Our Lady of 47 Ursae Majoris and Other Stories / Richard Parks. Kindle Edition. Canemill Publishing, 2011 (ebook). 141 pages.

I’m not generally a big fan of ebooks, but I’m definitely a fan of Richard Parks, and having exhausted what’s available from him in dead tree editions, I decided it was time to take the plunge. Much of his fiction can be found in a variety of formats, include print, ebook and audiobook, but some, like the collection here under review, is available in ebook alone. In these instances it’s a good bet it’s self-published through his Canemill Publishing imprint.

That might sound like a warning sign to some, but not in the case of Parks. In my experience, one does not encounter a poor Richard Parks story; such a mythical creature may well not even exist. So why would he self-publish? Most likely because he does not expect the material in question to be picked up by other publishers—presumably he shopped it around, and has reason for his pessimism. That doesn’t mean it’s bad; indeed, much of what he has chosen to release in ebook form originally appeared in magazines and anthologies. But Parks is not a big name author, and publishers these days are timid creatures, especially when it comes to short story collections. A shame, as he’s well worth seeking out.

Parks made his name in fantasy; this collection includes most of his rare science fiction shorts. Their occasional nature makes the book a rather mixed bag, an assembly of miniatures rather than grand themes. No vistas of galactic empires or speculations on extraterrestrial intelligence here; instead, we get portraits of familiar people in the unfamiliar conditions and circumstances of various possible futures. The majority of the stories could be described as intimate science fiction horror; personal tales of psyches under intolerable stress. While we may encounter the random alien or exoplanet, human nature is the constant, stripped down and generally unlovely. Here the optimism and lightness of touch so often seen in Parks’s fantasies give way to a darker tone.

A habitable world of the star system 47 Ursae Majoris, some forty-six light years distant, seems to have struck a chord with Parks, as he utilizes it in three different stories. As a point of reference, it might stand in his science fiction rather as Canemill, Mississippi does in his contemporary fantasies—if we were there long enough to grow familiar with it. Of the Ursae Majoris tales, the title story is the standout, a quiet, poetic meditation on one of the planet’s archaeological mysteries, and the effect it has on beings of two different species. If any story in the collection deserves having the book named after it, it’s this one.

Two later tales set earlier in time, “Some Archival Material on the 2198 Stellar Expedition” and “Directional Drift,” are much more disturbing. Together they relate the aftermath of the failed first human expedition to the Ursae Majoris system, detailing how time and isolation led to disaster for the explorers, followed by an endless cycle of vengeance played out among their electronically recorded minds and their spacecraft’s guiding artificial intelligence. Amazingly, Parks is able to instill in the reader some level of sympathy for the common narrator, whose actions set all this pain in motion. While not a man you would want to have your back (he might well have stuck a knife in it), his sufferings feel disproportionate.

Another piece, “Keeping Lalande Station,” contains echoes of all three Ursae Majoris stories, though set in a different star system. Here another failed expedition leads to a more drawn-out trauma of isolation, in which nothing experienced by the unreliable and periodically unhinged narrator can be fully trusted.

“Poppa’s Children,” a tale of interstellar colonization, cloning and robotics, explores the consequences of a genius’s inability to properly connect with and care for his disparate creations. Subjected to his quiet tyranny during his lifetime, they exploit loopholes in his directives to subvert his goals after he dies. Our sympathies are all with the “children.”

The collection’s remaining stories are set on Earth. Parks’s interest in the human mind and what technological advance might mean for it are revisited in two unconnected pieces. In “Passing Zero Point,” AI augmentation of the brain helps avoid disastrous social interaction at the cost of any interaction at all. “Punishment” has a criminal’s psyche restored only for the purpose of making his execution meaningful; turning the technique to rehabilitation would, it seems, be too expensive...

“Crows” strikes a similar note, this time in a tale of post-apocalyptic horror, in which two representatives of an extinguished humanity are temporarily preserved by its alien exterminators as an object (and abject) lesson—and as a gift of sorts to our kind’s successors.

“Signs Along the Road” deals with the interaction of two damaged outcasts on the fringes of their respective societies, one of them a hobo from our own, the other (perhaps) an extraterrestrial exile. The tone is elegiac and healing, more in the mainstream of Parks’s work. “Eucharist” develops as an apparent supernatural fantasy on the translation to godhood of Elvis Presley, only to be revealed as a grotesque perversion of science.

But the collection ends on a (literal) high note with “The Great Big Out,” an exciting adventure involving an extreme sport evolved from storm chasing. Here too the focus is intimate, but the feel is ultimately positive and uplifting. After so much mucking around in the darker corners of SF, Parks discovers here a certain joy in this future’s new possibilities.

So what’s the upshot? Well, as a point at which to take the plunge into e-readership, the book’s not a bad one. While neither a vital SF collection nor a signature Parks one, it’s definitely worthwhile, and an intriguing taste of this author’s art in a mode not usually seen.

Four out of five stars.

—Brian.