The Flaying Season presents coffee house proprietor Kohl, a woman beginning to founder in loneliness and indecision until she connects with a story collection by the 20th Century writer Mishima. From the standpoint of sentiment, it s not a pretty sight. From the vantage of hard reality, what then happens carries an aura of grim inevitability. Likewise the Asian-descended homicide cop in Wakizashi who, in trying to work out a multicultural conundrum of murder and sacrifice among aliens, finds a wholly appropriate way to pass his ancestral family sword along to a worthy recipient. In The Palace of Nothingness and The Library of Sorrows the infinite mutability of memory is exacerbated through VR technology and brain-controlling chips.
Immolation presents the beginnings of clone rebellion.
The plot-lines may suggest fairly orthodox science fiction gimmicky. That s not at all the true dark heart of Punktown . Sometimes jarring, it s still a lovely and effective collage effect. And perhaps this is the clearest instance of sf timebinding. Thomas is expert at using the tropes of the familiar to generate strange new next-generation effects.