Ian Creasey. Ormonde and Chase. (Asimovs June 2014)

In an Austerity Britain of the near future, cultivating plants that have the appearance of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet appears to be a way to dig a flagging bespoke plant design company out of a financial black hole…

Truth be told the story didn’t really grab me – it just felt a little leaden and more the like the kind of story that was in Analog back in the day when I was reading it (and the kind of story that led me to stop reading it). The protagonist is a particularly unengaging character, as his his partner (and frankly you don’t care for either of them!). And when a story stoops to describing a sketch from a TV show (Spitting Image and the famous Margaret Thatcher ‘vegetables’ sketch) that suggests a story that was a germ of an idea, but the plant was rushed out of the greenhouse a bit too early, without enough hardening off.