Barnacle Bill The Spacer and Other Stories: Lucius Shepherd

If morality is “a work in progress” you can do whatever you want - or whatever you can get away with. That’s the motto of the Strange Magnificence, the black-satin-clad terrorists taking over space station Solitude in the title story of this collection but the idea recurs in nearly all the stories. From the mostly justified violence of the detective trying to defend the station (and the half-wit Barnacle Bill), to the gardener fighting the decadent and sadistic Captains so he can get on with growing the tomatoes that will feed a new world, Shepherd’s characters polarise between desire and obligation, often bloodily, and sometimes with love and lyricism. There’s a fair bit of graphic sex too!

The British flavour of some stories doesn’t work; Shepherd is far better at painting the grimy, hard-edged glitter of an anonymous American city, the desolate beauty of the badlands or a space station in orbit around the Sun, than at any aspect of British life, from geography to accents (for the London accents on Solitude, think Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins and shudder). And while most characters are well-drawn, almost to a man the narrators are confused, desolate, nihilistic and uninvolved, but still carry on acting as the plot requires and experience a convenient if cynical redemption.

The stories range from the discomforting magical realism of the purblind boxer gaining a new vision through the horror of re-animated jazz players whose music literally changes your life, to science fiction (complete with faster than light colony ships, transcendent beings living on the Sun, super-evolved humans and the entire human race getting frozen). They all leave you thinking and some leave you shuddering.