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Faction Paradox #20
Faction Paradox: Rose-Coloured Crosshairs
‘There was a temple at the dawn of time. Except it was not a temple and it was not at the dawn of time.
A dreadful thought crossed the man’s mind. Except the thought was not dreadful and the mind did not belong to a man.
A tube train arrived at a London Underground station. Except it was not a tube train and it had not arrived at a London Underground station.
The sabre-toothed tiger strode majestically across the ice-age wasteland. Except it was not a sabre-toothed tiger and it was not an ice-age wasteland.
Memories cheat.
But so do Faction Paradox.’
A dreadful thought crossed the man’s mind. Except the thought was not dreadful and the mind did not belong to a man.
A tube train arrived at a London Underground station. Except it was not a tube train and it had not arrived at a London Underground station.
The sabre-toothed tiger strode majestically across the ice-age wasteland. Except it was not a sabre-toothed tiger and it was not an ice-age wasteland.
Memories cheat.
But so do Faction Paradox.’
- GenresScience Fiction
156 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2025
7 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 24, 2025
The latest standalone novella set in the Faction Paradox range from Obverse Books under the umbrella title Worlds of the Spiral Politic, Rose-Coloured Crosshairs is author Blair Bidmead working on his grandest canvas yet, with events taking place across more than 4 billion years, split across three time periods. Bidmead manages the trick of setting up three connected yet distinct environs with an engaging cast of characters, giving you enough to want to spend more time in their company, but without feeling shortchanged when the narrative leaps onward to the next, and then bringing it all home again by the end.
One of the things I love most about the Faction Paradox range is the expansive range of stories being told there and the diverse range of voices it attracts to provide those stories. In seeking out and enabling these voices, Obverse are doing gods' work. Whether that god is Tezcatlipoca, Yahweh or Galactus, other deities are available. Cards on the table, my voice is one of those enabled, but I was all in for the Faction long before I wrote for them. Big ideas and big voices, allowed to carve out their own little areas of interest within the bigger saga. And Rose-Coloured Crosshairs has a very big idea - The Nostalgia Bomb - that demands the scale of the book. Could this have been novel-length? Easily, but it works so well as a novella. During his tenure as the editor of 2000AD, Andy Diggle's mission statement was that stories should be distilled until they became a shotglass of rocket fuel, and that's always stayed with me. Rose-Coloured Crosshairs is definitely jet-propelled.
Bidmead finds a place for his recurring character Theo Possible, always a welcome guest appearance. And wait till you meet Pontifex Kklakk, Cousin Rake, and Mick and Milo. All characters with internal lives crying out to be told. I hate it when characters feel like they popped out of nowhere into the story purely to perform a plot function and then pop off into obscurity again. No danger of that in a Blair Bidmead story. Any of them could easily headline further stories, and I am here for them.
One of the things I love most about the Faction Paradox range is the expansive range of stories being told there and the diverse range of voices it attracts to provide those stories. In seeking out and enabling these voices, Obverse are doing gods' work. Whether that god is Tezcatlipoca, Yahweh or Galactus, other deities are available. Cards on the table, my voice is one of those enabled, but I was all in for the Faction long before I wrote for them. Big ideas and big voices, allowed to carve out their own little areas of interest within the bigger saga. And Rose-Coloured Crosshairs has a very big idea - The Nostalgia Bomb - that demands the scale of the book. Could this have been novel-length? Easily, but it works so well as a novella. During his tenure as the editor of 2000AD, Andy Diggle's mission statement was that stories should be distilled until they became a shotglass of rocket fuel, and that's always stayed with me. Rose-Coloured Crosshairs is definitely jet-propelled.
Bidmead finds a place for his recurring character Theo Possible, always a welcome guest appearance. And wait till you meet Pontifex Kklakk, Cousin Rake, and Mick and Milo. All characters with internal lives crying out to be told. I hate it when characters feel like they popped out of nowhere into the story purely to perform a plot function and then pop off into obscurity again. No danger of that in a Blair Bidmead story. Any of them could easily headline further stories, and I am here for them.
Displaying 1 of 1 review