New Writers in SF - Ted Kosmatka

Posted by Colin Harvey Jul 27, 2008

A little while ago I reviewed the June F&SF, making positive comments about Ted Kosmatka's 'The Art of Alchemy.' Soon after I was reading his 'Divining Light' in Asimovs, and realized that here was a writer to watch.

A writer's career is littered with pitfalls. Look down the list of John W. Campbell Award winners and amongst the Nebula Award winners and the bestsellers, you'll see names that haven't fulfilled their potential; PJ Plauger is the obvious one, but who is Julia Ecklar? (the 1991 winner, but whose priorities seem more musical than literary).

So it's a little early to be making prophecies for Kosmatka, and part of the frisson that I felt was because he was in both the genre's two big magazines in very quick succession. Nonetheless, even that achievement isn't that common. I've read most of the hot new writers coming through, and there are many good ones -- Will McIntosh, Benjamin Rosenbaum, David Moles, Paul Meloy, Tim Pratt and Aliette de Bodard spring to mind.

But none of them can match the scientific content of Kasmatka's work, allied with the intensity of the prose and the sheer flawed but sympathetic humanity of his characters. I'm looking foward to his appearance in this year's Dozois Year's Best. with more anticpation than I've felt since about 1990, when I read a couple of stories in quick succession by a certain Greg Egan. SF is a literature of ideas, and to avoid becoming an orthodoxy needs periodic injections of new blood; it needs new talents like Ted Kosmatka. Let's hope he continues to give pleasure and help maintain and even extend the field.