for big skY loncon 3 4

sf masterworks 2 sf masterworks 2 “The new covers are also loaded with microchips that shout "Buy me!" while subliminally commanding you to 4 reach into your pocket to fish out the required £7.99…” — Gollancz rep at Odyssey 2010, speaking on condition of anonymity

Part-genzine, part-perzine, variable sercon/fannish content. If you are not satisfied with this product please contact your nearest SF Masterworks dealer. The next letters column will be in issue #5 – please be part of it ! Send all Letters of Comment, articles and artwork to [email protected]. Edited and published by Peter Young. This fanzine has been produced independently of both Gollancz and Loncon 3.

Cover: The Sky Is Falling — Andrew Nelson, 2011 (cc) Fanzines in trade can be sent to: Pages 2–5: Gold in the Blue — © 2014 Sue Jones, used by permission 136/200 Emerald Hill Village, Soi 6, Hua Hin, Prachuap Khiri Khan 77110, Thailand Pages 6 & 9: ©2014 Peter Young or if postage is less: Page 191: Just Testing — Andrew Nelson, 2013 (cc) c/o 22 Tippings Lane, Woodley, Berkshire, RG5 4RX, England

Thanks to all contributors for use of their articles and artwork. See page 178 for full credit details and brief author bios. contents

We Didn’t Start the Fire Peter Young 6

Christopher Priest, Inverted World Keith Stevenson, Andy Wixon, Kate Sherrod 10

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle Manny Rayner, Peter Young 12

H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau M.J. Nicholls, Basil Williams, Joel Cunningham, Ben Babcock 15

Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren Steve Shipman, Ian Sales 18

Brian Aldiss, Helliconia Nigel Quinlan, Mark Yon 21

2014 H.G. Wells, The Food of the Gods G.K. Chesterton, Mark Yon 24

Jack Finney, The Body Snatchers Mark Yon, Peter Young 27

Joanna Russ, The Female Man Peter Young, Ademption 30 Gold in the Blue Gold in the

M.J. Engh, Arslan Abigail Nussbaum 32

Bruce Sterling & William Gibson, The Difference Engine Carlos Ferreira, Howard Mittelmark, J.G. Keely 42 Sue Jones 2 sf masterworks 2 contents - continued

Christopher Priest, The Prestige David Hebblethwaite, Jonathan Terrington 47

Brian Aldiss, Greybeard Charles Dee Mitchell, Tony Atkins 50

Olaf Stapledon, Sirius Manny Rayner, Stuart Carter, A.C. Fellows 52

Dan Simmons, Hyperion Ben Babcock, Jesse Hudson 54

Clifford D. Simak, City Rhys Hughes, Mark Monday, Christy M. Tidwell 57

Frank Herbert, Hellstrom’s Hive Rob Weber 59

William Tenn, Of Men and Monsters Peter Young, Charles Dee Mitchell, Mark Yon 62

Karel Capek, R.U.R. & War with the Newts Matthew Lloyd, Rhys Hughes, Andy Wixon 65

Christopher Priest, The Affirmation David Hebblethwaite, Vacuous Wastrel, Rob Adey 71

Cecelia Holland, Floating Worlds Iain Merrick, Bruce Gillespie, Antony Jones 74

Algys Budrys, Rogue Moon John DeNardo, Charles Dee Mitchell 77

Harlan Ellison, ed., Dangerous Visions Mark Yon 80

Olaf Stapledon, Odd John Antony Jones, Manny Rayner 83

Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion Ben Babcock, Kemper 85

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Manny Rayner, J.G. Keely, Lee Battersby 90

Pat Cadigan, Synners Steph Bennion, Sylvia Kelso, Chris Mander 94

Nicola Griffith, Ammonite Alix Heintzman 96

Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Canary Ben Babcock 99

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Mark Monday, Nicholas Whyte, Martin McClellan, Bruce Gillespie 101

3 sf masterworks 2 contents - continued

D.G. Compton, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe Ian Sales 106

Connie Willis, Doomsday Book Donna Carter, David Norman 108

Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker Chris Mander, Stephen Zillwood 110

David I. Masson, The Caltraps of Time Stuart Carter 112

Rachel Pollack, Unquenchable Fire Karen Heuler, Peter Young 114

John Crowley, Engine Summer Bill McClain, Peter Young 116

Colin Greenland, Take Back Plenty David Hebblethwaite 119

Nicola Griffith, Slow River Ben Babcock, David Langford 121

Sheri S. Tepper, The Gate to Women’s Country Stuart Carter 124

George Turner, The Sea and Summer Mike Dalke 126

Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog Christine Bellerive, Ian, Simon McLeish 128

Eric Frank Russell, Wasp Jo Walton 131

Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves Manny Rayner, Rob Weber 133

James Morrow, This Is the Way the World Ends Michael Brown, Tracey, Bruce Gillespie 136

John Crowley, The Deep Rhys Hughes, Jonathan Thornton 138

Michael Bishop, No Enemy But Time Megan Medina 141

Connie Willis, Time Is the Fire: The Best of Connie Willis Kev McVeigh 144

Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star Sarah Pinsker, Jonathan Thornton 147

Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space Mark Monday 150

4 sf masterworks 2 contents - continued

Jack Womack, Random Acts of Senseless Violence Paul, Kate Sherrod 152

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Manny Rayner 155

Michael Bishop, Transfigurations Joachim Boaz 157

Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything Dave Haddock, Paul Bowers, Jonathan Terrington 159

Robert A. Heinlein, The Door Into Summer Rich Horton, Liam Proven, Marion Pitman 161

T.J. Bass, Half Past Human Jonathan Thornton 164

Leigh Brackett, The Long Tomorrow Charles Dee Mitchell, Peter Young 166

T.J. Bass, The Godwhale Eddie Tomaselli, J.P. Lantern 168

James Tiptree, Jr., Her Smoke Rose Up Forever Niall Harrison 171

Arkady & Boris Strugatsky, Monday Begins on Saturday Zalka Csenge Virág, Dan Harlow 175

The Contributors 178

5 We Didn’t Start the Fire

Peter Young ’LL BEGIN WITH a musical analogy. A famous New York pianist and singer, who once aspired to be a history i teacher, wrote a song in 1989 that hit the top of the charts in his home country and did almost as well around the world. Having just had his fortieth birthday, he chose to sing about stuff that had happened everywhere in the first forty years of his life, and put it across as a rapid-fire list of events, year by consecutive year. He even mentioned Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. If you don’t know either the song or the singer I’m writing about here then this probably doesn’t sound exactly musical, but you can hear the end result (and watch the video) here. The guy realised it wasn’t the best melody he ever wrote and remains ambivalent about that song to this day, but in his defence even his harshest critic would have to admit it’s hard to weave a catchy tune around such material. So why did he spend the time doing it? Well, the obvious reasons: he was interested, and needed to get something out of his system. The idea had probably been sitting around his subconscious for some time, quietly nagging “So when you gonna do me, huh?” Similarly with me and this SF Masterworks fanzine. I’m the first to admit that a publication of reviews, of what is essentially a publisher’s own selection of their favourite books, isn’t the most creative use to which two large issues of a fanzine could be put, but it was timely and I reckoned it could be done. From its first sketching-out in late January 2014, I had six months to pull it together before Loncon 3, and that meant roughly two to three hours every single day of reading already-published reviews or asking people for new ones (often people I have never met or even encountered online before this project), then asking for permissions, assembling it all and editing it down over the next six months to arrive at these two issues of Big Sky you have here. The whole process went astonishingly smoothly, made all the easier by quickly encountering entertaining and lively reviews online (ones that don’t begin with “I read this in high school

014 and thought it was really great.”). Instead, I was rather knocked out by the range of often unsung creative voices writing about books I both knew and didn’t know, in ways and with viewpoints I had often never even conceived. I don’t know where I first heard the phrase “There are two kinds of people in this world; those who do things and those who have things done to them.” It’s too simplistic, of course, because we all occupy both those positions in different situations, but from a fannish point of view (and speaking as a non-writer of SF) you could say that Masterworks 3 2 Masterworks everyone writing and commenting in this fanzine is on the receiving end here, is having “science fiction history” done to them. We didn’t start this fire, we’re just observing and thinking and writing about it and above all hopefully enjoying this most creative circus of the human imagination. Rather like Mr. Joel. Thanks, everyone, it’s been fun. Peter Young

7 Style notes With so many reviewers appearing here with work not initially written for this publication, I’ve necessarily had to adopt a very laissez-faire approach to ‘house style’. To make so many conform to my own style preferences might risk upsetting a large number of this fanzine’s contributors, all for the want of some vain notion of adherence to my own taste. Therefore you will encounter several ways of conveying the same two important words – “sf”, “SF”, “science- fiction”, “science fiction” and even (goddammit) “sci-fi”, as well as several other individual quirks of taste which I have simply let stand.

Bibliographic notes It’s been a necessity to divide this fanzine into two issues. For clarity’s sake, I’ve sequenced all titles in the second series as per the date of their first appearance as an SF Masterworks title. Several titles across both series have had cover art misattributed on their back covers. Where known, these have been corrected for their appearance here.

A note on internal linking – or the lack of it Big Sky is designed for the iPad and other e-readers that provide easy scrolling to particular pages, however I know it’s a justified criticism (as was mentioned in a LoC in Big Sky #2) that it would also help if internal links could connect Contents entries directly to the titles. Pages ’09 v5.2 for some inexplicable reason has this function disabled, however linking to exterior web pages is no problem. Until Apple do an update that re-enables internal linking I can only apologise, and I’ll be issuing a fully-enabled version as soon as this problem has been overcome.

8 the books CHRISTOPHER PRIEST INVERTED WORLD 1974

KEITH STEVENSON One of the things that keeps me coming back to SF is stories that immerse me in a world so disorientating my brain has to work overtime to work out wtf is actually going on. I really enjoy piecing together the logic of why a situation is as it is. Inverted World is told in a very simple and readable way, but increasingly we are presented with pieces of information that just don’t tally with each other and/or what has gone before. It’s a masterfully controlled piece of storytelling and the ending is just as challenging, answering some questions but leaving others unresolved so you’re not sure who is telling the truth or seeing things as they really are. [2013]

ANDY WIXON The first time I heard of Inverted World, it was preceded with the words ‘hyperbolically strange’ and that’s a better capsule description than any I can give. Basically, it’s the story of a young fellow named Helward Mann (possibly a crashingly unsubtle piece of metaphor, possibly not) 2014 who is just coming of age as a citizen of his city – the opening sentence “I had reached the age of one hundred thousand miles” may tip you off as to the weirdness of what’s to follow. And as part of learning what makes things tick around the place, Helward is sent off to supervise the

Masterworks 4 Masterworks ripping-up of some railway lines south of the city, and then see them

shipped up north of it… Cover illustration by Chris Moore …and at this point your head sort of turns inside out, as you Peter Young

April 2010: SF Masterworks second series 10 realise all of your assumptions about what’s been happening are wrong – the technical term is, I suppose, ‘conceptual breakthrough’, but I just think of it as Chris Priest messing with my head. To do this so effectively once would be enough to make this a notable book, but the fact is that it happens again… and again… and again… with each subsequent expansion of your perception of the situation as startling as the previous one. I know, I know I’m being vague. I could have put spoiler warning on this and gone into detail, but why bother? Suffice to say that the book incorporates some of the most astonishing imagery in SF, and – it ultimately turns out – has a point beyond the display of pyrotechnic conceptual legerdemain that Priest manages to sustain for most of the distance. It is possibly a little bit dry, solemn, and highbrow, like all of Christopher Priest’s work, and someone has pointed out to me an allegedly serious goof, in that it shouldn’t be possible for the sun to rise and set on an inverted planet. I’m prepared to give Priest the benefit of the doubt on that. I would recommend you do too. Maybe you won’t like it, but you certainly won’t forget it. [2014]

KATE SHERROD This book has the feel more of an extended thought-experiment than a novel at times, but the mystery of why the world through which Helward Mann’s city-on-rails travels kept me turning pages, wanting to find out why the hell time moves differently north and south of the city, why the ground is pulling the city towards its destruction, why the sun appears as a hyperbolic solid rather than a sphere… Other reviewers have complained that there is not a conventional story here, that the protagonist does not develop. There is some validity to this, but I think it misses the point to demand a personal touch in a book that poses such big and interesting conundrums. Helward Mann is merely the lens through which we view these, and the tool by which we come eventually to the truth. I, for one, was never bored or impatient, except to find out what was really going on. I devoured this book in a day and a half and was sad, yet satisfied, when it was over. [2011]

11 KURT VONNEGUT CAT’S CRADLE 1963

MANNY RAYNER Most people have read Cat’s Cradle, so I won’t bother to try and hide spoilers. Did you say you hadn’t read it? Well, what are you waiting for? This isn’t Ulysses, you know, it’s short and funny! So, now that it’s just us people who know the book, I want to say why I disagree with the criticism you often see, that it’s too fragmentary. On the contrary, I think it’s very focused, and makes its point with near-perfect economy and wit. There are two obvious themes. One is how the irresponsible use of science to construct ever more deadly weapons is probably going to end up destroying the whole world. The other is a wonderfully crazy take on religion. Each of these themes is satisfying in its own right; what’s less clear is that they have anything to do with each other. Let’s look at the first theme. Vonnegut’s scarily plausible thesis is that it won’t be a question of some madman destroying the world on purpose. I love General Jack T. Ripper in Doctor Strangelove, the obvious movie parallel to this book, but I find him somehow less convincing than the series of deranged, helplessly incompetent people in Cat’s Cradle. Felix Hoenikker, an obvious Asperger’s type, invents Ice-Nine in response to a casual question from the US military. His three damaged children get hold of the secret, and exploit it for their own petty ends. Plain, charmless Angela sells it to the Americans in exchange for a playboy husband; Newt, the midget, gives it to the Soviets for a dirty weekend on Cape Cod with a tiny Russian dancer; and, fatally, humourless Franklin sells it to “Papa” Monzano, who Cover illustration by Dominic Harman makes him a Major General in the largely imaginary army of San Lorenzo, a

May 2010: SF Masterworks second series 12 bankrupt state, I believe, loosely based on Haiti and the Dominican Republic. After that, things just proceed by themselves; nothing works in San Lorenzo, so why would you be able to successfully guard a doomsday device? And, sure enough, it gets used completely by accident. The second theme is presented through Bokononism, a kind of Caribbean version of Christianity, and surely the best fictional religion ever devised. Is there any person here who’s never tried boku maru? (Unfortunately, in real life it doesn’t have the effect described in the book. Pity.) Bokononism is the one thing that makes life worthwhile for Papa’s miserable subjects. Officially, the religion is outlawed; in practice, everyone is a Bokononist, which makes their lives rich and meaningful. Everything about the religion turns out to be a lie, and there is even a technical term, foma, for the lies that make up its substance. Nonetheless, Vonnegut succeeds admirably in showing what a good religion it is. The scene where Dr. Schlichter von Koenigswald reads the Bokononist last rites to the dying Papa Monzano is funny, but also moving. I love the line “Nice going, God!”, which expresses that particular sentiment with unusual clarity and feeling; it’s extremely respectful, while pretending to be the exact opposite. So, what is the connection between the two themes? I think in fact that Vonnegut tells you straight out, but since he does it at the beginning (a favourite ruse of crime writers), you don’t quite notice it. He introduces Bokononism, and recounts its creation myth, which is absurd even by the standards of this magic realist genre. Then he cheerfully tells you that Bokonon himself admits that it’s all lies. Finally, he comments, in one of his better-known quotes: “Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either”. As already noted, Bokonon’s wise lies in fact make an excellent religion. Here’s what I think he means by this. The potential destruction of all life on Earth isn’t a very amusing subject. It’s so horrifying that you can hardly think about it at all. But Vonnegut manages to present most of the book as a comedy, so that you are able to think about it, which we desperately need to do before it’s all too late. By making it funny, he is formally lying to us, but these lies are more useful to us than the truth; we’re in pretty much the same situation as the San Lorenzans, who couldn’t survive without their mendacious religion. People during the Cold War were, with good reason, scared shitless that the world was going to end soon in a nuclear holocaust. We came terrifyingly close during the Cuba Missile Crisis. (As Christopher Hitchens says, do you remember where you were the day JFK nearly killed all of us?) There were many books and movies intended to help people relate to

13 what was going on. Some of them just presented the threat straight up, in as realistic a way as they could manage: the version I like most is Shute’s On the Beach. But I would say that the mirror-reversed ones, like Cat’s Cradle and Doctor Strangelove, were better. It’s amazing how powerful a weapon humour is; I feel they did more to help persuade us not to blow ourselves up. We need these people badly if we’re going to stay sane. Can someone point me to a new Vonnegut, who knows how to make us laugh at global warming and the financial meltdown? I’d rather like to read him. [2012]

PETER YOUNG An unintentional ‘wampeter’ of Vonnegut’s own design around which agnostics still flock, and a good time to re-read it was not long after Vonnegut had left us – and re-published as a Masterwork in hardcover, no less. Surprisingly perhaps, Cat’s Cradle remains particularly well-judged as a hefty swipe at religion and shows precisely how humans are all running around chasing after the wrong things. Vonnegut’s invented religion of Bokononism – like Taoism with added determinism – is the real centrepiece, with the deadly Ice-Nine almost a MacGuffin and the ensemble of characters all playing bit-parts to a much bigger story. Reading it the second time around I knew what to expect, but I recall being three-quarters of the way through it the first time (twenty-five years ago) when it dawned on me how well put together Bokononism, and Cat’s Cradle itself, really is; a lesser talent would have made this twice as long and only half as entertaining. [2007]

14 H.G. WELLS THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU 1896

M.J. NICHOLLS The Island of Doctor Moreau? Please! Who among us hasn’t gambolled in fields with apecats, badgies, cockpigs, donrets, elephocks, ferrats, gerbats, horsharks, iguanomones, jagutans, kookakeys, llamoles, monkelots, narwhelks, ostringos, pandicoots, quaileeches, rhinilgais, shaardvarks, tigeels, uintapmunks, volemice, wombulls, xanthraffes, yakapes and zebrams? In your back garden (or if you live in a city, in the countryside – a mythical place where grass exists), trillions of micro-organisms are cross- breeding right now to introduce even more wondrous deviations and half- breeds to the planet, twice as splendorous as the cloned sheep and spliced deer-penguin hybrids being created in underground labs by Evil Doktors and their hunchback locums. Nature is a language, can’t you read? [2013]

BASIL WILLIAMS The horrors described by Mr. Wells in his latest book very pertinently raise the question how far it is legitimate to create feelings of disgust in a work of art. It is undeniable that details of horror and disgust sometimes appear perfectly legitimate methods of arousing the emotions, and add to the beauty of a tragedy and to the pleasure to be derived therefrom. The Philoctetes* is perhaps an extreme instance of this, for there the loathesome- ness of the details of Philoctetes’s suffering is as great as it can be, and yet it is never revolting. But in this book the details of suffering so elaborately set

Cover illustration by Dominic Harman * A play by Sophocles, 409 BC.

June 2010: SF Masterworks second series 15 forth by Mr. Wells simply have a nauseating effect. The distinction between legitimate and illegitimate use of horror seems to lie not in the form of the horror, but in the purpose for which it is used. The repulsive details in the Philoctetes are merely used to give verisimiltude to a tragedy which would be tragic without them; the case of Philoctetes, quite apart from his particular form of suffering, arouses pity, and his special sufferings are adventitious, and not of the essence of the tragedy. But in Mr. Wells’s story, which may be taken as a type of many others tainted with the same fault, the tragedy, such as it is, merely consists in the details of the form of horror chosen; the disgusting descriptions arouse loathing without any equivalent personal interest. The sufferings inflicted in the course of the story have absolutely no adequate artistic reason, for it is impossible to feel the slightest interest in any one of the characters, who are used as nothing but groundwork on which to paint the horrors. In fact, these horrors have not even the merit of penny-a-lining descriptions of police-court atrocities, for in them there is at least some human interest, but here, without the actual form of horror described, the book would be quite irrational. It has, we observe, been suggested in some quarters that Mr. Wells was animated by a desire to expose the repulsive aspect of vivisection, but we do not believe it. At least, it is singularly ineffective from that point of view, and would be about as valuable for such a purpose as a pornological story in suppressing immorality; and even if that were the object, it would be no defence for artistic failure. [1896]

JOEL CUNNINGHAM This book will always be indelibly associated in my mind with an ailing, bloated Marlon Brando mumbling through his part as the title character while being followed around by a tiny, identically dressed dwarf. I’m sorry, H.G. Wells, that’s just the way it is. This is a pretty good sci-fi horror story, especially considering it’s so old and peppered with casual racism. It’s not quite as good as The Time Machine, but it’s similar in a lot of ways. What is Wells’s obsession with all his books being big long letters or stories that have been discovered by a colleague or relative? Can’t the protagonist just tell us his own story? Anyway, there’s this island, like the island on Lost, except instead of the smoke monster it has a bloated Marlon Brando named Dr. Moreau, who mumbles and somehow turns animals into manimal-horrors through a carefully regulated process of torturing them. Do you know what vivisection means? It’s like surgery, but without anaesthetic, and it is generally performed by Nazis, evil Japanese WWII doctors and mad scientists, of which Moreau is one, even though he never says

16 anything really choice like “IT’S ALIVE! I AM AS A GOD!” Of course, he doesn’t really need to, since Wells slathers on all the “folly of playing god” stuff with a pretty generous trowel. There’s also a bunch of stuff about the inherent beastly nature of man, and society as a mere scrim over our animal passions, fragile enough to be ripped away in any moment of great strife. Also some stuff about how men follow God without really understanding his nature, merely parroting a set of laws that are really only there as a means of control. So, all good stuff, and the prose is very brisk and readable for a 115 year-old book. Sadly, however, mini-Moreau was a cinematic invention, which means we can’t blame Austin Powers 2 on H.G. Wells. [2010]

BEN BABCOCK As with The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau features a first-person, erudite, British, male narrator. And much like the narrator of The War of the Worlds, Edward Prendick finds himself in the middle of an untenable situation not of his own making. However, he more resembles the protagonist of The Time Machine, who is an adventurer and a man of action. This latter point is important: Edward Prendick does things in this book. He isn’t just a passive observer of a Martian invasion or an intervener in events that haven’t yet happened; having stumbled upon a radically different society, Prendick recognizes that he needs to act in order to survive. The Island of Doctor Moreau has also increased my appreciation for the psychological side of Wells’s science fiction. I’ve always been aware of its existence, but I don’t think I gave it enough credit before. Wells manages to portray the collective feeling of hopelessness engendered by Martian invasion, the sense of outrage against the injustice perpetrated on the Eloi, the fear of losing any rigid line that separates Human from Beast… there’s more going on here than I originally credited, and I’m starting to see now why Wells is so revered, both for his contributions to the nascent genre of science fiction and to the field of literature in general. There’s relevance here, and consummate skill, so while it’s good to be sceptical of “the classics” like I try to be, it’s also important to keep an open mind. Just not a vivisected one. [2010]

17 SAMUEL R. DELANY DHALGREN 1975

STEVE SHIPMAN I recommend that y’all go to Amazon and read some of the reviews of Dhalgren there. It is interesting to read the long positive reviews by the “smart” people and it’s also a laugh to read the negative reviews by the people who just didn’t get it or who were offended by its explicit sexuality. It seems that everyone there either gives it a 5-star rating or a 1-star rating with a note saying they’d give it no stars if possible. I have found Dhalgren to be many things, mostly it’s a search for self- identity by the main character, both in wanting to know his real name (other characters call him Kid or The Kid), and in finding out who he is through love, power and fame. It is an exploration of societal values, contrasting hippies in the city park to roving street gangs, each with their own hierarchy or power structure. It’s an exploration of “family” with Kid and his triangle relationship with two lovers, a gay teenager and a straight woman, contrasted with an apartment building family for whom Kid does some work. And it’s also a review of art, religion, friendship, sex, violence, and organization in the midst of anarchy. If New Orleans had simply been entirely walled off and forgotten after hurricane Katrina, then this is perhaps what it may have become. Add to that image elements of a disjointed acid trip through 1960s San Francisco and voilà, you have Dhalgren. [2008]

IAN SALES People either love or hate Dhalgren. This is not altogether surprising – it’s an Cover illustration by Chris Moore experimental novel, it’s pornographic in parts, and it’s only peripherally

July 2010: SF Masterworks second series 18 science fiction. On its publication in 1975, some sf commentators hated and condemned it. Harlan Ellison said, “When Dhalgren came out, I thought it was awful, still do… I was supposed to review it for the L.A. Times, got 200 pages into it and threw it against a wall.” (Ellison hating it is a good reason to like the book, if you ask me.) And yet Dhalgren proved to be Delany’s biggest-selling novel, finding a huge audience outside the genre. The plot, what little of it there is, is simple: a young man who cannot remember his name enters the city of Bellona. Some catastrophe has taken place there, and only there, reducing the city to a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland. In this wasteland live a few hundred anarchic survivors. There is a commune of do-gooders in the park, gangs of scorpions roaming the streets, and Roger Calkins, publisher of the Bellona Times freesheet, lording over it all from his walled mansion. The young man – who is quickly named Kidd, the Kid, or Kid – meets various of Bellona’s residents. He helps the Richards move apartments. They are trying to continue their lives as if everything were normal, but it’s proving very difficult. Kid enters into a relationship with harmonica-playing Lanya. Eventually, he ends up as the leader of a nest of scorpions. And he becomes a poet, and has a book of poetry published by Calkins. The prose operates at a very detailed level, with almost every itch, breath, or passing thought documented. Occasionally, it’s clumsy. Sometimes, it’s serviceable. Mostly, it’s good, but never quite brilliant. The characters are, by their very nature, chiefly ciphers. Bellona itself is probably the best drawn character in the novel. Some of the cast are merely mouthpieces. The prize-winning poet, Ernest Newboy, for example. The name itself is a giveaway. At several points in Dhalgren, Newboy discusses poetry with Kid – both the writing of it and people’s responses to it. I haven’t read enough of Delany’s non-fiction to spot if Newboy is reiterating Delany’s own theories. I doubt it, because Newboy’s theories are pompous twaddle. For instance, he tells an anecdote about how his appreciation of two writers was changed by personally meeting them. The work of one he found bland and dull, but after interviewing the writer, revised his opinion – he could now hear the author’s voice when he read, and what was anodyne he now saw was ironic and incisive. And vice versa for another writer, whose work he had always admired, but found near unreadable after getting to know the author. It’s complete and utter rubbish, of course. You might as well expect a soap opera star to behave in real life the same as the character they play on television… Dhalgren is only peripherally science fiction. No explanation is given for the catastrophe which has befallen Bellona. The various hints Delany gives are not rational – a second moon in the night sky, a day when a vast sun fills the sky, the

19 way the city seems to randomly change, the unreliable nature of time within the city… I’ve seen it suggested that much of this can be explained through Kid being schizophrenic. But there are other sfnal elements in the novel. The scorpions are so called because they wear holographic “light shields”. These were initially holograms of scorpions, although by the time Kid arrives in Bellona they’re all manner of colourful and mythical creatures. This use of science fiction ideas, without the underlying process, is what angered some sf commentators – Delany was breaking the “rules”. But it’s not just the “rules” of science fiction that are broken in Dhalgren. Many of the “rules” of fiction are also carefully broken. The voice is third-person, but occasionally lapses into first-person. The final section ‘The Anathemata: A Plague Journal’, is presented with interlinear comments, and in parts reads like an edited manuscript. Kid’s character too is very different to that presented in the rest of the novel. The novel’s opening line, “... to wound the autumnal city” is actually the latter half of the novel’s last line. The narrative’s chronology is confused and confusing – Kid loses entire days at a time, and yet the novel’s timeline never quite adds up. One of the interesting aspects of Dhalgren is not that you find something new every time you read the book, but that you consider the book itself anew. Each reread changes how you think about the novel as a whole. This time, I found many of the characters less appealing than I’d remembered. Newboy was a pompous arse, astronaut Captain Kamp (based on Buzz Aldrin? In places, he seemed to be) was patronising, George Harrison was almost a caricature, and most of the scorpions were unlikeable yobs. And yet, on this read, I learnt something new about Dhalgren: it is filled with references to Greek and Roman myths. Such as the opening scene, in which Kid has sex with a woman and then visits a grotto and finds a strange chain of prisms and lens – a reference to Daphne. In many parts of the novel, Kid’s story references that of Apollo. Dhalgren is more myth than literature, and in some respects its construction reflects that. I still find the novel fascinating. There's something primal in the story which appeals to me. As a post-apocalyptic novel, it’s completely different to George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides. Dhalgren is never dull. It hasn’t even dated, because it’s one of those sf novels – like van Vogt’s Undercover Aliens – which carries the time it was written around with it, irrespective of, and in addition to, the time in which the story is set. [2008]

20 BRIAN ALDISS HELLICONIA 1982–1985

NIGEL QUINLAN An astonishing trilogy, best read, I suspect, in one big 1,000-plus paged lump as presented here. Helliconia is a formidable work. The timescale is vast, the themes are difficult, the human dramas, though full of intrigue and passion, battles and spectacle, are unashamedly literary in the demands placed on the reader. The trilogy, in fact, expects full intellectual and emotional engagement in order to fully appreciate the scale and complexity of Aldiss’s achievement. Helliconia is a planet with two suns and two years. The shorter years are over four hundred days long. The greater year takes millennia. At one end of the great year the planet is shrouded in extreme cold, at the other in extreme heat. Civilisations rise and fall over the course of the year, only for the survivors to come forth again in the Spring and start all over again. Helliconia is an epic of climate change. Vying for supremacy on the planet are two species, the phagor, who dominate in the cold time, and humans who dominate in the warmth. The two are profoundly hostile to each other, and yet fundamentally linked in the struggle to survive. Overhead is a researching station from Earth, the Avernus, cataloguing and recording and transmitting its findings home. Life persists, in abundant forms and varieties, though the processes are cruel and profligate with individuals, but the books chart the stories of individuals as they struggle with their strange world, trying to understand it or shape it or control it, often with plenty of cruelty of their own. Can the Cover illustration by Dominic Harman cycle be broken? Can memory and civilisation persist, and if so at what

August 2010: SF Masterworks second series 21 price? The world-building’s the thing here. Designed, envisioned and delineated with great care and detail, Helliconia is alive on the page, but though marvelous and splendid and strange, it’s more than a simple vehicle for escapist fantasy. It’s a world in some ways even more circumscribed than our own, partly because of the strictures of the environment and partly because of humanity itself. It’s a big, broad, shambling masterpiece. Every human is flawed, every venture doomed and the vast natural processes designed to preserve life are merciless and inscrutable, yet ultimately Aldiss unifies these elements into a vision of universal empathy in which intelligent life must adapt to to the natural vehicles that keep it alive. [2014]

MARK YON I did read these novels back in the 1980s when they were released as three separate books: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer and Helliconia Winter, in 1982, 1983 and 1985 respectively. Hereafter I’m going to see them as one book, which is for all intents and purposes is how they read, as a uniform body of work (albeit in three parts). At the time of original writing they were a surprise, if I remember right. Here was a writer known for his SF writing (Hothouse, Greybeard, Report on Probability A, etc.) writing what seemed (at first) to be a fantasy. And if I remember right, a glacially slow series. Which made them a little disappointing. However, there is an SF element to the books. For those who don’t know, Helliconia is a planet. The tales are told from the perspective of the inhabitants as they go through the world’s seasons. The twist in the tale here is that the seasons are very long: centuries long, long enough for species to live and die within one season, and especially in the long, cruel, bitter winters. As the tale unfolds the perspective is drawn further back to the point where we realise that all that is being told is actually part of a planetary research report from the Earth ship Avernus. It is here that the reader discovers that, as part of a binary star system, all/most life on Helliconia will be extinguished. Much of the books are spent in the debate over whether humans should interfere with the rise and fall of civilisations on the planet, which is an interesting counterpoint to what goes on in the research ship and on Earth. We meet a variety of people/creatures on this journey: in Helliconia Spring, Yuli is a humanoid hunter-gatherer, one of the Freyr, who, as the world reawakens, we find experiences the development of an urban civilisation. Helliconia Spring tells

22 of Yuli and his descendants as Winter turns to Spring and the Freyr develop from hunters to urban dwellers. By the second book Helliconia Summer we have the dominance of the human-like species in a fantasy setting. We also encounter more about the Phagors, a Morlock-like furred white humanoid species, who begin in Helliconia Spring as seemingly simple hunters and carry off Yuri’s father. As the story deepens, however, in Summer and Winter we find that they have a richer background and culture and seem to have been on Helliconia long before the emergence of the human-like dominant species. The fantasy feel is quite strong as we discover about their lifestyles. To confirm this further, there’s even a dragon- like creature, the Wutra’s Worm, with an enormous lifespan. The book is a case study in worldbuilding: evidently Aldiss spent time with physicists, astronomers, ecologists, climatologists, sociologists and microbiologists in creating a credible environment. Most importantly (according to Aldiss’s introduction) is Lovelock’s idea of Gaia, once fairly new in the 1980s, and now seems to be increasingly plausible. Perhaps, as a result, this book doesn’t seem as way out as it did when I first read it, though just as epic and majestic. Part of the joy of this book is to see how the world changes through the seasons and how the landscape and landforms adapt accordingly. In the style of Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, or some of H.G. Wells’s work, this book is perhaps the ultimate planetary romance, and deliberately so. In such a framework the writer writes as an observer rather than as part of the narrative. Consequently, the book seems written in a rather detached style. Though this can give a feeling of weight and gravity to the long tale, it can also create a coolness that distances the reader from the world and creatures within. They are being studied rather than interacted with. In the twenty-five years or so since originally reading this, I now see where Aldiss is going. It is his view on civilisations, their ability to grow and decline and the causes and effects of such development. It also raises the question of whether in the grand scheme of things Mankind in the future may be worth preserving. Though it is still slow to develop, it is surprisingly engaging. Do not expect it to be a fast-paced romp. Instead, it is a book where you expect to be immersed and be slowly awakened to the opportunities within. It may be my greater age and experience, it may be that in these days of global warming and biomes the world’s just caught up with the concepts herein. However this was a much more satisfying read second time around. And good to see the background details given as Appendices here too. Consequently, very much recommended. [2010]

23 H.G. WELLS THE FOOD OF THE GODS 1904

G.K. CHESTERTON … And now it comes to my mind that Mr. H.G. Wells actually has written a very delightful romance about men growing as tall as trees; and that here, again, he seems to have been a victim of this vague relativism. The Food of the Gods is, like Mr. Bernard Shaw’s play*, in essence a study of the Superman idea. And it lies, I think, even through the veil of a half- pantomimic allegory, open to the same intellectual attack. We cannot be expected to have any regard for a great creature if he does not in any manner conform to our standards. For unless he passes our standard of greatness we cannot even call him great. Nietszche summed up all that is interesting in the Superman idea when he said, ‘Man is a thing which has to be surpassed.’ But the very word ‘surpass’ implies the existence of a standard common to us and the thing surpassing us. If the Superman is more manly than men are, of course they will ultimately deify him, even if they happen to kill him first. But if he is simply more supermanly, they may be quite indifferent to him as they would be to another seemingly aimless monstrosity. He must submit to our test even in order to overawe us. Mere force or size even is a standard; but that alone will never make men think a man their superior. Giants, as in the wise old fairy-tales, are vermin. Supermen, if not good men, are vermin. The Food of the Gods is the tale of Jack the Giant-Killer told from the point of view of the giant. This has not, I think, been done before in

Cover illustration by Dominic Harman * Man and Superman (1903)

September 2010: SF Masterworks second series 24 literature; but I have little doubt that the psychological substance of it existed in fact. I have little doubt that the giant whom Jack killed did regard himself as the Superman. It is likely enough that he considered Jack a narrow and parochial person who wished to frustrate a great forward movement of the life-force. If (as not unfrequently was the case) he happened to have two heads, he would point out the elementary maxim which declares them to be better than one. He would enlarge on the subtle modernity of such an equipment, enabling a giant to look at a subject from two points of view, or to correct himself with promptitude. But Jack was the champion of the enduring human standards, of the principle of one man one head and one man one conscience, of the single head and the single heart and the single eye. Jack was quite unimpressed by the question of whether the giant was a particularly gigantic giant. All he wished to know was whether he was a good giant – that is, a giant who was any good to us. What were the giant’s religious views; what his views on politics and the duties of the citizen? Was he fond of children – or fond of them only in a dark and sinister sense? To use a fine phrase for emotional sanity, was his heart in the right place? Jack had sometimes to cut him up with a sword to find out. [1905]

MARK YON Of all the many books written by H.G. Wells, this is not one that usually springs to mind. However this is a good, if rather overlooked, scientific romance that is worthy of your attention. The tale is fairly straightforward. Two scientists, Mr. Bensington and Professor Redwood, create a miracle chemical that they call (rather unpronounceably) Herakleophorbia IV. This chemical element accelerates physical growth and creates animals that are much bigger than normal. Thinking that they are Advancing Science and have created a solution to future world supplies, the two scientists test their compound by creating giant chicks and set up an experimental farm for their study. However, mismanagement by the Skinners, an inept couple given charge of the farm, leads to the giant poultry escaping. The problem is exacerbated when it is found that other animals have fed on the food and soon giant worms, earwigs, wasps (as shown on the cover) and rats are found across the countryside. The media publicise this with gusto. Consequently the scientists, with a civil engineer named Cossar, track the giant vermin down and to halt further problems the farm is burnt to the ground. However most of the book is concerned with the humans who have eaten the food, now called Boomfood. Redwood’s

25 own child, Edward (Teddy), is fed the food, as too Albert Caddles, the grandson of the couple given the farm to look after. Unable to stop eating the food (as that would prove fatal) the giants created are seen as a boon yet ultimately lead a sad life. Intelligent and physically advanced, the super-sized innocents are shunned and reviled by human society, seen as freaks and treated with mistrust. Bensington is driven into hiding by the media. A politician, John 'The Giant Killer' Caterham, uses the public fear of the giants through the media to whip up feeling against them, which has tragic consequences. In the end it seems clear that there is to be a war between the repressed giants, the Children of the Food, and the human Pygmies. However, as this tale is not told here, the reader is left to wonder ‘what-if?’, and the last paragraph is an epic Stapledonian-type moment. For a book that is over a hundred years old, this book (as mentioned in the new introduction by Adam Roberts) is surprisingly relevant in these days of ‘Frankenstein foods’ and genetic modification. The corrupt politician, the restrictions of a hierarchical class society, bureaucratic ineptitude, the gullibility of the masses and the influence of the media are surprisingly apt keystones, not just for the 20th but also for the 21st century. In this study of ‘Man versus Science’, though the technology in Wells’s tale may be different, the social consequences are both appropriate and thought-provoking. Wells manages to show the consequences of scientific progress, whilst warning of corruptible politicians and evoking the inequality of slavery. Wells’ combination of both light humour (at the beginning) and darker pathos (towards the end) work surprisingly well here, though they are relatively simple in execution. The need for the giant Young Caddles who travels to London to determine the meaning of life is both amusing and affecting. Some of the scenes of the giant creatures attacking humans are quite horrific. The characters are a little caricaturist, and show their age, though this is perhaps deliberate. It must be remembered that the book was written for the primary purpose of entertainment, though its sly commentary (if a little simplistic) is engaging and appropriate. It’s more readable than Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and in the best tradition of Wells’s scientific romances makes the reader consider alternative options to reality. [2010]

26 JACK FINNEY THE BODY SNATCHERS 1955

MARK YON Here’s another of those names that deserve to be better known, in my opinion. Though Jack Finney is a name you may have heard of, I doubt it’s one that immediately springs to mind in the SF canon, even though Jack was the recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1987, and Time and Again (1970) is often seen as one of the best time travel tales of all time, though not widely known. And that’s a shame. Jack is one of those authors whose writing has been better known through the films of his work, rather than the actual books. So here’s perhaps a good place to start, with a re-evaluation of one of his better-known writings. The Body Snatchers you may know as the films The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (both in 1956 and 1978) and The Invasion (2007). I say that with trepidation, in that knowing of the films perhaps devalues the book: many will say they know the book, having seen the film/s. But, good though some of those films are, the book for me is subtler and more refined work. Its apparent effortlessness as it unfolds and its rapid pace belies a work of deceptive power. This is perhaps partly due to the fact that the writer’s background in advertising enables him to write with precision and effectiveness. The story starts with what seems to be a 1950s idyll: August 1953 in small-town America, with a leisurely lifestyle and a homely nature. Our hero Cover illustration by Dominic Harman of the tale, told in the first person, is Doctor Miles Bennell, who lives a

October 2010: SF Masterworks second series 27 happy existence in Santa Mira (Mill Valley), California. When closing the surgery one night, Miles’ childhood friend Becky Driscoll visits to ask about her cousin Wilma’s strange behaviour. She doesn’t believe that her Uncle Ira is really her Uncle Ira… Cunningly we are gradually told that this wonderful, if rather dull, life is changing, that people are not the real people. Miles and Becky find that their initial scepticism becomes something that may be real as the number of these cases that are reported increases. Friends also tell of similar cases. Manny Kaufman, a psychologist, is asked for advice. And then acquaintances Theodora and Frank Belicec find something in the garage that is just unbelievable… The central horror is this: that in idyllic America, all white picket fence and Mom’s apple pie, with good people doing good things, we have a secret – that people are not who we think they are and that our friends and loved ones are changed from that which we know and love to something that is bland, conformative, where everyone is a blank canvas, programmed to be part of a communicatively conjoined society. And that is a creepy, illicit and supremely effective horror: it can happen any time, to anybody. To this we have a character that lives in a place that he’s known for most of his life, who has things that have not changed throughout his life, yet seemingly change overnight. It’s the spinster librarian who fed Miles’s childhood reading habit but turns into something nasty, the main street of people who stop waving and smiling to each other, the decline of trade in the town as the aliens discourage ‘outsiders’ and in fact the blank indifference to outsiders and lack of human contact that creates the horror here. Things are perfectly ordinary and yet they are not – and that is the horror. This book not only tells of fear, a trepidation of change and the possible decline of a person’s sanity, but a loss of things that are ordinary, rational and normal. And that’s why, even with its dated moments – it works. The link between this paranoia and the secret threat of subversive Communism in the 1950s has been made before. The invasion issue is initially left ambiguous in the novel: it is first posed as a psychological phenomenon, or even a dream- like condition, which the new cover shows admirably. Later of course we realise that it is an alien invasion, a point that in the book, unlike the 1956 film, is cleverly and subtly examined, counter-argued and eventually proposed as a viable explanation. By the end you believe that it is a possible and sensible solution. There are lapses in the tale that show its 1950s origins – the role of women in the tale is rather stereotyped, events are

28 ’queer’ and also ’gay’, boyfriends and girlfriends are chaperoned, characters smoke and drink as if they’re competing with characters from one of the latest episodes of Mad Men – and yet, at its core is a sense of creeping paranoia, of things not being right, in what should be an idyllic Bradbury-esque small town environment, striking that feeling of unease. (Interestingly, the book was slightly revised in 1978 by Finney to tie in with the second movies release. Here we have the original.) There’s the odd clunk and info-dump, but nothing too jarring. Would this work as a novel today? Perhaps not (see the 2007 film The Invasion for why not): and consequently, it is perhaps something that works best as a product of its time. It works when towns were often isolated things, communications between places less common than today and everyone in a settlement knew everyone else. Is this communism or urbanisation? Is it post-war malaise or something more insidious? That’s what makes this book creep, and why it has created one of the genre’s most enduring lodestones. The introduction by Graham Sleight, as you might expect from the Locus writer, is both informative and knowledgeable, though may be best read after you’ve read the tale. I think there’s a great deal of mileage in reading this novel with no background at all: not easy for such a now-well-known genre trope. In summary, this is a brief, yet still effective tale. Though it has dated a little, it is still powerfully successful. [2010]

PETER YOUNG We all know the story, but this kind of first-person narrative seems to define a good old-fashioned tale of alien invasion, and in that sense it is a direct descendant of the narratives of War of the Worlds and The Day of the Triffids but necessarily given a distinctly ‘small-town America’ slant. Jack Finney always denied the Body Snatchers were meant as an allegory for Communism, an interpretation he blamed on Hollywood; I’m inclined to believe him too because Finney’s story is clearly devoid of any hint towards politics, direct or indirect. In a blog post in 2005 I said The Body Snatchers was on my own list of books I’d like to see on the SF Masterworks list, not just for its undeniable influence on twentieth century SF but for the fact that Finney’s writing still comes through fresh, loud and clear. [2014]

29 JOANNA RUSS THE FEMALE MAN 1975

PETER YOUNG Some may have been thinking this inclusion on the SF Masterworks list was well overdue, and they were right. Russ plays a part in her own novel (her most famous) about alternates of herself that may exist out there in the multiverse, with the broad differences between them being defined along the lines of their degrees of emancipation. By including herself in her novel even though she largely takes a back seat, this seemed to be the most honest way Russ could explore the subject of women’s unequal role in society by comparing four possible universes, one of which is her own. The most prominent is of course the Joanna Russ that is Janet Evason, inhabitant of a far future Earth renamed Whileaway in which men died out in a selective plague 800 years previously; then there’s the Russ that is Jeannine Dadier from an alternate present in which World War II never happened and American women are universally the stay-at- home types, and the fourth Russ is Jael Reasoner, combatant in a protracted and violent future war against men, who brought the four of them together for purposes she will eventually reveal. Russ does not fire off her flaming arrows at only the men – her female characters often come in for an equally tough critique. She wrote the story scattergun-fashion with the four different points of view interchanging frequently and denying the reader any chance of experiencing a straightforward narrative, however the novel still hangs together nicely and the unusual composition is a major part of the book’s originality. Cover illustration by Dominic Harman On publication The Female Man may have been something of a wake-

November 2010: SF Masterworks second series 30 up call for the men at the time who were prepared to take it on, as it is undeniably didactic. As a sequel to her Nebula Award-winning short story ‘When It Changed’ (a story thoroughly deserving of its inclusion in Harlan Ellison’s Again, Dangerous Visions, and one that horrified the likes of authors Michael G. Coney and particularly Richard E. Geis, whose soft porn SF featured women who are little more than toys for men), it’s probably fair to say Russ’s prickly and often very humourous rants are a little less emblematic, directly, of the experience of Western women today. However much things have improved and however much the battleground may have shifted, the objective hasn’t: the glass ceiling is still there and the ongoing battles for equality of opportunity in the West are still no less important than those that went before. The Female Man can still put fire in the belly of feminists, and while it’s probably a layer or two beneath the current strata of feminist experience and thinking (that evolution could certainly be commented on better by others, not myself) it was certainly pivotal to some of the feminist genre literature that came after. However much this was a product of its day, its age is beginning to show a little and that’s actually something to celebrate, as its impassioned and very likeable ending itself makes clear. Certainly a classic, and still an invigorating book which I’m particularly glad to see on the SF Masterworks list. [2011]

ADEMPTION Four different women from alternate Earths discuss their lives. One is from the far distant future. One is a librarian from an alternate early 1960s where the depression never ended. One is from the present day. One is from a nearer future, has claws like Wolverine, and was the impetus for Molly from Neuromancer, another beclawed female assassin. Four stars, because The Female Man is a 1970s book with all the glory and messiness of that era. The book is sci-fi, feminist critique, literary critique, a rant by the author, beatnik, utopian, domestic, warlike, angry, pacific. It starts slow, but there is plenty going on. The narrative shifts between characters, modes, and settings like a ’70s cartoon à la The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat or Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Moreover, the author is a character who addresses readers, other characters, and the book itself. Some of this is beautiful; some of it is too much. Russ also used a few passé expressions like “grok” and “drugstore novels” that make the book both goofy and loveable. Why are you not reading this? [2014]

31 M.J. ENGH ARSLAN 1976

ABIGAIL NUSSBAUM The first time I tried to read Arslan I was seventeen or eighteen. The book came to me via Amazon’s recommendation engine, which in those days, before I found an online community of readers, was my main source of new and unfamiliar titles. I recall not knowing much about the book before buying or reading it – just that it was well-regarded, and that it told the story of the invasion and conquest of the United States by the titular general. The book began calmly enough – narrated by Franklin L. Bond, the principal of a middle school in Kraftsville, Illinois, on the day that Arslan’s forces roll into town, its opening scenes follow Bond as he steadfastly tries to calm his staff and students and to prevent any bloodshed. Then came the chapter’s climax, a celebratory dinner held by Arslan for his forces in the school gymnasium. At the end of the dinner, Arslan brings out two students, a boy and a girl, and, before his appreciative men and the horror-struck staff – which includes the boy’s mother – rapes them both. I closed the book, put it away, and spent the next few months refusing to look it in the eye. Had it occurred to me, I might have, like Joey on Friends, put Arslan in the freezer. The next time I culled my books, Arslan went to the local library, where for all I know it has been traumatizing unsuspecting readers ever since. But a part of me felt guilty for letting a book terrify me so thoroughly, and when Arslan came up, every now and then, in conversation as a difficult but brilliant work of science fiction, I would shift uncomfortably. At the end of 2010 Gollancz reissued Arslan, and Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs Adam Roberts’s admiring foreword (excerpted on his blog) convinced me to

December 2010: SF Masterworks second series 32 give the book another try. This time around, I made it all the way to the end, and I can certainly see where all the praise and respect are coming from. I can also see that my reaction – if not quite its vehemence – was exactly what Engh was aiming for in that opening chapter. What is less clear to me, however, is whether I truly made the wrong choice all those years ago, when I left Arslan unread. After his explosive entrance, Arslan makes his home in Kraftsville and sets about remaking it. A curfew is declared. Firearms are confiscated. Soldiers are billeted with the local families, who act as hostages to their guests’ safety. (It is interesting to note just how methodically Arslan goes about violating the first few amendments to the US constitution.) Arslan himself makes his home with Franklin and his wife Luella, into whose house he also brings Hunt Morgan, the boy he raped, and Betty Hanson, an attractive young teacher from Franklin’s school, who are obviously both intended for Arslan’s amusement. Franklin, with his gruff manner and steady nerves, becomes Kraftsville’s de facto leader, which puts him in Arslan’s company even more than their sharing a house would, and gives him a chance to get to know the man, who is as devoid of cruelty as he is of compassion, utterly dedicated to his creed, in which strength is the ultimate moral virtue, and to his master plan for the human race. To this plan’s end, Arslan informs Franklin, he plans to make Kraftsville self-sufficient. Phone lines and later electric power are shut down. The high school students are shipped away, and replaced by foreign (male) soldiers and (female) prostitutes. The county’s borders are closed down, on pain of death. Machinery, medicine, anything that can’t be manufactured and maintained within the town, are all confiscated. This is all, Arslan explains to Franklin, his plan to save humanity, to stop the rampant exploitation of resources that will surely doom the species, but when Franklin pushes him Arslan admits that his hopes of creating a sustainable human race are flimsy, and sooner rather than later he shifts his efforts to plan B – saving the planet from us by sterilizing all the world’s women, and bringing about the extinction of the human race. Before we go any further it should be acknowledged that this is all utterly absurd. When the narrative voice shifts, in the middle segment of the novel, to Hunt, who becomes Arslan’s protégé and travels with him to the -stan country from which he emerged to conquer the world, we get a flimsy but borderline plausible explanation of how Arslan managed to leverage Soviet nuclear capability into a threat that would bring the entire world to its knees before him, but even this is not enough to rationalize the novel’s events. It might be possible to segment rural America into self-contained chunks with manageable populations, but what about the cities, or even the suburbs? How do you make New York self-sufficient? Hell,

33 how do you put together an army that could conquer New York, or Chicago, while conquering the rest of the world at the same time? Surely at some point the occupation army would outnumber the occupied population, and yet Arslan directs all his forces from Franklin’s living room. Most importantly, how do you get the millions of people who would have to be involved in it to carry out the extinction of their own species? All of these things are impossible, and Engh tacitly acknowledges this when she, for example, whisks Hunt and Arslan from the Midwest to the Middle East and back again (at the same time that Arslan is supposedly dismantling the planet’s mechanized and electronic infrastructure) as if by magic – as though Kraftsville were the only solid place on Earth, and everything outside it were a hazy, ill-defined non-space in which distance had no meaning, because it is all Not Here. This is, of course, exactly how Franklin, who left Kraftsville as a young man but returned because the price of success was “being cut off from the people I understood and the things I believed in”, whose response to the news of the President’s capitulation to the threat of nuclear war is that “everything we ever heard about Washington must be true”, sees the world. Nowadays we’d call Franklin a Red Stater. In 1976, when Arslan was published, he was probably intended as the self- ordained last bulwark of a beleaguered masculinity, and of a way of life that had just finished going ten rounds with the counter-culture movement, the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement, a battle whose outcome was still unclear but which, it must have seemed very likely (at least to men of Franklin’s ilk) would be anarchy and indiscriminate violence. As Arslan puts it, “in the very ascendancy of your power, disintegration! The upheaval, the upswelling, of savagery, of violence.” (Which, like the novel’s grounding in the Cold War, just goes to show, yet again, that no future is as foreign as the recent past’s future.) Arslan, with his delicate mannerisms, his ambiguous sexuality, his palpable ethnicity (it’s difficult to call someone racially prejudiced against a person who has overrun their home-town, killed its people, and raped its children, but nevertheless the insistence with which Franklin’s gaze is drawn to Arslan’s dark skin and Middle Eastern features leaves very little room for doubt) and his undeniable, lethal strength threatens not only that way of life but that concept of masculinity. As Adam puts it in his introduction, Arslan’s premise is “an iteration of a particular US paranoid invasion fantasy: from Floyd Gibbons’s The Red Napoleon (1929) to Red Dawn (1984), US popular culture has luridly imagined the one military catastrophe – occupation by a foreign enemy – that the USA has never, in actuality, suffered.” Franklin is precisely the sort of man whose internal narrative, once it adjusted to the unthinkable scenario of the US capitulating to invaders,

34 would cast him in the lead role of one of these tales of triumphant resistance, and he immediately sets about forming a Kraftsville underground, which originally functions as a secret police and loyalty patrol, but whose ultimate goal is to kill Arslan. It should come as little surprise that a middle aged school principal fails to overthrow a world-conquering tyrant, and that the arc of the novel – which spans nearly twenty years – bends towards Arslan’s victory, and even the success of his plan for auto-extinction. What is more surprising, and even more disquieting, are the similarly dispiriting results of the parallel battle between Arslan and Franklin over Hunt’s soul. As Arslan explains to Franklin, his strategy with Hunt is “First the rape then the seduction,” and as the people of Kraftsville, including Hunt’s parents, recoil from what they now perceive as a damaged, tainted person, Arslan steps in to fill the void. He procures a prostitute for Hunt, teaches him to ride and shoot, and encourages him to question the Mom-and-apple-pie dogma with which he was raised (Engh’s background was in the study of ancient Rome, and the relationship between Arslan and Hunt is quite clearly intended to recall the one between an aristocrat and his catamite). Hunt’s seduction by Arslan is not only the failure of a single teacher to keep a single boy from corruption, but the failure of a whole way of life.

it took a convulsive effort to realize that it was exactly the good people, it was especially the better people, who were the loathsome hypocrites. My father and my mother, and all the other reasonably intelligent, reasonably nice, reasonably successful people I had ever known – they were the ones who spoke out dogmatically for truth, beauty, and goodness, while with every action of their lives they cast votes for falsity, ugliness, and corruption. And Mr. Bond, of course – Mr. Bond was a particularly prime specimen, because he made his living teaching hypocrisy to children. It was Arslan who showed me the possibility of living honestly. Even his deceits were straightforward – tools as simple in purpose and exquisite in design as the guns he equally loved. He lied; but he did not pretend. It’s customary to praise an author of difficult, sophisticated fiction by saying that they make such believable people of their characters that they are impossible to dislike. Arslan achieves something even more difficult. It crafts its three leads so carefully that the reader has no recourse to the relative comfort of either hating or liking these thoroughly unpleasant, occasionally admirable people. Arslan is a monster, but a predictably charismatic one, and just as he seduces Hunt, and later the citizens of Kraftsville, so does he seduce the reader – as Adam points out, the second most disturbing scene in Arslan comes at its end, when Engh manipulates us into rooting for her title character. Hunt is irredeemably twisted up by

35 abuse – Arslan’s, but also Kraftsville’s, which rejects him after his rape. He’s pitiable, but hard to look at. Franklin is the novel’s moral center, the only character able to put up any resistance to Arslan’s charisma, and in that capacity he reminds us, and those who follow Arslan, of the brutal cost of his policies. He’s also the only person in Kraftsville who doesn’t consider Hunt complicit in, and tainted by, his own rape. But Franklin is also deeply prejudiced and narrow-minded. Perhaps more importantly, he fails. His determination to keep fighting is an endearing trait at the beginning of the novel, but an off-putting one as the finality of Arslan’s victory, and the paltriness of Franklin’s power, become more apparent. The novel revolves around these three men and the battle of wits and will between them, which is also a battle for a dominant philosophy of life and a definition of masculinity – Franklin’s uncomplicated steadfastness, Arslan’s narcissistic fascism, Hunt’s sarcastic nihilism. It’s typical for novels that discuss masculinity to sideline femininity and female characters, but Arslan takes this tendency to extremes that shocked me even more, in adulthood, than that opening scene of rape did in my teens. If I have ever in my life read a novel that is so dismissive of women’s character, personhood, and agency as this one, I am struggling to recall it. It’s been a long time since I expected female authors to automatically write feminist or even woman-friendly fiction, but nevertheless I found myself, as I got further into the novel, checking and rechecking Engh’s biography to make sure I hadn’t misremembered her gender. The invisibility of women, to the narrative as well as the three leads, is particularly startling when one considers that one of Arslan’s most important themes is rape – the physical rapes that Arslan commits, and the metaphorical rape of the US by his invasion, which the novel returns to again and again. And yet it’s only men’s rapes that the narrative lingers over, and only through men’s eyes that the horror of rape is expressed. Women, meanwhile, simply endure, like animals. Hunt is raped alongside a girl from his class, who struggles “but it was hardly what you could call a contest.” After the rape she “lay tumbled there till the two soldiers hauled her up and walked her stumblingly off the stage.” We never hear from her again. Hunt’s rape, meanwhile, is a battle: “from the second he realized the scene that had been set for him, he was fighting … Arslan had trouble keeping Hunt under. The boy fought with flailing arms and legs; … Then through a lull in the din I heard Hunt’s cry – a muffled, wordless squawl of anguish and shame and rage. … They led Hunt past us, and he walked upright, not half-collapsed like Paula.” Hunt's narrative is a brilliant, disturbing, heart-rendingly raw description of a rape victim seduced by their rapist. Rejected by his friends and family both for being a rape victim and for accepting the gifts and protection of the only friend

36 he has left, Hunt is confused by feelings of self-loathing and guilt into accepting and eventually returning the love of the man who violated him – because his is the only love on offer. Both Hunt and the supposedly good people around him take it for granted that having been raped makes him ineligible for the love of a better person, and so Hunt clings to the only form of affection still left to him. (I was reminded of Margo Lanagan’s story ‘The Goosle’, which depicts a similarly disturbing relationship with similar skill.) What’s interesting is that not only would we expect the victim in this story to be female, the reality of rape being what it is, but that there is a female victim of rape in the same circumstances as Hunt who could easily have taken his place at the center of this narrative – Betty Hanson, Arslan’s other sex slave. As in the case of Hunt and Paula’s rapes, the narrative distinguishes between Hunt’s angry, combative initial reaction to Arslan’s violations to Betty’s terrified but essentially passive one – Franklin reports hearing screams from Betty’s room, sounds of struggle from Hunt’s. The possibility that women might fight their rapists or try not to give them the satisfaction of hearing them scream, that women might possess feelings of pride that a rape would injure, or experience rage as a result of rape, is never given space by the narrative. Betty’s screams are the last we hear of her. Almost as soon as she arrives in Franklin’s house Arslan tires of her and packs her off. Like Paula, she’s never heard from again. Part of the problem is the dominance of Franklin’s narrative voice in the first half of the novel. Franklin isn’t a bad man. He doesn’t approve of rape, whether it’s done to men or women, and the fact is that there is nothing he could do to stop Betty’s or Paula’s mistreatment, no more than he could have saved Hunt. But it’s pretty obvious that the rape of women doesn’t bother him nearly as much as the rape of men, that it simply doesn’t strike him as important, in the grand scheme of things. When teenage Russian prostitutes arrive in town, and Franklin dryly comments that now they know what has happened to the girls from Kraftsville’s high school, that’s not just a stiff upper lip. He gives a damn, but not much beyond a moment’s stern disapproval, after which he moves on to more pressing matters. Franklin moves heaven and earth to try to save Hunt’s soul from the corruption of Arslan’s abuse, but when Arslan brings Hunt a prostitute to restore his injured manhood, and years later when he returns to Kraftsville with a prepubescent girl as a gift for Hunt, Franklin thinks of them only as temptresses, obstacles placed in Hunt’s path back to righteousness: “she was enough older than Hunt to matter; and in some ways, of course, she was ages older. … She was a cheery little creature, I had to say that for her, but at absolute maximum she was worthless.” The possibility that these girls, too, are victims who need saving never seems to occur to him. But Franklin isn’t the only vector from which this un-personing of women is absorbed. Arslan, of course, is incapable

37 of noticing the humanity of anyone not himself, and Hunt is too twisted up to notice women when his mentor seems to think so little of them, but the novel’s narrative itself encourages this view of women as blanks to be acted upon. The novel climaxes with Arslan, who has disbanded his army and plans to live out his life in Kraftsville, defending the town’s women from a gang of rapists. Throughout the battle, Kraftsville’s women – many of whom were raped by Arslan in their teens – are a passive, undifferentiated clump, who take no part in their own defense. They are a “crowd of women”, a “mob of females”. They “squeal”, “shriek”, and “chatter”. And, of course, Arslan’s plan for engineering the end of the human race short-circuits female, not male, fertility. In the world of Arslan, women seem to be defined by what goes into, or comes out of, their vagina. Aside from the quickly-dispatched Betty and Paula, there are three named female characters in Arslan, each with a personal connection to one of the three leads. Luealla Bond is initially portrayed quite positively, as a level-headed person whom Franklin can trust to keep her head in a crisis. In the early months of Arslan’s presence in the Bond house Luella, like Franklin, grits her teeth at the tyrant’s presence and perseveres in the face of the abuses he commits under her roof (she also, unlike Franklin, extends her sympathy equally to Betty and Hunt). But as the occupation draws on Luella become more and more passive, relegated to her home and her kitchen, serving her husband, Arslan and Arslan’s troops. Years later Hunt muses that Luella, “fulfilled for me (as, I increasingly thought I saw, for Franklin) the role of devoted and honored servant, privileged to criticize, to manage, and to share, but neither to initiate nor to command”, and when she dies Franklin realizes that “I felt very little personal grief … the real blow was practical and selfish. Luella had kept everything running smoothly. No wonder she'd been tired.” Hunt’s mother Jean is also at first a positively drawn character, strong enough to endure the unbearable sight of her own son’s rape. When Hunt tries to reconnect with his parents after several months in Arslan’s care, however, Jean becomes entirely passive, and that passivity destroys their relationship when Hunt’s father makes it clear that, like much of Kraftsville, he considers Hunt irreparably damaged by his rape, and culpable in his own abuse. For the rest of the novel, Jean remains trapped between the two men, incapable or unwilling to assert herself. She doesn’t seem to share her husband’s disgust with their son, but neither does she make any effort to stop him when he gives Hunt an ultimatum to stop “seeing” Arslan as a condition of coming home, nor does she express any preference or exert any control on the question of who does or does not get to live in her house. The change in both women could be taken as an effect of life under occupation and in drastically reduced circumstances, but as none of the point of view characters give much thought to what life is like for women in Arslan-controlled Kraftsville, this is left for us to surmise.

38 The only woman with anything like power and agency in Arslan is also the one whom the novel most thoroughly makes Other. When Arslan returns to Kraftsville after several years’ absence in the novel’s second part, he brings with him his lover Rusudan and their son. Franklin is shocked to see anyone, much less a woman, who can hold their own against Arslan, who can argue with him and elicit from him human irritation and anger, rather than inhuman calm and self- satisfaction. Hunt, who hears about Rusudan long before he meets her, is baffled by Arslan’s claim that he loves her: “I did not understand, I could not conceive, what such a verb as love might mean to Arslan.” We share Hunt’s incomprehension and Franklin’s surprise. It seems inconceivable that a person as monomaniacal as Arslan could feel an emotion as messy and human as love, or that another person could share his life in the mundane way that Rusudan does. But Arslan does nothing to make Rusudan comprehensible. We see her only through Hunt and Franklin’s puzzled eyes, and she herself has no voice – or rather, she has a very loud, frequently raised voice, but it is a babble, as she never learns English and all of her speech is in a language that neither Franklin nor Hunt can understand. Shortly after her arrival in Kraftsville Rusudan is brutally murdered. The murder is assumed to have been political, but for the rest of the novel the possibility is repeatedly raised that Hunt killed Rusudan out of jealousy. Before that question is resolved – in a typically ambiguous manner that leaves Hunt’s actual culpability in Rusudan’s death up for grabs – we get an in-depth look at Hunt’s take on Rusudan, which is simultaneously dismissive and deeply envious. Seen through Hunt’s eyes, Rusudan is animalistic, reduced to her body and its functions – “She was garish, she was cheap, she was third-rate Technicolor”; when Hunt witnesses a fight between her and Arslan he notes how “The woman’s face streamed and dribbled (when Rusudan wept, she wept wholeheartedly), her wild hair, beautiful sometimes in its munificence, was fuzzed and snarled now”; when Arslan takes their child from her soon after its birth, Rusudan “shrilled at him from her bed (deprived, for the time, of her body, she was all ugly now)” – while he desperately tries to argue that it’s he who has the meaningful, deep connection to Arslan – “He would not have spoken to Rusudan of friendship”; “By what right had he suffered for Rusudan? It was I, not Rusudan, whom he had led through Karcher’s woods, to whom he had whispered ‘Look.’” Point for point, Hunt’s observations on Rusudan make him out to be that old-fashioned stereotype, the misogynistic homosexual. Hunt’s sexual orientation is ambiguously defined – the only people we see him sleep with other than Arslan are women, but they are the women procured for him by Arslan, and there are vague hints in the chapters narrated by Hunt that during his sojourn away from Kraftsville he had male lovers as well – and, in all likelihood, was demolished by Arslan’s

39 rape and abuse along with the other parts of Hunt’s identity, so that by the time he leaves Kraftsville he is probably best described as an Arslan-sexual. Nevertheless, stereotypes of homosexuality, and particularly the ones that the people of Kraftsville would ascribe to, attach themselves to Hunt throughout the novel. Unlike Franklin’s matter-of-fact, linear narrative, the chapters narrated by Hunt are discursive, slipping in time and space and between fact and fabulation. His voice is solipsistic, erudite (an erudition granted to him, at least in part, by Arslan, who has Hunt read philosophy and poetry to him), ironic, and disinclined to make moral judgments. Arslan may not turn Hunt into a homosexual, as Kraftsville comes to believe, but he does turn him into the sort of person that, in Franklin and Kraftsville’s worldview, is associated with homosexuality – nihilistic, morally relativistic, intellectual, and unpatriotic. It is Hunt, however, who triumphs at the end of the novel. While a graying Franklin makes ever-more futile gestures of resistance against an enemy who has long since triumphed, and an untouchable Arslan retires to enjoy the fruits of his labor, it’s Hunt whose narrative voice ends the novel, as independent of either of these two men – and of Kraftsville’s opprobrium – as he ever will be. The novel leaves him hunting in the forests, the new man who has taken over the old man’s pursuits as well as his world. It’s in this tension between old and new American masculinity that I begin to see a reason for Arslan’s dismissiveness towards women. Arslan is an assault on Franklin’s type of masculinity, on the narratives of triumphant resistance that its premise deliberately recalls. In order to achieve that assault, it assaults its readers. When Arslan returns to Kraftsville for the last time, Franklin observes that he has extended the tactic he used with Hunt, “First the rape then the seduction”, to the whole town. Arslan the novel takes that tactic with its readers. The opening scene that so terrified me as a teenager was intended to do just that, and the rest of the novel is Engh’s seduction of her readers, her slow persuasion of us onto Arslan’s side. To the men whose concept of masculinity Engh is trying to shatter, a woman’s rape in the opening scene would not have achieved that shock. Our misogynistic culture teaches us that being rapeable is a component of femininity, but that it negates masculinity (or, as Arslan puts it “When a woman is raped, then she is perhaps by so much more a woman … But when a boy is raped, he is by so much less a man”). To see a male character get raped is an assault on the male reader that a woman’s rape wouldn’t have been, and for the seduction part of the novel to get under that same reader’s skin by confounding all expectations that Hunt will rebel against Arslan and avenge his violation, the object of the seduction must also be a man. The problem with this tactic is that it is aimed exclusively at men. Just as Arslan scarcely bothers to seduce the women he rapes and saves his attentions for Hunt (and just as his seduction of Kraftsville is focused on its young boys,

40 to whom he becomes a mentor), Arslan the novel is only interested in seducing its male readers. The problem with the novel turns out to be its lack of interest, not in its female characters, but in its female readers. We don’t get seduced. The opening rape scene is as much an assault on us as it is on male readers, but the rest of the novel ignores us. Ultimately, I’m both glad and sad that I didn’t persevere with Arslan when I was seventeen or eighteen. Part of me thinks that I could never have grasped even a fraction of this brilliant, fascinating, frustrating, disturbing novel at that age, that even if I’d managed to finish it I would simply have thrown it aside in incomprehension and disgust. Another part of me thinks that I would have felt Arslan’s force more strongly, and could have better sympathized with its goal of dismantling thoughtless, jingoistic patriotism, at a time in my life when I was less educated about feminist issues, less primed to notice how a book treats its female characters and readers. What’s done is done, however, and though I certainly don’t regret reading Arslan – for all that I’ve written about it here, there is still so much more to say, and I’m certainly not qualified to plumb its full depths – I can’t help but feel that I haven’t been fully repaid for the trauma it deliberately inflicted on me, because I wasn’t its intended audience. That’s not exactly a point against the novel, but it might be a point against other women reading it. [2011]

41 BRUCE STERLING & WILLIAM GIBSON THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE 1990

CARLOS FERREIRA Considering what Steampunk has become – at times more concerned with style and fast pace than with substance – The Difference Engine is made of a different cloth. Taking its cues from not only the Victoria aesthetic, but also Victorian English, the book is difficult to read in places, sounding formalistic and highly strung. Likewise, some of the action sequences go on for too long, and the characters are neither complex nor especially likeable. But despite these difficulties, this is a book worth sticking with. It presents one of the best fictional discussions I know of about the impact of fast technological change in a society. The politics of technological innovation and societal change all play out in the story, with intense discussions of chaos theory, the Luddite uprisings, surveillance and privacy, and the role of social sciences. This is not your usual action-adventure steampunk novel. And it is all the better for it. [2014]

HOWARD MITTELMARK In their first major collaboration, SF heavyweights Gibson and Sterling spin an exquisitely clever filigree of Victorian alternate history, sparkling densely with ideas, moored by a challenging subtext of chaos theory and the lessons of recent paleontology. In London of 1855, Lord Babbage’s steam-driven Engines (mechanical computers roughly comparable to Univac) have transformed the world, blueprints thanks to Victorian paradigms of science Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs and order. England’s hereditary lords have been replaced by merit-lords

January 2011: SF Masterworks second series 42 (Darwin, Huxley, etc.); Lord Byron’s Industrial Radical party rules. Behind the mask of progress, 20th century crises brew: Babbage Engines and Citizen Numbers are creating a police state; the pollution of a hyper-accelerated industrial revolution makes London sporadically unliveable; political propaganda is deconstructionist. When rising paleontologist Edward Mallory chances into possession of a stability-threatening Engine program (it’s Godel’s Proof, a theorem demonstrating that mathematical systems can never be consistent), he’s thrust into a shadowy world of politics, spies and revolutionaries. With the help of a James Bondish “dark lantern man” and a dedicated cop, he threads his way through London’s demimonde and defeats Captain Swing, a Marxist/Luddite intent on a new social order. Despite the authors’ proficiency, their message is perhaps too subtle even for SF readers (a major epiphany is an oblique reference to Stephen J. Gould’s Wonderful Life, and thus the random nature of life); mainstream readers will see brilliant extrapolation (the kinotrope is a new art form, motion pictures by way of programmed arrays of changing, clacking tiles), clever details (Disraeli’s a Grub Street hack; Shelley’s a Luddite exiled to Elba; hackers are called “clackers”) and an adequate cops-and-robbers plot, and miss the point completely. [1990]

J.G. KEELY My Shakespeare professor was ravishing: clever and ebullient, and never to be found without knee-high leather heels. I drew playbill covers while she lectured, and gave them to her at the end of class. One day I went to her office hours and there they were, all arrayed upon the wall above her desk. Life is the better for beautiful, passionate people. One day, at the end of class, she beckoned me over: “Are you going to turn your next paper in on time?” Of course, I answered, non-chalant, with a crooked smile – why wouldn’t I? “Because you turned the last four in late.” Crestfallen, I merely nodded, the chastened acolyte, vowing that I would do better, next time. It was my habit to sit in my little apartment, a few blocks off campus, late into the hours of the night, not writing papers. I watched old BBC series, worked on my own little projects, and visited this site, to read about Victorian London. There I discovered Henry Mayhew, founder of the era’s most successful and brilliant satirical publication, Punch, who spent his free time wandering the slums and carefully cataloging the lives of the poor. While considered an eccentric waste of time by his peers, his London Labour and the London Poor is a groundbreaking work of social research, and filled with the

43 most fascinating and unbelievable details of life, some horrible to tell, others uproarious, and all the sort of thing which may make any aspiring writer throw up his hands and cry out “imagination is a fool’s crutch, which never could pretend to depict the world half so rich or unusual as it truly is!” I delighted likewise to read of Isambard Kingdom Brunel – and not merely for his fantastic name – but because he contrived to build a shipping tunnel beneath the Thames in 1825 – and succeeded. Then there are the innumerable pieces of erotic fiction that flourished in the upright, proper age, an amusing reminder that there is no new act or desire under the sun, as plentifully evidenced by curious work of one mysterious ‘Walter’, a man of the upper middle class who wrote an extensive, rather unflattering memoir of his own sexual escapades, My Secret Life, which is at turns amusing, disturbing, unbelievable, and often, altogether too human. I can still remember the night when, up late with a paper to write, I stumbled across a growing subculture in California, ‘Steampunk’, whose devotees dress themselves in top hats, cutaway coats, and other such fine style, drinking Absinthe, and hearkening back to that sophisticated age. My interest was piqued. I traced the movement back to this book and picked up a copy, used. Of course, I already knew Gibson and Sterling as the innovators of the Cyberpunk subgenre, so I was excited to start. A half-chapter in, I decided I should probably know more about the Victorian era before I tried this book again, and so it sat on my shelf for long years. It isn’t that the story cannot be enjoyed simply as an adventure, but without prior knowledge I worried I’d miss the subtext. I looked more into Steampunk and found that its adherents didn’t know much about Brunel, Mayhew, Walter, Ada Lovelace, or Disraeli – let alone more obscure figures. They knew Byron, Keats, Shelley, maybe Blake. They were mostly music scene kids with money who wanted to show off, though even their knowledge of the fashions tended to be sadly spotty and incoherent. So it’s curious that this book, one of the starting-places of the movement, is so obsessed with precise knowledge and references to the period. It is not a reconstruction – it presents an alternate history, so all the characters we see are different than we would expect them. It’s amusing to watch these familiar personalities in unfamiliar, yet fitting roles. Likewise we have a mix of periods clashing together, since the whole concept is that Babbage’s Difference Engine, the first computer, was actually built when he designed it, and not a century later. It’s always a curious question to ponder: what if Archimedes early explorations into Calculus had been widely known instead of lost for millennia? What if the Greeks had

44 realized the steam dynamo could be more than a toy? Playing with these ideas can provide a lot of fodder for writers, looking to the past in the same way Wells and Verne looked to the future. Many of the most amusing moments in The Difference Engine are throwaway references, such as Ada Lovelace asking if there might be some future in ‘the notion of electrical power’, hinting at the fact that electric power progressed from theory to practice quickly in the real world, while the computer languished, but it need not have been so. But as I said, the central story is not overly concerned with in-depth knowledge: terms and references are thrown around constantly, but none are required in order to comprehend what’s going on. The MacGuffin is a MacGuffin – more interesting if we understand why, but hardly necessary for the plot. The structure of the story is unusual, and often, the book feels more like an intellectual exercise between the writers than a streamlined story. There is a commitment to verisimilitude, realism, and historicity throughout, so that things are never tied up neatly; there is no single, easy end, and we get three related stories which, as a whole, tell a larger story, but there is guesswork in the gaps between them. We even get a short section of ‘related documents’ – newspaper stories, letters, speeches, and such things which many Victorian writers (prominently Stoker) used to spice up their works and play with the narrative voice. It’s a useful structure for authors, since it allows them to dole out information in pieces without suggesting an absentmindedly omniscient narrator. Yet it is certainly possible to carry verisimilitude too far in the name of realism. A story which painstakingly described every detail and moment, went off on digressions about every tertiary character or bit of fluff about the world, used realistically fragmented, stuttering dialogue, and killed off or abandoned characters at a moment’s notice, all without a thought for how it would effect the structure or the story, would be very unpleasant and rather pointless reading. So we must ask: where to draw the line? When does detail and allusion simply bog down the story? When do sudden character exits make the story incomplete? It’s hard to find a rule of thumb, but we can say that any piece of information the audience likely already understands need not be made explicit, any detail which does not build mood, character, or plot can be safely left out, and a character should get some kind of complete personal arc before being unceremoniously dumped. And in those regards, this book almost entirely succeeds. Each individual story doesn’t quite stand on its own, and together, they do not elevate the book – there are too many spaces left unfilled – but they do coalesce into something more-

45 or-less solid, something which we have experienced fully, and can walk away from having had our character arcs, and a very complete world. The writing is also mature and carefully-considered. We can see the authors making numerous deliberate choices about what their world is, who their characters are, and who they aren’t. There are, as expected, some sparking moments of hot, flash prose (probably Gibson’s) which illuminate moments here and there, as well as the overwhelming press of humanity: the characters are all tactile, all pained, all reaching for release. Of particular effect is a lone erotic scene, hearkening to illicit publications like The Pearl and to Walter’s unpretentious confessional. It is not pornographic, though it is undeniably of the flesh. When it lingers, it does not do so to titillate with some overblown poetic ideal, but to send us back down to earth, to some awkward moment of recognition, some fleeting scent, interrupting that triumphal chariot ride to whisper an unwelcome memento mori. The confusion of desires, anxieties, and all those compounding, competing thoughts paint such an evocative picture of the characters, in all their glory, fumbling but too filled with anticipation to really care. Too often, authors give us a celebration of something inhuman, something untouchable, rather than a celebration of a moment of true humanity. Victorian poetry is an unabashed exultation of the impossible, always recalling to me Edith Hamilton’s observation in The Greek Way that a Greek paramour would no more have said his love were ‘beautiful as Venus’ than she would have believed it. ‘Beautiful as a roadside daisy’ is more than enough, and has the added benefit of being true. As I read along, I found myself comparing it to my own, earlier, abortive attempt to write in the subgenre. As usual, it only goes to show that if you don’t read a genre before attempting to write in it, you’re bound to cross familiar territory. Happily, I started on a rather different tack, so no complete rewrite is in order. This is not an easy book to simply rate. I enjoyed it, but to what degree, it’s harder to say. In the end, I’m undecided whether this experiment ever exceeded its curious exploration to become a lasting story. As a vision, as a collection of ideas and characters, it is beyond reproach, but there is some faltering in the structure, a lack of cohesion which sometimes proves charming, and other times tiring. But for all its flaws, at least it is something new, something daring and, if somewhat too large for its confines, at least not too small for them. Odd that, procrastinator that I once was, here I am, late at night, writing a review for no reason at all – and yes, I did get my Shakespeare essay in on time. [2011]

46 CHRISTOPHER PRIEST THE PRESTIGE 1995

DAVID HEBBLETHWAITE When I think back to the books I’ve most loved reading, I find that many of them are strongly tied to particular times in my life. Most of them, I haven’t re-read; some, I don’t even want to, because I have a nagging sense that I wouldn’t find them as good second time around. I feel that a book I nominate as a favourite should be one that stands the test of personal time – one I can go back to and still enjoy as much as I did on the first reading. The Prestige is the story of two feuding Victorian stage magicians, each of whose lives is shaped to an extraordinary degree by the secret of his signature illusion. The book is something of a magic trick itself, full of misdirection and uncertainty, only gradually revealing the truth, which may not be (indeed, probably isn’t) everything you expect. I first read it some time in the early 2000s, polished it off in a weekend, and absolutely loved it. Fast-forward to 2006, when Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of The Prestige was released (as an aside, the movie is good in its own right, but very different; I’d recommend reading the book first). I chose it for my then reading group and had to face the possibility that it would not be as good as I had remembered it. Well, I needn’t have been concerned; if anything, I read it even quicker the second time, and enjoyed it even more. And the reading group? I don’t think there was a more animated discussion of a book in all the time I was a member. [2011]

Cover illustration by Sidonie Beresford-Browne

February 2011: SF Masterworks second series 47 JONATHAN TERRINGTON “An illusion has three stages. “First there is the setup, in which the nature of what might be attempted at is hinted at, or suggested, or explained. The apparatus is seen. Volunteers from the audience sometimes participate in preparation. As the trick is being setup, the magician will make use of every possible use of misdirection. “The performance is where the magician’s lifetime of practice, and his innate skill as a performer, cojoin to produce the magical display. “The third stage is sometimes called the effect, or prestige, and this is the product of magic. If a rabbit is pulled from a hat, the rabbit, which apparently did not exist before the trick was performed, can be said to be the prestige of that trick.”

The Setup A four-and-a-half to five star book that began as a five star book, dropped partway to a four star read and then rose again to a five star enjoyable finish. Now before I begin my proper review I have a disclaimer that the review you see here is due in part because I made a vow I would read this before seeing (what is bound to be) an excellent film by Christopher Nolan. I must now draw your attention ladies and gentleman to the apparatus of my next paragraph in which I will perform wonders most miraculous…

The Performance I found the writing to be of top quality and in a slightly unusual style reminiscent of Mary Shelley’s flowery use of language merged with Bram Stoker’s quirky use of different perspectives. It is a book that when I read it I began to say from the start that the writing was exceptional. There are several thematic elements and multiple subplots which were properly explored to fully explain and sustain the intrigue of the book. That said the book does end on a very mysterious note but I shall leave you to observe that magic for yourselves. I rather enjoyed reading the perspective of Alfred Borden and then switching to his rival Rupert Angier’s perspective in order to observe the full picture and understand both mysterious secrets of the illusions they perfect in order to outplay the other at conjuring. In many ways this is a novel about secrets – secrets kept in order to preserve the magic of

48 illusions and how those secrets affect the magicians’ lives. It is also the tale of an illusionist’s war, a war in which both magicians attempt to reveal the secrets of each other’s magic to the observing audiences and hence win the battle. I would say that this novel is one which is deeper than it appears and cannot help wondering if perhaps in the distant future it will be named as a classic because I believe it would prove capable of doing so if the popularity of Christopher Nolan’s film does not destroy this intriguing version.

The Prestige And now you see that I have completed a magical trick of such proportions that you cannot grasp its magnitude. Ah but I will not tell you how it works you see because I – like all true magicians – must carry out living the secret of my grand illusion to ensure no one knows how I perform such a trick. The magic is such that I suddenly have before you, where there was nothing, a fully completed review with a magical five star rating. If that is not enough to convince you to give this a read then no other illusion will persuade you.

(exits in a flash of smoke and falling curtains)

End note: You know how there are times when you read a book and you go away and forget about it no matter how good the book was? Well I think a good book grabs you, becomes part of you and refuses to let go. And then when you encounter something with similar subject matter you remember the book all over again. That is what this work is for me – a book that grabbed me. Now every time I see a magic trick I think of the various stages of performing that trick… [2012]

49 BRIAN ALDISS GREYBEARD 1964

CHARLES DEE MITCHELL Very satisfying sf adventure story. Atomic testing sterilizes humans and most other mammals in the 1980s. Algernon Timberlane, ‘Greybeard’, was a child at the time and now, a man in his fifties, is among the earth’s last generation. England is quasi-medieval, with remnants of 20th century culture still in use. Flashbacks recount the history of the last fifty years, the breakdown of governments, one last world war. For a time Timberlane works for Childsweep, a worldwide effort to kidnap children in the least affected areas for repopulation experiments. He then becomes part of the Documentation of Contemporary History, an organization with the unfortunate acronym DOUCH, made even worse when Timberlane, as a English operative, drives around in a truck labeled DOUCH(E). But England devolves to a time of warlords, massive epidemics, petty dictators, and snake oil salesmen offering eternal life. Greybeard, his wife and two friends make they way down the Thames, wanting one last chance to see the coast. The novel ends with a slight hint of hope, but most remarkable is Greybeard’s realization that he has led a fuller life than he could have ever expected from whatever might have been the ‘normal’ progression of humankind into the 21st century. Aldiss is an excellent storyteller. His descriptive passages can be either lovely or grotesque as the scene requires. And he created that rarest of all things in sf novels, real characters capable of both cowardly and heroic behavior. [2011] Cover illustration by Dominic Harman

March 2011: SF Masterworks second series 50 TONY ATKINS This is yet another end-of-the-world scenario, in which atomic testing has rendered all of mankind sterile. Extinction by attrition is terrain well-trod by later works such as Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos, and P.D. James’s Children of Men. In Greybeard, we follow members of the last generation as they make their way through the ruins of the world. This is a society of the old, which lacks the infusion of energy and new ideas that each new generation brings. After the ‘Accident’, the first changes are small. Businesses dependent on the young (record shops, toy shops) falter before anyone understands why. Eventually, people understand their situation, and the hopelessness of a future without children infects all levels of society. Government and industry break down, and disease, decay, and vermin break down the corpse of human society where it falls. There is no apparent future to work for, and so people selfishly wring what sustenance and comfort they can out of the world, often without regard for the people they must kill or enslave to do so. In reading this book, I was reminded of World Out of Time by Larry Niven. Niven’s work depicts one man from our society encountering an alien and distant society of the far future. The turning point of the story hinges on discovering a key piece of technology that holds the secret to eternal youth. There was the suggestion of something similar early on in Greybeard, and I kept expecting Aldiss to unveil a technological solution (a secret project that leaves an incredible legacy, etc.). The Deus Ex Machina never comes. It is life, rather than science, that finds a way. Instead of an immortality treatment, Greybeard offers us something more relevant to our lives. We see characters who are forced into a series of seemingly hopeless situations. They regain some measure of dignity and integrity by realizing that they can and must move beyond the meaningless echoes of the previous society that deaden and degrade most and benefit a privileged few. This is the not a novel like Philip José Farmer’s To Your Scattered Bodies Go, in which the things that constrain us are set aside to allow us to realize our full potential. Instead, it is a novel about the ways in which humans realize their potential in spite of all constraints, and is well worth a read. [2009]

51 OLAF STAPLEDON SIRIUS 1944

MANNY RAYNER During the early decades of the 20th century, many intellectuals devoted attention to the idea of what a “Superman” would look like. (George Bernard Shaw is a prominent example). After a while, the emphasis shifted; the Nazis gave the word unpleasant associations, though Professors Siegel and Shuster luckily managed to save it from oblivion with their discovery that the Übermensch would carry a cape and wear his underpants on the outside, an important point that had somehow escaped Nietzsche’s attention. A strange example of the cross-over between these two streams was Olaf Stapledon. A professor of philosophy by day, I’m guessing that his conception of the Übermensch probably started off at the Nietzsche end; but his science fiction, which is the only thing that people now remember him for, also contains elements vaguely reminding you of the Son of Krypton. Most of Stapledon’s books explore the Superman theme in one form or another. In his most famous works, Last and First Men and the sequel Star Maker, we see the future evolution of the human race, and later on the evolution of all life in the Universe, towards its godlike conclusion. Odd John is a more standard guy-with-amazing-powers story, though a considerably more intelligent one than average. And in Sirius, a book that deserves to be better known, he turns it round. It’s unfortunately impossible to imagine what a Superman would be like, since we are only human; this is the insoluble problem at the heart of Odd John. But suppose, instead, that human scientists managed to produce an Überhund, a dog with human-like Cover illustration by Cliff Nielsen intelligence. What kind of life would it have? How would it relate to other

April 2011: SF Masterworks second series 52 dogs, and to people? Stapledon did not have an optimistic take on things, and if you’ve read any of his other books then you’ve no doubt already guessed that this one is going to be tragic. But it’s a surprisingly moving story, and Sirius is one of the great fictional dogs of literature. If you’re a dog-lover yourself, consider putting it on your list. [2012]

STUART CARTER Sirius gets underway remarkably quickly; the scientific elements are entirely secondary to the anthropological. Thomas Trelone is a brilliant scientist who has discovered a way to increase the intelligence of the higher mammals and the star of his programme is Sirius, a huge Alsatian crossbreed with a brain far larger than the rest of his species. Stapledon’s prose manages to project Sirius’s alien-ness throughout the book without ever losing sight of his… I want to say ‘humanity’, but it’s less oxymoronic to say his commonality with man. Without using any modernist or postmodernist tricks, Sirius presents a very straightforward narrative that takes up where Frankenstein left off, but has a ‘monster’ largely unhampered by a hideous exterior but who is, in the end, still defeated by a humanity ill at ease with what it doesn’t understand. Sirius is only a short book; it could easily have been far longer and perhaps more insightful, but I think Stapledon was right to restrain himself so that Sirius is a parable where it could have been an inquiry, and consequently it retains a greater emotional resonance than either Star Maker or Last and First Men. [2000]

A.C. FELLOWS Primary impression: They don’t write books as audacious as this in our timid conformist age. No forelock-pulling to the prejudices du jour whatsoever. A challenge for all of us to be less timid. Secondary impression: It was nice to see the grand philosophical vision of Star Maker immanentised in the person of one superintelligent dog, and to get a feel for what Stapledon was capable of in a story with actual characters in it, rather than just ignorant civilisations clashing in a billion-year night. [2013]

53 DAN SIMMONS HYPERION 1989

BEN BABCOCK Frame stories are not my favourite way to conduct business with a novel. In general, Hyperion’s greatest flaws lie within its structure, frame story included. That and the abrupt ending devoid of any real conclusion are probably the two chief sources of criticism, from myself and from other reviewers. Like many other readers, I was suckered into the story as it approached the end, only to find no resolution! That was quite disappointing. None of the main characters especially invite empathy. Sol Weintraub’s tale was heartbreaking, managing to capture the disadvantages of reverse ageing much better than some books that base their whole story on the premise. Father Hoyt’s was creepy. Martin Silenus bored me. Brawne Lamia’s detective story was interesting, and I liked Simmons’ take on artificial intelligence revealed therein. I felt cheated that I didn’t get to hear Het Masteen’s tale. Finally, my favourite had to be Colonel Kassad’s. It was just the right mix of adventure and creepiness. Yet despite how I feel about their stories, the characters themselves are much like their Chaucerian counterparts in The Canterbury Tales: stock representations of an archetype intended to provide a certain perspective rather than any real personality. What all of their tales have in common, and indeed the best part of Hyperion, is the revelation of the backstory of the future. Dan Simmons has some first-class worldbuilding going on here, full of the stock SF conventions like faster-than-light drive, wormhole-type instantaneous travel, Cover illustration by Larry Rostant artificial intelligence, and whatnot. He manages to demonstrate the

May 2011: SF Masterworks second series 54 ramifications of each technology on society without ever veering too far into preachy exposition. The saturated, topical nature of the “Web”, worlds connected by farcasting devices, really struck close to home in an era dominated by the phenomena-fuelled internet. At first, Simmons made what appeared to be throwaway mentions of artificial intelligence – that the AIs had seceded a couple of centuries previously, that they now resided in a “TechnoCore” from which they conduct their own affairs and assist humanity in various maintenance-related tasks. It wasn’t until near the end of the story, particularly in Lamia’s story, that we really get an idea of how involved the AIs are in the quest to solve the mystery of Hyperion. I love it when hardcore SF explores the alienness of human-created intelligence, and Simmons doesn’t disappoint me. With a couple of homages to Gibson’s Neuromancer and only a little overindulgent technobabble, we’re treated to glimpses of the machinations of AI factions and how irrelevant they consider humanity to the grand scheme of the cosmos. While the component stories of Hyperion are variously interesting or boring, I can’t say much about the frame story itself. I am extremely interested in what will happen when the pilgrims finally confront the Shrike, of course. Unfortunately, the cynical part of me suspects that I’ve been exposed to so many other similar confrontations in other stories that it won’t be as impressive as I hope. And that’s the problem with the frame story itself – it’s a story told in standard definition that’s just begging for hi-def. The ideas and scope on which Dan Simmons is writing is huge, mind-bogglingly huge, but his style doesn’t seem to compensate for that. The philosophy behind Hyperion and the themes it espouses definitely make it a fascinating book. The title, of course, alludes to the unfinished poem by John Keats, and Simmons takes the allusion even further in the story itself, ‘resurrecting’ Keats in a sense as some sort of artificial persona, whom we meet in Lamia’s tale. So perhaps it’s fitting that Hyperion ends abruptly, unfinished, picked up in The Fall of Hyperion, much like Keats did with the original. Like the Keats poem, this is a story about the search for truth (which, to Keats, equates to beauty, of course): the truth about Hyperion, the truth about the agendas and motivations of the seven pilgrims, the truth about the AI’s agendas, etc. It’s set against the background of a stagnating, sprawling galactic empire. The Hegemony is not evil or repressive per se. However, as the book progresses, we learn it has few qualms about manipulating whomever or whatever in order to achieve its aims. It sanctions genocide of potentially competitive species – and although it hasn’t been successful in eradicating them so far, it doesn’t sanction the existence of a rival group of humans, the Ousters. In this future, we learned nothing from Earth’s destruction, nothing from

55 our Diaspora and fragmentation. Humans are still capricious children, playing with shiny toys. Brilliant and clever in many ways, Hyperion definitely deserves praise as a work of thoughtful science fiction. It has flaws in its structure and narrative, and it seemed to hold my interest intermittently. Even though each character told a very personal story in this book, and as much as the ‘big ideas’ encapsulated in the book fascinate me, what Hyperion really lacked were real people as characters. And no amount of allusion to Chaucerian and Keatsian style will make up for that. [2009]

JESSE HUDSON If world-building is the foundation of Hyperion, then storytelling is the palace atop it. Other writers, including Iain Banks, Richard Morgan and Alastair Reynolds, have stated their dreams of producing such an imaginatively singular yet archetypal story – their imaginations alone nothing to frown at. Borrowing the structure of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Hyperion is a frame story broken into seven basic pieces: one for each of the pilgrims traveling to the Shrike temple on the titular planet. One by one, each pilgrim tells the story of how they came to the pilgrimage and their reasons for undertaking the potentially deadly journey. Simmons uses the interstitial space of the individual narratives to describe segments of their collective journey to the temple. Needing to be read to be believed, the ex-army general, poet, priest, detective, teacher, forest guardian, and diplomat all have the most amazing tales to tell. If the depth of imagination and storytelling or borrowing of Chaucer’s framing device are not enough, then Simmons’ thematic grounding of the tale in the poetry of Keats will satisfy those looking for literary qualities. Not a lengthy testament to the British poet, Simmons instead uses the eponymous poem by Keats as an allegory for the tension between sentient species and artificial intelligences. Not blatantly a Star Wars, good vs. evil, situation, the scene set pits uber-intelligent AI constructs against the technically advanced beings inhabiting the universe, each fighting for autonomy. Like the Greek gods warring with the Titans, this aspect of the novel puts the “opera” after “space”. In the end, Hyperion is one of the best science-fiction books ever written, a real treat for the imagination. The imagery, characters, underlying themes, narrative structure, storytelling, and flat out entertainment value leave 99% of sci-fi in the dust. [2012]

56 CLIFFORD D. SIMAK CITY 1952

RHYS HUGHES A ‘fix-up’ novel consisting of eight linked short stories that cover the next 12,000 years of history. City was published in 1952 but the stories date from the mid to late ’40s. Simak’s style is pastoral, poetic and nostalgic, rather like Ray Bradbury’s, but he is fundamentally an ideas writer, and the ideas in City are extremely good. Simak has a remarkable talent for weaving together disparate subplots, half a dozen at a time, each one loaded with thought-provoking concepts, and the seventh story in this collection (entitled ‘Aesop’) is a masterclass in multi-narrative fictioneering. The twilight of Mankind; the rise of the robots; the dominance of the Dogs; the discovery of parallel dimensions; interplanetary (and then interstellar) exploration; bioengineering; libertarian mutants, genius ants and high level inter-species communication. This is an incredibly rich tapestry of authentic speculation. [2011]

MARK MONDAY Simak is a humanist, but a clear-eyed one, an author who doesn’t let much sentiment cloud his storytelling. Man fails, and fails again, but his strivings are viewed with both careful distance and genuine affection. This is not one of those novels about man being the architect of his own doom. Well, I suppose it sort of is – but minus the doom part. There is a kind of transcendence achieved, or at least a movement by mankind into a state that is clearly more glorious and exuberant than their earthly forms. They Cover illustration by Dominic Harman reach for the stars (ding, ding, ding, cliché time arrives) but don’t quite get

June 2011: SF Masterworks second series 57 there. Eh, no matter. How does the song go? You can’t always get what you want… but if you try sometimes… you get what you need. Man gets what he needs. When dogs inherit the earth – well, perhaps, not our earth – man is basically a mythical creature. The stories in City are tales told and studied by the dog race a millennia in the future. The novel is subtle, nuanced, tender; even-tempered and even-handed. The prose is clean and straightforward and rather literary as well. The narrative is anything but straightforward, although the stories move sequentially in time. People and places and things and ideas are mentioned, developed, dropped, and yet always return. Nothing of value is left abandoned. This is not a novel that is by any means thuddingly obvious. I was consistently surprised at the twists and turns that each story took and how the story of our future history is developed. And don’t expect hard science – or any realistic science in general – when reading this. Expect yearning and melancholy and kindness and a sweet sort of poetry and an infinite largeness of spirit. It is a classic novel for many good reasons; I was completely enthralled. The kind of novel where, after I finished, all I wanted to do was hug the author for creating it. [2012]

CHRISTY M. TIDWELL Simak himself says that this book was “written out of disillusion” after World War II. He says, “City was written not as a protest (for what good would protest do?) but as a seeking after a fantasy world that would serve as a counterbalance to the brutality through which the world was passing”. He goes on to recognize that he “peopled the fantasy world with dogs and robots because [he] could see little hope of mankind arriving at such a world”. I’m not sure I agree with the cynicism of this statement or with City’s insistence that violence is an unavoidable part of human nature, but I do agree that the humankind of the 20th century deserves to be indicted for its behavior. Simak argues in his introduction to the book (from which I have been quoting) that humanity is beyond saving and, further developing this argument, creates in this book a world in which humankind disappears, leaving a more peaceful, kind, and empathic world of Dogs and Robots; I would argue, on the other hand, that Simak’s creation of this world shows the possibilities of nonviolence, even for humans, because it shows through this contrast what changes would need to be made to have this kind of world. The Doggish commentator on the stories asks, “If Man had taken a different path, might he not, in time to come, have been as great as Dog?” Despite the violence of the 20th century (and the opening of the 21st) and despite Simak’s loss of faith in humanity, the kind of criticism of humanity levied by Simak is an important part of the process involved in finding the right path. [2008]

58 FRANK HERBERT HELLSTROM’S HIVE 1972

ROB WEBER Hellstrom’s Hive first appeared in serialized form in Galaxy between November 1972 and March 1973 under the title Project 40 and saw release as a full novel not long after. I first read it in 2007 and I think that it was as close as Herbert would come to full blown horror in his career. There is something incredibly creepy about the novel. It literally makes your skin crawl. Herbert was inspired by the 1971 movie The Hellstrom Chronicle, produced by David L. Wolper and directed by Walon Green. Herbert must have seen it shortly after its release and it obviously had quite an impact on him. I hadn’t seen the movie before so in preparation for this review I decided to watch it. Visually it is very good, considering the movie is over forty years old by now. The content of the movie is utter nonsense, however. It is a semi-documentary in which the fictional Dr. Nils Hellstrom (Herbert would use this name for one of the main characters in his novel) shares with us his shocking finding that insects are superior to us in every way and likely to rule the earth long after humanity has gone extinct. He does so by comparing an entire class of animals (there are currently over a million species of insects described by science and the consensus is that there are many more yet to be discovered) to a single species of mammal and, when it suits his argument throws in some arachnids for good measure because the are “closely related”. Never mind several hundred million years of diverging evolution. Cover illustration by Dominic Harman Obviously, insects have many adaptations not seen in humans and

July 2011: SF Masterworks second series 59 can survive in environments inhospitable to humans. They also have limitations but the film tends to ignore those. Hellstrom, portrayed by actor Lawrence Pressman, takes us though the myriad of survival strategies of insects to show that in a Darwinian competition for survival we will inevitably lose. Hellstrom’s narration is probably intended to be satirical. Personally, I found it annoying. The language he uses is pompous, full of grandiose statements presented without context. The facts presented in the movie are supposed to have been checked by several scientists but nevertheless manages to omit most of wider ecology that supports both humans and insects. From an ecological point of view his argument is laughably poorly reasoned. Even if it was meant to take down our opinion of our own achievements a notch I couldn’t really take it seriously. In short, despite the pretty pictures, I thought the movie was rubbish. Herbert himself must have realized some of the movie’s shortcomings. Despite borrowing heavily from the movie in the snippets of text attributed to Hellstrom or his brood mother, he does go about presenting his story in a different way. The novel opens with operatives of an organization only referred to as ‘the agency’ stumble across information regarding technological breakthrough. The information is incomplete but suspicions soon arise that it is a weapon. The information is traced back to a farm in Oregon, property of one Dr. Nils Hellstrom, an entomologist and documentary maker. When the agency starts to investigate his place, agents start disappearing. Hellstrom’s Hive is, as the title suggests, a community modeled on social insects. It’s a society of classes, where each member has their own role, specializations and adaptations. They are bred for the task they are meant to perform and selective breeding has been part of their community since its founding several centuries ago. A select group of specialists holds up a front for the outside world but most of the community is kept carefully hidden in an underground warren. Herbert’s depiction of this human hive is absolutely brilliant. He actually manages to create a kind of sympathy in the reader for poor, embattled Hellstrom, who is only trying to protect his community from outside forces. He realizes that if they are exposed, their society will be considered an abomination. The Hive would be destroyed instantly. They are not without their resources however, a cat and mouse game between Hellstrom and the agency ensues. As the story progresses and more details of the Hive are exposed, a sense of dread envelops the reader. The full consequences of the way the Hive has chosen to read are horrific to an individualistic society and Herbert uses that to full effect. The agency certainly seems to see it as such when they see the full extent of what is going on in Hellstrom’s Hive. I guess the agency point of view shows the novel’s age. It is an organization trapped in a kind of paranoid cold war state of

60 mind. It would have been easy to draw the parallel between a communist state and the Hive’s social structure. Herbert thankfully doesn’t really emphasize that, it must have been obvious enough at the time, and that certainly has helped the novel age more gracefully. It is a false analogy anyway. It’s pretty insulting to compare a Soviet worker to the mindless drones that make up the majority of the Hive and in the end most of the characters who have an inkling of what it really is, seem to realize that. One of the things that make me like the book much better than the movie that inspired it, is the fact that Herbert is aware of the different ecologies of humans and insects and that humans could never fully fit in the ecological structure of a social insect. The snippets of text from Hellstrom and his brood mother, that give the reader some insight into the philosophy behind their community and warning that they should not slavishly follow the termite mold in which the Hive is built, show up fairly frequently. Another example of Herbert’s ecological awareness is the internal pressure the community exerts on its leaders. The community is looking to expand and in times of severe stress, the tendency to swarm and start new colonies in order to maximize the chance of survival suffuses the story. It is almost as if this pressure is coming from the subconsciousness of the entire swarm, although explanations of pheromones are also given. It helps create the image of a Hellstrom beset by problems on all fronts. If there is any element in the novel that is lacking, it is probably the climax. Throughout the novel, the work is very well paced, carefully keeping the balance between sympathy for the Hive and discomfort with its ruthless nature. There is a masterfully depicted scene near the end of the novel that essentially shows us what happens when you poke an ant hill. Despite that, the end of the novel doesn’t feel very satisfactory. Throughout the novel both parties search for an advantage but neither seems to get the upper hand. At the end of the novel there is still a status quo. Battles have been fought, secrets uncovered but nothing is really resolved. For a novel that mostly relies on the plot and the big idea behind the story rather than the characters, none of whom attain much depth, the ending really is a bit of a problem. Despite an ending that could have been better I enjoyed Hellstrom’s Hive a lot the second time around. Seeing where Herbert got his inspiration did significantly change my perception of the novel so I guess it was worth watching the rather poor movie after all. I still think The Dosadi Experiment is his best non-Dune novel but this one is not that far behind. It takes the ecological awareness that can be found in many of his novels to a new level and the creepiness Herbert works into it make it stand out. If you can forgive Herbert the ending, I think it is well worth the read. [2013]

61 WILLIAM TENN OF MEN AND MONSTERS 1968

PETER YOUNG Philip Klass (aka. William Tenn)’s only novel has one of science fiction’s most memorable opening lines: “Mankind consisted of 128 people.” which, if you’re familiar with the disposition of Tenn’s satire, might immediately raise a knowing smile. The Mankind in question is surviving like vermin after the long-ago arrival of powerful aliens whose technology has driven us to living in the walls of their alien homes while scavenging for food and ways to hit back, and the coming of age of the rather wimpish Eric the Only is only just beginning. I particularly liked Tenn’s idea of ‘ancestor science’ vs. ‘alien science’ as a metaphor for enlightenment vs. hand-me-down religion, as Eric gradually comes to realise just how much his upbringing has kept him in the dark and fed him bullshit. As a light bildungsroman, Of Men and Monsters works well enough even if the satire does fizzle the further into the novel you get and it becomes more of a straightforward adventure, or even a parody of one. I’ve read so many of Tenn’s short stories and so was expecting more wry laughs than I felt were delivered, but this is still an enjoyable work and largely deserves its place on the SF Masterworks list. [2011]

CHARLES DEE MITCHELL Giant scary monsters have invaded Earth and now, centuries later, humans live like mice in the walls of the invaders gigantic structures. William Tenn takes this cornball idea and runs with it. Full disclosure: Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs I read the first portion of this novel when it was excerpted in the October

August 2011: SF Masterworks second series 62 1963 edition of Galaxy magazine. I had just turned twelve. I thought at the time it was about the greatest thing I had ever read. Monsters, brave young heroes, savagery, sex (lots of talk about mating) – everything a twelve year-old could want. It is still an enjoyable story. I thought it was petering out near the end, but Tenn’s vision of the next evolutionary step for mankind is, to say the least, humbling. [2012]

MARK YON Here’s another in those series of ‘SF authors you should have heard of but probably haven’t’. William Tenn was the pseudonym of Philip Klass (1920-2010) who was famous for his satirical short stories, mainly published in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1999 he was selected as the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Author Emeritus. He only published one novel, which this is, in 1968. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of sorts. Aliens – big, technologically proficient aliens, called Monsters here – have taken over the Earth. The human population collectively named ‘Mankind’ – all 128 of them – live like mice, in the walls of the aliens’ houses and scrabble for food scraps when they need them. In this human world we have the tale of Eric, or to give him his full title, Eric the Only, an initiate into the Brotherhood of the force known as The Male Society. For in this society women are the healers and knowledge-bearers whilst men hunt and fight, as warriors and thieves. In order to be classed as a fully-fledged adult, Eric has to complete a Theft. We follow Eric, led by his uncle, on his quest. We soon discover that the humans are pretty unnoticed by the aliens, or seen as no more than annoying vermin, rather like mice in the human world today. We are in that strange position where roles of homesteader and pest are reversed and we are the pest! Having completed his quest, Eric returns to find that there has been a revolt and that he and his uncle have been labelled as outlaws and are therefore subject to a lynching and a hanging. His uncle dies and Eric is forced to make the journey to Monster territory. There he leads the fight against Ancestor Science (that which has always been) and in favour of Alien Science, the heretic view that his Uncle believed in, that it was by using such that the future of Mankind lays. The second part of the book is where Eric grows up fast: he realises that there is a world outside the front burrow tribe, is captured but then escapes, finds a partner and begins to uncover Earth’s secret history. By the end, the reader realises that what it is most is a comment on people, society and class structures. The

63 characters within and their behaviour are all recognisable, forty-odd years on. It is a tale of evolution and revolution, in that it’s Eric that causes change and deals with the consequences. On reading this book my overall feeling is that Tenn’s book is funny; not laugh-out-loud, belly-laugh funny, but intelligently funny. I found myself smiling when events occurred, or remembering things after I’d finished reading the novel. (There’s an ongoing joke about ‘the cages of sin’ which made me grin a lot.) Eric is a likeable enough chap, whose naivety means that he blunders into situations but manages somehow to come out of it better. And that’s what this book does. It makes you smile, makes you appreciate witty writing, makes you feel that reading this book was worth it. The ending is very clever, and surprisingly positive in a tale basically that tells of world catastrophe. I was repeatedly reminded of Terry Pratchett in tone, perhaps The Wee Free Men or Maurice and his Educated Rodents, though this predated most of Terry’s better known work by at least a decade. This is as good, or dare I say it, allowing for its age, better than Pratchett, though Terry is very good. (Surely it can’t be coincidence that one of Terry’s ‘Discworld’ novels is indeed titled Eric?) Graham Sleight, in his introduction to this novel, points out that “Satire is angry humour”. And at that, Tenn/Klass was one of the best. If you like Robert Sheckley or Terry Pratchett, then I can see you liking this one. It’s sharp, it’s funny, it’s angry. It makes its point but doesn’t outstay its welcome. And is totally deserving of your attention. [2011]

64 KAREL ČCAPEK R.U.R. & WAR WITH THE NEWTS 1920 & 1936

MATTHEW LLOYD His sole purpose was nothing more nor less than to prove that God was no longer necessary.

I thoroughly enjoyed the play R.U.R., which coined the word “robot” for all subsequent SF authors. I don’t usually enjoy reading plays that much, and I have to say that I probably would have enjoyed seeing this more than I enjoyed reading it. Which is not, of course, to say that I did not enjoy reading it. But plays are not there to be read, unless you’re an actor (or director etc.). The Robots are very different to what robots would become, although the cover of the Gollancz Masterworks version by Arthur Haas seems to have taken its inspiration from the Will Smith adaptation of Capek-derider Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. Was that sentence too long? Is it too late to add an idle reference to the wonderful title of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that is ‘I, Robot… You, Jane’? Anyway. The Robots themselves are very different, organic rather than mechanical, but the themes of creator and created, of the soul, and of the relationship between class and mechanization were not new, nor would they end at this point. The story is said to have been described by Capek himself as a modern version of the Jewish Golem legend (although a citation is needed on the Wikipedia article), and Philip K. Dick is just one of the many later authors who would ask what ultimately will distinguish “artificial” life from biological. Cover illustration by Arthur Haas “I don’t believe that rascal is a Robot at all any longer.”

September 2011: SF Masterworks second series 65 “Doctor, has Radius a soul?” “He’s got something nasty.”

The play’s importance is one thing, but what makes it any good? There is an interesting tension between the Robots and the men in charge of the factory; it is demonstrated that the Robots themselves have no concerns about the work they do, about their enslavement, despite the protest groups from those who have not encountered Robots. Even as they overthrow their human masters the Robots continue to work – more efficiently, but without purpose – there will be no-one to benefit from their work. But work is what they do. I haven’t seen the film, but this prefigures in some ways what I understand about George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, where the zombies follow their former lives, wandering about the mall with no direction or intent. But I digress. The Robots have no purpose beyond work, but they are still threatening. It has been necessary to rid workers of their desires beyond work. But as soon as they are changed, they are a threat. And why would the Robots keep humans around, as soon as they realized that they did not need them?

You are not as strong as the Robots. You are not as skillful as the Robots. The Robots can do anything. You only give orders. You do nothing but talk.

My assumption is that Capek was writing from the Left, although in post-Second World War Communist Czechoslovakia his work was said to be too bourgeois. His later work, in the 1930s before his premature death in 1938, was thoroughly anti- Nazi; if R.U.R. is anti-Nazi it is especially prescient as it was first performed in 1920. The presentation of the factory owners is clearly critical, despite Domin’s desire for a (human) utopia without work:

It was not an evil dream to shatter the servitude of labour – the dreadful and humiliating labour that men had to undergo. Work was too hard. Life was too hard. And to overcome that –

His dream can of course be criticised on a number of accounts – freedom from labour is not necessarily freedom from work; many who perform labour would not find it “dreadful” and “humiliating”, but he as a man who (presumably) has never worked in his life assumes that it must be so. He identifies the mistake as being the Universal nature of the Robots – split the Robots up, create National Robots, and they will not rise up. Divide and conquer, as was done with human labour across the globe, unable to organize itself through the communication barriers. But he is cut off in his explanation of his dream:

66 Was not what the two Rossums dreamed of. Old Rossum only thought of his God-less tricks and the young one of his millards. And that’s not what your R.U.R. shareholders dream of either. They dream of dividends, and their dividends are the ruin of mankind.

But the Robots are not beyond criticism. Radius wishes to rule over men – his end is not equality, it is dominance. They will continue to work – nothing but work – until the end. Radius is one of few individual Robots, one of few who fears for his life and has the sickness of a soul; the rest are a mass, identical, as far as having the same face. But they are an angry mass. They have the numbers – when they are armed and unified they become unstoppable. Whether this was intended as an approving Left-wing message or as a dire warning for the bourgeoisie, the message is clear – if those we oppress, the workers, unite against us, they are the many, we are the few – they will win. The question of mechanization, of workers replaced by efficient “machines”, has always been and remains strong. Were the Luddites whose names have become synonymous with anti-technology wrong to oppose mechanization which increased production but potentially put people out of work? The Robots represent both these workers and their replacements, but these replacements are intelligent, and alive. And that makes them a threat. [2013]

RHYS HUGHES War with the Newts is one of the finest political, social, economic and philosophical satires written during the 20th century. The story tells of how mankind becomes the agent of its own destruction thanks to greed and the unstoppable engines of big business; it’s partly also a satire against the rise of the Nazis (it was published in 1936). The writing is crisp, clever, funny, exquisite; and the structure of the novel, full of differing viewpoints and fake newspaper cuttings, is technically ingenious. Capek was one of the best writers from a small nation that produced a brace of phenomenal writers. For years I was discouraged from reading his works by disaparaging references made to him in an Isaac Asimov article. By chance, I read one of Capek’s humorous travel articles in an anthology of Traveller’s Tales and I was immediately hooked by his engaging, comical and absurdist style. Asimov was wrong (as he was so often). Like Bulgakov, Karinthy and Zamyatin, Capek is proof that 1920s and 1930s continental European science fiction and fantasy was the most advanced in the world at that time… [2012]

67 ANDY WIXON As usual, I have probably missed a serious and academic discussion about when exactly the great sundering took place between what we now call SF and Serious Literature. You know what I mean: no one honestly considers people like Arthur Conan Doyle or George Orwell to really be SF authors, but one of them wrote a book about an adventure with dinosaurs and the other one came up with possibly the definitive work of dystopian fiction. I suppose part of it stems from the fact that neither of them just wrote SF, but on the other hand to simply put it down to this is to overlook the fact that, once upon a time, it was completely acceptable to mix and match your output without it being a big deal. No one really does that these days, certainly since the passing of Iain Banks; perhaps we just have a much stronger sense of the importance of genre these days. Back in the first half of the last century it was possible to do things differently: one of my favourite novels is Star Maker, an extraordinary work of visionary SF written by Olaf Stapledon, someone completely unaware of the existence of SF as a body of work. Stapledon is not much remembered these days, nor does he honestly seem to have been much influential. The same is not true of another writer from roughly the same period, Karel Capek. These days Capek is mainly remembered for two things: inventing the word robot in his play R.U.R. (although he apparently admitted it was his brother’s idea; he himself preferred labori), and – rather as a consequence of this – inspiring the name of a second-division Doctor Who villain. I must confess to not being especially familiar with R.U.R., for all that it is surely one of the foundation texts of modern SF, but I have read Capek’s much later novel War with the Newts. This book is rather less well-known, but it seems to me to be a remarkable piece of work and quite possibly very influential, in its own way. Published in 1936, this is a piece of genuine SF masquerading quite effectively as droll comic satire. The main thrust of the narrative concerns the discovery on a remote Pacific island of a population of large, sentient, highly imitative and adaptable humanoid amphibians (it is later suggested they have inadvertently been transplanted to this location by human agency). A passing trader sees the inherent potential in training the creatures to fish for pearls, and as a result the Newts slowly come to the world’s attention. Soon enough the global pearl market is saturated, and the corporation exploiting the Newts hits upon a new scheme, where they will be put to work on a much larger scale, carrying out large-scale underwater construction works on coastlines

68 around the world. The Newts thus spread around the world, and are given all the essentials of an industrial society – the essential nature of the creatures themselves is overlooked in favour of the profits they can help to generate, something Mankind ultimately has cause to regret… It sounds like a grim and doomy tale, but Capek is aware of the inherent absurdity in the concept and he never neglects the comic potential of the story. The opening chapters in particular feel like a bizarre mash-up of different authors from the early 20th century: the South Seas colonial setting inevitably summons the shade of Somerset Maugham, while initial descriptions of the Newts themselves – primordial beasts of the deep – is equally reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft and his Deep Ones (the Newts are also described as ‘sea devils’ in a few places, which naturally hit a few of my own Doctor Who buttons). But the style of the prose as the novel goes on is predominantly droll and witty – this is the closest thing I’ve ever read to the proverbial H.P. Lovecraft–P.G. Wodehouse collaboration. Nevertheless, this is a book with some genuine concerns and one which is never afraid to make its points. The story unfolds over many decades, not really featuring a particular group of central characters, and is initially presented as a series of drily-recounted vignettes concerning the discovery and early exploitation of the Newts. As the situation of the Newts becomes more complex, so does the book become darker and, if not more serious, exactly, then certainly more pointed in its satire. The book is more about human society than an attempt to present the Newts as a credible nonhuman intelligence, and perhaps this is why some sections of the book make slightly uncomfortable reading these days. This book is clearly loaded with allegorical potential, with much to say on the topics of both slavery and animal rights, but as usual when these two themes are tackled in close proximity it’s hard to shake the sense that on some level African people are being likened to beasts – it’s the same feeling I get watching Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, in which elements of the civil rights struggle in America are allegorically recreated with the role of African-Americans played by apes. The intention is laudable but the realisation potentially suspect. Anyway, the story moves on to its final section, in which the tables are of course turned. Here again the book has a sort of weird familiarity to it, but in this case it’s a similarity to a book that wouldn’t be published until over fifteen years later. There aren’t many books concerned with the rise of a nonhuman intelligence to domination of the world’s oceans, concluding with the inundation of the continents and the collapse of human civilisation, and there are fewer still where this

69 unpromising subject matter is treated both lightly and somewhat satirically. Even so, I am a little wary of bluntly saying that War with the Newts is the obvious inspiration for John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes, but I would be astonished if the resemblance between the two is entirely coincidental. War with the Newts is funnier, however, rather more absurd, and also does have some specific points to make. These do not seem to me to be racial or cultural but instead political and economic – it’s the prospect of economic gain and the fear of economic collapse which is the driver throughout the rise of Newt civilisation, and it’s the human refusal to treat the Newts as civilised creatures in their own right, but rather as the property of human nations, which makes an effective response to them impossible to effect. Is it too much to say that this book is a product of the same post-Depression disaffection as Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath? In neither book are individuals held accountable for the horrible events which occur, but rather impersonal systems of human economics and politics which are running out of control. Humans are not really in charge of their world even before the Newts go on the offensive. P.G. Wodehouse, Somerset Maugham, H.P. Lovecraft, John Wyndham, John Steinbeck: I’ve compared Karel Capek to a lot of very disparate and rather celebrated people while writing about War with the Newts. I think he warrants it, and I think it shows how accomplished and distinctive his writing is. And I think the book is as relevant today as it was in 1936 – the problems he writes about have hardly disappeared in the intervening years. Exploitation is still the world’s biggest problem even if giant salamanders remain only a minor concern. It seems odd that a Czech SF novel from the 1930s can remind us of this, but then that’s one of the joys of great literature, I suppose. [2014]

70 CHRISTOPHER PRIEST THE AFFIRMATION 1981

DAVID HEBBLETHWAITE Having lost his father, job, home, and relationship, all in quick succession, Peter Sinclair is at his lowest ebb. He takes on some work helping to renovate a friend’s country cottage; inspired by his ability to turn his vision for one of the rooms into reality, Peter resolves to write his autobiography, in the hope that, by doing so, he can make some sense of his life. After trying various approaches, he decides that the best way to achieve what he wants is to write metaphorically about his life; it won’t be what ‘actually’ happened, but it will attain (what Peter sees as) the ‘higher truth’ of capturing what the events of his twenty-nine years meant to him. So, Peter creates an alternative version of himself, with the same name, but living in an imaginary world, and all the key people in his life given different names – and writes this Peter’s life story to represent the ‘higher truth’ of his own. Peter has almost completed the manuscript when he is interrupted by the arrival of his estranged sister, Felicity, and is forced to break off his work mid-sentence. This happens in the fourth chapter of The Affirmation; the fifth is again narrated by Peter Sinclair (his voice is recognisably the same), but it’s the Peter of the imaginary world (a world, incidentally, also used by Priest as the setting for his ‘Dream Archipelago’ stories), who is sailing south to a clinic, having won a lottery to undergo a medical procedure which will effectively confer immortality on him. Okay, one supposes, this must be an extract from the ‘real’ Peter’s manuscript – but, no: the Peter in this world Cover illustration by Julyan Bayes has also written a fictionalised autobiography; and the events of this strand

October 2011: SF Masterworks second series 71 subtly contradict what we know of the other Peter’s manuscript. One is left with no option but to conclude that the ‘imaginary’ world has its own valid reality. And so, as the novel continues, the two realities shift back and forth, with the reader never allowed to pin down one of them as being more real than the other. Even the nature of the text presented to us is uncertain: we never knowingly get to read any of the manuscripts referred to, so what exactly is the testimony that we’re reading? And we only know Peter Sinclair through his words on the page, so what can we trust? This is what Priest is so good at: undermining our expectations, hiding the truth, making the realities of his stories profoundly uncertain. There are imaginative pleasures aplenty in The Affirmation, then; but the novel also works on other levels. It’s a fine meditation on memory, and how it can make us who we are. Peter believes that memory is central to the creation of identity, but he also knows how fallible our memories can be; this is played out in several different ways in the novel, including a quite literal one in the shape of the athanasia treatment – a side effect of the procedure is to erase patients’ memories; they’re required to complete a questionnaire beforehand, which will be used to reconstruct their memories – but can they possibly be the same people afterwards? The Affirmation is also an acute portrayal of a man in a fragile mental state (though, as noted, it resists being interpreted as solely a tale of delusion). We discover early on that Peter hasn’t actually painted his ‘white room’ at all (though he imagines it painted, and it’s that ‘higher truth’, he insists, that really matters); this is only one of the first indications that the world viewed through Peter’s eyes may not be what a third party would see. This leads the protagonist into difficulties relating to other people. For example, Peter’s ideas of what his girlfriends (in both worlds) are like don’t reflect the reality, which puts a strain on his relationships; the way Priest reveals the ramifications of this is simply superb. [2010]

VAC U O U S WA ST R E L A plain description of the novel would make it sound like a firework display of postmodern literary exuberance, but in fact it is anything but. It’s a surprisingly low-key work, in its prose (quite quotidian), pacing (very measured), and mood (ruminating). It doesn’t assault the reader with its brilliance; what it does do is crawl under your skin and refuse to leave. I found myself increasingly gripped, even though there was nothing much going on. In some ways, it has a bit of the

72 sensibility of an old horror film, although there’s not much actual horror. Or maybe there is, but it’s genuine horror and dread, not the sort that is just code for monsters and serial killers. I suppose you could call it a novel of “psychological suspense”. It’s also exceptionally clever. This may not be the best place to get into Priest – try The Prestige instead – and I can see how this might be very much a love-it-or-hate-it book. I think I may actually both love and hate it. But if you like serious literary fiction, and are willing to take novels with fantasy elements seriously, it’s a must-read; likewise, if you’re a genre reader who’s also willing to give themselves a headache now and then, this is considerably easier to get through than, say, Gene Wolfe. In fact, it’s very easy to read, because it’s written very simply and honestly. The difficulty comes after you’ve read it, when you’re trying to decide what you feel about it. It’s not a perfect book – it’s a little too emotionally cold, and a little too slow, particularly at the start – but it’s powerful, memorable, highly intellectual, and brilliantly constructed. [2011]

ROB ADEY I’d have hated this book instinctively if it’d been described to me – in capsule form, it sounds like the sort of postmodern metaliterary “Ahhhh, but isn’t everything fiction?” things that Paul Auster or Salman Rushdie might write (I imagine). And technically it is that (and it’s much more that than the SF it’s badged as – it’s actually fairly difficult to categorise as SF, not that it matters). But it’s by Christopher Priest, which is why I read it without first reading anything about it, and why it has a strong story – albeit a strange and very gradually unwrapped one – and why it has a beautiful, eerie atmosphere, somehow built up from what seems at first quite bland prose. The sort of book you’d find left to read as you waited in a Schrödinger box, in a very clean lab, by the light of half the photons in your torch. [2013]

73 CECELIA HOLLAND FLOATING WORLDS 1976

IAIN MERRICK 600-odd pages covering the life and turbulent times of a woman of the distant future. It’s the single SF work by a well-known historical novelist, so as a seasoned SF reader I kept a wary eye open to see what kind of book it would really turn out to be. And I couldn’t crack the code. It’s something of a historical mashup, sure – Viking raiding parties, bloody tribal rituals, Yakuza families (hence “floating worlds”), backstabbing in the senate – but no single element dominates, and the sum is pure gritty SF. The protagonist, Paula Mendoza, is a woman of few advantages living in a crapsack solar system of squabbling petty empires. She’s smart and creative; surrounded by people motivated by hatred, fear, or lust for power, she yearns for happiness in some vague sense she can never define. She kicks against the restraints of society, takes risks, has sex with all the wrong people, is ruthless when she needs to be and loving at unexpected moments. After some absolutely horrific experiences, she’s weary but undefeated. She’s like a cat who refuses either to come in or go out, but insists on sitting in the doorway. She doesn’t necessarily leave the solar system a better place. I didn’t find this exactly a pleasurable read, but definitely compelling. The writing is stripped-down, unadorned. There’s no direct explanation of the future history, and lots of names and places get flung about with little emphasis. The overall effect is of intense reality – it’s up to you whether to pay attention, or just let it wash over you. And time passes Cover illustration by Dominic Harman unexpectedly. Without any big leaps in the storyline, we suddenly realise to

74 our surprise that a character has aged ten years. When did that happen? It’s been happening all along, in small steps, no special emphasis. This is as good and rounded a portrait of a complete life as I’ve seen in SF. Holland has been compared to Ursula Le Guin and Joanna Russ. I also find her reminiscent of early Vonda McIntyre; like McIntyre, she doesn’t necessarily give you a vivid feel for vast gulfs of time between then and now, but she does get the texture of the future right – centuries of layered history and tradition, drifting far away from our own. [2012]

BRUCE GILLESPIE If Floating Worlds is “A neglected SF masterpiece”, as Kim Stanley Robinson is quoted as saying on the front cover of this edition, part of the reason for that neglect could lie in the novel itself. It is an odd mixture of dissimilar elements: a flat, no- nonsense style more suited to kitchen sink drama than sf; an sf environment that reminds me more of an Ottoman harem than an outer space city; and characters who are somehow both more and less vivid than their background. Since Cecelia Holland is well known as an historical novelist, I suspect her of writing historical fiction disguised as space drama. Is, as the title suggests, the model for this novel the Japanese court of feudal times? How does one reconcile the odd mixture of gritty realism (in the style) and operatic melodrama (in the plot)? Try the first fifty pages of this book. You will be either bored stiff or hooked for another five hundred pages. [1989]

ANTONY JONES The novel tells the story of humanity 2,000 years in the future where capitalism has been overthrown and anarchy reins supreme, as not only a legitimate political ideology but actually practiced throughout the world. Having colonised some of the planets in the solar system including Moon and Mars they have encountered problems with the Styths, a powerful mutant race who have descended from early pioneers and live in the outer gas planets Uranus and Saturn. They have been launching pirate raids on ships from Mars and are becoming increasingly hostile. Earth’s “Committee for the Revolution” has been asked to step in and negotiate a truce between the middle planets (Earth and Mars) and the Styth Empire. It must be said that Floating Worlds is quite a thick tome, weighing in at 640 pages it’s certainly no shrinking violet and that can also be said of the prose too. With a simple, fast and uncluttered narrative the pace is thankfully pretty fast but

75 does take a little getting used to, having sometimes short clipped sentences. This extends to the backdrop too; a world that has accepted anarchy rather than a structured government is so different – so antipodean to most novels that are out there, or at least those that work anyway. This unrestrained reality is set on a post-nuclear Earth two millennia in the future, where people live in large domes, sheltered from the surrounding radioactive wastelands. The colonies on Mars are ultra-capitalist and the Moon ultra-fascist which act as very effective counterpoints to Earth’s nonconformist, bohemian culture. The lead character of Paula Mendoza is seen at first glance as a clichéd “gentle woman standing up against a male dominated society” and that certainly is one of the many messages, but there is so much more going on, and it’s all done in such an intelligent and thoughtful manner that overcomes such shallow judgments. I loved the way that Paula thinks; if anything, she seems to manage to embody a true anarchy, not some violent misconception that is so often portrayed but one of simply not conforming, representing an ultimate level of freedom – which reminds me of the quote by Alan Dean Foster: “Freedom is just chaos, with better lighting.” The race of the Styth are represented as a brutal, sexist, aggressive race who treat women as little more than slaves, and slaves that are little more than animals. They raid the inner planets and colonies stealing resources and taking people as a slave-force. Paula is tasked with trying to arrange a treaty with these eight feet-tall clawed people and she does so in a totally unexpected and quite brilliant way (which I won’t mention for fear of spoiling the story). There is a major theme of race and sexism running throughout – explored without judgment and represented in a thoughtful and intelligent manner. The story is both vast in scope and astounding in its vision, spanning seventeen years and making most of the different ideas and themes; everything is just so plausible and vivid, the dialogue gripping so that those 600-plus pages don’t seem like much at all. The style is very different to most science fiction books you will read that it is an experience in itself; there isn’t any over-flowery descriptions, no lengthy exposition just a gritty, believable story that deals with some very real issues. [2012]

76 ALGIS BUDRYS ROGUE MOON 1960

JOHN DeNARDO People often wonder why movies are remade but fail to even realize that the same phenomenon happens in the world of publishing as well. Every now and then, a short story, novelette or novella will be expanded into a novel- length story. So it was with Asimov’s ‘Nightfall’ and ‘The Ugly Little Boy’ (both expanded with the help of Robert Silverberg) and so it is with Algis Budrys’s ‘Rogue Moon’. The 1960 novella was expanded into a novel and nominated for the 1961 Hugo Award. The premise is an intriguing one. A mysterious, alien artifact is found on the Moon and discovered to be deadly to anyone who enters it. With the help of duplicating technology, people are sent in to investigate it, usually dying within seconds of the last explorer. In this way, the artifact is mapped out little by little. The copies of the people maintain a mental link with their counterparts back on Earth, but unfortunately, that link often drives them insane. The project’s lead scientist, Edward Hawks, thinks the solution is in the type of men that they are sending. So he finds Al Barker, a daredevil with a serious death wish. Barker is duplicated again and again as he explores the artifact and, ultimately, himself. I read the novella some years back and had a mostly positive recollection of it (more later). I wanted to read the 180-page book length version because it was short and it was inspiration for the truly excellent short story ‘Diamond Dogs’ by Alastair Reynolds. I kept the novella close at hand so I could occasionally do the compare/contrast thing. Cover illustration by Dominic Harman First my impressions of the book. Overall, this was a good story. The

January 2012: SF Masterworks second series 77 puzzle that is the artifact was very intriguing. (That’s the same thing I liked about ‘Diamond Dogs’, by the way.) Add to that the ability to duplicate people on the Moon and you get a nice healthy dose of wow factor. Some interesting issues are brought up with the duplication process. For example, is it ethical for a sick man to be perpetually reborn through duplication? Can the technology be used to self-perpetuate itself? All fun stuff to think about. I did wish that this wow factor was a more integral part of the book. In the end, the alien artifact is just a Big Dumb Object, but more damaging was that too much of the book centers on the characters of Hawks, Barker, Claire (Barker’s lover), and Vincent Connington (the personnel director). While their stories are somewhat interesting, I really wanted to see more of the BDO. These were minor detractions. Overall, as I said, the story is a good one. But how does it stand up to the novella on which it was based? The book expands on the novella by extending the dialogue or descriptions, re-ordering scenes and changing scenes entirely. In most cases, the changes made little or no difference. For example: on a date, Ed Hawks describes a point in his youth where he had to make a decision. In the novella, Ed had to choose between honesty and dishonesty in his attitude toward school. In the book, Ed was in Physics class with a poorly trained substitute and had to choose between taunting the teacher like the rest of the class, or trying to make the best and learn what he could. Is one of these better than the other? I didn’t think so. One thing I remember from reading the novella is the awkwardness of the opening scenes where Hawks recruits Barker at Barker’s swinging bachelor pad. The scene reminded me then of a James Bond movie, replete with the requisite flirtatious, bikini-clad, nympho babe (Claire) lying on the diving board. Barker is a reckless daredevil who expends incredible amounts of energy to appear macho. Even Claire, admittedly the object of Barker’s conquest, comes off as unpleasant. I found these characters, and indeed most of them, unlikable – as if they are contentious just for the sake of being so. This book-length re-read only solidifies that memory. Again, minor nits. Rogue Moon is a good book, but it does not add anything significant to the novella on which it was based. In fact, I’d go so far as to say read the novella version instead of the book. [2005]

78 CHARLES DEE MITCHELL Rogue Moon was written in 1959 and takes place in 1959. That makes it a special sort of period piece. I was only eight years old at the time, but the settings and much of the adult behavior Budrys depicts reminds me of the more mature television and films I saw then. Rich people drive sporty cars and live in ultra-modern glass houses overlooking the ocean. Everyone drinks a lot. Scientists slave away long hours in the lab and have trouble “relating” to others. What sets Budrys’s 1959 apart from the real thing or any other version of it is the nature of the scientists’ endeavors. They have perfected a “matter duplicator” capable of sending a man to the moon. This marvel is a joint project of the military and the private sector, and in one priceless, throwaway moment, a moment that probably did not strike Budrys the way it struck me, Dr. Edward Hawks, the head of the project, tries to adjust the temperature in his office by fumbling with the recalcitrant knobs of his window unit. So the government can send men to the moon but won’t fork out for central air. Each man they send to the moon dies. They die in their effort to penetrate an alien-built labyrinth where one wrong turn means instant death. But each man adds some knowledge to the mapping of the labyrinth, and I guess it says something to the quality of the US soldier that volunteers do not seem in short supply. Hawks has also perfected the process of storing a duplicate of the hapless volunteer, one that can be reconstituted after the real self dies on the moon. Unfortunately, those duplicates invariably go insane, having experienced their own deaths. Enter one Al Barker, described on the back of the 1960 Gold Medal paperback edition as a “suicidal maniac whose loving mistress was Death.” Like all good jacket copy, this has only a tangential relationship to the actual character. He is a one-legged, millionaire adventurer who loves to take chances. Vincent Connington, the odious personnel director of the company funding the moon project, thinks Barker is just the man to survive these missions, and he turns out to be right. But wait, everything I’m writing implies that Rogue Moon has much more plot than it really does. What Budrys gives us is a group of characters who all seem to loathe one another, and long, I mean really long conversations about scientific progress, life, and death. I suspect some of it was meant to be weightier than I was finding it. But Budrys finishes things off with an excellent set piece on the moon, and some final twists about the nature of the project that make for a satisfying last dozen pages or so. And by the way, the whole thing is really short. I would like to know more of what sophisticated readers, busy adjusting the knobs on their window units, made of it in 1959. [2011]

79 HARLAN ELLISON, ed. DANGEROUS VISIONS 1967

MARK YON There are some books out there whose reputations often exceed the content of the book itself. Many people, even those who don’t read SF, have heard of Frank Herbert’s Dune, for example, or Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 (that’s the novel, not the film). In SF circles, Dangerous Visions is one of those that many know of by reputation but these days have rarely read. It was the Gone with the Wind of SF anthologies when it was first published in 1967. Like the film Gone with the Wind before its release, there was great speculation in the genre about Dangerous Visions before the book was published. Heralded as the best of cutting edge New Wave SF at the time, the rumours of what Harlan was doing and which authors were included, and perhaps more importantly which ones were not, were rife. Its content was allegedly salacious, sexy, outrageous, exciting, and thought-provoking, at a time when SF was mat- uring into something beyond the space opera pulp of the 1940s and ’50s. Dangerous Visions was the messenger of the New Age, bringing SF to those who had previously spurned its origins. The eventual list of thirty-three stories from thirty-two authors reads like a Who’s Who of SF writers: Philip K. Dick, Samuel ‘Chip’ Delany, Robert Bloch, Philip José Farmer, Robert Silverberg, Brian Aldiss, Theodore Sturgeon, J.G. Ballard, John Brunner, Norman Spinrad, Fritz Leiber, Frederik Pohl, Lester del Rey, Roger Zelazny, and even Isaac Asimov, who amusingly explains in one of his Introductions why he’s not in the collection, other Cover illustration by Vincent Chong than for the Introduction. Ellison cherry-picked who he saw as the best in

February 2012: SF Masterworks second series 80 the US at the time and the emerging British New Wave at the time. Jo Walton claims that it is “an astonishing anthology”. Harlan himself, with no lack of modesty, declares at the beginning of the collection, “What you hold in your hands is more than a book. If we are lucky it is a revolution.” There is an introduction about each author written by Harlan. The authors themselves often provide an Afterword after Ellison’s Introductions. Personally, I always enjoy reading such comments, as I love hearing how authors write. However, they can be very long. The Introductions, from 1967 and 2007 and a new Introduction from Adam Roberts, cover forty-four pages alone. In the case of Robert Bloch, the Introduction is longer than the story itself, though I did find it entertaining. At its worst, it can be rather like those DVD extras where people spoil the experience by telling us how great they are, or worse, that the explanation of the mechanics of writing devalue the tale. Some may find it better to ignore such excesses and focus on the stories. Whilst some of its content feels tame by today’s standards, it can still divide. As an example, Philip José Farmer’s novella, ‘Riders of the Purple Wage’, despite its great pun of a title and tieing with ‘Weyr Search’ by Anne McCaffrey for the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1968, is still to me overblown posturing about nothing (It actually put me off reading Farmer for a long time afterwards). David R. Bunch’s two tales (the only author to have two in the book) are still as confusing as ever. Carol Emshwiller’s tale ‘Sex and/or Mr. Morrison’ is just weird, and no less weird from my first reading. Others are still great. ‘Gonna Roll the Bones’ by Fritz Leiber, which received a Hugo Award and also a Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1968, and I still think is funny, witty and quirkily odd. Unlike the Farmer, when I first read this one it set me on a course of reading more Leiber, to my mind a much underappreciated writer these days, though he did write the odd clunker. Of the better known authors there are some surprises. Robert Silverberg’s tale of death ‘Flies’ is still chillingly and sickeningly creepy. Poul Anderson’s tale of homosexuality ‘Eutopia’ is startling in its New-Wave style take from an author whose reputation was by this stage fairly well known as ‘Old-Guard’. Of the older authors, Lester del Rey’s tale of God versus Humans ‘Evensong’, Frederik Pohl’s comments on racism in ‘The Day After the Day the Martians Came’ and Larry Niven’s tale of organ-farming ‘The Jigsaw Man’ are all less cutting- edge than they probably were at the time, though have stood the test of time. (And as an aside, the tale of how Larry Niven’s

81 monetary contribution ensured this collection was actually published is an entertaining footnote.) Robert Bloch’s future Jack the Ripper tale, ‘A Toy for Juliette’, an alternative to his ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper’, is still unsettling. Harlan’s own sequel to ‘Juliette’, ‘The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World’, also shows what a tour de force Harlan was in the 1960s. The British end of the New Wave also holds up their own through Brian Aldiss’s tale of terranaut time-altering, ‘The Night that All Time Broke Out’ and JG Ballard’s bleak circus story ‘The Recognition’, as well as John Brunner’s machine-as- God ‘Judas’. There’s also a comment by Mike Moorcock, written in 2002, about the context of the collection in 1967, and claiming that Harlan “singlehandedly produced a new benchmark” with this book. Lastly, Samuel R. Delany’s ‘Aye, and Gomorrah…’, with its neutering of astronauts, ‘frelking’ and sexual prostitution is still quite a memorable tale that must have been a cautionary tale for SF fans at a time when we hadn’t made it to the Moon. Delany won the 1968 Nebula for Best Short Story for ‘Aye, and Gomorrah…’ (and in the November 1967 copy of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Judith Merrill claimed that this, the last story in the book, was by far the best.) Other Award Winners from this collection: Philip K. Dick’s submission ‘Faith of Our Fathers’ was a nominee for the 1968 Hugo in the Novelette category, beaten by Leiber. Harlan himself received a special citation at the 26th World SF Convention for editing ‘the most significant and controversial SF book published in 1967’ although he had his nomination for Fan Writer withdrawn reportedly because he had won a Hugo and Nebula in the past. Clearly there was a lot of love for Harlan at this point. Like me, you may not like it all. When it works, it works well, where it doesn’t, it can leave you… confused. I still feel, like I did thirty years or so ago, that some of the tales try too hard to shock, and consequently in the end they make their point less. But you must read it, even if it’s to get an idea of what all the fuss was about when first published. Religion, sex, death: all are here. The effect of Dangerous Visions is still palpable today, though many of the stories here have dated, in some cases badly. Having said that, for a book over forty-five years old, there are more hits than misses, which is impressive. (Although I defy anyone to come up with the same list of likes and dislikes as someone else!) For here lies the heredity of William Gibson, Dan Simmons, and China Miéville, amongst many others. Think of it as a primer, to try different authors you may not have heard of. Then go read more of their work. [2011]

82 OLAF STAPLEDON ODD JOHN 1935

ANTONY JONES Written from a narrator’s perspective, Odd John is a pretty unique piece of fiction. Apart from the superhuman subject matter there are no other tropes of the genre present and this helps to re-enforce just how different John is. From birth to death we follow this extraordinary freak John Wainwright, born to ordinary parents and so much more advanced than homo sapiens that they are little more than playthings to him. Upon finding a few others who are a little like him, John develops a plan – to create a new order on Earth, a new supernormal species. Is the world ready for such a change? This vision of the superhuman is far from the vision of a “superhero”, instead the novel explores how someone with such an evolutionary leap forward in intelligence and cognitive ability would view the human race and may consider themselves to exist outside of it. As with Stapledon’s other "super intelligence" novel Sirius, the perspective of the narrator is used to provide a detached viewpoint from which to witness John’s life. At times this does feel a little clinical in its analysis but nonetheless proves very effective overall. It’s also important to remember that this book was written almost eighty years ago, and apart from the occasionally quirky dialogue has aged remarkably well. At the time it must have caused quite a stir with allusions to sexual acts that even today are quite taboo. At times it reminded me of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and does contain a few similar themes, such as using someone placed outside of humanity to explore the race. Cover illustration by Eamon O’Donoghue The author manages to really encapsulate the thoughts and feelings

March 2012: SF Masterworks second series 83 that such a being would likely go through and at times it’s a somewhat bittersweet journey, compounded by the thought that eighty years in the future I can’t really imagine such a person being treated a great deal better (we’ve come leaps and bounds technically but only really a small hop sociologically). This edition features an introduction by the ever-so-eloquent Adam Roberts and provides an effective summary of the ideas behind the story. It is, as Roberts says, odd but at the same time quite brilliant in its oddness. [2012]

MANNY RAYNER Not your run-of-the-mill superhero story, which may have had something to do with the fact that Stapledon wasn’t a typical person to be writing a superhero story in the first place; he was a Professor of Philosophy, and apparently a friend of both Virginia Woolf and Winston Churchill. It has always surprised me that this book isn’t better known. Most superhero scenarios, starting with Superman, take it for granted that the guy will spend most of his time acting as a kind of elite first responder service, cleaning up or preventing the more challenging train crashes, armed robberies, earthquakes and so on. Now, if we take the superhero idea seriously for even ten seconds, why ever should this godlike creature think that his top priority is to rescue beings who are, to him, about as significant as mice are to us? I mean, even though your average human could probably save a whole lot of mice if he put his mind to it, you find that that’s an unusual career choice. Stapledon, however, goes back to first principles, and asks what a superhero might find to do that wasn’t essentially just rescuing mice. The result is a book that’s interesting, even if not totally convincing. The obvious problem is that a mouse, even a very clever one, isn’t going to be able to write a good book about what it’s like to be human – but Stapledon at least tries, and we should give him credit for that. One idea I liked, which occurs elsewhere in Stapledon’s writing, is that it isn’t primarily about winning (conquering the world, amassing a colossal fortune, etc.), but rather about living your life absolutely to the full. He has a good shot at showing us how John tries to achieve that. He also has a much more interesting take on the battle between good and evil than is common in this genre. Evil people have just, as it were, been handed the Black pieces in the cosmic chess game; it’s a question of how artistically they handle their resources. I don’t know whether I agree with this, but at least it makes you think, which is more than you can say for variants on Clark Kent versus Lex Luthor. [2009]

84 DAN SIMMONS THE FALL OF HYPERION 1990

BEN BABCOCK My relationship with Dan Simmons has been ambivalent. We’ve had bad times and even worse times. We’ve also had some good times, namely with Hyperion. So I went into The Fall of Hyperion feeling pretty good, and if anything my opinion of this series has only improved. Any ill will I bore Simmons for the books I didn’t like has dissipated thanks to his masterful presentation of this epic science fiction series. The Hyperion Cantos hits an impressive number of tropes that appeal to me in my science fiction. Introspective, existentially-minded main character? Check. Ineffable, almost omnipotent artificial intelligences? Got it. Wormhole-connected human civilization? Oh yes. Crazy mind-bending temporal logic? Sadly, oh so much. The Fall of Hyperion preserves the flavour of its predecessor, and to its credit, it is also much more complete than Hyperion. I liked Hyperion (after re-reading my review, more than I recalled, apparently). One of the things I enjoyed about the book were the overt allusions to John Keats’s poem of the same name. By way of disclaimer, I haven't actually read Keats’s Hyperion, nor am I anywhere close to familiar with most of his work. Still, Simmons establishes a literary mood that I, as a reader, enjoy. The tone of the work is erudite without becoming overbearing about its literary qualities; at its heart, it is still science fiction. But it’s high quality science fiction, the kind you buy from a shady dealer in the dive off the darkest alleyway, looking furtively in either direction as he reaches beneath his trenchcoat for his last copy even as you rock back and forth, Cover illustration by Larry Rostant muttering under your breath about how you need your next hit. Yeah,

April 2012: SF Masterworks second series 85 Hyperion and its sequel are definitely my type of drug. The literary quality to the book also helps liken it to the myths that Simmons references. In another author’s hands, the comparisons might be heavy-handed, but he pulls it off deftly. In my review of Hyperion, I discuss what we learn about the AIs, the TechnoCore, and “how irrelevant they consider humanity to the grand scheme of the cosmos”. I could not have been more wrong! Without going into spoiler territory, let’s just say that humanity is essential to the TechnoCore’s plan, at least in the short term, for a variety of reasons. And the TechnoCore’s role as antagonist becomes much more apparent in this book. To accompany this plot, Simmons talks about the war between the Titans and the Olympian gods of Greek mythology (the subject of Keats’s poem), putting the human Hegemony in the role of the former and the usurper AIs as the Olympians. By including this literary dimension, Simmons elevates his conflict beyond the typical AI rebellion plot. The struggle is more than mere survival, more than epic, even more than myth: it’s the fulfilment of a grand, cosmic theme. It’s poetic. The Fall of Hyperion makes heavy use of the role of religion in society. Father Paul Duré is back, in a big way, and with it comes the small cult of Catholicism and Duré’s own musings about the eventual fate of humanity. We can also call the TechnoCore’s motives “religious”. All their roads lead to the Ultimate Intelligence, an AI that would essentially be God. Yet even as they manipulate humanity, they are divided, both on whether they want to realize a UI and what to do with humanity. Severn/Keats, an AI reconstruction of a centuries-dead poet, also has to reclaim his identity and decide what role he wishes to play in this conflict (as he discovers, he has been groomed to perform a certain task). Finally, the pilgrims each have their own conflicts of faith and must decide to embrace faith or reject it, in very personal ways. Simmons involves conflicts of faith at a variety of levels, which overall adds to the complexity and rich texture of this book. Given the antagonist and the emphasis on faith, the casual reader might detect an anti-technology theme to The Fall of Hyperion. I know that, at first, I was wondering why Simmons was down on the bit-mongers. But it’s much deeper than that. Simmons is criticizing the Hegemony’s dependence on the sentient TechnoCore for its technology and the maintenance of that technology. The story goes: humanity invented the Hawking drive, but the TechnoCore gave us the farcasters. Guess which one became the primary mode of transportation? That’s right, the one that moves people instantaneously from planet to planet. Since the establishment of the Hegemony, the Core has been there, suppressing any radical developments in technology that might upset the balance. In a way, the TechnoCore is a depiction of what the Minds of Iain M. Banks’s

86 ‘Culture’ novels could be, if they were of a more domineering bent. (There are other factors, of course, not the least of which is the fact that the Hegemony descends directly from humanity and Earth cultures, whereas the Culture is a ‘pan-species’ civilization, old when humans are still learning to sail.) Technology itself is awesome, and becoming dependent on a technology is OK, but surrendering one’s freedom and self-determination because someone else is doling out technological goodies leads down a bad road. Having compared this series to the Culture novels, I’d also like to refer to Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star and its sequel and related works. There are some superficial similarities: Hamilton has an Intersolar Commonwealth, wormholes, and the SI; Simmons has the Hegemony of Man, farcasters, and the TechnoCore. Yet the differences between the two universes allow their stories to be wonderfully unique. In Hamilton’s works, wormhole travel comes from the minds of two human geniuses before the SI is a glimmer in the eyes of programmers. The Commonwealth’s government treats the SI with more suspicion than it might warrant, since it seems a lot friendlier and more benign than Simmons’ TechnoCore. By contrast, although the Commonwealth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, it is much nicer than the Hegemony on a sliding scale. Both deliver the type of mega-scale space opera that I find so enticing, so addictive. The Fall of Hyperion isn’t perfect, but overall it seems designed to appeal directly to me and to my interests. I can easily see why it was nominated for a Hugo and why Hyperion won the award. It’s a space opera with a complex plot that draws upon literature and mythology to create an immensely satisfying experience. This is the good stuff, the direct line to the pleasure centre of your science fiction nervous system. [2011]

KEMPER “Nurse, this patient’s chart is very confusing.” “Which patient, Doctor?” “Uh… Mr. Kemper. He’s the one in the vegetative state.” “Oh, that’s a very sad and odd case.” “According to the patient history, he was admitted a few weeks ago with cerebrospinal fluid leaking from his nose and ears, but it seemed like he should recover. But yesterday he was brought in again, barely conscious and then he lapsed into a coma. The really odd thing is that I see no signs of injury or disease.”

87 “That’s right, Doctor. It was a book that did this to Mr. Kemper.” “A book? How is that possible?” “From what we can figure out, the first incident occured after he read Hyperion by a writer named Dan Simmons. I guess it’s one of those sci-fi books and apparently the story is quite elaborate. Anyhow, Mr. Kemper had read Simmons before and knew he likes to put a lot of big ideas in his books. But this time, apparently Simmons broke into his house and managed to directly implant much of the book directly into Mr. Kemper’s brain via some kind of crude funnel device.” “I find that highly unlikely, Nurse.” “Most of us did, Doctor. But Mr. Kemper kept insisting that Simmons had some kind of grudge against him. He even had a note he said Simmons had left, that said something like ‘Don’t you ever learn? If you keep reading my books, I’ll end you someday.’” “Assuming that I believed this story, I guess that Kemper’s current state tells us that he didn’t heed the warning?” “Apparently not, Doctor. His wife said she found him having convulsions and leaking brain matter out his nose and ears again. A copy of the sequel, The Fall of Hyperion was on the floor nearby.” “I can’t believe that reading a silly sci-fi book could turn a healthy man into a turnip, Nurse.” “Well, when they brought Kemper in, he was semiconscious and muttering. Someone wrote it down. Let see, he kept repeating words and phrases like: Shrike, Time Tombs, the Core, God, uh… no, two gods actually, farcasters, Ousters, religion, pope, death wand, space battles, interplanetary trees, old Earth, AI, mega sphere, data sphere, The Canterbury Tales, poetry, John Keats, Tree of Thorns, and Lord of Pain.” “Jesus! What does all that mean?” “Someone looked it up on the web and all of that is actually in the book.” “That poor bastard. No wonder his gray matter is fried. No one could absorb all that without permanent damage.” “Yes, I’d think that book should have some kind of warning sticker or something on it.” “One thing I still don’t understand, Nurse. If Kemper knew that this book would probably do this to him, why did he still read it?” “I guess he had told several people that Hyperion was just so good that he had to know how it ended, even if it killed him.”

88 I think the word ‘epic’ was invented to describe this book. What Simmons began in Hyperion finishes here with a story so sprawling and massive that it defies description. In the far future, humanity has spread to the stars, and maintains a web of worlds via ‘farcasters’. (Think Stargates.) On the planet Hyperion, mysterious tombs have been moving backwards in time and are guarded by the deadly Shrike. Seven people were sent to Hyperion on a ‘pilgrimage’ that was almost certainly a suicide mission, but the Ousters, a segment of humanity evolving differently after centuries spent in deep space, are about to invade. The artificial intelligences of the Core that humanity depends on for predictions of future events and management of the farcaster system can’t tell what’s coming with an unknown like the Shrike and Hyperion in play. Battles rage across space and time and the virtual reality of the data sphere as varying interests with competing agendas maneuver and betray each other as the pilgrims on Hyperion struggle to survive and finally uncover the secrets of the Shrike. But the real reasons behind the war and its ultimate goal are bigger and more sinister than anyone involved can imagine. I can’t say enough good things about the story told in these first two Hyperion books. This is sci-fi at its best with a massive story crammed with big unique ideas and believable characters you care about. Any one of the pieces could have made a helluva book, but it takes a talent like Simmons to pull all of it together into one coherent story. [2011]

89 DOUGLAS ADAMS THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY 1979

MANNY RAYNER They stumbled out of the Heart of Gold and looked around them. It was very quiet among the tall buildings. The ground was covered with brightly- coloured objects that, from a distance, looked a little like paperback novels. Trillian picked one up. “It’s a paperback novel!” she said, surprised. “Long Hard Ride, by Lorelei James.” She flipped through it. “Hm, who’d have thought that the late inhabitants of Frogstar Z would have been into women’s erotica?” She picked up some more. “Be With Me, by Maya Banks… Dangerous Secrets, by Lisa Marie Rice… A Little Harmless Pleasure, by Melissa Schroeder. They’re all women’s erotica!” It was still very quiet. Ford whistled. “So that’s what the end result of a women’s erotica spiral looks like!” he said. “What a way to go!” “One of the better ones,” said Zaphod’s left head, while the right one avidly eyed the cover of Alluring Tales: Hot Holiday Nights. “A what spiral?” asked Arthur, as usual feeling that he was several steps behind. “Oh, it’s one of the most common ways for a Type III civilization to go extinct,” explained Zaphod’s left head. “People start spending more and more time on reviewing sites. After a while, everyone’s top priority is collecting votes. Pretty soon, they realise that they get most votes for women’s erotica reviews. Before you know what’s happened, the whole Cover illustration by Tim Marrs planet is doing nothing but reading erotic women’s novels and writing

May 2012: SF Masterworks second series 90 reviews of them, and after that it’s usually just weeks before the Total Erotic Chicklit Field forms. And then—” “And then.” agreed Ford. “Then what?” asked Arthur peevishly. Trillian was still poking through the books. “Oh look!” she said brightly. “Magic in the Blood. I’ve read this one. Hottie vamp alert! I remember, I bought it after reading the blurb on the back. I’m happy to say that the book was even better than the blurb!! Take one devastatingly sexy vamp, add a female mage, stir in a bit of mystery and a villain or two and you have a pretty fun read with some smokin’ sex!” Arthur stared at her uncomprehendingly. Trillian picked up another paperback. “Wolf Unbound! I can’t believe it, I’ve read this one too! Lauren Dane serves up Tegan’s story in book four of her ‘Cascadia Wolves’ series. This series has action, hot werewolves, mystery, hot sex, suspense, and did I mention the sexy werewolves?” “Are you feeling alright?” asked Arthur. “Never better!” said Trillian, as she picked up a third book. “Only I wish I had a laptop handy, so that I could note down some of my impressions. By the way, why have you removed your shirt, revealing your hard biceps, well-developed pecs and flat, six-pack stomach?” “I… don’t know,” replied Arthur bemusedly, as his steel-blue eyes strayed brazenly over Trillian’s slim, attractive body. He suddenly noticed that Zaphod was dragging him towards the ship. Ford was doing the same with Trillian. Before he had quite realized what was happening, they were inside again and being strapped into their seats. “Don’t look at her!” hissed Zaphod, but it was too late. Arthur was already entranced by the sight of Trillian’s small, proud breasts, heaving against the thin fabric of her Versace frock. Her disheveled raven hair outlined a perfect, heart- shaped face. Her eyes were closed. One crystalline tear slowly trickled down her cheek. It was no longer quiet. A strange, moaning sound filled the air. “How long before Erotic Chicklit Max?” asked Zaphod through gritted teeth, as he strapped himself in. “About thirty-five seconds,” replied Eddie. “And you know, folks, nice as this place is, I do wonder whether we shouldn’t be somewhere else. Any requests?” Before Zaphod could reply, Trillian answered for him. “Take us,” she said in a low, sensuous voice, “to a place beyond

91 space and time, where all our desires will be granted a hundredfold.” “Sure thing, boss!” said Eddie cheerfully. There was a blinding flash. The next moment, they were in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. [2012]

J.G. KEELY The universe is a joke. Even before I was shown the meaning of life in a dream at seventeen (then promptly forgot it because I thought I smelled pancakes), I knew this to be true – and yet, I have always felt a need to search for the truth, that nebulous, ill- treated creature. Adams has always been, to me, a welcome companion in that journey. Between the search for meaning and the recognition that it’s all a joke in poor taste lies Douglas Adams, and, luckily for us, he doesn’t seem to mind if you lie there with him. He’s a tall guy, but he’ll make room. For all his crazed unpredictability, Adams is a powerful rationalist. His humor comes from his attempts to really think through all the things we take for granted. It turns out it takes little more than a moment’s questioning to burst our preconceptions at the seams, yet rarely does this stop us from treating the most ludicrous things as if they were perfectly reasonable. It is no surprise that famed atheist Richard Dawkins found a friend and ally in Adams. What is surprising is that people often fail to see the rather consistent and reasonable philosophy laid out by Adams’s quips and absurdities. His approach is much more personable (and less embittered) than Dawkins’, which is why I think of Adams as a better face for rational materialism (which is a polite was of saying ‘atheism’). Reading his books, it’s not hard to see that Dawkins is tired of arguing with uninformed idiots who can’t even recognize when a point has actually been made. Adams’s humanism, however, stretched much further than the contention between those who believe, and those who don’t. We see it from his protagonists, who are not elitist intellectuals – they’re not even especially bright – but damn it, they’re trying. By showing a universe that makes no sense and having his characters constantly question it, Adams is subtly hinting that this is the natural human state, and the fact that we laugh and sympathize shows that it must be true.

92 It’s all a joke, it’s all ridiculous. The absurdists might find this depressing, but they’re just a bunch of narcissists, anyhow. Demanding the world make sense and give you purpose is rather self-centered when it already contains toasted paninis, attractive people in bathing suits, and Euler’s Identity. I say let’s sit down at the bar with the rabbi, the priest, and the frog and try to get a song going. Or at least recognize that it’s okay to laugh at ourselves now and again. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just is a joke, but some of us are in on it. [2011]

LEE BATTERSBY Beginning to creak a little bit now, after decades of high-profile media exposure and fandom, but still hugely enjoyable in parts and there’s a sense of deliciousness in creeping up on the more famous moments, as well as in discovering some of the gleefully nutty plot points that haven’t become as ubiquitous as ‘42’ and “Life, don’t talk to me about life” (Zaphod’s brains, anyone?). Surprisingly, on re-reading the book for the first time in several years, I find that it’s not particularly well-written: it’s a series of comic skits and scenarios loosely strung together rather than a particularly coherent narrative, and character development is, for the most part, non-existent. And Adams is no master at line level, either – the book doesn’t so much leap along on the beauty of its construction as rely on skipping from punchline to punchline with fingers crossed that each set-up will get you there. At this stage in his writing career Adams is still very much a gag man, coming out of radio and transitioning to author, a transition that will bear much greater fruit in the next two novels as the influence of the radio serial is left behind and the books take on a narrative life of their own. But – and it’s a heck of a but – the gags themselves are still pure gold, the last great flowering of that particular Oxbridge Mafia style comedy of the late ’50s to ’70s that began with ‘Beyond the Fringe’ and died when Fry & Laurie split up. As a gag man, Adams is very British, very absurd, and very good, and there’s still a massive amount of fun to be had. This book may have become more a comfortable old friend than the herald of an exciting and funny sub-branch of the genre – it’s been a long time since Adams was surpassed by Pratchett in that regard – but it’s an old friend I’m still glad to see. [2012]

93 PAT CADIGAN SYNNERS 1991

STEPH BENNION A cyberpunk classic and one that back in 1991 visualised the future (ie. now) far better than the much better-known Neuromancer. This was written pre-internet, but shows the web as it is today, the backbone of a media- drenched world that’s far from pretty. The story revolves around the consequences of linking a user’s mind directly into the net, which is explored from a variety of viewpoint characters, all connected in some way to a media company looking to capitalise on the new technology. This is a stylish, often confusing, yet very entertaining read. One last thing, the SF Masterworks ebook I bought from Kobo is probably the best presented and formatted ebook I’ve come across to date from a mainstream publisher. [2014]

S Y L V IA KELSO Took me three times through to be fairly sure I had all there was in this book, when I first read it back in the early ’90s. It’s dense. It’s cryptic. Its narrative cuts are very, very sharp. It’s got its own slang and a heap of expert-IT-argot and it bristles with wicked lines. “If you can’t eat it or fuck it and it can’t dance, throw it away.” – “Ninety percent of life is being there, and the other ten percent is being there on time.” And the key-motif, the one the whole book’s about: “Change for the machines.” It all ensures the reader a brain workout rather than just sitting there spooning in words. The characters are nearly as sharp as the lines, and the world- Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs building is complex – an info-LA plugged into every form of VR there was,

August 2012: SF Masterworks second series 94 from appetite-suppressant implants to insty-parties for the suburban wannabes, via somebody’s gypsy cam and somebody else’s wired up hot-suit. It has excellent space opera sub-stories, and wild ideas about the old SF chestnuts like, What is Human, and new ones like how human brain events might affect cyberspace. To quote the other catch-phrase, is all that far enough up the stupidsphere for you? With twenty years and change since the first time, I worried that, like so many near-future cutting edge novels, it wouldn’t work when the future caught up. But Synners makes it in spades. The info-scene is actually right on line, the comp. science was so well done that it hardly feels dated. The frenzy about viruses is all that seems a bit retrospective now. But the story still belts along like Metallica on fast-forward, and the scenarios haven’t lost an inch of punch. Especially the melt- down viral breakout and the last showdown on the virtual lake-side – quick nod to “Stranger on the Shore” there – with its scene-jumping almost as fast and confusing for the reader as it is for Gina and Gabe. A few books aren’t just a good read but become a world you don’t want to leave. I’m happy Synners is still in that small pile for me. If that’s too far up the stupidsphere for some people to whack to, in Synnerspeak – well, that’s a real shame for them. [2013]

CHRIS MANDER In Synners we are plunged headfirst into a gritty alternative future where a grimy LA is broadcast through the eyes of its inhabitants during a technological breakthrough. The world is intricate, multi-faceted and well imagined, with some impressive predictions, their “everything on demand” lifestyle seems to mirror our internet-enriched lives today. The plentiful cast can sometimes be hard to keep up with but that doesn’t stop their interactions delivering an edgy narrative through punchy dialogue. There is certainly an air of awe as they strut through the world with attitude and style. Synners is deep with concepts which still remain relevant over twenty years on. From a virtual world consuming lives to the likening of entertainment to porn, this is the impact of the net on our world, and foreseen with frightening accuracy in this novel. This was my first foray into cyberpunk and it is a genre I will revisit, even if I don’t feel quite cool enough to fit in with a band of drug taking, thrash metal-listening hackers. [2013]

95 NICOLA GRIFFITH AMMONITE 1993

ALIX HEINTZMAN In Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite, we find a world without men. If you’re imagining a serene society ruled by wise matriarchs, or a planet of space- babes waiting for Kirk to rescue them, then perhaps this book is not for you. Because Griffith’s world is different. Her book is about reworking the familiar ploys of science-fictions past and making them wonderfully new. It’s classically science fiction, in that it pushes irreverently against the boundaries of classic science fiction. The first few pages of the book are filled with enough airlocks, sliding doors, and food dispensers to satisfy the most rigid sci-fi fan. An anthropologist named Marghe is in space, preparing to descend to the planet Jeep. Jeep, we learn, was once colonized by the Company for its valuable resources. But then a virus swept through the settlers and killed all the men and most of the women, and the Company abandoned the project. Five years later, they’ve developed a vaccine and returned. Marghe is the scientist who will be simultaneously studying the natives – human women who have survived the virus for centuries and somehow managed to reproduce – and testing the vaccine. She descends into a classically colonial scene: a militarized Company base surrounded by a vast unknown planet full of preindustrial natives. At this point, the tone shifts. Marghe leaves the safety of the base and heads north, searching for the Company scientist who disappeared before her arrival. The elements of classic science fiction fade as Marghe travels Cover illustration by Arthur Haas through a premodern world of nomads, sailors, farmers, and pastoralists.

September 2012: SF Masterworks second series 96 Her anthropological journey quickly morphs into a scramble for survival. She’s kidnapped by the Echraide, a violent indigenous clan, escapes into the tundra, and gets adopted by a friendly coastal village. Along the way, several crises build: the Company seems likely to destroy the planet if the vaccine fails, but the success of the vaccine would lead to full-scale colonization and the destruction of native lifeways; the Echraide start a genocidal war, which threatens the Company base and the rest of the planet; and Marghe’s own allegiances shift and evolve, in a complicated but familiar process of “going native.” All these crises fit together in a stunning and powerful climax: Marghe standing alone on the grassy plains, between two lines of advancing soldiers, telling a story. It’s an intricate plot, which improves with the second and third reading. Ammonite is filled with tried-and-true science fiction themes, but none of them lead to the places you’d expect. The idea of the women-only world, in particular, is an old and treacherous device. In the 1950s, planets controlled by women were a fun way for male science fiction authors to talk about how terrified they were of female agency. Matriarchy led to creepy hierarchical societies that hated individualism, violent Amazonian cultures that cannibalized men as a hobby, or maybe just groups of love-starved women in Outer Space. Then second-wave feminism arrived and started generating woman-only utopias. No war! No violence! Equality, vegetarianism, and peaceful negotiation as far as the eye can see. But, as Griffith says, “I am tired of reading about aliens who are really women, or women who are really aliens.” And so Ammonite plays a sly trick on us all. The headlining plot device, a planet without men, turns out to mean nothing at all to the hearts and minds of the characters. Jeep is not a homogenous planet of bitter women, or a bloody jungle filled with Amazons. It’s a planet with peace, war, pettiness, greatness, bravery, and fear. Because “Women are not aliens.” The idea that a planet of women would function suspiciously like a planet of humans has met with skepticism. Bloggers and reviewers have claimed that she’s ignoring “the thousands of years of Darwinian selection that developed gender roles in the first place”, and that “human gender roles are clearly defined by nature (as they are in chimps).” And that’s the sound of several generations of feminist scholars rolling their eyes. The intertwined myths about biologically-determined gender roles, the natural origins of patriarchy, and the oppositional differentness of men and women are clearly alive and thriving. Stories like Ammonite are still necessary. Colonial encounters are another common device in science fiction. For about half a century, white male characters have been busily exploring (and exploiting) foreign planets, whose alien populations are variously racially constructed. Sometimes the encounter is a violent struggle against dehumanized others, sometimes it’s a righteous crusade to save the

97 downtrodden inhabitants, and sometimes it’s a thrilling tale of the white interloper going native. These are essentially the same stories that the British told about South Asia and Africa, and Americans told about Native Americans, except with a few more spaceships. They’re stories told from a position of cultural supremacy. Marghe’s journey fits perfectly within the colonial mold. She’s the rational, scientific white woman bravely pushing past the colonial frontier into savage territories. Then she’s kidnapped by violent and possibly insane natives, and slowly loses her grasp on her own civilized identity. That’s more or less the plot of every Dr. Livingstone-I-presume adventure story from the British Empire. But it’s an intelligent colonial adventure, where the natives are given history, complexity, and agency in their lives. The Echraide, Marghe’s kidnappers, aren’t just bloodthirsty savages. They’re a dying culture coping with a harsh climate, who have turned in desperation towards millenarian cultism. Their story borrows from the South African Cattle Killing, and has an internal logic that’s usually denied to hostile natives. These are the larger, and most successful, pieces of Ammonite. There are other layers. Marghe’s own psycho-spiritual journey is central, and several secondary characters are involved in similar personal evolutions. These are absolutely convincing transformations, but phrases like self-awakening and self-discovery make me picture obnoxiously cheerful, skinny women talking about meditation. But, ultimately, even the cheerful yoga-mat-carrying types of women are not aliens. They would be welcome on Jeep. [2013]

98 KAREN JOY FOWLER SARAH CANARY 1991

BEN BABCOCK It is a widely accepted fact that our passions and interests are not evenly distributed among the eras of human history. Some prefer tales of neolithic courage; others are interested in ancient Greece, Ilium, Rome. I have a soft spot for medieval and Tudor England; even Victorian England has its allure. Late 19th-century America, not so much. I do not avoid books set in that time, nor do I go out of my way to read them. The atmosphere of Sarah Canary’s time period holds little appeal for me. Asylums and steamboats… carnivals and freakshows… a time where the frontier of the Wild West has been settled, but not yet successfully civilized. Amid all these distractions, we have a migrant Chinese railroad worker, an escaped asylum inmate, and a woman with no identity, no personality, no intelligible voice. I should say at this point that Sarah Canary is not what I expected at all – and that is fine. Actually, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was not expecting the mix of mystery and magical realism that Fowler delivers. What starts as a slow, almost plodding quest to discover the nature of Sarah Canary metamorphoses into an interstate adventure. Sarah Canary passes through a quixotic chain of custody, and each of her keepers have their own motivations for helping her. Chin thinks that she is an immortal, and thus it is his duty to help. BJ seems to be along for the ride. Harold wants to profit off of Sarah Canary, billing her as the “Alaskan Wild Woman.” Adelaide Dixon mistakes Sarah Canary for a murderer. Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs Sarah Canary is the thread common to all these people’s lives, the

September 2012: SF Masterworks second series 99 nexus that brings them together in a grand chase stretching from Steilacoom, Washington all the way to San Francisco, California. Of all the strange characters who populate this narrative, Sarah is perhaps the least well-defined, because she has no voice. Instead, she is like negative space in a painting, her shape defined by those around her. Is she a wild woman? An escaped murder? A poor, innocent, insane woman? Or an immortal, seeking acts of human kindness? Discovering the truth about Sarah Canary is never the point of this novel. We learn very little that is definite about this woman – if indeed she is a woman – but she has a very definite impact on the characters’ lives. Chin travels down the West Coast for her, dragging BJ in his tow. His actions are at times questionable, even illegal, and usually dangerous. Harold, perhaps the most delusional character (bar none), looks to Sarah Canary for quick cash and discovers his own immortality. Adelaide seeks to use Sarah Canary for her own purposes and nearly ends up a tiger’s lunch. So yeah, I’m calling ‘MacGuffin’ on Sarah Canary. She’s a plot device that creates the convergence of characters, the motivation for all the events in the novel. And there is nothing wrong with that, although I wish the characters in question were somewhat more three-dimensional. By and large I enjoyed Fowler’s characterization. Chin and BJ have an interesting dynamic. Both of them are somewhat outsiders from society, and they each have an interesting perspective on the world: Chin’s is coloured by his Chinese heritage, full of Confucian metaphor and mythical messages; BJ, high-functioning but still not quite there, liberally mixes fact and fiction. Personality quirks aside, however, the characters never fully rise above the archetypes they represent. In particular, Adelaide is a tireless campaigner for women’s rights… and that’s about all. The characters have personalities but not fully-developed personae. Sarah Canary didn’t leave me awestruck, but it did touch me – especially the ending. Chin’s reflection on the nature of story and the role of reader is poignant and true. That being said, what was up with that epilogue? [2010]

100 MARY SHELLEY FRANKENSTEIN 1818

MARK MONDAY ...and so I was born! A man, and not a man; a life, and an un-life. Hair and lips of lustrous black, skin of parchment yellow, watery eyes of dun- coloured white. The stature of a giant. A horror among men! And so my creator fled me, horrified of his creation. And so I fled my place of birth, to seek lessons amongst the human kind. My lonesome lessons learnt: man is a loving and noble creature; learning is pathway to beauty, to kindness, to fellowship. And this I also learnt: to witness what differs, to meet what may be noble under the skin but ugly above it… is to then reject that other, to cast him out! Man is a brutal and heartless creature. And as I was rejected, I do so reject: turn from me and you shall find my cold hands, seeking some bitter warmth… O wretched creature am I! My tale is told by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, in the loveliest and most vivid of flowing prose. A wise writer is this Mary Shelley – and at such a young age! The narrative is as three nesting Russian dolls, a thin one to contain them all, a second of weightier proportions, and a third one within – its gentle and broken heart. That inner story, the smallest, is of my youth – a life of fear, but also of learning, of growing into myself, of witnessing the beauty around me. Of spying upon the family De Lacey – their unknown son. Their own tale is one of bravery and gentleness, of humanity at its weakest and strongest, of survival. But mine is of friendship spurned, kindness returned with terror, a stark rejection, and then a house in flames. Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs And with that burning house burned all the love within this scarcely beating

October 2012: SF Masterworks second series 101 un-heart… all that love, burnt clean away, never to return! The middle story is of my creator, Victor Frankenstein: spoiled child, spoiled man, dreamer, visionary, coward; the foolish instrument of his own despair. A curse upon him, and a blessing, and a curse again! The outer layer is a story of wintry landscapes, an exploration of the icy reaches and the final doom of my creator. It is as well a tale of longing: for justice and for revenge, of course… but also for a companion, for a brother who can never be found. Alas, Captain Walton, a sensitive and lonely soul… I could have been your own brother, such was the depth of our shared yearnings… O wretched are those who walk the earth alone! My father and mother both: Victor Frankenstein. Curse the man who rejects his offspring! Curse the man who seeks to forget his own creation! I was the fruit of his mind and of his labours, born rotten, and thus cast away. The tale of my maker is the tale of a parent suddenly fearful of his young, terrified of what he has wrought. It is a tale of responsibility rejected. The record of his actions are of criminal neglect, of shameful weakness, of a man who lives so much in his thoughts that the world around him crumbles, and the people in that world become abused. My wretched self most of all! And yet I am more than his cast-out son. I am the Frankenstein’s shadow self: capable of the sublime, yet enacting the abominable. What is dear to him shall be mine to destroy. His precious ideals shall be the instrument of his destruction. As he would embrace his youngest brother, his dearest friend, his beloved wife… so shall I! And as his shadow self, I will follow him as he will follow me, I will lead him to his destiny, on a terrible trail he has forged himself. I shall spare him, and all others, only the faintest pity… O wretched are those who cross my path! My story is not simply one of thoughtless cruelty or hideous revenge. It is also one of beauty, and of ugliness. Behold the many descriptions of the natural world, the myriad and vivid wonders of nature, of mountain and forest and lake and ocean. There is true beauty. It is a fact upon which we three – Victor Frankenstein and Captain Walton and I – are truly of one mind. In nature there is true transcendence! But alas, it is not simply nature that is judged as beauty, or as ugliness. Inspect the story closely. Note the good fortune of the child Elizabeth, raised in squalor and then lifted into comfort. Why was she so chosen? Because of her fortunate beauty, her golden hair… so different from the children around her, who remained in poverty. A typical act for the human species: forever embracing the fair and turning away from what their eyes call foul. Terrible human nature, that judges the surface alone. Study Victor’s reactions to his professors, both steeped in

102 wisdom: one kindly and elegant in appearance, the other misshapen and coarse… his fondness for the former and his displeasure with the latter. See Victor’s uncaring and hysterical flight from his own child – myself! Watch his descent into illness at the mere idea of such ugliness. Witness the family De Lacey, and their rejection of one who sought only to ease their burdens, to bring their kindness back upon them – a being who only craved love! Myself! Again and again, the pleasant surface is favoured over the ill-formed; the unknown depths to remain unknowable. Foolish humans – victims of their conceits, forever enchanted by what they call beauty. Foul and petty humans – they are villains of their own making. A curse upon them! And so rejected and abandoned, I shall bring ugliness back to their doorstep. I become nemesis; and shall live forever as your deadly child, a perilous inheritance, a nightmare of your own creation… O wretched are you all! [2012]

NICHOLAS WHYTE It’s really extraordinary to think that a book this influential was written by a teenager – is there any other similar case in the history of literature? It’s a bit uneven structurally – the nested stories are a bit of a mess, and the dialogue sometimes sounds like a bunch of young but very earnest intellectuals sitting indoors during a dull Swiss holiday – but the central thrust of the narrative, Frankenstein giving life to his creature which then goes on the rampage, is deeply compelling. It is a long time since I last read this, and I had forgotten a number of interesting points: that Frankenstein’s original betrayal of his creature is right after he animates it, when he runs away; that Frankenstein attempts to create a female version of it in, of all places, Scotland (the Orkney Islands, to be precise); the interlude with Felix, Agatha, Safie and the old man in Germany; the detailed account of the geography of the surroundings of Geneva and to a lesser extent England (compare the much vaguer descriptions of Ingolstadt and Ireland); and the ending – I had the idea that the creature fled to a hidden Arctic city, but perhaps I was thinking of Aldiss’s Frankenstein Unbound. I had also forgotten how much dialogue Frankenstein’s creature gets. This is really important because the story is about families, and the creature’s isolation when rejected by Frankenstein, its ‘father’, resulting in its murderous resentment. It encounters two sets of extended families in the story – the Frankensteins, and Felix and Agatha’s household – and is excluded, cruelly if for understandable reasons, from both. (NB. the framing narrative is also a family one, letters from Walton to his sister.) No wonder its sole demand of Frankenstein is to create a soul-mate. I’m not aware that any cinematic

103 adaptation manages to generate as much sympathy for the creature as Shelley’s original. The other key figure is of course Frankenstein, who starts off as a keen if naïve scholar, unifying old lore and new science to create wonders, and then spends the rest of the book wrestling with his conscience over the consequences of his actions. Although he is the first-person narrator for most of the book, and unlike the creature doesn’t actually kill anyone, it’s much more difficult to feel sympathy for him as he tries to evade his responsibility, both to his biological family and to his creation. I should love to read a biography of Mary Shelley, to see where she got these fairly vivid models of human misbehaviour from. (Wikipedia suggests it was direct observation of Percy, but that seems too easy.) Anyway, it’s a quick read, and in places a surprising one, and if you have any interest in the sf genre it is a hugely important book. [2010]

MARTIN McCLELLAN Things not in this book: • A castle, especially one called Frankenstein. • An assistant of any kind, let alone one called Igor. • A lumbering monster. He is described as hideous, but with long black hair. One gets the sense that Frankenstein was aiming for handsome, and instead hit loathesome. • Madeline Kahn, but you could have guessed that. • Speaking of which, there is no bride. Well, there is, but the less said about that the better. She certainly didn’t have a shock of white hair. • Eastern bloc countries. The tale takes place in Switzerland, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Russia, and the Arctic. • Graveyard robbing. • Brains. I was amazed how many preconceptions I needed to shed to see this novel in a new light. To read it without seeing twentieth century movies projected on its pages. Because, the legend has largely supplanted the text. Isn’t that a shame, because the text is something else. What is in this book: gnashing at the condition of its inhabitants. So much cursing and calling to high to better one’s

104 place, to no avail. And are you surprised? This, the blueprint of the Gothic novel, giving the definition of misery to goth. So far apart from our current understanding (as evidenced by the fashion of teenage angst) where this gothic was predicated by happiness cut short by playing god and horrible tragedy. I give it five stars for overall effect, although it is certainly a book of its time and clunky in places. For example, Shelley employed the word “countenance” forty-eight times in the novel. For comparison, the name “Frankenstein”, including the title, is used thirty-two times. The word “monster” thirty-three. “Victor”: thirty. But Shelley’s marvelous plotting, tremendous metaphor building, and wholly original idea still holds to this day. How interesting to revisit this, which spawned so many who, ironically, are ugly lumbering imitations of the original. [2014]

BRUCE GILLESPIE I finally caught up on the book which Brian Aldiss calls the first sf novel. Well, it certainly isn’t that, but it’s very enjoyable. Also, it has either little or nothing to do with the James Whale movies or my expectations about the book. The atmosphere of Frankenstein is more like that in Kafka’s novels than in anything science-fictional. It’s an endless dream sequence in which the monster springs out of nowhere (Shelley spends less than half a page on the actual sequence when the monster comes to life) and collides with his maker every now and again. The book becomes a dance of death between the two of them. For instance, Frankenstein relates that the monster commits four murders. Yet the book is constructed in such a way that Frankenstein could have commited the murders himself and then blamed them on the monster, who becomes a magical, superhuman figure by the end of the novel. The only other character who sees the monster, although only at a distance, is Robert Walton, the explorer who picks up Frankenstein from the northern ice and listens to his story. When the monster tells his story, he sounds like the paragon of earnest, suffering humanity; the rest of the book is so exhausting because Frankenstein himself sounds dingbats. I suppose Brian Aldiss and I could argue the matter forever, but it seems to me that Frankenstein is important to sf only as far as it inspired The Island of Doctor Moreau. Frankenstein owes more to Milton, Coleridge and the gothics than sf owes to it. [1975]

105 D.G. COMPTON THE CONTINUOUS KATHERINE MORTENHOE 1974

IAN SALES The first book by David Guy Compton I read was Justice City back in 1996. I picked it as one of my ten best books that year, and described it then as “excellently written, believable characters, and a crime plot that depends on its political dimension as much as it does on the psychology of its cast”. It wasn’t until six years later that I read another Compton, Chronicules. While not a comforting book to read, I did review it and noted that the prose was “a joy to read”. Last year I read Scudder’s Game, and only last month The Electric Crocodile. The more of Compton’s novels I read, the more I appreciate his writing. Yes, they are grim and misanthropic, and most have a very 1970s atmosphere – but that, I suppose, is part of their appeal. The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe – also known as Death Watch and The Unsleeping Eye – is perhaps Compton’s best-known sf novel. The title character is diagnosed with “Gordon’s Syndrome” and told she has four weeks left to live. A successful television programme, Human Destiny, has found success broadcasting the final weeks of terminal patients, and they want Katherine to be a subject – for a large sum, of course. But she refuses. The producers of Human Destiny had been planning to try out some new technology on her: one of their reporters, Rod, has had his eyes replaced with television cameras. (His eyes still look the same, so Katherine would never know she was being filmed every moment.) The novel is set in the future, and it’s a very 1970s future. I remarked on this in my capsule review of The Electric Crocodile and, I have to admit, Cover illustration by Eamon O’Donoghue it’s an aesthetic I find appealing – all that Brutalist architecture, the huge

October 2012: SF Masterworks second series 106 antiseptic data processing centres, the clunky technology… The society of Compton’s future is also a product of the book’s time of writing. It’s a future not much different from then, but not much like now. People live in huge blocks of flats, and die only of old age… except for notable exceptions, such as those who feature on Human Destiny. Mortenhoe works as an editor for a publisher – or rather, she manages a computer system which writes romance novels. Yet this old school Labour future also has its rich and privileged – everyone is provided for, but there’s still the fabulously wealthy. And from Compton’s characterisation of one such rich character in The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, it’s plain where his sympathies lay. In fact, if there’s one thing that stands out in Compton’s novels it’s his sympathies. The technology or technological innovation around which Compton bases his stories – in The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, it’s Rod’s camera-eyes; in The Electric Crocodile, it was the supercomputer which allowed a self-proclaimed scientific “elite” to dictate the direction of human progress… It’s the misuse or abuse of this technology which is the plot-engine of the novels; and the fuel on which that engine runs is outrage. Rod’s camera-eyes represent an infringement of Katherine’s privacy of unthinkable levels. Every aspect of her life will be held up to public scrutiny and, possibly, probably, ridicule. She will have no secrets. Technology has robbed everyone of their secrets. Much like the other Compton novels I’ve read, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe is a character study of its protagonists – the eponymous “heroine”, of course; and Rod the cameraman. The sections told from Rod’s viewpoint, however, are in the first person. As in The Electric Crocodile, Compton often repeats scenes from each character’s viewpoint, although the disconnect between what they experience is not so marked as it is in that earlier novel. While Rod is a bit of an everyman – he has a failed marriage in his back-history, and his ex-wife makes several appearances – Katherine is extremely well-drawn. She loves her current husband, but their marriage is perhaps best described as “comfortable”. She is not adventurous – but in order to escape the Human Destiny production team, she disguises herself as an indigent. And her decision to do so fits in wholly with her character. She is wholly ordinary, but extraordinary in small ways. The writing, as in other Compton novels, is excellent. Of those British sf writers who were popular during the 1970s, Compton is perhaps the best prose stylist. Some may have been more popular; Bob Shaw, for example. Some of them may have had a steady career writing books for US publishers, such as E.C. Tubb or A. Bertram Chandler. But Compton was, I think, the best writer of the lot. Having said that, his books are very British, and very miserable. So it’s no surprise his novels have been mostly forgotten. Which is a shame. But I certainly plan to read more by him. [2010]

107 CONNIE WILLIS DOOMSDAY BOOK 1992

DONNA CARTER Willis spent five years researching this book, and the sections set during the Middle Ages come alive. Everyday life 700 years ago wasn’t all that different: mothers-in-law still criticized, children still whined and got excited about Christmas, edible food and potable water still had to be found. People were born, people died. Only the trappings are different now – we drive instead of riding horseback, our water comes from a tap or out of a plastic bottle and not hauled by bucket out of a well, we rely on doctors instead of folklore when we’re ill. We face medical and spiritual crises differently, but we still face them regularly. The more contemporary sections of The Doomsday Book are a little more problematic, but only because the book, written twenty years ago, seems kind of dated, which is a weird, weird thing to say about a book set in the future. But in our current age of instant communication, it seems odd that these people are struggling with landlines, even if they are landlines with video features, and not using cellphones, Twitter, Facebook, or email to communicate with both each other and the general population. At one point, a character is putting up placards about the flu and I kept thinking “why don’t they just use the internet?” In a world where computers are used to facilitate time travel and technology is able to allow translator implants in the brain, it seems a bit wrong that there are no cell phones or internet. But it’s hardly Willis’ fault that our current communications tech has outstripped her book. And that doesn’t make the book any less readable or Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs less enjoyable.

November 2012: SF Masterworks second series 108 I’m sorry I waited so long to read this. Doomsday Book won virtually every major SFF award in 1993, and with good reason. If you’re like me and hesitant to read something that looks like it’s going to be depressing, take a leap of faith. This is a great book. [2013]

DAVID NORMAN Kivrin is transported back in time. She is part of a bizarre group of scientists. Their aim is to gather information on a certain period of time in the Middle Ages. The project is almost successful. Kivrin finds herself surrounded by a bleak, harsh, snow- covered English landscape. The only problem being, there has been a slight miscalculation on the time element. Yes, she is in the Middle Ages, but several years forward of the selected year. She is about to witness the Black Death. The part of the book that so impressed itself upon me, is the dynamic description offered by the author on the surroundings that Kivrin finds herself in. I could sense the utter silence, the brightness of the stars, the bitter taste of the cold. The smoky interior of the house that she finds herself a guest in. The bleak day to day routine of the inhabitants. Their continual battle for survival against starvation, the elements, the constant fear of illness. Their lives, so much a part of the local Church. I found the first part of the book had a direct bearing on the actual time spent by Kivrin in the Middle Ages. During the first chapters, the characters are aware that it is Christmas, that there is a cold and flu epidemic, that the sound of the Church bells heralds the approach of Christmas. These same concepts play a much more vital part during the part of the book, where Kivrin is actually living in the Middle Ages. Instead of colds and flu, there is ongoing threat of the Plague. Where the Church is merely a backdrop during the first part of the book, it is here, when Kivrin is part of the Middle Ages, that it proves to be the centre of not just the local inhabitants’ lives, but also her own daily struggle for survival. Father Roche is assuming just as an important place in her life as those of the local villagers. I have read Doomsday Book twice. Even now, I can almost feel that I have myself been transported back into that place in history. Such is the skill displayed by the author with her considerable descriptive talents, that it has provided me with a lasting memory. Have I really been to that part and time, in history? I have only got to turn to a page, in this novel, and glance at the date – 1320 – and answer yes, while reading this book, I was there. [2007]

109 RUSSELL HOBAN RIDDLEY WALKER 1980

CHRIS MANDER This is an immersive piece of dystopian fiction, with a distinct English character and humour, written in a style that really adds to the post- apocalyptic setting. Fragments of familiar language are interspersed with phonetic, simplified English in a compelling narrative. Hoban quickly drags you down into a world littered with the detritus of modern society, with its own practices and cultures that really bring the setting to life. We follow Riddley, a boy of twelve, who inherits his father’s role as a “connexions man”, an interpreter of events and an orator of histories. He soon discovers that men of power are trying to recreate a relic of the former world with potentially dire consequences for his hunter- gatherer society. The plot is multi-faceted, loaded with layer upon layer of myth, legend and ritual. It would take many readings to fully comprehend its depths and the messages contained within. It is certainly not an easy read, but by forcing the reader to slow down and concentrate, Hoban has created a substantial work of imagination, equally as challenging as it is rewarding. [2014]

STEPHEN ZILLWOOD Russell Hoban’s 1980 post-apocalyptic masterpiece was a book handed to me with the words, “It’s a little difficult, but you’ll enjoy it.” Half right. Hoban’s book follows the adventures of the eponymous Walker, a twelve Cover illustration by Dominic Harman year-old boy who has just passed his “Naming Day,” thus becoming a man.

November 2012: SF Masterworks second series 110 He lives in a world that has self-destructed in a conflagration that the survivors call “the 1 Big 1,” the nuclear apocalypse with which our generation continually seems to flirt. This is not, however, a tale of the few stragglers suffering through fallout and nuclear winter so familiar from dozens of films covering similar territory; rather, much like Walter M. Miller Jr.’s excellent novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, the story is set ages past the event, over 2,000 years in this case. Humanity has devolved, culture appearing only in the form of a travelling puppet show which serves as entertainment, education and political propaganda all at the same time. Hoban cleverly echoes this devolution linguistically. The story is set in south-eastern England, in and around Canterbury, and the language the characters speak has its roots in English; however, like humanity in general (in which society has been reduced to individuals struggling to survive), the language has devolved to individual phonemes, with complex words often broken up into smaller units (surprise = sir prize, Canterbury = Cambry), most still recognizable, but many requiring a bit of work to decipher. That said, Hoban’s work is much easier to understand if you read it aloud – often, hearing the words gives you the phonetic equivalent, and when that doesn’t work, context helps quite a bit as well. This was the “It’s a little difficult” that my friend referred to, but to be perfectly honest, the language contains an inner logic that makes it fairly easy to comprehend, once you get a couple of chapters into the book. And if you’ve already tackled Finnegans Wake or A Clockwork Orange, you’re well-armed to make the attempt. The beginning of the story finds Walker becoming his village’s “connexion man,” a position vacated when his father dies in an accident. This requires him to make pseudo-mystical comments about the travelling puppet show I mentioned earlier, a show that travels from town to town and presented by two “Eusa men,” representatives of what stands for a government in this rather ephemeral society. His comments are intended to provide wisdom to his fellow villagers; however, Walker experiences a truly mystical vision, which frightens everyone around him – and ultimately, leads (amongst other things) to Walker leaving his village entirely. Once Walker leaves his home, he becomes “dog frendy” (dogs, not terribly impressed with our tendency to self-destruct, have finally given up on humanity – except as tasty hors d’oeuvres), and works towards finding the secret of “the 1 Big 1.” What he ends up stumbling upon is something a little less destructive, but altogether just as dangerous within the context of a world that largely relies on sticks and stones (and brute strength). [2007]

111 DAVID I. MASSON THE CALTRAPS OF TIME 1968

STUART CARTER I think it’s a measure of the quality of the ten stories in The Caltraps of Time that not until you finish reading them and notice the ‘first publication’ dates do you realise that even the baby of the bunch, ‘Dr. Fausta’, comes from the darkest depths of 1974. Perhaps even more surprising is that The Caltraps of Time contains all the short fiction Mr. Masson has ever published (usually in New Worlds), so it can pretty much be said that he has never published a really duff piece of work. To begin at the beginning (as most of these stories do, but with time- travel of one sort or another being a favourite subject they frequently end at the beginning too), ‘Traveller’s Rest’ gets this book off to a phenomenal start. In a milieu that’s a cross between Christopher Priest’s Inverted World and the super-high gravity planet Moab in Book Three of Alan Moore’s Halo Jones, a soldier fighting in an endless war against an unseen enemy is sent home from the front on leave. Home, however, is down the time gradient so that when he is eventually recalled some (for him) twenty years later only seconds have passed at the front. It’s not an easy story to grasp at first, but with a little thought and patience it is, I think it’s fair to say, worthy of being called a ‘classic’. The next story, ‘A Two-Timer’, is the tale of a man of 1683 who finds an abandoned time machine and visits the future. Well, 1964 anyway. It’s a well written and occasionally amusing piece of light satire with a nice loop in its tale, unlike ‘Not So Certain’, the next story. While in 1967 this Cover illustration by Vincent Chong exploration of linguistics might have been challenging and rather daring;

December 2012: SF Masterworks second series 112 now it seems very dry and overburdened with discussions about the pronunciation of alien words that contain no vowels. It is, at least, a sharp-eared rejoinder to the universal translators of much modern TV sf. Two stories, ‘Dr. Fausta’ and ‘The Transfinite Choice’ (hmm, that sounds like a good name for a band actually), deal with the complexities of time travel accompanied by alternate universes. Of the two, ‘Dr. Fausta’ is the more enjoyable simply because it’s so ludicrously and comically over complicated – deliberately so, I presume. ‘Take It or Leave It’ is an interesting narrative experiment, a sort of split-screen dystopian nightmare – much superior to the seemingly Daily Mail-inspired though thematically similar ‘The Show Must Go On’. And then there’s ‘Lost Ground’, a story that reminded me of nothing so much as Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn, if only because a story that so obviously appears to be about to get a sensible job in a bank suddenly strips naked and runs screaming into the sea. That said, both are strong stories, although some of the elements may have become overly familiar to readers by now. Given how well some of these stories compare to quite a lot of modern sf I can only imagine how extraordinary they must have appeared back in the sixties, so they’re very welcome back into print. [2003]

113 RACHEL POLLACK UNQUENCHABLE FIRE 1988

KAREN HEULER One of the surprises here is that a spiritual revolution has happened. The world is set in order by a reenactment or telling of the stories of the Founders. There are Bright Beings and Malicious Ones and all sorts of tales that get honored in various ways. In the midst of all this, Jennie becomes pregnant and not by human agency. This is a strange book and the stories – the tales of Li Ku Unquenchable Fire, of Too Pretty For Her Own Good, of He Who Runs Away – I didn’t always feel that I understood them, the sense of the story or the symbolism or even the continuity of the spiritual agenda. But what a strange, delightful ride. [2013]

PETER YOUNG This is a book I remain ambivalent about – putting aside for the moment the ever-present argument “But it isn’t science fiction!”, which I will come back to. My ambivalence lies not so much in the question of “Did I enjoy it?” (yes, I did) but “Did I enjoy it enough?” (probably not). There are things I still feel I am missing, now after reading it twice with an intervening span of about ten years, and that problem lies in what Pollack chose to reveal about this strange version of our contemporary world and what remains untold. Oh sure, there’s more in the sequel Grandmother Night, but that’s a different book, and there is more in Unquenchable Fire than anyone (except perhaps Pollack herself) could hope to fathom, with its original mythology and spiritual basis owing more to storytelling than asserted fact, a loose Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs connection to Tarot (I’m more of an I Ching guy myself), and an imperative

December 2012: SF Masterworks second series 114 that is backed up by actual spiritual events in daily lives that would leave us stupefied if they weren’t so commonplace:

In the Days of Awe the Earth, freed by the Founders from the gag tied on her thousands of years ago, used to roar up at the children and the adults watching them. The noise was so powerful it could blast the children right out of their bodies to flutter around the fields until the Devoted Ones could show them the way home again. Jennie had seen old newsreels of boys’ and girls’ bodies stacked up in bunk beds waiting for their residents to return.

This is the kind of place our world has become and Jennie Mazdan lives in it, in Poughkeepsie and New York, which is pretty much like our present-day Poughkeepsie and New York but with added… something. A spiritual dimension to life that is factual and visible on an everyday basis, and reinforced with a new ‘religion’ (for want of a better word) that incorporates modern civilisation, with the overseeing Spiritual Development Agency, the prevalence of spiritual supply stores and a trade in rare spiritual artifacts, all rooted in the history of the Founders. But any belief system is open to scepticism and Jennie, a soon-to-be single mother with no conception of who the father might be (call it a divine intervention, if you will), begins to feel it’s all too much for her, having her life directed by this special child in her womb in a way that will ensure its own delivery. And yet even while living through this miracle she still begins to question everything, because it’s not the life she wants. Throughout the novel, Jennie is a unique and precious snowflake, kind of adrift and susceptible to the winds of chance, but with inner resources and a toughness that surfaces when it needs to. She is a well-drawn character living an everyday soap opera life, with an ex-husband who’s lost interest and manipulative neighbours from hell. She carries the novel admirably. The background legends of the Founders and Tellers that inform her world are illuminated in every chapter, and they are challenging to grasp completely: there is a huge gulf between these two extremes. So what is missing? In truth, probably nothing, although this subjective viewpoint is hard to elucidate. Unquenchable Fire is a completely original novel, yet it takes an everyday approach to describing both strange wonders and the boringly mundane. There is no ecological lecturing at all while Pollack tells us of the Earth trying to express itself tangibly through human lives. It has a science fictional underpinning but its language feels like that of fantasy. It also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1989 – shouldn’t that be recommendation enough? Probably not. Anyone wishing to take on this novel today should also take a close look at this edition’s cover art and see how its odd symbolism admirably illustrates what’s inside: a very unusual yet also very ordinary way of thinking about the strangeness of modern human life and thought. [2014]

115 JOHN CROWLEY ENGINE SUMMER 1979

BILL McCLAIN What will the modern age look like a thousand years after the Storm that ends it?

Oh, the world was full in those days; it seemed so much more alive than these quiet times when a new thing could take many lifetimes to finish its long birth labors and the world stay the same for generations. In those days a thousand things began and ended in a single lifetime, great forces clashed and were swallowed up in other forces riding over them. It was like some monstrous race between destruction and perfection; as soon as some piece of the world was conquered, after vast effort by millions, as when they built Road, the conquest would turn on the conquerors, as Road killed thousands in their cars; and in the same way, the mechanical dreams the angels made with great labor and inconceivable ingenuity, dreams broadcast on the air like milkweed seeds, all day long, passing invisibly through the air, through walls, through stone walls, through the very bodies of the angels themselves as they sat to await them, and appearing then before every angel simultaneously to warn or to instruct, one dream dreamed by all so that all could act in concert, until it was discovered that the dreams passing through their bodies were poisonous to them somehow, don’t ask me how, and millions were sickening and dying young and unable to bear children, but unable to stop the dreaming even when the dreams themselves warned them that the dreams were poisoning them, unable or afraid to wake and find themselves alone…

Cover illustration by Martyn Pick This is a small gem, an irreplaceable little book. As with Crowley’s others,

January 2013: SF Masterworks second series 116 the story is rich, sad, and difficult to critique. It is in some ways a precursor to Little, Big, in that many important plot elements are unseen, unspoken and unspeakable. The power, depth, and subtlety of his creation is stunning. It is one thing to speculate about life among people with “world views” different from our own; it is another to experience their lives as we do in this book. Crowley gives us two such cultures: the gentle warren-dwelling “truthful speakers”, and the secretive “Dr. Boot’s List”. As different as they are from one another, they are drastically removed from us (the “angels”) in that they know they do not run the world, while we still think that we do. They are no longer at war with nature. All ambition has been burned out, and they are in the long “indian summer” of the world. The people of this depopulated future earth seem almost like another species, and perhaps they are. The “angels” tinkered with human physiology; for example, the women of the future are born infertile. Who knows what other adjustments to human nature were made? Our narrator is “Rush That Speaks”, and neither he nor his people seem to have any violence in them. Their games are cooperative, they eat no meat, they are kind to animals and even insects, and they have no money or writing. In our time this seems like a fantasy, but who knows what would come if everything we know were to collapse and vanish in a great Storm? A new thing Rush’s people have is “truthful speaking”:

They learned to make speech transparent like glass, so that through the words the face is seen truly.

This is an insightful critique of rhetoric: is the purpose of speaking to decorate words so that they cloud men’s minds, or is it to make the words transparent so that the true thoughts (“the face”) of the speaker become clear? Rush’s “saints” try to be transparent, achieving a sort of deathlessness. It is Rush’s tragedy that he seeks to become transparent, but the woman he loves strives to be opaque. The mythic power of the book grips me strongly. When I read it I enter into a world gone back to wilderness, not savage but gentle. At first it seems entirely depopulated, but now and then I come across others who know the story and feel at home in it. It’s the oddest thing: when I was very young I lived in a sort of wild area and spent much time with my m’baba across the road, and went on walks in the woods with my father… I did not completely understand the nature of Rush’s narration during my first reading, but the text shows he understands his condition. There is a third person present with Rush and the woman he calls the “angel”. “Be gentle with

117 him” Rush tells her at the end. “Stay with him.” Others have described the cultures described here as similar to those of the Native Americans. I don’t quite see that, other than in the types of names people are given. For a somewhat similar vision of post-technological civilization, complete with “Indian” names, see Robert Graves’ Watch the North Wind Rise, also known as Seven Days in New Crete. It has more of fantasy and satire, and features an appearance of the White Goddess. [2001]

PETER YOUNG My first experience of John Crowley’s writing was his second novel Beasts, a work not entirely representative of the rest of his oeuvre and one that, while still good, somehow sits uncomfortably between the respective depths of The Deep and Engine Summer. This latter title was something of a turning point, or a watershed even, in his adoption of fantasy as a preferred genre for his subsequent output, and this is worth reflecting on: are there pointers in Engine Summer that give readers a hint as to Crowley’s future direction, his ‘Path’? Certainly some of the cultural imaginings present in Engine Summer would fit just as comfortably in a fantasy setting. There is an almost dreamlike quality to this post-apocalyptic far future in which people lack so much of what we take for granted today, yet are still able to lead the kind of fulfilling lives that we only envisage in moments of uncommon sense: a culture based on “truthful speaking”, a seemingly unconscious adherence to non-violence, an ability to map life’s changing directions that mirrors the essence contained in the I Ching with a different codification. It’s almost as if science fiction was a coat that, Crowley decided, didn’t fit him; it was too restricting for his imagination, but with Engine Summer he kindly took the time to leave a note to say where he was heading next. The novel that Engine Summer reminds me of most is, perhaps not unexpectedly, Delany’s The Einstein Intersection. They somehow seem of a pair in their different approaches to myth and myth-making, and while Delany’s novel has a stronger element of quest there are still many themes that are present in both: a mellowed, post-technology future, a search for a lost love, an understanding of one’s life purpose in relation to already established cultural stories. But Engine Summer is, ultimately, elegiac. The fate of the book’s narrator, the wonderfully named Rush That Speaks, remains beautifully hidden right up to the novel’s closing lines in a way that (like another Delany novel) gently nudges the reader to immediately circle back to the beginning to experience the whole story again. Engine Summer’s journey may be one that occasionally defies clear understanding – much like life itself – but it is certainly a thing of beauty. [2014]

118 COLIN GREENLAND TAKE BACK PLENTY 1990

DAVID HEBBLETHWAITE The novel on 2010’s Clarke Award shortlist that stuck out as being most anomalous was Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, because it was the kind of exuberant adventure sf which tends not to do well at the Clarke. Probably the last time a book of that kind won was back in 1991, when the Clarke went to Take Back Plenty by Colin Greenland, a novel which also has a reputation as being one of the founding texts of the ‘New British Space Opera’ that’s flourished in the past two decades. Quite a weight of expectation, then – but I’m pleased to say that, a few references to ‘tapes’ aside, Take Back Plenty holds up remarkably well today. Partly, I think, this is because the particular twist that Greenland puts on his setting hasn’t (as far as I know) been employed much since; and party it’s because of its sheer brio and sense of fun. Take Back Plenty is set in the future of a different universe, a universe in which there really are canals on Mars and swampy jungles on Venus. Numerous alien species have made themselves known to humanity and populated the Solar System; but no one can leave, thanks to a barrier put in place by the mysterious Capellans. Greenland’s protagonist is Tabitha Jute, pilot of the Alice Liddell, who starts the novel in trouble with the authorities on Mars, and takes on a passenger because she needs the money to pay a fine. But that passenger, Marco Metz, and the other members of his entertainment troupe, may turn out to be more trouble than they’re worth. I doubt it’s any coincidence that Greenland starts the novel during Cover illustration by Chris Moore Carnival and names the ship after the girl who inspired Alice’s Adventures in

January 2013: SF Masterworks second series 119 Wonderland, because Take Back Plenty is a parade of incident and colour. Tabitha and colleagues hurtle out of one scrape and into another, but never with a sense of being all-conquering heroes – Tabitha is very much an ordinary, fallible human being; the Alice Liddell gradually falls to bits; and her passengers hinder as much as they help. Yet the rhythm of the story is as it should be: just when you think things can’t get worse, they do; and just when you think there’s no hope, there is. Greenland walks a fine line, but I think he gets the balance just right – Take Back Plenty is self-aware enough to recognise its absurdities, yet it’s also celebratory in its sense of fun, without either being ironic about it or skimping on substance. The novel is also wonderfully written. Tabitha has periodic conversations with her ship’s AI persona; in what I think is a rather brilliant touch, the Alice Liddell seems to communicate at times in the style of the ELIZA program. Then there’s Greenland’s superb eye for description:

Carnival in Schiaparelli. The canals are thronged with tour buses, the bridges festooned with banners. Balloons escape and fireworks fly. The city seethes in the smoky red light. Though officers of the Eladeldi can be seen patrolling everywhere, pleasure is the only master. Shall we go to the Ruby Pool? To watch the glider duels over the al-Kazara? Or to the old city, where the cavernous ancient silos throb with the latest raga, and the wine of Astarte quickens the veins of the young and beautiful? A thousand smells, of sausages and sweat, phosphorus and patchouli, mingle promiscuously in the arcades. Glasses clash and cutlery clatters in the all-night cantinas where drunken revellers confuse the robot waiters and flee along the colonnades, their bills unpaid, their breath streaming in the thin and wintry air.

I love the vivid details in that passage, and the rhythm of the sentences… just great. Take Back Plenty has stood the test of time so far, and I think it will continue to do so. I’d say it’s a worthy winner of the Clarke Award, and it shows just what adventure sf can be. [2010]

120 NICOLA GRIFFITH SLOW RIVER 1995

BEN BABCOCK On one hand, I love science fiction that examines how new technology can completely disrupt society. Few people, two centuries ago, could envision the way we live today, so many of us spending our time punching buttons on the side of a flat box so that words show up on a screen a few centimetres away. Technological advancement is driven by and drives changes in society. On the other hand, it’s always nice to see books that dial back the disruption to focus on what doesn’t change. In the case of Slow River, Nicola Griffith asserts that wireless payment and other near-future advancements will hail neither a post-scarcity utopia nor a totalitarian dystopia in which children fight to the death (aww). Instead, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and those caught in between continue to do what it takes to survive. Slow River has an interesting dual structure. Throughout each chapter, Griffith alternates between a third-person Lore, set a few years to months in the past, and a present-day, first-person Lore. The former story follows Lore as she recovers from an horrific kidnapping. Heiress to one of the wealthiest families in the world, Lore is a child of privilege. She was raised with the best education and experiences that money can buy. After learning, or thinking she has learned, certain secrets about her family, Lore decides she cannot return after she escapes from her abductors. She goes underground instead, meeting Spanner, a small-time criminal and hacker who takes pity on her. The latter story focuses on Lore’s attempts to get a “normal” life after Cover illustration by Vincent Chong leaving Spanner and striking out on her own. Armed with a false identity

February 2013: SF Masterworks second series 121 chip and her own knowledge of water purification processes, Lore gets a job at the local plant, only to find herself in the deep end. Occasionally, Griffith adds a third perspective: Lore as a child, growing up and navigating the waters of adolescence. The title says it all: this is not a book that takes things lightly, nor does it move at a breezy pace. Griffith lingers over events, tracing and re-tracing them throughout the book. She is particularly keen on taste and smell, senses too often neglected at the expense of the more easily imagined sight, sound, and even touch. The result is writing raw and energetic yet also relaxed, almost effortless. It almost has the quality of a stage play rather than a novel. Beyond the small core cast, Griffith doesn’t bother making the supporting characters feel very real. But this works, because ultimately Slow River is a character-driven piece, Lore’s journey is from self-exile to some kind of understanding, if not acceptance, of her past and her identity. I won’t go into too much detail and spoil anything, but it’s apparent from very close to the beginning that someone close to Lore sexually abuses her as a child. There is a scene involving a “monster” and putting a lock on her bedroom door. Lore’s sister Stella, the wandering child of the family, commits suicide just prior to Lore’s kidnapping. So on one level, Lore should have it all: riches, power, an interesting career as one of the heads of a company specializing in biological solutions to purification problems. Yet her family is riven by mistrust, by mutual dislike, by the dark secrets and the monsters that no one is willing to speak of aloud. Lore’s kidnapping and escape are also traumatic enough that, by the time she emerges onto the streets shivering and injured, she has no desire to face her family and try to work things out. Griffith plays with ideas that Lore is both a victim as well as a perpetrator. As a victim, she has suffered at the hands of those who wronged her. Then, however, she falls in with Spanner, who claims that her petty slate theft is “victimless crime”, even though it soon becomes apparent it is anything but. The Lore who recovers under Spanner’s watch is a much more jaded, more cynical Lore than the one who came before. There’s a very memorable scene where Lore dyes her hair for the first time. She has grey hair, a sign of her wealth. (It goes like this: pigmentless hair leaves people prone to skin cancer, so the hair is a sign that Lore’s family can afford the medical nanotechnology required to prevent such an ailment.) This would be a dead giveaway in someone Lore’s age, so she must dye it. Spanner rejects her first choice, brown, because it looks too good on her. She is still too perfect, not broken enough to mix and mingle with the rest of this seedy world. Lore has to go with red, brutally altering her physical appearance in a way that affects her psychologically. From then on, she is

122 broken, and it feels like she has much less agency. In effect, there are two Lores in this book. Past!Lore goes along with Spanner’s schemes, caught up in the latter’s wake, craving her love and attention and, for once, relieved not to have any responsibility. Present!Lore is desperate to sort out her life, to start acting like someone normal, to forget how being with Spanner made her feel powerless and guilty. I love this parallel story and the arc Griffith forges with it. The end result is a powerful and moving book. Though set nominally in the future and featuring certain technologies we don’t quite have, Slow River is science fiction in setting only. It eminently represents the best use of science fiction as a psychological tool for interrogating the ways we create and interpret our own and others’ identities. It’s not a book that many people might casually pick up – all the more the loss for them. [2009]

DAVID LANGFORD It’s an old science-fictional plot device – to chuck your lead character out of a wealthy, privileged existence and into the horrible sewers of a future world. Nicola Griffith, a fine writer, rings changes on the theme to produce something rather special. Her wounded but slowly recovering heroine Lore is memorable. More than one slow river flows through the story: a literal river in a city, the underground rivers of tainted water whose round-the-clock decontamination offers the real excitement of a believable and dangerous future job, and a darker river of memory polluted by long-ago unpleasantness that needs to be traced and confronted. Lowlife cross-currents are skilfully deployed: credible Internet charity scams, kidnapping, designer drugs, sex (usually lesbian), sadism, advanced digital porn, sabotage, information and identity theft – all solidly human, without the easy dazzle of cyberpunk cliché. There are no disposable characters. Life isn’t cheap. High life proves worse. More than one member of Lore’s multinational-owning family is full of maggots and rot beneath the glittering exterior. Big business simultaneously encourages and absolves itself from ecological crimes by engineering genetic miracles with special loopholes designed to maintain profits. Life in the bottom muck is cleaner: towards the end Lore can say proudly, ‘I’ve lived here three years. I’m one of the people I used to be scared of.’ Slow River is a mature sf novel which pulls off the difficult trick of combining a solidly decent moral stance with compelling readability. I was impressed. [1995]

123 SHERI S. TEPPER THE GATE TO WOMEN’S COUNTRY 1988

STUART CARTER Centuries after a global war has devastated Earth, North America is, at least, beginning to recover and develop. Women’s Country, a loose-knit collection of towns and villages composed mostly, as you might expect, of women is the basis of this recovery. Men for the most part live just outside Women’s Country in warrior garrisons, Spartan-like encampments where life revolves around meaningless displays of “honour”. Any man can decide to leave the garrisons and join Women’s Country as a “servitor” but this is an unacceptable humbling for most. The few who do make the break “lack honour” and worse. It’s all very Klingon. Women’s Country is the basis of order in this post-apocalypse world. While the men are parading silly banners, ribbons and decorations around inside their camp, (and being forbidden access to the slowly reviving technologies of Women’s Country) their “sisters” are rediscovering, reproducing and reorganising civilisation. But it is being done so along rather different lines to the previous one, which initiated the apocalypse (ours, presumably – whoops). Stavia, whom we follow contemporaneously at three important stages in her life, is initially entering adulthood in Women’s Country and about to discover that everything is not quite what it seems in her homeland. The Gate to Women’s Country reminds me, as did Grass, of Ursula K. Le Guin’s work, not least because Tepper is writing about similar things in a Cover illustration by Dominic Harman similar, though less well-rounded, style. Human interaction is well to the

March 2013: SF Masterworks second series 124 fore, with a strong and intelligent (and female) main character who is “Learning Something Important”, which in this case is the secret behind Women’s Country. Although traditional sf trappings are there with both writers (just the minimum amount required by law to allow use of the ‘sf’ label) the point in this case is the establishment of, if not a utopian society, then certainly what seems to be a better run and organised society than we currently have. I’m not sure I entirely believe in Women’s Country but I applaud most of its sentiments. The men’s garrison is well depicted as some horrible mutant rugby club, but importantly, there are some strong (though deliberately underplayed) male characters among the servitors and some very silly girls amongst the women. Tepper admits that neither side is perfect, and the end of the book, I think it’s safe to give away, reveals that the initial chasm between the two sexes is being slowly whittled away to the mutual benefit of both. If Women’s Country is a feminist utopia it’s one that recognises and involves men only as equals, which is surely not too terrible a future to hope for, is it? My only small PC quibble with The Gate to Women’s Country is the absolute denial of homosexuality as a “so-called ‘gay syndrome’… caused by aberrant hormone levels during pregnancy” (p76). If you told the original Spartans their sexual preferences were solely due to ‘viciousness and dominance, not from any libidinal need’ (p76 again) you’d soon feel the sharp end of one of their javelins! I’m at a loss to understand this nasty slip in what is otherwise a well-recommended book. [2000]

125 GEORGE TURNER THE SEA AND SUMMER 1987

MIKE DALKE This Australian author is a gem and Drowning Towers is his multifaceted masterpiece. Most of his other novels including Brain Child and Down There in Darkness take place in a similar drowned and depleted Australia; in these enlightening novels his perseverance in writing about topics he considers important (global warming, overpopulation, food production, employment of the masses and finance) shines through the monotony of the overarching theme, and his conviction is inspiring in both scientific and artistic terms. The approaching decades prior to 2061 have been fraught with the disasters of selfish overpopulation to the overwhelming total of ten billion, resulting in the ballooning of mouths to feed. The environmentally taxing greenhouse effect has caused the poles and glaciers to melt so now coasts are being inundated; once inhabitable and fertile terrain is becoming flooded; fields of plenty have turned into fields of sterility. This hellish future of the planet Earth is wrought with distinct class divisions, governmental avoidance of responsibility, and pragmatic decline into extinction. Melbourne is a city with its share of high and low elevations. The higher elevations are a haven from the flood waters for the ‘Sweet’ residents who have jobs, who contribute to society, who have found employable niches in the divisive society which purges all who cannot or will not contribute. The lower elevations are home to the corrupted constructs call the Towers, monoliths to the diseased notions of mankind where eight people are meant to crowd into a three-room flat, where adults steal food Cover illustration by Vincent Chong from the children, where even the police don’t extend their jurisdiction.

March 2013: SF Masterworks second series 126 Between the lives and locations of the ‘Sweet’ and the ‘Swill’ lies the tainted notion of the Fringe, at the corroded skirts of the steel and concrete monsters. It’s here where Francis and his brother Teddy are downcast with their mother after their father loses his job and commits suicide, a selfish act which imprints negativity onto the boys’ idea of a fatherly figure. It’s here where the social chasm of rich and poor creates a permanent wedge between the two. It’s not a place for a boy to mature and prosper; it’s not a place for a single woman to live with dignity. The deprivation of the Swill and Fringe give way to opportunity for people like Billy Kovacs who is unperturbed by the desperate and dingy conditions, and he finds the kindling of leadership within himself to make the Swill and Fringe a better place that both serves his own interests and the communities’ well-being. Kovacs is a man of contradiction, one who’s fond of both swindling and occasional charity. He injects himself into the daily lives of Francis, Teddy and their mother, who he eventually woos, a situation which she finds inevitable and beneficial to the family, yet the boys find loathsome, degrading. Joe Haldeman has called this novel “the best didactic novel” because, I’m assuming, of its criticality of blind human direction, or as Turner puts it so eloquently, “we existed in a state of scrambling from crisis to crisis, preserving our good opinions of ourselves by hailing the expedients of desperation as moral and intellectual triumphs.” Turner has the poignant habit of explaining the grandeur of his future Australia then suddenly speaking of the past perils gone unseen, or ignored because of human shortsightedness. It may be a didactic novel in parts but at other times it mounts the pulpit to proselytize the reader into confronting Turner’s own belief that the world is ready to stab us in the back, but we’re just too sure of ourselves that we keep our eyes shut. I don’t find it disconcerting; rather I find his convictions reassuring. I can respect Turner for believing in it and writing about it – it’s almost a romantic notion, nowadays. It’s rich in plot and topical organization and insightful into human nature, our history and most notably our shortsightedness. I’m unsure which tract is being manifested through The Sea and Summer: Turner’s warning of the world to come or his smile of certainty of what the future has in store. He may have written that the novel cannot be seen as prophetic, but the didactic nature of the novel transposes a sense of urgency for change, an indicator of coming peril. If you have ever been in the presence of someone you consider a ‘prophet’ or simply been inspired by their timeless words, then you understand the tacit aura of someone’s notion of undying truth. Turner’s The Sea and Summer comes so very close to manifesting this position in the genre, an accolade also extended to Down There in Darkness, a book which imbues prophecy and bleakness as to the direction of both our planet’s nature and our own human nature. [2014]

127 CONNIE WILLIS TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG 1998

CHRISTINE BELLERIVE Connie Willis is hilarious. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a time travel comedy about bumbling “historians,” who travel back and forth in time through a “net,” which is supposed to keep objects from the past from being brought into the future. Except that sometimes it doesn’t. Agent Verity Kindle has just returned from the past – with a cat. Historians also aren’t supposed to take too many trips in a row back and forth through time, because they can get time lag, an ailment whose symptoms resemble drunkenness to great comic effect. (“One of the first symptoms of time lag is maudlin sentimentality, like an Irishman in his cups or a Victorian poet cold-sober.”) But wealthy Lady Schrapnell is used to getting her way, and she wants to find out what happened to a hideous Victorian artifact known as the bishop’s bird stump, in time for the consecration of the re-booted Coventry Cathedral. So narrator Ned Henry travels back and forth, back and forth, until his time lag is so bad that he has to be secretly sent on vacation– and there his path crosses with that of Verity, and the cat. I love the way Willis sets up the mechanics of time travel. The machines are clunky, there’s the “net,” which is never explained in detail but seems plausibly necessary, and there’s also “slippage,” maybe the coolest idea. Slippage happens because the space-time continuum has a way of sealing itself off whenever time travelers get too close to changing Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs history. Difficulty arriving at the exact day and time one intends – “slippage”

May 2013: SF Masterworks second series 128 – is a sign that history is trying to correct inconsistencies. If you’re trying to go to August 4, 1890, and you arrive eight days later, that’s some pretty major slippage. An area of slippage surrounds the bird stump’s disappearance; but no one knows why. There are a lot of mysteries woven into the story, maybe too many for them all to be developed fully – who’s got “time lag” at any given moment? How it was possible for the cat to come through the net? Where did the bishop’s bird stump disappear to? How does slippage actually work? And, of course, there’s the Victorian romance that shows up along the way and hogs center stage for quite a while, though it’s not really the most interesting of the mysteries – I’d figured it out before I was halfway through the book. The mysteries about the mechanics of time travel are much more interesting and less predictable; I would have loved to see more space devoted to them, with the romance treated a bit more like a subplot. Still, this is a really fun read. It’s a book that I’d enthusiastically recommend to anyone who likes Doctor Who, but would hesitate to recommend to anyone who doesn’t. It’s a zany and sometimes corny time travel romp with lots of heart. I’d also recommend it to anyone who likes Alexander McCall Smith. Anglophile Willis has the same sort of gentle-as- afternoon-tea British wit, and is every bit as charming. [2013]

IAN Reviewing an uncategorizable book – an overbearing billionairess – rebuilding a cathedral – God is in the Details – too much time travel makes one loopy – drowning cats but not this one – fixing the incongruity – hilarity ensues with three men in a boat, to say nothing of the dog – quoting Victorian poetry – hot Victorian chicks and their mothers, to say nothing of their butlers – jumble sales and croquet and Waterloo – a setback – a mistery – a love story, to say nothing of the cat – more poetry – signing the Magna Carta – goldfish and historical references – more poetry and more historical references – another setback – another mistory – another love story – another incongruity – Victorian etiquette and taboos, to say nothing of the poetry – characters with a lot of personality, to say nothing of the dog – the perfect butler arrives from the future – panic in the Blitz – saving an atrocity from destruction – having faith in the Grand Design – the least likely suspect – the billionairess made happy – kittens and more poetry – happily ever after – four stars. [2010]

129 SIMON MCLEISH To Say Nothing of the Dog is a time travel novel, a farce around the idea of a professional time traveller sent to a time which is not his specialist historical period – Victorian England instead of the Second World War. A powerful and rich woman is trying to recreate the original Coventry cathedral destroyed in the Blitz after the sixties replacement is turned into a shopping centre. She is able to monopolise the services of the Oxford time travellers, retrieving items believed destroyed by the bombing at the last moment (so their removal doesn’t create a paradox). But there is one ornament which is supposed to be there on the night of the bombing, but which can’t be found – so operative Ned Henry is sent further back than 1940 to find out what happened to it. In the 1880s, Henry gets involved with eccentric Oxford dons, a trip down the Thames, an upper class houseparty, and a manic attempt to introduce the right pair of lovers to each other so that the future is saved, even though Henry only knows the identity of one of them and the initial letter of the name of the other. On top of this manic plot, Willis piles on a huge variety of references to other literature: a wide selection of the more popular English language writers from Jane Austen to P.G. Wodehouse and Robert Heinlein via Dorothy L. Sayers are either directly referenced or are clear influences. The book as a whole is a homage to Three Men in a Boat – the title To Say Nothing of the Dog is the subtitle to Jerome K. Jerome’s comic classic. (I want to point out that the ending of The Moonstone is given away – so anyone planning to read Wilkie Collins’ novel who doesn’t want to know what happens beforehand should read that first.) Few of the references need to be familiar in order to follow To Say Nothing of the Dog; the most important after Three Men in a Boat is probably Sayers’ Gaudy Night. However, the more of them that the reader picks up, the more they will enjoy the game. This is a type of meta-novel which appeals to me greatly, and I would put several of them into my all time favourites list, of which To Say Nothing of the Dog is now also one. [2014]

130 ERIC FRANK RUSSELL WASP 1957

JO WALTON When you think about it, Eric Frank Russell’s Wasp is a really peculiar book. Terry Pratchett summed it up when he said “I can’t imagine a funnier terrorist’s handbook.” It’s the story of one Earth man sent to a Sirian planet to cause as much havoc and consternation as possible, to waste Sirian time and resources so that humanity can win the war. James Mowry is sent off alone with a pile of resources to be a wasp—and the wasp he’s supposed to emulate killed four people and crashed their car by causing them to panic. The odd thing about it is that it’s very light in tone. It’s a comedy about a terrorist. The last time I wrote about Russell Neil Gaiman said in comments:

The only book I’ve optioned was Wasp. I started the script, wrote about a dozen pages, then Sept 11th happened, and I let the option lapse; I didn’t think that the world (or at least the US) would be ready for a terrorist hero for a very long time. And he is a terrorist – one man tying up an entire planet’s military might as they look for a huge non-existent organisation, using nothing but the 1950s plot-equivalent of a couple of explosions and a few envelopes filled with anthrax powder…

It would have made a marvelous movie, but Gaiman was quite right. I said in that article on Next of Kin that you should “read him with your twelve year-old head,” but reading Wasp now I realised that my twelve year-old head had bought into a lot of things. We’re told that the Sirians are Cover illustration by Dominic Harman awful, but what we see of them isn’t very different from what we’re shown of

May 2013: SF Masterworks second series 131 Earth. They are both overloaded bureaucratic systems that don’t take the wishes of their citizens very much into account. Mowry tells himself that every Sirian is an enemy, but we see lots of ordinary perfectly nice Sirians as well as some obnoxious ones. What Mowry is doing is explicitly terrorism – he’s making people afraid, and he’s making them use up energy and resources, he’s encouraging the system to become more repressive and use up more resources. My twelve year-old head delights in seeing one disguised human snarl up a whole alien planet with nothing but some stickers, some ticking parcels and a few small explosions. The story is absorbing. I laugh. But my grown up head keeps looking at how he was recruited and how he’s treated by Earth, and what happens when he’s thrust into a prisoner of war camp and saying “Hmmmm.” Russell clearly intended this. He was writing very Campbellian SF, one competent Earthman snarls up a whole planet of purple aliens with funny ears, but yet, at the same time he was doing something subversive. Mowry associates with gangsters and criminals who cheerfully betray and murder each other, he blows up innocent cargo ships and doesn’t care who gets hurt when his luggage blows up and destroys half a hotel. We’re clearly meant to be on Mowry’s side, and I am, but... are we meant to be on Earth’s side? Or should he have been doing the same things at home? As always with Russell, you want to head away from bureaucracy and make for the planet of the individualist anarchists. This is an old fashioned book, written before women were invented – I don’t think there’s a single woman with a speaking role in the book. If it were written now, Mowry would have more character – he has a background and a personality, but he really isn’t developed at all. What’s good about Wasp is the set of incidents, which rattle along without pause, the humour, and the way it makes you think. I regret the loss of Gaiman’s movie version, which would have had women and brought the ambiguity centre stage. Meanwhile, keep your brain switched on this time, or try to read it both ways at once. You’d have loved it when you were twelve. And it’s still a lot of fun. [2011]

132 ISAAC ASIMOV THE GODS THEMSELVES 1972

MANNY RAYNER One of the Holy Grails of science fiction writing is the Convincing Alien Sex Scene. Has it ever been done? You get these claimed sightings, but then the sceptics move in. Okay, it’s sexy and alien, but is it really convincing? Or, it’s alien and convincing, but does it come across as sexy? Anyway, this book is one of the stronger contenders, as Asimov treats us to a graphic, no-holds-barred description of how a three-gendered species get it on. I found it convincing, and many people agree that it’s sexy. But is it truly alien? It’s been said more than once that you just need to make a few substitutions of words, and it all becomes disappointingly mundane. I’m not sure I agree though. What exactly are these substitutions? I’m curious to know what other candidates there might be. Philip José Farmer’s The Lovers must get an honourable mention at the very least. And then there’s the bizarre sequence from Brian Aldiss’s little-known novel The Interpreter, where the human hero gets trapped inside an alien porn cinema and experiences an extraterrestrial erotic movie with full touch and smell. Any more suggestions? [2011]

ROB WEBER Given his enormous output, I’m a very inexperienced Asimov reader but from what I understand his career in science fiction can be split into two major periods. The first covered the 1940s and 1950s, in which he wrote a great deal for the magazines that then dominated science fiction. Novels Cover illustration by Dominic Harman started appearing in 1950, starting with Pebble in the Sky, a novel of the

June 2013: SF Masterworks second series 133 Galactic Empire. I’ve read four of his previous books: the original ‘Foundation’ trilogy and I, Robot. All of these have been published in the 1950-1953 period and lean heavily on work Asimov had produced in the 1940s. During the 1960s Asimov mostly wrote non-fiction, so The Gods Themselves can be seen as something of a triumphant return to the genre. In this book he answers the critics of his earlier work, winning a Hugo, Nebula and Locus award in the process. The story is that of the discovery of the electron pump, a device that promised a clean and inexhaustible source of energy by using the different laws of nature that can be found in parallel universes. The story of its discovery is one of coincidence and pettiness but the man being hailed as the inventor soon achieves rock star status. His influence on the scientific world is such that he leaves a trail of broken careers in his wake and suppresses information that threatens his status and the use of ‘his’ invention. Not everybody is discouraged by his bullying though. Doubts are being raised about the safety of the device. Soon a theory surfaces that suggests continued use might cause the sun to go nova. Bitterness, stupidity and infighting ensue. The title is taken from Die Jungfrau von Orleans (‘The Maid of Orleans’, 1801) by Friedrich Schiller, who said “Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens”, most commonly translated as “against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain”. The novel essentially consists of three novellas, each with a part of that quote in the title. The novellas had been published in Galaxy and Worlds of If earlier in 1972. so I guess you could call the novel a fix-up. One of the main problems I had with Asimov’s earlier books is that they read like unedited manuscripts. His prose is atrocious. Most of it is awkward dialogue with hardly any descriptive passages. Although the concepts that he discusses in these works are interesting enough, Asimov, at that point, clearly didn’t have the skills to make the most of it. For that reason I decided that if I was going to read anything by him again it would be something from his later years. It must be said he has improved. His prose still isn’t exceptional but it is certainly readable, and The Gods Themselves is a much smoother read than the early ‘Foundation’ novels. Asimov also tackles some other problems with his early writing with varying degrees of success. The lack of aliens (personally I find science fiction without aliens perfectly acceptable but some people disagree), the lack of sex and the lack of well drawn female characters. The solution to the first two is to include alien sex in the novel. Don’t worry, he doesn’t get too explicit. The alien section of the novel, of the second novella if you will, is probably where Asimov challenges himself most as a writer. The creatures he describes are very alien. It took me a while to settle into their mode of thinking. As for the

134 well drawn female characters, I don’t think the novel passes the Bechdel test but there is one female character with an important role in the story. I guess we shouldn’t expect miracles. The stupidity Asimov refers to in the title is mostly committed by scientists. Where in most science fiction novels, and certainly in more than a few of Asimov’s stories, scientists are the heroes, in this novel they are a petty, self-centered lot. The ‘inventor’ of the electron pump – who mostly got the idea handed to him by the aliens – is doing everything to protect his creation, while the scientists who got sidetracked try to discredit him out of spite. It’s a sad lot and a very sharp contrast to quite a lot of other science fiction novels. I’m particularly thinking of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels that radiate a belief in the process of science, even if those practicing it can be very nasty as individuals. In this novel just about every character has purely selfish reasons for their actions, losing perspective on the larger threat in the process. Stupidity is too mild a word in some cases. Asimov also exposes a problem that I’ve come across in environmental science quite a lot: not wanting to give up a comfort or luxury despite the obvious environmental drawbacks. I’ve always thought cars are a perfect example of this. There is a long list of problems associated with them: there is acidification, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic related deaths, the noise they produce, particulate matter and smog issues and the huge amounts of raw materials put into making them, to name a few. The novel raises the stakes much further. If we are unwilling to give up, or even limit, something with such obvious problems, how hard would it be getting people to give up what is essentially free energy without any side effects based on dubious and untested theoretical physics very few people are actually capable of understanding? Even Asimov doesn’t have an answer to that, and he resorts to a technical fix himself; a very elegant one, it has to be said. He doesn’t seem to believe humanity will be able to give up it’s bad habits without something better to replace them, though. Which puts the title of the novel in yet another perspective. Some people see the Hugo win for The Gods Themselves as a retroactive reward for Asimov’s golden age work but I must admit I enjoyed it a lot more than everything else I’ve read by him. At this point he has grown as a writer, able to keep up with a younger generation of authors making a name for themselves in the 1970s. There might have been books that deserved the win more; I haven’t really read enough of the period to pass judgement on that, but it is certainly a strong novel. While I can see the appeal of his older work, if someone asked me for a recommendation of Asimov’s work I would be much more likely to suggest this. [2013]

135 JAMES MORROW THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS 1986

MICHAEL BROWN I think that for all of us who read regularly to the point where we can’t imagine a life without doing it, there are one or two books that feel like they’re Ours. Things we found without prompting, discoveries we made ourselves with no help or guidance from anyone or anything, but which change us in a way and refract our expectations into smoother, deeper and more pleasing waters. This is one of mine. Dear God, it has everything! I grinned and laughed, I sighed and I cried – without being too specific, there are two scenes toward the end within about ten pages of each other and they both left me choking back my sobs. You’re with the protagonist, George Paxton, all the way too. He’s an ordinary man in extraordinary and surreal circumstances, victim of a monstrous loss, dealing with it by becoming the Perseus we all must at such times, having (metaphorically in George's case) to kill the thing he daren’t even look at. Yet still he finds some hope and some heart and, most of all, some desire to continue. There’s a side-piece featuring Nostradamus as well – that is the way the book begins. Someone to whom I recommended this book told me she had never read anything like it before – she’s right, neither had I. Or since. Don’t believe I ever will. One of the previous reviews describes this book as being, among other things, warped. It is, kind of, but only in the same way as putting gravy on cheese – if that’s your bag, go for it, there’s no harm. So what’s the way this review ends? With a bang or a whimper? With a smile and by saying this book is wonderful, of course. What else could I say? [2012] Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs

June 2013: SF Masterworks second series 136 TRACEY George Paxton wants to buy a scopas survival suit for his daughter for Christmas, but can’t afford one, as he works on commission as a tombstone carver. A mysterious old woman sends him to a remarkable shop, where he signs a contract admitting complicity in the nuclear arms race in return for a suit. World War Three erupts; as nasty and brutal as everyone expects. A handful of men, including George, are saved and brought to Antarctica for the purpose of being put on trial by a surprising, yet logical group of people. Published in 1986, in the middle of Reagan’s second term and four years before the Soviet Empire crumbled, this novel depicts an all-too-possible future for that time. The chapter describing the results of the nuclear strike is poetically gruesome; I’m somewhat surprised I didn’t have nightmares. More magical realism than science fiction, the plot is paced well with some interesting twists. The Alice in Wonderland theme was almost too clever for its own good, and I was kept guessing as to who a couple of the characters represented. The legal trial got a bit tedious; however, it wasn’t as turgid as the trial in Blameless in Abaddon, another of Morrow’s novels. Recommended to survivors of the Cold War who are still haunted by The Day After. [2007]

BRUCE GILLESPIE This Is the Way the World Ends is the oddest good book I’ve read in years. I found it odd because I couldn’t work out what was happening in it. When Morrow told me at the end, I didn’t believe it. Something in me baulked at a novel in which most of the characters are ghosts of a future that didn’t happen. The future, that is, which is the one that was not obliterated by nuclear warfare. Yet these ghostly figures are corporeal enough to try and execute the people who caused that war. And the trial takes place in Antarctica, after the holocaust. Somehow James Morrow’s anger makes this weird machine of a book work. So does his sense of humour. Put them together and you have something like this scorching fire that burns through books like Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Morrow is not as smooth a cook as Vonnegut. He splats poisonous custard pies in the face of the reader. I’ll stand in line for the next one. [1989]

137 JOHN CROWLEY THE DEEP 1975

RHYS HUGHES The Deep is a masterpiece, no doubt about that; anyone who likes Game of Thrones is almost certain to enjoy it; indeed I am convinced that George R.R. Martin has read The Deep and that it influenced him, consciously or unconsciously. Crowley's novel is like an ultra-condensed version of the military, political and personal intrigues that take place in Martin’s famous epic. The writing is incredibly dense. Like William Golding, Crowley says more in three pages than most writers would say in thirty. But this makes the novel a slower read than most. To rush this book is to do it an injustice. As a consequence, although it is less than two hundred pages long it works like an enormous saga. There is much to digest. The quality of the prose is superb. It is lyrical and magical but never flowery for its own sake: the poetry has meaning. Some of the scenes are described so deftly that they will remain with you for years. The city in the lake at the centre of the world; the rooftop escape; the journey through the marsh; the climb towards the edge of everything and the cosmic monster that lives in the deeps of space. John Crowley is one of the best living writers. This was his first novel and it is a vastly accomplished debut. It is almost inconceivable that he would go on to write books even better and more magical than this one, but he did. [2013]

Cover illustration by Eamon O’Donoghue

July 2013: SF Masterworks second series 138 JONATHAN THORNTON In The Deep, as much as in Engine Summer, John Crowley displays both his gift with beautiful prose as well as his empathy with everyday suffering. Which is not bad at all for a first novel. Where its political manipulations between multiple morally ambiguous sides anticipates George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice aznd Fire, while Martin delights in dreaming up new and inventive mental and physical punishment to destroy his characters’ lives, Crowley’s characters meet with simple, unglamourous deaths, frequently lost offscreen in the indiscriminate chaos of battle. All that’s left is the sadness of pointlessly wasted human life. I suspect you could argue long and pointlessly as to whether The Deep is SF or fantasy. It is set on a flat circular world that is supported on a giant pillar that rises out of the eponymous Deep, a void of nothingness that surrounds the world. The sun and numerous moons orbit around it, and an ancient beast known as Leviathan sleeps underneath the world, coiled around the pillar. So you have a premise not dissimilar to a severely warped Discworld or World of Tiers, and indeed you might wonder what effect living on such a different world to ours would have on the people living on it. Well, the answer is perhaps less than you would think, seeing as the whole world is caught up in a viscous struggle for power that has been going on for time out of mind. You have your fairly standardish Fantasy set up, where the Folk, your average common people, are looked after – read exploited – by the Protectors, the landed gentry. The Protectors are divided into two factions, the Reds and the Blacks, who have been fighting each other for many generations. The knowledge in the world is controlled by the Grays, a brotherhood of priests and scholars, and just to confuse matters there is a group of freedom fighters called the Just, who see it as their task to assassinate everyone in the Protectors’ class to gain freedom for the Folk. Not that the vast majority of the Folk support their endeavours in any way. The neutral Endwives camp out near battles and clean up the mess, saving who they can. Much of The Deep deals with the futility of war, the pointless and never ending cycle of revenge, betrayal and violence. The two sides are even named after chess pieces, suggesting how they are all reduced to pawns in someone else’s strategy, pieces on the board. Or perhaps checkers is the more apt metaphor, with everyone’s brilliant strategies shown to be so much hot wind. Much like a game, whoever is in the position of power seems to have absolutely no significance for anyone outside of the people playing. The most sympathetic Protector is the vaguely Ned Stark-ish Redhand, whose honour and general decency get him absolutely nowhere fast in this particular game. At least by the end of the book, there is a sense

139 that everyone is sick and tired of war, and there is at least some kind of hope for a way out of the cycle of destruction. Into this confusion a Visitor is sent from beyond, a nameless superhuman being with silver skin, with a vitally important purpose to bring to the people if only he could remember what it was. Due to his amnesia he starts the book as a wide-eyed blank slate, and is thrown right in the middle of the power struggle between the Reds and the Blacks, following a Red takeover from the Black king. Slowly we see him become wise in the ways of selfishness and deception as he learns more about the world he’s found himself in. The Visitor’s corruption is deftly handled. In his initial state, friendly, unthreatening and full of a hunger for knowledge, everyone he encounters finds him unsettling for these character traits as much as his bizarre appearance. Up until the moment where he takes action for himself, he is guarding the life of his friend. But it’s not just his surroundings influencing his behaviour; the call from his true purpose is too strong to ignore. And his change in behaviour is linked to what that purpose is. The Visitor is a messianic figure, sent from the heavens to redeem this poor war-torn realm. And to a certain extent that’s true. One of the characters spends a large chunk of the book trying to figure out an ancient riddle: if everyone has two parents and so four grandparents and so on all the way back up the line, how come the small world is not overcrowded? Where do they go? Well, of course, they die. The Visitor has been sent to facilitate this by being a bloodthirsty warrior, leading the world even further into mayhem, death and destruction in order to keep the population down. This is a brutal and shocking twist, and it gets right to the heart of what the book is about. Just because it is possible to imagine a higher power, should it exist there is no guarantee it would be the kind of higher power we’d like, or that its idea of our best interest would match ours. The world of The Deep is ostensibly one where bad things happen on a regular basis, but it’s not in spite of God’s plan, but because this is God’s plan. When the Visitor, having travelled to the very edge of the world, summons Leviathan and speaks to it, he finds that the god-like being – it is never named explicitly – originally took mankind from another planet to this artificial world because people begged for a return to simpler times, without fully understanding what that wish meant. Eternal life as the perpetual motion of eternal struggle and strife. In The Deep, the covenant God made with humanity is simply a really bad bargain on humanity’s side. [2013]

140 MICHAEL BISHOP NO ENEMY BUT TIME 1982

MEGAN MEDINA Coming out of Bishop’s 1982 Nebula award-winning novel No Enemy But Time is like coming out of a time travel trance: the experience is jarring, hazy, and unwelcome. Bishop sweeps the reader into his world – humanity’s distant past – and paints a primitive African landscape dappled with hippos, hyenas and volcanoes, but lush with the human experience. It’s a world where our ancestors, two million years removed, wear more flesh and charisma than our contemporaries. The reader befriends these charming hominids, shares in their struggles and triumphs, exalts in their communal efforts, only to be yanked back to the present where individuals misinterpret, neglect, and manipulate one another.

“All I am is a set of eyes, and the people I’m watching – they’re almost like people, but different, too – they can’t see me. They’re very hairy, but naked just under their hair” (Loc. 2568, Ch. 19).

Since infancy, Johnny Monegal has dreamed about the prehistoric past, a phenomenon he calls “spirit-traveling.” His dreams always lead him to Pleistocene-era Africa, inspiring his curiosity about primitive humanity and influencing his informal expertise in paleoanthropology. But Johnny knows more about humanity’s past than he does his own, a black baby abandoned by a mute Spanish prostitute, and he later deserts his adoptive family, changes his name to Joshua Kampa, and flutters around Florida until a chance meeting with eminent paleoanthropologist Alistair Patrick Blair. Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs Blair, and temporal physicist Woodrow Kaprow (Bishop has a thing for

August 2013: SF Masterworks second series 141 rhyming names), bring him to the African country of Zarakal, where he tests the technology that unlocks the past to allow his body to join his mind on his spirit travels. Bishop’s love for the past is reflected in the romance between Joshua and Helen, a Homo habilis female who Joshua meets during his visit to the past. Helen belongs to a small troupe of habilines who grudgingly adopt Joshua as their resident outcast. Helen, a barren female of unusual height and with humanlike characteristics, shares Joshua’s outsider role, and they eventually mate and bond. Some readers may be disgusted by this pairing, and Bishop acknowledges this when Joshua states, “an old country boy like our Wyoming landlord Pete Grier would have seen more poetry in a farm boy’s hasty violation of an indifferent heifer than in my adult attraction to the willing Helen Habiline” (Loc. 2119, Ch. 16). But Helen, despite her hairy façade, is not an ape, and her advanced sapience and outsider status bridge the two million year gap. Helen and her habiline community represent the “innocent and beautiful” referenced in the Yeats poem from which the title is derived. (“The innocent and the beautiful / Have no enemy but time…” Loc. 3122, Ch. 22.) Among many themes, Bishop addresses gender and violence in this early age. At first, typically maligned gender roles seem innocent in the habilines’ primitive hunter-gatherer society, and Helen’s role, having no children and a larger stature than most of the men, is stretched to benefit the hunt. But Bishop reminds us that the social boundaries we currently struggle to break were being formed in this early age, where “a big, strong, swift-footed, and cunning female was still a female” (Loc. 1586, Ch. 12) and “if you put on a child in this society, you were automatically dressed as a woman” (Loc. 4557, Ch. 28). And the violence, in which baby cheetahs and adopted Australopithecus children are clubbed to death, may be as dark and bloody as many modern movies and video games, but is never as gratuitous. But Bishop’s charm lies in his writing. Cool, placid, and precise, with a few snatches of dry humor that surprised a few laughs out of me. Images of habiline shaving cream fights and while the leader wears Fruit of the Looms (which gives new meaning to the phrases “wearing the pants” and “brief dethronement”) are funny, but the real humor lies within Bishop’s observations – never a punchline exactly, but built into the prose, and too corny or unwieldy to take out of context as a quote. This style fits well with the often jokey protagonist, who alternates first-person POV in the Stone Age with third- person POV in Joshua’s modern past. Joshua himself is an odd duck, a pariah in both the past and present, but he has more empathy for his habiline companions. He wants to fit in with the “Minids,” whereas he makes little effort to relate to modern-day Homo sapiens. His interactions with modern humans only emphasize his peculiarity. In fact, I suspect his

142 success with the “Minids” may be due to their limited language skills, which spares them from Joshua’s often inane babble. Bishop’s wry humor goes beyond the silly imagery and quips that pepper his tale. He pranks his readers by setting up a traditional time travel paradox that, to my relief, he never delivers. He withholds his anti-paradox time travel rules until the very end, just for the sake of the prank. Habilines with fire, Fruit of the Looms, and a few English words – not to mention sex with a Homo sapien – all have the potential to rock the foundation of human development at its core. And when the time traveler resembles his hominid community (short, dark, and initially speechless), with mysterious parental origins and vivid dreams of humanity’s origins – even a casual SF reader can foresee the looming paradox. But when Helen births an albino female, and not a baby Joshua, the paradox is revealed as an illusion. And that illusion effectively casts doubt to Joshua’s entire story. The illusion of time travel told by an unreliable protagonist fits well with the disconcerting tone of the story, but perhaps Bishop wanted to circumvent the hackneyed “it was all a dream” ending. Instead, Bishop switches gears and flips his resonating sociological study of human origins into a 007 thriller piece in which Josh’s daughter catches the attentions of a slimy crook with interests in future-travel. The last tenth of the novel is so out of character, I prefer to think that some editor axed Bishop’s original ending in order to dangle the possibility of a sequel. It’s just that terrible. Or maybe it’s brilliant. Maybe Bishop designed his story to illustrate his interpretation of the chain of human evolution: slow and steady, difficult and harsh, but meaningful and communal, with the last tenth of our history rampaging toward the future being hollow, violent meaninglessness. Perhaps Bishop’s story structure is a reflection of his story’s message, in which he proclaims the end of evolution, likening our current social development to that of a tumor, a mutation rather than progress. Because that last chapter was like a tumor in an otherwise perfect tale. It shocks the reader out of the powerful trance that Bishop fosters. It’s an unwelcome jolt from the cozy, warm slumber of spirit-travelling, and I was pissed when it happened. I want to go back. Bishop succeeds where few speculative writers dare to tread. It’s common to imagine a future with endless possibilities, or to inject a documented past with dystopic tones. But to summon an unwritten past, and to gild our primitive ancestors with utopic optimism – it may not be very scientific, but it’s compelling and weighty. Bishop’s habilines hold a mirror to our supposed progress, causing the reader to reexamine their definition of “the good old days.” [2014]

143 CONNIE WILLIS TIME IS THE FIRE: THE BEST OF CONNIE WILLIS 2013

KEV McVEIGH The novels of Connie Willis are popular enough that maybe I don’t need to tell you about them, but how about her short fiction? Time Is the Fire is the first UK collection of Willis’ shorter fiction and features ten stories originally published between 1982 and 2005. Eight of them won the Hugo Award, the other two were amongst the five that picked up Nebulas. That’s some record. So this is a collection subtitled ‘The Best of Connie Willis’, although qualified (sub-subtitled, as it were) on the cover as ‘The Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Short Fiction’. What makes it so good? Are there recurrent themes that explain Willis’ huge popularity? Lisa Tuttle has a go in her introduction, identifying a number of Willis protagonists on quixotic quests:

worrying that they’ve misunderstood something important, and consumed by the certainty that there is little time left to get it right. Sometimes these quirky quests are personal obsessions, but sometimes (because these are science fiction stories) the fate of the whole world may hinge on the timely discovery of the right clue by one bright yet basically powerless person.

For me that is one of the charms of the best of these stories, that Willis’s characters aren’t omnicompetent superheroes but closer to ‘ordinary’ people. It is also one of the annoyances, as Willis then frequently Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs creates implausible setups for them. Looking at ‘Fire Watch’ from a rational,

August 2013: SF Masterworks second series 144 traditional SF position the premise that a historian who studied St. Paul could mistakenly be sent back in time to St.Paul’s Cathedral during the blitz is borderline ridiculous, but Willis isn’t that kind of writer. As others have noted, her model is often closer to Golden Age Hollywood’s screwball comedies than to Golden Age Campbellian SF. ‘Fire Watch’ even makes this opposition clear when the narrator challenges his tutor over the examination focus on numbers rather than people’s lives. The other stories of history here (they aren’t historicals as some would have it, but stories about history) are funnier than ‘Fire Watch’ and less poignant. ‘The Winds of Marble Arch’ has a farcical runaround plot about conference attendees trying to arrange theatre tickets and some classic screwball banter where Willis shows off her love for the Underground. Interspersed with this are echoes of the Blitz seeping through from the past in ‘winds’ through the station tunnels. It isn’t a serious story on the surface, Willis’ London is romanticised and unrealistic for comic effect, but in contrasting this with the haunting winds there is a serious point about theme-park history and tourism. ‘Inside Job’ meanwhile has a fake medium who is actually genuinely channeling H.L. Mencken (of whom poignant is the least appropriate adjective). Mencken may be less familiar to UK readers and this story perhaps suffers for that. And then there is ‘The Soul Selects Her Own Society: Invasion and Repulsion: A Chronological Reinterpretation of Two of Emily Dickinson’s Poems: A Wellsian Perspective’ a mock-scholarly piece on the belle of Amherst encountering Wells’s martians. Laden with footnotes, and of course footnotes on footnotes, it has some of Willis’s most directly funny writing. Several of these stories are slow-burning, taking fifty or more pages not to transmit an idea but to build relationships and settings. The stories of history go to lengths to create a sense of verisimilitude. The comedies focus on dialogue and comic juxtapositions. The unusual Christmas story, ‘All Seated on the Ground’ is like that. Willis plays the screwball card again. Stock characters are played with whilst a romance develops, the author shows off her detailed knowledge of Carols, and a point is made about communication with aliens and with other humans. Less romantic, and in some ways less impressive are the older stories here. ‘Fire Watch’, ‘Even the Queen’ and ‘A Letter from the Clearys’ date from 1982. The latter is reminiscent of stories I’ve read by Eudora Welty and by Kit Reed (acknowledged here by Willis in her various comments). It is a post-apocalyptic story that reveals its darker side between the lines, but doesn’t quite surprise and doesn’t have the quirky pseudo-characterisation of later stories. ‘Even the Queen’ is

145 another story where a regimented society is faced with a revolution based on human actions. The subject matter may have been challenging in 1982 but the basic theme is one SF has mined many times before and since. My favourite story here is ‘At the Rialto’ which more neatly ties its SF premise to its comic set-up. Again academia comes in for some gentle ribbing, but in a less long-winded way than say ‘The Winds of Marble Arch’ as Willis plays with quantum theory and hotel booking systems to comic effect. Time Is the Fire also includes Connie Willis’s own introduction, afterwords to every story, her Worldcon Guest of Honour speech and not one but two SFWA Grand Master speeches. To be honest, you can skip any two of the three speeches and not miss much. The introduction also covers some similar ground, but hey some people like that. A lot of people like Connie Willis too, as exemplified by the list of awards she has won. Your mileage may vary on whether all or some were deserved as truly the ‘best’ stories of their year, and for me, if I was selecting the actual Best of Connie Willis there are stories I’d swap for at least a couple here (‘Schwartschild Radius’ and ‘All My Darling Daughters’ since you ask). Nevertheless as one of the few women SF authors to gain consistent attention she deserves this collection. It might be nice to see some critical attention too that judges Willis on her own terms, as a writer of character-driven, romantic, screwball comic SF that makes up in charm, warmth and humour what it occasionally and deliberately neglects in plausibility. [2013]

146 ROBERT A. HEINLEIN DOUBLE STAR 1956

SARAH PINSKER A couple of years ago I attended an event at which Connie Willis spoke about her research for Blackout and All Clear. She referenced numerous romantic comedies and several war movies in addition to her factual historic research. I don’t recall that she brought up many works of fiction, but Double Star was one of them, and it stuck in my mind as something I wanted to read. Between the Hugo win and the subject matter, I thought it would be worth a try. Willis said that Double Star was inspired by the story of M.E. Clifton James, who was sent to North Africa and Gibraltar in Field Marshal Montgomery’s place in order to confuse the Germans. She borrowed these events in her own depiction of the intelligence war. Heinlein’s version is less madcap than the Willis version, and possibly less madcap than the true story, given that James was an alcoholic and a smoker (and was missing a finger!) and Montgomery was not. Double Star is fast paced and somehow manages a light tone despite the serious subject matter. The Great Lorenzo (nee Lawrence Smith) is an out-of-work actor when he is plucked out of a bar to perform the role of a lifetime: impersonating the kidnapped Expansionist leader John Joseph Bonforte. At the beginning, the actor’s character is painted somewhat broadly. He spends a lot of time talking about his own acting chops, and it takes the reader a while to trust that he is actually as good as he says. This journey Cover illustration by Vincent Chong mimics that of Bonforte’s inner circle, who agree to the deception out of

September 2013: SF Masterworks second series 147 desperation, but have little confidence that it will work. Most of this shortish novel takes place over the span of a few weeks. It manages to flesh out the political situation fairly quickly, and with enough depth that there is a sense of what is at stake in the impersonation gambit. The character development of the support players is a little lacking, but Smith is fully realized, as is Bonforte in a more oblique fashion. It’s interesting to see Smith’s own fears and prejudice and strong personality twist to conform with the role he is forced to play. On the whole, I think this book has aged well, but as usual with mid-century SF, I had some issues with the characterization of women. Smith learned his profession from his father, but doesn’t seem to have had a mother to speak of. Bonforte’s assistant, Penny, is intelligent, but also moody and petulant and subject to fainting spells. She is also deep in unrequited love for Bonforte. Thankfully, she is only threatened with a spanking once by a co-worker. If it had been twice I would have been tempted to put the book down. I’m glad I didn’t put it down. I was impressed by the taut plotting and the contained timeline. I’d be very curious to find out where the breaks were in the original Astounding serialization. The will-he-be-found-out moments dripped with suspense, and Smith’s personal journey was well depicted. This is a worthy Hugo winner, and I’d place it near the top of my personal best-of-Heinlein list. [2012]

JONATHAN THORNTON It’s not difficult to argue that Robert A. Heinlein was the greatest out of SF’s Big Three. Out of him, Asimov and Clarke, only one of them was consistently able to write character and dialogue. He pioneered many of the subgenres and basic ideas of SF, and wrote great stories in the ones he didn’t himself help to develop. So why have I read far more Clarke and Asimov than Heinlein? Michael Moorcock nails much of what makes me uncomfortable with the man’s work far more eloquently than I ever could here. To illustrate from my experience, last year I read Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit – Will Travel, one of his classic juveniles. It’s a tremendously fun, fast-paced space adventure filled with well-drawn characters, inventive aliens and sound physics. So why didn’t I like it? At the end, the Mother-Thing’s race kill an entire planet-full of aliens because they deem them dangerous and aggressive. They then put mankind on trial and decide that humans aren’t quite dangerous and aggressive enough to warrant genociding them out of existence. Basically, I find this morally objectionable as well as wildly inconsistent. No one has the right to mete out judgement to other species, or rain down destruction on a less powerful

148 people utterly unable to defend themselves against you as punishment for aggression. I found the Mother-Thing’s people to be smug and hypocritical, yet the narrative and the narrator side with them, and if you have a problem with that, or with the way that the alien aggressors’ ugliness is treated as part and parcel of their villainy and why they deserve to be destroyed, Heinlein couldn’t care less. Heinlein’s strong, uncompromising attitude colours much of his more iconic work – like, say, Starship Troopers, even more so. This is, of course, Heinlein’s prerogative and Heinlein’s opinion, and I in no way deny his right to it, but it makes much of his work difficult for me to enjoy uncritically. So imagine my surprise on finding out that Double Star finds Heinlein defending democracy and equality. (Mea culpa – it’s worth remembering that people you disagree with are as capable of complexity as anyone else). The premise of the novel – a sleazy out-of-work actor is hired to impersonate a politician – could be horrifically cynical, but it actually turns out to be the opposite. True, you have to find a super good reason to justify duping the public, but the book isn’t really about that. It’s about Lorenzo Smythe’s transformation from a xenophobic, selfish and petty man into the genuinely honest, altruistic and thoroughly moral politician Bonforte. Many of Heinlein’s characters are born special. Kip from Have Spacesuit – Will Travel has his fair share of adversity to overcome in the shape of his poor background and unsympathetic surrounding community, but there’s no question about his intelligence and courage, even before he discovers he’s a kid genius and saves the world. Lorenzo Smythe is a more engaging protagonist because he has to overcome personal issues as well as situational difficulties. As he studies Bonforte through recordings of his life, speeches and beliefs, he comes to understand where the man’s moral centre and convictions come from, and to cast off the shackles of his own prejudices. Like Bonforte, he comes to realise that in order to reach the stars, humanity is going to have to overcome its petty prejudices, and that it is imperative that humanity not turn the stars into yet another empire run on exploitation and human privilege. Heinlein’s gift with characterisation and dialogue is in full swing here. The novel is told in the first person from Lorenzo’s point of view, and his crude, sarcastic and cynical voice is frequently hilarious and ultimately a very canny instrument with which to tell this particular story. His transformation is handled deftly and subtlely as his character changes and he adopts more and more of Bonforte’s dignified tone. Double Star is as breezy, fun and engaging as Have Spacesuit – Will Travel, but not only do I find its outlook more palatable, it is also an excellent character study. [2013]

149 ALASTAIR REYNOLDS REVELATION SPACE 2000

MARK MONDAY I suppose you could call Alastair Reynolds the Bad Twin of Peter F. Hamilton. Both write space operas that come complete with mind-boggling concepts, galaxy-spanning adventures, bizarre aliens, space politics, love stories, and eons-old mysteries. But Hamilton writes about a future that despite having its ups, downs, and various inequities, is mainly Bright & Shiny, full of possibility. On the other hand, Reynolds’s interests arise from the basic idea that the universe is a cold, scary place, full of dead things and barely-understood terrors. Hamilton’s characters run the gamut of loveable to outright villainous; Reynolds prefers to write mainly about self-absorbed killers and assholes. One writes about factions of humanity trying to come together to fight off threats; the other depicts humans turning on each other and how things fall apart. So I guess it depends on your perspective: do you want your space opera glass to be half-full or half-empty? Overall, I think this is a pretty good first novel. It is certainly an elephantine one; fortunately, the size didn’t seem unecessary and I was absorbed by the ideas and narrative from beginning to end. Reynolds’s background as a scientist is evident in spades, and I’m happy to report that my right-brained self didn’t suffer at all when reading this – concepts were explained carefully and clearly, in a way that didn’t make me feel particularly stupid and never felt didactic or condescending. The character- ization is certainly striking – if you are looking for characters that are charming or sympathetic or likeable, look away! You will not find that here. Cover illustration by Chris Moore Instead prepare to read about insanely arrogant scientists, vicious

September 2013: SF Masterworks second series 150 politicians, cold-blooded killers, and even more cold-blooded spaceship crews. It can get a bit oppresive at times. There is an interesting theme that slowly rises up through the narrative: the obsessive-compulsive nature of humanity. this is depicted within a military mind-set that views all outsiders as potential threats and a scientific mind-set that views exploring even the most awful and potentially threatening of things as the only option. Characters in this novel don’t just live with their obsessions, they are defined by them. Characters don’t make decisions based on anything resembling empathy or humanism – they are compelled to continually repeat and expand upon their compulsions, no matter what the cost. It is certainly a dark perspective on the nature of mankind. But that darkness, that oppressiveness, is really at the heart of this novel’s appeal. The cover quaintly describes this novel as “CyberGoth”, which of course is a pretty stupid moniker… but it also makes some sense. Imagine a gigantic spaceship crewed by five misanthropes, haunted by voices from outside of time, full of enslaved rats and unimaginably deadly weapons, captained by an unconscious individual whose plague symptoms include the transformation of all materials around him into a vaguely disgusting, tendril-y mess. Imagine two planets: one whose decadent citizens while away the time playing assassination games and another whose berserk citizens seem to be engaging in relentlessly bloody revolution every couple years. Imagine a culture where marriage includes a “wedding gun” that shoots DNA of your spouse directly into your forehead. Imagine a horrific version of the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, one where the unknowable enigma wants to kill you and all of your stupid little species. Imagine Lovecraft in space. There, now put that all together and you’ve imagined Revelation Space. [2011]

151 JACK WOMACK RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE 1993

PAUL This book should be as famous as A Clockwork Orange – like that one it has its own language and pictures a near future urban nightmare featuring gangs of feral children. But it isn’t. Perhaps the problem is the title, which is, when you look at it objectively, completely crap. Perhaps the problem is that when people see that it’s about a near future urban nightmare featuring gangs of feral children they think huh, I already read one like that. Doesn’t stop them reading umpteen books about vampires though. So it can’t be that. Maybe it’s because this novel is a little bit science fictiony and a little bit young adulty and that confuses us poor readers. But really I don’t know. It’s a mystery. Anyway, this novel portrays the disintegration of our heroine’s privileged upper-class Manhattan lifestyle bit by bit as all the problems inherent in the rich Western lifestyle which makes it doomed, doomed I say, irredeemably doomed rise up like a fetid sewerey sea of unfixable breakdown and commences to drown everyone. So this is a lot of fun, seeing the rich suffer and the stuck-up girls not able to ride their ponies in the Berkshires any more because the ponies all got eaten. But that’s not the half of it. The tale is told in diary form by Lola Hart who is twelve when we begin and going on fourteen I think as we leave her. It’s one thing to have a good laugh at the rich suffering but when you’re up close and personal with Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs a twelve year-old girl’s diary while her life is torn down bit by bit and you

October 2013: SF Masterworks second series 152 watch her have to rebuild it herself with her bare hands, that’s another thing entirely. Jack Womack is a very brave writer – he thinks he can think the way a rich funny intelligent twelve year-old girl would, about twenty or thirty years in the future, and show us how her whole mental landscape, and consequently her vocabulary, her idioms and slang and grammar, all morph along with these huge life changes and she becomes absorbed into the black street gangs which rule the blocks where her suddenly impoverished family has to move to. By the end of the book you get to be as fluent in future black street vernacular as Lola has to be. By half way, you get the sinking feeling you know how things will turn out for Lola, so by the last third you are reading through your fingers hoping that you’re gonna be wrong. The last page is a killer. I can’t say this about many people but I can say – Lola Hart – you broke my heart. [2013]

KATE SHERROD I am fairly certain that Jack Womack is not now nor ever has been a twelve-year-old girl, but Random Acts of Senseless Violence could not be used as evidence to prove this. Indeed, it is the finest literary drag act – not just in gender, but also in generational drag, actually – that I have seen since Gene Wolfe’s Pandora by Holly Hollander. And really, in terms of the genius of the narrative voice, these two novels are comparable. But whereas Wolfe’s protagonist-narrator confounds and misleads and imposes her own perceptions on the reader, Womack’s Lola Hart feels like an fairly trustworthy and rational guide to her disintegrating world, down whose socio- economic rungs she and her privileged bourgeois-bohemian family plunge even as the rest of society comes apart in a near- future Manhattan that surely feels more plausible now than it did in the 1990s when this book was first published. This even as she herself degenerates, as I’ll discuss some more below. The reader is meant to assume the role of Lola’s diary, whom Lola addresses as Anne, thus evoking thoughts of Anne Frank, who addressed her own diary as Kitty and treated it as a person much the way Lola does here; in fact Random Acts of Senseless Violence could, weirdly enough, be thought of as the offspring of Diary of a Young Girl and A Clockwork Orange, as much as it can a punk Pandora by Holly Hollander, horrifying as that thought might seem. This is because while the early pages and the general premise seem to be more or less setting up our heroine as a victim the way Anne Frank was a victim, this is not a narrative of hope and perseverance through adversity. Rather, it’s a sort of precursor to Breaking Bad in that we

153 are watching a good character degenerate right along with her society; the violent acts to come are mostly going be perpetuated by, rather than on, Lola. That she is left with little choice is abundantly clear. Lola is still a victim, but not a blameless one. But then again, maybe if Anne Frank met up with some toughs like Lola’s friends in the slummy new neighborhood to which Lola’s family is forced to move, Anne might have wound up going on the odd Nazi-beatin’ rampage and going out in a blaze of gory (no, that is not a typo) instead of dying of Typhus in a concentration camp? Who knows? At any rate, watching Lola transform from bright, friendly private school student to slang-slinging little thug is horrifying and fascinating and feels woefully inevitable once she’s adjusted to her new surroundings. It’s also horrifyingly plausible, given how prescient the novel’s near-future setting turns out to have been; I had to remind myself often that this book was written before 9/11, before the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis, before the Occupy movement and the latest national debt brinksmanship and federal government shutdown. Like John Brunner before him, Jack Womack has a scary crystal ball sitting in front of him – only his prophecies have yet to manifest as self-denying ones. But this isn’t just a descent into the titular violence; Lola is on the verge of womanhood with all of the issues that can bring, including those of sexuality and potential homosexuality; Lola spends a fair amount of the novel wrestling with these issues and her sexual attraction to some of her girl friends, giving us just the odd glimpse into the rest of society’s doings – Presidential assassinations, Army mobilizations in urban areas, recoinage, minor stuff like that – as a mere backdrop to her struggles. As any tweenage girl might, when confiding in her diary. The reader thus struggles between annoyance at and sympathy for her self-absorption as the reader tries to see around Lola to the world beyond in all its decay and violence. Which is, of course, the point. The result is, like a John Brunner novel, anything but a comfortable read, but it’s a powerful one, and not one to be missed, deadhead. [2013]

154 DOUGLAS ADAMS THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE 1980

MANNY RAYNER “It must be nice,” mused Ford Prefect thoughtfully, “to know what you’re for. I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m for. Most sentient beings don’t. But you,” he continued, turning to Arthur and Trillian. “You know. Part of finding the answer to the Ultimate Question. I’m sure that’s comforting at times.” “You mean the 42 business?” asked Arthur. “What?” asked Zaphod’s left head incredulously, while his right head rolled its eyes. “You mean you fell for that?!” “But…” stammered Arthur. “I mean… Slartibartfast… the mice . . . ” Both Zaphod’s heads raised their eyebrows in unison. “Well,” said Ford after a pause. “I see we’re going to have to explain it to you.” “Using simple language,” agreed Zaphod’s left head in an irritatingly superior tone. “And slowly,” added Marvin. “At a speed appropriate to slightly evolved monkeys.” Arthur gritted his teeth for the sixteenth time that day and waited for them to continue. “Look,” said Ford, “it’s the Sequel Question of course. Most fundamental problem of philosophy. Can a sequel be better than the original?” “I read a magazine article about that once,” said Arthur. “A few well- Cover illustration by Tim Marrs known examples. Huckleberry Finn…”

November 2013: SF Masterworks second series 155 “If you neglect the last ten chapters,” interjected Ford. “Alright,” said Arthur. “The Godfather, part 2…” Ford sighed. “So which scene, precisely, is better than the horse’s head?” he asked with exaggerated politeness. “Only quoted three times as often as everything else put together?” “Wait!” said Trillian. “We’re missing the obvious one. The New Testament.” Ford gave her a disappointed look. “I suppose you’re going to tell me about the Sermon on the Mount,” he said. “A painfully longwinded and confused way to suggest that people could try to be nicer to each other.” Trillian sputtered incoherently and tried to say something, but Ford continued. “Compare it with the opening lines of Genesis!” he said. “That wonderful passage about the quark-gluon plasma…” “The what?” asked Arthur bemusedly. “Or however it’s expressed,” snapped Ford. “Stop interrupting. The Twenty-Third Psalm. Ecclesiastes. Nothing to touch them in that, excuse me, drab and pointless sequel. Even if it did sell a lot of copies. But there is one case where the second volume clearly is better…” “And that is?” said Arthur, who was now starting to feel seriously annoyed. “Please tell me. I’m dying to know.” Ford stared at him in disbelief. “Why, this book, of course!” he said. “Isn’t it obvious?” “Then what are the third and fourth ones for?” asked Trillian, who was doing a better job of keeping up. “Or the fifth, for that matter?” Ford looked embarrassed. “Well,” he said. “The Author shouldn’t have gone for double or quits. He overestimated his position. Even Adams nods…” [2012]

156 MICHAEL BISHOP TRANSFIGURATIONS 1979

JOACHIM BOAZ On the surface, Michael Bishop’s science fiction appears deceptively simple. In his first novel and unacknowledged masterpiece A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), the premise (moving an alien people from a planet) evolves into a vast and complex anthropological tapestry filled with stories within stories creating an almost claustrophobic doubling of characters. In Stolen Faces (1977) the biological mystery of a virulent disease grows, tumor-like, into a brilliantly nightmarish exploration of bodily and societal decay and the gravimetric forces of memory. In a similar pattern, in 1973 Bishop published the Hugo- and Nebula- nominated novella, ‘Death and Designation Among the Asadi.’ Conceived as a series of notes and transcribed recordings compiled and published after the disappearance of their author, a cultural xenologist named Egan Chaney, it forms the prologue to the expanded novel Transfigurations. It deploys a traditional SF trope: scientist sets off to decipher the nature and culture of an alien species. But under this purely anthropological veneer – hinted at by Chaney’s mantra “There are no more pygmies, there are no more pygmies, there are no—” is an intense character study and meditation on post-colonial mentalities that builds towards inevitable conflict. The planet BoskVeld is modeled on the open, uncultivated landscape of the Bushveld of Southern Africa, and the Synesthesia Wild resembles the same continent’s more forested wilderness. The mysteries of this powerful text within a text recounting Chaney’s trip into the Synesthesia Wild in search of Cover illustration by Vincent Chong the Asadi are as unsettling as staring into non-human “eyes that look like

November 2013: SF Masterworks second series 157 the murky glass in the bottoms of old bottles”. The prologue ‘Death and Designation Among the Asadi’ truly conveys the alienisms of the Asadi. Cyclical rituals that are rooted inextricably to natural forces of BoskVeld dominate Asadi activities. Possessed by “Indifferent Togetherness” the Asadi mill around clearings, engaging in “brutal” sexual activity and “quirkish staring matches” which seem to be the only indications of social behavior. Egan Chaney, treated like an outcast Asadi whose eyes do not swirl with colors, is a deeply conflicted man. In a desperate move to save a people after the “African Armageddon” that resulted in the complete contamination of the continent, Chaney oversaw the transportation of the dozen remaining BaMbuti pygmies to the New World. On their arrival, perhaps due to “homesickness, nostalgia, disorientation”, they slowly died off one by one. This guilt and confusion generated by his earlier failure boils beneath the surface and influences all of Chaney’s actions and conceptions of the aliens. He is simultaneously terrified and intrigued by the Asadi, who often resort to animalistic violence, burning out their own eyes by prolonged exposure to the sun, and even practicing nocturnal cannibalism. Chaney is unable to decipher all the cryptic clues to Asadi behavior. He tries to return to the settlements on BoskVeld but slips into deep depression, refuses to discuss elements of his discoveries with Thomas Benedict, his principle colleague and friend. Despite Chaney’s concluding monologue as he observes another Asadi ritual, “the show is beautiful and grotesque, grotesque and beautiful, but at this stage my principal reaction seems to be one of… well, of disgust”, he feels their inexorable pull, the desire to assuage his guilt. Before he heads back into the clearing he leaves a note, part of which reads “I’m one of them. I feel for them.” Soon new forces enter the narrative in an attempt to find Chaney: Thomas Benedict, Chaney’s daughter Elegy, a modified primate designed to look like an Asadi, and the interplanetary government. There is more at stake than the discovery of the explorer. In A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire the nature and rituals surrounding eyes defined each group of aliens. The Asadi in Transfigurations also define social roles via the nature of the eyes: the outcasts have murky eyes and are unable to engage in the central communicative ritual of intense staring bouts, where eyes swirl with incandescent colors, that interrupt the “Indifferent Togetherness” of Asadi existence. The mysteries of the Asadi are perceived through a variety of lenses: Chaney and his past guilt, Elegy and her desire to find the father that abandoned her, Thomas’s drive to find his friend. Despite the biological explanation for many of the Asadi rituals, their alieness remains unsettling and inhuman. As the expedition sets off again into the Synesthesia Wild, Elegy confesses, “I never thought… never thought I’d sink so low.” [2014]

158 DOUGLAS ADAMS LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING 1982

DAVID HADDOCK 42 Spotting – The Fundamentals Forty-two, so Douglas Adams claimed, is the funniest of the two-digit numbers, and he picked a number for the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything as a joke. There is no significance to it. It is fun to spot instances of it occurring, however, I am a 42 fundamentalist. You cannot just have a four and a two next to each other in a number. It should be a decimal instance of the number, and is best when it comes out of the blue. If you are counting something that increments in units, do not express amazement when you get 84% of the way to fifty. My favourite is that the reign of the Antichrist according to Revelation 13:5 will be “forty and two months.” Forty-two. Find, share and enjoy. [2012]

PAUL BOWERS As a life-form still inhabiting the planet commonly known as Earth I have accepted without question, that the answer to “Life, the Universe and Everything” is 42. I feel drawn to the number and see 42 all over the place, ever conscious of its magnetic attraction. I have studied birth charts and used mathematical equations to find a definitive reason for 42 to have such an effect on me, but with no result so far in this life. However in my subconscious mind I know that the number 42 is the very force of life for me. It will come; it will manifest itself in much the same way as following Cover illustration by Tim Marrs Portsmouth Football Club for fifty years believing them to be the greatest

December 2013: SF Masterworks second series 159 team ever, but with very little evidence until out of the blue they actually play in two FA cup finals in two years, win one then disappear into oblivion. If one can believe in something as nebulous as PFC then 42 is easy. As Neil Diamond once said, “I’m a Believer.” [2012]

JONATHAN TERRINGTON As a continuation of Douglas Adams’s famous Hitchhiker’s Guide series this was, as indicated by Simon Brett’s foreword to the 2009 Pan edition, one of the most plotted in the series. But as also indicated by that foreword, you don’t read the Hitchhiker’s Guide series for the plots. So, you ask me, what do you read it for? You read it for the sense of wonder about the crazy place the universe is. You read it for the comedy of Douglas Adams, for his creative and zany use of made up people, places, words… for his use of language. He is a wizard, transforming words into wit to power a laugh within the inner sanctum of your mind as a reader. When you think you’ve got him figured out, that’s when you realise that actually you haven’t. I read elsewhere when attempting to discover what I could about the literary idea of ‘deus ex machina’ that while it is generally frowned upon as poor storytelling, Adams was able to use it brilliantly for humour. Reading this third instalment of his series I saw again that yes, he was able to do exactly that! And at the same time his use of deus ex machina also contributes ultimately to the plot (which we as readers of Adams do not care for). In many ways, perhaps unintentionally, Adams therefore shows that he can also use the literary device of ‘Chekhov’s gun’. Characters and plot ideas introduced earlier in the piece never really go away. Some may be simple ideas thrown in their for an occasional laugh, but if you see Adams mention a fact or a character specifically, especially in a way that’s out of the story’s usual context then that character or fact will appear later. Such as the idea in this story of flying (and the re-incarnated character – which I thought was brilliant!). I won’t bother with a plot summary. I doubt anyone can sum up the plot in any way that makes much sense. I will say that if you’ve read the previous books and enjoyed them then this is a similar continuation. If you haven’t read any of the previous books don’t jump in now. I recommend going back to where there’s Vogon poetry and the destruction of the world with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. [2012]

160 ROBERT A. HEINLEIN THE DOOR INTO SUMMER 1957

RICH HORTON The Door Into Summer is one of Heinlein’s sunniest novels, and one of his most straightforwardly enjoyable. At the same time, it’s a little slight next to Double Star, or indeed next to some of his novels which I don’t think are as successful, but which are certainly more ambitious: Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and my other favourite among his novels, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. And by slight I don’t mean just length (it’s much of a length with Double Star, though much shorter than any of the later adult novels): thematically it’s just not terribly challenging. But to say that is to risk denigrating the book unfairly. What it does, it does almost perfectly, and it ends up being quite moving as well. I’ve been watching the Olympics, so perhaps this analogy is in order: it’s like a low-degree of difficulty dive executed with perfection – and such a thing is better than a high degree of difficulty dive ending in a bellyflop (I Will Fear No Evil, anyone?). The book opens in 1970, a few years after the Six Weeks War, a nuclear war (yes, this book was written in the ’50s). Dan Davis is a successful inventor. His main product is an automated “cleaning lady” called Hired Girl. He’s got a booming new company, run from a business standpoint by his good friend Miles Gentry, and the company secretary, the beautiful Belle Darkin, is engaged to marry him. He is owned by a nice cat called Petronius Arbiter, and he has another great friend in Miles’ 11-year- old stepdaughter Frederica (Ricky). He has just finished designing an even better machine: an all-purpose automaton called Flexible Frank. Could life Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs be any better?

December 2013: SF Masterworks second series 161 Naturally, it all crashes on him. Miles and Belle betray him, marrying each other, forcing him out of the company, stealing his patents, even chasing away his cat. Then they stuff him into a cold sleep establishment, arranging for him to wake up in the year 2000, too late to take any action. Dan wakes in the year 2000, and several chapters are taken in giving us a view of the year 2000, while Dan relearns engineering, and tracks down the traces of Miles and Belle, and then looks for Ricky. What he finds is very surprising indeed, and he is driven to a desperate attempt to set his future right. It seems very appropriate to reread this book in 2000, given that the bulk of the book is set right now. As with any book of that time, the predictions are mostly oddly off. But they are still interesting, and Heinlein was a sharp man, so his predictions often make a lot of sense, and every once in a while he even hits. This book features something a whole lot like Automatic Teller Machines, complete with interbank transfers, for instance. And one of Dan’s inventions, Drafting Dan, reminded me somewhat of Computer-Aided-Design programs, though at the same time Heinlein almost completely missed the ubiquity of computers, especially personal computers. And of course we didn’t have a nuclear war in the ’60s (although we had a good scare in the fall of ’62) that caused the US capital to move to Denver, and we don’t have the beginnings of planetary colonies, and we don’t have anything like “cold sleep”. Of course, nobody in their right mind reads ’50s SF, or any SF, for accurate predictions. The light the predictions throw on the way people thought about the future in the ’50s is interesting. And the sum total of the changes Heinlein shows is a better world, which is Heinlein’s real theme. To quote:

“the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better… Most of these long-haired belittlers can’t drive a nail or use a slide rule, I’d like to… ship them back to the twelfth century – then let them enjoy it.”

For Dan Davis, the Door into Summer is the door to the future. (And that title image, “the Door into Summer”, is one of Heinlein’s happier literary creations.) This bright, sweet, optimistic novel is pure fun to read. [2000]

LIAM PROVEN Ooh, this is an odd one. The second Heinlein I managed to miss out on in my early teens; looking back now, I wonder how much he

162 influenced my adult mindset… I didn’t understand a lot of the preachier bits when I was a kid, but now, as an adult, I do and I agree with them. I moan and mourn the moralistic, uptight, repressed C21 world; RAH would too, I feel. This is an early Heinlein and it really shows. It’s from before he grew into his full powers; it’s a simplistic story by a simplistic character, and the technology, language, and future-prediction have all dated badly. But viewed as a thing of its own time, it’s not bad – it’s interesting, and whereas the prose is simple, the plot, involving time-travel, time-loops and characters who knowingly modify their own history, really is not all that simple. In part it reads like a whodunnit and part of the game is to work out WTF is actually going on the second and subsequent times around. The ending is one which would cause C21 moralisers to go apoplectic – in the real modern world, it manages to violate one of our most deeply-held taboos. There is a reason that this Heinlein isn’t talked about much today. Shame – I enjoyed it. It’s a slice of the old stuff, and whereas it’s got a slight pong to it now, if you can get past that, it’s enjoyable. [2012]

MARION PITMAN I first read The Door Into Summer decades ago, and all I really remembered was the cat. To be honest, the cat is definitely the best bit. The main character is not very sympathetic – maybe he’s not meant to be, but his appalling views of women are still unpleasant. I noticed that more this time around – in the sixties and seventies one just accepted it, since it was almost universal. I can’t comment on the science; his inventions seem like the sort of thing people have been imagining since the middle of the nineteenth century (see, for example, G.K. Chesterton’s short story ‘The Invisible Man’), and I have no idea how plausible his methods are; I assume a lot of it is techno-babble. The convoluted time-travel plot doesn’t convince me (but then I don’t think it has to). The time-travel is total wish-fulfillment – there are no down sides, Davis almost goes forward and back at will in the end, rearranging things to his own satisfaction and his enemies’ discomfiture. He redeems himself somewhat, though, since his motives, besides revenge and kinky sex, include saving the cat. On the other hand, the writing is clear and readable, the story-line moves on, it’s an entertaining read (apart from the misogyny); the plot is well constructed, if confusing to bears of very little brain like me, and it was no hardship to read it again. And it’s worth it for the cat. [2014]

163 T.J. BASS HALF PAST HUMAN 1971

JONATHAN THORNTON Half Past Human is both a well thought out work of biological extrapolation and an uncompromising dissection of the values that make us human. Set in the far future, it shows us a world where regular Homo sapiens is being replaced by the post-human Nebish. Genetically engineered and mentally conditioned, the Nebish are able to live in huge numbers in underground hives in ways humans simply aren’t able to cope with. Earth is populated with three thousand billion Nebish, who have eradicated all other species from the land surface of the planet and turned it entirely into agricultural farmland. They hunt the few remaining humans for sport and food. A less skilled writer would use this as a set up for a simplistic confrontation between ‘good’ humans and ‘evil’ Nebish, but T.J. Bass uses intentionally alienating language and unsympathetic characters to initially make both sides in the inevitable conflict look equally unappealing, before bringing us round to a greater understanding and sympathy towards both sides and forcing us to confront our innate biases and perceptions of humanity. A large part of what makes Half Past Human so striking is Bass’s use of language. Bass was a doctor, and his medical knowledge informs not only his invention of Nebish biology but also gives him a wide vocabulary of precise anatomical and physiological terms, which he deploys with gusto. Emotions and actions alike are rendered in terms of physiological processes, creating a formalised, alienating framework for both human and Nebish characters. Take this moment, late on in the book, when a dying Nebish Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs realises that his religion may have something behind it after all: “Dyspnea

January 2014: SF Masterworks second series 164 pressed on his oxygen dissociation curve. Pulse raced.” This is initially cold, clinical and alienating, especially when Bass uses it to describe violence, reducing the characters to pieces of meat, appropriately enough as human and Nebish alike are cannibals. But you get used to it as the story progresses, and you become invested in characters on either side despite this initial distancing technique. Ultimately Bass encourages us to extend our sympathies to both. The spirituality of both humans and Nebish is subtly explored, however anything that initially appears mystical is given a rational scientific explanation. Both humans and Nebish worship the deity Olga, though most of the characters with genuine faith are either humans or Nebish who secretly harbour the human gene, suggesting that religion is one thing that humans need more than Nebish do. It’s worth highlighting the book’s one glaring flaw. All the female characters in Half Past Human have little to no agency, and exist solely to mate and reproduce, whether they are part of human or Nebish society. While I suppose it would be possible to use this as a device to look at what the novel’s harsh biological imperative means for women and how they cope with a society that expects one thing and one thing only from them, Bass’s female characters are given no such depth. It’s the one bum note in an otherwise powerful and striking novel. It’s particularly a shame because Nebish gender is actually pretty interesting and could have been used to thoughtfully explore gender stereotypes and issues. Bass makes it abundantly clear that the human and Nebish modes of life are incompatible. The Nebish are slow, dim- witted and unmotivated, happy to live out short, unfulfilling lives cut short by malnutrition in the close confines of their underground cities. However this life style is what has allowed them to survive in such huge numbers in situations humans could never prosper in. Bass leaves it up to the reader to decide if the passion, drive and ingenuity of humanity would be worth sacrificing so that a greater number of people would be content. When one of the humans smugly asserts that they are the superior race because the machines sided with them, he is sharply rebuked by Olga. One of the things Bass is particularly good at is highlighting the extent to which humans and Nebish are Othered from each other’s perspective. Scenes from the Nebish point of view rejoice in particularly queasy and unpleasant descriptions of humans, and vice versa. There is an excellent scene where the Nebish perform an autopsy on the last human and then preserve him in a museum. All the characteristics that mark him out as a human are classified as diseases, in a complete inversion of the original human term for the differences, ‘the Nebish disease’. What is normal, what is human, is simply a matter of perspective. While the humans survive by fleeing to the stars, the Nebish inherit the earth. [2014]

165 LEIGH BRACKETT THE LONG TOMORROW 1955

CHARLES DEE MITCHELL By all accounts I’ve read, Brackett’s 1955 novel is the first, post-nuclear holocaust novel written in the US. It takes place around a century after what survivors call “The Destruction”. Cities across the globe were bomb targets and they now exist as unvisited ruins, demonized as the symbol of the hubris that brought about the attacks. Brackett’s brilliant and genuinely creepy innovation – although I guess it’s not really an innovation if it is the first book of what is now a well-worked genre – is to create a society, not unlike mid-19th century America, but where Mennonites control the government, the religion, and the ideology. Mennonites? Apparently after “The Destruction”, they along with the Amish and whatever Shakers and like groups were still around, proved best suited to a life without technology. Their quaint ways are suddenly in great demand and, through means Brackett never fully explains, their simple, funda- mentalist faith rules most of the spiritually defeated and technophobic United States, and it has, no surprise, hardened into an ideology that is not above stoning to death those they find threatening or burning to the ground towns that threaten to grow too large or introduce to many innovations. Doesn’t seem like a fair accommodation just for all the great jams and pies they bake, or that cool, pegged furniture. The New Mennonites are also firm believers in “Spare the rod, spoil the child”, a practice that keeps most youth contained but goes against the Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs grain of our young heroes, Len Colter and his cousin Esau. They discover a

February 2014: SF Masterworks second series 166 shortwave radio that proves the existence of the fabled city of Bartorstown, which they imagine to be a thriving, mid- twentieth century American metropolis. The “long journey” of their title is their flight from home and many years’ quest for this technological utopia. This is SF filtered through Mark Twain and Frank Norris, filled with small town types, entrepreneurs, dangerous townsfolk, and mysterious strangers. And it all works. If many scenes play out like those of early TV westerns, there’s a good reason for that. For years I thought Leigh Brackett was a man who wrote western screenplays for Howard Hawks, and that there was some other Leigh Brackett who wrote 1940s SF of the planet-hopping, space opera variety, back when Venus was a jungle and Mars a habitable desert. At some point I learned they were not only the same person, but a woman. Despite this SF background, her first novel was a hardboiled detective story that caught the eye of Howard Hawks; he brought her to Hollywood to help William Faulkner with the famously troubled and outrageously convoluted script for The Big Sleep. She had both a successful Hollywood career and continued to publish SF. George Lucas hired her to write the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back. She died of cancer shortly after turning in the script and there continues to be discussion over whether any of her material was used by Lawrence Kasdan in the final screenplay. Much of Leigh Brackett remains in print, but the packaging of the anthologies have too much ‘Buck Rogers’ about them to tempt me. But I did read that she is the “Poetess of the Pulps”. I might have to lay aside my prejudices and have a go at something like Enchantress of Venus. [2011]

PETER YOUNG A gentle read that packs a punch, and sixty years on it’s still quite easy to grasp the rationale behind The Long Tomorrow: with science having let humanity down by bringing a nuclear war upon the US, an ascetic religion reasserts itself and denies any chance for ‘scientific progress’ which, if it’s to continue at all, must be done in secrecy. The vectors to show what lies at both extremes of this scenario are the lives of Len Colter and his cousin Esau, drawn to the forbidden knowledge first by the discovery of a radio, later to embark on an escape from their strict God-fearing upbringing to learn that fanaticism can have more than one face. So Brackett cleverly uses the religion vs. science debate in an original yet urgent way, not only asking what knowledge would we deny our children after a nuclear war, but also how can we prevent fear from masquerading as love? Brackett has no answer to this last question, other than to say: this is clearly not how it’s done. [2014]

167 T.J. BASS THE GODWHALE 1974

EDDIE TOMASELLI T.J. Bass’s The Godwhale, a loose sequel to Half-Past Human, was published approximately forty years ago. Is it still a relevant book after all this time? You bet your sweet butt it is. One would have a relatively smooth time arguing that conceptually speaking it’s even more relevant today than it was in 1974. The environmental themes thrust onto the reader’s eyes will only continue to become more prevalent in today’s tumultuous stew of filth- spewing mega-corporations and never ending dreams to consume everything that may or may not be living on the planet that isn’t human (for the most part). The book is important for its didactic approach in telling us what’s potentially going to happen to us, our offspring, and our offspring’s offspring. Offsummer, offall, offwinter, you get where I’m going with this. However for all its importance in telling us what we’re in danger of doing, the book unfortunately put me in a state of near cringeworthy catatonia at times as well. Not for its imagery of sterile oceans, severing of legs, faeces, rape, and mutant sex, but for Mr. Bass’s character design, dialogue and plot. The characters within The Godwhale possess very little to no idiosyncratic traits whatsoever. They all sound as if they are all the same voice, the voice of Mr. Bass. If I were to cover up their names and read their individual dialogue I would not be able to tell you who’s talking to who. Even by the end of the novel there was little difference between characters, although some seemed to possess more testosterone than others. A whole Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs bunch of characters absolutely love to shake their fist in anger as well:

March 2014: SF Masterworks second series 168 fascinating. On-the-nose dialogue, nomadic responses to trivial obstacles (especially characters that actually weren’t nomadic) and scientifically hollow descriptions engulfed most of the novel’s characters within the book. My favorite, absolute favorite parts in The Godwhale came during the “romantic” scenes.

“I will be your new mate – and feed you and your son.” said Har confidently. Opal smiled. “You may – when you are ready.” “Har is ready now.” His gesture was awkward but gentle – a caress on the pectoralis muscle bulge between her wide, small breasts.

That was just foreplay.

“…I don’t know which sexual fantasies you’ve been imprinted with, but call them all up. I know I’m not very erotic – all wet, cold, and leathery. But keep your mind on my erogenous zones. Remember: physically – do nothing; mentally – do everything!” Har smiled meekly. She gave him a swat on the wet buttock.

Oh baby, are you hot and bothered? Because I sure am. Not that I expected or even necessarily wanted the book to be poetically romantic, but the author fails at expressing realistic human emotion on all levels, not just with romance. Pros: The relevance and frightening ideas set forth in the book are all too realistic. Nature is a “luxury”. There’s simply no room for it, only room for crops to feed an expansive population. Consumption rules, there’s no balance. The world is too inhospitable for man because of man’s own doing. Cons: The characters, the overall plot. Which I will tell in short: A man who loves nature gets his legs cut off by a train-like machine because he was stealing food. He is put in suspended animation. Each time he wakes up the world is more and more environmentally devastated. He eventually joins forces with humanoid water-dwellers and battles ‘the Hive’, (the government on land) with the help of a genetically engineered super-human clone of himself and a cyborg whale. Conclusion: Conceptually fascinating, the story and characters ruin the overall effect. [2014]

169 J.P. LANTERN It’s a natural thing to be terrified of genetic engineering, in the same way that I imagine cars – if they were sentient – would be terrified of mechanical engineering. Anyone messing around with the stuff that makes you what you are carries an almost inescapable stigma of doing something diabolical. In The Godwhale, T.J. Bass explores the notion of genetic engineering with incredible totality of vision, making even the most horrific results sort of commonplace for the new breed of humans (called “Nebishes”) some many thousand years in the future. In this future, Bass presents an eerily believable picture of the future of humans in which a few trillion of us all live in underground, city-like Hives. In a lot of science fiction, there are extremes of technological power and organic power, and both of these are seen (as extremes often are) as undesirable. A middle-ground hybrid of some sort is often designated as the ‘answer’ (such that answers exist at all for this sort of problem), and Bass seems to take exception to that. The future of the very-organic Hive, and all of its genetically pre-designed denizens, is decided by cybernetic intelligences which were created long, long before the novel begins. It would be easy to cast this in the genre of books that are warnings against rebellious artificial intelligences, but for two points: one, the AI in question has been in control for thousands of years, and two, absolutely everyone in power in these books seems to be somehow weak, incompetent, or vicious. The AI is no exception. What is most fascinating about Bass’s work is the way everything just keeps going; how the bureaucracies that the humans and AIs develop never fail to propose some fresh, flawed solution for very old problems like inequality and war. Frequently, Bass posits what are – in most other pieces of SF – absolutely earth-shattering developments. Huge points of contention that are fought over for the duration of a narrative, with some cataclysmic change at the end. In The Godwhale, an AI controls the bulk of mankind (or Nebishkind, as it were), everyone is forced to live in an organic, calorie-dispensing Hive, cannibalism is an understood way of life, and genetic super-warriors are bred like hunting dogs. And yet it’s all regular for them. In fact, rather than being problems at all, “harvesting more calories” (i.e. killing more humans to eat them) is referenced as a solution or a desirable result; breeding genetic super-warriors is an ideal way to make this happen. I think Bass is, through the many pages of his exploration, pointing out something fundamental about the human experience – that we can get used to anything. And like anything else that is fundamental about our experience, this is something that be both majestic and tragic. In The Godwhale, Bass leans toward the latter, hoping perhaps to fix humanity’s psyche before we start trying to fix its genes. [2014]

170 JAMES TIPTREE, JR. HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER 1990

NIALL HARRISON I think I am jealous of anyone who was reading science fiction before 1976.* I’m jealous because I wish I could have read the stories in Her Smoke Rose Up Forever without a legend leaning over my shoulder. It would have meant I could have read most of them twice: once before knowing that James Tiptree, Jr. was Alice Sheldon, and once after. As it is, only the second reading was available to me. And I’m jealous because I want that moment of realisation. I want to know how I would react. Whether I would be Robert Silverberg, egg-on-face after insisting that Tiptree’s writing was ‘ineluctably masculine’, or whether I would have been more agnostic. As it is, I can’t ever know. And I want to know because some of these stories are without question some of the most important – the most worth thinking about – in the science fiction canon. Oh, some of them have undeniably dated. The central image to which ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’ builds, for example, is striking, but it’s also absurd; it’s hard to read it with a modern eye, and

* And there’s a moment of perspective for you. I had unconsciously assumed that, as it would today, the news of Tiptree’s identity had flashed around the sf community in the space of a day. But of course, no: we’re talking letters and fanzines, not the internet. ‘Everything But The Signature Is Me’, in Meet Me at Infinity, is compiled from letters between November 1976 and 1977; in his introduction to Her Smoke Rose Up Forever Clute uses 1977 (because it was the ’77 Worldcon where it was hot Cover illustration by Christopher Gibbs news?); in In The Chinks of the World Machine Lefanu uses 1976.

July 2014: SF Masterworks second series 171 impossible to imagine a modern writer carrying the same idea off with a straight face, except possibly at a much shorter length. But for the most part, even the ways in which the stories have dated are interesting. You can see science fiction changing before your eyes, as you read, from the pulps to the new wave. The conflict is almost literal in stories like ‘And So On, And So On’, and ‘Houston, Houston, Do You Read?’ but the threads are there throughout, even in the devastating critique of exogamy embedded in ‘And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side’. Of course, this is not primarily science fiction about science fiction. In fact, the extent to which Tiptree used classic sf ideas was a surprise to me. I bought the reissued Her Smoke Rose Up Forever at the end of 2004 and had, until recently, only read four stories from it, and they hadn’t been representative. (I wasn’t going so slowly because I didn’t want to read the book, but because I was reluctant to have read the book. Either the stories couldn’t possibly live up to the hype (although just about every time I read one it turned out to be very good), or they would, and then I wouldn’t have the book to look forward to any more.) They were, for want of a better phrase, respectable science fiction. Stories like ‘The Women Men Don’t See’, ‘The Screwfly Solution’, ‘The Last Flight of Doctor Ain’ – set in the world, focusing on human reactions in the more-or-less here and now. Half the stories in this collection, though, while not as outright bizarre as ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, are about as brazenly science fictional as you could ask for. I think I was most surprised by the number of stories with an almost Stapledonian perspective, skipping across time like stones across water; and though ‘She Waits For All Men Born’ didn’t do a lot for me, I suspect the final, vivd images of ‘The Man Who Walked Home’ and ‘Her Smoke Rose Up Forever’ (the future folding down into the present) will be with me for a while yet. And there are stories told completely from an alien perspective, too: ‘Love Is The Plan The Plan Is Death’ with its excitable, oblivious narrator, hurtling towards his end; and, more succesfully, ‘We Who Stole The Dream’, which flirts with parable and allegory without ever committing to either. And the intensity of them! Tiptree tells her stories with a force, with a ruthless conviction that leaves much contemporary short sf looking distinctly anemic. Perhaps Lucius Shepard can match her in this regard, but perhaps he also has less range. Tiptree’s themes – biology and society, intelligence and instinct, men and women – recur, but her visions are extravagant. And somehow, for all that most of the stories end with death, or decline, or loss, it is not, finally, a bleak collection. There is that feeling you seem to get only from science fiction, that humanity is a small part of a vast and uncaring universe, but that the passion of life is what makes it worth living, on its own terms. The extraordinary penultimate

172 story, ‘Slow Music’, captures this best: at the end, we are told, ‘mortal grief fought invading transcendence’. Tiptree makes the words more than dramatic rhetoric. Best and worst stories? The weakest are the ones that are obviously the work of a beginner – ‘The Last Flight of Doctor Ain’, ambitious beyond its means – or have lost their context, and therefore their relevance. ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’ is one of these, as mentioned, as is the overlong and overmanipulative ‘With Delicate Mad Hands’; they are stories whose anger is directed at targets already mostly demolished. The strongest are, by and large, the ones that everyone already knows. There’s the familiar, pitiable, unconsciously prejudiced viewpoint of the narrator in ‘The Women Men Don’t See’, which serves as the most economic articulation of some of Tiptree’s central arguments. There’s the intense cynicism of ‘The Screwfly Solution’, and the firecracker writing (and unexpected poignancy) of ‘The Girl Who Was Plugged In’. But even beyond the award winners there are important stories. ‘And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side’ is chilling in its simplicity, manifold in its implications; ‘Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!’ is harrowing. To complain too much, or to argue that these are the favourites everyone should have, just seems mean. And there’s probably my favourite story in the collection, ‘Houston, Houston, Do You Read?’ in which three astronauts are cast from Then into the Future, where they encounter a woman-only world (men having been killed in a plague). Elsewhere, Dan Hartland said that:

The society developed by the women in ‘Houston, Houston’ is fascistic, sterile and myopic, yes. It has become obsessed both with purity and the Greater Good, and is not particularly interested in individual identity, exploration or new knowledge except in so far as it contributes to that Greater Good. When something turns up that is perceived to throw a spanner in the works of that unity and purity, it is treated with initial fascination, its useful sperm characteristics taken and assimilated, and the individuals concerned exterminated. The fact that our narrator, having seen his friends degraded, dehumanised and manipulated, and having realised that there is no free place in such a society for him, willingly goes along with his murder is hardly an argument in favour of that society.

Let it be noted he liked the story, for demonstrating that women and men are as bad as each other. And admittedly, individual reactions to a story like this will vary; it’s a mark of how skillfully Tiptree asks questions about gender and power.

173 But to me, his reading seems a little lazy, and almost offensively wrongheaded. The society in ‘Houston, Houston’ is not obsessed with purity or the Greater Good; and I’m not claiming it as a utopia, but it’s certainly not fascistic. It is, simply, a society that works tolerably well but that has no place for men – more, in fact: it is a society to which men are inimical. The astronauts are not perceived to throw a spanner in the works; they do throw a spanner in the works, just by existing. The women of ‘Houston, Houston’ do not need men to love, or for anything else. They don’t hate men, either, and they certainly don’t fear them. In fact, they’re not missing much of anything. (Is there a reason they should, do you think?) There are some hints that their society is less vital and expansionist than it would otherwise be, but those are not inherently bad things, and their world is also clearly less conflict-riven a world than our own (although part of that is likely to be simply that the population is much smaller than ours currently is). But the presence of men would inevitably destroy the society that has been created in their absence, and something worse would take its place. The strength and the tragedy of the story, for me, then, is in just how comprehensively irrelevant men are, and that the narrator – clearly the most balanced of the astronauts, despite the unreliability of his perspective – has the self-awareness to realise the damage his life would cause and, while lamenting, face up to the consequences of it. It’s not a question of refusing to recognise difference; it’s that coexistence is not possible without one or other party being shackled. Is that a bleak view of the relationship between the sexes? Hell yes. In ‘Houston, Houston’, men and women are literally aliens to each other. Do I believe in it? No, and I don’t think Tiptree did either. But to assume the premise makes for an extraordinarily powerful and provocative story. As are many of the rest. It’s unfair to compare a retrospective like Her Smoke Rose Up Forever to most other collections I’ve read. The stories here are the pick of just twelve extraordinary years. But I’ll say this: if you haven’t read these stories, you need to – if only to argue with them. [2005]

174 ARKADY & BORIS STRUGATSKY MONDAY BEGINS ON SATURDAY 1965

ZALKA CSENGE VIRÁG So, here is a book that matches Harry Potter in magic, Terry Pratchett in deadpan humor, and Doctor Who in time travel. And raises them one heck of a parody of Soviet science and bureaucracy. It did remind me of Pratchett in a lot of ways: deadpan one-liners, creative uses of magic and folklore, and humor catered to smart people. I also loved the fact that while it is categorized as science fiction, this book is not action. It is rather a parody of everyday life in a science institution with all its frustrations, typical characters, and curiosities. It lets you flavor the everyday life of the book’s world, rather than resorting to an action plot. It is full of Easter eggs for folklore and myth buffs, and also references to sci-fi tropes out the wazoo. For people who have been through higher education, jokes at the expense of professors of all kinds are the cherry on top. Awesome book. [2014]

DAN HARLOW There is a great documentary on YouTube titled Pandora’s Box: The Engineers’ Plot about how the Soviet Union attempted to use mathematical and scientific principles to bring about the greatest amount of happiness and comfort to the Russian people. Through pure logic and reason the Soviet scientists hoped to control an illogical and irrational population. This was a real thing and it went on for decades. And it was a total failure. This book was published in the late 1960s during the beginning of a Cover illustration by Eamon O’Donoghue period of Soviet economic downturn. The (relatively) prosperous days of the

August 2014: SF Masterworks second series 175 1950s and early 1960s of the Soviet Union were coming to an end and the reality of grossly inefficient Soviet rule was apparent to everyone – though not many people said anything publicly. The authors, one of whom was actually an astronomer, would have had a front row seat to many of the societal events of their day from a very unique perspective. And that’s what this book is about. But it’s not just about making fun of the Soviet Union – it’s about how all institutions are a bungled mess of competing egos and endless bureaucratic quicksands. But unlike Kafka, they take a much more lighthearted approach to the joke of all human society. Years ago I was friends with a lady who, like Boris Natanovich Strugatsky, was a scientist. She was one of those wiz- kid PhDs by her mid-twenties and had done so in the field of astrophysics. At the time I was working with a friend making hand built telescopes for the (rich) amateur enthusiasts and so she was always coming by our shop and hanging around. What I quickly learned, however, was that a genius PhD in astrophysics is not nearly as interesting or romantic as it sounds. Her job was (if I remember this right) the study of the gravitational effect between two incredibly distant galaxies and just those two galaxies. She didn’t study anything else about those galaxies or any other structures in the universe, she only studied how gravity worked on a pair of multi-billion year old galaxies in a constellation I had never even heard of. And her knowledge of general astronomy was laughable in many regards. Current news and discoveries were things she was totally unaware of and was probably why she hung around us so that she wouldn’t totally lose touch with the greater scope of the field she was working in. This book deals with pretty much the same idea: scientists have become so hyper-specialized (and, honestly, everyone in higher academia suffers this fate) as to be nearly useless. Here, the scientists are all magus (magicians and wizards – even Merlin himself) who work at an institute devoted to discovering and perfecting human happiness. Their tools include a couch that interperts dreams, a sort of motorcycle that you can drive into the invented future realities of science fiction books. In town there is a mermaid in a tree and a wish-fulfilling pike in a well. There are coins that always show back up in your pocket when you spend them and a man who is two men, one who at midnight instead of living into the next day like the rest of us time linear folks, reappears twenty-four hours earlier and lives that day instead. It’s a totally bonkers idea, but that’s the whole point, too because in a way it mirrors not only what was going on in the Soviet Union at the time, but also what still goes on in the Ivory Towers of higher-learning around the world.

176 But there’s a larger theme at work here, too, and that’s of how the general public sees science. For many people the work of the scientists is not much different than that of a magician because it’s nearly impossible to explain what scientists actually do. Academic papers might as well be fairy tales for all the good they do a regular person who has to go to work all day. The authors then go on to make parallels to the media and the ‘rock star’ scientist who does no real science but the public loves them because they do a lot of neat tricks (like a magician). Even economics is explored where they take their egotistical, rock star scientist, and task him with trying to create the perfect man but who only turns out to be so incredibly gluttonous because he has everything he wants and can be given everything he wants as to literally explode after gorging on nearly three tons of rotting fish heads. Not bad that they could expose the failings of both Capitalism and Communism with only one metaphor! And there is so much more here, too. That’s what I love about this book – it’s great fun and wildly imaginative, but it also gets you to really think about a great many concepts and ideas without hitting you over the head with them. The book is outrageous, the characters are thinner than the pages, there is no dramatic tension at all, but none of that stuff matters because the ideas rule here. And there are also some wonderfully powerful images that will linger: the ride into the future where we meet the soldier near the Iron Curtain thousands of years into the future, or the bird, or my favorite: the giant, lazy mosquito the size of a dog that he shoos out the window into a driving blizzard in the middle of the night where it immediately disappears in the storm and cold. Strange and brilliant. [2013]

177 the contributors

London circle fans at the White Horse, c. 1950s Left to right: Jim Rattigan, Brian Burgess, Ron Buckmaster, James White, Chuck Harris, Frank Arnold From the collection of Vince Clarke

RATEFUL THANKS go out to all contributors of commentary, essays, reviews and artwork to this fanzine, and it was gparticularly gratifying to see such widespread enthusiasm for this project. All articles are reproduced by permission and copyright belongs to their respective authors. Articles with previous appearances are also noted below.

Many thanks also to: Sue Jones (for admirably meeting an exacting brief), James Bacon, Keith Brooke, Rob Hansen, Tony Lee, Kev McVeigh, Jim Mowatt, Mark Plummer, Donna Scott; also Steve Jeffery and Marvin Vernon for offering unused reviews, plus Simon Hadleigh-Sparks and Mike Rammell for offering two great but unused cover images (Simon’s, Mike’s). And thanks of course to Benji and Miles Young for their patience when I couldn’t be pulled away to play Angry Birds.

178 Ademption is from Toronto, ON, and blogs at Tumblr and Goodreads. • JOANNA RUSS, THE FEMALE MAN – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MARCH 2014

Rob Adey is co-author of A Shot Rang Out: The Tangled Life and Mysterious Death of Thomas Cauldron: Author, Spy, Traitor. His reviews appear at Goodreads. • CHRISTOPHER PRIEST, THE AFFIRMATION – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, FEBRUARY 2013

Tony Atkins is an American expat and entrepreneur working and raising a family in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His goal in life is to build at least a small part of the future with the limited technology available today. • BRIAN ALDISS, GREYBEARD – FIRST APPEARED AT SPECULATIVE LIVING, JULY 2009

Ben Babcock is from Thunder Bay, ON, and is currently teaching in Bury St. Edmunds, England. He blogs about books at Tachyon Decay and Goodreads, and his reviews appear under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International Licence. • KAREN JOY FOWLER, SARAH CANARY – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JUNE 2010 • NICOLA GRIFFITH, SLOW RIVER – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, FEBRUARY 2009 • DAN SIMMONS, HYPERION – A LONGER VERSION OF THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, OCTOBER 2009 • DAN SIMMONS, THE FALL OF HYPERION – A LONGER VERSION OF THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JULY 2011 • H.G. WELLS, THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU – ADAPTED FROM A LONGER VERSION OF A REVIEW THAT FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, FEBRUARY 2010

Lee Battersby was born in Nottingham, England, and lives in Mandurah, Western Australia. He is the author of The Corpse-Rat King and The Marching Dead, his website is at leebattersby.com and his reviews appear at Goodreads. • DOUGLAS ADAMS, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JULY 2012

Christine Bellerive is a writer, freelance editor and occasional academic from Philadelphia, PA, and blogs at Strange Quarks. • CONNIE WILLIS, TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG – FIRST APPEARED AT STRANGE QUARKS, JULY 2013

179 Steph Bennion is a writer and musician living in South London, England. Her latest space opera adventure Paw-Prints of the Gods, for young adults and adults young at heart, is the sequel to her 2012 science fiction mystery Hollow Moon. Her website is at Wyrdstar and her reviews appear at Goodreads. • PAT CADIGAN, SYNNERS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JANUARY 2014

Joachim Boaz, writing from the USA, reviews ‘50s-’70s SF from the more esoteric fringes. He is a proponent of the New Wave movement, social science fiction, and the nightmarish joys of Barry N. Malzberg and Michael Bishop. He blogs at Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations. • MICHAEL BISHOP, TRANSFIGURATIONS – AN EXPANDED VERSION OF THIS REVIEW ALSO APPEARS AT SCIENCE FICTION AND OTHER SUSPECT RUMINATIONS, AUGUST 2014

Paul Bowers lives in Gosport, England, and is member #4600 of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha. • DOUGLAS ADAMS, LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING – FIRST APPEARED IN THE LITTLE BOOK OF 42s, NOVEMBER 2012

Michael Brown is from Clayton-le-Moors, Lancashire, England, and blogs about books at Goodreads. One of these things is more rewarding than the other. • JAMES MORROW, THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, OCTOBER 2011

Donna Carter lives in Maine. Her reviews have appeared at Radish Reviews and RT Book Reviews. • CONNIE WILLIS, DOOMSDAY BOOK – EXTRACTED FROM A REVIEW THAT FIRST APPEARED AT RADISH REVIEWS, MAY 2013

Stuart Carter lives in London, England, where he works as a copywriter and is trying to raise two young daughters without the aid of a safety net. He blogs, when possible, about chickens, parenting, and London at (not to be confused with) The Truth. • DAVID I. MASSON, THE CALTRAPS OF TIME – FIRST APPEARED IN VECTOR #231, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003 • SHERI S. TEPPER, THE GATE TO WOMEN’S COUNTRY – FIRST APPEARED AT INFINITY PLUS, JANUARY 2000 • OLAF STAPLEDON, SIRIUS – EXTRACTED FROM A LONGER REVIEW THAT FIRST APPEARED AT INFINITY PLUS, NOVEMBER 2000

180 G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English author, poet, dramatist and theologian. His best-known speculative novel was The Man Who Was Thursday, first published in 1908. • H.G. WELLS, THE FOOD OF THE GODS – EXTRACTED FROM ‘MR. H.G. WELLS AND THE GIANTS’, HERETICS, 1905

Joel Cunningham lives in the US and blogs about books at Barnes & Noble and Goodreads. • H.G. WELLS, THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JUNE 2010

Mike Dalke is from Pontiac, IL, and lives in Bangkok, Thailand. He blogs at Potpourri of Science Fiction Literature. • GEORGE TURNER, THE SEA AND SUMMER

John DeNardo is from Houston, TX, and is the editor of SF Signal, a two-time Hugo Award-winning group science-fiction and fantasy blog featuring news, reviews and interviews. • ALGYS BUDRYS, ROGUE MOON – FIRST APPEARED AT SF SIGNAL, MAY 2005

A.C. Fellows met in Townsville, North Queensland, and now live in the New England region. They blog at Forgotten Planet. • OLAF STAPLEDON, SIRIUS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, SEPTEMBER 2013

Carlos Ferreira lives in Northampton, England, and blogs about books at Goodreads. • BRUCE STERLING & WILLIAM GIBSON, THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JANUARY 2014

Bruce Gillespie is from Melbourne, Australia, and is editor of the fanzines SF Commentary, The Metaphysical Review and Steam Engine Time, among many others. • CECELIA HOLLAND, FLOATING WORLDS – FIRST APPEARED IN SF COMMENTARY #67, JANUARY 1989 • JAMES MORROW, THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS – FIRST APPEARED IN SF COMMENTARY #67, JANUARY 1989 • MARY SHELLEY, FRANKENSTEIN – FIRST APPEARED IN SF COMMENTARY #41/42, FEBRUARY 1975

Dave Haddock lives in Cambridge, England, is ex-president of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha and editor of The Banksoniain. • DOUGLAS ADAMS, LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING – FIRST APPEARED IN THE LITTLE BOOK OF 42s, NOVEMBER 2012

181 Dan Harlow lives in Colorado, and blogs about books at Goodreads. • ARKADY & BORIS STRUGATSKY, MONDAY BEGINS ON SATURDAY – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, NOVEMBER 2013

Niall Harrison lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and is Editor-in-Chief at Strange Horizons. • JAMES TIPTREE, JR., HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER – FIRST APPEARED AT LIVE JOURNAL, DECEMBER 2005

David Hebblethwaite is a reviewer and book blogger, who was born in the north of England, went to university in the Midlands, and now lives in the south. He has written about books for various venues, including Strange Horizons, Vector, Fiction Uncovered, and We Love This Book. He blogs at Follow the Thread and Goodreads. • COLIN GREENLAND, TAKE BACK PLENTY – FIRST APPEARED AT FOLLOW THE THREAD, JUNE 2010 • CHRISTOPHER PRIEST, THE AFFIRMATION – FIRST APPEARED AT FOLLOW THE THREAD, JULY 2010

Alix Heintzman is from Kentucky, and blogs about SF and fantasy literature at The Other Side of the Rain. • NICOLA GRIFFITH, AMMONITE – FIRST APPEARED AT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RAIN, OCTOBER 2013

Karen Heuler lives in Brooklyn, NY, and her stories have appeared in over seventy literary and speculative journals and anthologies. Her website is at karenheuler.com and her reviews appear at Goodreads. • RACHEL POLLACK, UNQUENCHABLE FIRE – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MAY 2013

Rich Horton is from Naperville, IL, and lives in St. Louis, MO. He is editor of the Year’s Best anthologies from Prime Books, his reviews have appeared at SF Site and he blogs at Live Journal. • ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, THE DOOR INTO SUMMER – A SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION OF THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED AT SF SITE, 2000

Jesse Hudson lives in Wroclaw, Poland, and blogs mostly about speculative fiction at Speculiction. • DAN SIMMONS, HYPERION – FIRST APPEARED AT SPECULICTION, JUNE 2012

182 Rhys Hughes is a writer of the absurd from Swansea, Wales. He blogs at The Spoons That Are My Ears and Facebook, and his reviews appear at Goodreads. • KAREL CAPEK, WAR WITH THE NEWTS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MAY 2012 • JOHN CROWLEY, THE DEEP – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, DECEMBER 2013 • CLIFFORD D. SIMAK, CITY – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, DECEMBER 2011

Ian is from Vista, CA, and he blogs about books at Goodreads. • CONNIE WILLIS, TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MAY 2010

Antony Jones lives in Lancaster, England, and is the owner of the SF Book review site. • CECELIA HOLLAND, FLOATING WORLDS – FIRST APPEARED AT SFBOOK.COM, JANUARY 2012 • OLAF STAPLEDON, ODD JOHN – FIRST APPEARED AT SFBOOK.COM, APRIL 2012

J.G. Keely is an author and critic from Albany, NY. He has been voted one of the best reviewers at Goodreads and blogs about writing at Stars, Beetles and Fools. He is currently completing the final draft of his debut novel, You Know Fulwell. • DOUGLAS ADAMS, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MARCH 2011 • BRUCE STERLING & WILLIAM GIBSON, THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, DECEMBER 2011

Sylvia Kelso lives in Townsville, Queensland, is the author of the ‘Riverworld’ series of books among many others, and blogs at sylviakelso.com. • PAT CADIGAN, SYNNERS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JANUARY 2013

Kemper lives in Overland Park, KS, and blogs at Kemper’s Book Blog and Goodreads. • DAN SIMMONS, THE FALL OF HYPERION – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MARCH 2011

David Langford is from Newport, Wales, and lives in Reading, England. He is a multiple Hugo Award-winning author, science fiction critic as well as editor of SFE and the long-running fanzine Ansible. His website is at ansible.co.uk. • NICOLA GRIFFITH, SLOW RIVER – FIRST APPEARED IN SFX, 1995

183 J.P. Lantern lives in the Midwestern US, he is a science fiction author whose work can be found at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and Kobo. His new dystopian adventure novel Up the Tower will be out in the second half of 2014. You can find his blog at jplantern.com. • T.J. BASS, THE GODWHALE

Matthew Lloyd is from Oxford, England, and blogs at The Land Between Two Rivers. • KAREL CAPEK, R.U.R. – FIRST APPEARED AT THE LAND BETWEEN TWO RIVERS, FEBRUARY 2013

Chris Mander lives in Harrogate, England, and blogs about books at Masterwork Master and Goodreads. He is a keen gamer, and is a beta tester for the role-playing game developers at White Rose Games. • PAT CADIGAN, SYNNERS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, APRIL 2013 • RUSSELL HOBAN, RIDDLEY WALKER

Bill McClain lives in Decorah, IA, and runs the publishing company Sattre Press. His website is at Watershade. • JOHN CROWLEY, ENGINE SUMMER – A SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION FIRST APPEARED ONLINE IN MARCH 2001, NOW ARCHIVED AT WATERSHADE

Martin McClellan is an author and designer living in Seattle, WA. His website is at martinmcclellan.com and his reviews appear at Goodreads. • MARY SHELLEY, FRANKENSTEIN – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JANUARY 2014

Simon McLeish works at the University of Oxford, and blogs about books at Simon’s Book Blog, Goodreads and Google+. • CONNIE WILLIS, TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG – FIRST APPEARED AT SIMON’S BOOK BLOG, MAY 2014

Kev McVeigh is from London, England, and blogs about science fiction at the Gollancz SF Gateway. • CONNIE WILLIS, TIME IS THE FIRE: THE BEST OF CONNIE WILLIS – FIRST APPEARED AT THE SF GATEWAY BLOG, AUGUST 2013

Megan Medina is from Texas, and blogs about speculative fiction at From Couch to Moon and Worlds Without End. • MICHAEL BISHOP, NO ENEMY BUT TIME – A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT VERSION OF THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED AT SCIENCE FICTION AND OTHER SUSPECT RUMINATIONS, APRIL 2014

184 Iain Merrick lives in London, England, makes indie video games and sometimes blogs about books at Goodreads. • CECELIA HOLLAND, FLOATING WORLDS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MARCH 2012

Charles Dee Mitchell is from Dallas, TX, and is a retired bookseller and freelance writer. His reviews appear at Worlds Without End and Goodreads, and he blogs at Potato Weather. • BRIAN ALDISS, GREYBEARD – FIRST APPEARED AT WORLDS WITHOUT END, JULY 2011 • LEIGH BRACKETT, THE LONG TOMORROW – FIRST APPEARED AT WORLDS WITHOUT END, AUGUST 2011 • ALGYS BUDRYS, ROGUE MOON – EXTRACTED FROM A REVIEW THAT FIRST APPEARED AT WORLDS WITHOUT END, JULY 2011 • WILLIAM TENN, OF MEN AND MONSTERS – FIRST APPEARED AT WORLDS WITHOUT END, SEPTEMBER 2012

Howard Mittelmark lives in New York, NY, and is the co-author of How Not to Write a Novel. His website is at howardmittelmark.com and his reviews appear at Goodreads. • BRUCE STERLING & WILLIAM GIBSON, THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE – FIRST APPEARED AT KIRKUS REVIEWS, MARCH 1990

Mark Monday is from San Francisco, CA, and blogs at Hypnos. • MARY SHELLEY, FRANKENSTEIN – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JUNE 2012 • CLIFFORD D. SIMAK, CITY – EXTRACTED FROM A REVIEW THAT FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, AUGUST 2012

M.J. Nicholls is from Glasgow, Scotland, and blogs at Quiddity of Delusion. • H.G. WELLS, THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, APRIL 2013

David Norman is retired and lives in Birchington, England. His favourite piece of advice: Keep a diary. • CONNIE WILLIS, DOOMSDAY BOOK – FIRST APPEARED AT SFFWORLD, MARCH 2007

Abigail Nussbaum is Reviews Editor at Strange Horizons, and blogs at Asking the Wrong Questions. • M.J. ENGH, ARSLAN – FIRST APPEARED AT ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS, FEBRUARY 2011

Paul lives in Nottingham, England, and blogs about books at Goodreads. • JACK WOMACK, RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JUNE 2013

185 Sarah Pinsker is from Baltimore, MD, and is a Nebula Award-nominated author and musician. Her fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s and Fantasy & Science Fiction, and her reviews have appeared at Worlds Without End and Goodreads. Her website is at sarahpinsker.com. • ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, DOUBLE STAR – FIRST APPEARED AT WORLDS WITHOUT END, MAY 2012

Marion Pitman, a Londoner exiled in Reading, England, has no car, no television, and no cats. She sells second-hand books online since her shop burned down, and has three unpublished novels. She has had short fiction and poetry published in many magazines and anthologies. Her hobbies include watching cricket, folk music, and theological argument. Her website is at marionpitman.co.uk, and she blogs at andallshallbewelldotcom and Facebook. • ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, THE DOOR INTO SUMMER

Liam Proven is from London, England, and lives in Brno, Czech Republic, and blogs at Live Journal, Facebook and Goodreads. • ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, THE DOOR INTO SUMMER – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, DECEMBER 2012

Nigel Quinlan lives in Co. Tipperary, Ireland. His first book Nothing to Do with Leaves will be published in 2015 by Orion in the UK and Roaringbrook Press in the US. He blogs at Live Journal and Goodreads. • BRIAN ALDISS, HELLICONIA – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, FEBRUARY 2014

Manny Rayner lives in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the author of the review collections If Research Were Romance and Other Implausible Conjectures and What Pooh Might Have Said to Dante and Other Futile Speculations (both available from Lulu), and he blogs about books at Goodreads. • DOUGLAS ADAMS, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY – FIRST APPEARED IN WHAT POOH MIGHT HAVE SAID TO DANTE AND OTHER FUTILE SPECULATIONS, 2012 • DOUGLAS ADAMS, THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MARCH 2012 • ISAAC ASIMOV, THE GODS THEMSELVES – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, APRIL 2011 • OLAF STAPLEDON, ODD JOHN – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, OCTOBER 2009 • OLAF STAPLEDON, SIRIUS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, SEPTEMBER 2012

186 • KURT VONNEGUT, CAT’S CRADLE – FIRST APPEARED IN WHAT POOH MIGHT HAVE SAID TO DANTE AND OTHER FUTILE SPECULATIONS, 2012

Ian Sales grew up in the Middle East and now lives in Yorkshire, England. He is an author and reviewer, and his SF-related blogs are at It Doesn’t Have to Be Right and SF Mistressworks. • D.G. COMPTON, THE CONTINUOUS KATHERINE MORTENHOE – A SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION OF THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED AT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE RIGHT, JULY 2010 • SAMUEL R. DELANY, DHALGREN – FIRST APPEARED AT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE RIGHT, JANUARY 2008

Kate Sherrod lives in Saratoga, WY, is an author, poet and reviewer for several websites, and also a podcast fiction narrator. She blogs at Insatiable Booksluts, Kate of Mind and Goodreads. • CHRISTOPHER PRIEST, INVERTED WORLD – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MARCH 2011 • JACK WOMACK, RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE – FIRST APPEARED AT KATE OF MIND, OCTOBER 2013 Steve Shipman, aka. Stevelvis, lives about an hour from the nearest gay bar in North Metro Atlanta, GA. When not earning his meager wage, he is mentally skyclad worshipping the goddesses of the rain and the moon, even if he is actually in his mancave surrounded by tens of thousands of books, CDs and DVDs. He blogs at Facebook and his reviews appear at Goodreads. • SAMUEL R. DELANY, DHALGREN – A SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, FEBRUARY 2008

Keith Stevenson is from Glasgow, Scotland, and lives in New South Wales, Australia. He is a speculative fiction editor, reviewer, podcaster and author, his website is at keithstevenson.com and his reviews appear at Goodreads. • CHRISTOPHER PRIEST, INVERTED WORLD – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JANUARY 2013

Jonathan Terrington lives in Melbourne, Victoria, and when he’s not blogging about books at Goodreads he actually tries reading. • DOUGLAS ADAMS, LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, OCTOBER 2012 • CHRISTOPHER PRIEST, THE PRESTIGE – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, AUGUST 2012

187 Jonathan Thornton is from Scotland but grew up in Kenya. He has a life-long love of science fiction and fantasy. Outside of books his interests are music and insects. He blogs about books at Golden Apples of the West and Worlds Without End. • T.J. BASS, HALF PAST HUMAN • JOHN CROWLEY, THE DEEP – FIRST APPEARED AT GOLDEN APPLES OF THE WEST, NOVEMBER 2013 • ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, DOUBLE STAR – FIRST APPEARED AT GOLDEN APPLES OF THE WEST, SEPTEMBER 2013

Christy M. Tidwell is from Rapid City, SD, is Assistant Professor of English at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, and is a science fiction scholar. She blogs about books at Goodreads. • CLIFFORD D. SIMAK, CITY – EXTRACTED FROM A REVIEW THAT FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JUNE 2008

Eddie Tomaselli lives Eagle Rock, CA, and is a graphic artist and film-maker. He blogs at Tumblr. • T.J. BASS, THE GODWHALE Tracey is a thirty-something bibliovore from the Midwest USA, and blogs about books at Goodreads. • JAMES MORROW, THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, SEPTEMBER 2007

Vacuous Wastrel is from London, England, and blogs about books at Vacuous Wastrel and Goodreads. • CHRISTOPHER PRIEST, THE AFFIRMATION – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, JULY 2011

Zalka Csenge Virág is a professional storyteller and author from Hungary. She is currently a PhD student in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University, Ohio. Her website is at Tarkabarka and her reviews appear at Goodreads. • ARKADY & BORIS STRUGATSKY, MONDAY BEGINS ON SATURDAY – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MAY 2014

Jo Walton is from Aberdare, Wales, and lives in Montreal, QC. Her novel Among Others won both the 2012 Hugo and Nebula Awards. What Makes This Book So Great is her most recent collection of essays that first appeared at Tor.com. She blogs at Live Journal. • ERIC FRANK RUSSELL, WASP – FIRST APPEARED AT TOR.COM, MARCH 2011

189 Rob Weber lives in Almere, the Netherlands, and blogs about books at Val’s Random Comments and Goodreads. • ISAAC ASIMOV, THE GODS THEMSELVES – A SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION OF THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED AT VAL’S RANDOM COMMENTS, NOVEMBER 2013 • FRANK HERBERT, HELLSTROM’S HIVE – FIRST APPEARED AT VAL’S RANDOM COMMENTS, NOVEMBER 2013 Nicholas Whyte is from Belfast, Northern Ireland, lives in Brussels, Belgium, and blogs at Live Journal, Facebook and Goodreads. • MARY SHELLEY, FRANKENSTEIN – FIRST APPEARED AT LIVE JOURNAL, AUGUST 2010

Basil Williams (1867–1950) was an English academic and historian. • H.G. WELLS, THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU – FIRST APPEARED IN ATHENAEUM, 9 MAY 1896

Andy Wixon lives in Oxford, England, and blogs about genre books, film and TV at No Chic. Just Geek and Goodreads. • KAREL CAPEK, WAR WITH THE NEWTS – A SLIGHLY LONGER VERSION FIRST APPEARED AT NO CHIC. JUST GEEK, MARCH 2014 • CHRISTOPHER PRIEST, INVERTED WORLD – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MARCH 2014

Mark Yon is from Nottingham, England, and is a reviewer and administrator at SFFWorld. He also blogs about books at Goodreads. • BRIAN ALDISS, HELLICONIA – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, AUGUST 2010 • HARLAN ELLISON, ed., DANGEROUS VISIONS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, MARCH 2011 • JACK FINNEY, THE BODY SNATCHERS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, OCTOBER 2010

• WILLIAM TENN, OF MEN AND MONSTERS – A LONGER VERSION OF THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, AUGUST 2011 • H.G. WELLS, THE FOOD OF THE GODS – FIRST APPEARED AT GOODREADS, OCTOBER 2010

Peter Young is from Reading, England, and lives in Hua Hin, Thailand. He is the editor of Big Sky and frequent guest editor of the Hugo-nominated Journey Planet. His book reviews appear at Fictionstream and Goodreads, and he blogs (rarely) at Live Journal and Facebook. • LEIGH BRACKETT, THE LONG TOMORROW

189 • JACK FINNEY, THE BODY SNATCHERS • RACHEL POLLACK, UNQUENCHABLE FIRE • JOANNA RUSS, THE FEMALE MAN – FIRST APPEARED AT LIVE JOURNAL, MARCH 2011 • WILLIAM TENN, OF MEN AND MONSTERS – FIRST APPEARED AT LIVE JOURNAL, APRIL 2011 • KURT VONNEGUT, CAT’S CRADLE – FIRST APPEARED AT LIVE JOURNAL, JUNE 2007

Stephen Zillwood lives in Port Moody, BC, where he teaches English Literature at Fraser International College. He blogs at Reviews by Steve. • RUSSELL HOBAN, RIDDLEY WALKER – FIRST APPEARED AT LIVE JOURNAL, 2007

The contemporary reviews of H.G. Wells’s novels were collected in H.G. Wells: The Critical Heritage, edited by Patrick Parrinder (RKP, 1972).

190 Asleep? No. Awake. I was told to close my eyes. And wait, he said, until you’re asked to open them. Oh. You can open them now… What do you see? You. Am I…? You’re like… a girl I know. Taller. Are all the angels tall? What else do you see? The grass we sit on. Is it grass? Like grass. I see the sky. Through your roof of glass, oh, angel, can it be? It is.

— John Crowley Engine Summer 1979 big sky 4 august 2557 / 2o14

Ademption Rob Adey Tony Atkins Ben Babcock Lee Battersby Christine Bellerive Steph Bennion Joachim Boaz Paul Bowers Michael Brown Donna Carter Stuart Carter G.K. Chesterton Joel Cunningham Mike Dalke John DeNardo A.C. Fellows Carlos Ferreira Bruce Gillespie Dave Haddock Dan Harlow Niall Harrison David Hebblethwaite Alix Heintzman Karen Heuler Rich Horton Jesse Hudson Rhys Hughes Ian Antony Jones J.G. Keely Sylvia Kelso Kemper David Langford J.P. Lantern Matthew Lloyd Chris Mander Bill McClain Martin McClellan Simon McLeish Kev McVeigh Megan Medina Iain Merrick Charles Dee Mitchell Howard Mittelmark Mark Monday M.J. Nicholls David Norman Abigail Nussbaum Paul Sarah Pinsker Marion Pitman Liam Proven Nigel Quinlan Manny Rayner Ian Sales Kate Sherrod Steve Shipman Keith Stevenson Jonathan Terrington Jonathan Thornton Christy M. Tidwell Eddie Tomaselli Tracey Vacuous Wastrel Zalka Csenge Virág Jo Walton Rob Weber Nicholas Whyte Basil Williams Andy Wixon Mark Yon Peter Young Stephen Zillwood