Review: The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi

The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi

a review by Rich Horton

Here is a novel that wears its time of writing on its sleeve.The Kaiju Preservation Society opens in early 2020, just as the pandemic is staring. Jamie Gray is working for a food delivery service, and sees a great opportunity for his company -- perceiving that the market for delivered meals is about to explode, Jame is eager to present this dea to the CEO -- only to be fired ... 

Let's pull back a bit. John Scalzi needs little introduction -- he's been writing vary enjoyable SF novels for nearly two decades. He's won a Campbell, a Locus, a Dragon, and a couple of Hugos. And somehow he became a lightning rod for the Sad Puppies despite, as far as I can tell, writing EXACTLY the sort of old-fashioned, plot and adventure and cool SF idea-centered stuff they claimed to want! Well, to use an appropriate word, whatever! I like his stuff, and I read it regularly, and so I was happy when our book club chose his brand new novel for our next read. (In this case, I bought the novel through Audible, so I listened to it rather than reading it. The reader, who did a fine job, is Wil Wheaton.)

To continue -- Jamie is humiliatingly forced to accept a gig job workiing for the same company, delivering meals. And in the process Jamie meets a guy from college, a guy who is impressed with Jamie's knowledge of SF (knowledge that almost led to a Ph. D.) And when it becomes clear that Jamie is facing impossible financial pressures due to a) not having his old job; and b) the pandemic; this guy, Tom, offers Jamie a job, for a group called the KPS. A really really well-paying job, but with a catch -- it's in a remote area, out of reach of connection to cell networks, and potentially living a little rough. But, hey, what's the alternative? And the job seems perhaps to have some connection to Jamie's SF knowledge?

Soon Jamie is in Greenland, still wondering what's going on. We can guess, of course, given the title of the novel. And, indeed, KPS stands for Kaiju Preservation Society, and once in Greenland they travel to a secret base, and go through a portal into an alternate Earth. An Earth with conditions that allow for the existence of 100 meter tall monsters. (They are powered by biological nuclear reactors!) Jamie's job is to "lift things" (and the novel has a lot of fun with that.) Everyone else is a Ph. D., including the other newbies, with whom Jamie soon becomes very friendly. 

The first large chunk of the novel is all about explaining what's going on, which is pretty fun -- wildly improbable but clever rationalizations of the Kaiju biology, amusing training sequences, references to a certain famous Kaiju which crossed over to our Earth near Japan thanks to a nuclear explosion (nuclear explosions thin the barrier between worlds ...) There's a lot of camaradie between the various KPS members -- they are a genuninely nice bunch. The eventual plot concerns first an effort to get a pair of Kaiju to breed, and second, a job Jamie is given to shepherd various visitors -- government official, military, scientific higher ups, and, of course, corporate sponsors -- around the base -- it seems that a chance to see real Kaiju is quite the lure. The actual conflict comes fairly late, involving an attempt to bring a Kaiju to our Earth to harvest some genetic material ... which turns out to be a really bad idea.

The novel is very light (though some terrible things happen) and it's very enjoyable. Scalzi's narrative voice is as usual delightful. A lot of it doesn't make a ton of sense, but it really doesn't have to -- the attempts to have it make SF sense are entertaining anyway, and we're not really expected to believe it. An afterword explains the genesis of the novel -- the stress of the pandemic, not to mention a maybe Covid maybe not illness, made it impossible for Scalzi to finish the more serious novel he had planned. He needed relief -- and the idea for this novel came to him, and he finished it in record time (by my lights -- maybe it's normal for Scalzi.) He described it as a "pop song", which seems entirely correct.

I liked it -- it's short and swift and fun. I do have one quibble, and it's a quibble I have about a lot of recent fiction -- the villain is a maximally, cartoonishly, evil corporation. Evil corporations are the lazy default villains these days, and certainly you can find a lot to complain about in corporate actions. But what this corporation gets up to is pretty extreme. And -- the novel takes on the stresses of the pandemic and such nicely enough. But in 2022 we have additional stresses, and a reminder that for real maximal evil a consciousless autocrat of a nation state is a much better candidate than a mere profit hungry corporation. 

[Note -- I've modified my original review, thanks to a hint from John Scalzi's editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden. I had assumed Jamie Gray was male -- but the novel carefully does not specifiy. Indeed, the other characters are referred to as he, she, and in one case they -- but we never learn Jamie's pronouns. This is, I suspect, easier to do in a first person narrative! It was a bit tricky for me to work around all the "he"s in my original draft without using "they".

I will offer a couple of defenses. The first is simple -- I did not read the novel, I listened to it. And the narrator, Will Wheaton, is male. And for a first person narrative, it's pretty natural to assign the narrator's gender to the first person character. Beyond that I'll suggest that there is one ambiguous marker that the Jamie might be male -- his job is to "lift things", and lifting things implies upper body strength, which is unevenly distributed between males and females. That said, the other person in the novel whose job is to "lift things" is explicitly female. The novel features no romantic subplots, and indeed I spent a tiny amount of time wondering whether or not Jamie is gay or straight -- there is no evidence either way (that I detected.)]

My Black Gate Essay Series

Over the past couple of years I've written several essays -- six for far -- for Black Gate, in each case taking a fairly close look at a story (or a few stories, or a poem) that I either particularly like or find particularly interesting. I'm quite proud of these posts, so I'm putting a link to them here in my blog.

"The Star Pit", by Samuel R. Delany;

Three Stories by Idris Seabright;

"Winter Solstice, Camelot Station", by John M. Ford;

"It Opens the Sky", by Theodore Sturgeon;

"Winter's King", by Ursula K. Le Guin;

"The Last Flight of Dr. Ain", by James Tiptree, Jr.;

I note that above my links just mention the title of the stories under consideration, but Black Gate editor John O'Neill add more interesting titles to the essays, and I particularly liked his title for the most recent one, about Tiptree: Still Not Telling Us. 

Table of Contents: Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2021 edition (stories from 2020)

Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2021 edition

edited by Rich Horton

(stories from 2020)

My best of the year anthology for 2021 has been much delayed, for reasons mostly linked to the pandemic, including difficulty getting a slot at printers. (And other issues!) But at last I have a TOC nearly ready. We're holding open one slot for one more potential story ... hoping to hear from the author soon. But I figured it was time to post the list. It's been fun going through these stories again, and realizing how good they are, and how worthy of whatever exposure they can get.

This list is in alphabetical order by author.

Nadia Afifi, "The Bahrain Underground Bazaar", (F&SF, 11-12/20)

Rebecca Campbell, "An Important Failure", (Clarkesworld, 8/20)

Leah Cypess, "Stepsister", (F&SF, 5-6/20)

Andy Dudak, "Songs of Activation", (Clarkesworld, 12/20)

Bishop Garrison, "Silver Door Diner", (FIYAH, Autumn/20)

A. T. Greenblatt, "Burn or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super", (Uncanny, 5-6/20)

Amanda Hollander, "A Feast of Butterflies", (F&SF, 3-3/20)

T. L. Huchu, "Egoli", (Africanfuturism)

John Kessel, "Spirit Level", (F&SF, 7-8/20)

Naomi Kritzer, "Little Free Library", (Tor.com, 4/8/20)

Sarah Langan, "You Have the Prettiest Mask", (LCRW, 8/20)

P. H. Lee, "The Garden Where No One Ever Goes", (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 12/3/20)

Yoon Ha Lee, "Beyond the Dragon's Gate" (Tor.com, 5/20/20)

Marissa Lingen, "The Past, Like a River in Flood", (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 8/27/20)

Ken Liu, "50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know", (Uncanny, 11-12/20)

Rati Mehrotra, "Magnificent Maurice or the Flowers of Immortality", (Lightspeed, 11/20)

Annalee Newitz, "The Monogamy Hormone", (Entanglements)

Alec Nevala-Lee, "Retention", (Analog, 7-8/20)

Sarah Pinsker, "Two Truths and a Lie", (Tor.com, 6-17/20)

Vina Jie-Min Prasad, "A Guide for Working Breeds", (Made to Order)

Mercurio D. Rivera, "Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars", (Asimov’s, 7-8/20)

Benjamin Rosenbaum, "Bereft, I Come to a Nameless World", (Asimov’s, 3-4/20)

Sofia Samatar, "The Moon Fairy", (Conjunctions #74)

Ken Schneyer, "Laws of Impermanence", (Uncanny, 9-10/20)

Alexandra Seidel, "Lovers on a Bridge, (Past Tense)

Michael Swanwick, "The Dragon Slayer", (The Book of Dragons)

Tade Thompson, "Thirty-Three", (Avatars, Inc.)

Ian Tregillis, "When God Sits in Your Lap". (Asimov’s, 9-10/20)

Eugenia Triantafyllou, "Those We Serve", (Interzone, 5-6/20)

Tlotlo Tsamaase,"Behind Our Irises", (Africanfuturism)

James Van Pelt, "Minerva Girls", (Analog, 9-10/20)

Aliya Whiteley, "Fog and Pearls at the King's Cross Junction", (London Centric)

Jessica P. Wick, "An Unkindness", (The Sinister Quartet)

John Wiswell, "Open House on Haunted Hill", (Diabolical Plots, 6/20)

Review: The Exile Waiting, by Vonda N. McIntyre

Review: The Exile Waiting, by Vonda N. McIntyre

a review by Rich Horton

Vonda N. McIntyre was born in 1948 in Louisville, and died, only 70 years old, in 2019. She began publishing in 1970 with "Breaking Point", in Venture (the second iteration of a short-lived (both times) companion to F&SF), and in 1973 published "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand" in Analog -- which won the Nebula for Best Novelette. It became her second novel, Dreamsnake, and that won both the Nebula and Hugo. She published several more generally well-received novels through 1997, when The Moon and the Sun appeared, and won her another Nebula. But that was her last novel, and she published only about a half-dozen further short stories in the couple of decades before her death. (I reprinted her last story, "Little Sisters", in The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2016 Edition.) I don't know wny she mostly stopped writing (or selling) -- she was a first rate writer. (A good portion of her output was media tie-ins, also, and her Star Trek novels are quite well regarded.)

So, I mentioned her second novel, and some later ones, but what of her first novel? This was The Exile Waiting, from 1975. Its first appearance was actually the Science Fiction Book Club edition. I bought the paperback when it appeared -- my notes in the book say I got it from Waldenbooks in Fox Valley Mall (a couple of miles from my house) in April 1976. I read it and liked it a good deal. And so I was happy to be pressed to reread it when we chose it for the book club that Mark Tiedemann runs ...

And, you know, it holds up. On rereading I felt it very clearly a first novel, with some of the problems of many first novels, but lots of the exuberance too. Like many first novels there is a sense that the author threw in a few too many ideas, and that the structure (perhaps especially at the beginning) is a bit loose ... but in the end it's very enjoyable and quite moving.

The book is set on earth (uncapitalized, oddly, though it is clearly meant to be our Earth) a long time in the future, after a nuclear war. As such, it's a post-Holocaust novel -- Mark Tiedemann pointed out that this was rather late for the at one time extremely common trope of setting a story in the distant aftermath of a nuclear war. Mischa is an adolescent girl (probably about 14 ... but her age doesn't come through very well) living in a place called Center, almost a hive for the people living in the otherwise blasted wasteland. She is a thief, as was her now drug-addicted and dying older brother Chris. She also has a power, as with the others in her family -- sort of an empathic/near telepathic ability to sense others' minds. This is a decidedly mixed blessing, especially as her much less mentally functional younger sister Gemmi has such a strong ability that she can compel Mischa to come to her -- which she does when their abusive uncle forces her -- mainly to get money. Mischa's dream is to escape to the "Sphere" -- that is, the relatively near star systems that humans have colonized; and to bring Chris with her in hope of a cure for his addiction (presumably, he started using the drugs to ecape Gemmi's pull.) And it becomes clear to her that her only shot is to find a way to get to the Palace, and to convince the aristocrats there to give her a job on a spaceship.

There are two other central characters. Jan Hiraku is a young man who has promised to bring his blind old friend back to earth for burial, and he has gotten passage on a starship. The starship is crewed by what seem a group of raiders, led by two curiously linked men who call themselves Subone and Subtwo. They were raised together as part of an experiment intended to make them mentally linked, and having escaped that situation they are beginning to establish independent personalities. (Their backstory is detailed in McIntyre's short story from the Delany/Hacker anthology Quark/4, "Cages", which I understand is included in the recent rerelease of The Exile Waiting (from Handheld Press in 2019).)

So -- Jan, unconnected with the raiders, serves as sort of an outside observer/narrator, though eventually he becomes a friend and mentor to Mischa. Mischa's attempt to infiltrate the Palace fails and she is whipped for it. But more or less simultaneously, the raiders' ship lands nearby, in storm season when no ships come -- the combined abilities of Subone and Subtwo make this possible. They arrive at the Palace, evidently intending to take over -- but are suborned, more or less, by the decadence and indifference of the ruling group. Meanwhile Subtwo is trying to separate from the more brutish and immoral Subone, so while Subone appears to enjoy being assimilated into the decadent life of the Place, Subtwo is disgusted by the slave culture revealed to him. He falls for Madame, the slave who serves as housekeeper to the ruler, and tries to arrange her freedom, while planning to leave with his ship as soon as possible. Jan and he rescue Mischa, and somewhat fortuitously begin to train her, and discover that she is a mathematical genius. (This is a bit of tired cliche, one of the "first novel" faults.) Plans for Jan, Subtwo, Madame, Mischa, and Chris to escape back to the Sphere seem well on the way, until Mischa's unseverable connections to her family intervene -- and Subone's cruel reaction to the presence of Chris in their quarters drives a crisis.

Jan and Mischa are forced to escape underground after attacking Subone in trying to rescue Chris. They encounter a group of mutated humans, cast out because of the old tradition of post nuclear societies trying to control mutations. Meanwhile Subone and Subtwo are chasing them -- Subone compelling his "pseudosib" to help get revenge on Mischa for attacking him. Mischa -- again quite coincidentally -- meets one of her highly mutated brothers ... Well, the natural result ensues -- with the mutants' help they escape back to Central, and in the process foment a rebellion that should lead to better treatment for the mutants, and also freedom for the slaves. And Subtwo finally manages to escape Subone's influence and their escape to the Sphere becomes a reality.

Told as baldly as I've stated it this final development seems a contrived and only too familiar (and too easy) resolution -- and it is, I suupose, except McIntyre's writing is very effective, and it's exciting, and quite moving. It's really a case of a first novelist's talent winning over her inexperience, I think. I liked the characters, and I wanted them to win. I'd actually have liked to see more stories in that future -- in the Sphere, mainly, and perhaps following Mischa's life. Apparently Dreamsnake is set on the same future ruined earth -- but we don't really see the Sphere in that book. (It's not clear to me whether the action of Dreamsnake is set prior to The Exile Waiting, after it, or at a roughly parallel time but different place on earth.) 

It is nice, I think, to return to a novel you remember enjoying 45+ years ago, and to find that it pretty much holds up! That doesn't always happen, but it did in this case.

Review: Murder in Millennium VI, by Curme Gray

Review: Murder in Millennium VI, by Curme Gray

a review by Rich Horton

This novel, published in 1951 by the important early SF book publisher Shasta, very quickly established a reputation as a nearly incomprehensible novel -- incomprehensible because it explains almost nothing about its future -- the intent is to be read as a comtemporary work,set in "Millennium VI", and as such not to describe thimgs that would be common knowledge to its supposed readership. Over the decades it's become sort of a talisman -- "Read this and marvel at how inpenetrable it is!" As such I've known for years that eventually I'd try to read it, and the time finally came. Short version -- it's at times difficult, a bit dizzying, but the basics are really pretty readily worked out. It's a decidedly interesting experiment, and with additional editorial input, it could have been something really special. It falls short, alas, but I still think it's worth reading.

The book has only been reprinted once, in 1952, as part of an omnibus edition offered by the Unicorn Mystery Book Club. The other books in that omnibus were When Dorinda Dances, by Brett Halliday (best known for the Mike Shayne mysteries); The Far Cry, by Fredric Brown; and The Virgin Huntress, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. I think it's fair to say -- even wholly ignorant, as I am, of the Halliday novel -- that that is a pretty damn impressive omnibus, even only considering the Brown and Holding novels. 

Curme Gray himself was for a long time -- still is, to some extent -- a mysterious figure. But in recent years some details have been tracked down, even a picture. (The picture attached was found by Paul di Filippo from a Battle Creek, MI, newspaper, accompanying an advertisement for a book signing -- evidently at the time this book was published Gray lived in Battle Creek.)  He was born in Indiana in 1910. His father or grandfather appears to have been in the shoe businees. By 1940 he was living in Cicero*, IL, a suburb of Chicago, and had a wife named Madeline. By the 1960s he seems to have been in Denver, and involved in local theater. But his interest in theater goes much farther back: there are apparently at least two plays copywrighted in his name. from around 1940, when he was in Illinois. He died in 1980. 

(*My high school wrestling coach was from Cicero. At a guess he was not too much younger than Gray -- maybe he knew him?)

So what's up with this book? It opens with the scene of a woman, having just awakened, heading to meet her mother, but colliding with her much smaller father (Alec), and rebuking him. The mother, Wilmot, and the daughter, Hilda, converse briefly, first by voice, then by "telement", about their coming trip to see the Matriarch, and Hilda's desire for a newly created position as the Matriarch's secretary, and her anger that her twin brother Victor will also meet the Matriarch and apply for the new position -- even though males are ineligible. The narrative switches to first person -- Victor has been monitoring their conversation, by both "telepathy" and "clairvoyance". Victor and Alec speak, and we learn that Alec owns three "records" from Ancient History. It seems Alec is fascinated by that time period, and even has learned to read the records, which are described strangely -- but in a way so that we recognize them as printed books. No one (except Victor and Alec) seems to read -- everything transmitted via telement is preserved in Archival Telement, or AT. Alec's three books are called Palmer's Method, Hobbies, and Crime, a History. Victor, using what he learned from Palmer's Method, is making his own record, by cutting up pieces of cloth and marking them. In this diary he preserves things he learns, and thinks, that will not be part of AT -- including his somewhat clandestine love affair with a woman named Barbara Porter. (Romantic love, we learn -- like death -- is a forgotten thing in this future.)

I've gone into greater detail than I normally would partly because the strangeness of the future needs more description than in many books. As we read further -- though much of this on a second reading is already indicated in the first chapter -- we learn that this is set 6000 years or so from now. The world is ruled by a Matriarchy. There is only one race (apparently descended from Asians though it could be just a future mix.) Women are significantly larger than men. Neither sex has secondary sexual characteristics -- indeed, both are bald. These characteristics seem to be maintained partly by selective breeding. Most communication is by telepathy -- something like personal radio. Clairvoyance seems to be a way of seeing what is happening elsewhere. (We learn later of private sorts of telepathy, and of a special form of telement called communion, in which perhaps thoughts are directly shared.) There is no crime, and no death. There are a few different varieties of women -- notably Menics (menial workers) and Clerics, of higher rank. Men, who do not work, seem either to be essentially house-husbands, or to reside forever in the "Stud". The extended lifespans also mean that maturity is not attained until the age of nearly one hundred.

The meeting with the Matriarch is complicated, because Barbara Porter is there as well, and it becomes clear that everyone with an audience with the Matriarch is applying for the same newly created position of secretary. The job should be Hilda's, because Victor is a male, and Barbara is of lower status (as Wilmot is the second most powerful woman in the Matriarchy.) Indeed, we now learn, Barbara is a highly unusual woman -- she has breasts, and is smaller than most women. (She even uses lipstick, it seems!) But to Victor's dismay, Barbara has rejected him for another male. And, indeed, Barbara and Victor's association was highly irregular -- females are supposed to choose males at the Stud. (It is never made terribly clear exactly what goes on at the the Stud.) 

Much of this becomes somewhat irrelevant when, just as the audience with the Matriarch is supposed to commence, it is clear that she is acting very oddly. Indeed, Alec and Victor rush forward -- she seems to be asleep! But, no -- she is not asleep, she is dead. And that is impossible, for no one dies! (This is one reason Barbara and Hilda, who are one hundred years old, have not found a position.) After much divagation, it is determined that the Matriarch has been murdered -- but by whom? It seems to be a locked room mystery.

The main action of the novel concerns the untangling of the mystery, of course. Alec is the first suspect, and he is soon found dead -- by suicide? Is this a confession? The question of motive arises -- but there are many plausble motives. Alec wanted, we learn, to restore the historical Patriarchy. Hilda wanted the secretary job that she felt was hers by right. Wilmot had long coveted the (elective) position of Matriarch. Barbara Porter's Aunt Gertrude resents the power held by both the Matriarch and Wilmot. Victor is suspect because he's Alec's son, and because of his irregularities. The question of method revolves around scissors -- and we know that Victor has a pair. But so, it appears, did Hilda. And perhaps the scissors are just a blind alley -- there are other means of murder. Other mysteries arise -- for death is not really wholly abolished, but people tend to forget it. It turns out that a past disaster (a plane crash) wiped out everyone in Alec's family. But no one (besides Alec) remembers this.

The solution (solutions?) to the murder mystery come in a dizzying sequence, with every one of the main characters at one time identified as the murderer. The final resolution is kind of neat (turning on an aspect of future technology) -- and yet, to my mind, it remains a bit ambiguous. (In a good way, I'd say.) The other outward plot element is the romance (?) between Victor and Barbara -- Barbara seems to run hot and cold, and Victor -- he's determined to marry Barbara, but hardly -- chivalrous? All in all, the sexual poltics of this book are decidedly retro -- arguably that's part of the theme, to be sure. But it can be hard to take.

In a way, though, these aspects aren't what's most interesting about Murder in Millennium VI. Decoding the true nature of this future is what involves the reader (in 1951 as much as in 2022, I think.) The social and sexual organization is central -- looked at naively it seems to be about a cyclical change from Patriarchy to Matriarchy and back again to Patriarchy -- but I think perhaps the resolution suggests an evolution to a more equitable arrangement. (This is not much addressed, though.) Another question revolves around death -- how has it been (mostly) eliminated in Millennium VI, and is its (potential) restoration a good thing? There are a host of technical issues that are described but never discussed -- people seem almost never to be outside, for example; or, what really goes on in the Stud? or how does the transportation work? or what are the homes really like? with the strange lighting? etc. etc.

The overall affect is effectively weird, if not quite convincing. The novel works in that sense. But as I hinted at the top, some of the confusion may be due more to ineffective writing -- and I think some hard editorial work might have resolved some of that. And to be honest the overall theme, especially the Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy aspect, and the general depiction of gender relations, is retro in a bad way, even rather unpleasant. This future doesn't seem a future we're headed to, and the questions the book poses about this future aren't really sensible, in the end. But for all that, I'm glad I read it It's an intriguing and quite different imaginative product. And it's not all that long! So -- worth a read if you can find a copy, and a reprint might be worthwhile (perhaps attached to some critical analysis.)

Two Treasures from Boskone (or just after)

Two Treasures from Boskone (or just after)

by Rich Horton

One of the joys of being in a community like the SF community is the opportunity to receive special, indeed unique, gifts from fellow members of said community. Recently at the Boston convention Boskone I attended a Kaffeklatsch hosted by Michael Swanwick. Michael's conversation was reward enough, but he also gave each of us a lovely tiny book created by his wife, Marianne Porter. This book, written and made for Valentine's Day, is called Fantasia Romantica. It includes several short-shorts on the subject of romance written by Michael, and it is itself a lovely physical object. At Boskone I also met, for the first time in person, Gregory Feeley (long an online friend.) We shared a couple of panels, and had a couple of nice conversations (and food and drink.) Shortly after the convention was over, Greg sent me a chapbook, another lovely object, privately printed, called Th'Erratic Stars: an excerpt from a novel he's worked on for years, called Hamlet the Magician. 

Th'Erratic Stars is a truly beautiful story about a European prince, now enslaved, first on a galley in the Mediterranean, then in Cairo, and by the end heading to Aleppo. The title of the novel means it comes as no surprise when we learn that this prince is from Denmark, where his uncle is King and his mother Queen. (This excerpt's title comes from Chaucer, however -- from a Chaucer work on a subject Shakespeare also wrote of.) It's an alternate Denmark, to be sure, from that of Shakespeare's play -- for one thing, Hamlet has left behind a wife (presumably Ophelia), and he has been exiled and, now, enslaved. The first section, "The Caitiff", begins, as I said, at sea, on a galley. The Prince is of course an oarsmen, subject to the ill use and illness often experienced by those, and his surviving one serious bout gives him a reputation as a witch -- only exacerbated when the ship encounters a storm and the Prince survives ... well, of course, he is a witch. They proceed to Egypt, where he is sold. Fearing castration, he instead lands at the house of a man with a library, and begins to help the librarian catalog that collection. The second section, "The Scholar", involves his work at this man's library, and especially his time with the librarian's daughter, who is also a scholar. The Prince is all along gaining knowledge -- of Arabic, for one, and learning to understand the Islamic attitude about magia, and, slowly, becoming entranced by Zaynab, the librarian's daughter. But this of course cannot be -- for one thing, he is a Christian, for another, she is not in control of her fate, nor is she of all that high status. And by the third section, "The Magus", everything is altered -- Zaynab's father's master is dead, she herself has undergone wrenching personal changes -- and the Prince is once again sold, and sent to Aleppo -- which at least is closer to Persia, where he might hope to learn more about true magic.

This is most definitely a novel excerpt, and not in itself a complete story. But it intrigues throughout. Hamlet is a compelling character, and there is a mystery in his past -- to say nothing of the questions about his future -- that urges discovery. The Zaynab section is one of the most well done sublimated romances I have read. The prose throughout is -- I shy from this cliche but it is true -- exquisite: balanced, intelligent, beautiful when it needs it, free itself of cliche. The historical milieu is convincing and fascinating. It is an great introduction to a novel I desperately hope to read.

Michael Swanwick's Fantasia Romantica is sort of the opposite, in comprising several quite complete, but very short, stories. The stories are all about love (and sex), and are all titled for women. Most of the women are fictional characters: Titania (from "A Midsummer Night's Dream"), Prunella Chanticleer (from Lud-in-the-Mist), Campaspe (a probably apocryphal mistress of Alexander the Great), Rosie (from The Lord of the Rings), Susan (from the Chronicles of Narnia), and ... Caitlin (who becomes involved with Archimago (from The Faerie Queene)). Each story is clever, arch, sweet if need be, slightly cynical if need be, sexy -- and fun. They are short-shorts, and I don't want to describe them further, but they are very enjoyable. And the slim book itself is a lovely object, with the nice cover depicted here, and excellent paper ... something I'm thrilled to have.

Old Bestseller Review: Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray

Review: Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray

a review by Rich Horton

I had read a couple other things by William Makepeace Thackeray, but never yet his most famous novel, Vanity Fair. (I've called this an Old Bestseller Review, a nod to this blog's original purpose -- not because I have bestseller lists dating to the 1840s but because Vanity Fair was definitely a sensation on its appearance.) I absolutely love Thackeray's great historical novel, Henry Esmond, which I review here:

Review of Henry Esmond.

Along the way I had bought a couple of used editions of Vanity Fair, with the idea that I'd surely read it someday. But a couple of years ago I found a quite lovely boxed edition, from Random House in 1958, with illustrations by Robert Ball. I snapped it up cheap at the used bookstore where I saw it, which was, alas, going out of business. And, a bit later, I started reading it -- but then set it aside, for reasons to do partly with deadlines, and perhaps also partly the pandemic. Upon my retirement from my Locus column, some reading time opened up, and I decided to return to Vanity Fair. I read it over the next few weeks much, I suppose, as its original readers did -- a chapter or two at a time. (The novel was serialized in 19 monthly parts in 1847 and 1848. The book version appeared in 1848.)

This is one of those cases where my review is more or less superfluous -- Vanity Fair is one of the all time classic English novels. Numerous trees have given their lives for pieces about the book, professors have told their students what to think for a century and a half, and I'm sure many more illustrious book bloggers than me have weighed in. So take my brief look for what it's worth. I will say to begin with that this is an immensely entertaining book -- but that I still rank it behind Henry Esmond. Perhaps some of this is down to the accurate subtitle -- A Novel Without a Hero. In Henry Esmond there is no doubt that Henry -- for all his faults -- is the hero of his narrative (if, perhaps, partly because it is framed as his narrative.) Vanity Fair is framed quite differently -- the author (a fairly direct avatar of Thackeray) conceives of himself as a puppeteer, manipulating his characters through their decades long adventures. And the main character, Becky Sharp, for all that she is one of the best known characters in Victorian literature, is not only not a hero, but is absent from the book for chapters at a time. The two most virtuous characters, Becky's friend Amelia Sedley, and William Dobbin, a friend of Amelia's husband George Osborne, doomed to a hopeless love for Amelia (who foolishly dotes on the worthless George); are presented as basically good but in different ways rather foolish.

The action of the story extends from about 1814 to the early '30s. Becky Sharp is the pennyless orphaned daughter of a rackety couple -- an art dealer and a French dancer -- who has managed to get an education by teaching French at a school for young women of society, and who there befriends Amelia Sedley, the daughter of a wealthy man of business. The story follows, essentially, the love lives of the two women (using the term "love" perhaps unwisely!) Becky is from the beginning an amoral schemer, and, beginning with Amelia's brother Jos, she sets her cap at a variety of men -- failing to get Jos to propose she pivots to an elderly baronet, Sir Pitt Crawley, then to Sir Pitt's younger son Rawdon. Once married to Rawdon, who ends up penniless because of his family's objection to the marriage, she attracts a lot of sexual attention from society men, especially the rather vile Marquis of Steyne -- always with the object of getting her hands on money. Amelia, on the other hand, falls for the handsome but irresponsible and rather stupid George Osborne, son of one of her father's business partners; even while George's friend, the sometimes socially awkward (and not so handsome) Captain William Dobbin is pathetically devoted to her. Amelia's fiscal life is also fraught, partly because the elder Osborne disinherits his son after Amelia's father loses his fortune because of some unlucky investments. And when Amelia's husband dies at Waterloo, she is reduced to living in poverty with her parents, and forced to give up her beloved son to the Osborne family. Becky also has a son by Rawdon Crawley, but she has no interest in motherhood, and Rawdon Jr. also ends up with his relatives (despite his father's sincere love for his son.)

The novel follows the fortunes of the two women and their families, with Amelia selflessly (but often foolishly) serving her mother and father in their sad state, and mooning over her dead husband, never realizing how he betrayed her (for the most notorious example, by having a brief affair with Becky Sharp and urging her to run away with him just before the battle that took his life.) It is only Captain Dobbin's often secret interventions that keep Amelia barely above water financially, and that allow her boy to go to school -- but she never deigns to take notice of poor William except as a friend. Meanwhile Becky's adventures seem to prosper for a while -- with Lord Steyne's sponsorship, she becomes a fashionable if somewhat scandalous hostess, and she squirrels away some money even as her husband's debts mount. (There is a delighful chapter called "How to Live Well on Nothing a Year".) But Becky overplays her hand, and ends up separated from her husband and wandering Europe. The novel's concluding chapters resolve things by reuniting all the main characters to one degree or another, each getting a fairly appropriate fate.

As must be obvious, the aim of the book is satire. And it delivers in spades. The novel is stuffed with amusing and mildly grotesque characters -- pretty much the entire Crawley family, most obviously, and to a lesser degree the Osbornes and their associates, not to mention Captain Dobbin's military company. The plot is quite intricate, if a bit loose-limbed (an inevitable consequence, I think, of both the length of time covered, and of the serial method of publication (and presumably composition.) While the misadventures of the amoral Becky Sharp seem the moral center of the book, in reality no aspect of British society escapes criticism. It is possible to have some sympathy for Becky's life circumstances -- she does seem to be treated unfairly because of her birth -- she squanders all that sympathy by her financial dishonesty, her apparently loveless sex life (though the book is far more circumspect about her actual sex life than the same book would be if written today), and most of all by her treatment of her child. And even Amelia, a much sweeter and more virtuous person, is portrayed as downright stupid, and terribly obtuse and unfair in her relationship with the only too faithful William. 

The book is what its reputation says -- one of the great Victorian novels. It is archly funny, biting, and absorbing. I still wasn't transported in quite the way I was with Henry Esmond, but I'm not sure that was the aim of this novel. I'll get to another Thackeray novel some time in the future -- maybe Pendennis? -- but first I need to sample some other Victorians -- Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell, Collins, another Brontë novel besides Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre ... who should it be?