Adam's review
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
by Michael Swanwick
Adam's review
The Dog Said Bow-Wow by Michael Swanwick
Adam's review
rating:
bookshelves:
steampunkery,
wtf-idea-gatling-gun-my-head-hurts
A really fun collection by Swanwick, for the most part lighter in tone than his death haunted collection Tales of the Old Earth. These tales use tropes of science fiction, fantasy, mythology, and trickster tales but plays with them and the reader’s expectation of the story. There is great range from dark jokes, pastoral visions, to epic battles. Highlights include all the Darger and Surplus tales (three of them…I hope Swanwick makes of novel on them), who are con men in a flamboyant bioengineering crazed future, following a computer based disaster that is hinted at, that combines our collective myths and history with future shock to craft surreal, dreamlike vision of future London, Paris, and Arcadia. “Slow Life” reads almost like rewrite of his classic “Very Pulse of the Machine”, opening it to a new range of colors. “The Skysailor’s Tale” which could be a lost chapter from Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon or Against The Day is bizarre steampunk fantasia riddled with remo...more
