Convention Report: World Fantasy 2022

Convention Report: World Fantasy 2022

by Rich Horton

At last I made it to another World Fantasy Convention. The last one I attended was in San Antonio in 2017, and I loved that. World Fantasy is a somewhat more writer-oriented, more professional-oriented, convention than, say, Worldcon. Both orientations are wonderful, but the World Fantasy slant is something I do love. Anyway, for one reason and another I missed 2018 and 2019. And of course 2020 was virtual-only -- I did do a panel for that con, but virtual just isn't the same. I had tickets and a hotel and all for 2021 in Montreal -- and I had to cancel for COVID-related reasons. So finally this year I made it back! This time was in New Orleans -- next year will be in Kansas City, practically home for me! -- I'll be there for sure, unless some other disaster intervenes.

Mary Ann made the trip with me. We drove down on Thursday, stopping in Memphis for lunch at Dyer's, a legendary hamburger joint (the grease they use is supposedly over 100 years old) -- I have to say it was fine -- but not awesome. Then we continued to Laurel, MS, where the home renovation show Hometown is set. We stayed the night, and visited their downtown the next morning. The shops run by the stars of Hometown were cute enough, but rather ridiculously overpriced. Then we headed into New Orleans, getting to the hotel at 12:30 or so.

(Mary Ann made a musical record of our trip -- I'll post it, with links to the songs, at the end of this post.)

I have to say it was a delight walking through the hotel on the way to the elevators up to our room, with the porter taking our bags, and old friends calling my name -- I stopped to say hi several times, no doubt to the frustration of Mary Ann and the porter. I got to meet several of Fran Wilde's writing students, for one thing. It is just so nice to be at live conventions again (this wasn't my first -- I was at Boskone in February and at Worldcon, but still!)

The hotel is kind of nice, particularly the interior architecture -- some 27 floors, in a sort of wedge shape, with dizzying empty space up to the top. That said, as with pretty much every hotel we've stayed in recently, the furniture is terribly uncomfortable.

We had a quick lunch in the hotel restaurant -- which was just fine if of course overpriced -- and Ron Drummond came coursing by and recognized me by my beard. We had a good talk and agreed to meet later. And, indeed, we went to dinner that night, at Reginelli's Pizzeria. Ron, of course, discussed the limited edition of John Crowley's great novel Little, Big, which Ron (along with John Berry) has been working on for some 15 years, and it is finally coming out. (My copy will arrive in a few weeks, I'm sure.) Ron had the first sample of the book to show off -- it's a beautiful creature indeed.

Before dinner I made a quick dash through the dealers' room, and ran into Arin Komins and Rich Warren, and had the first of several conversations with them. (I also saw them, and had dinner with them, at Windycon the following week.) Then I was looking in at a panel but instead ran into Jim Cambias and Gordon van Gelder, and soon we were joined by Jo Walton, and we spent the next hour talking about -- about cozy catastrophes and many other things. And I spent the evening after dinner at the bar, meeting people and talking -- that was my MO for the whole convention. Panels are great, sure, and readings, and the Dealers' Room -- but the best part of a convention is hanging around the bar and having conversations. 

After dinner there was the mass signing. I had signed up for a spot this time, but once again I forgot to bring my books. I'll get the hang of it someday! I was sitting next to Ron, and took the opportunity to look through Little, Big. Bruce McAllister was there too, and I finally not to meet him though we didn't get to talk much. I signed one or two of my books that other people had brought, but mostly wandered through the room trying to meet other authors I hadn't met yet, and to catch up with some of my long time friends. Among the many people I ran into were Sharon Shinn, Peter Halasz, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Claire Cooney and Carlos Hernandez, Ellen Klages, Kathleen Jennings, Fran Wilde (who, happily, I bumped into numerous times over the weekend), Laura Anne Gilman, Emily C. Skaftun, Marie Brennan, and E. C. Ambrose. They had a nice spread too -- both Friday and Saturday night! Of course, being in New Orleans helps a lot! Then to the bar, and more conversations.

Saturday I grabbed breakfast at a place called District, apparently a chain of some sort, in close walking distance from the hotel. It was OK, not great. My only panel was at 3, though there was one at 2 I also wanted to see. So I spent a good while in the Dealers' Room. It was fairly small, but the sellers who were there had interesting stuff. I saw Sally Kobee of course, and Jacob Weisman, Patrick Swenson, and James Van Pelt, and Allen Kaster and his daughter. And I also met a dealer named Donna Rankin, who had some interesting stuff but probably a lot more at her place in South Carolina. As we make it to South Carolina every so often (though it's been a while), there's a chance I'll be able to visit her store some time. Susan Forest was there too, helping to sell her daughter's novel. Naturally I bought some books. The convention also gave us quite a nice book bag (books included).

The first panel I went to was on the place of essays in science fiction. The panelists were Nisi Shawl, Farah Mendlesohn, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Eileen Gunn, and Farah's husband Edward James. They discussed the form of the essay, several famous and influential essays, etc. etc. -- all interesting and worthwhile stuff (and as I've been known to write the occasional essay, motivating to me!) This was my first chance to meet Farah and Edward in person -- we've been FB friends for a long time. Edward and I had a nice discussion, particularly on Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories", which I read for the first time (!) a few months ago, and was very impressed by.

The only panel I was actually on was on the Author/Editor Relationship. I moderated, as Jeffrey Ford and Ellen Datlow talked about their editing process; and Donna Glee Williams and Jo Fletcher talked about theirs. I think it went very well. Lots of good talk about the mechanics, the effects of COVID (and technology in general), levels of editing (structural, prose, line, copy), as well as issues with things like what happens when an editor leaves a company (sometimes not by their choice) and the author has to work with a new person. And some gossip (no names though.)

For dinner this time we decided I'd pick up takeout from a place called Daisy Mae's Southern Fried Chicken. Again, it was good, though there was almost a fight between two people waiting for takeout. And I ran into Jo Fletcher again, eating with a couple of her friends, and Sharon Shinn with Ginjer Buchanan. We got to chat for a bit while I waited for my food. Again, good stuff, probably would have been better eaten in the restaurant.

There was an art exhibit/auction that night. The art show, alas, was a bit thin this year, though there were some excellent artists, including one of my favorites (a favorite writer too), Kathleen Jennings. A good spread as well, again. At the bar afterward we were treated to the Alabama/LSU football game, which was extremely exciting, and naturally the locals were thrilled when LSU pulled off a miraculous finish to win the game. The final World Series game was on, too -- a very good result for Allen Kaster, who is from Houston. And, of course, long conversations with lots of people -- I met Marc Laidlaw in person at last, and talked to Scott Andrews, Jake Wyckoff, Brandon McNulty, Tod McCoy, Christopher Cevasco and others. (And disappointment as I learned that, all too typically, the hotel bar couldn't make an Aviation, though at least the bartender knew what I was talking about!)

Sunday was a light day at the convention, especially as we weren't going to the award banquet. I sat in on the WFC Board meeting for a bit -- I find this stuff quite interesting, perhaps surprisingly. Visitors, of course, were kicked out when they got to sensitive subjects.

Mary Ann and I had decided to use Sunday afternoon to visit the French Quarter. We took the streetcar down there -- it's very easy and convenient. We were going to get lunch and I was determined to get a muffeletta, which is one of my favorite sandwiches. I wanted an authentic muffuletta from New Orleans -- which I got at Frank's, which advertised the "original muffuletta". Alas, it might be the original, and it was fine, but you can get one just as good at, for example, C. J. Mugg's in my town of Webster Groves. We should have eaten at the French Market Restaurant instead! We also, of course, went to Cafe du Monde to try beignets, and, hey, they were actually very good. (The line was long but went quickly.)

I had more conversations that night, of course -- finally running into Sarah Pinsker, and meeting A. T. Greenblatt -- we had a real good talk, talking engineering as much as writing. There was also an interesting writer from, I think, Pakistan, an historian who is working on an epic novel based on the history of Afghanistan. Alas, between the noise at the bar and my aging ears (which have a hard time with background noise these days) I didn't catch his name!

Monday was of course farewells, and another dealers' room sweep. I'll go ahead and namecheck everyone else I remember talking to, though I'm sure I've forgotten some:

Christopher Rowe, Gwenda Bond, Usman T. Malik, Darrell Schweitzer, Kelly Robson (who I saw again the next weekend at Windycon!), Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Robert V. S. Redick, Shawna McCarthy, C. C. Finlay, Darryl Gregory, Gary K. Wolfe, Dale Hanes, David Boop, Gordon Van Gelder, Brandon Ketchum, Walter Jon Williams, and Arley Sorg.

Then it was time to leave. We had decided to make the trip a circle, going up more to the west on the

way home. I wanted to go over "the longest bridge over Ponchartrain" as a great Lucinda Williams song has it, so we went over the causeway, and cut over to Baton Rouge. We drove through LSU's campus, just because, though they kicked us out of part of it because they want it to be a walking campus. We got lunch at a neat barbeque place called City Pork. We were aiming to get to El Dorado, AR, a small town not too far over the border. The route from El Dorado up to Branson, MO, was advertised as the prettiest drive in Arkansas. The next morning we wandered around El Dorado's downtown, which is quite cute, though marred by the statue of the traitor in the center of it. We had breakfast at a neat place in a converted train car. 

Then it was on to Branson. The drive, it turned out, was a bit of a disappointment. We stopped in Arkadelphia and went through -- or at least near -- a couple more campuses: Henderson State, and Ouachita Baptist. Then finally up through the mountains -- well, hills -- to Branson. We've been to Branson a number of times, but many years ago. We didn't see all that much of it, though -- the lights downtown were nice, though kind of early! The goal was to eat at one of Guy Fieri's restaurants. It was -- fine -- I mean, really, I had a good hamburger, good comfort food. A bit expensive.

Finally the next morning we headed home, the familiar ride up I-44. We stopped in Rolla at their excellent pie place, A Slice of Pie (in a new more convenient location.) But it was time to be home!

Here's Mary Ann's notes and the key to the songs we played on the way there and back:

"Tear Stained Eye" by Son Volt was picked because of these lyrics,"Sainte Genevieve can hold back the water But saints don't bother with a tear stained eye." Ste. Genevieve is a town just south of St. Louis on I-55. 

"Everyday is a Winding Road" by Sheryl Crow. We passed an exit for Kennett, MO, where Crow is from. 

"Walking in Memphis" by Marc Cohn. Pretty obvious. We did walk on Beale Street and ate at Dyer’s Burgers which uses grease from 100 years ago. Something like that. 

"Jackson" by Johnny Cash and June Carter. Once again, pretty obvious.  

"My Hometown" by Bruce Springsteen.  This is for our overnight stay in Laurel, MS. That is the town that the HGTV show, Hometown, is set in. I wanted to visit this town since I watch the show.  

"The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton.  Our destination for World Fantasy. There are several songs we could have used for NO, but this one has a family connection.  (Sort of. Ha!)

"Louisiana Rain" by Tom Petty. Saturday in New Orleans was a very rainy day. We could have used this on Monday when we went to Baton Rouge, as well. 

"House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals. We went down to the French Quarter and Rich had a muffaletta and we had beignets at Café Du Monde. 

"Crescent City" by Lucinda Williams. We were crossing the Lake Pontchartrain bridge so the lyrics, "And the longest bridge I've ever crossed over Pontchartrain", fit perfectly. 

"Baton Rouge" by Magnolia Summer (a St. Louis band.) We did drive through Baton Rouge, so this was a good choice. 

"Natchez Trace" by Pavlov’s Dog.  We were passing through Natchez, Mississippi on the way home.  So pretty obvious.  This is a pretty obscure song, I admit. 

"Monroe, Louisiana" by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. We had to google songs about Monroe, LA. This one came up. I admit I have never heard it before. 

"El Dorado" by Elton John.  This is a song from The Road to El Dorado.  We had to google songs about El Dorado.  We stayed the night in El Dorado, AR. 

"What I Really Mean", by Robert Earl Keen. It's a musician "touring" song and namechecks a number of places we came close to (and some we got nowhere near!) (Plus Rich likes it a lot.)

"Ballad of Jed Clampett" by Flatt and Scruggs.  Because everyone knows the Clampetts came from Silver Dollar City in Branson.  We ate at a Guy Fieri restaurant and spent the night.  

"Walkin’ Daddy" by Greg Brown.  Driving by Jack’s Fork river so these lyrics: "I'm walkin' daddy, where the Jack's Fork river bends/ Down in Missouri, where the Jack's Fork river bends", worked perfectly. 

"Meet Me in St. Louis" by Judy Garland.  We made it home.  

Review: Station Eternity, by Mur Lafferty by Rich Horton

Review: Station Eternity, by Mur Lafferty

by Rich Horton

Station Eternity is Mur Lafferty's third novel (not counting media tie-ins) -- her first, Playing for Keeps, dates to 2007, but it was her second, Six Wakes (2017) that gained a lot of notice, including Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick shortlisting. (Lafferty has also been editor or co-editor of the major SF fiction podcast Escape Pod for most of its existence.) Six Wakes was an unusual murder mystery set on a spaceship ... and Station Eternity is an unusual murder mystery set on an alien sentient space station. It is subtitled The Midsolar Murders, with the implication that it may be the first of a series -- and, indeed, the ending leaves room for more books with some of the same characters, especially the main "detective" character, Mallory Viridian. (I emphasize, though, that the story this book tells is complete -- the series would be in the form of many mystery series, including a pseudonymous series mentioned in this book -- written by Mallory herself!)

The novel opens establishing that Mallory Viridian, a 30ish young woman, has been, Murder She Wrote-like, present at numerous murders, and that she has been able to solve many of these. This hasn't done her much good -- her dating life is pretty much shot, and she hasn't been allowed to make a profession of her detective ability, as her close connection to various murders makes her an object of suspicion. In despair at the danger she seems to pose to anyone close to her, she decides to apply for a sort of asylum on Station Eternity, a space station that is home to several alien races, and which has in recent years contacted Earth -- but so far has only invited three humans to live there: the official ambassador, linguist Adrian Casserly-Berry; Mallory herself; and Xan Morgan, who is coincidentally (or is it coincidence?) an old college friend of Mallory, as well as a soldier who had been working on a classified project involving the aliens before he was mysteriously spirited off the station.

The primary action of the story is driven by the impending arrival of the first large group of humans at Station Eternity -- a mix of a couple dozen bigwigs, some military, and lottery winners. Xan and Mallory and Adrian are each incensed by this development, for different reasons: Xan convinced he faces a court-martial or worse; Mallory simply desiring to maintain her distance from the humans she feels she endangers; and Adrian believing he will be replaced as ambassador. But before any of their concerns are addressed, there is a worse crisis at hand: the space station, a sentient being, has gone crazy, perhaps because its symbiote, an unpleasant alien who serves as sort of an interface between the station and its inhabitants, has been killed. As a result, the shuttle carrying the human visitors is destroyed, with more than half of the visitors killed. Xan and Mallory are charged with rescuing the survivors; while Adrian ends up as a potential new symbiote for the station.

Whoa! Feels like time for a breath -- there's so much going on. What seemed at first a somewhat comic SF take on the Murder She Wrote trope of an obvious serial killer heroine "solving" the unusual number of murders in her neighborhood (and apparently something of this nature is going on in the British show The Midsomer Murders, as signaled by the Midsolar Murders label for Lafferty's impending series) has become rather darker and more urgent. Clearly, human/alien relations are focal point here; particularly the difference between humans, who do not form symbiotic relationships with other species, and the alien species, all of who do form such relationships. In addition, everyone on the station, most certainly including Mallory and Xan, is in mortal danger. And -- what's up with all these sudden human visitors? The novel digresses here to fill in the back stories of most of the humans (and a couple of aliens as well.) Mallory's life is detailed, and Xan's including his military background, which involves a horrible incident -- in which a number of soldiers died, and Xan and his friend Calliope Oh were implicated for negligence or worse. And Calliope is one of the survivors of the shuttle accident -- as well as Xan's brother Phineas, a rap star; as well as Mallory's unpleasant Aunt Kathy; and a certain Mrs. Brown and her violinist granddaughter -- both of who have killed people in self-defense (though Mrs. Brown went to jail, partly because Mallory investigated one of her killings ...) Add an obsessive fan of Mallory's books ... It becomes quite clear that the events that have brought this particular group of humans to Station Eternity are not a coincidence. Beyond that, Mallory's best alien friends, the rocklike Gneiss, turn out to be significant too -- for one thing, they are responsible for Xan's arrival at Station Eternity; for another thing, one of them is a Princess, and another is ready to use a very dark Gneiss secret ...

Gasp! And I've left a lot out. Suffice it to say that this book is stuffed full of incident, intrigue, interesting aliens, and, well, improbability. In the end, the mysteries are resolved (the chief villain, it should be said, is a bit obvious) and some of the really weird happenings, such as Mallory's magnetism for murder, are explained in a reasonably plausible fashion. The nature of the aliens, of human relations to them, and the future resolution to all these issues is well enough arranged -- and, yes, future books in the series seem to be coming.

That said, I did have some issues, primarily with the sheer absurdity of some of the science, and the implausibility of some of the events and motivations. In the end, I'm willing to give much of the scientific implausibility a bit of a pass on the grounds that perhaps for a certain sort of SF -- indeed, I was reminded of James Alan Gardner's similarly entertaining and difficult to believe League of Peoples novels -- it's OK to let go of logic to allow the telling of a fun story and the description of involving aliens. And, yes, Mallory's improbable back story gets something of an explanation. But things like the movie Phineas was making that he had to abandon for family issues becoming an Oscar winner stretched my credibility far enough it snapped ... and that was a needless elaboration. Beyond that, as with so many novels these days, I thought some judicious cutting was in order. The digressions detailing the back story of all the major characters tried my patience a bit, though Lafferty's auctorial voice has enough verve that my interest was held -- which isn't to deny that less might have been more. 

Anyway, I found this book a good deal of fun, if not wholly successful. It's got plenty of SFnal brio, at times to a fault maybe. The mystery is set up intriguingly, if the resolution is just a tad flat. But I'm happy I read it, and I'll be there for Midsolar Murders 2.

Review: The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler

Review: The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler

by Rich Horton

Ray Nayler burst upon the SF scene with a remarkable and beautiful story called "Mutability", in the June 2015 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. (I reprinted this story in The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2016 Edition.) (He had published a good deal of poetry, crime fiction, and literary fiction in the couple of decades before that, mind you.) In the several years since then he has continued to publish striking SF, wildly imaginative, scientifically convincing, and always with powerful characters at the heart. But only now has he published his first novel, The Mountain in the Sea. And it must be said, it fully realizes the promise of his shorter works.

The Mountain in the Sea is, at first glance, about intelligent octopuses, and about attempts to communicate with them. But more deeply, it is about intelligence and communication in general. To this end, it beautifully interleaves characters, speculation, and plot threads concerning machine intelligence of different kinds, translation (between human languages), hacking, evolution of intelligence, remote control of devices such as drones, non-neurotypical people, man-machine symbiosis, memory aids, etc.

The novel features three separate narrative threads. The main one follows Ha Nguyen, who is hired by a branch of a company called DIANIMA to join a research effort on an island called Con Dao, in an ocean preserve off Vietnam (or more precisely, the Ho Chi Minh Autonomous Zone.) She is the writer of a book called How Oceans Think, and her research will involve attempting to communicate with octopuses. The preserve is intended to protect the local sea life from the effects of overfishing and other effects of human impingement; though we know already (and Ha certainly knows) that those protection efforts have not been very successful. But there are stories of mysterious deaths of humans, especially divers -- and octopuses are believe by some to be involved.

Another thread concerns Rustem, a genius hacker (for lack of a better word) based in places in the former Soviet Union. His specialty is breaking into AI systems, for mysterious backers, often, it seems, with the aim of causing the AIs (which control things like fishing and cargo ships) to act contrary to their owners' wishes -- often with fatal results.

And the third thread follows Eiko, a young Japanese man who has been kidnapped by slavers, and is imprisoned on a factory fishing ship controlled by an AI. Eiko and his fellow slaves are in essence replacing AIs who had previous operated the fishing amd fish preparation equipment -- human slaves, it seems, are cheaper than AIs. 

There are other people -- or other beings -- as well. Ha works with Evrim, an intelligent and conscious (or so they think) android, created by DIANIMA and its leader, Arnkatia Minervudóttir-Chan, in order to demonstrate that they can "build minds". But Evrim so frightened the establishment that intelligent androids have been outlawed -- and he can stay only in a DIANIMA-owned enclave such as the Con Dao preserve. Ha also talks regularly with her friend Kamran, a researcher at a laboratory somwhere unspecified. Rustem starts dating a young woman named Aynur -- partly perhaps to provide the reader someonw for Rustem to explain his ideas, but also to introduce her point-five -- an AI companion, not fully conscious but often seeming so. Eiko makes friends with other slaves, and they being to plot a potential escape. 

How to these intertwine? The revelation comes slowly, but it's easy to guess things like what AI Rustem is now attempting to hack into; or where Eiko's ship is heading and how the slaves' interactions with the ship's AI will work out. And Ha and Evrim -- along with their security professional Altansetseg, a Mongolian war veteran and drone controller -- are making hesitant progress in communicating with the local octopuses. But time is limited -- Dr. Minervudóttir-Chan is losing control of DIANIMA, Ha and Evrim's autonomy is in question, Eiko is a wild card, and the octopuses themselves are seriously threatened by the human depredations of the sea.

But I've hardly described anything of the wonders of the novel. The layers of speculation about intelligence are remarkable -- the novel interrogates intelligence as manifested by humans, neurodivergent humans, octopuses, AIs, point-fives, semi-autonomous drones, AI monks of apparently limited intelligence ... not to mention intelligence augmentations such as memory palaces, translation algorithms, drone-human links, schools, even books. It examines how an intelligence is shaped by its physical housing, by its environment, by its culture, by its language and its language's expression in writing or other means of recording or transmission. And it's not just about intelligence -- it's fiercely engaged with environmental activism, with climate change and other human-caused environmental harm. And its fiercely engaged with humans harming humans, with slavery, with corporate malfeasance, with moral failure. I've discussed before the idea of "through-composed" SF -- SF that fully considers the implications of its extrapolations and speculations. This is a fully through-composed novel! And it's a novel that takes its speculation seriously in the sense of wondering about -- or advocating for -- ways to work for a more just future (and not just for humans.)

Highly recommended. This is science fiction doing everything science fiction can do -- speculating excitingly about scientific ideas, extrapolating a convincing future, and telling an exciting story. 

Old Non-Bestseller Review: The Empty World, by D. E. Stevenson

Old Non-Bestseller Review: The Empty World, by D. E. Stevenson

by Rich Horton

I rarely review the same author twice in a row, but after I published my review of D. E. Stevenson's Rochester's Wife, David Pringle told me that she had written an SF novel. This is The Empty World, published in the UK in 1936. (The US edition from 1939 was retitled A World in Spell.) I went looking for a copy, and learned quickly that it's not easy to find and quite expensive. There were a couple of reprints, large size paperback, in 2001 and 2009, but they can't have had large print runs (perhaps they were even POD) and they run between $30 and $100. The American edition can be had for $120 and up, and true UK first editions start at about $200. All too rich for me! But there is a Kindle edition for a very reasonable price, and I figured I'd read that instead.

I noted in my review of Rochester's Wife that while it was not a wholly successful book it was still an engaging read -- and I noted also that Stevenson's fans were unanimous in suggesting that she wrote many other better books. The Empty World was not mentioned, and I suspect it's been less widely read, and that it really was never reprinted until the editions I mentioned from this century, so it was probably hard to find. I imagine it may not have been a success on first appearance, and perhaps Stevenson herself was not satisfied with it. And, indeed, it too is not really a particularly good book -- yet it is also an engaging read. Stevenson simply had that storyteller's touch. 

The story opens with Jane Forrest, a successful writer of historical novels, about 30 years old, boarding an aeroplane to return to London after a lecture tour of the US. The year is 1973. The plane carries 13 (!) passengers, with 9 crewmembers. Jane is accompanied by her assistant Maisie. Other passengers include Sir Richard Barton, the actress Iris Bright and her assistant Alice, Iris's manager Mr. Haviland, a couple of elderly sisters, and a few more; and the key crew members are the pilots David Fenemore and Thomas Day. There's probably not much point speculating on the economics of that sort of air travel; or on the (skimpy) details of the future of 1973. (By coincidence, 1973 was the year D. E. Stevenson would die.)

As the plane is over the Atlantic, there is a terrific storm, and Fenemore manages to bring the plane to a great altitude to evade it. Sir Richard has made friends with Jane, and he tells her of the predictions of the crackpot scientist Dr. Boddington that a comet was passing by the Earth and its electrical interaction with the atmosphere would result in the death of all animal life. While he's sure Boddington's predictions are crazy, the reader is not surprised when the crew reports that they can get no response from calls for help on the radio, and the reader is also not surprised when they land near Glasgow and find everything eerily empty -- no people, no birds, no animals, not even any insects. Fortunately tinned food has survived! At first the plan is to stick together, but it's soon clear that a good portion of the survivors are terrible people -- all these folks are men, and they soon reveal that they have plans for the few young women among the survivors (Jane, Maise, Iris, and Alice.) 

Sir Richard proposes to take a few people to his estate to establish some minimal society, but the thuggish elements resist that, wanting their "fair share" of the women. David Fenemore, his copilot, and Alice take an aeroplane and head for the continent to look for survivors. But Jane is kidnapped while the others escape to Sir Richard's place. Jane bravely manages to play the kidnappers against each other -- and when David Fenemore returns and it's clear the bad guys will kill him, Jane pretends to play along to give David a chance to escape. Then she bravely manages her own escape ...

This sets up the first conflict -- both the broad one, of Sir Richard managing to establish his tiny society while resisting the violence of the thuggish element; and the narrow one, of Jane and David overcoming David's disgust at his feeling that Jane had been dishonorable in arranging for him to get away while she was in the hands of the bad guys. But that is (mostly) resolved fairly quickly (and conveniently, at times) and soon the people at Sir Richard's estate are growing crops (without insects etc? Don't ask such unfair questions!) and beginning to pair off. Still, less than a dozen people are hardly enough to restore human civilization (especially after the tinned food runs out!) So there is a final episode -- a realization that in fact one other group survived, under the direction of Dr. Boddington. Alas, when they discover the Boddington enclave, they learn quickly that he is setting up a rather horrific technocratic/eugenic society ...

I've been a bit dismissive of the silliness of the science in this story -- and seriously, it's dreadful. The effect of the comet on the Earth is ridiculous. It's slightly reminiscent of W. E. B. DuBois' "The Comet", which is an outstanding short story that uses fairly silly science involving a comet encounter to establish an emptied out city with just two survivors. Likewise Stevenson uses silly silence involving a comet encounter to establish an empty world with just a hundred or so survivors. I'd say it's easier to get away with this at 5000 words than 60,000 or so -- still, let's allow Stevenson that one device. A further issue is the follow on effects of the death of all animal life from insects on up -- this would be far more devastating than Stevenson allows. Likewise Stevenson's paper thin extrapolation of the nature of life in 1973 is annoying. In then end, though -- these issues distract any SF reader, but aren't necessarily fatal to the actual story Stevenson is telling.

Here she fares somewhat better. Part of it is her storytelling facility, that I've mentioned before. She does make the reader want to keep reading. And there are some exciting episodes -- Jane's escape is quite well done, for instance. The introduction of Dr. Boddington's creepy attempt at a scientific utopia is pretty interesting. For all that, the novel still doesn't really work. The various romances are thin; and even the primary one, Jane's with David Fenemore, complicated by David's anger at her and by Jane's interest in the older Sir Richard, doesn't really strike home well enough. But more than that the issue is the villains. I'm coming to the conclusion that perhaps Stevenson just doesn't do villains well. The group of thuggish bad guys in the initial airplane are quite crudely depicted, and there is an overlay of classist prejudice to all that. Dr. Boddington, also, is a caricature mad scientist. Set against that, she does a fairly good job describing the society Boddington attempts to establish; and its faults. (Though there is just a hint that maybe she thinks eugenics "done right" could work, though there's an implied acknowledgement that it won't ever be done right.) 

So -- two D. E. Stevenson novels, and two flops! What to do? Don't worry -- I'm reasonably convinced that I just picked the wrong two to read first. Rochester's Wife is a misstep -- every prolific writer has some of those, and I think in The Empty World she was trying something different, something not in her wheelhouse. And even in these books, I can see that she truly can tell a story, and though I didn't think either one quite worked, I enjoyed reading them. I have a couple more Stevenson novels on hand, including the highly praised Miss Buncle's Book, and I'll get to them sometime! 

Old Bestseller Review: Rochester's Wife, by D. E. Stevenson

Rochester's Wife, by D. E. Stevenson

a review by Rich Horton

Dorothy Emily Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1892. She was first cousin once removed to Robert Louis Stevenson, so she came by her writing chops (if you want to assume there's a genetic component!) honestly. That said, her parents seem to have disapproved of her interest in writing, and they would not let her attend college. She married James Reid Peploe, an officer in the British Army, in 1916. She began publishing with a book of poems in 1915, and her first novel was serialized in 1923. She hit her stride in the 1930s, especially with the very popular Mrs. Tim books (about a British Army wife -- based of course on her own life) and the likewise popular Miss Buncle books. She was very popular, publishing in the end some 40 novels. She died in 1973. In the past decade plus many of her books have returned to print -- some from Persephone Books, and many more from one of my favorite imprints, the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint of Dean Street Books, curated by Scott Thompson of the excellent Furrowed Middlebrow blog, which focuses on British women writers of the early to middle 20th Century. 

I have over the past couple of years found about four of her books used, and have intended to read them for a while, prompted by Scott's enthusiasm, and likewise by recommendations from Jo Walton. I finally grabbed the latest book of hers I found (at an estate sale a week or so back) -- Rochester's Wife. This was published in 1940, but my edition is an Ace reprint from about 1980 (based on the price ($1.95) and on the Ursula Le Guin editions advertised in the back of the book!) The cover to this Ace reprint is execrable, as you can see -- it is true that there is scend of a game of tennis in the book, but there is no way that those people resemble this novel's characters in the least. 

As with many of Stevenson's books this can be called a "light romance". The main characters are Kit Stone, who is in his late 20s, and was trained as a doctor with the goal of taking over his father's practice. But his father died early, and the practice had to be sold. Kit's rather older brother took his half of the inheritance and set up as a stockbroker, but Kit, restless, decided to travel the world for a few years. Now back in England, he agrees to a trial period working for an older doctor in a London suburb, Minfield, where Kit's brother's partner Jack Rochester lives. 

Kit's new boss, Dr. Peabody, lives with his 30ish daughter Ethel, who keeps house; and his grandson Jem, whose mother decided to leave him with her father while she and her husband manage a tea farm in Ceylon. They are soon joined by Dr. Peabody's other daughter, Dolly, who has been sent home by her Navy husband because she is pregnant. There are tensions, mainly due to Ethel, who immediately manifests a dislike of Kit, and who clearly does not get on with her sister at all. But Kit settles in; impressing his new mentor with his skill. He also makes a great friend of Jem. Then he is called to the Rochester house to treat their housemaid, and the instant he sees Jack's wife Mardie, he falls desperately in love. 

That sets up the fundamental arc of the novel. It soon becomes clear that the Rochester marriage is troubled -- because Jack is undergoing what I'd call a nervous breakdown. Kit (and Dr. Peabody) decide that he is dangerously insane -- paranoid -- and I have to say that I found Stevenson's treatment of mental illness rather off. Kit tries to keep from getting too involved with Mardie, but it's hopeless, while Mardie, though attracted to Kit, remains loyal to her husband and tries to control his moods. It all comes to a head when Rochester disappears. This is an issue for Kit's brother -- to have a partner act so irresponsibly is bad for business! -- but of course much more so for Mardie, who has to give up her house and move back to her home in Scotland. As for Kit, he tries hard to find Jack Rochester, all the while aware that his love for Mardie is hopeless ...

The resolution, I have to say, is a thudding disappointment, the author essentially taking an implausibly easy and convenient way out. I think the novel ultimately a failure, marred by its bothersome treatment of mental illness and by its botched ending. But there is a lot to like -- Jem is a delightful character, and much of the day to day action, and the treatment of the main characters, is very nicely done. On the evidence of this novel, Stevenson was an effective storyteller, and had a nice light hand with her characters. This book didn't work, but a quick check showed me that Stevenson's fans seem to share my view -- this was not the right Stevenson book with which to start! I'll be reading more of her work -- I have an old copy of Miss Buncle's Book, for example, which seems quite highly regarded.

A couple more minor points. The book is set in 1938 or more likely 1939 (one character saw Snow White "several months earlier" and it went into wide release in February 1938.) A prominent character is a Navy wife -- and yet there is no presentiment of her husband's likely fraught responsibilities, and indeed she is shown, months later, frolicking on the beach in Bermuda. Another character (not seen) lives in Ceylon; and at the end of the movie Ethel departs for India (with her "great friend" Olive -- I don't think Stevenson meant this but it's intriguing to wonder if Ethel is a lesbian.) (Indeed, I felt Ethel was a missed opportunity -- she's portrayed as mostly rather an unmotivated shrew, her dislike for Mardie never explained, her dislike for Dolly maybe resulting from her interest in Dolly's husband? A better back story for Ethel, a fuller characterization, would have been nice.) Anyway -- we know now that the near future for all these characters is going to be a struggle -- and the novel as written is entirely unaware of this. Granted, Stevenson was writing in 1938 or 1939, and perhaps understandably couldn't foresee the future, but it does resonate oddly in our minds. Always I remember Philip Larkin's great poem "MCMXIV" -- "never such innocence again". 

New Bestseller Review: Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel

Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel

a review by Rich Horton

Emily St. John Mandel's first big splash was Station Eleven (2014), a novel about a pandemic (and its aftermath, 20 years later.) Which makes it SF, to be sure, and unlike some writers from the so-called "mainstream," Mandel made no effort to deny that. (Indeed, others of her novels have to some extent been crime fiction.) I loved Station Eleven, and I liked (and sometimes loved) the TV series made from it (which has significant changes to the novel, for understandable reasons, but the result is that it's a different story, and not quite as good.) I thought Station Eleven should have gotten at least a Hugo nomination, but, hey, it was the 2015 Hugos! It did win the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Her followup, The Glass House (2020), was more a of a crime novel. Sea of Tranquility appeared in 2022, and was written during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Intriguingly, and perhaps a bit oddly, just as Station Eleven gained additional notoriety as being a pandemic novel, Mandel, during the real pandemic, chose to write yet another pandemic novel! It's also an SF novel, engaging much more directly with SFnal ideas that Station Eleven, and with a much wider and wilder variety of ideas. To add to the complications, Sea of Tranquility is also, in a way, a sequel -- or at least significantly related to -- The Glass Hotel. (Mandel seems to be entering David Mitchell territory in a way, especially as apparently The Glass Hotel refers to the Georgia Flu from Station Eleven!)

I won't bury the lede any more. What did I think? Sea of Tranquility is very enjoyable novel qua novel. Mandel is truly a wonderful storyteller, somebody you want to read. But as SF? For an experienced SF reader -- well, at least for me! -- I found the SF aspects weak. There are lots of cool ideas, but they don't all hang together, and some make no particular sense. A term I like to use -- I think I'm the only one -- is "through-composed". That is, has the author thought through the implications of their extrapolations? Do the various aspects make sense together? Do the ideas even work -- that is, are they scientifically plausible? I think for many writers -- particularly, I suspect, those not fully imbued in genre conventions, but, honestly, plenty of full-on SF writers too -- these questions don't matter much. Some might just say, "Are these ideas cool?" Some might say, "I just wanted to set up a setting for my novel." And some -- and Mandel may fit this category -- might say, "Sure, some of these extrapolations may not work, but what I really want is to explore my central idea, or my characters." I can forgive all these approaches, especially the latter, but they are still weaknesses, and often weaknesses that could be fixed.

So, what's going on in the book? It's set in four time frames. It opens in 1912, with Edwin St. John St. Andrews, a "remittance man" -- exiled from his noble English family to Canada for his excessively radical views -- wandering aimlessly across the country to Vancouver island, where, near the village of Caiette (familiar, I understand, to readers of The Glass Hotel) he experiences something very strange in the woods, and encounters an unusual "priest" named Roberts. (Edwin's middle name, St. John, is the same as Mandel's, and indeed he is apparently at least a bit based on one of Mandel's ancestors.)

Then, in 2020, Mirella Kessler (also familiar to readers of The Glass Hotel) is looking for news about her former friend Vincent, and attends a performance by Vincent's brother Paul, a composer, in which he shows a multimedia piece including a video by his sister, which shows a scene near Caiette in the 1990s that is strikingly similar (the reader sees -- Mirella of course doesn't understand) to what Edwin saw in 1912. Mirella also meets a man named Roberts who is also interested in Paul Smith's video -- and, strangely, Mirella recognizes Roberts from a traumatic encounter in her childhood. (The very earliest stages of COVID are mentioned in this segment as well.)

By now, most SF readers will have guessed that Roberts is a time traveller. Which is true, but in different ways with different implications than we might imagine. Next we go to 2203, and "the last book tour on Earth". Olive Llewellyn is a writer from a Moon colony. She is touring Earth in support of the movie version of her book Marienbad, which had been a huge bestseller a few years before. Marienbad is about a plague. (The conclusion that many of Olive's experiences on her book tour directly echo Mandel's experiences in discussing her huge bestseller about a plague, Station Eleven, are unavoidable.) As Olive's tour continues, rumors of a new plague originating in Australia arise ... The segment ends with Olive giving an interview to a man named Gaspery-Jacques Roberts -- a curious coincidence as a character in Marienbad was also named Gaspery-Jacques. And Roberts asks Olive a particular question -- about a scene in Marienbad which mentions a strange experience in an airship terminal in Oklahoma ... a vision that very much resembles that seen by Edwin in 1912, and by Vincent Smith in her video. 

Then to 2401. Now Gaspery is the main character. We learn that in fact he was named after the character in Marienbad, and in fact that he grew up in the same Moon colony where Olive grew up -- on the same street, even, though in the centuries since Olive's childhood that neighborhood has changed -- their particular colony is now the "Night Colony", as their dome lighting has failed. Gaspery makes his way to the more successful Colony One on the Moon, and, after a failed marriage and a fairly aimless succession of jobs, he begs his brilliant sister Zoe to help him get a job for the Time Institute -- a job investigating, via time travel, some anomalous historical occurrences -- indeed, one anomaly is the strange visions shared by Edwin, Vincent, and Olive.

I've not mentioned the fundamental reason this "anomaly" is being investigated, and I think I'll leave it for readers of the novel to discover, It's another science fictional idea, a fairly familiar one, but it's the SF idea that is really most central to this novel's theme. In that sense, it's the one idea that works. And it resolves in a fairly moving way. Despite this novel being set in four time frames, with four main characters, it resolves to being a novel about one character, Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, and his quite unusual life. And its also about that last idea, and what it really means for the characters involved. And on these terms it's quite successful. Gaspary's eventual conclusion seems true -- honest and moving. It's also true that the plot machinations to get him there are rather creaky. But Mandel's ability as a storyteller finesses a lot of that.

Still -- an SF reader is going to ask a lot of questions. Questions like: "Why are the hotels Olive stays at in 2203, a future with a completely fractured US and Canada, with Moon colonies (and planned colonies in the outer planets, and in Alpha Centauri's system), still called Marriot or La Quinta?" Questions like: "How do they get to Alpha Centauri in a reasonable time?" Questions like: "How do the Moon colonies really work?" Questions like: "How many people live on the Moon in 2203? And in that case, do the plague casualty numbers add up?" And so on. I don't think the future Mandel depicts makes much sense, and that bothers me. But, I admit, perhaps that doesn't really matter so much to her aim in the novel.

Bottom line -- I'll quote John Kessel, who suggested that this is very bad science fiction; but not necessarily a bad novel. I agree. 

Old Non-Bestseller Review: Augustus Carp, Esq., by Himself

Old Non-Bestseller Review: Augustus Carp, Esq., by Himself

by Rich Horton

This book was published anonymously in 1924. The actual author was Sir Henry Howarth Bashford (1880-1961), who had a fairly successful career as a doctor -- he was reputedly King George VI's official doctor (in some sense, perhaps only ceremonial) and he published medical articles in the Lancet. He wrote fiction on the side, in a variety of genres: romances, thrillers, regional novels, ghost stories; as well as non-fiction on such subjects as the history of the British Navy and fishing. These books, published under his own name, are now forgotten (and copies are very hard to find.) And his anonymously published novel, which was a sort of cult secret for over 40 years from its publication, now stands as a minor classic of satire; listed among the best comic novels of all time by such an authority as Michael Dirda.

What happened? Augustus Carp, Esq., went through two printings in the UK, and also had an American edition, in 1924, so it wasn't a failure, but that was it until 1966, when Anthony Burgess, a rabid admirer of the book, convinced his publisher to reissue it. It has been reprinted several times by a few publishers since then, including, in 1988, a very nice boxed edition from the Folio Society. I found a used copy of that edition and, knowing nothing of the book, bought it on impulse. The book has an introduction by John Letts and illustrations by David Eccles. (Incidentally, the first edition was also illustrated by "Robin", an illustrator for Punch, whose real name was Marjorie Blood, and who later became a nun, an action that surely would have drawn the utmost condemnation from Augustus Carp.)

The full title of the novel is Augustus Carp, Esq., by Himself, Being the Autobiography of a Very Good Man. The book tells of his life from birth until his marriage. Augustus' father, also named Augustus, is a civil servant, and a prominent member of the congregation of the Church of St. James-the-Less. That is, until he is forced to move his membership successively to the Church of St. James-the-Lesser-Still, then St. James-the-Least-of-All, and finally to St. Nicholas, Newington Butts. The senior Carp is described by his son as "somewhat under the average height ... inclined to corpulence ... possessor of an exceptionally large and well-modelled nose ... massive ears ..." The son evidently inherited these characteristics, as well as his father's name. The choice of name is described in this lovely passage: "I shall name him Augustus," said my father, "after myself." "Or tin?" suggested my mother's mother. "Why not call him tin, after the saint?" "How do you mean, tin?" said my father, "Augus-tin," said Mrs. Emily Smith. But my father shook his head. "No, it shall be tus. Tus is better than tin."

Augustus undergoes a difficult childhood, due to his parents' devotion to various instructive books on the raising of children, and also to the depredations of one of his nanny's children and the other boy's toy cannon. In addition, Augustus has a dodgy digestion, and somehow his eating habits never improve it. He goes to a private school, and somehow his virtuous insistence on reporting the sins of his schoolmates makes him less than popular. He considers becoming a clergyman despite the "financially inadequate" rewards of that position, but unfortunately "to be ordained presupposed an examination, and I had been seriously handicapped in this particular respect by a proven disability, probably hereditary in origin, to demonstrate my culture in so confined a form." So Augustus must find a position, and he does, at a purveyor of religious texts, after blackmailing the owner.

And so the book continues: Augustus and his father are confronted with the horribly successful attempt of another family to donate a lectern to the church, precipitating a failed lawsuit and their move to St. Nicholas. Augustus manages to receive a promotion at work by discovering his supervisor drunk. He joins such associations as the Peckham Branch of the Non-Smoker's League, the Society for the Prevention of Strong Drink Traffic, and the Anti-Dramatic and Saltatory Union. He achieves, as a friend puts it, "the full flower of his Southern Metropolitian Xtian manhood." And he makes the courageous attempt to rescue the beautiful actress Miss Moonbeam from her sinful career -- only, alas, to be defeated by the innocent consumption of Portugalade. 

This short novel achieves, in portraying Augustus Carp in his own voice as a person thoroughly unaware of his actual nature -- a profoundly unpleasant man, a perfect "monster of priggishness" as Letts puts it his introduction -- a beautifully balanced satire of religious excess, of a certain kind of masculine insensitivity, of lower middle class British life at a certain period. (And as with all the best satire, the satire of a particular sort of person has a universal applicability.) Bashford's prose is the key -- convolutedly justifying all Augustus' pretensions with always just the right unconciously deflating phrase. Augustus is a complete bore, but the book is not in the least boring, especially at its short length. Extended any longer, it would have overstayed its welcome. At all accounts, Bashford was never this good in his other fiction -- perhaps the comfort of anonymity allowed him free reign to gamble? (Letts suggests that Bashford published the book anonymously in part because he was reacting to some aspects of his childhood, and didn't want to offend his family; or perhaps that he felt such satire unbecoming in a man who had attained some conventional respect in his medical career.) 

I read this book just after reading John Kennedy Toole's comic masterwork A Confederacy of Dunces, and I was struck by some superficial similarities. Both novels are satirical works about a fat man with digestive issues, a man determinedly unaware of how the rest of the world perceives him. Toole's Ignatius J. Reilly seems, somehow, more innocent, and also more intelligent (if just as misguided) as Augustus Carp. But it was curious to read about them back to back.

At any rate, Augustus Carp, Esq., is a very very funny book. I haven't quoted it as widely as I might -- passages such as Augustus' mother finally escaping his orbit; or the whole encounter with Miss Moonbeam, or the descriptions of the tracts Augustus sells at his job, simply need to be read to appreciate. It wholly deserves the reputation it seems to have finally established -- a minor satirical classic of the early 20th Century. Dirda compared it with Cold Comfort Farm, I've suggested A Confederacy of Dunces. I confess I think both those books superior to Augustus Carp (perhaps because on occasion this book seems to punch down just a bit) ... but that said, this book is still fully worth reading. 

Old Bestseller Review: A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole

A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole

a review by Rich Horton

Many years ago I read John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, and I loved it. But I recently realized that I hardly remembered it! So I decided to read it again.

The novel's backstory is rather famous. John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969), a native of New Orleans, graduate of Tulane with a Master's from Columbia. He spent time teaching at what is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette; and also at Hunter College in New York, while he worked on a Ph. D. at Columbia (he never completed this degree.) He was drafted into the Army and posted to Puerto Rico, where he began working on A Confederacy of Dunces. After his discharge he finished it. He revised it several times with the advice of the legendary editor Robert Gottlieb, but Gottlieb eventually passed. Increasingly mentally ill, Toole committed suicide at the age of 31. His mother (who, one imagines, perhaps unfairly, was not always a benign influence on him) remained convinced of his genius, and eventually barged into the office of the great Louisiana novelist (and SF writer!) Walker Percy. Percy, in his introduction, recounts his fear that the novel would be the usual horrid thing; and his growing disappointment that it was good enough he had to keep reading, succeeded by shock as he realized it was actually quite remarkable. He eventually managed to convince LSU Press to publish it -- it appeared in 1980, was a critical success, eventually a bestseller, and it won the Pulitzer. (Only two other writers have won a posthumous Pulitzer in Fiction, and the other two were also distinctly Southern writers: James Agee, from Tennessee, and William Faulkner, from Mississippi (make of that what you will.)) The Neon Bible, a novel Toole wrote when he was 16, heavily influenced by Flannery O'Connor (speaking of Southern writers), was later published.

Ignatius J. Reilly is the antihero, though in reality the novel is an ensemble work (and pretty much everyone is more "anti" than "hero".) But Ignatius is the fulcrum. He is a fat man of about 30, well educated but unwilling to work, discontented with everything about the modern world (he is fond of advocating a return to the monarchy.) He lives at home with his mother, his father having died long before. Ignatius spends his time writing either long philosophical screeds, combative letters to his one time fellow student/sworn enemy/almost girlfriend Myrna Minkoff, or accounts of his everyday travails on Big Chief notepads. He drinks Dr. Nut (a then popular New Orleans soft drink), eats too much, and complains constantly about his troublesome pyloric valve. His favorite recreation is the movies, where he likes to yell at the screen protesting the obscenity he sees (which is a joke given that Reilly's favorite actress appears to be Doris Day, whose movies were so "clean" she was called "America's Oldest Virgin".) One day Ignatius attracts the unwelcome attention of a hapless policeman named Angelo Mancuso, and, distressed, he and his mother venture into the Night of Joy, a sleazy nightclub, after her work, and she ends up drunk and wrecks the car as well as a nearby building. And then Ignatius is forced to find a job.

His jobs are disasters of course -- the first is with Levy's Pants, a nearly moribund clothes factory. Ignatius' job is to file the records, which he does by burning them. He also incites the (largely black) factory workers into protesting their conditions. After losing his job there, he more or less at random finds a position at Paradise Vendors, pushing a hot dog cart (though eating most of the product.) 

But the other characters are busy too. The owner of Levy Pants is trying to find a way to get rid of the place, but his wife has taken up the cause of the aging Miss Trixie, who really wants to retire. The office manager, Mr. Gonzalez, is afraid of offending anyone. Ignatius writes a vicious letter to one of Levy's customers, who sues in response, which may at last serve as his business' mercy killing. The proprietor of the Night of Joy is selling pornographic pictures of herself to high school kids, while unwillingly allowing one of her employees to start a striptease act. The Night of Joy also hires a black man, Burma Jones, at much less than what he calls "minimal wage" -- a job he needs to avoid being jailed as a "vagran". Mrs. Reilly makes friends with Patrolman Mancuso's aunt, who quickly divines that Ignatius is the source of all her problems, and urges Mrs. Reilly to have him committed, while also trying to set her up with the old man who Patrolman Mancuso arrested in lieu of Ignatius. And Mancuso's career proceeds from bad to worse -- forced to wear outlandish costumes and wait in cold bathrooms hoping to arrest suspicious characters ...

There's more than that going on, and not much point in me detailing it -- I've probably already written too much! The novel is extremely funny throughout. Is it offensive? Well, objectively, Ignatius' views and rants are offensive, though in an oddly innocent way. Most of the other characters are just as, to use a tired phrase, politically incorrect. Even Myrna Minkoff, Ignatius' Jewish social justice warrior frenemy, is wackily off base. Probably the only scene that descends to lazy cliché is a gay party that Ignatius stumbles into -- I found that also quite funny, but was uneasily never sure that the gay scene described ever existed anywhere besides Toole's imagination. 

It's clear that Ignatius is too disconnected from reality to ever succeed in this time -- but also clear that he's just crazy enough to stumble through life never knowing how much trouble he's causing, and never knowing how close to disaster he hews. He's also in a cockeyed way intelligent enough to fascinate, intelligent enough to hold our interest. It's a weird ride, and an inimitable book. It's really great fun to read. 

Review: The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne

The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne

a review by Rich Horton

The Actual Star is Monica Byrne's second novel, appearing in 2021, 7 years after her first, the Otherwise Award winning The Girl in the Road. And the seven years of work shows -- in a good way! This book is wildly ambitious and mostly successful. It depicts Mayan society of a thousand years ago convincingly, and depicts an utterly fascinating post-climate catastrophe future a millennium from now intriguingly. There's a present day thread as well -- and it's well done too but to be fair in some ways that's easier.

The novel's structure, as I hinted above, revolves around three threads -- one a millennium ago as Mayan society is collapsing -- or, at least, its traditional structure is changing. Another is set in the present day, as Leah Oliveri, a 19 year old girl from Minnesota decides to visit her (dead, and never part of her life) father's home, Belize. And the third is set a thousand years in the future, with a radically different future social organization under threat due to conflict between a free thinking "sophist" and a conservative "scroop" about what people should be allowed to think, and about what change might be possible to a society founded on principles aimed at living lightly on the land in the wake of climate disaster. 

There is another, not quite as obvious, structural aspect. The novel features no fewer than four sets of twins. And in each case those twins represent paired qualities, not necessarily the same pairs. The Mayan section, set in 1012, focuses on Ajul, the King to be, and Ixul, his fierce and ambitious sister. Their parents have disappeared, presumably capture and/or killed by enemies; and their coronation approaches. Their kingdom is declining (this is the period when the Mayan civilization collapsed, or at least radically altered in structure.) It is an open and scandalous secret that they are incestuous lovers. The action is set primarily on the day of their coronation, and concerns their younger sister Ket's initiation into bloodletting, which is said to facilitate access to Xibalba, an Underworld or perhaps parallel realm; and her interactions with a strange black jaguar; and also the preparation for the coronation, which will include traditional human sacrifice; and then the shocking events at the ceremony.

In the year 2012, Leah Oliveri decides to travel to Belize. Once there she visits a famous cave; guided at first by Xander. The cave itself has a number of well-preserved skeletal remains, some of which we soon gather may be those of Ajul or Ixul or perhaps their victims. Leah is fascinated by the cave, and immediately determines to visit the cave as often as possible, and to find a way to stay in Belize. She meets Xander again, and his estranged twin Javier, who is also a guide; and some other locals. She is attracted to both Xander and Javier, who have radically different personalities -- she sleeps with both, and hears Xander's goal to study abroad (he is a brilliant autodidact) ... all the while plotting to travel deep into the cave despite the rules against that.

And in 3012, Niloux de Cayo makes an assertion that violates some of her future societies core beliefs: she is skeptical about the "disappearances" that have been witnessed over the past millennium, beginning with the disappearance of St. Leah Oliveri from a cave in Belize. Leah's lovers, the Consort Twins, Xander and Javier, then found Laviaja -- something of a religion, something of a political, social and economic way; and this way of living has come to dominate life after the climate catastrophes of the early third millennium. As an SF reader, this was the most fascinating part of the book to me: people live nomadic lives, staying no more than 9 days in any place. They do not accumulate possessions. They do not form long term relationships. They do not raise their blood children. All this is buttressed by some impressive technology, and by radical body modifications (for one thing, everyone is a hermaphrodite.) As a reaction to the depredations humans made to the natural world, they live extremely lightly on the Earth -- though the fact that there are only some 8,000,000 living humans certainly helps that lightness! Niloux's assertion prompts two reactions -- a group who see in her an inspiration for more openness, more flexibility, in their society; and a group who (paradoxically violently) oppose any change, any risk of change, to a society that seems to have served people -- and the Earth -- very well for centuries. This second group is led by Tanaaj de Cayo -- as her name indicates, born in the same area as Niloux -- and it becomes clear that Niloux and Tanaaj are bound for a confrontation at the Jubilee that will be held in Belize, 1000 years after St. Leah's disappearance. 

The book moves nimbly between the three threads. Ajul and Ixul's story is historical fiction, with an overlay of fantasy (in the sense that what we now regard is magical things are truly believed -- and perceived -- by people of that time.) Leah's story is contemporary realistic fiction, about an American tourist becoming entranced with a different culture -- very well and honest depicted. And Niloux and Tanaaj inhabit a truly intriguing future, with neat technology, and a wonderfully thought out future society, with radically different economics, gender organization, social organization, habits of work and entertainment. These ideas are fascinating -- and also invite argument, in the way the best speculative fiction does. (For example -- how did a society of 8,000,000 people who do not stay in any one place for any period of time create the remarkable technology they rely on?)

The novel is long, but reads compellingly. It is very well written -- one of very few recent SF novels that did not have me reaching for my blue pencil. It is not perfect -- I think the climactic events are perhaps a tad convenient -- one character in particular is let off rather easily, to my mind. The ending is ambiguous, but I ended up sold on it. The structure is well-maintained but at times there is a bit of strain, a sense that one section may have dithered a bit to maintain pace with the others, perhaps -- but never in a truly harmful way. I was reminded a bit of Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home, and of John Crowley's Engine Summer, and the author (in conversation) acknowledges the influence of Le Guin (especially The Dispossessed) and of Kim Stanley Robinson (pervasively, I suspect, but especially the Mars Trilogy.) 

This is a tremendously ambitious novel, that reaches for the (actual!) stars and achieves most of its goals. It has not been ignored, but it surely deserves more notice. This is the kind of SF we need now, I think -- SF that does not by any means abandon the goal of entertainment, SF that shows real attention to craft, to prose and structure; and most of all, SF that excitingly thinks about the future, and about the past, and about how we live, how we should live, how we might live. 

Rambling Notes on The Shadow of the Torturer

The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe

rambling notes by Rich Horton

(Cover by Don Maitz)

I read this book in 1980, shortly after it appeared. (My copy is a first edition.) I was already a great fan of Gene Wolfe (that's why I bought the hardcover right away!) and this seemed (still seems) a confirmation of his status as one of the most exciting, most complex, most original SF writers. This is a view I have not abandoned since. 

We discussed the book in my regular book club (run by Mark Tiedemann) for September, so I reread it. Shortly thereafter I attended a panel on Gene Wolfe at Chicon 8. All this was energizing -- I'll be paying extra attention to Wolfe in the near future. For one thing, I'll certainly finish my reread of the New Sun books. And I'll catch up to some of the late Wolfe I haven't yet read. 

But what about The Shadow of the Torturer? In a way, I don't have much to say. Not that there isn't a lot to say, but most of it has been said by others, and I don't think I have the energy to attack that now. Maybe after I've finished the whole set? For now, some, I guess, rambling notes.

What is the book about? I think most people know that -- it's the account of Severian, a member of the Guild of Seekers for Truth and Penitence (which is to say, Torturers), beginning with his youth in the Guild, and following him until he leaves his home city, Nessus. We soon gather that the older Severian is now the Autarch, ruler of this far future Urth. But this volume concerns only his life mostly from roughly puberty until his expulsion from the Guild. 

The central sequence concerns his relationship with the Chatelaine Thecla, an aristocratic woman who has been imprisoned by the Autarch, presumably because her sister is involved with a revolutionary group led by one Vodalus. (Severian very briefly encounters this sister (and Vodalus) in the opening scene of the novel.) Thecla's fate is to be tortured, to attempt to extract information about Vodalus, though more likely really as a sort of petty revenge against her sister. (Thecla may well know nothing.) Severian, as a pubescent boy, falls hard for the beautiful Chatelaine. In his telling he seems to think she returns his affection, but in my reading she at most regards him as sort of a cute puppy, and also as the only source of human companionship available to her. And, of course, as potentially her savior. For, indeed, Severian betrays his oath and gives Thecla a knife with which to commit suicide and thus escape torture. For this crime Severian is expelled from the Guild, and exiled to a remote provincial town, Thrax, to serve as carnifex, or executioner.

While in my memory Severian's time with Thecla dominates this first book, in fact more than half the book concerns Severian wandering the city after his expulsion. In this sequence he meets several important people: the seductive and treacherous woman Agia; her brother Agilus, who covets Severian's sword; the giant Baldanders; the strange Dr. Talos and his group of players, including the beautiful Jolenta; and of course Dorcas, a long dead woman whom he retrieves from a strange pool and resurrects. He is challenged to a duel to the death. He visits the Botanic Gardens, which are much bigger on the inside than the outside. And, significantly, he comes into possession of the jewel called the Claw of the Conciliator.

I've skipped over almost every incident, but that's OK, these are best encountered in the reading. What I remember still is, partly, the mysteries. The famous picture of the armored man in a desolate landscape. The Matachin Tower where the witches live (and the realization that all the guild towers are spaceships.) The hut in the Jungle Garden. The note Severian receives. Dr. Talos' play. 

A couple of things struck me in particular on this rereading. One is that Severian, throughout this book, is very young, perhaps 15 at the conclusion. I had always thought of him as older, perhaps because his narrative voice is that of a much older man. (Wolfe is always very careful to control point of view, and keeping track of who is telling his stories, and from which point of view, is essential. This story is told by an older man with perfect memory, but a man who has his own agenda. (Contrast the games played in the Soldier books, in which the narrator forgets everything each night; or how a story like "Tracking Song" is told: via notes recorded each day by a man who knows little of even his identity.)) It seems important to me now though to keep in mind that Severian is a callow adolescent. This colors in particular his relationships with women ...

Which brings me to the question of women, and their characterization. Wolfe is often criticized for his women characters, and often with good reason. The women in this book -- Thecla, Agia, Dorcas, Jolenta, even the prostitute with whom Severian loses his virginity, all fit, more or less, into the old virgin vs. whore duality. There are complexities, of course, that make that bald dichotomy an over-simplification. And it should be remembered that all these women are seen through the eyes of a callow adolescent (admittedly, perhaps also through the memory of a much older man.) But still -- Thecla as portrayed is an idealized woman. (I am convinced, though, that truly we know little of her real self, only what Severian sees.) Agia is a treacherous schemer. Dorcas is nearly a pure innocent, in that she seems literally newly reborn. We learn little of Jolenta in this volume -- we see her only through Severian's eyes, and Severian's response is sheerly lustful. And of course the the prostitute really is a whore (and one who is imitating Thecla, to boot.) I have seen it suggested that all the women are improbably attracted to Severian -- but I think that's a misreading. It is only Dorcas who may be sincerely attracted to him. We know little (yet) of Jolenta. Thecla's relationship is unequal and constrained by her imprisonment. Agia's motivations are clearly transactional -- there is no reason to believe she cares a whit for Severian. (I will add one thing about Severian's relationship with Thecla -- it is never directly said that he and Thecla have sex, but I think there are sufficient hints that they do.) In sum -- I don't think this book has fully realized female characters -- which is to day that Wolfe's critics aren't wrong -- but I also think, that for this particular book, that is not a weakness, simply a result of the book's focus. (Though I can understand that for some readers, this aspect of the book may be a failure.)

I don't have any overarching conclusion to reach, and I don't think I will until I complete the four volume sequence. I'll simply say that The Book of the New Sun's high reputation is deserved, and this reread of the first volume has not changed my mind.

Finally, a look at two Gene Wolfe signatures -- one stamped on the front cover of my edition of The Shadow of the Torturer, the other written in my copy of The Fifth Head of Cerberus. (Alas, I can't just now put my hands on the copy of my first Best of the Year volume which I got Wolfe to sign next to his story in that book, "Comber".) The signatures are definitely the same!

Review: The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, by Lawrence Block

Review: The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, by Lawrence Block

by Rich Horton

I've previously read several Lawrence Block books with enjoyment, but I hadn't yet tried his Bernie Rhodenbarr series, about the title man, a burglar, who gets involved in murder cases and helps solve them (or so I deduce.) I received an advance copy of the latest in the series, the thirteenth, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown. My interest was piqued in part because I know Brown as both a science fiction writer and a mystery writer, of some note in both fields. So, odd as it may seem to begin a series at book 13, I gave it a go. And I enjoyed it a great deal.

(I'll note in advance that this book won't be released for another month -- October 18th. But go ahead and pre-order -- it's available in audio, or for Kindle, or in print.)

We open with Bernie at his antiquarian bookstore, Barnegat Books. Books and bookselling are his love -- burgling is just a way to make money. Sadly, in these days technology has made both jobs harder -- omnipresent surveillance and modern locks are tough on burglars, and internet bookselling is killing physical book stores. Bernie notes the shoppers glancing at his books then look for deals online, for instance. A former regular customer is now selling him books he found cheap. But he's still able to live his fairly comfortable life, feed his cat, and meet his best friend, Carolyn, for lunch and/or drinks, and to complain about the state of modern life -- the eyesore skyscraper that replaced the Bowl-Mor, or Amazon killing Bernie's business, or all of Carolyn's favorite dyke bars closing. Bernie dreams of stealing the Kloppman Diamond from sleazy Pharma Bro Orrin Vanderbrinck, but the cameras everywhere are a problem. So it's off to bed with Fredric Brown's classic noir, The Screaming Mimi.

The next morning things seem strange. Business at the bookstore is brisk. One of his favorite customers is back. A couple of very intriguing women buy a lot of books ... and seem interested in more. And ... the Bowl-Mor is back! What is going on? A meeting with Carolyn reveals that she has notices odd changes as well ... And -- hey, there aren't any security cameras around Orrin Vanderbrinck's penthouse.

Before long we gather -- Bernie gathers -- that somehow he and Carolyn have ventured into "the best of all possible worlds". Bernie's business is booming because there are no internet bookstores. Carolyn's favorite dyke bars are back. And Orrin Vanderbrinck's diamond might be accessible to a skillful burglar!

I won't say much further ... suffice to say that complications arise. There are a couple of murders. Bernie is accused of a crime he didn't commit -- or, maybe, this universe's version of Bernie did? And he and Carolyn's relationship takes an unexpected step. Can Bernie figure out what's happening? Well, sort of, because this book isn't about the mystery, really. It's about -- well, more than anything it's about friendship, and beautifully so. It's also about Fredric Brown (and his SF book What Mad Universe.) It's about long series of mysteries. It's about books, and if getting everything you want is the best thing. And it's a very funny book -- much of it is Bernie and Carolyn talking, finishing each others' sentences in the manner of best friends, joshing with each other. It's simply -- warm and sweet and clever.

It's also SF, and Lawrence Block isn't really an SF writer (though he did have an early story in one of Judith Merril's Best of the Year annuals.) But he plays nicely with the old multiverse trope. Maybe not much makes sense, and that's part of the point! I'll be looking for more Bernie Rhodenbarr books -- if I have time, because Lawrence Block promised to tell Bernie to save some Jeffery Farnol books for me the next time I can make it to Barnegat Books!

Old Non-Bestseller Review: The Angelic Avengers, by "Pierre Andrézel" (Karen Blixen)

Old Non-Bestseller Review: The Angelic Avengers, by "Pierre Andrézel" (Karen Blixen)

by Rich Horton

Karen Dinesen was born in Denmark in 1885. Her father was wealthy and had a small literary reputation, but he committed suicide when Karen was 9. She made an unfortunate marriage to the Swedish Baron Bror Blixen in 1914, and they opened a coffee plantation in Kenya. Bror was unfaithful and lazy, and by 1921 the marriage had collapsed. Blixen stayed in Kenya until 1931, living since 1925 with the big game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, until he died in a plane crash. After the coffee plantation failed, Karen Blixen returned to her family's home in Denmark, where she remained for the rest of her life, dying in 1962. (She was on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize that year (Steinbeck won) and she may have been chosen had she not died, though apparently the Swedish Academy was worried about showing too much favoritism to Scandinavians. This is an appropriate concern, that seems not to have bothered them with such later controversial picks as Eyvind Johnson. I personally think Dinesen a much more interesting writer than Steinbeck, and I wish she had won the Prize.)

She had written stories for literary magazines as a young woman, published in Danish as by "Osceola", but she doesn't seem to have intended to have a literary career until late in her time in Kenya. Her first book was Seven Gothic Tales, completed in 1933. She wrote it in English (which she primarily spoke while in English-speaking Kenya.) After some difficulty, she found a publisher in the United States (who did not pay an advance!), using the semi-pseudonym Isak Dinesen, which she retained for the rest of her career. (I say semi-pseudonym as after all Dinesen was her maiden name.) Her best known work seems to be her memoir of her time in Kenya, Out of Africa, though its fame must rest in some part on the popular movie. I far prefer her fiction -- especially Seven Gothic Tales, but really all of her works in that mode, including Winter's Tales, Last Tales, Anecdotes of Destiny (which includes "Babette's Feast", also made into a successful film), and Ehrengard. All these are moody, colorful, usually set in the past, and often with a touch of the supernatural. Beautiful work. There was some resentment in Denmark about the fact that her first book was written in English (she published a Danish version as a free translation, with some details changed) and her subsequent work was usually published simultaneously in Danish and English, and it's not clear to me if she wrote in one language and then translated the work, or if she did the writing sort of simultaneously. Her life story is quite interesting, often dark -- marred by her father's suicide, her husband's unfaithfulness, her lover's untimely death, and chronic illness (including syphilis contracted from her husband, and various other medical issues due in part to poor treatment of the syphilis, or so it is believed.) 

In this context The Angelic Avengers, her only full-length novel, is something of an outlier (though it does bear some similarity to her other fiction.) She wrote it during the War, and it was published in Danish in 1944 as Gengaeldesens Veje, and in English in 1946. She seems to have been a bit dissatisfied with it, and she chose a new pseudonym, "Pierre Andrézel". For some time she denied that she had written it, or claimed that she had merely translated a lost French novel. For myself, I found the book at an estate sale quite a while ago, and figured it was worth a shot for a dollar. I had no idea who Pierre Andrézel was, but it looked like the kind of goofy over the top romantic/Gothic fiction I often enjoy. And so it proved to be! I was quite surprised (and somewhat gratified) when I looked up Andrézel to see if "he" had written any other books, and found that "he" was actually one of my favorite writers. I reread it just now, partly in service of the 1946 Project at the recent Worldcon.

The Angelic Avengers is set in the 1840s. A young English girl, Lucan Bellenden, an orphan, has lost her position as a lady's companion, and finds a new one as governess to a blind young boy. She soon grows attached to the boy, and the boy's widowed father begins to pay attention to her. Lucan senses that he may be about to propose, and she has decided she must refuse -- she does not love him. And then she is shocked and embarrassed when instead he suggests she become his mistress. So she runs away.

With no chance of another position without a reference, she can only think to throw herself on the mercy of an old school friend, Zosine, and she ends up at her house, on their mutual 18th birthday. Zosine is happy to see her, and invites her to her birthday ball ... and, shockingly, the ball ends with the revelation that Zosine's father has had to run away to avoid his creditors -- a business venture collapsed terribly. Zosine too is now destitute, with only her father's estranged cousin, Aunt Arabella, and her  old black nurse, Olympia, from Hispaniola (where Zosine was raised.)

(I will add immediately that the portrayal of Olympia, though quite positive in the sense that she is a good person and treated sympathetically, also trades quite broadly on racist stereotypes, and rather diminishes the fact that Olympia was a slave and though she claims to have loved Zosine's father, and had a child of his, was also clearly a victim of sexual predation in that sense.)

Zosine and Lucan need to find another position, and after some difficulty receive what seems a remarkable offer -- to come to France to live with an old English couple, a retired clergyman and his wife. Their duties will be light, primarily to take studies in history and religion from the old man. And so they go, and at first things seem wonderful. The old man, Mr. Penhallow, is very learned and teaches them a great deal. The place, in the Languedoc, is quite pleasant. There are some jarring notes -- the servant boy, Clon, who seems simple minded and apparently has a criminal past, for one. And the housekeeper is somewhat sinister. Finally, the neighboring estate, Joliet, seat of the Baron de Valfonds, has a curious history -- the Baron's family has vowed never to leave their province, ever since his ancestor was murdered during the French Revolution. The two girls do meet some interesting young men -- Baron Thésée, for one; and an Englishman, Noël Hartranft, who seems to fall for Zosine, but who admits he is engaged and will not go back on this promise; plus the handsome young Magistrate, Emmanuel Tinchebrai, who may be a byblow of one of the Valfonds ...

The sense that something is wrong mounts, and the reader will not be surprise to learn that there is a terribly dark secret behind the supposedly idyllic home the girls have been provided. The action turns on them finding a secret letter; on a serious accusation against Mr. Penhallow that seems to be disproved; and on the girls' realization that they are in desperate danger, and soon all hope of escape seems gone ...

It's all terribly melodramatic, of course. The villain(s) are satisfyingly horrible, and the two protagonists are engaging. The motivations are deeply weird in a very old-fashioned way: the attitudes, both religious and as to the proper place of women, are absurd. The romances are a bit thin, to be sure. But if one simply accepts the attitudes as a weird fantasy situation, and reads the novel just for the over the top fun, it's quite entertaining. Definitely not for everyone -- and not as powerful as Dinesen's great "Tales" -- but I liked it. It's sometimes considered fantastical, and certainly there are a few occurrences that can be regarded as supernatural, but I think it's best considered a Gothic historical novel.

(Evidently it was regarded in Denmark as partly a satire/allegory of the German occupation, though Dinesen always denied this.)

Old Non-Bestseller Review: The Unfortunate Fursey, by Mervyn Wall

Old Non-Bestseller Review: The Unfortunate Fursey, by Mervyn Wall

by Rich Horton

Mervyn Wall (1908-1997) was an Irish civil servant, and also a writer of plays, stories, novels and non-fiction. The Unfortunate Fursey was his first novel (though he had written plays before that.) It was published in 1946, and a sequel, The Return of Fursey, appeared two years later. These are darkly comic works, satirical commentary on the Church and on Irish life. His later four novels seems to have abandoned the humor and the fantastical elements, and instead are deadly serious -- though well respected -- works of social realism. He retains a significant if minor reputation, both for the Fursey books and the later novels.

I heard about The Unfortunate Fursey only a few years ago, when the new Valancourt Press edition appeared with an introduction by Michael Dirda. I read the introduction somewhere and I was convinced I should read the book -- but I didn't get around to it until a couple of weeks about, spurred by the 1946 project at Chicon 8 to consider it as a potential "Hugo" candidate had there been Hugos then. And, indeed, The Unfortunate Fursey is definitely one of the best fantastical novels of its year (though Wall would probably be pipped at the post by another Mervyn, Peake, with his novel Titus Groan.)

The Unfortunate Fursey begins at the monastery of Clonmacnoise, some time in the 10th Century. This long peaceful community is under siege from by a plague of demons, and the monks turn to prayer and proven chants to conquer the devils. Alas, one monk, the simple Fursey, is so frightened by the unholy visitors that his prayers are ruined by his stuttering. Before long, the demons concentrate in Fursey's room, and the monks decide the only solution is to expel him.

So Fursey begins his travels, wholly unprepared for life on the road. The devil shows up with an offer for him -- for the minimal price of his soul he will have peace. (As with so many novels about the devil, he gets a lot of the best lines.) Fursey ends up forced into marriage with a suspected witch, after he has saved her from drowning (of course, the fact that she was drowning proved she wasn't a witch.) That marriage doesn't last long after after a sorcerous battle with a neighboring sexton. Fursey is soon trying to return to Clonmacnoise, but his fellow monks will have none of it. So then it's to a King's city to be executed, with the help of a fierce friar who will conduct the examination of Fursey. But with the help of a Byzantine prince (real identity easily deduced) Fursey escapes again.

The story is very funny throughout, and never loses its satirical edge. Fursey soon has a reputation as a formidable sorcerer, and despite his sincere faith he begins to be tempted -- for the devil never leaves him alone. He meets a beautiful woman at a temporary place of refuge, but soon the King starts a war ... No need to detail the plot any further (and my recitation so far is likely somewhat muddled.) The Unfortunate Fursey remains a success -- funny, dark, piercing, uncompromising. It's a novel that has never been precisely famous, but also never forgotten, and contemporary readers should definitely take a look.