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Subterfuge
Tales of manipulation and subtlety, of misdirection and Neal Asher, Tony Ballantyne, Pat Cadigan, Gary Couzens, Jaine Fenn, Dave Hutchison, Tanith Lee, Steve Longworth, Una McCormack, Juliet McKenna, John Meaney, Nik Ravenscroft, Sarah Singelton, Neil Williamson, Nick Wood
256 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2008
About the author
Dave Hutchinson
60 books239 followersUK writer who published four volumes of stories by the age of twenty-one – Thumbprints, which is mostly fantasy, Fools' Gold, Torn Air and The Paradise Equation, all as David Hutchinson – and then moved into journalism. The deftness and quiet humaneness of his work was better than precocious, though the deracinatedness of the worlds depicted in the later stories may have derived in part from the author's apparent isolation from normal publishing channels.
After a decade of nonfiction, Hutchinson returned to the field as Dave Hutchinson, assembling later work in As the Crow Flies; tales like "The Pavement Artist" use sf devices to represent, far more fully than in his early work, a sense of the world as inherently and tragically not a platform for Transcendence. His first novel, The Villages, is Fantasy; The Push, an sf tale set in the Human Space sector of the home galaxy, describes the inception of Faster Than Light travel and some consequent complications when expanding humanity settles on a planet full of Alien life. Europe in Autumn (2014), an sf thriller involving espionage, takes place in a highly fragmented and still fragmenting Near-Future Europe, one of whose sovereign mini-nations is a transcontinental railway line; over the course of the central plot – which seems to reflect some aspects of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 – the protagonist becomes involved in the Paranoia-inducing Les Coureurs des Bois, a mysterious postal service which also delivers humans across innumerable borders.
- See more at: http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/hutc...
Works
* The Villages (Holicong, Pennsylvania: Cosmos Books, 2001)
* Europe in Autumn (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Rebellion/Solaris, 2014)
Collections and Stories
* Thumbprints (London: Abelard, 1978)
* Fools' Gold (London: Abelard, 1978)
* Torn Air (London: Abelard, 1980)
* The Paradise Equation (London: Abelard, 1981)
* As the Crow Flies (Wigan, Lancashire: BeWrite Books, 2004)
* The Push (Alconbury Weston, Cambridgeshire: NewCon Press, 2009)
After a decade of nonfiction, Hutchinson returned to the field as Dave Hutchinson, assembling later work in As the Crow Flies; tales like "The Pavement Artist" use sf devices to represent, far more fully than in his early work, a sense of the world as inherently and tragically not a platform for Transcendence. His first novel, The Villages, is Fantasy; The Push, an sf tale set in the Human Space sector of the home galaxy, describes the inception of Faster Than Light travel and some consequent complications when expanding humanity settles on a planet full of Alien life. Europe in Autumn (2014), an sf thriller involving espionage, takes place in a highly fragmented and still fragmenting Near-Future Europe, one of whose sovereign mini-nations is a transcontinental railway line; over the course of the central plot – which seems to reflect some aspects of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 – the protagonist becomes involved in the Paranoia-inducing Les Coureurs des Bois, a mysterious postal service which also delivers humans across innumerable borders.
- See more at: http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/hutc...
Works
* The Villages (Holicong, Pennsylvania: Cosmos Books, 2001)
* Europe in Autumn (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Rebellion/Solaris, 2014)
Collections and Stories
* Thumbprints (London: Abelard, 1978)
* Fools' Gold (London: Abelard, 1978)
* Torn Air (London: Abelard, 1980)
* The Paradise Equation (London: Abelard, 1981)
* As the Crow Flies (Wigan, Lancashire: BeWrite Books, 2004)
* The Push (Alconbury Weston, Cambridgeshire: NewCon Press, 2009)
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 25, 2022
A mixed bag of short SF and fantasy stories. probably worth 3 stars as a whole but gave it an extra star as it contained one of the best short SF stories I've read in a while - The God Particle by Steve Longworth.
For me there were too many fantasy stories that centered around ghosts, ghost ships, and the supernatural. These weren't all bad but just not my cup of tea.
There's a solid offering by Neal Asher, based in his Polity world (The Rhine's World Incident, featuring one of our favourite alien monsters) and the other highlights were 'Time, like an Ever-Rolling Stream' (a time travel story by Nik Ranenscroft), Underbrain (Tony Ballantyne) and Multitude (Dave Hutchinson). The rest were a mixture of OK and meh, just not really SF.
For me there were too many fantasy stories that centered around ghosts, ghost ships, and the supernatural. These weren't all bad but just not my cup of tea.
There's a solid offering by Neal Asher, based in his Polity world (The Rhine's World Incident, featuring one of our favourite alien monsters) and the other highlights were 'Time, like an Ever-Rolling Stream' (a time travel story by Nik Ranenscroft), Underbrain (Tony Ballantyne) and Multitude (Dave Hutchinson). The rest were a mixture of OK and meh, just not really SF.
November 25, 2011
All anthologies inevitably vary in quality and even though I've rated this one five star, there were a few stories I didn't like, but for some reason the theme of subterfuge really works well.
Certainly, the contributors interpreted the theme quite broadly, judging by the variety of the stories. Some barely qualifying to be called SF at all in my opinion, occasionally crossing over into fantasy and horror, though not lacking for quality. Tanith Lee's "Underfog (The Wreckers)" being a case in point. And Dave Hutchinson's "Multitude" found one of the most unusual ways to combine science and fantasy I have ever encountered. Others, on the other hand, were firmly planted on familiar SF ground (though not lacking in imaginative power), such as John Meaney's "Emptier than Void" and Neal Asher's "The Rhine's World Incident".
Among my favourite stories in here I should definitely mention Tony Ballantyne's "Underbrain", Juliet McKenna's "Noble Deceit" and Nik Ravenscroft's "Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream".
I would love to see Ian Whates revisit this theme, perhaps with a "Future Subterfuge" anthology? ~nudge, nudge~
Certainly, the contributors interpreted the theme quite broadly, judging by the variety of the stories. Some barely qualifying to be called SF at all in my opinion, occasionally crossing over into fantasy and horror, though not lacking for quality. Tanith Lee's "Underfog (The Wreckers)" being a case in point. And Dave Hutchinson's "Multitude" found one of the most unusual ways to combine science and fantasy I have ever encountered. Others, on the other hand, were firmly planted on familiar SF ground (though not lacking in imaginative power), such as John Meaney's "Emptier than Void" and Neal Asher's "The Rhine's World Incident".
Among my favourite stories in here I should definitely mention Tony Ballantyne's "Underbrain", Juliet McKenna's "Noble Deceit" and Nik Ravenscroft's "Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream".
I would love to see Ian Whates revisit this theme, perhaps with a "Future Subterfuge" anthology? ~nudge, nudge~
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews