Courttia Newland

A rather uneven collection of short stories in the sci-fi/speculative fiction vein. There are some real gems here, but you have to dig for them, and the fact that the first stories in the book are arguably the weakest makes getting through this collection a bit of a slog until about the midway point. The worst of the stories are jargon-heavy, with little supportive context or character development. Some read like the beginning of a story yet to be completed; others read like notes for a story not yet written. The best stories, however, are inventive, memorable, character-driven pieces satisfying enough to warrant a revisit. Highlights include "Scarecrow," "You Meets You," "Dark Matters," "Nommo," and the stand-out "Seed," which is likely the strongest story in the collection. Overall, worth reading, but skip around.… (mere)

I didn't think any of the stories in this collection were successful. On the positive side, the author tried his hand at every type of classic sci-fi story, whether it was robots, zombie apocalypse, aliens, or underwater merfolk atlantis. However, and here's the really strong negative, each and every story was incomplete. They fell into two general categories: either 1) the stories felt like prologues or first chapters of longer works, which just stopped right after setup and without exploring any of the concepts they'd introduced, or 2) they read as outlines.

As annoying as it was to finally settle into a story only for it to just STOP (wait, that's IT?) the stories that felt like outlines were unbearable. The opening story is one of those, though not the worst one. They read like, "this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened..."

I really can't recommend this. I appreciate trying all sorts of ideas, but the author didn't have anything at all to say, and the prose style varied greatly from "ok, some time was spent on this one" to "ok, he'll get back to this one later."… (mere)

I dream in Blade Runner's setting. I want to love Blade Runner, but no matter how many times I watch this film, I always wish for more worldbuilding. And since it's such a speculative classic, I'm often wary of other speculative stories. I have hardly met a speculative novel that I feel has ENOUGH worldbuilding - I love more more more speculative details. So as soon as I picked up 'Cosmogramma' I had a bit of worry that speculative details in a short story format certainly wouldn't offer up enough detail heaped on that plate for my tastes. But I am proved wrong, Mr. Newland! Despite hesitancy on a speculative short story format, most of these stories worked well for me, though a few could have used a tiny bit more detail to click in my unscientific brain. I like one particular story that seems to combine two sci-fi classics brilliantly, but I wanted more of a reason WHY for the story to really hit home. There is a generous array of science fiction and speculative topics and themes in this collection to keep it fun. Something here is bound to haunt your imagination. I liked that the final story hinted at the first. Some of my favorites here: Scarecrow, You Meets You, Nommo, The Sankofa Principle. I'm very glad I gave this collection a chance. If you like speculative short stories, pick this up!… (mere)

Overall, I found this collection very uneven; some of the stories are very good, including one that won me over despite using the second-person voice (a style I usually dislike outside of Choose Your Own Adventure type books and N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy), while others felt like they needed more work to get their point across or just didn’t overcome styles that I dislike. It wasn’t helped that the first four stories fell into the latter category for me.

Many of the stories are informed by the author’s reaction to history and recent events as a Black English man. At least three are directly related to Brexit and the trends it exposed, while at least four more deal with slavery and colonialism. Other stories deal with the impact of environmental crises, not letting a bad decision or experience control your life, and fear of the unknown.

In a number of cases, I couldn’t figure out just what the story’s point was even though there clearly was one beyond entertaining the reader. In some cases, this was no doubt because I don’t have the correct reference points, but there were cases where it felt like the author had felt that certain background details were unnecessary to understanding what was going on, leaving the reader unsure just what key terms mean. In one case, there is an explanation very late in the story, but even in that case it feels a bit too late, and other stories leave key details that might explain what was happening or why completely unknown. In the case of one story, part of the confusion is apparently due to some proofreading errors (at minimum, the phrase ‘seeing my confusion’ is attached to the wrong sentence), a problem which might be corrected when the book is released. Slightly ironically, one story opens with a few details that seem completely irrelevant to anything that follows.

Overall, I think there are too many misses to make the book worth hardcover prices, but the better stories would probably make it worth the price of a cheaper edition.… (mere)