Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Reviewer: Scott
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About The Book
- What happens when an AI assistant is always whispering in your ear?
- Does hacking into the structure of reality help you get a prom date?
- When your world is dying, how far are you willing to go to save its people?
- What is the nature of identity, and who are you, anyway?
Flashes in Time explores these questions and more in sixteen imaginative short stories set atop a fourfold table of science fiction and fantasy, contemporary and far off.
A diverse cast of characters explores the limits of what it means to be human, and what our choices make of us.
From darkness to light and lingering in between, the scenarios and thought experiments take the reader on a journey with surprising yet inevitable twists.
The Review
I first met Mikko Rauhala at Nebula Con – this was during the pandemic, and that year’s convention was held entirely online. They had breakout rooms set up on their “Nebula Starship,” and in one of them I ran into Mikko. They were really nice, and we chatted for a bit before I moved on to another room.
Then earlier this year, their latest book was submitted to us for review. I grabbed it immediately, intrigued by the cover image and wanting to know more about their writing. I’m glad I did.
This short story collection contains sixteen fairly short works of speculative fiction. Maybe that’s why the word “flash” is i the title? Although most of them are a bit longer than what I would consider flash fiction. The stories are mostly idea driven… the characterization is light, but not unduly so, and it works in this context. I love a good idea-driven short story, and enjoyed all of these, but for some reason the science fiction section’s stories seemed a bit stronger to me.
In any anthology or collection, there will be some amazing stories and some also-rans. For the purposes of this review, I’ll cover what I consider a few of the stand-outs.
“The Aide” was the one that stuck with me the most after reading it. This tale tackles the whole Generative AI issue head-on. To wit, what would happen if you outsourced your life almost completely to AI? It’s a thought experiment piece, and it shines in part because of its topicality, and in part because of how neatly the author dissects the problem and delivers an entertaining story built around it. It’s especially relevant now, as accounts are starting to come out about the cognitive decline that Gen AI use can bring about when overused. And Rauhala even manages an (almost) happy ending.
“The Samaritan” mines similar territory, but in a much darker. It takes place in a dystopian near-future, and asks the question “what if you could turn off empathy with a software upgrade?” This one’s far more chilling in both tone and implications, and left me cold. In a good way.
“The Emissary” gets points for its sheer alienness. Describing the encounter between two alien entities, it manages to capture that sense of not-human in a creative and revealing way. I’ve written alien creatures before, and know from experience how hard it can be to not inject humanness into the characters. A hauntingly beautiful story.
Finally, on the fantasy side, one story in particular stood out (and maybe because it was the most “sci-fi” feeling of the fantasy stories?). “The Presence” features what I read as a non-binary, probably autistic character who is haunted by a bright, shining presence they can never quite bring themselves to look at directly, but which they fear. Told in the first person, the story avoids gendering the character, leaving it up to the reader to decipher. The suspense as they prepare to confront the unknown thing is palpable.
Don’t get me wrong – all of the stories in Flashes in Time are worth reading. I enjoyed the entire collection, even if some of them resonated a little more strongly with me than others. I highly recommend this collection – give it a try. You won’t be disappointed.
The Reviewer
Scott is the founder of Queer Sci Fi, and a fantasy and sci fi writer in his own right, with more than 30 published short stories, novellas and novels to his credit, including two trilogies.
