Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss has some notoriety among fantasy fiction readers, as its volume one of a trilogy that at the time of reviewing only has two volumes. Nevertheless it is highly acclaimed among those who like this sort of thing and it was a fun read.

It is also notable for its "story in a story" format. The open scenes take place in a classic fantasy tavern. The innkeeper Kote is actually Kvothe, a famous adventurer and magician, of whom many tales are told and embellished across the continent of Temerant. There is, naturally, a growing darkness on the continent and roads are dangerous to travel. Rumours of monsters and attacks on villagers lead to Kote travelling out one night and rescuing someone. This person turns out to be Chronicler a travelling scribe who is on a mission to find Kvothe so that he can document his adventures from his own account.

This leads to the main story as Kvothe recounts his life story, from his time as a child with a travelling circus, his encounter with an arcanist who teaches him the rudiments of magic and his eventual entry into Temerant's university of magic.

Stories within stories give the reader a lot of background, and set up plot points for later novels (and I presume its sequels). Kvothe's time at university is dominated by his superhuman (and somewhat unbelievable) natural abilities to learn and develop his magical skills and his rivalry with a wealthy student Ambrose who he develops a book long hatred of. Rothfuss makes a big thing of the disparities in wealth of Kvothe and most of his peers. Kvothe's lack of cash is made up for by enormous luck and his super ability to learn skills including making music, which allows him to continue his adventures.

What makes The Name of the Wind a decent read is the depth of the world-building and the stories within stories. The tropes of magical schools, student rivalries and magic are handled relatively well and don't distract too much. It's a fun adventure that will distract readers appropriately though I am not sure it will linger much in the memory.

R.C. Sherriff - The Hopkins Manuscript

***Spoiler Alert***

R.C.Sherriff is best known for his World War One play Journey's End and as the screenwriter for such classic films as The Dambusters and Goodbye, Mr Chips. His 1939 novel The Hopkins Manuscript is however not as well known. I hope that this review will help encourage a new audience to enjoy this remarkable comic dystopian novel.

Edgar Hopkins is a snob. A retired teacher he lives alone with a housekeeper, and breeds chickens. His prizewinning poultry is perhaps his greatest success and he coverts every possible prize. On occasion he travels to London, where as a member of the British Astronomy Club he surrounds himself with people whom he imagines are intelligent, basking in their reflected knowledge. It's a singular existence. He is rude to almost everyone else. Feuds with most of his neighbours in the tiny village were he lives and imagines himself to be better than the rest. In short, he is a middle class snob, desperate to be noticed by his betters and to get to sup at the table of those richer, more famous and more learned than he.

One evening, as a member of the Astronomy society he is let into an enormous secret. The worlds' governments have discovered that the Moon has come adrift and is heading towards Earth. In a few months it will impact and if the world survives it will be on a very different basis.

As the moon approaches the world awakens to the threat. Enormous resources are poured into buildings shelters and preparing for catastrophe. Hopkins' is gradually transformed. He learns the comradeship of work, makes friends and tries to "make do and carry on". As one of the few survivors he begins to rebuild with a few neighbours (albeit ones from the landowning classes). Its the happiest time of his life. Cut adrift from the government and state, the local village fends for itself. Bartering becomes the norm. Hopkins learns new skills and loses old prejudices. Almost.

This is a very funny book. Hopkins reminds me of Mr. Pooter in Diary of a Nobody. The humour is similar, the reader laughs at Hopkins' idiocy and class jealously. We laugh at his snobbery, maintained as the world is literarily on the brink of disaster but we also will him on. We want him to survive. And survive he does.

But. The opening chapter of The Hopkins Manuscript tells a different story. The book has been found a thousand years later, and published, with even more snobbishness, by the Imperial Research Press of Addis Ababa. They know nothing of Britain. It disappeared and its damp climate destroyed all records. What happened to Hopkins? To London? To Europe? 

This then is the second half of the book, and while the humour remains, there is darkness. You see as civilisation rebuilds, the governments of the Earth also reestablish control. The Moon has not disappeared, instead it has crashed into the Atlantic ocean and there left a vast area of unclaimed land and mineral resources, coal and oil. The rebuilding nations all demand their share, and Britain demands access so it can maintain its Empire.

The tensions erupt, inevitably, into war and Hopkins losses everything. The happiness he knew will living in the new world, unencumbered by fears of politics and economics falls apart. Having a chicken to lay eggs now is a luxury. England starves. So does Hopkins.

The cleverness of the book of course is twofold. As Rebecca Solnit points out in her book A Paradise Built in Hell. Disaster does not make us into mindless zombies or characters in a Mad Max film. It leads us to try to help each other. It is the reassertion of capitalism, of the state, of class, that drags the world back to disaster and the second is far worse than the first. It's a subtle jibe. Sherriff was writing on the eve of World War Two. He had lived through and documented the horrors of the first. He was now staring down at another. The Hopkins Manuscript is his commentary on what is happening - and its is very good indeed.

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Stephen King (Richard Bachman) - The Long Walk

The gameshow format exploded in popularity in the US in the late 1950s. The promises of instant wealth and exotic prizes combined with flamboyant hosts became a global phenomena, that has never really ended, merely changed. By the mid-1960s, when Stephen King began writing, they were a central part of US culture and had been exported globally. It is no surprise then that they offered a fertile ground for dystopian writers.

The Long Walk was the first book King wrote. But it was not the first he published. That honour went to Carrie. The Long Walk languished until 1974 when it was published under the pseudonymn Richard Bachman. Eight years later King/Backman published The Running Man. Given that both novels concern a horrific, murderous, game show it is hard not to compare the two.

The Long Walk consists is a competition walk. Entrents, all boys, compete to walk the furthest. This continuous walk must be completed at a speed never less than four miles per hour. Those who fall behind are warned. After three warnings, the next time the speed drops below 4mph, accompanying soldiers execute the unfortunate boy. But the boys can regain warnings by recovering and keeping going for an hour. The last walking boy wins whatever they want and need for life. In the grim poverty stricken society of this alternate America, hundreds of boys are willing to risk death for the chance to lift their families from poverty and drudgery.

The bulk of the novel is the story of the walk. The boys make alliances, friendships and help each other. They occasionally share snacks, and tell each other their life stories. Several boys avoid this, indeed one of them actively tries to sabotage the others. In other words the game that is designed to foster competition actually ends up forcing collaboration. At least until the end of the walk nears.

There are, of course, parallels with The Running Man. There a game player has to avoid their own murder and must rely on their ability to escape pursuers while trusting on the help of strangers who have a vested interest in handing the player in to authorities for a reward. Both stories suffer a little from the period when they were written. The Long Walk is not televised as TV cameras require cables. So crowds gather, and no doubt, news reports on progress allow people to know how their bets have turned out. But the crowds are not baying for blood, they're encouraging the walkers and often not in a partisan way. King here, as in The Running Man, tends to have a more positive view of human nature. That said, there's little in this book about the origins of the Walk and the role it plays in society. The leader of the troops, the Major, is anonymous. He wears reflective sunglasses and seems to have a hero status in the eyes of those he is threatening. In The Running Man there's a much more explicit acknowledgement that the games are a release valvue for a society whose tensions are high due to its economic and politics contradictions.

Thus The Long Walk, in part because of the nature of the game itself, and in part because of how King writes it, is less a story of dystopiansm and more a story of individual survival against violence and against the odds - albeit one where several characters only get as far as they do because those they compete against help them. The Running Man, on the other hand, is a deeper exploration of a society were the downtrodden find ways to resist and there's broader solidarity among the oppressed. The Long Walk's central premise doesn't allow King to draw this out, and so it's tempting to see the later novel as a fuller exploration of the themes in King's first work.

That said - do read The Long Walk. While it's story seems dystopian, we should not forget that America had dance competitions to win a prize, with the last couple standing taking the prize. Or the British games show "Touch a Truck" which saw similar feats of individual endurance to win a prize. While no one has yet murdered anyone for a 21st century game show, it doesn't seem unrealistic. 

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M. John Harrison - The End of Everything

Well they always say you shouldn't be afraid to try new things. I was unsure I would like M. John Harrison's latest book The End of Everything after I read the Guardian review here. As quite a literal reader I am uncomfortable with stories that aren't particularly clear on what's happening, or layer meaning upon meaning. Nonetheless I decided to give it ago, not least because I very much like end of the world novels, and we are facing catastrophic change.

The End of Everything is mostly set in the very English seaside world of the Kent coast. A place of small farms, former fishing villages and second homes. The world has undergone some form of catastrophe. Aliens called the iGhetti have appeared connected in some way to financial centres and banking - the City of London being a common location. The military have bombed and shelled their somewhat ghostly forms, but nothing seems to have halted their advance.

Civilisation seems to have collapsed. One character who claims that he has repeatedly visited London to study the iGhetti is met with disbelief. The state doesn't seem to function - there are no police when one of the characters commits murder early in the book - and instead a form of listless mob justice seems to rule. But on the other hand some cafes and inns seem to function in a way that bears no real relationship to an actual economy. Perhaps this is meant to be a comment on our own economy, which seems to bear little relationship to the needs of the people who make up society.

Much of the book centres on people who make their living by collecting artefacts from the sea. Unnamed things wash up on the beach and some are sold or kept. Special artefacts can be transformative for the finder, who consequently leave the coast. Phillip has found one of these artefacts. It seems to be alive - indeed at various points people eat bits of it - and over time it grows and develops. When Phillip dies it takes on his personality or part of it. Marnie, Phillip's elderly relative, goes on a road trip with the artefact and Phillip's ashes. Marnie appears to be on a quest to try and find out what happened. But she doesn't seem to really mind - instead she's drawn to the source of the problem at the City of London. Perhaps its the source of all our problems.

Online commentary suggests that the novel is meant as a comment on Brexit, or capitalism. I thought it had something to say about commodity fetishism - but perhaps thats the Marxist in me reading too much. But there's a real fog about this book. Its not clear what is happening - is anything real. Is anyone even human? Does anyone have a purpose? Are the customers in the cafe ghosts? Or are they real people lost in a landscape that has lost all meaning.

My Guardian reader worried that readers who dislike SF might be put off by this book. I am not sure. Those who are put off are probably those like me who need more certainty in their novels. Those who like ambuguity, metaphor and fog will love it. I could see the brilliant writing. But I couldn't see into the story.

Iain M. Banks - Feersum Endjinn

Despite my love of Iain M. Banks' science fiction novels I have never read Feersum Endjinn. When I first attempted it soon after it's first publication in the mid 1990s, I was put of by the "difficult" chapters. These are written phonetically, and I found them impenetrable. Today, after nearly three decades of text speak, I was less challenged by them. Perhaps younger audiences will find them normal.

Feersum Endjinn is set on a future Earth facing a gigantic astronomical calamity. Precisely what this is, and what the solution is, is unclear until nearly the end of the book and I won't ruin that here. But living on the Earth, long after huge populations have deserted the planet, are a number of waring factions that inhabit different levels of a colossal structure known as the Fastness. This is the remnant of Earth's spacefaring past, the anchors for its space elevators, and a monument to civilisational collapse. The factions that inhabit the ruins do so in a feudal structure - something that Banks often uses to represent retrograde or backward human societies that have falled from their technology appogee. The war between these factions takes place on a number of vertical levels. It also takes place on a number of cyber levels too. Humans in this future have the ability to enter different dimensions, places were time moves differently, and engage with others physically and mentally.

Banks explores this conflict from multiple points of view. One of them is a senior aristocratic Count, who has been assassinated multiple times, before escaping to a new "level" to solve the riddle of his murder at a different time scale. The other is a scientist who has receved a cryptic message from a seemingly alien presence that alerts her to a potential solution to Earth's dilemma. Finally we have an initially aimless being who appears suddenly at the estate of a minor noble, but whose innocence betrays the fact that she has deeper knowledge of what is happening. Finally there is a oddly minor figure, whose account is told phonetically, whose innocent quest to find his talking pet ant takes him on a strange quest, full of all sorts of beings, that gradually point toward the resolution.

The backdrop to the story is the various factions who are trying to cover up the danger to Earth, and also to protect themselves. the resolution sees the coming together of representatives of the various factions, manipulated by unseen forces and made to overcome their differences.

Writing in 1994 it is possible to see Feersum Endjinn as a metaphor for social intrasigence in the face of oncoming environmental disaster. At the time it was also possible to believe that techology alone would be enough to "save Earth". Today that is unlikely, and perhaps this literal ex machina escape rings less true that it did when the book was first written. Nonetheless for Iain M Banks' fans this is an excellent read, though its structure and language makes the book a difficult one.

R.F. Kuang - Katabasis

*** Spoilers ***

Apparently R.F. Kuang explained the origins of her latest novel Katabasis on noting that "academia is hell" and extending this to what if academia was hell. In this sense it is a development of what has come to be known as "Dark Academia", a subset of fantasy novels that deal in horrors, violence and threat in universities. The dark side of academia.

Katabasis begins like many a fantasy novel. The hero, Alice Law, is studying magic under Doctor Jacob Grimes. Grimes is a magical genius. But also a control freak, self obsessed, egotistical monster and a bully. He steals ideas, makes promises that never come to fruition and has a reputation as a someone who is impossible to work for. He is also a serial sexual assaulter, and a key plot point is that Alice has been his victim.

Grimes' two star students, Alice and Peter Murdoch have a difficult relationship with their tutor. Alice is desperate for acknowledgement and praise, Peter is wounded by how he has been betrayed by Grimes. Their own friendship has fallen about as a result of misunderstandings, and lack of communication. Both of them seek revenge and in doing so Grimes is killed in a magical accident while trying to test an idea he has stolen from Peter.

Feeling guilty, but not trusting each other, Alice and Peter head to Hell, to the realm of the dead, to try and rescue Grimes. If nothing else they both need to graduate.

The bulk of the book is set in Hell, with Alice and Peter trying to track down Grimes' shade and return him. They proceed through the various levels that have previously been documented by earlier visitors like Dante, debating philosophical questions as they proceed. Hell is academia. It's outer layers are mirrors of undergraduate life and its inner realms are reflections of the hell of trying to publish, gain recognition and stay ahead.

Katabasis is a strange fantasy. It has been described as a love story. But in many ways it is more a story of revenge. It is also a critical, if somewhat oblique, comment on academia in general, and Oxbridge in particular. Grimes' is the worst you can imagine in an academic, and Alice's tragic experiences with him, and the failures of those around him, are portrayed well. As is the final reckoning.

Terry Pratchett - A Hat Full of Sky

Tiffany Aching is one of the great characters of Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasies. While the novels she is in are aimed at young adults - Tiffany is only 11 in this one - they are profoundly clever works exploring our moral universe with a dash of anarchy and chaos. A Hat Full of Sky is the second Tiffany Aching novel after she defeated the Queen of the Fairies and temporarily becomes the Kelda of the local Nac Mac Feegle. These "pixies" are violent, drunken, agreesive and fiercly loyal inhabitants of the Chalklands were Tiffany lives (analogous to Wilthshire) and after her victory they are her protectors and chaotic influences.

Tiffany heads to become an apprentice to the elderly Witch Miss Level. One the way she is attacked by an indestructible creture called a Hiver which has been around since the beginning of time, absorbing and taking over individuals, feeding off their memories and knowledge. After several surprises in Miss Level's home, Tiffany meets other apprentices, some of whom are convinced that the more showy aspects of magic are the most important thing. Trinketts and explosions over care and morals.

Tiffany, together with her mentor Granny Weatherwax, eventually defeat the Hiver and restore safety to the universe. It's a fairly decent fairy tale, and everyone gets their just desserts or rewards at the end.

Except. It is much more than that. It's a wonderful example of Pratchett's carefully drawn world. His buccolic rural setting where the rural economy is backed up by gentle magic. Where real magic exists, but proper magic is knowing how to look after a dying man and help his widow clean the sheets the day after. Its a carefully constructed moral universe where people love and live, and get back what they put in. The moral Witches' moral economy is particularly interesting, as payment and reward are constantly fed back into the wider social and economic world, keeping things going and passing on good.

Threats to the order are dire, but can be faced with honesty and bravery. While there's a lot of fantasy here, its a kind world where Pratchett celebrates our humanity and kindness in general. We could learn a lot.

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Claire North - Slow Gods

Claire North has a gift for unusual stories that usually meld fantastical elements (humans who relive their lives over and again; people who can take over other people's minds and bodies) with the gloriously normal worlds the rest of us inhabit. In Slow Gods however North has done something a little out of the ordinary for her. This time her novel has a principle character Mawukana na-Vdnaze who cannot die. Or rather they cannot stay dead ("I am a very poor copy of myself"). But they don't live on our Earth, they live in a very complicated galaxy dominated by a powerful corporation known as the Shine and a rather ineffectual UN type body called the Accord.

The interplanetary travel in this universe is conducted by means of arcspace. Gifted humans have to link into spacecraft and guide the ships through "the dark". In doing so they risk their minds and those of their passengers. Most humans can only do it a few times. But for some reason Mawukana na-Vdnaze can do it repeatedly, and with a precision that allows remarkable missions and occasional warfare. The Shine like to use piloting as a punishment. It's a sign of their cruelty.

Into this well thought out universe comes news from the Slow, and unknown alien force of enormous power. They inform worlds that a supernova will consume a densely inhabited part of the galaxy in a few decades, and leave humanity to try and cope. The Shine does little - rescuing handpicked individuals and people they need, leaving the masses to perish. Other planets do more, and pilots like Mawukana na-Vdnaze are in great demand to pilot refugee ships. Every great science-fiction novel is a reflection on our times, and those of us who've felt horror at dozens of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean can only imagine the horrors when billions are fleeing. Some people get a lottery ticket to escape. Others are left. The evacuation of one planet, Adjumir, sees its population desperately scrabbling to save their culture, traditions and history. But what can be saved? At the end those who've survived have begun to lose their songs and language - merging into their new locales.

In response to the failures to rescue people a resistance movement is born, and on some planets the Shine are fought to a standstill. Eventually the Accord is forced to act - not to save people, but to stop the Shine. Mawukana na-Vdnaze plays their own role, as spy, warrior and pilot. Part of the resistance to the Shine that first destroyed his own city.

Slow Gods is a complicated novel in places. I found North's development of Mawukana na-Vdnaze's story hard to follow as it was scattered through the book. But what worked well were interpersonal relations between Mawukana na-Vdnaze and their friends, comrades and lover. Here North plays around with gender (and lots and lots of pronouns) to flesh it all out vividly. 

Ultimately I was left a little disappointed. The book is very much a metaphor for how society reacts to threats. The analogy with the supernova in a few decades time threatening to destroy everything, and the inaction over climate change is obvious and works well. But I found the story itself a little thin and underwhelming. So read it for the people, places and cultures that North portrays. Also a living spaceship made from trees and flowers.

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qntm - There is no Antimemetics Division

The online SCP Foundation, via the SCP Wiki, has been a source of excellent fictional writing focused on the idea that various secret organisations exist that study and fight paranormal, alien and (sometimes comic) supernatural creatures and species. Qntm, the pen-name of Sam Hughes, has produced an excellent novel based on their writing on the SCP Wiki and various short stories. There is No Antimemetics Division is based around Marie Quinn, the leader of the Antimemetics Division which fights various alien and supernatural creatures, most I think of which appear on the SCP Wiki.

The story begins with some of the more mundane events, where it becomes clear that there are many existing threats to the Division and to humanity in general. But what also slowly emerges is that there are layers on experiences and knowledge that are hidden from the characters themselves. Fighting monsters that can live in ideas, or thoughts, or their awareness of you, means sometimes having to forget key pieces of information. Then there is the problem that some of the monstrous threats alter or destroy memories. So the joke of the book's inner flap "Welcome to the Antimemetics Division, this is not your first day" is a very real one for employees of the Division.

What quickly becomes clear is that there is a very big conspiracy that is threatening reality itself. Quinn is central to fighting this, but she's not entirely aware of her role, and some of the best bits of the novel are those where characters like Quinn find hidden information or even special firewalled offices that allow them to discuss infomation they have forgotten.

One of the great things about the SCP Foundation has always been the way it gives the reader tantalising glimpses of wider stories. If this was all qntm's novel did it would probably work - especially because frequently these glimpses come through the character's own discovery of knowledge of their forgotten memories. But the novel really works because there is a good story here too. Quinn discovers that the Division is shrinking. They are losing their war. This is deeply personal for her and this loss is at multiple levels. In fact the reader is not just an observer - we know things that Quinn forgets. This allows a level of horror to develop beyond that of just that caused by death and destruction.

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Stephen King (Richard Bachman) - The Running Man

I have not yet seen the new version of The Running Man film released earlier this year. Its release however has been the occasion for me watching the original film, the 1987 one starring Arnold Schwarzenegger  and finally reading the book. I am very glad I read the book - Schwarenegger's film much less so - as it is a remarkable novel.

Few readers of this blog are likely to be unfamiliar with the story. Written by Stephen King as Richard Bachman in 1982 it is set in the early 2000s in a dystopian world where poverty and lawlessness are endemic and the US state manages its citizens through a combination of violent repression and distracting TV programmes that offer tantalising prizes to the poor while offering viewers the voyeristic chance to see the players die horribly. What twisted mind could imagine such a future one asks?

This is familiar territory. The 1987 film turned the idea of a man hunted for dollars, risking his life to a massive prize into a gameshow and the trope is now a realtively common one. But, and its a big but, leaving that aside I want to recommend King's book very highly indeed. Because what King does is to turn the story into one about an ordinary, poverty stricken working class man whose daughter desperately needs medication that they cannot afford, into a story about class, power and revenge.

Ben Richards is the titular running man. He's a working class bloke who has been almost broken by the system. Blacklisted for punching a foreman, he has nearly destroyed his health working casual, manual work. His wife is a sex worker whose earnings keep the family afloat. Richards enters the running man because he has to make some money to pay for medicine. But he enters as an embittered and angry man whose frustrations are aimed much higher than those out to hunt him down. When the gameshost is waiting with Richards for a lift to go to the ground floor of the games building, Richards has feted with wealth and power. As he steps into the lift he asks the host of the Running Man, but "who could I kill if I went up?" A good question. Class runs through this book like a red thread. One good piece of advice Richards gets from the games host is "stay with your own". Because what Richards finds is solidarity - from people who look after him, to people who turn their eyes the other way. 

As Richards travels he learns more, and in the most powerful bit of the book he finds himself protected by a group of Black radicals who have taught themselves in the libraries about the world they live in. They've uncovered a conspiracy by the state to hide the fact that millions are dying from appalling pollution, but that the rich have all been given nose filters to protect them. The deaths of millions of children like Richard's daughter are the result of a greedy government, not poverty. Richard's attempts to use his position on the show to expose the reality. But his urging of people to "read about pollution", "go to the library" are drowned out by mocking, middle class audience jeers. As Richards flees further he argues with a woman he kidnaps, showing her that her reality is the unreal one. Soon it becomes clear to the network that Richards is actually quite dangerous. 

I have always enjoyed Stephen King's books for their insights into the dark underbelly of US history. The Running Man is perhaps the book of his I've read that is most clearly about class, poverty and resistance. There's no collective action here (though a few strikes are mentioned) but Richards is supported by a lot of people. At one point a couple of cops watch his car escape and they mutter to each other - I hope he wins says one. The ending is much more radical and satisfying than the sanitised pseudo super-hero film that Schwarenegger stars in. I've heard that the remake is closer to the original novel. But read the book - its a remarkable novel that speaks a great deal to modern times.

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Hal Lacroix - Here and Beyond

To escape a world ravaged by environmental crisis, biodiversity loss and economic collapse a billionaire builds a generation ship to travel to another planet. 600 people join a voyage that will last almost 400 years, far longer than anyone will hope to survive. Their children's children's children might make it. Here and Beyond is the story of what happens to the generations who live on shipworld.

Science-fiction novels that deal with generation ships are not uncommon, but the best of them allow the author and reader to play with concepts that are elusive in other environments. Communities trapped in deteriorating conditions, or limited space, is one common theme. Others play with the thoughts and frustrations of people trapped in conditions that they would not have asked for. Hal Lacroix's book looks at both of these, and interestingly the bulk of his novel doesn't concern those who arrive at HD-40307G, the exo-planet that is their destination. What concerns Lacroix is the relationships of the generations that are shipbound.

These go through various phases - there are those that remember Earth, including those that were on Earth. Then there are those that that have a connection to Earth through their parents, but as those die out the community begins to develop its own culture, theories and ways of coping. Here one of the fascinating aspects to Lacroix's book is the cultural limits imposed by the billionaire who built it. There are only 100 recordings of music that he liked, and only books from his personal library (which means our intrepid explorers have a strange collection of business books to cope with - though library is eventually recycled). Readers might see in this a metaphor for how the super-rich see themselves and what they consider of value. Its notable that one of the items on the ship is a Olmec head, stolen no doubt and placed there by the billionaire. Another is a painting that has symbolic meaning for the recipient, and is interpreted differently by its subsequent owners.

Readers looking for a scientific account of the 42 light-year trip will be disappointed. Lacroix very much focuses on the people and their relationships, and how they cope, survive and experience the various crises on route. There's some interesting commentary - youngsters go through a phase where they doubt the reality of their mission, believing they are an experiment and have to be shown the outside. Others wonder what clouds are like or what deviled eggs are. Some people rebel against the constraints of the ship. Sometimes they win. The billionaires carefully constructed eco-system quickly breaks down - when doesn't it? Birds die and spices are short. 

This is very much a novel to provoke thinking. Lacroix doesn't dwell on some of the experiences - the reader can never understand, like his characters, what happens with one strange encounter. Nor is there a great deal of information on what happens after landing. That's perhaps the beauty of this work. Its not to be read for science, but to provoke you to think what it's liked to be trapped in a failing ecosystem created by the billionaires. Now there's a metaphor.

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Douglas Adams - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Revisting a favourite book from many years ago can be like finding a long lost friend. So it was with Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I must have read this half a dozen times in the 1990s. But that means that there's a gap of nearly quarter of a century since I last opened it, and while I remembered it well, I think I had forgotten just how funny it is. I also had not remembered, or perhaps hadn't appreciated, the novels depths and the intricacies of the plot.

One of the amusing things about the book is that Dirk Gently, who appeared in one further complete novel, a radio play and a couple of TV series, doesn't appear until a third of the way through this, the first novel. The opening third of the novel is a series of apparently random and disconnected events. A robotic priest, programmed to believe everything it is told, rides a horse in an alien landscape. An absent minded history professor amazes a young girl at a Cambridge dinner, and Gordon Way (I am assuming this is a caricature of Clive Sinclair) a multi-millioniare software company founder, is murdered.

These stories will be connected. In fact they are connected through time and space with other, lesser events. Everything in the book matters, and readers will find on repeated readings that they notice more and more. All this, of course, goes with Dirk Gently's central idea - everything is connected. The universe links everything and solving mysteries is simply a matter of following everything to its conclusion - no matter how unrelated and random stuff appears. 

All of this is, of course, done within the framework of Douglas Adam's typical absurdist, chaotic and occasionally farcical story telling. It is what made me laugh thirty years ago, and what made me laugh again, and again, this time around. But I was also struck by something else. Adam's own fascination and embracement of new technology means that some parts of the novel would have seemed outlandish. One character downloads information from the internet (we assume a bulletin board of the time) and there's a good joke about the US militaries use of software. While none of the characters have mobile phones, in some ways this is a very modern novel.

When I first read this I used to joke that this was a convoluted novel that was really about how a sofa gets stuck in a stairwell. It is that. But there's so much else, and its made me very keen to reread the sequel and seek out the final, unfinished story that's collected in Salmon of Doubt. Douglas Adam's untimely death robbed us of so many great stories.

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Ken Macleod - The Cassini Division

About forty pages into The Cassini Division I realised that this was not the first book in the series. I then found a review that suggested it was NOT a good place to start the series. That said, occasionally you find yourself without alternative reading material, and so I ploughed onward. If this was an inauspicious start it was not a disastorous one. This is an engrossing read and I am determined to find the actual start so I can enjoy the books in series.

There is a long, fine, tradition of radicals writing books about visitors to, or from, utopian societies to capitalist ones. William Morris' splendid fantasy News from Nowhere is perhaps the best of these, though Iain M. Bank's Player of Games ranks high for me. Ken Macleod's The Cassini Division is clearly inspired by these, and others. His chapter titles are all examples of the genre, though many are realtively obscure.

But in Macleod's version, our protaganists come from an advanced future Communist society that has emerged from a complete economic and technological collapse. This is the sort of utopia that I've discussed in many Socialist Worker meetings. Or perhaps more often in pubs and cafe's after those meetings. Here people organise to help and satsify needs, rather than labouring for someone else's accumulation. There's a wonderful moment when Ellen May Ngewthu visits an airport in a capitalist society, and contrasts the chaos, advertising and shops with the relaxed environment of her normal travel hubs, were people help with luggage, look after each others kids and relax. 

There are plenty of moments like this as Ellen builds a team to confront an existential threat to Earth, and this involves a travel to that alternative world. For the purposes of this review, the nature of that threat doesn't particularly matter - though things would likely have been much clearer if I'd read books one and two first. The point is that Macleod contrasts the chaos (and greed) of a world that puts profit before people, with the choices made by a world where decision making is made in the interests of all. Even if those decisions can lead the death and destruction. 

For socialist activists reading The Cassini Division there is fun to be had at spotting in-jokes and self-referential material. But I was charmed by how Macleod demonstrated democracy in practice, as well as how life might work in an affluent society, albeit one constrainted by ecological and physical realities. Decisions here are made that give a framework to those implementing them. And those who have ideas are expected to try and lead on then. No elected leaders sending other people's children off to fight here.

This doesn't feel like the preaching that characterises some of the 19th century utopian works. But there is a certain smugness to it all - not unlike the smugness our socialist heroes feel when they arrive in a world where people haven't overthrown class society. All that said this isn't just a political novel. It's a great bit of Space Opera, with starships firing heavy weapons, adventure and some classic jokes. I really enjoyed it. But I am, perhaps, it's target audience.

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Alan Moore - The Great When

The idea of a secret world adjacent to our own is a compelling one in fantasy. In Alan Moore's new book, The Great When, the first of a promised quintet, the veteran fantasy writer and author takes it to a whole knew literary level. The Great When is the alternate London, only visible to those who have the imagination to join it, and then, perhaps only as the result of extreme tension, stress or danger. Young Dennis Knuckleyard, a second hand bookseller in a shabby post-war London first glimpshed the alternate London at the height of a bombing raid during the Blitz. He did not comprehend it then, and it is only with the discovery of a book that shouldn't exist, that he is able to stumble into the alternate space.

Moore places fast and loose with the alternate world. Its a place of danger and fantasy. Its a place where organic machines with multiple knives can escape into our world and murder. It's a space where death is all around, and where monsters and monstrous people pull strings to control normal London. Its somewhere were giant creatures epitomise riot, poetry and crime and those attuned during the Battle of Cable Street, or other events can glimpse them, striding about.

Dennis Knuckleyard has to return the book that shouldn't exist. But in doing so he is pursued by the criminals of the London underworld, determined to access the When themselves so they can profit from it. Young Dennis is swiftly exposed to a violent world, while navigating poverty, unemployment, sex and love.

Like all great fantasy novels The Great When is about more than just the fantasy world. Dennis' somewhat gormless entry into alternate London is matched by his gormless struggles to understand the much more sophisticated world of Grace Shilling, a young prostitute he falls for. But that world too exposes him to violence and horror. 

There are some great moments, and some clever running gags. I enjoyed the LOSED and PEN references to the shop door. But the book is special because of its literary twists. Moore loves playing with language, throwing in references, double-meanings and references. London itself is a character in The Great When, and those who have lived there will get more than just clever puns on names on its street names. The more gothic prose, when the text changes to italics as Dennis enters other London, need a little more attention that some readers might enjoy. But it's worth perservering, as Dennis' comes to terms with the new world out there and learns who and where his friends are. Superb. I cannot wait for the rest of the series.

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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 previously, 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 are tensions here as the youngsters chafe at the restrictions and society. Is the threat 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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.