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Sometimes the universe is stranger than you think; it certainly
is when D. J. Burnham turns his imagination loose. In this
set of short stories you will take a drive across Mars, find
out what sort of trouble eBay can get you into and discover
whether Earth would manage under the glare of alien religious
zealots...
Test
Drive: Volume One of the Collected Stories, is a new set
of science fiction orientated short stories by D. J. Burnham.
One
of the things that you first discover about Burnham, through
his writing, is his obvious love of the English language -
not only its use, but also a love of constructing fascinating
sentences which has an internal rhythm and tone.
"She
glowed magnificently in the Martian sunset, anciently anachronistic,
a dream on white-walled tyres poised to roll."
Now
there's a sentence that just rolls around the tongue. It is
little wonder then, that when Burnham isn't writing short
stories he is engaged in the visual arts, with a degree of
expertise that has allowed him to not only provide the stories
but also the book's jacket cover (write the theme tune, sing
the theme tune). And why not? The boy has talent. Not only
that, he also has a social conscience as, at Burnham's request,
all the profits from the book are to be donated to the World
Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The
seventeen various stories in this his first collection cover
a wide range of subjects and tones. Inside you will discover
stories which cover anything from intimate examinations of
personal obsession to galaxy spanning big spaceships with
big ideas which are reminiscent of the best sci-fi short stories
written in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Some of the stories,
like Meltdown, veer
a little from a true sci-fi story, but even here the ideas
behind the tale makes it well worth twenty minutes of anyone's
time. For the most part, the stories all have a little bite
in the final twist, though some are just plain odd all the
way through.
It
would be difficult to select a favourite story as, for the
most part, they are all well constructed. My personal highlight
has to be Borrowed Time. If you read as much as I do
you often get a feel for where the story is taking you and
often get to the twist before the author does, but Borrowed
Time had me guessing right to the end.
At
the back of the book is a notes section, with some further
information about how the stories came about, a nice extra
as it is always intriguing to get a little insight into the
workings of an authors mind.
I'm
presuming that Burnham has a stash of other stories waiting
to be published, hopefully the "Vol. 1" in
the title isn't just a hope, as I for one, very much look
forward to reading Volume Two.
Charles
Packer
Click
here
to buy this book from Lulu.com
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