If variety truly is the spice of life, then Tobias S. Buckell’s short story collection Tides from the New Worlds is a flavorful feast indeed. And I can give my assurances that it is. Like Buckell’s longer fiction, the short stories in this collection combine great writing, wonderous worlds, expert storytelling, and characters from every corner of the universe.

Despite having already read it online in .PDF format, I went ahead and reread the first work, “The Fish Merchant,” which marked Buckell’s first professional publication, to the now-defunct Science Fiction Age. In the collection’s wonderful, stylish script, the story was even better the second time around. Before each story — and writers will especially enjoy this — Buckell gives readers a glimpse into what inspired each particular work in the collection. It’s often surprising just how many different ideas and influences coalesced to form a story — or, even just how few, and how simple, others came about.

Buckell explains that, like many of his most cherished works, “The Fish Merchant” came about by combining the influence of the classic science fiction he loved growing up — notably Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, among others — along with his nautical and Caribbean background. The result is a story that examines the mind of working class humanity — China, specifically — and the collateral damage that might occur in the wake of a government receiving a transmission from beyond Earth’s atmosphere. It’s a good first contact story, but it’s the characters, and the eventual tragedy, that make this story so impacting.

Buckell explores the vast realm of speculative fiction to find his own voice in the field in all of these stories, but I believe that it’s his science fiction that really shines. He manages to recall more traditional, classic sci fi while still bringing something new and memorable to the industry. “In the Heart of Kalikuata” examines life as an oppressed woman living aboard a cramped, working-class space station in the not-too-distant future. It makes for a strong story, but I found the descriptions and the ending in this story to be its most powerful points.

“Io, Robot” is obviously an homage to the fiction of automaton maestro Isaac Asimov, but Buckell again surprises the reader with an impressive ability to examine some new facet of the technological age of the future. Instead of concerning itself with the nature of robotics and their relationship with humanity, the story instead shifts the focus toward the nature of humanity by blurring the line between machine and organism, an idea that has been becoming more and more popular as a topic of discussion among the science and science fiction intelligencia. I, for one, am fascinated with the question of what criteria denote an organism in the presence of advanced — cybernetic, I dare say — technology. I grew up watching the G1 Transformers cartoon series on television and VHS, and it’s stuck with me through the years. Optimus Prime, diesel-for-blood or not, is a very ideal human being in my eyes. What is the nature of life? Buckell doesn’t claim to know, but the way in which he poses the question in this delightful story is a joy to experience.

“Anakoinosis” is a brilliant alien-focused story that examines the slave/oppressor dynamic that humankind has employed in times of colonialism by placing a band of prospectors on a planet inhabited by very interesting, diminutive beings with a very unique method of reproduction and learning. The use of an alien as the point-of-view character sheds a dark, yet luminous light on the nature of humanity.

“The Shackles of Freedom,” co-written with Buckell’s Clarion mentor Mike Resnick, was probably my favorite piece in the collection, excluding perhaps “The Fish Merchant.” The story is told from the perspective of a doctor who knows that technology allows him to heal a great many ailments, but who is forced not to utilize them because he serves a colony planet inhabited by the Amish, who believe death to be a God-willed act, not something humanity should attempt to interfere with. It makes for one of the most human, emotionally gripping tales in the collection. The ending was very poetic and stuck with me for days.

“In Orbite Medievali,” Buckell’s winning story for the Writers of the Future contest, is an exciting, somewhat bizarre retelling of Christopher Columbus — the Anglic misnomer for Spanish explorer Cristobal Colon — and his odyssey to the literal edge of the world. Cutting the corners of known physics, for the sake of avoiding his characters’ instantaneous deaths by suffocation, among other complications, Buckell explores the possibilities of ancient sailors’ seafaring adventures across a planet which was, in fact, square like a map. It makes for an interesting story, and I’d say it deserved the win, but I’m of the opinion that his fiction has improved vastly since Buckell wrote this work.

Stories like “Four Eyes,” “Spurn Babylon,” “Trinkets,” and “Death’s Dreadlocks” are literary collisions of Buckell’s dabblings in fantasy, children’s folktales, and dark fantasy with his rich, fond experiences growing up among the islands of the Caribbean. The stories have a lot to teach the reader, regarding the history, myths, and livelihood of Caribbean peoples, and more importantly, they are terrific tales.

In the final third of the book, Buckell stretches his imagination to the limit to produce some truly bizarre tales, giving his own unique examination of dryads/tree nymphs, historical (fantastic) fiction, and more of the Caribbean-flavored space opera that Buckell has certainly mastered — “Necahual,” in fact, takes place within the Xenowealth universe, like ”The Fish Merchant” and his novels Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose. In his introductions, he explains that “Tides” was inspired solely by a painting, “A Green Thumb” by a television commercial, and “Something in the Rock” by listening to rock and roll for a change of pace from his usual preference for rap or reggae.

In sum, I’d call Tides from the New Worlds a grand, diverse showcase of Buckell’s increasingly brilliant, always enjoyable short fiction. Some of the stories, like the zeppelin-jacking-by-a-rampant-cyborg tale “Aerophilia,” didn’t quite tickle my fancy, but were nevertheless substantive and well-written. I found “Shoah Sry” interesting, but so confusing it will eventually require a reread, at least to accomodate my own comprehension.

I’m still a huge Stephen King fan, and he’ll always be one of my favorite authors — I’m really looking forward to his upcoming collection Full Dark, No Stars — but I think that I may have recently discovered my new favorite writer. In a world that’s finally coming to terms with the fact that humanity is not constituted solely by old, white intellectuals in tweed jackets, and that is beginning to acknowledge the ills of reckless colonialism and its toll on the developing world, I find Tobias Buckell’s fresh, exciting perspective on the genre of speculative fiction to be a breath of fresh, revitalizing air.

I’m going to make an effort, for once, to avoid gushing. All that geeking out isn’t doing anyone any real good, and it’s making me feel as if I’m giving everyone too much credit for everything, all the time. That said, damn was this a good read.

I’d read a story or two by Jay Lake online prior to picking the first book in his “Clockwork” series, and even then I was astounded at the sheer beauty of his prose, his perfect brandishing of the English language. He wields characters and action like a sword and spear, carrying a mastery of description as a shield. A true warrior of the field.

The book follows the story of a Clockmaker’s Apprentice named Hether, in an alternative history in which Her Imperial Majesty of England — that’s Queen Victoria, yes — still holds dominion over the Americas and much of the “Northern Earth.” The planet is a literalization of many biblical ideas, often coming across as high-brow satire that made me smile innumerable times while reading the novel. To summarize the nature of the book’s strange setting, suffice it to say that the world is not unlike the one described in the Bible, centered around a hyperbolic representation of Colonial Britain, with magic and robots. Or, I should say, sorcery and brasswork automatons.

Were it not for the realism Lake pours over every sentence, every paragraph, the book would seem a silly, overwrought allegory. As it stands, the novel works quite to the contrary. A self-proclaimed Atheist, Lake instead seems to confront his faith, or lack thereof, head-on in this stellar steampunk/clockpunk debut from the John W. Campbell and Writers of the Future award-winner.

Hethor’s journey begins the second the book starts, from the very first sentence, and ends only at the book’s conclusion. The level of excitement, the sense of well-organized (or, rather, chaotic) adventure plotting, the mythic scale of it all — only a true professional, a near-master of the craft, could have pulled such a tale off. That said, there were times when the pacing seemed off — for example, there is almost and endless sustainment of suspense throughout the novel in regard’s to Hethor’s mission to God as incited by the Archangel Gabriel, and by the story’s end, I felt as if the final confrontation lacked a bit of satisfaction, and I was left — as a reader — longing for greater understanding of William of Ghent’s character. The balance of action in description in that scene, of course, made up for that minor disappointment, which was probably the only point in the book where I felt let down.

The book’s narrative voice is a writer’s delight, delicious, and carries the reading effortlessly. I don’t recall ever reading a 300-plus-page novel so fast. A very inspiring passion for language and storytelling. I look forward to finishing the Clockwork saga, as continued in the sequels Escapement and Pinion, and also will definitely seek out his other works as they are released.

Several reasons led me to pick up this book, the debut novel from Tobias S. Buckell. First of all, the guy won Writers of the Future a few years back, so that drew me in to begin with. I had read the beginning of his Halo tie-in Halo: The Cole Protocol, which I picked up at Wal-Mart; it seemed like the American thing to do at the time, but unfortunately I never finished it. I rarely manage to drive myself to read an entire media tie-in novel. Few guys can really pull them off. In retrospect, I should’ve finished it, because I know as a Halo fan I’d enjoy it — plus, Buckell’s a damn solid writer. After reading some of his short fiction online, such as “Her,” “The Fish Merchant,” and more recently, “A Jar of Goodwill,” I decided that his writing style was something fresh, enjoyable, and overall comprised of all the elements that make for good fiction — and good science fiction — a sense of wonder, imagination, adventure, grand scale, and ideas both new and revamped.

Crystal Rain kicks off a saga of truly epic scale. Based on what little I know about the second and third installments of what Buckell calls the “Xenowealth” series, Ragamuffin and Sly Mongoose, the purpose of this first book seems to be to skillfully and gently draw the reader into a familiar, very human world of recognizable sociopolitical groups and religions that mirror the world of the author’s Caribbean upbringing. Presumably, the scope of the story is intended to ease the reader into the rich, complex universe Buckell’s created, which it does with near-perfect pacing and masterful execution. The reader very quickly gets a sense that, steampunk tropes aside, this is no ordinary tale of islanders and sailors. This is a story of another world, settled by ancestors of the Caribbean cultures of Earth.

The question of how humanity got to Nanagada comes in small doses, hinting at the presence of strange aliens, historically significant legends of the “old-fathers,” and technology far beyond the comprehension of the beings that populate the surprisingly primitive colony world. Isolation has buried the secrets of humanity, and the mysterious beings — or “gods,” to the Azteca — that caused that cutting off of Nanagada from Earth and her colonies have become prophets, treasured beings that seem to have penetrated the various human cultures.

The story is told mostly from the viewpoint of heroic protagonist John deBrun, who is said to have washed up on the shores of Brungston years ago, and who has no memory whatsoever of the events prior to that. He has a wife and son, both of whom are written as important motivators for the character.

It is his son, Jerome, however that seems to be critical to the story. I sensed, as I read, a deeply personal connection between the author and this character. As the plot unfolded, however, I felt that Jerome might have played more of pivotal role in the resolving of the book’s many conflicts, as Buckell has made him the viewpoint character in a number of the book’s many chapters. Alas, by the book’s end Jerome is merely awaiting the return of his father — which does make for a rather touching final chapter.

The enigmatic Pepper, a character first introduced in Buckell’s short story “The Fish Merchant,” which effectively serves as a prelude to the story that unfolds in this novel, is an important viewpoint character that serves as John’s connection to the past he can’t remember. Seemingly invincible, it is clear from the beginning that he is no ordinary Nanagadan. He has a long, complicated past, and serves to allow the reader to see glimpse many truths before the protagonist, John, does.

Oaxyctl, pronounced O-ash-k-tul, is a key character from whom the reader is given the enemy’s point of view. He is a spy of the Azteca who manages to infiltrate the “mongoose-men,” Nanagada’s peacekeeping force of veritable badasses. He allows for a bit of sympathy for the Azteca, a group who could easily be dismissed (this sounds familiar, America) as extremist, savage jihadists, but whom we could come to understand a bit more deeply. Oaxyctl constantly questions his own faith, resolve, and motivations; he knows he needs to torture and probably eventually kill John to get what he needs to fulfill his mission to the gods, but he has come to respect the man.

Forward-thinking feminist critics (no dirty word, there, my friends — this is the 21st century; let’s reason accordingly) will find that Crystal Rain does a fantastic job of presenting women as they truly are in the real world — occasionally set aback by society and male-dominated politics, but also quite capable of ascending to intellectual and political power. In fact, the Prime Minister of the Nanagada’s Capitol City is a woman, another viewpoint character named Dihana, whose eyes give the reader a look at the sociopolitical mechanisms at work on this well-conceived, believable world. Dihana is a wonderful character who shows us that Buckell is a mature, educated, and socially experienced writer.

Tobias S. Buckell writes with the voice of someone who began as a voracious reader but who struggled to develop his own writing in his youth — his style shows this ideal confluence of formative factors through a marvelous sense of pace, sparceness of needless words, and poetic description. Every word, every letter serves its purpose; each and every paragraph virtually paints a picture with the gritty, lively verb choices Buckell makes, and the figurative language throughout is used both tastefully and sparingly; the whole damn book is a delight to read, from a writer’s perspective, because a writer can appreciate the fact that Buckell has spent years doing his homework. The diction, the balance of description and narrative exposition, and the sheer quality of the prose make for a tasteful read throughout.

The book has its flaws, as any first outting almost certainly does, but they are minute in every instance. A reader hoping for excitement, thought provocation, and imaginative world-building will be thoroughly satisfied with this introduction to what looks to be a grand and fairly ground-breaking saga by Buckell. If you wanted proof that there is still great, fresh science fiction — what I would go so far as to call a hybrid of steampunk and space opera – being written, and by virtually brand-new novelists, then Crystal Rain and its successors should be sufficient.