Starlings

October 16, 2017
This collection of fiction and poetry from Hugo- and Nebula-winner Walton (The Just City) showcases her trademark focus on genre and philosophical questions. Most of the fiction is very brief, and fans of the form will have plenty to appreciate. The strongest story is the relatively long “The Panda Coin,” which follows the path of a gold coin as it passes through the economy of a space station. Cleverest is “Sleeper,” the story of a future biographer interviewing a simulation of her 20th-century subject. The inclusion of “Tradition,” however, is unfortunate, as it’s an undisguised, nearly point-for-point rehashing of a very common joke, and the play “Three Shouts on a Hill” fails to rise above the tropes and clichés it attempts to interrogate. Of the poetry included at the end, “Machiavelli and Prospero” stands out as a rewarding and clever piece of character insight, and “Sleepless in New Orleans” is particularly striking for its voice. The collection will appeal most strongly to Walton’s dedicated fans and those with academic interest in her work.

November 1, 2017
Award-winning sci-fi novelist and essayist Walton shares her poetry, a play, and assorted short fiction, accompanied by lengthy insights about writing each work and complaints about not getting paid.Walton has some interesting and frank insights about her writing process and what she felt she needed to learn in order to compose a short story that works. She argues that it's vital to match a story length with the appropriate ending "weight." This is true, up to a point; and the selections in the book illustrate Walton's skill at crafting appropriate endings to her intriguing beginnings. However, she might want to devote more attention to developing story middles, many of which come across as either incompletely established or rushed. It's also true that short stories, particularly in speculative fiction, are wonderful opportunities for experimentation, to say "What if?" and carry the idea forward for a bit and stop. Several of the included works are mainly overt experiments of this kind, almost one-joke sketches, such as a brief correspondence between Jane Austen and Cassandra of Troy. But Walton, as she's demonstrated in her novels (Necessity, 2016, etc.), is an expert experimenter, and even her weaker efforts are worth a reader's time. Selections of particular note include "Three Twilight Tales," three brief and gorgeously enigmatic scenes at an inn; "Sleeper," about employing Cold War-type subversion in a near-future era of repressive capitalism and constant surveillance; "A Burden Shared," in which an app allows you to take on a loved one's pain (Walton is correct about these two; they're both successful, fully formed short stories); and "Three Shouts on a Hill," a delightfully metafictional and anachronistic play that retells an Irish legend, which Walton accurately claims as the collection's best work. The book also includes several poems, whose shorter length is well-suited to Walton's idea-tinkering.An intriguing peek inside a fertile mind.

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December 1, 2017

In the introduction to Walton's first story collection, the author claims to have spent most of her career not knowing how to write a short story. One of the few pieces she acknowledges as a "proper" story is the marvelous and sad "A Burden Shared," set in a future where an app allows users to share their pain with others. But there are also first chapters of books never penned, extended jokes, and writing exercises that allowed Walton to play with a theme or point of view that intrigued her. All are enjoyable, no matter how brief. One of the entertaining experiments is "The Panda Coin," which follows a single coin as it is passed from person to person on a space station. There is also a hilarious play, "Three Shouts on a Hill," which pokes fun at the heroic quest. The volume concludes with a lovely sampling of Walton's poetry. VERDICT This collection of 20 stories, 15 poems, and a single one-act play demonstrates Walton's versatility as an author whose novels have also bounced among genres with kinetic abandon, including the Nebula- and Hugo Award-winning Among Others.--KC

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