A pockmarked face, a decided paunch and two missing front teeth notwithstanding, renowned physician Erasmus Darwin was, as Nebula Award winner Sheffield illustrates here, not only arguably the greatest 18th-century Englishman but a 24-carat charmer. A practicing scientist himself as well as the author of justly admired hard SF (The Spheres of Heaven, etc.), Sheffield poses six bedeviling mysteries smacking of the supernatural, which the real Erasmus Darwin would have found irresistible: an aquatic devil lurking in the depths of a Scottish loch; a deadly Oriental ruby that kills to defend itself; a phantom highwayman making off with passengers' jewels from a locked coach; a werebeast, a vampire and a cursed treasure from a pre-Roman king—all in the historical context of England's Age of Reason. The author cleverly inserts several of the leading scientific minds of the late 1700s into these elegantly wrought short stories, including such luminaries as the endearing engineer James Watt and the brilliant chemist Joseph Priestley. Each tale also hints that Erasmus anticipated a then-horrifying theory that made his better-known descendant's name an anathema to traditional Christians. Plagued by gout that was exacerbated through lovingly delineated dietary indiscretions like clove-laced squab pie and flagons of claret and port, Erasmus Darwin follows his life's motto—eat or be eaten—into Sheffield's masterfully crafted tales, which are sure to keep the author in the limelight. (June)
Forecast:The jacket art, more evocative of Moby Dick than the Loch Ness Monster, doesn't do the book's quality justice, but Sheffield fans will know better. Sheffield's last novel was
Dark As Day (Forecasts, Jan. 14), while another short story collection,
The Lady Vanishes and Other Oddities of Nature (Forecasts, Apr. 29), has come out almost simultaneously.
