Review: Espedair Street, by Iain Banks

Review: Espedair Street, by Iain Banks

by Rich Horton

I really enjoy Iain M. Banks' SF novels, particularly Use of Weapons, one of his Culture novels. I have also generally enjoyed those of his mainstream books I've read. This is a short look at one of those. Espedair Street is held in fairly high regard by Banks fans. It is also usually called one of his happier novels.

I must admit I was a bit taken aback, then, when the book opened with the narrator declaring that he had decided to kill himself. To be sure, he quickly assures us that he has decided to live after all.

It being a Banks book, it's told on two timelines. Fairly traditionally: one timeline recounts the last few days in the life of Danny Weir, while the other tells the story of his life from his late teens to the present (age 31). Danny Weir, we soon gather, was the bass player and songwriter for a huge 70s/80s progressive rock band, Frozen Gold. His nickname was Weird (for Weir, D., obviously enough). The band seems to have ended under rather distressing circumstances, which don't become clear for a long time.

In the present day thread, we learn that Danny is living a pointless existence in a mock cathedral in Glasgow, drinking his life away with Communist liquor, spending time with three not-quite-friends -- a young man, a rather older man, and a prostitute. He still writes music, but not very seriously -- film scores and commercial jingles. He gets drunk enough to have no idea what crazy things he might have done. He also doesn't tell any of his friends who he really is -- letting them think he is just the caretaker for Danny Weir's property.

The other thread tells the story of Frozen Gold: how Danny more or less forced himself on the band as a songwriter (they were talented players of cover tunes), his resentment of the middle-class origins of the other members, the meteoric success of the band. Danny is extremely tall (6'6") and he describes himself as ugly. The leaders of the band are Davey Balfour, a supremely talented guitarist, and Christine Brice, a wonderful singer. We soon gather that Davey's risk-taking may have something to do with the band's collapse, though Danny blames himself. There is also some sexual dynamics -- Davey cheating with Danny's girlfriend, and Danny responding with an affair with Christine (she and Davey having been a couple). 

It all comes to a head when Davey is pushed to resume his career (it seems that his solo album is unexpectedly a success), but then learns some more devastating news. He feels that there is simply no point to his life -- but then he -- well, leave it to the novel to reveal. Yes, though, it is at least a hopeful ending, if not unambiguously happy.

I rather enjoyed the book, but with reservations. Mostly they turn on a feeling that it's all too easy. Above all, Espedair Street seems facile. It's hard to believe in Frozen Gold -- in their success, in Danny's brilliance as a songwriter. It's hard to believe the tragedy that precipitates the action of the book. (The tragedy that ruined the band, on the other hand, though absurd, is believable in a weird way.) Danny's redemption also comes too easy. The more I think about this book, and about Banks's other books, I suspect that he is perhaps a supremely talented writer but not a great writer -- that his instinct leads him too readily to facile, constructed, ultimately shallow resolutions. It may be that at his best he can transcend this -- a reread of Use of Weapons may be in order -- but I suspect that in the long run this facility, this tendency to neatness and to easy solutions (even the sad endings, on reflection, are "easy" in a sense) is a limit to his range. (One illustration -- the nature of the human character in his Utopian Culture. The Culture is a wonderful place to live, but Banks has shied away from presenting a place inhabited by actual humans. Instead, they have been genetically engineered to be more tractable.)

Resurrected Post: A Look At the Candidates for the 1950 Retro Hugo

"A Look At the Candidates for the 1950 Retro Hugo" 

by Rich Horton

Back in 2001 I spent some time going over as many potential candidates for the Retro Hugo that year -- for works published in 1950 -- and I published my thoughts in several iterations, mostly on my SFF Net newsgroup. (Newsgroups! Those were the days!) I first commented on what I thought were worthy nominees. I updated it as I read more stories, and then as the nominees were announced, and then after the winners were announced.

Then, a few years ago, I went through an exercise to look back at the Hugos for the whole decade of the 1950s, I made a new post on what I thought were good choices for stories from 1950. That post is here. It echoes a lot of what I did way back in 2001 -- about which at that time I had completely forgotten! Today I had reason to look up things I had said about Fritz Leiber's classic story "Coming Attraction" -- and I came across this old post! So I decided to reproduce it here, in its original form (mostly) -- my later post linked above does mention a couple pieces I missed earlier. 

(And, hey, for more of my recent Hugo neep, here's my Substack post about the 2025 Hugo Short Story ballot.)

Anywhere: here is that old post:

I've been calling this a work in progress. Now, however, I have to say it's complete: the Retro Hugos have been awarded, and this latest revision includes commentary on the actual choices. I note that I have read all the actual Retro Hugo nominees. So, this essay considers the works I considered the most likely nominees for the 1950 Retro Hugos, to be awarded by the 2001 World Science Fiction Convention, the Millennium Philcon. Nominations for the Retro Hugos, and for the 2001 Hugos (for works published in 2000) are complete, and have been announced, as have been the winners. Interested people should check out the Millennium Philcon home page. In this latest revision to this essay, I will still list the stories I thought deserved consideration, adding the few examples that didn't make my list but which were nominated, and discussing the nominations, and the eventual winners.

(Incidentally, a someone different version of this essay, with pictures!, and with more prose and fewer lists, is available at SF Site, 1950 Retro Hugo Candidates).

I'd like to mention first that I'm aware of the arguments against awarding Retro Hugos, and I think they are pretty sound. There is no way we, in 2001, can reasonably simulate what voters in 1951 would have chosen as the best work of 1950. For example, stories by writers who established reputations that endure to this day will almost undoubtedly have an advantage over stories, possibly equally good or better, by writers who are forgotten or nearly forgotten 50 years later. But given that Retro Hugos are going to be awarded, the best we can do is try to find as many good 1950 stories as we can, read as many as we have time to, and vote accordingly. That's the goal of this essay: to list the novels and stories that I have found that I believe deserve consideration for Retro Hugo nominations. It's worth noting that the eventual winners, in my opinion, support the position of those who find the awards flawed -- particularly the non-fiction awards, which include such inexcusable results as Bob Silverberg winning Best Fan Writer, and Kelly Freas winning Best Pro Artist.

I began simply by checking the Internet Science Fiction Database's list of stories from 1950. The ISFDB isn't complete, but it's a pretty good resource. My memory is even less complete, but I have read a lot of old SF. I made a list of potential stories and novels, and posted the list on the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written, as well as on my personal newsgroup at SFF-Net, and at Dueling Modems. I got some suggestions for additions, mostly from the estimable John Boston, who knows far more about old SF than I do. I acquired a couple more anthologies to check out additional stories, and I even bought some magazine from 1950 (not a hardship: I love those old SF magazines). Dave Truesdale also made some suggestions, on SFF.Net. I also did some more research, at William Contento's Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections. Basically, I remembered that Everett Bleiler and T. E. Dikty's seminal Best of the Year collections were coming out in those days. So I looked up the contents of their Best Science Fiction Stories: 1951 (which was published in 1951 but selects stories from 1950) in the Contento Index. While many of the stories I had already listed were in that book, there are a few more. They seemed to restrict themselves to novelettes and short stories. They did do a short-lived series of Best Science Fiction Novels which collects novellas. (Typically, magazines in those days called things of roughly novella length "Short Novels", though their length standards varied: Planet Stories seemed to call anything longer than about 16,000 words a "novel", while the examples I find in Astounding are closer to 20,000 words (and for example the two Lawrence O'Donnell stories below were listed as novelettes and are each over 18000 words). The Standard Publications/Better Publications pulps (Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories, and, later, Space Science Fiction) published much longer "novels": 30,000 words was typical, and I have one issue of Startling with a novel called The Dark Tower by Wallace West that is nearly 60,000 words! At any rate, the first (1952) Bleiler/Dikty collection of Best Novels included the Poul Anderson story, "Flight to Forever", that I list below, even though that story dates to 1950, and the rest of that book collects 1951 pieces.

Anyway, I figure that to be fair I ought to add the Bleiler/Dikty selections to the list: they were what people at the time thought were the best. (And at least two of their selections are first rate stuff I had unaccountably missed in my earlier lists: Kornbluth's "The Mindworm" and MacLean's "Contagion".) In addition, I've discovered an anthology edited by Groff Conklin, Possible Worlds of Science Fiction, published in 1951, which had about 8 stories from 1950, many of them very good, such as Schmitz' "The Second Night of Summer", MacLean's "Contagion", van Vogt's "Enchanted Village", and Arthur C. Clarke's "A Walk in the Dark". I've gone ahead and listed all the 1950 stories that Conklin chose, just for kicks, though I haven't read "Exit Line" by Sam Merwin, and I think St. Clair's "The Pillows" and Fyfe's "In Value Deceived" are just OK. And, finally, I reread Ray Bradbury's seminal collections (quasi-novels), The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, both of which include several worthwhile 1950 stories.

So, here goes. Revised and expanded list of 1950 novel and short fiction Retro Hugo Candidates. I've marked [BD] next to stories from the Bleiler/Dikty collections, and I've also listed original magazine publications where possible. I've marked stories I've read with a *. And I've alphabetized the stories by author.

NOVELS: (this list includes at least three that should perhaps better be regarded as linked story collections: The Martian Chronicles, The Dying Earth, and The Voyage of the Space Beagle. I purposely didn't include another linked story collection first published in 1950, Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, simply because I subjectively think of it as more purely a short story collection than the other examples I list -- I concede without demur that reasonable people may disagree.) (I've just recently added Heinlein's juvenile Farmer in the Sky, which is not my favorite among his juveniles, but any of the RAH juveniles deserve mention!)

*"... And Now You Don't", Isaac Asimov (of course this is the second part of Second Foundation, but it was serialized in Astounding ending in January 1950, and it's about 50,000 words)

*Pebble in the Sky, Isaac Asimov

*The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

*Needle, Hal Clement (This was serialized in 1949, but the 1950 book version is expanded to about twice the length of the serial)

*Farmer in the Sky, Robert Heinlein

*"You're All Alone", Fritz Leiber (though I prefer the 1953 (rev. 1980) expansion, The Sinful Ones, which is apparently actually Leiber's original, which he cut to get published in 1950)

Genus Homo, P. Schuyler Miller and L. Sprague de Camp (orig. 1941 but a revised version was published in book form in 1950)

*Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

*"Time Quarry", Clifford Simak (first ever serial in Galaxy, this is better known by the title of the 1951 book, Time and Again)

*First Lensman, E. E. Smith

*The Dreaming Jewels, Theodore Sturgeon

*The Dying Earth, Jack Vance (not really a novel but a collection of stories, and not really closely linked stories for the most part: still and all, what better book was published in-genre that year?)

*"The Wizard of Linn", A. E. Van Vogt

The Voyage of the Space Beagle, A. E. Van Vogt, a fixup of a bunch of short stories, several of which I have read. I'm not sure if the book version had additional material, which would make it eligible -- I believe it does involve significant revisions to some of the original material. .

I nominated the Bradbury, the Peake, the Vance, the Sturgeon, and the Leiber. The eventual nominations were for Pebble in the Sky, Farmer in the Sky, The Dying Earth, First Lensman, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This last story, at 38,000 words, is actually a novella, but the Hugo rules allow the administrators to move stories of over 35,000 words into the novel category if they deem that sensible. I think that's a reasonable choice for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which after all is only known as a book. I plan to vote for The Dying Earth. I really think the remainder of the nominations are less than great. I don't quarrel with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I do think it one of the weaker Narnia books. Neither Pebble in the Sky nor Farmer in the Sky is anything like its author's best work. And I have just read First Lensman, the first "Doc" Smith novel I have ever read, and I thought it was quite bad.

The actual winner was Farmer in the Sky. I don't think this is at all a great choice, but it's defensible -- people have pointed out that The Dying Earth isn't really a novel, and that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is by no means the best Narnia story. And I have no argument with those who like it better than the Asimov or Smith stories -- after all, so do I! Certainly the Vance, Smith, and Lewis stories are immeasurably more influential than Farmer in the Sky -- one might say, more important -- but the award is for "best", not "most influential". Farmer in the Sky is not in my opinion one of Heinlein's best juveniles, but it's a solid and enjoyable work, and its award isn't a disgrace.

SHORT FICTION: (categories based on my wordcount, when I had the story at hand, otherwise I'm guessing)

Novella: (of this list, several works were originally published in book form, perhaps unusual in 1950. The Vance is from The Dying Earth, the Heinlein from the collection also called The Man Who Sold the Moon, and the Lewis, of course, was published on its own as a book.)

*"Guyal of Sfere", Jack Vance (20,000 words)

*"Flight to Forever", Poul Anderson (20,000 words) [BD] (Super Science Stories, Nov)

*"The Man Who Sold the Moon", Robert A. Heinlein (36,000 words)

*"To the Stars", L. Ron Hubbard (37,500 words) (Astounding, Feb and Mar)

*The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis (at about 38,000 words, this is a novella by Hugo rules, though to be sure it was nominated as a novel)

*"Paradise Street", Lawrence O'Donnell (i.e. Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, in this case reputedly mostly Moore) (18,200 words) (Astounding, Sept)

*"Heir Apparent", Lawrence O'Donnell (also apparently mostly by Moore) (18,800 words) (Astounding, July)

*"Last Enemy", H. Beam Piper (24,000 words) (Astounding, June)

I nominated "Guyal of Sfere", "Paradise Street", "The Man Who Sold the Moon", The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and "Flight to Forever". The actual nominations I find rather controversial, indeed improper, though perhaps not worthy of too much fuss. They are, I am sure, the longest cumulative set of novella nominations ever. They include two novella-length stories that could have been moved to novel, though it's fine that they weren't, of course: "To the Stars" and "The Man Who Sold the Moon". There is also the Piper novella "Last Enemy", which I have just reread, and which I consider rather weak for a nominee, but that's not an issue either. The issue is that two full-length novels, above the word limit for movement down to the novella category (that limit is 50,000 words) were nominated: Sturgeon's The Dreaming Jewels, and Asimov's "... and Now You Don't". The first of these was nominated based on its appearance in the February 1950 Fantastic Adventures. The assumption seems to have been, any story that appeared a single issue of a magazine can't be a full-length novel. Well, that just isn't so. The pulps of that era were pretty generous as to word count, and novels of up to 60,000 words did appear in single issues. Oddly, Fantastic Adventures actually included word counts in their table of contents! (Something I've seen in few other '50s magazines, but none more recent.) They had "The Dreaming Jewels" at 55,000 words. As for "... and Now You Don't", I assume the rationale for calling it a novella was "it's only part of a novel, Second Foundation, so it must just be a novella". Not so again! It is well over half that novel, it was published as a three part serial in Astounding, and it's about 50,000 words long. Moreover, the precedent from the previous Retro Hugos (awarded in 1996) is illustrative: Asimov's "The Mule", a part of Foundation and Empire, also some 50,000 words long, was the novel winner for 1945. At any rate, my vote will go either to "The Man Who Sold the Moon", which I suspect will win, or The Dreaming Jewels, which is probably the better story, but which isn't a novella. I like "... and Now You Don't" fine, it ranks third. "To The Stars" is, on the one hand, reasonably well-done and pretty absorbing, an interesting read; and, on the other hand, morally disgusting. On the gripping hand, it ranks below "No Award". "Last Enemy" is not, in my opinion, one of Piper's better stories. I can't rank it very highly either.

As I predicted, "The Man Who Sold the Moon" won. I can't quibble -- as I've said, I voted for the Sturgeon novel, but the Heinlein novella was next in my list.

Novelette: (Note that the Blish stories are part of his series Cities in Flight, I believe part of the novel Earthman Come Home. The Kornbluth and Smith stories are in the SF Hall of Fame.)

*"The Helping Hand", Poul Anderson (10,500 words) (Astounding, May)

*"Bindlestiff", James Blish (16,000 words) (Astounding, Dec)

*"Okie", James Blish (Astounding, Apr)

*"The Dancing Girl of Ganymede", Leigh Brackett (13,800 words) (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Feb)

*"The New Reality", Charles Harness (15,500 words) [BD] (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Dec)

*"The Little Black Bag", C. M. Kornbluth (10,000 words) (Astounding, July)

*"Contagion", Katherine MacLean (11,900 words) [BD] (Galaxy, Oct)

*"Dear Devil", Eric Frank Russell (15,000 words) (Other Worlds, May)

*"The Second Night of Summer", James H. Schmitz (11,000 words) (Galaxy, Dec)

*"Scanners Live in Vain", Cordwainer Smith (13,000 words) (Fantasy Book #6)

*"The Stars are the Styx", Theodore Sturgeon (16,000 words) (Galaxy, Oct)

"Forget-Me-Not", William F. Temple [BD] (Other Worlds, Sept)

*"Not to be Opened --", Roger Flint Young (14,600 words) [BD] (Astounding, Jan)

My nominations went to the Harness, Kornbluth, MacLean, Schmitz and Smith stories. The final ballot consists of "The Helping Hand", "Okie", "Dear Devil", "The Little Black Bag", and "Scanners Live in Vain". Not at all a bad ballot. I'll vote for "Scanners Live in Vain", with "The Little Black Bag" second, "Dear Devil" third, and "The Helping Hand" fourth.

This award went to "The Little Black Bag". I think that's not right -- but, once again, it's defensible. "Scanners Live in Vain" is indisputably more important -- one of my personal favorites. But "The Little Black Bag" is a strong story, and definitely was much admired in its time.

Short Story: 

(Note that of the Bradbury stories, "Ylla", "Usher II", "Way in the Middle of the Air", and "There will come Soft Rains" are in The Martian Chronicles, while "The Fox and the Forest" and "The Veldt" are in The Illustrated Man. Note all the variant titles, too. The Leiber and Matheson stories are in the SF Hall of Fame.)

*"Quixote and the Windmill", Poul Anderson (3600 words) (Astounding, Nov)

*"Trespass!", Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson [BD] (Fantastic Story Quarterly, Spring)

*"Green Patches" (aka "Misbegotten Missionary"), Isaac Asimov (Galaxy, Nov)

*"Oddy and Id" (aka "The Devil's Invention"), Alfred Bester [BD] (6400 words) (Astounding, Aug)

*"There Will Come Soft Rains", Ray Bradbury (2500 words) (Collier's, 6 May)

*"Ylla" (aka "I'll Not Look For Wine"), Ray Bradbury (5000 words) (MacLean's, 1 Jan)

*"The Veldt" (aka "The World the Children Made"), Ray Bradbury (6000 words) (Saturday Evening Post, 23 Sept)

*"Usher II" (aka "Carnival of Madness"), Ray Bradbury (6000 words) (Thrilling Wonder, Apr)

*"The Fox and the Forest" (aka "To The Future", aka "The Fox in the Forest"), Ray Bradbury (6500 words) [BD] (Collier's, 13 May)

*"Way in the Middle of the Air", Ray Bradbury (5000 words) (Other Worlds, July)

*"The Gnurrs Come From the Voodvork Out", R. Bretnor [BD] (F&SF, Winter/Spring)

"The Star Ducks", Bill Brown [BD] (F&SF, Fall)

*"The Last Martian", Fredric Brown [BD] (Galaxy, Oct)

*"A Walk in the Dark", Arthur C. Clarke (Thrilling Wonder, Aug)

*"Summer Wear", L. Sprague de Camp [BD] (Startling, May)

*"A Subway Named Mobius", A. J. Deutsch (6500 words) (Astounding, Dec)

*"In Value Deceived", H. B. Fyfe (4300 words) (Astounding, Nov)

*"To Serve Man", Damon Knight [BD] (Galaxy, Nov)

*"Not With a Bang", Damon Knight (F&SF, Winter/Spring)

*"The Mindworm", C. M. Kornbluth [BD] (Worlds Beyond, Dec)

"The Silly Season", C. M. Kornbluth (F&SF, Fall)

*"Coming Attraction", Fritz Leiber [BD] (5000 words) (Galaxy, Nov)

"Two Face", Frank Belknap Long [BD] (Weird Tales, March)

*"Spectator Sport", John D. MacDonald (2000 words) (Thrilling Wonder, Feb)

*"Born of Man and Woman", Richard Matheson [BD] (1000 words) (F&SF, Summer)

"Exit Line", Sam Merwin, Jr. (Startling, Sept)

*"The Sack", William Morrison (6000 words) (Astounding, Sept)

*"The Pillows", Margaret St. Clair (4800 words) (Thrilling Wonder, Jun)

*"Liane the Wayfarer" (aka "The Loom of Darkness"), Jack Vance (4400 words) (Worlds Beyond, Dec)

*"Enchanted Village", A. E. Van Vogt (5800 words) (Other Worlds, Jul)

"Process", A. E. van Vogt [BD] (F&SF, Dec)

My nominations went to the Leiber, the MacDonald (which I recently read in the original Thrilling Wonder Stories issue), and three Bradbury pieces ("There Will Come Soft Rains" ,"Ylla", and "Usher II"). The actual nominations went to the two SF Hall of Fame stories, "Coming Attraction" and "Born of Man and Woman", as well as to three rather frivolous pieces, "To Serve Man", "The Gnurrs Come From the Voodvork Out", and "A Subway Named Mobius". While this isn't a bad nomination list, it does have a dreadful, disgraceful, lack. Where is Bradbury? My best guess is that he had so many fine stories that the votes were split. Secondarily, many people might not have realized which stories from The Martian Chronicles were eligible, and indeed, may not have regarded those stories as separate stories. At any rate, it's a terrible shame. That said, my vote, as I always intended, will go to "Coming Attraction", which, it seems to me, should be the overwhelming winner. (The other four stories rank more or less even with me -- I suppose the Knight, because the joke is a really neat joke, goes second on my ballot, or perhaps "Born of Man and Woman".)

The actual Retro Hugo went to "To Serve Man". Truly, this award is shocking. It may be unfair of me to suggest this, but I would hope that Damon Knight, with his outstanding critical sense, at least considered refusing it. "To Serve Man" is a fun, biting, story. But it's a trifle. "Coming Attraction" is a masterpiece, and it's a story that says something. Something besides "It's a cookbook", for crissake. I am forced to the conclusion that "To Serve Man" won not for Best Short Story, but for Best Twilight Zone Episode -- a clear example of what can go wrong with an award like the Retro Hugo -- where a story can benefit from a years later TV adaptation.

Review: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

Review: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

by Rich Horton

This is the first novel I read by Marilynne Robinson, which I suspect is true for many readers. Shortly before it appeared, in 2004, I read an excerpt from this novel in the New Yorker and was quite taken by it. Otherwise I might not have read the full book, though perhaps the praise of it by friends like Greg Feeley would have persuaded me. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Fiction of 2004, but I have a tendency to dismiss Pulitzer winners. (No doubt I am partly influenced by the common mistrust of genre readers for mainstream literary awards (though I've tended to like the Bookers), also I am influenced by a book I read long ago criticizing the first few decades of Pulitzer fiction choices.) The clincher was when I saw a friend of mine from church reading the book, a friend with whom I have traded the occasional book in the past (The Time Traveler's Wife, for instance, and Jasper Fforde's novels). She lent me the book on finishing it -- so I had to read it! And a good thing, too. To cap this discursive little paragraph, just a bit later I saw a copy of the New York Times with a profile of a reader's club, in which they cited five favorites (including The Time Traveler's Wife) and 4 books they disliked. One of these latter was Gilead ("watching paint dry") but I was heartened that another they disliked was The Master and Margarita, which I think is a spectacular novel.

I will add that after reading Gilead I of course continued to her only other novel then published -- Housekeeping, from 1980. And I will tell you that it is very different from Gilead -- and, for me, it is even better. It is one of my favorite novels of the 20th Century. Robinson has gone on to publish three further novels, each very closely related to Gilead: Home, Lila, and Jack. And of these I think Home is also magnificent, and I'd rate it too as better than Gilead. Which is only to say that Robinson truly is a great writer, to have written three such remarkable novels. (And the other two are also strong, though to me not quite at the level of the first three.)

Gilead is presented as a long series of letters from a man to his son. The letters are intended to be read after the man dies, and after the son is an adult. The letter writer is John Ames, a pastor in the small town of Gilead, Iowa, near the Kansas border. John Ames is an old man, 76 as the book opens (in 1956), and he has heart problems and doesn't expect to live long. He married very late in life to a much younger woman, and his son at the time of writing is only 7. In part the letters are an attempt to replace the years of fathering he guiltily feels he is depriving his son by his expected death.

John Ames is the son and grandson of preachers of the same name. His grandfather was a fiery abolitionist, an associate of John Brown, who came to Gilead as a Free Soiler, and who maintained in "Radical Iowa" a safe house for Brown and other abolitionist fighters and too for escaped slaves. The middle John Ames, by contrast, was a pacifist, who fought in the Civil War but was disgusted by it. Each pair of father and son became estranged -- the grandfather eventually returning to Kansas in the 1890s to preach and soon die. The estrangement between John Ames's father and himself is never clearly explained -- there is reference to a letter from father to son which the son burned, and a hint that the father may have lost his faith, or may have been simply offended by his son's refusal to ever move from Gilead.

But I digress. The letters from the younger John Ames to his son are partly a mixture of meditations on such subjects as the joys and disappointments of life, the life of a pastor, and theology. That doesn't seem like a novel, and perhaps if that's all the book was it wouldn't be a novel. (Though it could still be very enjoyable.) But the letters also tell stories, mainly on two subjects. One is the eldest John Ames, the wild abolitionist grandfather, who would steal from the collection plate in order to give money to the poor, and who apparently shot and possibly killed a Federal soldier to save John Brown from capture, and who had visions of Jesus coming and talking to him face to face. The other is Jack Boughton, John Ames Boughton, the ne'er-do-well son of the younger John Ames's best friend, a fellow pastor. Jack Boughton returns to Gilead from St. Louis during the book, but John Ames is suspicious of him, partly because of his dishonorable past actions, and partly because he seems to be just a bit too nice to John's wife, who is Jack's age, and to John's son, with whom Jack is able to play in a way that now frail John cannot. But Jack's story is more complex than John Ames first understands, and he presents John with a problem of faith, forgiveness, and honesty. As well as closing the novel with an involving story that resonates well with the historical motivations of John's grandfather.

The novel, then, is profoundly a moral meditation. At times it concerns the moral tug between pacifism and just causes such as ending slavery. At times it deals with this country's racial history. At times it concerns the responsibilities of parents to children, or of pastor to flock. At times it is, quite beautifully, a celebration of the wonders of life, and of the beauty of very simple things. Sometimes it is a love letter to a son and a wife. To an extent it is a depiction of life in a small town in American in the 1950s -- and earlier. And it is very much a religious novel, and concerned with the John Ames's sincere and humanistic religious beliefs. Ames's voice is wonderfully maintained. The prose is just remarkable, very balanced and measured, not spare but not ornate, and quite often striking without any sense of showiness. A great novel, I think, or at any rate a novel that over time will be a candidate for "greatness". 

Review: The Adventures of Mary Darling, by Pat Murphy

Review: The Adventures of Mary Darling, by Pat Murphy

by Rich Horton

Pat Murphy's new novel, The Adventures of Mary Darling, is a clever mashup of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes -- the one sentence elevator pitch might have been "Sherlock Holmes is engaged to solve the mystery of the disappearance of the Darling children." In a sense this reminded me of her Max Merriwell trilogy (1999-2001), which I absolutely loved: three books linked in clever metafictional ways and also referencing classic texts such as the Odyssey, Tarzan, The Jungle Book, "The Hunting of the Snark", and The Hobbit*. Those three books (There and Back Again by Max Merriwell, Wild Angel, and The Adventures of Max Merriwell) are at one level simply great fun, offering the reader enjoyable plots, engaging characters (including Pat Murphy herself!), and the chance to play "catch the clever references". But at another lever they are after something deeper -- the metafictional (and "pataphysical"!) games have a serious point, and there is an abiding concern with gender roles and personal identity choices. The Adventures of Mary Darling does indeed do some similar things, though the levels of metafictional complexity aren't as extensive (partly in that there is only one book here) while the overtly serious aspects -- an examination, again, of gender roles, but also of British colonialism, with a soupçon of American and Canadian mistreatment of indigenous populations -- are more explicitly foregrounded (not always to the novel's benefit.)

I suppose I'll have to unpack some of that a bit later. But not to bury the lede -- in the end I was immensely entertained by The Adventures of Mary Darling. It's simply lots of fun -- and the more "serious" aspects after all do hit home: Victorian ideas about women's roles and rights were terribly unfair, the British Empire routinely and offensively misunderstood and oppressed the native inhabitants of their colonies, and the treatment of indigenous tribes in both Canada and the US was horrifying, particularly portrayed here regarding the attempts of Indian schools to erase tribal identities. One other aspect of the novel that works is a skeptical deconstruction of the character of Sherlock Holmes.

But maybe I should talk about the novel itself more! The story is ostensibly told by Mary Darling's granddaughter (so Wendy Darling's daughter) in an attempt to set straight the story of Peter Pan, given that J. M. Barrie got so much wrong, and left so much out. It begins with the night of the disappearance of Wendy, John, and Michael Darling. Naturally the parents, George and Mary Darling, are distraught. But Mary's uncle (and foster father) is a certain Dr. John Watson -- and before long Sherlock Holmes has agreed to help investigate the apparent kidnapping. However, Mary Darling is not impressed by Holmes, and is even less happy when her husband seems ready to commit her to a "rest cure"**, even though if anyone needs psychiatric care it's surely George. So Mary decides to set off for Madagascar herself -- partly based on the one clue Sherlock Holmes found -- a leaf from a tree native to the Indian Ocean. 

Thus John Watson realizes he must follow his niece -- and he has encountered an ally, Sam Smalls, a native of the Solomon Islands, who is involved with the criminal side of London society, but is an educated and intelligent man. And -- he turns out to have known Mary Darling -- and her brother Tom -- from their childhood. Much of the next long section of the novel, then, expands on the back stories of the characters -- Mary Watson Darling in particular, but also Sam Smalls, George Darling, and even Captain Hook. We learn about Mary's childhood in Australia, with her artist mother Alice, who drew pictures of fairies. We learn about Sam's childhood in the Solomons, the son of an English missionary and a native woman.  We even see an extended portrayal of the origination of the "Red Indians" in Peter Pan, who turn out to have been members of the Kanien'kehá:ka nation, living on the St. Lawrence River, who escaped the prospect of seeing their children sent to Indian school by joining a circus act, and eventually setting out on their own, only to shipwreck on Neverland.

These back stories all give information but I wonder if some of them should have been curtailed a bit. The history of the Kanien'kehá:ka band is pretty much dropped, for example, which makes their section seem largely unnecessary. And there is a sense of over-idealization of some of the indigenous characters -- their characterizations and attitudes don't fully convince. Some of the back stories seem a bit contradictory, but I think that may have been intended -- we see a slow unraveling of the layers of both well-intended deceit, and of not always reliable memory, as the story continues. And there are unresolved issues -- Mary's mother's true fate, for instance. These sort of things are just fine, and add realism to the novel. I was also intrigued by a couple of namedrops -- Mary's mother is named Alice, for example, and another important character is named Hawkins, and I wonder if Murphy intended sly references to Wonderland and Treasure Island thereby. 

The book is fun throughout but it really takes off when we start to follow the parallel journeys of Mary Darling on one ship; and of John Watson, along with Sherlock Holmes, Sam Smalls, and George Darling on another. I won't detail what happens -- suffice it to say that Watson and George are confronted with some blind spots they have developed, and that they change as a result, and that Holmes too is confronted by his blind spots, and stubbornly retains his blindness. Mary Darling is resolute and of course ultimately successful, and she is allowed to fully integrate some previously conflicting elements of her life -- she is happy to be a wife and a mother, but she also wants to be an independent and powerful woman -- and she finds a way to have it all, in a sense. Perhaps unresolved is the problem of Peter Pan himself -- but one can't have everything!

I really enjoyed this novel. It combines a fun and involving story with some probing deconstruction of 19th century adventure literature, and of the colonialist attitudes behind much of that literature. The characters of Mary Darling and John Watson in particular are delightful, and the sharp examination of Sherlock Holmes' character is bracing (even if a bit of it is unfair -- Holmes' skepticism about the existence of fairies is, after all, justified -- and one incident in which he described the unreliability of photographic evidence hits home in particular when we remember how Arthur Conan Doyle himself was taken in by the "Cottingham Fairies".) (I will say that George Darling remains a bit hard to credit.) Less central characters such as Lady Hawkins, the disgraced doctor Rumbold, and Sam Smalls are also interesting. Recommended.

*While the Tolkien estate's predatory behavior in defense of their copyright is not so evil as that of the Doyle estate, they do often go well overboard in using their access to legal defense, and the way they caused the suppression of There and Back Again by Max Merriwell was disgraceful, in my opinion.

**Sometimes I wonder if I read the same articles an author read while researching their story, as not long ago I encountered a piece on the inventor of the "rest cure", Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, which described that rather horrifying treatment. (Mitchell was a very prominent American doctor, and a decent writer of fiction, and his work outside the rest cure was apparently quite impressive.)

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