Review: Tales From The Dead Astronaut
Tales From The Dead Astronaut from Space Station Zed (writer Jonathan Thompson and artist Jorge Luis Gabotto) is a small psychedelic gem: four otherworldly stories framed by our free-floating narrator, the corpse of a spaceman, his visor shattered, his umbilicus severed, drifting all alone in the void but for a family of hungry tardigrades who strip him down to the bone... None of which gets in the way of his storytelling purpose.
"... seen some crazy stuff ..."
Another World - the tree sails through the universe in search of new homes for its passengers, fresh soil to put down roots...
The Star - a jaded musician suffers the barrage of inane questions from a press conference of the mediocre media, but only up to a point...
Prince of Steel - metalsmith transforms himself into the ultimate unstoppable killing machine...
SEEK REPAIR - a robot digs through a junkyard to make himself whole...
There are no epic plot arcs or high-concept navel-gazing here, just a fistful of potent little spacey vignettes to push the buttons of your geeky pleasure centres... Not so much a bottle of fine wine, grand and matured, more like a line of shots on the bar waiting for you to knock 'em back in quick succession.
Once upon a time (I'm no spring chicken) short stories were a solid mainstay of science fiction: Asimov and his ilk were frequently featured in magazines; these stories later gathered and republished in paperback anthologies that were hungrily snatched up and devoured by the next generation of fanboys and fangirls ... The format is less common in these days of the galaxy-spanning Magnum Opus, grandiose worldbuilding and the drive for the kudos of deep and meaningful... but the compact and bijou still holds its own special magic. And that is most definitely not damning with faint praise: what we have here is just as enjoyable and rewarding in its own way as any weighty tome of a graphic novel. Sometimes cool ideas can be expressed succinctly, without the need for the exhaustive literary approach.
Gabotto brings the stories to life with a style that is both skilled and playful; characters are rendered eerie (the tree-dwelling monks), comedic (the pan-species music press) and dramatically sinister (the psychotic self-made cyborg); colours restrained to zero or splashed with generous aplomb as required. At times Moebius-like (dreamy with a hint of retro, a dash of oriental spirituality), at others cartoony (little green men and bug-eyed monsters), he adapts to suit the tone of the story in question, giving each one exactly what it needs. His versatility shines here.
I'm certainly hoping our deceased traveller has more tales to tell. As he teasingly muses at the end:
"I wonder what'll happen next." ....
So will you!
Zak Webber
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