{"id":92576,"date":"2016-11-29T01:00:24","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T01:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=92576"},"modified":"2016-11-29T09:46:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T09:46:15","slug":"slipping-by-lauren-beukes-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/slipping-by-lauren-beukes-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Slipping by Lauren Beukes book review"},"content":{"rendered":"

With her novels Moxyland<\/strong><\/em>, Zoo City<\/strong><\/em>, The Shining Girls<\/strong> <\/em>and Broken Monsters<\/em><\/strong>, Lauren Beukes has established herself as one of the genre\u2019s most exciting voices. The stories assembled here not only show off her eclectic range of influences and interests, but the strength of her voice, her passion for her subjects, and that fantastic blend of anger, analysis, sensitivity and wit.<\/p>\n

Several of the stories show an uncertain near future in which technology and humanity exist in an uneasy co-dependency. The titular \u2018Slipping\u2019 is the story of Pearl, a teenage athlete competing in an Olympic event in which the runners\u2019 cybernetic enhancements are discussed more than their own skills. With her distrust of authority and personal belief system, Pearl\u2019s struggle is her own.<\/p>\n

Tech concerns come through with a more classic dystopian feel in sci-fi tales like \u2018The Green,\u2019 in which a bunch of grunts harvest terrifying flora and fauna for an uncaring corporation and may be worth more dead than alive, depending on what killed them. \u2018Riding With The Dream Patrol\u2019 is set in 2017 and finds journalist Lauren Beukes reporting on the government\u2019s use of social media to monitor us, and doesn\u2019t feel very sci-fi at all.<\/p>\n

Several hallmarks of Beukes\u2019 writing, such as her fascination with modern connectivity, the art world and the personas we create for ourselves, come through again and again in this collection. In \u2018Pop Tarts,\u2019 a reality star is forced into a violent and unwelcome crossover with another up and coming personality.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Exhibitionist\u2019, a young artist shares floor space with a Cronenbergian living machine that may or may not feel pain. In the non-genre \u2018Easy Touch,\u2019 a front-man for one of those classic email scam collectives tries to guide an increasingly impatient woman through her final payment. One or two of the stories feel like they\u2019re nudging up against each other, but they are in the minority.<\/p>\n

There are stories that have no genre element at all, simply focusing on attempts at human connection, or on people facing unwanted attention. While she can certainly deliver delirious, pop-culture-strewn explosions of science fiction (we\u2019re referring to \u2018Unathi Battles The Black Hairballs,\u2019 in which the titular character fights a gigantic hair monster in Tokyo before going on a very trippy journey involving performance art, talking cats and the infamous Suicide Forest), she is just as capable of giving us a vivid and strong character like Thozama, who tries to fend off a \u2018helpful\u2019 vigilante while carrying her produce to her shop in the excellent \u2018Smileys\u2019.<\/p>\n

Couples come together and separate, stalkers are confronted with the grim facts of their behaviour, lonely people debate doing a Tom Ripley to their friends, and students learn to be more selfless by befriending teenage ghost girls. The best short story collections should feel like a treasure trove, a carefully curated present from the author to the reader. If you\u2019re a fan of Beukes\u2019 work, this is a gift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren Beukes collects some of her short stories and essays in Slipping<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":92577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1624,8],"tags":[1694,5478],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-22-at-11.57.40.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92576"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}