Whispers in the Dark
The Greatest
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REVIEW BY WILLIAM D. GAGLIANI
Recently, best-selling author Walter Mosley took a break from writing his Easy Rawlins mysteries and tried his hand at science fiction. As you would expect, he's not inclined to write simple-minded adventure stories. Walter Mosley uses speculative fiction's wide-open horizons to explore issues of class and race, knowing that as the future collides with our present, these problems will continue to challenge us. Whispers in the Dark and The Greatest, only available by download on the Web, offer a look at Mosley's speculative chops. The verdict: except for minor inconsistencies, Mosley's speculations are as incisive and hard-hitting as his mysteries. In Whispers in the Dark, the stronger and more emotional of the two tales, ex-con Chill fights the near-future law that wants to take away his supremely intelligent nephew, Ptolemy, and place him in a state-run genius program. Bucking the system and the law to educate "Popo" at home, which would require expensive computer and uplink access, Chill makes sacrifices that bring the story to the brink of horror. It's a disturbing and emotional indictment of racist class structures. In The Greatest, the world's foremost female boxer, Fera Jones, is pressured into a symbolic heavyweight bout against the current male champion. Again dealing with an invisible underclass, as well as sports megabucks, commercialism and political pressure groups (in this case, the powerful FemLeague), Mosley adds the drug addiction of Fera's father to the volatile mix. By turns powerful and convincing, the tale falters only in the occasional detailófor instance, $1,000 tickets to the Big Event don't seem so futuristic when people already pay scalpers that much for the Super Bowl. But such quibbles aside, The Greatest and Whispers in the Dark pass the speculative fiction test by projecting today's trends into a foreseeable future and doing so with both credibility and passion. Adding a new voice to the genre, Walter Mosley makes his mark as a talent to watch in the SF universe. Bill Gagliani is the author of Shadowplays, an e-book collection of dark fiction from Ebooksonthe.net
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