Two Linked Novels by Robert Silverberg: Regan's Planet and World's Fair, 1992

Two Linked Novels by Robert Silverberg: Regan's Planet and World's Fair, 1992

a review by Rich Horton

I have been trying to finish reading all of Robert Silverberg's "early period" novels. This may seem a silly quest, for after all Robert Silveberg is celebrated as a writer whose early career was marked by extreme prolificity more than by particularly strong work. And I don't deny this at all! Still, I'll say that he learned to write skillfully and professionally very quickly, his early novels, while none of them are of truly lasting value, are mostly quite readable, and often engage with worthwhile and interesting ideas. 

Famously, Silverberg "retired" from science fiction around 1960, and turned to writing mostly popular science and history -- and doing so quite well. But around 1963, Frederik Pohl, editor of Galaxy, If, and Worlds of Tomorrow, lured him back, urging him to write more ambitious fiction. Silverberg quickly produced some exceptional short fiction, and by 1967 he was also publishing exceptional novels. 

There's a curious interregnum there, however -- what about those novels that appeared between 1961 and 1967? Some may have been -- some certainly were -- novels already in the pipeline, or novels based on already published short work. And there were a few YA novels. But one at least stands out as neither of these -- Regan's Planet, from 1964. Silverberg states in his introduction to the 1982 reprint of World's Fair, 1992, that he wrote it in 1963. Clearly he was not "fully" retired from SF -- but does this novel stand with his best later work? No. 

Anyway, I feel like I should call it a transitional work of sorts. It's well written, in a very professional fashion. But it is not as ambitious as most of his post 1967 novels. It's not in any sense experimental. And, it's never been reprinted -- it's only publication was a 1964 paperback.

For all that, Silverberg did produce a sequel -- the other book under review here, World's Fair, 1992, which appeared in hardcover from Follet in 1970. It was marketed as a YA novel, but it did get a reprint, from Ace Books in 1982. During the late '70s and early '80s, several of Silverberg's early novels were reprinted by Ace, sometimes in omnibus form, and with couple of different book designs. These featured genial introductions in which Silverberg explained the genesis of the novels and admitted that they weren't up to the quality of his later work but were, in his view, worth resurrection. This edition of World's Fair, 1992, doesn't really seem to be part of that series of reprints -- the novel is a later work, for one thing, and the book presentation is much different. But it does have a genial introduction, discussing the writing of each novel, and, most importantly, clearing up some confusion. Apparently -- and, to my mind, not surprisingly -- many readers assumed that World's Fair, 1992, was simply a retitling of Regan's Planet. (This claim even ended up in some bibliographies.) It was a somewhat plausible claim for a couple of reasons -- one, that World's Fair, 1992 is a thoroughly reasonable title for Regan's Planet; and two, that neither the paperback edition of Regan's Planet nor the original hardcover of World's Fair, 1992 were readily available to check. Instead, World's Fair, 1992 is a YA novel, set during the period of Regan's World's Fair. (Regan's Planet ends just as the Fair begins.)

Regan's Planet is centered around Claude Regan, the head of Global Factors Inc, which by 1990 has become probably the most powerful corporation in the US, having bought up a lot of companies during the Panic of '76. Regan himself, only 35, took over the corporation years later in a power play in which he ousted his uncle. And suddenly he is summoned by the President, who asks him to take over the running of the planned 1992 World's Fair in the US, on the 500th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage. It's 1990 -- so Regan has only two years, and a site hasn't even been selected.

The bulk of the novel follows Regan's efforts to stage the Fair. His biggest innovation is his choice of a site -- instead of choosing one of the many US cities angling for the job, he decides to have it in space. He will have a large satellite built, 50,000 miles* up, and also build a fleet of spaceships to shuttle visitors back and forth. In this depiction, the biggest problems aren't engineering -- he hires a Brazilian firm to build the satellite, for example, and they seem to slap it together in no time. His biggest problems are financial, and the novel shows him making some desperate maneuvers, which risk bankrupting Global Factors. He also has to fight off an internal takeover attempt by people unhappy with the financial chicanery he's trying. 

Other aspects of the novel include a depiction of a much changed international political order. The US and the USSR are still important, but clearly on a downward slide, with countries like Nigeria, China, and Brazil becoming the new world powers. The book attempts to portray the other countries in a positive manner, but there is some stereotyping (and one cringey sideways reference to South Africa.) There is essentially only one female character, Regan's wife, and their marriage is displayed as quite toxic. 

The plot, besides the financial aspects, turns on the difficulty of attracting enough visitors to pay off the debts Regan incurred to set up the space station. There is a lot of reluctance, partially due to the cost of the trip, and partially due to fears after some apparently spurious threats to attack the station surface. But Regan comes up with a spectacular, if icky, solution -- there are colonies on Mars, and very recently men have discovered a few living "Old Martians" -- the indigenous inhabitants, a dying race. Regan decides to build a representative Old Martian cave on the station, and invites a few of them to come and live in the cave for a year. And if they're not interested? ... well, I'll leave that for the reader to see.

It's slickly written, and a quick read, and there are some interesting aspects, and a moral conundrum (well, not THAT much of a conundrum!) and a decision for Regan to make at the end. I thought the science and engineering aspects were brushed over a bit -- which is to say, I was not convinced that the space station could be built in that time and be suitable for so many visitors, nor was I convinced by the Mars colonies or especially the Old Martians (who seem very similar to those in the otherwise unrelated middle grade novel Lost Race of Mars). Regan himself is not a very inspiring character, though his eventual fate suggests a better path for him. And, of course, the future history up until 1992 bears little resemblance to real history -- indeed, the book was written a few months before JFK was assassinated, so it was already obviously out of date when published in 1964. But you can't blame the author for that! In the final analysis, it's a pretty minor book, more evidence of Silverberg's professionalism but no real evidence of his ability to treat deeper themes that was soon to show up in his novels.

A little bit to my surprise, I liked World's Fair, 1992 rather more than Regan's Planet. The protagonist is Bill Hastings, a high school senior interested in xenobiology who won an essay contest to spend a year on the World's Fair satellite. His essay concerned the possibility of life on Pluto, and while on the satellite, he will be part of the team maintaining the exhibit of the Old Martians. 

Bill soon realizes that most of the other young people working at the Fair got their positions due to their families' wealth or influence, and he's rooming with a couple of wealthy young men, though they seem decent enough. He's also met (literally) a pretty girl of about his age, who ran into him as he was trying to find his way after arriving. This is Emily Blackman, the daughter of a Senator, and she seems to be a fairly, well, bitchy young woman. As Bill's roommates warn him -- one of them is her cousin, and the other also knows her socially.

Work in the Mars Pavilion turns about to be pretty interesting. Seven scientists are using the opportunity to study the Old Martians as extensively as they can. Bill is adopted as a gofer, but also as a bright young student who they all want to recruit to their branch of xenobiology. Over time Bill seems to make a slight connection with the six Old Martians, who remain stoic and not terribly interested in anything outside their own situation. Bill also realizes that the scientists are all, to one degree or another, appalled with the decision to uproot the six Martians and bring them to the Fair. Bill also has a chance to spend some time with Emily, and he starts to feel attracted to her, and to feel that she is attracted to him. But the Fair in general isn't doing so well -- after an early rush of interest, attendance has fallen drastically. There is a risk that the Fair will have to close early. (This is clearly a change from the implied situation at the end of Regan's Planet, but to be fair, that novel did end only as the Fair was starting.)

But Claude Regan has a plan. (He always has a plan.) His company happens to have magically developed, in the nick of time, a nuclear-powered spaceship that can get to Pluto in only a couple of weeks. He has sent an unmanned probe there, which has found evidence of life -- life resembling the sort of life Bill Hastings has speculated Pluto might feature. So now he wants to send a manned expedition, in the hopes that they can grab some samples of Plutonian life and open a Pluto Pavilion, to attract more visitors. And -- he wants Bill Hastings to be on the expedition, to take advantage of his having, sort of, predicted all this.

Well -- we can guess the outline of the resolution. Will the expedition find samples of life on Pluto? Will there be some adventure, even some danger, making Bill a hero? Will the expedition over all be a success, and save the fair? Will the notoriety gain Bill a foothold on the xenobiology career he wants? Will this raise Bill's status with Emily enough to make his dreams come true?

The answers to these questions are smoothly revealed, and really they make a lot of sense in the context of the novel. Is a lot of it a bit silly? Sure -- like the convenient appearance of frankly unbelievable two week travel times to Pluto. But I took a lot of this in stride, as consistent with a lot of SF shortcuts, particularly in YA novels (but adult novels too.) The emotional core of it all pretty much works -- Bill's interest in xenobiology, his worries about Emily's vastly different social status, the attitudes of the scientists to their morally queasy study of the Old Martians, and to the potentially similarly queasy issues raised by the discovery of the Plutonians. It's a smooth read, of course, and interesting even though implausible, and I liked it. A reprint of both Regan's Planet and World's Fair, 1992 in an omnibus edition would be kind of neat, though I daresay the audience for it wouldn't be all that huge.

*The orbit is stated to be "fixed" over the United States at 50,000 miles, but that really makes no sense (and the fuel costs of maintaining position over the US (not a true "orbit") would be, er, astronomical.) A geosynchronous orbit (at a radius of some 26,200 miles from the center of the Earth) would be more logical, even though it would not always be over the US.

Review: Spear, by Nicola Griffith

Review: Spear, by Nicola Griffith

by Rich Horton

Nicola Griffith is the author of a great many excellent novels -- SF, crime, contempoary -- but she has made her biggest mark with two remarkable historical novels, Hild (2013) and Menewood (2023). These concern the life of the 7th Century Saint Hilda of Whitby. (More books about Hild are planned.) While working on Menewood she took a break to write Spear, which appeared in 2022. It is set in Wales and England in the 6th Century -- thus not dissimilar in time frame to the Hild books. But it is different in another way -- it is an Arthurian story, and truly a fantasy, leaning entirely into the Arthurian mythos complete with magic. Yet it is her own take on Arthur -- Welsh-centered, reimagining the characters as diverse, differently abled, queer, polyamorous, but still entirely true to the (already wildly diverse) legendarium.

The viewpoint character is Peretur, a version of Percival. But this Percival is a woman, and queer. We meet her growing up with only her mother Elen, in a secluded valley in Wales. But she feels always that her fate is different -- she is drawn to an image of a lake. And as she grows close to adulthood, she feels a need to leave, and to head to Caer Leon, and the King, Artos, and his Companions.

She has acquired spears, and a sword, and has developed remarkable skill. She encounters some of the Companions, and establishes a reputation, but when she comes to Caer Leon, she encounters some resistance. But after further feats -- defeating some bandits, rehabilitating some and killing the worst, she returns, and begins to develop relationships -- with Cai, at first skeptical; with Llanza (Lancelot), a great warrior though lame in one leg; and especially with Nimuë, the sorceress. But Artos is still wary -- and the secrets of Peretur's birth begin to come clearer (even to her.)

The novel then rushes to its conclusion -- the quest for the Grail (which here is, quite beautifully, not the Grail but one of the treasures of the Tuath Dé.) This too involves a confrontation with her father, and a resolution of her relationship with her mother, and with Artos; and of Artos' relationship with Gwenhyfar and Llanza. 

This is a lovely book, and the reframing of the story of Arthur is throughout sensible and intriguing. Peretur herself is wonderfully portrayed, and her sexuality is frankly and honestly depicted, and seems natural in its context. (And honestly Griffith does great sex scenes.) As with Hild, the depiction of everyday life in historical Britain is remarkable. The prose is graceful and lyrical. The fight scenes are outstanding. The characters all come to life. If I had a complaint, it would be that the ending is a bit rushed, and at times comes off a bit convenient. But Spear remains a glorious contribution to the (huge!) array of Arthurian retellings -- and it makes us see Arthur and his fellows in a way both familiar and refrshingly new.

Review: Love's Shadow, by Ada Leverson

Review: Love's Shadow, by Ada Leverson

by Rich Horton

Looking for my next audiobook recently, I browsed a selection of free ones (mostly from Librivox), and this book seemed worth a try. The name of the author rang a very faint bell, and, hey, how wrong can you go for $0? And it came up aces. (I have, of course, since bought the physical book, or actually an omnibus of the entire trilogy for which this book is the first volume.) I should mention upfront the reader: Helen Taylor, who did an excellent job. (Librivox recordings can be a crapshoot sometimes, but this one is very good.)

Ada Leverson was born Ada Esther Beddington in 1862. She married Ernest Leverson, unwisely and against her father's wishes, at the age of 19, and had two children, one of whom died as an infant. The marriage was generally a disaster, and eventually her husband decamped to Canada. She began writing witty sketches in the early '90s, publishing them pseudonomously in places like Punch, Saturday Review, and (eventually) The Yellow Book. One sketch, a parody of Oscar Wilde's work, was praised by its subject, and the two became good friends. Wilde called Leverson "the Sphinx", a nickname that stuck with her.

Her six novels all appeared in the decade 1907-1916. Love's Shadow (1908) was her second novel, and it was followed by two more novels about the same people, Tenterhooks (1912) and Love at Second Sight (1916). The three together are known as The Little Ottleys, and have been generally available as an omnibus under that title since 1962.

I'm going to shamelessly steal the way Hyson Concepcion described these novels, because it's perfect: "at once frothy, angry, incisive, and hilarious." It ranges from brittle satire on the English upper class in the Edwardian period, to light romance, to laugh out loud sketches of various silly people, some harmless, some less so. It's a shortish, novel, at some 56,000 words, and presented in 39 short and snappy chapters.

The story essentially follows two threads. One concerns the marriage of Edith and Bruce Ottley, and the other concerns Edith's friend Hyacinth Verney and her romance with Cecil Reeve. The two threads intersect, of course. 

Hyacinth is an orphan, an heiress, and strikingly beautiful. So far she has had several suitors, none of whom have interested her much. But she seems a bit more attached to Cecil Reeve, perhaps because he seems unusual to her (though the other characters assure us he's a completely ordinay Englishman.) His main quirk is his fascination with Eugenia Raymond, a widow about ten years his senior, who clearly regards him as more or less a puppy. Partly at Eugenia's insistence, he eventually seriously courts Hyancinth and they marry -- but Hyacinth remains jealous. All this is nicely enough done but mostly a tad conventional.

The more engaging thread is about Edith and Bruce. Bruce works in the Foreign Office, and the couple have a son, Archie, who is about two. It's quickly clear that Bruce is a fool and a bore, and is unthinkingly abusive to his much more sensible wife. Edith has learned to maneuver him by suggesting the opposite of what she prefers, realizing that he'll insist on doing what she wants instead. But she can't get him to reliably go to work on time, or to perform his responsibilities, such as writing letters he has promised, or communicating with his parents, or managing the finances. All this seems at first merely the eccentrities of a rather dense young man, but before long it's clear that Bruce, without really much intention of being so, is a terrible husband.

Over time Bruce, while ignoring his FO duties, hatches a scheme to write a play that will, he is certain, make him a fortune. Then he decides to take a part in an amateur theatrical performance. He is a hypochondriac, to the point of eventually deciding that he is a hypochondriac -- in a hypochondriacal sense. He is often absent, and appears to either be philandering, or attempting to philander but failing because the objects of his attentions reject him. He accuses Edith of an affair with a strange friend of his named Raggett, whom he had thrust upon her. And of course he is a terrible spendthrift and the household is soon deeply in debt. All of this is portrayed with a savage but light touch by Leverson. (It is speculated that this marriage is based on Leverson's own unhappy marriage.)

Their are numerous gloriously funny set-pieces. One of my favorites concerns Bruce attempting to babysit Archie, who is a pretty convincing if slightly precocious two year old -- the sequence where Archie asks Bruce if parrots have pockets had me rolling in the aisles. Bruce's absurd pretensions about his acting ability, in the two tiny parts he is given (with three total lines) are hilarious. (Indeed, pretty much all of the Edith/Bruce conversations are, if uncomfortable at times, lovely to read.) Raggett's tics -- such as his adoption of the Legitimist position (arguing that the true King should be in the line of King Charles the Martyr) and his subsequent attempt to develop a sense of humour -- are great fun. The acerbic contributions of Hyacinth's companion Anne Yeo, who is evidently Lesbian and in love with Hyacinth, and who customarily wears a macintosh, a golf cap, and boots, are wonderful. Hyacinth's uncle and guardian, Sir Charles Cannon, is in another unhappy marriage, though in this case the primary fault lies with his wife. Lady Cannon is a pompous snob who is only too willing to give her unwanted advice to all and sundry. Cecil Reeve's obsession, Eugenia Raymond, is an eccentric 40-something widow, and her view of life is refreshing.

This is really a very enjoyable novel, sprightly yet at the core darkly portraying the place of women in society. As I noted above, there are two sequels, and I will be reading them soon. 

Review: Hester, by Margaret Oliphant

Review: Hester, by Margaret Oliphant

a review by Rich Horton

Here I continue my discovery of Victorian writers. This ongoing project has been as rewarding as any reading I have done for a long time. There is something in the Victorian approach -- partly the prose, partly the particular angle on realist fiction, partly the portrayal of an interesting historical time, and also, I think, the use of author-viewpoint omniscient. I maintain that this is a tremendous way to tell a story, and the more recent insistence on, typically, either first-person or tight-third (sometimes tight-third with multiple viewpoints) is an overreaction. Those are certainly valid choices for many stories, but the near abandonment of omniscient is a loss of a great tool.

Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant was born in Scotland in 1828. Her mother was named Margaret Oliphant, her father Francis Wilson. She married a cousin, Frank Wilson Oliphant (the name suggests he may have been a double cousin.) They moved to London, and had six children. Frank, a stained glass artist, contracted tuberculosis, and the family moved to Italy for his health, but he died there. Margaret returned to England, to Windsor. She had already published some novels and stories, and now set to work writing regularly to support her family. Her life was generally sad, it seems -- all six of her children predeceased her, and so did other family members (a couple of dissolute brothers) whom she supported. She wrote quickly, and ended up publishing 93 novels, as well as some nonfiction (including a rather frank autobiography) and many stories, some of these supernatural. She died in 1897, at 69. 

Her prolificity may have harmed her reputation. Indeed she herself worried about her literary status, in particular with respect to George Eliot. But if she concluded that she would not be ranked with Eliot by posterity -- which proved true, of course -- it does not follow that her work was negligible. Indeed, to be the second best, or fourth or tenth best!, Victorian novelist is hardly anything to be ashamed of. And on the evidence of Hester -- considered perhaps her best novel -- she was very good indeed at the top of her form.

Hester was published in 1883. As with most of her work, it was signed Mrs. Oliphant. This was common practice for married women writers at that time, but the present day editions tend to use the writer's full name. That said, Mrs. Oliphant was how she chose to sign her books, and certainly that may have been a surrender to convention, but there is also evidence that, especially in her case, her identity as "Mrs. Oliphant" was important to her, perhaps especially given her husband's early death, and the fact that Oliphant was her mother's maiden name.

Hester opens sometime in the late 1820s, with a careful description of the background to Vernon's, a provincial bank in the town of Redborough. The bank has a reputation for conservativism, making it a very safe place to keep your money. It has been owned for generations by the Vernon family, and the current owner is one John Vernon. He was expected to marry his cousin Catherine, who has as much hereditary right to the bank as he, but who will not be in charge because she's a woman. Instead, John marries a pretty woman who is part of a respected county family, and cousin to a baronet -- hence by some measures of higher social status than merely wealthy people like the Vernons. John builds a new house for his bride, and otherwise keeps her in luxury. And somehow the bank is not doing quite as well -- whether due to John Vernon's extravagance, or his poor management, or both, is not clear. Then comes a rumor of a run -- which will ruin the bank. John Vernon is nowhere to be found -- he has run away and abandoned his responsibilities. All is lost -- until Catherine Vernon is summoned, and, using her personal fortune (as a descendant of the bank's founder) and her, it turns out, very impressive management skills ("she has the brain of a man" people say, not entirely in an approving way) she saves the bank. Over the next few decades she makes it as successful as ever, and also establishes a reputation as a wonderful philanthropist.

In the late 1850s, after John Vernon dies in France, his wife and their 14 year old daughter return to England, and are offered a place in a house Catherine Vernon owns, called "The Vernonry" as a wry pun based on its original name, The Heronry. Catherine has retired from an active role in the bank, handing the reins to two cousins, Edward and Harry. Edward is Catherine's favorite, and the more intelligent of the two. Harry is much more stolid, and lazier, interested more in football than banking -- though he is faithful enough about doing his work. 

Hester and her mother, called Mrs. John, settle into their new rooms. The Vernonry has been subdivided into several apartments, and Oliphant takes great joy in sardonically portraying some of the other residents, particularly two sisters, Martha and Matilda Vernon-Ridgway; and another cousin, Mr. Mildmay Vernon. They are mean and jealous people, professing gratitude at the place Catherine has given them, but ever sarcastically snipping at her behind her back. There is another couple, Captain Rowley Morgan and his wife, who are in their 80s. Captain Morgan is a connection to Catherine on her mother's side, so "not really a Vernon" as the Miss Vernon-Ridgways insist, and they are more truly grateful to Catherine. Hester befriends the Morgans, and both in their way are moral beacons for her (even though they are not perfect people either.)

Hester herself is an energetic and intelligent girl, hoping to help her mother out by doing real work, such as teaching French to young women. She is also spirited enough to openly defy Catherine. The two set up as cordial enemies. And we realize that while Catherine's philanthropy is real, it is also a bit self-serving. And her attitude toward her beneficiaries, especially family members such as those in the Vernonry, is perceptibly condescending -- she fancies she can see through all their pretensions, and she probably can, but her response makes things no better.

Five years on comes the main action of the book. Hester is 19. She remains fiercely independent. But she has become something of a beauty. Harry's sister Ellen has married, and is setting herself up a social leader of the younger set in Redborough. Edward is inwardly chafing at his staid position as Catherine's more or less adopted son, and as her chosen leader of the bank; while publically he remains devoted, to the point of snubbing Hester at social events if Catherine is present while acting as if he is attracted to when they meet in other circumstances. Harry and Edward both are of an age they should probably marry, but there are precious few eligible women in their circle. Captain Morgan's grandson Roland is coming to visit him. 

So the stage is set. Harry is intrigued by Hester, but he is not at all an intellectual match for her. Edward begins to notice her more romantically, but she is troubled by his inability to honestly confront Catherine. Roland too is briefly an intriguing young man, but he is not terribly interested in marriage, and his grandfather is curiously cool to him -- it turns out, because his father was not a good person, and Captain Morgan fears he's ruined all his children, not to mention being a terrible husband to the Captain's daughter. And then Roland's sister Emma turns up -- and she is quite openly looking for her "chance" -- chance to marry, that is.

But I am making the novel seem like it has a marriage plot, as if the romance stories are the center of it. And that is not the case at all. For Hester does not want to be just a wife. She wants to do things. She wants to be a hero -- like, she ruefully acknowledges, her enemy Catherine Vernon was in saving the bank. And she also values truth, honesty. It's clear to the reader that whatever Edward's virtues, he is weak at the core, and not just in his treatment of Hester (and her mother.) And while Harry is pretty honest, he is also, as noted, a bit dull -- and not imaginative enough to give Hester scope for the life she may want. Roland himself is ambiguous -- his work is on the stock exchange, and that is suspicious, for it can involve dangerous speculation, and possibly outright dishonesty. And, indeed, he attracts the interest of Edward, and Harry, and Ellen's new husband -- will he play them for fools?

So -- the resolution beckons. Hester (even as the reader wants to warn her!) becomes intrigued by Edward's interest in her. Emma is angling for a proposal from another young man in Redborough. Roland has helped Ellen's husband, and Harry, and Edward, to make a bit of money with modest investments, but Edward wants to make a true fortune, so that he can escape Catherine's control. So Edward appropriates money that is truly owned by the bank, and starts to make risky investments, while hinting to Hester that they should marry and run away. And, inevitably, a crisis results ... I won't reveal the ending, though it's mostly not a surprise, if in some ways it defies expectations for this sort of novel. But it's involving and honest. 

What to say of the novel as a whole? It is truly delightful. Catherine and Hester are excellent characters. It's not much of a revelation to say that they are more like each other than either would like to admit. The minor characters are neat as well. The various residents of the Vernonry are a sort of chorus -- the nastier elements are comic relief, and Captain Morgan and his wife are oracles. The Morgans' granddaughter Emma is an excellent creation -- she is not likeable but she is understandable: she truly has been dealt a difficult hand as the youngest daughter of a genteel family sliding into poverty; and her grasping ways are both comic as displayed, and oddly forgiveable. Edward and Harry Vernon are perhaps closer to types, but useful and well-depicted types -- Edward the more intelligent but less honest, Harry quite definitely dull but true. Mrs. John Vernon is wonderfully portrayed -- a silly woman but a sweet woman.

And in the end, what we see, really, is an argument against the roles women in this society were forced into. Catherine escaped those roles -- but at some sacrifice. Mrs. John wholly accepted them, and ended up poor. Ellen tries to become a force in the only avenue available to her -- with some success but with a realization of that role's shallowness. And Hester -- Hester is left in almost tragic position. She is intelligent and strong and powerfully honest -- but there is no way for her to grow into her talents. The novel is also a successful social novel, portraying provincial life, and its limitations, along with the economic risks and injustices of 19th Century England.

Reviews of Brian Stableford's work, in his memory

Brian Stableford died yesterday, February 24, 2004, at age 75. I will have a fuller obituary elsewhere soon, but I thought to compile a number of reviews of his work I did, for 3SF magazine and for Locus.

The Omega Expedition (from 3SF, April 2003)

One of the most ambitious, coherent, and philosophically interesting Future Histories of recent years comes from the pen of Brian Stableford. This project began with his 1985 non-fiction book The Third Millennium, written with David Langford. In 1986 he published the first story set in that milieu, and throughout the 90s he published a quite a few further stories, set from the very near future to centuries ahead. 

He has capped this achievement with six novels: Inherit the Earth (1998), Architects of Emortality (1999), The Fountains of Youth (2000), The Cassandra Complex (2001), Dark Ararat (2002), and finally The Omega Expedition (2002). Most of the novels are expansions of earlier short stories. The central theme of the entire project is "emortality": the realization of the dream of indefinitely prolonged human life. The books and stories sketch a future in which human life is nearly destroyed by the Plague Wars of the 21st Century, and in which the entire ecosystem undergoes a nearly terminal crash. But from the ashes rises a near utopia: nanotechnology allows for greatly extended lifespans, while various biotechnological innovations rescue the biosphere. A variety of strategies for true "emortality" arise, including genetic changes, "cyborgization" -- integration of mechanical devices into the body, and even "chimerization" (based on the completely different biology of a different planet), which will allow people to adapt their bodies to radically different environments. But as The Omega Expedition opens, there is a long-term threat to this utopia, in the form of the "Afterlife", mindless beings that eat anything organic in their path. As it turns out, there is also another much nearer term threat.

The action in the book turns on the unfreezing of Adam Zimmerman, one of the key figures of the early 21st Century, a man obsessed with immortality, who finally had himself frozen with instructions that he be awakened when immortality was possible. The main viewpoint character, however, is Madoc Tamlin, who is awakened as a sort of trial run for Zimmerman. Tamlin had been kind of a "fixer" for a member of the ruling elite of the 22nd Century, and he was apparently frozen as punishment for some crime he can't remember. He soon learns that he has been roused by one faction of 31st century emortals, people who have their physical development arrested before puberty. Before long the other factions are involved as well, but then the small group of reawakened sleepers and advocates of various forms of emortality are kidnapped. 

From this point the main thrust of the novel revolves around the threat of devastating war, and a brave attempt to avert this war. But instead of action, we get lots of talk, arguably too much. I will say, though, that I found the talk interesting and quite thought provoking. Stableford uses this platform to discuss the meaning of life, the definition of intelligence, and how to make truly extended lives worthwhile. So, though the book is a bit static, on balance I found it absorbing and a very worthy capstone to an impressive feat of extended speculation.

Dark Ararat (3SF, December 2002)

Brian Stableford has spent some time working out an interesting "future history" based mostly on advanced biotechnology. In a number of stories, and a planned six novels, he has told of a 21st century under increasing ecological stress, eventually wracked by Plague Wars which threaten the survival of humanity. Biotech created the plagues, but biotech also created the solutions, which include practical "emortality" (arbitrarily extended lifespans) for humans, and a genetically engineered biosphere that will allow Earth to survive without ecocatastrophe.

Dark Ararat is the fifth novel in the series, and sort of an offshoot. At the beginning of the 22nd century as Earth seemed to face certain disaster, a series of generation ships were launched. One of these ships has arrived after hundreds of years at a new planet. Biologist and TV personality Matthew Fleury is awakened to find that things aren't going quite as planned. The crew of the ship, adapted over generations to onboard life, wants to drop off the colonists and continue traveling. But the first wave of colonists is not sure this new planet can be made habitable. And one of Fleury's colleagues has just been murdered. It is his job, along with a policeman revived along with him, to both investigate the murder, and to investigate the biological mysteries of the planet.

Not surprisingly it is the scientific mystery which dominates. Life on this planet is organized around a very different encoding molecule to DNA, and one result of this is that most organisms are some form of chimera. There are also hints of possible intelligent life, and there are hints that this chimerization may result in another form of emortality. Fleury investigates all these things, at the same time giving us a neat tour of the strange planet, while he and the policeman somewhat perfunctorily solve the murder mystery. The eventual scientific explanation is rather clever, though on a few grounds I was underwhelmed. One shortcoming may lie with me: I couldn't quite grasp all the scientific details. Another is quite common in my experience of Stableford: his portrayal of human relationships, especially romantic ones, is very distanced, and it is hard to get inside his characters. Finally, the wrapping up is very rapid, and perhaps too convenient. Still, it's in many ways a neat book – good SF for SF's sake.

From Locus, June 2002

Brian Stableford's "Taking the Piss" is a very amusing story about advances in bio-engineering. Stableford extrapolates from recent genetic modifications to animals to have their bodies create useful substances (I seem to recall that scientists have managed to get silk from sheep's milk). It turns out, in Stableford's future, that some biological engineering is best done using human hosts. This becomes a low class job, for folks such as Darren, the aimless young man who narrates this story. But the human body is a complex thing, and the specific proteins created from a certain genetic modification can be quite different from person to person. When Darren's engineered urine turns out to create something unexpected, he is potentially quite valuable. As such he is a target for industrial espionage, and also perhaps a national security asset. Stableford wraps some interesting extrapolation in a clever and quite funny story of competing economic interests.

From Locus, September 2002

January's issue of The Silver Web is their fifteenth. Editor Ann Kennedy chooses a decidedly slipstreamish mix. My favorite story this issue is Brian Stableford's "Oh Goat-Foot God of Arcady", which is mostly straight science fiction, with a (possibly metaphorical) intrusion of fantasy in the appearances of the title being, Pan, to the main character, a woman musing on her upcoming marriage to a man who is interested (and why?) in the possibilities of using genetic engineering to create human/animal chimeras. The tale is slyly told, and the mixture of the appearances of Pan with the conversational unfolding of the story behind the possible creation of chimeras works strikingly well. 

From Locus, February 2003

Brian Stableford does biological speculation as well as any writer. His latest is "A Chip off the Old Block", in which young Stevie turns out to have a potentially valuable genetic feature. But who owns his genes? Stevie becomes the focus of a bidding war, complicated by the fact that his mother and father are going through a divorce. This is a first rate look at not so much near future scientific progress as at the unexpected social consequences of such progress – and the laws surrounding it. 

From Locus, January 2004

Brian Stableford's "Nectar" is another of his stories set in a near-utopian future in which human lifespans have been enormously extended, and in which children (for that and other reasons) are very rare. Sara is an adolescent, one of only a few nearby. She gets fitted for an ornamental attachment -- a quasi-living rose. But it unexpectedly attracts not just butterflies, but shadowbats, a very new creation: more artificial life used as body art. She tracks down the old man who designed these particular creatures, hoping simply that he can fix them so they won't bother her. But her visit leads to more momentous discoveries, and changes. More solid work from one of the most consistently interesting writers of hard SF.

From Locus, July 2006

Plenty of solid reading in the August Asimov’s. The novella is a wild alternate history/fantasy from Brian Stableford, “The Plurality of Worlds”, in which a spaceship (or ethership) is constructed in late 16th Century England, for Queen Jane (presumably Lady Jane Grey survived). The five man crew are Thomas Digge, John Foxe, and three more familiar names: Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, and Edward De Vere (Earl of Oxford, and perhaps the most fashionable current alternate Shakespeare). The possibility of making a spaceship in the 16th Century rather implies a different cosmology, and so this story supposes: the ether turns out to be breathable, and the planned trip to the moon results in an encounter with some very odd creatures, and a trip to a much farther star, where the humans learn something of man’s insignificance. 

From Locus, October 2006

Weird Tales continues a very strong year with an issue full of enjoyable stories. It opens with a long, gleefully mordant, story from Brian Stableford, “The Elixir of Youth”, in which a winemaker’s two sons fall out over the title potion. One ends up dead in a cask of wine, his body full of the elixir, which does remarkable things for the wine. But it does much worse things for the psyches of those people who find out about it: the winemaker and his surviving son, their liege lord and his heir, and so on. 

From Locus, February 2007

Brian Stableford’s “Dr. Muffet’s Island” (Asimovs, March), is a sequel to last year’s “The Plurality of Worlds”. In this one Francis Drake, having been branded a madman for his story of his adventures in space in that story, is attempting to find a large island in the central Pacific, based on a map drawn from space. But to his surprise he finds a British ship already there, with a small colony, and in particular a scientist attempting to breed spiders. All turns out to be related to schemes of a group of “celestial spiders”, enemies of the insect people from the previous story. It makes for enjoyable and outré storytelling … and likely more to come.

From Locus, February 2008

And Brian Stableford’s “Following the Pharmers” is a particularly good piece about a genetic engineering-dominated future. Radical genetic engineering is viewed with suspicion, both by the law and by the corporations (“Big Pharma”). The narrator is a small-time “pharmer”, living alone and cultivating psychotropic drugs. His privacy is threatened by a new neighbor, an activist who wants to change the rules, to force humans to become “masters of evolution”, to rectify the sloppiness of natural selection. She presses the narrator to help her – but he has a secret, involving his own past career, and his lost wife, and he is dangerous to push too far – not necessarily by his own desire.

Review: Fast Women, by Jennifer Crusie

Review: Fast Women, by Jennifer Crusie

by Rich Horton

Jennifer Crusie (real name Jennifer Smith) is a popular author of romance novels (with crime aspects). Her early career was as a teacher (in grade schools), and she has an MFA and taught in college and written criticism. She began writing category romances (i.e. from publishers like Harlequin) in the early '90s but broke out into general fiction in the later '90s.* Most of her books, at least after this switch, combine romance with mystery plots. In the past 20 years or so, most of her fiction has been collaborations, particularly with Bob Mayer.

I have read several of her novels in the past, but I hadn't read one in a while. I found Fast Women (2001) at a used book sale, and gave it to my wife, but after she finished it I figured it looked fun so I decided to read it too. 

The main character is Nell Dysart, whose husband left her, and who is looking for a job. She's in her early 40s, and after quitting college to marry, she worked as her husband's secretary/office manager -- and she likes working. She takes a temporary position with McKenna Investigations, a detective agency, and quickly brings her organizing skills to bear -- much to Gabe McKenna's displeasure, as he doesn't like change. I think all romance readers can see where that's going from (checking book) page 5. 

I said Nell is the main character, and that's true, but this novel is in many ways an ensemble book. Besides Nell and Gabe, there's Gabe's partner and cousin Riley, and Nell's best friend Suze, who is married to Jack Dysart, one of Gabe's most reliable clients. Add in Nell's other friend Margie, who was formerly married to Jack Dysart's former partner Stewart Ogilvie but is now living with Ogilvie and Dysart's accountant Budge. Plus Gabe's ex-wife Chloe, and their daughter Lu. And Nell's son Jase. Plus of course Marlene (a dachsund.) (I actually would have found a family tree for the characters very helpful!)

Nell learns quickly that her predecessor, Lynnie, had been embezzling from the McKennas. Plus Jack Dysart gets a blackmail call. And there's a mystery about Gabe's father Patrick, who had died a couple decades before, leaving Gabe the agency and a Porsche 911. Plus there are a variety of regular clients, all of whom seem serial adulterers or spouses of adulterers, and are given names like the Quarterly Report and the Hot Lunch. And a lot of strange things start to happen, including Nell stealing a dog, diamonds turning up in various places, dead people being found in freezers, and arson. And Nell, Suze, and Margie continually debate their love lives -- they all need a change, largely (it seems to me) because they got married way too young. Plus they buy a lot of china. 

It's a fun novel, but not a great one. The best part by far is the dialogue -- fast, witty, snarky. There's some sex, and some action. The crime plot, I thought, was a bit overextended, a bit too complicated, with some really gruesome stuff happening that oddly doesn't hit home enough. And the resolution was slightly labored. It was mostly a skeleton (indeed, a skeleton in a closet) on which to hang the romance plot. The romances are mostly about women in their 30s and 40s (with one exception) and that's kind of refreshing, and there is a lot of meditation on how to establish a mature and equitable relationship with your spouse. In the end, then -- enjoyable but quite light.

(*I say general fiction but more as a marketing distinction -- her novels remained similar in style and focus, though they got much longer and were published in hardcover.)

The Fiction of Zoran Živković

This review first appeared at Locus Online way back in February of 2002 -- about the same time my first column for the magazine appeared. (I had been doing a few things for Locus Online before that, however.) I thought it worthwhile to reproduce it on my blog (though it can still be found buried in the archives of Locus Online), partly because I think Zoran Živković a writer who deserves our attention. I will add that he has written many more books than those reviewed here, and remains prolific today.

(I note that, unlike back in 2002, many of Živković's books are readily available (in attractive editions) now.)

The Fiction of Zoran Živković 

a review by Rich Horton

Time-Gifts, by Zoran Živković 

Impossible Encounters, by Zoran Živković 

Seven Touches of Music, by Zoran Živković 

Regular readers of the excellent UK magazine Interzone will have noticed in the past few years a pronounced attempt to publish SF in translation. Interzone has featured fine stories by Hiroe Suga (Japanese), Ayerdahl (French), and Jean-Claude Dunyach (also French). But their most prolific non-English Language contributor is the Serbian writer Zoran Živković, who lives in Belgrade. Approximately a dozen of his stories have graced the magazine since "The Astronomer" appeared in #144, for June 1999.

Živković's work is marked by a quiet and graceful style (smoothly translated by Alice Copple-Tošic with the editing assistance of Chris Gilmore), by an interest in time, in the effects of knowledge of the future and the past on people's lives, and by a pronounced tendency towards metafictional effects. Almost all his work is nominally SF (or fantasy), but the basic thrust is often more allied with the "mainstream" — the stories look closely at ordinary characters, as their lives are affected by curious fantastical incursions. But some few of these stories take a more directly SFnal tack — for instance "The Puzzle", one of my favorites, is at the same time a look at a man entering a lonely retirement, and a metaphor for the difficulty of communicating with the alien — or, perhaps, with anybody.

I've received three of Živkovic's books in English translation. Each book is a subtly linked series of short stories. The links are both thematic and metafictional — each book closes with a story in which the other stories are wryly alluded to. The oldest of these books, Time-Gifts (1997, tr. 1998) is available from Northwestern University Press, and through Amazon.com. The other two books might be available from the publisher, Polaris, or one could read the stories in the various issues of Interzone in which they appear. (To the best of my knowledge, each story in Impossible Encounters and Seven Touches of Music will have appeared in Interzone by early 2002, though only one of the parts of Time-Gifts appeared there.) The books are very slim paperbacks, on high quality paper with nice covers — they are rather short, between 20,000 and 30,000 words each, I estimate.

Time-Gifts consists of four stories. "The Astronomer" concerns a medieval astronomer awaiting his execution for heresy. He entertains a mysterious visitor in his cell, who allows him to travel to the future, there to learn what effect, if any, his heroic opposition to the rigidity of the Church might have. He is left with an agonizing decision. The title character of "The Paleolinguist" is instead offered a trip to the distant past, where she can learn for herself whether or not her radical speculations about the origin of language were correct — but once again, such knowledge, and the means of gaining it, may be a decidedly mixed blessing. And "The Watchmaker" is vouchsafed the ability to alter a tragic event in his own past, but even there his happiness with the outcome is hardly guaranteed. The concluding story, "The Artist", features a woman in an asylum, who is painting a picture — apparently of the mysterious visitor with the "Time-Gifts" in each of the preceding stories. This story, then, serves mainly as a vehicle for commenting on each of the other stories, and for tying them up in a metafictional knot. The whole thing is effective and thought-provoking.

Impossible Encounters tends just a bit more towards being a jape, and is more strongly metafictional still. The shadow of Borges looms over this book. Each story features a character meeting an "impossible" other character — it might be God, or himself, or an alien, or the author. And the book, Impossible Encounters, appears as well in each story. They all satisfy, but there is perhaps a sense of cleverness, and a sense that the stories are a touch too cute, and a touch too much about each other, and not enough about character or metaphysics. But that is to quibble — they are fun to read, witty, and at times quite beautifully written.

Finally, Seven Touches of Music, published only last year, and with component stories still appearing in Interzone this year, is perhaps the most impressive of these three books. The seven stories all feature music, not surprisingly, usually as a catalyst for some strange message, or curious intrusion. The links between the stories are a bit subtler (mainly confined to a hint that two stories share a setting, and to the trademark appearance in the last story of the characters from the previous ones — something which occurs, one way or another, in all three of these books). Thus, I feel, the individual stories work somewhat better read separately. Perhaps most impressive is "The Puzzle", one of the better SF stories of 2001, which I have already mentioned. It's about a man who has retired from a job working on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). In his retirement, he organizes his life rather obsessively in patterns. Most striking is a series of paintings he is compelled to make while listening to music in the local park. The paintings seem to be parts of a puzzle — but how to find a meaning? Zivkovic has no answer, but his means of asking the question invites us to think about SETI, and about communication in general — it's a subtle, evocative, piece. "The Cat" deals engagingly with another elderly man, and his cat (complete with sly nod to Schrödinger) — and with another of many Zivkovician looks at the effect on our lives of contingency, and of knowledge of the effects of choices, past and future. Thus it resonates both with "The Watchmaker" from Time-Gifts, and with "The Waiting Room" in this collection — about an old woman apparently granted visions of the upcoming deaths of several people. "The Fire" is a striking story about a woman who dreams of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, and who is perhaps vouchsafed a chance to read a lost volume — much as the dying scientist in "The Violinist" hears, in a beautiful passage on a violin, the secrets of the universe for which he has long searched. In "The Whisper" the music of Chopin seems to spark in an autistic child some insight into the deep structure of the universe, while in "The Violin-Maker", we perhaps learn something about the origin of the violin played in "The Violinist". In all these stories, the gift of secret knowledge is ambiguous, in that it seems impossible to reliably transmit this knowledge to anyone else — perhaps this is the overriding theme to this collection. At any rate, the seven stories, separately and together, are again quite thought-provoking.

Zoran Živković is revealed here as one of the more interesting voices in contemporary SF. His fiction is at one level clearly informed by a knowledge of SF, but it remains separate from the main currents of the contemporary field. It is indeed worth your while to see what sort of work is coming from non-English Language practitioners, and how their stance, as it were, outside the US/UK/Canada/Australia "center" of the field (at least to our perceptions) affects their work.

Review: Jewel Box, by E. Lily Yu

Review: Jewel Box, by E. Lily Yu

by Rich Horton

E. Lily Yu made a splash from the start in the SF field, with "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" in 2011, though she had published a story in the Kenyon Review earlier, and she has continued to write outstanding stories, and strikingly original stories, in the decade plus since then. She published a beautiful novel, On Fragile Waves, in 2021. Her stories are varied in tone, setting, and subject matter, but they are always beautifully written, intensely interested in character and in morality -- personal morality, as in how to live a good life, and public morality: that is, one might say, justice, both economical and political. They do not hector, however, they simply demonstrate. More than that, they make the reader, or this reader, feel strongly -- anger, love, joy, hope, but not cynicism.

The book at hand is her first collection, published by Erewhon Books in 2023. It collects 22 stories, four of them original to the book, and a few more that many readers may have missed. It is an essential collection -- a strong representation of the work of one of the most interesting new writers in recent years. (Even so, she has published enough stories that she could readily assemble another collection.) The stories are a mixture of contemporary fiction (some which veer into what might be called magical realism), fantasy, and science fiction. If there is a single mode she repeats, it is variations on fairy tales, folk tales, or myths. (One story is a wild transformed almalgam of "Jack and the Beanstalk", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale", with a bit of "The White Cat" thrown in.)

There is not a story in this book that is not worth reading and rereading. The four new stories are of a piece with her earlier work. "The Cat's Tale" is perhaps the highlight: it's the wild almagam I mentioned: when Jackie goes to sell her mother's cow, a white cat buys it, and convinces Jackie to accompany her to confront an ogre: the abusive Lord Walter. It's inventive and amusing and pointed. "The Lion God and the Two Gates" is essentially a parable, about a judge who is reputed to be a good man -- but his goodness is shown as legalistic and supportive of the status quo -- and when he faces his judgement at the hands of the lion god, his sentence is appropriate. "Courtship Displays of the American Birder" is a sweet contemporary story about a substitute teacher getting the courage to upend his life and migrate to the home of a woman he met while birding. And "The Eve of the Planet of Ys" is SF (if not terribly plausible scientifically) about a woman's -- several women's -- efforts to make a liveable place underground as the two suns of Ys consume each other. Perhaps the science doesn't work, but the story makes emotional sense.

Rereading the other stories reinforced to me their virtues. The slyness, indeed subversiveness, of "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" still enchants and makes one think. The fierce satire, married with almost loving description of the foolish extravagances of the near-future ultra-rich, makes "Green Glass: A Love Story" both timely and timeless. A more hopeful near future is shown in "The Doing and Undoing of Jacob Mwangi", set in Kenya with a version of Universal Basic Income that has divided society into "Doers" and "Don'ts" -- those who live on UBI and those who work for something more. Jacob Mwangi is a Don't who is moved to became a Doer -- but who needs to find a way true to his own self. "The Wretched and the Beautiful" is a searing and scary portrayal of humanity's reaction to the arrival of alien refugees. "Three Variations of a Theme of Imperial Attire" is a very dark portrayal of the real story behind "The Emperor's New Clothes" -- the clothes, and the advice, the tailor provides are horrifying, and the results are terrifying. And "The Valley of Wounded Deer" is one of the most moving stories here, another story in the mode of fairy tale, about a Prince who ends up on the only survivor of her murderous grandmother, the Queen, and who emulates the ways of deer in attempting to escape her grandmother's plots. The ending is particularly powerful.

I've only mentioned a subset of the contents -- but the entire book, as I said, is excellent. Some stories are vicious, some are sweet, some are clever, some are hopeful, some despairing. All are beautiful. 

(Disclosure -- Lily is a respected colleague, someone with whom I correspond somewhat regularly, and meet occasionally at conventions. And she sent me this book. So calibrate my words as you choose -- but, honestly, you'll thank me after you read her!)

Review: Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany

Review: Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany

by Rich Horton

(This is my 1000th post at this blog!)

In Boston this past weekend I visited the Brattle Book Store, an antiquarian store a bit over a mile from the hotel. (It has an outdoor space for discounted books that was used for a scene in the film The Holdovers -- I didn't recognize it offhand but when Alexander Jablokov told me that it was obvious.) It's a very nice bookstore, three stories high, a huge selection. I came away with two things: an issue of Harper's from 1902, and this very slim book by Lord Dunsany.

I've written about Dunsany before -- so, very briefly: Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, was born in London in 1878 but lived most of his life in his castle in Ireland -- his baronage was part of the Irish Peerage. He died in 1957. He wrote some 90 books, but is largely remembered for several books of fantasy short stories published between 1905 and 1916, for his novel The King of Elfland's Daughter, and for several books of "bar stories" told by one Joseph Jorkens. The early fantasy work has been tremendously influential, and a key strain of sword and sorcery is essentially Dunsanyesque, though one hears much less about his influence than the later influences of Tolkien, Howard, and Lovecraft. I believe Leigh Brackett in particular was working in a Dunsanyesque vein in her planetary romances. Dunsany was accomplished in many fields, in particular a brilliant player of chess. He was friends with Yeats, AE, Padraic Colum, and other prominent Irish writers. His niece Violet Pakenham, a writer herself, was the wife of the great novelist Anthony Powell and the brother of the notorious seventh Earl of Longford.

Fifty-One Tales was published in 1915 by the firm Elkin Mathews. My copy is part of the Third Edition, or "Third Thousand", no date given but I believe 1919. The frontispiece is a photograph of Dunsany in uniform (he served in the Army in the Second Boer War and the First World War, and in the English Home Guard in the Second World War) -- and the page is signed "Dunsany" -- probably a reproduction. In literary style it is of a piece with the fantasy stories he was writing at this time, but these pieces are much much shorter (and many of those stories were quite short.) They range from under 100 words to perhaps 750 words. They are largely melancholy, though occasionally rather droll, and most of them concern the scourge of modernity, the value of sincere art, the passing of humanity, and death. 

I found the book quite enjoyable, though it must be said his grumpiness and prejudice about any aspect of 20th century industry got pretty tiresome. The writing is beautiful if his style works for you, as it does for me: it is old-fashioned and ornate, and very well constructed. (I should note that his style evolved over time, and the Jorkens stories, for example, are told in a less mannered mode.) The mood is deeply melancholy for the most part, though modulated by considerable irony.

It might be best not to read too many stories at one go, though I did read it fairly quickly. Favorites include a short sequence about encounters with Death: "The Guest", about a despairing man eating a meal with a nonexistent guest (of whom he says "there is plenty for you to do in London"; "Death and Odysseus"; and "Death and the Orange". I would add to that set "Charon", in which the ferryman, after years of idleness finally conducts one more shade across the Styx, who tells him "I am the last". "A Moral Little Tale" casts a cynical eye on the censoriousness of a Puritan. "The Demagogue and the Demi-Monde" shows what happens when a strident politician and a demi-mondaine arrive at the gates of Heaven at the same time.  "How the Enemy Came to Thlünräna" tells of the defeat of the title city of wizards. "The Dream of King Karna-Vutra" is a meditation on the King's desire for his long dead wife. And "The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise" tells not just of the race between those two but of the mordant latter day result of that race.

These stories are minor Dunsany, and uneven, but at their best they do evoke a melancholy sense of deep time and of the impermanence of humanity and its works. The writing is effective, and sometimes lovely. I'd read, say, A Dreamer's Tales first -- but this is a nice work. 

Review: Patternmaster, by Octavia E. Butler

Review: Patternmaster, by Octavia E. Butler

by Rich Horton

Patternmaster was Octavia Butler's first novel, published in 1976. It was the final novel chronologically (though first published of coure) in her Patternist series. I discovered Butler's work not too much later, and read several of her novels, borrowed from the library -- Kindred, and the other Patternist books: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, and even the one she later disavowed, Survivor. And I thought they varied from very good (including Survivor) to brilliant. Her short fiction was also brilliant. But somehow I never got to Patternmaster, or if I did I forgot it. (Which as we will see, might not be improbable.)

Patternmaster was our book club choice for February this year. We often have the author call in to our sessions, but obviously we didn't have the option this time, as Butler died in 2006, only 59 years old, after a fall. But one of our members, Cliff Winnig, had her as an instructor when he attended Clarion, so he could offer some insight. I listened to the audio edition, narrated very well by Robin Miles, and also got a Kindle version.

It's set on Earth, centuries into a post-apocalyptic future (some of the details of this are covered in the other novels.) The rulers of the planet are telepathic humans called Patternists, who keep the non-telepathic Mutes as slaves. There are also dangerous mutated human/lion chimeras called Clayarks. The viewpoint character is Teray, who is rumored to be a son of Rayal, the Patternmaster. We meet Teray and his wife Iray as they leave their school to meet Joachim, a house master who has agreed to take Teray on as an apprentice. This is Teray's best chance to eventually have a House of his own. But Joachim is beholden to a more powerful Housemaster, Coransee, and when they visit Coransee he forces Joachim to sell him both Teray and Iray ... an act that is a deep betrayal by Joachim.

We realize quickly some of the organization of this Patternist culture -- Housemasters have complete rule of the house. Apprentices can have wives, but not Outsiders -- and Coransee will make Teray an Outsider -- which is to say a Patternist of lower status. Iray will become just one of Coransee's wives, available to any man in the house EXCEPT Teray. Teray also realizes that Coransee is a son of the Patternmaster -- and that Teray is his own full brother. Coransee's actions must have something to do with Rayal's growing weakness -- he is likely to die soon, and Coransee is scheming to become the next Patternmaster. 

During Teray's time working for Coransee -- as the overseer of his Mutes -- he learns that he is indeed Coransee's full brother, and that Coransee is stronger (telepathically) than he, and also does not trust Teray's claim that he has no interest in being Patternmaster. Coransee also takes Iray to his bed, and to Teray's chagrin, Iray comes to care for Coransee. Teray's position becomes more and more tenuous, especially after his efforts to improve the condition of the Mutes, who are subject to terrible abuse from Patternists in the household, lead him to meet an independent woman, Amber, who is a strong healer. It soon becomes clear that Teray must flee or directly confront Coransee -- and Teray does not feel strong enough for a confontration, so he and Amber ending up running away, trying to reach the Patternmaster's territory before Coransee catches them. The route is perilous, especially because it takes them through the territory of the Clayarks, who who carry a terrible disease and attack Patternists on sight. On their journey, Teray learns much from Amber, about his latent healing ability, about better ways to kill Clayarks, and about how to tread a strong and independent woman ... But in the end, everything comes down to the inevitable confrontation with Coransee.

I've made the plot seem pretty direct and simple -- and it really is. There are some nuances, to be sure -- Teray is clearly a better person than his brother -- more interested in fair treatment of slaves, more open to equitable relationships with women, at least vaguely interested in understanding the Clayarks better (they are, after all, intelligent creatures.) But all this is in the context of a truly awful culture, built on slavery, on strict gender roles, on a fiercely hierarchical ordering of society. Thus it's not at all clear that Teray, if he wins, will be a substantive improvement on his father or his brother. This is consistent with Butler's vision -- she was uncompromising on where the logic of her stories led, wholly aware that the five books of the Patternist series have led humanity into a terrible trap, and unwilling to construct a typical SF plot in which the hero magically saves the world by the end.

Alas, this is a first novel, and it shows. It's not nearly as subtle as Butler's later books, nor as well written. There are promising ideas that are dropped -- such as one curious encounter between Teray and a Clayark, which raises questions that Butler doesn't choose to answer. Iray is a weak character -- perhaps on purpose but it's still diappointing. Amber is much better, mind you. The plot, especially towards the end, is devoid of surprise, and the battles are clichéd magical fights, as disappointing in there way as the wand wielding in the Harry Potter books. 

Butler got much better, almost immediately. The other Patternist books are better than Patternmaster (and it's clear she had a good idea of the whole series from the beginning.) The short stories are fantastic, Kindred is powerful indeed, and the Xenogenesis and Parable books are first-rate -- her reputation is wholly deserved. But this, her first novel, is ultimately very minor work. Definitely not a good place to start. There's potential here, mind you -- and if Butler had been interested in returning to this novel after completing the series and doing a from the ground up rewrite, it could have been much better. But by then, of course, she had other fish to fry. 

Review: Orbital, by Samantha Harvey

Review: Orbital, by Samantha Harvey

by Rich Horton

I discovered this novel based on recommendations from Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Robert Silverberg. And I owe them gratitude!  Samantha Harvey is a British writer who has gained considerable admiration for her previous novels -- of which I confess I was unaware. Orbital, published just a couple of months ago in the UK and in December in the US, is her fifth novel. And it is glorious -- one of the most sheerly beautiful novels I've read in recent years.

It's set on a space station -- indeed, the ISS, though in what seems a slightly alternative history, or perhaps a slightly aspirational near future. The ISS is nearing its end of life (scheduled for 2031), but there is finally a new expedition to the Moon, and plans for sending people to Mars. But this novel, set simultaneously with the trip to the Moon, covers one day -- sixteen orbits of the Earth -- on the space station. There are six astronauts aboard -- or, I should say, four astronauts and two cosmonauts. Shaun is from the US, Chie from Japan, Nell from the UK, Pietro from Italy, and Roman and Anton from Russia.

In simplest terms, this is just a day in the life, for all six characters. A look at their daily routine, their interactions with each other, the work they do, what the station is like, what they see looking down on Earth. There is little or no drama on the station. But on Earth there is a super typhoon gathering strength, heading for the Philippines -- where Shaun and his wife had befriended a family now threatened. On the way to the Moon are the first astronauts to land there since 1972. And Chie's mother has just died. Roman is worrying about his marriage, which is on the verge of collapse. Nell is happily enough married to an Irish farmer, but at the same time aware that if she were asked to go to Mars she would accept. Pietro thinks about his daughter, and Anton about his heroes such as Sergei Krikalev, the cosmonaut who was the last man on Mir and one of the first on the ISS.

We see Chie thinking about her mother, who miraculously survived the bombing of Hiroshima. We see Roman talking on the radio to ham operators all over the world. Shaun thinks about the postcard he has from his wife -- a reproduction of Velazquez' great painting Las Meninas, which was discussed in the class in which they met, and which is further discussed powerfully here. We see visions of the Earth passing underneath them, over and over, the whole world, piece by piece in the 16 orbits. We hear of the progress of the Moon mission. We learn about the histories of each of the station's residents. And again and again there are astonishingly lyrical passages -- just some of the most powerful prose I've read -- about many things -- the fragility of the Earth, the promise of Mars, the beauty of humans, our aspirations, our failures. One of the highlights -- just a wonderful sequence -- is a meditation on what aliens might think of the golden record on Voyager 1 -- "Would they ever infer that over forty thousand years before in a solar system unknown a woman was rigged to an EEG and her thoughts recorded?" "Could they see into a human's mind? Could they know she was a woman in love?" "In five billion years when the earth is long dead, it'll be a love song that outlives spent suns."

I'll warn you -- there's no real plot here. But what does that matter? This short novel is ecstatic, lovely, hopeful, despairing but believing, honest, loving, real. The best tears are tears of awe, and I shed those. What a book! What a triumph! 

Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler

Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler

by Rich Horton

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves appeared back in 2013, and I bought a copy right away. But in our family, Karen Joy Fowler's books go first to my wife. (She is the only writer we both read everything by.) So she read it, and before I could start it, we had lent it to a friend. And, as happens sometimes, the book never came back! I'm sure if I had asked, it would have, but I was in my usual schedule crush, with Locus reviews and all, so the book sort of went on the back burner -- and it only just came off. I went ahead and got the audio version and listened to it.

And, boy, it was worth reading. Was it better now than then? Probably didn't make a difference. I will say that the narration, by Orlagh Cassidy, was very well done. I've been a Karen Joy Fowler fan since her stories began appearing in Asimov's in 1985, and this is one of her very best books.

Let me pause here to make a remark about the ISFDB's page for Fowler. It breaks up her novels to SF and Non Genre. Now, the thing with Fowler is that much of her short fiction -- the bulk of it, I'd say -- is pretty unambiguously SF or Fantasy. (And I've reprinted a few of her stories in my anthologies.) But all her novels are in some way or another ambiguous as to genre. But a couple are definitely non-SF, though with some slant ties to the field -- for example, The Jane Austen Book Club is not SF, but one of its characters is an SF fan. And We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is, to my mind, definitely not SF, though the way in which it explores our relationships with non-human characters who have some degree of intelligence at least puts it in conversation with the genre. Nonetheless, it's not SF -- but the ISFDB has it listed as SF. And they have Sister Noon, which definitely dances on the Fantasy/Mainstream border, with some features that strike me as surely fantastical -- but it is listed as Non Genre. In the final analysis, none of this really matters, but it is a bit odd.

The novel is narrated by Rosemary Cooke. She is telling the story from much later than the main action (essentially at the time of writing, in 2012 or so.) She tells the reader (addressed often as you) that she was a great talker when she was young. But she is going to skip the beginning of her story and start at the middle. (Which is advice her father gave her, frustrated by her loquaciousness.) So we are taken to the University of California at Davis, where Rose is attempting to be a permanent student. She's quiet now, and isolated from her peers. And then she gets in the middle of a scene started by Harlow, another student, who is breaking up with her boyfriend -- violently. And somehow Rose ends up with Harlow in jail. And after they are released, Harlow shows up at Rose's place. Meanwhile we are getting hints of Rose's past -- parents from who she seems somewhat estranged, and a brother who ran away from home a decade or so before -- and who may have tried to see her in Davis. There's a visit to her family back in Indiana, where the night in jail -- and the subject of her brother -- are carefully ignored. Soon she's back in Davis, having lost a suitcase that held her mother's journals, and with Harlow still luring her into drunken nights out and such ...

But now it's time to drop the other shoe, the one about her missing sister. So Rose takes us back to 1979, when she was five. And we learn -- though most of us already knew because the book's publicity revealed everything! -- that her sister Fern is a chimpanzee. And that she and Rose were raised together from infancy. Her father is a psychologist, and Fern (and Rose) are his grand experiment. So the two of them grew up inseparable, amidst a host of graduate students. And there were very close -- until a terrible time when Rose was five, when she was sent to her grandparents for a few weeks, and when she got back, Fern was gone.

There is more going on than just the story of a girl raised with a chimp. There's her lonely time after Fern leaves, when she goes to school and is called Monkey Girl and is over time pressured to silence, and left friendless. And there's her brother Lowell, who loved Fern too, and who was desperately hurt when she was taken away -- and who eventually runs away. And her father becomes a hopeless alcoholic, her mother descends into deep depression. There are mysteries -- what is Lowell doing? Why did Fern have to leave? What will Rose do with her life? The narrative returns to Davis, and more wild adventures with Harlow and other inhabitants of her apartment building including its eccentric supervisor (who, like most men it seems, is instantly smitten with Harlow) and her roommates, and of course Madame Defarge, an antique ventriloquist doll who was in the wrong suitcase the airplane sent Rose.

I don't need to tell more of the story. My telling makes it seem potentially terribly depressing, and it's not that at all. The narrative voice is snarky and energetic, and the book is sometimes quite funny and always involving. Yet it is moving and, really, heartbreaking. Lowell's anger, and Rose's fear and guilt and loneliness, and their parents different ways of retreat, are depicted precisely. It's very intelligent, and very engaged -- it has a point to make, and makes it compellingly, about humans and animals and our cruel relationship to them. The characters all live -- certainly Rose and Lowell and Fern jump off the page. (Fern, of course, is a great jumper, or at least climber!) The revelations are all believable and wrenching. Rose is a girl who has lost both her sister and brother, though neither is dead, and it's about her love, her loneliness -- and an eventual accomodation of sorts. 

The structure is wonderful too -- it's a master class in controlling narrative by means of controlling time. It's not radically nonlinear, but it's cleverly nonlinear. The prose is excellent -- Fowler's control of voice is beautiful, her images are sharp and never cliched. And the reader learns a lot, too -- while having fun! It's one of Fowler's best books, which makes it a very good book indeed.

Review: Apricot Sky, by Ruby Ferguson

Review: Apricot Sky, by Ruby Ferguson

by Rich Horton

Here's another delightful discovery courtesy of Scott Thompson's Furrowed Middlebrow Press (an imprint of Dean Street Books.) Ruby Ferguson (1899-1966) is best known for one adult novel, Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary (1937), and for a series of children's books about a girl named Jill and her ponies. Her full name at birth was Ruby Constance Annie Ashby, and her first several novels were published as by R. C. Ashby, and seem to be mysteries. She got married in 1934, and her first novel under her married name was Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary, which was a bestseller and apparently admired by the (then) Queen Mother. She published novels for adults and children until her death.

Apricot Sky (1952) joins Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary as the only ones of her adult books now in print. The latter was reprinted by Persephone in 2004, and this book by Furrowed Middlebrow in 2021. It comes with enthusiastic recommendations from Scott Thompson (of course) but also Charles Litka, in a comment on this blog. And I have to say it met the expectations thus raised.

It's set in Scotland, as is Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary, and both books are rapturous about that country, though Ferguson was an Englishwoman, albeit born in North Yorkshire. The main viewpoint character is Cleo MacAlvey, who is, in 1948, just returning home after spending three years in the U.S. Her younger sister Raine is engaged to be married, to Ian Garvine, whose slightly elder brother Neil is the Larrich -- that is, the head of an important local family. Cleo is in love with Neil, though Neil seems entirely unaware of that, and in fact a very beautiful local widow, Inga Duthie, seems to have set her sights on him. That's the romantic plot, such as it is, of the novel. But really the novel is hardly about romance it all. Instead, it's a story about family life in postwar Scotland. Besides Raine, Cleo has a brother, James, who has married a rather neurotic and unpleasant woman named Trina. The other two MacAlvey brothers died in the War, and they left three children, Gavin, Primrose, and Archie, ages ranging between 10 and 15, to be raised by their grandparents.

The point of view shifts between Cleo and Mrs. MacAlvey and the children, primarily. Over the summer we see the children having fun -- sailing by themselves to the nearby islands with their friend Gull (who has a neat secret of her own), and unenthusiastically putting up with their cousins, James' children Armitage and Angela, as well as the prissy and snobby more distant cousins Cecil and Elinore. We see Cleo and Raine looking for dresses and receiving Raine's wedding gifts and making plans for remodeling the Garvine place. Cleo gets a few chances to be with Neil Garvine and (in her view) blows every one with her tongue-tiedness. Mrs. MacAlvey fusses over her garden and worries about wedding plans and her various visitors, such as Mrs. Leigh, still apparently recovering from an operation which only bothers her when convenient. The arc points ever towards the end of summer, and Raine's wedding, and children returning to school, and Cleo's future ... whatever that might be. A new job? Caring for her parents as they age? or ... ?

I trust the above implies there isn't really much plot -- because there isn't. What there is is loving description of ordinary life in the Scottish coastal Highlands. (Admittedly, ordinary life among a fairly privileged family.) And throughout the novel is very funny. Some of it is gentle light humor, some is snarky (mainly the depictions of the visiting children, and of Trina,) and some is downright (if quietly still) uproarious. There is one glorious passage when Mrs. MacAlvey needs to make conversation with a chance visitor, one Mr. Trossach, who fancies himself an avant-garde writer, and is concerned about Mrs. MacAlvey's reception of his recently broadcast radio play, and who insiste on telling her the plot of his new novel. There is Raine and Cleo deciding to throw an ugly stone wedding present from an old relation into the river, and being surprise by the police in the act. Or there is Mr. and Mrs. MacAlvey's visit to Laird and Lady Keith -- where at least you won't get a sore throat from having to talk to much.

What more can I say? Is this somewhat fluffy? Well, sure (though grounded by what seems quite real portrayal of life.) Is the plot terribly thin, and resolved abruptly and conveniently? Again, sure, but that's not the point! Apricot Sky is a purely enjoyable novel, and as sweetly funny as anything I've read in some time.

Review: The Game, by A. S. Byatt

Review: The Game, by A. S. Byatt

by Rich Horton

I fell in love with A. S. Byatt's work when I read Possession, her Booker Prize winner, back in 1990 when it came out. I quickly read her previous two novels, The Virgin in the Garden (1978) and its sequel Still Life (1985); and since then I've read a great many of her short stories, as well as the two novellas in Angels and Insects and her novel The Biographer's Tale. Somehow I haven't yet read the other two novels in the series begun with The Virgin in the Garden (Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman) nor her last major novel, The Children's Book, but I'll get to them eventually. But I had never really even looked at her first two novels, The Shadow of the Sun (1964) and The Game (1967).

Among her shorter works I particularly recommend "Sugar" and "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye", but there is lots more at less than novel length that is wonderful. And she wrote a great deal of non-fiction, criticism mainly, and some academic work, and some literary biographies. She was an authority on Iris Murdoch, another of my favorite writers, and wrote a couple of book length examinations of Coleridge and Wordsworth. 

Antonia Susan Drabble was born in 1936. Her siblings are all highly successful -- Margaret Drabble is a novelist of considerable repute, Helen Langdon is an art historian, and Richard Drabble is a barrister and a King's Counsel. Her father was a Quaker, and was a Queen's Counsel, and her mother was a scholar and expert on Browning. Some of these family details -- the Quaker upbringing, and the younger sister who is a novelist -- are interesting when reading The Game. She was educated at Cambridge, Bryn Mawr, and Oxford. She married Ian Byatt in 1959, so that A. S. Byatt became her writing name. They divorced in 1969, and Antonia later married Peter John Duffy. She had two children with each of her husbands. She taught at the Central School of Art and Design and at University College of London. She was named a Dame of the British Empire in 1999, and thus is properly styled Dame Antonia Susan Duffy. She died just recently, November 16, 2023, at the age  of 87.

I listened to The Game though I have a copy of the book as well. It is ably narrated by Wanda McCaddon. The Game centers upon two sisters. The elder, Cassandra, is a lecturer at Oxford, specializing in Medieval Literature. She is unmarried, indeed apparently a virgin. The younger, Julia, is a writer of fairly successful light domestic novels. Julia has a 15 year old daughter, Deborah. Her husband is Norwegian, and a manager of charitable concerns.  The book is primarily set in 1963, when Cassandra is 38 and Julia a couple of years younger, though there are flashbacks to the girls' youths.

The action is set in motion primarily by the death of their father, prompting each to return to their childhood home in Newcastle. The two women are thrown together for the first time in a long time, and they revisit some of their childhood memories, especially the game they invented and played together -- an involved game set in a fantasy milieu they jointly created, with apparently complicated and recomplicated rules and back stories. And we start to learn more of their history, and their longstanding rivalry. They grew up in the Quaker church, with a father who did time in prison because of his pacifist views; and who was always working in movements for justice. Julia reacted by marrying another Quaker, whom she met through her father. Cassandra reacted by converting to Anglo-Catholicism (which I have learned was, by this time, essentially synonymous with High Church Anglicanism.) Cassandra was the prickly elder sister, seemingly bossing Julia when she could, and jealous of her privacy. Julia was the more social, and would also invade her sister's room and read her journals and suchlike. She even began her writing career with a story she based on a scenario Cassandra did for the game.

But perhaps their most significant point of disagreement concerned Simon Moffat, a neighbor of roughly their age, who became close to both girls; which, inevitably, Cassandra regarded as another "theft" by Julia. Simon has his own issues, such as a father who committed suicide right in front of him, and he eventually becomes an herpetologist, and moves to the Amazon to study reptiles in their natural habitat. By happenstance, he has become a television star, as another man tracked him down in the jungle and eventually started filming him -- and both Julia and Cassandra have seen his show.

So, after the funeral, a whole series of events start to change both women's lives ... a television show about the arts in which Julia appears ... a crisis in her family as her husband wants to move to Africa where he can do more good, and Julia refuses ... Cassandra struggling with her religious beliefs ... both getting back in touch with Simon as he returns from the Amazon ... an affair ... Julia's daughter getting close to Cassandra ... a disastrous visit from Julia to Cassandra in Oxford ... and, perhaps most significantly, Julia deciding to write a more challenging novel -- a novel which will be transparently about her sister and Simon. And there are no easy answers, and no real stop in the slide to tragedy.

I liked the novel, but didn't wholly love it. It's absorbing throughout, and beautifully written. There are symbols and motifs aplenty -- snakes, multiple suicides, two women who in very different ways don't seem to truly connect with anyone (and don't like sex), a lot of examination of the twisted pair of the two sisters. I think my issue -- and it's not a serious issue but a reason I don't think this novel stands with the best of her later work -- is that Byatt's philosofphizing, while never boring, is not always convincing. The characters and their actions are interesting, but at times seem too overtly programmed, too much types designed to allow the novel to proceed as it must. Julia may be the more fully realized character, but she's also the shallowest. Cassandra is fascinating -- and she's the one I wanted to read about more -- but she's also the more artificial construction, at least to my eyes. Simon, too, seems at times a construct. 

Then there's the question of autobiographical elements. There are clear parallels with Byatt's life -- a Quaker upbringing in the North of England, a younger sister who was a rival and who wrote at least one novel that seemed to draw from their shared history, the older sister an academic. That said, the Drabble sisters are about a decade younger than the Corbett sisters in The Game, and neither Margaret nor Antonia's lives and careers really resemble those of Julia and Cassandra that closely. It could almost be Byatt poking a bit at Drabble for her earlier novel (The Millstone, I believe.) Anyway, it's always dangerous to put too much stock in autobiographical parallels. But it's hard not to at least think of them in this case.

Bottom line -- The Game is a fine novel, and a worthy if not central part of the oeuvre of one of the best writers of recent decades. Definitely worth reading.