Entertainment :: Books
Dreamwish Beasts and Snarksby Kilian MelloyMonday Aug 24, 2009 Sci-fi great Mike Resnick has, over the years, authored a number of hunting-themed stories ranging from safaris on light-years distant strange new worlds (so much for seeking out new life!) to the comedy-horror adventures of an parallel universe Teddy Roosevelt, vampire killer.
These stories and more can now be found in one collection. Golden Gryphon Press--among the most reliable purveyors of quality speculative fiction and fantasy, always printed on superior paper and treated to excellent binding--has published nine of Resnick’s hunting-themed stories in one volume, Dreamwish Beasts and Snarks.
Anyone acquainted with Resnick’s work or Golden Gryphon’s line of books will know to expect top-notch work from the new collection. But seldom is one writer so consistently capable with a range of tones. Resnick is as artful with his semi-comic, witty noodlings ("Stalking the Unicorn with Gun and Camera") as with his more serious, more deeply textured work, such as the elegantly constructed "Bwana," a generous and wise work, or the thrilling, and ultimately devastating stories that the title refers to, and that bookend the collection: "Hunting the Snark" and "The Soul Eater."
"Hunting the Snark" is a potent story of big game hunting on an alien planet, and a thought experiment on how tragically mistaken even an expert’s assumptions might be when dealing with an unknown intelligence.
"The Soul Eater" is a brilliant, brave, heartbreaking character study of an intergalactic mercenary, a professional killer whose targets are the exquisite, and exotic, life forms from hundreds of worlds. The hunter, Nicobar Lane, encounters a mythical energy being in the remote reaches of an interstellar dust cloud; the experience changes him so profoundly that he becomes obsessed, determined to track and kill the being. Resnick cites "Moby-Dick" as an influence, but this is not a mere retelling with the galaxy as a backdrop in a futuristic setting: Lane is his own, quite complex, character, and no pale shade of Captain Ahab.
Other literary traditions are plucked up and tied into lighthearted knots in "The Lord of the Jungle," which riffs on Tarzan stories in the course of giving Resnick’s recurring character Lucifer Jones a chance to ride (or, rather, wander lost and bemused) once again.
But perhaps the most distressing (and subtle) of the stories presented here is "Safari 2103," a story about ecological and spiritual depletion that presents us with a sympathetic, yet horrified, glimpse at a future in which city dwellers pay a premium to see not lions or tigers, but much tamer game--all that’s left in the shrinking expanse of the wild in a future scrubbed of almost all biodiversity.
If good science fiction is all about finding the regrettably constant elements in human nature among the future’s endless possibilities and then warning us of our own worst possible destinies, then Resnick accomplishes that and more. These stories are a safari for sure: to the extremes of imagination and through the rich veldt of smart storytelling, a wild preserve of the imagination where the reader is sure to glimpse the most savage, and the most noble, of literary creatures.
by Mike Resnick
Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press. Publication Date: September 1, 2009. Pages: 278. Price: $24.95. Format: trade hardcover original. ISBN 978-1-930-846-609
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
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