‘Petra’ by Greg Bear

A load of gargoyles come alive, mythic strangeness ensues. This is not a side of Bear’s work that I know; it is sort of proto-New Weird which might make it just plain weird but doesn’t make it cyberpunk.

Punkosity: *
Quality: ****

‘Tangents’ by Greg Bear

A researcher into the multi-dimension theory happens to stumble across a boy who can actually see the fourth dimension. This coincidence is adequately managed but Bear forces his story through all sorts of strange contortions by insisting on establishing a parallel between Peter Tuthy (his researcher) and Alan Turing.

Tuthy is British but lives illegally in America after he was smuggled into the US through Canada. This is because he was fleeing homosexual persecution in the UK. Now, Turing might have been prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952 but a lot happened between then and Tuthy’s supposed arrest in 1964. The Wolfenden Report recommending the de-criminalisation of homosexual behaviour was published in 1957 and by 1967 this was established in law (it wasn’t until 2003 that the same was true of the US). So the majority of the resonance the story is meant to engender backfires completely. Once you strip this out, you are left with the thin and unlikely story of a magic boy who can slip through dimensions.

Quality: **
Hardness: **