The White Notebooks #13 ]

come quick! they’re everywhere

[ the white notebooks #13 ]

Kershed

I WAS INCLINED HERE to begin with a recap of recent called ‘the threshold’, which is that barrier that prevents reading, but basically that has been tramlined, summed up an author’s bibliography from becoming unnecessarily by the above single word headline, suitably in bold type. extensive when they have actually contributed little to My more regular reading about Thailand and Asian spec- speculative fiction: to get an idea of this, scroll to the ulative fiction has been diverted into a very British cul-de- bottom of any bibliography page and see how much non- sac these last four months after an engaging encounter genre work is included there. For current examples, Robert with the writings of the prolific Gerald Kersh (1911–1968). Silverberg’s [3] non-genre work appears to be more My first Kersh happened around ten years ago, extensively researched than Isaac Asimov’s [4]. Then go see with the 1941 short story ‘Frozen Beauty’ in Mike Ashley’s the extent of Ian Fleming’s [5] spec-fic output, and see how The Best of British SF 1 (1977). It didn’t make much of an many James Bond books we list (clue: none). It’s a vague, impression, and he remained pretty much forgotten by me movable feast but ‘the threshold’ is actually a necessity, and until June this year when I encountered his 1953 novelette authors who are ‘above the threshold’ are generally ‘Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?’ in Damon decided upon by editorial consensus. I gained the Knight’s 1968 anthology 100 Years of Science Fiction. It was agreement of several other editors that Gerald Kersh the writing of this (only slightly) bizarre tale that made me deserves to be considered as ‘above the threshold’, with a sit up and take notice, and checking out his ISFDB page more complete bibliography that includes his non-genre [1] I was inevitably led to Harlan Ellison’s ‘Kersh site’ [2], work. For comparison, think of Kurt Vonnegut [6]. in which Ellison® has laid out a possibly complete So to expand Kersh’s bibliography means also, bibliography of all Kersh’s writing including his necessarily, to explore it. Kersh had twenty-one collections journalism, with the necessary coda that there may indeed of short stories and twenty-one novels, only one of which be more stuff undiscovered and currently lost to history. was science fiction (The Secret Masters, aka. The Great Ellison’s Kersh’s bibliography first appeared on 10 Wash). His speculative output in short stories fared much February 1999, and as I made note of in the ISFDB header, better, with several collections (a few posthumous) it appears not to have been updated since then. comprising entirely of horror, science fiction and fantasy. I’ve since been going over Ellison’s Kersh Many of his other collections are sprinkled with bibliography with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, speculative content amid the more everyday fiction. Even because there is so much information there of use to the his mildly famous short fiction series on the great criminal ISFDB where our own Kersh biblio, as I discovered, was Karmesin has a couple of ghost stories. actually sorely lacking. We have a thing at the ISFDB In the last few months I’ve read five of the

come quick! they’re everywhere [ the white notebooks #13 ] August 2561 / 2018 a print perzine for limited distribution, available for ‘the usual’ also at efanzines.com. email: [email protected] 136/200 Emerald Hill Village, Soi 6, Hua Hin, Prachuap Khiri Khan 77110, Thailand set in 9/12 Didot and Letter Gothic

[ 1 ] collections that are available as e-books, but I still have essays, often decades old and so far outside of Ellison’s many more to go. Only a scant few of the combined forty- own sphere of contact? No, I suspect he came by Kersh’s two titles he produced are available as actual books own records, perhaps acquired some years after Kersh currently in print, several in Faber and Faber’s eclectic died in November 1968, and the highly useful bibliography ‘Faber Finds’ series, so the rest will have to be found on he presents on his own website (in a section known widely Amazon, AbeBooks or eBay. His bibliography at the as “the Kersh site”) is simply a result of his distillation of ISFDB is now twice as long as when I first looked at it, Kersh’s own record-keeping. Looking at the finer details of and there is still a long distance to be covered. the bibliography, it’s very hard to see it any other way. I’ve found Kersh to be an enjoyable writer. His Nevertheless I’ve discovered it is also riddled with imagination is prodigious, his writing bold and confident if errors that are not backed up by other sources (such as a little lacking in finesse, although he does have a Phil Stephensen-Payne’s extensive and detailed Galactic particularly good turn of phrase now and then. His Central [7]). Not all of the errors can be explained away as preoccupations are very much within the ‘low’ end of merely typographic or by Ellison’s strict adherence to the society: rough people, criminal behaviour, grubby city information’s poor presentation, which is basic to say the streets, coarse language, wars, deceit and a sizeable amount least. If any incorrect information does come to us via the of desperation. His speculative fiction also has a certain website then these errors could well be Kersh’s own. muscular charm about it, as if it was something he enjoyed I think the time for a better, updated presentation writing but knew he would never be up there with the of Kersh’s bibliography is overdue – twenty years is too greats. His speculative ideas are generally simple and long a duration to pass without a single recorded update. unrefined, but they work. Some of his story endings are Much (although not all) of this information is useful to the abrupt and don’t really satisfy, but he is also the kind of purpose of the ISFDB, but while making it more widely writer you would never imagine having writer’s block: he’d available is certainly good work, I wonder if people would ignore any criticism and evade the self-doubt by simply not also want to see the complete bibliography (one that getting on with the next story. includes his journalism) presented in a more readable way. Kersh was Harlan Ellison’s favourite writer, and Maybe I should think about working on that too. it’s easy to see why as their championing of the underdog But that’s a project for the future – it’s not as if Mr. Kersh is consistent. I imagine Ellison found a reflection of his hasn’t given me enough to be getting on with already. own abrasiveness in Kersh’s uncompromising outlook and directness as a writer. I’ve also wondered how Ellison [1] http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1060 came to present this trove of bibliographic information. [2] http://www.harlanellison.com/kersh He makes it look like it’s all his own work and alludes to [3] http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?54 “six years of research”, but what far distant avenues on the [4] http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?5 other side of the Atlantic would he have had to pursue to [5] http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?31742 gain so much detailed bibliographic information on all [6] http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?62 those fiction sales, translations and all those newspaper [7] http://www.philsp.com k Biopics

Kafka 1991, Steven Soderbergh

Yes, it’s a stretch to call this a biopic, but then Soderbergh has always played fast and loose with his material – Solaris being another case, a movie that I actually liked more than the Tarkovsky original (which puts me in a minority of 1). Kafka is an original story set in Kafka’s own universe of chronic self-doubt, a distant relationship with his father, the frustrations of his ofﬁce job, the personal perils of writing – and overseeing everything, an imposing and impenetrable Castle. Except that with the help of a rebel group of dissidents opposed to the status quo in this unnamed city, Kafka does breach the Castle and learn the inner workings and meaning behind his dystopian society. I’d say it’s a journey worth taking, if only to see the wonderful performance of Armin Mueller-Stahl as detective Grubach; Ian Holm provides some comic relief and Jeremy Irons makes a good Kafka, although the secret of the Castle somehow does not really ﬁt with everything else. But this is still an interesting (and fun) creative diversion from Kafka’s true story.

[ 2 ] Dystopia Mon Amour

Beyond Brave New World: Four More British Dystopias

Lucky residents of Happyville™ know dystopias are all the certainly straightened him out on that score, or at least rage these days, and nowhere more so than in the deity- tried to. But of course there have been more successful blessed United States of America [1]. It is my belief that British dystopias that have both feet firmly planted on the American alternatives to their perfectly utopian existence correct side of the fence: the dark side, the side that have mostly been written – with the obvious exception of doesn’t also try to kid its imaginary citizens that in some works by that degenerate socialist scribbler Norman insincere Harold Macmillan sense they’ve never had it so Spinrad [2] – so that readers can feel superior to the poor good, and are in fact living in a benign utopia the way unfortunates forced to exist in such dreadfully depressing Huxley tried it on with his readers. “No,” saith the big bad cultural situations. This is why Americans love dystopias, government, “what you have here is a shit world that you because let’s face it, bad things can’t possibly happen in have to just learn to get along in. We are making no their own country and they just need a bit of enter- apologies and no claims to the contrary.” tainment now and then. We all know utopias are Boring So let’s start with the big brother of them all. with a capital B, and for them to work better as interesting When reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and thoughtful literature they must acquire a dash of as a teenager in the late 1970s I interpreted it, perhaps Rebellion. naïvely, as a useful piece of socialist political science Americans have always been very good at fiction and little more, a somewhat far-fetched thought rebellion, other countries less so. Some experiment and clearly a proverbial canary countries just seem to accept their very in the coal mine for the British political existence as ‘burgeoning real-world intelligentsia. Instead, as we have found, dystopian nightmare’ and wear it as a badge especially in the early 21st century, the of pride, in my reckoning probably none intervening years seem to have brought us more so than the British. Even the East considerably closer to too many aspects of European nations weren’t happy with the Orwell’s vision, particularly with respect to totalitarianism they lived under and surveillance in the UK and the conduct of managed to emphatically get rid of it; on the our political hypocrisies on a global scale. other hand the United Kingdom, aka. Some details of Nineteen Eighty-Four Blighty, aka. Airstrip One, since World War 2 have become so well known that you need has enthusiastically and consistently flirted only to read the book to see how they all with real-world dystopian ideas with a view join up. So as a warning, Nineteen Eighty- to actually adopting them, whatever party Four has continued to serve the Western happens to be in charge. Our political world very well indeed, constantly classes might even view dystopian literature, referenced by the world’s media, and one should they read it, as a ‘how to’ rather than wishes that Russian and Chinese literature as a warning (well, mostly). Therefore, it could have come up with equally potent must be said, dystopias are already in our fables of their own that would have had a blood… we have the dystopias the world similarly enlightening effect on their own needs to check out. populations and a restraining effect on their (So how did I get to have such a leaders. The intervening sixty-odd years cynical take on the future prospects of my since it was written have often resonated own country of birth? I have to admit, with sentences and passages from this book probably by reading British dystopias.) that could be read as historical fact in parts I already looked at Aldous Huxley’s of the world – the excesses of Russian and Brave New World (1932) in some depth in my Chinese communism particularly, the last essay on dystopias and came out of it former which Orwell feared English rather down on Mr. Huxley, mostly because Socialism had a real danger of resembling – his (and his novel’s) eugenically utopian or echoes of the world’s present nervous aspirations were undercut, let’s face it, by condition, in which realities are habitually his naïvety about how these things actually fabricated for entire populations in a way play out in the real world. World War 2 that would horrify our earlier generations.

[ 3 ] I suspect Orwell did not wish to and dark glasses are the only item of see his vision as being so necessarily clothing because they help keep your extreme, but his faultless extrapolation feelings to yourself. But being a bit of a helped him to round out the novel in the rebel, Uncumber looks for something more absolutist way that he did. It has inevitably tactile and goes on her way to the outside become one of the defining books of the world in search of Noli, a surface-living man twentieth century, and with the invention of she accidentally encountered on her Newspeak [3] he also made a useful and holovision TV. He unexpectedly turns out to indelible stamp on the English language be a selfish low class polygamist among and conceptual thought everywhere. other things, and her situation get worse Which brings me directly to Derek from there. Raymond’s A State of Denmark (1964), As an allegory for the dangers of because a pull-quote on the back cover of withdrawal from the world A Very Private the Serpent’s Tail 2007 edition describes Life works well but the story never really this as “alternative science fiction on the comes alive as anything other than a mild scale of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four”, comedy of manners. Yes, life is always far which is, frankly, rubbish. A State of more complex than we can perceive from a Denmark doesn’t have the same imaginative naïve standpoint, but that observation scope, even remotely, though it is certainly a seems self-evident from the beginning and descendant of Orwell’s masterpiece because the development of this theme never really this dystopia’s purpose is intended mostly, moves beyond second gear. again, as a political warning. A British A British dystopia that deals with socialist Prime Minister of the 1960s called restless youth far better and more Jobling reveals his true colours and quickly realistically is of course Anthony Burgess’s turns England into a relentless dictatorship, A Clockwork Orange (1962), a book I put off while Wales and Scotland secede from the reading for about twenty-five years largely United Kingdom and the Left just rolls over as a result of Kubrick’s brutal but superbly and dies. Set against Jobling is Richard directed film, and also because the small but Watt, a political journalist living under self- important differences to it that the original imposed exiled in Italy; this exotic and book contains are not often commented on. rather languorous setting for the first half of Now we’re in the days of the ASBO [4] A the book sets a pace that creaks along, but Clockwork Orange is still, thankfully, not yet it’s there mostly to draw parallels with Mussolini. The a book noted for being a prediction. Instead, as a warning second half is far more descriptive of England under it seems to have functioned very well, largely as a result of dictatorship and starts off far more boisterous, though Kubrick’s truncated version (which I’d like to compare endures to a downbeat finale of unceasing hopelessness. with Andy Warhol's Vinyl [5] someday). But what was lost Serpent’s Tail reissued this novel posthumously; it’s to Kubrick – he was unaware of the book’s final chapter different from the usual English noir Robin Cook (as because it was omitted from US editions – is a final sense Derek Raymond) offered up but in places it’s plausible – a of personal sympathy for the violent and unreliable small alert that, actually, it could happen here if we let our teenage narrator, Alex. It’s actually what keeps the book guard down. I cautiously recommend this because in truth alive and relevant because Burgess came down clearly on I suspect any aspiring British dictator would encounter far the side of his distinctly amoral anti-hero, despite having more resistance than is portrayed here. been driven to write A Clockwork Orange out of personal When it comes to the political overtaking the experience and loss from precisely the kind of violence he personal, at the other end of this spectrum is Michael describes. It must have been difficult to write for that Frayn’s A Very Private Life (1968) which, although clearly reason alone, though when set against the even greater depicting an unnamed future dystopia, is actually less an amorality of a misguided government trying to deal SF novel and more a futurist fairy tale in which personal effectively with youth crime it’s clear the book emerged space has become of paramount importance. The young out of Burgess asking himself some hard questions while female protagonist Uncumber lives in a sterile still feeling a justifiable rage. Which makes the book a underground world, being a cultural reaction against the moral one, and far easier to experience than the film invasions of privacy that began in the 20th century. despite the complexities of his invented language, Nadsat Emotions must be drug-induced to be acceptable, babies [3], which somehow also serves to veil the violence. Of are made at the factory when you provide the ingredients, which there’s plenty.

[1] The majority of dystopias that are tagged as such at the ISFDB are from American authors, and by far the greater majority of these have appeared in the 21st century. [2] Actually I love the writing of Mr. Spinrad. We are even friends on Facebook. Please retain your sense of humour. [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order [5] http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_(1965_ﬁlm) [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadsat

[ 4 ] Markers

lightly edited

WAHF . . . company, but my hours have been cut down to so few. At Nic Farey, Bruce Gillespie, David A. Hardy & Penny Hill. least they allow me the luxury of saying on my resume that I am indeed employed, and thanks to these days off and a I’m mourning the passing of Steve Sneyd (1941-2018), a good internet connection, I have flooded the market with regular correspondent to The White Notebooks who died on resumes, and I may have some interviews in the next 13 June after a sudden encounter with emphysema. Steve couple of days. Another issue of Big Sky? Bring it on, I was notable for several things, primarily for being possibly look forward to it. I think the newest edition of Graham the most published poet in the UK (and a genre poet, no Charnock’s Vibrator is his last one. I suspect poor health less); also the long run of his frequent handwritten fanzine may be catching up with him. Data Dump which deserves to be indexed in its entirety at I knew there’d be a happier end to this LoC… we the ISFDB, and also (perhaps most famously) his just- will meet at Corflu Toronto! I have purchased my about-readable handwritten correspondence. This was membership, even though I have yet to get any Steve’s particular idiosyncrasy and I shall miss his letters, confirmation from Colin or Catherine. Well, I will show and our correspondence also included exchanges of books up, and see if they let me in. of poetry. It’s fair to say he ploughed a lonely furrow but he clearly loved what he did, and those who knew him JERRY KAUFMAN, Seattle, WA; 13 May 2018 personally (I am not among them) have attested to what a Suzle and I were glad to see you at Corflu, though really lovely guy he was. Rest In Peace, Steve. we saw you and didn't seize a chance to talk. Maybe we’ll First up is Lloyd Penney, who sent me his LoC for issue remedy this some day. #12 in February 2018, and which I never actually read as it My usual dream locations and landscapes are remained in my Inbox swamped under the 3,000 other often a twisted version of New York, record shops, emails from assorted lists I’m on. I clearly need to be convention hotels, and apartments I don't recognize but more thorough on LoCs received, and my sincere are my home in the dreams. Sometimes in the city dreams, apologies to Lloyd. there are buses. I read Brave New World at about the same age as LLOYD PENNEY, Etobicoke, ON; 28 February 2018 you did, and followed it up with Ape and Essence, Island, Many thanks for The White Notebooks #11. So many people and perhaps one or two others (I did not read Revisited or, have indeed written about the passing of Randy Byers, and surprisingly, The Doors of Perception). I’m glad you’ve his excellence of character. More and more I feel isolated looked at Huxley’s views in BNW, because it has rekindled here in Toronto; I had met him a couple of times, but my interest in his work. I think I should re-read the book never got to really know him. My loss, and indeed, all our and see if I can reconcile the contradictory themes for losses. I hope there’s happier things to discuss as I pass myself. the first page. Mark Plummer talks about tallying the annual I have never been one for seeking out autographs. number of fanzines he receives. Robert Lichtman used to I have a few, but many of them were offered to me, and I do this in Trap Door, but stopped at some point when he accepted. In some ways, I consider them an invasion of saw the numbers drop below some threshold. If Mark or privacy. Yet, I have friends who seek out autographs and someone started counting the zines available in eFanzines, posed pictures with every actor who’s ever been in an SF not only the ones he prints or receives by mail or hand, movie, regardless of quality. It takes all kinds, I suppose. the numbers would perk up considerably. But if we didn’t The more authors who consider conventions as part of have eFanzines, there are many zines I think would not be their marketing campaigns, the better. published at all, or that Mark would not be on the radar of A book sale anywhere is a good thing, even after the editors. So the picture is muddy. Yvonne and I have edited out about 20% of our collection. I loved all the barking dogs, crowing roosters, Should we get a little more confident in our income singing birds, and so forth. I’d never noticed this status, maybe we might indulge ourselves, but I have my rhetorical device before. doubts. We will keep what we have left in an era where a For your Thai book file, I offer Thailand: Shifting good book is considered by many as a complete waste of Ground Between the US and a Rising China, by Benjamin rare paper resources. Zawacki, as reviewed in the New York Review of Books, May The Timothy’s down the street from me shut 24, 2018. It’s published by Zed, 370 pp, at an eye-watering down, along with the convenience store the coffee shop price of $95, $26.95 in paper. The author’s main thrust is, was a part of. I am still working for that mystery shopper according to the reviewers, that the US has handled

[ 5 ] relations with Thailand badly, and therefore Thailand has and sustainable human populations. (Consider the Gaza swung to China for its economic and political well-being. Strip, and wonder.) Brave New World asks centrally, can The reviewers say that the author has only considered free unmodified human beings live in a safe stable diplomatic and military reasons for the change, but has society? As you say our modern views of his ideas have badly failed to take into account historic and social moved on, but the problems remain. Should we all live as reasons for Thailand to feel comfortable working with we like even if that means freedom to pollute, exploit and China. plunder to exhaustion? You could argue that similarly the Ebola virus should have freedom to exploit the seven DAVID REDD, Haverfordwest, Wales; 17 May 2018 billion potential host bodies sharing its world. So Huxley’s Thanks for TWN+TLS #12; again I made the mistake of saying “we are on the horns of an ethical dilemma” might printing it on the old laserjet (pdfs can be veery slooow) have been a cop-out, but was and is all too true. but worth reading when it came out. Especially re. eugenics, which I suspect gloomily won’t Your Higgins-variation sound effects seem stay bulging under the carpet much longer. popular in final sentences. Amazingly I find that the All in all, Brave New World deserved its instant- wonderful Margery Allingham could nod, in an otherwise classic status, and its uncertain balancing-act between terrific ending: utopia and dystopia is still worth exploring as you’ve done. But if Aldous Huxley himself couldn’t sort out his The gentle clangour of the gong in the hall below contradictory ideas any better post-WWII, I doubt broke in upon the silence. whether anyone could have. Even John Brunner – – Look to the Lady, Margery Allingham intelligent, committed, well-informed – essentially But it was a rather early novel of hers. And I’m guilty retreated from our future after Shockwave Rider. Elaine myself, although I did give two sounds for your money in Morgan tried to analyse the prospects for urban my entry: civilisation in her non-fiction Falling Apart, which disappeared unnoticed, leaving her muttering sadly about In the silence they heard the river bubbling, and the having bitten off more than she could chew. Maybe the technician whistling as he worked. real message of Brave New World is that happiness, – ‘The Mammoth Hunters’, David Redd, New Worlds freedom and correct answers are simply incompatible... Quarterly #5. and from that idea 1984 got started? Elsewhere in the issue, nice to see a necessarily sketchy Again I’ve written too much on one topic. Not 1937 fan bibliography being useful in 2018. Good work, even commented on Joseph Nicholas’ experience of Douglas Mayer. In TLS #12, there’s more preservation of changing social attitudes to guns, which surely deserves otherwise unknown material in Jumsai’s History of Thai expansion. Hope your other activities and real life go well. Literature; very enlightening. I presume “turn of the century” in this context means 1900? Globalisation hit LLOYD PENNEY, Etobicoke, ON; 22 May 2018 Thai literature early. Great to finally meet you at Corflu Toronto! It was a I usually pause at mentions of John Russell helluva trip to leave Bangkok, go to Toronto and return, Fearn. His on-off attempts at non-pulp writing might but I hope you enjoyed your stay in Toronto. Many thanks make an interesting little study, but I doubt whether for a directly-handed-to-me issue of TWN #12. there’s been a recent bibliography to clarify his late So, that quotation on the cover page comes from mainstream pseudonyms or lost unpublished mss. (His Elon Musk, hm? Launching his car into space was quite friend William F. Temple’s own attempts to upgrade his the PR stunt, but I hope someone is keeping track of writing also both interest and sadden – Temple’s novel where it is, and I hope it doesn’t damage any of the orbital Shoot at the Moon was enormously improved from its hardware littering our skies. Space is deep, space is dark, original version as a novelette for Nebula I believe, but his and I can’t find a place to park… publishing experiences were dismaying for both that book I rarely remember any dreams I may have, but with its unfortunate VA-VOOOM cover and his next novel one I do remember is riding on a 10-speed bicycle, going with its truncated paperback. Oh well, water under down a long, open road between wide-open farmers’ bridges, etc.) fields. I did just that when I was a kid, and it is symbolic of But the TWN #12 main business of sf import is finding one bit of freedom in an otherwise restrictive Brave New World, revisited again. From my own reading childhood. I haven’t had that dream in some years now years ago, I can agree with you that it’s a hard book to like because with Yvonne, there’s a lot more freedom to travel but does provide both “impressive world-building” and a and do what I might like to do. “mountain of food-for-thought”. As the best sf should do. After reading Brave New World far too many years The elephant in the room is of course eugenics, ago, I searched out and found many more positive and which Huxley rather brushed under the carpet fantastical books to read. I certainly enjoy cautionary tales, afterwards. I was reminded of this separately while but Huxley’s book was less fiction, and more commentary, researching “Mary Weston” – Mrs O.A. Merritt-Hawkes – and I really did want flights of imagination to take me out and finding that the science of healthy societies was of that afore-mentioned restrictive childhood. BNW is on permanently derailed by the horrific Nazi perversion of it. my shelf, but it stays there. I will say one thing that some Arguably Hitler did humanity its worst disservice for of its messages were ignored, and look where we are now. centuries by putting off-limits any discussion of improved The rule of the incompetents affects the whole world, and

[ 6 ] WTFs ring out everywhere. to you that an Epilson embryo must have an Epsilon I was pleased to see so many fanzine fans come environment as well as an Epsilon heredity?”, the Director from Britain, Australia and Thailand for Corflu, a relatively of Hatcheries and Conditioning chides his students: the small event. I wish there were more Canadians involved in lower castes are all deprived of oxygen in utero, or rather this, and perhaps I wouldn’t feel so much like an intruder in vitro. Their mental and physical development depends looking over the fence. There were some friends who were on more than genes. Huxley approvingly quotes W.H. helping Catherine and Colin run the show, all local fans… Sheldon: “Reproductive delinquency is biological and Diane Lacey ran the con suite, long-time friend Lance basic.” But who might an Epilson be if allowed to breathe Sibley looked after the ‘In Memoriam’ shown during the freely? Sunday brunch, and Kevin Grücock helps with AV and Eugenics is an easy target, I admit, even in these computer stuff with some of the local conventions. times of white supremacy in the White House. Where Collin Piprell… I know I could Google him up. Brave New World Revisited still seems relevant is in Huxley’s No doubt he’s Canadian, but I haven’t heard of him chapters on technology, propaganda, and persuasion. He before. It has been so long since I have ready any new SF, writes, “As lately as fifty years ago, every democratic let along Canadian SF. There is always pressure to buy country could boast of a great number of small journals new books from local friends who are struggling authors, and local newspapers. Thousands of country editors and they know I am struggling too, so they don’t pressure expressed thousands of independent opinions. Some- us too much. I wish them every success, but right now, I where or other almost anybody could get almost anything just can’t help them. printed.” I wonder what he would have made of our times, I think I am done for now. I hope you got the in which media monopolies sit side-by-side with the Web, information on the Georgian House Hotel in Belgravia I where anybody can publish anything, from grass-roots sent, and I hope you get a chance to enjoy it. Yvonne and I organisations to propaganda machines to random idiots. are planning a return trip to England in June/July 2019, On a different subject entirely: how fascinating and we are already planning where we’d like to go and that the Thames Valley Bus Station plays such a central stay. We thought our trip in 2016 would be our only trip to part in your dream landscape! Mine is a patchwork of real England, but 2019 will likely be the last. We hope our and imaginary places, notably the university library at health will hold out until then. which I worked for twenty years. In fact, I turn up to work there in my underwear so often that, in the dream locker KATE ORMAN, Sydney, NSW; 16 June 2018 in my dream office, I keep a spare set of clothes. There’s a You prompted me to retrieve Brave New World Revisited second hand bookshop which I regularly visit, and from my to-read pile, on which it has been teetering for sometimes an immense subterranean collection of library the last three years. You were spot-on to say that Huxley’s shelves and books, which I think is my to-read pile in comments on eugenics were a “cop-out” and especially to oneiric disguise. Chess grandmasters remember the point out that, in his tellingly brief chapter on the subject, positions of pieces as “chunks” of the board; perhaps our he never mentions the Nazis. memories do the same with geography, and dreams I recently read a story by L. Sprague de Camp, recombine these into new configurations, half-familiar ‘Hyperpilosity’, which was unremarkable except that it and half-labyrinthine. offered a fascinating glimpse into the science of the time it was written: genes were thought to be made of protein. ERIC LINDSAY, Airlie Beach, Queensland, 5 July 2018 The story was published in 1938, six years after Brave New Thanks for “A giant explosion on the pad…” which I World, fourteen years before scientists confirmed that collected as part of the loot from Corflu in Toronto a few DNA was the stuff of genes. It's a reminder that the months ago. Took a while after I returned to Australia to eugenicists of the first part of the Twentieth Century were get around to it again. suffering from a serious case of the Dunning-Kruger My early Dream Central seems to have been a Effect; they simply didn’t know enough to know how little vacant block, with old left over industrial plant nearby. Not they knew. It would be decades before science began to sure what I imagined it to be, but probably not science glimpse the enormous complexity of the genome. To a fictional, as I did not come across SF until later in my life. eugenicist like Huxley, gametes were simply “biologically Thanks for reminding me I should re-read Brave superior” or “biologically inferior”. New World sometime. Books like that are so easily put Perhaps in the hypothetical Hatchery, the positive aside, because after all you did read it way back when. aspects of mood disorders – the energy and creativity of Oh look, there is Joseph Nicholas in the LoCs mania – could be preserved, while the negative aspects – mentioning that his Australian Eastern States jaunt was depression, irritability, agitation – were edited out, along partly to attend Jean Weber’s 75th birthday party in with nuisances like allergies. When it comes to the real Melbourne. Carey Handfield did all the hotel organising, world, Huxley stops just short of advocating steps to just as he graciously did for my 70th the year before. Jean prevent “the contamination of the gene pool” by the liked that so much she said she wanted the same. All I had “congenitally insufficient”. to do was pay for the party. Wonderful result I thought, Of course, Huxley knew perfectly well that and about the same size as Corflu, but not as lengthy. environment also plays a critical role. “…hasn’t it occurred

[ 7 ] Thirty Genre Books of Personal Significance: Part One, 1972–1982

IN MAY 2018, with a cunning Jedi mind-trick, Mark Yon on Andre Norton Facebook persuaded me to post seven books of personal The Beast Master significance, “with no explanation”. I assumed they didn’t 1959 all have to be genre books, which was just as well, and I I recall liking this book in 1972 went against the “no explanation” thing because otherwise but found that I remembered it just resembles a series of disconnected book covers: absolutely nothing about it – not clues had to be provided because what was significant to the native aliens who happen to me once may no longer be so. ‘talk like Injun’, the horse- It was an odd-looking assembly of books covering rustling, the marauding giant a very diverse range of subjects, and I don’t think they sat lizards or the blaster-wielding well together. I suppose I could have included other aliens – but it’s a genuine SF/ publications of personal significance that I had my nose in Western adventure tale with an more than others at various times in my life – an Ian Allan authentic frontier feel to it, ‘combine’ (the British trainspotters’ bible) from the late particularly in the build up. 1970s perhaps, or a Letraset typeface catalogue from the Hosteen Storm’s abilities as a early 1980s – but that wouldn’t really have been entering Beast Master – someone with a into the spirit of things; I wasn’t exactly emotionally telepathic link to his accom- invested in those, important though they were to me at the panying meerkats, dune cat, time. So I’ve opted to change things around, the original eagle and horse – are only really Magnificent Seven now being split up into their respective used as a device to drive the plot genres, and I’m making it one genre per selection: further forward at key moments. It’s now books of personal significance in other genres will come quite charming in its innocence; along in good time in future issues of The White Notebooks. upon re-reading this in 2004 I I’m not offering plot summaries because these aren’t found the writing itself to be reviews, just opinions about why the books are significant rather less than fluid, just about to me, presented in roughly chronological order. 1982 was competent enough to hold my the beginning of a fourteen-year hiatus on reading attention. How we read so anything genre-related (with one exception), therefore I differently as children and owe it to myself to also do Part Two, another selection of adults… science fiction that I’ve read from 1997 to the present, which will be along in the next issue. Bruce Carter Arthur C. Clarke The Perilous Descent Islands in the Sky 1969 1952 Two British World War II airmen Bought for me by my father in bail out of their crippled 1972, the first specifically airplanes and their parachute science fictional book I can descent takes them deep into remember reading. At the age of the earth’s interior. This junior twelve I was probably precisely ‘hollow earth’ adventure, the kind of reader Clarke had in probably read when I was age mind when he penned it, mostly 13, is personally significant for to interest young boys in the being definitely the first – and many possibilities of space still possibly the only – book I exploration, and he filled it with have re-read immediately upon small lessons in science and finishing it. It was literally back entertaining discoveries on life to page one just to experience in zero gravity (remember the whole adventure again, and I Gagarin did not get into space can recall thinking at the time until 1961). The book may be that this must be the best book devoid of any sophistication of I’d ever read. I’m sure I still plot but it is nevertheless still a have it boxed away somewhere, good example of the scientific telepathically calling me to dig it kind of SF that turned mere out and read it once more. ideas about space travel into the kind of complex reality we have today.

[ 8 ] Madeleine L’Engle Robert Heinlein A Wrinkle in Time Stranger in a Strange Land 1963 1961 “It was a dark and stormy night”, Another of those Heinlein titles begins this small and perfectly that age 18 helped me get a formed classic of children’s handle on this whole ‘American fantasy. Or is it SF? I was never culture’ thing, such that I sure where to place it because it perhaps wouldn’t have felt out of seems to be a slick blending of place on an American university genres, and re-reading it in 2004 campus while spending whole left me none the wiser. Within evenings on hash and trying to my limited reading of fantasy I grok everyone. By this point I can say it falls somewhere in the was beginning to tire of vicinity of Ray Bradbury’s The Heinlein’s sermonising, although Halloween Tree and Michael this was a last hurrah before he Ende’s The Neverending Story, seriously blew it for me with The while the science fictional tropes Number of the Beast. I still regard include naïve meddling with this as a classic and one of SF’s space and time, strange and core texts, though not one I’d be magical aliens, and the evils of at all comfortable re-reading. telepathic mind-control creating Samuel R. Delany an enslaved uniformity. Maybe I The Einstein Intersection should read the many sequels, 1967 although I admit I don’t feel inclined to. This to me is the daddy of them all, which I must have read about Kate Wilhelm half a dozen times since I first The Killing Thing encountered it in the form of the 1967 1977 Sphere edition. Like most Read in this Panther paperback British kids of the ’70s I started edition, this is a cynical novel for with Clarke, Asimov and sure, and Wilhelm’s loathing of Heinlein, and ended up thinking all aspects of her story is barely “Is that all there is?” Then I read concealed: therefore I was made this, my first Delany, and a fundamentally aware at age universe of possibilities opened fifteen that authors don’t always up. Still my favourite genre book, write about stuff they like. I have and still one of my favourite no idea what made me pick up covers by Peter Elson. I want to this book in 1974 but its imagery see this as an SF Masterwork has stayed with me for over forty that keeps the Elson cover – only years, and I re-read it in the first then can I die happy. edition in 2005. I now wonder if it was the Vietnam War that Marta Randall inspired Wilhelm to write it; if so, Journey in that respect it compares rather 1978 favourably with Le Guin’s The Hamlyn was a publisher whose Word for World Is Forest. books were more often found in the racks of local newsagents Robert Heinlein than in bigger bookshops, and that’s where I discovered Journey Glory Road 1963 in 1979. It quickly became a favourite, a kind of unashamed Age 18 when I read this, and I ‘interplanetary colonialism-lite’ confess I was using Tim White’s family saga when such things covers to point me to reading the were quite rare. Most memorable interesting stuff. Case in point, is the characterisation, a cast of with beautiful cover art. I recall more than a dozen who you get being very taken with Glory Road, to know in distinct detail and yet but looking back it was one more who also all interconnect as a of Heinlein’s preach-texts rather family. I re-read this in 2002, and than anything really radical. I am sure I will re-read it again.

[ 9 ] Bruce Sterling Roger Zelazny Involution Ocean Roadmarks 1977 1979 What captured me first was the A novel that initially mystifies strangeness of Tim White’s with its dreamscapes then wraparound cover, which gradually explains itself. A kind contained no blurb on the back of time-travel road novel, except despite his leaving plenty of it isn’t. One of my favourites by space for one. NEL must have Zelazny, read around 1981 and had real confidence in this novel, twice since, because the loose and the first paragraph is one of dreaminess of the plot and my favourite ever story openings. imagery always seems to fade Definitely needs to be on the from memory until I’m drawn to Gollancz SF Masterworks list. pick it up again.

Mick Farren Robert Anton Wilson The Song of Phaid the Gambler The Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy 1981 1979–1981 This time Tim White’s intriguing I skipped the Illuminatus! trilogy cover was a ruse: it bears no and went straight to these three connection to the novel at all. But volumes as they were released by this was still a great read: a big, Sphere from 1980–1982, around thick book containing a big, the time I was needing more from weighty story that just my science ﬁction than space steamrollers along regardless that adventure, time travel and a it was destined to become an steady stream of dystopias. These obscurity in post-apocalyptic books didn’t disappoint me at all ﬁction. One four-letter word – you could read them in any describes this story: vast. It’s also order and you’d still get the same decidedly picaresque in the story, something that appealed proper sense: the story of Phaid strongly to my craving for the is but a thread in this sprawling creatively absurd. This series had world of decay and reinvention. everything: bizarre humour, bizarre intellectualism, bizarre Samuel R. Delany science, bizarre sex. I truly felt Dhalgren like I was being done a huge 1975 favour, being served up with this kind of super-weird shit. This was a hard novel to get hold of (never published in the UK John Sladek until 1992), and more likely to be Alien Accounts found as a battered old second- 1981 hand copy. I had to wait weeks for my brand new edition to arrive This and Keep the Giraffe Burning from the US in 1980. I was not have always been my two one of those people who favourite Sladek collections, read abandoned Dhalgren a quarter of back-to-back in 1982, but Alien the way through, mostly because Accounts comes out ahead for I found stuff going on in it that creativity. This collection is not was strangely happening in my about aliens, it’s about life at the time. I’ve always had a accountants, and the workaday relationship with the language of estrangement we willingly subject many of Delany’s novels that I ourselves to. Sladek’s appeal is can’t adequately describe, and undeniable: hit hits all my hot with Dhalgren it was the most buttons when I feel like raging connected I have ever felt to what against the shallowness of I was reading on the page, as if ‘modern life’ and his sardonic the damn book was actually humour bites in a way that written for me. I know I will never doesn’t actually hurt, which has read another book like it… unless always kept me coming back for I were to read this again, anew. more.

[ 10 ] Fanzines Over Astrakhan

Six from Needles & Pens

SO THERE I AM, doing my own thing, minding various personas alongside song lyrics, so the my own business – which in this instance fanzine becomes a game of ‘name that song’. means browsing in the zine store Needles & Next up is The Meanderings of a Death Row Pens [1] in San Francisco’s Mission district – (California, San Quentin, East-Block, Yard 3) Inmate when who is browsing right next to me but my by Bob R. Williams (2009, 24 pages, b/w, $5). son’s former kindergarten teacher from the Being something of a fact checker I looked him other side of the world. Selﬁe photo taken and up [4]: yes, Mr. Williams is what he says, so he duly posted to Facebook, Christopher J Garcia clearly has a limited amount of time on his spies a few wrestling fanzines in the back- hands and is endeavouring to put it to good use. ground, he doesn’t use the all-purpose word The zine begins “In 1996 I entered a strange “want”, he uses the rather more speciﬁc and land of concrete and steel a condemned man, 20 urgent “need”. The next day entails a return to years old, scared, lonely, curious and lost”, and said store for purchase of such to add to the through various means of perspective three zines already bought. A surprise for Chris, adjustment, ends “I am truly FREE!!!” This is a sent to him up the road in Mountain View, rather engaging snapshot of prison life, in which gratis because he’s a mate and fanzine co- Williams has found much freedom in his own editor, but not before I get to say a few words inner space: “It took me 12 years to realize that about them here. prison is a state of mind and that the door to my A lot of the fanzines at Needles & Pens cave is just that, a door, albeit a pretty well made are too slim in content to engage much interest one!” Williams’s b/w drawings alongside his from me, meaning that they comprise entirely words are rather diverse in style and subject. of poor photos or sketchbook drawings with He’s also followed it up with three further little or no context provided. At least they may ‘Meanderings’ zines, which perversely leaves me be in colour on coloured paper, but what else thinking “Oh, to have the free time to get am I getting for my $5–$20? I gravitate towards immersed in doing something like this.” the fanzines with written content – and the Finally, something of a prize: Binoculars more, the better – to balance the visuals. by Tetsunori Tawaraya (2018, 36 pages, 600 Dead Wrestlers I, II & III by Adam copies, 4-colour risograph, $20). The third in a Villacin (2018, 20 pages, b/w, $7) are simple in series of similar zines, this is something I wish I content: drawings of dead wrestlers with how could show you physically because it’s simply they died. Looking at his site [2], Villacin has a beautiful in content and construction, and was lot of diverse illustrative interests (including bought in spite of what I said earlier about the Mongolian national heroes, wtf) but wrestling is need for words and context. We are given thirty- clearly a predominant one. Knowing Chris’s one monsters from Tawaraya’s imagination in interest I expect he has plenty more fanzines dayglo pinks, greens and blues, on different like these, but it’s a world I will probably persist sizes of thick paper held together by a pink ring in knowing next-to-nothing about… binder, and topped and tailed with transparent First on my personal stack is Rebel acetate covers. Rebel: An Illustrated Tribute to David Bowie by If I ever produce zines for sale, Binoculars Patrick Sean Gibson (2016, 20 pages, 250 [5] creates the kind of impact I would be aiming copies, b/w, $6). From San Francisco, Gibson is for, something that is a pleasure to spend time clearly a big fan of Bowie, and this fanzine [3] simply holding and turning its pages. Not takes a similar format to Dead Wrestlers, with enough zines are visually special, or even in a drawings of Bowie taken from photos of his tactile way, but this is certainly one of them.

[1] http://www.needles-pens.com [2] http://www.adamvillacin.com [3] https://patrickseangibson.bigcartel.com/product/some-print-thing [4] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-supreme-court/1121830.html [5] https://otherbooksla.com/products/binoculars-by-tetsunori-tawaraya

[ 11 ]

Pareidolia Listopia

“WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE GENTLE ONES WHO PAY THE PRICE OF EVERYONE ELSE’S AMBITION?” – Scorpius, Farscape, ‘…Different Destinations’, 2001

This fanzine was put together from 1 May – 23 August 2018. MORE GENRE FANZINES RECEIVED / READ SO FAR IN 2018 I’ve had no chance to proofread-by-print so more typos Alexiad #98–99 – LISA & JOSEPH MAJOR than usual may have crept in. Ansible #370–373 – DAVE LANGFORD Books and zines are all over this issue, hence the title, and Askance #44 & Askew #25 – JOHN PURCELL it has a rather polarised theme: things I particularly like, Banana Wings #70 – CLAIRE BRIALEY, MARK PLUMMER and things I particularly don’t like. The title comes from I Claims Department #23–24 – CHRIS GARCIA know not where (I googled just to make sure and came up with nothing) so I have to assume that I’m not The Drink Tank #401–403 – CHRIS GARCIA unconsciously nicking someone else’s words. I also like the Flag #21 – ANDY HOOPER way the phrase can visually capture a bad situation in just Journey Planet #40 – JAMES BACON, CHRIS GARCIA, ET AL four words, the kind of situation that might be found in the Lofgeornost #127–131 – FRED LERNER form of a cockroach problem at Pio Busto’s boarding house Opuntia #411–420 – DALE SPEIRS in London, the rather unsalubrious location that serves as Rat Sass #9 – TARAL WAYNE the backdrop for several Gerald Kersh short stories. SF Commentary #96 – BRUCE GILLESPIE Kershed Spartacus #26–27 & The Zine Dump #44 – GUY LILLIAN III I now have an uncomfortable sense of Harlan Ellison® Trap Door #33 – ROBERT LICHTMAN looking over my shoulder from beyond the grave as I transfer much of Kersh’s bibliography to the ISFDB, THE MAJOR FANNISH EVENT for me between this fanzine arguing with me when I correct mistakes, making damn and the previous one was certainly Corflu 35 in Toronto. sure I give him due credit absolutely everywhere while at My wife thought I was a bit mad to fly half way round the the same time threatening to sue for copyright world for just a couple of days with friends and new infringement for undertaking the job in the first place. acquaintances, but she accepts how important fandom is to me. My flight to London was fine, my flight to Toronto Beyond Brave New World: Four More British Dystopias ended up diverting to Detroit due to storms, and I made it My reading of these books goes back almost a decade, and to the hotel about six hours later than expected – an hour this article is based on, and is an embellishment of, notes I or so in the fan lounge and I was ready to turn in. My made at the time. I find dystopias are becoming more regret is that I missed the trip to see the Toronto Public relevant to British life on an almost daily basis, at a time Library’s Merrill Collection, which I will have to do at a when the Brexit-obsessed British government has gone later date if I’m ever in Toronto again. It was a great from “We’ll have £350m every week to spend as we like” to pleasure meeting people I have previously only “We’ll try to make sure nobody starves” in just two short corresponded with, such as Lloyd Penney, Paul Skelton years. More assessments on more British dystopias to come and Taral Wayne, as well as other fans I was aware of in future essays. through their enjoyable fanzine work such as Eric Lindsay Thirty Genre Books of Personal Significance: Part One and Pablo Miguel Alberto Vazquez – Pablo’s story of how One thing that’s noticeable to me from that period of my his friend Christopher Hensley successfully trolled the life is that I never gave up on any book that I read. I always right-wing, ass-hat, science fiction author John C. Wright, persisted; I gave it a chance to finish its argument even if I really needs to be written up somewhere as an article: it ended up not liking it. I still try (but sometimes fail) to would be a great sequel to Hensley’s take-down of Wright adhere to this philosophy today, and there are a few books that’s found in Lake Geneva #5. I came away with a few that I have actively tossed as opposed to just abandoned – rarities in the auction (eg. New Worlds #1) plus a few new I think there’s an important distinction to be made there. books found in local bookstores, such as Roger Levy’s Aha, I’ve just discovered another list that needs looking long-awaited novel The Rig. Hope I can make it into… to Washington next year.

Above: Grea K./sangrea.net [public domain]

[ 12 ] THE THAI LITERARY TLS SUPPLEMENT, #13 AUGUST 2018

“Almost anything may happen and one may meet almost anybody, from a mere author to an international crook on his way to elsewhere.” — from Graham Greene’s letter of thanks to the Oriental Hotel, Bangkok, framed in the hotel’s suite dedicated to him

S HORT FICTION

Matt Carrell Colin Cotterill Slips, Trips & Whiplash Hidden Genders 2014 | Linden Tree, ISBN 978-14952-5313-3, £0.99 2011 | Quercus, ISBN 978-1-78087-332-9, £4.99

Subtitled ‘and the perils of ‘Colin with one L’ has carved finding love in a Thai go-go bar’, out an admirable niche for this novelette delivers quite well himself in crime fiction set in on what it says on the cover, and South East Asia, with series set as an ebook download for a quid in both Laos (the ‘Doctor Siri’ I’d say this was good value. murder mysteries) and Thailand, The story revolves where Cotterill now lives. This around a couple of English guys, novelette introduces Jimm Micky and Steve, who operate a Juree, female Thai journalist, shady ambulance-chasing insur- Chiang Mai resident and ance scam that creates accidents certified non-lesbian despite her before offering the victims a rather butch appearance – and a chance to claim compensation. great introduction it is too, with Steve, however, is already well on his way out of all this by several subsequent novels that spending his holidays in far-distant Pattaya in Thailand, keep the up this story’s oddball plotting and dark humour. where he met his bar-girl girlfriend and love of his life, After giving a university lecture, Jimm is pursued Cat, at the Platinum Club on Walking Street. He knows sexually (I wouldn’t say romantically) by a female student what she does but is cool with it, and he believes his who goes by the name Bomb, who won’t take no for an offering true love and a secure future precludes him from answer and who then becomes Jimm’s stalker. Meanwhile, having to pay for the sex. He’s finally quitting England for Jimm’s brother is having ‘the op’ to please his rich German good while Micky, who’s busy making a small fortune, boyfriend, and after Jimm is nearly murdered in a thinks he’s more worldly-wise and mocks Steve’s naïvety, swimming pool her brother-now-sister’s help is enlisted to while he’s shacking up with his beautiful Mediterranean figure out the who-almost-did-it and why. lover who has her own secrets. What is to become of them It’s the humour, more than anything else that gets both, and who’s really in the better position? filtered through the viewpoint of protagonist Juree, that This is a variation on that common theme in makes this story a winner. I was grabbed right from the Thailand’s ‘bar story’ sub-genre – the one where women first paragraph, which raised a knowing smirk and let this simply can’t be trusted. It’s a shame the story is founded reader know that it was going to be exactly my kind of on this stereotype because I think a better story could lightly intelligent and sharply sardonic story. It becomes have been told if the greater contribution came from Cat’s apparent that sexual identities in this story are meant to be viewpoint, but that in turn might be to forfeit some of the somewhat fluid, at least on the superficial level, and yet story’s English freshness. I’m not a huge fan of Thailand’s Jimm shows herself to be a reliable narrator despite expat ‘bar stories’ despite their popularity, because I think everything going on around her. £4.99 is a bit of a steep the bar needs to be set higher. However in brief episodes price to pay for a short story, but no matter, I expect the like this they’re quite palatable and often work well (as this subsequent novels will now rise pretty steeply further up one does) if they don’t take themselves too seriously. my ever-lengthening reading pile.

[ 1 ] N ON-FICTION

Jim Algie M.L. Manich Jumsai Bizarre Thailand Thai Folktales 2010 | Marshall Cavendish, ISBN 978-981-4302-81-4 1976 | Chalermnit, ISBN 974-85856-6-2, 210 baht

Canadian journalist and writer Unlike the myths and oral tales Jim Algie clearly has space in his found in the first half of Jumsai’s life for plenty of weird shit, and H i s t o r y o f T h a i L i t e r a t u r e Thailand has clearly given him (reviewed in TLS #12), these are more than enough to be getting all straightforward retellings of on with. Bizarre Thailand is a Thai myths and legends, many good primer on where to find the handed down orally through the outré side of life in this conflicted centuries before eventually land, where much of what Thais making it into written form and find weird around them is based finally into print. What we don’t on the supernatural and other get here is detail on where the perceived horrors. Ghosts and folktales originated or from how spirits abound, sex in all its long ago, and that would have diversity is clearly another central obsession, as well as been useful. I expected a fair amount of fantasy and cowboys, royalty, celebrities, dinosaurs, dangerous animals supernatural content to be found in these tales and I and robot buildings. For me the best chapter here is on wasn’t disappointed: magic, demons, spirits, shapeshifters Susan Aldous, the Australian ‘Angel of Bang Kwang’ who and ghosts make an appearance in almost every story, has shown how we can make our time on Earth a wild, although there are also other, more everyday common rollercoaster ride of dignity and compassion when one themes – royal courts, wars, thwarted love affairs and puts altruism at the centre of one’s life. There are a few occasional reincarnations – that make it hard to find more odd facets of Thai life that I’d like to have seen here, things that are unique to each story. Useful, however, is an so a second volume (hint) would be very welcome, Jim… abbreviated summation of the famous tale Khun Chang Khun Phaen, which no doubt I will one day read in full. Pira Sudham People of Esarn W. Somerset Maugham 1987 | Shire Books, ISBN 974-8912-34-5 The Gentleman in the Parlour 1912 | Vintage, ISBN 978-0-099-28677-6, £9.99 I remember buying this in the bookstore at the United Nations In Maugham’s travel writing it is headquarters in New York, hard to trust that he is telling the where it came with assorted truth: superficially, this appears signed literature giving some to be a solo journey from Burma, background on the author who, through Siam and then on to i t i s c l a i m e d , w a s o n c e Cambodia. But in reality it was nominated for a Nobel Prize for made entirely in the company of Literature, yet Sudham appears his partner Gerald Haxton who to have taken a hard road to never gets so much as a mention, getting his writing noticed, with and the pair then went further only one novel, Monsoon Country, on to the Americas and back to ever appearing in English. People London, but that whole segment of Esarn takes a strangely autobiographical route to getting of the journey became excised across some portraits of people from his remote part of the with Southeast Asia becoming Maugham’s focus. country. It is presented as non-fiction, however there are Maugham specifically wanted to create a stylistic travel two stories with female first-person viewpoints, one of memoir in the fashion of his earlier On a Chinese Screen, which features a long interlude from a male Bangkok taxi yet in truth I don’t think it’s all that much of a success. driver whom the narrator forms a relationship with. The Written seven years after their journey, Maugham can’t frequent droughts and poverty of Isaan province form the seem to rise above his inbred superciliousness no matter true emotional backdrop to the stories, and the best, ‘A how hard he tries, and he puts so much effort into Thai Woman in Germany’, shows well the dichotomy of relinquishing his snobbery that the reader can largely see being lucky enough to escape such a harsh life while through all his affectations. But for all that, there are some always feeling one is being pulled back to identify with this excellent sequences (or were they, as once published, barren land in one’s heart. The stories ‘by’ the women are fictions?) and the characters he meets on the way are easily the best, which makes this collection feel like at least mostly particularly well drawn. Certainly worth a partly fictional but is none the worse for that. indulgent read, but perhaps with a large pinch of salt.

[ 2 ]