Peripheral Visions

Paul Kane

Short stories, SF Horror

Creative Guy Publishing 2008

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

It’s very hard to classify this book. Paul Kane’s short stories are a mixture of different genres with a strong leaning towards the inner space of the mind. These stories particularly are brilliantly conceived and written.

Paul Kane has a very economic style of writing but he can pack so much into a few pages. His words are well chosen, his plots clearly and concisely outlined. The seven-page Strobe, for instance, sets up an overpowering addiction to a flashing light in the first couple of pages then tracks the degeneration through stronger and stronger lights until the final …..whatever …. is reached. In these few remaining pages he completes the plot credibly and even gives the addict a sympathetic personality.

He is also good at turning the conventional ideas on their head and examining the outcome. A family of robots buying a human child as a pet for their daughter and then learning how to look after it? The hardest part of Lifelike is the inability of the robot family to understand the concept of a living breathing organism – they can only treat the child as a defective robot, as real human life is outside their limited experience. Isn’t this the way many humans treat their pets?

I found Life Sentence particularly poignant. It explores the possibility that, as life-prolonging technology improves, dying may become illegal, as may even wanting to die. If you succeed in finding a way to end your life, you will be brought back to serve a life sentence for the crime of trying to die. Even if you have nothing to live for you can be imprisoned until you change your mind. Until then, your life becomes a true life sentence. This possibility of an endless living death is one that I have not seen examined before. Paul manages to convey the desperation of wanting to die and the utter futility of trying. He gives the whole euthanasia debate a new, subtle, vicious twist.

And the most chilling story of all is the shortest – Protege.

Because each story is so different in its plot and approach this is a very easy book to come back to later. Each story explores a new idea and if, like me, you like to read in short bursts between other demands on your time, this book is very easy to enjoy. Ghosts, zombies, environmentalists, obsessives, blackmailers – they are all here in their own little beautifully crafted stories. This is a book worth reading for its good stories and for Mr Kane’s incredible imagination.

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This review will appear in Volume 2 No.5 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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