'The Separation' technically falls within the increasingly popular sub-genre (or would that be sub-sub-genre?) of alternate histories of World War 2. Since I have written one of those myself (The Foresight War) I read this book with more than usual interest.
The overriding impression I formed is of the vast difference which can exist in the way in which nominally similar themes are handled. At one extreme comes my own effort, which is a nuts and bolts analysis of how foreknowledge of events by those in power in Britain and Germany (thanks to time-travellers) might have affected strategies, tactics and equipment, and how the war might have turned out differently as a result. Christopher Priest's novel is at the other end of the spectrum.
'The Separation' is a fascinating intellectual exercise portraying different versions of reality. The tale starts in an alternate 1999, in which an historian is collecting material for a book about an RAF officer, J L Sawyer, who appeared to have played a mysterious part in the events which led up to the ending of the Anglo-German War in May 1941. The rest of the book consists of the material which he found: accounts from various viewpoints, correspondence and official notes of meetings.
It soon becomes clear that much confusion had been caused by the fact that there were two J L Sawyers: identical twins named Jack and Joe. Their contrasting personal accounts make up much of the book. We first meet them at the 1936 Olympics where they are rowing together, but they fall out and their paths diverge shortly thereafter. As war looms, one becomes a bomber pilot in the RAF, the other a conscientious objector working for the Red Cross.
As the viewpoint shifts from one person to another, so does the path of history. In one account, one of the brothers is killed; in another, the other one dies; and in a possible third they both survive. In one timeline one brother marries and has a daughter; in another, the other brother marries the same woman and has a son. In the wider context, one thread sees the war lasting until 1945 while another describes its ending in 1941. Deputy Führer Rudolph Hess apparently flies to Britain (but is he a fake?) in one account, and plays an important role in negotiating the peace in another. The confusion is not helped by the fact that one of the brothers suffers from powerful, extended and entirely realistic hallucinations following a head injury: are the experiences he recounts imaginary or real? He doesn't know, and neither do we. There is a final twist in the tail of the tale, concerning the identity of the historian researching the story.
With such internal contradictions the story is difficult to follow, or even to make sense of afterwards: do not hope for a tidy ending in which all is explained! This all may sound like an exercise in frustration, but the high quality of Priest's writing draws the reader into the novel. Don't look for dramatic action or much in the way of the technicalities of war; there is much well-researched detail on the bombing campaign, from the viewpoints of those delivering it and of those on the receiving end, but that's about it. The pleasures of this surreal story are more subtle. It is like a kaleidoscope; keep turning and the same elements keep falling into different patterns.
Some aspects are not entirely convincing. There is brief mention of events outside NW Europe following the 1941 end of the war, in which the USA becomes involved in extended conflict in Asia and, for no clearly explained reason, becomes a failed, gangster-run state which it remains even half a century later. There is much about Churchill, but the way in which he suddenly changed his mind over an important issue did not strike me as realistic.
Despite these reservations, the novel can be strongly recommended to readers who appreciate high-quality story-telling and enjoy having their perceptions repeatedly overturned.
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Friday, 27 June 2008
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke
'Rendezvous with Rama' is due to be discussed later this year in the Classic Science Fiction discussion group ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClassicScienceFiction/ ) and as it is one of the novels on my top-20 all-time SFF favourites list, this was a good enough reason for me to return to it after a long absence.
The plot is deceptively simple. It is set in the 22nd century, in what would now be regarded as a somewhat utopian future: our civilisation has survived and spread to establish permanent colonies on the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and some of the major moons of the outer planets. There is no faster-than-light drive, so humanity is confined to the Solar System. Little is said about the Earth, but it has one representative on the United Planets committees, which implies at least a co-ordination of world government. A few decades before, a major asteroid strike on Earth had caused massive damage, so Spaceguard had been set up to keep a careful watch on any bodies of significant size which looked as if they might pose a danger.
A large body is observed to be heading into the Solar System from outer space, so a probe is sent to investigate. The few images it sends from a high-speed fly-by show the object to be a perfect cylinder of enormous size, 50 km long and 20 km in diameter; clearly an alien artefact. Its huge speed means that it is almost impossible for a manned spacecraft to match velocities with it; there is only one vessel in the right position to achieve this, a survey ship called the Endeavour, captained by Commander Norton. Furthermore, the trajectory of the object, dubbed Rama, means that it will be heading very close to the sun, giving the Endeavour's crew just three weeks to explore the object before they would have to withdraw. The ship makes the rendezvous and the rest of the story is concerned with what they find there, interspersed with the debates and political manoeuvrings going on at United Planets HQ on the Moon.
Without wishing to give too much of the plot away to new readers, Rama is found to be hollow, with a breathable atmosphere and a rapid radial spin providing artificial gravity. Humans can walk around normally on the inner surface, requiring no more protection than warm clothes against the cold. At first it appears to be an entirely dead environment, but as it warms up with the approach to the Sun, it begins to show signs of life.
This is a deliberately restrained story. Clarke's writing style is spare and economical; no purple passages here, just matter-of-fact descriptions of the events. The human science described is basically that of the present day: there is not only no FTL travel, but nothing else that might cause physicists to raise their eyebrows. Rama is full of mysteries, but some of these are gradually revealed as the explorers observe the changes taking place and slowly try to piece together the purpose of the huge artefact. The science of whoever built Rama is far beyond humanity's, but the structure is mostly (if only just) understandable. This may sound dull, but it isn't; this is a great adventure story as well as being educational in using logical analysis to explain the mysteries. It is the kind of book which can be strongly recommended to anyone thinking of trying SF for the first time, so that they can get some understanding of the famous "sense of wonder" which has been at the core of SF's appeal for generations. In fact, it could be a good basis for getting young people interested in science.
By modern standards the structure of the novel can be criticised: the present fashion is to plunge straight into the action rather than provide explanatory prologues, to "show not tell" (i.e. let information come out as a result of the actions and conversations of the characters), to concentrate on developing the characters, and (of course) to write any new book as the first of a series. 'Rendezvous with Rama' fails quite comprehensively on all of these counts: while there is no formal prologue, the first few of the very short chapters are entirely devoted to setting the scene and explaining the background, with the first words of dialogue being spoken in Chapter 4. The narrator is present throughout, describing what is happening. The characterisation is slight; the Endeavour's crew are all dedicated professionals, working together in harmony (how refreshing!). Sequels to the book were not initially planned and did not begin to appear until the co-authored 'Rama II', some seventeen years after 'Rendezvous' was published in 1972. I haven't read any of them, but by all accounts the sequels are entirely different in style from the original, focusing much more on characterisation; they have been nowhere near as successful. I strongly suspect that if 'Rendezvous' were submitted by a new author for publication today an editor would call for drastic changes, if indeed the manuscript managed to get off the slush pile at all. Yet it is one of the most enduringly popular SF novels ever written, being frequently reprinted. Make of that what you will.
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Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of this weekly blog. Over the year the number of visitors has steadily increased. Thanks for reading, particularly to those who have contributed by commenting on my posts.
The plot is deceptively simple. It is set in the 22nd century, in what would now be regarded as a somewhat utopian future: our civilisation has survived and spread to establish permanent colonies on the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and some of the major moons of the outer planets. There is no faster-than-light drive, so humanity is confined to the Solar System. Little is said about the Earth, but it has one representative on the United Planets committees, which implies at least a co-ordination of world government. A few decades before, a major asteroid strike on Earth had caused massive damage, so Spaceguard had been set up to keep a careful watch on any bodies of significant size which looked as if they might pose a danger.
A large body is observed to be heading into the Solar System from outer space, so a probe is sent to investigate. The few images it sends from a high-speed fly-by show the object to be a perfect cylinder of enormous size, 50 km long and 20 km in diameter; clearly an alien artefact. Its huge speed means that it is almost impossible for a manned spacecraft to match velocities with it; there is only one vessel in the right position to achieve this, a survey ship called the Endeavour, captained by Commander Norton. Furthermore, the trajectory of the object, dubbed Rama, means that it will be heading very close to the sun, giving the Endeavour's crew just three weeks to explore the object before they would have to withdraw. The ship makes the rendezvous and the rest of the story is concerned with what they find there, interspersed with the debates and political manoeuvrings going on at United Planets HQ on the Moon.
Without wishing to give too much of the plot away to new readers, Rama is found to be hollow, with a breathable atmosphere and a rapid radial spin providing artificial gravity. Humans can walk around normally on the inner surface, requiring no more protection than warm clothes against the cold. At first it appears to be an entirely dead environment, but as it warms up with the approach to the Sun, it begins to show signs of life.
This is a deliberately restrained story. Clarke's writing style is spare and economical; no purple passages here, just matter-of-fact descriptions of the events. The human science described is basically that of the present day: there is not only no FTL travel, but nothing else that might cause physicists to raise their eyebrows. Rama is full of mysteries, but some of these are gradually revealed as the explorers observe the changes taking place and slowly try to piece together the purpose of the huge artefact. The science of whoever built Rama is far beyond humanity's, but the structure is mostly (if only just) understandable. This may sound dull, but it isn't; this is a great adventure story as well as being educational in using logical analysis to explain the mysteries. It is the kind of book which can be strongly recommended to anyone thinking of trying SF for the first time, so that they can get some understanding of the famous "sense of wonder" which has been at the core of SF's appeal for generations. In fact, it could be a good basis for getting young people interested in science.
By modern standards the structure of the novel can be criticised: the present fashion is to plunge straight into the action rather than provide explanatory prologues, to "show not tell" (i.e. let information come out as a result of the actions and conversations of the characters), to concentrate on developing the characters, and (of course) to write any new book as the first of a series. 'Rendezvous with Rama' fails quite comprehensively on all of these counts: while there is no formal prologue, the first few of the very short chapters are entirely devoted to setting the scene and explaining the background, with the first words of dialogue being spoken in Chapter 4. The narrator is present throughout, describing what is happening. The characterisation is slight; the Endeavour's crew are all dedicated professionals, working together in harmony (how refreshing!). Sequels to the book were not initially planned and did not begin to appear until the co-authored 'Rama II', some seventeen years after 'Rendezvous' was published in 1972. I haven't read any of them, but by all accounts the sequels are entirely different in style from the original, focusing much more on characterisation; they have been nowhere near as successful. I strongly suspect that if 'Rendezvous' were submitted by a new author for publication today an editor would call for drastic changes, if indeed the manuscript managed to get off the slush pile at all. Yet it is one of the most enduringly popular SF novels ever written, being frequently reprinted. Make of that what you will.
*****************************
Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of this weekly blog. Over the year the number of visitors has steadily increased. Thanks for reading, particularly to those who have contributed by commenting on my posts.
Saturday, 21 June 2008
Other Voices by Andrew Humphrey
The output of some writers defies conventional classification. Andrew Humphrey is clearly one of them judging by the thirteen stories in 'Other Voices', his second collection to be published. Elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery and mainstream drama can be found in various combinations; if one word had to be chosen to categorise them it is slipstream: "the fiction of strangeness".
A common factor is that each story focuses on a relationship – usually but not always between a man and a woman – which is under stress of some kind. His invariably male protagonists tend to be emotionally detached, unable to respond adequately to the demands of their situations. There is little in the way of upbeat themes or happy endings.
'Grief Inc' is set in a future or alternate Norwich (his stories are generally set in Norfolk and have a strong sense of place), in a country slowly disintegrating into social and organisational chaos. The protagonist, Carter, has a unique ability; just by hugging people, he can permanently remove the deep grief of bereavement, and in a world of frequent random death he is much in demand. He has a complicated relationship with Josie, his kept mistress, and is faced with the need to decide what to do as their world collapses around them. Unusually, this has a cautiously optimistic ending.
'Mimic' focuses on a small group of men who have been closeted for years in an underground bunker in a country threatened by war and an unexplained alien invasion. They are occasionally sent captured aliens to examine and dispose of, but their latest delivery has a disturbing tendency to mimic the appearance of Carter, the protagonist. The ending is rather predictable.
'Dogfight' concerns a man who is trying to establish a better relationship with his teenage son by spending a weekend away with him in a seaside caravan. He recalls his own difficult relationship with his violent grandfather, who told him gruesome tales of his exploits as a Battle of Britain fighter pilot. When out walking, they twice see a Spitfire roaring overhead – the second time being chased by a Messerschmitt. These phantoms of a bygone age gradually take on a strange and threatening reality.
Those are just the stories which stuck most in my mind, perhaps because they are the closest to conventional SFF. It might seem an unpromising collection, and I must admit that it is not my preferred type of fiction, but there is one other common factor in Humphrey's stories: they are all very well written and held my attention throughout.
(This is an extended version of a review for the British Fantasy Society)
A common factor is that each story focuses on a relationship – usually but not always between a man and a woman – which is under stress of some kind. His invariably male protagonists tend to be emotionally detached, unable to respond adequately to the demands of their situations. There is little in the way of upbeat themes or happy endings.
'Grief Inc' is set in a future or alternate Norwich (his stories are generally set in Norfolk and have a strong sense of place), in a country slowly disintegrating into social and organisational chaos. The protagonist, Carter, has a unique ability; just by hugging people, he can permanently remove the deep grief of bereavement, and in a world of frequent random death he is much in demand. He has a complicated relationship with Josie, his kept mistress, and is faced with the need to decide what to do as their world collapses around them. Unusually, this has a cautiously optimistic ending.
'Mimic' focuses on a small group of men who have been closeted for years in an underground bunker in a country threatened by war and an unexplained alien invasion. They are occasionally sent captured aliens to examine and dispose of, but their latest delivery has a disturbing tendency to mimic the appearance of Carter, the protagonist. The ending is rather predictable.
'Dogfight' concerns a man who is trying to establish a better relationship with his teenage son by spending a weekend away with him in a seaside caravan. He recalls his own difficult relationship with his violent grandfather, who told him gruesome tales of his exploits as a Battle of Britain fighter pilot. When out walking, they twice see a Spitfire roaring overhead – the second time being chased by a Messerschmitt. These phantoms of a bygone age gradually take on a strange and threatening reality.
Those are just the stories which stuck most in my mind, perhaps because they are the closest to conventional SFF. It might seem an unpromising collection, and I must admit that it is not my preferred type of fiction, but there is one other common factor in Humphrey's stories: they are all very well written and held my attention throughout.
(This is an extended version of a review for the British Fantasy Society)
Friday, 13 June 2008
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
TSMD was first published in parts in 1956/7 and may also be found under the title 'Tiger! Tiger!'. I first read it in the 1960s and it blew me away, becoming established after a couple of re-reads as my favourite SF novel. I hadn't read it for decades, and picked up my much-worn 1965 Panther paperback with some apprehension that it wouldn't live up to my memories. I needn't have worried. This is a dazzling firework display of a story, packed full of original ideas and maintaining a ferocious pace to an unexpected, dramatic and entirely satisfying conclusion.
The author starts with a five-page prologue to set the scene: a 24th Century in which humanity has spread throughout the Solar System, and in which the Outer Satellites are in conflict with the Inner Planets. At the start of the century, a man named Jaunte accidentally discovered teleportation – the ability to transport himself from one place to another by an effort of will – and soon almost everyone was "jaunting". There turned out to be a 1,000-mile limit, though, and no-one could jaunte through space.
Prologues are out of fashion these days, the current orthodoxy being to plunge the reader straight into the action, but I am frankly rather tired of having to read the first few chapters of a story before I can work out what's going on. Bester uses his prologue to outline the kind of society, much altered by jaunting, in which his story takes place, and his book is all the better for it.
We are introduced to the principal character, Gulliver Foyle, as he struggles for survival on board a wrecked spaceship near the Asteroid Belt. An uneducated man of limited ability but great potential, he is only spurred to take the action needed to save himself by the casual spurning of his plight by a passing spaceship. The rest of the story concerns his ferocious battle for revenge against those who abandoned him, a battle which sees him ruthlessly using and abusing all those around him in order to claw his way to the wealth and fame he needs to achieve his aims. In the process, he educates himself, learns to control his rage, acquires a conscience and finally realises his undreamed-of potential.
It has rightly been said that any modern author would spread the ideas scattered liberally through TSMD over a fat trilogy, but Bester packs them all into 195 pages. Jaunting, one-way telepathy, a woman who can only see in the infrared, the interrogation techniques of the Nightmare Theatre and the Megal Mood, a rewired nervous system to provide blinding speed and an automatic "Commando killer" programme, exotic drugs, sympathetic blocks which automatically kill people if they try to reveal secrets, an explosive of almost unimaginable power which can be detonated only by thought, and a vivid account of the confused senses of synaesthesia. The settings include a lost asteroid colony made up of descendents of scientists who regard scientific formulae as religious texts, a prison deep within the Gouffre Berger cave system, an Earth dominated by vast corporations whose hereditary leaders form the nobility, and the Martian base of a Sklotsky sect whose members voluntarily have their nervous systems severed. It's all here, wrapped up in an exhilarating ride of a story. For me, the only jarring note which showed the age of the novel was the inclusion of a character so poisoned by radiation that no-one else could survive near him, while he remained healthy.
Critics may argue that modern novels use their greater length and slower pace to include much better characterisation, but in doing so they lose the relentless, unputdownable drama of TSMD. Science fiction is essentially about new ideas and concepts, about stretching the imagination, and TSMD delivers this better than any other novel I know.
Bester (1913-1987) had previously won a Hugo award for 'The Demolished Man' (1953), a novel about telepathy which, although good by most standards, doesn't really compare with TSMD. However, he didn't write another novel after TSMD for nearly twenty years, and nothing he subsequently wrote achieved the same dramatic impact. This is disappointing, but it can't detract from his achievement in writing what is still, in my opinion (and that of many well-known SF authors), the greatest of the classics of the genre. Anyone with an interest in science fiction should read this book, at least once!
The author starts with a five-page prologue to set the scene: a 24th Century in which humanity has spread throughout the Solar System, and in which the Outer Satellites are in conflict with the Inner Planets. At the start of the century, a man named Jaunte accidentally discovered teleportation – the ability to transport himself from one place to another by an effort of will – and soon almost everyone was "jaunting". There turned out to be a 1,000-mile limit, though, and no-one could jaunte through space.
Prologues are out of fashion these days, the current orthodoxy being to plunge the reader straight into the action, but I am frankly rather tired of having to read the first few chapters of a story before I can work out what's going on. Bester uses his prologue to outline the kind of society, much altered by jaunting, in which his story takes place, and his book is all the better for it.
We are introduced to the principal character, Gulliver Foyle, as he struggles for survival on board a wrecked spaceship near the Asteroid Belt. An uneducated man of limited ability but great potential, he is only spurred to take the action needed to save himself by the casual spurning of his plight by a passing spaceship. The rest of the story concerns his ferocious battle for revenge against those who abandoned him, a battle which sees him ruthlessly using and abusing all those around him in order to claw his way to the wealth and fame he needs to achieve his aims. In the process, he educates himself, learns to control his rage, acquires a conscience and finally realises his undreamed-of potential.
It has rightly been said that any modern author would spread the ideas scattered liberally through TSMD over a fat trilogy, but Bester packs them all into 195 pages. Jaunting, one-way telepathy, a woman who can only see in the infrared, the interrogation techniques of the Nightmare Theatre and the Megal Mood, a rewired nervous system to provide blinding speed and an automatic "Commando killer" programme, exotic drugs, sympathetic blocks which automatically kill people if they try to reveal secrets, an explosive of almost unimaginable power which can be detonated only by thought, and a vivid account of the confused senses of synaesthesia. The settings include a lost asteroid colony made up of descendents of scientists who regard scientific formulae as religious texts, a prison deep within the Gouffre Berger cave system, an Earth dominated by vast corporations whose hereditary leaders form the nobility, and the Martian base of a Sklotsky sect whose members voluntarily have their nervous systems severed. It's all here, wrapped up in an exhilarating ride of a story. For me, the only jarring note which showed the age of the novel was the inclusion of a character so poisoned by radiation that no-one else could survive near him, while he remained healthy.
Critics may argue that modern novels use their greater length and slower pace to include much better characterisation, but in doing so they lose the relentless, unputdownable drama of TSMD. Science fiction is essentially about new ideas and concepts, about stretching the imagination, and TSMD delivers this better than any other novel I know.
Bester (1913-1987) had previously won a Hugo award for 'The Demolished Man' (1953), a novel about telepathy which, although good by most standards, doesn't really compare with TSMD. However, he didn't write another novel after TSMD for nearly twenty years, and nothing he subsequently wrote achieved the same dramatic impact. This is disappointing, but it can't detract from his achievement in writing what is still, in my opinion (and that of many well-known SF authors), the greatest of the classics of the genre. Anyone with an interest in science fiction should read this book, at least once!
Saturday, 7 June 2008
'The Anansi Boys' and 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is establishing a niche as a specialist in the bizarre, and 'Anansi Boys' is no exception. Set in the present, it features Charlie Nancy, an ordinary and rather hapless young man who travels from England to Florida for the funeral of his long-estranged father. He is told that his father may have been the spider god Anansi – a deity of the trickster kind. Furthermore, he discovers that he has a previously unsuspected brother, Spider, who seems to have inherited their father's abilities. When Spider arrives at his London home and begins to play havoc with Charlie's work and love life, Charlie returns to Florida to find an occult way of ridding himself of this troublesome sibling, and that's when events begin to slide out of control.
Well-written, original, intriguing, often amusing, occasionally dark and a tad horrific but basically warm-hearted and likeable, this is an entertaining read which deserves the praise it has received.
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'Coraline' is a different kind of story altogether. Only a novella of around 40,000 words, this is a fairy tale intended for children. Not some twee, sugar-coated tale to send them quietly off the sleep, more like a Grimm one which will have them looking nervously under their beds.
Coraline is a contemporary young girl who has just moved with her parents into a newly-converted flat within a large old house. She is intelligent and self-confident and loves exploring. Her personality has some amusingly realistic touches, for instance she turns her nose up at her father's "recipes" (which sound very tasty), preferring to eat microwave chips and pizza instead. She finds an old door which leads nowhere, opening onto a brick wall created during the conversion work. She can't help being fascinated by it, however, and one day opens it to find an empty corridor. At the end of that is a replica of her flat, and even a close replica of her parents, but something is terribly wrong. To survive and to save her parents, Coraline has to call on all of her wits and courage.
Despite the dark and horrifying elements, this is an optimistic story of bravery and determination triumphing over evil. Neil Gaiman is a versatile as well as talented author.
Well-written, original, intriguing, often amusing, occasionally dark and a tad horrific but basically warm-hearted and likeable, this is an entertaining read which deserves the praise it has received.
---------------------------------------
'Coraline' is a different kind of story altogether. Only a novella of around 40,000 words, this is a fairy tale intended for children. Not some twee, sugar-coated tale to send them quietly off the sleep, more like a Grimm one which will have them looking nervously under their beds.
Coraline is a contemporary young girl who has just moved with her parents into a newly-converted flat within a large old house. She is intelligent and self-confident and loves exploring. Her personality has some amusingly realistic touches, for instance she turns her nose up at her father's "recipes" (which sound very tasty), preferring to eat microwave chips and pizza instead. She finds an old door which leads nowhere, opening onto a brick wall created during the conversion work. She can't help being fascinated by it, however, and one day opens it to find an empty corridor. At the end of that is a replica of her flat, and even a close replica of her parents, but something is terribly wrong. To survive and to save her parents, Coraline has to call on all of her wits and courage.
Despite the dark and horrifying elements, this is an optimistic story of bravery and determination triumphing over evil. Neil Gaiman is a versatile as well as talented author.
Friday, 30 May 2008
The X-Files film
No, not the new one but the 1998 production which I only recently got around to viewing for the first time. I should start by saying that I was a fan of the early X-Files TV series, enjoying the interplay between the two FBI agents who are the main characters: David Duchovny as the gullible Fox Mulder who believes that the presence of aliens is being covered up, and Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully, the science-trained sceptic. They are tasked with investigating incidents which defy rational explanation, and the mix is partly FBI procedural, partly mystery and suspense, with elements of SF and horror plus a substantial dollop of paranoid conspiracy theory.
As a firm believer in the cock-up rather than conspiracy theory of why things go wrong, I never bought into this but I nevertheless enjoy a well-told story, which at first this was ('Capricorn One' is another conspiracy theory SF film which is also great viewing). I think I stopped watching the TV programmes at some point in the third or fourth series, partly because the scenarios became rather repetitive and partly because the horror elements became stronger, with the plots steadily ramping up the yuck factor – not my favourite kind of viewing.
Reading about the forthcoming second film, I decided that it was time for a stroll down memory lane and dusted off an old videotape of the first film from the back of a cupboard. The mix was pretty much as I recalled, with the yuck factor (horribly unnatural things happening to people, in graphic detail) coming in strong at the start and cropping up at intervals throughout the film. However, it was interesting enough to hold my attention, and in particular I had forgotten how good Duchovny and Anderson were together; an enjoyable pairing of opposites, spiced with that frisson of never-released sexual tension.
Having said that, I found the plot a confusing mess. The main threat was an alien virus in the form of a black goo which infected people and turned them into alien monsters, apparently in preparation for the return of the aliens to take over the planet. Since the virus was supposed to be the oldest living thing on Earth, which would put it at about 3.5 billion years old, this suggests an alien planning timescale which makes present-day major military procurement programmes look quite speedy.
Where I got lost was when the conspiracy bit kicked in. It seems that a powerful organised group was trying to help the alien takeover along (for reasons which were never explained) and were doing this by breeding bees to carry the virus (but being stung by a bee seemed to produce entirely different results from the black goo – the relationship between them was not explained); corn crops came into this as well, but I didn't understand why (other than that they provided a good place for our two heroes to hide from searching helicopters). There was a mass release of bees but as this happened in the middle of a desert it is hard to see what this was supposed to achieve, and this plot thread disappeared. There was also an Antarctic base on top of an alien labyrinth which turned out to be a space ship (3.5 billion years old?) with which the conspirators were tinkering, but to what end was never explained, except that they seemed to be providing human hosts for the virus. I was thoroughly confused by this point, but it did of course all end happily; no producer would dare kill off one of the heroes while they might be needed for sequels.
I'm old-fashioned enough to prefer plots which make sense (however improbable) by the end of the tale, which this one really didn't. The new film will have to garner some impressive reviews before I feel tempted to watch it; except, perhaps, as a nostalgia trip in another ten years.
As a firm believer in the cock-up rather than conspiracy theory of why things go wrong, I never bought into this but I nevertheless enjoy a well-told story, which at first this was ('Capricorn One' is another conspiracy theory SF film which is also great viewing). I think I stopped watching the TV programmes at some point in the third or fourth series, partly because the scenarios became rather repetitive and partly because the horror elements became stronger, with the plots steadily ramping up the yuck factor – not my favourite kind of viewing.
Reading about the forthcoming second film, I decided that it was time for a stroll down memory lane and dusted off an old videotape of the first film from the back of a cupboard. The mix was pretty much as I recalled, with the yuck factor (horribly unnatural things happening to people, in graphic detail) coming in strong at the start and cropping up at intervals throughout the film. However, it was interesting enough to hold my attention, and in particular I had forgotten how good Duchovny and Anderson were together; an enjoyable pairing of opposites, spiced with that frisson of never-released sexual tension.
Having said that, I found the plot a confusing mess. The main threat was an alien virus in the form of a black goo which infected people and turned them into alien monsters, apparently in preparation for the return of the aliens to take over the planet. Since the virus was supposed to be the oldest living thing on Earth, which would put it at about 3.5 billion years old, this suggests an alien planning timescale which makes present-day major military procurement programmes look quite speedy.
Where I got lost was when the conspiracy bit kicked in. It seems that a powerful organised group was trying to help the alien takeover along (for reasons which were never explained) and were doing this by breeding bees to carry the virus (but being stung by a bee seemed to produce entirely different results from the black goo – the relationship between them was not explained); corn crops came into this as well, but I didn't understand why (other than that they provided a good place for our two heroes to hide from searching helicopters). There was a mass release of bees but as this happened in the middle of a desert it is hard to see what this was supposed to achieve, and this plot thread disappeared. There was also an Antarctic base on top of an alien labyrinth which turned out to be a space ship (3.5 billion years old?) with which the conspirators were tinkering, but to what end was never explained, except that they seemed to be providing human hosts for the virus. I was thoroughly confused by this point, but it did of course all end happily; no producer would dare kill off one of the heroes while they might be needed for sequels.
I'm old-fashioned enough to prefer plots which make sense (however improbable) by the end of the tale, which this one really didn't. The new film will have to garner some impressive reviews before I feel tempted to watch it; except, perhaps, as a nostalgia trip in another ten years.
Friday, 23 May 2008
The Birthgrave by Tanith Lee
The Birthgrave was first published in 1975, and I read it not long after. It made such an impact that it joined the select group of books I've read more than once, and now I've read it for the third time, decades later. I had forgotten almost everything except the general outline, so I was able to enjoy it all over again.
The story is set on another world, with an early medieval culture; small city states, nomadic groups, constant little wars and skirmishes, swords and primitive cannon, and multiple deities. The nameless heroine is the sole survivor of a race of cruel, humanoid, super-beings who had previously ruled this world before being wiped out by disease, leaving their human slaves to carry on. She wakes after a long coma and goes out into the world, where she is hailed as a goddess but finds herself strangely powerless, haunted by dreams of the magnificence and horror of her past. She is controlled and manipulated by ambitious men, and only breaks free right at the end of the book, which suddenly includes a science fiction element to add to the fantasy.
Tanith Lee's writing is rich and strong, powerfully evocative of the cultures her heroine moves through. It is frequently gritty and brutal; the death rate around the heroine – among friends as well as enemies – reaches epic proportions. There is a sustained account of a vicious form of chariot race, in which the tension is gradually built up from the initial preparations, through the training and into the race itself, until its crashing climax. This passage is so well-written and gripped me so strongly that I couldn't put the book down until the race was over.
If there is any criticism I could make of the book, it is that a greater than usual suspension of disbelief is required to accept an almost invulnerable super-race of god-like powers, who can live on air and even survive for years in a coma in an airless environment. There is also an unexplained inconsistency in the basic timeline of the book: the heroine grows from child to adult while in a sixteen-year coma and is supposed to be only twenty, yet the cities of her youth had fallen into ancient ruins and the memory of her race had faded into legend.
One thing which slightly surprised me: a couple of scenes which I recalled from previous readings weren't actually in the book; they must be in the sequels, Shadowfire and Quest for the White Witch. Oh well, they're sitting on my shelf with a rather expectant air…
The story is set on another world, with an early medieval culture; small city states, nomadic groups, constant little wars and skirmishes, swords and primitive cannon, and multiple deities. The nameless heroine is the sole survivor of a race of cruel, humanoid, super-beings who had previously ruled this world before being wiped out by disease, leaving their human slaves to carry on. She wakes after a long coma and goes out into the world, where she is hailed as a goddess but finds herself strangely powerless, haunted by dreams of the magnificence and horror of her past. She is controlled and manipulated by ambitious men, and only breaks free right at the end of the book, which suddenly includes a science fiction element to add to the fantasy.
Tanith Lee's writing is rich and strong, powerfully evocative of the cultures her heroine moves through. It is frequently gritty and brutal; the death rate around the heroine – among friends as well as enemies – reaches epic proportions. There is a sustained account of a vicious form of chariot race, in which the tension is gradually built up from the initial preparations, through the training and into the race itself, until its crashing climax. This passage is so well-written and gripped me so strongly that I couldn't put the book down until the race was over.
If there is any criticism I could make of the book, it is that a greater than usual suspension of disbelief is required to accept an almost invulnerable super-race of god-like powers, who can live on air and even survive for years in a coma in an airless environment. There is also an unexplained inconsistency in the basic timeline of the book: the heroine grows from child to adult while in a sixteen-year coma and is supposed to be only twenty, yet the cities of her youth had fallen into ancient ruins and the memory of her race had faded into legend.
One thing which slightly surprised me: a couple of scenes which I recalled from previous readings weren't actually in the book; they must be in the sequels, Shadowfire and Quest for the White Witch. Oh well, they're sitting on my shelf with a rather expectant air…
Friday, 16 May 2008
Indigo by Graham Joyce, plus the Platypus
This book is curiously difficult to review, or even to describe. It is set in the contemporary world, and features Englishman Jack Chambers, who has been summoned to Chicago to execute the will of a controlling and manipulative father he has loathed, but not seen, for some twenty years. He discovers that he is required to publish a manuscript in which his father lays out in detail the protracted physical and mental preparation required to see the colour Indigo (that mythical seventh colour of the spectrum) and thereby gain not only a different form of seeing but also the ability to avoid being seen by others.
Chambers meets his disturbingly attractive half-sister for the first time since she was a young girl. They both travel to Rome, his father's second home, in order to dispose of his property and trace the principal beneficiary of the will. What follows is a strange mixture of mystery, tension, drama, sex and romance, as Chambers struggles to discover what his father had been up to, work out whether the manuscript held genuine knowledge or was just delusional, and incidentally sort out his own life.
Indigo is worth reading if only for the atmospheric quality of the writing:
"You didn't look at Rome, you slipped into it and it parted around you like warm water. History lay everywhere, like mineral mud on a river bed, or broken and glistening as it broke the surface. Antiquity waved vast anemone clusters and drew your attention to submerged treasure, or to a sunken rock which on close inspection turned out to be artefact. There was no more pristine, native rock. Everything had been mined, carved, sculpted, worked, improved, discarded, reworked into a lustrous flow. In Rome you needed a set of gills to move through history, and if you tried to come up for air you found that even the sky was seeded with the dust of ancient brick. It was cloying and sweet and pearly with reference. Every evening the city crumbled under the weight of its own memory; each morning it was rebuilt with the fresh hot brick of making the past anew."
This is not a conventional SFF novel; it is in fact rather hard to categorise. I found it well worth the time spent on it, though. My only complaint is that Penguin chose to publish it in what looks like an eight-point font, which is almost too small for comfortable reading.
-------------------------------
As a follow-up to my post here (25 April) about the New Scientist's feature on evolution, another development covered in the magazine (10 May) is the sequencing of the genome of the Australian duck-billed platypus. This has revealed some intriguing information, as might be expected of an animal which combines a bird-like beak with fur, and lays eggs while producing milk for its young. As expected, its genome contains a mixture of mammalian and reptile features. The sequence for determining sex is more like a bird's than a mammal's, yet the milk-producing genes are similar to humans and cows. The conclusion is that milk-producing evolved before the ability to have live offspring.
Perhaps my marsupial saurians in Scales weren't quite so implausible after all!
Chambers meets his disturbingly attractive half-sister for the first time since she was a young girl. They both travel to Rome, his father's second home, in order to dispose of his property and trace the principal beneficiary of the will. What follows is a strange mixture of mystery, tension, drama, sex and romance, as Chambers struggles to discover what his father had been up to, work out whether the manuscript held genuine knowledge or was just delusional, and incidentally sort out his own life.
Indigo is worth reading if only for the atmospheric quality of the writing:
"You didn't look at Rome, you slipped into it and it parted around you like warm water. History lay everywhere, like mineral mud on a river bed, or broken and glistening as it broke the surface. Antiquity waved vast anemone clusters and drew your attention to submerged treasure, or to a sunken rock which on close inspection turned out to be artefact. There was no more pristine, native rock. Everything had been mined, carved, sculpted, worked, improved, discarded, reworked into a lustrous flow. In Rome you needed a set of gills to move through history, and if you tried to come up for air you found that even the sky was seeded with the dust of ancient brick. It was cloying and sweet and pearly with reference. Every evening the city crumbled under the weight of its own memory; each morning it was rebuilt with the fresh hot brick of making the past anew."
This is not a conventional SFF novel; it is in fact rather hard to categorise. I found it well worth the time spent on it, though. My only complaint is that Penguin chose to publish it in what looks like an eight-point font, which is almost too small for comfortable reading.
-------------------------------
As a follow-up to my post here (25 April) about the New Scientist's feature on evolution, another development covered in the magazine (10 May) is the sequencing of the genome of the Australian duck-billed platypus. This has revealed some intriguing information, as might be expected of an animal which combines a bird-like beak with fur, and lays eggs while producing milk for its young. As expected, its genome contains a mixture of mammalian and reptile features. The sequence for determining sex is more like a bird's than a mammal's, yet the milk-producing genes are similar to humans and cows. The conclusion is that milk-producing evolved before the ability to have live offspring.
Perhaps my marsupial saurians in Scales weren't quite so implausible after all!
Friday, 9 May 2008
Flood: and a few bits and pieces
A two-part four-hour drama shown on UK ITV in early May, 'Flood' explored what might happen if a huge storm surge funnelled down the North Sea and arrived at the Thames estuary at the same time as the highest tide of the year. This was, of course, more or less what happened in 1953, causing widespread flooding and hundreds of deaths in England, and thousands in the Netherlands. I even have a vague childhood memory of that, as at the time my family were living in an East Coast town which suffered considerable damage from the storm.
The plot of 'Flood' assumes that the resultant surge from storm and tide combined would be high enough to overwhelm the Thames Barrier and inundate much of central London, with heavy casualties. There was a cast of stock characters: the hapless Meterological Office man who got the forecast wrong, delaying evacuation plans; the professor who had always argued that the Barrier was in the wrong place leaving London vulnerable to just such a threat; the divorced couple forced to work together because of their expert knowledge of the Barrier; the Metropolitan Police Commissioner trying to co-ordinate the response to the threat and subsequent disaster while worrying about her own daughters trapped in central London; the Deputy Prime Minister saddled with the responsibility of making very tough decisions in the absence abroad of the Prime Minister; and for contrast, the two workmen on the Underground system who found themselves trapped in the tunnels.
There was some interesting material in this. The CGI of the great wave travelling up the Thames and flooding one famous landmark after another was gripping. The operations of the government COBRA Committee, the difficult issues they grappled with, and the response to the disaster were all fairly convincingly, if somewhat patchily, portrayed (although I can't comment on their authenticity). However, for my taste the programme was over-dramatised and over-long: too much hysterical screaming and panicking, too much time spent on the various "human interest" sub-plots.
A pity really, because this is a genuine threat which needs to be treated seriously. When first built 25 years ago the Thames Barrier, which rises up to block the Thames when sea water levels threaten to flood London, was used only once or twice a year. As SE England continues to sink by a few mm a year (isostatic recovery from the last Ice Age still going on) and sea levels gradually rise, so the threat is increasing and the Barrier is deployed more often – 14 times in 2003. Furthermore, we seem to be on the receiving end of more frequent violent storms. The plot of the drama came too close to reality for comfort on 9 November 2007, when the Barrier was raised twice due to a storm surge and high tide combination, but fortunately they didn't quite coincide.
I would have welcomed a shorter, calmer and more realistic drama-documentary. In fact this subject has quite enough drama on its own, so I'd be happy with just a "what-if?" documentary, examining the growing probability of the threat, the likely consequences if it happened, how the authorities would respond, and what we should be doing to minimise this risk, since the Barrier will eventually become inadequate. They could retain that CGI of the floods, though – definitely worth seeing!
-------------------------------------
Something of a disappointment on the reading front this week. I had read lots of high praise for Geoff Ryman's 'Air', concerning the impact on a small and remote Asian village of a test to beam the internet right into people's heads. So I bought a copy and got stuck in. However, I stopped reading after four chapters. Nothing wrong with the author's writing style or ability, it was just that the story wasn't to my taste. And I have so many books lined up waiting to be read that I don't persevere for long with one which I'm not enjoying.
-------------------------------------
A curious trend in the sales of my alternate World War 2 novel, 'The Foresight War'. Up to the end of last year, after three years of sales, more than twice as many copies had been ordered from the UK printers as from the US ones (it's Print On Demand, so copies are only printed as they are purchased). This didn't surprise me, as the principal character is British and the plot is very much focused on Britain and Germany. Since January, however, sales in the UK have declined while those in the USA have increased, to the extent that in this year so far US sales are 2.5 times higher than UK ones. Perhaps I've just run out of Brits interested in alternate WW2 stories!
The plot of 'Flood' assumes that the resultant surge from storm and tide combined would be high enough to overwhelm the Thames Barrier and inundate much of central London, with heavy casualties. There was a cast of stock characters: the hapless Meterological Office man who got the forecast wrong, delaying evacuation plans; the professor who had always argued that the Barrier was in the wrong place leaving London vulnerable to just such a threat; the divorced couple forced to work together because of their expert knowledge of the Barrier; the Metropolitan Police Commissioner trying to co-ordinate the response to the threat and subsequent disaster while worrying about her own daughters trapped in central London; the Deputy Prime Minister saddled with the responsibility of making very tough decisions in the absence abroad of the Prime Minister; and for contrast, the two workmen on the Underground system who found themselves trapped in the tunnels.
There was some interesting material in this. The CGI of the great wave travelling up the Thames and flooding one famous landmark after another was gripping. The operations of the government COBRA Committee, the difficult issues they grappled with, and the response to the disaster were all fairly convincingly, if somewhat patchily, portrayed (although I can't comment on their authenticity). However, for my taste the programme was over-dramatised and over-long: too much hysterical screaming and panicking, too much time spent on the various "human interest" sub-plots.
A pity really, because this is a genuine threat which needs to be treated seriously. When first built 25 years ago the Thames Barrier, which rises up to block the Thames when sea water levels threaten to flood London, was used only once or twice a year. As SE England continues to sink by a few mm a year (isostatic recovery from the last Ice Age still going on) and sea levels gradually rise, so the threat is increasing and the Barrier is deployed more often – 14 times in 2003. Furthermore, we seem to be on the receiving end of more frequent violent storms. The plot of the drama came too close to reality for comfort on 9 November 2007, when the Barrier was raised twice due to a storm surge and high tide combination, but fortunately they didn't quite coincide.
I would have welcomed a shorter, calmer and more realistic drama-documentary. In fact this subject has quite enough drama on its own, so I'd be happy with just a "what-if?" documentary, examining the growing probability of the threat, the likely consequences if it happened, how the authorities would respond, and what we should be doing to minimise this risk, since the Barrier will eventually become inadequate. They could retain that CGI of the floods, though – definitely worth seeing!
-------------------------------------
Something of a disappointment on the reading front this week. I had read lots of high praise for Geoff Ryman's 'Air', concerning the impact on a small and remote Asian village of a test to beam the internet right into people's heads. So I bought a copy and got stuck in. However, I stopped reading after four chapters. Nothing wrong with the author's writing style or ability, it was just that the story wasn't to my taste. And I have so many books lined up waiting to be read that I don't persevere for long with one which I'm not enjoying.
-------------------------------------
A curious trend in the sales of my alternate World War 2 novel, 'The Foresight War'. Up to the end of last year, after three years of sales, more than twice as many copies had been ordered from the UK printers as from the US ones (it's Print On Demand, so copies are only printed as they are purchased). This didn't surprise me, as the principal character is British and the plot is very much focused on Britain and Germany. Since January, however, sales in the UK have declined while those in the USA have increased, to the extent that in this year so far US sales are 2.5 times higher than UK ones. Perhaps I've just run out of Brits interested in alternate WW2 stories!
Friday, 2 May 2008
Dark Horizons Issue 52
The Spring 2008 edition of the British Fantasy Society's biannual publication contains the usual predominance of short stories flavoured with poems and articles (in this instance, just one article; a long interview with Charles de Lint by Jan Edwards). The cover design is by Dan Skinner, and there is a stand-alone illustration: 'More Tea?' by Chris Bell.
I can't say I'm a poetry fan but the contrast they provide with the prose adds to the interest. This time, one of them is traditional: 'The Twa Corbies' (for which a translation of words from Scots is helpfully provided). Most of the others are short and enigmatic; 'A Dinner Party' by Marion Pitman; 'Road To My Soul' by Laura Willis; and 'Pain in Every Measure' by Jo Fletcher; the exception being 'Walt Whitman Did It For Me, And Continues To Do It' by Robert Holdstock, a homage to the famous poet.
So to the short stories:
The Gentleman Assassin by Richard Hudson: a playful tale of a fictional assassin, told from the perspective of his creator.
Star-Changer by Rebecca Lusher (winner of the 2007 BFS Short Story Competition): trainee shape-changers undergo their first ritual test.
Behind the Curtain by Joel Lane: a willing vampire victim in a sordid future.
Withered by Meaghan Hope: an intriguing premise – a woman wakes with no memory of who she is, but realises that she is not human – ends abruptly, as if the first few pages had been extracted from a novel.
Flies by Jim Steel: an ironic tale describing the life of a group of early hominims who are conscious of their evolutionary status and govern their lives using modern management concepts and jargon. It reminded me of a story I read long ago (author and title forgotten), in which hominim mothers were wont to yell at crawling children; "Get up on your legs and walk – you want to undo millions of years of evolution?"
The Bequest by David A Riley: a supernatural horror story of demonic possession in a mundane contemporary family.
Keep off the Grass by Sally Quilford (runner-up in the 2007 BFS Short Story Competition): yet another dystopian future, a Britain run by robots among which the few surviving humans scavenge.
A varied mix of tales. The one which caught my attention most was Withered; I find that kind of plot appealing, and if Meaghan Hope ever extends it into a novel I'll be joining the queue to buy it.
I can't say I'm a poetry fan but the contrast they provide with the prose adds to the interest. This time, one of them is traditional: 'The Twa Corbies' (for which a translation of words from Scots is helpfully provided). Most of the others are short and enigmatic; 'A Dinner Party' by Marion Pitman; 'Road To My Soul' by Laura Willis; and 'Pain in Every Measure' by Jo Fletcher; the exception being 'Walt Whitman Did It For Me, And Continues To Do It' by Robert Holdstock, a homage to the famous poet.
So to the short stories:
The Gentleman Assassin by Richard Hudson: a playful tale of a fictional assassin, told from the perspective of his creator.
Star-Changer by Rebecca Lusher (winner of the 2007 BFS Short Story Competition): trainee shape-changers undergo their first ritual test.
Behind the Curtain by Joel Lane: a willing vampire victim in a sordid future.
Withered by Meaghan Hope: an intriguing premise – a woman wakes with no memory of who she is, but realises that she is not human – ends abruptly, as if the first few pages had been extracted from a novel.
Flies by Jim Steel: an ironic tale describing the life of a group of early hominims who are conscious of their evolutionary status and govern their lives using modern management concepts and jargon. It reminded me of a story I read long ago (author and title forgotten), in which hominim mothers were wont to yell at crawling children; "Get up on your legs and walk – you want to undo millions of years of evolution?"
The Bequest by David A Riley: a supernatural horror story of demonic possession in a mundane contemporary family.
Keep off the Grass by Sally Quilford (runner-up in the 2007 BFS Short Story Competition): yet another dystopian future, a Britain run by robots among which the few surviving humans scavenge.
A varied mix of tales. The one which caught my attention most was Withered; I find that kind of plot appealing, and if Meaghan Hope ever extends it into a novel I'll be joining the queue to buy it.
Friday, 25 April 2008
Boy in Darkness by Mervyn Peake; the New Scientist on Evolution
Boy in Darkness by Mervyn Peake
This novella (112 pages, c. 25,000 words) is set in the world of Titus Groan and Gormenghast, although they are not named, being referred to only as the Boy and the Castle. It is the Boy's 14th birthday and he wearies of the endless rounds of official celebrations to mark the event, so he takes an opportunity to escape into the wider world beyond. He encounters three strange beings known as the Goat, the Hyena and the Lamb, and faces a terrible danger. That's about as much as I can say about the plot without spoiling it for potential readers. My edition of the book (Hodder Signature, 1996) is illustrated by P. J. Lynch.
It is a very strange story, even by the standards of Gormenghast; the three beings are entirely fantastical and the plot very bizarre, being more in the nature of a fairy tale (of the original Grimm sort). What comes through most strongly is the poetic beauty of Peake's writing. Take this passage describing a peal of bells to celebrate the Boy's birthday; for me, this brought back memories of the strange, rich flavour of the Gormenghast books:
"A bell began to chime, and then another and then a swarm of bells. Harsh bells and mellow ones: bells of many metals and many ages: bells of fear and bells of anger: gay bells and mournful; thick bells and clear bells….the flat and the resonant, the exultant and the sad. For a few moments they filled the air together, a murmuration, with a clamour of tongues that spread their echoes over the great shell of the Castle like a shawl of metal. Then one by one the tumult weakened and scores of bells fell away until there was nothing but an uneasy silence, until, infinitely far away, a slow and husky voice stumbled its way over the roof-tops and the Boy at the window heard the last of the thick notes die into silence."
Peake is not for everyone, but if you are a fan of the Gormenghast series (as I am) then this one should be added to your collection.
-----------------------------------------------------------
On Evolution
A valuable summary in the New Scientist magazine (19 April issue) correcting some common misconceptions about evolution. This article, plus more, is included on their website HERE and all SF writers should study it in order to avoid errors (possibly I was a bit ambitious with the marsupial saurians in Scales…)
A very brief summary of some examples of misconceptions:
Everything is an adaptation: it isn't true that everything has a purpose, some features of life are just accidental hold-overs from earlier developments, such as the appendix and the male nipple.
Evolution can't be disproved: in theory it could be, but all of the evidence collected so far supports it, and no evidence has been found to disprove it.
Evolution is limitlessly creative: there are limits (at least on Earth) to what has been, and probably can be, developed. Every intermediate stage needs to have had some survival benefit (e.g. primitive forms of eye are still better than nothing in detecting objects).
Natural selection leads to ever greater complexity: it can actually lead to greater simplicity since unnecessary features frequently disappear (e.g. eyeless cave fish).
Evolution produces perfection: "you don't have to be perfectly adapted to survive, you just have to be as well adapted as your competitors". Examples of inefficiencies in human beings are the eyes (birds have much superior vision), the lungs (much of their capacity is wasted because of the two-way air-flow; birds have a much more efficient one-way flow) and so on.
Natural selection is the only means of evolution: random genetic drift has a great influence, with chance often deciding which mutations survive and which don't.
It doesn't matter if people don't grasp evolution: our civilisation is facing many challenges which need some understanding of how science works to appreciate, and make sensible judgements about. "Any modern society which bases major decisions on superstition rather than reality is heading for disaster". Which makes it rather worrying that in a recent survey, when asked "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals: true or false?", only 40% of US citizens polled "true", 39% "false" and 21% "not sure". In contrast the "true" response from most western European countries and Japan was around 75%.
Among those not believing in evolution (according to their public statements) were several of the initial candidates for the nomination for the Presidency of the USA; a staggering admission of scientific illiteracy, in the same league as admitting that they couldn't read or write. Let's hope that the most powerful and influential nation on Earth ends up with a leader who has a much better grasp of scientific arguments than the present incumbent.
This novella (112 pages, c. 25,000 words) is set in the world of Titus Groan and Gormenghast, although they are not named, being referred to only as the Boy and the Castle. It is the Boy's 14th birthday and he wearies of the endless rounds of official celebrations to mark the event, so he takes an opportunity to escape into the wider world beyond. He encounters three strange beings known as the Goat, the Hyena and the Lamb, and faces a terrible danger. That's about as much as I can say about the plot without spoiling it for potential readers. My edition of the book (Hodder Signature, 1996) is illustrated by P. J. Lynch.
It is a very strange story, even by the standards of Gormenghast; the three beings are entirely fantastical and the plot very bizarre, being more in the nature of a fairy tale (of the original Grimm sort). What comes through most strongly is the poetic beauty of Peake's writing. Take this passage describing a peal of bells to celebrate the Boy's birthday; for me, this brought back memories of the strange, rich flavour of the Gormenghast books:
"A bell began to chime, and then another and then a swarm of bells. Harsh bells and mellow ones: bells of many metals and many ages: bells of fear and bells of anger: gay bells and mournful; thick bells and clear bells….the flat and the resonant, the exultant and the sad. For a few moments they filled the air together, a murmuration, with a clamour of tongues that spread their echoes over the great shell of the Castle like a shawl of metal. Then one by one the tumult weakened and scores of bells fell away until there was nothing but an uneasy silence, until, infinitely far away, a slow and husky voice stumbled its way over the roof-tops and the Boy at the window heard the last of the thick notes die into silence."
Peake is not for everyone, but if you are a fan of the Gormenghast series (as I am) then this one should be added to your collection.
-----------------------------------------------------------
On Evolution
A valuable summary in the New Scientist magazine (19 April issue) correcting some common misconceptions about evolution. This article, plus more, is included on their website HERE and all SF writers should study it in order to avoid errors (possibly I was a bit ambitious with the marsupial saurians in Scales…)
A very brief summary of some examples of misconceptions:
Everything is an adaptation: it isn't true that everything has a purpose, some features of life are just accidental hold-overs from earlier developments, such as the appendix and the male nipple.
Evolution can't be disproved: in theory it could be, but all of the evidence collected so far supports it, and no evidence has been found to disprove it.
Evolution is limitlessly creative: there are limits (at least on Earth) to what has been, and probably can be, developed. Every intermediate stage needs to have had some survival benefit (e.g. primitive forms of eye are still better than nothing in detecting objects).
Natural selection leads to ever greater complexity: it can actually lead to greater simplicity since unnecessary features frequently disappear (e.g. eyeless cave fish).
Evolution produces perfection: "you don't have to be perfectly adapted to survive, you just have to be as well adapted as your competitors". Examples of inefficiencies in human beings are the eyes (birds have much superior vision), the lungs (much of their capacity is wasted because of the two-way air-flow; birds have a much more efficient one-way flow) and so on.
Natural selection is the only means of evolution: random genetic drift has a great influence, with chance often deciding which mutations survive and which don't.
It doesn't matter if people don't grasp evolution: our civilisation is facing many challenges which need some understanding of how science works to appreciate, and make sensible judgements about. "Any modern society which bases major decisions on superstition rather than reality is heading for disaster". Which makes it rather worrying that in a recent survey, when asked "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals: true or false?", only 40% of US citizens polled "true", 39% "false" and 21% "not sure". In contrast the "true" response from most western European countries and Japan was around 75%.
Among those not believing in evolution (according to their public statements) were several of the initial candidates for the nomination for the Presidency of the USA; a staggering admission of scientific illiteracy, in the same league as admitting that they couldn't read or write. Let's hope that the most powerful and influential nation on Earth ends up with a leader who has a much better grasp of scientific arguments than the present incumbent.
Friday, 18 April 2008
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
This sequel to Hyperion (reviewed on this blog on 28 March 08) continues where the first volume left off. The pilgrims are still in the valley of the Time Tombs on Hyperion (where most of them remain, more or less, for the duration of the tale), and one of the two main plot threads follows their stories as they try to solve the mystery of the Tombs while constantly threatened by the deadly Shrike. Interleaved with this is the first-person viewpoint of a new character, a second reincarnation of the poet John Keats created by one of the Artificial Intelligences of the TechnoCore. He is attached to the staff of Meina Gladstone, CEO of the human Hegemony of the Web, whose worlds are linked by the Core-run farcaster system; effectively teleportation gates. Gladstone is trying to cope with the crisis of an unexpectedly strong Ouster attack on the Hyperion system, which deepens when simultaneous attacks are reported on other Web worlds.
The plot switches locations between various Web worlds, what appears to be a recreation of the long-destroyed Earth, and different futures on Hyperion as the Time Tombs, travelling back from the future, begin to open. All (or, at least, most) is eventually revealed in a series of dramatic conclusions in which much of what had previously been understood is turned on its head.
The Fall of Hyperion sustains the remarkable inventive energy of the first volume, the constant references to Keats and his poetry, and the very high quality of the writing. This last reminds me most of Iain M Banks, although without the wry sense of humour. It also sustains the same leisurely pacing of the plot, which robs it what should have been an increasing sense of urgency as the climaxes are approached; only in the final pages is there any real sense of drama.
The first two Hyperion books are an impressive achievement which deserve the praise lavished on them. For me, the plot was too drawn-out and the writing too dispassionate to generate the kind of excitement which would have made them a great read rather than an admirable one. I have the two Endymion novels, which are distant sequels to the Hyperion ones, on my "to be read" shelf, but I think I'll have a break from Simmons before I get stuck into those…
The plot switches locations between various Web worlds, what appears to be a recreation of the long-destroyed Earth, and different futures on Hyperion as the Time Tombs, travelling back from the future, begin to open. All (or, at least, most) is eventually revealed in a series of dramatic conclusions in which much of what had previously been understood is turned on its head.
The Fall of Hyperion sustains the remarkable inventive energy of the first volume, the constant references to Keats and his poetry, and the very high quality of the writing. This last reminds me most of Iain M Banks, although without the wry sense of humour. It also sustains the same leisurely pacing of the plot, which robs it what should have been an increasing sense of urgency as the climaxes are approached; only in the final pages is there any real sense of drama.
The first two Hyperion books are an impressive achievement which deserve the praise lavished on them. For me, the plot was too drawn-out and the writing too dispassionate to generate the kind of excitement which would have made them a great read rather than an admirable one. I have the two Endymion novels, which are distant sequels to the Hyperion ones, on my "to be read" shelf, but I think I'll have a break from Simmons before I get stuck into those…
Saturday, 12 April 2008
The end of civilisation?
The New Scientist magazine – recommended, by the way, to anyone who likes to keep up with developments across science – included a couple of linked articles by Deborah MacKenzie in its 5 April 2008 issue, concerning threats to our civilisation. Always an interesting topic to SF fans!
To summarise, the general thesis runs something like this: simple civilisations tend to be relatively unaffected by disasters, unless drastic environmental change (e.g. prolonged drought) makes their location uninhabitable. So although 14th century Europe suffered a one-third loss in population due to the Black Death, the civilisation continued. This was because it was essentially a rural, subsistence society, with urban populations being small. The survivors just carried on as usual, and all they needed could be grown or made locally.
Increasing the level of complexity of a civilisation increases its resilience, up to a point. Local disasters, which would previously have had major local effects, can be mitigated by rushing in aid. The threat of epidemics can be countered by the rapid development of medical countermeasures. However, as a civilisation becomes even more complex and tightly integrated, as ours is, its vulnerability increases. An economic shock affecting one major region affects everyone (as we are seeing now). Commercial economics drives efficiency, which leads to such changes as concentrating manufacture of a product in as few locations as possible; preferably only one, located in a part of the world where the labour is cheapest. Clearly such a system is more vulnerable to local disaster or transport interruptions than distributed production. This is exacerbated by the fashion for "just in time" deliveries, which means that only limited stocks are kept in warehouses; for instance, cities typically contain only a three-day supply of food.
This emphasises that we are highly dependent on the continuous functioning of our transport infrastructure. Not just to supply food, but just about everything we need, including medical supplies to hospitals and fuel to power stations and road transport filling stations. Power failures would cripple our ability to respond to crises, or even to find out what is going on. They would also lead to the rapid spoiling of refrigerated foods; in fact, the inability to buy anything (electronic shop tills wouldn't work). If transport breaks down, we will be plunged into deep trouble very quickly.
But what could have such a widespread effect on transport? MacKenzie suggests an international pandemic, such as the post-WW1 influenza outbreak which killed far more people than the war. She points out that this only had a 3% death rate, whereas in the cases so far of the H5N1 "bird flu" passing to humans, the death rate has been 63%. If bird flu (or some other virus) mutates to be highly infectious, our international air travel system could distribute it around the globe very quickly, perhaps more quickly than we could analyse the virus and devise, manufacture and distribute medical countermeasures.
The natural human response to a pandemic would be to stay at home; either due to sickness, or to look after sick relatives, or to keep from being infected. If enough transport workers are sick or stay at home, the transport system will fail. If enough refinery workers stay at home, no more fuel will be produced. If enough power station workers stay at home, the power will fail. If enough water supply workers stay at home, the water will fail. Very often nowadays, the continuous functioning of such essential services depends on a few key individuals. (A personal anecdote: I once attended a conference based in a college building. It started late, because the caretaker didn't turn up on time; and he was the only man with the keys.)
MacKenzie goes on to suggest that the increasing vulnerability and specialisation of complex civilisations may make their eventual collapse inevitable. This is not a new thesis; Jared Diamond covered such ground in his 2005 book 'Collapse', as did Joseph Tainter in his 1988 book 'The Collapse of Complex Societies', which examined the ways in which all previous civilisations have collapsed. We are not as immune from that as we might like to think (naturally, every civilisation has assumed it will last forever). Even without such a dramatic event as a pandemic, the increasing pressures on limited supplies of fresh water, fuel, food and other raw materials, are eventually likely to make our present way of life unsustainable. Climate change will exacerbate these problems, because our systems of agriculture are finely-tuned for our present patterns of rainfall, and much of our urban and transport infrastructure to existing sea levels. Any major international disruption, for whatever cause, will hit the confidence of the international financial markets on which the functioning of our civilisation depends.
What can be done? Those societies which would be least affected by major collapse would be rural ones with self-sufficient lifestyles (preferably located a long way away from densely populated urban areas) but it isn't feasible for most of us to live like that. Some measures will help stave off the risk of collapse, but they will not be easy to implement because they would be uneconomic if left to the market. More distributed production of essentials to spread the risk and minimise the importance of transport would certainly help. More use of distributed power and other supply systems would also add resilience. The local (even domestic) stockpiling of long-lasting foods and other essentials would be very prudent. So would disaster planning which takes into account the potential risks of a major pandemic and implements plans to minimise the effects (current planning tends to assume a death rate of no more than 3%).
MacKenzie points out that only one complex society has ever survived collapse, and that was by deliberate downsizing: the empire of Byzantium lost most of its territory to the Arabs, and responded by simplifying their society; moving out of most cities, switching to more of a barter economy, and changing their professional army to a peasant militia. Education levels declined.
A final thought: if the worst happens and our civilisation does collapse, it does not of course mean the end of humanity; although the world population would shrink drastically and revert to an earlier and much simpler form of existence. Recovery from such a disaster to anything like our present level of civilisation may not be easy. We have already mined out much of the easily-obtained fuel and other raw materials, so humanity could be caught in the Catch-22: before advanced technologies could be developed again, raw materials would be needed which could only be extracted by the use of advanced technologies, even if records of their locations had survived. What happens to our civilisation is therefore of critical importance to humanity's future.
To summarise, the general thesis runs something like this: simple civilisations tend to be relatively unaffected by disasters, unless drastic environmental change (e.g. prolonged drought) makes their location uninhabitable. So although 14th century Europe suffered a one-third loss in population due to the Black Death, the civilisation continued. This was because it was essentially a rural, subsistence society, with urban populations being small. The survivors just carried on as usual, and all they needed could be grown or made locally.
Increasing the level of complexity of a civilisation increases its resilience, up to a point. Local disasters, which would previously have had major local effects, can be mitigated by rushing in aid. The threat of epidemics can be countered by the rapid development of medical countermeasures. However, as a civilisation becomes even more complex and tightly integrated, as ours is, its vulnerability increases. An economic shock affecting one major region affects everyone (as we are seeing now). Commercial economics drives efficiency, which leads to such changes as concentrating manufacture of a product in as few locations as possible; preferably only one, located in a part of the world where the labour is cheapest. Clearly such a system is more vulnerable to local disaster or transport interruptions than distributed production. This is exacerbated by the fashion for "just in time" deliveries, which means that only limited stocks are kept in warehouses; for instance, cities typically contain only a three-day supply of food.
This emphasises that we are highly dependent on the continuous functioning of our transport infrastructure. Not just to supply food, but just about everything we need, including medical supplies to hospitals and fuel to power stations and road transport filling stations. Power failures would cripple our ability to respond to crises, or even to find out what is going on. They would also lead to the rapid spoiling of refrigerated foods; in fact, the inability to buy anything (electronic shop tills wouldn't work). If transport breaks down, we will be plunged into deep trouble very quickly.
But what could have such a widespread effect on transport? MacKenzie suggests an international pandemic, such as the post-WW1 influenza outbreak which killed far more people than the war. She points out that this only had a 3% death rate, whereas in the cases so far of the H5N1 "bird flu" passing to humans, the death rate has been 63%. If bird flu (or some other virus) mutates to be highly infectious, our international air travel system could distribute it around the globe very quickly, perhaps more quickly than we could analyse the virus and devise, manufacture and distribute medical countermeasures.
The natural human response to a pandemic would be to stay at home; either due to sickness, or to look after sick relatives, or to keep from being infected. If enough transport workers are sick or stay at home, the transport system will fail. If enough refinery workers stay at home, no more fuel will be produced. If enough power station workers stay at home, the power will fail. If enough water supply workers stay at home, the water will fail. Very often nowadays, the continuous functioning of such essential services depends on a few key individuals. (A personal anecdote: I once attended a conference based in a college building. It started late, because the caretaker didn't turn up on time; and he was the only man with the keys.)
MacKenzie goes on to suggest that the increasing vulnerability and specialisation of complex civilisations may make their eventual collapse inevitable. This is not a new thesis; Jared Diamond covered such ground in his 2005 book 'Collapse', as did Joseph Tainter in his 1988 book 'The Collapse of Complex Societies', which examined the ways in which all previous civilisations have collapsed. We are not as immune from that as we might like to think (naturally, every civilisation has assumed it will last forever). Even without such a dramatic event as a pandemic, the increasing pressures on limited supplies of fresh water, fuel, food and other raw materials, are eventually likely to make our present way of life unsustainable. Climate change will exacerbate these problems, because our systems of agriculture are finely-tuned for our present patterns of rainfall, and much of our urban and transport infrastructure to existing sea levels. Any major international disruption, for whatever cause, will hit the confidence of the international financial markets on which the functioning of our civilisation depends.
What can be done? Those societies which would be least affected by major collapse would be rural ones with self-sufficient lifestyles (preferably located a long way away from densely populated urban areas) but it isn't feasible for most of us to live like that. Some measures will help stave off the risk of collapse, but they will not be easy to implement because they would be uneconomic if left to the market. More distributed production of essentials to spread the risk and minimise the importance of transport would certainly help. More use of distributed power and other supply systems would also add resilience. The local (even domestic) stockpiling of long-lasting foods and other essentials would be very prudent. So would disaster planning which takes into account the potential risks of a major pandemic and implements plans to minimise the effects (current planning tends to assume a death rate of no more than 3%).
MacKenzie points out that only one complex society has ever survived collapse, and that was by deliberate downsizing: the empire of Byzantium lost most of its territory to the Arabs, and responded by simplifying their society; moving out of most cities, switching to more of a barter economy, and changing their professional army to a peasant militia. Education levels declined.
A final thought: if the worst happens and our civilisation does collapse, it does not of course mean the end of humanity; although the world population would shrink drastically and revert to an earlier and much simpler form of existence. Recovery from such a disaster to anything like our present level of civilisation may not be easy. We have already mined out much of the easily-obtained fuel and other raw materials, so humanity could be caught in the Catch-22: before advanced technologies could be developed again, raw materials would be needed which could only be extracted by the use of advanced technologies, even if records of their locations had survived. What happens to our civilisation is therefore of critical importance to humanity's future.
Saturday, 5 April 2008
Film 'V for Vendetta' and TV series 'The Last Enemy'
V for Vendetta (2006) is set in a future dystopian England in which security fears have led to the imposition of a police state, with tight controls on public behaviour and suppression of dissent. A girl (Natalie Portman) becomes caught up in the plans of a vengeful and resourceful man, known only as "V", who is planning the violent overthrow of the government. He always wears a mask and costume to represent Guy Fawkes, and it is suggested that he was badly disfigured by an official experiment which went wrong.
I'm not a fan of comics, and when I sat down to watch the film I didn't realise that it was based on a graphic novel. The comic-strip elements are clear enough: not only the man in a mask, but his improbable resources and apparently superhuman abilities with knives. What is slightly confusing is that the rest of the film appears to be a lot more serious in intent, using well-known actors and sending clear messages about the authoritarian direction in which the UK seems to be gradually but inexorably heading, and the dangers which lie down that path. I'm not sure that the serious and comic-strip elements work all that well together, but it was an interesting attempt and worth watching.
The theme of 'V for Vendetta' reminded me of the recent BBC TV series The Last Enemy (shown in five episodes, totalling 330 minutes, in February and March). This was much more realistic, concerning a near-future British government plan to introduce a national "total surveillance" system, linking CCTVs, ID cards and other databases so that anyone can be immediately located and tracked, and comprehensive information about them obtained. A famous but unworldly mathematician is roped in to help sell the idea to the public, and also becomes involved in a parallel plot line concerning a mysterious and lethal ailment apparently caused by secret genetic experiments. Together with a few resourceful friends he tries to expose what is going on but, unlike 'V', the story does not have a happy ending.
The plot of The Last Enemy is really getting close to the truth now, because our government does indeed want to introduce a comprehensive system linking everything about everyone that is recorded on official electronic databases, and providing access to such data via the planned ID cards. There's a lot of debate about the introduction of the ID cards (which is going to be voluntary for most people: at least, at first…). In my view, too much of the discussion misses the point. I see no harm in ID cards. I carry one now – a driving licence with my name and address, date of birth and photo on it – and occasionally find it useful in confirming my identity. The main issue is the vast database which the government wants to put behind it, way beyond anything attempted anywhere else, and that's a problem for various reasons. The loss of privacy, the certainty of error in inputting the data, and the horrifying prospect of a really comprehensive identity theft if it's ever hacked (or a civil servant with input access is bribed or coerced). The catastrophic record of government failures in introducing computer-based systems far less sophisticated and complex than this is another reason to regard this idea as misconceived. As is the fact that the excuse for introducing the system is international terrorism, but all such recent attacks in the UK have been by British citizens in good standing who would have been perfectly entitled to be issued ID cards, so where's the benefit there? Oh well, rant over - for now.
I'm not a fan of comics, and when I sat down to watch the film I didn't realise that it was based on a graphic novel. The comic-strip elements are clear enough: not only the man in a mask, but his improbable resources and apparently superhuman abilities with knives. What is slightly confusing is that the rest of the film appears to be a lot more serious in intent, using well-known actors and sending clear messages about the authoritarian direction in which the UK seems to be gradually but inexorably heading, and the dangers which lie down that path. I'm not sure that the serious and comic-strip elements work all that well together, but it was an interesting attempt and worth watching.
The theme of 'V for Vendetta' reminded me of the recent BBC TV series The Last Enemy (shown in five episodes, totalling 330 minutes, in February and March). This was much more realistic, concerning a near-future British government plan to introduce a national "total surveillance" system, linking CCTVs, ID cards and other databases so that anyone can be immediately located and tracked, and comprehensive information about them obtained. A famous but unworldly mathematician is roped in to help sell the idea to the public, and also becomes involved in a parallel plot line concerning a mysterious and lethal ailment apparently caused by secret genetic experiments. Together with a few resourceful friends he tries to expose what is going on but, unlike 'V', the story does not have a happy ending.
The plot of The Last Enemy is really getting close to the truth now, because our government does indeed want to introduce a comprehensive system linking everything about everyone that is recorded on official electronic databases, and providing access to such data via the planned ID cards. There's a lot of debate about the introduction of the ID cards (which is going to be voluntary for most people: at least, at first…). In my view, too much of the discussion misses the point. I see no harm in ID cards. I carry one now – a driving licence with my name and address, date of birth and photo on it – and occasionally find it useful in confirming my identity. The main issue is the vast database which the government wants to put behind it, way beyond anything attempted anywhere else, and that's a problem for various reasons. The loss of privacy, the certainty of error in inputting the data, and the horrifying prospect of a really comprehensive identity theft if it's ever hacked (or a civil servant with input access is bribed or coerced). The catastrophic record of government failures in introducing computer-based systems far less sophisticated and complex than this is another reason to regard this idea as misconceived. As is the fact that the excuse for introducing the system is international terrorism, but all such recent attacks in the UK have been by British citizens in good standing who would have been perfectly entitled to be issued ID cards, so where's the benefit there? Oh well, rant over - for now.
Friday, 28 March 2008
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
I kept reading about how good the two Hyperion books were so I eventually bought an omnibus edition including both Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. It is the size of a substantial doorstop so it sat on my shelf for a few months while I found excuses to read shorter books. However, I eventually stiffened my sinews, gritted my teeth and got stuck in.
It isn't quite what I expected, which was a conventional, if superior, space opera. In fact, it's an unusual book with an unconventional structure and an inconclusive ending (just as well I have its sequel available, or I'd be feeling frustrated). The setting is a 29th century human commonwealth known as the Hegemony, which spreads over a couple of hundred worlds in one sector of the galaxy. Two other groups with a major influence on events are the Ousters, a renegade human group who had departed long before to live in space away from the rest of humanity and are now in conflict with the Hegemony, and the TechnoCore, consisting of human-created artificial intelligences which had thrown off human control and now had a parallel existence, mostly virtual but occasionally via human avatars. One of the avatars with a significant role is a recreation of the poet John Keats; the author is clearly a fan.
The plot concerns seven very diverse people called by The Church of the Shrike to undertake a hazardous pilgrimage to the Time Tombs on the remote world of Hyperion. These mysterious, empty objects predate humanity and are surrounded by strange time eddies. They are also haunted by the deadly Shrike, a legendary being of only partly-glimpsed form consisting mainly of red multi-faceted eyes and steel blades, with the ability to appear and disappear at will. When the seven arrive on Hyperion, they are greeted by chaos; the Shrike has broken away from the constraints which had kept it close to the Time Tombs and is roaming the country, killing at will. The spaceport is besieged by the entire human population who are desperate to leave. Despite this, the seven proceed with their pilgrimage across an empty land, believing that they stand a chance of unravelling the mystery of the Tombs and the Shrike.
The seven were previously strangers to one another so they spend their travelling time telling their stories in turn to the group in order to explain their interest in the Tombs, and the novel principally consists of these stories. This structure is reminiscent of (and presumably inspired by) Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The stories are an astonishingly varied and inventive collection, ranging from a poet whose muse was the Shrike, through a legendary military commander who appeared to have been manipulated by it, to the elderly father of a daughter who, as a young archaeologist, had been caught in a time anomaly while exploring the tombs and from then on had lost rather than gained age, and was now a baby in his arms.
Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I have a general preference for shorter and faster-paced novels. The deliberate pacing of Hyperion coupled with the story-telling format (which, contrary to the general advice for novel writing, largely consists of "telling" not "showing") sacrifices some of the buzz of excitement of a good thriller. However, Hyperion is very well written, highly original and intriguing. I am thoroughly hooked and looking forward to reading the sequel.
It isn't quite what I expected, which was a conventional, if superior, space opera. In fact, it's an unusual book with an unconventional structure and an inconclusive ending (just as well I have its sequel available, or I'd be feeling frustrated). The setting is a 29th century human commonwealth known as the Hegemony, which spreads over a couple of hundred worlds in one sector of the galaxy. Two other groups with a major influence on events are the Ousters, a renegade human group who had departed long before to live in space away from the rest of humanity and are now in conflict with the Hegemony, and the TechnoCore, consisting of human-created artificial intelligences which had thrown off human control and now had a parallel existence, mostly virtual but occasionally via human avatars. One of the avatars with a significant role is a recreation of the poet John Keats; the author is clearly a fan.
The plot concerns seven very diverse people called by The Church of the Shrike to undertake a hazardous pilgrimage to the Time Tombs on the remote world of Hyperion. These mysterious, empty objects predate humanity and are surrounded by strange time eddies. They are also haunted by the deadly Shrike, a legendary being of only partly-glimpsed form consisting mainly of red multi-faceted eyes and steel blades, with the ability to appear and disappear at will. When the seven arrive on Hyperion, they are greeted by chaos; the Shrike has broken away from the constraints which had kept it close to the Time Tombs and is roaming the country, killing at will. The spaceport is besieged by the entire human population who are desperate to leave. Despite this, the seven proceed with their pilgrimage across an empty land, believing that they stand a chance of unravelling the mystery of the Tombs and the Shrike.
The seven were previously strangers to one another so they spend their travelling time telling their stories in turn to the group in order to explain their interest in the Tombs, and the novel principally consists of these stories. This structure is reminiscent of (and presumably inspired by) Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The stories are an astonishingly varied and inventive collection, ranging from a poet whose muse was the Shrike, through a legendary military commander who appeared to have been manipulated by it, to the elderly father of a daughter who, as a young archaeologist, had been caught in a time anomaly while exploring the tombs and from then on had lost rather than gained age, and was now a baby in his arms.
Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I have a general preference for shorter and faster-paced novels. The deliberate pacing of Hyperion coupled with the story-telling format (which, contrary to the general advice for novel writing, largely consists of "telling" not "showing") sacrifices some of the buzz of excitement of a good thriller. However, Hyperion is very well written, highly original and intriguing. I am thoroughly hooked and looking forward to reading the sequel.
Friday, 21 March 2008
Interzone 215 and Vertigo
April's edition of the bimonthly SFF magazine contains the usual news column plus book, film and TV reviews (although in this case the book reviews are various reviewers' books of the year: a useful checklist to make sure that I haven't missed anything). There's a long interview of Mike Carey, author of the Felix Castor series and a comic book storyteller, exploring the way he works and the thinking behind his books. Then there are the usual half-dozen short stories illustrated by Darren Winter (who also did the cover), Warwick Fraser-Coombe and Chris Nurse.
The Endling by Jamie Barras: There is a fashion for writing stories which plunge into a strange environment with no explanation, leaving it to the reader to try to figure out what is going on as the tale progresses. This can work very well, but it requires careful judgment by the writer, who needs to provide enough clues along the way to keep the reader on board. I have to say that this story lost me from beginning to end; even after I had finished I wasn't really sure what it was all about. Too many strange settings and characters, some obviously non-human, too many unfamiliar terms and concepts thrown in with too little context to work out what they might be. I did consider reading it again to see if I could make better sense of it the second time around, but the story's quite long and life's too short.
Dragonfly Summer by Patrick Samphire: Another oddball, although for a different reason. This features two men and two women returning for the first time to a place they had visited together as students – a windmill by the sea – and concerns their relationships and the events which happened then. Except that they find there is no windmill there, and never had been. Not a bad story, but not obviously SFF.
Crystal Nights by Greg Egan: One of the world's richest men is paying the best programmers to evolve artificial intelligence by developing initially simple virtual beings then applying a carefully controlled process of natural selection. With the aid of a new generation of superfast computers, the evolutionary process is extremely quick and soon the AIs are beginning to outstrip their human creators, with unexpected results.
Holding Pattern by Joy Marchand: An airliner in a holding pattern, a harassed stewardess, and a cast of passengers including an alien in human disguise. The alien and the stewardess are the only two who realise that they've been in this situation before; over and over again.
Street Hero by Will McIntosh: A self-educated street tough tries to find a reason for existence in a dystopian near-future America; a popular setting for recent Interzone stories, in this case one in which the genetic modification genie is well and truly out of the bottle (or, rather, the secure laboratory). Lethal designer viruses strike without warning, and modified bamboo springs up with terrifying speed to clog fields and cities. However, there is a purpose behind it.
The Imitation Game by Rudy Rucker: The homosexual computer genius Alan Turing tries to arrange an illegal tryst in 1954 Manchester. But did he really die of cyanide poisoning as the history books say?
A mixed bag this time, with not so many hits for me – or, to look at it another way, a selection for various tastes.
-------------------------------------------
The other week I read Vertigo by W G Sebald. This is not science fiction or fantasy, but kind of mixture of history, autobiography and travelogue, with what seems to be a large dose of fiction thrown in. I bought it because it had received glowing reviews, being touted by The Literati as one of the books Which Must Be Read. Well, it was sufficiently well-written and interesting for me to read to the end, but I can't say that it was a life-changing experience. The narrative was very disjointed, the characterisation slight, and there was no focus.
Oh well, I suppose I'd better get back inside my genre ghetto. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised to be disappointed by Great Modern Literature. After all, look at modern art (but only if you feel like a laugh). I felt like cheering when several years ago Ivan Massow, then chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, criticised much modern art as "pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat". I can't find the exact quote now, but if I recall correctly he added something like: "Great art is a combination of imagination and technical skill. Skill without imagination is craftsmanship. Imagination without skill is modern conceptual art". He was forced to resign, of course: the Emperor which is the modern art establishment doesn't like anyone pointing out that its wonderful new clothes don't amount to anything.
The Endling by Jamie Barras: There is a fashion for writing stories which plunge into a strange environment with no explanation, leaving it to the reader to try to figure out what is going on as the tale progresses. This can work very well, but it requires careful judgment by the writer, who needs to provide enough clues along the way to keep the reader on board. I have to say that this story lost me from beginning to end; even after I had finished I wasn't really sure what it was all about. Too many strange settings and characters, some obviously non-human, too many unfamiliar terms and concepts thrown in with too little context to work out what they might be. I did consider reading it again to see if I could make better sense of it the second time around, but the story's quite long and life's too short.
Dragonfly Summer by Patrick Samphire: Another oddball, although for a different reason. This features two men and two women returning for the first time to a place they had visited together as students – a windmill by the sea – and concerns their relationships and the events which happened then. Except that they find there is no windmill there, and never had been. Not a bad story, but not obviously SFF.
Crystal Nights by Greg Egan: One of the world's richest men is paying the best programmers to evolve artificial intelligence by developing initially simple virtual beings then applying a carefully controlled process of natural selection. With the aid of a new generation of superfast computers, the evolutionary process is extremely quick and soon the AIs are beginning to outstrip their human creators, with unexpected results.
Holding Pattern by Joy Marchand: An airliner in a holding pattern, a harassed stewardess, and a cast of passengers including an alien in human disguise. The alien and the stewardess are the only two who realise that they've been in this situation before; over and over again.
Street Hero by Will McIntosh: A self-educated street tough tries to find a reason for existence in a dystopian near-future America; a popular setting for recent Interzone stories, in this case one in which the genetic modification genie is well and truly out of the bottle (or, rather, the secure laboratory). Lethal designer viruses strike without warning, and modified bamboo springs up with terrifying speed to clog fields and cities. However, there is a purpose behind it.
The Imitation Game by Rudy Rucker: The homosexual computer genius Alan Turing tries to arrange an illegal tryst in 1954 Manchester. But did he really die of cyanide poisoning as the history books say?
A mixed bag this time, with not so many hits for me – or, to look at it another way, a selection for various tastes.
-------------------------------------------
The other week I read Vertigo by W G Sebald. This is not science fiction or fantasy, but kind of mixture of history, autobiography and travelogue, with what seems to be a large dose of fiction thrown in. I bought it because it had received glowing reviews, being touted by The Literati as one of the books Which Must Be Read. Well, it was sufficiently well-written and interesting for me to read to the end, but I can't say that it was a life-changing experience. The narrative was very disjointed, the characterisation slight, and there was no focus.
Oh well, I suppose I'd better get back inside my genre ghetto. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised to be disappointed by Great Modern Literature. After all, look at modern art (but only if you feel like a laugh). I felt like cheering when several years ago Ivan Massow, then chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, criticised much modern art as "pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat". I can't find the exact quote now, but if I recall correctly he added something like: "Great art is a combination of imagination and technical skill. Skill without imagination is craftsmanship. Imagination without skill is modern conceptual art". He was forced to resign, of course: the Emperor which is the modern art establishment doesn't like anyone pointing out that its wonderful new clothes don't amount to anything.
Friday, 14 March 2008
Mammoth by John Varley
John Varley was one of my favourite authors in the 1980s, and his Gaean trilogy (Titan, Wizard and Demon) is still among my twenty favourite SFF works. Somehow I've managed to miss reading anything by him since then, so I opened Mammoth with anticipation.
The time is the near future, and an intact mammoth is found frozen solid in Canada. Lying alongside the body are the equally frozen corpses of a man and a woman - the man wearing a wristwatch and carrying a metal briefcase. Not an original idea, but a good start for a time-travel mystery. We are soon introduced to the main characters: Howard Christian, one of the richest men on the planet and obsessed with the idea of using frozen mammoth sperm to breed a mammoth/elephant cross; Matt Wright, the brilliant mathematician he recruits to solve the puzzle of the strange device in the briefcase which he believes to be a time machine; Susan Morgan, the vet and circus trainer recruited to oversee the pregnant elephants; and Warburton, Christian's formidable fixer.
In the early chapters, the plot is interrupted by extracts from a briefing about mammoths aimed at young people; a device to fill in some of the background. Despite these interruptions, the story rattles along at a good pace, with Wright and Morgan transported back into the past and returning accompanied by some live mammoths. So far, an entertaining and gripping adventure. Then, about half-way through, the story grinds to a halt. It picks up after a five year gap with a twenty-page infodump with scarcely a word of dialogue, followed by an even longer section largely concerned with the characters bringing each other up to date with what had happened in the intervening years. It seems that Varley is fascinated by circuses, as he devotes a whole chapter to an account of a performance featuring mammoths, and also describes a second performance in some detail. With all of this, it's only in the final third of the book that the action gets moving again, with Morgan, Wright and a mammoth being hunted across North America.
As the action proceeds, the key question begins to trouble the characters: the identity of the frozen bodies found at the beginning of the tale. This is finally resolved in an unexpected and satisfying way.
Varley's approach to time travel is idiosyncratic and somewhat unfashionable. The mechanics of the process turn out to have as much to do with philosophy as technology. He also sticks with one time-line rather than the nowadays more common parallel worlds, and blithely accepts the paradoxes which result, one of which (clearly signalled early on) is a real whopper.
All in all, an enjoyable light read despite the uneven pacing, but this one won't be making it into my top twenty.
The time is the near future, and an intact mammoth is found frozen solid in Canada. Lying alongside the body are the equally frozen corpses of a man and a woman - the man wearing a wristwatch and carrying a metal briefcase. Not an original idea, but a good start for a time-travel mystery. We are soon introduced to the main characters: Howard Christian, one of the richest men on the planet and obsessed with the idea of using frozen mammoth sperm to breed a mammoth/elephant cross; Matt Wright, the brilliant mathematician he recruits to solve the puzzle of the strange device in the briefcase which he believes to be a time machine; Susan Morgan, the vet and circus trainer recruited to oversee the pregnant elephants; and Warburton, Christian's formidable fixer.
In the early chapters, the plot is interrupted by extracts from a briefing about mammoths aimed at young people; a device to fill in some of the background. Despite these interruptions, the story rattles along at a good pace, with Wright and Morgan transported back into the past and returning accompanied by some live mammoths. So far, an entertaining and gripping adventure. Then, about half-way through, the story grinds to a halt. It picks up after a five year gap with a twenty-page infodump with scarcely a word of dialogue, followed by an even longer section largely concerned with the characters bringing each other up to date with what had happened in the intervening years. It seems that Varley is fascinated by circuses, as he devotes a whole chapter to an account of a performance featuring mammoths, and also describes a second performance in some detail. With all of this, it's only in the final third of the book that the action gets moving again, with Morgan, Wright and a mammoth being hunted across North America.
As the action proceeds, the key question begins to trouble the characters: the identity of the frozen bodies found at the beginning of the tale. This is finally resolved in an unexpected and satisfying way.
Varley's approach to time travel is idiosyncratic and somewhat unfashionable. The mechanics of the process turn out to have as much to do with philosophy as technology. He also sticks with one time-line rather than the nowadays more common parallel worlds, and blithely accepts the paradoxes which result, one of which (clearly signalled early on) is a real whopper.
All in all, an enjoyable light read despite the uneven pacing, but this one won't be making it into my top twenty.
Friday, 7 March 2008
BSFA Vector: Nov/Dec 2007
The most recent issue of the British Science Fiction Association's "critical journal" Vector (a mixture of reviews and articles) focuses on "reimagining history", with several items considering the field of alternate (or alternative) history. These are stories in which the world is different from the one which we know because of a significant event which happened - or didn't happen - at some point in the past. This key element of all alternate histories is known as the POD (Point Of Departure) or, by some fans, as the Jonbar point, named after John Barr in Jack Williamson's The Legion of Time (1938). An example might be the historical claim by a British infantryman that he had Hitler in his rifle sights at the end of the Great War, but decided not to fire as Hitler was wounded and posed no threat. If he had squeezed that trigger, how might history have changed?
Alternate histories may concern themselves with just the one Earth which results from the change, or may adopt the idea of branching universes in which each POD creates a new world which runs in parallel with the others (with the possibility of communication or travel between these parallel worlds). In either case, the actual POD might not even be specified, leaving the reader to consider what it might have been.
The first of the items in Vector is, literally, exemplary: an account of the development of a form of fiction called "plausible-fabulism", written by Daud al-Musafir al-Khilafahi bin Ammar ibn al-Afrangi, a critic living in a world in which the Muslim Caliphate includes Britain and America.
The editorial by Niall Harrison comments on the recent popularity of alternate histories, pointing out that they tend to be categorised as either science fiction (e.g. McAuley's Cowboy Angels) or fantasy (Stross' Merchant Princes series), depending on the author's treatment of the story or the publisher's whim, and that there is even a sub-category of "fantastic alternate histories", such as Novik's Temeraire books. Jo Walton and Guy Gavriel Kay are interviewed for this piece, giving their own perspectives. Kay argues the benefits of the "universalising" effect of setting a story in a world detached from our reality, which thereby bypasses the preconceptions and prejudices of readers, although Walton points out that any imagined world which is close to reality has an obligation to actual history. One controversial issue with such close worlds is whether to include, and if so how to treat, historical people. Does "anything go", or should they be left alone, or included but treated as accurately as our understanding of them permits? Harrison concludes by quoting from The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction: "At its best, the alternate history reminds us that we all change the world".
This is followed by Edward James' very well-referenced and thoughtful article, The Limits of Alternate History. He also draws distinctions between different kinds of alternate history, but is more concerned with the rules of the genre. He argues that the most elegant form is the most realistic type, with a credible POD (such as Hitler being shot) and a well-informed attempt to extrapolate what could plausibly have happened next. He observes that such an approach is not restricted to novelists, having attracted serious historians as well. This goes back to the 1st century BC when Livy speculated about what might have happened if Alexander the Great had not died young, through to the present fad for "counterfactual histories" led by Niall Ferguson, with an interesting example en route being Winston S. Churchill's If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg, which appeared in If; Or, History Rewritten in 1931. James presents an interesting summary of the arguments concerning why historians should, or should not, get involved in such speculations.
Various sub-types of alternate history are discussed by James, as well as the interesting issue of how much the author should assume the reader will know. If a story includes, without comment, lots of consequential changes to the detail of history, readers unfamiliar with the period will miss a lot of the pleasure: but if the author spells out what the changes are, those who do know the period are likely to be irritated.
James has less enthusiasm for the "impure" variations of alternate history, including those popular ones which merge with other SF themes such as time travel (with the time-travellers changing history, or trying to prevent others from changing it), or "time-slip" stories in which an entire town, fleet or army might suddenly find themselves back in the past. Multiverse stories, in which characters can travel between parallel worlds, are also categorised as "impure". He concludes by arguing that alternate history is best kept separate from the themes and tropes of SF, and would thereby form a genre of its own.
Next come two authors writing about their approaches to writing; Juliet E. McKenna and Chris Roberson. McKenna is the author of the Aldabreshin Compass series and her article, History Around the Margins, explores the female viewpoint, both in fiction and in reality, and describes the wealth of historical resources now available to authors which enable them to enrich their historical fantasies with period detail. Not specifically about alternate histories, but the references she cites would be very useful to AH authors setting their stories in an alternate but realistic past. Roberson's History Repurposed - The Celestial Empire Stories describes his approach to creating his alternate world, which is the background to stories stretching from the past into the future. In all of these, Imperial China rules the world (with the exception of the Aztecs in some stories) as a result of an obscure POD concerning a 15th century murder investigation which leads to a different emperor taking the throne.
Graham Sleight's The New X concludes this issue (apart from no less than 27 SFF book reviews), by putting a case for why we should regard alternate history as SF. He argues that the common themes are the use of extrapolation, in which the author works forwards from a known point (whether in the past, the present or the future) to develop a world different from our own; and in the effect of the stories, in that the author has to develop a realistic invented world as well as presenting the characters.
Altogether an excellent issue dealing thoughtfully with an increasingly popular genre. For anyone interested in this, the articles (especially Edward James') are packed with references to novels (and "counterfactuals") which embody different aspects of alternate history.
I have only one complaint: the contributors incomprehensibly neglected to mention a couple of novels which incorporate alternate history themes, albeit in entirely different ways: The Foresight War and Scales! Perhaps it's just as well, though, as I fear that James would categorise both of them as "impure". TFW's POD is entirely implausible, concerning as it does present-day British and German historians waking up in 1934, although in my defence I did do my best to make the resulting developments as plausible as I could (and did a lot of research to that end). In contrast, Scales is set in the present day and mostly on our Earth, but includes some very different parallel Earths with PODs (not always specified) ranging from a few centuries to a hundred million years ago.
Alternate histories may concern themselves with just the one Earth which results from the change, or may adopt the idea of branching universes in which each POD creates a new world which runs in parallel with the others (with the possibility of communication or travel between these parallel worlds). In either case, the actual POD might not even be specified, leaving the reader to consider what it might have been.
The first of the items in Vector is, literally, exemplary: an account of the development of a form of fiction called "plausible-fabulism", written by Daud al-Musafir al-Khilafahi bin Ammar ibn al-Afrangi, a critic living in a world in which the Muslim Caliphate includes Britain and America.
The editorial by Niall Harrison comments on the recent popularity of alternate histories, pointing out that they tend to be categorised as either science fiction (e.g. McAuley's Cowboy Angels) or fantasy (Stross' Merchant Princes series), depending on the author's treatment of the story or the publisher's whim, and that there is even a sub-category of "fantastic alternate histories", such as Novik's Temeraire books. Jo Walton and Guy Gavriel Kay are interviewed for this piece, giving their own perspectives. Kay argues the benefits of the "universalising" effect of setting a story in a world detached from our reality, which thereby bypasses the preconceptions and prejudices of readers, although Walton points out that any imagined world which is close to reality has an obligation to actual history. One controversial issue with such close worlds is whether to include, and if so how to treat, historical people. Does "anything go", or should they be left alone, or included but treated as accurately as our understanding of them permits? Harrison concludes by quoting from The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction: "At its best, the alternate history reminds us that we all change the world".
This is followed by Edward James' very well-referenced and thoughtful article, The Limits of Alternate History. He also draws distinctions between different kinds of alternate history, but is more concerned with the rules of the genre. He argues that the most elegant form is the most realistic type, with a credible POD (such as Hitler being shot) and a well-informed attempt to extrapolate what could plausibly have happened next. He observes that such an approach is not restricted to novelists, having attracted serious historians as well. This goes back to the 1st century BC when Livy speculated about what might have happened if Alexander the Great had not died young, through to the present fad for "counterfactual histories" led by Niall Ferguson, with an interesting example en route being Winston S. Churchill's If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg, which appeared in If; Or, History Rewritten in 1931. James presents an interesting summary of the arguments concerning why historians should, or should not, get involved in such speculations.
Various sub-types of alternate history are discussed by James, as well as the interesting issue of how much the author should assume the reader will know. If a story includes, without comment, lots of consequential changes to the detail of history, readers unfamiliar with the period will miss a lot of the pleasure: but if the author spells out what the changes are, those who do know the period are likely to be irritated.
James has less enthusiasm for the "impure" variations of alternate history, including those popular ones which merge with other SF themes such as time travel (with the time-travellers changing history, or trying to prevent others from changing it), or "time-slip" stories in which an entire town, fleet or army might suddenly find themselves back in the past. Multiverse stories, in which characters can travel between parallel worlds, are also categorised as "impure". He concludes by arguing that alternate history is best kept separate from the themes and tropes of SF, and would thereby form a genre of its own.
Next come two authors writing about their approaches to writing; Juliet E. McKenna and Chris Roberson. McKenna is the author of the Aldabreshin Compass series and her article, History Around the Margins, explores the female viewpoint, both in fiction and in reality, and describes the wealth of historical resources now available to authors which enable them to enrich their historical fantasies with period detail. Not specifically about alternate histories, but the references she cites would be very useful to AH authors setting their stories in an alternate but realistic past. Roberson's History Repurposed - The Celestial Empire Stories describes his approach to creating his alternate world, which is the background to stories stretching from the past into the future. In all of these, Imperial China rules the world (with the exception of the Aztecs in some stories) as a result of an obscure POD concerning a 15th century murder investigation which leads to a different emperor taking the throne.
Graham Sleight's The New X concludes this issue (apart from no less than 27 SFF book reviews), by putting a case for why we should regard alternate history as SF. He argues that the common themes are the use of extrapolation, in which the author works forwards from a known point (whether in the past, the present or the future) to develop a world different from our own; and in the effect of the stories, in that the author has to develop a realistic invented world as well as presenting the characters.
Altogether an excellent issue dealing thoughtfully with an increasingly popular genre. For anyone interested in this, the articles (especially Edward James') are packed with references to novels (and "counterfactuals") which embody different aspects of alternate history.
I have only one complaint: the contributors incomprehensibly neglected to mention a couple of novels which incorporate alternate history themes, albeit in entirely different ways: The Foresight War and Scales! Perhaps it's just as well, though, as I fear that James would categorise both of them as "impure". TFW's POD is entirely implausible, concerning as it does present-day British and German historians waking up in 1934, although in my defence I did do my best to make the resulting developments as plausible as I could (and did a lot of research to that end). In contrast, Scales is set in the present day and mostly on our Earth, but includes some very different parallel Earths with PODs (not always specified) ranging from a few centuries to a hundred million years ago.
Sunday, 2 March 2008
Red Shift by Alan Garner
Alan Garner is best known for writing children's fantasies like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, previously reviewed on this blog. However, he went on to write more challenging novels, still usually classified as for "young adults" but with plenty in them to keep adults absorbed. Red Shift is perhaps the most extreme example of this.
The plot follows three linked threads. The first and main one concerns the relationship of a girl and a brilliant but disturbed boy in their late teens in contemporary Cheshire. The other two feature the lives of their earlier counterparts in the same locations, during the English Civil War and in Roman Britain. Apart from the characters and the locations, a key linking element is a polished stone axe which appears in all three threads.
The style of writing is decidedly unconventional. There are no chapters, and the story chops between the threads without warning. Long time gaps can occur between consecutive sentences. There is little description or narrative to explain what is going on. The book consists almost entirely of dialogue between the characters; a clipped, elliptical form of speech which leaves the reader having to concentrate to fathom what is happening. It is not an easy read.
Neither is there much cheer in the three plots, which are downbeat and grim. Ursula Le Guin is quoted on the cover as describing this as "a bitter, complex, brilliant book", and I don't disagree. I found this short novel worth the effort to read despite my somewhat unenthusiastic description, and would particularly recommend it to those interested in the craft of writing.
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My novel Scales has received another review, this time on Spiral Galaxy Reviews. There have now been nine reviews posted on the web (summarised and linked to on my website); one bad one, a couple of middling and the rest fairly good. Maybe I'll keep writing after all...
The plot follows three linked threads. The first and main one concerns the relationship of a girl and a brilliant but disturbed boy in their late teens in contemporary Cheshire. The other two feature the lives of their earlier counterparts in the same locations, during the English Civil War and in Roman Britain. Apart from the characters and the locations, a key linking element is a polished stone axe which appears in all three threads.
The style of writing is decidedly unconventional. There are no chapters, and the story chops between the threads without warning. Long time gaps can occur between consecutive sentences. There is little description or narrative to explain what is going on. The book consists almost entirely of dialogue between the characters; a clipped, elliptical form of speech which leaves the reader having to concentrate to fathom what is happening. It is not an easy read.
Neither is there much cheer in the three plots, which are downbeat and grim. Ursula Le Guin is quoted on the cover as describing this as "a bitter, complex, brilliant book", and I don't disagree. I found this short novel worth the effort to read despite my somewhat unenthusiastic description, and would particularly recommend it to those interested in the craft of writing.
*******************************************
My novel Scales has received another review, this time on Spiral Galaxy Reviews. There have now been nine reviews posted on the web (summarised and linked to on my website); one bad one, a couple of middling and the rest fairly good. Maybe I'll keep writing after all...
Saturday, 23 February 2008
Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith
Cordwainer Smith (real name Paul Anthony Myron Linebarger) was an unusual man; an expert on the Far East and on psychological warfare, who served in US Army Intelligence in both World War 2 and the Korean War, he also left behind a series of linked stories set some 15 millennia in the future. These envisage a strange universe in which man has developed in various forms on different planets and has in addition changed animals into "underpeople"; mainly human but retaining some characteristics of their animal origins. The whole is ruled by the Instrumentality of Mankind, a self-perpetuating and self-governing group of Lords and Ladies who have absolute power.
Norstrilia is the one full-length novel in the sequence. It follows the adventures of Rod McBan, born heir to a farm on the planet Old North Australia (Norstrilia for short) which maintains the way of life of the long-lost Earth original. Despite the simple life of the people, they are fabulously rich because the planet is the only source of stroon, a life-perpetuating drug extracted from diseased sheep. At the start of the book McBan is in serious trouble as he has a handicap – his telepathic ability is unreliable – and Norstrilia has a rigorous screening policy to keep the population in check by very pleasantly killing off anyone who doesn't measure up. With the aid of an old computer, programmed long ago in the science of economic warfare, he protects himself with a sustained assault on humanity's economic system, which leads to him buying Old Earth, to which he escapes. The rest of the story tells of his adventures there among the Lords of the Instrumentality and the underpeople.
If the plot sounds strange, the writing style is even stranger. Cordwainer Smith had a unique, unmistakeable style with which to express his truly bizarre genius. While just about qualifying as SF, it has more of the feel of fantasy. However, it isn't all smoke and mirrors created by an imagination careering away with itself; there is thinking and writing of real substance here, passages to make the reader stop, and think, and re-read them.
It is quite possible that some people will really dislike the result; I suspect that you either love or hate his work. Personally I love it, and believe that the author has earned a special niche in science fiction's wall of honour. Everyone with a real interest in the genre should read at least one of these stories, and will then most likely not rest until finishing the lot.
Norstrilia is the one full-length novel in the sequence. It follows the adventures of Rod McBan, born heir to a farm on the planet Old North Australia (Norstrilia for short) which maintains the way of life of the long-lost Earth original. Despite the simple life of the people, they are fabulously rich because the planet is the only source of stroon, a life-perpetuating drug extracted from diseased sheep. At the start of the book McBan is in serious trouble as he has a handicap – his telepathic ability is unreliable – and Norstrilia has a rigorous screening policy to keep the population in check by very pleasantly killing off anyone who doesn't measure up. With the aid of an old computer, programmed long ago in the science of economic warfare, he protects himself with a sustained assault on humanity's economic system, which leads to him buying Old Earth, to which he escapes. The rest of the story tells of his adventures there among the Lords of the Instrumentality and the underpeople.
If the plot sounds strange, the writing style is even stranger. Cordwainer Smith had a unique, unmistakeable style with which to express his truly bizarre genius. While just about qualifying as SF, it has more of the feel of fantasy. However, it isn't all smoke and mirrors created by an imagination careering away with itself; there is thinking and writing of real substance here, passages to make the reader stop, and think, and re-read them.
It is quite possible that some people will really dislike the result; I suspect that you either love or hate his work. Personally I love it, and believe that the author has earned a special niche in science fiction's wall of honour. Everyone with a real interest in the genre should read at least one of these stories, and will then most likely not rest until finishing the lot.
Friday, 15 February 2008
How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide by John Sutherland, and How Novels Work by John Mullan
These two books were written by men who coincidentally are or have been Professors of English Literature at University College London. I read them in quick succession, and they provide an interesting contrast.
How to Read a Novel seems to be a condensation of a lifetime's experience of reading, studying and teaching fiction. The author covers a wide field in many short and easily digestible chapters, including a brief history of fiction, a discussion of why such an ancient medium as a bound paper book should remain so popular in the electronic age, hardbacks vs paperbacks, knowing your taste, the value of browsing in a bookshop, titles, blurbs, covers, reviews and recommendations, prize novels, TV and film adaptations, and the impact of the internet. He discusses the way in which stories by different authors are interlinked, often referring to each other in oblique ways, and illustrates the points he makes with many short extracts from novels.
Unlike many literati, the author is refreshingly open-minded about his subject and not afraid to admit to reading the occasional airport blockbuster as well as the classics. He includes a chapter on genre fiction in which he spends some time discussing SF and fantasy. There isn't space for him to do more than pick out a few examples, but he covers the range from Mary Shelley and some other early practitioners (but not, curiously, Jules Verne) through to modern writers. He focuses in particular on describing Robert Jordan's 'Wheel of Time' fantasy series, which he takes as an exemplar of current trends. Even graphic novels get a mention.
I originally bought this book thinking that it would provide some kind of analysis of what makes novels successful, from which I might usefully pick up some tips for my own writing. In fact, this work is not as directly useful as that. Nonetheless, it is an interesting read and worth the modest time spent on it.
In contrast, How Novels Work takes a much more systematic approach to analysing stories. The eleven chapters cover Beginning, Narrating, People, Genre, Voices, Structure, Detail, Style, Devices, Literariness, and Ending. Each is broken down into topics, for instance 'Narrating' includes First-Person Narration, Recollection, The Inadequate Narrator (not a criticism; an approach), A Man Writing as a Woman, Multiple Narrators, Skaz (colloquial writing, more closely resembling speech), The Self-Conscious Novel, Addressing the Reader, The Omniscient Narrator, Point of View, Tense, Tense Shift, and Free Indirect Style.
Throughout the book, the points being made are illustrated by extracts from novels, frequently contrasting the approach in older books with that of modern works. One downside is that Mullen takes a more highbrow approach than Sutherland, focusing only on the classics like Jane Austen and the kind of modern novel which gets on the list for the Booker Prize. Science Fiction and Fantasy scarcely get a mention, even in the Genre chapter, the closest being a brief section on 'Magical Realism' which concerns authors like Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.
That doesn't mean that the book is a difficult or irrelevant read, though. The author is critical of the kind of arid textual analysis which has become popular in universities and which tends to ignore such matters as characterisation. He focuses very much on what makes a novel work for the reader, and in so doing passes on a huge number of useful ideas to the writer. Definitely a book I am likely to be returning to, as a guide and reference.
How to Read a Novel seems to be a condensation of a lifetime's experience of reading, studying and teaching fiction. The author covers a wide field in many short and easily digestible chapters, including a brief history of fiction, a discussion of why such an ancient medium as a bound paper book should remain so popular in the electronic age, hardbacks vs paperbacks, knowing your taste, the value of browsing in a bookshop, titles, blurbs, covers, reviews and recommendations, prize novels, TV and film adaptations, and the impact of the internet. He discusses the way in which stories by different authors are interlinked, often referring to each other in oblique ways, and illustrates the points he makes with many short extracts from novels.
Unlike many literati, the author is refreshingly open-minded about his subject and not afraid to admit to reading the occasional airport blockbuster as well as the classics. He includes a chapter on genre fiction in which he spends some time discussing SF and fantasy. There isn't space for him to do more than pick out a few examples, but he covers the range from Mary Shelley and some other early practitioners (but not, curiously, Jules Verne) through to modern writers. He focuses in particular on describing Robert Jordan's 'Wheel of Time' fantasy series, which he takes as an exemplar of current trends. Even graphic novels get a mention.
I originally bought this book thinking that it would provide some kind of analysis of what makes novels successful, from which I might usefully pick up some tips for my own writing. In fact, this work is not as directly useful as that. Nonetheless, it is an interesting read and worth the modest time spent on it.
In contrast, How Novels Work takes a much more systematic approach to analysing stories. The eleven chapters cover Beginning, Narrating, People, Genre, Voices, Structure, Detail, Style, Devices, Literariness, and Ending. Each is broken down into topics, for instance 'Narrating' includes First-Person Narration, Recollection, The Inadequate Narrator (not a criticism; an approach), A Man Writing as a Woman, Multiple Narrators, Skaz (colloquial writing, more closely resembling speech), The Self-Conscious Novel, Addressing the Reader, The Omniscient Narrator, Point of View, Tense, Tense Shift, and Free Indirect Style.
Throughout the book, the points being made are illustrated by extracts from novels, frequently contrasting the approach in older books with that of modern works. One downside is that Mullen takes a more highbrow approach than Sutherland, focusing only on the classics like Jane Austen and the kind of modern novel which gets on the list for the Booker Prize. Science Fiction and Fantasy scarcely get a mention, even in the Genre chapter, the closest being a brief section on 'Magical Realism' which concerns authors like Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.
That doesn't mean that the book is a difficult or irrelevant read, though. The author is critical of the kind of arid textual analysis which has become popular in universities and which tends to ignore such matters as characterisation. He focuses very much on what makes a novel work for the reader, and in so doing passes on a huge number of useful ideas to the writer. Definitely a book I am likely to be returning to, as a guide and reference.
Friday, 8 February 2008
Film: Déjà Vu (2006)
The time is the present, the location New Orleans. A massive car bomb destroys a ferry packed with families, and ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) is assigned to the team to investigate it. Be warned: I try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, but it really isn't possible with this one, so if you plan to watch the film and want the plot to be a surprise, stop reading NOW!
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Carlin discovers that the FBI are using a "time machine" based on wormhole technology which allows them to look at any point within a radius of a few miles of the machine, but with a fixed timelag of four days and six hours. As the team look back into the past to discover clues to the identity of the bomber, they focus on a young woman, Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) from whom the bomber obtained the vehicle used in the attack – and whose body had been found in the water near the explosion. Over days of observation, Carlin falls in love with her and, after the bomber has been identified and arrested and the case is closed down, goes back into the past to try to rescue her and to prevent the bombing from happening.
So far so good: it seems to be a straightforward alternate time-line story, with the branch point being Carlin's attempts to alter the past, from which moment the "future" divides into the original time-line in the first part of the film (lets call it TL1) and the new one caused by Carlin's actions, which runs in parallel (TL2). This division into two time-lines is specifically acknowledged in the film, when one of the characters considers the implications of altering the past. Unfortunately, there are some massive plot holes which make a nonsense of the story, which is a shame because it is otherwise an intriguing and entertaining film with some neat touches. If you don't want to know what the problems are, stop reading NOW!
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The problem is that the film-makers get terribly confused between the time-lines. This first becomes obvious during a dramatic and original car chase in TL1, in which Carlin is driving a vehicle while trying to follow, through a portable viewer linked to the time machine, the bomber who is driving the same route 4+ days in the past. He is so distracted that he causes a series of accidents, and when he has to double back he drives past some blazing wrecks – but these also appear in the view of the past. That's just carelessness, but a more fundamental problem is that a whole series of events is misplaced: starting with the murder of his partner (due to a message Carlin had sent into the past) and going through the destruction of the bomber's property as Carlin rescues the girl, and then his subsequent visit to her flat to clean up his injuries (leaving bloodstained dressings), during which the girl rings up the ATF office to check on his identity. These events only occur because of Carlin's efforts to alter the past, and therefore belong in TL2, but they are all observed in TL1, in which the girl died before most of the events which "involve" her. That makes no sense at all.
Yes, I know that the whole premise of the story is impossible anyway, but that isn't the point. I am willing to suspend disbelief and go along with all sorts of impossible plot lines provided that they are internally consistent (I wouldn't otherwise be able to read SFF at all). It's when they lack internal consistency that I lose patience. I am frankly amazed that an entire team of people spent months working on this film and didn't notice, or decided to ignore, these inconsistencies. Either they suffered from collective stupidity, or they assumed that their audience would be too stupid to notice. Not the way to give SF films a good name.
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Carlin discovers that the FBI are using a "time machine" based on wormhole technology which allows them to look at any point within a radius of a few miles of the machine, but with a fixed timelag of four days and six hours. As the team look back into the past to discover clues to the identity of the bomber, they focus on a young woman, Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) from whom the bomber obtained the vehicle used in the attack – and whose body had been found in the water near the explosion. Over days of observation, Carlin falls in love with her and, after the bomber has been identified and arrested and the case is closed down, goes back into the past to try to rescue her and to prevent the bombing from happening.
So far so good: it seems to be a straightforward alternate time-line story, with the branch point being Carlin's attempts to alter the past, from which moment the "future" divides into the original time-line in the first part of the film (lets call it TL1) and the new one caused by Carlin's actions, which runs in parallel (TL2). This division into two time-lines is specifically acknowledged in the film, when one of the characters considers the implications of altering the past. Unfortunately, there are some massive plot holes which make a nonsense of the story, which is a shame because it is otherwise an intriguing and entertaining film with some neat touches. If you don't want to know what the problems are, stop reading NOW!
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The problem is that the film-makers get terribly confused between the time-lines. This first becomes obvious during a dramatic and original car chase in TL1, in which Carlin is driving a vehicle while trying to follow, through a portable viewer linked to the time machine, the bomber who is driving the same route 4+ days in the past. He is so distracted that he causes a series of accidents, and when he has to double back he drives past some blazing wrecks – but these also appear in the view of the past. That's just carelessness, but a more fundamental problem is that a whole series of events is misplaced: starting with the murder of his partner (due to a message Carlin had sent into the past) and going through the destruction of the bomber's property as Carlin rescues the girl, and then his subsequent visit to her flat to clean up his injuries (leaving bloodstained dressings), during which the girl rings up the ATF office to check on his identity. These events only occur because of Carlin's efforts to alter the past, and therefore belong in TL2, but they are all observed in TL1, in which the girl died before most of the events which "involve" her. That makes no sense at all.
Yes, I know that the whole premise of the story is impossible anyway, but that isn't the point. I am willing to suspend disbelief and go along with all sorts of impossible plot lines provided that they are internally consistent (I wouldn't otherwise be able to read SFF at all). It's when they lack internal consistency that I lose patience. I am frankly amazed that an entire team of people spent months working on this film and didn't notice, or decided to ignore, these inconsistencies. Either they suffered from collective stupidity, or they assumed that their audience would be too stupid to notice. Not the way to give SF films a good name.
Friday, 1 February 2008
The Godmakers by Frank Herbert
It is the far future and a space-faring humanity is beginning to rediscover planets settled before the devastating Rim War. Their greatest fear is another war, so each time an occupied planet is found, any warlike tendencies lead to a corrective occupation. Particularly prized are the rare individuals with psi powers, which are better understood than now and whose development is largely linked to religion: properly channelled, psi powers can create a god.
Lewis Orne is a newly-trained member of the Rediscovery and Re-education Service, whose job is to assess the cultures of newly-found settled planets to determine their suitability for joining the Galactic Federation. While he is demonstrating remarkable ability in tackling one intractable problem after another, the Abbod of Amel, the planet which is the focus of human religion, is creating a god: exactly what and where, he has no way of telling.
Orne suffers a near-death experience which affects his outlook on life. On recovering, he discovers that he has psi powers, and is sent to Amel, where his process of self-discovery reaches a remarkable conclusion.
Herbert wrote The Godmakers after Dune. It is a much shorter work (175 pages in my 1974 NEL paperback) without the same epic sweep. Nevertheless, it reflects the same fascination with the techniques of myth-making and religion. I can recognise certain elements here which must have subconsciously influenced me when writing Scales, particularly the effect on an individual of the development of unusual abilities. However, Herbert focuses more on the process of getting there than on what happens next. It isn't a great book, but it's worth the time to read.
---------------------------------
I've been updating the speculative fiction parts of my website. I have revised my article On Publishing Fiction, which focuses on the pros and cons of traditional vs self-publishing, and I have also amended and transferred to the website articles which previously appeared in this blog: On Marketing and Success and The Length of SF Novels: Quantity vs Quality? All of these should be of interest to those interested in the business of writing and publishing SF or fantasy.
Finally, I have posted the first two chapters of my alternative WW2 novel The Foresight War, to join Part 1 of my SF thriller Scales, to give prospective readers a good chance to try before they buy. Plots summaries and reviews can be read HERE.
Lewis Orne is a newly-trained member of the Rediscovery and Re-education Service, whose job is to assess the cultures of newly-found settled planets to determine their suitability for joining the Galactic Federation. While he is demonstrating remarkable ability in tackling one intractable problem after another, the Abbod of Amel, the planet which is the focus of human religion, is creating a god: exactly what and where, he has no way of telling.
Orne suffers a near-death experience which affects his outlook on life. On recovering, he discovers that he has psi powers, and is sent to Amel, where his process of self-discovery reaches a remarkable conclusion.
Herbert wrote The Godmakers after Dune. It is a much shorter work (175 pages in my 1974 NEL paperback) without the same epic sweep. Nevertheless, it reflects the same fascination with the techniques of myth-making and religion. I can recognise certain elements here which must have subconsciously influenced me when writing Scales, particularly the effect on an individual of the development of unusual abilities. However, Herbert focuses more on the process of getting there than on what happens next. It isn't a great book, but it's worth the time to read.
---------------------------------
I've been updating the speculative fiction parts of my website. I have revised my article On Publishing Fiction, which focuses on the pros and cons of traditional vs self-publishing, and I have also amended and transferred to the website articles which previously appeared in this blog: On Marketing and Success and The Length of SF Novels: Quantity vs Quality? All of these should be of interest to those interested in the business of writing and publishing SF or fantasy.
Finally, I have posted the first two chapters of my alternative WW2 novel The Foresight War, to join Part 1 of my SF thriller Scales, to give prospective readers a good chance to try before they buy. Plots summaries and reviews can be read HERE.
Friday, 25 January 2008
Interzone 214 and Contact (1997 film)
An interesting preview of Iain M Banks' new Culture novel Matter (due out in hardback in February), within an entertaining interview with the author, is the first feature in the latest issue of the SFF mag. One to look out for when it arrives in paperback (not that I'm a skinflint, I'm just short of bookshelf space…).
There are fewer stories this time, because they include a novella; Far Horizon by Jason Stoddard, illustrated by Paul Drummond (an engagingly retro wheel-shaped space station features, repeated on the cover). One of the richest men on a rather dystopian, corporation-ruled near-future Earth, has plans for terraforming Venus which won't bear fruit for millennia. He decides that the immediate future is too uninteresting to hang around for, so he cheats time by going into cold sleep until his new planet is ready, only to discover a vast surprise.
In Pseudo Tokyo by Jennifer Linnaea, a future tourist, eagerly anticipating teleporting into Japan, finds himself not quite where he expected.
The Trace of Him by Christopher Priest is a brief glimpse of a few hours in the life of a woman returning for the funeral of a lover she had left twenty years before.
The Faces of my Friends by Jennifer Harwood-Smith is the winner of the James White Award. The last remnant of a outcast group is persecuted towards extinction in an intolerant future world; but what they are being persecuted for is an uncomfortable surprise.
Finally, The Scent of their Arrival by Mercurio D. Riviera explores the world of planet-bound but intelligent beings who communicate by scent, struggling to understand the message sent by the vast spaceship which had arrived in orbit around their world. All is not what it seems…
A good crop, as usual; original, inventive and absorbing. I've noticed that it's some time since I read a story in Interzone which I didn't enjoy. Either the standard is rising or I'm becoming acclimatised. Or perhaps I've become more tolerant of a fiction form which, even if it doesn't always work, at least doesn't involve a large investment in time to find that out. Or maybe it's all of those things.
The final section in the mag is, as usual, the pages of detailed and sometimes hard-hitting reviews of films, TV programmes and books. Top of my "might buy" list from this batch is Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson, which sounds like a story I might enjoy getting my teeth into.
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I've recently seen Contact, the 1997 film of Carl Sagan's 1985 novel about the first contact from an intelligent alien species. Somehow I've managed to miss both the book and the film until now, so I came to it entirely fresh, knowing nothing except the basic premise. I must admit that I was highly impressed. The film takes an intelligent, adult approach to the issues which would be raised by such an event and gripped my attention throughout. I would have awarded it an Oscar, and given another to Jodie Foster for a brilliant central performance as the obsessed astronomer. If only all SF films were this good!
There are fewer stories this time, because they include a novella; Far Horizon by Jason Stoddard, illustrated by Paul Drummond (an engagingly retro wheel-shaped space station features, repeated on the cover). One of the richest men on a rather dystopian, corporation-ruled near-future Earth, has plans for terraforming Venus which won't bear fruit for millennia. He decides that the immediate future is too uninteresting to hang around for, so he cheats time by going into cold sleep until his new planet is ready, only to discover a vast surprise.
In Pseudo Tokyo by Jennifer Linnaea, a future tourist, eagerly anticipating teleporting into Japan, finds himself not quite where he expected.
The Trace of Him by Christopher Priest is a brief glimpse of a few hours in the life of a woman returning for the funeral of a lover she had left twenty years before.
The Faces of my Friends by Jennifer Harwood-Smith is the winner of the James White Award. The last remnant of a outcast group is persecuted towards extinction in an intolerant future world; but what they are being persecuted for is an uncomfortable surprise.
Finally, The Scent of their Arrival by Mercurio D. Riviera explores the world of planet-bound but intelligent beings who communicate by scent, struggling to understand the message sent by the vast spaceship which had arrived in orbit around their world. All is not what it seems…
A good crop, as usual; original, inventive and absorbing. I've noticed that it's some time since I read a story in Interzone which I didn't enjoy. Either the standard is rising or I'm becoming acclimatised. Or perhaps I've become more tolerant of a fiction form which, even if it doesn't always work, at least doesn't involve a large investment in time to find that out. Or maybe it's all of those things.
The final section in the mag is, as usual, the pages of detailed and sometimes hard-hitting reviews of films, TV programmes and books. Top of my "might buy" list from this batch is Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson, which sounds like a story I might enjoy getting my teeth into.
--------------------------------------
I've recently seen Contact, the 1997 film of Carl Sagan's 1985 novel about the first contact from an intelligent alien species. Somehow I've managed to miss both the book and the film until now, so I came to it entirely fresh, knowing nothing except the basic premise. I must admit that I was highly impressed. The film takes an intelligent, adult approach to the issues which would be raised by such an event and gripped my attention throughout. I would have awarded it an Oscar, and given another to Jodie Foster for a brilliant central performance as the obsessed astronomer. If only all SF films were this good!
Saturday, 19 January 2008
Dante's Equation by Jane Jensen
Aharon Handalman is a rabbi in modern Jerusalem who is fascinated by "Torah codes"; hunting for significant words in the patterns of letters in the book. One name which keeps recurring is that of Kobinski, a rabbi, philosopher and physicist who disappeared in Auschwitz. Denton Wyle is a vain and wealthy young American who amuses himself by researching mysterious disappearances for a magazine on popular mysteries. He too becomes intrigued by Kobinski, who apparently vanished without trace. Calder Farris is a USMC officer assigned to the Department of Defense in order to monitor scientific research for weapons potential. And Dr Jill Talcott, aided by her graduate student Nate Andros, is at a US university researching wave mechanics while pursuing an "energy pool" hypothesis, that all matter exists as energy waves in a higher dimension. The lives of these characters gradually converge as they realise that Kobinski may indeed have discovered something of great potential and that he left records which had become scattered across the world.
So far this seems to be just another modern mystery – if not mystic – thriller, but the perspective changes as the characters find out the hard way that the consequences of Kobinski's and Tallcott's work are very real. They find themselves in a series of worlds which differ radically from each other as a result of variations in the frequency of their energy waves, and their experiences fundamentally change them.
This is a very ambitious and original work by a writer best known for creating computer games. It is not only broad in scope, it is massive in length too, at nearly 700 pages. Regular readers of this blog will recall that I usually take a jaundiced view of very long SF novels, finding most of them to be either so padded as to be slow and tedious, or so packed with characters and incident that I lose track of who is doing what to whom and why. Jensen falls into neither trap: this is a well-paced and well-told story, using its length to develop the characters into distinctive and convincing individuals struggling to cope with the bizarre situations in which they find themselves - and with each other. The book engaged my attention from the start and built up into an impressive and satisfying climax. Well worth the time to read.
So far this seems to be just another modern mystery – if not mystic – thriller, but the perspective changes as the characters find out the hard way that the consequences of Kobinski's and Tallcott's work are very real. They find themselves in a series of worlds which differ radically from each other as a result of variations in the frequency of their energy waves, and their experiences fundamentally change them.
This is a very ambitious and original work by a writer best known for creating computer games. It is not only broad in scope, it is massive in length too, at nearly 700 pages. Regular readers of this blog will recall that I usually take a jaundiced view of very long SF novels, finding most of them to be either so padded as to be slow and tedious, or so packed with characters and incident that I lose track of who is doing what to whom and why. Jensen falls into neither trap: this is a well-paced and well-told story, using its length to develop the characters into distinctive and convincing individuals struggling to cope with the bizarre situations in which they find themselves - and with each other. The book engaged my attention from the start and built up into an impressive and satisfying climax. Well worth the time to read.
Saturday, 12 January 2008
The Enemy Stars by Poul Anderson
Poul Anderson is one of the "greats" of SF so I looked forward to re-reading this novel. Somewhat to my surprise, I was unable to recall anything about it as I read it, but at least that meant I could enjoy it without knowing the outcome! First published in 1958, The Enemy Stars was slightly tidied-up by the author in the 1980s. I have the later version published by Baen in 1987, which comes with a short-story sequel The Ways of Love, first published in 1979.
It is slightly different from my expectations, in that it is primarily about people rather than the grand mind-stretching concepts more typical of the 1950s. The story is set in the twenty-third century. A long time before, a matter transmitter had been developed which enabled virtually instantaneous transmission between worlds. The catch was that a transceiver was needed at both ends, so one had to be carried out to each star system on board a conventional, sub-light-speed space ship. Since the voyages took decades if not centuries, the ships were crewed on a rotation basis using the on-board matter transceiver to change crews every month.
A disparate crew of four strangers, two from Earth, two from different colony planets (and all men), arrive on board the Southern Cross, a ship which had been travelling longer than any other. There are tensions from the start: the two Earthmen are from very different levels of a highly stratified and paternalistic society, ruled by a dictatorial world government. The colonials had their own agendas, as relationships between Earth and its colonies were fraught, with frequent rebellions.
The Southern Cross was diverted from its target to investigate a strange, dark sun. Disaster struck, leaving the ship without a functioning transceiver and with limited food supplies. The bulk of the story is concerned with how the crew cope with their situation as they struggle to re-establish communication in increasingly desperate circumstances. There is a sub-plot running in parallel back on Earth, concerning the difficult relationship between the wife of one of the crewmen and his father, and their very different views of space travel and settlement.
I won't say anything more about the plot, or anything at all about the short-story sequel, as that would mean revealing the surprising climax of the novel. In fact, try not to look at the cover of the Baen edition in advance, because the illustration is one of the biggest spoilers I've seen!
Compared with other novels from the classic era of SF, I found this one a tad claustrophobic. The focus is on tense human relationships in a situation which is very confined, both physically and plot-wise. Despite this, the characters never really came alive for me, possibly because all four are treated fairly equally (the viewpoint switches between them) and we never get to know, or empathise with, any of them very well. Not really my favourite kind of story, but all credit to the author for an early attempt at writing science fiction with a human face.
It is slightly different from my expectations, in that it is primarily about people rather than the grand mind-stretching concepts more typical of the 1950s. The story is set in the twenty-third century. A long time before, a matter transmitter had been developed which enabled virtually instantaneous transmission between worlds. The catch was that a transceiver was needed at both ends, so one had to be carried out to each star system on board a conventional, sub-light-speed space ship. Since the voyages took decades if not centuries, the ships were crewed on a rotation basis using the on-board matter transceiver to change crews every month.
A disparate crew of four strangers, two from Earth, two from different colony planets (and all men), arrive on board the Southern Cross, a ship which had been travelling longer than any other. There are tensions from the start: the two Earthmen are from very different levels of a highly stratified and paternalistic society, ruled by a dictatorial world government. The colonials had their own agendas, as relationships between Earth and its colonies were fraught, with frequent rebellions.
The Southern Cross was diverted from its target to investigate a strange, dark sun. Disaster struck, leaving the ship without a functioning transceiver and with limited food supplies. The bulk of the story is concerned with how the crew cope with their situation as they struggle to re-establish communication in increasingly desperate circumstances. There is a sub-plot running in parallel back on Earth, concerning the difficult relationship between the wife of one of the crewmen and his father, and their very different views of space travel and settlement.
I won't say anything more about the plot, or anything at all about the short-story sequel, as that would mean revealing the surprising climax of the novel. In fact, try not to look at the cover of the Baen edition in advance, because the illustration is one of the biggest spoilers I've seen!
Compared with other novels from the classic era of SF, I found this one a tad claustrophobic. The focus is on tense human relationships in a situation which is very confined, both physically and plot-wise. Despite this, the characters never really came alive for me, possibly because all four are treated fairly equally (the viewpoint switches between them) and we never get to know, or empathise with, any of them very well. Not really my favourite kind of story, but all credit to the author for an early attempt at writing science fiction with a human face.
Saturday, 5 January 2008
Dark Horizons from the British Fantasy Society
December brought a batch of publications from the British Fantasy Society: Prism (their quarterly newsletter), Dark Horizons (the biannual short story plus articles mag) and a one-off special, H P Lovecraft in Britain by Stephen Jones.
This last was written by the anthologist involved with the production of Necronomicon: the Best Weird Tales of H P Lovecraft, due for January 2008 publication by Gollancz, and covers the patchy history of publication in the UK of the works of one of the original masters of horror. Now I am not a fan of that genre, but I have memories of reading some anthologies as a teenager and will probably pick up a copy of this one, if only through nostalgia.
Prism contained the usual crop of reviews, one of which (Attica by Garry Kilworth) sounded interesting enough to add to my "to buy" list. I have a fondness for tales involving strange worlds connected to our own; in this case via an attic which, like Dr Who's Tardis, turns out to be very much bigger on the inside than the outside suggests. There are the usual columns by the slightly less usual columnists plus an interview with Vincent Chong, the winner of the Best Artist category in the 2007 British Fantasy Awards, who also produced the dreamlike cover.
On to Dark Horizons, which this time contains six short stories and two articles, interspersed with a couple of poems and some line drawings. The cover is by Don Barker. There is also a brief dream-like vignette, What the Moon Brings, by H P Lovecraft. The articles are Roots of an Editor, an interview by Jan Edwards of Ellen Datlow, multiple award-winning editor of many fantasy and horror anthologies and magazines; and The Invisible Prince by David Sutton, a brief bio-bibliography of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the 19th century writer of fantastic horror. Combined with the information about H P Lovecraft, this December BFS batch proved quite educational!
And so to the stories:
By Right of the Stars by Anne Gay. A desert-dweller with magical powers crosses a medieval world to right the wrongs inflicted on his people.
In His Charge by Nicki Robson (a runner-up in 2006 BFS short-story competition). A preacher who is the sole survivor of a shipwreck which killed all of his followers maintains an empty church nearby. For his followers haven't entirely left.
The Perils of Pentavir by Allen Ashley. A compilation of apparently random jottings on the significance of the number five, centred on the fate of the cradle of human civilisation, Pentavir: the former fifth planet located between Mars and Jupiter.
The Dullich Assassins by David Lee Stone. In which apprentice assassins have to qualify by killing one of their teachers in single combat. Written with more humour than drama.
Father's Day by David Turnball (another runner-up in 2006 BFS short-story competition). A latter-day Frankenstein struggles to rebuild and reanimate people from the wreckage of their civilisation.
The Children of Monte Rosa by Reggie Oliver. A man recalls a childhood holiday in Portugal during which his family meets a strange couple with a macabre hobby.
An interesting variety of themes and styles, all worth reading. I enjoyed the first one the most, although I suspect that the last will stick in the mind the longest.
This last was written by the anthologist involved with the production of Necronomicon: the Best Weird Tales of H P Lovecraft, due for January 2008 publication by Gollancz, and covers the patchy history of publication in the UK of the works of one of the original masters of horror. Now I am not a fan of that genre, but I have memories of reading some anthologies as a teenager and will probably pick up a copy of this one, if only through nostalgia.
Prism contained the usual crop of reviews, one of which (Attica by Garry Kilworth) sounded interesting enough to add to my "to buy" list. I have a fondness for tales involving strange worlds connected to our own; in this case via an attic which, like Dr Who's Tardis, turns out to be very much bigger on the inside than the outside suggests. There are the usual columns by the slightly less usual columnists plus an interview with Vincent Chong, the winner of the Best Artist category in the 2007 British Fantasy Awards, who also produced the dreamlike cover.
On to Dark Horizons, which this time contains six short stories and two articles, interspersed with a couple of poems and some line drawings. The cover is by Don Barker. There is also a brief dream-like vignette, What the Moon Brings, by H P Lovecraft. The articles are Roots of an Editor, an interview by Jan Edwards of Ellen Datlow, multiple award-winning editor of many fantasy and horror anthologies and magazines; and The Invisible Prince by David Sutton, a brief bio-bibliography of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the 19th century writer of fantastic horror. Combined with the information about H P Lovecraft, this December BFS batch proved quite educational!
And so to the stories:
By Right of the Stars by Anne Gay. A desert-dweller with magical powers crosses a medieval world to right the wrongs inflicted on his people.
In His Charge by Nicki Robson (a runner-up in 2006 BFS short-story competition). A preacher who is the sole survivor of a shipwreck which killed all of his followers maintains an empty church nearby. For his followers haven't entirely left.
The Perils of Pentavir by Allen Ashley. A compilation of apparently random jottings on the significance of the number five, centred on the fate of the cradle of human civilisation, Pentavir: the former fifth planet located between Mars and Jupiter.
The Dullich Assassins by David Lee Stone. In which apprentice assassins have to qualify by killing one of their teachers in single combat. Written with more humour than drama.
Father's Day by David Turnball (another runner-up in 2006 BFS short-story competition). A latter-day Frankenstein struggles to rebuild and reanimate people from the wreckage of their civilisation.
The Children of Monte Rosa by Reggie Oliver. A man recalls a childhood holiday in Portugal during which his family meets a strange couple with a macabre hobby.
An interesting variety of themes and styles, all worth reading. I enjoyed the first one the most, although I suspect that the last will stick in the mind the longest.
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