Resurrected Review: Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

Another resurrected review -- this was on my SFF Net blog in 2002.

Review: Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

by Rich Horton

China Miéville's second novel, Perdido Street Station, was published in the U. K. in 2000, and in the U. S. in 2001. It made the 2002 Hugo shortlist --the beneficiary of a then recent Hugo eligibility change, whereby a book can be eligible for a Hugo nomination based on the first publication in the location of a given year's Worldcon. 

The novel is set in New Crobuzon, a large city in a fantasy world. New Crobuzon seems overtly modelled on London, and the fantasy world, the rest of which geography is rather vague, is somewhat "steampunk" in nature. There is considerable magic, openly recognized, even systematized, operating side-by-side with tech of a somewhat Victorian feel (but on the whole more advanced than that: for instance, the computing tech is ostensibly based on Analytical Engines a la Babbage, but the level of computing power is comparable at least to say 1980s electronic computing). The city is controlled and mainly inhabited by humans, but there are also a number of different alien (or "xenian") races (all to some extent humanoid): the water-dwelling vodanyoi, the cactus-like cactacae, the flying garuda, and the bug-headed khepri.

Isaac der Grimnebulin is a human scientist living in a rather bohemian quarter. He is in love with a khepri artist named Lin, though because interspecies relationships are looked on with much prejudice they keep their affair a (rather open) secret. One day they each get a valuable commission. A garuda named Yagharek, who has had his wings ripped out for some terrible crime, asks Isaac to find a scientific means of giving him back the power of flight. And a radically Remade crime boss named Mr. Motley asks Lin to sculpt him (the Remade are surgically altered people, usually altered for punishment, but apparently sometimes for enhancement: Motley's alterations are extensive and chaotic). 

Isaac's investigations into the possibilities of flight lead him to a potentially world-changing scientific discovery. Unfortunately, they also result in him accidentally releasing another sort of flying being on New Crobuzon, something called a "slake-moth", which preys on sentient beings' dreams, in the process literally sucking out the sentient part of their mind.

The major portion of the plot turns on Isaac's attempts (with a small band of friends and temporary allies: the garuda Yagharek, a radical journalist named Derkhan Blueday, a criminal named Lemuel, a spontaneously generated AI, and an extradimensional spider-like creature called the Weaver) to track down and destroy the slake-moths. These intersect the similar attempts of the city authorities to deal with the slake-moth threat, and with Mr. Motley's interests, which are more ambiguous: he had been keeping slake-moths in captivity because they secreted a valuable drug, and he resents what he sees as Isaac attempting to horn in on his business.

The plot itself is interesting, though probably not worthy of over 700 pages. It is reasonably well worked out, though. Miéville's imagination is fecund, however, and his descriptions of New Crobuzon and the various alien inhabitants are continually fascinating. His political parallels are often rather crudely drawn, but not fatally so. Isaac and Lin and Yagharek and Derkhan are good characters, people we learn to care for. The prose is sound but not spectacular, and it does stumble in places. The book's structure does have one mild flaw: it is framed with Yagharek's story, and the eventual revelation of his crime is rather anti-climatic, and by ending with the resolution of his story things seem to go on beyond the proper end. But all in all this is a fascinating novel, an involving read that only rarely drags over 700+ pages, a very worthy award nominee.

Capsule Review: The Essence of the Thing, by Madeleine St. John

Capsule Review: The Essence of the Thing, by Madeleine St. John

by Rich Horton

The Essence of the Thing is a very short novel (about 47,000 words), by Madeleine St. John. It was published in 1997 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. St. John was born in 1941 in a suburb of Sydney, moved to the US with her husband, and then to London after a divorce. She wrote four novels between 1993 and 1999, the first (The Women in Black) set in Sydney, that latter three forming a loose trilogy set in London's Notting Hill neighborhood. The Essence of the Thing was the middle book in this set, and became the first book by an Australian woman to be shortlisted for the Booker. I bought in on impusle, and found it a rewarding read. My brief review follows. 

Nicola is a 30ish Londoner living with a lawyer named Jonathan. She fully expects that they will marry, but one day she walks into their flat and Jonathan tells her coldly that he has decided they must part. He seems surprised that she is devastated by this.

The rest of the novel follows her and Jonathan's reaction. Despite her friends' advice, Nicola still feels devastated by the breakup, and still feels in love. But she slowly disconnects. She leaves the flat, which was originally hers but which she can't afford to keep. She moves in first with married friends, then with friends of these friends who have a little girl and a spare room. She applies for a job she has no belief she can get. At the same time Jonathan only slowly tells anyone, despite visiting his parents for a weekend and being given his mother's engagement ring to give to Nicola. He is shown realizing that his shirts aren't magically getting ironed, and that he misses other aspects of Nicola's presence. There are also some very witty scenes with Nicola's various friends -- lots of supple and clever and believable conversation. The final resolution is fairly predictable, though aspects are (wisely) left open ended. A slim but quite enjoyable novel.

Hugo Best Novel Final Ballot Thoughts, 2025

My latest Substack post covers my thoughts on the current Hugo Best Novel final ballot: https://open.substack.com/pub/richhorton314252/p/the-2025-hugo-best-novel-ballot

Old Bestseller Review: The Wings of the Morning, by Louis Tracy

Old Bestseller Review: The Wings of the Morning, by Louis Tracy

by Rich Horton

A year or two ago I happened across this book in an antique store. It's a novel I had never heard of by an author I had never heard of. I was a bit taken aback, though, by the series is appeared in: The Winston Clear-Type Popular Classics. This was a set of novels apparently aimed at teen-aged readers -- what me might call YA today. These books are almost all very well known -- novels and collections often originally aimed at adult readers, but deemed (correctly) to appeal to younger people. Examples include several classic books that I read as a teen: Little Women and Little Men by Louisa May Alcott; Treasure Island and Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson; Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates, by Mary Mapes Dodge; and Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell. Other entries were familiar as well: the Lambs' Shakespeare; Pinocchio; Heidi; Robinson Crusoe; collections of stories from the Bible, from the Arabian Nights, and folk tales and fairy tales. Indeed, of all the books listed in the series I knew of everyone -- EXCEPT The Wings of the Morning. 

Well, I had to buy it! I should note in passing that the publisher, John C. Winston, was long known for books for young readers -- SF fans of a certain age might remember the Winston Juveniles from the 1950s. As best I can tell this particular set of books was published in the early '20s. All the books were reprints -- the novel at hand was first published in 1903. But -- who was Louis Tracy? As often with such older popular books, tracking down information about the author proved as interesting as the book itself.

Louis Tracy was born in 1863 and died in 1928. He is often said (on Wikipedia, for example) to have been born in Liverpool, but Steve Holland did some rigorous research and traced his birth to Ireland, and established his name at birth as Joseph Patrick Treacy. The family moved to England not long after -- likely first to Liverpool then to Yorkshire, where his father was a police officer. His name was changed at some point to Louis Tracy. He became a journalist, working in Durham and Yorkshire and eventually London. His first novel was science fiction, The Final War (1896), one of a number of "future war" books he published. He also collaborated with M. P. Shiel, particularly on a number of mysteries under the name "Gordon Holmes". Tracy published mysteries under his own name as well.

But it seems that his most popular novel was indeed The Wings of the Morning. This was first published by Ward Lock in the UK as Rainbow Island, in 1904. That same year it was published in the US by Edward J. Clode as The Wings of the Morning. Clode reprinted the book multiple times (and the copyright notice in my edition is under Edward J. Clode.) Editions are readily available on Abebooks. There were illustrated versions, including one using stills from a 1919 silent film. As far as I can tell, the John C. Winston Popular Classics edition dates to 1924, and it is illustrated by the once prominent American artist Mead Schaeffer, in nice colored plates. I have found two different covers for that edition on Abebooks, and I've seen it stated that different editions include additional Schaeffer paintings -- mine has only four.

(I need to credit Steve Holland, Douglas Anderson, David Langford, Mike Stamm, and the late John C. Squires for providing most of the information on Tracy and his works.)

The book itself? It's really quite fun. (I'll note in advance that it features some out and out racist depictions of Malay pirates ("Dyaks") as well as of one virtuous but cringily portrayed Indian character.) As the original title might hint, it's a "Robinsonade" -- that is, the main characters are marooned on a deserted island, just like Robinson Crusoe. (And the characters mention both Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson.)

It opens on the Sirdar, a steamer owned by Sir Arthur Deane, heading from Hong Kong back to England. The passengers include Sir Arthur's daughter Iris. However, a typhoon is threatening, and after a brave battle with the elements, the Sirdar, after a collision with a junk and then a crash on a reef, is destroyed, and everyone on board dies except Iris and one sailor, Robert Jenks, who managed to grab her and bring the two to safety on an island. 

Robert, fortunately, has considerable experience -- Iris quickly gathers that he was in the military. He and she are able to rescue some supplies from the wreck of the Sirdar, and to find water on the island -- first from pitcher plants and then after discovering a well. The well represents signs of habitation, and they soon realize that the island had been visited by people from nearby islands, and well as some Chinese and at least one European, but all perished due to a volcanic emanation of poison gas. They find a cave that will serve as shelter while they hunker down and wait hopefully for rescue.

The novel continues as you might guess. Robert Jenks, who doesn't talk or act like a common sailor, has a secret, which Iris soon winkles out of him. She herself is supposed to marry a certain Lord Ventnor, but she's never really liked him. Propinquity, along with Iris' beauty and Robert's many manly virtues, does its magic, and they are soon chastely promised to each other. And Robert has a made a dramatic discovery that may change their future fortunes. But there are severe dangers, particularly a threat of the Dyak pirates who haunt the area -- and even if they are rescued, will Iris' father consent to her marrying a poor seaman ...

There follows some dramatic action, some sweet domestic scenes, more dark secrets balanced by some rather lucky revelations. It's an adventure novel of its time, for good and bad; and it's the sort of thing I'd have enjoyed as a teen, and still quite enjoyed now. I don't really know why its reputation has diminished so much in the past decades, except that it's a good enough book but it's not great -- it's not at the level of Stevenson, certainly, nor of the very different Alcott, nor even Defoe. And to be sure its racist elements do make it a hard sell nowadays -- and, frankly, deservedly so. For all that, I'll probably try another of Tracy's novels along the way -- maybe one of his mysteries. 

(And here's one more cover -- of the sort you often see on early 20th Century books: just slap a Gibson-style pretty woman on the cover, no concern for representing the book.)

Hugo Novel Ballot Review: Service Model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Hugo Novel Ballot Review: Service Model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

a review by Rich Horton

This is the sixth and last of my reviews of novels on the 2025 Hugo Award final ballot. Service Model is one of two Adrian Tchaikovsky novels that made the ballot this year. It's a standalone novel (as was the other, Alien Clay.) 

The novel opens with Charles, a robot valet, going through his normal routine serving his master. We quickly gather that things aren't quite normal -- though Charles always asks, his master doesn't need much of what he offers. He never travels, so Charles can't make travel plans or ask as chauffeur. He doesn't have a wife any more, and in general he's not interested in much of anything. But today things are even more different -- for when Charles goes to dress his master, he finds him inert, and there's a terrible red stain. It's quickly clear that Charles must have slashed his master's throat while shaving him, though Charles has no record of taking such an action in his memory.

Charles must be defective, he concludes, so he heads off to the diagnostic center to be repaired. But once there is it clear that not much is being accomplished -- in fact, all the robots are sent to "data compression", which turns about to be rather more literal than one might hope. But Charles has encountered another very unusual robot called "The Wonk", which insists that Charles must have been infected with the "protagonist virus", which gives him free will. Charles doesn't believe this, and decides that the Wonk is a terribly defective robot. (The reader will instantly recognize what the Wonk really is.) Charles desperately want to return to service, and the Wonk, having given him a new name -- Uncharles, as he can hardly still use the name his mater had given him -- suggests he investigate a "Conservation Farm" where humans are attempting to reenact ancient human life -- prior to robots.

So begins Uncharles' journeys through a world which is revealed as post-Apocalyptic -- society has clearly completely collapsed. The "farm" turns out to be a horribly oppressive sort of prison, where "volunteers" are compelled to pointlessly take a subway to work and to meaningless work etc. etc. The Wonk invades the farm -- she (she is mysteriously given a pronoun at some point) is very good at getting into places -- and helps free Uncharles from service to the bureaucrat running the farm. Then there is a journey to the "central library", where robots are archiving all human knowledge; then an encounter with "God" who gives Uncharles three wishes -- sending him first to serve the master of a manor like his first manor -- but of course there is no living human there; then a feral group of humans, who have no particular use for Uncharles, then a "king" -- but not a human king but a massive robotic soldier, ruling a group of military robots fighting an endless war. Finally, he and the Wonk (who keeps showing up) journey to God to finally learn the real truth as to what caused the apocalypse -- and they learn of course that God is no better than anyone else in this terrible future.

I am of two minds about this novel. It's very cleverly written, in Tchaikovsky's snarky voice, which is well adapted to the satirical aims of the book. Both Uncharles and the Wonk are delightful characters, though most of the rest of the characters (almost all robots) are slimly depicted. I found myself quite moved at times. Still, some of the book is too obviously set up to make satirical points that don't always land; some of it is unconvincing (particularly the time span), and every so often Tchaikovsky stomps on a joke (as when I could see the setup for an Oz reference towards the end of the book from a mile away.) It's a bit tendentious, for sure. All that said, on the whole it works nicely, and I enjoyed reading it.

Bottom line -- I divide the Hugo nominees this year into three piles -- one novel is to my mind clearly at the top; four novels are pretty close to each other in the middle group -- and Service Model is in this pile; and one novel is distinctly the least of the nominees (to my mind, a really puzzling choice.) I'll do an official summary at my Substack in a few days. 

Review: Collisions, by Alec Nevala-Lee

Review: Collisions, by Alec Nevala-Lee

a review by Rich Horton

Alec Nevala-Lee is building a repuation as one of the best biographers of science, with his previous books Astounding (about a science fiction magazine and four major contributors, of whom one was a scientist (in a minor way), one a pseudo-scientists (among many "pseudo" identities, and the other two technincally trained and very interested in science (and pseudoscience!) and Buckminster Fuller: Inventor of the Future; and now with this book, a biography of the Nobel Prize winning physicist Luis Alvarez. (And he is currently working on a book about the scientifically-focussed think tank the RAND Corporation.)

His books have all taken a truly scientific approach to their subjects, by which I mean not just thorough research but a degree of skepticism. This continues in Collisions. Luis Alvarez was a remarkable scientist who made a number of profound contributions to both his field and other fields. But he was also sometimes difficult to work with (although to my mind the book shows that difficult as he could be, he was working with people just as difficult,) and he was by no means above slanting his conclusions to favor his preferred viewpoint -- never to the point of anything like fraud, mind you, just a very human tendency to emphasize the positive. That said, when he was proved wrong, he admitted it, and indeed celebrated it -- a fundamental characteristic of good science is recognizing that learning that a hypothesis, or even an estabilished belief, is wrong counts as progress in the search for knowledge.

Alvarez's major contributions are many indeed, and this book covers them well. Nevala-Lee has the ability to describe the scientific advancements, and their significance, quite clearly to a lay audience. (Calibrate that if you must against the fact that I have a B. S. in Physics.) He does so economically as well. Alvarez was at heart an experimentalist as opposed to a theoritician, and so some of his contributions were in the area of inventing better instruments, or designing clever experiments, to get data that would help the theory folks prove or disprove their ideas, or give them evidence that might prompt additional theorizing. In this area he invented the "bubble chamber", a key enhancement to the cloud chamber, for tracking subatomic particle paths. (He eventually won the Nobel Prize in part for this innovation.) He devised a source of "slow neutrons". As a student he helped set up an experiment that determined the charge of cosmic rays. He also found practical nonscientific uses for some of the equipment he worked with, perhaps most dramatically in inventing a way to use radar to help land airplanes in bad weather. He did make some important physical discoveries as well, such as proving the Helium-3 was stable and present in nature, but tritium was radioactive. (I have left stuff out, of course.)

His reputation in the wider world, to be sure, derives from other contributions, such as his work on the Manhattan project. (Which led to controversy when he testified against Robert Oppenheimer when the question of Oppenheimer's clearance came up in the 1950s.) He spent a fair amount of energy refuting conspiracies about the Kennedy assassination. And most dramatically, he, along with his son Walter, Helen Michael, and Frank Asaro (whose daughter Catherine is a prominent science fiction writer), discovered the evidence (excess iridium in the very thin layer of clay in rocks from around the boundary at the end of the Cretaceous Era) that indicated that the Cretaceous extinction event was caused by an asteroid strike.

Nevala-Lee tells all these stories engagingly. He is careful to credit all of Alvarez's many collaborators -- which Alvarez always did as well. He also tells of Alvarez' occasional failures. He is very open about his shortcomings -- a tendency to be very hard on some of his colleagues, and at times to be vicious to scientists whom he felt had betrayed science, usually by opposing Alvarez' ideas in a case where Alvarez would eventually be proven right. This book is much more about Alvarez the scientist than Alvarez the man, though undoubtedly that's in part because the man was above all a scientist, sometimes to the detriment of his personal life. But we do learn about his childhood, and about his father, a prominent doctor, and about his two wives. (His first marriage collapsed largely due to the time Alvarez spent away from his wife doing his job (and to be fair, the worst of this was during the War, and its hard to blame Alvarez for that investment of time), but his second marriage seems to have been much more successful -- and Alvarez acknowledged that this was in part because he let his wife be much more involved with his work. Both his wives were very intelligent women as far as I can tell, and one minor subthread of this book subtly indicates the way in which women were kept away from pursuing scientific careers at that time.)

This is another excellent scientifically-oriented biography from Alec Nevala-Lee. As his career continues, I suspect Nevala-Lee will have given us a broad portrait of scientific advances, scientific problems, and pseudo-scientific errors in the 20th Century, and I'm looking forward to reading about all these.

Review: Some Trick, by Helen DeWitt

Review: Some Trick, by Helen DeWitt

a review by Rich Horton

Some Trick is a collection of thirteen short stories (and one prefatory poem) by Helen DeWitt, who is best known for her brilliant 2000 novel The Last Samurai. On reading The Last Samurai I immediately realized I should read anything else she's published. I have since read her sly novelette The English Understand Wool, and now this book. There is another novel, Lightning Rods (2011), and a third upcoming later this year, Your Name Here, written with Ilya Gridneff. The books published to date are all available from the venerable small press New Directions (though The Last Samurai first appeared from another publisher, who seems to have been very difficult for DeWitt to work with (partly due to corporate mergers.)) The new novel will be published by another outstanding small press, one of my favorites: The Dalkey Archive. (DeWitt's difficulties with publishers seems to inform some of the plot of The English Understand Wool, and also might inform bits and pieces of the stories in Some Trick.)

The stories in Some Trick cover a wide variety of subjects, mostly touching in some way on the arts. The voice is varied as needed throughout but is always recognizable as DeWitt's. I'm not sure of the provenance of most of them -- one, "Climbers", appeared in Harper's in 2014, and three are dated "Oxford 1985" so presumably date to her time at Oxford, where she got her doctorate. (I will say that I find the habit of literary publishers refraining from giving original places of publication for stories in collections quite annoying.) The collection itself appeared in 2018.

On the whole the book is a delight. If there is any flaw -- and this is less of a flaw than an ambiguous virtue -- it is that in the weaker pieces a sense of cleverness (and DeWitt is very clever indeed) may be the main thing a reader takes away. But the best pieces are thought provoking, intensely enjoyable, sometimes very funny indeed, and sometimes quite powerful. The arts dealt with are varied too -- visual arts, books, music, even math. (Which, really, also describes The Last Samurai.)

As to the stories, very briefly: "Brutto" concerns an artist who finds herself approached by a crazy Italian man who wants her to make a number of copies of a suit she had made as a youthful apprentice as a dressmaker, and exhibit them as works of art. And for financial reasons, and artistic ambitions, she can't resist. It'a almost a satire of the art scene, but stays just short of that, and I liked it a lot. "My Heart Belongs to Bertie" is a rather astonishing little piece about a mathematician, and statistics, and publishing, and computer programming -- this is the sort of thing only DeWitt, it seems to me, could pull off. "On the Town" is about a young man from Iowa who ends up rooming in New York with the disaffected son of a wildly successful writer of children's books, and -- well, it's hard to describe but it's a madcap ride through some wild financial maneuvers and a guy from the sticks falling in love with New York and, well, it's very funny. "Remember Me" mixes a famous Jewish writer, a Church of England canon who wants a Jewish man to participate in VE Day services, and a young woman friend of the writer's fiancee who is writing a novel herself. This one didn't fully work for me. "Climbers" is also about a famous writer, and a couple of people who are sort of obsessive fans of him in different ways, and a project to try to get the writer's latest book published in the US -- which tells you nothing about the story, which is more about some offbeat characters, and about publishing -- and I thought it absorbing. 

"The French Style of Mlle Matsumoto" switches from publishing to music -- a brief story of a famous French pianist, and a Japanese woman who was herself an exceptional Chopin interpreter -- an about the Second World War and antisemitism and eventually about, perhaps, musical influence passing down generations. But nothing so banal. "Stolen Luck" is also about music -- about a rock band and their drummer and a photographer and an unexpected hit song and -- it's amusing but minor in among DeWitt's work. Back to rock music for "In Which Nick Buys a Harley for 16K Having Once Been Young" -- in this case a band in 1970 making a US tour and falling apart due to, I suppose, creative differences, or a slimy producer. "Plantinga" is back to visual art -- the title character is a photographer, and this short story quickly covers her life and a few of her works -- there's no describing it really, but it works. (Maybe the Lem and Calvino references make it work for me!) And finally "Entourage" is one of my favorites, about a man trying to collect books with different letters in them -- so from different languages with different orthographies -- and it goes on to a project to hire associated to carry his suitcases full of books -- and then somehow to the founding of a restaurant change. And to a bunch of guys named Josh. And a Lem reference again -- well, kind of the same Lem reference. The story is bonkers but great weird fun.

I said "finally" but I skipped the three Oxford stories. To me they have a slight different feel, and the cleverness is definitely front and center. They are all still solid work, if sometimes seeming a bit unfinished. (But I suspect entire finished in DeWitt's mind.) "Improvisation is the Heart of Music" features Edward and Maria, who as we meet them are newlyweds embarking on a honeymoon -- an old-fashioned honeymoon through Europe by boat-train. And Edward tells stories, which Maria has heard before. And which pretty openly are derived from The Count of Monte Cristo. "Famous Last Words" is conversations and seduction -- with mentions of structuralism and advanced math, and characters named X and x, and -- it's very clever, and sexy in its way. In "Trevor" Lily and Trevor talk about art, and about beauty, and prettiness, and Botticelli and a possible Gainsborough, and perspective. It has a certain mystery to it -- perhaps the most successful of these three stories. Though, really, even if I imply they are not finished -- maybe I am wrong, as I certainly was intrigued by all of them.

I haven't, I think, done a good job saying what these stories are really like, and probably with a writer like DeWitt you simply have to follow her. The words are important, the rhythm, the ideas -- and a way of balancing ever present irony with the certainty that serious matters (in most cases) are being treated. It's fascinating work, and even the lesser stories compel reading.