Dancing with Myself

This book is a collection of short stories. The book is worth buying for the incredible short story - "Out of Copyright". I have found that the science fiction writers that people enjoy is as much about writing style as it is about the scope of the stories themselves. Maybe this is true in all genres. Anyway, Charles Sheffield is one of the science fiction writers I love, and I think that it is impossible to explain his writing style, you just have to experience it. So here is the beginning of the short story - "Out of Copyright" : Trouble-shooting. A splendid idea, and one that I agree with totally in principle. Bang! One bullet, and trouble bites the dust. But unfortunately trouble doesn't know the rules. Trouble won't stay dead. I looked around the table. My trouble-shooting team was here. I was here. Unfortunately they were supposed to be headed for Jupiter and I ought to be down on Earth. In less than twenty-four hours the draft pick would begin. That wouldn't wait, and if I didn't leave in the next thirty minutes I would never make it in time. I needed to be in two places at once. I cursed the copyright laws and the single-copy restriction, and went to work. "You've read the new requirement," I said. "You know the parameters. Ideas, anyone?" A dead silence. They were facing the problem in their own unique ways. Wolfgang Pauli looked half asleep, Thomas Edison was drawing little doll-figures on the table's surface, Enrico Fermi seemed to be counting on his fingers, and John von Neumann was staring impatiently at the other three. I was doing none of these things. I knew very well that wherever the solution would come from, it would not be from inside my head. My job was much more straightforward; I had to see that when we had a possible answer, it happened. And I had to see that we got one answer, not four... Hopefully, that is enough of a teaser to get you interested. Enjoy!

I read this book a number of years ago (I was still in high school) and liked it very much. It may have been the first collection of short stories that I could read through in its entirety without losing interest. It seemed that each story revolved around a specific idea (as most, especially sf, stories do); nearly every one of these ideas struck me as very original, and interestingly depictedand played out. Two particularly struck me: one where a physicist dies and how his childhood friend steals his theories, and one about teams of engineers composed of cloned people throughout history (and the dynamics between them, whether they were geniuses on account of nature/nurture etc.) I remember being quite pleased at the blend of hard science and humanity.That said... looking back, perhaps tainted by over-literary reading, I see something very 'dilettantish' about these stories, as though the author were merely playing with ideas, maybe only on weekends; and the same goes for the writing itself. My biggest criticism is that the book as a whole lacks development, rumination; I can still see entire blades of grass, unchewed, poking through the text. Sometimes this roughage lends interesting texture or charm, and can even be desirable (letting the reader (re)write/create). Often, however, it is a burden; after each story, the reader is left holding a loose and scattered group of ideas to be assembled later. In certain short stories (Joyce's, Kafka's...) which give hint of a hidden unity and demand numerous readings, this sense of an 'incomplete reading' is good/necessary/intentional; the reader starts the story over to decipher the code, uncover its meaning, or to reenter its spell. With this book, I never really got this feeling or urge to reread, or even think deeply about, any of the stories. Thus, the problem may reside in the depth of the stories; what you can glean from one reading is about all you are going to get. This lucidity and plainness is great for pure entertainment, but it seems these stories are trying to do something more cerebral at the same time; they give an illusion of depth, making its absence all the more aparent.And that said... I give this book four stars not only for my first reading (which, I repeat, was very interesting and fun), but also because I still think that it is a very solid book, with solid writing and solid ideas. Some of the stories have stuck with me, and it is perhaps this sort of test of time which points towards a books true worth.