Forward Collection

I was coming fresh off Recursion by Blake Crouch and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and my appetite for techno thrillers was at its peak and so the idea of a short story collection led by Blake Crouch collaborating with a few different authors including Andy Weir seemed too good to be true at the time. It unfortunately kind of was…

As he’s the instigator of this collection, it seems sensible to first focus on Blake Crouch’s story, as he’d be the one understanding his own brief the best which is indeed the case. Summer Frost encapsulates the spirit of a near future dystopia and tells a fully rounded story, as I said in my original review, it reads like a Black Mirror story and follows all the story beats of the show through its premise, baiting of hope for a happy ending and the depression of it being squashed moments later. It’s also the only story of the collection whose story I can fairly well remember revolving around the concept of Roko’s basilisk and explores the event which could lead to its creation. It’s not particularly long at 75 pages but it is significantly longer than the other stories in this collection which I’m struggling to interpret as I’m unsure if the other authors thought they did a great job by staying south of 50 pages or if they were a bit lazy with their writing. This is something I’m only inclined to say and believe because Blake Crouch’s story is the only one of this collection that I see as having any worth and on its own would score a strong 9/10 for me.

Very disappointing was Andy Weir’s story, Randomize which is more of a proof of concept than a fully fledged story. In fact, in my original review I not that there is essentially no story. Instead, over only 28 pages, Andy Weir walks us through the introduction of quantum computers to the general public and their function and impact in random number generation for casinos but there is no progression from this, the scene is set, a story is ready to happen but instead it just ends with the premise. It was interesting, like a vulgarized lecture in quantum computing but it’d be a stretch to suggest that Andy Weir was even trying to tell a story here.

A surprise inclusion for me was Veronica Roth mostly known for her Divergent series. I read the first two books of that series and ended up dropping it halfway through the third one (which I guess is also what happened with the movies) which didn’t leave me with a very positive opinion of this author. The lack of originality of Divergent with it being Hunger Games meets Harry Potter with very little logic in world building and the plain and uninteresting writing style is reflected in her own short story, Ark. In this one, Earth is about to be evacuated and we follow a depressed scientist who likes flowers. The reason behind Earth’s evacuation isn’t explored, how society got the technology to fly off to the stars but not the technology to save Earth isn’t explored, the character’s background is barely mentioned, i.e. the world building lacks logic once more. Combine this with me somehow struggling to finish this not even 50 page long story due to sheer boredom and this was one of the low points of the collection.

Moving on to authors I hadn’t read anything from before, N.K Jemisin’s Emergency Skin could have been a highlight but it ultimately struggles to work as a short story. It follows a character infiltrating an “inferior” society and whilst the build up to the dark side of this society is done well, the reveal itself lacks elegance as it felt like the author was trying to squeeze every social issue we are facing today from racism, to ageism, to ableism to transphobia. The concept was good and it, like Andy Weir’s, could have been a good story but it struggled in this specific format.

I should have loved Amor Towles’ You have arrived at your destination as the premise is right up my alley, using genetics to determine a child’s potential and the morale implications of this when it comes to selecting a child’s future before its birth. The concept is however pushed to its limits by using advanced statistical analysis to simulate the child’s entire life, predicting decisions, career, achievements etc. Suspension of belief breakage aside, the bigger flaw of this story is that it’s more focused on the protagonist talking at a bar about unrelated world events to avoid having to discuss the simulation results with his wife, something that the story doesn’t get to, ironically meaning that story-wise, it never gets to its destination.

This leaves us with Paul Tremblay’s The Last Conversation which I have arguably the least memories of despite its premise being quite solid. Waking up in a room with no memories and only a voice over a speaker acting as the protagonist’s guide is another solid Black Mirror-esque opening but it didn’t leave a trace in my mind. This might be due, as I noted in my original review, to the story never leaving the premise, it sets itself up like it wants to tell a full story and it does it well but then it stops and it once more doesn’t get to its destination.

The Forward Collection was an experiment for me, I was at the time not familiar with reading short stories and I thought by following some of my favourite authors I’d be guaranteed the best possible introduction and experience. This obviously didn’t work and overall I see the collection as very mediocre. Blake Crouch’s story stands out and I maintain that it is really solid but if I am to review the collection as a whole, it’s one good story and 5 others that often promise something interesting but consistently under deliver.