Jeff Koeppen's Reviews > Tangents

Tangents is an interesting collection of short fiction, plus one nonfiction story to wrap things up. This was a mixed bag for me as I really do not like fantasy and at least half of the stories were fantasy rather than the science fiction I was hoping for. Still, this was a fun read and even the fantasy content kept me turning pages. I listened to the audiobook on Audible but also have a paper copy. The audiobook featured both a male narrator, Brennan Taylor, and a female narrator, Therese Plummer, and having both of them really added to the experience. A summary of the stories follows:

"Blood Music" - a bio-horror/sci-fi story about a scientist who injects nanobots in to his blood and things don't exactly go as planned. For him. Bear expanded this in to a novel which I'll have to check out.

"Sleepside Story" - a boy from the other side of the tracks befriends a prostitute with magical powers which causes her to change in unexpected ways.

"Webster" - a lonely woman magically creates the man of her dreams but their relationship doesn't grow as she hopes.

"A Martian Ricorso" - a mission to Mars involving first contact doesn't go well for the three astronauts on the red planet.

"Dead Run" - things don't go as planned for a truck driver in charge of delivering souls to hell.

"Schrodinger's Plague" - a gripping, mind melting story about a deadly viral pandemic, or not?

"Through Road No Whiter" - Nazis on a road trip come upon an old lady who isn't who she appears to be.

"Tangents" - a scientist famous for his work cracking codes in WWII encounters a boy who seemingly can see and communicate with beings in the fourth dimension.

"Sisters" - in the future where many are genetically modified to be physically attractive, a natural high school girl struggles to be part of the group.

"The Machineries of Joy" - this is a non-fiction article which Bear wrote for Omni magazine in 1984 in which he talks about the future of computer technology especially how it relates to movies. I found it fascinating. He predicts many of the things we take for granted now regarding CGI and gets some things wrong, too. Very relatable for those of us who were first dabbling in computers around that time, as I was as a college boy.

Overall, there weren't a lot of feel good stories in this collection. Most were pretty dark and some were really dark. Standouts for me were "Blood Music", "Sisters", and "Schrodinger's Plague". I've got a number of Bear novels on my shelves I need to get to now.