Julian: A Christmas Story

#226
Title: Julian: A Christmas Story
Author: Robert Charles Wilson
Publisher: PS Publications
Year: 2006
86 pages

Julian: A Christmas Story is a novella that apparently will be incorporated into Wilson's forthcoming Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (scheduled for release June 9).

I've ordered a copy from PS Publications (first edition, 500 copy print run, introduction by Robert J. Sawyer). However, I read it on line because I needed a Robert Charles Wilson fix. The online copy is at http://www.kith.org/RCW/Julian_Christmas.pdf and the introduction by Robert J. Sawyer is at http://www.sfwriter.com/rcwilson.htm.

Set in a post-collapse United States (60 of them) with a distinct 18th- or 19th-century religious and technological character, this novella is presented in a voice that differs from Wilson's usual: The more mannered and self-conscious voice of Julian's friend Adam, a young man of lower social status and greater naivete. It feels like the set-up for a longer story even though there is action, emotional change, and some resolution to the episode being recounted. In tone and some thematic material it recalls Heinlein's novella "If This Goes On--" (1940) with Adam Hazzard perhaps in John Lyle's role. It will be interesting to see where Wilson goes with it.