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

Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel

a review by Rich Horton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Rich Horton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole

a review by Rich Horton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne

The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne

a review by Rich Horton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rambling Notes on The Shadow of the Torturer

The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe

rambling notes by Rich Horton

(Cover by Don Maitz)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Rich Horton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Rich Horton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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