Birthday Review: A. S. Byatt's The Biographer's Tale

Birthday Review: The Biographer's Tale, by A. S. Byatt

a review by Rich Horton

I wrote this review back in 2004, and I'm resurrecting it in honor of A. S. Byatt's birthday. She is a magnificent writer -- I'm a particular fan of Possession, and of the utterly brilliant short story "Sugar", as well as the novellas of Angels and Insects. Much of her work if fantasy, or borderline fantasy. This novel is one of her less well-known books.

The Biographer's Tale, from 2000, is one of those books A. S. Byatt seemed to produce as a break from her "Frederica Potter" series. (I suppose one shouldn't call The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and The Whistling Woman the "Potter" series -- might cause confusion!) It's an enjoyable novel, fairly short, fairly amusing, with a number of surface similarities to Possession, but a very different overall feel.

Phineas G. Nanson is a very small Englishman, a graduate student in postmodern literary theory. (I say very small -- his description of himself is not specific, but I don't think he is meant to be a "dwarf" or "midget" or whatever the correct clinical term is -- rather, a very short, slight, man, perhaps 4'9" or 4'10".) One day he decides to chuck that branch of study, and a professor suggests as an alternative a study of biography, or, specifically, the three volume biography of Sir Elmer Bole, by Scholes Destry-Scholes. This biography turns out to be indeed fascinating, and Bole himself an incredible person, a Victorian polymath, who among other things married two women, a somewhat typical Englishwoman and a Turkish woman. Nanson decides to try to do a biography of Scholes Destry-Scholes. But he runs into trouble quickly -- Scholes is long dead, or at least disappeared, he isn't even really named "Scholes Destry-Scholes", and very little is known about him.

At this juncture the book seems ready to become a spiraling mystery built around curious small facts, and an elusive subject. Nanson discovers some papers left at his publishers by Scholes, that appear to be sections of contemplated biographies of other famous people, real people this time: Carl Linnaeus, Francis Galton, and Henrik Ibsen. But these prove problematic as well, as much of these accounts turn out to be invented. Nanson digs deeper, and at the same time gets a job, working at a curious travel agency run by a couple of gay men. The travel agency concentrates on unusual tours, thematically linked -- which corresponds fairly well to the inventions of Scholes re his subjects. Nanson's other diggings lead him to meet two intriguing but different women: a Swedish ecologist, or more specifically a bee expert, whom he meets at a museum dedicated to Linnaeus; and a radiologist, the niece and closest surviving relative of Scholes Destry-Scholes.

The rest of the book swings to "autobiography", as the subject becomes not Bole, or Scholes, or Linnaeus, Ibsen or Galton; but rather Nanson, in particular his relationship with the two women he has met, and his difficulties and successes at his new job. It's all pretty interesting, and fun, and generally unexpected. Some of it -- much of it -- has a distinct air of unreality. Byatt is always prone to fantastical writing even in her most mainstream stories, and here she is certainly brushing against the border of realistic fiction with -- what? I guess that's part of the question -- a question naturally posed when we consider a fictional biographer with an assumed name writing about a fictional person, but also writing about "real" people, though making up stuff about them. And so on -- consider the radiologist's art pictures -- X-rays presented as art -- are these bones the real people? Or Francis Galton's composite photographs ... or Henrik Ibsen's ideas about character ... or Linnaeus' classification schemes ... in many ways this is a "light" book but it is also an obsessively intellectual book (as usual with Byatt), and a fascinating read.

A Perhaps Forgotten Mystery Novel: The Flaxborough Crab, by Colin Watson

A Perhaps Forgotten Mystery Novel: The Flaxborough Crab, by Colin Watson

a review by Rich Horton

I admit I had never heard of Colin Watson when I ran across this 1969 mystery novel at an estate sale or antique shop recently, hence the "Perhaps Forgotten" label. But on research (i.e. reading his Wikipedia entry) I see he was quite popular at that time, and that the Flaxborough books even became a TV series. So very possibly he's not forgotten at all.

Colin Watson (1920-1983) wrote 12 novels in the Flaxborough series -- Flaxborough being a provincial town based on Boston, Lincolnshire (where Watson worked as a journalist). He wrote one other novel (The Puritan) as well as a study of thrillers, Snobbery With Violence, that covers such writers as Dornford Yates, whom I have reviewed on this blog. (And, yes, "snobbery with violence" fits Yates very well.) Four of the Flaxborough novels were used in the BBC TV series Murder Most English, in about 1978. (One of these was the novel at hand, The Flaxborough Crab.) There were also BBC radio adaptations of two of the books.

The detective in the books is Inspector Walter Purbright, a rather plodding but honest fellow. Another major character is Miss Lucinda Teatime, who seems rather a conwoman, but, as a recurring character, is evidently never the true villain. She's "of a certain age", but seems concerned with her appearance and sexual availability, even though she doesn't actively engage in such activities in the book at hand -- and she's quite clever and intriguing if, well, also intriguing, in another sense.

The book opens with several scenes of women being attacked by an older man, and groped. (One of the older men portrayed, by the way, is called Mr. Grope, I am sure not unintentionally, though he isn't the villain.) The curious aspect of all this is the strange scuttling crablike way the attacker runs. So Purbright sets up a patrol, trying to catch the perp, with no results, However, a senior citizens outing, organized by Alderman Winge, leads to a shocking conclusion -- Winge tries to grope one of the women, and in making his crablike escape, falls off a cliff into the river and dies.

So -- problem solved, eh? But the inquest suggests the possible involvement of an herbal product, "Samson's Salad", which is supposed to, er, increase the vitality of older men. (This is pre-Viagra days, of course.) And Samson's Salad, Purbright learns, is sold by an outfit run by Miss Lucinda Teatime. That's not all, though -- there are competing doctors testifying at the inquest, and it appears there's another potential product involved, much more respectable, produced by a German company. Could one of these drugs/herbs be causing the unsavory activities of the Flaxborough Crab? And is there more than one Crab?

You've probably guessed the solution, in broad terms. In narrower terms, there's another death (there always is -- these detectives are terribly inefficient, always at least one more person needs to die for them to solve the case), and it's suspicious enough to lead to further investigation and the revelation of a rather involved murder method.

The whole mystery aspect of this novel is really kind of minor, and the actual murder method seems implausibly involved. But the fun is the wicked satiric portrayals of all the characters, good, bad, and merely crazy. It's nothing overwhelmingly special, but it's pretty fun, all things considered. Not a great book, but I suspect the Flaxborough Novels, as a class, will all pass the time amusingly.

Birthday Review: Chimera, by Will Shetterly

Birthday Review: Chimera, by Will Shetterly

a review by Rich Horton

On the occasion of Will Shetterly's 63rd birthday, here is a repost of my long ago review of his 2000 novel Chimera.

Will Shetterly’s novel Chimera mixes together a few fairly familiar SF themes: human/animal combinations, artificial intelligences, the issue rights for both of the above, and a somewhat balkanized (or at least decentralized) future U. S. with a Libertarian edge (viewed rather darkly, given Shetterly’s politics). The plot is taken from a familiar mystery trope (not uncommon in SF): the hard-boiled detective with a heart of gold who gets mixed up in a vulnerable woman’s problems despite himself. The end result is not bad: the book is fun reading, with very sympathetic main characters, and a fast-moving if sometimes a bit unconvincing plot. I liked this novel, but I didn’t quite love it: I felt it brushed up against some profound thematic material without really fully engaging it, and I felt that the future depicted was more an assemblage of neat bits than a fully imagined, or fully plausible, future society. Perhaps I am simply guilty of wanting to read a book the author didn’t intend to write: certainly Shetterly has delivered a good read, which at least asks the reader to think about some important themes.

The narrator is Chase Maxwell, a former member of UNSEC (apparently United Nations Security: some variety of future Peacekeeping group), who left that job after an assignment went bad. He retains one useful (and really neat!) piece of tech: an Infinite Pocket, an area of warped space attached to his arm, in which he can apparently store things of nearly arbitrary size. Including his gun, which has a similar bit of tech: a sort of “Infinite Magazine”. He’s down on his luck (naturally!) when a jaguar-human hybrid named Zoe Domingo asks him to track down her “mother”‘s murderer. (Actually, I’m not quite sure whether the “critters” of this book are “enhanced” animals, a la David Brin’s “Uplift”, or genetically engineered human/animal hybrids.) Janna Gold, the human Zoe calls her mother (she bought her out of slavery), has just been killed, apparently by berserk “copbots”. But the police department is much more likely to finger Zoe for the murder, given the prejudice against “critters”. Moreover, Zoe has a mysterious earring Janna gave her, which seems to be a piece of special tech that lots of highly placed people really want.

Max is reluctant to take the case: he doesn’t work for critters. But he’s in a bit of a bind, so he agrees to help. What follows is a nearly nonstop chase, as Max and Zoe encounter first the police, then a series of people who seem to be peripherally involved: Krista Blake, a police expert who takes a sudden shine to Max; Amos Tauber, an advocate for full rights for both “critters” and Artificial Intelligences; and Oberon Chain, the head of a high-tech company who is also an AI rights crusader. When some of these people begin to get murdered as well, the frame is in, and Max and Zoe are the designated suspects. At the same time, Max is realizing that his feelings for Zoe may be a lot deeper than is prudent for a human to have with respect to a critter.

From there we encounter a number of different aspects of this future, such as the indentured service camps that have replaced jails; and the “critter” side of town, complete with riots and reverse prejudice against “skins” (ordinary humans); plus scenes of critters “werewolfing”: suddenly going berserk and killing everybody in sight; as well as a very well put argument about the ethics of downloading human brains into computers, and vice versa, and plenty more. As I said, the plot is fast moving, and I was always interested, but at times things happen a bit conveniently for the heroes.

Chimera raises some questions that I didn’t feel were fully answered. Chief among these is “Why were the “critters” created?” I honestly don’t believe that, starting from the present day, the essentially purposeful creation of a new underclass, of that particular nature, is very likely. I also thought his future U.S. a bit unlikely, politically. But both of these reservations are really quibbles, and he does portray his future society quite interestingly. But always at the back of our mind is a desire to more fully engage the submerged issues: equal rights for “critters”, and equal rights for AIs. Those questions are raised, but mostly brushed aside, in the interests of maintaining narrative pace. Certainly a longtime SF reader cannot help thinking of Cordwainer Smith’s classic “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell”, about a “catwoman” who gives all in the pursuit of rights for the “underpeople”. But though such issues are present here, they simply don’t resonate the way they did in Smith’s great story. Nonetheless, though I may (perhaps unfairly) regard Chimera as a missed opportunity to be something really special, it’s still a fun read, with its heart in the right place.

A Little-Remembered Ace Double: The Space Willies/Six Worlds Yonder, by Eric Frank Russell

Ace Double Reviews, 12: The Space Willies, by Eric Frank Russell/Six Worlds Yonder, by Eric Frank Russell (#D-315, 1958, $0.35, reissued as #77785, 1971, $0.75)

Eric Frank Russell (1905-1978) was an English writer who worked almost exclusively for John W. Campbell. He began publishing in 1937 and made his first big splash in 1939 with Sinister Barrier in the first issue of the classic fantasy magazine Unknown. (One fannish legend, probably false, has it that Campbell founded Unknown because he wanted to publish Sinister Barrier but didn't think it would fit in Astounding.) Russell was particularly prolific during the 50s, then almost completely stopped, publishing only some 5 short stories and one novel after 1959. He was most famous for novels and stories of interaction between humans and aliens, usually with a comic slant. Sometimes buffoonish humans would come into frustrating contact with unpredictable aliens (as in "The Waitabits" in this book), sometimes a clever human or two would themselves frustrate buffoonish aliens (as in "Diabologic" and The Space Willies in this book). And sometimes the interaction would be a bit more interesting.

(Cover of The Space Willies by Ed Emshwiller)

This Ace Double backs the short novel The Space Willies, about 37,000 words long, with Six Worlds Yonder, a collection of six stories totalling some 43,000 words. All the stories in Six Worlds Yonder are from Astounding, and The Space Willies is an expansion of an Astounding novelette.

The publication history of The Space Willies and its related stories is a bit complex. It was originally a novelette, "Plus X", in the June 1956 Astounding. The Space Willies was then published in 1958 at 37,000 words. The following year, it was further expanded to a 56,000 word novel, Next of Kin. (The copyright notice in the recent Gollancz SF Collectors' Edition of Next of Kin hints at an even later revision, as it gives copyright dates of 1959 and 1964.) (The Chris Moore cover shown for that edition was actually painted for Bill Johnson's Hugo-winning story "We Will Drink a Fish Together".) It must be said that the expansion seams show -- I haven't read "Plus X", but I think I can detect which parts of the novel it must have been, and I don't think the padding added much meat.

(Cover by Chris Moore)

The story concerns John Leeming, a scout pilot for the Terran space navy. Earth and her allies are engaged in a war with the Lathians and their allies. Leeming, a rather insubordinate fellow by instinct, is given the assignment to take an experimental new super-fast one-man scout ship and fly it as far as he can towards the "rear" of the Lathian empire, in order to determine the extent of the Lathian holdings. Leeming proceeds to do so, but as the capabilities of his ship are unknown, he finds himself marooned with a decaying ship on a planet well away from the front, indeed, out of range of an ordinary ship, Terran or Lathian. He's the only human being on a strange planet, and he must find some way to elude capture and find a way back home -- and he may have to do so twice, as even if he steals one ship, it won't be able to get all the way to Earth.

Leeming proceeds to have a few adventures, but inevitably gets captured by the natives of the planet, who are not Lathians but one of their allied species. He finds himself in a prison with a number of Rigellians (allies of Terrans), but no other humans. Now his problem is doubly difficult -- but then he has an inspiration. The rest of the book (which I assume to have been the original story) tells of his clever idea and the implementation of it. I found his idea cute in conception, but implausible in execution. As with several other Russell stories that I have read, it is necessary for the hero's foils to be quite remarkably stupid. It also depends on some 50s slang being essentially current far in the future -- and ... but criticism is pointless. The book is not meant to be believable, but just to be fun to read.

Six Worlds Yonder is subtitled "Stories of First Landings on Far Planets", and that is actually a pretty good description of 4 of the 6 stories. It's a decent enough collection in pretty pure Russell mode, but I ought to mention that I had read all of the stories save one before, but I only remembered one of the stories before rereading. (To be sure, that may say more about the state of my memory than anything else.) The six stories are:

"The Waitabits" (17500 words, Astounding, July 1955) -- a Terran military team lands on a world they have been warned is unconquerable. The natives do indeed turn out to be unconquerable, but for an amusing reason. Decent enough, but I think a bit long for its substance.

"Tieline" (2700 words, Astounding, July 1955, under the name Duncan H. Munro for the fairly obvious reason that it appeared in the same issues as "The Waitabits") -- men sent to an isolated "lighthouse" planet inevitably go mad. How can they be kept sane? A bad story -- the setup is strained beyond belief (they go insane on 10-year hitches -- why not try shorter hitches? Pets aren't allowed -- but that is pretty much contradicted by the eventual solution. etc. etc.).

"Top Secret" (6300 words, Astounding, August 1956) -- Terran military types send messages to a remote planet via a relay system, resulting in essentially a game of "telephone", such that a routine message ends up warning of the arrival of 42 ostriches, and repeated requests for clarification just make things worse. Silly as anything, but OK as long as you don't ask for anything but silliness.

"Nothing New" (4000 words, Astounding, January 1955) -- this was the only story I hadn't previously read, and oddly enough it might be my favorite. Humans visit a friendly alien planet for the first time -- or was it really?

"Into Your Tent I'll Creep" (Astounding, September 1957) -- this time the story is from the POV of aliens visiting Earth. The humans they like just fine, but there is another species on Earth that one alien comes to fear ...

"Diabologic" (8500 words, Astounding, March 1955) -- this seems to be a fairly popular story, for example it was Andre Norton's choice for the anthology My Favorite Science Fiction Story. I guess it's OK, but it's awfully slight, and it depends on really stupid aliens, who don't understand Zeno's Paradox or the Cretan Liar Paradox. The story features a Terran scout discovering another space-going civilization, and managing to befuddle the aliens enough that they won't pose any threat to Earth.

On the whole, this is a fairly characteristic Eric Frank Russell collection, but not really his best work. Better to seek out the stories in The Great Explosion, his Hugo winner "Allamagoosa", his novelette "Dear Devil", maybe the novel Wasp.

A Mostly Forgotten Ace Double: Rocket to Limbo, by Alan E. Nourse/Echo in the Skull, by John Brunner

Ace Double Reviews, 37: Rocket to Limbo, by Alan E. Nourse/Echo in the Skull, by John Brunner (#D-385, 1959, $0.35)

Today (August 11, 2018) would have been Alan E. Nourse's 90th birthday, so I've taken the opportunity to repost this review I did some time back of his Ace Double Rocket to Limbo.

(Covers by Ed Emshwiller and Robert E. Schultz)

This 1959 Ace Double pairs a once-popular writer best known for his juveniles with a writer who became one of the towering figures in the field. At the time Alan E. Nourse was surely the "headline" writer of the pair (which is not to say he was particularly well-known), but as of now John Brunner is clearly the more important figure. Rocket to Limbo is a reprint of a 1957 novel, originally published by David McKay. (There also seems to have been a version, possibly much shorter, published in Satellite Science Fiction in 1957.) It is about 50,000 words long. Echo in the Skull is from 1959: it was published in the same year in the UK magazine Science Fantasy. (I don't know which publication came first.) It's a longish novella at some 28,000 words -- I'm not sure if the Science Fantasy text is the same as the Ace Double, but I suspect it may be. It has been reprinted as "Give Warning to the World" according to the ISFDB, but I can't find any details of that.

One point about John Brunner's Ace Double career. I had previously listed a number of especially prolific Ace Double contributors. Somehow, I managed to forget Brunner: the most prolific of them all, I believe! He wrote 24 Ace Double halves, in 21 different books. A few of these were published under the name Keith Woodcott. (He also used this pseudonym for a few short stories -- I read one just today, "Fair" in the March 1956 New Worlds, a pretty fair story, I will say.)

I enjoyed several Alan E. Nourse novels as a teenager: he was one of the first few SF writers I read (with Asimov, Clarke, Norton, and Simak). In particular I recall The Mercy Men, The Bladerunner, The Universe Between, and Raiders from the Rings. (The last two novels were based on 1951 stories in Astounding -- the curious thing is that Raiders from the Rings is not based on a Nourse story, but rather "The Mauki Chant", by Nourse's sometime collaborator J. A. Meyer.) However the novel at hand is not to my mind as good as any of those.

Rocket to Limbo opens with a scene of Earth's first star ship, the Argonaut, blasting off en route to Alpha Centauri. It is a generation ship -- its primitive engines are expected to take as much as a century to reach the nearest star. Quickly we cut to the main action, some 350 years later. The faster-than-light Koenig drive as been in use for a few centuries, and the Earth has a burgeoning colony population. However, the Argonaut is not found at Alpha Centauri, nor at any other planet. Lars Heldrigsson (I thought I was in a Poul Anderson novel for a second after reading that name!) is a young man preparing for his first journey for the Colonial Service, under the command of legendary explorer Walter Fox.

Lars soon learns that what he thought was to be a routine trip to Vega will be something else entirely. The ship's launch is made under unusual security. And Lars's roommate, his former classmate Peter Brigham, a bitter young man, tells him of a mysterious cargo that seems to be illegal nuclear weapons. They are swiftly told the reason for the unusual procedures: another Colonial Service ship, investigating a newly discovered planet, disappeared after making planetfall. Their job is to investigate this mysterious disappearance.

Walter Fox, it turns out, has a bug in his brain about intelligent aliens. It seems humans have encountered no sign of them, but Fox is sure they must exist, and he wants first contact to be peaceful. But other people are afraid of the aliens, including many of the crew, some of whom plan a mutiny, charging that they have been illegally shanghaied to this secret mission, instead of the expected Vega milk run. Peter Brigham has other motives -- he blames Walter Fox for his father's death on a previous exploration mission. Lars, of course, is a loyalist, and he eventually turns Peter to the good side of the Force.

No prizes (after the opening scene of the book) for guessing what the divided crew actually finds on the strange planet. And no prizes for guessing that Lars and Peter, after a harsh struggle with the elements and with another mutiny, have a key role to play when they encounter strange beings in a strange city. And, finally, no prizes for guessing that Walter Fox's dream of discovering intelligent aliens comes into play as well.

I was rather disappointed by this novel. For one thing, it's put together rather carelessly. There are a number of quite unnecessary niggling inconsistencies (such as how far the Argonaut eventually seems to have travelled, or what sort of planet the mysterious planet is in terms of indigenous life). And the ending is an annoying attempt at transcendentalism via psi hogwash.

I enjoyed Echo in the Skull somewhat more. It's an extraordinarily fast-moving story, partly because it covers a very short time period -- perhaps twelve hours. Long enough to save the world with a love story thrown in. It's gripping and sets up an interesting mystery which is resolved acceptably. There are some short-cuts -- the hero jumps to some correct conclusions implausibly swiftly, for instance. It's not great work but it's good old-fashioned fun.

The story opens with Sally Ercott hungover and in despair. She is broke, filthy, living in a rundown flat, and at the brink of letting her landlord sell her as a prostitute in lieu of rent. She has vague memories of a much more comfortable life, but no specifics -- and more terrifyingly, she does have occasional very specific memories of other, much stranger, lives. These memories involve things like human sacrifice to a huge alien being, and barbarian invaders, and suchlike.

Then she is nearly run over by a young man, who insists on taking her to his house to at the very least clean up and get herself a good meal. Sally's landlord and his wife are depicted as furious at this development -- is their only motivation that of driving her to sufficient degradation to agree to "go on the street"? Or is something more sinister going on? The man who picks up Sally is named Nick Jenkins (it's probably only a coincidence that that is the same name as the narrator of one of the most important (and one of the best, and perhaps my favorite) English novels of the 20th Century: Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time).  Nick is an inventor, and a man with an open mind, and he promises to treat whatever strange stories Sally tells with respect. And when Sally tells him of her unusual memories of other lives, he asks her to draw scenes from them -- which elicits the information that the barbarian invaders from one scene had four arms; and that in another memory Sally's skin was scaled.

Nick arranges for a Doctor to treat Sally. Meanwhile the sinister landlord couple have tracked Nick down, and they are attempting to kidnap Sally back. Fortunately, another resident of Sally's rooming house has also become suspicious of the landlord and landlady. The conclusion moves rapidly, with Sally in deadly peril, even as she and Nick have figured out (perhaps too rapidly, as I suggested) just what's going on. But between Sally's new found confidence, and the help of Nick, the doctor, the other resident, and some reasonably intelligent policemen, all comes out OK.

A Little Remembered YA SF Novel: Raiders from the Rings, by Alan E. Nourse

A Little Remembered YA SF Novel: Raiders from the Rings, by Alan E. Nourse

a review by Rich Horton

Alan E. Nourse was born 11 August 1928 (he died in 1992), so I thought it might be a good time to resurrect this brief review of one of his YA novels, that I wrote for SFF Net a long time ago.

Alan E. Nourse was one of the SF writers whose juveniles introduced me to the field.  The Universe Between is the book I specifically remember: I was very impressed back in 1972 or whenever I read it.  I also read The Mercy Men and The Bladerunner.  (He got some money for the use of his title when the film came out, even though it had nothing to do with his book.)  His career mostly covered about 1951 to the early '70s, though he had a story in F&SF as late as 1990.  He died in 1992.  (He was an M.D., and his last name was pronounced "Nurse".)

A lot of his early work was for the regular SF magazines in the early '50s, then was revised into Young Adult novels later on: many of his YA books are from the '60s.  For instance, The Universe Between (1968) is an expansion/revision of two short stories from 1951 issues of Astounding.

(Cover by Jack Gaughan)

Raiders from the Rings comes from 1962. It too is based on an older story from Astounding, but oddly enough the story is not by Nourse. It is "The Mauki Chant", by J. A. Meyer, from the June 1951 Astounding. Meyer was a friend of Nourse, and the two collaborated on a novel (The Invaders are Coming!, aka The Sign of the Tiger (which was the title of the 1958 Amazing story that the novel was based on).) Mayer also had three stories in Astounding, all in 1951.

Raiders from the Rings is a decent but not great YA SF novel -- which in the end describes much of his work.  He was no Heinlein, certainly, and not quite Andre Norton either (though apparently people used to mistake "Alan Nourse" for yet another Alice Mary Norton pseudonym, along with Andre Norton and Andrew North). He was much better than, say, the Silverberg of Revolt on Alpha C (possibly the first SF novel I read), or most of the "Winston" writers, and at least a bit better than Isaac Asimov writing as Paul French.  This novel posits a future solar system with fierce conflict between Earthman and Spacers -- a familiar subject.  Earthmen hate Spacers for some bad reasons -- they refused to join in the Atomic War that nearly wrecked Earth, thus they were traitors to one side or the other.  (The book's hero, Ben Trefon, is later revealed to be actually named Trefonovich -- which in 1962 was I'm sure supposed to be a shocking revelation -- The Good Guy is a COMMIE!)  They also have good reason to hate them -- Spacers periodically raid Earth and kidnap their women.  Spacers hate Earthmen, conversely, because they won't negotiate, and because they commit horrible atrocities whenever they happen to catch a Spacer ship.

It turns out there's a reason for the Spacer actions, and it also turns out that some Spacer fear of Earthmen, as well as most Earth fear of Spacers, is misguided, which is of course the message of the book.  The book begins with Ben participating in a raid on Earth, by mistake kidnapping not just a girl but her brother.  However, when Ben gets back to his home on Mars, he finds that the sneaky Earthmen have sent a suicide fleet and have blasted the Spacer homes to smithereens, killing Ben's father as well as many other Spacers.  He heads to "Asteroid Central" to join the doomed defense effort, but on the way he encounters a mysterious ship -- which seems to herd him to a strange asteroid.  There Ben and the two Earth kids learn a strange secret about the destiny of Earth, and they, having finally learned to trust each other, must find a a way to make the war stop, and to bring mutual trust between all Spacers and Earthmen.

As I said, it's decent but not great.  The science is actually not bad, and the plot, though it does turn on rather a deus ex machina, is still different enough to interest.  I could have used a bit more sexual tension -- but it was a YA book after all. And indeed any added sexual tension would have required a fuller portrayal of the women in the book, and a fuller engagement with the icky "wife kidnapping" theme.

A Significant Recent SF Novel: The Light Ages, by Ian R. MacLeod

The Light Ages, by Ian R. MacLeod
Ace, New York, NY, May 2003, 456 pages, Hardcover, US$23.95, ISBN:0-441-01055-5

a review by Rich Horton

Another review that I'm resurrecting because Ian MacLeod's birthday was yesterday -- but this seems a book that his slipped out of the general consciousness in the years since its publication, and that's just wrong -- it's a really significant book, and I hope it can be rediscovered. (I believe I may have first posted this review at rec.arts.sf.written in 2003.)

Anyway, as it seems in danger of being too soon forgotten, I'm featuring this is this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

Ian R. MacLeod is one of the finest writers in the SF field, known best for short fiction such as his World Fantasy Award winner "The Summer Lands", "Starship Day", "Breathmoss", "The Chop Girl", and "New Light on the Drake Equation". He is certainly one of my favorite writers. He has published only one previous novel, The Great Wheel, though I am told that a novel-length version of "The Summer Lands" exists.

The Light Ages has the feel of a steampunk novel -- that is, it is set in an England that resembles Victorian (or perhaps Edwardian) England, with magic that resembles rather grungy technology the motivating force in the background of the book. (Though if the book can be dated, it would seem to date to the late 20th Century -- I'm not sure if that is meant to be a comment on the magic and social organization of the world of the book retarding progress, or if rather it is a backhanded comment on our own society, or perhaps it is simply a mistake on my part.)

The book is told by one Robert Borrows. Robert grows up in a Yorkshire mining town. The substance mined at this town is "aether", a magical source of energy that is the driving force of the economy and technology of the world of this book. Accidents with aether can cause people to mutate into "changelings" or "trolls", and Robert's life changes when his mother begins to mutate. One result is a trip to a strange old woman, Mistress Summerton, a changeling herself, who lives with a beguiling ward called Annalise. Another result is, eventually, his mother's suicide. And yet a third result is his association with the Grandmaster of the local Guild, who is performing dangerous experiments on such things as electricity, and who seems perhaps to have been involved in a mysterious incident that may have caused Robert's mother's aether contamination.

Robert eventually escapes his home town and heads to London, where he becomes involved in fomenting a socialist revolution. He becomes a "mart", someone outside the Guild structure of England. The Guilds apparently control all the technology, and all the labour. Robert, thus, makes his living via the black market, or by simply stealing, and he also becomes a writer for a revolutionary newspaper. His focus is the injustices of the Guild structure, but all along we are also showed the maltreatment of the changelings.

In London Robert also again encounters Annalise, now calling herself Anna Winters. She has become attached to the upper classes, particularly via her friendship with Sarah Passington, daughter of perhaps the most powerful man of the realm. Robert's doomed attraction to the strangely glamourous Anna motivates him to continue to visit her when he can. He is both disgusted by the class inequalities revealed to him, and also of course attracted by the perquisites of the very wealthy -- not to mention such beauties as Sarah and Anna. He also again meets Mistress Summerton, as well as further figures from his past, and further changelings -- all slowly adding detail to our understanding of the terribly unjust social structure of this alternate England. Among all this, Robert runs into further hints of the secret behind his mother's accident, which turns out not surprisingly to be central to Annalise's history as well.

The book turns, finally, on revelations about the emptiness behind the aether-based power structure of the rulers of England, and an ambiguously successful "revolution". Robert and Anna learn much about their past -- and they are intimately involved with the opening of a new "Age". But the new Age is perhaps not all they might have hoped.

I had a complex reaction to this novel. It is for much of its length quite frustrating. The pace is glacial. MacLeod conceals important information (what is aether, really? what are changelings? etc.) for what in the end seems little reason. For too long almost nothing really happens. But it remains absorbing for the excellent writing (save a few slips that I think point to less than wonderful copyediting), and for the fascinating details of life in this alternate England. But what really redeems the book is the ending, which I found emotionally wracking, and honest, somewhat surprising, almost but not quite cynical. I was moved to tears -- I think honest tears -- and the final scene is perfect.

It is an ambitious novel. I cannot argue with anyone who gives up because of the pace -- it really is too slow in developing. For me, in the end the payoff was wholly worth it, though. While acknowledging that it could have been even better, I think I still concur with David Kennedy's view (expressed in another review on rec.arts.sf.written) -- "ridiculously good".

More Ian R. MacLeod:

My review of his first, quite excellent, story collection, Voyages by Starlight
And a compilation of some of my Locus reviews of his short fiction, plus a longer "SF by Starlight" piece on his great novella "New Light on the Drake Equation": Short Fiction of Ian R. MacLeod