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Deep Dream (SF) Indrapamit Das (Ed) ****

There have been several Twelve Tomorrows collections from MIT Press since the original in 2018 - stories that are supposed to make the reader think about the impact of future technology. This latest addition focuses on 'science fiction exploring the future of art' - which presented a distinct danger of pretentiousness taken to the extreme. Thankfully, editor Indrapamit Das has been able to avoid this trap. Like all such collections, there is a mix of good, bad and indifferent - but on the whole the balance is positive.

Even a story like the opener The Limner Wrings His Hands by Vajra Chandrasekera - which scores fairly high on the pretentiousness stakes, and is far too clever clever somewhat in the manner of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest - is surprisingly readable if you force yourself to focus hard on the word salad (though it is fantasy rather than SF). 

To pick out two favourites, The Art Crowd by Samit Basu was a significantly more readable piece, well structured and with a very solid link to the future of art. And the closing piece The Quietude by Lavie Tidhar really engages with rich environment that could easily be expanded to make a likeable novel.

The only big name here besides Tidhar, Bruce Sterling, contributed Immortal Beauty, which felt a little called in, if quirky. Despite its deliberately stilted style, though, it does draws the reader in - but it felt rather strange that this and practically every story had a post-apocalyptic setting - the brief was just SF exploring the future of art - perhaps we should blame the editor for not providing more diversity of possible futures.

Occasionally a lack of writing experience came through in some tortured metaphors: we are told in one story that someone had ‘a gaze that said she wanted a precise taxonomy of his experiences’ - I’m not convinced any gaze ever said that. In another we are told that antiseptic corridors were like 'a cold mist' - I really don't think they were. But overall this is an interesting collection, attempting something different with a degree of success.

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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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