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Whispers in the Dark and The Greatest (Short stories)
reviewed by
Recently, bestselling author Walter Mosley took a break from writing Easy Rawlins mysteries and tried his hand at science fiction. As you would expect, he's not likely to write simple-minded adventure stories. No, 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 will continue to ignite the most controversy and challenge us with their intrinsic difficulty.
"Whispers in the Dark" and "The Greatest," available for 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 most emotional of the two tales, ex-con Chill fights the near-future law which would 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 requires expensive computer and uplink access not usually available to people of their class - Chill makes sacrifices that transform the story to one of pure horror, weaving hope and despair into the same dark tapestry. It's a disturbing and emotional indictment of racist class structures.
In "The Greatest," the slightly weaker of the two tales, the world's foremost woman 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 Fera's father's Pulse addiction to the volatile mix.
By turns powerful and convincing, the tale falters only in the occasional detail - for instance, thousand-dollar 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 both credibly and with passion. Walter Mosley is now a voice to hear, a talent to watch in the SF universe. Perhaps a foray into horror would be well-received, because if "Whispers in the Dark" is any indication, Mosley would have a lot to say.
Note: A version of this review was previously published at BookPage.com. This version appears here by permission of ProMotion, Inc.