Shortcuts: Track 1: Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand

by Marie Hodgkinson (Editor), Lee Murray, Piper Mejia

Writing on the theme of strange tales of Aotearoa New Zealand, seven Kiwi authors weave stories of people and creatures displaced in time and space, risky odysseys, and even more dangerous discoveries.
Featuring:

Lee Murray and Piper Mejia‘s odyssey through a dystopic future: Mika
A.C. Buchanan‘s story of creatures and people displaced in time and space: Bree’s Dinosaur
Grant Stone‘s tale of jealous muses and musical prodigy: The Last
A husband with a secret in I.K. Paterson-Harkness‘ Pocket Wife
Tim Jones‘ exploration of desperation and betrayal on New Zealand’s shores: Landfall
Grief, ghosts, and atoms in Octavia Cade‘s The Ghost of Matter

Genres: Fiction, Speculative Fiction

273 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2015

Reviews

[Lemurkat · Rating 4 out of 5]

From indie publishers, Paper Road Press, we have the first in what will be, hopefully, a series of anthologies: "Shortcuts: Track 1". This instalment offers up a collection of fine speculative fiction from a selection of New Zealand authors. The tales are diverse and engaging, long enough to immerse and engage the reader, but short enough to devour in a single sitting.

We begin with "Landfall" by Tim Jones, a chilling near-future tale. New Zealand has become a distant haven for refugees escaping a world altered by climate change. But it is not, truly, a haven, for the beaches are patrolled, and outsiders - and those that aid them - are greeted with guns and hostility. Nasimul is one such refugee, fleeing his homeland of Bangladesh. Donna is a soldier, trained to hunt and kill.

This is followed by the somewhat more fanciful, "Bree's Dinosaur" by AC Buchanan. Deformed banana cake, a science project, a family secret and a meteorite, all converge into an explosive conclusion.

Grant Stone's "The Last" is a more haunting, fantastical tale, with folklorish elements. The narrator, Rachel, is a reporter - one of the last true rock reporters, sent into the countryside to interview the enigmatic Katherine St. John, singer and songwriter. But there is more to the woods than meet the eye, as Rachel is soon to find out.

Lee Murray and Piper Mejia have teamed together to bring us "Mika". Mika is from Aotearoa, has set out on a mighty journey in her waka (a far evolved descendent from the traditional canoes) to New York, seeking the cure for the disease that is ravaging her family. What she finds, instead, is a conspiracy, an unlikely ally and a child with a dark past and an even darker future.

Probably my favourite in this collection is "Pocket Wife" by IK Paterson-Harkness. It introduces strange future-tech: miniature replicas of a person that acts as a sort of surrogate for the person, allowing them to see, hear and feel everything that the doll feels. Our narrator may be away on business, but his wife is watching him, through the eyes of her "Tiny". When the replica malfunctions, we are thrown into a darkly humorous comedy of errors.

The final tale, "The Ghost of Matter" by Octavia Cade features Ernest Rutherford - but not entirely as we remember him.

Overall, "Shortcuts" is a fine and entertaining collection, offering a bit of everthing: chilling dystopia, nifty future-tech, a harrowing journey, and much, much more. I look forward to seeing what else the authors, and Paper Road Press, have to offer.

[Nettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a love hate relationship with New Zealand fiction, mostly I hate "NZ fiction the genre" because it's always trying to convince me that its something special when it isn't and doesn't need to be. Every so often I read something that changes my mind very briefly. In Shortcuts it was Grant Stone's The Last and The Pocket Wife by Ik Paterson-Harkness. The imagery in both was perfect, they had that touch of kiwi that makes them familiar even in the fantasy. Mika had potential but it made leaps that were not so easy to follow in places, I personally believe it was novel square-pegged into a novella and deserved more voice. Overall the collection was a mixed bag (as Mike described below) with some good and some not as good short fiction. Was worth the look though.

[Mike]

A mixed bag.

I think I most enjoyed Tim Jones shortish thriller of the future in which some measure of compassion still exists and I.K. Paterson-Harkness‘ Pocket Wife where a husband tries to hide his adultery from his wife, who, because of the technology, is able to 'see' and 'feel' him far more than he wants her to.
These two stories were tightly written, and came to satisfying conclusions.

Lee Murray and Piper Mejia‘s Mika took a bit of a Mad Max approach, though without the devastation of that world. I didn't find the characters rang true to me, though the premise was intriguing. Equally Bree's Dinosaur by A C Buchanan was mysterious without sufficient explanation and Grant Stone's The Last, while it was clear when working in a real world, didn't quite manage to make the surreal aspects work.

Octavia Cade‘s The Ghost of Matter looked promising early on, and is interesting in its back and forth approach to real-life scientist Ernest Rutherford's life and career, but it gets to a point where it seems to be meandering, without ever resolving anything very clearly. The stuff about the possibilities of Rutherford's discoveries being used for destructive purposes seems a bit tacked on, and doesn't connect to the three ghosts who keep on appearing, as far as I could tell.

However, this is an interesting collection, and even those stories that didn't quite grab kept me reading to the end. Other people may well prefer different stories in the collection as their 'favourites.'