“The Overnight,’ by Ramsey Campbell (Tor, 396 pages, $24.95)
British author Ramsey Campbell has many honors for horror fiction, but he has had to take a full-time job at a Borders book store to make ends meet. He uses his retail experience to create a deliciously creepy bookstore nightmare.
The American chain, Texts, has opened a store at Fenny Meadows Retail Park near Manchester. Unfortunately, they never consulted the local historian to learn the fate of previous attempts to develop the location. The American manager, Woody, has high ambitions, but sales are poor and the area is always thick in fog. The regular patrons are a pair of bald men who sit in the store reading children’s books.
Employees react half-heartedly to Woody’s exhortations to always smile and follow his example of speedy shelving. But books are always out of order when they arrive in the morning. Videos are taped over with fuzzy scenes of violence.
Campbell masterfully tells the story from the viewpoints of all the shop employees, except poor Lorraine, who was run over in the foggy parking lot. The manager’s idea of a tribute is for everyone to take over a share of her work to prove she was irreplaceable.
Wilf loses the ability to read. He becomes physically ill when he is forced into leading the book discussion group. His nightmare increases when the book’s author comes for a signing and demands Wilf read from the book.
To catch up for an inspection by the American bosses, Woody forces everyone to stay for an overnight work session. It is also a time for the elder inhabitants of Fenny Meadows to come out and take back their home. Between the disasters, “The Overnight’ perfectly captures a retail nightmare.
“Sunstorm,’ by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (Del Rey, 328 pages, $25.95)
The latest from Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter is sub-titled “A Time Odyssey: 2′ but goes in a completely different direction from the first book. Instead of jumping around through time, it is a disaster novel on a global scale.
A massive solar storm disrupts a world dependant on electronic gadgets. It seems beyond anyone’s power to stop, but one brilliant scientist predicted the storm. He also predicts a larger one that could end human civilization.
British astronomer Royal Siobhan McGorran is a cosmologist who knows little about solar physics but does her duty to head the project to save Earth. Most of the world’s political leaders get behind a worldwide project to build a shield in space to divert the destructive energy predicted.
The link to the first volume is Bisesa Dutt, who experienced the time manipulations of the mysterious eyes. She has been returned to London but is reluctant to leave home, and it takes a long time for anyone to listen to her. Even when they do, she has moved from heroine to minor player.
This is a classic British boys adventure in saving the world even though women have been added to the cast. In 2037 all the political leaders are women. It doesn’t avoid occasionally winking at itself by mentioning the central ideas were developed by a certain British science fiction writer a long time ago. The eyes that unite the two Time Odyssey books are classic Big Dumb Objects (that’s the technical term used in “The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction’) left by aliens for unknown reasons. The engineers building the space shield call it a Big Dumb Object. The virtue of the classic adventures was they were a lot of fun. “Sunstorm’ fits the tradition.
Freelancer Fred Cleaver writes a monthly column on new science fiction releases.
