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The Fringe Matrix Capacitor
This version is out of print. A new, expanded version is available.
122 pages, Paperback
First published December 6, 2011
66 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Beam
26 books27 followersStephen Beam is a native Californian. For many years he was a video game artist, starting out freelancing, then later employed full time at Interplay Entertainment. He created game art as diverse as Nintendo's Mario Brothers to realistic Star Trek worlds. He moved on to work as a graphic artist and web designer, creating games and presentations for various government services such as the Long Beach MWD and many VA hospitals around the country. He is now writing bizarre mixed genre fiction.
Transcendental Bizarro Catalog:
http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Beam/e/...
Transcendental Bizarro Catalog:
http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Beam/e/...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 17, 2012
I’ll start this review with a quick sketch of certain social processes. In popular music, there have been no Jazz titans since the 1960’s, no rock titans since the 1970’s, no metal titans since the 1990’s. Nevertheless, there are countless musicians in every city on every continent on the planet, keeping the flame alive by performing classic hits in smoky bars, or composing beta versions of the same, or exploring in depth some shade of a subgenre, or even at times trying to bring back the whole genre into relevance. At times succeeding for a year or three.
Likewise in popular literature, countless writers toil to keep alive science fiction, horror, and sword and sorcery, in the face of the onslaught of space opera, sword opera, and paranormal soft and hard porn.
Greg Bear and David Brin have been trying for decades to fill the hole left by Asimov. Vernor Vinge and Greg Egan make gallant attempts to keep the spirit of Arthur C Clarke alive.
And now we come to The Fringe-Matrix-Capacitor by Stephen Beam. As you can guess, this is a book that is part of the collective effort to not let a certain story-telling tradition die.
A collection of four interconnected stories, revolving around the repercussions of the invention of the aforementioned Capacitor, which allows instantaneous travel around the universe.
The first story starts as your classical 1930’s Golden Age story of an inventor and the super spaceship in his basement. By the middle of the story it is suddenly 1965 and Philip Dick has just tried acid.
The second story starts as a Bob Sheckley affair about a loser being marooned on another planet by use of suspicious black market technology. Again, as the story moves towards culmination, the special effects erupt on a level comparable to Stanislaw Lem’s Futurulogical Congress.
The third story starts as a Voneggutish/Simakish pastoral, and then…you guessed it. And so on, and so on.
Bottom line: a charming postmodern mix of pre-WWII naivist golden age sci-fi/weird, post-WWII psychidelia, and the occasional cyberpunkish nano-synaptic-mnemonic tech stuff.
Likewise in popular literature, countless writers toil to keep alive science fiction, horror, and sword and sorcery, in the face of the onslaught of space opera, sword opera, and paranormal soft and hard porn.
Greg Bear and David Brin have been trying for decades to fill the hole left by Asimov. Vernor Vinge and Greg Egan make gallant attempts to keep the spirit of Arthur C Clarke alive.
And now we come to The Fringe-Matrix-Capacitor by Stephen Beam. As you can guess, this is a book that is part of the collective effort to not let a certain story-telling tradition die.
A collection of four interconnected stories, revolving around the repercussions of the invention of the aforementioned Capacitor, which allows instantaneous travel around the universe.
The first story starts as your classical 1930’s Golden Age story of an inventor and the super spaceship in his basement. By the middle of the story it is suddenly 1965 and Philip Dick has just tried acid.
The second story starts as a Bob Sheckley affair about a loser being marooned on another planet by use of suspicious black market technology. Again, as the story moves towards culmination, the special effects erupt on a level comparable to Stanislaw Lem’s Futurulogical Congress.
The third story starts as a Voneggutish/Simakish pastoral, and then…you guessed it. And so on, and so on.
Bottom line: a charming postmodern mix of pre-WWII naivist golden age sci-fi/weird, post-WWII psychidelia, and the occasional cyberpunkish nano-synaptic-mnemonic tech stuff.
September 4, 2012
Here is what someone posted about the first story in the collection:
"...I have read a lot of science fiction over the course of many years, and surprises aren't easy to come by. However, the author's concept of the "end of space" was definitely a surprise. I found the narrative engaging and the characters very likeable. It was a story built around an idea rather than action/adventure. No kidnappings, terrorists, interplanetary wars and general mayhem, just an entertaining presentation of a concept. I have to say I found it an enjoyable read." - Donna
"...I have read a lot of science fiction over the course of many years, and surprises aren't easy to come by. However, the author's concept of the "end of space" was definitely a surprise. I found the narrative engaging and the characters very likeable. It was a story built around an idea rather than action/adventure. No kidnappings, terrorists, interplanetary wars and general mayhem, just an entertaining presentation of a concept. I have to say I found it an enjoyable read." - Donna
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews