By Paula R. Stiles

Harvey, Colin, ed. Future Bristol. Arlington (TX): Swimming Kangaroo Books, 2009. Paperback. 233 pp. ISBN: 978-1-934041-93-2. $11.99 USD.

Future Bristol has a fantastic idea. It’s an anthology of science fiction stories about, and set in, Bristol, England. It reminds me a lot of those city-based detective shows like Da Vinci’s Inquest (Vancouver), Miami Vice (Miami), Homicide: Life on the Street (Baltimore), the various CSIs (Las Vegas, Miami and New York), and The Wire (also Baltimore). You used to see a fair number of shared-universe fantasy anthologies (Liavek, for example, which I quite liked), but nobody ever seems interested in science fiction anthologies about the future history of a city. An effort like Future Bristol makes me think that’s a shame, especially since Bristol isn’t an obvious choice for a city with a future history. That, you would think, would allow for a wider variety of roads not yet taken than, say, an anthology about Future Tokyo or New York.

I was surprised to find that I enjoyed these stories fully, as there are usually at least a few duff ones in an anthology. But all nine stories have something to recommend them. They range from the fantastic steampunk of Liz Williams’ “Isambard’s Kingdom” to the arr-matey-meets-post-cyberpunk style of Joanne Hall’s “Pirates of the Cumberland Basin” to a “long view” worthy of Olaf Stapledon in Jim Mortimore’s “The Sun in the Bone House”.

A couple of my favourites were more of the mundane SF variety, set in a near-future Bristol, twenty or thirty years from now (if that), like John Hawkes-Reed’s “The Guerilla Infrastructure HOWTO” and Christina Lake’s “A Tale of Two Cities”. I was especially impressed to see the lesbian heroine of the former not only portrayed sympathetically (and not as your stereotypical butch or femme), but getting lucky at the end. The anthology also shades into superhero fic with Stephanie Burgis’ “After the Change”, which shares images of human beings turning avian with Colin Harvey’s “Thermoclines”. Oddly, both stories have ordinary male protags who must deal with the literal threat of the women they love growing wings and flying away. The anthology also tends to portray civil disobedience as scrappy and heroic in stories like “The Guerilla Infrastructure HOWTO” or Nick Walters’ “Trespassers”, and Evil Corporations show up in “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Pirates of the Cumberland Basin”. We even get an end-of-the-world scenario in Gareth L. Powell’s “What Would Nicholas Cage Have Done?”, where the last man on Earth witnesses the world’s conversion into a giant computer by nanites in a tragic version of Arthur Dent’s predicament at the beginning of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

If you’re familiar with the style of Hub Magazine or Irish ‘zine Albedo One, you’ll have a pretty good idea what to expect. Lots of snark, off-the-wall weirdness you won’t normally see in North American specfic (the publisher is from Texas), and considerable attention to world-building. The latter is both Future Bristol’s great strength and great weakness. Important themes and ideas range from a literal bridge across the Avon River becoming a temporal/allegorical bridge to two futures (one beautiful, one terrible) in “Isambard’s Kingdom” to using biotechnology to clandestinely grow a free public transport system that solves Bristol’s traffic jams for good in “The Guerilla Infrastructure HOWTO” to a corporation flooding the city’s water system with a dangerous chemical that allows people to remember the memories of their parents in “A Tale of Two Cities” to the vision of a sunken, permanently-flooded Bristol that has become as beautiful (and dangerous) as Venice in “Pirates of the Cumberland Basin”. The plots are almost incidental to the gorgeous futures (and sometimes, pasts, as in first-and-last “Isambard’s Kingdom” and “The Sun in the Bone House”) that the stories lay out for us.

But the thing that makes these stories work as a whole vision – their detail – is let down somewhat by the near-total lack of supporting material. Harvey’s introduction gives some lovely personal background, but needed to be a lot longer. Also welcome would have been brief introductions to each story giving us some idea about how it addressed Bristol’s unique culture and history, some temporal context, even a map. Sure, I perked up every time I saw a mention of Temple Meads station (so-called because it’s built where the Bristol Templar preceptory once stood). But a brief visit to Bristol for a conference several years back does not me an expert on Bristol make. And most people wouldn’t have even that knowledge. If I was confused, despite being willing to look up what references I didn’t get, how much do you think your average SF reader would get out of it?

Which is a shame, because this is a really fun anthology and a grand idea (I’d love to see an antho about Vancouver or St Andrews). I also want to add that this is my only real nit. The stories themselves are lovely (being an editor of a ‘zine, I am one picky bitch, so that’s saying a lot); the editing is nice and clean; I love the cover (okay, I really love the cover); the whole thing is as professionally-done as any big publisher puts out; and it’s great to see so many female writers and protags. When Silvia and I say that we wish we could see X type of specfic more often, we mean this type of stuff. If any of it were Mythos, I’d happily buy it. I would suggest that if you want to get the full effect, read up a bit on Bristol’s history and current events, first. The tales in Future Bristol are worth the effort.

You can find Future Bristol at Swimming Kangaroo Books, and on Amazon.com. The book’s actually cheaper on the publisher’s site and you can find alternate, cheaper versions (like MobiPocket) there, too.

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