Tania Hershman

The White Road and Other Stories is Tania Hershman's first collection of short fiction. I emphasise "short", because there are 27 stories in its 135 pages. About half are flash fiction, some extremely short, and many of the others have been sparked by articles which appeared in New Scientist magazine. The title story has been rel="nofollow" target="_top">published on the New Scientist website.

Tania describes such stories as "science-inspired fiction" rather than "science fiction" - I though this might be Margaret Atwood-style cheese-paring at first, but having read the stories, I can see what she means, although a couple of the stories in the book can be described as SF. In most, however, the development is primarily internal and emotional rather than external and extrapolative.

Given that I like SF, this wasn't always to my taste; I felt that some of the stories could have done with more development of their basic idea. But I don't think there is a single bad story in this collection, the quality of the writing is high, and I found many stories, including the title story, "Evie and the Arfids", and "North Cold", highly memorable and effective. "The White Road and Other Stories" is well worth reading.… (more)