Film: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

What a strange film this is! It is set in an alternative 1939 in which mercenary fighter pilot "Sky Captain" Joe Sullivan (Jude Law) apparently defends New York single-handedly while an evil scientist called Totenkopf (well, who wouldn't be evil given a name like that?) is plotting the end of the world.


After flying robots kidnap his geeky assistant and leave a trail of destruction through New York, Sullivan, accompanied by former girlfiend and persistent reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) flies to Nepal in his Curtis P-40 (which incidentally can fly underwater…don't ask) in search of the origin of the robots. There they are aided by another of Sullivan's former girlfriends, played by a decidedly kinky Angelina Jolie - in skin-tight black leather with an eye-patch to match - as the commander of a huge British flying aircraft carrier (I told you, don't ask!) as they try to thwart Totenkopf's plans.

I find it hard to know what to make of all this. The silly plot seems straight from an adolescent 1930s comic strip and the acting is unrealistic - it could hardly be otherwise, as they try to recreate a make-believe Biggles-like world in which handsome heroes and their debonaire girlfriends stroll into terrible danger with a light-hearted quip and are completely unflappable whatever happens. The result is that the actors don't appear to be taking it at all seriously and the whole film basically seems to be a spoof, although there's no obvious humour in it (apart from Paltrow's reactions when she finds out about Jolie…).

On the upside, it looks terrific with a wonderful 1930s feel packed with Art Deco iconography, although the heavy sepia tinting makes some of it hard to see. The "advanced technology" reminds me of Bruce McCall's humorous drawings of fantasy ships, aircraft, cars and buildings of the period (collected in his book Zany Afternoons - one of my favourites).

Essentially, the film has huge style but very little substance. Is it worth watching? I'm still trying to work that out. I expect that this is one which some people will love and others hate, although having said that, I'm somewhere in the middle. I gather it failed at the box office despite good reviews, but I can imagine it acquiring minor cult status in the future.

Broken Angels by Richard Morgan

Richard Morgan is one of a current wave of British hard SF authors ("hard" in this sense meaning set in distant space-travelling futures with lots of advanced technology), some others being Alastair Reynolds, John Meaney, Neal Asher and (although a lot quirkier) Iain M Banks. Having said that, Morgan has more recently branched out into fantasy. Until now, the only book I had read by Morgan was his first, Altered Carbon, which won the 2003 Philip K. Dick Award for Best Novel. The sequel, Broken Angels, was published a year later.


I read Altered Carbon when it first emerged and was sufficiently impressed to keep it for another read sometime. I have yet to get around to that, but fortunately Broken Angels is set thirty years afterwards and, although it features the same principal character, Takeshi Kovacs, the plot is not related so they do not have to be read in order.


The time is the 26th century when humanity has spread to many star systems, thanks in part to the discovery of the remains of an ancient galactic civilisation, known as the Martians since their remains were first found there. Physical travel between the stars is limited to sublight speed, but communications are much faster through subspace. A person's consciousness can be digitally stored and sent via subspace to be implanted in another body grown for the purpose, known as a "sleeve". Consciousness can also be stored in small data nodes called "stacks" implanted in a body, which can be used to "resleeve" people who have died.


This civilisation is loosely monitored by a United Nations Protectorate which enforces its will be means of "Envoys", highly trained operatives. Kovacs is an ex-Envoy who, at the start of Broken Angels, is working for a feared mercenary organisation called the Wedge. Rumours of a dramatic discovery, in the form of a complete Martian starship, cause him to join a race to find and secure this enormous prize, in which all of his Envoy skills are needed just to secure his survival.


This is a complex novel, told by Kovacs in the first person. It portrays a brutal and cynical world of corporate power overriding any humanitarian concerns. It involves frequently shifting relationships, betrayal, explicit sex and a lot of violence, so those of a sensitive disposition had better avoid it. I found it took me a while to get into it, but I read the second half of this long book in one late-night sitting. A memorable tale, but not for the faint-hearted.

Time travel films: The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), and Midnight in Paris (2011)

I thought I'd group these together, as they make for an interesting contrast.

The Time Traveler's Wife is yet another film based on a best-selling book which I haven't read. So my review will focus just on the film rather than its relationship to the book.

Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana) suffers from a peculiar genetic disorder which causes him to travel in time. This happens at random intervals and he has no control over when it happens, whether he goes forwards or backwards in time or where he arrives, but these events usually last for only a brief period before he returns to the present. One added complication; he can't carry anything with him, so whenever he time-travels he arrives naked. As can be imagined, this leads to all manner of awkward situations.

The plot is really a romance between Henry and Claire Abshire (Rachel McAdams) who keep meeting at various times of their lives from when she is a young girl onwards. There are complicated chronological crossovers here, as sometimes a younger Henry meets an older Claire or vice versa, but it is usually possible to keep up with what's happening, given a bit of concentration. Despite the difficulties, their relationship heads towards marriage but that is far from the end of their problems.

The film hangs on the performance of the two principal characters and they both carry it off well. The basic plot has lots of potential for humour but there is very little of this, the emphasis being on the drama of their personal lives, and there is a growing sense of impending doom as the story approaches its climax.

Overall, I thought it was a good film. It is well-made and well-acted, and the unlike some time-travel stories (see my review of Déjà Vu for an example) the events seem more or less to make sense, given the improbable premise. Worth a look, but if you are emotionally inclined keep a tissue box to hand towards the end.
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I must admit that when I ordered the DVD of Midnight in Paris I didn't realise that it was a fantasy; I merely picked up that it was supposed to be Woody Allen's best film in years, which along with the location (one of my favourite cities) was enough for me to want to see it.

It is essentially a romantic comedy which uses a fantasy element to emphasise the dilemma of successful scriptwriter and aspiring novelist Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), who is visiting Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams, again - not that I'm complaining!) and her parents. Pender is in love with Paris, and especially the era of the 1920s when it was alive with writers, artists and composers, but Inez has little sympathy with him. The rest of this review inevitably contains some mild spoilers so if you like everything to be a surprise, you'd better stop reading - but do watch the film!

Wandering alone through Paris at midnight, Pender is offered a lift by a group of people in an ancient car and taken to a party, where he gradually realises that he has shifted in time and is back in the 1920s. A few hours later, he finds himself back in the present day. He spends the next few nights returning to the 1920s each midnight, meeting many of his idols as well as Adriana (Marion Cotillard) which whom he gradually falls in love, while drifting further apart from Inez during the days.

It really would spoil the enjoyment of this film to reveal more of the plot, but suffice to say that it is neatly and amusingly scripted to make a point, is well acted, and has a rich, romantic texture which makes Paris the real star of the movie. I found it very enjoyable and can well imagine myself wanting to watch it again, which is a strong recommendation as it's something I rarely do.

The War Against the Rull by A E Van Vogt

I last read The War Against the Rull in the 1960s and liked it enough to hang on to my ancient copy, so I was pleased to renew my acquaintance with it when it was selected for this month's read by the Classic Science Fiction discussion group. Its origin is a series of five linked stories published between 1940 and 1950, which were tied together into one fix-up novel in 1959. I should add that according to another review there is at least one more story, from 1978, included in later editions of the book, but I haven't read that.

The setting is the far future, when a human galactic empire is engaged in a long-drawn-out war of survival against the empire of a formidable insectoid race called the Rull. The principal character in most of the tales is Trevor Jamieson, a high-powered trouble-shooter for the Galactic Convention and typical of the "competent man", capable of dealing effectively with any situation, who features as the hero in so much SF even to the present day.

Rather surprisingly, the Rull only make an occasional appearance and that mostly towards the end. The most significant is when Jamieson and a Rull leader are trapped together on a sheer-sided mountain top on an uninhabited world in a classic one-on-one climactic battle of wits; interestingly, the viewpoint alternates between the characters. Another is told from the viewpoint of Jamieson's young son, who has to deal with Rull agents on Earth.

Far more time is devoted to Jamieson's problems with the ezwal; terrifyingly large, fast and powerful telepathic beings who are regarded as non-sentient animals by most of humanity and are targeted for destruction since their planet is needed for a strategic base. Jamieson is the only person who is aware of their intelligence and telepathic ability but has a major task to convince them to co-operate with humanity in order to save themselves, and to persuade other people to believe him. The novel immediately plunges the reader into the middle of a critical situation involving an ezwal who crashes with Jamieson on another remote planet, this time in an equally classic "co-operate or die" situation. As with the Rull, in one story the author provides the ezwal's viewpoint.

In assessing this novel it is only right to remember its origins, and the period in which the original stories were written. It has a decidedly disjointed feel without any clear structure. The characterisation is minimal, as is usual for the period, and is as good (or bad) for the Rull and the ezwal as it is for the humans; in fact, providing their viewpoints adds depth and interest to the stories. There are some intriguing SF ideas, as one expects from this author. The one which caught my attention (and the only part of the story I remembered in advance of reading it again) was ability of the Rull to hypnotise humans to carry out certain actions by the use of carefully-designed patterns inscribed on a suitable surface.

Was it worth reading again? Yes, despite its flaws I enjoyed it, but nostalgia played a part in that. Unlike Bester's The Stars My Destination, another classic novel from the same era, it doesn't stand up well today. Don't expect the kind of approach a modern writer like Cherryh would give to a tale of alien races.

 

TV: Once Upon a Time, and Game of Thrones

This is my second look at Once Upon a Time as I commented a month ago after seeing the first episode, but I've only just seen the first two episodes of Game of Thrones as I had to wait for the DVD (not having satellite TV).

The two programmes are similar in that they are examples of that rare beast, a TV fantasy series meant to appeal to adults. In fact, in the case of GoT only to adults; the language, nudity and sex gaining it an 18 rating. In contrast, OUaT is entirely family-friendly. One other incidental similarity is in the detail: both include evil queens who are far more beautiful than the heroines (those seen so far, at least) - a very subversive feature!

Having said that, the two series are very different. Judging by the first two episodes, GoT is less of a fantasy and more of an alternative history. There are no fantastical elements included and it is little more than a fictionalised but convincing depiction of life as it was in Europe about 1,000 years ago. Perhaps it develops in more interesting directions later; the camera keeps dwelling on some supposedly fossilised "dragons' eggs" in a rather suggestive manner. Anyhow, while viewers are awaiting such developments, we can enjoy a well-scripted, well-acted show with high production values. The only downside is that I find it all rather depressing; after all, life at that time tended to be nasty, dark and dirty, and this is faithfully reflected in the story, which also has a sense of doom about it. Not an alternative world I would choose to live in even as a member of the aristocracy, let alone a pleb.

OUaT is far more whimsical and lighthearted, despite the darker elements introduced by the evil queen and Rumpelstiltskin. It is also completely unrealistic in almost every respect - except that it is set in an ordinary-looking present-day American town, and the heroine is (as far as she knows) an ordinary American young woman. It is the clash between our expectations of the mundane setting as seen from the heroine's viewpoint, compared with what we discover is actually going on in that town, which provides the intrigue. There's a faint echo of The Truman Show here, except that in this case hardly anyone in the town is in on the secret. A picture of the events which led up to the present situation is built up by occasional flashbacks showing the town's inhabitants as they had been in their lost fairy-tale world of castles, royalty, dwarves and magical powers. The series is still holding my interest.

BSFA Awards 2011: shortlisted stories

An unexpected bonus of my membership of the British Science Fiction Association: a booklet containing all five of the short stories shortlisted for their awards (although it did arrive too late for me to vote). Two of them I had reviewed before, but it was interesting to read through them again and I have repeated my reviews here.

The Copenhagen Interpretation by Paul Cornell. An alternative Earth with a strange mixture of the futuristic and the traditional, and some unexplained technologies which the reader has to try to figure out from the context: e.g. "folds" which may refer to folds in space-time, and "embroidery" which is to do with communications. The tale is a spy-cum-romance thriller concerning a British agent and a courier whose messages are kept securely inside her head. Somewhat entertaining, somewhat baffling.

Afterbirth by Kameron Hurley. The life of a woman who is passionate about astronomy, but who lives in a female-dominated religious world in which scientific enquiry is not encouraged, all but the ruling caste are primarily seen as wombs, and boys are merely cannon fodder for the endless wars. Not the most cheerful of stories.

Covehithe by China Miéville. The wrecks of long-gone oil rigs have been slowly reassembling themselves on the sea bed and are now marching onto the land. A bizarre tale, but well-told as usual from this author.

Of Dawn by Al Robertson. This appeared in Interzone 235, which I reviewed in July 2011. A young female violinist goes in search of what motivated her dead brother's bizarre poetry, following clues to a village abandoned since World War 2 when it was incorporated into an army training area. Strange visions and music feature in a story strongly reminiscent of Robert Holdstock. I concluded: my favourite from this issue. Although I am mainly an SF fan, there is something haunting about this story (and Holdstock's work) which appeals to me.

The Silver Wind by Nina Allen. This appeared in Interzone 223, which I reviewed in April 2011. A future in which Britain has elected a right-wing government, resulting in the formation of a police state and the ejection of all non-whites from the country. This is the kind of depressing scenario which doesn't appeal to me and usually sets up a "brave defiance by principled hero" plot, but this author handles it in a more subtle and intriguing fashion. She focuses on a conformist property agent who doesn't question the status quo (it all happened long ago) but who becomes fascinated by the history of a clock made by a talented dwarf, Owen Andrews. He manages to locate and visit Andrews in a remote part of London, separated by a new and dangerously inhabited forest from the main city, and learns of experiments concerning time which are taking place in an old hospital nearby, and their sometimes horrific results. He is captured after becoming lost in the forest and is taken to the hospital, where he finds that there is an alternative to the existing paradigm. An engaging story. I concluded: Nina Allen's story is certainly the stand-out one in this issue, I enjoyed her fantastical take on an unpromising scenario.

A very varied mix of stories, all of them intriguing in different ways. My personal preference is for Nina Allen's tale, with Al Robertson's and then Paul Cornell's following on. I see from the BSFA website that Cornell's story got the award.

Film: Watchmen (2009)

When I saw this film I knew nothing about the plot, having never read the mid-1980s comic book of which (as I learned later from the Wiki entry) the film is said to be a faithful adaptation. I'm not sure whether this was an advantage or disadvantage; at least I didn't spend my time checking its authenticity and was able to evaluate the film purely on its own merits.

The setting is an alternative 1985 in which the USA has had a history of masked vigilantes (superb fighters but otherwise normal humans) now all retired. There is also one genuine superhero with god-like powers as a result of a laboratory accident, who is now a glowing blue figure known as Dr Manhattan. His existence enabled the USA to win the Vietnam War and gave them a dominant position over the Soviet Union. However, he is becoming increasingly remote from normal human affairs and seems to have disappeared, causing Cold War tensions to become increasingly hot: nuclear war threatens. Meanwhile, someone is killing off the vigilantes and the survivors get together to try to discover what is going on.

Having experienced something of a surfeit of Hollywood superhero movies of late, I had certain expectations. I was expecting light entertainment: a fast-moving thriller with a straightforward good vs evil plot, lots of action and special effects, probably a dash of humour in the quieter scenes, and maybe a touch of thwarted romance. I was therefore rather surprised to discover that, although Watchmen has most of those elements (I can't say I noticed much humour), it also has a lot more. It is a generally slow-paced and indeed very long film, running for over 160 minutes. It is also rather confusing, hopping constantly between the present and the pasts of several of the heroes at different stages of their lives: I wasn't always sure who the younger versions of the characters were meant to be. Overall, it is a rather grim and downbeat film with a pessimistic twist in the ending.

I understand that many aficionadoes of the comic book rate this film very highly. My own view is rather more mixed. There are some good elements and some strong scenes, but overall I suspect that the desire to be faithful to the comic has resulted in a rather messy and confused structure with too much packed into it. It was involving enough for me to watch to the end, but I'm not likely to want to see it again.

Revelation by Bill Napier

This is the third of Bill Napier's novels I have reviewed here (although the second he wrote), with two more still in the reading pile. I was deeply impressed by the first one I read, which was his fourth novel, Lure (keep up at the back!). The first novel, Nemesis, was also good although a bit rougher around the edges.

Revelation has what can now be recognised as typical Napier elements: the principal character is a scientist, researching a mystery which puts him in danger from an organisation determined to suppress the truth. This leads to chases across national boundaries and a fair amount of violent action. There is commonly an historical aspect to the mystery, involving scenes set in the past. There are set-piece debates - very well done - which allow the author to explore aspects of his plot in more detail. The core of the mystery is always to do with science, which is unsurprising as the author is also a scientist. And there is a trace of romantic tension, always kept well in the background.

In this novel, the historical background is the development of the atom bomb in the early 1940s and the fate of one of the scientists, Lev Petrosian, who appeared to have discovered something entirely new and very dangerous - but his work had been lost with him. In the present day, Dr Fred Findhorn, an Arctic specialist, is sent to recover some documents from an old plane wreck buried in an Arctic glacier. These documents provide a key to the mystery of Petrosian's work and become the focus of a deadly hunt as competing groups, with very different agendas, are out to get them. The action hops between the Arctic, the UK, the USA, Armenia and Japan as Findhorn (with some attractive female assistance) tries to discover the secret while staying alive.

I was less impressed by Revelation than the other books; it seemed rather rushed and there were various improbabilities, unexplained aspects and loose ends. As I have observed before, Napier is weak on characterisation and Findhorn never came alive for me. There are also an awful lot of characters and I was occasionally left trying to remember who somebody was. Having said that, the science is as intriguing as ever and the adventure exciting, so it is still worth the read, although the SF element is less strong than in the previous books I've reviewed (question: where does the techno-thriller end and SF begin?).

Interzone 239, and Once Upon a Time (TV)

As well as the usual book and film reviews (featuring an interview with Chris Beckett as well as a review of his book Dark Eden) the SFF magazine has an R.I.P. section which this time notes the passing of John Christopher, author of the 1953 disaster novel The Death of Grass (among various other SF works), a title I recall from long ago.

A reversion to shorter stories this time, with six included:

Twember by Steve Rasnic Tem, illustrated by David Senecal. A near future in which strange cliff-like apparitions rise up, move across the landscape and disappear, leaving little physical trace of their passage but causing major disruptions to the lives of the inhabitants.

Lips and Teeth by Jon Wallace, illustrated by Richard Wagner. A long-term prisoner in a despotic state is recruited to use his unique power - but can he use it to help himself?

Tangerine, Nectarine, Clementine, Apocalypse by Suzanne Palmer, illustrated by Richard Wagner. A fruiterer in a society confined within a space station has the ability to see the future - and which fruit he gives out has a meaning. But there is one fruit which he never gives.

Bound in Place by Jacob A. Boyd, illustrated by Ben Baldwin. Ghosts can be made to do all of the housework, provided you have the manual of instructions.

Railriders by Matthew Cook, illustrated by Warwick Fraser-Coombe. A downbeat tale of people on the fringes of society who steal rides on interstellar craft.

One-Way Ticket by Nigel Brown, illustrated by Mark Pexton. An alien world provides a chance of a strange kind of survival for the terminally ill.

I was very critical of the previous issue for publishing stories which were all relentlessly grim and downbeat. This time they are thankfully more varied. Railriders is the grimmest, and only superficially SF - it could have been written about hoboes of a century ago. My favourite is Twember - I like this surreal kind of tale.

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Once Upon a Time is a US TV fantasy series which has just started being shown on UK TV (Channel 5 on Sundays, for anyone interested). As a result of an evil spell from a wicked queen, characters from fairy tales are transported to a hellish place where there are no happy endings: the present-day USA! They now look like normal people and have no memory of who they once were, but one very modern woman unknowingly seems to be destined to save them. An intriguing premise, and the first episode was promising. I not only watched all of it (more than I can say for any of the other US TV fantasy series I've tried to watch in recent years) but I'm even looking forward to the next episode. I'll keep you posted.

Film: Cowboys and Aliens (2011)

Compared with last week's post, this is going from one cultural extreme to the other. Yes, I know, the title should have warned me off, but I couldn't resist watching it!

Daniel Craig (the current James Bond, for the benefit of any readers from other planets) plays a gunman in the Wild West who wakes up with no memory but with a hi-tech bracelet firmly clipped around his wrist. At the same time, people are being attacked and captured by small flying machines. One of these crashes, and the tracks leaving it indicate that something decidedly non-human was on board.

A motley posse sets off on the hunt for the alien, and then in search of the source of these flying machines with the hope of rescuing the captured people. Apart from Craig, this includes Harrison Ford as a rich farmer, Olivia Wilde as eye candy (though she does turn out to have a role to play) and various assorted lawmen, cowboys, criminals and even Indians.

This is a lightweight and forgettable film but makes for a couple of hours of trivial entertainment, preferably watched in well-oiled social company in the mood for a laugh.

I do have one gripe (at the risk of a mild spoiler): why are "bad" aliens in such films always shown to be hideously ugly monsters with such deliberately evil intent? Do the film makers not realise that evil wearing an innocent face is far more chilling? Or that the activities of aliens on this planet might incidentally have a disastrous effect on humanity even without any evil intent? Or is such subtlety beyond their comprehension (or at least, more subversive than they think their target viewing public will accept)? Oh well, I suppose I'm expecting too much of a lowest-common-denominator popcorn movie based on (and closely resembling) a comic strip. To be fair, though, the good guys do not all get to live happily ever after.

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

Yet another selection for the Classic Science Fiction discussion group. Something of an achievement for me; I don't think I've managed to read both the classic and modern novels in one month before.

I first read The Dispossessed when it emerged in 1974 but haven't done so since. I had conveniently forgotten everything about the plot so could read the story with fresh eyes.

The setting is the far future, with humanity existing on several worlds but apparently having developed separately since before the beginning of recorded history, the original race who had seeded the other planets being the Hainish. These had more recently provided the technology for interstellar flight to less developed civilisations such as the Terrans (who had by then completely wrecked the environment of the Earth). This background was used for other Le Guin novels from this period: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, and The Left Hand of Darkness.

The Dispossessed is set on Anarres and Urras, a pair of worlds which orbit each other as well as the star Tau Ceti. The Cetian civilisation had developed on Urras, Anarres being smaller and almost barren. However, a revolution nearly two centuries before had seen the revolutionaries, followers of an anarchist named Odo, voluntarily transferred to Anarres to continue the development of their ideal society there. Urras continued as a patchwork of nations and philosophies not very different from present-day Earth. Contact between the two worlds then ceased but for some essential trade.

The story begins with the controversial journey of a ground-breaking physicist, Shevek, from his home in Anarres to visit Urras. The chapters then alternate between his experiences on Urras and his earlier life on Anarres which led up to his unprecedented decision to leave his home world. Anarres is a harsh, dry world permitting little but a survival level of existence, well suited to the frugal, egalitarian society implanted there, and Le Guin paints a convincing picture of the how the society functions, with all its flaws and benefits. On the lush world of Urras, Shevek finds himself not only the centre of attention but also the focus of tension, as competing interest groups are stirred into conflict by his arrival.

The Dispossessed isn't really a traditional SF novel; the setting and plot are merely vehicles to enable the author to explore some fundamental issues about society and humanity in a much more clear-cut way than would otherwise be possible.

This novel is not a dramatic page-turner and isn't the kind of story which would normally appeal to me, but it is so well-written and contains such intelligent observations that it held my attention throughout. It deservedly won both the Hugo and Nebula awards as well as being well-received outside the SFF community. Highly recommended.

Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds' first novel, Revelation Space, was published in 2000, since when there have been nine others plus various shorter fiction, much of it published in collections. They might be regarded as traditional, optimistic, hard SF; all (as far as I can judge) set in far futures in which humanity has not only survived but has expanded into space. They are heavily science-based, reflecting the author's background as a physicist and astronomer.

I read his first three novels, all in the Revelation Space series, when they first came out and was sufficiently impressed to keep them for a re-read sometime. I found them intriguing and plausible but also long, dense and rather heavy going - not exactly page-turners. Perhaps that's why he dropped off my reading radar until recently, when his 2005 novel Pushing Ice was selected as one of the monthly reads of the Classic Science Fiction discussion group (which picks one classic and one modern SF novel per month, as well as a weekly short story).

Pushing Ice is a stand-alone novel unrelated to his other books. After a prologue set eighteen thousand years into the future, the story proper starts in 2057, (the near future by Reynolds' standards) on board Rockhopper, a commercial space vessel under the command of Bella Lind, which is mining comets in the Solar System. Suddenly Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, leaves its orbit and begins to accelerate towards a distant star. It soon becomes apparent, as much of Janus' ice cover falls away, that it is really a gigantic spaceship. Rockhopper is the only ship near enough to intercept, so is despatched in pursuit. So far, the plot is strongly reminiscent of Clarke's classic Rendezvous with Rama but, unlike that novel, the landing on and exploration of the alien craft is only the start of a much longer saga. I can't give more plot details without posting important spoilers but suffice to say that the story stretches into the far future and is ambitious in scope, involving alien races and the future of humanity.

As usual with this author, the story is very long (over 500 pages of a rather small font) and densely packed. Other differences from Rama are that there is a strong emphasis on developing the major characters on board Rockhopper as they start their great adventure, as well as on the dilemmas and disagreements they face, and in particular a friendship which turns into bitter emnity between two of the principal characters. The result of this is that the pace of events is slow for much of the book, and at times my interest in discovering what was going to happen next was only just enough to keep me picking up the book to read some more. It wasn't helped by the occasional insertion of gaps of years or even decades in the narrative. Fortunately, the pace then begins to accelerate and I found that I read the last quarter of the book in one session stretching into the night, unable to put it down.

To sum up: an impressive achievement, definitely worth reading, but initially a degree of patience is required. I would have preferred to see a brisker pace from the start.

Film: Troll Hunter (2010)

This is something different: a Norwegian "found footage" film with a combination of fantasy, horror and comedy elements.

It purports to be the result of a student film project anonymously handed in to the film company which is releasing it. Each scene was therefore filmed from only one viewpoint, the pictures are sometimes jerky and the scenes cut abruptly from one to the next, with no background music. It reminded me of the brief period during which I tried to film my holidays on a camcorder!

Three students set out to make a film about bear hunting, and learn about the presence of a suspected poacher. They follow him, only to discover that he is after much bigger and more dangerous game than bears. It is giving away no secrets (given the title and the inclusion of a gigantic beast in the posters promoting the film) to reveal that he is after trolls….The students follow the troll hunter in a sometimes hair-raising, sometimes comic series of adventures before the dramatic climax.

Troll Hunter is an entertaining film, convincingly acted by the young students but dominated by Otto Jespersen, who delivers a great performance as the laconic, cynical, expressionless hunter, wearily going through what for him is his routine and tiresome official job of hunting down the most dangerous beasts on the planet - beasts whose existence the government is very anxious to keep secret.

There's a moment of unexpected humour right at the end, when Jens Stoltenburg, who really is the Prime Minister of Norway, is seen in an interview saying "Norway has trolls". The interview was genuine, but the audio slightly edited…he was actually referring to the Troll oil field just off the coast of Norway!

Incidentally, I don't know what language the UK cinema release version was in, but as I watched it on DVD I had a choice and elected to watch it in Norwegian (with subtitles, of course!). I hate films with dubbed-in speech; I find listening to the original language much more authentic and interesting even though I don't understand it, and relying on the subtitles doesn't bother me.

The City and the City by China Miéville

China Miéville has been establishing a reputation as a high-quality writer with a very varied SFF output. I have so far picked up three of his books. Un Lun Dun is an intriguing, Alice in Wonderland kind of fantasy which I reviewed here a couple of years ago. It is an entertaining tale which I enjoyed despite it being aimed at younger readers. Next up was Perdito Street Station, a darker, adult story also set in a fantastical city. However, after reading 70 pages or so (with another 800 still to go), it had failed to grip me: I didn't care about the characters and decided that I had other books I'd rather be reading, so I stopped. As a result, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I picked up The City and the City.

What I found was something very different from the previous two: a story set in the present day in an imaginary Middle Eastern country, consisting mainly of one large city. It is a murder mystery, featuring and told by Inspector Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad of the city of Besźel. So far, so mundane - but this is no ordinary city. I can't say more without a few spoilers, so if you like everything to be a surprise you had better stop reading now. I will just conclude this paragraph by saying that this book has my strong recommendation.

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What is peculiar about the city, as the reader soon begins to realise, is that for reasons lost in history it is two organisationally, culturally and linguistically very different cities occupying the same physical fabric. They even have different names: Besźel and Ul Qoma. This doesn't mean the city is carved into sectors like Berlin during the Cold War; while some parts are purely Besźel and others Ul Qoma, these sections are scattered at random throughout the city and the remainder is mixed, with Besźel and Ul Qoma buildings intermingled. Stranger still, the inhabitants of each city are conditioned from childhood only to see the buildings and people of their own city. They can recognise the differences easily enough; the buildings are of different architectural styles and the people dress differently and have different gestures and body language, as well as speaking different languages. It is absolutely forbidden to interact with, acknowledge or even look directly at people or buildings in the "other" city (a crime known as "breach") and the inhabitants learn to "unsee" the other city, ignoring anyone or anything which is not theirs. This draconian rule is enforced by a shadowy and much feared organisation simply called "Breach"; enforcement officers who dress and behave in such a way that they are "unseen" by the inhabitants of both cities, until they suddenly emerge to arrest anyone guilty of breach. The two cities interact in only one place, Copula Hall, which is also the "virtual border" between them. Inhabitants of either city can obtain permission to visit the other, but they have to be trained first to "see" the city they are visiting; which means that for the duration of the visit, they "unsee" their own city.

This bizarre situation can make the life of a police officer like Borlú very complicated, so when a visiting American student, working on an archaeological dig in Ul Qoma, turns up dead in Besźel, he knows he's in for trouble. Working with his Ul Qoman opposite number he tries to get to the bottom of a complex and murky case, complicated by the apparent involvement of Orciny, a legendary third city "unseen" by the other two, and with the threat of Breach constantly hanging over him.

This novel is really unclassifiable and it may well not appeal to all SFF fans, but the extraordinary conception of the two cities gripped my imagination and I found the story fascinating on two levels: if this author ever tires of writing SFF, he could make a good living in crime fiction. For once, I was sorry when the book ended (it is quite short by Miéville's standards, at only 370 pages). It is rare to find something so completely different and it will undoubtedly prove to be one of the highlights of my reading year.

Film: The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (TDVC) is probably one of the most famous and also the most notorious novels of the last decade. The former for its huge international sales success, the latter for the clunky writing style and the fact that the author pretended that some long-discredited theories about the basis of the Catholic religion were true. As I posted in my review of his 2009 book The Lost Symbol, "I read TDVC when it first came out, before all of the public furore, and while I didn't think much of the author's writing style I was intrigued by the plot. This was obviously a mixture of fact and fiction and had me guessing as to which was which. It seems it had the author guessing as well, since he took literally a fictional source, but that didn't hurt sales."

I watched, with rather mixed feelings, the film of TDVC shortly after its release. When it came up on TV recently I decided to give it another look. I won't comment on the religious and other controversies which accompanied both the book and the film, except to note that the principal character, symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), displays a rather more sceptical attitude to the main plot elements than he does in the book. I also won't describe the plot - it's very well known, and anyone who doesn't know it can easily find a summary on the internet. Instead, I'll just concentrate on it as a piece of film-making.

It starts off rather badly in the Louvre, with a man receiving an eventually fatal gunshot wound. He survives for long enough to write a series of coded messages in various places (using an ink only visible in the ultraviolet), then undresses and decorates his body with symbols before finally expiring. I couldn't help wondering why, if he had so much time, he didn't just call an ambulance. That rather set the scene for the rest of the film, a series of more or less improbable set-pieces flying past with such speed that there was scarcely time for more of a response than an occasional "But…" or "Hang on a minute…".

To be fair, the film makers had a problem in that the book is just the same. Furthermore, they couldn't really miss much out without making the story even more confusing. They set themselves the impossible task of covering a long and action-packed novel within the time limitations of a single feature film. Even with a bladder-testing running length of 2.5 hours, this was nowhere near enough - they should have split it into at least two films (or a TV mini-series) which would have given them enough room to improve on the book by developing the characters beyond two dimensions.

Despite all of this, it is a just about watchable if decidedly frantic film (provided you keep hitting your "yes, but…" alter ego on the head) and I found the penultimate scene, in which the heroine (Audrey Tautou) discovers her origin, surprisingly moving.

Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz

Deryni Rising is the first novel in the long Deryni fantasy saga. The first trilogy (known as The Chronicles of the Deryni) was published between 1970 and 1973 and has since been followed by three other complete trilogies plus a fourth still underway, as well as a stand-alone novel, short stories, fan-fiction and reference works. In short, a complete and constantly expanding fantasy world. I read the first trilogy in the mid-1970s at least twice and loved it, so I thought it would be interesting to see how it stood up today after a gap of nearly forty years.

The setting is an alternate world generally corresponding with the Celtic culture of a thousand years ago, with one key addition: the existence of the Deryni, a race of people human in all respects except for some formidable magical abilities. A couple of centuries before, a long period of Deryni rule had ended in revolt and most of the Deryni had been killed in retaliation. The survivors had abandoned their magical practices or gone into hiding, condemned by the Church. At the start of the story there is just one acknowledged half-Deryni with magical powers, General Alaric Morgan the Duke of Corwyn, protected by his close friendship with King Brion of Gwynedd. The line of Gwynedd kings has a secret - although human, they maintain a tradition of passing on to their heirs the ability to acquire Deryni powers using a technique learned in the last days of Deryni rule.

I don't want to describe the plot as that would immediately involve spoilers, so I'll just say that Morgan, the principal character, faces constant suspicion, the opposition of some powerful individuals and the deadly emnity of a Deryni sorceress in his efforts to defend the monarchy.

So how did the novel stand up? Well, I picked it up one evening expecting to read for an hour or so and didn't put the book down until I'd finished it in the early hours of the morning. That very rarely happens to me, and indicates that it was just as exciting and entertaining as I remembered. The story is fast-moving and, although it has some darker moments, is generally light with a straightforward plot. It is eminently suitable for young adults as well as for older folk, particularly as it features a strong teenage character, Prince Kelson.

I expect I'll go on to read the other two novels in the first trilogy, as I still have those and recall them to be just as good as the first. I also read a few of the later books in the 1970s, but found them less satisfying so didn't keep them. The action slowed down and the focus shifted more towards religion and the description of its practices, which the author evidently found a lot more fascinating than I did. Still, the first trilogy has my strong recommendation.

Gridlinked by Neal Asher

Gridlinked was the first published novel by this author, emerging in 2001. Since then, he has published eleven more set in the same, far-future Polity universe, four featuring the same principal character as Gridlinked, as well as novellas, short stories, and some unrelated novels; an impressive output. I hadn't read any of these but had heard good things about them, so I eventually got around to reading the first of the series.

The novel starts in the twenty-fifth century when humanity has spread to many worlds using FTL ships, but has since installed interstellar matter-transmitters known as runcibles for routine travel. This empire (known as the Polity) is managed not by people but by Artificial Intelligences which vastly exceed human capabilities. They are linked via the AI Grid, to which some humans also have direct mind links surgically implanted in their brains. The Polity's interests are defended by the ECS (Earth Central Security) which sends agents wherever trouble arises. Their top agent is Ian Cormac, who has been gridlinked for thirty years - ten years longer than the recommended maximum.

At the start of the story, Cormac reluctantly realises that his extended time linked to the Grid has gradually been dehumanising him, so decides to shut down his link despite the instant access to information and automatic control of linked equipment this provides (which makes the title rather odd: "No Longer Gridlinked" would be more accurate!). Even without this, Cormac is a formidable operator, highly intelligent and ruthlessly logical, with his strength and speed artificially boosted, and is aided by his programmable self-propelled shuriken, a high-tech version of the multi-bladed throwing weapon.

Cormac is recalled from his latest mission against a separatist group led by Arian Pelter (during which he had killed Pelter's sister) in order to investigate an unthinkable event - the violent explosion of a runcible, resulting in the devastation of a large area of a planet. In solving this crime, he deals with an enigmatic alien being known as the Dragon, while being constantly pursued by a vengeful Pelter.

The story has many familiar SF elements: modified human types (including outlinkers who are specialised for life in zero-gravity space stations); artificial humans (golems) who are much faster and stronger than any human; physically boosted soldiers (sparkind); anti-gravity machines, anti-matter bombs and proton beam weapons. This is all combined into a page-turning thriller which maintains a brisk pace despite being over 500 pages long. It is quite a traditional story, filled with the basic optimism of a galaxy-wide humanity, but is none the worse for that. Cormac himself doesn't come alive as much as some of the other characters, the mercenary John Stanton being both better-developed and more likeable, and even Mr Crane, a highly dangerous "broken" golem working for Pelter, displaying more of a personality. Despite that, Gridlinked was a thoroughly enjoyable read and I'll be seeking out the sequels. The Polity series has been compared with Iain M Banks's Culture series, but judging by this first one it is less quirky and offbeat, being more of a straight-line action adventure tale.

On a point of detail, I was pleased to see that the book defied the currently fashionable orthodoxy by having both a prologue and infodumps. The latter appear at the start of almost every chapter in the form of extracts, sometimes amusing, from future histories and references; an approach previously used by Asimov in the Foundation trilogy and Herbert in Dune. These aren't suited to every story but can be very useful in some cases so shouldn't be dismissed as old-fashioned by the "show don't tell" evangelists. I do get rather tired of having to read a large part of a story before I can find out what's actually going on - assuming I even get that far!

Interzone 238

Only four stories this time (there used to be six in every issue, but they seem to be getting longer):

Fata Morgana by Ray Cluley, illustrated by Richard Wagner. In a drowned world in which people live in the top floors of city buildings in a rigidly stratified, horizontally layered society, a boy living a grim poverty-stricken existence dreams of travelling to the mythical city above the sea - built on sand.

Fearful Symmetry by Tyler Keevil, illustrated by Mark Pexton. In a grim future in which some nuclear catastrophe has presumably taken place, an environmentalist travels to Siberia to examine the evidence for a possibly mutant tiger which has been killing people. Should it be protected or shot?

God of the Gaps by Carole Johnstone, illustrated by David Gentry. A woman takes a young boy to a funfair, and finds herself in a UFO exhibition with a nasty twist. A horror story with a thin wrapping of SF. The ending can be seen coming from a long way off, which doesn't make it any more enjoyable…

The Complex by E. J. Swift. A long-term prisoner on a harsh colony world reaches the end of her sentence and views with increasing anxiety her imminent transfer back to a ruined Earth.

I have to say that I found this collection intensely depressing. This issue should have carried a health warning: "Special Dystopia Issue - readers may suffer acute misery from reading this magazine". There is a place for the occasional story like these - definitely not more than one per issue - but to have all of them set in downbeat, pessimistic futures is too much. Yes, we need some fiction to warn about the kind of future we might be drifting haphazardly towards and SF is better placed than any to do that, but people also read SF and fantasy to enjoy a period of escapism from this world and its troubles. Surely there are some lighter, optimistic and more entertaining stories worth publishing to provide some contrast?

Fortunately, the substantial book and film reviews sections are as interesting and informative as ever. I noted a couple of books to add to my list (I hadn't caught up with the fact that Richard Morgan is now writing fantasy) plus a couple of films - and also some to avoid!

Film: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and TV: Eternal Law

The last of the eight films covering the seven Harry Potter books by J.K.Rowling, not so much a fantasy series as a global phenomenon. Just to recap, I only read the first of the books (I thought I would have loved it as a ten-year old, but it didn't do much for my ancient self) but have watched all of the films. I find I am rather more tolerant of films than of books, partly because visual spectacle can provide entertainment which may be lacking in print, and partly because films take far less time to watch than books do to read.

The first few films made for rather engaging light entertainment, but as time progressed and the children grew up, the mood (and the lighting effects) grew progressively darker. The first part of The Deathly Hallows was indeed rather deathly, so gloomy and dark in every sense that I found it barely watchable. Fortunately, the final film came to the rescue. While the mood is still grim until close to the end, there is more variety and interest in the plot than in the previous film, plus a satisfactory conclusion which wrapped up all of the loose ends and finished on a feel-good high. However, there were few stand-out moments; the one which sticks in my mind not being one of the more dramatic action scenes (all too common in modern films) but the surreal banking hall with the ranks of gnomes scribing away on either side.

At the end of it all, my main feeling was one of relief that it was all over. That is perhaps rather unkind, as history is almost certain to record that this series is one of the most outstanding achievements in fantasy film-making, along with The Lord of the Rings (I only hope that the forthcoming The Hobbit maintains that standard). Perhaps one day I'll feel like seeing all of the Harry Potter films again, only in relatively quick succession so that I literally don't keep losing the plot in the long gaps between releases. That isn't likely to happen for quite a long while, though.
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Eternal Law is a six-part ITV series by Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham, the creators of the marvellous Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. It features Samuel West and Ukweli Roach as angels who have been sent down to Earth (to be specific, the city of York) in human form to help people - as lawyers! They are assisted by the always-impressive Orla Brady, whose character had given up her angelic status to live as a human, and opposed by a fallen angel in the form of another lawyer, played by Tobias Menzies. To complicate matters, the fallen angel's human assistant (Hattie Morahan) had been the love of the Samuel West character's life in (literally) his former incarnation, but she doesn't recognise him.

The result is a strange mixture of fantasy, comedy, and sometimes emotional courtroom drama. Although I've now seen four of them I still can't decide how well this all gels, but it's intriguing enough to keep me watching. Compared with LoM and AtA, it suffers from the lack of a charismatic lead equivalent to Philip Glenister's Gene Hunt. Best summed up as rather whimsical light entertainment.

The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) is acknowledged one of the "greats" of SF, a hugely productive multi-award-winning writer of novels and short stories as well as a science professor and non-fiction writer. His most productive fiction period was in the 1950s although new work was still being published into the 1990s. He is perhaps best known for the "Three Laws of Robotics" featured in his robot stories, but his most famous fictional work is probably the 1950s 'Foundation' trilogy: Foundation, Foundation & Empire, and Second Foundation (based on short stories from the early 1940s). I first read these in the 1960s but the last time I opened their pages was in the 1970s, so I was interested to see how these classic works stood up.

The time is the far future, with humanity spread over a vast galaxy-wide empire which had been ruled for thousands of years from the Imperial capitol at its heart, Trantor - a planet completely covered with buildings. But the huge spectacle of power presented by the Empire covers a gradual internal disintegration, with regional governors breaking free and creating their own kingdoms. Few people realise the inevitability of the decline, but among them is the famous psychohistorian, Hari Seldon. Psychohistory is the mathematical analysis of trends in society to predict the broad sweep of future social history. Seldon recognises that the disintegration is inevitable but aims to reduce the resulting "dark age" from a predicted 30,000 years to just 1,000 by setting up two Foundations, on planets at opposite ends of the galaxy, with the purpose of preserving human knowledge and skills.

Foundation

In the first volume, Seldon manages to obtain imperial permission to set up his Foundations, and the remainder of the book follows the fortunes of the First Foundation on the remote planet Terminus. The ostensible purpose is the creation of a vast Encyclopedia Galactica of all knowledge, and steady progress is made until the break-up of the Empire creates a crisis for the Foundation. A recorded image of the long-dead Seldon then appears, accurately predicting the crisis, and Salvor Hardin, the mayor, takes control from the academics and solves the problem, beginning a line of powerful mayors. They apply practical politics to managing their local area of the galactic fringe, controlling other planets by providing the high technology they have lost, wrapped up in the guise of an invented religion. These are in turn replaced by the traders, who ultimately develop into merchant princes, notably Hober Mallow, who are no less devious in their commitment to controlling their markets.

So far the first Foundation has been successful in following the path foreseen by Seldon, and confirmed by the occasional appearances of his recorded messages at moments of crisis. The Foundation has survived, maintaining its scientific knowledge and technology (and in some cases surpassing the achievements of the Empire, especially with miniature atomic power), and establishing a commercial empire in their small part of the galaxy. But the story is a long way from being over…

Foundation & Empire

The episodic nature of the first book, skipping generations at a time to focus on particular periods of crisis, is continued in the second but slows down somewhat, with only two parts this time. The first concerns the last attempt by a fading Empire to use its still powerful fleet, under the command of energetic Bel Riose, to crush the Foundation. The second and much longer part marks an intriguing side-step from the Seldon plan, when a mysterious new individual, never seen in public and known only as the Mule, seizes power in one system after another with astonishing ease, threatening the Foundation itself. This had not been foreseen by Seldon, and prompts a desperate journey to the heart of the old Empire in order to seek help from the legendary Second Foundation. Interestingly for the period in which it is written, this part features a heroine, Bayta, who is much more competent and impressive than her husband.

Second Foundation

The final part of the story continues with the search for the mysterious Second Foundation, concerning which there is only the briefest of references in the records, with no indication as to its nature or location. This is also in two parts, the first following on from the previous volume in covering the attempt by the Mule to locate and destroy the Second Foundation, the second a couple of generations later when growing tensions between the First and Second Foundations threaten to destroy Seldon's plan. This final part also features a strong female character, the precocious teenager Arcadia Darell (Arkady), Bayta's granddaughter.

To sum up, I greatly admire Asimov, not just for his landmark contributions to SF but also for his work in popularising science. The Foundation trilogy is a bold conception, a coherent and well-structured story covering four centuries and postulating a different kind of human civilisation based on developing mind skills rather than technological power. However, I have to say that despite his status in the genre, I find his fiction lacks something which keeps it out of the very front rank. While I enjoyed re-reading the Foundation trilogy it isn't as gripping as the very best fiction. There is a certain lack of excitement, of that "sense of wonder" which makes the best classic SF so compelling; instead, there's a flavour of didactic lesson about it. The episodic nature of the story, spread out over centuries with each episode featuring its own characters, also makes reader engagement more difficult to sustain.

Having said that, it's still an impressive achievement, especially for the 1940s. There are some nice touches: each part begins with an extract from the future Encyclopedia Galactica providing a brief introduction to the period (a neat way of inserting a useful little "info dump" to plug the gaps, copied by Herbert in Dune). The story also gets better as it goes along, as the longer episodes provide more time to focus on the key characters. In particular, Arkady is a marvellous creation, an observant and amusing portrayal of teenage dreams and angst. She gives the lie to the assumption that the early SF writers couldn't develop characters and must surely have been based on a girl or girls Asimov knew well.

In conclusion, the trilogy not only should be on the "must read" list of every SF fan who has any interest in the history of the genre, it is still worth reading in its own right.

Black Mirror (C4 TV series)

A series of three TV dramas on UK Channel 4 "that taps into collective unease about our modern world". Each takes a look at some aspects of modern society by imagining what the future might hold if current trends continue.

The National Anthem

The nation's favourite princess has been captured and is being held to ransom. The kidnapper's demand? That the Prime Minister should have sex with a pig - live on TV - that day; otherwise she dies. This is the premise for an hilarious but very dark comedy as the PM struggles to find a way out of the situation, with spin doctors, special forces, TV reporters and his wife all getting involved, and many twists and turns before the final sting in the tail. Painfully real - the PM's agonised dilemma is all too convincing.

15 Million Merits

Some time in the future, the lot of most citizens is to spend their days on exercise bikes, generating power for some unknown purpose. The harder they pedal, the more Merits they earn to spend on food, consumer goods and popular entertainment. The only way out is to earn the 15 million Merits needed to get a ticket onto a talent show, where their performances are judged by a panel plus the reaction of a virtual audience. One man hears a new neighbour singing, an innocent girl only just old enough to have started pedalling, and is so moved that he sponsors her for the talent show. But the outcome is entirely unexpected, and drives him into making a dramatic intervention - with an equally unexpected consequence. No humour in this one apart from the satirical portrayal of the judging panel, but it's a bitter, thought-provoking take on some trends in modern society.

The Entire History of You

The time is the near future, when almost everyone is implanted with a Grain in their heads: a small memory chip which permanently records everything a person sees or hears. It can be played back in their heads or sent to a TV screen, as often as they want. This is remarkably convenient but the drama reveals the social and psychological dangers of a memory which is not only perfect, but can be replayed to anyone else. The plot follows the gradual disintegration of one man who obsessively replays his memories to look for clues about the relationship between his wife and an old flame of hers they'd recently met, zooming in on details, using lipreading programmes to decipher distant conversations, and so on. Not for those who prefer their entertainment to be light-hearted.

These programmes make compelling viewing and, unlike other TV dramas, have stuck firmly in my mind. The first is more of a political satire but the others are adult SF, and all of them were written to make people think rather than be passively entertained. They make the usual TV SFF hokum look ridiculously juvenile. If you missed them, try to see them. They are not always easy to watch but are exemplars of what modern adult SF programmes should really be like.

Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore

I have previously reviewed two other alternative history novels concerning the American Civil War - Harrison's A Rebel in Time and Turtledove's The Guns of the South (see my review list in the left column) - so it was natural for me to pick up a copy of Moore's Bring the Jubilee which, since its first publication in 1953, has become regarded as a classic.

Moore's approach is very different from the later works mentioned above. The principal character, Hodgkins McCormick Backmaker (Hodge), is a young man born in 1921 into a very different America. The Confederate side had won the American Civil War (known as the War of Southron Independence) and had since flourished, absorbing Mexico and other central and south American states and becoming one of the world's great powers, along with the German Empire (following their victorious 1914-1916 European war) and the British Empire. The northern rump of the United States of America is a backward, weak and impoverished country of no account in world affairs, but this is where Hodge was born and brought up. The plot of the novel almost entirely focuses on Hodge's experiences over a period of several years, painting a usually bleak picture of life in this alternative pre-industrial USA. In approach it therefore has a lot in common with P K Dick's The Man in the High Castle (also reviewed here), which similarly focuses on the aftermath of a different outcome of a war - in that case, World War 2. Moore does not deal directly with the Civil War until the very last part of the book.

Hodge is an unlikely hero, too big and clumsy to be of much practical use and only really interested in reading. He is an observer of life and only occasionally a reluctant participant, and his dream is an academic career as an historian, but that is highly unlikely in the restricted opportunities available to him. He leaves the farm where his parents barely scrape a subsistence-level existence and walks the dirt tracks to New York, where he finds employment in a bookshop. However, the city is full of tensions with the radical Grand Army, a banned nationalist organisation, competing with Southern agents, and Hodge becomes unwittingly involved.

This is not an easy read and I gave up at one point, before returning to it a couple of weeks later. The gloomy situation and Hodge's knack of falling into trouble become somewhat depressing, and only my interest in seeing how it turned out led me to return to it. Fortunately, the mood changes to one of (relative) optimism half-way through as Hodge's circumstances change for the better.

Critics of SFF usually point to a lack of characterisation but have nothing to complain about here. Not only is Hodge a well-drawn individual but so are several other characters: Tyss, the bookshop owner who offers a haven to Hodge; Enfandin, the Consul for the Republic of Haiti, a fellow-spirit who becomes his friend; and the three women in his life, Tirzah, his first love, the intensely conflicted Barbara and the captivating Catalina. In fact, from the SFF viewpoint Moore devotes too much time to developing his characters and not enough on exploring and explaining the very different world he outlines.

I can't say more about the story without spoiling some surprises, so I will merely say that the book deserves its classic status, even if it isn't the most cheerful or exciting of stories.

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SPOILER WARNING - read no further if you want to read the book for yourself!
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Hodge applies to universities, more in desperate hope than expectation since he has no formal qualifications, but to his surprise he is invited to Haggershaven, a combination of commune and academic refuge, where researchers are free to pursue their interests as long as they contribute labour to the running of the farm and various associated industries. For Hodge, it seems like Paradise. He now has the leisure to focus his interests on the War of Southron Independence and becomes a noted scholar, publishing well-received papers. However, he remains most intrigued by one crucial episode in the Battle of Gettysburg when a small number of Confederate soldiers were able to hold onto an important position, turning the tide of the battle and starting a cascade of Confederate victories which won them the war.

Meanwhile, another member of the Haggershaven community, a brilliant physicist, is working on a time machine. Tests prove that it can send and retrieve people for up to 100 years into the past, and Hodge cannot resist the temptation to visit that crucial position at the Battle of Gettysburg and see for himself what actually happened. I leave the rest to your imagination (or to the Wiki plot summary if you're really desperate to know). I will only say that the ending is unusual in that it represents both a triumph and a tragedy, depending on the perspective.

Abarat by Clive Barker

I recall Clive Barker first hitting the headlines in the late 1980s with his dark fantasy novel Weaveworld, which was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 1988. I also read some other books by him over the next few years, although Weaveworld is the only one I've kept to read again sometime. Since then I've not kept up with his writing career (something which happens all too often, I find) but when I spotted Abarat (first published 2002) while browsing through one of those cheap multiple-buy bookshops, I added it to the pile after a cursory glance at the back cover. Which goes to show the hazards of such a casual approach as I found a couple of surprises when I came to read the book.

The heroine of Abarat is Candy Quakenbush, a girl from the depressingly boring Minnesota town of Chickentown. She runs away to escape her life there and finds herself in a strange alternative universe, the Islands of the Abarat, set in the Sea of Izabella. There is one island for every hour of the day and night; the island at Noon basks in continuous midday sun, while the one at Midnight, on the opposite side of the circular archipelago, never sees daylight. There is also a mysterious island at the Twenty-Fifth Hour, set in the centre. The islands vary greatly in their form (one consisting of a giant sculpture of a head) and in their inhabitants, many of whom are far from human. Magic works there but so does technology, and there is a growing tension between the two as a struggle develops for domination of the Islands.

As a rare visitor from the fabled Hereafter (the name given to our world), Candy is immediately of great interest to the competing powers and finds herself in a series of hazardous adventures as she tries to escape capture and find her own way in this strange world. On the way, she makes friends with an assorted collection of peculiar individuals and has to grow up in a hurry, aided by surreptitious assistance from some of the inhabitants.

I mentioned at the start that I had a couple of surprises when I read the book. The first you may already have guessed from the plot summary - Abarat is aimed at young adults. This makes it the third time recently that I have unexpectedly discovered this on reading a novel set in a parallel universe, the others being China Miéville's Un Lun Dun, and Polikarpus & King's Down Town (see my review index). Perhaps this kind of plot sells particularly well to young adults? The other surprise is that this novel is only the first of a series, with two sequels to date and another one reportedly planned.

Abarat was nominated for the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers, won second place in the 2003 Locus Poll for the Best Young Adult Novel and was picked as one of its Best Books for Young Adults by The American Library Association. My own feelings towards the story were rather more lukewarm. It was sufficiently entertaining and well-written to keep me reading to the end (something which can't be taken for granted these days) but it didn't strike me as especially notable. Perhaps I've just read too many good stories of this kind recently. If you enjoy this sort of story it's worth looking up, but I'm in no hurry to seek out the sequels. I should add that one of the major appeals of the original hardback was apparently a large number of colour illustrations by the author (who is also an artist) which maybe helped to account for its warm reception, but these were omitted from my paperback edition.

Film: Thor (2011)

Yet another US superhero film, this time giving a contemporary science-fictional twist to the myths of the Norse gods and acquiring an upmarket gloss by being directed by Kenneth Branagh, the Shakespearean actor/director.

The plot is set on three of the nine Norse "realms" (effectively, planets): Asgard, the abode of the gods; Jotunheim, the home of their traditional enemies the Frost Giants; and Midgard, our very own Earth. Thor (played by Brad Pitt look-alike, the muscular Chris Hemsworth) is the heir to the throne of Asgard, currently occupied by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins). However, his scheming brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) plots to get Thor into trouble by goading him to attack Jotunheim, for which act of disobedience Odin strips Thor of his magical powers and of his mighty hammer Mjolnir, casting both separately to Midgard.

On present-day Earth, the newly arrived Thor is promptly run over by the vehicle of a scientific research team led by astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), leading to some amusing scenes as he tries to work out what is going on and they try to understand who he is. Hearing that Mjolnir has landed not far away and is being researched by a secretive government organisation, Thor sets off to reclaim his hammer, only to find that it isn't quite as simple as that. Further adventures and battles follow (along with a predictable romantic entanglement) before Thor is able to return to Asgard to challenge his brother, who has been getting up to further mischief in his absence.

Thor is an entertaining film, briskly-paced, well-acted and with a good mix of adventure, supernatural battles, humour and romance. Unlike some reviewers, I much preferred the literally down-to-Earth part, when Thor was an ordinary human, over the stylised and over-dramatised scenes on Asgard and Jotunheim which always looked like, well, fantasy film sets. Despite that reservation I wouldn't have minded watching it all again soon afterwards, which is high praise as I rarely feel that way about a film. A couple of sequels are already planned and I can only hope (albeit without much optimism) that they maintain the standard of the first.

The Origin of Our Species by Chris Stringer

This week, a pause for some real rather than fictional science. Chris Stringer has been researching human evolution throughout his professional life and currently works at the Department of Palaeontology at the National History Museum, London. He is regarded as the UK's foremost authority on the subject and his latest book, The Origin of Our Species, sets out to explain to interested observers the current state of knowledge in a field which has seen some rapid developments in recent years.

Not only have two additional hominims who lived at the same time as Homo sapiens been discovered - the Denisovans and Homo floresiensis (the "Hobbit"), both in Asia - but gene sequencing has hit the news with the revelation that the genome of modern humans contains some elements from both Neanderthals and Denisovans, indicating that they all interbred at some point. Genetic analysis and advanced dating methods have also provided far more information about the way in which the various species of the genus Homo are related to each other, plus how they spread and interacted.

I read with great interest what Stringer has to say about all this. His approach is thematic and discursive rather than chronological; it focuses on how we know what we do about human origins rather than on simply telling the evolutionary story. This makes for an interesting read but an awkward reference source since material on Neanderthals, for example, is scattered throughout the book, requiring much flipping between text and index to track down.

I liked the fact that Stringer is not didactic. He acknowledges where the data is shaky and where it is firm, and points to alternative interpretations in order to highlight the areas where there is disagreement between the researchers in this field. However, it is also clear from his narrative that most such disagreements tend to be temporary, caused by lack of adequate data, and that they usually go away as the data builds up sufficiently to make one interpretation clearly a better fit with the data than the others (although scientists are human too, so can be reluctant to give up a theory that they've adopted).

In the initial chapter the author outlines the history of the study of human evolution starting with Darwin's The Descent of Man. This is followed up by chapters on: the development of dating techniques (the long-established radiocarbon dating having been joined by several others with different strengths and weaknesses); new high-tech ways of analysing skulls and other bones; recent finds and their implications; the examination of the evidence for the development of thought and behaviour (tools, art, crafts, burials); genes and DNA; and finally two chapters on "The Making of a Modern Human" and "The Past and Future Evolution of Our Species". There is a huge amount of fascinating material in this book and in a review like this I can only pick out a few points which caught my attention.

An early problem, which still exists today, is how to categorise the various fossils which have been discovered to date. One view (particularly associated with the Multiregional theory described below) is that the genus "Homo" and species "sapiens" covers a wide range of hominims, leading to the use of sub-species terms such as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens (i.e., us). At the opposite extreme, another view has a different species name attached to almost every fossil. Stringer sits somewhere in the middle; he doesn't use sub-species terms but just the main species ones.

One of the hottest debates over the past few decades has been between the "Multiregional" and "Out of Africa" models of evolution. The former postulates an early spread of hominims from Africa across Eurasia, after which each group evolved in parallel into the variety of modern humans. The latter (which Stringer prefers to call RAO, for "Recent African Origin", since there is no dispute that all of humanity originated in Africa, as Darwin speculated) argues that there were several stages of dispersion from Africa, with modern humans primarily originating from the most recent one approximately 70,000 years ago (with the addition of a soupçon from older species by interbreeding before they died out). At one time the Multiregional theory was dominant but modern genetic analysis has swung the argument strongly in favour of RAO after the usual academic debate (polite term for a vicious cat-fight!), with some still refusing to be convinced.

The course and timeline of human evolution within Africa is another issue explored in the first chapter. Trying to sort out how the various fragmentary fossils relate to each other - specifically, which were in the ancestral chain leading directly to modern humans and which were dead-ends - is still very much a source of debate. Here, the development of more sophisticated technical dating systems has proved helpful. What has become clear is that the evolutionary history is very far from the tidy progression from an ape-like hominim to modern man as shown in the now notorious "ascent of man" illustration. Different types of hominim coexisted for a very long time in Africa - and probably interbred. The earliest skull fragment of modern human form has been dated to 250,000 years ago (although the first fully modern humans seem to be only half as old), but a primitive skull found in west Africa is only 20,000 years old.

In the light of all of this, any human family tree is tentative and subject to revision as more data are discovered. Keeping that caveat in mind, the author indicates a probable structure as follows: Homo erectus, for which there is fossil evidence in both Africa and Asia, emerged about 1.5 million years ago and survived in Africa into the Homo sapiens era. At some point, perhaps 1.2 million years ago, an offshoot of erectus appeared, designated Homo heidelbergensis. This hominim family subdivided around 400,000 years ago; one branch produced both the Neanderthals and Denisovans, the other became Homo sapiens; modern humans.

However, this definition of "modern human" concerns only a skeleton and skull like ours. Were the earliest sapiens like us in every other way? To determine this, we have to look beyond biological evidence and try to assess their behaviour from clues they left behind. It seems reasonably clear that up to about 100,000 years ago, sapiens stone tools were much like those of the Neanderthals. However, at some point human behaviour began to change: tools became more varied, specialised and sophisticated; cave art and stones engraved with geometric designs began to appear along with necklaces and musical instruments; there is evidence for more permanent occupation of caves; and also for a wider range of food sources including marine fish as well as shellfish (which implies special tools to catch them). These changes didn't all happen at the same time - the earliest burial evidence dates from around 100,000 years ago with the changes becoming comprehensive by about 40,000 years ago - but the evidence leads some scientists to believe that genetic changes rewired the human brain during this period. Certainly the Cro-Magnons of 35,000 years ago, the first modern humans in Europe, exhibited the full range of such behaviours.

For me, some of the most fascinating questions concern the Neanderthals; how different were they from contemporary Cro-Magnons and why did they die out less than 30,000 years ago, after living in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years? Physically, they were stockier and more massively built than humans; their children developed more rapidly and the adults only lived to about 35-40 at best, with the middle-aged and old comprising a much smaller proportion of the population than with humans. There is evidence that they lived hard and injury-prone lives - the women as much as the men. Their tool technology was simple but they showed some indications of culture in their burials and in decorative items such as beads. Whether or not they wore clothes is unknown, but there is no evidence for the sewing and weaving which the Cro-Magnons possessed. However, it seems likely that they did use fur wraps and ponchos in the cold conditions in Europe (they were physically better adapted to cold than humans, but not that much better). Their foot bones do not indicate that they wore shoes - unlike those of Cro-Magnons. Their diet seems to have been more restricted - they were far more carnivorous than the ominvore humans.

Could Neanderthals speak? The shape of the throat indicates that speech would have been physically possible, albeit at about the same level as a human two-year old. They also have the same variant of the FOX2P gene as humans - for whom it is necessary for speech. So while we can never be certain, there seems to be no reason why they could not have had some kind of speech, albeit without the range and sophistication of humans.

So why did Neanderthals die out? Were they killed off by the more advanced newcomers, the Cro-Magnons? As the author points out, there was probably no single reason for their extinction. They died out at a time of great climate stress, with rapid fluctuations in temperatures. Their more restricted diet would have counted against them. The high death rate - possibly the result of having to close with their animal prey rather than using throwing weapons like the humans - would have taken its toll. Poorer communications due to more restricted language skills could have handicapped them. More subtly, the relative lack of older people would have made it more difficult to pass on acquired knowledge or to help with child care while the younger adults were out hunting. The evidence of long-term decline indicates that the Neanderthals may have been on the way out anyway, although competition for resources from the Cro-Magnons might well have played a part in finishing them off.

This raises another interesting question discussed in the book - the importance of population density. Evidence suggests that at various times during human development in Africa, relatively advanced technologies were employed, only to be lost. They kept having to reinvent the wheel (metaphorically speaking). The reason for this was probably that the small groups who developed the new technologies may have died out without passing on their knowledge, or been put under such survival stress that they stopped having the time to use them - resulting in their being forgotten. Only with a sufficiently high population density, plus frequent communication between groups, could new ideas be disseminated, preserved and built upon. The Neanderthals never enjoyed such advantages.

Perhaps the most striking detail in the book concerns "the Hobbit"; the tiny hominim from the Indonesian island of Flores, providing the name Homo floresiensis. Although the heat and humidity has effectively destroyed the DNA, the morphology of the remains indicates that the Hobbit was unrelated not only to modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans, but even to their precursor, Homo erectus. While there is still disagreement over its origins, Stringer suggests that it could be a dwarfed descendent of Homo habilis or even the australopithecines which dispersed from Africa over two million years ago (stone tools found on Flores are at least 800,000 years old). Yet the most recent remains of the Hobbit have been dated to about 18,000 years ago, only a few thousand years before modern humans colonised the island. In evolutionary terms, that's a blink of an eye. It sends a chill down my spine to think that we came that close to coexisting with such an early hominim.

Finally (in case you were wondering) yes, there is evidence that humanity is continuing to evolve - and at an accelerating rate. One surprise is that average human brain size has shrunk by about 10% over the last 20,000 years; whether this will continue is interesting to speculate, but brains are very energy-intensive to maintain and will shrink if they are used less. Perhaps our modern information and other technologies, which require us to do less memorising and even thinking, will accelerate this reduction? The profound changes in lifestyle over the last 10,000 years, with the spread of agriculture and urban population centres, have led to other changes, particularly the development of disease resistance and of adult lactose tolerance (among Africans and Europeans). Analysis of the human genome, and in particular the rate of mutations in DNA, have indicated that some 20% of our genes have come under selection pressure over this period. And this of course is without considering the potential of genetic engineering to alter humanity in the future.

As you may have gathered, I am highly impressed with this book and warmly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. It does require a degree of concentration - although aiming for a popular audience the author thankfully hasn't dumbed down to the lowest common denominator - but it's well written and easy enough to follow.

The Steel of Raithskar by Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron

The Gandalara Cycle is a set of seven novels published during 1981-86 which essentially contain one episodic story over 1,200 pages long. The series was conceived by Randall Garrett, famous for his 1960s Lord Darcy fantasy series, but he was taken ill so the work was completed by his wife, Vicki Ann Heydron. The Gandalara Cycle is commonly found in three paperback volumes: the first two containing three novels each (Gandalara Cycle I and II) the third just the final novel, The River Wall. If you manage to acquire these and are looking forward to immersing yourself in the tale, be warned that in the second volume, novels five and six are in the wrong order. I first read these books in the late 1980s and enjoyed them enough to keep on my shelves so I decided that it was time for another look. So far I have read only the first novel, The Steel of Raithskar.

Ricardo Carillo, former US Marine and now an elderly and terminally ill professor of languages, is on a farewell cruise around the Mediterranean when he sees a ball of fire heading straight for his ship at enormous speed. He recovers in the middle of a desert, parched and injured and with a dead man next to him, and begins a slow and painful journey to look for help before collapsing into unconsciousness. Recovering at an oasis, he discovers several things: he is not on our present-day Earth but in the land of Gandalara, which has a culture and technology similar to the Bronze-Age Mediterranean; he is not in his own body but is occupying the body of a young man called Markasset, of whose memories he retains only fragments apart from his understanding of the language which is like nothing he has heard before; the people are hominims but not quite Homo Sapiens; and he is a sha'um rider. The sha'um are giant fighting cats, the biggest animals in Gandalara, who form telepathic bonds with their riders, and he has only survived because Markasset's sha'um, Keeshah, carried him to safety.

Still very unsure of what is going on and how he should behave, Ricardo/Markasset and Keeshah travel to their home city of Raithskar where he discovers some uncomfortable facts: he owes a large sum of money in a gambling debt; he is engaged to be married; his estranged father, Thanasset, is suspected of complicity in the theft of a giant jewel, the Ra'ira, which is the symbol of the city; and Markasset is also suspected of having fled the city with the jewel. The rest of the novel is concerned with Ricardo's attempts to clear the names of Thanasset and himself while trying to recover more of Markasset's memories and determine his place in this strange, but increasingly appealing, land.

This is a fast, light and entertaining read which sets up the Ganadalara Cycle very well. There's more than an echo of Burroughs' Carter on Mars here, and references to other works including the giant telepathic cats in Schmitz's Novice, reviewed recently. It's an escapist adventure in the classic mould, made more immediate and involving by being told in the first person, and I'm looking forward to reading the the rest of the Cycle.

Interzone 237

The November/December issue of the British SFF magazine emerged just too soon to cover the death of Ann McCaffrey, the prolific SFF writer who will always be remembered for her creation of the world of Pern and its huge, telepathic dragons. I still remember the delight with which I first read Dragonflight in 1970 and it remains one of my favourite SFF novels. It stood up very well to a recent reading, following which I reviewed it on this blog (see the review list on the left).

The cover art is by Richard Wagner, who is also the subject of the editorial and of an interview on the magazine's ttapress.com website. David Langford's Ansible Link includes mention of a Heinlein award to Connie Willis for "SF or technical non-fiction that inspires human exploration of space", which puzzled me because all of her work that I know about is very much set on Earth. There are the usual book, DVD and film reviews which I will, as usual, study carefully to see if there is anything I should be adding to my "to read" and "to watch" lists.

Just four stories this time:

The Last Osama by Lavie Tidha, illustrated by Steve Hambidge. Purportedly told by one of the soldiers who killed Osama bin Laden, it is set in a surreal future in which people become Osama as if it were an infectious disease. Decidedly bizarre.

Erasing the Concept of Sex from a Photobooth by Douglas Lain, illustrated by David Gentry. This one defeats my powers of summary description. Suffice to say that it features sex and a weird photobooth. Even more bizarre.

Insect Joy by Caspian Gray. A young woman is sensitive to all creatures, including insects, and has a very strange form of control over them. Yep, you guessed it, this one's bizarre.

Digital Rites by Jim Hawkins, illustrated by Richard Wagner. Famous actors begin to die in a competitive future in which they don't actually do any acting - they just pose for the news media - but are linked by quantum entanglement to their characters in virtual film productions in order to animate them more effectively. The chase to discover what's going on, to overcome the studio's crisis and to complete the film they're working on makes an intriguing story which seems remarkably mundane in this company.

I was getting worried by the time I reached the final story because the first three were not much to my taste, but Hawkins' tale (by far the longest of the four) I read with some relief as I found it much more engaging and enjoyable, even if I didn't entirely follow all of the plot threads and the ending seemed a bit too neat.

Films: The Ninth Gate (1999) and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

This time we have two Johnny Depp films for the price of one.

I hadn't previously seen The Ninth Gate. Depp plays Dean Corso, a mercenary book dealer who is hired by Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) to verify the authenticity of a rare book he owns, The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, of which only three copies are known. The book contains nine engravings which legend says were drawn by the Devil and will summon him if used in the correct way.

Corso searches for information about the book and visits the owners of the other two copies to make direct comparisons. Along the way he meets the previous owner of Balkan's copy (Lena Olin) who is desperate to recover it, and keeps seeing a mysterious unnamed girl (Emmanuelle Seigner) who has a knack of turning up at the right moment to save him from danger. Corso discovers that only three engravings in each copy are genuine - it is necessary to bring them all together to achieve the desired effect. The bodies begin to pile up as rivals compete to obtain the nine genuine engravings, culminating in occult ceremonies.

This is described as a horror film, which surprises me as there is nothing particularly horrific - or even occult - about it. It is quite low-key and slow-paced, and is best regarded as a mystery. The only supernatural elements are a couple of gravity-defying tricks by the unnamed girl, and the very last scene which frankly left me baffled as to what it all meant. However, the film is stylish, looks good and is moderately entertaining; and, if nothing else appeals, male viewers can enjoy the sight of Olin and Seigner!

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The fourth of the Pirates of the Caribbean films has Depp once again reprising his role as the iconic Captain Sparrow, although the two secondary stars of the earlier films (Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom) disappear and Penélope Cruz joins the crew as Sparrow's love interest. The only other memorable characters are Ian McShane as Blackbeard and the young mermaid Syrena, played rather fetchingly by Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey.

I don't have a lot to say about this one. It's just more of the same, but not a lot more. I expected Cruz to pair very well with Depp but her performance never takes off and there is zero chemistry between them. In fact, the entire cast seems subdued, as if they're not having much fun. Even Depp's performance (as usual, the main reason to watch the film) is toned down, and the film lacks the joie de vivre which made the earlier ones (especially the first) so enjoyable. I note that this film had a different director from the first three, Rob Marshall replacing Gore Verbinski, and apparently the budget didn't allow for as many special effects, both of which presumably contributed to the malaise.

The film finished with lots of dangling loose ends and two more sequels are reportedly planned, which just goes to prove (once more) that Hollywood can't see a dead horse without giving it a thorough flogging.

Short Stories: Novice by James H Schmitz; The Eyes Have It by Randall Garrett

The Classic Science Fiction discussion group selects one short story a week (from those available free online) to read and discuss, as well as the monthly pair of novels. I don't usually read them because I spend so much time on a computer anyway that I don't like to read fiction on it as well, and I don't have an e-reader because I have so many paper books stacked up awaiting my attention. However, I happened to have the two stories above in paper anthologies, so I re-read them. Both stories were written in the 1960s and both are the first of series: the Telzey Amberdon and Lord Darcy stories respectively.

In Novice, Schmitz's far-future Telzey Amberdon is a teenage girl with very high-status parents who happens to have a genius level intelligence, remarkable maturity and competence, and nascent psi powers. Oh, and she's good-looking too. If this all sounds like someone you would hate, prepare to be surprised - Schmitz makes us like her and you'd need a heart of stone not to be cheering her on by the end of the story. Sent away on holiday with her sweetly poisonous aunt to a strange planet with only her pet giant cat of unknown species, Tick-Tock, as a friendly face, Telzey soon discovers that her aunt has hatched a plot to deprive her of her pet. For Tick-Tock is a native of the planet - a species now believed to be almost extinct - and is therefore subject to confiscation. But Telzey also discovers that the giant cats are far from extinct, and she becomes involved in a dangerous scheme to outwit her aunt and survive the close attention of the ferocious felines.

In complete contrast, the Lord Darcy tales are set on an alternate Earth of vaguely Victorian technology and even earlier social development in which France and the UK are one country, North America is still a colony and the nobility are very much in charge. Oh, and magic works and is openly practiced - provided that it is sanctioned by the church. Lord Darcy is a criminal investigator who puzzles out seemingly impossible crimes with the aid of his assistant, a magician who has all kinds of useful abilities. So these stories are in effect a mixture of Sherlock Holmes, magical fantasy and steampunk. The most famous of them is the full-length novel, Too Many Magicians, but there are also nine short stories, of which The Eyes Have It was the introductory tale, concerning the mysterious murder of a lecherous nobleman. Those interested in these stories should look for the 2002 publication, Lord Darcy, which includes all of the stories as well as the novel.

These two stories may appear to have nothing in common, but that's not the case - they are both huge fun to read, light and entertaining, and were very popular in their day, resulting in several sequels. They date from an altogether more innocent age of SFF, which is an important aspect of their charm.