Neutrino Drag
by Paul Di Filippo
(Four Walls Eight Windows, $15.95, 492 pages, trade paperback; published
in May 2004.)
Neutrino Drag is a collection of comedic  science
fiction culled from Paul Di Filippo's first twenty years as a professional
writer.
The collection's 21 stories are arranged in chronological order. Readers
are thus given a chance to see him grow as a writer, becoming increasingly
confident, his ideas taking more daring turns.
Occasionally, Di Filippo doesn't go quite far enough in working out
the consequences of his concepts. A number of the endings aren't quite
worthy of the author's otherwise clever ideas, energetic storytelling,
and outrageous characters.
However, there are several gems here, and three stories stand out as
particularly excellent.
In "Stink Lines", an inventor causes reality to take on -- at first
comically, and then increasingly disturbingly -- the characteristics
of comics: thought balloons, sound effects, stink lines, and the rest
of comics' visual grammar become tangible and respond to people's emotional
and physical states. It's a classic screwball comedy with a just enough
of a dark edge and postmodern twist to make it work on several levels.
"Stink Lines" is a textbook example of flawless construction. And it's
wickedly funny.
"Weeping Walls" -- a merciless social satire attacking the sacred cow
of public grief -- features the most vivid characters in the collection.
They're mean, egotistical, arrogantly stupid, completely unredeemable,
and/or smugly imbued with a sense of their own righteousness. This is
a daring piece, with the humour dark and stark.
The title story, "Neutrino Drag", is a wildly imagined tale set in
the 1950s involving hot-rod racing and an extraterrestrial obsessed
with the primal excitement of that lifestyle. The story goes off in
all kinds of zany directions, and the dialogue is priceless.
This collection showcases the lighter side of Paul Di Filippo. The
result is generally fun, with some memorable moments of brilliant wit
and storytelling.
Originally published in
The Montreal Gazette, Saturday, 7 August 2004.
Claude Lalumière's Fantastic Fiction
is a series of
capsule reviews first published in the Saturday Books
section of The Montreal Gazette.
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