October 27, 2003
Cannibals of the fine Light by Simon Brown

Cannibals of the fine Light by Simon Brown: a short story collection from an Australian author that never quite lived up to its potential.

These stories, set in a not-to-distant future, almost all revolved around biochips planted in people’s brains and their relationships with other humans, machines and animals.

For the most part, I didn’t really enjoy too many of the stories. I wanted to know more about the time and place that they happened in. Kind of like with William Gibson’s Neuromancer, I felt that I was missing key elements as to why people did the things that they did. I just never really felt myself drawn into the story.

Saying that, however, I did enjoy a few of them. They were “The Mind’s Eye,” “The Final Machine,” “Brother Stripes,” “Rain From the New God,” and “The Truth in Advertising,” a clever little co-written piece that made reading the book worth it. Not really recommended, but fans of anthologies may find enough gems in here to make mining the book worth it.