Sir Niallalot Reviews

Niall Alexander (@naillalot on Twitter) has reviewed Robots for the Tor.Com blog. It's a thoughtful, interesting review, with some positive and some negative things to say. He calls the book overall a 'difficult, if intermittently excellent (and certainly representative) collection'. Can't say fairer than that. One thing particularly piqued my interest:

Some of the science fiction collected herein is stunning, as essential as it is eclectic, but perhaps an equal quantity of it can be summarised thusly: here’s an idea. Isn’t it interesting? Next!

I take the force of this latter criticism, directed (of course) at me. But part of me thinks: I've read a thousand collections of SF short fiction that, in effect, do precisely that. Perhaps it (the logic thumbnailed in Alexander's pithy phrase) is part of the problematic of short SF itself? Or is that just me trying to wriggle free from under the butterfly pin? Either way, Here’s an idea. Isn’t it interesting? Next! strikes me as an excellent title for a collection of science fiction short stories, and I may appropriate it for future use.

Next!