Elasticity: The Best of Elastic Press

by Chris Beckett, Justina Robson, Andrew Hook (Editor)

Elastic Press began publishing collections and anthologies in 2002 and closed down in 2009. By the time their 2008 collection The Turing Test by Chris Beckett won the prestigious Edge Hill Prize for Literature (beating Booker Prize and Whitbread shortlisted authors to do so), Elastic had already won two British Fantasy Awards for Best Small Press, while their titles had picked up three further British Fantasy Awards and one East Anglian Book Award.

Established with the aim of publishing mixed genre short story collections by relatively unknown writers, the Press gave early opportunities to the likes of Chris Beckett, Neil Williamson, Gary Couzens, Gareth L. Powell, Allen Ashley, and Steven Savile, while their anthologies were soon attracting submissions from authors such as Justina Robson and Nina Allan.

In 2009 Elastic Press announced they were closing down. In 2017, fifteen years after Elastic's first title appeared, NewCon Press are proud to present Elasticity: The Best of Elastic Press, featuring a selection of exceptional stories as chosen by the imprint's founder and proprietor Andrew Hook.

Contents:

Introduction - Andrew Hook
Grief Inc - Andrew Humphrey
The Tower - Brian Howell
Evelyn Is Not Real - Mike O'Driscoll
Amber Rain - Neil Williamson
351073 - Jeff Gardiner
Four A.M. - Gary Couzens
When We Were Five - Marion Arnott
Shopping - Antony Mann
Somme-Nambula - Allen Ashley
Visits To The Flea Circus - Nick Jackson
Alsiso - Justina Robson
Jasmine - Andrew Tisbert
Televisionism - Maurice Suckling
The Marriage of Sky and Sea - Chris Beckett
fight Music - Tim Nickels

278 pages, Paperback

First published July 10, 2017

About the author

Chris Beckett is a British social worker, university lecturer, and science fiction author.

Beckett was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and Bryanston School in Dorset, England. He holds a BSc (Honours) in Psychology from the University of Bristol (1977), a CQSW from the University of Wales (1981), a Diploma in Advanced Social Work from Goldsmiths College, University of London (1977), and an MA in English Studies from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge (2005).

He has been a senior lecturer in social work at APU since 2000. He was a social worker for eight years and the manager of a children and families social work team for ten years. Beckett has authored or co-authored several textbooks and scholarly articles on social work.

Beckett began writing SF short stories in 2005. His first SF novel, The Holy Machine, was published in 2007. He published his second novel in 2009, Marcher, based on a short story of the same name.

Paul Di Filippo reviewed The Holy Machine for Asimov's, calling it "One of the most accomplished novel debuts to attract my attention in some time..." Michael Levy of Strange Horizons called it "a beautifully written and deeply thoughtful tale about a would-be scientific utopia that has been bent sadly out of shape by both external and internal pressures." Tony Ballantyne wrote in Interzone: "Let’s waste no time: this book is incredible."

His latest novel, Dark Eden, was hailed by Stuart Kelly of The Guardian as "a superior piece of the theologically nuanced science fiction".

Dark Eden was shortlisted for the 2012 BSFA Award for Best Novel.

On 27 March 2013 it was announced that Julian Pavia at Broadway Books, part of the Crown Publishing Group, had acquired the US rights to Dark Eden and Gela's Ring from Michael Carlisle at Inkwell Management and Vanessa Kerr, Rights Director at Grove Atlantic in London, for a high five-figure sum (in US dollars).

Beckett comments on his official website: "Although I always wanted to be a writer, I did not deliberately set out to be a science fiction writer in particular. My stories are usually about my own life, things I see happening around me and things I struggle to make sense of. But, for some reason, they always end up being science fiction. I like the freedom it gives me to invent things and play with ideas. (If you going to make up the characters, why not make up the world as well?) It’s what works for me."

Reviews

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Elasticity: The Best Of Elastic Press’ is a selection of stories from the various anthologies put out by Elastic Press in its short but interesting life. In his introduction, editor Andrew Hook, who ran the Press, defines the genre category as ‘slipstream’. That basically means anything goes. Listed below are some that went well for me.

The opening shot, ‘Grief Inc’ by Andrew Humphrey, features a dystopian British future with things falling apart. Carter is a cynical, selfish man who earns cash by letting people hug him. Some unexplained ability takes away their grief at the recent loss of a loved one. Money gives him the ability to live a comfortable life with occasional treats, like chocolate and wine for him and his girlfriend. He’s old enough to remember the good old days when people had everything and still moaned. A sound plot and a good lead character because he’s a bit rotten, as real people so often are.

‘Amber Rain’ by Neil Williamson, while not exactly an adventure story does have things happening. It’s rumoured everywhere that some kind of alien invasion is going on but no one can prove it. This invasion is subtle. No giant spaceships hovering over Manhattan, landing on the White House lawn or even Horsell Common. Instead, there’s funny coloured rain in Edinburgh. Nicely understated.

‘351073’ by Jeff Gardiner will have you all turning your calculators upside down to look for messages. A nice Church of England Vicar has a baby at last but his wife dies in childbirth. He cherishes daughter Eloise but doesn’t force her down his path. Instead, she takes up numerology and becomes a guru. I liked the gentle Vicar and the tolerant view of different spiritual paths

‘Four A.M.’ by Gary Couzens has a night shift worker in a motorway café meeting a strange, suicidal woman. The night shift is a popular milieu for weird fiction because it is an odd time to be awake and everything feels different than the day. Pretty good.

‘When We Were Five’ by Marion Arnott is brilliant. In the 60s, a nice lad is besotted with Sophie, a communist agitator, and accompanies her on a trip to the Soviet Union. He gets mumps and strikes up a relationship with a scarred, battered old hotel cleaner who tells him her story. The fact that she speaks English with a cut-glass posh accent and calls him ‘old boy’ adds a touch of comedy. The rest is tragic. This is the real story of the Russian Revolution, bully boys in long coats arresting anyone they fancied for that feeling of power. The ending is inevitable and satisfying. Tales like this are a handy reminder in troubled times that idealistic demagogues who pretend to have all the answers are dangerous, especially when they will brook no opposition. You’re better off with that nice CofE vicar in ‘351073’. Really.

I’d almost say the book is worth buying just for ‘Shopping’ by Anthony Mann. A tale is told in shopping lists, starting with ‘June 5: Milk, newspaper, sandwich, chewing gum, banana, cat food.’ Clever, macabre and funny. I loved all six pages of it.

‘Visits To The Flea Circus’ by Nick Jackson tried my patience but was worth it in the end. It starts with a woman jumping from a bell tower and goes on to show why, maybe, she did it. Set in Mexico, it’s one of those stories where the author goes into minute detail about the scenery, the clothes, insects and everything else. James Blish called it ‘New Realism’ and found it tedious. So do I, especially when the story turns out not to have a story. You bore patiently through it and throw the book across the room when you‘ve finished, cursing the author for wasting your time. In this case, the minute detail was an important ingredient of the mix, there was a theme and by the last page, I was satisfied.

‘Alsiso’ by Justina Robinson started with a few confusing references but that’s par for the course in the genre. It turned out to be a great piece of SF horror involving humans and nanotechnology on a far distant planet. To say much more would give it away but it was damn near perfect. Short, compact, lots going on and with a neat ending.

Perhaps not quite as good as the last line of ‘Jasmine’ by Andrew Tisbert which made me laugh out loud. It was a bitter laugh. After his divorce, Bernie goes to work in an institution for disabled people and falls in love for an inmate called Jasmine. He can see her beautiful soul despite her mental and physical impairments. In Bernie’s world, there’s a Research Institute for Accessible Possibilities which sends volunteers off to alternate realities. A disturbing well-written story.

Maurice Suckling gives us a Darren Brown-style TV magician who is also a beautiful girl called Ciara in ‘Televisionism’. The first person narration is by Jim, a bloke she picked up in a bar who became her boyfriend and watched her rise to stardom. Ciara pulls stunts even better than those amazing chaps on television. Can you guess the twist? It was nicely done, though, and I’m glad someone else’s mother is an awful cook as well.

There’s a gadget every writer will envy in ‘The Marriage Of Sea And Sky’ by Chris Beckett. Clancy is from a super-scientific world but wanders off to other planets in Sphere writing travel books on Com, a handheld device. ‘Add a chapter about the Aristotle Complex,’ he says. ‘Neo romantic with a small twist of hard hard-boiled. Oh and include three poetic sharp edge sentences. Just three. Low adjective count.’ If only composition were so simple! Clancy is lonely but his life changes during a visit to a sea-faring race on a planet with a gigantic moon. The prose style made this a pleasure to read. Maybe Chris Beckett has a Com.

Everything in Elasticity: The Best Of Elastic Press is carefully crafted by honest professionals and, taken overall, there’s a lot to like about it. I’d say it’s not worth bothering with for hardcore lovers of easy reading adventurous pulp but if you like a bit of literary slipstream fiction this will suit. In the toilet of fandom, I fall somewhere between these two stools. Nearer the pulp to be honest.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very important anthology (whatever the nature of the remaining stories yet to be read), important in itself as a gestalt of quality hyper-imaginative short fictions in our world and also important to the Indie Press Golden Age of the Noughties during which Elastic Press has been a specific force in all conceivable Alternities.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.