The Perseids

I picked up Robert Charles Wilson's The Perseids and Other Stories because I had enjoyed Spin (which won the Hugo), The Chronoliths, Blind Lake, Darwinia, and Bios (but not so much A Hidden Place). I started reading it without reading the jacket copy as is my custom: I usually prefer to avoid spoilers. It fit with his usual gloomy themes; imperfect characters (especially the men), loss, and cracks in reality. His plots skate the edge of despair, and these short stories were no exception.

As worked through the book I realized that they were all tangentially interrelated, beyond the setting in Toronto: centered around a book store and a few recurring characters. Mr. Wilson is an American who has lived in Toronto since 1962, somehow without actually becoming Canadian until last year. But with this book he definitely makes his mark on the Canadian science fiction canon. I never knew he was Canadian (his books are not usually set here) but it always had a slight out-of-country flavour, a certain remove when discussing society. His remove goes beyond nationality, however, and puts the human condition in a smaller context of a larger, hostile universe.