More catching up . . .

Annihilation (2014) by Jeff VanderMeer is the first of three short novels called the Southern Reach Trilogy. It tells the history of the 12th expedition into the mysterious Area X.  This expedition consists of four women, referred to by their positions—the biologist, the anthropologist, the surveyor, and the psychologist. Previous expeditions into Area X all ended in various types of disasters.  Annihilation is basically the journal of the biologist. VanderMeer uses this format to play a game with readers—none of the characters are given names, the context of the story as provided by the biologist is only selectively revealed, and the narrator is unreliable. The book is well written, but it is a really a chump’s game. There is no readerly interest in the characters, and only a small curiosity about the setting and plot. VanderMeer withholds too much from the reader, while teasing them along. It is no surprise that nothing is explained at the end, and I’m certain that nothing will be revealed in the two subsequent books. And I have no interest in reading them. 

The New Atlantis (1989) by Ursula K. Le Guin.  This novelette was originally published in 1975, and in 1989 it was issued as a mass market Tor Double (with Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Blind Geometer as the main other story).  It was pure coincidence that I read this immediately after VanderMeer’s Annihilation, and found that it almost seems to take place in the future of our world that leads to the future in VanderMeer’s novel. Yet Le Guin is a much greater artist, and she evokes more humanity in this slim story than VanderMeer can muster in an entire novel. 

Song of Kali (1985) by Dan Simmons is an odd book. Set in 1977, it concerns an American magazine writer sent to Calcutta to locate some recent poetry supposedly written by a dead Indian poet. Robert Luzcak travels with his Indian wife and their young daughter. Mystery and intrigue follows. Luzcak is not always sympathetic character (his attitudes towards the Indian natives are rude), and his daughter seems only to be a plot-device to be kidnapped. The tenor of the book changes towards the end, and Simmons broaches some philosophical ideas as suggested by the title (the song of Kali referring to human hatred and violence), but these are not expanded upon, and the novel remains merely an engaging thriller. 

Bimbos of the Death Sun (1988) by Sharyn McCrumb takes place at a small regional science fiction convention. One of the two author guests is the famous, temperamental and arrogant writer of the Tratyn Runewind books, Appin Dungannon. The other guest is a local engineering professor, James Owen Mega, who wrote a hard science fiction novel that a cheap paperback firm published with a cheezy cover and retitled (to the author’s disgust) Bimbos of the Death Sun. As a mystery novel, this is an oddity. Appin Dungannon doesn’t even get murdered until the second half of the book, and the murder is solved in the last two chapters by acting out a D&D game. But what makes it interesting and readable is the spot-on depiction of the science fiction fans at the convention—critical but also compassionate.  Anyone who has attended a science fiction convention will have encountered many people similar to the characters found in this amusing novel. 

 

Friends of the Dead (2015) by James Doig.  This limited edition (only 200 copies) collects ten short stories, most of which are in the medievalist antiquarian mode, and thus in the tradition of M.R. James. The medieval historical aspects are particularly well-done here—an area often given short shrift by modern Jamesian writers who lack the expertise in the medieval (Doig mentions in his short introduction of having studied for a PhD. in medieval history).  One story (“Malware,” which opens the book), however, is completely modern: a tale of computer systems and hackers.  It is as well-done as the rest of the tales in this handsome volume.  

Some Catching up...

The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality and the Financial Crisis (2015) by Darryl Cunningham is a great book, essential reading—in graphic novel form—to understand the current political malaise in America.  It is divided into three parts.  The first gives the biography of the patron saint of selfishness, Ayn Rand (1905-1982), showing her many errors and contradictions.  The second section, “The Crash,” shows how Rand’s devotees, like Alan Greenspan and the Tea Party advocates, who follow her economic ideas but not her atheism, set up the ridiculous unregulated market, that with the attendant self-interests of Wall Street brought about the market crash of 2008.  The third section, “The Age of Selfishness,” analyzes the current financial and political world and calls for a much needed re-evaluation of where things are heading.  This is one of the best books of 2015.

The Tropes of Fantasy Fiction (2015) by Gabrielle Lissauer sounded like it would be a book I would like. The cover blurb notes that it shows how the tropes and clichés that go into making a story do not make it good or bad, but how the author applies them does.  “The book also explores the concept of text versus meta-text—that is, when the story’s world and character actions contradict the reader’s expectations based on the tropes being used.”  Alas, it does no such thing.  This book reads like an enormous blog-post, with a know-it-all blogger of limited capacity. Witness a few random quotes:  “One thousand years ago in our history, the Holy Roman Empire still existed. Europe was in the beginning of the Middle Ages, and Islam was in the midst of its Golden Age. Algebra didn’t exist yet, nor did the printing press—though movable type was on the horizon. And a great many people still thought the sun revolved around the Earth!” (page 162).  “Elves are the creatures that are found in books like Lord of the Rings and fairies are like Tinker Bell. Elves are tall, stately creature that are in tune with nature and better than people. Fairies are tiny, silly things with insect wings and also in tune with nature. They are of the natural world, whereas man is of the urban and technological world. Fairies and elves are mysterious and magical; men are mundane and must beware lest they stumble into their realms and never to be seen again.” (page 143). Nevermind that these statements are massive simplifications, inapplicable in their details to most literary productions; yet they are trotted out like pearls of wisdom. The whole book is written in this trite, patronizing tone. This book should be jettisoned into the nearest Crack of Doom. 

 

Naomi’s Room (1991) is the first novel published under the pseudonym Jonathan Aycliffe.  It is a commercial supernatural thriller, in which Charles Hillenbrand loses sight of his four year old daughter Naomi while Christmas shopping, and she is abducted and soon afterwards found mutilated. Supernatural forces that are based in their house are involved in some way, and their reawakening involves further deaths and mysteries which Charles Hillenbrand must solve.  Compelling, and interesting in parts, it nevertheless remains merely a page-turner with (as is so often the case) an unstasfying resolution. 

 

The Lost (1996) is the fifth of Jonathan Aycliffe’s supernatural novels.  Here a modern British man Michael Feraru makes a trip to Roumania and delves into his family history, reclaiming an isolated castle that his family had abandoned during World War II.  The tale is told, like Dracula, in documents—letters, journal entries, clippings. Bram Stoker did this very effectively; Jonathan Aycliffe less so. The revelation of the family secrets are anti-climactic, and the novel as a whole is much less interesting that Naomi’s Room.

 

Belin’s Hill (1997) by Catherine Fisher is a young adult novel centering on a boy Huw, who (with his sister) comes to live with his uncle’s family near Caerleon (Arthur Machen country) after his parent’s deaths. Huw himself had been in the train accident that killed his parents, and is still not really recovered.  In this new place he is both distracted and haunted by various things to do with the legend of a haunted family on Belin’s Hill.  Huw finds some Celtic stone faces, hinting at more ancient magic, but the local legend of the witch and her cursed family is also involved. Ultimately the various threads of story don’t mesh very well.    

 

Machen’s Gwent: ‘A Country Hardly to be Known’ (2015) is Catherine Fisher’s talk from the 2013 Caerleon Festival which honored the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Machen. It is an essay of strung-together quotations from Machen’s works, highlighting his comments on Gwent. Nothing really revelatory to be found here, but it’s a pleasant essay acknowledging Machen’s interests by one of his modern appreciators. 

 

Speculative Horizons (2010), edited by Patrick St. Denis, is a collection of five original stories by C.S. Friedman, Tobias S. Buckell, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Brian Ruckley, and Hal Duncan. The slickest tale is that by Modesitt, which is related to his other writings, and feels rather ephemeral on its own.  The Buckell story is promising and shows some good imagination. The Ruckley is a fantasy of a society of hunter-gatherers, and the Friedman begins as a more routine tale but it has an interesting twist at the end.  The standout of the volume is the final tale, “The Death of a Love,” in which a kind of cupid is formed when couples fall in love. Duncan explores how couples kill destroy their own loves by killing their cupids.

 

The Book of Dreams (2010), edited by Nick Gevers, is also a collection of five original stories, centering on dream adventures.  The opening story, “The Prisoners” by Robert Silverberg, is the most routine of the five. Jay Lake’s “Testaments” is the most imaginative, though its episodic nature makes it less of a story.  Jeffrey Ford’s “86 Deathdick Road” is one of those quirky modern stories that suddenly turns (unsatifyingly) surreal.  Kage Baker’s “Rex Nemorensis” mixes the dreams of a Vietnam veteran with a particular locale.  And finally, the oddest story of an odd lot, Lucius Shepard’s “Dream Burgers at the Mouth of Hell” gives a glimpse at the backward and surreal workings of Hollywood and its scriptwriters.