Review: The Price of Memory and More Stories, by Sally McBride
The Price of Memory and More Stories
Sally McBride
304 pages
Release: October 8, 2024
ISBN 9781998795130
Publisher: Brain Lag
I’ve known Sally McBride for some number of years now. Under Five Rivers Publishing, when it was a going concern, I published her first novel, Indigo Time.
Sally is an expat Canadian, living in Idaho with her American husband, and periodically in Toronto where she has family. She is a prolific writer, whose work has appeared in Asimov’s, Amazing, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Northern Frights, Tesseracts, as well as our own On Spec.
First, the marketing blurb:
Visions of death and life, alien memories, magic spells gone awry, floating girls, and more. Prepare to get transported to a fantastic future, a terrifying present, or look at history and myth in a whole new light.
This new collection from McBride includes 15 stories, spanning the spectrum of fantasy and science fiction, and pretty much everything in between. The writing is fluid, the characterization believable even when the characters are not, which is a remarkable skill from any writer.
The first story, “The Doll Ladies” is a disturbing vision of human procreation, and in order to prevent spoilers, that’s about all of the premise I’m going to reveal. What McBride presents is a compassionate insight into the predations of humans — a theme prevalent throughout the collection — with the only detractor what felt like a too-easy, almost twee ending — another theme throughout the collection. That, however, is certainly the author’s prerogative.
The most compelling story, for me, is “Intersection”, a bit of an homage to Blade Runner, with overtones of Ex Machina: well-written, disturbing, memorable.
Which brings me to influences apparent in McBride’s writing. Certainly I found stylistic references to Asimov, but more particularly two of the other greats of the golden age of science fiction: Theodore Sturgeon and Arthur C. Clarke. And yet McBride writes in her own fashion, with her own voice and vision.
I think you will find The Price of Memory highly readable if you’re a lover of science fiction.