By Simon Roy
Publisher: Image
ISBN: 9781607069362
This a neat little collection of short sci-fi stories set in various future settings. They’re all character driven, so despite the futuristic backdrops you don’t need to understand the greater whys and wheres of the worlds around them.
The first tale is aboard a Russian two-man space mission with a disgruntled cosmonaut veteran and the son of the man running the space programme. It’s brief, but for something created so early in Simon Roy’s career it shows an awful lot of promise and nicely sets you up for the rhythm of the rest of the book.
Jan’s Atomic Heart is the longest of the tales, and was created during his first year of art college. The artwork is already looking more accomplished and the storytelling more involved as you’re set down in a future society not to dissimilar to our own where the inhabitants of the Luna colony have been at war with Earth and now the threat of a terrorism campaign hangs over everyone. Jan is a human who has been in a horrific car accident where insurance is covering both the replacement of car and body, so until such a time as flesh and bone is sorted Jan is temporarily housed in a prosthetic, which is essentially a robotic body. When Jan realises the robot body is identical to one used in a lunar bombing panic sets in.
The other stories involve selling weapons to the occupants of a planet to assist the eventual human takeover, a shipwrecked man and talking gorilla, the recolonisation of Earth seen through avian eyes, a bar fight in a bar of assorted alien species and finally a rather touching relationship between a human and a crashlander as they are out on patrol.
These are really good sci-fi shorts in which together they make an even greater whole. Simon Roy’s xenomorph designs are inventive, the technology and infrastructure thoughtful, and his ability to blend cultures and languages into a plausible future convergence works to make the future a more realistic, believable place. All of his work, bar the cover, is in monochrome, which is by no means a distraction but I’d love to see some more of his work given the full colour treatment. His artwork reminds me of Gene Ha’s, which surely can’t be a bad thing.
Certainly one of those books you’ll pick up and read again and again to ensure you get the most from it.
And if you like that: Look up Gene Ha’s Top Ten, written by Alan Moore
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