Antibodies - Charles Stross

 Antibodies - Charles Stross

Charles Stross is a highly successful and award-winning science fiction author. At the time that Antibodies was published, he was just beginning to build a reputation as a writer of fiction, though he was known for his non-fiction work in Computer Shopper magazine. He had also gained some success in writing for and about Dungeons & Dragons in White Dwarf.

Antibodies was published in Interzone magazine in July 2000. It was nominated for the 2001 Sturgeon and Locus awards in its category. Gardner Dozois selected the story for The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection. A couple of years later, Dozois and Jack Dann included Antibodies in their themed anthology AIs.

Stross’s best stories are characterized by strikingly original concepts. He has a good grasp of how to expand upon hard science fiction in order to construct a compelling narrative. At times, I find his addiction to humour to be intrusive. This can derail my engagement in his writing, as he produces a strange and disturbing amalgam of Gregory Benford, H P Lovecraft and Terry Pratchett. In Antibodies, the concept is thought-provoking, the narrative is pacy, and the quirky humour is, mostly, under control.

The opening of the story seems almost excessively geeky, but Stross trusts his readers, feeding necessary information as the narrative progresses, all the way to the chilling and unsuspected final sentence. It makes a powerful and compelling read, and it leaves the reader with plenty to think about.