One of the writers I discovered during the 365 Day Challenge was Ian Creasey. Maps of the Edge is a collection of spec
fic stories by Creasey published in 2011. (His novella, The Strawberry Thief, was published last
October. I can't wait to read it.) Creasey identifies as a science fiction writer, but pigeonholing him
into one genre really doesn't seem fair, especially after reading through this
collection, which is a small sample of the more than 50-odd stories he's sold
to magazines and anthologies.
The stories
range over a wide spectrum of emotions. "Reality 2.0" is a hilarious
riff on a new product from Microsoft, a re-imagination of math called
"WonderNumbers" that takes all the hard work out of math, much to the
dismay of mathematicians. "Now you can divide by zero" is the
product's sales pitch for the software, which does away with a lot of
inconvenient math concepts and formulae. "This is How it Feels" is a
haunting story about loss and grief that describes the feeling as "a
compost heap where rats endlessly gnaw over the scraps of your heart."
"Cut
Loose the Bonds of Flesh and Bone" is a story about a mother and a
daughter that also touches on one of the core concepts and conceits of the
collection, the persistence of personality in an electronic afterlife. Many of
the stories are surrounded and shaped by conspiracy theories and there are
references throughout to a Conspiracy Channel--the people who work there and
some of the shows that appear. And who doesn't love a good conspiracy theory?
Creasey is
not just a storyteller, he's an actual wordsmith--a term that's thrown around
much too easily. (In the opening story, "Erosion," he describes
clouds as looking like "celestial loft insulation" and the phrase is
just perfect.)
You don't
have to like science fiction to like Creasey's stories but if you do, you will
love them.
