Review: Peace, by Gene Wolfe

Review: Peace, by Gene Wolfe

by Rich Horton

What to say about Gene Wolfe's Peace? That's a difficult task. The last time I "reviewed" a Wolfe novel my post was called "Random Notes on The Shadow of the Torturer" and I suppose this one might have been called "Random Notes on Peace" except that such a title might easily be misinterpreted. This review comes from my recent reread of the book. I won't reiterate what I have said before about Gene Wolfe, but I will leave this link to my obituary for him.

Peace (1975) is narrated in the first person by Alden Dennis Weer, an old man living in a huge rambling house somewhere in the Midwest. (Feels like northwestern Illinois to me, actually.) But almost everything I just wrote is in question, including the word "person". Not to mention "house", and "narrated" and "old" ... The novel's somewhat famous opening sentence reads "The elm tree planted by Eleanor Bold, the judge's daughter, fell last night." We learn later that Eleanor Bold planted trees on the graves of her friends, and there is an old legend that when a tree planted on one's grave falls, the ghost of the person in the grave is released. One assumes, then, that the elm tree that has just fallen was planted on Weer's grave -- which tells us too that this narration is likely decades if not more after Weer's death, which gives another spooky glow to the book.

So -- and this, I think, is all but inarguable, especially as Wolfe himself confirmed it -- Alden Dennis Weer -- called "Den" (as in "den of the wolf"?) -- tells the many stories in this intricate book after his death, as he wanders through the nearly endless sequence of rooms in his "house". His house, of course, is a sort of memory palace. It is also, a passage late in the novel suggests, co-extant with his skull -- and his skull may be in the hands of a far future archaeologist. I will say that on first reading I missed much about this novel, but I did realize that Weer must be dead. (However, I say "all but inarguable" because I have found people who disagree that Weer is dead.)

Weer tells us his life story, then, from the vantage point of his house -- but this house is as I said a sort of memory palace, containing a vast series of rooms based on rooms from his past -- rooms in his grandmother's house, his Aunt Olivia's house, his apartment later in life, his office at work, doctors' offices, and so on. His narrative moves back and forth through time. He tells us he has suffered a stroke, and indeed he visits, in his memory, a couple of doctors for advice.

His first visit to a doctor's office there are four other people in the waiting room -- all people we will meet again in this novel: Margaret Lorn, Ted Singer, Abel Green, and Sherry Gold. It being a waiting room, there are magazines (Life, Look, Today's Health, and Water World.) Weer says "There is (as a matter of fact) a whole pile of Lifes before me, and I play the old game of trying to arrange them chronologically without looking at the dates, and lose." On first reading that meant nothing to me but on rereading its significance is obvious -- and certainly (among other things) it reflects the structure of the novel. Note too what the Nurse says of the four people in the waiting room, all younger than Alden Weer, when Alden says he must see the doctor, as he is dying. "All these people are ahead of you." Are they -- and some of them are much younger than Den -- all going to die before he does?

Over the course of five long chapters, Alden Dennis Weer tells his life story -- or some of it. At first glance it appears a discursive account of the childhood -- and later adulthood -- of a man living in a small Midwestern town, in the early 20th Century, extending by the end of his life to about the time of writing of the novel. Alden grows up with his parents until about the age of 9, then with his Aunt Olivia, his parents having spent several years in Europe. He goes to college, and at some time gets a job in the orange juice factory founded by Olivia's husband -- and in time takes over management of the factory. We see details of small town life, of working in the factory, of a couple of Den's ultimately not terribly successful love affairs ... 

We also hear numerous stories. Stories told by Aunt Olivia, by her three suitors and by the fourth man (Julius Smart) who ends up marrying her. Fairy stories, particularly from Andrew Lang's Green Fairy Book, which Alden receives as a gift when a boy. Stories about books. Stories about carnivals. Stories about a mysterious Chinese egg. And lots of stories about death.

There are also a great many lacunae. Very few of the stories actually come to an end, certainly including stories Weer tells about himself. There is essentially no information about his life in the couple of decades after he leaves college. We hear nothing about his father. We don't learn why he never married Margaret Lorn, whom he was in love with in high school. We don't learn much about Aunt Olivia's death, except that she was run over by a car. We don't know why Alden's leg is injured. We don't know who some people who seem to be very important, such as Doris, actually are. 

The closer we look, however, we do see how many people close to Den have died. Bobby Black, who fell down the stairs at age 5 in an accident seemingly caused by Alden. Aunt Olivia. Lois Arbuthnot. A co-worker at the juice factory who was locked in a freezer. Doris. Mr. Tilly. Julius Smart. Alden's parents. And in the end, the question arises -- with how many of these deaths was Alden Dennis Weer directly involved?

Definitive answers are hard to come by. Weer was nowhere near Mr. Tilly nor Doris, for example, when they died. What evidence there is points to someone else causing Olivia's death. Alden was only 5 when Bobby Black was injured. But darkness pervades the book, and the Alden Dennis Weer who tells us the story does not seem a happy man, nor a happy ghost. 

Peace is a book that I will need to read again to make more progress comprehending what really happens. But every reading is a joy -- it is mysterious, fascinating, dark but beautiful, and very rereadable. The depths in this novel may be endless -- but they are fruitfully deep. It is a book with a very high reputation among Wolfe aficionados, but in many ways it is not a well-known novel, perhaps partly because of its ambiguous genre status. Most of Wolfe's novels are unambigously, indeed exuberantly, SF or Fantasy, but this novel can be read as general fiction, and even when it is read as a ghost story it does not otherwise (in any overt way) depart from mainstream traditions. It may still be a novel that needs to find its true audience. But it is a book that you ought to try.

Old Bestseller Review: Olivia, by Olivia (Dorothy Strachey Bussy)

Old Bestseller Review: Olivia, by Olivia (Dorothy Strachey Bussy)

by Rich Horton

This book was written in the 1930s but not published until 1949, when it had quite a success. It was made into a movie in France in 1950, also called Olivia. The book was published as by its main character, Olivia, but the author was Dorothy Strachey Bussy (1865-1960), who was connected to the Bloomsbury Group though apparently somewhat tangentially. 

Olivia is a very short novel -- a novella, really, at just over 25,000 words. It tells the story of the title girl, who at the age of 16 is sent to a posh boarding school, Les Avons, in France. It's told by the older Olivia some decades after this time, which seems to have been in the late 1800s, parhaps about 1880. As in fact the author was born in 1865 and went to a posh boarding school, Les Ruches, in France, and wrote this novel decades later (in the 1930s) we can be forgiven for assuming it's a fairly autobiographical novel. 

Olivia had been at English schools for her previous education, and had not liked them. On coming to Les Avons she is delighted by the somewhat freer nature of the tuition.And she is immediately and especially enchanted with one of the two headmistresses, Mlle Julie. She considers her a wonderful teacher, and a gateway to certain sorts of literature (French tragedy seems a lot of it!), and also inspiring in other ways. And before long Mlle Julie quite openly makes Olivia her favorite, placing her in the prlvileged seat next her at dinner, singling her out for notice in class (though Olivia seems but an OK student), reading privately to her in the library. Olivia, on her part, develops an extreme crush on Mlle Julie, which seems to be reciprocated (though it doesn't seem that there is any physical consummation.) 

The other headmistress is Mlle Cara. Mlle Cara is an invalid, doing relatively little actual work at the school. It seems that Julie and Cara started the school together, with Julie's money but Cara's expertise, a couple of decades before, and were partners, certainly in business but surely sexually as well. But there has been a falling out, and as a result the school is divided. Each woman has a very close ally on the staff: an Italian woman called Signorina for Julie, and a German woman, Frau Riesener, for Cara. And the students too sort themselves into camps (and Cara seems to greatly resent that Olivia gravitated to Julie's camp.)

So things go through the school year, Olivia becoming more and more infatuated, being invited on trips to Paris, and eventually hoping that Mlle Julie will come to her bedroom -- but Julie seems aware that to start a physical relationship with a student might get her in real trouble. We meet some of the girls in Olivia's circle, including a very beautiful American (who is angling to marry a Duke and, we are told, eventually does) and, on a visit, Mlle Julie's previous favorite, a level-headed woman named Laura. But things come to a head late in the novel not because of Olivia but rather due to a final break between Julie and Cara, leading to a somewhat melodramatic conclusion. 

It's really a very nicely done slim story -- just about exactly the length it needed to be (it would have worn out its welcome had it gone on longer.) Olivia's 16 year old feelings seem real, and her reactions honest. The prose is graceful and effective. Evidently the book was first written in French, then translated to English for its first publication, and retranslated back into French for French editions. How much of this is directly from the author's life is up for question: Dorothy Strachey, later Dorothy Bussy, was bisexual, married and had a child, and had affairs with both men and women. Bussy herself wrote to her close friend André Gide: "I hope you didn't think that my entire story was true. A large part of it was, but an even larger part wasn’t." (Apparently her letters to Gide were written in French, and his to her were written in English.) The somewhat famous headmistress of her school, Marie Souvestre, seems likely to have been a lesbian (though Wikipedia dances gingerly around that question): she had a partner at her school, and after a breakup started a new school, eventually living with a former student. Indeed, Dorothy Strachey later taught at Souvestre's school in London, Allenswood, and indeed she taught Eleanor Roosevelt there. (Roosevelt kept up a correspondence with Souvestre until the latter's death.) 

The Stracheys are a rather famous family, particularly Dorothy's brother Lytton, who was part of the Bloomsbury Group and wrote respected biographical and critical works, such as Eminent Victorians and a biography of Queen Victoria. One of the earliest Stracheys wrote an account of the shipwreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda which is regarded as some of the source material for The Tempest, and which for that matter was the impetus for establishing a colony on the till then uninhabited archipelago. The family line includes numerous civil servants, some artists (including Dorothy's daughter Jane Simone Bussy), an important songwriter, a major computer scientist, etc. But they produced surprisingly little fiction. Olivia was Dorothy's only story, and her niece Julia Strachey wrote two (quite good) novels (which I review here) and some short stories, and that's about it. (And so I've read all the novella or novel length fiction the Stracheys have published!)

Old Bestseller Review: The Rocks of Valpré, by Ethel M. Dell

Old Bestseller Review: The Rocks of Valpré, by Ethel M. Dell

by Rich Horton

I had recently read Ethel M. Dell's The Hundredth Chance, and I went ahead and downloaded another of her books from Project Gutenberg. The Rocks of Valpré (1913) was her third novel, and it was a bestseller, and filmed twice, once silent and then in a 1935 talkie. I should note that the Wikipedia one line description of the plot is wrong. (The only correct phrase is "officer wrongly imprisoned" -- everything else is nothing like the actual book. I believe the plot described is actually that of the 1935 film.) 

As I wrote before, Ethel M. Dell (1881-1939) was a writer of romance novels published between 1911 and her death. She was popular enough -- she made up to £30,000 per year -- that she was routinely disparaged in serious books at the time, and even nonserious books like those of P. G. Wodehouse. Her married name was Savage -- curiously appropriate given some of her sexual themes. She is largely forgotten these days, as with many very popular authors of that era who were considered lowbrow. 

The opening section of The Rocks of Valpré is set near the fictional seaside town of Valpré. Christine Wyndham is a teenaged girl (perhaps 16) staying there with her younger brothers, Max and Noel, and her governess, plus her dog Cinders. Chris likes to go play on the beach with Cinders, wondering if she might meet a handsome Frenchman, and wondering about the Magic Cave of which she's heard. And -- voilá -- Cinders goes running off, and in finding him, who does she meet? A handsome Frenchman named Bertrand de Montwille, a soldier, some six years her senior.

In the way of things, they encounter each other some more, innocently playing and talking. And one day they make their way up to the Magic Cave -- and end up marooned there for a night by the high tide. Naturally this is regarded as scandalous ... though of course nothing happened. Chris does learn that Bertrand (whom she calls Bertie) has invented a special new weapon for France, and has vaulting ambitions. And she does encounter Bertrand in a duel with another French officer ... over a woman. (Her, of course.) Chris feels she might be in love, but after all, she's only 16. And Bertrand knows he is in love, but admits it's hopeless. And soon Chris returns to England.

Several years later, Chris is ready to marry the rich, handsome, and quite honest and good journalist Trevor Mordaunt. Chris is a bit skittish -- the memory of Bertrand is still with her, but she has heard nothing of him since then. She agrees to marry Trevor. What she doesn't know is that Bertrand had been betrayed by the very officer he had been duelling, who is jealous of his success, and has been framed for a crime (selling his new weapon to an enemy country) and sent to prison. One of his only defenders is a British journalist who, in reporting on his trial, became convinced of his innocence. That journalist, of course, is Trevor Mordaunt. 

Chris and Trevor get married, and have a honeymoon, but somehow Chris is not fully committed. There are other issues -- her somewhat rackety brothers, for instance, following on her irresponsible father, have left the family home in terrible shape. Trevor buys it, fixes it up, and gives to to Chris, but her older brother and Chris are both spendthrifts, and continue to take money from Trevor, making it worse by being dishonest. And then Trevor rescues a man at the end of his tether, starving, without money, in the rain in London. Of course this turns out to be Bertrand, who has been released from prison but exiled from France. Trevor hires him as his secretary. 

And, of course, Chris and Bertrand meet, and Chris's attraction to Bertrand is revived. Which sets up the (rather protracted) conclusion, involving blackmail, Bertrand's noble determination to renounce his love for Chris (until the afterlife, to be sure), a chance to prove Bertrand's innoceence, more financial issues, and, crucially, Bertrand's health, which has been ruined by his time in prison. Which, really, serves as kind of a cheating way for Dell to write her way out of the actually rather interesting dilemma she'd left Chris in -- her true love for a very good man, Bertrand, set against her true respect for the very good man she has married, Trevor. 

As I said in my previous review of a Dell novel, she's a good enough writer -- if not really a very good writer -- to hold the reader's interest, and to make us care. I did think this novel went on a bit too long, and, as I noted, kind of cheated its way to an ending. And there's a lot of gushing talk about eternal love extending into the afterlife (which presumably means polyamory once all of them get to heaven), and a fair amount of melodrama. For all that, I think Dell earned the money she made as a writer (which was a lot.) 

Anthologies I Never Got to Publish

Anthologies I Never Got to Publish 

by Rich Horton

As happens to most anyone, some books I hoped to publish never happened. I was looking back through my notes and past spreadsheets and stuff and found some interesting (to me!) details.

1. In 2007 I assembled a prospective Space Opera anthology, of the best Space Opera stories from 2006. I had Sean Wallace at Prime Books interested, and there was even a potential cover floated (seen at left), but in the end he decided not to publish the book. Here was the proposed TOC, which became a “ghost anthology” cited in the ISFDB and mentioned in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia:

Paul Berger, "The Muse of Empires Lost" (Twenty Epics)

Jay Lake, "Lehr, Rex" (Forbidden Planets)

Paul J. McAuley, "Dead Men Walking" (Asimov's)

John G. Hemry, "Lady Be Good" (Analog)

R. Garcia y Robertson, "Kansas, She Says, is the Name of the Star" (F&SF)

John Barnes, "Every Hole is Outlined" (Baen's Universe)

Brian Stableford, "The Plurality of Worlds" (Asimov's)

Alastair Reynolds, “Thousandth Night” (One Million A. D.)

Mike Resnick, "Catastrophe Baker and the Cold Equations" (Golden Age SF)

Anya Johanna DeNiro, "Have You Any Wool" (Twenty Epics)

I ought to call particular attention to the anthology Twenty Epics, edited by Susan Marie Groppi and David Moles, an absolutely fantastic original anthology from the very small publisher All-Star Stories – besides the two stories mentioned there were great pieces from Christopher Rowe, Tim Pratt, Yoon Ha Lee, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Mary Robinette Kowal, Meghan McCarron, Sandra McDonald, and others. It’s a jewel of a book, that came out of nowhere.

Not having learned my lesson, I tried again in 2008, and again Sean said no. The prospective TOC for this volume leaked also, though it’s not in the ISFDB, but John Scalzi did complain, saying he never had been asked for permission to reprint his story. Well, of course not – because the anthology never got to the point where we would ask for permissions. (John understood, of course, once that was explained.)

David Moles, "Finisterra" (F&SF, December)

John Scalzi, "Pluto Tells All" (Subterranean, Spring)

Richard A. Lovett, "The Sands of Titan", (Analog, June)

Ken MacLeod, "Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" (The New Space Opera)

Charles Stross, "Trunk and Disorderly" (Asimov’s, January)

Gareth L. Powell, "Six Lights Off Green Scar" (Infinity Plus)

Jayme Lynn Blaschke, "The Final Voyage of La Riaza" (Interzone, June)

C. W. Johnson, "Icarus Beach" (Analog, December)

Robert Reed, "The Caldera of Good Fortune" (Asimov’s, Oct/Nov)

Jay Lake, "The Fly and Die Ticket", (Subterranean, Fall)

Dan Simmons, "Muse of Fire" (The New Space Opera)

I did reprint some of the stories in both of these volumes in other anthologies, including the Space Opera book I did finally get to publish, in 2014, which reprinted my take of the best Space Opera short fiction of the millennium to that point.

2. In 2009 we combined the SF and Fantasy volumes of my Prime Books Best of the Year series into one, because we had lost our mass market publisher (who preferred the shorter separate volumes) and because it seemed clear the combined book would sell better than the two shorter books together. In the process -- and because one story I'd chosen turned out to have been previously published (that is, before 2008, when all the stories for the 2009 volume were to have been from) I'd also chosen three additional stories from 2008 for the Fantasy volume. In the end, we decided not to add these stories to the final combined volume. These three stories, all excellent, were:

Jessica Reisman, "Flowertongue" (Farrago's Wainscot #6)

Hal Duncan, "The Toymaker's Grief" (Lone Star Stories, October)

William Alexander, "Ana's Tag" (Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, November)

I actually had a longer list of prospective inclusions, some from the SF volume, that either couldn’t fit, or we couldn’t get permission to reprint, so here are the others:

Terry Bisson, “Private Eye” (F&SF, October-November)

Elizabeth Bear, “Overkill” (Shadow Unit)

Ted Chiang, “Exhalation” (Eclipse Two)

Greg Egan, “Crystal Nights” (Interzone, April)

Philip Raines and Harvey Welles, “Alice and Bob” (Albedo 1, #34)

Robert Reed, “Truth” (Asimov’s, October-November)

James Stoddard, “The First Editions” (F&SF, April)

3. In 2010 I assembled another Table of Contents for a collection of stories from webzines. The previous year I'd published Unplugged, which showcased online=only stories in their first print publication, and I hoped to do that again in 2010, for stories from 2009. However, that book never got published, because by then it was clear that webzines weren't really a novelty any more. (Also, perhaps, the first book hadn't sold all that well. But I still think it's damn good!) Here's the projected TOC for the 2010 book, which would have been called Rebooted: 2010 Download.

Forrest Aguirre, "The Non-Epistemological Universe of Emmaeus Holt", Farrago's Wainscot

John Barnes, "Things Undone", Jim Baen’s Universe

Catherine Cheek, "Voice Like a Cello", Fantasy

C. S. E. Cooney "Three Fancies from the Infernal Garden", Subterranean

James Enge, "Fire and Sleet", Pyr.com

Eric Gregory, "Salt's Father", Strange Horizons

Kij Johnson, "Spar", Clarkesworld

Richard Kadrey, "Trembling Blue Stars", Flurb

Helen Keeble, "A Journal of Certain Events of Scientific Interest from the First Survey Voyage of the Southern Waters by H.M.S. Ocelot, as Observed by Professor Thaddeus Boswell, D.Phil, MSc; or, A Lullaby", Strange Horizons

Lucy Kemnitzer, "Wink", Hub #86

Mary Robinette Kowal, "First Flights", Tor.com

Richard A. Lovett, "Carpe Manana", Abyss and Apex

Sandra McDonald, "Diana Comet", Strange Horizons

Holly Phillips, "Thieves of Silence", Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Tim Pratt, "A Programmatic Approach to Perfect Happiness", Futurismic

Ken Scholes, "A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon", Tor.com

Rachel Swirsky "Great Golden Wings", Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Lavie Tidhar, "The Dying World", Clarkesworld

Catherynne M. Valente, "The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew", Clarkesworld

Elliott Wells, "This Must Be the Place", Strange Horizons

4. In 2022 I definitely intended to continue my Best of the Year series. But the 2021 book had been delayed, and was electronic only, because of pandemic issues, both personal (on my part and on the publisher’s) and more general (skyrocketing paper costs, long wait times at printers, etc.) By the time that was straightened out, my publisher had decided (for reasons I definitely understand) to discontinue the anthology series. That’s a darn shame, but it’s life in the publishing business, and I’m by no means the only anthologist to have similar issues. (That said, if any publisher is interested in resuming my series, by all means contact me! 😊 )

However, I had already assembled a list of stories I’d have liked to have in the 2022 volume (stories from 2021.) And looking at this list adds to my disappointment – there were some wonderful stories that I’d really have loved to reprint! So, I’m going to go ahead and list the stories I was considering. Keep in mind – this wasn’t a final list, and I certainly hadn’t received permission to reprint any of these stories.

These first 11 are the Top Ten list I posted at Locus in my year end essay, and I definitely would have wanted all of those in by Best of the Year book, except probably not the William Gass story, which is think is great but not really SF or Fantasy – I listed it only because that issue of Conjunctions was excellent overall (and had a fair amount of SF/F) and because I liked the Gass story so much.

P. Djèlí Clark, “If the Martians Have Magic”, (Uncanny, 9-10/21)

William H. Gass, “The Pattern of a Proper Life”, (Conjunctions:76)

José Pablo Iriarte, “Proof by Induction”, (Uncanny, 5-6/21)

John Kessel, “The Dark Ride”, (F&SF, 1-2/20)

David Moles, “The Metric”, (Asimov’s, 5-6/21)

Sarah Pinsker, “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather”, (Uncanny, 3-4/21)

Cat Rambo, “Crazy Beautiful”, (F&SF, 3-4/21)

Karen Russell, “The Ghost Birds”, (The New Yorker, 10/11/21)

Sofia Samatar, “Three Tales from the Blue Library”, (Conjunctions:76)

Alexandra Seidel, “January House”, (Not One of Us, 1/21)

Fran Wilde, “Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.”, (Uncanny, 5-6/21)

These are the other stories that were in my spreadsheet as candidates – I couldn’t have fit them all, so I’d have had to cull the list a bit, but I never had the opportunity to do that (agonizing!) work because the anthology was cancelled.

Eleanor Arnason, “The Graveyard”, (Uncanny, 7-8/21)

Tony Ballantyne, “Tail Call Optimization”, (Analog, 3-4/21)

Elizabeth Bear, “A Blessing of Unicorns”, (Asimov’s, 9-10/21)

T. J. Berry, “My Heart is at Capacity”, (Asimov’s, 5-6/21)

Maurice Broaddus, “Babylon System”, (F&SF, 5-6/21)

Octavia Cade, “The Women Who Didn’t Win Nobels, and How World Trees Are Not a Substitute”, (Fusion Fragment, 5/21)

Adam-Troy Castro, “The Silence Before I Sleep”, (Analog, 9-10/21)

Charles Q. Choi, “By the Will of the Gods”, (Analog, 1-2/21)

Greg Egan, “Sleep and the Soul”, (Asimov’s, 9-10/21)

Meg Elison, “The Pizza Boy”, (F&SF, 3-4/21)

Jen Fawkes, “The Story Within”, (Tales the Devil Told Me)

Gregory Feeley, “The Children of the Wind”, (Asimov’s, 7-8/21)

Karen Joy Fowler, “The Piper”, (F&SF, 1-2/20)

Carolyn Ives Gilman, “Nanobojou and the Wise Men”, (Galaxy’s Edge, 6/21)

Alexander Glass, “A Hollow in the Sky”, (Interzone, #290-291)

Liam Hogan, “Six Coins”, (Curiosities, Winter/21)

Nalo Hopkinson, “Broad Dutty Water: A Sunken Story”, (F&SF, 11-12/21)

Alex Irvine, “Glitch”, (Asimov’s, 3-4/21)

Kathleen Jennings, “Gisla and the Three Favors”, (LCRW, 6/21)

Naomi Kanakia, “I Didn’t Buy It”, (Asimov’s, 1-2/21)

Benjamin C. Kinney, “Conference of the Birds”, (Analog, 1-2/21)

Rich Larson, “The World, a Carcass”, (F&SF, 5-6/21)

Jonathan Lethem, “The Crooked House”, (The New Yorker, 3/8/21)

Megan Lindholm, “A Dime”, (F&SF, 11-12/21)

Marissa Lingen, “Beyond the Doll Forest”, (Uncanny, 1-2/21)

Jim Marino, “Acting Tips for Remaining Unknown”, (LCRW, 6/21)

Premee Mohammed, “Those Who Walk on Currents of Earth”, (Alternate Plains)

Lisa Morton, “Antonia and the Stranger Who Came to Los Feliz”, (Speculative Los Angeles)

T. R. Napper, “A Vast Silence”, (F&SF, 11-12/21)

Ray Nayler, “The Shadow of His Wings”, (Analog, 3-4/21)

Yukimi Ogawa, “Her Garden, the Size of Her Palm”, (F&SF, 7-8/21)

Chimedum Ohaegbu, “And for My Next Trick, I Have Disappeared”, (F&SF, 7-8/21)

Heather Osborne, “Groven”, (Seasons Between Us)

Mark Polanzak, “How You Wish”, (The OK End of Funny Town)

Lettie Prell, “Uploading Angela”, (Analog, 5-6/21)

Ranylt Richildis, “Sainte-Noyale”, (Fusion Fragment, 6/21)

Madeleine Robins, “Mannikin”, (F&SF, 3-4/21)

Karen Russell, “The Cloud Lake Unicorn”, (Conjunctions:76)

Erica L. Satifka, “Act of Providence”, (How to Get to Apocalypse)

Bianca Sayan, “Extrasolar Redundancy in the Nova Tortuga Model of Preservation Dermochelys coriacea”, (Analog, 9-10/21)

Priya Shand, “The Yoni Sutra”, (Fusion Fragment, 9/21)

Michael Swanwick, “Huginn and Muninn – and What Came After”, (Asimov’s, 7-8/21)

Rachel Swirsky, “Thirteen of the Secrets in My Purse”, (Uncanny, 5-6/21)

Molly Tanzer, “In the Garden of Ibn Ghazi”, (F&SF, 3-4/21)

Lavie Tidhar, “The Egg Collectors”, (Interzone, #290-291)

Catherynne M. Valente, “The Sin of America”, (Uncanny, 3-4/21)

Caroline M. Yoachim, “Colors of the Immortal Palette”, (Uncanny, 3-4/21)

Marie Vibbert, “The Unlikely Heroes of Callisto Station”, (Analog, 7-8/21)

 

Review: The Lonely Girl (aka Girl with Green Eyes), by Edna O'Brien

The Lonely Girl aka Girl with Green Eyes, by Edna O'Brien

a review by Rich Horton

Edna O'Brien was born December 15, 1930 in Ireland, and died just a couple of weeks ago, July 27, 2024, at the age of 93. She was one of Ireland's most important 20th Century novelists, and was particularly important in bringing a frankness about the sexual life of young women into Irish literature -- an achievement that caused her early work to be fiercely criticized and sometimes banned in her home country. She trained to be a pharmacist and worked at that job in Dublin, but moved to London with her husband in 1959, and never again lived in Ireland. She wrote some 16 novels, four children's books, several plays, and countless short stories, as well as criticism, biographies of Joyce and Byron, and a memoir. After hearing of her death, I decided I ought to finally read her, and I took up the only book of hers I have, a 1981 paperback edition, "in Penguins" as the publisher likes to say, of Girl with Green Eyes. This was Penguin's 1964 retitling of her second novel, The Lonely Girl (1962), presumably to coincide with the release of the movie based on the novel and also called Girl with Green Eyes, starring Rita Tushingham, Lynn Redgrave, and Peter Finch. Kingsley Amis, I note, was an early promoter of her work, which isn't in any way surprising, but it amuses me mildly as both Amis and O'Brien had at least four novels with the word "Girl" in the title (arguably for different reasons!)

The Lonely Girl is narrated by Caithleen (Kate) Brady, who grew up in rural Ireland, as apparently related in The Country Girls (1960), O'Brien's first novel. She and her best friend Barbara (Baba) Brennan have moved to Dublin, and share a room in the house of Joanna, who seems to be a somewhat recent immigrant. The novel appears to be set in the 1950s, approximately the time of writing. Kate works at a small shop, and makes just enough money to get by, though she's been promised a "rise" in the new year. She and Baba have as an active a social life as they can manage, cadging tickets to dances and such when they can, or pulling tricks like posing as reporters for Women's Night. Baba seems the more adventurous, and knows several young men, and seems likely to be sleeping with a married man. Kate is a reader, and quieter than Baba, and somewhat sensitive about her weight.

The novel is primarily built around Kate's affair with an older man, Eugene Gaillard, a documentary filmmaker in his mid-30s. (Kate turns 21 during the novel.) This is her second serious boyfriend -- apparently she had a boyfriend she called Mr. Gentleman in The Country Girls. They go on several dates, and before long Eugene invites her to his house, out in the country a bit. It's a beautiful location, and the house is -- quaint. Kate is very attracted to Eugene, and he to her, and eventually she agrees to sleep with him, indeed to move in with him, but panics when he attempts to have sex. He is tolerant of this, and tolerant of her relative ignorance, and they get along pretty well, even though Kate learns that Eugene has an American wife, and a daughter, though the wife has left him and taken their daughter with her back to the US.

But gossip gets to the ears of Kate's father (her mother drowned when she was 14.) Her father is a terrible man, constantly drunk, but the whole community collaborates as he essentially kidnaps her and takes her back home. She tries to escape and can't, and is lectured by the local priest, but finally manages to get back to Eugene's house. Leading to a terrible confrontation when a posse from Kate's village comes by the next day and is only chased away by the housekeeper brandishing a gun, after Eugene is beaten up. Kate does begin to have sex and enjoy it, but it's clear to the reader that this relationship can't last, between the uneven ages of the two people, and Eugene's marriage (and apparent remaining feelings for his wife), and Eugene's growing impatience with Kate's youth. So the novel moves to its inevitable conclusion.

The plot isn't really what drives the story, though. The characters are extremely well depicted. The book is very funny at times -- Baba is a hoot -- and the portrayal of Kate's young love and developing sexuality is convincing, as is the portrayal of life in general in Ireland. And the prose is wonderful. It's a beautiful novel, and Edna O'Brien certainly deserves her reputation.

Review: The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl

Review: The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth

by Rich Horton

I recently had occasion to reexamine some of Frederik Pohl's most significant work, in support of an essay about Pohl's consideration of the future or work and working people. This was quite rewarding -- I've enjoyed Pohl's contributions ever since encountering him in my early teens, but I'd lost touch with his major works. And arguably chief among those is The Space Merchants -- which of course he wrote in collaboration with C. M. Kornbluth.

The Space Merchants is a widely accepted classic of science fiction. I read it with considerable enjoyment in my teens, but as I worked on that essay I realized that I didn't remember it very well at all, so I reread it. And in the process I bought the revised version, from 2011. In this version Pohl said he fixed a few "logical and scientific errors" -- I suppose I'm OK with changes like that. But he also did things like remove references to the year in which the events occurred -- a few decades after 2039 in the original book, so I suppose Pohl thought that seemed uncomfortably close to 2011. And he altered the names of some of the corporations mentioned, which to me is pointless and something of a cheat. (At first I thought, wait a minute, Pohl and Kornbluth predicted FedEx?!) Pohl also added a preface describing the origins of the novel, and of his collaboration with Kornbluth, which was pretty enjoyable and worthwhile.

The novel first appeared as a serial called "Gravy Planet" in Galaxy in June, July, and August of 1952. The book version came out in 1953 from Ballantine, which at that time often issued simultaneous hardcover and paperback first edtions, and did so in this case. It has been reprinted many times since then (indeed, Pohl somewhat ironically discusses that status of latter day reprints in the preface to this edition.) Pohl did write a sequel, The Merchants' War, published in 1984. I have not read that book.

Mitch Courtenay is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. He is a high-ranking copywriter for Fowler-Schocken, one of the leading advertising agencies in the crowded near future Earth. And it turns out that that's an even more important position than we might think, as in this future the advertising agencies essentially hold all the power. The society is basically corporatist, and the battle to increase sales is fundamental. And the best tool corporations have to improve sales is advertising -- so by now the ad agencies pull all the strings. As the novel opens, Mitch gets a plum new assignment, which comes with a promotion -- he is going to lead the advertising effort for the Venus Project -- a plan to colonize (and terraform) Venus. From the perspective of the corporations, this is mainly a way to open up space for new consumers, as Earth is getting terribly crowded. The challenge, for Fowler Schocken and by extension Mitch, is to make the idea of colonizing a hellish place like Venus attractive. But Mitch takes it on, with the help of the first man to land on Venus, Jack O'Shea, a midget, and a cynical man to boot. As Jack says, when asked what he would do to attract colonists to Venus: "I'd tell them a lot of damn lies!" Which is right up an ad man's alley. 

Mitch has another problem, a personal problem: his wife Kathy. He's still desperately in love with her, but the end of their one year marriage contract is approaching and she isn't showing signs of wanting to renew. He hopes his promotion will make her readier to renew, but she's still resistant. And when the Venus Project gets going, she does show some interest in helping him out -- but she also shows perhaps a bit too much interest in Jack O'Shea.

Then a major complication arises -- Mitch's biggest rival in Fowler Schocken seems to be obstructing his work, and when Mitch tries to arrange a confrontation, he is betrayed, and finds himself declared dead, and with a new identity, sent to work in the Chlorella plantations, with the synthetic food processing. This is a typically abusive work environment for this future. It's a company shop, in that food and housing are supplied by the corporation, and the system is set up so that it's almost impossible to avoid falling into debt. Work contracts theoretically expire, but as one adds debt the contract can be extended. The work is difficult and dangerous. This is the look we get in this novel at blue collar working conditions, and of life in general at that economic level. It's pretty horrifying, and the sense is that much of the crowded world lives in similar straits. The reform movement in the book is, however, mostly environmental -- the "Consies" (Conservationists) are the main resistance movement, and while they certainly have adherents among the lower classes, they do seem dominated by better off people. And, inevitably, Mitch gets involved with that movement -- though his plan is to betray the Consies to his superiors, to allow himself to be reinstated to his rightful position.

All this is pretty effective stuff -- sharply satirical, with a sympathetic protagonist who we realize is on the wrong side. The criticism of advertising, and thus of corporate domination, is biting and hits home. Having said that, upon this reread, I found the resolution disappointing -- Mitch's inevitable change of heart seems forced, and the hugger mugger to get to a (mostly) happy ending doesn't convince. The final state of things is ... fair, I suppose? -- but also just what an SF fan wants. In the end, this is a good novel, that did an awful lot of original things, and truly did influence the future of the field -- but it's also a bit of a sellout, and so it remains good but not great.

Review: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winifred Watson

Review: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winifred Watson

a review by Rich Horton

This book has been on my radar for a while. It fits in a category I take considerable interest in: popular fiction of the first half of the 20th Century, for one thing. It's quite highly regarded by those who have read it. And I have had numerous recommendations from people I trust: first and foremost, Hyson Concepcion, but also Scott Thompson of the Furrowed Middlebrow blog. Several other people have echoed these recommendations in comments. So I bought a copy of the book, and put it right on top of my TBR pile, and there it stayed for a few weeks while I read a few other books due to various obligations. And just this past weekend, at the science fiction convention Confluence, I had a nice long talk with the writer Timons Esaias, and we realized we both have an interest in -- women writers of the first half of the 20th Century. And Timons asked -- "Have you read Winifred Watson's Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day?" I mean, I was going to read it promptly anyway, but that was a delightful serendipitous confirmation.

My edition is the Persephone Books paperback from 2000, with an introduction by Henrietta Twycross-Martin. This edition has an elegant cover in all grey except for the title/author block, though Persephone reissued it in 2008 with the illustrated cover shown above. (I have a couple of those all grey Persephone editions and I find that presentation quite nice.) The novel, Watson's third, was first published in 1938 by Methuen. The Persephone edition's text seems to have reproduced the pages from the first edition, which was illustrated nicely by Mary Thompson. Though Watson was apparently a somewhat sucessful writer in her day, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was evidently her most popular book, I could not find a copy of the earlier editions. I'll go into detail about Watson's life and career after touching on the novel.

Miss Pettigrew is a woman of 40 or so, quite poor, and taking jobs as a governess to make ends meet. As the story opens, at 9:15 AM, she is just entering the employment office, for she needs a new position. She doesn't think she's a very good governess, and she certainly doesn't enjoy her work, but the only alternative is the workhouse. The agency gives her the address of a Miss LaFosse, who is looking for a nursery governess, and Miss Pettigrew makes her way to Miss LaFosse's apartment.

On arriving, she finds a very pretty young woman, rather startled to see her, and apparently afraid she was someone else. And before long a young man emerges from the bedroom. Miss Pettigrew is rather taken aback -- and there is no sign of a nursery or a child -- but soon Miss LaFosse -- Delysia -- is asking for her help in shooing away this young man, Phil, because Miss LaFosse's other lover, Nick, is about to come over, and he is a dangerous man. Before long Miss Pettigrew has been enlisted by Delysia for more help with her somewhat disorganized social life. It turns out that Delysia has another lover, Michael, who doesn't have Phil's advantages (being willing to bankroll a show with Delysia as the star) or Nick's advantages (being devastatingly handsome and also paying Delysia's rent.) But Michael is willing to marry Miss La Fosse, and seems a better person anyway, except for the part about just getting out of jail.

So the novel continues, over the course of a day, as Miss Pettigrew also meets Delysia's hairdresser, Edythe Dubarry, and continues to help both women out of scrapes while herself being introduced to bohemian life, getting a makeover and wearing a nice dress, drinking, going to a night club, etc. It's a very light-hearted novel, and very funny, and if it's totally implausible who cares? Miss Pettigrew, all the while worrying about where Miss LaFosse's children might be and what will happen when she realizes Miss Pettigrew is just a governess, has the time of her life, and it would be fair to say that she and Delysia each learn (not in any heavy-handed way) some useful lessons from the other. The book is a thoroughgoing delight.

Winifred Watson (married name Pickering) was born in 1906 near Newcastle, and lived there most of her life. She published her first novel in 1935, Fell Top, and published five more through 1943, then stopped writing. She married in 1936, and her husband was apparently very supportive of her writing, but in 1943, the top floor of the house they were living in was hit by a bomb. She had by sheer luck taken her fussy baby downstairs just before. The house being unlivable, she had to move in with her mother-in-law, and conditions were simply not conducive to writing, and even after the War she never returned to it, despite encouragement from her husband and son.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was her third written novel, but, curiously, it was the fourth published, as Methuen originally rejected it. Her first two novels were good sellers, and both were romantic dramas set in rural areas near Newcastle, and her publishers wanted more of the same. She felt strongly about Miss Pettigrew, and made a deal -- she'd write another book like the one they wanted, but after that came out they would publish Miss Pettigrew -- and Watson's instincts about the book proved correct.

Before long all her books were out of print, and by the 1990s were all but forgotten. But Persephone -- one of a few imprints devoted to rescuing worthy books by forgetten women writers -- had asked for reader suggestions for books to reprint; and Henriette Twycross-Martin suggested Miss Pettigrew -- her mother's favorite novel, and a novel she too loved. Persephone's editors loved the book too, and they suggested that Twycross-Martin write the introduction -- and then they found that Winifred Watson was still living in Newcastle, then some 93 years old. All these details, I should add, are gleaned from Twycross-Martin's excellent introduction. Watson was able to see her novel reprinted, and widely praised, before her death at age 95 in 2002. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was made into an apparently pretty good movie in 2008, starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams (who seem excellent choices to play Miss Pettigrew and Delysia LaFosse, respectively.)