Brilliant Things by Simon Morden

It's a risky move to name a collection something that suggests the stories within are great, because it also leaves the way open for obvious jibes if someone disagrees. Yet the responsible reviewer should resist such jibes. So I don't really want to say that the stories in Simon Morden's book are not 'brilliant things' but... well, frankly, they're not.

I was really looking forward to reading this. The jacket and accompanying press release are full of praise for Morden's work; and surely, I thought, as editor of Focus, the BSFA's fiction magazine, Morden should know a thing or two about what makes good science fiction. But there's no denying that reading Brilliant Things was a hard slog.

The main problem is Morden's use of language: these stories are full of cumbersome imagery and awkward turns of phrase. A typical example comes from 'Empty Head': 'Three computers, separate but together, white gloss cases diffusing the hot yellow light slanting through the open slats of the blinds.' Or, from the book's title story, set in the First World War: 'Stones and soil clattered out in a stinking cloud that bloomed and faded like a poppy.' This sort of thing highly distracting, and disrupts the reading experience.

It's a shame, too, because Morden's ideas are often good in principle, just not so good in practice. For example, 'A Forgotten Corner of Hell' is set in a wounded WW1 veteran's country house, where people start freezing to death after a relative of the owner comes to stay. It turns out that the relative has built a machine granting access to a 'forgotten corner of hell', and a demon is passing through the machine and killing people in this world. It's an interesting idea, but the story is again let down by the writing, both the specific ('Every panicked step he took covered a pace's worth of floor...') and the general; there's something artificial about the whole telling of the story.

The tales in Brilliant Things cover a lot of ground in terms of genre and setting, and some of them do hit the mark. 'Terra Incognita' is an atmospheric tale of 18th-century seafarers that rattles along nicely and raises a smile at the end. 'Whitebone Street' is mostly effective for its deadpan delivery of surprises, so I had better not say any more about it. 'The Northman's Shroud' is another interesting piece, in which some plainsfolk are cursed by the titular Northman, and permanent dusk subsequently descends. Again, I risk spoiling the story for you if I reveal any more.

In summary, then, Brilliant Things contains a few good stories, but there are also some of a considerably lower standard; and, sadly, the good stuff is in the minority. It's not a book I can recommend - and I say that with no small amount of disappointment.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

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