BOOK REVIEW

The Engine of Recall

by Karl Schroeder

With its 10 powerful short stories, The Engine of Recall serves as an ideal introduction to the talents of Toronto science fiction writer Karl Schroeder. While his novels have met with considerable success (Permanence was awarded the Aurora Award and his first novel, Ventus, was named a New York Times Notable Book), his shorter works have not been collected prior to this volume, edited by Robert J. Sawyer for his eponymous imprint.

The stories span a broad spectrum of science fiction schools and styles. “Hopscotch” is a realistic paranormal mystery of the I-want-to-believe school (most popularly manifested in The X Files), while “The Engine of Recall” borders on classic space opera, touched with anthropological zeal. “Making Ghosts” explores the nature of consciousness and the portability of identity, while “The Cold Convergence” is a meditative exploration of place and home. The thrills in the collection are largely intellectual, although “Halo” builds a subdued sense of suspense and genuine peril through some mysterious subspace messages and a fast approaching spaceship.

The disparate stories are united by the keen edge of Schroeder’s writing and the fundamental humanism at the stories’ core. Schroeder writes with a terse economy of language, a precision that one expects from the genre but rarely encounters. Few words are wasted, and the language underscores the close attention to characterization.

Two of the strongest stories in the collection illustrate the depths of Schroeder’s human concern. Both are set in worlds a mere quarter-turn away from our own, and use some of the mechanics of science fiction to explore facets of contemporary life and human nature. In “The Dragon of Pripyat,” a mystery set in the radioactive ruins of a post-catastrophe Chernobyl, Schroeder examines social dissociation and isolation, while “Allegiances,” set in a Bosnian town, examines the tangled legacies of genocide and intercultural violence. The stories in The Engine of Recall are powerful, thought-provoking dispatches from a visionary imagination.

Reviewed by Robert J. Wiersema (from the July 2005 issue)

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