What's that? You need to be convinced further?
Very well...
A lot of 'slipstream' fiction is vague about the reality (or otherwise) of its fantasy elements: it's left to the reader to decide whether events are real or just hallucinations. This is fair enough, but tends not to go far enough for my liking. More interesting, in my opinion, is to assume the fantasy is real, and just get on with the business of telling stories. Ashley does this many times, and it works magnificently, as in 'Sequel', for example, which makes entering a sci-fi B-movie seem the most natural thing in the world. And perhaps the most startling example of this is 'In Search of Guy Fawkes', where a scientific experiment gone wrong causes history to collapse, leaving behind an early modern world where some technology from our present day nevertheless survives. It's a credit to Ashley's skill that he makes this sort of thing seem utterly believable, rather than absurd.
Throwing us in at the deep end, however complex the background, is not an approach that makes things easy for the reader (nothing wrong with that, though!); but it does make for some fascinating stories. One very welcome consequence of the technique is that it brings the characters right to the foreground, when Ashley could easily concentrate on dazzling us with his fantasy ideas. The aforementioned 'Sequel' explores what might happen to a B-movie hero after he saves the world from alien invasion; it wouldn't work nearly so well if it dwelt on the fact of someone passing into the world of a film. Then there's 'Downsize', a story about a devoted employee, which treats its 'loyalty machine' as something relatively unremarkable, thus allowing the characters to take centre stage.
'Downsize' also illustrates another strength of Somnambulists: the way in which the fantastic elements and settings of the tales reflect the characters. This isn't always satisfying - 'Siberia' perhaps labours its point a little too much - but, most of the time, it works very well. An example would be 'The Twilight', where a permanent darkness mirrors the emotional disconnection of its protagonist.
There's a sharp vein of humour running through some of the stories, which comes to the fore especially in two satirical pieces. 'Pumpkin Coach' recasts Cinderella as a 'people's princess' who dies in a road accident in Paris. And in 'Matthew Saint', we meet a struggling author living in ancient Judea. Both these stories raise a good deal of wry laughter.
This review has deliberately tried to avoid evaluating any of the stories in Somnambulists in detail, because the overall quality is genuinely so high that it seemed inappropriate to single any out as being 'bad'. Nigh on everything about this collection is superb (and let's take a moment to praise Dean Harkness's gorgeous cover). It shows Allen Ashley to be a master storyteller and fantasist, and is yet another outstanding volume from Elastic Press. Put simply: if you like fiction, read this book. Go on, what are you waiting for?
This review first appeared in The Alien Online.
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