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Vanity publishing services, including print-on-demand, get a bad rap that is not entirely undeserved. What an author gets from a traditional publisher starts long before the marketing department takes hold, when an editor starts separating the wheat from the chaff in an otherwise promising manuscript. Even before that, someone has to decide the manuscript is worth a first read.
Vanity and POD skip straight from author to consumer, with no one in between to catch the problems.
Stumble Down the Mountainside by Ian Donnell Arbuckle is one POD novel that is worthy of that first read but would have benefited from the hand of an editor.
Told from the perspective of a middle child named Lithium, Stumble Down the Mountainside takes place in a future where the very air is saturated with "nano" -- nano-machines that do everything from changing eye color to healing injuries. Nano is available as pills, and everyone is doing it, including Lithium, who at one point buys "spider legs" pills that allow him to climb walls for a short amount of time. The science is not especially realistic, but Arbuckle makes it believable.
The story starts when Lithium's father dies and Lithium's older brother Grant, a researcher in the field of nanotechnology, comes home to grieve. At their father's request, Lithium and his younger brother Brandt have already burned the body by the time Grant arrives.
"I could have saved him," Grant says when he learns about the pyre.
But alas! With no body to repair, the nano that Grant has managed to sneak out of his laboratory is useless to their father. So he gives it to their mother instead, promising that it will heal any injury or illness.
With Grant's arrival, the plot heats up. Lithium spies Grant in the yard one night waving his hands around in the air. When confronted, Grant says he was spreading a net of nano to protect the family from bad nano that might be spread by terrorists. One morning the family wakes up and discovers that everyone else in the nearby town is dead, turned into piles of smelly gray ash, apparently by some bad nano. When military vehicles roll into town, mother and sons head for the mountains.
Arbuckle's writing style is a bit rambling, almost stream-of-consciousness at times, crammed with flashbacks but no transitions to tell you whether you're in the past or the present. I occasionally had to re-read sections to be sure I knew what had happened.
At other times, his gift for description shines through:
"He grinned, then, but it was sick, like a priest defraying the shock of a dirty joke he accidentally told during the homily." (p. 35)
"...there was just enough light to see a hard line in his jaw, built strong to hold in uneducated words." (p. 138)
For the avid consumer of social science fiction willing to overlook a few imperfections, Stumble Down the Mountainside is an entertaining read, full of worthy ideas and strong character development.
Chris Africa is a veteran writer and editor, with eight years' experience in Web site development. In November 2003, she founded Ultraverse e-zine of science fiction and fantasy. For more information about Chris Africa, browse her personal web site, Parola Scritta. Feel free to contact her at either of her e-mail addresses: baiewola@yahoo.com or editor@ultraverse.us
© 2004 Chris Africa
Ultraverse e-zine is Copyright 2003 Parola Scritta and Chris Africa.
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