Vital Signals: Virtual Futures Near-Future Fictions edited by Dan O’Hara, Tom Ward, Stephen Oram
(NewCon Press, 2022)
Reviewed by Duncan Lawie
The introduction to this collection left me with a heavy heart. It is full of sentences: “We are attempting to provide tentative situations that may be manufactured by the activities of the present.” So academic. Nevertheless, the idea of the book is intriguing. Vital Signals is a compilation of many short, short stories on the near future by writers from a variety of backgrounds, including some familiar SF names.
One of the advantages of stories of no more than four pages is that they are out of the way quickly. It’s no great effort to read several mediocre stories in a row. However, this also led to my gradual lowering of expectations as I worked my way through this volume. Perhaps tortured sentence structures or passive voice have their own tale to tell about disconnection from reality or the narrator’s own fears, but the multiple stories written in this way were difficult to enjoy or appreciate.
The majority of the stories simply do not stick in the memory. However, there are notable exceptions, ‘The Needs of the Few’ by Jennifer Rohn presents a world of severe antibacterial resistance, where access to the only working commercial drug is highly restricted. This is beautifully revealed, alongside the working practices of the ‘mad scientist’ protagonist, and her reasons for trying to find wild antibacterials. The plot is clever and complete although the decision to provide a further emotional punch in the closing paragraphs feels unnecessary. ‘An Honest Mistake’ by Tom Ward aims lower but hits its mark with its dark humour. Genetic engineering combined with quite foreseeable errors and a dose of bad luck bring on the end of the world. The longest story in the volume is, by a long way, the highlight. Tim Maugham’s ‘Safe From Harm’ has the room to create three dimensional characters and a situation with real depth. After a crash has destroyed the online world, the contents of a hoarder’s house—old CDs, newspapers and magazines—can be used to reconstruct the records of the past. The value of these objects becomes the source of conflict between the author’s beloved Bristolians and the smart chap from the ministry in London—and the resolution uses intelligence rather than force.
Having consecutive stories with almost the same idea was also frustrating on my first read through. However, on looking at the book again, this may be the purest success of editorial intent. Close variations on a theme, with different styles and viewpoints, show the strength of presence that some ideas currently have in our group mind. Three stories in a row are about gaming social media presence. In ‘The Test’ by C.R. Dudley, those who want to succeed online need to prove that they are authentic through undergoing testing which compares their online presence to a psychological test. When the protagonist fails to be as attractive in real life as her persona, she discovers that, for a price, she can use technology to retrain her psyche to match her desired presence. ‘Conjugal Frape’ by Jamie Watt centres on the “one percent” in a “post-truth society” who exploit the gullibility of the rest of the world by creating a social media presence at odds with their real lives. The greatest crime they can commit is telling the 99 percent the truth that they will never be able to join the elite. ‘iDentity’ by Britta Schulte contrasts with these by describing ways to escape the online world by simply paying for your media presence to be curated for you—entertaining as an inversion of the Dudley.
Vital Signals sounded as if it should and could have been more interesting than it is. Disappointingly, there are more misses than hits amongst the thirty-one stories present.
Review from BSFA Review 18 - Download your copy here.