Drive Or Be Driven: Stories Of Travel (Polestars 6) by Aliya Whiteley (book review).
‘Drive Or Be Driven’ by Aliya Whiteley is the sixth book in the ‘Polestars’ series of individual author short story collections from Newcon Press and features seven stories previously published in magazines or anthologies and twelve yarns ‘original to this collection’. I enjoyed Whiteley’s novella ‘The Creator’, which is a pulp homage, and thought it would be worth giving her short stories a try, and it was, but they are not the same kind of thing.
In ‘Drive Or Be Driven’, Margarita meets Ioan at an icebreaker for her halls of residence. He lives three doors down the hall, so she arranges to have a lift to campus with him every day in his well-cared-for Citroen DS3. They go for long drives at night with both windows down, as the days are scorching. The background is a slow environmental catastrophe of drought, heatwaves and insect plagues.
There’s a similar setting in ‘Your Hero’, where a man with a very nice Range Rover gives a lift to a young fellow whose old Triumph Stag has broken down. Both stories are slices of life and inconclusive, though the latter has a vague sense of menace.
In ‘Luisa Opines’, Luisa lives in a cottage in a forest. Every day, after her mother goes off into the woods, a young man turns up with a tablet and asks her to take part in surveys about holidays, savings accounts, frozen peas and other matters. He’s always friendly and cheerful. This develops into a black comedy.
Narrator Filli on the interstellar trader Artisan lands in the ocean of a planet where sea giants, five times as large as the ship, circle endlessly and seem to have no interest in anything but feeding. Filli and her people are obsessed with the art of the deal; they trade everything, even favours, with each other. ‘Everything wants something’ is their motto, and the same must be true of the big fish. A terrific story and an interesting look at an alien culture which may be getting less alien now.
Ursula Carleton, née Templeton, struggles to escape the restrictions imposed by society on her sex in 1919 when she investigates the tomb of Khefatra, perhaps a forgotten female pharaoh of ancient Egypt. When male Doctor Morrowley takes over on the instructions of the British government, she rebels. Ursula’s theory is that, like her, Khefatra was oppressed by the patriarchy. At one point, I thought this might turn into a classic horror story, but it’s more subtle than that. Nicely done, though, and I love the title: ‘Wrapped’.
My pulpish expectations were similarly frustrated by ‘Multiply’, which sets up a classic SF scenario. A small crew of three lives and works on board the Arrow. They have left behind a broken Earth and are carrying thousands of passengers in cryogenic storage to start again on a new planet. There are sympathetic characters and a truly devastating crisis which had me gripped. Then the story turned into something else. I’m not quite sure what. The ending was vague. I enjoyed the ride but left disappointed.
I’m glad to have read ‘Drive Or Be Driven’, but it’s only fair to warn potential readers that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s only honest to admit that a lot of it wasn’t mine. If you like your fiction to hit the standard storytelling signposts with a couple of crises and a resolution in which the hero wins out by dint of skill and character, then you may be disappointed. But you can get that in most places. This is something a bit different, and if you like a slice of life or prefer to be surprised, puzzled, intrigued or weirded out, then this collection might suit. You also get fine writing and interesting characters. Take a chance?
Eamonn Murphy
August 2025
(pub: NewCon Press. 230 page small enlarged paperback. Price: £13.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-914953-70-5).
check out website: www.newconpress.co.uk
