anishing Acts is an anthology about extinction and
endangered species, about imperiled plants and animals, ranging
from sunflowers to jaguars, darkling beetles to buffaloes. In
collecting these stories, editor Ellen Datlow has put together a
group of tales that pry into readers' assumptions about
humanity's dominance over nature, and the ways in which
ecosystems can falter--or fight back.
Suzy McKee Charnas's haunting "Listening to Brahms" opens the
book, bringing the extinction theme to its logical conclusion. In
it, the last few survivors of the human race are taken in by
reptilian aliens who have been emulating them for years. With no
home to return to, this handful of grieving men and women must
watch as their own lost culture wreaks irrevocable changes upon
the aliens who have adopted them.
Many of the stories are about humanity's closest cousins. In
Karen Joy Fowler's "Faded Roses," a museum worker tries
desperately to interest a group of schoolchildren in his beloved
gorilla exhibit. "The Girl Who Loved Animals," by Bruce
McAllister, concerns a surrogate mother who carries a
long-extinct gorilla. Not all of the imperiled species are
primates or even conventional Earth creatures, however. William
Shunn creates a network of wildlife preserves and stunning aliens
on the planets of "The Dance of the Yellow Breasted Luddites."
"Chimera 8," by Daniel Abraham, is about creatures who are
genetically engineered to fill niches left by species that have
already been lost. The collection also contains a centaur, flying
reptiles, passenger pigeons and menacing stork aliens. In "Now
Let Us Sleep," Avram Davidson offers a glimpse of a
much-abused alien race called the Yahoos. The scope of life under
siege in Vanishing Acts is very wide indeed.
Stories with teeth
Though the tone of Vanishing Acts is quietly serious,
this book is neither depressing nor universally somber. On the
contrary, many of the stories resonate with hope: long-dead
species are brought back into existence, the secrets of imperiled
human primitives are kept, and pockets of biodiversity
survive--through luck, magic or human endeavor--in the face of
considerable opposition. A particular delight in this respect is
M. Shayne Bell's wry "The Thing About Benny," in which a
hardcore ABBA fan tracks down lost plant species in the office
cubicles of large corporations. "Sunflowers," by Ian McDowell,
shows a single family acting in beautifully rendered symbiosis
with a very special piece of the prairie and its inhabitants.
To be sure, some of the stories are considerably harsher, most
notably "Links," by Mark W. Tiedemann, and David J. Schow's
"Blessed Event." Both are uncompromisingly bleak. Readers looking
for upbeat entertainment may want to steer away from this
anthology; even more so than most SF, its subject matter is
uncomfortably close to the everyday world and its concerns. There
is considerable humor to be found in Vanishing Acts, but
none of the stories lacks teeth.
Every story in this book carries with it, naturally enough, a
consciousness of humanity's pivotal role both in making life
forms extinct and in attempting to return them from the brink.
This sense of responsibility, more than anything else, is what
ties the anthology together. Without preaching, it makes a timely
and effective point: that habitat preservation is everyone's
duty, and that the cost of failure will affect everyone.
