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Cities
Edited by Peter Crowther

Paul Di Filippo, China Mieville, Michael Moorcock, Geoff Ryman
Gollancz hardback, 292 pages, £12.99
Review by Mike Don (2003)

Cities is a loosely themed collection of novellas by SF luminaries. It comes with a perhaps misleading back cover blurb; the contents are not entirely ‘fantasy’.

Paul Di Filippo’s ‘A Year in the Linear City’ presents the idea of a city a few blocks wide but of near-infinite length, suspended between Heaven and Hell. A mixture of the everyday and the bizarre; the hero (nice touch!) is the equivalent of a pulp SF writer, whose imaginative tales describe something not unlike our world. 

Di Filippo's overall approach reminded me of China Mieville, in fact more so than Mieville’s own novella, ‘The Tain’, which immediately follows. This offers a whole new take on the vampire theme, although the vampiric (not strictly true, but near enough) invasion of a devastated London slightly resonates with the likes of I Am Legend. A story guaranteed to make the reader think twice about looking in mirrors.

‘Firing the Cathedral’ offers nothing unexpected: simply a new Jerry Cornelius tale, updated for the post September 11 world but with a return of all the old favourites -- Jerry, Bishop Beesley, Shakey Mo, Una Persson -- and in its own sly way offering an oblique commentary on the present US administration. Moorcock back to his roots.

Finally, there’s Geoff Ryman's 'V.A.O.'. The joker in the pack, neither overtly ‘city’ oriented nor in any sense fantasy. It’s closer to the cyberpunk idiom than anything else, a slick story with hard-boiled dark humour and a dry social commentary on the treatment of the elderly. Grey Panthers strike again! No reflection on the rest, but this novella is my personal preference.