Well, I am ready, now.
As if on cue, the apparition moves away from the foot of my bed, pointing at the corner of the wafer-thin mattress where he knows I have concealed the flex. My mouth becomes very dry as I tug it out. I trek over to the door, slipping the smaller loop around the handle. I shrug off my regulation blouse and let it slip to the floor.
Getting down on my knees, I noose the other end of the flex about my neck, and lean forward, away from the door. The cord instantly bites. My lungs struggle for breath. I hear a rushing sound all around me. My head starts to distend, like some misshapen balloon. There is a burning smell, somewhere. I battle to focus my whole being on driving my fists towards the floor.
The boy glides across the grubby tiles to face me, his head mere inches from mine. The fuzzy patch on his cheek has gone; his face is perfect, unblemished.
Now, at last, Jake opens his mouth to speak.
“Come,” he says.
And I follow.
Reviews
Helix and Soon I Will Be Invincible reviewed by Lee Harris
HELIX By Eric Brown
Published by Solaris (4 June ’07)
RRP: £6.99
In our first electronic-only issue of Hub (issue 3, 20th April) we published a new tale by Eric. In our introduction we described him as “the incomparable Eric Brown”. We’re about to confess a slight fib.
Helix is an unashamed adventure story – SF so light it needs weighting to keep it from floating away. While the characters don’t always convince, there is much to be enjoyed, here.
After mankind has destroyed the Earth’s ecosystem through constant warring and the ravaging of the land, a colony ship – the Lovelock – is launched with the intention of starting mankind afresh on a new world. When the ship crash-lands on an inhospitable planet, the crew discover that the world they are on is part of a helix – a vast, spiral construct of planets, wound around a single sun. The entire construction is exactly that – a construction. The location (and, indeed, continued existence) of the original Builders is unknown, and the reason for the build is also shrouded in mystery.
The crew meet a number of races – some deadly, some placid, some more complex – and plan a way to find a suitable world on which to revive their passengers, stored in cryogenic suspension.
Comparison with Niven’s Ringworld books is inevitable. Brown treads similar ground: vast planetary construct? Check. Alien allies and enemies? Check. Obligatory sex scene? Check. Mystery surrounding the artifact’s origin? Check. Two-dimensional characterisation? Ah. That’s a different matter. Niven’s book was bold, innovative, and a fascinating read. His characterisations, however, were two-dimensional and ill-considered. The protagonists in Helix are simply portrayed, but they have layers. At first glance it seems that Brown has fallen into the same trap as Niven, and made his world more interesting than his main characters, but as the book progresses we discover more about what makes these people do what they do, and we uncover some interesting revelations.
The same cannot be said of the antagonists, unfortunately, who have been roughly sketched, though this is not enough of a problem to stop me from recommending this book for anyone looking for a holiday read.
This is far from Brown’s best work, but as an uncomplicated boys-own-adventure in space, you could do far worse. An enjoyable romp.
Soon I Will Be Invincible By Austin Grossman
Published by Pantheon (US, 5 June ’07), Michael Joseph (UK, 16 August ‘07)
RRP: $22.95/£16.99
Doctor Impossible (evil genius, diabolical time-traveller, wannabe world ruler) has escaped from prison. Again. It’s up to the New Champions (reformed especially to take down Impossible, despite the disappearance of their most powerful member, CoreFire) to save the world from his evil plans. Again. Told from two points of view (Doctor Impossible narrates every other chapter, with intervening chapters told by the New Champions’ newest member, the cyborg Fatale), Soon I Will Be Invincible is an amusing tale of super-heroics, and of what drives super-villainy. It’s not a comedic tale, but it does acknowledges the ridiculousness of its own premise.
I leaned in to the microphone. Time to talk some trash.
“You didn’t think your prisons would stop me, did you? You knew I’d be back. I… Doctor Impossible!”
It passed the time.
Superhero stories rarely work well in prose. Perhaps it’s because we’re too used to seeing their tales unfold in illustrated or filmed format, and the novel format seems too serious for this type of endeavour. Invincible works. It’s a lot of fun. Bwahahahahaaaaaa!
Coming Next Week: Fiction: I Look Forward to Remembering You by Mur Lafferty
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Hub - Issue 9 Page 2
