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Sunday, May 23, 2004
Up Close & Personal
by Mike Resnick
I saw this collection of Mike Resnick's stories in a chain bookstore when it first came out in 1992. Nothing grabs me like a catchy title and, although I flipped through it, I didn't buy it until I found it used last year.
Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet... is uneven, with some very good individual stories, a few that are excellent. And the book as a whole reads well.
"Kirinyaga" and its sequels are jewels, but it's also available in a book of the same name, where Mr. Resnick completed this story of tradition squaring off with technology. I highly recommend the entire book--Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia.
"Over There" is another of his excellent Teddy Roosevelt/alternate history stories, this one more reflective than most. There are some disturbing stories, such as "Watching Marcia", showing Resnick at his most serious; others such as the hilarious, recursive "His Award-Winning Science-Fiction Story" keep the collection balanced. And the wonderful "Winter Solstice" ends the collection on a high note.
Overall, this is a good collection. The stories tend to be more personal and concerned with individual problems; characters are a touch more vivid than in larger-than-life novels such as Ivory, Santiago or the Kirinyaga stories. Even the Teddy Roosevelt stories, while concerned with societal problems, strike an excellent balance between environment and human concerns. An additional collection from Mr. Resnick, containing fiction since this 1992 volume, would be welcome.[1]
[1] Over the last few years, Mr. Resnick has placed highly in SF awards, with stories such as "The Elephants of Neptune", "Robots Don't Cry", and the creepy, cautionary tale "Old MacDonald Had a Farm".
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