Unexpected Places to Fall From, Unexpected Places to Land

by Malcolm Devlin

Unexpected Places to Fall From, Unexpected Places to Land crosses genres and dimensions, exploring the consequences of a rare cosmic anomaly. In the exact same moment, all possible versions of Prentis O'Rourke will cease to exist. By accident, by malice, by conflict, by illness - Prentis will not simply die. He will go extinct. These are the stories of the journeys we take and the journeys we wish we'd taken.

Malcolm Devlin's second short story collection ranges from science fiction to folk horror as Prentis O'Rourke's demise echoes across the dimensions. Scientists, artists, ex-nuns, taxi drivers, time travellers and aliens - the same people living varied lives in subtly different worlds. Something unprecedented will happen, and it will colour them all.

Crossing multiple realities, countless versions of ourselves, and shifting backwards and forwards through time, these are stories of forking paths and unexpected destinations - of flying and falling and getting up to try again.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Story Collection, Horror

352 pages, Paperback

Published October 7, 2021

About the author

Malcolm Devlin’s stories have appeared in Black Static, Interzone, The Shadow Booth and Shadows and Tall Trees. His first collection, ‘You Will Grow Into Them’ was published by Unsung Stories in 2017 and shortlisted for the British Fantasy and Saboteur Awards. A second collection, also to be published by Unsung Stories, is due to be published in Summer 2021. He currently lives in Brisbane.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5) Isn’t it amazing when you buy a book on a whim and it turns out to be exactly the sort of thing you’re always longing to read? This is a collection of linked stories (good) and encompasses a dazzling range of genres that might best be collectively summed up as speculative litfic (even better). It revolves around a man called Prentis O’Rourke: his death, we learn, is significant in that it occurs simultaneously in every possible version of reality. This is all observed and catalogued by a multiple-existence-monitoring agency called The Landry Institute. Some of the stories in Unexpected Places feature versions of Prentis, along with his partner Laura and daughter Carrie. But others focus on characters with only tangential connections to the central figure.

The stories speak the language of science fiction: there’s time travel, synthetic bodies and possible cloning. There’s also a more indefinite strangeness always creeping around the edges: urban ghost stories, deserted places wreathed in mysterious mist... even a potentially immortal dog. At the same time, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to describe this book chiefly as hugely empathetic literary fiction. Unexpected Places would, I think, particularly appeal to anyone who loved Keith Ridgway’s Hawthorn & Child or Daniel Kehlmann’s Fame.

The three-part story ‘Walking to Doggerland’, which forms the backbone of the book, centres on Penny, one of three daughters of the Landry Institute’s founder, and is about what happens when the very different siblings reunite in a house where they used to spend summer holidays. It’s just perfect. Subtly weird and totally unpredictable, but very human. I have said this before about Malcolm Devlin’s writing, but his best stories are full of the sort of details so original I can’t really understand how someone could just make them up. ‘Walking to Doggerland’ is the closest thing to a Nina Allan story that isn’t a Nina Allan story – and that is one of the highest forms of praise I could give.

‘Five Conversations With My Daughter (Who Travels in Time)’, another standout, is narrated by Prentis himself. It takes place in a reality where six-year-old Carrie can, occasionally and momentarily, allow an older version of herself to occupy her body and talk to her father about the future. Again, to my mind this story really plays to the collection’s strengths – it has this pure SF concept at its heart, but its real power lies in a believable and sensitive depiction of family relationships.

That’s also a strength of ‘My Uncle Eff’, in which Laura remembers her eccentric, itinerant uncle and the stories he told her. It’s a story about storytelling, and memory and landscape; it captures precisely the way stories can speak to you as a child, and how you understand them differently from an adult perspective.

‘The New Man’ is straight out of the Alexander Weinstein playbook of character-driven near-future sci-fi. After an accident, a man’s consciousness is placed in a ‘basic model’ synthetic body that looks nothing like his old self; his family struggle to readjust. The fantastic and the ordinary are juxtaposed superbly here.

Meanwhile, ‘The Knowledge’, told in taxi journeys around London – with dark & bloody undercurrents – would slot right into Gary Budden’s London Incognita. ‘We Can Walk It Off in the Morning’ follows two friends who are cheating on their respective partners with each other. It’s not a ghost story, but it feels like one. The same characters appear again in ‘Talking to Strangers on Planes’, a story cleverly told backwards – though whether we’re meeting the same versions of Aleyna and Jack, it’s impossible to know.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[Roberta R. (Offbeat YA) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mini blurb: A bunch of characters - some related, some not - live seemingly ordinary or (mostly) peculiar lives in multiple universes, while husband and father Prentis O'Rourke dies in every single one of them.

***

Rated 3.5 really.

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title from the publisher for review purposes. Thanks to Unsung Stories for providing an ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

Based on the blurb, I expected these stories to be more strictly intertwined (which is the extra ingredient when it comes to my loving an anthology), and Prentis' death - or better, extinction - to play a bigger role in them. Also, there were a couple of stories that left me puzzled (Finisterre and The Knowledge, I'm looking at you). However, I did appreciate their quirkiness, their (sometimes subtle) references to one another, and the way they formed a multifaceted prism were each reality had only so much in common with the others. Despite the sci-fi premise and the (sometimes wildly) speculative outlook, these tales have an all-too human quality that will easily appeal to contemporary/magical realism fans. This being said, Five Conversations with my Daughter (Who Travels in Time) (a heartbreaking insight into the laws of, well, time travel) and The New Man (an absolutely original take on clonation...with a twist) were easily my favourite.

Note: definitive review (due to time commitments, I've decided not to write full-length reviews anymore for short stories, novellas and anthologies, except in special cases or unless they're part of a series).

[Philippa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fabulous collection of short stories by a hugely talented writer who wears his gift very lightly. The stories are joined by the loosest of plot threads, but in a deeper way by the themes of parents, siblings, friends and the more fundamental things that join us all: earth, sea, the shifting landscape. I enjoyed this on two levels: first of all the love of a good story with interesting characters I wanted to know more of. Secondly from the perspective of enjoying a master craftsman at work. It wasn't perfect, in fact its biggest flaw to me was that it opened with my !east favourite story, but my favourite, Walking to Doggerland, was spread over three instalments and more than made up for any minor shortcomings in other tales.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favorite stories:
The Purpose of the Dodo is to be Extinct
Five Conversations with my Daughter (Who Travels in Time)
The New Man

This book unfortunately lost focus near the end and eventually left me disinterested in the collection as a whole. The writing was really solid though, so I’d definitely be up for reading more from this author (I’ve already read his novella “And Then I Woke Up” and really enjoyed it and would recommend)

[Runalong · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection exploring our sense of self and travelling through life , death, parallel universes or parallel lives on our families. Very impressive

Full review - https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...

[MichaelK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't the book I was expecting based on the blurb, which made it sound like the stories would be more connected to the many deaths of Prentis O'Rourke. While I was somewhat disappointed in that regard, I still very much enjoyed this collection and am eager to start Devlin's previous one.

[Michael Reffold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very readable short stories but also quite forgettable and lacking in emotion or anything to connect with.