Cities: The Very Best of Fantasy Comes to Town

This book includes four novellas. China Mieville takes a look at a bleak, blasted out London full of not very nice things. Avatars of death and politics collide in Paul Di Filipo's A Year in the Linear City, which is really quite good. Ryman's V A O is shorter, and not as interesting. Of most interest to me is yet another outing for the fabled Jerry Cornelius. In Firing the Catherdral, Moorcock is attempting a scatching satirical take on our post 9/11 type world, as seen by all the newspaper quotes at the start of chapters, from both 2002 and also from decades in the past. Jerry is running around doing his thing, happy to be back and functioning. So is the omnipresent Una Persson, travelling at Jerry's side for much of the time. The usual brothers, sisters, bishops and even Colonel Pyat make an appearance. It is ok, but maybe more than a touch heavyhanded, at times.

This collection edited by Peter Crowther, contains four stories by some of the best known fantasists of today...IMHO only the Moorcock piece is weak, but they are as follows: A Year in Linear City-Paul DiFilippo: Reminds me of Ringworld, except this one seems to be on a straight line, bordered by water on two side and a railway (subway?) that runs down the west side of the City. It's millions of blocks long, and few people have been outside of their own town (each is made up of 10k blocks),not does anyone know who or what is building/built it. Great idea and well carried out. The Tain-China Mieville: China has Stephen King's nightmares. This one details the revenge of the people we see in our mirrors. After having to perform for us for centuries, they decide to strike back, devastating whole cities and murdering their dopplegangers where they can. They are almost unstopable since we can't go into their world. Firing the Cathedral-Michael Moorcock: As best I can figure (with my limited mentality), this is a story of time coming unstuck and people living in different time periods at the same time. On the other hand it could be an old acid dream of Moorcock's left over from the sixties. V.A.O-Geoff Ryman: If you've read "Was" or any of Ryman's books, you know that he likes to take a known premise and bend it to it's breaking point and then go over the top with it. In this one, "old" people shut themselves up in Homes (the one called Happy Farm) to protect them in their old age. It cost $100K per year to stay on the Farm. Because so many of the 'residents' are ex-programmers, all of their computers are spied on stroke by stroke and the place is monitored by cameras and bio- reading equipment 24-7-365. The property is protected by 'Victim Activated Ordanance'; in other words, the inside perimeter looks like the East German side of the old Berlin Wall. For me, I would love to see DeFillipo's story turned into a full novel. It has classic written (pun intended) all over it.

Cities is a compilation of four stories by authors who are all masters of their craft; Paul Di Filippo, China Mieville, Michael Moorcock, and Geoff Ryman. Beginning with Paul Di Filippo's `A Year In The Linear City', the book takes off like a bullet from a gun. Di Filippo's envisioned city is hundreds of thousands of blocks long, but bordered on one side by a river and on the other side by railroad tracks. Beyond these boundaries exist The Wrong Side Of The Tracks and The Other Shore, places of myth and superstition. The world is cleansed of their dead by the Fisherwives and the Yardbulls, celestial beings who come for the spirits of the dead. This is a truly outstanding tale of a strange city in a strange world, with compelling characters and original plotline. Need I say more? Next is China Mieville's `The Tain', a unique and horrifying tale of what lays in wait behind our own mirrors. Call it a tale of vampires, or a tale of spectral imagery, a curse behind vanity, or a strange sci-fi-fantasy yarn of alternate universe/reality, but what it really amounts to is a chilling tale that is well worth picking up this book strictly for `The Tain' by itself. Michel Moorcock's `Firing The Cathedral' would be the one letdown in the book, regardless of what high esteem I hold Moorcock in. This is a `Jerry Cornelius' adventure, but I think even fans of Moorcock's `Jerry' will find this short story to be just a tad too meandering. Moorcock is an extremely talented writer whom I felt was merely left wandering through the haze of useless obliqueness when this story was conceived. `Cathedral' touches down into the prose style of "guess what I'm thinking" sci-fi jumbles that I usually try to avoid. The writing was just a little too disjointed, and Moorcock is normally much better than this individual story. Last of the collection is `V.A.O.' by Geoff Ryman, perhaps not as well known as the other three authors, but he writes a masterpiece with this tale of elderly inhabitants of a nursing home. V.A.O. stands for Victim Activated Ordinance, a security system put into place to protect the wealthy elders from the violent youths of the time. Or is it the elderly who are violent? In a closely monitored `home', these aged folks hide their computer codes beneath videos of golf matches, codes that launder money and track the activities of The Silhouette, leader of the `Age Rage' gang. Cities is an outstanding addition to your collection of strange places to go, and I highly recommend you pick up a copy if you are a fan of any one of these four talented authors. If you aren't now, you soon will be. Enjoy!

All these writers happen to be favorites of mine, so I could be prejudiced. The Moorcock story also appears in The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius and it's from the same publisher. People not familiar with Jerry and who haven't read Alan Moore's brilliant introduction to him (reprinted on the Fantastic Metropolis website) will get a better idea of the context. Moorcock has always used Jerry as a divining rod for the sources of the world's ills and the newspaper reports, including the quote from Cromwell about Ireland, reveal the story behind the story. Contrary to what one reader says, these stories are about cities - London in Mieville's story, Linear City in Di Filippo's and Moorcock suggests that we'll be living in some sort of artificial domes as the greenhouse effect destroys the world more thoroughly than any terrorist. The way he links the tragedy of 9/11 to the tragedy of what we're doing to our own cities, let alone the planet, is beautifully stated. Four novellas by four top writers, all of whom have something more to say, all of whom have outstanding imaginations. This is what modern sf is all about. I can't recommend this highly enough.

Compiled and edited by Peter Crowther, Cities consists of four fantasy novellas by China Mieville, Michael Moorcock, Paul DiFilippo and Geoff Ryman provide different scenarios of man's future. Mieville tells of a London overrun and destroyed by anti-human reflections living in mirrors; Moorcock's title is set in post-post-9/11 New York, Di Filippo is set in a city which literally straddles the line between Heaven and Hell, and Ryman's V.A.O. provides a funny mystery set in a future retirement home. All of these outstanding short stories are involving reflections on possible future worlds.