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The British Boom: What boom? Whose boom?

Thirteen ways of looking at the British Boom

Andrew M. Butler

Andrew Butler, ‘the greatest SF critic [First published in what, with the clarity of hindsight and the galaxy has ever known’ (Cheryl Studies, No 91, November 2003. the demand for narrative convenience, Morgan, Emerald City) is ‘a pipe- Reprinted by permission of the author we do with Romanticism and Modern- and Dr Arthur Evans, editor of SFS. ism. What this article sets out to do is to smoking, vaguely sarcastic Andrew and the SET editors have survey the terrain from a variety of per- academic’ who has a PhD in the attempted to preserve the style of the spectives, in the hope that this will help works of Philip K. Dick, and has pub- original as far as possible, including the to give some indication of the phenome- lished books on Philip K. Dick, use of American spelling.] non’s scope and characteristics. The , , Film Boom contains cyberpunk, post- Studies, and Postmodernism, co- 1. ‘There certainly seems to be something cyberpunk, cyberpunk-flavored fiction, edited books on Terry Pratchett and of a boom. To a certain extent these things , splatterpunk, , hard sf, soft sf, feminist sf, , Ken MacLeod, and has been fea- are always artefacts — there’s no objec- dystopias, anti-utopias, apocalypses, tures editor on Vector since 1995. tive criteria by which one can judge “boom-ness” (boomitude? Boomosity?) cosy catastrophes, uncomfortable catas- The following article on the British — so the fact that everyone’s talking trophes, Bildungsromans, New Wave- Boom, described by the leading Brit- about it is to a certain extent definitional style writing, planetary romances, ish SF magazine Interzone as ‘a of the fact that something’s going on’ alternate histories, big dumb objects, farrago’, won the 2004 Pioneer (China Miéville in Butler, ‘Beyond’ 7). comedies, tragedies, slipstream, horror, Award (the Science Fiction Research and any combination of generic hybrids and cross-breeds. Hopefully a Association Award for Excellence in 2. Mapping the Terrain It is asserted that there is currently a series of micronarratives about Boom Scholarship). In his spare time writing and writers will avoid the dan- Andrew teaches Media Studies, Cul- boom within British science fiction — by editors, by critics, by authors, by readers, gers of prescription in an era when the tural Studies and Digital Culture at in the pages of Science Fiction Studies and macronarrative or metanarrative is no Canterbury Christ Church University in the publicity for some events at the longer achievable or desirable. College. I (BRG) ‘met’ Andrew first Institute for Contemporary Arts in Lon- It is worth first comparing the Boom through Acnestis, the prestigious don in May 2003. Let us assume that this with two other movements within science fiction. The British New Wave in British amateur publishing associa- is not a mass delusion, and there is in- deed a boom. The Boom is thought of science fiction is primarily associated tion. He has visited Melbourne twice with the era of New in recent years, and is welcome back mostly as a British Science Fiction Boom, and to limit it to this genre is clearly Worlds magazine from 1964 onwards, any time. within the parameters of a journal named dissipating at some point in the 1970s — Science Fiction Studies. But there is also a the experimental writings of J. G. Ballard, parallel boom within fantasy and horror, Moorcock, Barrington Bayley, Brian as well as within children’s fiction — Aldiss, John Brunner, and visiting dominated by the hype surrounding the Americans Thomas M. Disch, John publication of the fourth and fifth Harry Sladek, Pamela Zoline, and Norman Potter novels by J. K. Rowling and the Spinrad. If Moorcock can be said to be its fact that the third volume of Philip Pull- polemicist, its Ezra Pound figure, then man’s His Dark Materials trilogy, The Ballard its resident T. S. Eliot — Amber Spyglass (2000), won the overall although arguably the New Wave had Whitbread Prize, the first children’s book found its creed in Ballard’s 1962 guest to do so.1 We could no doubt make a case editorial where he argued that ‘science for other, less cognate, genres. What we fiction must jettison its present narrative also need to remember is the generic slip- forms and plots [. . . I]t is inner space not page and interchange that goes on within outer, that needs to be explored. The only adult and children’s science fiction, fan- truly alien planet is Earth’ (117). Langdon tasy and horror. Jones’s The New SF: An Original Anthology It is impossible to draw a clear, stable of Modern Speculative Fiction (1969) an- boundary around these distinct and thology can stand as its archetypal collec- Andrew M. Butler, speaking at Aussiecon tion. New Worlds did continue to publish Three, 1999. (Photo: Paul Billinger.) overlapping booms, to subsume them within a single movement, but that is non-New Wave material, but writers

15 (1986) as its tombstone. Indeed, many of Chaz Brenchley, Keith Brooke/Nick The Boom is thought of the stories within the collection hardly Gifford, Christopher Brookmyre, Eric conform to the concept of cyberpunk as Brown, Molly Brown, Eugene Byrne, Pat mostly as a British it is now understood. In the years since, Cadigan, Richard Calder, Mark Chad- Science Fiction many other writers have been labeled as bourn, Simon Clark, Susanna Clarke, Boom . . . but there is cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk or cyber- , Michael Cobley, Steve punk-flavored, irrespective of their con- Cockayne, Storm Constantine, Louise also a parallel boom nection to the original impulse. Here we Cooper, Paul Cornell, Gillian Cross, within fantasy and have a model of how a movement can Peter Crowther, Russell T. Davies, Jack horror, as well as begin almost as a hobbyhorse, grow Deighton, Peter Dickinson, Eric Evans, through association with a number of Jasper Fforde, Christopher Fowler, within children’s fiction. writers, and then explode beyond the Maggie Furey, , Stephen control of its originators — and be in- Gallagher, David S. Garnett/David Fer- creasingly difficult to define as cyber- ring, Mary Gentle, Debi Gliori, Muriel punk. Gray, , Nicola Griffith, such as Robert Presslie, Don Malcolm The Boom has no resident polemicist , Peter F. Ham- and John Phillifent were more or less (although M. John Harrison, China ilton, M. John Harrison, Robert Hold- silenced. A movement can exclude as Miéville and others have found spaces to stock, Tom Holland, Tom Holt, Lesley well as include; indeed different hailers talk about it3), no key writer (although Howarth, Eva Ibbotson, Simon Ings, of the Boom have their own list of exclu- some would suggest Miéville), and no Brian Jacques, Robin Jarvis, Ben Jeapes, sions. defining anthology or magazine Diana Wynne Jones, Gwyneth In the previous paragraph I specified (although Interzone could take some of Jones/Ann Halam, Graham Joyce, Peter British New Wave, because the applica- the credit). Even such a thing as a starting Kalu, Garry Kilworth, William King, tion of the term to American writing has point has yet to be agreed. Mark Bould , Tanith Lee, Roger Levy, led to some confusion. Certainly Judith has outlined a number of starting points James Lovegrove/J. M. S. Lovegrove, Merril, in her Best of SF anthologies, was between 1982 and 1995 (Bould, ‘Boom’ Brian Lumley, Ian R. MacLeod, Ken looking to Britain for material, exposure 308–9) and each of these starting points MacLeod, Jan Mark, Graham Masterton, to which may have led to a greater would lead to a different conceptualiza- Paul McAuley, Geraldine McCaughrean, experimentation in form in US science tion of the boom. A writer like Mary Ian McDonald, Juliet E. McKenna, Robin fiction. There was a growing permissive- Gentle found success with Ash: A Secret McKinley, John Meaney, China Miéville, ness that led to a greater willingness to History (1999), winning among others the Martin Millar/Martin Scott, David explore sexual themes within sf. One British Science Fiction Association Mitchell, Michael Moorcock, Alan product of this was ’s Award, which ought to put her smack Moore, Simon Morden, Richard Morgan, groundbreaking anthology Dangerous into the British Boom — although she’s Grant Morrison, Kim Newman/Jack Visions (1967), in which taboos (for the been a highly regarded writer since the Yeovil, William Nicholson, Jenny science fiction market) were broken. 1980s and was first published in 1977. Nimmo, Jeff Noon, Daniel O’Mahoney, This, along with a growing divide be- Perhaps we should borrow Borges’s ter- Darren O’Shaughnessy/Darren Shan, tween hard and soft science fiction, has minology and speak of precursors to the Stephen Palmer, K. J. Parker, Terry led to a retrospective acknowledgment of Boom, even of work precursive to the Pratchett, Christopher Priest, Philip Pull- an American New Wave, which could Boom. There are a number of writers — man, Robert Rankin, Philip Reeve, Alas- include ‘Aldiss, Ballard, Disch, Delany, , J. G. Ballard, M. John Har- tair Reynolds, Chris Riddell, Philip Heinlein [sic] and on’ (Brooke-Rose 99) or rison and Christopher Priest, among Ridley, Adam Roberts/A. R. R. Roberts, Joanna Russ, Ursula Le Guin, Philip K. others — who have been successful in the Katherine Roberts, Justina Robson, J. K. Dick, Thomas M. Disch and Samuel past and are now enjoying a renewed Rowling, Nicholas Royle, , 2 Delany (Pfeil). Broadly speaking the period of success or republication. There Jan Siegel, Alison Sinclair, Gus Smith, American New Wave seems to be a new is also the problem as to whether the Michael Marshall Smith, Brian Stable- kind of content, a paradigmatic New British Boom should only include ford/Brian Craig/Francis Amery, Paul Wave, and the British one a new kind of British-born writers, or be expanded to Stewart, Charles Stross, Tricia Sulli- structure, a syntagmatic New Wave. In include writers from the United States van/Valery Leith, Brian Talbot, Sue turn it should be noted that British and (Pat Cadigan, Tricia Sullivan, Molly Thomas, Karen Traviss, , Jo American perceptions of the Boom are Brown) or Canada (John Clute, Geoff Walton, Ian Watson, John Whitbourn, different. Ryman) who have become long-time Liz Williams, John Wilson, David Win- The second movement is cyberpunk. resident in the UK. Whilst many of the grove, Chris Wooding. It might be true that Bruce Bethke was the writers within the Boom know each first to use the word cyberpunk — the other, there are varying degrees of influ- title of a manuscript circulating in the ence and social connection. Some of them 4. The Long Wave early 1980s — and that it was Gardner do have lunch together on a weekly basis, The history of science fiction in Britain Dozois who was the first to use the term but that is as much the bonds of friend- has been traced back to Frankenstein to refer to a group of writers, but for the ship as the secret powerhouse of a move- (Aldiss 1973), to Paradise Lost (Roberts, larger critical community it began with ment. Science Fiction) and even to (Kin- ’s (1984). caid, ‘More’; although Malory’s Le Mort Meanwhile Bruce Sterling circulated a d’Arthur [1485] is the root fantastical text fanzine, Cheap Truth (1983–86), edited as 3. A (Partial) Census in Kincaid, British 7). None of these ur- by Vincent Omniaveritas, which cri- Joan Aiken, Brian Aldiss, David Almond, texts was consciously written as science tiqued much existing sf and set out the Joe Ahearne, Chris Amies, Tom Arden, fiction. The various scientific romances of grounds for cyberpunk — although it Neal Asher, Steve Aylett, Wilhelmina the last thirty years or so of the nineteenth was not until issue 12 that cyberpunk was Baird, Cherith Baldry, J. G. Ballard, Iain century were often prompted by im- mentioned. In the final issue Omniaveri- M. Banks, James Barclay, , pulses which we would now recognize as tas declared cyberpunk to be dead, with Paul Barnett/John Grant, Stephen Bax- science fictional; H. G. Wells’s writings Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology ter, Malorie Blackman, Stephen Bowkett, could stand as a definitive starting point

16 SET EDITORIAL COMMENT: The British New Wave — did it ever disappear? Compare the cover for New Worlds 178, December 1967/January 1968 (by Charles Platt and Christopher Finch) with the cover for Interzone 188, April 2003 (by Judith Clute). Okay, no nudes on Interzone covers; the cutup effect is achieved digitally rather than with scissors and paste; and the names on the covers have changed. But who could doubt that British SF is still Cool Britannia after 35 short years?

were it not that this would seem a nation- Greenlander (1978), the first of a projected Simon Ounsley, Alan Dorey, and Gra- alistic move. The American domination trilogy, Compton was only occasionally ham James — decided to take the profits of the genre coalesces in Amazing Stories published after 1975 and few now will of the Yorcon II convention to set up a in 1926, but some British writers did con- know the names of Morgan, Dunn and new magazine. Meanwhile in London, tribute to the sf pulp magazines — most Lunan as writers of fiction. The Hold- Malcolm Edwards pitched the idea for a notably John Wyndham, Eric Frank stock and Priest-edited anthology Stars of new magazine to the BSFA (then chaired Russell, and Arthur C. Clarke — and Albion coincided with the World Science by Alan Dorey) and brought John Clute, tried to meet the demands of the US mar- Fiction Convention being held in Colin Greenland, and Roz Kaveney in as ket. Only with the onset of the New Wave Brighton in 1979, but it was the last gasp associate editors. The BSFA plan having in the 1960s did British science fiction of the market. New Worlds was no more come to nothing, the eight banded to- begin to make an impact upon the way — there were four, irregular issues be- gether to set up a quarterly magazine that that generic science fiction perceived it- tween 1978 and 1979 — and since the they eventually called Interzone (see self, in the writings of Moorcock, Aldiss, only other British science fiction maga- Pringle and Terran for more on this). and Ballard. The moment did not last, zine, Science Fiction Monthly, and its re- Inevitably it suffered comparisons to however, and after a brief period of suc- placement, SF Digest, had both closed in New Worlds; in part it was championing cess in the early 1970s, the market for 1976, the only outlets for written British former New Wave writers such as Aldiss, British sf collapsed. Brian Stableford cites science fiction was the book and antho- Ballard, Sladek, and Disch. Many of the the 1978 special All-British issue of The logy markets and overseas sales. stories it published in the early days had Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction In 1981 a group of fans, critics and the downbeat endings typical of much if with its article by Brian Aldiss celebrat- writers based in Leeds — , not the bulk of British science fiction ing the wealth of professional British since the Second World War. The Inter- authors: ‘Ian Watson, Andrew Stephen- zone editorial collective dwindled until son, , Chris Morgan, Only with the onset of the Pringle became the main editor, but the Mark Adlard, Bob Shaw and Philip Dunn New Wave in the 1960s magazine went from strength to [. . .] Richard Cowper, Edmund Cooper, strength, going bimonthly in 1988 and Christopher Priest, Duncan Lunan, did British science fiction monthly in 1990. Other professional Laurence James, Barrington Bayley, begin to make an impact magazines have emerged: among others Michael Coney, D. G. Compton, Angus upon the way that generic Extro (which published three issues in Wells and M. John Harrison’ (21). But, as Northern Ireland in 1982), Back Brain Re- Stableford notes, most of them had al- science fiction perceived cluse (edited by Chris Reed from 1984 and ready produced their best work or would itself . . . The moment did linked to the small press scene), The Gate disappear until the 1980s or later, having not last, however. (1989–91), SF Nexus (1993–1994, which reinvented themselves as fantasists. Ad- merged with Interzone), Amaranth, Spec- lard has not published a novel since The trum (paid for by editor Paul Fraser), Od-

17 yssey and 3SF (published in 2002–03 by perspective of the New Wave writers in Ben Jeapes’s Big Engine small press). Among the British 1970, looking forward with boundless There is also TTA, also known as The optimism. By 1975 that optimism was Third Alternative, which is more geared to writers who carved out misplaced, and there is no guarantee that dark fantasy and horror. However, Inter- their science fiction the current Boom will continue indefi- zone is the only paper-based science fic- writing careers in nitely. tion magazine to keep a regular schedule over a sustained period of time in Interzone were S. M. — Britain.4 later Stephen — Baxter, 5. British British vs US British Boom Among the British writers who Keith Brooke, Eric One thing that has become clear to me in carved out their science fiction writing discussing the state of British science fic- careers in the magazine were S. M. — Brown, Molly Brown, tion at various locations on both sides of later Stephen — Baxter, Keith Brooke, Eugene Byrne, Richard the Atlantic, is that there are two different Eric Brown, Molly Brown, Eugene Byrne, Calder, Nicola Griffith, perceptions of the Boom in terms of the Richard Calder, Nicola Griffith, Peter F. market place. At a discussion panel at the Hamilton, Simon Ings, Graham Joyce, Peter F. Hamilton, ICFA in 2002 I noted that two writers had Paul McAuley, Ian MacLeod, Ian Simon Ings, Graham blazed a trail for best-selling science fic- McDonald, Kim Newman, Alastair Joyce, Paul McAuley, tion and fantasy prior to the contempo- Reynolds, and Charles Stross, leading to rary boom, Terry Pratchett from The what The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Ian MacLeod, Ian Colour of Magic (1983) and Iain M. Banks. called ‘a second new wave of UK SF’ McDonald, Kim But Pratchett has been through a whole (Clute and Nicholls 622). Their writing Newman, Alastair series of different American publishers, was diverse in scope, yet within an iden- suggesting that he has not sold consis- tifiably British mode: for example Baxter Reynolds, and Charles tently, and Banks seems to be a name that wrote hard sf within his Xeelee sequence Stross, leading to what had not broken as much in the United and has been compared to Clarke, The Encyclopedia of States as it has in the UK. It almost feels McAuley has tried his hand over the that the leg-up apparently given to Ken years at hard sf, steampunk, and tech- Science Fiction called MacLeod by Banks in the UK has been nothrillers, and Newman and Byrne ‘a second new wave of reversed in the United States; MacLeod’s mapped out alternate histories rooted in UK SF’. Fall Revolution Quartet may have been British popular culture. As if giving this published in a different order but it has new generation of writers a regular mar- now all been published, and first US edi- ket was not enough, Pringle branched tions of the Engines of Light trilogy have out into editing role-playing game tie-ins followed swiftly upon the British. In Brit- with the Warhammer series of novels Hugo and Noon winning the John W. ain MacLeod has been perceived as one and anthologies, giving Kim Newman, Campbell Award. Since then Jon Cour- of a number of Marxist or left-wing writ- David Garnett, Brian Stableford, and Ian tenay Grimwood and China Miéville ers that also includes , Watson opportunities to write novels in have both begun having novels pub- Adam Roberts, and Miéville, but in the the late 1980s and early 1990s, and many lished without a visible track record of USA it is his libertarian interests that others of the Interzone generation another short stories. seem to have caught attention. market for short stories (Baxter, ‘Free- From its nadir in 1977 and 1978, Brit- It is likely that a large number of the dom’). ish science fiction has spent two decades names I have listed in section 3 remain After this generation of short story rebuilding itself and finally is being unpublished in the USA, but equally writers began to publish novels, they taken notice of again. It is worth quoting many British writers have been able to were joined by a series of writers who Brian Stableford here: sell in New York what has not sold in had not first appeared in Interzone, London. Ian McDonald, Manchester- though in some cases not for the want of The writers [. . .] felt that science fic- born but based in Northern Ireland and trying. Iain M. Banks had begun as an tion had been labouring too long first published by Extro in 1982, sold his enfant terrible with the publication of his under artificial constraints, held story collection Empire Dreams (1988) and controversial The Wasp Factory (1984), back by the walls of the ‘pulp ghetto’ his first novel Desolation Road (1988) to and followed it up with the sf-tinged and subjected to the unreasonable American publishers, prior to any British Walking on Glass (1985) and The Bridge contempt of literary critics. They publication. Equally Ian R. MacLeod was (1986), before publishing his space opera were longing to break free, to carry able to enter the US book market well Consider Phlebas (1987). Jeff Noon — pre- the cause of science fiction forward before the British one. His story viously known only for winning the Mo- to a position of honour and prestige ‘Through’ was published in the July/ bil Playwriting prize at the Manchester that it had been unjustly denied. August 1989 issue of Interzone, but his Royal Exchange Theatre in 1985 with his They [had . . .] the conviction that first books were the collection Voyages by Falklands play Woundings — wrote a the tide had turned, and that the Starlight (1997), mostly collecting stories novel called (1993), which launched battle — although not yet won — from Asimov’s and The Magazine of Fan- a new Manchester-based publisher was theirs for the taking. [. . . It] tasy and Science Fiction, and the novel The called Ringpull and became a cult hit. He looked as if the last barriers to the Great Wheel (1997). It was not until Sum- followed this up with Pollen (1995), but it progress of the genre had been re- mer 2003 that The Light Ages marked his was not enough to save the publisher moved — and the one thing no one novel debut in Britain. from bankruptcy. Ken MacLeod, a friend could imagine was that new ones There is clearly a complex interplay of Iain M. Banks since childhood, would be raised against it (21). between the British and United States launched his first novel The Star Fraction markets, with either side at various (1995) at the World Science Fiction Con- This passage has much of the same points appearing to the other country to vention in Glasgow, a convention that rhetoric of the current generation of writ- dominate the genre. The perception from saw Pringle’s Interzone finally winning a ers considered to be part of the Boom. British writers and readers during the However, Stableford is talking about the 1980s and early 1990s was that they could

18 not sell their work in the US because they of Manchester: focused on the broken were perceived as being too-British; this glass and dog excrement surrounding ironically was at a time when American the tenements in Hulme and the Moss such as Blaylock and Jeter Side crescents which had seen riots in the could set novels in Victorian London. 1980s, and had become the province of Not only did Gibson’s novels include the squatter, the dealer, the student and near-future British settings, but also the infirm, to a soundtrack of pounding several of them were first published in bass. Within a few years of the publica- book form in Britain. Bruce Sterling, the tion of Vurt, urban renewal came to the cyberpunk subgenre’s best polemicist, area and the crescents and tenements clearly saw British writers Ballard and were demolished to make way for pret- John Brunner as forebears, and wrote tier low-rise flats. Whether the battle columns for Interzone. It might even be against glass and dog excrement will be argued that the downbeat endings of won remains to be seen. The novel also Neuromancer (1984) and other cyberpunk featured the club scene that had been novels owe something to British sensi- dominated by the Hacienda in Manches- bilities. At a panel I chaired on British ter. Noon in time abandoned Manchester science fiction in the 1980s and 1990s at for Brighton, which increasingly became the 1999 Eastercon, a member of the audi- the music capital in terms of DJ culture ence argued that, ‘we, from the American and a thriving club and gay scene. He side of the Atlantic, look on Britain as also temporarily abandoned sf after Pixel being a hot house of cyberpunk’ (Butler, Juice: Stories from the Avant Pulp (1998), Brown and Billinger 13; see also Cobley). although Falling Out of Cars (2002) saw a return to the genre. The sense of place in Noon was dupli- party more interested in big business 6. Cool Britannia? cated by other novelists who lived out- than unions, and in being tougher than Perhaps American eyes were also look- side London. Before Peter Hamilton their Conservative predecessors. ing across the water because of the fuss turned to his monumental Night’s Dawn Whilst some British sf writers may about Cool Britannia. trilogy (1996–99) he had set the Quantum have been carried along by the publicity The British New Wave seemed Murder trilogy (1993–95) in a near-future of Cool Britannia, and, with some excep- focused on and drew imagery from Rutland — a county that had been disap- tions, the default position of contempo- Swinging London, although many of the peared in the reorganization of local gov- rary British science fiction writers is on successful bands and musicians had ernment in 1974 and reappeared in a the left, it is difficult to think of a British emanated from Liverpool. Perhaps by further reorganization in 1997. Nicola science fiction writer sympathetic to the coincidence, the Boom emerged during a Griffith’s Slow River (1995), written in the Blairite cause. Blair’s love affair with ce- renewed period of optimism about the United States, recreated her previous lebrities, including Oasis and other pop cultural significance of Britain. This time home of Hull and the landmarks, includ- stars, must in part be Gwyneth Jones’s the musical powerhouse was Manchester ing the Polar Bear pub, of the inspiration for her near-future fantasy and there was a cross-fertilization of psy- Avenues/Spring Bank area of the city. (2001) and its sequels, in chedelia in the forms of acid house and Stephen Palmer’s Memory Seed (1996) dis- which pop stars of a more sixties vintage rave, as well as the guitar-based lad guised Anglesey and north-east Wales as share power. China Miéville stood as a bands such as The Happy Mondays and a post-apocalyptic city and landscape. Socialist Alliance candidate in The Stone Roses of the Manchester/Mad- Meanwhile there was the shared ex- Kensington and Chelsea and was hailed chester indie music scene in the late 1980s perience of the final defeat of the much- by the London Evening Standard (not and early 1990s. Rivalries emerged be- hated Conservative government in the known for its leftist tendencies) as the tween the music scenes of Manchester, landslide Labour victory of the 1997 Gen- sexiest man in British politics (Renton Sheffield, Hull, and Bristol, among other eral Election. For weeks the phatic was 25). late industrial cities, and the ultra-hip dominated by the question: ‘Were you up Camden, London. The Mancunian band for Portillo?’ — referring to the unseating 7. Eclipse Oasis — centered on the Gallagher broth- in the early hours of the morning by the Nature abhors a vacuum. It seemed clear- ers — went head to head on chart success openly gay Labour candidate Stephen est in the announcement of the novels with the southern art school mockney Twigg of arch-Conservative MP, Michael shortlisted for the Hugo Awards in May Blur and came out on top. Oasis looked Portillo, widely assumed to be a closeted 2001: A Storm of Swords by George R. R. back to the chords and tunes of The gay. The pleasure taken in the defeat of Martin, Calculating God by Robert J. Saw- Beatles and the Liverpool scene whereas specific Conservatives blinded many to yer, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by Blur drew lyrically on predecessors such the ironic possibilities inherent in J. K. Rowling, Midnight Robber by Nalo as The Kinks. Both had a sense of English- Labour’s choice of ‘Things Can Only Get Hopkinson and The Sky Road by Ken ness about them, as did Pulp, but an Better’ as their victory anthem. After a MacLeod. Martin was the only American Englishness that was capable of being brief early period of radicalism in the writer; the rest included two Canadians read ironically. Their vast audiences form of the introduction of a minimum and two British writers. The eventual were being eyed by a Labour Party trying wage (compromised as it was) and other winner was J. K. Rowling — the first Brit- to pull itself together after their defeat by reforms, New Labour seemed to progress ish recipient of the award since Arthur C. the grey man John Major of the Conser- to putting Conservative-type policies Clarke in 1980, indeed only the third Brit- vative party who on any rational level into practice. Portillo, in the meantime, ish recipient after Clarke (who had also 5 was surely unelectable. read Marcel Proust and seems to have won in 1974) and Brunner in 1969. Jeff Noon’s position in Manchester reinvented himself as a compassionate Generic American science fiction ap- surely helped him in the mid-1990s, in a Conservative, more caring than and ap- peared to be in some kind of trouble. period when publishing houses outside parently to the left of the Blairite Twigg. Cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk still of London appeared to be thriving. Vurt New Labour quickly became a political dominated the 1990s sf scene in America, could have been plotted on an A to Z map and a series of writers were being com-

19 8. Remix Iain M. Banks’s To some extent a genre is always parodic of itself. Just as parodies and pastiches Consider Phlebas had depend on the reproduction and recogni- the sort of tion of particular codes and conventions, galaxy-spanning plot so does writing within a given genre. The codes of genre science fiction, whilst they that we had perhaps may look back to Shelley, Poe, Verne, and thought was no longer Wells, were largely formulated in Ameri- possible . . . what Brian can pulp fiction magazines, within the period of the emergence of America from Aldiss has called the isolationism of the 1920s to becoming “widescreen baroque”, one of the world superpowers in the af- was evidently back with termath of the Second World War. One man, with his wits, and his bare hands if a bang. And moreover, necessary, can bring down an empire, it was up-to-date, and save the world. Except in short-lived well-written, fast, and marketplaces that have existed within Britain and the Commonwealth, there is cool’ (Ken MacLeod). a sense that British writers have had to parody American formulae to make their way in the marketplace — during the called “widescreen baroque”, was evi- period in which the British lost an em- dently back with a bang. And moreover, pire. it was up-to-date, well-written, fast, and pared to both William Gibson and Some authors have foregrounded this cool’ (MacLeod, ‘Phlebas’ 2). But the Quentin Tarantino. No new movement parodic intent in their writings; Ian novel, which introduced the left-of-cen- seems to have come along to replace it, McDonald clearly drew on Ray Brad- ter, post-scarcity, utopian empire known and many of the big writers of the 1980s bury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) for as the Culture, is deceptive. The merce- seem to have been diverted into sequels Desolation Road (1988), as well as ele- nary hero, Bora Horza Gobuchal, is actu- to books by other writers and media tie- ments of Gabriel García Marquez, and ally fighting for the wrong side, against ins. Gibson is mapping a trajectory for Hearts, Hands and Voices (1992) drew on the Culture, but is brought in from the the mainstream, and Neal Stephenson’s works by Geoff Ryman, most notably The cold by the end of the book, if only in the output is slowing. The philosophizing Child Garden (1989) and The Unconquered name of a spaceship. Having established that underlay Kim Stanley Robinson’s Country (1986). McDonald’s Northern the peaceful, utopian, game-playing ten- Red Mars (1992) expanded through the Ireland-set Sacrifice of Fools (1996) mixes dencies of the Culture — usually viewed rest of the trilogy, and dominated Antarc- the police procedural with the sexual from the outside — Banks then increas- tica (1997); what many had first perceived politics of Gwyneth Jones’s Aleutian tril- ingly undercuts this in his portrayals of as hard sf had become much more cere- ogy (1991–97), which in itself offered a the processes by which other civiliza- bral and politicized. For whatever reason response to Ursula Le Guin’s The Left tions join the Culture. Sure, it is a utopia the genre seemed to losing its buzz. Hand of Darkness (1969). McDonald’s re- that these civilizations join, but the dice Pages of magazines, pages in journals, mix aesthetic, which draws to some ex- are loaded so that it seems in these civili- slots at conferences still had to be filled, tent on music culture of the 1980s to date, zations’ interests that they do join — and and so editors, critics and academics puts little store in originality, but more in in later volumes the Culture’s dirty tricks were casting around for new writers to the skilful blending of the individual ele- are more exposed. What begins as a left- interview or write about. At first the ments. Adam Roberts, a self-acknow- wing, anti-imperialist utopia ends up in smart money was on Australian science ledged fan of McDonald, is the author of self-critique. fiction, boosted by the 1999 Melbourne four novels to date, including Salt (2000), By then there was also Colin Green- , the anthologies Dreaming which owes debts to (1965) and Le land’s (1990), a caper that Down Under (1998) and Centaurus: The Guin, On (2001), which echoes Christo- featured Tabitha Jute and her spaceship, Best of Australian Science Fiction (1999) pher Priest’s (1974), and Alice, who owes a debt to McCaffery’s and the non-fiction The MUP Encyclo- Polystom (2003), which echoes Bob ship who sang as well as to Lewis Carroll. paedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy (1998) Shaw’s Ragged Astronauts trilogy (1986– Jute is persuaded to transport a troupe of and Strange Constellations: A History of 89), as well as having virtues of their players from Plenty to Titan and is Australian Science Fiction (1999). Janeen own. caught up in intrigue and criminal deeds, Webb, co-editor of Dreaming Down But perhaps where British science fic- among the canals of Mars and the steam- Under, wrote that: ‘Whether we have tion has become most systematically ing jungles of Venus, which are inspired somehow arrived in the much discussed parodic and revisionary is in its revival more by Edgar Rice Burroughs than New new Golden Age or are undergoing an of the subgenre of space opera, which Scientist or Nature. As entirely different occurrence remains to had been more or less relegated to the wrote in her review: ‘the writer must play be seen, but we are certainly experienc- sidelines as contaminated by media sf — with or work against what has gone be- ing one of those spikes in literary output Star Wars, Star Trek, and so forth. Iain M. fore’ (Pollack 102). Having won both the that occur when conditions are right’ Banks’s Consider Phlebas had the sort of Arthur C. Clarke and BSFA Awards for (114). Greg Egan, Sean McMullen, and galaxy-spanning plot that we had per- this novel, Greenland eventually bowed Stephen Dedman were the three names haps thought was no longer possible. As to popular pressure and brought back to watch. Instead the eclipse of American Ken MacLeod writes in his introduction Jute in Seasons of Plenty (1995) and Mother genre sf allowed British talent to shine to the German edition: ‘Space opera — of Plenty (1998). Unfortunately the audi- through, marked by Charles N. Brown’s the colourful, violent, galaxy-spanning ence were less receptive this time round assertion in conversation that only Brit- space opera so many of us had read when — or Greenland’s grafting of a trilogy ish writers were being interviewed for younger, and which Brian Aldiss has structure on to a standalone novel failed. Locus.6 More successful was Harm’s Way (1993),

20 of a Commonwealth of Nations (who de- There is a ‘can’t do’ light in defeating us at cricket), and we are the odd one out in the European spirit that infuses much Union, resisting integration and clinging of British society . . . on to our pounds and ounces decades There is something in after we agreed to go metric in the 1960s and to our decimalized pounds (whilst the British character still mourning shillings). There is some- that loves a loser — thing in the British character that loves a Captain Scott, who did loser — Captain Scott, who did not get to the South Pole first, Eddie the Eagle, the not get to the South world’s worst ski jumper, and numerous Pole first, Eddie the others. There are also the internal divi- Eagle, the world’s sions as well — the distinct countries of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern worst ski jumper . . . Ireland, each with their own north– south, east–west or other divides. As a fractured country yet to relocate its rôle, pessimism is the only course to take. a steampunk tale where ships sail the The fracturedness reflects the multi- solar winds around the system. cultural nature of Britain, with some Space opera is also the starting point attempt to represent the diversity of per- for ’s novels, beginning sonal identity. John Meaney, for exam- with Revelation Space (2000). Dan Sylveste ple, attempts to imagine diversity within is a tough archaeologist and scientist, alien species rather than seeing them all futures (and pasts) where the program risking the lives of his team in his explo- as other; there are nationalities, different continues, where humanity makes it to ration of an extinct civilization on the cultures, subgroups, factions, and so Mars and even to Titan. If only for dra- colony world Resurgam. It is not long forth. That being said, Peter Kalu is prob- matic reasons, these are hardly trium- before his past and local politics catch up ably the only Black British science fiction phant missions; Baxter imagines a future with him, but it is clear that the previous writer, and the list of Boom writers is where more money went into space mis- species died out for a reason. It might be rather chappist — most of the female sions but also where more disasters also that he will not have time to investigate writers listed in section three are part of occurred. His attitude seems ambivalent: this as both an assassin with an anony- the children’s market. The male writers ‘though in some ways Voyage for me was mous client and the crew of a spaceship, are at least attempting to portray female an exercise in wish-fulfillment, I found I Nostalgia for Infinity, with its half-dead characters, including a series of lesbian could no longer believe whole-heartedly captain are on his trail — always assum- lead characters such as Greenland’s that throwing humans at Mars regardless ing that whatever caused the extinction Tabitha Jute, Malise Arnim in Simon would necessarily be a Good Thing’ of a space-faring species will not happen Ings’s Hot Head (1992), and the central (Baxter, alt.space 19). From the stories as again. As Paul Billinger notes in his re- characters of Geoff Ryman’s The Child a whole a curious sense of nostalgia view ‘the most sympathetic character is a Garden. There is a nod towards Islam in emerges — for failures that never hap- professional killer’ (30), and no one is several books, including Hot Head, and to pened, for lost opportunities for things to entirely who they seem: Sylveste is a the new Europe in Ings’s Headlong (1999), go wrong. In Titan there is an utterly modified clone of his lost father and has Paul McAuley’s Fairyland (1995), and convincing portrayal of the harshness of various other copies of his father, and has Gwyneth Jones’s Kairos (1988/1995). space, the dangers of exploration and pe- lied about his experience with the revela- In Ings’ work there is a portrayal of nultimately an almost Stapledonian tion space of the title; the triumvirate life after the cyberpunk future: after the sweep of a universe without humanity. deputizing on Nostalgia for Infinity have machines have gone out of control and Alas, for many of us, Baxter finds a happy their own motives; the assassin, press- chips have been banned in Hot Head. In ending — which for me is more interest- ganged by one of the triumvirate, is not Headlong, Christopher and Joanne Yale ing for its failure than its success. letting on about her true profession. As have been made redundant, and their There’s a curious and not entirely con- in Banks’s space opera, it is no longer chips have been removed. After they vincing eucatastrophic closure to Roger possible to identify heroes and villains both begin to suffer from Epistemic Ap- Levy’s first novel, Reckless Sleep (2000), with any certainty. petite Imbalance, Joanne dies and Chris- which might almost owe a debt to Brazil topher sets out to investigate, keeping (Gilliam, 1985). The world is literally fall- 9. The ‘Can’t Do’ Spirit one step ahead of European Union ing apart, thanks to a series of nuclear If the United States has been going agents. The novel, told in retrospect from explosions on undersea faultlines; Lon- through a period of expanding influence somewhere in Leeds, is suffused with a don is partially ruined and covered in over the last century, with each new nostalgia for the posthuman. Technology ash. There had been the hope of a colony, problem just a challenge to be solved, is not bad — you cannot live without it Dirangasept, but the colonists had been then Britain is very much a country that — but it is unlikely to make life any eas- attacked by unidentified alien inhabi- is declining, that can only see the prob- ier. tants, and the Far Warriors who had been lem. There is a ‘can’t do’ spirit that in- ’s alt.space stories sent to operate remote control war robots fuses much of British society, largely show part of the tension between hope have been defeated. The Far Warriors, from our experience of declining public and pessimism at work. He is clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress syn- services (that seem strong across sorry that the Apollo moon missions drome, thanks to too much VR remote Europe). Britain is in a unique position ended and that human exploration did control of the robots, are now more or less with three different international struc- not continue further into the solar sys- blamed for the debacle. Veteran and poet tures: we are the junior power in the tem. In various short stories, as well as Jon Sciler gets a job testing a new VR special relationship with the United Voyage (1996) and Titan (1997), he creates environment at the same time that Chrye, States, we are the often-despised begetter a psych student studying the effects of

21 cannot unproblematicly ‘inhabit’ the US national identity, but ends up using the The key to British tropes and devices despite the ideologi- cal mismatch. This is particularly true of science fiction must be Baxter’s alt.space stories. a sense of irony. Paul Kincaid and Colin Greenland, talking about the other British writers who emerged at the time of the British New Wave, both identified a voice that was present in the works of Keith Martians, or was about the real world. Roberts, D. G. Compton, Richard Cow- Martin Amis scores points for dealing per, Michael Coney and Christopher with the nuclear bomb in Einstein’s Mon- Priest, among others. Greenland identi- sters (1987) but loses them again for fied it as being ‘ironic [ . . .] It’s informed claiming this is the first fiction about the with a sense of literary tradition, not sim- bomb — and for his allegation in a docu- ply spinning out words and racking up mentary that science fiction readers are a pages. It feels the tensions and connota- bit like trainspotters. Ian McEwan, Will tions of language, so it’s richer in history, Self, David Mitchell, and Louis de and mood, and atmosphere, and the Bernières have all used fantastical ele- shades of character. Time and memory ments in their works, to some success. are every bit as important as space and This has some way to catch up on theater, action’ (Butler, Greenland and Kincaid where plays on quantum physics, prob- 23). That same voice seems still to be at ability, chaos theory and so on by Alan using VR, starts to interview him for her work in Boom writing, although the rela- Ayckbourn, Tom Stoppard, and others project. Sciler discovers that his fellow tionship to the tradition has become have been acceptable for years. veterans, also VR testers, are being killed more problematic. In a novel like Jon The mainstream media in Britain is one by one. Courtenay Grimwood’s neoAddix (1997) beginning to take science fiction more This future is unremittingly grim, and there is an acknowledgment of earlier seriously, although there is still a slight the outlook bleak. VR should be a great cyberpunk and its forebears with its sneer in some presenters’ voices on BBC new hope for escape from Earth, but naming of its protagonist Alex Gibson, Radio 4. Cadigan, McAuley, Newman, seems to be another chance for Armaged- and there is another (albeit pointless) tip Miéville, and others are increasingly be- don; indeed it might be infected by the of the hat to the closing line of Arthur C. ing called on to review films for the radio, telepathic aliens unwittingly brought Clarke’s ‘The Nine Billion Names of God’ but not as often as the mainstream writ- back from Dirangasept by the Far Warri- (1953).8 ers of their generation. The Independent ors. The novel even offers up the possi- Boom science fiction should not be and The Guardian both review science fic- bility that Dirangasept is itself purely a taken at face value. In the few happy tion frequently, even allowing the cover- simulacrum, and that the aliens were endings something more sinister must be age to spill over beyond the monthly simply monsters from the id. VR is no taken into account — characters may round-up of five or six novels into a five- solution to real world problems. As Steve have achieved their desires but at a cost. hundred-word review. The Guardian not Jeffery wrote in his review: ‘Levy’s debut In the bleak endings many ironies come only reported on Priest’s win of the Ar- is assured but tries perhaps too hard [. . .] together, including the consequences of thur C. Clarke Award, but gave him to be too many things at once: sf thriller, the characters’ actions. But perhaps the space to discuss his inspiration for The fantasy, dystopia and romance’ (Jeffery bleakness itself needs to be ironized as a Separation (2002). The Independent, The 28). However, this intergenrification is pose, a nod to the depression of Douglas Guardian, and The Times all carry obituar- typical of the British Boom. Adams’s Marvin the Paranoid Android, ies when British science fiction writers and before him Eeyore in A. A. Milne’s die. 10. Irony Winnie-the-Pooh (1926). Quite often — Not all is rosy though. In 1983 the The key to British science fiction must be and this can be a problem as well as a British Book Council compiled a list of a sense of irony. There is something in the strength — the resolutions do not resolve twenty young British writers who British psyche that sees things doubled, anything. seemed promising — including Martin and refuses to let the addressee know Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, which version is meant. Politeness is a and the already veteran Christopher key sign of contempt, insults a sign that 11. The Mainstream Priest. Two lists later and the broadsheet you have been taken into their heart.7 Since the actual readership of just science newspapers wondered what had hap- John Wyndham’s novels were long fiction in Britain is rather small, and new pened to the 1983 generation — indeed thought to be cosy catastrophes, but in fans of science fiction seem more inter- where Christopher Priest was now (this fact they are more bleak than Wynd- ested in films, tv and comics than the being symptomatic of the publicity his ham’s readers initially perceived written word, British science fiction is publisher had lavished on his latest (Wymer 1992). We simply misread him dependent on the mainstream. In a sense book . . .). In 2003, China Miéville was and missed the irony. Perhaps irony is there is a tradition of British mainstream specifically excluded from the list be- particularly prevalent in British science writers being allowed their one generic cause of his generic status (Jack 11). The fiction: if we assume that the scope of the dalliance — think Conrad and Ford’s The barricades have been drawn back, but genre has been shaped within a US mar- Inheritors (1902), Forster’s ‘The Machine not that far. ket context, it has been influenced by a Stops’ (1909) and Orwell’s Nineteen whole series of ideologies such as the Eighty-Four (1949). Sometimes it is less 12. ‘[. . .] these moments are cyclical. American Dream, life, liberty, and the happy — E. P. Thompson’s overly long We’re lucky enough to be in a time when pursuit of happiness, and has developed The Sykaos Papers (1988), or P. D. James’s sf is loud and proud and exciting. It won’t a range of narrative tropes and devices The Children of the Moon (1992), which last forever. It’s fun milking it while it which engage in, mediate with, or resist could not possibly be science fiction be- lasts . . .’ (China Miéville in Butler, these ideologies. Clearly a British writer cause it was well written, was not about ‘Beyond’ 7).

22 13. An[drew]thropic Principle Greenland and Jones, then I would have the infrastructure to support the renais- The Boom exists because I am here to been able to refute it thus’ (Butler, ‘Fore- sance we seem to be engendering’ (Kin- observe it. sight’ 3).11 In noting the buzz about Brit- caid, ‘Golden’ 531). Perhaps I flatter myself. I do not wish ish sf being at the cutting edge I still The first sign of this may have just to claim that I am single-handedly re- sounded a warning, sceptical note: arisen in July 2003. Under the watchful sponsible for the Boom, but I have been eye of veteran sf editor John Jarrold (who in the right places a number of times, and [. . .] the image of Colin Welland at had published Banks, MacLeod, and oth- helped to provide a space for discourse the Oscars, shouting, ‘The British ers at Legend and Orbit), the Earthlight about the Boom, as well as adding my are coming!’ does loom rather large imprint of Simon and Schuster UK had own voice. In 1995, the year of the Glas- at this point. grown to rival the position Granada/ gow Worldcon and various British Hugo (And then a more science fic- Panther/ Grafton/ HarperCollinsVoy- wins, I became co-features editor of Vec- tional image, of Kevin McCarthy ager had held in the 1970s and 1980s. tor, the critical journal of the BSFA first stopping cars, and screaming Earthlight republished the sf back cata- published in 1958. Whilst Gary Dalkin, ‘They’re coming! They’re com- logue of Ray Bradbury among others, my co-editor, and I were more interested ing!...’) (Butler, ‘Foresight’ 3). and new novels by Byrne, Calder, in media than our predecessors (for me- Cobley, Grimwood, Holdstock, McDon- dia, read film, tv, and some comics, not ald, Whitbourn, and others. Jarrold de- By the time I wrote the following edi- necessarily sf),9 we both agreed that the cided to go freelance and was replaced by torial, I had spent three weeks in Mel- field was being destroyed by what Mike Darren Nash, who continued to maintain bourne — where both Ash and Perdido Resnick was calling wookie books — tie- Earthlight’s prestige as HarperCollins- Street Station were hot reads — and I had in books. We would rail against them at Voyager seemed to dwindle to myriad been to the Hugo Awards Ceremony any opportunity — in editorials, in arti- editions of Tolkien and a handful of other where Rowling won: cles, and in responses to letters of com- classics in uniform, dark blue, editions. ment. At the same time, we took every However, Simon and Schuster have de- opportunity we could to promote inter- There’s a sense, which we’ve been cided to restructure, in the process clos- esting novels by British writers, in a sense trumpeting for a couple of years ing the Earthlight imprint and ousting wanting to put the British back into the now, that we are in a boom time for Nash. It might be that this marks a death BSFA. In the run up to the BSFA’s fortieth British science fiction, in the last of sf as the list is to be absorbed into anniversary and the 200th issue of their eighteen months or so we’ve had a Simon and Schuster’s Pocket Books im- magazine Vector in 1998, we held a poll couple of novels which have been print, and thus not necessarily distin- to establish the most popular British sf respected by gratifyingly large guished as science fiction. The mood, novels. The results were published in the audiences on both sides of the At- however, is more that the books will no 201st issue; and at the following year’s lantic, and both seem to be making longer get the kind of specialist attention Eastercon I ran several panels on the his- inroads Down Under in Australia that Jarrold and Nash were able to give. tory of British science fiction to the then (Butler, ‘Hugos’ 3). It is too early yet to tell whether this is the present day discussing the results.10 beginning of the end of the Boom.12 A coincidence of connections led The Boom was off and running. It is perhaps very British to expect it Mark Bould and myself to the launch of In film, the British did not come, as all to fail — but there is some part of us China Miéville’s Goldcrest, the producers of Chariots of that is forever Eeyore. (2000), Mark conducting an interview for Fire, went belly-up after a series of poor Vector with Miéville and an invitation to choices — such as editing out Mark both of us to hear him speak at Marxism Bould’s performance from Revolution. Notes 2000 on the subject of Marxism and fan- Some British directors, actors, and writ- 1. The Whitbread Prize is a two-step tasy. In an editorial for Vector I com- ers are enjoying Oscar success, but process, with individual awards mented on the Marxism 2000 event and largely in American films. Is the Boom and juries for novel, first novel, non- added: ‘With writers like Miéville, doomed? Entropy, after all, is a favored fiction, poetry and children’s fiction, MacLeod, Meaney and many more, sf in metaphor of British sf — and everything with the children’s fiction award Britain at the end of the century seems to must pass. With so many writers active, sometimes being announced at a be revolutionary: clearly in a tradition, can the market sustain them all? How different time of year. These win- but still finding new ways to tell new many more will the American publishers ners are then judged together to gain (and old) stories. Could this be another take on? Meanwhile Tor has set up a an overall award. Golden Age? Or am I being just too uto- British imprint, mostly publishing 2. For a critique of Pfeil’s position see pian?’ (Butler, ‘Revolution’ 3). By the end American authors, and this is likely to Butler, ‘Modelling Sf’. of June the following year critics such as offer the existing sf imprints — Gollancz, 3. Among other spaces, the Boom was Gary Wolfe and John Clute and authors Headline, Earthlight, HarperCollinsVoy- discussed as a piece of guerrilla pro- such as M. John Harrison were talking of ager, Penguin and Little, Brown — a run gramming by Harrison, Miéville, a Boom, leading to the guerrilla panel at for their money. As some of these are and others at 2001: A Celebration of 2001: A Celebration of British Science Fic- connected to US companies, could these British Science Fiction (28 June– tion. face a US resurgence? Tor is piggy-back- 1 July 2001) endorsed by the organ- Not that the feeling was unanimous. ing off Pan Macmillan — home to izers (Farah Mendlesohn, Andy After a paper at that conference (on sci- Miéville, among others — so for how Sawyer, and myself), by John Clute, ence in a number of British plays) Nicho- long can the two remain distinct? Brian Aldiss, Ellen Datlow, Gary las Ruddick argued (without using the Worried voices are already beginning to Wolfe, China Miéville, Farah exact word) that current sf was banal and mutter. Paul Kincaid has noted in the Mendlesohn, and myself at a panel that literary values were in decline; as I pages of Science Fiction Studies that: ‘the at the 2002 ICFA, by Paul Kincaid wrote in an editorial: ‘If Miéville, pool of British publishers is growing and myself at The Goldfish Factor MacLeod, Meaney, Grimwood and Rob- smaller, and looking at the current eco- (the Science Fiction Founda- son had been in the room, let alone a nomic climate, I suspect that advances tion/British Science Fiction Asso- slightly older generation of Baxter, will be falling, if they haven’t fallen al- ciation joint AGM event) in April ready. [. . .] I do wonder whether we have 2003, and at the ICA in May 2003 in

23 events organized by Miéville and being just too young for the nell, grew tired, the producers Harrison. Gary S. Dalkin and myself Quatermas serials — are the vari- simply had his ship rejuvenate often turned to the topic of the state ous series for children by the ani- him into Patrick Troughton; in of British sf in our editorials for Vec- mators Oliver Postgate and Peter time he regenerated into a fur- tor from 1995 to present. There have Firmin: the proto-fantasy/faux- ther six incarnations, most re- no doubt been other moments. To Norse tales of Noggin the Nog and cently in a television movie. many of these people — along with his archenemy Nogbad the Bad, Whilst the character and the for- Mark Bould and Istvan Csicsery-Ro- the uncanny tale of a stuffed cat mat of the series would change nay Jr., who patiently watched me Bagpuss (1974), but most impor- from year to year or producer to scribble on the backs of envelopes — tantly the science fiction series producer, some things remained I clearly owe a debt. The Clangers (1969–1974), featur- constant — beyond the attractive 4. [2004] But see section 13 and note 12. ing a whole family of aliens who assistant ready to scream at the 5. [2004] See Luckhurst for a longer sounded like swannee whistles first sign of danger. Reason and treatment of the context and project and co-existed with a soap rationality had priority over of New Labour’s ‘New’ Britain. dragon. Despite the making of force; the Doctor rarely fired a 6. This was over breakfast at ICFA only a handful of episodes of gun and always tried to solve a 2002. In 2002 there were six inter- these and other series, they re- problem rather than calling for views with British writers Miéville main a strong presence in the violence. The production values and Siegel (March), Baxter (April), psyche of any British thirty to were better than the budget Joyce (May), McAuley (June), Gai- fifty something, creating a my- would suggest, with gravel pits man (September), which clearly thology from the simplest of ani- and quarries across the south showed the period in Spring and mations. east of England standing in for Summer to be dominated by British Rather more sophisticated in alien planets (or, in one episode writers. However there were also six technique were the marionette when they did land in a quarry, interviews with British writers in acted series of Gerry Anderson: for a quarry). 1995 (counting Pat Cadigan) and in Supercar (1961–1962) featuring a Blakes Seven (1978–1981) was 1998. car that could fly or be a subma- created by Terry Nation who had 7. This is not just an English phenome- rine, Fireball XL5 (1962–1963) created the Daleks for Doctor non; there is also a divided con- with a space patrol, Stingray Who, although some credit sciousness at work in the Welsh, (1964–1965) in which various un- should also be given to script Northern Irish, and Scottish, either dersea menaces are met, Thun- editor Chris Boucher. The series as writers from those countries are derbirds (1965–1966) featuring an began with Blake being shipped subsumed into metropolitan, Lon- international rescue team and for political reasons to a prison don life or as the apparently English Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons planet and his escape with a mot- claim authenticity from ‘provincial’ (1967–1968) in which the alien ley band of prisoners. They lo- roots. For two examinations of a Mysterons are trying to infiltrate cate a ship, named the Liberator, Scottish dividedness see Middleton Earth and Joe 90 (1968–1969) and begin a series of attacks on and Butler, ‘Strange Case’. where a nine-year-old-boy is the evil Federation, personified 8. I am not making a nonsensical claim used as secret agent. The series by the shaven headed female that writers from Britain are ironic were backed by a comic — vari- Servalan. Whereas Spock and and writers from the USA are al- ously called TV Century 21 and McCoy might banter in Star Trek, ways sincere — a list including TV21 — which featured both here heroic Blake, cynical Avon Twain, Bierce, Vonnegut, Michael strips spinning off from charac- and cowardly Vila and the others Moore, and the Coens would refute ters in the various series, and in- would argue, fall out and even this — but that the dominant mode troducing characters from future plot against each other. It was of narrative voice in British sf is series. Together it formed a sin- impossible to tell who was a hero ironic. gle continuity for the range of the and who a villain, even down to 9. [2004] Despite this interest in media, Supermarionation series. the apparent central character there is a regrettable absence of any Stephen Baxter, an avid reader of Blake, written out at the end of real consideration of comics in the comic through the 1960s, has the second series only to return either this article or the rest of the written: ‘it was an important and as a possible traitor in the blood- British Boom issue of SFS, as John formative part of my life, and no bath that ended the final series. Newsinger pointed out in the next doubt of others’ (Baxter, ‘Adven- Whilst Doctor Who had dabbled issue. I regret this absence and that tures’ 8). The Anderson series with moral ambiguities, here none of the people we invited to continue to gather viewers as there was no moral certainty at contribute (including John) covered they are repeated to this day. all. the topic. I had drafted a section on For a slightly older audience There are various other tele- media (predominately television), there were the two long-running vision series that are remem- but dropped it because Mark Bould series Doctor Who and Blakes bered with various kinds of was covering the ground in his arti- Seven, the former beginning 23 affection — several incarnations cle (Bould, ‘Monster’). In the ab- November 1963 in a Saturday of The Tomorrow People (1974– sence of that article, let me reinstate teatime slot on BBC1 and featur- 1978), a partial adaptation of The that deleted version of section 9: ing an eccentric old man — ap- Tripods (1984–1985), intended as parently an alien — who a replacement for Doctor Who, as travelled through time and space well as occasional plays by Nigel There is a shared media back- in a spaceship disguised as a Po- Kneale, serials by Michael J. Bird ground to the Boom writers aged lice call box, rescuing people and and so on. Perhaps more impor- between thirty and fifty, which saving the day. When the initial tant than any of this, though, is has informed their aesthetic. One actor in the rôle, William Hart- the shared heritage of main- of the earliest — this generation

24 stream programming such as been active in Hollywood; Neil Gai- — . ‘alt.space.’ Vector: The Critical Journal Blue Peter, Tiswas, shows featur- man is likely to join him. of the British Science Fiction Association ing northern comedians, Monty 10. Each voter was given five votes 197 (January/February, 1998): 17–19. Python’s Flying Circus, The Good- which would be weighted accord- — . ‘Freedom in an Owned World: ies (especially the episodes ‘Kit- ing to their ranking. The top ten was Warhammer Fiction and the Interzone ten Kong’ and one where 9th Coney, Hello Summer, Goodbye Generation.’ Vector: The Critical children’s tv characters take- (1975) and Brunner, The Sheep Look Journal of the British Science Fiction over the world), Fawlty Towers, Up (1972), 8th Roberts, Pavane Association 229 (May/June, 2003): and Blackadder among many oth- (1968), 7th Wyndham, The Midwich 4–17. ers which have added to the un- Cuckoos (157) and Tolkien, Lord of the — . Titan. London: Voyager, 1997. conscious linguistic resources of Rings (1954–1955), 5th Wyndham, — . Voyage. London: Voyager, 1996. the writers. In Vurt the charac- The Day of the Triffids (1951), 4th Bax- Billinger, Paul. Review of Alastair ters hallucinate a typical Satur- ter, (1993), 3rd Brun- Reynolds, Revelation Space. Vector: The day night’s viewing from the ner, (1968), 2nd Critical Journal of the British Science 1980s. Clarke, Childhood’s End (1953) and Fiction Association 211 (May/June, 1st Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four 2000): 30. To shift from influences to the influ- (1949). The most popular writer was Blackford, Russell, Van Ikin and Sean enced, it is clear that the heritage of Arthur C. Clarke. See Butler, ‘Best’. McMullen, eds. Strange Constellations: British television sf and fantasy has 11. Contrast this statement a year later A History of Australian Science Fiction. had a influence on recent television from Miéville on the Boom: ‘Gener- Westport, Cn and London: Green- — a remake of Randall and Hopkirk ally, good to excellent “literary” wood Press, 1999. (Deceased), the darkly surreal League quality’ (Butler, ‘Beyond Consola- Bould, Mark. ‘Alloyed Optimism.’ SFS of Gentleman, and even in the details tion’ 7). 29.3 (November, 2002): 531–2. of the British Queer as Folk (one of the 12. [2004] A success story I neglected to — . ‘Blowing Raspberries: An Interview central characters’ Doctor Who fixa- discuss was Peter Crowther’s series with China Miéville.’ Vector: The tion was inspired by creator Russell of novellas and story collections un- Critical Journal of the British Science T. Davies’ own taste, indeed Davies der the PS Publishing imprint, Fiction Association 213 (September/ has penned some science fiction se- which included works by Baxter, October, 2000): 5–9. rials for children [2004: and was Barclay, Campbell, Chadbourn, — . ‘Bould on the Boom.’ SFS 29.2 (July, tasked with reviving Doctor Who]). Gallagher, Gentle, Lovegrove, 2002): 307–10. In addition, British writers have had MacLeod, McAuley, McDonald, — . ‘What Kind of Monster Are You? a huge influence in other media, no- Miéville, Newman, Roberts, Ry- Situating the Boom.’ SFS 30.3 tably comics where Alan Moore and man, Smith, Tuttle, and others. (November, 2003): 394–417. Neil Gaiman, among others, have Crowther has also edited the first Brooke-Rose, Christina. A Rhetoric of the helped to invigorate the mode. issue of a quarterly magazine, Post- Unreal: Studies in Narrative and [2004: The weekly comic 2,000 AD Scripts, dated Spring 2004. Also in Structure, Especially of the Fantastic. (1977–) has had an incalculable in- 2004, David Pringle came to the end Cambridge: Cambridge University fluence upon British sf, most obvi- of his tenure as editor of Interzone. Press, 1981. ously through the Judge Dredd The schedule had become erratic, Butler, Andrew M. ‘The Best of British.’ strip. Artists included Brian Bol- and it looks as if the economics of Vector: The Critical Journal of the British land, who went onto to work for DC, fiction magazines had finally caught Science Fiction Association 201 including Batman: The Killing Joke up; however the baton has been (September/October, 1998): 18–19. (1988) and Dave Gibbons, who also passed to TTA, which is revamping — . ‘Beyond Consolation: An Interview drew for Doctor Who Weekly and the magazine. Pringle’s importance with China Miéville.’ Vector: The drew Watchmen (1986–87), and went within British science fiction, and Critical Journal of the British Science to work for DC. Writer Alan Moore, the emergence of the Boom, is Fiction Association 223 (May/June, who had collaborated with Gibbons unique – he is not the only begetter 2002): 4–7. on 2,000 AD, Doctor Who, and Watch- of it, but he did more than most to — . ‘Billable Time: An Interview with Pat men went on to work for Marvel, DC allow it to come forward. Cadigan.’ Vector: The Critical Journal of and alone, producing such seminal the British Science Fiction Association works as Swamp Thing, V for Ven- 225 (September/October, 2002): 4–8. detta, Batman: The Killing Joke, From Bibliography — . ‘Modelling Sf: Fred Pfeil’s Hell, and The League of Extraordinary Aldiss, Brian. Billion Year Spree: The Embarrassment.’ 72 Gentlemen. Other significant figures History of Science Fiction. London: (Spring, 1998): 81–8. include Grant Morrison, Bryan Tal- Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973. — . ‘Strange Case of Mr Banks: Doubles bot, John Wagner, and Dave Ballard, J. G. ‘Which way to inner space?’ and The Wasp Factory.’ Foundation 76 McKean. Neil Gaiman wrote The New Worlds 40.118 (1962): 2–3, 116–18. (Summer, 1999): 17–27. Sandman and Miracle Man, as well as Banks, Iain. The Bridge. London: — . ‘The View from the Foresight collaborating with Terry Pratchett Macmillan, 1986. Centre.’ Vector: The Critical Journal of on Good Omens (1990) and J. Michael — . Walking on Glass. London: the British Science Fiction Association Straczynski on Babylon 5.] Finally, Macdonald, 1985. 219 (September/October, 2001): 3. the British film industry remains — . The Wasp Factory. London: — . ‘The View from the Hugos.’ Vector: immersed in heritage and comedies Macdonald, 1984. The Critical Journal of the British Science penned by Richard Curtis, although Banks, Iain M. Consider Phlebas. London: Fiction Association 220 (November/ Bond has at least one foot in the sf Macmillan, 1987. December, 2001): 3. camp. However recent years have Baxter, Stephen. ‘Adventures in the 21st — . ‘The View from the Revolution.’ seen low budget sf and horror films Century: The Future History of TV21.’ Vector: The Critical Journal of the British such as Reign of Fire, Dog Soldiers and Vector: The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association 213 28 Days Later. Clive Barker has long Science Fiction Association 224 (September/October, 2000): 3. (July/August, 2002): 4–8.

25 Butler, Andrew M., Tanya Brown and Jack, Ian. ‘Introduction.’ Granta: The — . Pollen. Greater Manchester: Ring- Paul Billinger. ‘The Best of British IV: Magazine of New Writing 81 (Spring, pull, 1995. The 1980s and 1990s.’ Vector: The 2003): 9-14. — . Vurt. Littleborough: Ringpull, 1993. Critical Journal of the British Science Jeffery, Steve. Review of Roger Levy, Palmer, Stephen. Memory Seed. London: Fiction Association 212 (July/August, Reckless Sleep. Vector: The Critical Orbit, 1996. 2000): 11–14. Journal of the British Science Fiction Pfeil, Fred. Another Tale to Tell: Politics and Butler, Andrew M., Colin Greenland and Association 211 (May/June, 2000): 28. Narrative in Postmodern Culture. Paul Kincaid. ‘The Best of British II: Jones, Gwyneth. Bold as Love: A Near London and New York: Verso, 1990. The 1960s.’ Vector: The Critical Journal Future Fantasy. London: Gollancz, Pollack, Rachel. Review of Colin Green- of the British Science Fiction Association 2001. land, Take Back Plenty. Foundation 51 210 (March/April, 2000): 20–3. — . Kairos. London: Unwin Hyman, (Spring, 1991): 102–3. Clute, John and , eds. The 1988. Pratchett, Terry. The Colour of Magic. Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. — . Kairos. London: Gollancz, 1995. London: Colin Smythe, 1983. London: Orbit, 1993. — . North Wind. London: Gollancz, 1995. Priest, Christopher. Inverted World. Cobley, Michael. ‘Young, Wired and — . Phoenix Café. London: Gollancz, 1997. London: Faber, 1974. Fairly Dangerous: The Secret History — . White Queen. London: Gollancz, — . The Separation. London: Simon and of British Cyberpunk.’ Vector: The 1992. Schuster, 2002. Critical Journal of the British Science Jones, Langdon, ed. The New SF: An Pringle, David. ‘Interzone: How It All Fiction Association 221 (January/ Original Anthology of Modern Began.’ Vector: The Critical Journal of February, 2002): 6–8. Speculative Fiction. London: the British Science Fiction Association Collins, Paul, Steve Paulsen and Sean Hutchinson, 1969. 152 (October/November, 1989): 6–9. McMullen, eds. The MUP Kincaid, Paul. ‘The Golden Age is Now.’ Pullman, Philip. The Amber Spyglass. Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction and SFS 29.3 (November, 2002): 530–1. London: Scholastic/David Fickling, Fantasy. Carlton: U of Melbourne P, — . Thomas More and Utopia. Paper 2000. 1998. given at SFRA Conference, New Renton, Alex. ‘The Sexiest Man in British Gentle, Mary. Ash: A Secret History. Lanark, June 2002. Politics.’ Evening Standard (2001): 25. London: Gollancz, 2000. — . A Very British Genre: A Short History Reynolds, Alastair. Revelation Space. Greenland, Colin. The Entropy Exhibition: of British Fantasy and Science Fiction. London: Gollancz, 2000. Michael Moorcock and the British ‘New Folkestone: BSFA, 1995. Roberts, Adam. On. London: Gollancz, Wave’ in Science Fiction. London: Levy, Roger. Reckless Sleep. London: 2001. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. Gollancz, 2000. — . Polystom. London: Gollancz, 2003. — . Harm’s Way. London: HarperCollins, Luckhurst, Roger. ‘Cultural Governance, — . Salt. London: Gollancz, 2000. 1993. New Labour, and the British SF — . Science Fiction. London: Routledge, — . Mother of Plenty. London: Voyager, Boom.’ SFS 30.3 (November, 2003): 2000. 1998. 417–35. Robson, Justina. Silver Screen. London: — . Seasons of Plenty: Book Two in the MacLeod, Ian R. The Great Wheel. New Macmillan, 1999. Tabitha Jute Trilogy. London: York: Harcourt Brace, 1997. Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet HarperCollins, 1995. — . The Light Ages. London: Earthlight, of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. — . Take Back Plenty. London: Unwin, 2003. — . Harry Potter and the Order of the 1990. — . Voyages by Starlight. New York: Phoenix. London: Bloomsbury, 2003. Griffith, Nicola. Slow River. London: Arkham House, 1997. Ryman, Geoff. , Or a Low Voyager, 1995. MacLeod, Ken. ‘Phlebas Reconsidered.’ Comedy. London: Unwin, 1989. Grimwood, Jon Courtenay. neoAddix. The True Knowledge of Ken MacLeod. Ed — . The Unconquered Country: A Life London: NEL, 1997. Andrew M. Butler and Farah History. London: Allen and Unwin, Hamilton, Peter F. Mindstar Rising. Mendlesohn. Reading: SFF, 2003. 1–3. 1986. London: Pan, 1993. — . The Sky Road. London: Orbit, 1999. Speller, Maureen Kincaid. ‘Emergent — . The Naked God. London: Macmillan, — . The Star Fraction. London: Orbit, Property: An Interview with John 1999. 1995. Meaney.’ Vector: The Critical Journal of — . The Nano Flower. London: Pan, 1995. McAuley, Paul J. Fairyland. London: the British Science Fiction Association — . The Neutronium Alchemist. London: Gollancz, 1995. 201 (September/October, 1998): 6–9. Macmillan, 1997. McDonald, Ian. Desolation Road. New Stableford, Brian. ‘Science Fiction in the — . A Quantum Murder. London: Pan, York: Bantam Spectra, 1988. Seventies.’ Vector: The Critical Journal 1994. — . Empire Dreams. New York: Bantam of the British Science Fiction Association — . The Reality Dysfunction. London: Spectra, 1988. 200 (July/August, 1998): 21–4. Macmillan, 1996. — . Sacrifice of Fools. London: Gollancz, Terran, Chris. ‘Mining the Interzone: Hartwell, David G. and Damien 1996. David Pringle Interviewed.’ Matrix: Broderick, eds. Centaurus: The Best of Middleton, Tim. ‘The Works of Iain M. The Newsletter of the British Science Australian Science Fiction. New York: Banks: A Critical Introduction.’ Fiction Association 121 (September/ Tor, 1999. Foundation: The International Review of October, 1996): 18–20. Holdstock, Robert and Christopher Science Fiction 76 (Summer, 1999): Webb, Janeen. ‘A Literary Foment: Priest, eds. Stars of Albion. London: 5–16. Australian SF Now.’ SFS 27.1 (March, Pan, 1979. Miéville, China. Perdido Street Station. 2000): 114–18. Ings, Simon. Headlong. London: London: Macmillan, 2000. Wymer, Rowland. ‘How “Safe” Is John HarperCollinsVoyager, 1999. Noon, Jeff. Falling Out of Cars. London: Wyndham? A Closer Look at His — . Hot Head. London: Grafton, 1992. Doubleday, 2002. Work, With Particular Reference to — . Hotwire. London: HarperCollins, — . Nymphomation. London: Doubleday, The Chrysalids.’ Foundation 55 1995. 1997. (Summer, 1992): 25–36.

26 Pioneer Award Acceptance Speech

Andrew M. Butler

[The SET editors tracked down Andrew the wrong person, and I had to turn my really couldn’t be avoided. Then there is Butler’s article because it won the most computer back on to double check what my health — I registered with a doctor recent Pioneer Award for an essay writ- the message had said. You see, ever since and had a medical, which revealed my ten about science fiction. Also, Andrew I’ve been writing I’ve written under the blood pressure to be so high that it was is one of our favourite SF critics. The pseudonym of Andrew M. Butler, and so practically off the scale. In fact they had award was made formally at the 2004 perhaps the judges confused me with to send for a bigger device to measure it conference of the Science Fiction Re- somebody else, such as, say, Andrew with. Given the blood was so pressur- search Association held at Skokie, Illi- Butler. ised, it was then rather odd that they then nois. Andrew faced the problem of (Actually, there is an Andrew Butler, had to extract any to take to test, when travelling several thousand kilometres who edits or has edited one of the Tolkien surely it should spurt out at the tiniest to receive an award from a committee Society magazines in Britain, although to prick. I’m now on beta-blockers and the chairman (Paul Kincaid) who lived not the best of my knowledge I’ve never been pressure’s coming down. far from him in Britain. Hence, his confused with him. It may, of course, be There are, of course, people I should acceptance speech was delivered by that he’s been confused with me, which thank in my absence — although perhaps Maureen Kincaid Speller — friend of rather suggests I should offer a third they’d rather not in case they get the Andrew, partner of Paul Kincaid, and apology, to him.) blame. Obviously thanks go to the people founding editor of Acnestis — at the I am also confused with Andy Saw- who judged the award and to those SFRA 2004 conference.] yer. I have to be careful what I say here, people who have organised this year’s because I have nothing against Andy SFRA conference; as a former co-organ- Sawyer, but it’s just that Andy Sawyer iser of an SFRA conference I have some I’d like to begin with two apologies: first does such a good job of being Andy Saw- idea of what you are going through right I am not Andrew Butler. Nor for that yer, that I can’t begin to compete. I can now. matter am I Andrew M. Butler. remember a Liverpool PhD student sug- Thank you to Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Secondly, I, which is to say Andrew gesting a drink after work, which was a Jr, whose suggestion that Mark Bould and/or Andrew M. Butler, channelled pleasant idea, but inconvenient as I lived and I should do a special issue of Science for now via Maureen Kincaid Speller, am two hundred miles away – whereas Fiction Studies on the British Boom we sorry not to be with you at this confer- Andy was rather closer – and then there learnt of by reading the journal. I jotted ence, because I would very much have a letter of complaint from a reviewer down my ideas about the boom on the liked to receive this award in person – in whose name had been misspelt in Foun- back on an envelope and Istvan nodded part because it might be the very first dation and who, by the way, had enjoyed sagely, before taking it away with him, thing I’ve won. talking to me at a conference (to which I presumably to ensure that I’d never write Actually, I might be lying. I have this hadn’t actually been). I presume that was the article. dim memory of a school sports day, Andy Sawyer again at that conference. Thanks to my old comrade, Mark where I led the field in the egg and spoon I have to say, and this is partly why I Bould, who generously indulged my race. insist on my middle initial and partly a neuroses as they developed at the insti- Then there was the occasion when I result of it, that I live in constant fear of tution where we worked together for came second in the Science Fiction Foun- being exposed as the charlatan I so clearly three and a half years, and whose article dation raffle, and won a pile of signed am. This is not some inverted modesty on (Mark Bould, ‘What Kind of Monster Are Neil Gaiman comic books. First place my part or fishing for compliments, but I You? Situating the Boom’, Science Fiction went to John Clute who, if I recall cor- am genuinely surprised by the fact that Studies 30.3 (November 2003), pp. 394– rectly, won a Happy Meal at a major anyone wishes to read what I write. The 417] was written in tandem with my own. burger chain. I think I got the better deal. M. is a comfort blanket. The shy, retiring, I suspect we both ended up stealing from But I did plan to be with you today. It introverted Andrew Butler can sit at his each others’ drafts, and it must have been appealed to my sense of humour that computer, drafting a script that Andrew those bits that swung the award for me. evening when I received an email about M. Butler can read out – but Andrew I’ve learnt so much from so many of the award from Paul Kincaid, the chair of Butler could never say those things. In you, and I’m constantly struck by the the Pioneer judges, who lives some fact Andrew Butler would be reluctant to excellence of the science fiction academic twenty minutes away from me, giving be with you because he’d be embar- community, as scholars and as friends. me news that meant we both needed to rassed. My fear is that if I lose my M., then Thank you all. fly a few thousand miles and across sev- you’ll never hear from me again. And now thinking back, I can remem- eral time zones to shake each other’s (I realise, of course, that this may ber more details of that egg and spoon hands. I did wonder whether it would be mean some concerted campaign to leave race. It would have been 1975 or 1976, more convenient for Paul and I simply to out my M. from each appearance of my and it was actually my birthday. Think of invite all of you lot across to visit us. As pseudonym in future, precisely in the me being five or six and in short trousers. it is, you are being addressed by someone hope that I disappear.) I presume I’d already demonstrated my even closer to Paul, and that appeals even Neither of us can be with you for two prowess by coming a distant last in every more. further reasons – I am right in the middle other race else I’d entered, but for some At first, I confess, I presumed that of hitting a marking deadline and this reason I went in for the egg and spoon Paul’s email was a joke, or that he’d got

27 race in which you had to balance an egg- keep my nerve and my balance . . . Five So this is the first thing I’ve ever won, sized ball on a spoon over fifty yards, yards. Four yards . . . Three . . . Two . . . and I’m flattered and flabbergasted and without the aid of glue or your thumb. I And then I looked back to see how far honoured beyond words to receive it, turned out to be good at this, and in fact ahead I was. Disaster! I dropped the egg. even in absentia. If you do find yourself was leading the field. The crowd were By the time I’d scooped it up, everyone in Canterbury (especially if you picked cheering me on as everyone else was else had crossed the line. Later that day I up a bottle of Laphroig in duty-free), do dropping their eggs all over the place. I had to retire to bed with sun stroke or drop in so I can thank you in person. was a good dozen yards ahead of who- heat exhaustion. Thank you. ever was in second place, if I could only There’s a moral there, I suspect.

Dissenting opinion

If this goes on: Butler, Science Fiction Studies, Interzone and the ‘British Boom’

Paul Brazier

[The following section was first pub- I would expect a critical investigation case, but the current ‘boom’ features lished as ‘If This Goes On’, Interzone such as this purports to be to attempt to mostly writers who were already active 193, Spring 2004, pp. 59–60; also re- examine the evidence, all of it, and draw when Labour came to power, so while viewed were Gwyneth Jones’ Midnight conclusions based on it. Instead of this, the government may have encouraged a Lamp, Mary Gentle’s 1610 and Eliza- we get a hotch-potch of assertions that pre-existing trend, it seems ridiculous to beth Hand’s Bibliomancy.] select their evidence and ignore large claim that they are responsible for it, I don’t know much about Paul Brazier, tranches of what has happened since however in favour of them you might be. but I do know that he has been involved 1984. Matt Hills now offers an intriguing in the publication of David Pringle’s Following the Miéville interview, look at counterfictions in Kim Newman’s Interzone for some years, and, since there is a farrago entitled ‘Thirteen Ways work. Again, there is a lot to think about David has relinquished editorship of of Looking at the British Boom’ wherein here, but precious little to do with the the magazine, has announced his own Andrew M. Butler, having apparently boom, and also precious little to do with subscriber site, quercus.com, which made notes towards an essay, then finds science fiction. I like Kim Newman and I will feature high-quality new short sci- that he can’t make a coherent essay out of think he is a fine writer, but I have read ence fiction.] those notes but doesn’t want to waste all few of his books because I often don’t that work so publishes the notes un- understand the post-modern cultural ref- digested. erences in them. I would have put him We don’t often review academic journals The point apparently being made is down as a horror writer but Hills claims here [in Interzone] because they plough that, unlike the New Wave, there is no his rewritings of Robert Louis Steven- their own furrow and it is parallel and one movement that has given rise to this son’s Jekyll and Hyde story mean he is rather distant from our focus on fiction. ‘boom’; there are just an extraordinarily reinventing Gothic SF as a counterfactual However, Science Fiction Studies No 91 diverse number of different people who or, to use the more familiar term, a paral- ($US12, SF-TH Inc. at DePauw Univer- have all made it happen. This collection lel world. All very interesting but not my sity) purports to be a first attempt to of undigested nuggets concludes with idea of science fiction, and certainly not examine ‘The British Boom’. I place that Butler quoting largely from his own central to ‘the boom.’ title in ironic quotation marks because I work elsewhere, which only reveals how Joan Gordon returns with a long essay disagree that any such thing exists and self-referential the whole process has on China Miéville. Were they really so find the essays offered here unfocused, been. short of material that they had to feature unconvincing and extremely partial. Next up, Mark Bould makes a brave the same author examined by the same The issue begins with an interview by stab at linking the ‘Boom’ to the Doctor critic twice? Perhaps so, because the next Joan Gordon of China Miéville and as Who milieu and media SF in general. This piece is the text of a largely autobio- such it is an interesting piece of work. is an interesting point of view. There is graphical talk given by Stephen Baxter However, it quickly becomes plain that certainly a stream of continuity that can’t about baby boomers. It is fascinating in the editors of this magazine see Miéville be ignored here and I would have liked itself but adds little to the debate about as somehow embodying or representing to see more. However, instead, it is fol- ‘the British Boom.’ the British Boom, whereas the books he lowed by Roger Luckhurst trying to Finally, Andy Butler and Mark Bould has published are no more than some of claim that the ‘boom’ is somehow a prod- offer a selection of comments from other the more recent representatives of a solid uct of the Labour Government’s cultural leading lights in British science fiction, a trend in British publishing that has been governance. He makes an interesting kind of letter column before the fact, and growing for the past 20 years.

28 most of the penetrating comments that not a boom, but the emergence into no- Astounding/Analog characterises the appear in this publication appear here. tice of a long-established steady growth, Golden Age of science fiction, while The section closes with a long list of writ- a simple resurgence in science fiction in Michael Moorcock and New Worlds does ings that might or might not be consid- Britain. the same for the New Wave. But this new ered part of the boom. But their sins are more heinous even movement, this so-called British Boom, is And I threw my hands up in despair. than that. Much is made throughout this not magazine-focused at all. Of course, It is mentioned several times that the publication of the fragmentary nature of Interzone has launched the careers of definition of science fiction that Science what they are trying to discuss. Of course many novelists from Stephen Baxter, Fiction Studies uses has been revamped it’s fragmentary: they’ve pulled in every- Richard Calder, and Greg Egan to, lat- recently to allow more discussion of re- thing they can find that might be labelled terly, Liz Williams, and it is difficult to lated works such as fantasy and horror. fantastic in any way in order to justify assess accurately how much influence However, this reading list and the pre- talking about works of fantasy as being the fact that there was a home-grown vious list of authors who might be at the centre of their subject where they professional magazine market has had — deemed to be part of ‘the boom’ seems should have been talking about works of certainly, several of the new writers that determined to rope in every single science fiction. I have introduced here are now produc- author who has published anything even They got closest to understanding ing and submitting novels to publishers vaguely fantastic from the past twenty what they were doing when they dis- and I have high hopes for them — but years and, by excluding nothing, effec- cussed cultural continuity. The editors, most of this new resurgence is novel- tively fails to draw any kind of boundary the people who buy books that then sell, based, and it is sad to have to acknow- around its subject area. they are the ones who have made this ledge that perhaps the magazine as the Its sins of inclusion, however, are happen and they are the products and guiding light of a generation of novelists massively overwhelmed by its sins of manifestations of that cultural continu- has had its day. omission. To fail to examine the role of ity. There are far too many to name them Nevertheless, to ignore the work of Peter F. Hamilton in starting the snow- all, but certain names spring immedi- the editors in the trade today is quite ball rolling is to ignore the core power- ately to mind — Malcolm Edwards, John simply to ignore the reason there is any- house of the current success of science Jarrold, Jane Johnson, Peter Lavery, thing that could be termed a boom. This fiction in Britain. Equally, to overlook Cathy Gale, who originally encouraged issue of Science Fiction Studies adds no- Iain M. Banks is to dismiss an extra- Peter F. Hamilton and, of course, our thing to our understanding of where it ordinary talent who has succeeded in own David Pringle — have been there, came from or where it is going. If you bridging the gulf between mainstream soldiering on, largely unacknowledged want real insight, look rather to the his- and science fiction and insisted that each outside the trade, but doing the work that torical record of Interzone to give you side take the other seriously. And to pass has made modern British science fiction some notion of what might have caused over Alasdair Reynolds is miss the prime the success it is. today’s boom. David Pringle should be example of what they are talking about, For many, John W. Campbell editing proud.

Thank you, everybody for raising the money through the BBB (Bring Bruce Bayside) Fund to send me (Bruce Gillespie) to Corflu in February 2005.

The Fund has been subscribed beyond the wildest dreams of me or the administrators, but we still have available copies for sale of

The Incompleat Bruce Gillespie A selection of Bruce Gillespie’s fanzine writing

$10 from Bill Wright, Unit 4, 1 Park Street, St Kilda West VIC 3182 or see me at Corflu or Potlatch in San Francisco in February.

29