Edited by Andy Lane and Justin Richards
One of the less celebrated parts of Virgin canon is the Decalog series, and now it continues (along with the New Adventures) without Doctor Who. You’d be forgiven for thinking the linking theme here is “The Doctor doesn’t turn up,” but it’s the Forrester family throughout history. (I love the title.) Honestly, that’s one of their better ideas. I’ve no idea how it’ll go.
*
Second Chances
By Alex Stewart
Sort of a murder mystery on a space station featuring Jack Forrester, an affable guy who mentally pilots a maintenance drone outside the station, and may or may not be dead. The main drive is not hunting the killer but settling on a future for Jack. This has some great sci-fi ideas like bouncing your consciousness into random technology (possibly inspired by the baddie in Original Sin?), and some good writing as a character does not initially realise they’ve died. It’s not exactly spectacular and there’s a bit too much description of people’s speaking tone, but it works very well as a short story.
*
No One Goes to Halfway There
By Kate Orman
Oh snap, Kate Orman’s in this? Here we find another Forrester working a somewhat menial space job, only Theresa Forrester feels a lot more like Roz, being abrasive to co-workers and rejecting her family’s influence and wishes. (If you really wanted to you could draw a parallel between the Forrester dynasty, Roz’s/Theresa’s friction with them, and the Doctor’s rejection of the Cousins in Lungbarrow.) Theresa has few close relationships but she is fond of another space-garbage hauler who goes missing. When she finds out what happened to him it’s bad news for the outpost named Halfway There, and possibly for Earth as well.
Pretty much any Orman is good Orman. This features her characteristic flair for playing with convention: the story flips between diary entries, scripted (and wonderfully interrupted) comms dialogue and normal narrative, with memories weaved in there too. Theresa really is a lot like Roz, and I’m not sure how deliberate that is. The story has a genuine threat and a sombre ending; the problem is an unknown force and there’s no magical Doctor to sort it out, so the characters must make do. Dashes of the writer’s endearingly cheesy humour (such as the garbage scow names, like Cash Scow) lighten a story that is sometimes unexpectedly visceral. It’s a cracking one-and-done.
NB: I’m pretty sure this is the first use of the f-word in any of these books (Decalog, NA or MA), swiftly followed by a second and a third use. I guess they don’t give an f-word any more.
*
Shopping For Eternity
By Gus Smith
This one doesn’t quite come off. Jon Forrester is a huckster. The (naturally sinister) Pabulum Corporation want to use his dubious skills to persuade ne'er-do-well colonists to find religion. (And also, the Corporation.) Despite an apparent spaceship crash and later an escape using just his wits, Pabulum are never far away and Jon ends up on the run for his life. Probably. (Do these Forresters ever make it to old age or, y’know, actually breed?)
The jaunty first person prose lets us into Jon’s head, but the other characters don’t work as well (particularly a silly space captain who throws Jon overboard for silliness reasons) and there’s too much then-this-happened-then-that-happened in the narrative. A few moments could have used a red pen, such as “I had other ideas. Seeing those exhibits on stage had given me an idea.” And “I thought of all the millions of light years I had travelled in space during my lifetime, and here I was, defeated by a few hundred metres of water. Ironic.” (Is it?)
It ends with a satirical swipe about shopping (see title) but with few actual consumers in the story this feels a bit random. Still, it’s all somewhat fun to read.
*
Heritage
By Ben Jeapes
Another one bites the dust. Did the Forresters desecrate an ancient burial site or something?
This is a tense, well written stand off on a “sleeper ship” arriving at a new world after centuries in space. Two generations of Forresters meet, one with less than savoury intentions for the ship and its cargo. There’s a hint of moustache-twirling here which is disappointing, and some moments of villainy seem to jump the gun due to the low page count. Billy Forrester is the star, the weight of responsibility for all the lives on board carving an immediate personality in her, and it ramps up to an impressive, if yet again bleak climax. It’s promising stuff, but jeez would you give a Forrester a break.
*
Burning Bright
By Liz Holliday
This one’s straight out of the New Adventures. Anjak Forrester is in law enforcement on a turbulent future world – so another Forrester that feels quite a bit like Roz, albeit younger. After the apparent death of her partner (okay, you’re taking the mickey now) she works with a disgraced cameraman to uncover a conspiracy that links frequent riots to drug abuse – and possibly the Psi-Powers arc? I’m nostalgic as hell right now.
Besides the latent NA-ness this is a tightly written story that whizzes by, despite being one of the book’s longer entries. Anjak’s family conflicts (now who does that remind me of) help define her and she has a nice rapport with Kenzie the cameraman, although it escalates a bit quickly once again because there’s only so many pages. I’ll let you guess whether Anjak has many Christmases to look forward to after this, but at least Liz Holliday orchestrates a fittingly heroic finale for her.
*
C₉H₁₃NO₃
By Peter Anghelides
Yuck. Kids, this is why you don’t write in second person. Peter Anghelides finds a reason for the device towards the end of this story – the title is as annoying as the prose, anyway it’s the formula for adrenaline – but that in no way makes up for constantly disorienting you and putting you at a distance from the main character. Second person seems designed to stay out of their head; it’s rarely done and, in a remarkable coincidence, is also a bloody stupid way to tell a story.
As for what this actually is, talky and unpleasant, mostly. Samuels and Bocx are on the run from synth humans. They find evidence of dangerous experimentation and for most of what follows, Samuels (you / the lifeless video game protagonist) just listens to expository dialogue about it. Bocx is our best shot at a character and the best thing you can say about him is that he seems to enjoy Virgin’s sudden lack of a swear filter. It ends with a revelation that explains the godawful narrative voice, then gives us more exposition, because in second person there’s sod all you can do but sit there and be told things.
It’s a strange mix of the fairly average and the totally unreadable. Thanks, I hate it.
NB: There is a Forrester in it, but don’t panic, he’s dying.
*
Approximate Time Of Death
By Richard Salter
Phew, another good one. Our Forrester du jour is Mark, who runs a family business that makes food easier to transport across space. A hostile takeover looms and, in possibly the most on-the-nose plot development in Decalog 4, he has received death threats. An Adjudicator (Rachel not-a-Forrester) investigates.
This is a confidently written, craftily plotted was-it-a-murder mystery that warrants a second reading. Rachel comes across as very smart, particularly when wheedling cooperation from a news anchor by threatening to keep him in holding just long enough that his replacement might make a good impression on the public. The Forresters once again have some bad news for the family quilt, but a quick reference at the end reminds us that one of them may actually breed at some point. Anyway, this story’s a winner.
*
Secrets Of The Black Planet
By Lance Parkin
This one’s quite interesting. A sleekly futuristic story featuring taxis that cry over movies and Special Editions of films with higher “emotional definition,” it follows Kent Forrester, brother of the more influential Troy, whose film about Nelson Mandela has (among other things) led to possibly getting the highest office available. He wants to remake his Mandela movie with greater accuracy and he tasks Kent with the research. The consequences are serious, and they come around a bit too quickly. Guess that’s short stories for you.
Parkin gets an immediate feel for the complex racial politics at play here, including the ballsy conceit of Mandela being retrofitted into the man who introduced apartheid in order to strengthen the (at this time) black-led society. Equally eyebrow-raising is the idea that the Forresters are descended from Mandela, but the fact that this seems to be the first I’m hearing about it is surely a clue...
With plentiful ideas and challenging themes, this is rewarding. A pity it’s only 20-odd pages.
*
Rescue Mission
By Paul Leonard
Well that was, er, lovely, wasn’t it?
Abe Forrester lives with his little sister, ailing mother and daydreaming father on a run down colony world. They would all like to escape to a better place, but Abe passes the time merrily enough in flights of fancy and the prose goes along with him, wallowing pleasantly in details as Paul Leonard often does. Then Abe’s sister Callie goes missing. Abe eventually figures out a conspiracy that led to this.
Leonard’s story escalates into a full blown horror movie about (I think?) snuff films, and it’s brutally nasty stuff. This hurts even more after the quite wistful writing about life on the colony, crap as the place is; there’s nothing as sad as betrayed children. I wonder if there was a less extreme avenue this story could have gone down. It’s a bit much, in terms of believability and taste, but it’s certainly not poorly written. Inevitably this is one of the more memorable stories. It’s probably very good, but still, good grief.
*
Dependence Day
By Andy Lane and Justin Richards
Finally we check in with Leabie Forrester, Divine Empress of Earth, in the aftermath of So Vile A Sin. How are things? Unsurprisingly, not great.
A historian, Tranlis, has nearly finished documenting the lives of the Forresters and Leabie is his last port of call. He finds a dead empire, a ruined palace, an old and weakening empress in name only. Oh, and cannibal gangs. Some mysterious aliens have arrived seemingly to hand out food parcels, but something is amiss.
This is funereal stuff, but beautiful in its way. We almost end on a note of hope, though naturally this is qualified with cynicism, and by the time we get to it there’s already been another family tragedy for the Forresters. (It’s as gruesome as the climax of the previous story.)
There’s a hint of mechanism in having the last story feature a guy documenting the Forrester history, but it makes enough sense. His final act is a bit implausible – let’s just say he really wants an ending for his book – but the story’s not really about him. Roz’s spirit makes a literal and figurative appearance and she makes an important difference once more, which is quite fitting.
I’m not sure I wanted this post-script, but it’s a well written piece.
*
Taking Doctor Who out of the equation has been good for the storytelling here, removing the usual constraints of needing to arrive, introduce self, find problem, solve it in under 40 pages. These tales are more grounded in people’s lives and by and large, they’re excellent. That said, they are generally very downbeat to the point where it seems surprising that the Forresters made it this far. Perhaps that’s the point – triumph over adversity – but each generation is so separate, with little to no immediate link between ancestors and their actions in these stories, that it feels more like random people who cannot catch a damn break. Certainly the concept of the Forresters as an elite family with great influence is kept to the sidelines, as much as it was by Roz herself.
Is it a good collection? Yes. The quality is perhaps more consistent than any earlier Decalog, and it’s certainly the best use of a linking theme so far. I would recommend it. But all the same, once in a while it would be nice if the sun came out.
8/10
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