Currently Reading - The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection

15. “Night Moves” by Tim Powers

So that’s a Tim Powers story. I look more forward to reading his novels on the strength of this, although I also get the feeling there may be a lot of social nastiness lurking under the surface which extended works may clarify.

Not science fiction. The destitute and regretful who have washed up in a Californian town are swept into a choice between dreams - whatever thing in the past they hold on to - and the world. I frown at the shadow of abortion tragedy which hangs over this tale.

The character Cyclops was intriguing, though one wonders why, knowing the things he knew, he did what he did. Just to warn the hapless, perhaps? Feel like this is one of those stories which does not hold together well if its plot is questioned, but is carried by the strength of its writing and character narrative.

Also example of a thing which tends to bug me in fiction. When a character recalls some memory which at first seems to be a bit of character colour, an incident from the past which is important only as an illustrative example of who ey is and has been, but which soon turns out to have been a (or the) pivotal moment in eir history.

Feels like an example of complaining a lot about something I liked. That happens.