Originally published in 2010 as part of the Apocalyptic SF Anthology from Mammoth Books, Alastair Reynolds’ Sleepover flew somewhat under the radar for me, in large part because I wasn’t much of a short story reader back then.
When asked to perform feats of imagination for post-apocalypse science fiction, writers have every reason to go looking for stories that lean slightly away from the traditional nuclear winter by-way-of global warming story lines that I for one find slightly over-worn, and in this Reynolds doesn’t disappoint.
The origin of the world-ending cataclysm is left a mystery for much of the story – something I didn’t find very plausible, but which works well given the well-measured parcelling out of meagre hints and misdirections. It’s not a ploy that would have worked well in a longer novel, but it’s sufficient to maintain the dramatic tension here.
I can’t fault the writing, and I can’t fault the imagination that went into the story design. Unfortunately, I can’t bring myself to love the story either. Probably because the nature of the catastrophe and the consequent relative powerlessness of both the main character and everyone else makes it difficult for me to engage.
I was curious to find out what happened next – the story leaves you more or less in the lurch and feels like an experiment in world building – but I found that my frustration at being left hanging didn’t last long and I was soon looking for a different story to read, so I wasn’t as hooked as I would have liked to be.
At under one euro, it’s good value and certainly a brief distracting read, so it still gets my recommendation, even if I’m glad it’s only on my Kindle and not taking up shelf space.
