Temps

Temps #1

by Alex Stewart (Editor), Neil Gaiman

These stories are all set in a comic strip world where superheroes are common. It is a world in which people are born with paranormal powers, or have bizarre accidents, get bitten by radioactive fauna, come into possession of magic gems or do favours for godlike aliens.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Anthologies, Fiction, Superheroes

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 8, 1991

About the author

Alex Stewart also writes as Sandy Mitchell.

Alex Stewart writes tie-in novels for the Warhammer 40,000 game under the name Sandy Mitchell, including Death or Glory and Hero of the Imperium.

Reviews

[Sean O'Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is quite an unusual book and not really what I was expecting. Based on the cover and, perhaps on the strength of Gaiman's Good Omens partnership with Terry Pratchett, I was expecting something laugh out loud funny. In fact the humour was distinctly wry for the most part. The story Pitbull Brittan was the one which played for laughs the most but for me it was one of the least effective of the stories in the book. I felt that the best of these stories were the ones which explored some of the consequences of the existence of paranorms such as Someone to Watch Over Me, The Oedipus Effect, The Rose Garden and A Lonely Impulse. It appears that there is another collection of Temps short stories and I would definitely be interested in reading them.

[Jillian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a bizarre compilation. I would have rated it higher if it were not for the inclusion of one of the longest short stories in the book, which was utter rubbish. I don’t understand why it was in the book at all.
There are some quite good stories in here, and the concept of getting a bunch of different authors to write about characters in the same world was a really interesting one.
It’s definitely showing it’s age, in ways that were quite jarring. Particularly in the last story about the lesbian, and how “coming out” as paranormal related to what “coming out” as gay would have been like in the late 80’s/early 90’s when this was written.

Content warnings - lots of violence, domestic and sexual assault, gore, racist, homophobic and sexist slurs, a bit of stalking, murder and suicide.
The most important one is please don’t waste your time reading about Pitbull Brittan, the human penis-man made entirely of erectile tissue. It could have been very funny, but it was just disappointingly, gratuitously violent, racist, sexist, classist and stupid in a way that none of the other stories were. Ugh. So bad. Ignore that one and this is a 4-star collection.

[Tony Lawrence]

(retrospective c.2011) This looks like an unusual short story compilation, with credits from the master Neil Gaiman. Picked up from a book stall, somewhere!

I may be wrong but this feels like something completely different, like a comic book in words, X-men crossed with The League of Fantastical Gentleman, a very British society of misfits. It could of course be a well established fantasy sub-genre?!

The book is made up of a number of short stories about 'temps', part-time members of the DPR (Department of Paranormal Resources), mostly with odd skills that mean they don't qualify as full-time 'superheroes'. For example the man who can turn into a frog, the boy who can appear invisible, or rather instantly forgettable etc. etc. Because of these 'skills' they are slight outcasts from society, misfits at best, mistrusted aliens at worst. I didn't really notice the different authors, maybe because Gaiman and Stewart created a very strong vision for this world to be populated by others? Very enjoyable, i'll look out for more like this, if it;s not unique ...