Punktown

Thomas is a very good wordsmith with a fecund and detailed imagination. In this collection of 10 short stories, seven original to the volume, he paints scenes from the dark and dystopic Punktown on the far-future colony world of Oasis. Gore abounds, severed heads and leaking entrails no less alarming because they belong to aliens or robots. Artists and industrialists in Punktown create their works in flesh--or something like it; gruesome has a different meaning there. The stories' appeal is to the senses, largely through violence and horror, but paradoxically, most of the tales are told through summary narrative. Fascinating as the events and conceptual inventions may be, they come to us dulled and mediated. Info-dumps abound--intrusive patches of information clothed as dialogue or shoehorned ad hoc wherever an explanation seems needed. The dialogue is generally torpid, devoid of character, often badly serving the plot. Except for a remarkable talent for impelling first sentences, the composition skills Thomas displays are crude. He manages here and there some interesting symmetries, as in ""Wakizashi,"" where hara-kiri, childbirth, vegetarianism and capital punishment are all thrown into a fresh light in relation to an alien religious ritual. However, nearly all of the stories come off as mere assemblages, events, characters, themes thrown about, introduced without regard to dramatic structure and never penetrated or resolved. The best we get is a nicely set scene, well imagined, but with a splash of gore or a hollow ellipsis in place of a conclusion, and many pretty phrases, but loose ends everywhere. There is certainly great promise in this writing, but no great writing yet. (May)