Review: Doting, by Henry Green

Review: Doting, by Henry Green

by Rich Horton

I discovered Henry Green a couple of decades ago largely because he was a friend of Anthony Powell, one of my favorite writers. I tried his best-known novel, Loving, and liked it a good deal, but it took me a while to continue. A few years ago I read Party Going, and found it astonishing. I have been planning to continue with him for a while, and indeed I started in on Doting, his last novel from 1952, some time back, but then the book somehow disappeared. So this past weekend I made a disciplined search for it, and it turned up in one of the many crates I'd filled with books while we were remodeling during COVID. And I've finally read it. I'm linking to my review of Party Going, which includes much more detail about Henry Green, whose real name was Henry Yorke (1905-1972).

The novel, as with his second to last novel, Nothing (1950), is told almost entirely in dialogue. It opens with Arthur Middleton, his wife Diana, his son Peter, and Annabel Paynter, the daughter of friends, attending a dinner theater, sometime shortly after the war. Arthur and Diana are about 40, Annabel is 19 or so, and Peter about to turn 17, and just about to return to boarding school. The conversation covers the entertainment, the food and drinks, and such things as Annabel, to Peter's displeasure, visiting one the prefects at his school. We also notice Arthur leering a bit at Annabel (getting a glimpse of her breasts when she leans over, for example) ... and it's fairly clear Annabel doesn't mind.

And thus the whirl of the characters begin. Soon Arthur is asking Ann out for "friendly" lunches, and even dinners, and their conversations move in the direction of seduction. Arthur has a confidante -- his and Diana's longtime friend Charles, a widower. And Ann confides with her coworker Claire. Diana gets wind of Arthur's attentions to Annabel, and tries to put a stop to them, at the same time beginning to meet with Charles. It's hinted that the Middletons' marriage is sort of semi-open, but Diana has her limits of toleration -- and so does Arthur, once he senses that something might be going on between his wife and his good friend. Claire joins the carousel -- lunching with Arthur and then with Charles, and happily going to bed with Charles. Annabel and Claire both claim to be atracted to older men. Arthur and Diana maintain that they love each other still, and over time Arthur, a busy civil servant, seems more willing to put aside his work to spend time -- in bed and out -- with Diana. Claire is perhaps just looking for a good time, but Annabel seems to be angling for something more. Charles remains traumatizzed by his wife's death (in childbirth) and his raising his son alone, and seems unwilling to think of marriage. Peter, a minor character really, is clearly a bit too young to be part of all this ... and the novel comes to its conclusion after perhaps a year, with another dinner party as Peter prepares to go to school again the following yeaer.

Described that way the book seems almost a sex comedy, even farce -- but there is no actual adultery -- it seems that Claire and Charles sleep together, and Arthur and Diana, but that's all. There are teases throughout, and plenty of talk of sex, and marriage. There's also the implied background of the recent war. There's the shadow of postwar rationing, and of death. There's the question as to what a single woman should be looking to do with herself. There's a good deal of ambiguous dialogue -- of outright lies and lots of evasions, and coy flirting. We do learn some of the background of the characters. It's at one level a light-seeming novel -- amusing and fast-moving, natural but arch conversation, an erotic frisson (though no real sex scenes.) At another level it's -- not exactly said but almost desperate. There is some happiness for the characters, but it seems thin, parlous. The war is over but the characters are not over it, is some of it; but, too, the men and women are, as ever, trying to learn how to be together. And, as Arthur tells Annabel: "Love must include adoration of course, but if you just dote on a girl you don’t necessarily go so far as to love her. Loving goes deeper." It's not entirely clear that anyone in this novel quite manages the deeper part.

SF Hall of Fame 1989-2018

Christopher Rowe wondered what might be in an "SF Hall of Fame" anthology going back a similar period that the original SF Hall of Fame covered in 1970 -- about 30 years, from a few years prior to that. And I decide to make my own list of stories that fits that specification. I posted it in a comment at Christopher's FB wall, but here's the same list, with some additional "just misses" added, for preservation at my own blog!

Best stories 1989-2018

Here's a list I put together today. I have lists of "short stories" (up to approximately 10,000 words) for a rough analog to the SF HOF Volume I, and novellas (10,000 to 40,000 or so) as a rough analog to Volumes IIA and IIB. I purposely slanted the list heavily to SF and not fantasy -- much as the first books were -- but there is some fantasy on these lists. I stuck to the 1989-2018 timeframe. I chose 30 short stories and 22 novellas -- just a bit more than the original books had. (So sue me!) If I did this tomorrow, the list might change by 1/3! ??

It was great fun putting this together, and especially choosing some somewhat forgotten stories that I think deserve more attention ("The Spade of Reason", "Sailing the Painted Ocean", "Three Days of Rain", "Sadness", "Milo and Sylvie" ...)

Short Stories

"Game Night at the Fox and Goose", by Karen Joy Fowler (1989)

"Bears Discover Fire", by Terry Bisson (1990)

"Buffalo", by John Kessel (1991)

"Another Story; or, The Fisherman of the Inland Sea", by Ursula K. Le Guin (1994)

"Think Like a Dinosaur", by James Patrick Kelly (1995)

"Wang's Carpets", by Greg Egan (1995)

"Starship Day", by Ian R. MacLeod (1995)

"The Lincoln Train", by Maureen McHugh (1995)

"The Spade of Reason", by Jim Cowan (1996)

"Gone", by John Crowley (1996)

"Get a Grip", by Paul Park (1997)

"Suicide Coast", by M. John Harrison (1999)

"Stellar Harvest", by Eleanor Arnason (1999)

"Scherzo With Tyrannosaur", by Michael Swanwick (1999)

"Sailing the Painted Ocean" by Denise Lee (1999)

"Lull" by Kelly Link (2002)

"The House Beyond Your Sky" by Benjamin Rosenbaum (2006)

"Eight Episodes", by Robert Reed (2006)

"Three Days of Rain" by Holly Phillips (2007)

"Exhalation" by Ted Chiang (2008)

"26 Monkeys, also the Abyss", by Kij Johnson (2008)

"Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" by Yoon Ha Lee (2010)

"The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees", by E. Lily Yu (2011)

"Sadness" by Timons Esaias (2014)

"Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology", by Theodora Goss (2014)

"Mutability" by Ray Nayler (2015)

"Red in Tooth and Cog" by Cat Rambo (2016)

"Everyone From Themis Sends Letters Home" by Genevieve Valentine (2016)

"Empty Planets" by Naomi Kanakia (2016)

"An Account of the Land of Witches" by Sofia Samatar (2017)

Novellas:

"Great Work of Time", by John Crowley (1989)

"Forgiveness Day", by Ursula K. Le Guin (1994)

"The Ziggurat", by Gene Wolfe (1995)

"The Flowers of Aulit Prison" by Nancy Kress (1996)

"Animae Celestes", by Gregory Feeley (1998)

"Story of Your Life", by Ted Chiang (1998)

"Dapple", by Eleanor Arnason (1999)

"New Light on the Drake Equation", by Ian R. MacLeod (2000)

"Milo and Sylvie", by Eliot Fintushel (2000)

"The Path of the Transgressor" by Tom Purdom (2003)

"The Voluntary State" by Christopher Rowe (2004)

"Magic for Beginners", by Kelly Link (2005)

"A Billion Eves", by Robert Reed (2006)

"Tenbrook of Mars" by Dean McLaughlin (2008)

"Eros, Philia, Agape" by Rachel Swirsky (2009)

"The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon" by Elizabeth Hand (2010)

"In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns" by Elizabeth Bear (2012)

"A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i" by Alaya Dawn Johnson (2014)

"Fifty Shades of Greys" by Steven Barnes (2016)

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson (2016)

"And Then There Were (N-One)" by Sarah Pinsker (2017)

"Dayenu" by James Sallis (2018)

Stories that just missed, were too many by the same writer, or more fantastical than I wanted

"The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link

"The Sandal-Bride" by Genevieve Valentine

"Pip and the Fairies" by Theodora Goss

"A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" by K.J. Parker

"Isabel of the Fall" by Ian R. MacLeod

"Journey Into the Kingdom" by M. Rickert

"Salt Wine" by Peter S. Beagle

"Another Word for Map is Faith" by Christopher Rowe

"The Small Door" by Holly Phillips

"The Tear" by Ian McDonald

"The Island" by Peter Watts

"A Letter from the Emperor" by Steve Rasnic Tem

"Stereogram of the Gray Fort, in the Days of her Glory" by Paul M. Berger

"Walking Stick Fires" by Anya Johanna de Niro

"The Bridge of Dreams" by Gregory Feeley

"Martyr's Gem" by C. S. E. Cooney

"Three Twilight Tales" by Jo Walton

"Aberration" by Genevieve Valentine

"Project Empathy" by Dominica Phetteplace

"Grace's Family" by James Patrick Kelly

"Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand" by Fran Wilde

"Exclusion" by Daniel Abraham 

"More Adventures on Other Planets" by Michael Cassutt

"Stories for Men" by John Kessel

"Ten Bears; or, A Journey to the Weterings" by Henry Wessells

"The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford

"Seven Guesses of the Heart" by M. John Harrison

"The Price of Oranges" by Nancy Kress

"Buddha Nostril Bird" by John Kessel

"Steelcollar Worker" by Vonda McIntyre

"Stairs" by Neal Barrett, Jr.

"Exogamy" by John Crowley

"Erase, Record, Play" by John M. Ford

A Few Stories from 2019 or later ...

"Green Glass: A Love Story" by E. Lily Yu

"Laws of Impermanence" by Ken Schneyer

"Crazy Beautiful" by Cat Rambo

"If the Martians Have Magic" by P. Djèlí Clark

"The White Road" by Kelly Link

Review: The Book of Gems, by Fran Wilde

Review: The Book of Gems, by Fran Wilde

by Rich Horton

This is the third in a series of novellas from Tor.com set in Fran Wilde's Gem continuity. The three books are widely separated in time -- The Jewel and Her Lapidary (2016) concerns the fall of a kingdom controlled by royals who manage the power of magical jewels, and their "lapidaries", who protect their linked royals from falling prey to the danger of the jewels. The Fire Opal Mechanism (2019) is set much later, when the jewels and their powers are myths, and a couple of people are battling to save independent knowledge from a sort of press that devours and summarizes books, creating a sort of mishmash of all the knowledge. 

The Book of Gems (2023) is set a while later. Dev Brunai studies the stories about jewels, and the fragments of The Book of Gems that survive, and works on making synthetic jewels that can do some minor things, but have nothing like the power of natural gems. Dev aspires to be admitted to the Society that controls gem research. But now she has realized that her mentor, Dr. Netherby, has stolen her very promising research and gone away to the valley located where the old jewel kingdom had been. There is an archaeological dig there, and they have unearthed the old Palace. But Netherby has disappeared. Without the Society's approval, Dev -- who is actually descended from people living in this valley -- heads out to try to track down Netherby, with the hopes of finding out anything he has learned, and advancing her own research as well.

Once there, she realizes that Lurai, the woman running the inn she stays at, is actually her cousin. And, with some reluctance, Dev and Lurai sneak out to the location of the dig, finding a hidden way into the Palace. This is fraught for both of them, because their goals are not quite the same, and their perceptions of the reality behind the jewels are different -- Dev with a more scientific view, Lurai with a more magical view (to a gross approximation.) But both are severely affected by the latent power of the buried gems. And what they find in this Palace points to a dangerous but important new understanding of the jewels, of the mysterious Prince of Gems, and what direction their world must go to accommodate the jewels' power but control it.

This is a nicely written book, and in many ways it is doing what I hoped to see after The Jewel and her Lapidary. I had found The Fire Opal Mechanism an unanticipated sidestep into an oddly more science fictional world. The Books of Gems seems on the road to resolving this conflict -- to creating a wholly understood sort of Science Fantasy milieu. I was involved in Dev and Lurai's story, and I found the questions (stated and implied) to by worthwhile. Having said that, I feel like the three novellas are incomplete in a sense, and what I really want is more -- more backstory, and more filling in of the real way the gems operate, and of how they (and such tools as the tem-powered escritoire they use for communication) are seen "scientifically", as it were. In a way perhaps this threatens the mystery some fantasy generates, I admit. I don't know if Wilde plans more stories in this sequence (there are already a couple of related short stories), or if she plans to write a full-length novel -- and I don't want to set her any assignments! But I imagine a rather grand novel, incorporating and expanding on what we already have, might really be something. In the interim -- or perhaps forever! -- these are some fine novellas set in a quite original universe.

Review: Laughter in the Dark, by Vladimir Nabokov

Review: Laughter in the Dark, by Vladimir Nabokov

by Rich Horton

Laughter in the Dark was originally published in Russian in serialized form in 1932-1933, and in book form in 1933, as Kamera Obskura. The first English translation, by Winifred Roy, was published in England in 1936, under the title Camera Obscura. Nabokov was disappointed with the translation, and he revised it himself, as Laughter in the Dark. This version appeared in 1938. It was radically revised from the original translation, but also from the original Russian version. The original translation did not sell well, and the remaining copies were lost when the warehouse in which they were stored was bombed in WWII, so it is an extremely rare book. But John Colapinto in the New Yorker compared the two versions -- using a copy which was apparently Nabokov's own, which he used to prepare his own translation. It's clear that many of the changes are more due to Nabokov reconsidering his earlier Russian version, rather than simply improving Roy's translation (and it seems fairly clear that the eventual English Laughter in the Dark owes a fair amount to Roy's Camera Obscura.) Nabokov changed character names, removed scenes that didn't work, and altered the ending, in addition to changes at the line/paragraph level.

In this sense Laughter in the Dark is in some ways a new novel, written in English (though to be sure similar in overall shape to the original Russian version.) I don't know if another Russian version, translated from the English, has ever been made, but I do know that there was a 1930s French translation of Kamera Obskura, and a much later French translation of Laughter in the Dark. At the same time, more or less, Nabokov translated his last Russian novel, Despair, into English. Those two efforts, it seems to me, serve as a sort of practice for his subsequent novels, which were all written in English.

Laughter in the Dark has a somewhat famous opening passage (as famous as a not all that well known novel could have): "Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster." Albinus is middle-aged, with a wife and young daughter. He's an expert in art, and not an expert in love -- he had a couple of unsatisfying relationships before his marriage, and he seems to love his wife well enough but find her a bit -- boring, I suppose, or insipid. One day he stops in a cinema to waste an extra hour, and he conceives an obsession with the girl who is serving as usher.

This girl, Margot Peters, is about 17 or 18. A year or two earlier she had left her unhappy and somewhat abusive parents, had become a nude model for painters, and, without quite realizing it, had fallen into the hands of a procuress, who arranges eventually for her to go off with a young man, which pleases Margot enough -- she finds she enjoys sex. But that comes to an end, and Margot can't conceive of any future except to continue to be kept by different men, or to become a movie star. And by the time Albinus encounters her, the closest she's got to the movie business is her job as an usher.

As Albinus clumsily begins to pursue Margot, hoping for a short fling and some excitement and sex, she maneuvers to get more than that out of him. She knows he's well off, and she finds him a tolerable companion. And Albinus, to some extent against his will, is manipulated into a situation where his wife leaves him, and he and Margot live together. This is a scandal, of course, though in Weimar Germany perhaps less than it might have been, and as Margot pushes him to get a divorce he resists -- until a terrible crisis involving his daughter forces events. And Albinus' fate is sealed, in the Greek tragedy sense, especially when Margot decides she likes another man's attentions more, though Albinus' money remains necessary. And so things go to the eventual conclusion -- told us in the first lines of the book, foreshadowed too by the movie Albinus was watching when he first saw Margot, alluded to by such things as a cunning reference to Anna Karenina.

It's a striking novel, blackly comic but legitimately tragic. I haven't mentioned the chief villain, Margot's other lover, an artist of some talent but no morals named Axel Rex, whom Albinus already knew (due to his art connections) but hardly understood. Margot's cupidity, Rex's outright capricious cruelty, and Albinus' weakness collide dreadfully. The prose is excellent, if not quite at the sumptuous levels of Nabokov's great later novels in English. The characters are well depicted. Nabokov's way with the surprising but perfect image is on display. There are no overt sex scenes but there are erotic passages of considerable effect, due to his depiction of character -- and of bodies. It is impossible not to see distorted pre-echoes of Lolita here -- the middle-aged man with a teenaged girl, though in this case the girl is in control and the man the victim. The construction is intricate and effective, the foreshadowing, as I've hinted, remarkable, and not really apparent until the end. It's a slim novel (perhaps 55,000 words) and something of a genre novel, and perhaps a bit slight. (Though slimness doesn't need to imply slightness -- Pnin is very slim but not slight at all.)

I've only read a few of Nabokov's Russian novels, though most of his Russian short stories. I think very highly of Invitation to a Beheading, and I enjoyed King, Queen, Knave and The Defense. I have not read The Gift, nor Despair -- each considered among the best of his Russian books. I'd place Laughter in the Dark below Invitation to a Beheading, but just ahead of The Defense. 

Review: Booth, by Karen Joy Fowler

Review: Booth, by Karen Joy Fowler

by Rich Horton

Recently someone told me that Karen Joy Fowler has a novel coming out soon, perhaps next year. I can't remember who told me that, or where, and so I cannot be sure that it's true -- but I hope it is! At any rate, that seemed a spur for me to finally read her latest novel, Booth, from 2022. Fowler is perhaps the only novelist that both my wife and I read regularly. And, of late, it works out that when a new Fowler novel appears, my wife gets the first crack at it. So she read Booth when it came out -- and it has lingered on my TBR pile until just now!

Fowler has been one of my favorite writers at least since her first novel, Sarah Canary (1991). Probably before then -- earlier stories like "The Lake was Full of Artificial Things", "The Faithful Companion at Forty", and "Game Night at the Fox and Goose" had already make a big impact on me -- and on enough people that her first collection, Artificial Things, appeared in 1986, the year following her first published story. It is notable that her short fiction is largely (though not entirely) fantastika, to use John Clute's preferred term, while her novels are largely, if often ambiguously, realistic. (This is one reason my wife reads her!)

Booth is an historical novel -- the third of her novels to be set in the US in the 19th Century, though the other two (Sarah Canary and Sister Noon) are only loosely based on historical events, while Booth is to an extent about arguably the most traumatic event in our history -- the Civil War, and especially the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The Booth of the title is not strictly speaking John Wilkes Booth -- the novel concerns his entire family -- his father, Junius, one of the greatest American actors of his generation; his brother, Edwin, pretty much indisputably the greatest American actor of HIS generation; his mother Mary Ann, his sisters Rosalie and Asia, and his brothers June and Joe. (There were four other children who died in childhood. There were other actors in the family, as well -- John Wilkes Booth himself, Asia's husband Sleeper Clarke and their sons Creston and Wilfred, June's third wife Agnes and their son Sydney Barton Booth, who acted in silent films, and Edwin's wives, Mary Devlin and Mary McVicker.)

The novel is told primarily via the points of view of Rosalie, Asia, and Edwin, with brief interludes about Lincoln. It opens in 1838 in rural Maryland. Mary Ann lives there with her several children by Junius Booth, but Junius spends most of his time touring. Nonetheless, they end up with 10 children, the last born in 1841. Rosalie, who turns 15 in 1838, narrates this section, which describes a somewhat pleasant country upbringing, though punctuated with the deaths of four siblings, and the stress surrounding her father's careless handling of money, and his eccentricities, which include alcoholism, a somewhat inconsistent vegetarianism, and a strong abolitionist viewpoint. Rosalie herself is much put upon -- acting as a second mother to her brothers and sisters, feeling herself less attractive than her generally beautiful siblings, and suffering from scoliosis. They are brought up with black servants -- freed slaves -- and while this novel is closely centered on the Booth family we do not miss the terrible condition of black people, even freedmen, and neither do we miss the way the nominally abolitionist Booth family members don't really see how their servants live.

We continue from then until, of course, April 1865. The Booths move to Baltimore, and the surviving children grow up. Rosalie has one love affair (perhaps just in her head) but her family squash it, and she is resigned to spinsterhood. Asia grows up a beauty. Edwin, bullied as a child, eventually turns to the stage against his father's will. June does the same, and moves to California where he marries. John is popular with his fellow boys, but an indifferent student, and for a time returns to the Booth farm, which he hates, then he too becomes an actor. In the mean time he is increasingly pro-South, and his repulsive racism is readily on display. The whole family is upended when a woman claiming (correctly) to be Junius Booth's actual wife, along with her son, turns up, and relatives all but force the Booths from their farm. Edwin eventually follows his father on a somewhat disastrous tour to California, partly in order to see June, and Edwin stays behind when his father returns home -- or, as it happens, does not. Edwin, upon his own return, establishes his reputation, and is soon regarded as one of the country's greatest actors -- and so he also becomes the family's means of support. And he marries a young actress, and has a daughter. Then comes the war. The Booths, by now in New York, mostly sit out the fighting, though they witness such events as the Draft Riots. Asia tells much of this story, and as John is her favorite brother, we see a bit of him, and his increasing radicalization, including threats to kidnap Lincoln. And so comes the inevitable climax.

There is much more going on of course, much based on the historical record, but many personal details of course invented. And the book beautifully and convincingly depicts all the main characters: John's charisma mixed with violence, Rosalie's disappointment, Edwin's depressive nature, acting brilliance, and distrust of his brother, Asia's sometimes unpleasant fierceness. The black characters -- mostly the servants at the Booth property -- are naturally less prominent, but as I said their condition is clearly portrayed, with such details as the adult couple who work for the Booths desperately saving money to buy their children out of slavery. The way John Wilkes Booth's faults distort the entire family is clear, and of course his final act falls heavily on them as well. (Edwin is jilted by a woman he wanted to marry, Asia's husband, as well as June, are imprisoned as suspects in the conspiracy, though they are eventually released. Edwin nearly quits the stage, and does stay off it for months.)

It's a strong novel, involving, honest, and -- like some but not all historical fiction -- informative. We really do learn about this period in American history -- a familiar period to most Americans at least superficially, but reading about it this way does deepen our understanding. The characters are real as well, though (as Fowler certainly admits in her Afterword) much of this aspect is due to the novelist's imagination. Still, seeing this time through the eyes of people of that time -- when those people are faithfully reconstructed as I trust Fowler to do -- is a way of learning more about how they lived. It was a fraught time -- aren't they all -- and that comes through powerfully. Definitely a worthy novel, though I will confess, I don't place it at the top of my lists of Fowler's books. (I have, I think, four tiers -- at the top, Sarah Canary, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, and the collection Black Glass; second level, The Sweetheart Season, The Jane Austen Book Club, Booth, and the collection What I Didn't See; third tier: Sister Noon and the collection Artificial Things; and then Wit's End at the bottom. I should probably reread both Sister Noon and Wit's End, and I should emphasize that her lowest tier would be top tier for most writers.) 

Review: The Last Emperox, by John Scalzi

Review: The Last Emperox, by John Scalzi

by Rich Horton

This novel, from 2020, is the final entry in John Scalzi's Interdependency series, after The Collapsing Empire (2017) and The Consuming Fire (2018). I had enjoyed the first two novels, and always intended to finish the series, and in fact bought the book long ago, but just never got around to it. I finally have, and I'm glad I did.

The setup, in a few sentences. The Interdependency is an interstellar empire comprising a number of star systems, all linked by the Flow, a kind of traditional set of something like wormhole links. They're not really wormholes, but they act kind of like them, and they allow much faster than light travel between systems, though those trips still take, typically, weeks or months. The Interdependency was formed about a millennium before the action of these novels, and it was designed specifically to have the various systems depend on each other -- so each system only makes a few necessary products, and must trade with all the others to survive. Especially since almost all the planets are uninhabitable, and the people either live underground or in space habitats.

However, the Flow is collapsing -- and within a number of years, all the systems will be isolated again. The rather young, rather new, Emperox, Grayland II, is working as hard as she can to save as many of her subjects as possible, by moving them to the one human-habitable planet, End. She has the help of the scientist who knows more about the Flow than anyone, Marce Claremont. (And she and Marce have become lovers.) But Grayland is opposed by many of the other noble houses, who are more interested in saving themselves than the common people, and who also are more interested in their political power games than in actually working on solving the collapsing Flow problem. And the most evil of these -- a real mustache-twirler had she a mustache -- is Nadashe Nohamapetan. The Nohamapetans have already tried to assassinate Grayland a couple of times, and Nadashe is plotting to have another go at it, and to make herself Emperox.

So, the novel becomes a sort of race against time -- can Grayland use her position to set in place a plan to save most of the Interdependency before Nadashe finally manages to kill her? Grayland has the help of her lover Marce, who has some theoretical ideas that may help at least delay the full collapse of the Flow, and might also help move more people to End -- if he only had the time. Grayland also has the help of simulations of all the previous Emperox's, to give her advice, and of the wily and profane Lady Kiva Lagos. And of course Nadashe has her own fellow schemers, though they do have the usual problem of those sorts -- none of them trust the other.

It's really a very enjoyable novel. It's told in Scalzi's typical snarky voice. To be honest, this voice can get wearing at times, especially as many of the characters sound pretty much the same. Still, Scalzi does snark very well. The love story is really pretty sweet. The political manipulations are interesting -- over the top evil, yes, but interesting. The science is all obviously made up, but it's cleverly done, and it's in the service of a well-constructed story with some pretty worthwhile discussion of morals, of how to govern, of the effect of travel on society, and such. The good guy characters are pretty delightful. The bad guys -- well, it's fun to read about their plotting and such, but maybe the mustache-twirling I mentioned is a tad over the top. And there is too clear a divide between the good guys and the bad guys -- the good guys are all nice, the bad guys are all super-evil. The plot logic is kind of inexorable, and after a while I was able to see how it would have to resolve -- which while it does in a sense (literal sense, really) involve a deus ex machina, gets there sensibly, and doesn't cheat on its internal logic. Having said that, the ending does come off a bit rushed. I would say, in fact, that the Interdependency novels are my personal favorites of Scalzi's books.

Review: The Presidential Papers, plus ..., by John Kessel

Review: The Presidential Papers, plus ..., by John Kessel

by Rich Horton

John Kessel's new collection is the latest in the PM Press Outspoken Authors series of slim volumes by, in their words, "today's edgiest, most entertaining, and uncompromising writers". These books are all by writers of speculative fiction, and the originating editor was the late Terry Bisson. This book was presumably one of the last books Bisson edited, but the series will continue, under the aegis of Nick Mamatas.

In the interests of full disclosure, and because it has a mild effect on my response to the book, I'll note that I bought this at the most recent World Fantasy Convention, at which I had the opportunity for multiple enjoyable conversations with John Kessel, over breakfast, and over drinks. And of course John signed my copy. My response is also affected, however, by some of the more biographical material here -- addressed in a reprinted speech, and in the interview conducted by Bisson that's included in the book. In those, Kessel discusses his ambition, on entering college, to become an astrophysicist, and his realization that his talent really lay elsewhere -- in his case, on encountering tensor calculus. I had nearly the same experience at college -- I entered as a physics major with an astronomy minor, and on encountering complex analysis, and advanced quantum mechanics, I realized that a Ph.D. in Physics wasn't likely. Unlike John, I didn't get an English degree, but I did load up my electives with multiple classes in poetry and contemporary fiction (and science fiction!) which were profoundly rewarding. In addition, I share with John a Catholic upbringing, since lapsed, but still informing a certain part of my worldview.

I knew none of this, mind you, when I first read John's work back in the early '80s -- stories like "Not Responsible! Park it and Lock it!" (1981) and the remarkable "Another Orphan" (1982); and searing later stories like "The Pure Product" (1986) and "Mrs. Shummel Exits a Winner" (1988), which last became part of his first solo novel, the underrated Good News from Outer Space (1989). I've been following his work ever since -- three more strong novels (Corrupting Dr. Nice, The Moon and the Other, and Pride and Prometheus) and a lot of excellent short fiction.

The Presidential Papers, plus ... includes a range of stories from early in his career to now, as well as a transcript of a 2001 speech, and the above-mentioned interview. The stories are chosen to fit the title -- but that doesn't mean quality was in any sense sacrificed to theme. "A Clean Escape" is built around sessions between a military psychologist and her patient, but as we learn about the situation they are in, and the identity of the patient -- and his disease -- the title truly resonates and the story is profoundly chillling. "The Franchise" is somewhat famous for an odd reason -- it's an alternate history and part of its premise is that Fidel Castro becomes a Major League pitcher, and the same issue of Asimov's in which it appeared also featured "The Southpaw", a Bruce McAllister story with the same premise. Kessel's story follows an alternate 1959 World Series in which Castro, a great pitcher for the Giants, faces George H. W. Bush, a minor league callup for the Senators (of course!) I don't want to reveal the guts of the story, though in the end it's more interested (properly, I think) in US politics than Cuban politics.

"The President's Channel" (1998) appeared first in the Raleigh News and Observer, but I saw it in Science Fiction Age. It's an amusing story, but it doesn't have the impact of the rest of this book -- the idea is that the President is constantly on a sort of reality TV channel, and we see an ordinary man watching this channel as we also see his own life. "The Last American" is another searing story, told from the point of view of posthumans looking back at the 21st Century, via the reconstructed life of the last US President. It mixes in actually kind of cool (if frightening, it its way) speculation about future tech and humanity, with even more frightening -- and only too plausible -- speculation about 21st Century political trends. The last fictional piece, new to this volume, is "A Brief History of the War with Venus", in play form, as the President of the Solar Federation confronts the Ambassador from Venus from a decidedly losing position. It's a dark jape, and the resonances with a certain current politician are only too obvious. (I was also curiously reminded of Andre Maurois' "The War Against the Moon".)

The nonfiction is really fascinating to me. The speech, entitled "Imagining the Human Future: Up, Down, or Sideways", looks at novels by Olaf Stapledon, Vernor Vinge, and Bruce Sterling, all of them imagining a posthuman future. Kessel's point it to look at these futures, and the people in them, from a moral or ethical standpoint. Essentially, he asks, if we become posthuman, are our ethics different? And that's a crucial question to ask. The interview is delightful -- basically a look at John's life from his own perspective, and these are interesting (to me) in general, and the more so reading his thoughts a week or so after we were talking across a breakfast table.

I've made this a more personal review than normal, and I don't want to overstate that. I see John Kessel at various conventions, and we have good conversations. But we're not bosom buddies or anything. I can say, I think without prejudice, that that is a first rate book. It is what it is -- it's slim, it's thematically focused. But the stories here are strong work -- particularly, for me, "A Clean Escape" and "The Last American". The nonfiction is really nice. Highly recommended.

Review: Drive, by James Sallis

Review: Drive, by James Sallis

by Rich Horton

James Sallis, who will turn 80 in December, began publishing with stories in New Worlds and in Orbit in the late '60s. He was strongly associated with the New Wave (and was for a time a co-editor of New Worlds), and it would be fair to say that when Darrell Schweitzer complained about "non-functional word patterns", he likely would have placed some of Sallis' early stories in that category. I would have to admit that whatever of his stories I had read by 1976 or so didn't make an impression on me. But I have returned to his work over the past couple of decades, and many of these Orbit stories are striking and intriguing, and always well written, though, yes, sometimes difficult to comprehend. And there is nothing wrong with trying hard to do something truly new and sometimes failing! (And the Sallis stories from that era that I did understand (to a sufficient degree) are wonderful -- I review some of them here.)

Sallis never really stopped writing SF, and he published worthwhile stories in Asimov's and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet through the '90, and more recently has placed work in Clarkesworld, Interzone, and even Analog! And these stories are first rate -- in particular I recommend a long novelette, "Dayenu", from LCRW, that I had the honor to reprint in The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2019 Edition. He also has written an on and off again book review column for F&SF since the turn of the millenium.

But I haven't mentioned any novels. And that's because when Sallis turned to longer fiction, he concentrated primarily on crime fiction. He developed quite a reputation in that field, particularly for his Lew Griffin series, though he published a number of standalone novels and one other trilogy. Some of this work was more experimental, mainstream or liminal, but the bulk was in the the crime field.

Drive (2005) is certainly a crime novel. It is sheer noir -- in no sense a mystery. There was eventually a sequel, Driven, from 2012, though I rather imagine Drive was conceived as a standalone. Drive was made into a fine movie in 2011, starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. The movie takes the main "heist gone bad" plotline from the novel, but leaves out the rest. Quite possibly that was the correct artistic choice for a film, but the novel is deeper for having additional threads.

Drive, the novel, is told in a non-linear fashion. The main character is just called "Driver", and it's not entirely clear whether that is actually his last name or just a reference to his job. (In the movie he's called The Driver, removing any ambiguity.) He works as a stuntman for low budget movies, and he is a remarkable driver. This leads eventually to a side gig as a getaway driver, though he cautions anyone who hires him that he doesn't do anything but drive -- no direct involvement in the actual crime.

The short, sharp, chapters go forward and backward in time. We see Driver's childhood, including an abusive father, and a mentally ill mother who ends up killing her husband in front of her son. We learn of his brief time with step-parents, then his move from Phoenix to LA, and his getting work as a stunt driver, then, his descent into the world of crime. He hooks up in a curious relationship with Irene, a woman living next door to him in one of the cheap apartments he rents, and when her husband, Standard, gets out of jail the relationship continues with Standard's consent. (I should say that there are no sex scenes in the book, and it's not entirely clear that Driver and Irene ever sleep together (though that's the way I'd bet.) It is clear that they are close, and that Driver also loves her son, Benicio.)

This is noir, so we kind of know what's going to happen -- but we know anyway because the first chapter in this non-linear narrative is set shortly after a heist that he and Standard were inveigled into goes south -- and as the book opens Driver is in a hotel room with three dead people -- another member of the heist team, a woman, who has been killed by the two dead men, who were supposed to retrieve the large bag of money that the woman had made off with. Driver, of course, killed the two hitmen, but he knows that he'll remain a marked man, as the two mobsters who set up the heist won't rest until they get their money back, and also kill anyone who knows about it. This narrative runs through the whole book, with, as I said, sections set in Driver's past, and also during the earlier days in New York of the two mobsters.

It's a perfectly executed piece of breakneck noir action. The novel is short (just over 30,000 words, I'd say). It's as violent as the reader expects. It's twisty and clever. The several men who have significant roles (the mobsters, a down on his luck doctor who treats Driver when he's injured, his mentor in the stunt business, and a younger driver who works with him, a friend he knows from the movie business, a couple more criminals with whom Driver is involved, and of course Driver himself) are economically and convincingly portrayed. (I should say that the only woman who comes into much focus at all is Driver's mother.) Driver is one of those criminals we root for -- because of his traumatic upbringing, because the other criminals all seem worse than him, because many of his actions seem forced on him.) He's also curiously complicated internally -- presenting an only partly true façade of an empty and emotionless man, but a devoted if eccentric reader, someone who likes good wine, and someone who is good to women and children.) It's a wickedly fast read, very entertaining. 

Review: Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy, by Rebecca West

Review: Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy, by Rebecca West

a review by Rich Horton

Harriet Hume was Rebecca West's third novel (of seven published in her lifetime.) It's a deliriously beautiful book, as strange as almost anything I've read, on one hand a character study of a corrupt man and an innocent woman, but not really like that at all. It seems to stand out of time -- it was published in 1929 and its action spans a couple of decades that aren't easily placed in our history. Its lovely prose also stands out of time in a sense. It is realistic in telling but fantastical as well, with mind-reading and ghosts and imaginary countries; and an almost phantasmagorical portrayal of London, and an oddly transcendent ending. It's a wonderful and mysterious book, and not for everyone, as a look at what reviews one can find will confirm. But I loved it.

Rebecca West was the pseudonym used by Cecily Isabel Fairfield for her professional life -- which is to say pretty much her entire life. She was an actor (she took the name "Rebecca West" from the heroine of Henrik Ibsen's play Rosmersholm), a journalist, novelist, travel writer, political activist. She was knighted ("damed"?) in 1959, and as far as I can tell, though technically she was Dame Cecily Fairfield she was called Dame Rebecca West. She was born in London in 1892, and died there in 1983. 

Her father was an Anglo-Irishman who had spent time in Australia and the US (he served as a stretcher bearer in the Confederate Army.) He was a respected journalist, but apparently terrible with money, and he abandoned his wife and three daughters in 1900, and died in 1906. Her mother (an accomplished pianist) moved with Cecily and her two elder sisters to Edinburgh. It was apparently a stimulating intellectual and political environment to grow up in. Her eldest sister became a doctor and barrister, and a niece was also a writer. Cecily and her sister Lettie were part of the women's suffrage movement. Cecily, as Rebecca West by then, became a journalist and literary critic (despite quitting school at age 15). She also entered into an affair with H. G. Wells (despite publishing a negative review of one of his novels) which lasted a decade and produced her only child, Anthony West. She published her first novel in 1918, and was married to Henry Andrews from 1930 until his death in 1968. She was very much a woman of the left, but also a staunch anti-Communist (a political combination I respect greatly.) She wrote several novels and many works of non-fiction, and is now best known for her massive study of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. 

My copy of the novel is from The Dial Press in 1982, a US reprint of the 1980 Virago edition. (The Dial Press, for a time, reprinted a selection of the Virago Modern Classics for the US audience.) The book was first published by Hutchinson in the UK in 1929, and by Doubleday, Doran in the US that same year. Curiously, the US edition was originally subtitled "A London Phantasy". 

Harriet Hume opens with Harriet and her lover Arnold Condorex running down the stairs from her bedroom (where they had been making love) into the garden of Blennerhassett House, where Harriet has a couple of rooms. Harriet discovers that she can read Arnold's thoughts, first as he imagines the names of their future children. There is a nice interlude, walking in the garden, Harriet reading the newspaper in her special way (pages spread on the floor in deference to her poor eyesight), and Harriet telling a lovely fantastical story about the three trees in her garden -- which she claims are the three Dudley sisters immortalized in Joshua Reynolds' famous painting "The Three Graces Decorating a Statue of Hymen". (I should note that there are errors in Harriet's description -- whether these are purposeful errors illustrating Harriet's character, or mistakes by West, I'm not sure, though I suspect the former. At any rate, the painting is actually called "Three Ladies Adorning a Term of Hymen", and the ladies depicted are the Montgomery sisters, not the Dudleys. Hymen is, significantly, the god of marriage.) Harriet's tale suggests that the three ladies had, as infants, become literally attached to a garland (as shown in the painting) which seems to have been the source of their beauty -- which left them at marriage as they could no longer carry the garland. But, later in life, they reclaimed their garlands, left their husbands and came to the very garden Harriet and Arnold are in, and turned into trees. Harriet and Arnold's conversation continues, at intervals delightful, and then foreboding, for it becomes only too clear that Arnold, born into a lower class, resents his rivals whom he believes were born with unfair advantages, craves above all political advancement, and doesn't appreciate Harriet's music at all (though he does appreciate her body!) And Harriet reads his thoughts concerning a plan to throw her over and instead marry a plain woman in order that this woman's father can help his career.

The novel continues with four further long chapters, each a few years apart, depicting a few more encounters between Arnold and Harriet. At each meeting Arnold is changed -- coarser, fatter, older -- but Harriet seems ever the same. We see Arnold's personal life -- he does not marry the plain woman but instead a very beautiful, and quite unintelligent, woman whose father also can help Arnold's progress. We see his political advancement -- his schemes come initially to fruition (one based hilariously on his discovery that the city of Mondh in Mangostan doesn't exist -- instead it was a typo for an ordinary city called Pondh -- but Arnold uses the fictional city as a lever in his maneuvering of Britain's foreign policy.) Arnold's plotting involves betrayal of his political allies, and eventually financial corruption. At each meeting with Harriet she uses her telepathic powers to learn of his perfidy, and to urge him to abandon it. Arnold's own perception of Harriet is revealed too -- he uses the words "slut", "jade", "wench", "trollop" and such with an affectionate tone betrayed by their meaning. And by the end he, now the First Baron Mondh, faces complete ruin, as his finances are in tatters and his political corruption exposed. And he makes one final trip to Harriet's place ...

I was enchanted -- the mundane tale of political corruption married to a sadly aborted romance mixed with a fantastical view of London, with comic interludes, and with an at once spooky and ethereal element all married beautifully. And the prose -- mannered in the best way, arch, surprising, with the flavor of the 19th century and the 1920s elegantly joined. Some examples, though as with most of the best prose, reading in context (and rhythm) is best:

"Of all women he had ever known she was the most ethereal. Loving her was like swathing oneself with a long scarf of spirit."

"Just then Harriet, smiling like a doll, raised her hand to her head and withdrew the sole pin that held in place her Grecian knot; and the sleek serpents of her hair slipped down over her shoulders and covered her bosom, their curled heads lying in her lap."

"She had passed beyond the trench of sooty shadow cast by the house on the silver pavement, and was in full moonlight when she turned, so that the tail of her gown, dropping beneath her cloak, shone like an angel's robe, and the hands which covered her trembling mouth seemed luminous, and the tears in her eyes might have been taken by experts for diamonds."

Review: Break, Blow, Burn, & Make, by E. Lily Yu

Review: Break, Blow, Burn, & Make, by E. Lily Yu

a review by Rich Horton

E. Lily Yu is one of the finest writers to appear in the past 15 years or so. She has published a few dozen short stories, in a variety of genres, with fantasy and SF the predominant modes; and one novel, On Fragile Waves (2021); plus a collection, Jewel Box (2023). Her new book is subtitled "A Writer's Thoughts on Creation", and it is about writing -- craft, ambition, purpose, inspiration, beauty. But in writing about creating outstanding books, it is also about living, about discipline, about being a better person. It is, I will add, very ardently a Christian woman's book -- though its message can be applied by one in any faith or philosophical tradition.

Critical to the book's message is discussion of how readers respond -- or how we hope they respond -- to books. Not by star ratings, nor by performative liking, but, to quote: "We honor books when we discuss them in this way: as art, as gifts, as potential acts of love, rather than as mass-produced factory products." This speaks to me as a reader and critic, but also to writers -- if readers will discuss books as art, as acts of love, the writer must aim for art, and must write with love, at least for their creation. "... wisdom, courage, character, and judgment are critical to both writing and living ..." This highlights another running theme -- the act of writing as part of a whole life, at least for the writer (and not everyone is a writer -- which is no judgment but just an acknowledgement that we all have different talents.) And thus a writer should respect their art as much as they respect their life. 

Yu writes interestingly about the goals of the reader and the writer. Here she properly rejects the notion that reading is itself productive of virtue -- particularly the idea that by reading we increase our ability to empathize. This notion always seemed suspect to me -- a way for us readers to pat ourselves on the back. And it has been debunked by research. In addition, she addresses the notion that a story should explicitly illustrate correct morals -- as for instance the not uncommon demand that it be clear that bad characters are punished and good characters rewarded. Yu reminds us that bad people can still love great art, and moreover that books can lie. Finally -- it is important for readers to put in the effort to understand a book -- the ability to accept multiple meanings, to discern truth, and to recognize allusions are all important, and do not come without work. "... a reader can recognize falsity in a book only when that reader can recognize falsity in herself and others ..." 

The middle of the book is the part most directly concerned with writing -- vocation and craft. Yu argues first for a writer to be  a vessel for truth -- and that truth comes when "the artist dies to self, burns, and becomes transparent". Writing should not be self-expression -- but expression of the real. "Self-expression is opacity". This observation was new to me but it resonates, and suggests to me something I object to in much contemporary poetry (and much recent fiction.)

One chapter is devoted to craft. And here I can only cheer! Likely it has always been so, but in recent years I have been disheartened to see many books -- often highly praised -- that stumble, that seem unwilling to care about prose and structure. Yu mentions understanding of language, and the benefits of knowing multiple languages. The necessity of precision, and the beauty that can result from not just a correct word but the right word used in the right place. The importance of rhythm to prose. Subtlety in portrayal of character, and in subtext. The importance of revision.

The third section is the most aspirational. It is in some sense a call to writers, a call to artists. It is intensely Christian in its language and references, and also very personal to this author's own experience. It deals too with the place of artists in the world, and the pressures they face. It urges attention to the natural world. It urges writers not to tailor their work to the demands -- political, artistic, moral -- of the public but to tell the truth their work requires. I found this inspiring, and I hope nonreligious readers will not be put off it, for I think the burden of the book will come through to any sympathetic reader.

The book is also a tribute to some of the authors who have inspired E. Lily Yu. Quotes and references abound to the likes of James Baldwin, Annie Dillard, G. K. Chesterton, George MacDonald, Madeleine L'Engle, and many more. A list of important books comes early -- Possession; Little, Big; Middlemarch, The Man Who Was Thursday, and more. I confess that discussing books I adore is a doorway to my heart! Break, Blow, Burn & Make is beautifully written, boldly argued, blessedly inspiring. 

I will leave with a few memorable sentences

"Language is the narrow rope bridge with which we traverse the vast abysses between two people, or two cultures, or two times."

"Mischief results when people mistake data for knowledge, knowledge for wisdom, and, more and more often, feelings for truth."

"If an artwork is incandescent, then sufficient craft, love, and proper source and orientation are already present in the work. If it sets us on fire, we are partly responding to those things, but we are also responding to the exaltation and expansion of the artist's spirit in response to that demand for courage."

"To read in the way I have suggested here is nothing more and nothing less than to live with open eyes and ears, attuned to both the sharp edge of the present and the thick layers of the past."

"I have no answers to the questions I ask, nor proof of anything, or the questions would not be worth asking."

Old Bestseller Review: Reluctant Millionaire, by Maysie Greig

Old Bestseller Review: Reluctant Millionaire, by Maysie Greig

by Rich Horton

This wasn't a true bestseller, but its author was a very prolific successful writer of romance novels and thriller. Maysie Coucher Greig (1901-1971) was born in Sydney, Australia. Her father's name is confusingly given in Wikipedia as Robert Greig Smith -- I don't know if that's a mistake or if Greig later adopted her father's middle name as her last name. She began writing for newspapers in Australia at the age of 18, and soon moved to England, continuing that profession. She moved again in 1923, to the US, and began writing novels. In addition to "Maysie Greig", she published as by Ann Barclay, Mary Douglas Warren, and Jennifer Ames. She moved back to England in the early '30s, staying until 1948, after which she returned to Australia. She returned to London in 1966. She married four times -- twice to American, once to an Australian, and last to an Hungarian. She had one son, by Maxwell Murray, the Australian. The book at hand, Reluctant Millionaire, was published in 1945, and copyrighted under her married name at that time, Maysie Greig Murray.

My edition is the first American edition. It's a wartime printing, so has a smaller profile and thinner pages than usual, to conserve paper. The publisher was Triangle Books. based in Philadelphia. The novel has a stamp from the "American Lending Library", and must have been sold used after its primary lending period, as it's also inscribed "Ruth Baggett, 1948". The novel was reprinted many times, including a Dell paperback in 1945, a Romance Book Club edition in 1956 in the UK as by Greig's pseudonym "Jennifer Ames", and in further paperback editions in both countries at least into the 1970s -- a pretty good run.

This novel essentially concerns four people in London, who end up in a sort of love triangle. The time seems to be pretty much the time of writing, during the war. Simon Bruce is a research chemist, apparently quite good but not at all well off. He lives in a shabby boarding house. Another resident is Prudence Hollywell. She works in a wartime factory, and she is terribly in love with Simon, who hardly notices her. Then Simon inherits a fortune from his American godfather. But he is really just bothered by the money -- it interferes with his  simple life.

Roenna Ashton is a stunningly beautiful young woman living with her American father Welsley. Welsley is separated from Roenna's mother, due to her disapproval of his means of making money -- he's a gambler who spends his life on ocean liners, swindling the rich travelers. Roenna has no idea of this, and since her early teens she has lived with him, in relative luxury, on ships and at resorts, assuming that her father's money is just the natural way of things. But the war has ruined him -- there is no ocean travel, and his money is all but gone. He and Roenna live in a really shabby place, and are about to be kicked out. But Welsley sees a story about Simon, who has told the newspapers he'd just as soon give his fortune to a relative. Welsley sees an opportunity, and tells Roenna that he actually was related to Simon's godfather. Roenna is sent to tell this story to Simon -- her father correctly assumes that messenger as beautiful as his daughter might help the story go down better.

And so things go even better than Mr. Ashton might have hoped. Simon falls head over heels for Roenna. Of course when Prue Hollywell finds out, she is suspicious, and quickly guesses that the Ashtons are up to no good. (She assumes, naturally, that Roenna is in on the whole scheme.) Also involved is Rafe, an American aviator whose father was Welsley's partner. Rafe is also in love with Roenna, but out of loyalty tries to help her by keeping Simon from learning the truth. Meanwhile the Ashtons convince Simon to move to a far nicer place, with enough rooms to accommodate them as well. All the while Prue is dueling with Rafe, as she learns more and more about Welsley's past, while Rafe tries to dissuade her from interfering.

There is a twist or two on the way, but of course we know all will come right in the end. But Greig keeps us guessing just how it will come out. It's really a decently executed novel. The plot hums along nicely. The characters are thin, but pleasant enough. The prose is smooth, with some nice turns of phrase, and some effective comic set pieces. The depiction of wartime England seems pretty well done. It's not an enduring classic, but it's easy to see why Greig was popular -- and I'd say she would plausibly stand as one of the more accomplished popular writers of her time -- not the writer that say, Georgette Heyer was, but a decent one.

Resurrected Review: Balance of Trade, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Steve Miller died unexpectedly this past February. He and his wife, Sharon Lee, collaborated on a great many novels and short stories, the vast majority of which were set in their Liaden universe. This series began in 1988 with Agent of Change, and the most recent book, Ribbon Dance, came out this past June. I read them regularly back in the '90s and 2000s, but wasn't able to keep up after awhile. But I found them quite enjoyable. I thought it might be worthwhile to resurrect a review I did back in 2004.

Resurrected Review: Balance of Trade, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

by Rich Horton

Balance of Trade is Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's latest Liaden novel (in 2004). It appeared originally from Melisa and Richard Michaels's Embiid Publishing in electronic form in 2003; and in print from Meisha Merlin in 2004. It is basically unrelated to the previous Liaden novels, which all concerned Clan Korval, famous for pilots. This book is expanded from an earlier Absolute Magnitude novella of the same title. It seems to be set some while prior to the Korval books.

Jethri Gobelyn is a young Terran, working on his family's trading spaceship. His rather distant mother, the captain, seems to resent him, perhaps because of memories of his dead father. She plans to send him to another not very attractive ship. Jethri is fascinated by the Liadens, and has begun to learn their language. He is also a promising trader. But he gets snookered by a con artist pretending to be dealing for a Liaden family, using a forged card. Jethri confronts the Liaden trader in question, and somehow manages to get himself apprenticed to Master Trader Norn ven'Deelin.

The rest of the novel turns on Jethri's learning of Liaden customs and rules, and his ability to develop his already growing trading skills in a Liaden environment. He is controversial to more traditional Liadens, who have no truck with Terrans. In addition, his father's dealing with "Old Tech" -- dangerous ancient technology now proscribed -- threaten to get him in trouble. And he meets some new cousins, twin girls, one of who is a powerful dramliza (sort of a wizard) -- also controversial to more traditional Liadens. Meanwhile, the rest of his family back on his home spaceship is threatened by renegade elements who may also be interested in Old Tech.

It's a pretty enjoyable novel. Perhaps it is just a bit too long, though I did enjoy myself the whole way. Perhaps there is not quite enough real conflict. I felt like there was a bigger story just waiting to get started. Still, it's a fun read, a fast read, perhaps best suited to readers already familiar with Liad (though perhaps not, as it is quite independent of the earlier stories). I can't help but feel that sequels are in the offing. [And, indeed, two more novels about Jethri Gobelyn have since appeared, Trade Secret in 2013 and Fair Trade in 2022.)

Review: The Poppy War, by R. F. Kuang

Review: The Poppy War, by R. F. Kuang

by Rich Horton

The Poppy War was R. F. Kuang's first novel, from 2018. It was very successful, winning the Compton F. Crook Award for Best SF/F First Novel, and being shortlisted for the Nebula and World Fantasy awards. Kuang won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2020. This novel and its two sequels are transparently set in a version of China, in a period roughly corresponding to 1930-1950. I am told that the main character is based on Mao Zedong, though I was not really able to recognize this in The Poppy War. (I am sure this becomes clearer in the sequels, The Dragon Republic and The Burning God.) 

The main viewpoint character is Rin, a war orphan living in Tikany, in a remote province of the Nikan Empire. She is essentially a slave of her adoptive parents, the Fangs, who are dealers in opium. But she decides to study for the exam -- in which a high finish will allow her to attend the university. Her goal is the academy in the capitol city, Sinegard, for which tuition is free -- and which trains students to be officers in the Empress's army. 

Naturally, Rin succeeds, and makes her way to Sinegard. There she struggles to fit in -- she is looked down on as a lower class provincial -- most of the other students are from wealthy aristocratic families. She does make one good friend -- Kitai, a brilliant student but less of a fighter. And she makes an enemy: Nezha, a handsome boy from a very highly placed family, and a legitimately talented martial artist. Rin proves an excellent student, of course, and she also attracts the attention of the enigmatic Jiang, the master of Lore. It turns out that Jiang's teachings concern learning to make contact with the Pantheon of gods -- who can grant "shamans" great power, at a great cost. And Rin also encounters Jiang's previous student (he takes students rarely) -- Altan Tensen, a recent graduate, who has become famous as perhaps the greatest martial artist the academy has seen in a long time. Tensen is a Speerly -- the last Speerly (or is he?), the only survivor of the brutal massacre of the inhabitants of that island during the previous Poppy War against Mugen. 

If the above has the flavor of cliché -- well, it really is a very familiar story: brilliant poor child comes to a (magic) school and is pretty much the bestest student of all, overcomes the jealousy and scorn of her higher class fellow students, studies with a powerful teacher, etc. etc etc. And while this was well enough done, and in particular Rin's lessons with Jiang were intriguing, I did find it a bit disappointing on the whole.

But then war intervenes, before Rin's class can even graduate. The Mugens invade again, and the entire faculty and class of the academy are thrust into action, in defense of Sinegard. This is a desperate affair, as the government and most of the populace are evacuated, and the loss of the city seems certain. But Rin discovers how to access her particular power, through the Speerly's Phoenix god, and Jiang too -- very reluctantly -- takes magical action, and, at an awful cost, the invaders are repelled. 

But of course, Mugen does not give up, and soon Rin, now assigned to the Cike, a special division of the army usually reserved for missions of assassination, ends up in the coastal city of Khurdalain, again trying to fend off the Mugens, who have far superior numbers. Her leader now is Altan Tensen, who turns out to be a brilliant tactician and a hard man to work for, and a man who is also struggling with the breadth and danger of his powers, and with an associated opium addiction (the poppy helps people get to the mental state to access the Pantheon.) Rin herself is struggling to access her powers consistently, and in a controllable fashion. But she, and Altan, and their fellows in the Cike, are severely tested by both rivalries with the rest of the Army, and with the Mugen invasion, which culminated with atrocities in both Khurdulain and the major city of Golyn Niis. In the end they resolve desperately to risk freeing the shamans who have gone mad and are imprisoned under a mountain. This leads to a terrible final resolution, in which Rin must confront the risks of using her own access to the gods, especially the Phoenix, and also the moral costs of answering the Mugen atrocities with further atrocities. This is by far the best part of the book -- the moral questions are powerful, the depiction of the horrors of war (particularly the aftermath of this world's version of the Rape of Nanjing) are truly wrenching, and the story really begins to sing -- or perhaps I should say keen. The climax is horrifying, though also a bit anticlimactic -- and the book ends somewhat weakly, in part because it is setting up for the sequel.

In summary -- I think this is a promising first novel, and a remarkable book to have been written by a teenager, but it's not quite a finished product. The prose is inconsistent, and another editing pass would have helped greatly. The pacing is irregular, and I feel that the first half or more of the book should have been significantly cut -- there is important information there, but also some routine and not terribly involving busy work. The characters are a bit thin -- even Altan and Rin, the major characters, don't really convince. But it certainly suggests a writer worth watching -- and I can report that for instance her 2022 novel, Babel, which won the Nebula Award, is far better written, and more original as well.

Old Bestseller Review: Miss Granby's Secret; or, The Bastard of Pinsk, by Eleanor Farjeon

Review: Miss Granby's Secret; or, The Bastard of Pinsk, by Eleanor Farjeon

a review by Rich Horton

This is the latest in the Furrowed Middlebrow series of reprints of worthwhile books by British women authors of roughly the the first half of the 20th Century, curated by Scott Thompson (of the excellent Furrowed Middlebrow blog) and published by Dean Street Press. The series was interrupted by the unexpected death of Dean Street's publisher, Rupert Heath, in 2023; but Rupert's sister Victoria Eade has taken over, and a new Furrowed Middlebrow book has at last appeared.

Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) was a very popular children's author with a career stretching from the turn of the century to about 1959, and including children's stories, biographies, poetry, at least one libretto for an opera by her composer brother Harry Farjeon, memoirs, and a few novels for adults. Scott Thompason chose for reprint the novel at hand, Miss Granby's Secret; or, The Bastard of Pinsk. Though it was reasonably well-received on its release in 1940, it seemed to have been all but forgotten and had been out of print for years. (Scott suggests that her other adult novels are less successful.) Her best known children's novels seem to be a pair about a troubadour: Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1921) and Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field (1937). She is also remembered for writing the lyrics to the hymn "Morning Has Broken", and there is a children's book award named for her. For all that, I had only a vague memory of encountering her name, and I'd never read any of her books.

This novel is curiously structured, as, essentially, a novel within a novel. Pamela Lang, the narrator of the frame, is the great-niece of Adelaide Granby, who had been a very popular writer of salacious romances over the latter half of the 19th Century. Aunt Addie, as Pamela calls her, is dying, in 1912, at the age of 79. She has written 49 novels and confesses that she wanted to write a 50th, but didn't get to finish it. Pamela is bequeathed her papers (and some money -- Miss Granby's novels have made her very wealthy and, as a spinster, she is very generous with bequests to a variety of people.) With the help of some letters and Miss Granby's diary, she learns that at the age of 16, Adelaide had fallen in love with a boy of about her age who was helping her with penmanship and her father with his book catalogue. Her father intends her to marry someone of a more appropriate class -- but Addie rebels, and continues dallying with the boy, Stanislaw, until her father catches them in flagrante delicto, as it were. Stanislaw is banished, but Addie refuses to marry anyone, and stays faithful to Stanislaw her entire life; turning her romantic energies to her novels.

Another thing found in Aunt Addie's papers is her first novel -- written when she was 16, not long after her love affair. Naturally, Pamela reads it, and this novel is reproduced in full in this book. It's the story of three beautiful daughters of a wicked great uncle, triplets, who have been raised in seclusion. At the age of 16 they notice a handsome young man riding by their great uncle's estate on a magnificent horse, and they attract his attention. As such things go, one day he falls from his horse and they must bring him in to their house and nurse him. Naturally, they all three fall in love with him, and he with each of them. But things are complicated by their dragonish governess, whose back story we learn -- a career as a courtesan to many men, beginning with the triplets' wicked great uncle. And of course their handsome visitor -- named Stanislaw -- turns out to have a mysterious past, and a beautiful sister who has herself been compromised, leaving her with a young child. And then enter the three boorish men their uncle has decided will be their husbands -- in order to get him out of debt ... 

It's rather intricately plotted, involving hints of incest, polyamory, hidden marriages, bastards, sinister servants, and more. It's also preceded by a set of definitions, revealing that the author, Adelaide Granby, didn't really know the meaning of terms like bastard and lecher, nor did she have any hint of the facts of life.

All this is funny for a while, but I confess it drags a bit over time. The novel does resolve, in an absurd but satisfying enough fashion. Pamela Lang, in 1912, decides it is too silly for publication -- Aunt Addie's desired Golden Jubilee novel will, after all, never see print. Fast forward a couple of decades -- Pamela, a young Fabian in 1912, has taken advantage of the new opportunities open to women and become a dentist. Some chance encounters remind her of Aunt Addie's past -- especially the revelation of the real identity of her lover Stanislaw, and the discovery of a lost part of her Aunt's diary. And in the end we learn just a bit more of her Aunt's romantic past, and of what really happened between her and Stanislaw. All this ties in with Pamela's life choices, and with those of some of the women she encounters -- her own maid, and a nurse (one of Addie's bequestees) who cares for Addie's old lover as he is dying -- and the story, rather movingly, becomes a sort of meditation on the changing fortunes of women over the previous several decades.

It's not a wholly successful novel, to my mind. The conceit is wonderful, and the eventual working out is effective, but the novel within a novel wears out its welcome and some of the jokes become a bit over-labored. Still, it's a fine book, and it's pleasant to see it back in print. 

Review: Invisible Things, by Mat Johnson

Review: Invisible Things, by Mat Johnson

by Rich Horton

Invisible Things is a 2022 novel from Mat Johnson. It was published by the One World imprint of Random House, and as far as I can tell marketed to the mainstream. But it's a true quill SF novel, though certainly one directly addressing contemporary social issues, with a sharp satirical slant -- so one that I would think does appeal to non SF readers. (Johnson's first novel, Pym (2011) is also SF, an odd sequel of sorts to Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.) The question is -- did the SF world notice this novel? And will SF readers read it the same way?

I don't recall a lot of coverage of Invisible Things in SF sources, but I could easily have missed it. Will SF readers like it? I think they should, and many will, but it does raise thoughts about SF reading protocols and SF readers' expectation. The book is about a trip to Jupiter's moon Europa, and an impossible city that is found there: a domed city (or county), with what must be artificial gravity (and other super high tech), in which live a million or so people in an environment and social system strongly resembling a contemporary American city. This poses questions: who made the city? how is it maintained? where do the residents come from? why does it exist? SF readers, I think, will want answers to all those questions -- and the book does provide some answers, but not all of them. SF readers may also have plot expectations that will mostly (though not entirely) be frustrated. Having said that, I was reminded, to one degree or another, of some of Philip K. Dick's novels (particularly Time Out of Joint) and even of Frederik Pohl's great novella "The Gold at the Starbow's End" -- so this does fit a template of some successful SF. And there is no question that Johnson knows SF, and takes it seriously, and while the book can't be called rigorously "hard" SF, it is as plausible as it needs to be, giving just the right level of detail. I should add, lest the following seem labored, that above all this novel is funny -- funny with a determined satirical point, but funny it is.

The story primarily follows two viewpoint characters. One is Nalini Jackson, a Black post-doc in Applied Sociology, who is accompanying the crew of the Delany, a spaceship exploring the Jupiter system. Her goal is to study the relational dynamics of the crew, to see how they are affected by a long trip in confined quarters. But her job (already fraught) is upended when they discover the anomalous city on Europa, and then are suddenly transported to the city, called New Roanoake, with apparently no choice but to stay there for the rest of their lives. The other main character is Chase Eubanks, a limousine driver in New Mexico, who has become part of the Allies of Alien Abductees after his wife mysteriously disappeared a few years before. He works for a rich old man who suddenly takes an interest in his alien abduction obsession -- and Chase learns that NASA has investigated the disappearance of the Delany crew with unmanned spacecraft, and has managed to get detailed photographs of the interior of the dome on Europa -- and one of the residents of the city is Chase's lost wife, Ada Hibiscus Sanchez. Soon Harry, Chase, a UN representative, and an Admiral working for NASA are on their way to Europa, in a ship called the Ursula, planning to learn more about this mysterious city, and to rescue the astronauts, and hopefully also some of the presumably abducted residents. 

In New Roanoake, Nalini and her fellows are struggling to adapt to their fates. Nalini is planning to use her sociological skills to analyze the society of New Roanoake, which seems only too closely to mirror contemporary American society, with its class and racial issues, and also with a lot of the same technology (and the same chain restaurants!) The other Black member of the crew, Dwayne Causwell, has joined a revolutionary party, the Party of the People. The captain of the Delany, Bob Seaford, has insinuated himself into the power structure of the city, which is dominated by the Founders' Party, which seems primarily focused on retain the privileges of people born in the city instead of abducted from Earth -- or "collected" as the locals prefer to call it -- including the descendants of Virginia Dare and other people presumably abducted from the original Lost Colony, Roanoake. Nalini's sometime lover, Ahmed, is just going along to get along, finding a job working for a TV station. And Ada Sanchez, now calling herself Hibiscus, is making ends meet as a typical lower class resident.

The arrival of the Ursula threatens to wholly upset New Roanoake. Admiral Ethel Dodson announces her intention to set up a facility to manufacture more spaceships to take the residents of the city home. The UN representative talks about exchanging technology with the city -- especially the tech involved in maintaining it. And Chase -- Chase just wants to find Ada (Hibiscus.) But we soon realize that there are very strange things going on -- Invisible Things, which it is taboo to mention, that occasionally snatch people and either disappear them or prominently mess with them. The resolution turns on the collision of the plans and desires of a whole range of people: Chase's desire to be with Hibiscus, Hibiscus' relative happiness with New Roanoake, Bob and his fellows in the Founders' Party desire to hold on to power and privilege by any means, Dwayne's need to see justice in the city, Nalini and Ethel's desire to go home to Earth, and the various conflicting and sometimes contradictory urges of the entire population of New Roanoake. Not to mention whatever unknowable desires the Invisible Things may or may not have.

As I said above, this book is very very funny. It is so in a satirical way, and no character is spared the knife. And, yes, the satire is in service of pointed commentary on our society, on voting rights, economic privilege, other class divisions, media, and human nature. The main characters -- Chase and Nalini -- are depicted deeply and convincingly. Most of the rest are a bit flatter, and give the impression of existing to make a point more than to be real -- but that's a feature of a lot of satire. And some of these characters are a delight -- such as Deputy Vice Party Chairman Brett Cole, generally only to be addressed by his full title.

Recommended.

Review: Miss Pickerell and the Geiger Counter, by Ellen MacGregor

Review: Miss Pickerell and the Geiger Counter, by Ellen MacGregor

by Rich Horton

One of the juvenile SF-adjacent writers I missed during my formative years was Ellen MacGregor. She was the originator of the Miss Pickerell series of books, involving an elderly spinster having adventures, occasionally involving clearly science fictional concepts, as with the first of the series, Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars. These were evidently important to a number of readers as a gateway to SF -- Harry Turtledove is apparently one example. But I never saw them.

Ellen MacGregor was a librarian. born in Washington state in 1906. She got her Bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in 1926, and got her Masters from the University of California at Berkeley. She had librarian and research positions in multiple places -- Hawaii, Key West, and the Chicago area, which seems to have been her primary residence. She didn't start writing fiction until 1946. Her first book, Tommy and the Telephone, appeared in 1947. The first Miss Pickerell book, Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, began as a short story, "Swept Her Into Space", published in Liberty in 1950, but appeared in book form in 1951. Two more Miss Pickerell books came out in 1953, but MacGregor died, only 47, in 1954. She had finished Miss Pickerell Goes to the Arctic and it appeared later in 1954. Three more non-Pickerell novels, presumably found in her papers, appeared in the next three years. A decade or so after her death, her publisher engaged Dora Pantell to write more books about Miss Pickerell, beginning with Miss Pickerell on the Moon in 1965. Pantell wrote a total of 13 Miss Pickerell books, the last appearing in 1986. The first 11 of these were published as by "Ellen MacGregor and Dora Pantell", and the last two by Dora Pantell "in the spirit of Ellen MacGregor", but it seems likely to me that all of these books were entirely written by Pantell, except just possibly for the first one or two. 

Miss Pickerell and the Geiger Counter is a very short book, around 13,000 words. It is illustrated nicely by Paul Galdone. In this book, Miss Pickerell and her nephews, and of course her cow, are headed to the state capitol for the state fair, and for the boys to see an Atomic Energy exhibit. Miss Pickerell will take her cow to a veterinarian for a routine checkup. Alas, however, the steamboat captain kicks her off the boat because of the cow, but not before mentioning that people are prospecting for uranium in the area. 

Miss Pickerell lets the boys continue to the exhibit, while she hopes to catch the train with her cow. But stuff intervenes -- her cow is kidnapped, the local sheriff gets the measles and insists on deputizing Miss Pickerell and assigning her the job of looking for the uranium, and Miss Pickerell misses her train. But she does recover her cow, and find out the truth behind the uranium search, and also learns what the sheriff really wants to do with his life. And the boys are fine, too!

It's not bad, but not special. Still, I think I'd have enjoyed it if I found it when I was 10 or so. Also very notable is the didactic side -- MacGregor definitely seemed to think her job was to educate young reader in science, and there are a lot of mini-lectures, about geology and radioactivity and such. I can't really recommend these books for adult readers, but they are amusing enough, and Miss Pickerell is a nice character.