Samantha Shannon - A Day of Fallen Night

In my experience it is rare for a fantasy prequel novel to succeed quite as well as the original book. With A Day of Fallen Night Samantha Shannon has proved that this is not always the case. Her 2019 book The Priory of the Orange Tree was a massive seller. It's label of "feminist Game of Thrones" was I argued in my review a slight misnomer as it undermined some of the radical edge to the work. The prequel A Day of Fallen Night is set 500 years ago, and is a complex piece of world building that sets up the dynasties and factions which are still vying for power years later.

These competing nations are set on a world geographically much like ours. However there are sleeping dragons and dangerous beasts resting beneath volcanos waiting for the opportunity to wake and destroy humanity's world (though the reason for their anger is never explains - presumeably beasts under volcanos are just evil). From the start the novel focuses on several different groups of people. Queen Sabran is one of a long line of queen's who all look identical. Their daughters are the magical barrier that prevent the great "nameless" evil from waking and destroying the world. At the start of the novel Sabran has made a marriage of convenience with the King of Hróth (a society that is a thinly veiled viking north). Their daughter Gloria's destiny is simply to keep the line going and while doing so learn from her mother how to build alliances and strengthen the realm.

Elsewhere in the Priory, the focus of the earlier book, Tunuva Melim is a guard of the Orange Tree, but while she and her sisters are trained to fight monsters - none have appeared. There's tensions here as the youngsters chafe at the restrictions and society. Is it even real? 

Finally there's the dragon rider Dumai, or would be dragon rider (there are no dragons) whose realm is organised around the Gods - the dragons - and their awakening. 

The novels shifting viewpoints are gradually, as in all great epics,  brought together. The evil awakes (as do the dragons) and an appalling assault on humanity begins. The various different heroines each have a role or quest, as they bring together different strengths and powers to fight the evil monsters. One of Samantha Shannon's writing strengths is that she describes a bloody good battle - and there are some corkers here. Particularly ones where humans get beaten. The monsters win, rather a lot, and humanity is pushed back into tiny hideouts, barely surviving.

The book builds to a good climax setting the stage for the sequel. But what of the radicalism. Here I found that some of the edge of Orange Tree was blunted. Part of the strength of that novel was the (then) Queen Sabran grappling with her role as a mother just for the next generation of Queens. There was a tension between personal desire and the needs of the regal role. That's absent here because the story needs to set up volume two. As in her other work Shannon is good at writing LGBT+ and female characters and so there are some interesting points about gender and sexuality. For instance in Tunuva's realm all the fighters are women and men take on supporting roles. But these are the backdrop to the novel, they are not the core point - refreshingly.

Subversion, such as there is, lies in the challenge to the Tolkienesque fantasy tropes - the medievalist, white, hetrosexual males - rather than the "viewpoint of the proletariat".

As such I found A Day of Fallen Night was not quite as sharp as its follow up. In addition the multi-view points and many many characters often got confusing. That said, its a fun read - particularly if you like reading about humanity getting killed off - and brilliant world building for the stronger Orange Tree. 

Related Reviews

Shannon - The Priory of the Orange Tree 

 

Iain M. Banks - Inversions

Inversions is one of Iain M. Banks' novels that I read multiple times after it came out, but haven't read in... well as long as this blog has been going. I found it again recently and re-reading it I was struck by how great a book it is.

The book is set on an unnamed planet, but one where a former powerful Empire has fragmented into rival states following what sounds like a major disaster with multiple asteroid impacts. The remaining rival kingdoms are analogous to Earth's European feudal states - though Banks is very careful not to make them identical. Knights may wear armour and ride to battle - but whether they are on horses is never clear. Banks avoids using words that tie things too closely to Earth.

There are two parallel stroies. Alternate chapters are titled The Doctor and The Bodyguard. Both characters are in kingdoms separated by a great distance. The Doctors' chapters are told by her assistant Oelph, though they are really his lengthy reports to an unnamed Master who is spying on the Doctor. The Doctor has arrived from a third, distant land, and risen quickly to become the personal physician to the King. This causes jealously, suspicion and doubt, particularly when the King begins enacting reforms that benefit the cities and the lower, producing, classes.

The Bodyguard is Oelph's publishing of a separate story that he finds long after the events he is involved in. Consisting of the account of the personal guard to another king, there are natural parallels with The Doctor chapters. But this consists of The Bodyguard's attempts to protect the King and his family while facing down external threats. In doing so he befriends one of the King's harem women and the King's son.

The Bodyguard tells his friends stories, and these can be read, particularly by those who've read other works by Banks, as examples of the way that The Culture view other civilisations that have not yet reached their level of technological and cultural sophistication. A further clue that this is set in the Culture universe and that the Bodyguard and Doctor are possibly not from the planet at all, lies in they way their ideas do not quite fit those of their chosen kingdoms. But are they there as agents of the Culture? Or are they running away from something? Or perhaps each other. 

Ultimately it becomes clear that the Doctor at least is from another place - she has access to knowledge and equipment that are far beyond the planet's technological development. However if the novel is reduced to this guessing game it does it a disservice. The best thing about the novel is the interaction between the characters from different societies. It reminded me of a classic Soviet SF novel Hard to be a God by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky which postulates a future socialist society's agents observing and living within a feudal society trying (or not) to influence its development (while also critiquing the Soviet Union itself). 

The book has little of Banks' trademark hard SF. Its focus is on relationships - and there are several that are beautifully described - in particular that between the Doctor and Oelph and the Bodyguard and Perrund, the King's concubine. But there are others - the Doctor falls for the King and in one moment of exuberance announces her love. It devastates Oelph, but more importantly it shifts the story dramatically as the Doctor realises she cannot be both of the world and from elsewhere. 

Despite barely being The Culture, this is one of the great Culture novels - demonstrating Banks' amazing abilities as a writer, and his ability to hand multiple different ideas and characters. Well worth a read, or re-read.

Related Reviews

Banks - The Hydrogen Sonata
Banks - Surface Detail
Banks - Against A Dark Background
Banks - Look To Windward
Banks - The Algebraist

Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man

Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man is considered one of the great works of post-war Science Fiction. First published in 1953 it is easy to see why it was considered a great work. But reading it today the book seems out of date and not as sharp as it must have read in the 1950s.

While very much sitting in the futuristic science fiction genre, surprisingly the book is actually a police procedural detective novel. There are two twists to this. The first is minor, the book is what Wikipedia charmingly describes as an "inverted detective story". We know, from the opening chapters who the killer is, and how they did the crime. Though it is not clear why. The more dramatic twist is that the crime takes place in a future where some people are "peepers", mind-readers who have varying abilities to read thoughts. This means that the most acomplished peepers can tell what someone is thinking, why they are thinking it, and everything else in their subconcious. It means that there hasn't been a pre-meditated murder in many years - though crime is very much still real.

The main character, and it is not a spoiler to say this, the killer is Ben Reich. Extremely rich, powerful and unpleasant, Reich is challenged by an equally massive company run by Craye D'Courtney. Reich is troubled by dreams of "the man with no face" and is increasingly paranoid. He resolves to murder D'Courtney and comes up with a series of clever plans to evade the peepers and hide his crime.

While much of the novel follows the telepathic police office Lincoln Powell's attempts to prove Reich's guilt and motive, the story's twist is that in the eyes of the law Reich has no motive. Quite the opposite. In fact Reich had everything to gain from keeping D'Courtney alive because a proposed merger of their companies which would have solved Reich's finanical troubles, was on the cards. The murder meant Reich's bankruptchy.

The problem is that telepathicly obtained evidence is not admissible in court, so Powell cannot simply bring in Reich for questioning, but has to find a way to prove what is going on in the killer's mind. 

All this set up makes for an intriguing premise. There's a lot of interesting stuff about the pros and cons of a society where some people can read minds, but where those peepers are not all as able as each other. Bester sets up some other intriguing ideas - the "cartel" of telepaths who monopolise and try to control individuals with those powers, leaving some peepers operating underground or without training and constraints. There are also some surprising class politics - the idle rich whose orgies are carefully hidden away and provide a perfect space for Reich's crimes.

But there are problems. Not least in the uneasy relationship that is depicted between Powell and D'Courtney's daughter. The murder of her father means his daughter regresses to childhood and Powell cares for her as she recovers through an accelerated childhood. From being a father figure, Powell becomes her lover. It feels really inappropriate - quite literal grooming - with the added problem of telepathic intervention.

This actually points to the real problem - the ending. Here Bester resorts to what feels now like a dated and cliched freudian explanation of why Reich commited the murder. It fits, of course, with the general narrative of thought and subconciousness. But it makes for an unbelievable and unsatisfying ending that feels very old fashioned. Bester's book is best read for its world building. But it just doesn't work for me.

Related Reviews

Bester - The Stars My Destination

Laura Elliott - Awakened

Highly recommended by reviewers, I was attracted to Awakened despite my usual rejection of the horror genre. It's pretext sounded intriguing. In a future Britain, a small group of scientists hide out in the Tower of London, protecting themselves from what is essentially a zombie horde outside. The difference here is that the zombies are the result of experiments by the scientists themselves to make people more efficient and profitable by eliminating the need for sleep.

As I said, it's intriguing. The story focuses on the arrival of a stranger, one of the sleepless, who seems to not be quite the same as the others. With him arrives a pregnant woman, proving perhaps that things outside of the Tower are very different. The impact of this arrival on the community, and in particular the narrator, Thea Chares is the subject of the rest of the novel. Thea has her own secrets and reason for her presence in the Tower. She's a scientist, one of those brought in by the eccentric billionaire who developed the chip that ended sleep. Thea's transformation through her developing relationship with Vladimir, the name adopted by the monster from outside, is the core of the story. Unfortunately I found it difficult to follow, events being confusingly described at times, and perhaps deliberately, Laura Elliott ends of drowning out the individual storylines with brooding menance. I had to read the ending several times to really work out what was being said, and found myself not that impressed. Ironically I didn't think the book was that much of a work of horror. It is, perhaps, more of book of implied violence. But I did also think that Laura Elliott had hit upon a good point to start from - if the billionaires could find a way of making us work through our sleeping hours they would. And they'd market it as a good thing for us, while they raked in the coins. This, perhaps, is the actual horror.

Adrian Tchaikovsky - Service Model

Readers who enjoy Adrian Tchaikovsky's innovating and often surprising science-fiction may find themselves surprised by Service Model. Normally Tchaikovsky's books are set in worlds with exotic alien flora and fauna, with humans grappling with the complexities of world's outside their experience. Service Model however deals with intelligence of a different form, grappling with the complexities of a world outside their experience.

Meet Charles. Charles is a robot valet, an AI with a clever enough brain for it to perform complex tasks such as laying out clothing and managing its human's appointment diary. Deviation from these tasks means following a somewhat limited decision tree, further restricted by Charles' limited experience of a world beyond the household of its master. When something goes badly wrong with the human Charles' is supposed to valet for, a combination of Charles' limited programming and problems with what passes for authorities forces Charles into the outside world.

Here's the interesting thing. We as the reader can appreciate things Charles' cannot. The robot has entered a world in collapse. Human society has broken down. Charles' home may have been one of the last bastions of society. Outside its chaos. Service robots continue to try to maintain the systems - mowing lawns or keeping deliveries going, even when there's no fuel or part, or even things to deliver. We can appreciate the horror. Charles just goes searching for the next stage in it's to-do list.

While we might be used to Tchaikovsky's books showing humans wandering through a dark, dangerous and incomprehensible world, in this case, its a robot in an incomprehensible, but still oddly human world. Will Charles' find someone to serve? Will he find a role? Or will he break free of the constrains of his programming - these are the central questions.

Service Model is a darkly humourous story. I enjoyed it a lot, and I appreciated the unexpected ending. It's a good read, but probably not one I will return too. An interesting take on questions of AI and what it is to be conscious - big questions for the 21st century.

Related Reviews 

Tchaikovsky - Alien Clay
Tchaikovsky - Ironclads
Tchaikovsky - Children of Time
Tchaikovsky - Children of Ruin
Tchaikovsky - Walking to Aldebaran

Kay Dick - They

Kay Dick's They is a forgotten classic of the dystopian fiction that is perhaps more relevant today than when it was first written. Despite Dick's popularity, when They came out in 1977 it sold badly. It was republished in 2022 after being rediscovered in the early 2020s. 

They is an unusual novel, seemingly more a series of interconnected short accounts, which defy easy classification. There is little "story" here, so to speak, rather a series of experiences in a future Britain, mostly set in a buccolic countryside to where dissidents have been banished, or escaped. They roam the country, hunting down culture and cultural producers. Artists, poets, singers and composers are imprisoned and punished, sometimes in the most barbaric ways. The punishment often fits the "crime". A poet has her writing hand held over a flame for eight minutes. Painters loose their eyesight. Others are taken away, and return, their bodies whole but their minds broken. They are mere cyphers, obeying and meekly watching TV.

Resistance is seemingly futile, but, resistance there is. People learn songs, books and poems by heart. Protecting the vanishing culture inside themselves. Books disappear, their absence noticed the next morning, because They come in the night, or when they are unobserved. Their vessels moored off shore, constantly monitoring and watching. In the face of the repression, many opt to collaborate, or hope it blows over, or even to shop those who are fighting to stay human and keep their art. Spies are everywhere, so are those who would, stasi-like, inform on their neighbours for singing or reading. Nonconformity is the only way to be safe.

Those who do not fit the standards deemed fit are also persecuted. Those who live alone, or don't watch TV, or behave unusually are singled out. It's not difficult here to see parallels for the persecution that Dick herself might have experienced as a gay person in mid-century Britain.

To me though the book is mostly about resistance, and how the act of resistance keeps you human. The central characters hold onto their humanity and their culture, not just to survive, but because doing so speaks hopefully of a better future. As Carmen Maria Machado notes in their introduction, the poet whose hand is burnt so badly for daring to write poetry is writing again. Having learnt to use their left hand. It is a powerful declaration of humanity and rebellion. While They might not follow normal patterns of writing it is, nonetheless a book that speaks to a time when having the wrong opinion or failing to conform, can, in many parts of the world have severe consequences.

Lev Grossman - The Magicians

Reading The Magicians for a second time, I cannot help but agree with my earlier review from a few years ago. Grossman's book feels, initially like a darker, grittier version of Harry Potter, where violence, sex and death are much more on display than in Rowling's children's fantasy. But re-reading The Magicians in a search for a quick escapist fantasy recently I was struck by how the arc of Quentin Coldwater's story is at odds with more traditional tales. Coldwater goes from naive youth, inexperienced in the world of magic, to a powerful wizard, isolated and cut off from those around him and desirous to learn more even as this leads to him destroying those around him. 

In fact, for almost all of the book Quentin's is a deeply unpleasant character, and his eventual exposing as such by his former partner is perhaps the most satisfying moment. The Magicians stands up well to a second read, its nuances (and its cheerful parody of the genre) becoming more apparent, even as the reader might find themselves repelled by the arrogant behaviour of the central protagonists. And of course, the thirst for wealth and power by a tiny class of unproductive, but extremely dangerous individuals has its parallels with the real world.

Related Reviews

Grossman - The Magicians (The first time) 
Grossman - The Magician's Land
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Adrian Tchaikovsky - Alien Clay

*** Spoilers ***

Adrian Tchaikovsky is known for his big scale science fiction that often has unusual takes on alien planets and lifeforms - intelligent octopuses and city building spiders are just two. But Alien Clay is a novel about first contact with a very different form of alien ecology, and to further interest this reader, it is centred on a group of revolutionaries and radicals, albeit ones who have been captured and exiled to another planet.

The book opens with the arrival of Professor Arton Daghdev on the planet Kiln. He doesn't arrive as an explorerer of scientist ready to study the planet's unusual life, instead he is there as a political prisoner, exiled by the despotic Mandate to an interplanetary gulag. Forced labour on Kiln is brutal, and the environment unforgiving. But the workers are not digging for raw materials, they are aiding the project of unravelling Kiln's ecological and archaeological mysteries.

For Kiln is the site of ancient alien ruins. Among the chaotic and dangerous flora and fauna there remains no sign of the intelligence that surely must have built and inscribed the ruins with mysterious writing. The labourers, including Daghdev are set to clearing the jungle from the ruins and trying to understand the animal life. It is Daghdev's dream, one he is uniquely trained to do as a exo-biology scientist, but one fraught with danger. Some of this comes from the threat formed by the planet itself, but mostly it comes because he has to tackle a difficult contradiction. Mandate orthodoxy states that humans are the pinnacle of a neat evolutionary process. Alien intelligence that goes against this threatens to not just to turn science upsidedown, but to turn the Mandate's ideology inside out. This is why Daghdev had no idea of Kiln's reality before the arrival on the planet.

On the planet life is cheap. The brutal camp commandant whose need to enforce Mandate orthodoxy is only partly tempered by his desperation to understand Kiln as much as his prisoner scientists. He has plenty of scientists, for in a earlier life Daghdev was one of a growing revolutionary underground, and while Daghdev was one of that movement's leaders, he was also part of the intellectuals whose opposition to the Mandate found tiny ways to challenge the "ruling ideas" of society.

These twin strands of alien exploration and revolutionary action intertwine on Kiln and Tchaikovsky does a brilliant job of using his intellectually unorthodox main character to be the eyes and ears of the reader as we ourselves learn about the reality of Kiln. And what revelations await. Even with the spoiler tags at the start of this review I don't want to give too much away, but Tchaikovsky shows how thinking outside of the box is box helpful for both revolutionary leadership and for scientific enquiry. The dawning awareness of what Kiln really is makes for a great story: who is actually doing the "First Contact" between Kiln and humanity. Tchaikovsky unveils this brilliantly.

Unusually, I read this as an audiobook. Normally I prefer physical books, but Alien Clay worked as audio primarily because it is a first person narrative. In places this it is borderline horror, not just because of the alien life's impact on humans, but also because prison worlds and gulags are horror filled places. The commandant knows all too well that rule comes from the barrel of a gun. In his isolated, and numerically weak position, the Mandate's man on the ground, can only rule - ideologically and physically - by mimicking the rule of the state back home on Earth. As such, the novels ending is perhaps a metaphor for wider revolutionary change. 

Alien Clay is one of the most unusual science fiction novels I have read in recent years. It could be written by someone prepared to push the boundaries of the science bit in science-fiction. But Adrian Tchaikovsky's obvious sympathy with radicals and rebels means that the revolutionary bits to the story feel remarkably real. As such, this will appeal to science fiction lovers. But it will also be enjoyed by those sitting on revolutionary committees everywhere who need a bit of a break from the actual struggle.

Related Reviews

Tchaikovsky - Ironclads
Tchaikovsky - Walking to Aldebaran
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Karen Joy Fowler - Sarah Canary

Sarah Canary is a strange and disconcerting book. Its titular character, the anonymous woman who appears in a Western railroad camp as if from nowhere, never speaks. Her very existence, however, draws around her a network of unusual characters - a Chinese railroad labourer, a escapee from an asylum and a feminist sex rights campaigner, - who find themselves compelled to protect and look after her. Sarah Canary is so named because almost the only noises she makes are musical - though there are no recognisable words, and despite the love and protection some of those around her display, she never seems to respond. The central question provided by this living enigma is never answered. The reader has to fill in the gaps.

The picaresque adventures that follow Sarah's arrival in the US show different aspects of the tough frontier life in the US west. Racism, lynching, mob violence and drunken abuse and fighting, as well as attempted sexual assault on the feminist. Through this Sarah Canary seems to float, walking off into the wild lands, or being carried off by unscrupulous people who want to exploit her, displaying her "uglyness" for all to see as an exotic attraction.

There's a lot to unpick here. It is easy to read the book expecting some great twist, or unmasking, whereby Sarah Canary is revealed to be a visitor from outer space, or some other character on an important quest. Reading the book like this will leave the reader unfulfilled for two reasons. Firstly there is no explanation. Secondly, it would mean missing some wider themes. In particular I was struck by how the ugly woman at the centre of the story, badly dressed and out of place in the violent frontier "male" world, is used to provoke a discussion about women themselves. The feminist Adelaide Dixon, who's speeches on the rights of women to enjoy sex, and have equality politically and economically, go down like a lead balloon, also finds herself without a hearing from Sarah Canary. Despite this Dixon sees Sarah as an asset, not least because she mistakes her (or does she) for a woman who has recently gained notoriety for killing her abusive husband. 

But the most interesting character is Chin, the Chinese labourer, sent out into the US to make his fortune, who escapes from debt bondage, finds work and a lot of racism, whose loyalty to Sarah is unchallenged. He follows her, like a sort of terminator, never giving up and never waving. Yet is unclear on exactly why he is doing this. Until her disappearance becomes the reason he returns to China. There he remembers her, and perhaps loves her, till the end of his days.

Sarah Canary is a lovely book. The adventures are over the top, comical and dark. The distinct episodes have the feel of one of those dark Netflix series that dwell on human suffering, but also remind us of the love and kindness out there. It is a classic. But it is not an easy read, nor does it offer any straightforward conclusions.

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Talabi - Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon
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Moore - Northwest of Earth
Le Guin - The Word for World is Forest

Wole Talabi - Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

Wole Talabi is a well known Nigerian author, but this is their first foray into fantasy. Set in a universe where the spirit and human worlds coexist side-by-side, Shigidi is a low ranking nightmare god, who as with other Nigerian gods suffers from a lack of faith. Worshipers are few and far between. The Christian and Muslim faiths have hoovered up their followers, and with the loss of followers comes a consequent loss of power.

The idea that gods are only as powerful as the number of worshippers they have is an old trope in fantasy. My first recollection of it was in Terry Pratchett's Small Gods. The idea likely predates that. But its a neat idea and in the hands of Wole Talabi it becomes a mechanism to discuss power, colonialism and the modern world. Instead of religion, the gods organise through corporations. The boards of these argue about advertising campaigns designed to drum up new followers. The Nigerian patheon of gods, organised through the Orisha Spirit Company, has just come out of a relatively unsuccesful attempt to increase income by funding films in Nollywood.

More problematically for Shigidi, is that he is in love and is on the run. He's falled for the succubus Nneoma, and together they've fled his corporation. Going freelance enables them to live off the spirits of humans that they steal - requiring Nneoma to seduce them with her beauty, and then steal their spirit at the point of orgasm. But it also leaves them with some serious obligations that they finally have a chance to break free of when they are offered a deal: steal a powerful artifact from the heavily magically guarded British Museum, and bring it to the Nigerian Embassy, and they'll both be free of debt, obligations and much more powerful than they can hope for.

The book is pitched as a love story, as Shigidi falls for Nneoma, and she struggles with her own past, her issues preventing her committing to Shigidi. The book opens as she finally does so, as the two escape in a London Black cab through London spirit world. The book then jumps back in time multiple times to give the reader the full back story.

As I said. An intriguing idea, and interesting for the way it brings in serious issues that are being discussed today, namely why all that stuff is in the British Museum anyway. Unfortunately the book is weakened because of its emphasis on sex and violence. There are several long fight scenes and a variety of sex scenes (as well as the violence of Nneoma's stealing spirits from humans who can't escape). These undermine the more intriguing and subtle story of colonialism and post-colonial rule. The metaphor of decling religious power due to the rise of Western ideas and religions gets lost. In fact the best bit, when Shigidi is in the British Museum trying to steal the artifact is disappointinly short. But it offers some moments: 

The gallery walls were painfully white and sterile, arrayed with an assortment of colorful masks, cloths, pottery, weapons and all manner of items displayed atop plinths in transparent cases. Some of the items were works of art. Others he recognised as totems of gods, deities and spirit entities from his and other spirit companies he had worked with in the past, now all displayed - hung, bound, or in locked glass boxes like prisoners. He stared, shocked.

Some of the items Shigidi remembers from his life when the Nigerian gods were all powerful. That they were stolen and hidden in the Museum, filled "him with heat at what the sight before him represented". It was he thinks, "a certain kind of savagery to keep these once purposeful items for no other purpose than display, as trophies in memorian of a colonizer's self-given right to take." 

It's a powerful moment - fantasy becoming real. But I felt that these bits were lost in the fights, chases and the sex. 

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon benefits from a brilliant world construction. It needed a bit more depth to fully explore it. I hope that there are sequels as I'd really like to see what Wole Talabi does next with these characters and ideas.

Frank Herbert - Dune

Denis Villeneuve's recent two part film of Frank Herbert's Dune novel have reawakened interest in the author's multi-volume work. Dune was a significant milestone in science fiction, a novel that linked aspects of the 1960s counter-culture, with emerging ideas around religion, ecology and resistance. When I first read the novel after seeing David Lynch's less successful film in 1984 it immediately became a favourite, though the sequels never grabbed me and I gave up half way through the third book. I did return to the original Dune, but hadn't read it for two decades when the new films were released. Time for a re-read I thought.

How does it hold up? In short I was impressed. The novel works on a number of levels, but hasn't dated to the extent that some science-fiction of the era has. One reason for this is that the novel is low in technological detail. Unlike the various film dramatization we don't see any space flight. The "ornithopters" are simply fast moving flying machines. Herbert's great technical detail is to make the Spice that is mined on Arrakis a drug essential to plotting space travel. But the lack of details means that the reader (and film maker) can fill in what they need.

But reading the book today it is notable how much it works as a story of religious inspired anti-imperialist resistance. There are two aspects to this. Firstly the influence of Middle Eastern ideas in general and Islam in particular to the religious of the Fremen. These indigenous inhabitants of Arakis, a sand world protecting the Spice, become in the contemporary mind, the Arab masses and oil. Watching the first of Villeneuve's films it was hard not to see this particularly in the treatment of the Fremen by the Harkonnes. The more morally just rule by the Duke Atreides, which still insists on the extraction of Spice simply becomes a liberal dose of imperialism, reflecting a world, or galaxy, that runs on oil/Spice.

Reading the book in the 1980s I probably missed the religious influences and references. I did not, of course, forget the sandworms. But re-reading Dune today what I noticed was the way the sandworms are only the tip of a complex ecological system. In fact the ecological orientation of the novels is one of its best aspects - contributing both to the world-building and the plot itself, particularly the position of Liet Kynes the imperial planetologist, whose role is sadly minimised in the films. Kynes' death is one of the great moments in the novel, reflecting as he does, on the world beneath.

Dune today stands in the shadow of the two most recent films. But it deserves to be read as a brilliant work of highly original science-fiction. It works best, I suspect, if read before heading to the cinema. But because it fleshes out a strange, but simultaneously highly recognizable galaxy, it is worth reading even if you've seen the movies.

Frank Herbert's brilliance in Dune was the create a world that seems endlessly familiar. But that's because it is ultimately a film about how imperialism relates to rare and essential resources. As such its a story for all our times.

Lev Grossman - The Bright Sword

***Warning Spoilers - loads of them***

I'll admit to picking up The Bright Sword with some trepidation. I loved Lev Grossman's Magicians Trilogy, which was a sort of warts and all, grown up response to the Harry Potter monolith. The Bright Sword is a retelling of the Arthur myth. The sword of the title is, of course, Excalibur, so do we really need another account of these stories?

But I am hugely glad I did read it though. The book is a fantastic modern update of the story of Camelot, which is refreshingly 21st century and neatly subverts the genre. Lev Grossman's writing is delightfully engaging, and his construction of the story, will engage even those who know Malory or TH White's books inside out. Grossman introduces us to Collum. A talented sword fighter from the Isle of Mull, who is traveling to Camelot to find King Arthur, drunk on the stories of adventure and chivalry that he has heard. His naivety and ignorance mean that when he arrives in the aftermath of Arthur's defeat and death, he is prey for the swirling factionalism that surrounds the court. Morgan le Fey tries to draw him into her schemes, but Collum's idealism keeps him with the knights of Camelot, as we, the reader, learn through flashbacks the story of Arthur and his court.

But this is not the linear narrative of Malory or White, or even John Boorman. This is Camelot, warts and all. Merlin is a sexual predator who uses and abuses his young proteges. Arthur is a good king, but not a great swordsman. Lancelot... well Lancelot is not the person you think he is. As we go back and forth in the timeline, we learn how Camelot was held together by Arthur's idealism and his pure presence. Its a weak foundation that barely holds things together.

Grossman is to be congratulated for this approach. He could have produced a work that was modern without transforming the story. But the Arthur legend has always been retold. It is, after all, a medieval fantasy that moves 15th century society back into the post-Roman period. Malory has a lot to answer for in this regard.

But Grossman goes several steps further. He too plays loose with history (there was no Baghdad at the time of the collapse of Roman Britain) but is at least honest enough to admit this in the afterword. This allows him to make commentary on the differences between Britain and the rest of the world. His slightly tongue in cheek references to colonialism will no doubt cause some Daily Mail readers to gnash their teeth. But the knight who visits the round table from what is now the Middle East, and bemoans how dirty and backward everything is, certainly has a point.

Grossman does more, of course. There's more magic, more fairies, more of an interaction between the real world and fantasy than either White, Malory or even Boorman and Disney introduced to the genre. It makes for a more unsettling atmosphere, that gives the sense of a world in transition. There's also more honesty about who the Britons were. There are enough black and Muslim characters to further upset the Mail readers, and it must be said, there is a beautiful and touching transgender subplot. To say more would be one too many spoilers for this review.

The Arthur myth was always the story of kingly perfection and the closeness between land and ruler. It is one that always glossed over the realities of feudal society, the oppression and exploitation, and brutal war. In retelling it Grossman reminds us that stories have a power to illuminate a lot more than their subject matter. For this, and for many other reasons, I have no trouble in recommending The Bright Sword as one of the strongest, and dare I say it, most original, works of fantasy in years.

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Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

The Massacre of Mankind proudly displays its badge of honour on its front cover: "Authorised by the H.G. Wells Estate". It might be authorised, but is it a worthy follow up to Wells' classic The War of the Worlds?

For those readers who have been hiding from Martians for seventy years, Wells' book was a classic account of an invasion of Victorian England, which saw the industrial, Imperial might of England defeated by fighting machines, until they are defeated in turn by one of literature's greatest deus ex machina. Baxter's follow up is set a few decades later in an alternate history shaped by the Martian's presence in the solar system, and the likelihood that they will return. The course of history has been diverted from our own timeline. World War One did not happen, Britain is in close alliance with Germany, and is a near dictatorship. Secret government projects exist to plan for the next alien arrival, but most people live in a hard, oppressive and grim world.

But Baxter's follow-up takes Wells' context, but sacrifices the original author's ability to tell a tale sharply and briefly. Baxter's work is overlong, bloated and disjointed. He attempts to tell the story of the Second Martian War as a sort of Victorian steampunk alternate history morality tale. 

The problem is that it all hangs together rather badly. There is a structural problem. Halfway through the book Baxter takes a break to suddenly introduce dozens of new characters to discuss the impact of the invasion on America, Australia, South Africa, China and the Ottoman Empire. Most of these are rapidly discarded (similar to how he discards characters in earlier chapters) and all the stories do is to tell of more destruction. It is likely that Baxter thought these stories might add colour (and it is at least good that places in the Global South get a mention) but unlike say Stephen King, who can add real depth to his wider stories with such bit parts, Baxter just adds to the book's bulk, without adding to the story.

A bigger problem though is that its hard to care about the characters. They are too one dimensional. Baxter simply cannot give his readers people who you identify with. Simply giving people long back stories is not enough. They disappear from the page and are instantly forgotten. He seems more interested in telling his alternative history (and being clever by inserting real historical figures into new situations) but even this feels contrived. The idea that the Russian Empire would leapfrog Western industrial capitalism by avoiding Revolution is incredibly far-fetched. But even that is not as far-fetched as the laughable deux ex machina that Baxter offers to end the Second War. At least HG Well's one was believable.

Overall this is a weak book, that relies too much on its original source material and seemingly clever nods to the reader. Don't bother, especially if you enjoy HG Well's original.

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Philip Pullman - The Imagination Chamber: Cosmic Rays from Lyra's Universe

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials universe has been growing over the years. The initial trilogy, followed by two further books of a second trilogy, have been joined by a number of shorter works, several of these have been reviewed on this blog, and have impressed with the additional materials, and quality of production. The Imagination Chamber is less impressive. It is a collection of whimsical thoughts, that the author suggested are like the "little trails of vapour" that condense around a charged particle in a cloud chamber, though the particles in this metaphor, are charged with story.

Cloud chambers are useful for studying very small things, and these vapour trails are very small indeed, some of them barely a few sentences and stretching the material to fit the description of book is difficult. Fans of the books, particularly the first trilogy, will perhaps enjoy fitting the material into those narratives, but they offer little insight or extra information. They might flesh out things a little, but they are more designed to explore character, rather than plot.

Dedicated fans will probably find something here. But I struggled to. The Imagination Chamber offered little to me, and felt unnecessary. One for the completionists. 

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C.L. Moore - Northwest of Earth

Imagine a space smuggler whose adventures rarely bring wealth and fortune, whose luck is proverbial, yet often leaves him in situations even more dangerous, whose roguish good looks attract many women whose good looks hide their danger, and a man who is handy with a blaster. You know who I'm describing of course? No. It's not Han Solo, but C.L.Moore's strangely named Northwest of Earth. C.L.Moore was one of the pen names of Catherine Lucille Moore, whose work was extremely popular in the 1930s. Interestingly she didn't use a pseudnym to hide her gender, but rather to protect her in her main employment.

Northwest of Earth is a collection first published in 1954 containing most of the stories about Northwest Smith. Nearly a century after they were first printed it is a fascinating read. Eschewing any contemporary knowledge of the solar system, she populates Mars, Venus and the other planets with steamy jungles, deserts filled with civilisation and moons and other planets filled with weird and wonderful people. The solar system is filled with civilisations, all of whom are human, but all with their distinct characteristics. The spaceports are filled with smugglers, criminals, dodgy bars and sex workers. And beautiful women.

The latter are, of course, a staple of the science fiction genre. Heroic spacemen blast the baddies/aliens and get the "girl". "Tell me," says one character to Smith "do you have such girls on Earth". Except in Moore's stories it is usually the woman who leads Northwest down a dangerous path. Almost invariably when he meets a female from Mars, Venus or anywhere else she is asking him to accomplish a dangerous task, and often lying through her teeth. It is a neat inversion and Moore deserves a little more credit for her female characters.

Because this isn't really science-fiction. This is Weird fiction. There is much of Lovecraftian work here, tentacles, and dark, dank, misty places. A touch of magic and scary scenarios. C.L. Moore's solar system isn't filled with shiny spacecraft, but with weird tentacled things and slide and slither. Invariably Northwest gets away, usually firing his flame or ray gun (the technology varies from story to story) and cuts his way out.

So these are unusual stories, and the language takes a bit of getting used to. In fact, Moore shares a tendancy to overwrite a little and sometimes the stories' language betrays their origin in pulp magazines. One story, Dust of Gods, has the opening line: "'Pass the whisky, MW' said Yarol the Venusian persuasively."

The modern "Masterwork" edition would be improved by an introduction that tells the reader more about the context and CL Moore's life and work. But all in all these are fun examples of a nearly forgotten genre, by a woman writer who is mostly ignored today, but who was writing intriguing tales that turned the genre(s) upsidedown. Worth digging out.

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Alastair Reynolds - Machine Vendetta

Machine Vendetta is the final novel of the Prefect trilogy, a series of hard science-fiction novels by Alastair Reynolds. It is set in the Yellowstone system, among the glitter-band, thousands of orbitals with hundreds of thousands of people. The system is government by a voting system where inhabitants constantly vote, usually automatically, on decisions that manage the system. The Panoply is the police force, a non-lethal police force who are supposed to be under the democratic control of the people of Yellowstone, but in reality act more as a benevolent dictatorship at times.

Machine Vendetta is part three of a trilogy, but the stories are closely linked. As such much of the background to this volume is not explained and instead readers have to return to earlier works. The book begins as a sort of "detectives in space" as Prefect Tom Dreyfus investigates the unusual behavior of his former protege prefect Ingvar Tench which has led to her death.

What starts as a sort of police procedural in space, albeit from a number of different perspectives, rapidly becomes a system spanning thriller, as the Prefects and Dreyfus confront a powerful enemy that threatens the whole of Yellowstone. 

All of Reynolds' novels carry the reader along, but unusually this felt a little shallow to me. Some of the big ideas are not really explored very well, and on a couple of occasions I felt characters were simply brought on to advance the plot, rather than being developed into fully fledged personas. Still it's a fun read that Reynolds' fans will love.

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Stephen Baxter - Raft

Stephen Baxter's Raft was first published in 1991 but it bears the imprint of an earlier generation of science fiction which made science and technology the focus of the story and world building, rather than personal characters and plot. That said, Baxter's universe is certainly unique. It is set among the descendents of humans who inadvertantly entered an alternate universe where the gravitational force is much stronger. This means that massive structures cannot exist, there are powerful localised forces - in this world humans could attract each other quite literarily - and planets do not exist. Stars are tiny, and have brief lives. 

Most humans live on the raft, which is inside a nebula of breathable air. Some miners live separately, a symbiotic relationship with the raft which seas them mining burnt out stars for metal to be traded to the raft in exchange for food. There are lifeforms that travel through the nebula, and even an exile planet of, well, you'll have to see.

The plot mostly derives from the interactions between these three planets as there is a growing realisation that the nebula is dying. Rees, a miner, comes to this realisation and stows away on a transport tree to get to the raft, where he swiftly proves his scientific ability. The Raft is a technocracy - ruled by scientists who protect and hoard the knowledge of the old spacecraft - its books and machinery, to carefully manage the human population size and share out its limited resources.

Except such sharing isn't equal, and the scientists are resented and hated by small groups of rebels - who eventually, well, rebel. The ensuing revolution is the scene for the end of the novel. Not plot spoilers here.

The problem is that Raft feels like novel that only exists to discuss the universe building. But on closer examination there are some bigger problems. The plot hinges on the role of science and technology, and Baxter appears to be saying that the only scientists are those who are dispassionate and clever enough to run society. In an era when populist politicians and rightwingers are sowing distrust at science and experts, it can feel tempting to support this thesis. But surely the problem with the raft is not the ignorant masses and the clever scientists - it is the material limitations of the society that mean the future is only getting worse. Baxter's only idea in this is that the scientists - through their dispassionate, all seeing knowledge - have the only answers. The masses are ignorant fools who disrupt the natural hierarchy.

It is, sadly, all to superficial. Scientists aren't the best rulers based on their knowledge. It would have been a far better story had Stephen Baxter explored these themes in greater depth and tried to really interrogate what it is about the interaction between society and environment that can produce progress or collapse. Sadly Raft doesn't do the context justice.

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Ursula K. Le Guin - The Word for World is Forest

When yumens arrive on Athshe they find themselves in the midst of plenty. Earth is short of crucial resources, but Athshe is covered in one of them - its lush forests providing enormous quantities of wood. The only people who live there are the primitive indigenous people, who are easily convinced to work, in slave like conditions for the yumens - as servants, labourers, and sex workers.

The Athsheans live a peaceful existence, their culture, art and communications are almost incomprehensible to the yumens, with the exception of Raj Lyubov the human colony's anthropologist who recognises that the Athsean are just different humans. They are not subhuman as most of the colony thins, its just that their culture is so different they are viewed as being lesser, childlike and alien.

Lyubov clashes with one of the colony's leaders, Captain Davidson. Davidson is in charge of a logging camp, meaning he directly overseas the forced labour of the locals. He is also a violent man, whose rape of the wife of one of the Athsheans, Selver, helps precipitate a revolt. Selver organisies, or reorganises the Atsean, leading them in a serious of brilliant military attacks that destroy the human colony and force Earth to withdraw.

First published in 1972, this is clearly a novel heavily influneced by the US war in Vietnam. Ursula Le Guin's criticism of US imperialism is clearly on display. Yet that's not the best analogy for the book - in fact it seems to me to be much more about the settler colonialism of the US within its own country - how the stripping of resources undermined and forced Native Americans into confrontation with the US military. In the 21st century, the struggle for resources (in this case wood) takes on a different sheen as well.

The brilliance of the novel lies in Le Guin's ability to show the incomprehension of the humans in the face of Athshean culture. Like countless encounters between European colonists and indigenous people, from Africa, to Asia and the Americas, the Athsheans are dismissed as childlike, lazy, stupid or subhuman. But Le Guin takes us into the alien mind, showing us an alternative world view, that clashes with the Earthling's quest for profit. But, in this encounter, the Athsheans cannot be unchanged. We are left knowing that things will never be the same again.

This is an incredible novel that stays with the reader long after finishing, and illuminates, perhaps more than Le Guin realised, the struggles we face today.

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Adrian Tchaikovsky - Ironclads

In the not to distant future, US troops use the British Isles as a jumping off point to fight a violent, internecine war on the European landmass. It is a savage conflict, with high tech hiding a brutal reality. Ordinary troops die, or are maimed in their thousands, while an elite officer class sit safe in their 21st century armoured "scion" skins, directing and effectively playing at being knights of the realm. They are near invulnerable, a class whom, like the knights of old made "a game of how many poor bastards they could cut up". So says Sturgeon, one of a small group of troops who have been chosen for an impossible mission.

The narrator is less sure. They're here to do a job - in this case rescue a downed scion, lost behind enemy lines. Sturgeon's history lessons niggle at the team's minds. Is it a mission they have been specially chosen for? Are they just pawns? Is there something else going on? And anyway who has the tech to actually down a scion?

Ironclads follows the team into the fray. It's a short novel that packs a lot in - partly because of its subject matter. The nature of the conflict feels much more like that in Ukraine, though it was published a few years before that slaughterhouse began. These years we are more used to highly powerful countries pulverising smaller, poorer nations. But this is a book about modern conflict in a high-tech world.

So there's lots of technology - AIs, drones, robots. But humans still get blown to pieces quite a lot. So this is military science fiction with a lot of human values in it. But, like much of Tchaikovsky's other work, it is also a deeply political novel. Sturgeon, in one of his history lessons, explains how Britain broke off from Europe, and in the ensuing economic catastophe, found itself even more closely aligned with the interests of the US. But the rest of Europe was following a different path. If the US was diving deep into a high tech, neoliberal, theocracy (the Church of Christ Libertarian!), then Europe was enjoying the fruits of state intervention, green technology and keeping the wealthy in check. 

The war, when it comes, is fought for the US multinationals who want to make sure they get back their slice of the pie, and smash the incipient European socialism. The scions aren't military top brass, they're the corporate heads who are really pulling the strings, and they have much deeper interests. There are thus some excellent jokes. As the narrator complains, "I got shelled by the 1st fighting corps of fucking Ikea last year!" 

Here Tschaikovsky has dialled up the imperialist narrative. Nearly a quarter of a century ago, US neoliberal Thomas Friedman said that ‘the hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas. The hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US army, air force, navy and Marine Corps.’ But this is not the hidden hand. Here the multinationals have merged and taken over the military. They are the warmongers. But, ironically, war is not actually that profitable if you are blowing apart your own sub-companies, emerging markets and resources.

The imperialism depicted in Ironclads is not really that different to the monopoly capitalism lying behind World War One that Lenin and Rosa Luxembourg wrote about. Good political science fiction doesn't always have to wear its politics on its sleeve. Adrian Tchaikovsky's done a very good job indeed here of placing some really interesting ideas at the heart of a very hard military science fiction work. Highly recommended.

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Sylvain Neuvel - Until the Last of Me

*** Spoilers ***

This is the second volume of Sylvain Neuvel's Take Them to the Stars trilogy. It is an alternate history of the 20th century, focusing on two groups of human like aliens that live among the wider population. For three thousand years they have fought each other. One group, the Kibsu, have tasked themselves with getting humanity to space so that they can escape Earth. These women, have hidden themselves, gently prodding and encouraging humans to gain the necessary insights to develop science and move, slowly towards the stars. The Kibsu are all women, and one of the great insights of these books is how Neuvel links the difficulties of these gentle nudges, with the wider problems of women's oppression in society and science. 

He also doesn't fall into the trap of pretending this is easy for the Kibsu. One of the ironies of the historical chapters in Until the Last of Me, is that the Kibsu often fail, or find that human scientists are already gaining the insights they need, or that their women's insights are ignored. In fact Neuvel reinforces the idea, perhaps not deliberately, that scientific advance is a consequence of humanity's collective development - not just the insights of individuals. The greatest step forward taking by Kibsu Mia though was to get the Nazi Von Braun to the US after World War Two, and then to push the Soviets into space to make it happen. This is where the second novel opens - humans are in space, but the Kibsu need them to push further outward. But there is a problem.

For thousands of years the Kibsu have run from the Tracker. The aliens, all male, hunting them. For thousands of years the motto has been "run, do not fight". In this book the last Kibsu has to fight to protect what she has found out about her origins and humanity's destiny. 

Neuvel skillfully weaves the story of the Kibsu around 20th century space exploration - making Voyager the focus of the tale. This is itself enjoyable - in a way its a more exciting and innovative vision of humanity's voyage into space than the moon landings and the space race. But it is a dead end, and its notable that the book opens with Kibsu disappointment at the lack of movement in space.

For this reason, Until the Last of Me fails to develop some of the intensity of the first book - the space race provided a tension that is lacking in the second book. Instead Neuvel relies on the back story of the Kibsu and a somewhat implausible detective story as the Kibsu use an ancient artifact (locked in a vault in China) as a map to find their way to a secret. This is a little to Indiana Jones, and it contains one of the sillest museum heist scenes I've ever read.

I suspect that Until the Last of Me, suffers from being volume two of a trilogy. A bridge between beginning and end. We shall see. The ending is a pretty good cliff hanger.

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