A Man Called Trent: And Riders of the Dawn Book

You're parked on the verge of a thick copse of trees, a flat tire marooning you on the side of the road. You're just working the nuts off the wheel in preparation for swapping in the spare when you hear a rustle from the bushes and look up. A wild bear is staring at you. A huge, upright, completely normal bear, other than the fact that like some furry Indiana Jones he is holding a burning torch in his right paw.

That's how Terry Bisson's story Bears Discover Fire (and this collection) begins, with the revelation that the bears of North America have discovered fire and ceased hibernating for the winter, instead gathering around campfires for warmth. It's a great introduction to Bisson's imaginative style, where fantastic concepts are spun with compelling writing and a subtle sense of warmth that I really like.

Even the odd story with a less-than-amazing concept underpinning it is mostly carried by Bisson's deft handling of character and pace, and the great majority of the works in this compilation are real winners.

They're Made of Meat is deservedly a classic SF short story, and it's the story that drew me to Bisson's work. If you haven't read it, Google it now. No really - stop reading this review and find it online. It's only a page or so long, and it's a great, great piece of very short SF.

Necronauts is a real stand out- a fantastically compelling story about a blind artist who is drawn into experiments where people explore the boundaries between life and death, a realm where his sight is restored to him. While the idea is not a new one - the film Flatliners preceded Bisson's story by three years - the direction the story takes is novel, and far more interesting than take that made it to the big screen. It's a real winner.

England Underway is another standout, a story where a single lonely old Englishman's impossible desire to visit his granddaughter in the USA results in the entire nation of England, Scotland and Wales detaching from its moorings and slowly powering away from Europe and across the Atlantic. The way protagonist Mr. Fox deals with this monumental occurrence, and the way British society adjusts to their home suddenly becoming the world's largest boat is both hilarious and plausible.

The final story The Shadow Knows Rounds things off nicely, with a satisfying first contact story led by an aged astronaut called in to speak with an alien entity that will only speak to the elderly.

There are, of course, a few bum notes - no short story collection is perfect. The Coon Suit fails to be either surprising or horrifying (which seems it's intention) and Partial People is a little weak too. By Permit Only is also weak - it just didn't work for me at all, and carried a sour hint of that made it an uncomfortable read, in a bad way.

Other than these few however, Bears Discover Fire And Other Stories is a fantastic short story collection, with a much higher strike rate of good stories than many, many other SF compilations I've read. Bisson seems criminally unappreciated to my reader's eye (I only heard of him recently myself), and he's really worth your time.

I'm hopeful that more people will read his work - that in time, Readers Discover Terry Bisson.

Four furry stars.