In early years, there’s no conception of self. This is a completely fascinating story about a child coming into self-awareness. Now I’ve got that off my chest, I can start again at the beginning of the book with the excellent “Daddy’s World”. An author setting out to tell a story should not rely on the reader’s specialist knowledge to rescue what has been written.

Fiction is fiction, but it’s supposed to be entertaining or have some point that is obvious to all who read it. In my conception of reality, a story stands or falls on what is written and, to me, this is a boring reconstruction of events more than 130 years in an unreal past. I was therefore somewhat irked upon arriving at the end of the story to discover that only those who can identify this as alternate history and know enough about Nietzsche’s writing to appreciate the pastiche, can appreciate the quality of this work. For all I have dabbled with philosophy over the years, the notion of the Übermensch has never interested me enough to actually read about it. Worse, I have never read anything written by Nietzsche. Allowing for Hollywood being somewhat economical with the truth for the sake of dramatic effect, I had no recollection of Friedrich Nietzsche being involved. I therefore read this story with increasing bewilderment. This is my only source of knowledge about the events leading up to the notorious shootout. When I was younger, I paid to see Gunfight at the OK Corral starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. So I’m starting off this review of The Green Leopard Plague, a collection by Walter Jon Williams (published by Night Shade Books), by talking about the third story, “The Last Ride of German Freddie”. No matter what the reputation of the kitchen, you can go in on a Monday evening and find a sous chef asleep at the wheel. It’s rather like going into a fine-dining restaurant and then being afraid to complain that the food tastes like shit because you heard the chef has the maximum number of Michelin stars.

For me, the book should stand or fall on its own merits. Eyes scan the letters, the brain engages and converts the letters into words, I attribute meaning to the words and we repeat until the end of the book. In a site headed, “Thinking about books” my approach to reading is “simple”. But it’s fun to start off these reviews with something vaguely provocative, just to get everyone’s creative juices flowing.

Daddy's World by Walter Jon Williams