Old Bestseller Review: The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni

Review: The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni

by Rich Horton

Not all countries have a "national novel", but apparently Italy does -- Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi, 1827, revised 1840.) This was its author's only novel, though he also wrote poetry, plays, and nonfiction. He had a rocky life in some ways -- his mother apparently had little to do with him, and left his (much older) father when Alessandro was 7. He did rejoin his mother, in Paris, at age 20, and made a happy marriage to a Swiss Protestant woman. But against this happiness, an apparently happy second marriage after his first wife died young, the success of his novel, and the birth of nine children, one must set the fact that seven children died before adulthood, both his wives predeceased him, and his health was poor for the last few decades of his long life. He wrote nothing more after the revised version of I Promessi Sposi appeared, and died in 1873 at the age of 87.

The Betrothed is considered Italy's "national novel" for a few reasons -- one is its sprawling plot, set during a few eventful years in the early 1600s; and its themes: the depredations of local tyrants, the folly of rulers, the ravages of war and plague. In addition, it was published as the desire for Italian reunification (that would culminate in the Risorgimento in the 1860s) was growing, and it was a major influence in the coalescence of the various Italian dialects into an accepted national language, based on the Tuscan dialect in which Manzoni's revised version was published. At his death, he was so celebrated that Verdi's Requiem was written in his honor.

I read the novel in Bruce Penman's translation, from 1972. I also read passages on my Kindle from Alexander Colquhoun's 1951 translation. Not long after I bought the Penman book, used, a new translation appeared, by Michael Moore. I have only sampled that one briefly -- it seems fine, if perhaps leaning a bit more into 21st century turns of phrase than I might prefer. The general feel of the prose is not dissimilar from Penman's, suggesting that both have captured at least to some extent Manzoni's Italian prose. The Colquhoun was less successful, to me -- for one thing, it seemed (mildly) abridged; for another, Colquhoun made the curious choice to Anglicize some names -- so for example the chief villain, Don Rodrigo, is called Don Roderick in his version. (This was a disappointment, for I am a great fan of Colquhoun's translation of Giuseppe di Lampedusa's The Leopard, which I would think another candidate for the "Great Italian Novel" (and also its author's only novel, and, indeed, about the Risorgimento.))

The Betrothed is the story of two peasants, from the village of Lecco (near Milan), Lucia and Lorenzo (called Renzo), who wish to be married. There should be no bar to this union -- the families are happy with it, and Renzo has a good job. But the most powerful man in the area, Don Rodrigo, decides he wants Lucia, and he pressures the weak local priest not to perform the wedding. With the help of a worthy nearby monk, Father Cristoforo, the two lovers are able to evade a plot of Don Rodrigo's to kidnap Lucia, and the two escape to different places: Lucia to the protection of a convent, and Renzo to Milan. 

Don Rodrigo is still searching for them, and they have their own troubles. Renzo reaches Milan as a famine continues, and he gets involved in riots, as starving people are convinced that the bakers are hoarding bread. He ends up framed as an inciter of the riots, and has to escape to Bergamo, which is under the rule of Venice. Meanwhile Lucia is working for a nun called the Signora -- an unhappy woman who was forced into the convent by her parents. This all ends up badly as the Signora betrays her location to Don Rodrigo.

Events of wider significance intervene -- in particular, war comes to Milan, and in its wake, the Plague. Meanwhile Don Rodrigo has hired a notorious criminal, here called "The Unnamed", to kidnap Lucia, with the unfortunate aid of the Signora. And Renzo has found a good position in Bergamo. But Renzo is still threatened with arrest if he enters the territory of Milan. Their relationship is further complicated by the circumstances of Lucia's escape from the Unnamed -- which seemed to her (and probably was) an answer to a prayer, which included a promise to the Virgin Mary that she would remain a virgin. Renzo and Lucia -- both unlettered -- exchange communications which are amusingly confused.

The climax of the novel is several wrenching chapters detailing the effects of the Plague. As has been noted by many readers, some of the responses to the Plague depicted here resemble only too much some of the responses to COVID. But the Bubonic Plague (at least prior to antibiotics) has far worse effects than COVID, with fatality rates on the order of 25%. And Milan is hit hardest. Manzoni is darkly satirical in portraying the political responses, and affecting in portraying the ravages of it, and the heroism of some, including Father Cristoforo. And towards the end Renzo, having survived his own bout with sickness, comes to Milan in search of Lucia ...

The Betrothed actually only covers a smallish amount of territory in Northwest Italy. But its real scope is vast. Manzoni observes the abuses of the powerful, the follies of those in the middle, the occasional stupidity of everyone. He also portrays people of great courage and virtue, many of them churchmen -- such as Father Cristoforo and a major character I haven't mentioned, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo. (Borromeo is an actual historical person, the nephew of St. Carlo Borromeo. There are many churches named for Charles Borromeo, including one just a couple of miles from my workplace. There are numerous other historical figures portrayed in this book, including the Signora (aka the Nun of Monza) and the Unnamed.) Manzoni views with his sympathetic but satiric eye the folly of politicians, and of mobs. It must be said that Renzo and Lucia are thinnish characters -- sweet and honest but not all that interesting. But Manzoni's portrayals of a host of other characters are fascinating, often hilarious, often piercing: Don Rodrigo, the Unnamed, Don Abbondio and his housekeeper Perpetua, Father Cristoforo, Donna Prassede (the silly and meddlesome woman who takes in Lucia after her rescue) and Donna Prassede's pompous husband. Like many great novels, The Betrothed mixes comedy and tragedy seamlessly, and in the end, I think, achieves its apparent goal of portraying a nation aborning, a people coming to consciousness of a possible unity that wouldn't happen for more than two centuries.

Review: Ledoyt, by Carol Emshwiller

Review: Ledoyt, by Carol Emshwiller

by Rich Horton

Carol Emshwiller (1921-2019) was one of the greatest of SF writers, though she never quite got the recognition I felt she deserved -- and much of that she did get came late in life. There are many reasons for that -- she didn't start publishing until in her mid-30s, she stopped for a few years when her kids were young, her vision was very individual, and thus hard for many to get a grasp on, she wrote a fair amount outside the SF field. Another reason, though, is that she wrote mostly short fiction. She published only six novels, the first (Carmen Dog) in her late 60s, in 1988. Her last three were published in her 80s. All too often, it's novels that get the attention.

What about those other two novels? Well -- there's a story there too. Ledoyt and Leaping Man Hill were published in 1995 and 1999, respectively. (In Emshwiller's 70s.) And -- they are not SF. They are Westerns, and not really conventional Westerns. Ledoyt is set in the first decade of the 20th Century, and Leaping Man Hill is set after the First World War. And they aren't shoot 'em up Westerns -- they are about families, about making a life in remote parts of California before anything much like modern technology had arrived. All this is not to say there's a lack of action -- there's plenty. There are fights, shots fired, rape, people dying. There's also sex and partying and honest work and weather and childcare advice from the 19th century. And that's just in Ledoyt.

The novel is set mostly between 1902 and 1910. We begin with Lotti, a 14 year old girl, writing in her journal, dated 1910, "it all began in the spring of 1902." What began? Well, that's when Beal Ledoyt, whose brother T-Bone is a neighbor to Lotti's mother, Oriana Cochran, shows up looking for work. T-Bone suggests he help out Mrs. Cochran, who came from the East a few years before with her young daughter. It's clear that a) Oriana comes from money; and b) that she's fleeing something traumatic. And, very quickly, Mrs. Cochran and Beal Ledoyt are in love. Oriana, who is about 30, is something of a beauty, and has been courted by several men in the neighborhood (I say neighborhood but there's no city, just people farming) and has shown no interest in them. Ledoyt is a few years older, has never stayed in one place for long, is very ugly, often drunk -- and also pretty capable. Lotti takes to him at first, but gets weirdly jealous when he and Oriana, unexpectedly to most everyone, marry. And Lotti's jealousy propels much of the plot.

The point of view jumps between Lotti and Oriana and Beal and eventually Lotti's new brother Fayette. It also jumps back and forth in time, though it's not entirely non-linear. (The 1910 thread, in particular, always moves forward.) It's clear from the beginning that both Oriana and Beal are severely scarred from their childhood, and in bits and pieces we learn why and how. Lotti, too, is a piece of work -- she's convinced she was adopted, and wants to find her real family. She is unsure of her mother's love, in part because of how hard her mother has had to work, and in part ... well, we see why. She takes to Beal right away, tries to help him, decides she'll be a better man than any male ... and also she fancies Beal in a childish way so is furious when he marries her mother. In their tiny house she sees what they do in bed and that confuses her too. After Fayette is born, he follows her everywhere, and she's not exactly nice to him.

Oriana and Beal both have a hard time trusting themselves -- neither sees themselves as worthy of the other. Each believes their dark histories (not at all their own faults) have ruined them somehow. And they react in different and painful ways to the children they end up losing -- a normal part of frontier life, I suppose, but no less difficult. 

I'm making the story sound like a dreary Theodore Dreiser novel or something -- and that's not at all true. Yes, there is pain, there are deaths, there is violence. But there is at bottom love, and much happiness, and family being family. Ledoyt's family -- T-Bone and his wife Henriette and their children and other relatives -- are stable and helpful and loving. The voices of everyone are wonderfully captured, and the novel is suffused with humor. As I said too, there's plenty of action, culminating in a desperate winter trek over the hills (mountains?) in terrible weather, and an encounter with a violent criminal ending with a courageous rescue. And ... well I won't say what's next, but this in the end a realistic and moving account of frontier life -- and love, very much love -- in the early 20th Century. And it's Carol Emshwiller, so it's witty when it needs to be, profound when it needs to be, and wonderfully written.

Emshwiller's novels have in one sense been very well served by their publishers, in the sense that the books have been nicely presented -- but with one exception, each one first appeared from a small press: The Women's Press, Mercury House, Small Beer, and Tachyon. (The one exception, Mister Boots, marketed as YA, appeared from Viking, and was reprinted by Penguin/Firebird, which also reprinted The Mount.) All those small presses are, if you'll forgive the word, classy, and to some extent prestigious -- but there books still probably don't sell quite as well. And Ledoyt and Leaping Man Hill are out of print. This is a complete shame and I hope some wise publisher rectifies this situation soon.

(There is a wonderful review by Ursula K. Le Guin of Ledoyt at Strange Horizons, written back in 2000. I didn't read it until after I wrote the above. But it's very much worth reading.)

Review: North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell

Review: North and South, by Mrs. Gaskell

by Rich Horton

Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born in 1810. Her father was William Stevenson, a Unitarian minister and writer on economic subjects. (Stevenson, by the way, resigned his position as minister on conscientious grounds: remember this in view of events in North and South!) Elizabeth married a Unitarian minister, William Gaskell, in 1832. They eventually settled in Manchester. She wrote and published poems (with her husband) and some non-fiction beginning in the 1830s. Her first short story was published in 1847, and her first novel, Mary Barton, in 1848, which made her name as a writer. Other important works are Cranford, Sylvia's Lovers, Cousin Phillis, and her last novel, unfinished at her sudden death in 1865, Wives and Daughters; as well as the first biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë. 

North and South was first published in Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words, in 20 parts between 1854 and 1855. Dickens is supposed to have suggested the title (Gaskell was calling it Margaret Hale, after the heroine -- in this case if perhaps no other regarding the novel, Dickens was right.) The preceding serial was Dickens' own Hard Times, and both Hard Times and North and South are "industrial novels", and are set in lightly fictionalized versions of Manchester. This caused Gaskell some concern, as she didn't want to duplicate any of Dickens' plot points. Gaskell also battled Dickens over the length -- she thought it would be in 22 parts and felt that she was forced to rush the ending, and the book version not only extended the ending and added bits throughout, it also added chapters at the front. It is MUCH the superior version. I have the print edition pictured above, but I actually "read" the novel by listening to it, in Claire Wille's effecting narration.

The novel begins as preparations continue for the wedding of Margaret Hale's cousin Edith. Margaret is now 18, and has spent the last several years in London with her mother's sister, Mrs. Shaw. Margaret has been happy enough there, but in general she is impatient with the rather shallow and fashionable life her aunt and cousin lead. She is ready to go back to her parents' place, in the small country parish of Helstone. Her only intellectual equal in her social circle is Edith's soon-to-be brother-in-law, Henry Lennox, an ambitious young lawyer. The wedding goes off well, Edith and her new husband head to Italy where he is posted, and Margaret returns to Helstone, where her father is Vicar of a small church. Mrs. Hale is a pleasant if rather inconsequential woman, given to complaining that her husband has not been given a more prestigious living. Margaret, however, loves the town of Helstone, and its people, and quickly settles back in. Two events disturb her peace, however: Henry Lennox comes to visit, and he asks her to marry him. Margaret is taken aback -- she has not thought of him as anything but a friend. He is abashed, but vows to try again after some time, as there is no one else Margaret cares for in that way. Then, more shockingly, Mr. Hale announces that he has decided, for reasons of conscience, that he must resign his position -- he has become a Dissenter. (It's not clear if his inclinations are Methodist or perhaps Unitarian (like Mrs. Gaskell's father and husband.)) This will result in even further reductions in their income, and, it soon becomes clear, a move to the industrial northern town of Milton (in a fictional county called Darkshire -- a name perhaps a bit too much on the nose.) This move has been recommended by Mr. Hale's old college friend, Adam Bell, who has property in Milton, and who believes that Mr. Hale can make a living as a tutor to some of the ambitious young men in town, or their children.

The move is accomplished (mostly through the efforts of Margaret and of Mrs. Hale's redoubtable maid Dixon.) Life in Milton is less pleasant than in Helstone -- the air is smoky, the people are constantly bustling -- all what Margaret calls "shoppy people", and the Hales' finances are less certain. Mr. Hale has one particular favorite student: John Thornton, who rents the property on which he has built a cotton mill from Mr. Bell. Mr. Thornton is a truly self-made man -- his father had lost all his money and committed suicide, and his mother had by pure force of will brought up John and his younger sister Fanny. John started as a draper's clerk and was eventually able to take over the cotton mill and make it a success, and he, conscious of his lack of education, is reading the classics with Mr. Hale. They become friends, and sometimes discuss their differing philosophies of life -- Margaret joins in these discussions occasionally, somewhat  repulsed by the commercial ambitions of Mr. Thornton but slowly realizing that his ambitions are more than simply to make as much money as he can.

Margaret also makes the acquaintance of a Nicholas Higgins and his sickly daughter Bessy, who live not far from the Hales' place. Margaret befriends Bessy, who is dying because of the cotton fluff she inhaled while working in one of Milton's many factories. Margaret comes to realize something of the conditions of life for the working class -- and makes friends as well with the prickly and irreligious Mr. Higgins. And she learns that the workers in Milton have formed a union, and that they plan a strike. Margaret hears as well from Mr. Thornton that he and his fellow mill-owners know of the strike, and are determined to resist it -- in part because their businesses are suffering. 

Thus the mainsprings of the novel -- a depiction of life in the industrial North, and its effect on those who live there (with an implied contrast to the more bucolic South); and also the (obvious to the reader) growing attraction, both intellectual and physical, between Margaret Hale and John Thornton. (A love story that has been compared, in a slightly inverted way, to that of Pride and Prejudice.) The strike comes to fruition, and a climactic event involves Margaret, by accident at the Thorntons' home, protecting John from violent strikers. John misinterprets, or at least overinterprets, her actions, driving the love story in one direction. Meanwhile, a series of at least six deaths convulse the personal lives of the main characters -- beginning with Bessy Higgins ... and, well, I'll not list the rest. There is another major plot point involving Margaret's older brother Frederick, a Navy man who became involved in a mutiny, and as a result is living in exile in Spain. This leads to a nearly catastrophic action by Margaret which severely impacts her relationship with John Thornton; and also to the re-entry of Henry Lennox, who tries to help Frederick clear his name.

The novel unspools beautifully ... Margaret needs to move back to London, after a cathartic reacquaintance with Helstone. Henry Lennox is back in the picture. Nicholas Higgins finds himself in a curious way again a parent; and also, in a curious way, an ally of sorts to John Thornton, as John's business is severely threatened. Margaret and John both labor under the burden of realizing they have seriously wronged the other (at least in their heads) with no way of resolving that. Henry's efforts to clear Frederick's name bring him back into Margaret's orbit -- but not quite as he hopes.

I won't say the novel is perfect. There is an array of coincidences, each in itself plausible enough but in toto a bit of a stretch. The optimism about labor/management relations that eventually arises is -- let's just say, the way one might hope things could be but not entirely the way things have worked out (though, to be honest to some extent they have worked out this way, just more slowly.) And the ending -- even with Gaskell's revisions -- was just a tad abrupt for me. But -- I absolutely loved it.

To begin with -- Margaret Hale. I don't know if this is just me drinking Gaskell's Kool-Aid, but I admired Margaret about as much as I have ever admired a novel's protagonist. She is -- and I believed this, that's the point -- supremely intelligent, morally upright, beautiful (and it's hard to truly portray this in prose, but I bought it), willing to recognize when she's wrong and to change, hardworking, not at all egotistical. I think she's one of the great women in fiction, and not well enough known for that. The novel is also socially conscious, and at the same time inquisitive -- willing to present two sides of an issue, willing to tolerate ambiguity. It is honest. It is generous. As much as we like the main characters, we like others -- Nicholas Higgins, justifiably bitter but also honest and willing to learn; the cranky maid Dixon, jealous of her rights but amusing and true -- and the likewise cranky Mrs. Thornton. Adam Bell, the lone truly comic character in the book (though Dixon has her moments) -- but also a deeply loving man, aware of his weaknesses but not really willing to change. Henry Lennox -- a brittlely intelligent man, constrained by his social milieu to limit his sympathy for those not his equals, and perhaps by the end understanding this. 

Gaskell engages, perhaps not as deeply but still intriguingly, with religious differences as well. Of course there is Mr. Hale's crisis of conscience at the heart of things. With Margaret remaining a convicted Anglican. And Frederick, her brother, converting to Catholicism, perhaps for the love of a Spanish girl he meets. While Nicholas Higgins is unable to turn to God, given the unjust conditions he lives under, and especially how they impact his beloved daughter. 

(A minor point -- the chapters are headed with quotations from poems, some from anonymous writers, and many from Gaskell's contemporaries, such as Landor -- and George Eliot, whose first novel appeared a couple of years after North and South -- a useful reminder that Eliot was first known for her poetry (and criticism), much respected at the time but almost unread now.)

North and South grabbed my attention from the outset, and never let go. I looked forward to reading (hearing) it desperately. Gaskell's prose is impeccable, if never as perfect as Eliot's, nor quite as clever as Mary Elizabeth Braddon could be. I was brought to tears over and over again -- at acts of heroism, at tragic events, at inspirational moments. Every character seemed real, though some were perhaps less deep than others -- Margaret's cousin Edith, and indeed her mother, were perhaps a bit too much types -- but believable types. It's a wonderful novel, and in recent decades it has claimed its deserved recognition at last -- I can only say, if you like Victorian fiction at all (and you should!) -- you must read this novel.

Review: Death and the Chaste Apprentice, by Robert Barnard

Review: Death and the Chaste Apprentice, by Robert Barnard

Scribner, 1989, ISBN: 0684190028

a review by Rich Horton

(This resurrects a review I wrote for my SFF Net newsgroup back in 1997. I don't cover the mystery writers I read often enough, so I figure posting this one would be nice. It's been slightly updated.)

I seem to read mystery writers in clumps: that is, I find a writer I like, read most of his or her output over a period of a year or two, then move on to someone else, possibly keeping up more or less with the previous favorite, possibly letting the previous favorite drop. I don't think I do this in any other genre: I couldn't say why. Perhaps it is because mystery writers tend to be somewhat prolific, and to write series of novels featuring the same characters. At any rate, in the past I've run through Robert B. Parker, Rex Stout, Ellis Peters, Anne Perry, Peter Lovejoy, Georges Simenon, and others. And my mystery writer of the moment (1997) is now Robert Barnard.

Robert Barnard (1936-2013) was an Englishman who spent time as a lecturer in English Literature both in Australia and Norway (and both locales have turned up in his books). He wrote an academic volume on Dickens. Beginning in 1974 he published some 40 mystery novels and many short stories. The novels are characterized mostly by their dryly satiric tone. They are very funny, and very biting. For the most part, he seems to have eschewed the continuing series format, although he has published several books featuring Scotland Yard's Perry Trethowan, and a couple more featuring a character first introduced in the Trethowan books, Charlie Peace. Given that the non-series books feature one-off detectives, he is more free than usual to turn his sights on the foolishness and incompetence of the crime-fighters, as well as that of the criminals, and in several of his books a main object of satire is the police.

The latest Barnard novel that I've read (as of 1997) is Death and the Chaste Apprentice. This is not particularly recent, and while not his best, it's a solid book, and also a bit less savage than some of his works. It's not really part of any of his series (as far as I know), though Charlie Peace does turn up (and Wikipedia cites it as the first Charlie Peace novel.)

The Chaste Apprentice of the title is also the title character of a fictional Jacobean comedy which is being staged at an arts festival near London. The arts festival is held in part in an old inn, and we are introduced to the cast of the play, staying at the Inn, a couple of classical singers who are also performing at the festival, and the manager of the Inn, a rather odious, snoopy, Australian (Barnard really seems to have it in for Australia). Barnard spends some time setting up the complex dynamics of the characters: a young actor who seems to be falling for the Russian singer, an alcoholic actress, the leading couple of the play, who are married to each other but engage in very public adultery, the incredibly self-centred Indian singer and his manager, the tyrannical conductor of the opera, the eccentric director of the play, and of course the Inn's manager, who alienates everyone with his snooping and his know-it-all attitude. Then, as the play opens, a murder occurs, and the police have to investigate. Naturally, the investigation reveals a variety of unpleasant secrets which don't have anything to do with the murder, before finally ending with a slight twist and a nicely logical solution. (Actually one of Barnard's stronger mystery plots: many of his books, while still thoroughly entertaining, have very strained solutions.)

The true pleasure of this book, as with all Barnard, is the sly sarcastic asides which pepper the descriptions of the characters and events. At the same time, the characters are mostly rather sympathetic, even when somewhat flawed: this is not always true with Barnard, as I have read books of his which feature literally no likable characters. This book is also interesting for the snippets of information about Jacobean drama as well as 19th century opera.

Review: Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Review: Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

by Rich Horton

Adrian Tchaikovsky* made his name with a long fantasy series, Shadow of the Apt, then began writing SF with this novel, published in 2015. Along the way he's published a fair amount of short fiction, and I reprinted one of those, "Dress Rehearsal", in my 2017 Best of the Year volume. So Tchaikovsky was on my radar -- and when Children of Time won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, I knew I needed to read it. But -- I sometimes have a hard time getting to novels! I recently bought the third book in the trilogy, however (it was at a convention, and they didn't have the first two!) -- so I finally got the audio version of this first book and read it. (By lucky coincidence it turns out that the book is even my book club selection for next month -- something I didn't realize until after I started it!)

The audiobook is read by Mel Hudson, very capably. I always enjoy hearing an English accent (especially for a book written by an English person) -- kind of emphasizes the whole "separated by a common language" thing. With an English reader, I usually find words pronounced differently from the American way, sometimes almost comically -- there really is NOT a second "i" in the word "specialty"! Except -- apparently in England "speciality" is an accepted alternate spelling! 

Children of Time opens in a star system 20 light years from Earth. Dr. Avrana Kern has been leading a terraforming effort, and now she is ready to release her crowning achievement -- a set of monkeys to inhabit the planet, and a virus engineered to accelerate the monkeys' evolution into an intelligent species. But at the last moment, the effort is sabotaged, and Kern ends up marooned in orbit, the rest of the terraforming station destroyed, her monkeys having burned up in atmosphere. But we soon learn that the virus did make it to the planet's surface, and, having no monkeys to infect, instead it finds some other species -- particularly a variety of spider. Kern uploads herself into a computer, and her physical body goes into suspension. And down on the planet, the spiders begin the process of what we might has well call uplift.

Some two millennia in the future, civilization on Earth is all but finished. War destroyed the Old Empire -- driven by the same political rift that motivated the saboteur of Kern's project. The few survivors of the succeeding ice age have managed to patch together a few "Ark Ships", sending the crews (in suspension along with the "Cargo" -- the potential colonists) to the worlds they believe the Old Empire terraformed. The Gilgamesh has arrived at "Kern's World" -- but Avrana Kern awakens to meet them -- and warn them off, for she wants her world preserved for what she thinks are "her" uplifted monkeys. By this time her physical self is insane, and her uploaded copy more or less constrained to obey the insane part. Holsten Mason is the "classicist" assigned to the Gilgamesh's crew -- an expert on the old Imperial languages they expect to find at the terraformed sites. So it is Holsten who learns to understand Kern. His best friend becomes the head of Engineering, Isa Lain, whose job it is to understand the Imperial tech they encounter (and to maintain the the Gilgamesh.) Antagonists (of a sort) are the Captain, Guyen, who has a barely sane Messianic streak of his own, and the head of security, Karst.

Down on the planet, the spiders have achieve a fairly high level of intelligence, and are beginning to build societies. Tchaikovsky uses an interesting device to maintain continuity with the spiders over their many generations -- he calls three main characters the same names generation after generation: Portia, the adventurer/explorer; Bianca (or "Bee-anker" in Britspeak!), the scientist; and Fabian, the revolutionary male. (In spider society, females are larger and dominant -- and they often eat their mates -- one of the crusades of one of the Fabians is to make that practice illegal.) 

We follow the growth of spider society -- increasing use of technology (especially biotech); increasing social cooperation and organization; a battle with ants for territory followed by harnessing the ant colonies for various technological uses, such as a biogical computer; and, crucially, contact with Avran Kern, whom they call the "Messenger", a god who for centuries has been transmitting mathematical equations, hoping to hear the correct solutions from what she believes will be at last "uplifted" monkeys. More or less in parallel we see the struggles of the Gilgamesh -- an attempt to evade Kern's quarantine of "her" world, an attempt to travel to the next terraformed world down the line, which fails terribly; and a return to Kern's world for a last ditch effort of take possession of the world now owned by the spiders. All this leads to a desperate final battle, as the human history of ecological disaster and genocide threatens everything the spiders have built, with only Mason dimly realizing how wrong this is. And it leads to a striking and quite moving conclusion.

The novel is really cool old-fashioned SF. There is effective use of some traditional SF ideas -- the Gilgamesh becomes in essence a generation ship, and some familiar generation ship tropes are nicely deployed. Even better is the speculation about spider society, and the really neat ideas about how they think and use tech, etc. They do come off, perhaps inevitably, as a bit too human in some ways, though Tchaikovsky tries to avoid that. (The wonderful revelation of what the character is Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky are really like doesn't happen in this case.) But that isn't a big problem, and in a way is key to the resolution (and, I presume, to the sequels.) It's a lot of fun, and I'd say it deserved its Clarke Award.

*(I love the story of Adrian Tchaikovsky's penname -- he's English, of Polish descent, real name Czajkowski, but his publishers wanted a name English people could pronounce -- so they suggested Tchaikovsky, pronounced the same (I assume) as his real name, but easy for English readers to recognize because of the composer.)

An M-Brane SF Double: The New People, by Alex Jeffers/Elegant Threat, by Brandon H. Bell

An M-Brane SF Double: The New People, by Alex Jeffers/Elegant Threat, by Brandon H. Bell

by Rich Horton

My fellow St. Louisan Christopher Fletcher published 30 issues of M-Brane SF in the three year period from February 2009 through January 2012 -- in print! A staggering achievement, really. And the fiction he published was of impressive quality. He had other publishing ambitions -- Brandon H. Bell edited three issues of Fantastique Unfettered for him, and Rick Novy edited an anthology, Ergosphere. (Fletcher and Bell also edited an anthology for Eric Reynolds' Hadley Rille Press, The Aether Age: Helios, sort of a steampunk revisiting of Ancient Greece.) Christopher also entertained the idea of publishing a set of double novels, in the Ace Double format (i.e. tête bèche, each side oriented at 180 degrees to the other, with either potentially the "front.") In the end, he only published one such book -- the one I'm covering now, which backs a pair of long novellas (30,000 words or so apiece) by M-Brane regulars. Christopher was kind enough to send me a copy a few years ago, and it took me an unconscionably long time to get to it, especially given that Alex Jeffers is a writer I particularly admire. But I have finally read it!

[Cover by Jeff Lund]

Both pieces are pretty self-contained stories from planned novels that have not, alas, yet eventuated. Alex Jeffers' The New People is, according to Fletcher's introduction, part of a book to be called A Boy's History of the World. The setting is  Rahab, an ocean planet somewhat isolated from what we presume is a larger galactic society. Humans live on only a few small archipelagoes, but life seems generally quite comfortable, with fairly high technology used in a what seem environmentally friendly ways. There is one unusual feature -- the population is entirely male. It is a purposeful inversion of the societies depicted in stories as varied as Joanna Russ's "When it Changed" and Poul Anderson's Virgin Planet: those are all female societies, this of Rahab is all male. (The other prominent such example is Lois McMaster Bujold's Ethan of Athos. One more, less pleasant, example occurs in Cordwainer Smith's "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal.") "Jannicke's Cat" depicted the title woman (not the cat!) as the last surviving female of whatever disaster wiped out all females on Rahab. The New People is set centuries later. Genetic engineering allows male children to be born to male couples. Life is calm, almost idyllic.

The story opens with Jafet desperately running out of a building ... we soon learn the building has been bombed. Jafet is one of a few survivors. And one of the suspects in the bombing is a group called the "New People" -- and Jafet has read their manifesto approvingly. As soon as he recovers, a policeman -- a very attractive man -- is questioning him. But it's fairly clear he had no involvement ... Then, 13 years before, we return to Jafet, still living with his fathers. Jafet has realized he is profoundly attracted to other boys, and he learns, or internalizes, that while his fathers love each other well enough, they are, at heart, heterosexual -- and of course there are no women. That, then, is the central paradox of Rahab, a world of all men, apparently a mostly happy world, but a world in which most relationships are more platonic than fully sexual. (The question really isn't asked, and perhaps would be unfair: but could this in some ways account for the apparent, well, pleasantness of life in this world?) 

Things continue on those two alternating timelines: the earlier one following Jafet's early adult life, as he does his global service, a few six month assignments, at various places around the world. More importantly, he meets a man, Evren, a remarkably talented singer. They fall head over heels for each other, as Jafet tries to work around his service requirements to follow Evren on tour, and as Evren makes a place of Jafet in his life, and is clearly ready for much more. But we know all along that didn't work out, for in the present Jafet is still unmarried, and indeed is emotionally a wreck, blaming himself constantly for breaking off with his past love. Moreoever, as the investigation into the bombing continues, we learn that it was an attack on one of the main nurseries in Rahab -- a place where the new babies are decanted, and their fathers first meet them. And one of those new fathers was Evren, and Evren's husband and child are among the dead.

The two strands move closer and closer, as in the one we see Jafet and Evren's love affair, and then the crushing way it ended. And in the present we follow (at a distance) the investigation into the bombing, as Jafet becomes intrigued with the policeman until he realizes that won't work, and as he learns eventually something of the motivation behind the bombing, and also something of the history of The New People movement and its goals (which intrigue Jafet.) And of course Jafet realizes that as Evren has survived he must face his pain and resolve their relationship. And behind all these strands lies the central problem at the heart of life on Rahab -- the only possible sexual relationships are between men, but most men are born essentially heterosexual. (This last presents a distinct contrast to the stories mentioned above -- the Russ and Anderson and Bujold.) Beyond that this is a story about a lovely sunny world (truly a near utopia) with some honest darkness dogging it. It's a really well-done story, that I think will benefit from the additional context of other planned episodes set in the same world.

[Cover by Jeff Lund]

Elegant Threat is subtitled ... on the Demise of Captain Fantomas Patton-Guerrero and Loss of La Amenaza Elegente. This tells us right away that the story won't end happily. La Amenaza Elegente is a ship that descends to the surface of the moon Shanama, in the Alpha Centauri (or Rigil Kentaurus) system, to harvest some of the local life, which is DNA-based, as opposed to the more alien life on Oasis, the planet the humans in this system seem to have colonized. There is a background, only dimly perceived here, of a conflict between Post-humans and still (fairly) normal humans. But this story really focuses on one fraught expedition to the surface of Shanama, and the effect this has on the ship's Captain, his wife Pristina, their two daughters, 16 year old Cancer and 8 year old Toro; as well as the first mate, Khalid, and his son Amr. Khalid and Amr are "slicks" -- the working class -- and Amr has a bit of a crush on Cancer, who seems a vain brat.

The story shows a bit of the normal operation of the ship, and shows Amr and Cancer serving (to different degrees) as apprentices -- intended to learn the ropes. But the ship has been sabotaged (betrayed by one of the crew ) and by happenstance the three children are the only ones on the ship when it goes out of control, and the main action, then, follows a desperate rescue attempt across the surface of the moon, with danger including the weather, and ghost sharks, and a megalodon. Amr grows up a bit -- or a lot -- and Toro has her own variety of heroism, while Cancer shows a different side -- not always pleasant. And Khalid and Fantomas and Pristina and their crew risk their lives try to save the children ...

It's exciting enough, and the setting is fascinating. But I did come away feeling I needed to know more about the back story, and more details about the slick position in society, and indeed the society as a whole, and perhaps especially about the conflict with the Posthumans. It's likely the finished novel would fill in a lot of these details (and at least two other stories in this milieu have appeared) but as it is this novella, though worth reading, doesn't fully succeed.

Review: Carmen Dog, by Carol Emshwiller

Review: Carmen Dog, by Carol Emshwiller

by Rich Horton

Carol Emshwiller (1921-2019) began selling SF in the mid-1950s, and it was quickly evident that she was a major talent. But while her early work got admiring notice, it was just offbeat enough not to make her famous -- and in the early '60s she wrote little, presumably while raising her children.* (Her husband was Ed Emshwiller, the great SF artist and also an important experimental filmmaker.) In the late '60s she resumed writing, and continued to produce original and challenging short fiction for most of the rest of her life (her last story appeared in 2012 -- health problems (most related to her eyesight, I believe) caused her to stop.) But like many SF writers, she was best at shorter lengths, and she didn't publish a novel until 1988. In the end, she published only six novels -- two of them Westerns set in the 20th Century, and four SF novels. By the end of her life, people such as me were suggesting that she should be an SFWA Grand Master, but I suspect that the shape of her career, and her relatively small output of novels, kept her just enough under the radar that she never received that award -- though she was named winner of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award in 2019, and she also won a couple of World Fantasy Awards (including one for Life Achievement), a couple of Nebulas, and a Philip K. Dick Award for Best Novel for The Mount. 

That first novel, published in 1988, was Carmen Dog, the novel at hand. It was published by The Women's Press, an English publishing house which published books by and about women, some reprints and some new, between 1979 and 2002. They had an SF line, which featured reprints by the likes of Joanna Russ, Marge Piercy, and Octavia Butler among many others, and original fiction by Josephine Saxton, Melanie Tem, and Emshwiller, again among others. (I will say for myself that I applaud the words they published, but the books were often poorly bound and the covers were terrible.) Carmen Dog was reprinted by Mercury House in the US in 1990, and again reprinted in 2004 by Small Beer Press in their Peapod Classics line. I have the latter edition, a really nice trade paperback, with an unusual trim size (5.5" by 7") and a fine cover by Kevin Huizenga.

The book is a delight. As it opens, we learn that all over the world, women are transforming into animals (of all kinds) and animals are transforming into women. The main character is a dog named Pooch, who is becoming a woman. Pooch is devoted to her master and the baby, and when her master's wife, who is changing to some sort of water creature, bites the baby, she decides she must take the baby away. Pooch has also discovered a talent for opera singing, and loves Carmen above all. 

But Pooch's opera dreams, as well as her hopes for reunification with her former master, are disrupted, first by arrest (and a trip to the pound) and then by a "rescue" by an experimental psychologist, who has "plans" to understand what is happening to the females of both the animal and human species. In both places Pooch makes friends with other females, both going "up" to humanness, or "down" to animal species. (While Pooch's sympathies are with those "ascending", like her, the question of which is better or if either is "better" is deliberately ambiguous.) The psychologist's treatments are truly horrifying, and Pooch loses her ability to speak -- and to sing. But she keeps on struggling, and keeps protecting the baby. Her adventures continue -- to a daring escape, a visit to the opera, a sexual escapade with another female and her opera singer lover, and eventually contact with a revolutionary group led by the psychologist's also altered wife.

This novel manages to be both very funny, very moving, and quite pointed. It's a deeply feminist novel, and through Pooch's naive ears we hear pointed observations about how men perceive women -- both those animals who have been "uplifted" and those humans whose nature is tending towards the animalistic. The revolution is most assuredly aimed at allowing women to be free of male expectations -- but at the same time is not anti men -- just desiring a future for men and women in which both flourish cooperatively. As the revolution's manifesto goes: "Neither Conqueror nor Conquered, Neither Victory nor Defeat." It is simply a very fun novel, and a very thought-provoking one. It's beautifully imagined, sly, sweet, witty, and inspiring. Emshwiller was one of the great treasures of the SF field, under-recognized in her lifetime but never ignored, and we should be rediscovering all her work now, ready to place her in her deserved spot in the SF pantheon.

*It's worth noting that Carol Emshwiller's daughter Susan is a fine writer on her own, mostly of plays and screenplays, but also short fiction, including a story in F&SF. Her first novel, Thar She Blows, has just been released. Thar She Blows.