Tomorrow Factory (SF) - Rich Larson ****

I've come a little late to Rich Larson's 2018 collection of science fiction short stories - but I'm glad I did. At the time of publication, Larson was apparently only 25, but had already managed to produce an impressively immersive and dark set of speculative stories.

The author's relative youth comes through occasionally in the writing, but more importantly in the effortless ability to capture a young feel to his characters that has no sense of being artificial. Quite a few of the stories here would once have been characterised as cyberpunk - there's often a sense of technology and human existence coming together and clashing, sometimes directly and physically with implants, at other times indirectly - particularly effectively in one of the best social media influencer satires I've seen in the story Razzibot.

There are 23 stories in all (or 22 if you don't want to count a poem) and for me there was an unusually high hit rate - there was only one that I gave up on because I found it too much hard work, but the vast majority pulled me quickly in and kept me reading. Although there's not a uniform future here, several of the stories share technological concepts and terminology - perhaps Larson took a risk that didn't quite pay of in calling his future of calling people skyping.

If I have one criticism, there could be more light and shade. A really good collection of short stories varies in length, topic and position on the heavy to light scale. Larson scores well on length variation. It would have been nice to have a few more stories set in totally different worlds or futures - but this wasn't a particular issue. But for me, too many of the stories were dark and set in a Blade Runner style tech-plus-misery future. It would have been good to have had a bit more humour, a few more gently entertaining pieces to give some light relief. And I missed that delightful old SF standby, the twist in the tale (sic), which didn't really feature.

However, that almost uniform darkness doesn't mean this isn't a great collection - and I look forward to reading more from Larson in the future.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

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