Imaginations on fire: 2113
A book review
For diehard Rush fans and sci-fi fans especially, there are probably at least 2113 reasons to love this short story collection.
Edited by Kevin J. Anderson and John McFetridge, 2113 is subtitled “stories inspired by the music of Rush” but that’s not entirely accurate. It also contains two stories that inspired Rush — and this is not an insignificant thing. They are probably worth the cover price alone, along with Anderson’s title story that nicely closes out these “18 exhilarating journeys into Rush-inspired worlds” as the back cover promises.
One of those stories is “A Nice Morning Drive” by Richard S. Foster. Written in the 1970s and published in that unlikeliest grist for a writer’s mill — Road and Track magazine — it inspired drummer and lyricist Neil Peart to write “Red Barcetta” for the band’s seminal Moving Pictures album.
The other story is Fritz Leiber’s “Gonna Roll the Bones” which appeared in Harlan Ellison’s 1967 SF analogy Dangerous Visions. Rush’s title track on its Roll the Bones album took its inspiration from this strange tale.
Both stories have appeared in, and are readily accessible through, various sites on the Internet and many Rush fans have probably read them at least once. But it’s nice to have them included in this volume.
Fifteen of the other stories in this book are written by other writers, all well-established and most of them masters of the SF trade. They represent a smorgasbord of tasty Rush song-inspired morsels. And that’s the beauty of a short story collection: like a buffet table, you can pick and choose what you like and still feel full and satisfied.
A couple of the stories lost my interest after a few pages. They’re like the seafood equivalent in the buffet — I don’t like fish, so I move along to the meat dishes. That’s just me.
Some of the other stories proved tasty indeed, starting with the first, “On the Fringes of the Fractal” by Greg Van Eekhout. Inspired by “Subdivisions,” the opening paragraph sparked my own imagination on fire — to use a Rush lyric — with its description of the character Sherman operating a “squirt station on the breakfast shift at Peevs Burgers.”
This being a book about Rush, most of the stories are well-grounded (or, rather, spaced out) in sci-fi. One of those tales is a coming-of-age story embedded with a subtle love interest.
“Spirits with Visions” by Brad R. Torgersen, inspired by the song “Missions,” weaves a tale of two characters: a Mars astronaut who missed her opportunity to take part in a mission to that planet after a car accident paralyzed her, and a young boy who witnessed that historic spaceflight and grows up to become a doctor. They find each other and become one another’s saviour.
“Players” by David Farland is a gritty, crime thriller that befits the screenwriter and movie producer’s credentials of its author. The “Tom Sawyer”-inspired tale about bad guys and a movie deal set in the Middle East is fun and sometimes funny — witness the protagonist’s nickname for his ex-wife, the cheating “Regina the Vagina.”
Too many of the stories like to feature too many lines from Rush, which is satisfying to fans but can feel contrived. I would prefer the writers to have just drawn their inspiration from the songs without quoting lyrics.
And while most of the stories, though well-written, do not reach that elevated platform called art, there are some very fine flourishes here and there. Dave Mack’s “Our Possible Pasts,” inspired by “Show Don’t Tell,” can’t help but seize the reader’s attention with its opening line:
“I don’t like watching people die, but sometimes it’s part of the job.”
And Steven Savile’s “Last Light,” a fascinating fictionalization of “The Spirit of Radio” and rendering of the memory of the character Grace — “the rose between us thorns,” the narrator calls her — includes this visceral description of a Dalmation,
“malnourished to the point where it was nothing more than skin and bone, the spots seemingly sliding off its carcass as it hobbled across the road.”
Tim Lasiuta’s “Hollywood Dreams of Death,” inspired by that deep, deep cut “I Think I’m Going Bald” off the Caress of Steel album, is a smooth, noir thriller about an actor with killer good looks — and hair.
“Day to Day” by Dayton (is that a coincidence?) Ward is a dramatic rendering of the remaining earthly survivors and their escape from the prison of alien invaders known as Pugs. It’s based on Grace Under Pressure’s dark, Holocaust-inspired “Red Sector A.”
The title story by Anderson, who co-wrote the steampunk fantasy novel Clockwork Angels with Peart and its followup Clockwork Lives, revisits Rush’s classic 2112, a dystopian, SF universe where, as Anderson writes, people are like sheep who have “forgotten how to understand the extraordinary.”
Anderson hews closely to the original story through most of “2113” and at first I felt disappointment, a sense that this was a bit of a ripoff from the original. But his sequel takes a turn and concludes with a bit of a twist that’s sure to delight Rush fans who have followed the band through to their last studio album, Clockwork Angels. It also brought a smile to this reviewer’s face since I found a similar analogy between two of the band’s dystopian visions and was inspired to write about it elsewhere.
Because, when it comes down to it, that’s what Rush does — inspires its fans to do their own thing whether it’s playing music, writing stories or even putting together a book review.
And 2113 is chock-full of inspiring, and inspired, tales to satisfy the reader.
Plus it has a great cover.
Claudio D’Andrea, a journalist for 30 years who has written and edited for newspapers, magazines and online publications, has been a Rush fan since 1979 and seen them 19 times in concert — and not once have they played “Fly by Night.” His stuff is on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and you can follow him on Medium.com.
