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The Purpose of Reality: Solar
Steve Simpson’s mesmerizing collection of short fiction and illustrations is surreal and wildly imaginative, with touches of playfulness throughout. Here is a selection of the beings within:
At Claire’s school, the walls were cardboard, and her chain-smoking math teacher never allowed numbers to be mentioned. He used a drawing of a press to flatten slices of air into tissue paper for kites, and he was Claire’s favorite, because all the other teachers were ghosts. One day, with a little pasta and a little mambo, everything changed.
The negentropy wars didn’t end the world, there were survivors, and in Santarém, the gringo electrician needed medicine to save his daughter’s life. To get it, he had to cross the Amazon River, where the Negentropy Horizon divided Brazil. The locals believed you could look across the river and see directly into hell. The electrician wasn’t superstitious, but he decided netting was a good idea, to keep the insects off.
Aldona worked in the Damasco Auto scrapyard, and when the electromagnet on the crane burned out and dropped the blue Passat, no one saw the electric-winged shape that had been trapped by the magnet. After all, there was nothing to be concerned about: the alien space fleet had been driven away by the earth’s nuclear defenses.
At Claire’s school, the walls were cardboard, and her chain-smoking math teacher never allowed numbers to be mentioned. He used a drawing of a press to flatten slices of air into tissue paper for kites, and he was Claire’s favorite, because all the other teachers were ghosts. One day, with a little pasta and a little mambo, everything changed.
The negentropy wars didn’t end the world, there were survivors, and in Santarém, the gringo electrician needed medicine to save his daughter’s life. To get it, he had to cross the Amazon River, where the Negentropy Horizon divided Brazil. The locals believed you could look across the river and see directly into hell. The electrician wasn’t superstitious, but he decided netting was a good idea, to keep the insects off.
Aldona worked in the Damasco Auto scrapyard, and when the electromagnet on the crane burned out and dropped the blue Passat, no one saw the electric-winged shape that had been trapped by the magnet. After all, there was nothing to be concerned about: the alien space fleet had been driven away by the earth’s nuclear defenses.
Paperback
Published September 6, 2022
About the author
Steve Simpson
14 books2 followersSteve Simpson has never been able to work out exactly what he does, although he would probably feed the cat if he had one. He’s sold over 30 poems and short stories to publishers for various magazines and anthologies, and his Purpose of Reality illustrated collections were published by Meerkat Press in 2022. They include The Beautiful Horizon, which was a finalist for the Aurealis Awards in the Fantasy Short Story Category. Texture of Silence, with co-author Eugen Bacon, was released in 2023.
In the visual arts, artworks and videos created with his image evolution software have been shown at many exhibitions, and with data from wearable EEG (Electroencephalogram) headsets, he’s developed a system to display meaningful artworks from changing mental states, rather than simple waves.
In the sciences, he’s published over 200 research papers, most recently in clinical neurology, and awards include the Peter Doherty Innovation Prize, for WeldPrint™, technology to make vehicles safer. A monograph, “Time and Time Travel,” is hidden in the mists of the future, and he likes wood ducks, doesn’t everyone? In the ether underworld, he’s @inconstantlight.
In the visual arts, artworks and videos created with his image evolution software have been shown at many exhibitions, and with data from wearable EEG (Electroencephalogram) headsets, he’s developed a system to display meaningful artworks from changing mental states, rather than simple waves.
In the sciences, he’s published over 200 research papers, most recently in clinical neurology, and awards include the Peter Doherty Innovation Prize, for WeldPrint™, technology to make vehicles safer. A monograph, “Time and Time Travel,” is hidden in the mists of the future, and he likes wood ducks, doesn’t everyone? In the ether underworld, he’s @inconstantlight.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 19, 2022
An intriguing miscellany of literary weird stories.
July 9, 2022
In a collection of short stories that are contained within some version of Brazil, along with intriguing illustrations, Steve Simpson’s The Purpose of Reality: Solar, plays with the bounds of reality, offering imaginative alternatives to the world we know while exploring world-ending events, be they personal or more global in their implications and ranging from concepts that include an insect-borne plague, nuclear bomb stasis, inherited memories and transformation by evolving through and beyond them, an alien invasion and solar flare, and temporal instability, and the moments of light that can be found buried within the seemingly dire.
To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.
With stories that use a variety of methods to demonstrate the ways in which the world is in a state of otherness and filled with a haunting sense of instability, occasionally evoked through a seemingly disjointed narrative in some moments, they encourage and foster deeper thought on the topics raised; the stories have a sticking power to them in the weirdness they contain that makes it easy to continue contemplation on what was conveyed long after reading. There’s a balance of the scientific and the surreal in these short stories and the way they’re written that aid in readers’ entertainment and engagement with thinking in imaginative or extraordinary ways. As with many collections of stories there are those that elicit a stronger connection and response than others and it can take some time to become accustomed to the writing style and voice of an author, particularly when the concepts are more abstract; the first stories in the collection, though intriguing and captivating in their own ways took time to become immersed in and it became easier to slip in to the stories as the collection progressed, where I found the last in the collection, “Danta in Black” to be the most fascinating, exploring temporal instability and the various realities resulting from that that one man experienced, but the concept itself is one that consistently intrigues me.
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.
With stories that use a variety of methods to demonstrate the ways in which the world is in a state of otherness and filled with a haunting sense of instability, occasionally evoked through a seemingly disjointed narrative in some moments, they encourage and foster deeper thought on the topics raised; the stories have a sticking power to them in the weirdness they contain that makes it easy to continue contemplation on what was conveyed long after reading. There’s a balance of the scientific and the surreal in these short stories and the way they’re written that aid in readers’ entertainment and engagement with thinking in imaginative or extraordinary ways. As with many collections of stories there are those that elicit a stronger connection and response than others and it can take some time to become accustomed to the writing style and voice of an author, particularly when the concepts are more abstract; the first stories in the collection, though intriguing and captivating in their own ways took time to become immersed in and it became easier to slip in to the stories as the collection progressed, where I found the last in the collection, “Danta in Black” to be the most fascinating, exploring temporal instability and the various realities resulting from that that one man experienced, but the concept itself is one that consistently intrigues me.
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
September 17, 2022
Thank you Meerkat Press for letting me read and review The Purpose of Reality: Solar. A short story collection. Steve Simpson is an amazing author, the writing is so poetic and makes it easy to picture what's going on. This collection of fiction is really interesting, I especially liked the illustrations and the variety of stories. Each story explores different realities and world ending events. The characters were fun to follow. There are many memorable quotes that I highlighted.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews