Chris reviewed The crime studio by Steve Aylett
None
4 stars
This caused a certain amount of harrumphing when it was submitted for the Arthur C Clarke Award for Science Fiction, as it's a collection of crime stories. But it can be both, and Steve Aylett definitely has the sci-fi gene. The Crime Studio could be a send-up of cyberpunk - the era is certainly about right, this being the early 1990s, and despite being apparently set in a noir-world where gangsters are all around and for some reason opening fire with a submachine gun results in very few casualties, it isn't really our world any more than most of Aylett's fiction is set in our world. He's hard to describe and I would need to read more of his work (besides this, Bigot Hall [Gormenghast played for laughs?] and Lint [fake bio of a sci-fi pulp author) to get a handle on what he's really doing.
This caused a certain amount of harrumphing when it was submitted for the Arthur C Clarke Award for Science Fiction, as it's a collection of crime stories. But it can be both, and Steve Aylett definitely has the sci-fi gene. The Crime Studio could be a send-up of cyberpunk - the era is certainly about right, this being the early 1990s, and despite being apparently set in a noir-world where gangsters are all around and for some reason opening fire with a submachine gun results in very few casualties, it isn't really our world any more than most of Aylett's fiction is set in our world. He's hard to describe and I would need to read more of his work (besides this, Bigot Hall [Gormenghast played for laughs?] and Lint [fake bio of a sci-fi pulp author) to get a handle on what he's really doing.
