Perseids and Other Stories

This is a fascinating science fiction anthology that centers on a small bookstore, Finders, as if that place is the vortex of the universe. Each story is well written and connects back to the bookstore, some more so than others. Three tales are new though if readers are like this reviewer they were unaware that the author had written any short stories so all the tales are new. As with his novels, Robert Charles Wilson has written an exciting book that showcase why this writer is one of the centers of the genre as short science fiction is rarely as good.Harriet Klausner

Robert Charles Wilson's fictions are always a great pleasure to read: populated by heartbroken, sometimes courageous, sometimes tragic characters caught in the galactic spinning wheels not of their design, depicted in elegant, spare and caustically witty prose, and addressing heavy metaphysical questions without losing sight of human-scale sufferings and losses. I sort of regard him as Graham Greene of contemporary science fiction, a healthy antidote to all the postmodern ironies and self-congratulatory razzle-dazzle that infect fictions of every genre these days. His first collection of short stories is, if anything, sparer and tougher than his epic novels like MYSTERIUM or DARWINA. Without employing unnecessary pyrotechnics (although he does kill off all life on earth in "Infinity Divided by Infinity") or dangling his attitude in front of our noses, Wilson draws us into the realm of horrors and wonders both cosmic (like Lovecraft minus the baroque intimations of "unspeakable") and personal. Potentially dreary subjects like alien abduction ("The Observer") and mineral-based life form ("Pearl Baby") are reworked into strange and unexpected touching meditations on the nature of mystery and the human ambivalence toward it. On the other hand, the collection's intimate scope might turn off fans of BIOS and DARWINIA, the stories being firmly rooted in the physical and emotional geography of Toronto. Some may also feel that science is not "hard" enough; others may object to the author's somewhat strenuous effort to construct a "shared world" around the stories that seem to have very little in common. I for one am quite satisfied, and am eagerly looking forward to his second collection.

Robert Charles Wilson has long been one of my favourite authors both in long fiction and short. As a Canadian, I've been able to see his wonderful short fiction as it appeared in various Canadian venues, such as the _Northern Frights_ and the _Tesseracts_ series of anthologies. Now they are collected here and they are fabulous. Wilson writes with heart and soul and a staggering intellect that is never show-offy. His fiction is a joy to read. My favorite of the stories is the title one, "The Perseids," which quite rightly won Canada's top sci-fi prize, the Aurora. For readers who know Wilson's work, his short fiction is much more in the vein of his Hugo nominated _Darwinia_ rather than in that of the more recent _Bios_. I recommend this book highly and hope it is only the first of many collections from RCW.