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The Mammoth Book of Future Cops
The future will be a world of ambiguity, of good men gone bad and bad men doing good - our world of today, turned sideways. This is the future of Blade Runner and Akira, the world of cops and crooks written across a bleak landscape of urban decay, pollution, corruption, of multinational organisations pulling the strings of government and controlling the world with cyber Big Brothering. All the stories included in this volume are the greatest of noir crime writing - by tum evocative, haunting, brutal and heroic, but always original, and always visionary.
498 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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April 16, 2012
It didn't really do what it said on the tin. I hate that, it's part of the reason I generally avoid these kinds of books. But what can I say? I'm a sucker for hardboiled crime, I enjoy cyberpunk and classic sci-fi, a merging of the genres seemed like a good way to find some interesting new authors and to get involved in some fun sci-crime stories. Overall I was a bit bored however.
The name Future Cops is misleading, most of the stories don't feature law enforcement of any kind; that's no gumshoes, no PI's, no cops, no pigs, no rozzers, no dicks, no old ladies knitting or baking, no recluse solving crime from their beds, you get the idea. The blurb uses the term 'future noir' and makes comparisons to the fantastic movies Blade Runner and Akira, and being a fan of the pulp crime genre of writing, an afficionado of film noir, I had expectations based on that which unfortunately were not met. There's a whole heap of inevitability and existentialism on behalf of the protagonists but aside from that the stories on the whole were lacking in excitement, interest, entertainment value, grittiness, dirtiness, great dialogue.
One thing that ties most of them together is the fascination with legalised narcotics and alternative sexual lifestyles, staples of cyberpunk I suppose, but mostly used in such a lazy fashion that it gave no added meaning or depth to the stories and caused sporadic eye-rolling to occur - not good whilst trying to read by the way.
Now to highlight a few standout experiences from the collection:
My first experience of Stephen Baxter was a real eye opener, I may have to get involved in his back catalogue of hard science fiction afterall (despite previous assertions that it was probably too hard for my brain.) Top quality writing and ideas are to be expected from him I believe.
The same can be said for China Miéville, I gave up on Perdido Street Station quite early on and haven't gone back despite the lavish praise heaped upon him. I may try a different novel of his in the future after this story.
The transplanting of Hercule Poirot to a spaceship using his little grey cells to figure out a murder involving man-eating aliens amongst other things was a triumph of an ingenious homage from Ian Watson which I will be sharing with my fellow Agatha Christie fans.
Blood Sisters from Joe Haldeman was a very interesting piece, not least because of the original publication being a 1979 issue of Playboy, which created a world I would have been interested to know more about.
Finally a mention for Jon Courtenay Grimwood, an author who I had previously considered reading thanks to his Arabesk Trilogy but dismissed as not worth my time thanks to the 500 books I currently have on my shelves waiting to be read, I enjoyed his Axl Against The Immortals story and will be hunting out that Arabesk Trilogy in the coming weeks.
The name Future Cops is misleading, most of the stories don't feature law enforcement of any kind; that's no gumshoes, no PI's, no cops, no pigs, no rozzers, no dicks, no old ladies knitting or baking, no recluse solving crime from their beds, you get the idea. The blurb uses the term 'future noir' and makes comparisons to the fantastic movies Blade Runner and Akira, and being a fan of the pulp crime genre of writing, an afficionado of film noir, I had expectations based on that which unfortunately were not met. There's a whole heap of inevitability and existentialism on behalf of the protagonists but aside from that the stories on the whole were lacking in excitement, interest, entertainment value, grittiness, dirtiness, great dialogue.
One thing that ties most of them together is the fascination with legalised narcotics and alternative sexual lifestyles, staples of cyberpunk I suppose, but mostly used in such a lazy fashion that it gave no added meaning or depth to the stories and caused sporadic eye-rolling to occur - not good whilst trying to read by the way.
Now to highlight a few standout experiences from the collection:
My first experience of Stephen Baxter was a real eye opener, I may have to get involved in his back catalogue of hard science fiction afterall (despite previous assertions that it was probably too hard for my brain.) Top quality writing and ideas are to be expected from him I believe.
The same can be said for China Miéville, I gave up on Perdido Street Station quite early on and haven't gone back despite the lavish praise heaped upon him. I may try a different novel of his in the future after this story.
The transplanting of Hercule Poirot to a spaceship using his little grey cells to figure out a murder involving man-eating aliens amongst other things was a triumph of an ingenious homage from Ian Watson which I will be sharing with my fellow Agatha Christie fans.
Blood Sisters from Joe Haldeman was a very interesting piece, not least because of the original publication being a 1979 issue of Playboy, which created a world I would have been interested to know more about.
Finally a mention for Jon Courtenay Grimwood, an author who I had previously considered reading thanks to his Arabesk Trilogy but dismissed as not worth my time thanks to the 500 books I currently have on my shelves waiting to be read, I enjoyed his Axl Against The Immortals story and will be hunting out that Arabesk Trilogy in the coming weeks.
Displaying 1 of 1 review