To be honest, I didn't know very much about John Kessel before I started reading this collection from Subterranean Press. I was aware that he had written a novel called THE MOON AND THE OTHER, and just before I started writing this review I discovered that I'd read and reviewed (back in 2012) an anthology that he
co-edited with James Patrick Kelly called Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology (which, now that I think about it, is one of the best anthologies I've read in a very long time). So what caused me to pick up Dark Ride: The Best Short Fiction of John Kessel?

Most likely because I'd heard his name uttered enough by people in the field whom I respect that I felt reading it was worth a try. I will also have to say that Subterranean Press puts out some fantastic collections, many of which I own. What I didn't realize, once I started reading the book, that I was in for a magnificent treat.

Not knowing any of Kessel's fiction allowed me to come into the book with an open mind and little to no expectations. The works would stand on their own; I would not really be influenced by anyone's thoughts on these stories because I'd never read them before. I was prepared to discover a bunch of new favorite
short stories. And I did.

I really enjoyed "Pride and Prometheus", a merging of Jane Austen and Frankenstein, in which Mary Bennet meets Victor Frankenstein (and encounters The Creature, albeit briefly). Bennet falls for Frankenstein, and Victor is impressed with her curiosity and knowledge. It was, of course, not meant to be. "Pride and Prometheus" won a Nebula Award and a Shirley Jackson Award. Little did I know that there were more stories like this in the collection.

Then there's "Another Orphan", a story in which a stock trader from Chicago ends up smack dab in the middle of MOBY DICK, on the Pequod herself as part of Ahab's revenge mission against the titular whale. It's not really clear whether the central character is actually on the Pequod or back in Chicago (and he does go back and forth a few times), but the longer he's around Ahab and the crew, the more he feels like he might be Ishmael, who does eventually survive the original tale. It's another one of my favorites in the book. Sure enough, another Nebula winner.

Another, "Stories For Men", in which the Society of Cousins on the moon is essentially role-reversed, where the men are pampered and protected and the women go out and do the hard labor, won a Tiptree (now Otherwise) Award. It's a powerful story about men without agency and an underground group of men who want to have meaning in their lives. The protagonist, Erno, is caught between his mother - a police officer - and that underground group who want to shake things up. "Stories For Men" takes place in the same setting as "THE MOON AND THE OTHER", and I like it enough that I will probably head to my local bookstore - yes, there
is an independent bookstore in my town - and pick it up.

Another favorite is "Gulliver at Home", which doesn't actually answer the question of what Gulliver's wife does while he's off on all his travels, but instead it explores the effect of his absence on his wife. "Buffalo" is a beautiful tribute story about Kessel's father and an imaginary meeting with H.G. Wells. Wells did go to Buffalo when Kessel's father worked there, although the meeting never did take place. "The Baum Plan for Financial Independence" follows a couple looking for a quick score of cash in an empty (but not abandoned) house that has a subway station running underneath it that leads to an idyllic location where all their needs are met and requests are granted. The Baum in the title does refer to the author of the Oz books, with the female of the couple being Dorothy, and the city at the end of the subway line being Oz, a place where all wishes are granted.

Probably the best story of the collection is the last one, "The Dark Ride", which gives the collection its title. It takes the true story of the assassination of President McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo by anarchist Leon Czolgosz and give it a genre twist by introducing a "Dark Ride" to the moon, where Leon meets and falls in with some rebels there who want to kill the lunar leader. Leon falls in with the group after he sees
what the lunar natives are doing to human slaves. The similarities between Czolgosz wanting to assassinate McKinley and the members of the rebellion on the moon is deliberate, of course, but the real question is whether the experience Czolgosz had on the moon was real, or just a figment of a deranged imagination. "The Dark Ride" is a terrifically powerful story that, as I said, is probably the best tale in the collection.

These may be the best of the stories in the book, but by no means are any of the stories weak. The stories are excellent genre fiction, with the fantastic elements doing a slow burn before they come to the forefront. Those same genre elements don't knock the reader over the head, but instead slowly insinuate themselves in the reader's consciousness until they become a natural part of the tale that Kessel is trying to tell and cause the reader to ask how they got in there when they clearly weren't there when the story started.

I may not have known much about John Kessel before I read this collection, but I do know a little more now, and it's clear that the thing to do is go out and find more John Kessel fiction to read. I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

This is my first encounter with John Kessel’s work, but a welcome journey into his fantastic world. Well worth reading and a stand-out in the genre.

I really liked The Moon and the Other by Kessel. It was a huge book, much larger than I normally prefer, but I listened to it on audio and it was strangely mesmerizing. This is another huge book of his, but a collection of shorter works. The author does a very credible job of excelling in short format also. This collection encompasses four decades of Kessel's writing career and spans a variety of genres and story lengths.
Ok, not quite a variety of genres, it is all science fiction, but it's science fiction from every angle, from humorous to macabre. All fun. Very fun. A good collection to dip in and out of. A very good read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

"Dark Ride" is a thought-provoking collection of stories by John Kessel. The anthology is well named as these stories tend to be dystopian and each certainly takes the reader on a journey to an unexpected conclusion. With 582 pages and 20 stories spanning 40 years starting around 1980, there is a lot of content in this book. It is clear that these are all well acclaimed stories since over half of them were originally published in either The Magazine of Fantasy (8 stories) and Science Fiction or Asimov's Science Fiction (4 stories). And remaining stories were originally published in collections of the author's works, or anthologies edited by people such as Bruce Sterling and Jonathan Strahan, or magazines such as Omni.

One of the things that stood out about the introduction by Kim Stanley Robinson was the challenge of categorizing these stories into a single genre. To be sure, there are strong elements of science fiction such as time travel, nano technology, lunar colonies, galactic empires, aliens, and esoteric physics. There are also whimsical aspects of fantasy and several stories that look at unexpected viewpoints of classic novels. To me, these stories fall into the genre of "Deeply Speculative Fiction that Makes You Think."

If you are looking for short stories to cheer you up on a rainy day during a pandemic, then you should keep looking. However, if you appreciate slightly dark and philosophically speculative fiction with a punch, then this would be a good book for you.

I thank John Kessel and Subterranean Press for kindly providing a temporary electronic review copy of this work.

The Dark Ride

[Blurb goes here]

This anthology has some wonderful stories, although, as per usual, not all stories in the book are great. I would say that about 30% of the book is certainly worth your time. The other 70%, let us say, half and half. Some of the stories are third person's accounts of classic books like Moby-Dick and Frankenstein, the last one describes the chance meeting between Mary Shelley and the infamous Victor Frankenstein, a great read. This story alone makes up for the not-so-good ones.

If you're looking for something different, you should have a go at this book.

Thank you for the free copy!