In these alternate universes, the ‘what-ifs’ rule the day

SUFFERIN’ saurians of Saturn!!! Can reading still be just plain fun? The way it was when judging a book (or a comic or a pulp magazine) by its cover (square-jawed hero in the grip of revolting Thing blazing away with his fearsomely foreshortened Antimatter Gun) was the rule to follow?

The virulent science-fiction and fantasy bug seems to infect most reader-kids somewhere around age 12. Once the jolt of pure story-spinning hits the preteen bloodstream, it is goodbye to chores, homework, even television. Although there is no known cure for SFitis, most of those affected appear to go into remission a few years later, thanks to copious doses of cultural elitism administered in high school. Others, either oblivious or more independent, stay fans of the genre for the rest of their days. To their delight, the sci-fi universe is continually expanding -- there’s now the option of warping into parallel universes on the Net.

Twenty-five seasoned writers have contributed 23 stories to the pages of “Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology.” (Sci-fi writers, unlike their genre-spurning “literary” kinfolk, seem happy to collaborate.) They hail from Britain, Australia, the U.S. and other shores; they include such living legends as Brian Aldiss (an Aldiss work inspired Steven Spielberg’s movie “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”) and newer talents such as Eric Nylund, whose story here, “Butterflies Like Jewels,” loops some dizzying loops in physics, and fantasy. Motivated, as Arthur C. Clarke explains in his moving introduction, by the calamity that befell our “Global Family” on Dec. 26, 2004, the publishers and contributors will donate their profits to the Save the Children Tsunami Relief Fund. Despite the benevolent goal, there’s a moment of reluctance, of frisson, in settling into a book that owes its existence to that ghastly catastrophe. But reluctance dissipates quickly in the reading. Imagination, like truth, shall set you free.

Something pure, and in the best sense child-like, clearly motivates a lot of science-fiction writers. Listing the series of “what-ifs” that inspired her bold speculation, “Abductio Ad Absurdum,” Esther M. Friesner concludes with the self-addressed: “ ‘Am I going to have fun writing about this?’ ” And finishes, “The answer to the last question being affirmative, the rest is history.” Disarming, and true. “Abductio,” for all its intellectual rigor, radiates the playfulness of its conception.

Other stories share this un-self-conscious elan, including Aldiss’ subversive “Tiger in the Night,” Janny Wurts’ heartwarming “Moebius Trip” and Lynn Flewelling’s sumptuously inventive “Perfection.” Rather less satisfying, at least as stand-alones, are those stories evidently spun off from novel or game series, with their interminable histories and proliferation of characters distinguishable mainly by silly-sounding names. It is difficult too to work up much interest in sadistic reveries such as “Chanting the Violet Dog Down” by Tim Lebbon or “Expedition, With Recipes,” by Joe Haldeman, with all due respect to their authors’ considerable reputations.

Imagination is “Elemental’s” primary element. How to make the new feel new again. Viewed together, these stories reveal the perennial appeal of key tropes to the questing sci-fi mind. Angels in our midst, for example. Universal warfare, with its opportunities for satire on Earth’s fledgling steps in that direction, as evidenced in stories by William C. Dietz, Michael Marshall Smith and David Drake. The basic conundrums: death, life, reality -- and the L.A. freeway system. And while this reader’s anticipation of a unifying central theme (natural disasters, more or less) turned out to be wrong, there are nonetheless two takes on the ancient fable of a mermaid-ish creature torn between life in the water and love on dry land. Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s long “Sea Air” is a particularly moving, viscerally convincing evocation of the theme of returning home beneath the waves.

Limited space proscribes mention here of every story in “Elemental.” That said, it would be a crime to miss “In the Matter of Fallen Angels.” Reporting deadpan on what happens when townsfolk find an angel recumbent in the yard behind the general store, Jacqueline Carey channels the affectionate humor of Mark Twain or Thornton Wilder: “The angel’s ribcage rose and fell slowly ... the way marble would if it could breathe. Quinn’s knees turned to water faster than a priest could transubstantiate wine and he sat down in the dirt.” Style is not always the strongpoint of sci-fi writers, but Carey writes like a dream. The result is enchantment.

Kai Maristed is the author of the novels “Broken Ground,” “Out After Dark” and “Fall.”