Written by contributor Christina ‘DZA’ Marie
Around the Dark Dial by J. D. Sanderson is a thought-provoking science fiction short story anthology. As such, it’s hard to concisely summarise it in a snappy intro paragraph.
Most of the shorts have nothing to do with each other, exploring different “what if” scenarios of Earth. What if the dog collar from Up was applied to a variety of different animals, each with their own culture and ideas of how they relate to humanity? What if humans created and then discriminated against humanoid AIs? What if time-traveling aliens landed on our planet?
Some of them are hopeful, some of them are dark, a couple are downright depressing. (One features a child death as a direct result of discrimination, so head’s up.) In that respect, Sanderson does a great job of using science fiction as a way to contextualise the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of humanity.
The anthology is described as “good old-fashioned science fiction” by David Wellington (author of The Last Astronaut). Whenever I hear the phrase “good, old-fashioned” in front of a genre book, my hackles go up, because it often means centering the story around a cishet white guy while tokenising minority characters, if they’re mentioned at all.
But luckily, that’s not the case with Around the Dark Dial. Sanderson uses several different perspectives in his stories: men, women, and a variety of races and ages. One of my favourites, even if it’s depressing, stars an old woman who used to be a nurse secretly administering illegal medicine to at-risk patients.
While most of the stories are completely separate from each other, there is a trilogy of sorts, as the first, the middle, and the last stories are in direct sequence, which makes it a bit confusing. I’d just got done reading four other stories about totally different characters and settings, and now we’re returning to the other one? In that case, I would have preferred all three of those stories combined into one novella.
At least one of the other stories felt like they should have been longer, too. Sanderson talks about some deep stuff, which deserves more time. More pages just means more book to love.
Sanderson’s writing style is straight and to the point. He spends very little time on descriptions, focusing almost exclusively on plot and story. This has the benefit of getting right to the good stuff, but the tradeoff is that some of the stories blend together. They could have been more distinct if he’d gone further into their settings.
But while description and setting may be a weak point, characters definitely are not. Each character Sanderson writes is brought to life through their personalities and, in some cases, very difficult decisions they need to make.
Overall, I’d give this book three and a half out of five stars. It was fun to read, and I look forward to seeing some other works from this author.
Around The Dark Dial is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up Around The Dark Dial? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
Take a trip around the dark dial with eleven original and thought-provoking short stories that invoke the wonder and mystery of old-time radio dramas. Forget all that you know about modern sci-fi. In Around the Dark Dial, it’s all about the unexpected.
