Tides is a short story from the collection Tides from the New Worlds.
Caribbean-born novelist Tobias Buckell established himself as a gifted new voice in science fiction with his stunning first novel, Crystal Rain. Now, in his first collection, Buckell demonstrates his strengths in the short form, offering listeners a collection of stories that are compelling, smart, wonderfully imagined, and entertaining. Tides from the New Worlds contains 19 stories that range from multicultural science fiction to magical realism, some in print for the first time.
"Buckell's stories, culturally informed and layered, are driven by plot, rather than character or concept; story tends to be centerpiece. He is in this sense a little like a mellowed, more pragmatic, hipper version of Octavia Butler." (Strange Horizons)
"In Tides from the New Worlds, Tobias Buckell does what the best SF/F writers tells stories that touch our minds with wonder and endow our hearts with perception. Reading this collection, for those of us culture-bound West or East, brings science fiction and fantasy to a fresh awakening. And for those of us who miss seeing ourselves in the fiction we so often read, it's quite moving." (Tor Books)
I have read (and even written about) Mackay's other alien-encounter books. This one, however, was new to me and left me with mixed feelings. It is a stark story of a real clash of civilizations (and species) that raises hard issues of historical justice, universal morality, and the nature of truth. In many ways, it is exactly what SF has to be. But the writing is mediocre, the ending is rushed, and the alien world is not really fleshed out. Still, there are worse novels of military SF out there.