Author: Cheryl Morgan

Cheryl Morgan is the editor of Salon Futura and owner of its publisher, Wizard's Tower Press. She is also non-fiction editor for Clarkesworld Magazine. Cheryl has won three Hugo Awards: Best Fanzine in 2004 for Emerald City, Best Fan Writer in 2009 and Best Semiprozine for Clarkesworld in 2010. She is a director of San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions and of Association for the Recognition of Excellence in SF & F Translation. She lives near Bath in the UK.

The Book of Flora

018, Book Review, Meg Elison

The Book of FloraThe third book in a trilogy is not an easy thing to review on its own. Fortunately I have help. The Book of Flora is the final part of Meg Elison’s Road to Nowhere series. The first volume, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the Philip K Dick Award. The sequel, The Book of Etta, was a finalist for that award. And The Book of Flora was on the Otherwise Award Honour List this year. That’s a pretty impressive record.

The books are set in a post-apocalyptic world in which plague has drastically reduced the population of the USA and civilisation has collapsed. Significant climate change has also happened, because it is possible to sail from Florida to California. The series title is a bit of sleight of hand because one of the major locations of the series is a community called Nowhere which, at least for a time, is shown as semi-utopian.

The first book tells of an ob-gyn nurse from San Francisco who travels the world disguised as a man (for safety) helping rescue women, and helping effect successful pregnancies. Although the plague has killed more men than women, it was not a Y chromosome plague of the type beloved of apocalypse writers. It has, however, made childbirth much more difficult, and this has inevitably made things very bad for women.

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife is to a large extent a book about sexuality. With fewer men, and many women not being fertile, in the world, polyandry has become commonplace. Same sex relationships are also accepted in some places, though some communities cling to old-world religious beliefs and others fetishize the need to breed.

The Book of Etta is more of an exploration of gender. The title character was assigned female at birth but spends a lot of time on the road as Eddy. Unlike with the Midwife, this is not simply a disguise. Eddy embraces his masculinity, though she has to go back to being Etta when at home in Nowhere. Eddy is joined by Flora who was sold as a catamite when very young and has been castrated. She has happily embraced femininity, and was lucky enough to fall in with a group of “horsewomen” – trans women who know the secret of distilling estrogen from mare’s urine – so she has had some hormone treatment as well.

If you want a detailed review of the first two books, you can find one at Strange Horizons. Thank you to Kelly Jennings for that. I’m going to drive straight into The Book of Flora. Because of the issues that need to be discussed, what follows is going to be quite spoilery.

The Book of Etta ended when Eddy killed the Lion of Estiel, a wannabe warlord who had conquered and destroyed Nowhere. The Book of Flora follows on more or less immediately from that (as opposed to the long gap between the first two books). The survivors of Nowhere have taken refuge in an underground community ruled by a charismatic and manipulative Prophet called Alma. Much of her power comes from her outrageous fertility, which marks her out as goddess-touched. This is not an environment in which the likes of Eddy and Flora will be comfortable.

The majority of the book is therefore set on the road, and for a large part of it Flora and Eddy are joined by Alice, a cis woman who is a brilliant herbalist but also naturally beautiful, and socially clueless in the way that only people who have never had to want for friends can be. Both Flora and Eddy are in love with her. They are later joined by Connie, an intersex child whom Flora rescues from slavery and adopts.

Connie’s particular variation is one known medically as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency (5-ADR) and popularly as guevedoce. That means that they have a Y chromosome, but their masculinity does not express itself until puberty. Such people are assigned female at birth, and appear to magically change from girls into boys. The variation is believed to be the origin of various mythological stories such as Iphis and Ianthe from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Certainly, the variation was known to Romans as Pliny claimed to have met someone who had gone through that change.

This gives us a very complicated mix of genders, and Elison struggles a bit to find what to do with it.

Much of the point of the series is to examine how we might build different types of society in a post-patriarchy world. The Lion of Estiel’s attempts to re-establish patriarchy have failed, and Alma’s religious matriarchy is soon abandoned as too oppressive for non-queers. What other options are there?

At one point Flora travels to the city of Shy (Chicago – the series is full of cute re-naming of familiar cities). The community there turns out to be entirely female. Initially Flora is afraid of being discovered and killed, but it turns out that many of the women there are like her. One of the locals explains:

Can smiled. “Well, most of us have to decide. I became a woman during my twelfth summer. I was stubborn and I wanted to believe there were some good men, somewhere. When I was apprenticed to a raider who would train me, I learned the truth. I became a woman as soon as I came home.”

Elison is asking us here what it means to be a woman. As far as Alma was concerned, Flora could never be a woman because she could never get pregnant. But in Shy anyone can be a woman.

“Nobody is born a man,” Can said, tucking her face to her shoulder as if to look at her, but keeping her eyes on the road. “You’re born a baby. You’re born naked. Everything after that is something that you learn to do.”

There’s your Simone de Beauvoir right there.

On the face of it, Shy is a paradise. The city is rich, food is plentiful, crime is rare. However, Flora finds that she can’t stay. She would have been very welcome, but she knows that there would be no place in Shy for Eddy. She refuses to accept her own salvation at the expense of his. It is a powerful feminist statement, but it will also prove to be her undoing.

The problem, and it is a problem that arises directly from the way that Elison has constructed the world, is that outside Shy the definition of “woman” is far closer to Alma’s. Flora knows this:

It’s no great crime to live as a man. Men are plentiful and everyone understands why you do it. Women lying with women is a waste, but you’ll hardly get killed for it. Living as a woman without being one is the thing that always stirs hate and violence. As if there is some great deception in it. As if it is the worst kind of fraud. Yet a woman who cannot breed or will not try is never the same sort of problem. And women past the end of their blood are no threat. I am no different from them.

This, of course, is Flora speaking, and I feel her pain. I also understand that trans men, non-binary people and intersex people can experience just as much oppression, but in different ways. To a certain extent, Elison has constructed a world that is particularly antagonistic to Flora.

I don’t think this was deliberate. As this interview explains, the series has taken five years to write, and the story arc was not planned. Elison has been exploring her world as it has developed through the books, and as she has learned more about gender and sexuality. But it is something that she’s stuck with, which makes it hard for her to construct a happy ending.

Flora does get to live to a ripe old age. We know that from the start because part of the book is told from near the end of her life looking back on events. In the time she is writing she’s living in a small colony on Bambritch Island (Bainbridge, across the Puget Sound from Seattle). Word has come that a small army is making its way up the coast, slaughtering most people they meet along the way. They have a tank, and possibly an aircraft. Stories from refugees suggest that the army’s commander is obsessed with the legend of “frags”, women who reproduce by parthenogenesis, and he wants to find them and put an end to them.

At this point I will stop giving spoilers because I want you to be able to experience the denouement for yourselves. I will warn you that it is not easy reading. I see from the interview that Elison re-wrote the ending to make it more hopeful after seeing the result of the 2016 presidential election. Goodness only knows what it was like before.

I will also speculate that some people will be extremely angry with this book. I’m not, but I am disappointed. Writing something like this is hard, and when you have a cast that is a mixture of different, and differently oppressed, people, each trying to stand in for their entire minority group, you are likely to get yourself in trouble. Had I been on the Otherwise jury this year, I would have been tempted to veto this book appearing on the Honour List. That’s not because I think it is a bad book – mostly it is very thoughtful and thought-provoking – but because of its potential to cause offence.

I find that very sad. This is a really interesting series. It asks some great questions and gives you plenty to think about. I also think that Elison tried really hard to make it work. I was, for example, very impressed that Flora chose to walk away from Shy. But writing this sort of thing is a minefield, and it only takes one false step for the whole thing to blow up in your face.

book cover
Title: The Book of Flora
By: Meg Elison
Publisher: 47North
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

War of the Maps

018, Book Review, Paul McAuley

War of the MapsIn the very far future, a Dyson sphere has been built around the dead husk of our Sun. On it live people who seem human, but they are not because they were engineered long ago by people so technologically advanced that they might be gods, and indeed pretended to be so. The gods have long since departed, but some of their servants may remain.

This is the setting for Paul McAuley’s latest novel, War of the Maps. It is in that sub-genre of SF in which people live in the ruins of a long-dead high-tech culture. Fans of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun will find much to enjoy here. This book, however, is not a hero’s journey, no matter how much it might seem like one at times.

A map, of course, is not the territory, but it is a useful metaphor and the people of the world of the book deploy it enthusiastically. A “map”, therefore, is a continent. Or rather, a set of land masses in close contact with each other. In the vastness of a Dyson sphere, areas of land can be separated by oceans so great that only the bravest try to cross them. Different “maps” therefore mostly keep themselves to themselves. But a “life map” is DNA. The inhabitants of one area of land might be very different from those of another area. Think, for example, if our world might be sufficiently vast that somewhere over the sea there is a whole separate world inhabited by creatures descended from the species whose fossils are found in the Burgess Shales. If an environment built on one life map were to come into contact with an environment built on an entirely different life map, they might find themselves at war, so to speak.

Our hero, Thorn, is mostly known by his job title. He is a Lucidor, one whose job is to shed light on murky matters. That is, he is a detective. He comes from a country established by former slaves that runs on a collectivist political system we might recognise as inspired by China. However, he is now far from home chasing a master criminal whom he had once captured, but whom corrupt officials have traded to a foreign country that wishes to make use of his skills.

Remember, these people are not human. Some of them have what we might describe as superpowers. The criminal, Remfrey He, is a silvertongue, he can persuade others to do what he wants. Along the way we meet Orjen Starbreaker, a scientist whose power helps her to see the life maps of other beings, and Angustyn, who can sense the presence and thoughts of people at a distance. The Lucidor has the ability to supress the powers of others, which is a very useful talent for a policeman.

So the Lucidor has resigned his commission and has chased Remfrey He into the Kingdom of Patua. That country, however, is at war. It is being invaded by creatures from another map, and it is losing, badly.

McAuley has a bit of fun with science fiction references in the book. For example, one of the manifestations of the alien ecosystem is a red weed, which brings to mind other tale of warring biospheres. Also, although the book is set in the unimaginably far future, there are some cultural references so strong that they have survived the test of time.

“You do know,” Mirim ap Mirim said, “that the world is a shell. Or have things so degenerated in your sandy scourhole of a country that you live on a flat plate riding on the back of a turtle, or some such nonsense?”

There is also quite a bit of political chat between characters. Orjen thinks that the Lucidor’s country is a tyranny that prevents free scientific exploration. He counters that hers is so free that it allows madmen like Remfrey He to practice their abominable arts unfettered provided that someone is profiting from his work. It doesn’t help that the Patuans are the people who once held the Lucidor’s people in slavery.

Along the way, McAuley has a lot of fun with biology, creating fascinating creatures such as the Hive Women—small humanoids with a bee-like society. He’s also quite keen on mind control fungus.

The main plot, however, is two quests. The Lucidor seeks to re-capture Remfrey He, while Orjen seeks the source of the alien invasion of her world. Remfrey, being Remfrey, seeks to turn the invasion to his advantage. And thus the two quests must meet.

However, there is a Macguffin, a creature known in the book as a Shatterling, but recognisable to us as an AI, that has fallen from the heavens and has its own, entirely different agenda.

Hopefully I have given you a sense of just how much there is in this book. If science fiction is the “literature of ideas”, then this is SF par excellence. It is also a book with some great characters. The Lucidor might be smart, and a decent fighter, but he’s also a stubborn old man with little feel for politics. Orjen is a young woman who has given up much to be a scientist, but tends to forget how much privilege she has. Remfrey He, though he is offstage for most of the book, could out-cunning Moriarty for breakfast. Or at least he says he could, and you will end up believing him.

There’s not a lot of truly great science fiction being written at the moment, and much of what we do get is unashamedly escapist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but with War of the Maps McAuley has shown that he can write intelligent, imaginative SF with great characters that we will end up thinking about for a long time.

book cover
Title: War of the Maps
By: Paul McAuley
Publisher: Gollancz
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Interview – Anne Corlett & Kevlin Henney

018, Anne Corlett, Interviews, Kevlin Henney

WiFi SciFiOnline conventions are suddenly all the rage. Here in the South-West of the UK we have been experimenting. Not content with putting a convention online, Anne Corlett and her team have tried to experiment with the convention format to see how things might be done differently in the digital world. Along the way they have also run into a number of limitations of the software. In this interview Anne and Kevlin Henney talk about their experiences running WiFi SciFi and where they think conventions might go in the future.


Triggernometry

018, Book Review, Stark Holborn

TriggernometrySome time ago now, Stark Holborn did a reading at BristolCon Fringe. She read from an as-yet-unpublished story that was a fantasy Western, with the fascinating twist that the special powers her outlaws had came not from magic, but from mathematics. That story has finally seen publication as the novella, Triggernometry.

As a conceit, it is completely bonkers. Of course, I would expect no less from Holborn. Her last Western book was called Nunslinger. Off-the-wall ideas are what she does. The important point is that she makes it work.

The basic plot of Triggernometry is pure Western. There’s a gang of outlaws, notorious for a string of outrageous heists. However, things have gotten a little too hot for them, and they are trying to retire. Then one of them comes up with news of One Last Job that will make them so much money that they can disappear wherever they want and never have to work again.

Along the way there are all the usual tropes: the saloons, the gunfights, the long horse rides through inhospitable country and, inevitably, the betrayals. It is beautifully done. Anyone who has been watching The Mandalorian will be entirely familiar with all of this.

Mixed in with the Western tropes, however, are a whole series of jokes and puns about mathematics. I suspect that I only got a small fraction of them, because I don’t know enough about the history of the discipline. I have no doubt that Holborn has done her research, and that the characters of Pierre de Fermat, Emmy Noether, David Hilbert, Sophie Germain and Solomon Lefschetz all have some connection to the personalities and/or work of their real-life counterparts.

The main character in the book is Mad Malago Browne. She’s not an actual mathematician. Holborn tells me that she thought having a real person as the main character was a bit much. The character was going to be called Smith or Brown or some such. However, in doing the research for the book, Holborn discovered the existence Marjorie Lee Browne, an African-American woman who is famous as a mathematician. The lead character was re-named Browne in her honour, but is not based on her.

I’ll be talking to Holborn for my radio show soon after this issue goes live. A version of the interview will appear in the next issue.

Given the current weirdness, Triggernometry is only available as an ebook, but that means it is ridiculously cheap. It’s a steal.

book cover
Title: Triggernometry
By: Stark Holborn
Publisher: Rattleback Books
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Book of Koli

018, Articles, Mike Carey

The Book of KoliA new science fiction trilogy by Mike Carey launched this month. Normally I would be jumping at the chance to read and review it, but I can’t. Although the vast majority of The Book of Koli is, surprise, about Koli and the strange, post-apocalyptic world in which he lives, it does also feature a couple of trans characters. Mike very kindly asked for my advice when writing the book. Hopefully I have done a good job and helped him make those two characters true to life.

However, as I am featured in the acknowledgements for the book, I can hardly provide an objective review.

Unobjectively, I loved it, and I hope you will too. Mike has an amazing imagination. The killer plants that have taken over his future Britain are a superb invention. And, as just about every review of the book so far has noted, Monono Aware is a fabulous character.

There are plans afoot for Mike and I to do something online about the book. I can’t tell you more than that now. Once it is all firmed up I will let you know.

book cover
Title: The Book of Koli
By: Mike Carey
Publisher: Orbit
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Editorial – April 2020

018, Editorial

That has been a very strange month. You would have thought will all that staying at home that I’d have plenty of time to read. But actually I still have plenty of work. Also I’m doing a lot more radio than usual. And whatever it is that I’ve been sick with isn’t going away quickly, so I have had a few days when all I have been capable of doing is resting and watching TV.

Also, not all I read is suitable for review here. I’ve been reading some books on feminism, and also quite a lot of history.

However, we have an issue. There’s some great books in this one, and a couple of interviews. I hope you enjoy it.

Issue #17

Issues

This is the March 2020 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Cover: The Thief’s Gamble: This issue's cover is The Thief's Gamble by Geoff Taylor

  • Comet Weather: A review of Comet Weather, the new contemporary fantasy novel from Liz Williams

  • Dark and Deepest Red: A review of Dark and Deepest Red, a YA fairy tale re-telling from Anne-Marie McLemore

  • Mars: A review of the short story collection, Mars, by Croatian writer, Asja Bakić, translated by Jennifer Zoble

  • Conventions Go Virtual: What does the sudden need to hold major events online mean for Worldcon? Cheryl has opinions.

  • Star Trek: Picard: A review of the first season of the new Star Trek series featuring the return of Jean-Luc Picard

  • Beneath the Rising: A review of Beneath the Rising, a decidedly weird tale of Tentacled Things by Premee Mohamed

  • Interview – Juliet E. McKenna: An audio interview with author, Juliet E. McKenna

  • The Golden Key: A review of The Golden Key, a debut fantasy novel about Victorian spiritualsts and faeries, by Marian Womack.

  • The Unspoken Name: A review of The Unspoken Name, a debut fantasy novel by AK Larkwood

  • The City of a Thousand Feelings: A review of The City of a Thousand Feelings, a novella by Anya Johanna DeNiro

  • Editorial – March 2020: Cheryl explains how busy life is for her in self-isolation.

Cover: The Thief’s Gamble

017, Art

For this issue’s cover I have used the cover of Juliet McKenna’s The Thief’s Gamble, which we have just brought back into paper at Wizard’s Tower. It is one of five books in the Tales of Einarinn series, all of which are available again as paperbacks after many years, and which are newly available as hardcovers to most readers.

The art is by Geoff Taylor who did the covers for all five books. Juliet and I talk a bit about his work in the interview in this issue.

Thanks to advances in printing technology, the hardcovers of the books have the plain art printed on the covers of the books. The books still have dust jackets with text on them, but underneath they are pure art. Well, the printers insist on putting a barcode on the back cover, but it is almost pure art. And that means you can get the full benefit of gorgeous things like this.

Comet Weather

017, Liz Williams

Comet WeatherThanks to the idiocies of mainstream publishing we haven’t seen much from Liz Williams of late. Fortunately, the excellent Ian Whates and NewCon Press have coaxed her back into the saddle again, and the most recent result is Comet Weather. This looks like being the start of a new and interesting contemporary fantasy series.

Williams, as many of you will know, is not just a very fine writer. She’s also a practicing occultist and, with her partner, Trevor, owns a witchcraft shop in Glastonbury (which has recently closed physically, but will continue online). The new series taps into some of that expertise. It has ghosts and ley lines and star spirits and hexes and the like. It is also very female-centered.

The main protagonists are the four Fallow sisters: Bea, Stella, Serena and Luna. Their mother, Alys, was a bit wild in her hippy days and had each girl with a different man. Alys has recently gone missing, and is presumed dead, but the sisters know different. They are pretty sure they’d know if she had died, and even if they didn’t their grandfather, who will still sometimes talk to them when they visit his grave, definitely would.

Beatrice, the eldest, is a practical one staying at home and looking after the family farm. She might seem a little boring, but she’s actually having an affair with the ghost of an Elizabethan man who once sailed with Drake.

Stella takes after her mother, wandering around Europe making money as a DJ and having a string of affairs with anyone who takes her fancy, though to date they have all been living.

Serena is the successful one, living in London thanks to a career as a fashion designer. She’s having an affair with the lead signer of a well-known rock band, who is not the father of her teenage daughter.

Finally there is Luna, the youngest, who was thinking of becoming an environmental activist but has recently taken up with a boy from a family of Travellers, at least in part because she thinks that Alys might be off on the sort of path only people with deep knowledge of the land might know.

Everything is coming to a head because a comet is due to arrive in the solar system soon. Grandfather Fallow was a keen astronomer, which is perhaps how come so many star spirits hang around the house. A comet, of course, is a harbinger of great changes, and a time of danger. What this will mean for the sisters, and their missing mother, is the great question of the novel.

Naturally the book is set in Darkest Somerset. It is, after all, a part of the world that Liz knows well. Indeed, despite being a fairly recent arrival, she knows more about the country folk than I do, because she lives among them and I grew up in a town. Of course she knows the town folk too.

“There’s a lot of inbreeding in Somerset. They put ‘NFB’ on patient charts in Taunton hospital”
“NFB?”
“Normal For Bridgwater.”
“Aw, that’s unkind,” Nell said, but she was smiling.
“True though. Webbed feet and all sorts.”

Yep, entirely true. Nell, by the way, is Cousin Nell the Famous Author from America, who is a bit of a dark horse in this book, but whom I suspect we will hear more of in future.

I should note that the local knowledge isn’t quite perfect. I don’t think Williams takes the train as often as I do, because there were two minor route errors in the book, but very few people are going to notice that.

With years of experience behind her, Williams writes easily readable prose that keeps you humming along through the book. Occasionally she waxes a bit poetic.

Now, she perched on a nearby gravestone and waited. The sky deepened and Venus sparked out between the branches of the yews, a lamp alongside the church tower. The moon was gibbous.

Equally occasionally she conjures other visions of the wild wood.

The accounts of Alys, first on Dartmoor and then in the church, had alarmed Bee. Usually cautious, she felt they should act, now the comet was here. So they were studying the map. Dark thought they should go via the watercourse, that there would be a way in.

If that wasn’t a Mythago Wood reference, then it taps into the same mythic substrate that infuses Holdstock’s famous work.

I really loved this book. It is written by a good friend and almost neighbour. It is also set in the part of the world where I grew up, and draws on many local traditions. But don’t take my word for it. Gary Wolfe enthused about it on a recent episode of The Coode Street Podcast, and Chicago is nothing like Darkest Somerset. Fantasy readers should snap this up as eagerly as they bought Juliet McKenna’s Green Man books.

book cover
Title: Comet Weather
By: Liz Williams
Publisher: Newcon Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Dark and Deepest Red

017, Anne-Marie McLemore, Book Review

Dark and Deepest RedImaginative fairy tale re-tellings are a staple of fantasy these days, and this book is very much in that vein. Dark and Deepest Red takes as its starting point the deeply disturbing Hans Christian Andersen tale, “The Red Shoes”, in which a vain young girl becomes possessed by her beautiful footwear. This story takes that basic idea of magical shoes, but connects them instead to an actual historical event, the famous dancing plague that hit Strasbourg in 1518.

So yes, this is a book about a plague. Oh dear. Should we be reading this now? Well, yes, bear with me.

Firstly, this a book by Anne-Marie McLemore who is a past winner of the Otherwise Award for When the Moon Was Ours, and is one of the best writers working in YA today. The award was for an absolutely brilliant take on trans themes in fantasy. McLemore is therefore someone who can be trusted with writing about marginalisation, and that’s what we find here too.

The basic story is a YA love story between Rosella Oliva and Emil Woodlock, two American teenagers united by their common Romany ancestry. In modern America, anything that suggests a tinge of non-whiteness is liable to mark you as an outcast.

Their story is cut with that of Lavinia, her aunt Dorenia, and Alifair, the orphan boy they have taken in. 16th Century Europe is a place becoming gripped with the fear of witchcraft. The Malleus Maleficarum was first published in Germany in 1486. Anyone with Romany ancestry is liable to fall under suspicion. Lavinia’s parents have already paid the price that fear of strangers demands. She and her aunt have fled to Strasbourg where they hope that can pass for white and be safe. And so they might have been, if the dancing plague had not arrived.

What we have, then, is not just a book about a plague, but a book about how a community hit by a plague will pick upon people from a marginalised group and make them scapegoats for the disaster. That’s a deeply disturbing thing for anyone like me to be reading right now. And yet…

The book starts very slowly, and much of it is traditional YA fare of two young people falling in love and having all sorts of problems with friends at school and parents. There is also the looming sense of disaster hanging over Lavinia and her family. But around halfway things start to pick up as the magic takes hold, and by the end McLemore has taken this web of fear, applied a very neat twist, and made something beautiful from it.

The release of this book is also marked by McLemore coming out as non-binary. That’s a big step for any author to take. In many people’s eyes it will transform them from that cute and talented author who has weirdly married a trans man, to One Of Them. I hope it doesn’t damage their career too much. But it is entirely appropriate that it should be this book that accompanies that announcement. I can’t say much more without risk of spoilers, but I’m sure that when you get to the end you will know what I mean.

Queer family, it might not seem like it to begin with, but this is the book about a plague that you need to be reading right now.

book cover
Title: Dark and Deepest Red
By: Anne-Marie McLemore
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Mars

017, Asja Bakić, Book Review

MarsA few weeks ago, when travel was a normal thing, I went to London for a meeting. The venue happened to be near Piccadilly Circus, so I took the opportunity to visit a shop I wanted to support. The Second Shelf is a second-hand bookstore specialising in books by women. Much as I would like a signed Le Guin or Butler, I can’t afford such things and mainly I just wanted to thank the shop’s owners for being so supportive of trans people on their social media feeds. But I asked about SF and a kind lady thrust a little book into my hand.

It was green, and said “Mars” on the cover. The author, Asja Bakić, was Croatian, which immediately perked my interest. Then I turned the book over and saw an enthusiastic recommendation from Jeff VanderMeer. Sold.

Mars is best described as a collection of stories of feminist weird fiction. If you are a fan of Karin Tidbeck, for example, you will want this book. Because the author comes from the Balkans, there are also echoes of Zoran Živković here. But of course Asja Bakić is her own person so such comparisons are only guides.

The stories in Mars mostly feature women in unusual circumstances. You will start each story not quite knowing what is going on. About a page before the end it all becomes clear that things are much more strange than you thought. There are stories about women who turn out to be androids, or clones, or dead.

The title of the book refers to the final story, “The Underworld”, in which the government of Earth has outlawed all literature, and all writers have been banished to the failed colony on Mars.

Since buying the book I have found Bakić on Twitter. Like most Croatians I have met, her English is excellent, but even so the book is translated. Jennifer Zoble co-edits an online journal about translation to I’m not surprised to see her do a fine job.

Had I known about it in time, I would have been pushing for the folks who read collections for the Locus Recommended Reading List to take a look. But of course like so much translated SF it has come out from a literary publisher – in this case The Feminist Press in New York – and has fallen under the radar. Now you know about it though. Check it out.

book cover
Title: Mars
By: Asja Bakić
Publisher: The Feminist Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Conventions Go Virtual

017, Articles, Con Running

Virtual WorldconRegular readers will know that I have long been an advocate of getting more people involved in conventions, in particular Worldcon. It seems crazy to me that we should get a few thousand people attending the event each year, only to then up and hold it in a completely different part of the world the following year and provide no easy means for them to take part. Most people simply can’t afford to go to Worldcon wherever it is in the world, and that seriously restricts people’s loyalty to the event.

When I have brought this up before, it has often been met with sad shaking of the heads, or outright mockery. The technology isn’t up to it, people would say. There’s no way Worldcons could afford it. People wouldn’t want to be on panels if they knew they would go online. All of these criticisms have a germ of truth to them. But none of them are the showstoppers that people think they are, if only someone had the will to carry things through.

Now, of course, our hands have been forced. The current global health crisis means that we have no choice but to make the 2020 Worldcon virtual. Inevitably some fans are grumbling about it, but there are no reasonable alternatives. What’s more, we are not alone. All sorts of other events are going virtual as well. Lots of companies are shifting to working from home. Schools and universities are moving to teaching online. And what we re seeing as a result is the sort of massive leap forward in technology, and technology use, that your normally only get in wartime. Right now we have to make this work, so we are doing so.

The most obvious benefit of this is that people now understand that the technology works. People who had previously scoffed at online meetings are now happily using Zoom on a daily basis. What we are finding is that most of the problems are not technical any more, but human. People need time to learn to use the new tools, and they need to lean to communicate effectively in an online environment.

For example, last weekend I gave a talk to an LGBT+ youth group in Somerset. The talk itself went fine, but it was very useful to have someone managing the tech for me as I talked. Also there was little in the way of Q&A. No one asked questions during the talk, and after it they did so in an orderly fashion. If I there had been 200 people in the audience with many of them wanting to ask questions, and a few determined to put forward, “more of a comment than a question” I would definitely have needed help.

Zoom, however, does have features that help with this. The person hosting the meeting can mute everyone’s microphone. There’s a feature where you can “raise a hand” if you want to speak. Anyone asking a “question” that goes on for more than a few sentences could easily be cut off. I’m sure that there are tricks that we will learn for successfully moderating the Q&A after a talk, but we are clever monkeys so I’m sure they can be learned.

Moderating a panel with Zoom is a different matter. It is certainly harder to see who is wanting to speak. Moderators might need to learn new tricks, and have to be prepared to be a bit more ruthless, in such an environment. The good thing is that we are not the only the only people having to learn these lessons right now. We can watch what other people are doing and pick up on what works.

Any new technology does, of course, come with potential downsides. I’ve been seeing stories of school kids sabotaging their lessons by sharing the URL online and encouraging trolls to interrupt the lesson. There are security features on Zoom that should allow you to prevent this, but you have to learn to use them.

A more serious issue is provided by Zoom itself. Like every other company in the online market it has gone down the route of providing its services cheaply and selling data to make up for the lack of income. Various scare stories have surfaced about the software, and Zoom has been forced into humiliating climbdowns on at least two occasions. IT journalists have started writing about how to keep yourself safe on Zoom.

From a privacy point of view, it seems to me that Zoom is currently no more nefarious than Facebook. If you already spend a lot of time on social media, using Zoom won’t make things any worse. Where it has major issues is firstly confidentiality of sensitive business information; and secondly in the way it can be used by unscrupulous employers to monitor the behaviour of their staff. Neither of these things appear to be much of an issue for an online convention.

Many people’s concerns about online events come from unfortunate experiences of the way some things have been put online in the past. The Hugo Award ceremony is available online in two ways. The current Worldcon generally puts it out over a streaming video service such as YouTube. The comment feed on such things is usually unmoderated and an utter cesspit. The text-based coverage that Kevin and I have done, with help from Mur Lafferty and Susan de Guardiola, is a much more pleasant environment. It is ruthlessly moderated. I know because I do it. People do come on and try to trash-talk everything. It doesn’t take them long to realise that the only person who ever sees their nonsense is me.

Cost is another major issue. You need to pay for all that bandwidth. A meeting attended by 5 people is cheap. A talk watched by 1000 people is not. Right now Worldcon committees have very little idea how to budget for such things, and therefore how much they should charge for access. I don’t envy CoNZealand for the learning experience they are going through. The good news is that if they are only doing virtual then they don’t need to worry about providing cameras in every programme room, which you would do if you wanted to make the whole of an in-person Worldcon also available online.

We have no way of knowing how many people would sign up to attend a virtual Worldcon. However, I suspect that it may well be a lot more than people expect. Over the weekend I got to talk to friends in Finland and the Caribbean. In both cases the people I spoke to were really excited about the possibility of being able to attend Worldcon regularly without having to pay a fortune in travel and accommodation.

There are aspects of Worldcon that do not transfer well to an online environment. I’m not sure, for example, how an online masquerade would work. How would you do workmanship judging? Would entrants have to find a space large enough to film their performance? I’m sure people are thinking about this, but I don’t have any solutions right now.

Then again there is the WSFS Business Meeting. Controlling that is hard enough face-to-face. How would you manage if you had 1000 people attending online, all of them wanting to speak? How would you do voting? Could the Puppies arrange to crash the meeting? Again these are things that probably can be solved, given thought and time, but they might mean that we have to fundamentally change the system of governance of WSFS. The BM is a “town hall meeting”. It cannot work in that form with thousands of attendees.

There’s a lot to do, then. And CoNZealand has to do it in a very short time. I’m sure that they will be keeping a close eye on what other people are doing. This year’s Nebula Conference will be online, and will be a good opportunity to find out what works and what doesn’t. I’m hoping to attend, though I am concerned about time zones, an issue that will be much worse when the con is in New Zealand. There’s more information as to what to expect, and a link to the registration page, here.

In the meantime I would like to offer my deepest sympathy to the CoNZealand committee. I have had senior roles on Worldcon committees before. I know how much work goes into putting on the event, and how unreasonable some fans can be. I would not want to be in their shoes for anything right now, but I am happy to offer what help I’m able from the other side of the planet.

We can get through this. And when we have we may find that we have built something that will allow Worldcon to become truly international. If that happens, the pain will probably have been worth it.

Star Trek: Picard

017, TV Review

Star Trek: PicardWe all knew that this was going to be an exercise in nostalgia. Jean-Luc Picard would probably win any poll of favourite Star Trek captains hands-down, and Patrick Stewart is a superb actor who has gone on to wow the geek community in other roles as well. In some ways, therefore, it was a project that had no risks. All it had to do was deliver fan service.

Thankfully that’s not all that the creators wanted. If they had, they would never have hired a writer as capable as Michael Chabon to craft the story arc. So the question most people will have been asking themselves is whether Chabon would manage to deliver the required nostalgia-fest and still produce a story worthy of Next Gen. And, of course, whether he could do that with a lead character and lead actor who are both getting a bit geriatric.

Wisely Chabon chose to focus on the most interesting philosophical question posed by Next Gen stories: the problem of artificial life. On the one hand we have Commander Data, by far the most interesting member of the Enterprise crew, who is an android who wants to be accepted as human. On the other we have the Borg, people who have become mere cogs in a giant machine intelligence.

Data, of course, is dead. He was killed saving Picard’s life in the film, Star Trek: Nemesis. I gather that film is almost universally despised by Trek fans. I watched it, and it didn’t seem that bad, though I’m afraid I will always find the Romulans to be very silly because the idea of an inter-stellar empire based on ancient Rome belongs in a Patricia Kennealy novel, not Star Trek. I asked about Nemesis on Twitter and apparently the director had said and done some pretty dumb things at the time, but my suspicion is that it is hated mainly because it kills off a well-loved character.

On the other hand, Data was an android, so it should be entirely possible to decant his personality into a new body. There was therefore a possibility that this series might bring him back. Whether it does or not, I will have to leave as a mystery. What it does do, fairly early on, is introduce us to his daughters.

Most science fiction is not really about the future, it is about the now. Any new Star Trek therefore has to be about the difference between America now, and America as it was when Gene Roddenberry first thought up his post-scarcity utopia. A key difference is terrorism. Picard therefore begins with a terrorist attack on the Starfleet construction yards on Mars. The attack is carried out by androids (synthetic beings, in the language of the series), and consequently their manufacture is banned. Picard, of course, continues to defend synthetics, and ends up resigning from Starfleet in a fit of pique.

Years later the appearance of two young women who appear to be synthetic beings modelled on Data in some way proves that someone, somewhere in the galaxy, is still manufacturing such things. Suspicion falls on the maverick scientist, Bruce Maddox, which is excellent use of past Next Gen stories. The plot of the series revolves around the question of whether Picard can find these people first, or whether they will be found by a Romulan secret society dedicated to eradicating all synthetic life.

This being Star Trek, there are some elements that are deeply philosophical, and others that are profoundly silly. There are a couple of episodes in the middle of the season that go completely off the rails and almost lost me. I still don’t understand the point of the Romulan Legolas character. Fortunately Chabon brings the story back on track before the end.

The nostalgia elements are, for the most part, handled well. Will Riker is his usual avuncular self, though somewhat thicker around the middle. Deanna Troi has aged far more gracefully and naturally than knowing her mother would have led us to suspect. Hugh the Borg makes a brief appearance. And of course the whole story is about Data.

The new characters are less convincing, at least in part because we don’t have much chance to get to know them. Narek, the hot Romulan spy, is at least interesting. Captain Rios, Raffi Musiker and Dr. Juradi might become more interesting with time, and if there is a second season I’m assuming they will be back. The less said about Romulan Legolas the better.

That leaves one other character who, at least for me, cemented the whole thing as proper Trek. Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine looked like she had barely been away, except to become even more badass. Given how old everyone else looked, I was impressed with the quality of Borg longevity treatments.

Now of course the question you are all asking is, “Did he pull it off?” (Or perhaps, in what I believe is the current vernacular for TV series, “Did he land the ending?”) I have a few observations. Firstly, this was absolutely a Next Gen story, with Picard doing what Picard does so well. Second, Picard does this while also being an elderly and somewhat grumpy old man who is long past his military service days and is scared that he can no longer cut it. Having a genuinely old man as a hero is a nice change. Thirdly, I was in floods of tears by the end of the final episode. I think that counts as a win.

Beneath the Rising

017, Book Review, Premee Mohamed

Beneath the RisingWell, this is a weird one. That’s a compliment, of course.

Beneath the Rising is a story of tentacled monsters from beyond the stars trying to take over our world, and being fought off by a couple of plucky teenagers. But if you think that makes it standard Lovecraftian fare, or standard YA fare, you would be wrong on both counts. Premee Mohamed has crafted something quite different.

Nick Prasad is an ordinary teenage boy of South Asian descent via the Caribbean. He and his family now make their home in Canada, so he does stand out a little from the crowd, but other than that there is absolutely nothing special about him, except for his best friend from school.

Johanna ‘Johnny’ Chambers is an ordinary teenage girl in the same way that Smaug is an ordinary lizard. She is The Girl Einstein; the Girl Who Cured HIV; the Girl Who Cured Alzheimer’s; and so on. She has more billion-dollar patents to her name than most teen girls of her age have lipsticks. Her home has a massive, multi-story basement full of laboratories and stuff, and Ben, her pet Giant Pacific Octopus.

So what exactly do Nick and Johnny have in common? Well it so happens that when they were both much younger they were caught up in a terrorist attack. They both survived, and ended up with a strange friendship. Nick idolises Johnny, and she see him as one of the few humans that she is able to have a connection with; someone who doesn’t only see her as the great Girl Genius.

Johnny, of course, cannot rest. A mind like hers is forever coming up with new ideas. Her latest scheme is to help stop climate change by coming up with a means of generating limitless free energy. Maybe it is cold fusion that actually works. Maybe it is zero point field energy. Or maybe she is tapping into a source of energy that is Somewhere Else. And that Somewhere Else might just be inhabited.

So it transpires that Nick and Johnny have to save the world, while it is falling apart around them. They have to deal with strange and ancient cults. They have to journey to the world’s oldest libraries and look for books that seem to have a mind of their own. And they have to face down That Which Man (and Girl Geniuses) Was Never Meant To Know; all the while facing up to the fact that their relationship is deeply dysfunctional.

The trouble is that while Nick might see Johnny as an ordinary human, her view of humans, and her ways of having relationships with them, are anything but ordinary. Nick explains:

When you have money you think the way people with money think, because that’s the influence. Ordinary rich people buy homes, plural. The super rich make homes everywhere. People like her, though, don’t need a home; they have nothing that they are worried about keeping, they know they can replace anything, literally anything, even if it is supposed to be one of a kind.

One of the places that they end up (it is in the cover blurb, but hey, old libraries) is Nineveh. Obviously this attracted my attention. I have to say that Mohamed knows far more about tentacled monstrosities than she knows about Assyriology, and that’s OK. It is all fantastical in an Indiana Jones sort of way. Besides, she also features the University of Fes in Morocco, which pleases me greatly because it is the oldest university in the world and was founded (in 859) by Fatima al-Fihri, the wife of a wealthy Muslim merchant.

Getting to Nineveh is another matter, because it is in Iraq. Because of that, the book is not set in the present day. It is set in an alternate 2002 in which the al-Qaeda attack on New York was an embarrassing failure. Mohamed doesn’t really examine the effects of this very much. Airport security still exists because the attack might have succeeded. Everything else is pretty much the same, except that travel to archaeological sites in Iraq is not as deadly as it would be now. That’s an interesting conjecture that I can see people having convention panels about.

Anyway, that’s a bit of a red herring. What is the book like? As I said earlier, it is not what you might expect. This is not a Call of Cthulhu adventure in novel form. Nor is it a teenage romance. It is by turns funny, weird, terrifying and full of tension. Above all it is a story built on the dysfunctional relationship between Nick and Johnny, which must be resolved if the world is to be saved. It is very much its own thing. And that, I think, is a very good thing.

book cover
Title: Beneath the Rising
By: Premee Mohamed
Publisher: Solaris
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Golden Key

017, Book Review, Marian Womack

The Golden KeyWell, here’s an interesting one. The Golden Key is a debut fantasy from Marian Womack. It is being very heavily promoted by the publisher, Titan. And by “very heavily” I mean adverts on the Tube sort of expenditure. It also has a rave recommendation from Cat Valente who was one of Womack’s teachers at Clarion. That’s a heck of a lot to live up to.

To some extent the book does. What I don’t understand is the combination. That is, a book that Cat Valente loves, while obviously attractive to me, is not necessarily the sort of book that will sell in the volumes necessary to justify adverts on the Tube. Don’t get me wrong, I love Valente’s writing, but it took her a few years to learn the difference between appealing to me and appealing to a more general audience. Womack, I suspect, is not quite there, and I worry about what that means for her career, given the amount invested in it, but she’s definitely someone worth watching.

Meanwhile, back with the book. The Golden Key, as some of you will know, is also the title of a story by George McDonald. It was published in his 1867 book, Dealings with Faeries. The story is also available as a 1967 standalone volume with illustrations by no less than Maurice Sendak. McDonald, a Scot who looked disturbingly like Rasputin, was a friend of Lewis Carroll and has been cited as an influence by everyone from CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien to Neil Gaiman and Peter Beagle, via Mark Twain and L Frank Baum in between. He’s that key figure in the history of fantasy that you have never heard of. Womack is well aware of this. In some ways her book is a love letter to McDonald.

I’m no great expert on the man myself, but I get the impression that he was very good at the creepy, edgy, almost-horror side of faerie. I haven’t noticed Susanna Clarke listed as being particularly influenced by his work, but there was one character in Womack’s book who reminded me strongly of The Gentleman with Thistledown Hair from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. And yes, “Gothic” is a description that could be applied to all three books.

Womack’s version of The Golden Key is set at the start of the 20th Century. Queen Victoria has just died, and a passion for spiritualism is sweeping the country. There are seances, and one of the themes of the book is the question as to whether mediums are really in contact with another world, or are just charlatans. Womack’s answer is “both”, and this is characteristic of her approach to the book in general. We are on a threshold all the time, and nothing is quite true or false.

The main character of the book, at least according to the blurb, is Helena Walton-Cisneros, a lady detective famed for her ability to find that which is lost, reputedly by occult methods. And yet we quickly learn that Helena is a fierce rationalist who was forced to accept the media portrayal of her work as informed by magic because that was the only way she could get the police to take her, a mere woman, seriously.

This feminist streak is also a major feature of the book. Helena spends some time partnering with Eliza Waltraud, a scientist who at one point comments:

“It is curious, to say the least, is it not? The way most female maladies are put down to shock, over-exhaustion, hysteria. It almost seems as if the good doctors are trying to find reasons not to worry about our ailments.”

However, there is more to Womack’s examination of Victorian society than simple sexism. The main plot of the book is about missing children. Helena is hired to find out what happened to the three daughters of Lady Matthews who disappeared in mysterious circumstances many years ago. But children are also going missing now. If they are poor, no one cares. If they are rich but female, many people still don’t care. And there is a suggestion that there might be reasons why girl children go missing. That they might be frightened of adults close to them who force them to do things that they don’t like.

Cat says about the book that it is, “like slipping into a warm bath and finding secret thorns there to pierce the heart.” You are always on edge with this book, never quite knowing if it is a Holmes-like investigation into fraudulent mediums, or a genuine case of fairy abduction, or something far more sinister.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s great. As far as the more casual reader is concerned, it might be an issue. The way in which the book skips constantly between modes, between viewpoints, possibly between times, might cause some people trouble. I’ve not got around to watching The Witcher yet, but I followed the debate on social media about the tangled timelines used in the series and generally despaired of TV watchers. The Golden Key is almost certainly more confusing. It also goes places that the reader is not expecting.

I’m giving a cautious thumbs up here. Womack’s work is not as richly poetic as Cat’s early books. Nor is it the sort of instantly accessible Victorian romp as purveyed by the likes of Theodora Goss. It is something altogether more ambitious, something informed by a deep love of the creepy side of faerie lore, and something that may fail to satisfy unless you are prepared to accept it on its own terms. Definitely worth a look, though.

book cover
Title: The Golden Key
By: Marian Womack
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Unspoken Name

017, AK Larkwood, Book Review

The Unspoken NameThis one took a little getting in to. The Unspoken Name is a debut fantasy novel by AK Larkwood. It is a large tome, and begins as if it is going to be very serious, and possibly a bit gloomy. Our hero, Csorwe, is an adept in a religious cult known as The House of Silence, devoted to the worship of The Unspoken One.

In the library of the House of Silence, there was a book bound in the skin of a murdered king, or so it was said. There were books in cipher, books in obsidian, books in whale hide. There were atlases of ruined cities and blighted worlds. There were useless maps to every treasure ever lost to time, and lexicons of every forgotten language.

Csorwe, it transpires, has been chosen to be sacrificed to her god on her 14th birthday. But she is rescued and spirited away by a mysterious wizard called Sethennai who is trying to regain his throne in another world, and find a mysterious thing called the Reliquary of Pentravesse. So far, so very fantasy.

However, it soon becomes clear that Larkwood isn’t taking things nearly as seriously as you might have supposed. The whole regaining the throne thing takes just over 100 pages of a 450 page book. It is, it transpires, backstory. Had I been editing this one, I might have suggested that Larkwood start at the beginning of the real story, and put all this preamble in flashbacks. I nearly gave up after the first section, and I suspect that other people might too.

Thankfully I didn’t because, once the main story gets going, it pulls you along at a fair old lick. You discover that the book is part comedy, and part slow-burn lesbian romance. Csorwe is tasked by Sethennai with chasing down the mysterious reliquary. She is given a partner called Tal who is one of those gay guys whom everyone else dismisses as useless because he’s a bit effeminate and inside is burning with macho desire to prove everyone wrong. Csorwe, in contrast, is a competent if somewhat reckless thug. The two of them hate each other, but need each other’s talents. They are opposed by Oranna, the Evil Librarian of the House of Silence who wants the Reliquary for herself so that she can become one with The Unspoken One and conquer the universe in true Evil Overlord style.

The book lurches between the amusing banter of Csorwe and Tal, and the absolute horror of the things that Oranna is prepared to do in order to get her own way. Meanwhile we get to meet a girl wizard called Shuthmili who is beautiful and doomed and absurdly deadly if she ever loses her self-control.

Having got into the book, I really enjoyed the rest of it, but I have questions, so many questions.

The worldbuilding is really interesting. The book is set in a universe where there are multiple worlds (I hesitate to call them planets because they might not be) that are connected by what seems to be a wormhole system called The Maze through which people sail in boats. It is interesting and innovative, and we learn very little about it.

Magic, in this world, is done by siphoning power from gods, actively if they are weak, and by importuning them if not. The Unspoken One wants blood. Lots of blood. Some of the worlds our heroes visit have been laid waste by powerful magics and/or angry gods. The search for the Reliquary means that much of the action has an Indiana Jones tinge to it.

Csorwe is an orc. Or maybe a troll. Anyway, she has tusks. One of them gets broken off in a fight in the backstory section and is replaced with a prothesis. This is apparently important enough to be used in the cover art, but is hardly ever mentioned again. Some people in the worlds of the book have tusks and others don’t. There’s no racism.

Finally, there is the Reliquary, which is apparently full of all sorts of magical knowledge. If Oranna gets hold of it she might be able to become an immortal avatar of The Unspoken One, and yet no one seems to take this danger seriously. All of the characters are much more interested in their personal objectives.

I’m pretty sure that hard core fantasy fans will be upset by this one. It has lesbians, for a start, but also it makes no attempt at cod-medievalism. At times the milieu of the book seems to be 21st Century Earth.

It wasn’t fair to pull someone out of a horde of revenants and immediately leave her to fend for herself on public transport.

That could have come straight out of an urban fantasy novel. And that might be a key to what we have here. Backstory aside, the book reads like an urban fantasy story set in an epic fantasy universe. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but might throw some readers.

There’s one more thing that I should mention. The book is replete with themes of ambition and duty ranged against life affirmation. Most of the main characters, at some point, turn their back on a life that has been mapped out for them by someone else. This might involve not getting sacrificed to a bloodthirsty god, or it might involve opting out of a safe but frustrating career to have a life. That’s something I can sympathise with. I tried being a corporate drone. It was horrible. I’ve been much happier, if much poorer, since.

book cover
Title: The Unspoken Name
By: AK Larkwood
Publisher: Tor
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The City of a Thousand Feelings

017, Anya Johanna DeNiro, Book Review

The City of a Thousand FeelingsThis is another book from the Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces series. It is thus quite short. (I read it in a few hours one morning.) It is also definitely a conversation piece and what one might term “experimental”.

The author, Anya Johanna DeNiro, is a trans woman. She had work out prior to transition so she’s had little option but to take that step very publicly indeed if she wanted to continue writing. The City of a Thousand Feelings is, to some extent, an allegory about gender transition. The City of the title is a place where socially acceptable people live, and at the start of the book it is being besieged by an army of trans folks who want admission. The City would rather flee or fight than open its gates to them.

While the people of the City are merely stand-offish, the true villains of the story are a cult of necromancers called Corpse-Mongers. If you look at them askance you might catch a glimpse of religious fundamentalists hiding behind their cowls.

Such a work is not going to resonate with everyone. Indeed, because gender transition is an intensely personal process, it won’t even resonate with all trans women. But there are two aspects to the story that I think work well and are worthy of examination.

The first is focus on feelings and loss. The City in the story is a place where emotions are celebrated. The fact that the army of trans people is kept outside is not just a mark of their lack of social acceptance. It is an indication that they are not allowed to feel happy, or safe, or loved. The only emotion that they are allowed is one of loss. That’s a brutally sharp observation of the trans condition, and it is one that thankfully will not resonate with all of us, but for far too many it will ring uncomfortably true.

The other aspect is a form of resolution that strongly echoes the one in Dark and Deepest Red. It is fascinating to see two books by trans writers in the same month that come up with very similar forms of salvation. That gives me a lot of hope for a community which, these days, is very much under siege.

If you are not interested in the trans themes, you may be interested in a fantasy story that is determinedly different and ambitious. It is also short, of course, so there’s not much to invest. Why not give it a try?

book cover
Title: The City of a Thousand Feelings
By: Anya Johanna DeNiro
Publisher: Aqueduct Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Editorial – March 2020

017, Editorial

Well, here we are living in interesting times.

Things are going pretty well for me. I still have plenty of work, which is good. I also have a lot more free time, which I have been putting to good use working on Wizard’s Tower projects. I may have had a mild case of the virus as I was somewhat ill for a while and have ended up with shortness of breath and a dry cough that won’t go away. But while I am reluctant to go out for fear of scaring people with the cough, I am otherwise healthy and able to get on with life in isolation.

The end result of this is that I’m very busy. In addition to the Tales of Enarinn reprints from Juliet McKenna, we also have a new Tate Hallaway novel due out in April. I will be talking to Tate about it for the next issue.

This issue has gone live on the Transgender Day of Visibility. I’m pleased that we have at least two boks by trans-identified authors reviewed here.

And finally we have the whole question of virtual Worldcons to think about. I have put some initial thoughts in this issue, but I’m sure there will be a lot of learning over the coming months.

Issue #16

Issues

This is the February 2020 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


Maresi

Archive, Book Review, Maria Turtschaninoff

On a remote island in the Northern Seas there is a secret religious establishment. One might call it a nunnery, for it is staffed entirely by women. The Red Abbey, however, is not like any nunnery of our world. In the Red Abbey, even god is female.

Maresi Enresdaughter is a teenage girl fairly newly arrived at the Abbey. She loves the freedom that she has there. She loves the company of the other young women. But most of all she loves books, and wants nothing more than to sit and read all day long. Naturally the older sisters despair of her at times, but perhaps she will make a good Librarian when she is older.

That’s a good enough lure for a YA fantasy novel, isn’t it? Maria Turtschaninoff sure knows her audience. However, our idyllic sojourn with Maresi in the Abbey library will not last forever. As the book opens, another young girl arrives at the Abbey. Her name is Jai, and she is a run-away. The culture that she was born into is deeply patriarchal, so much so that women who don’t follow their men-folk’s orders are liable to be killed to preserve the “honor” of the family. Jai’s mother has managed to get the girl to freedom, but is the Abbey truly far enough away to make her safe?

Jai’s people, of course, are tall, fair-haired and fair-skinned. You had guessed that, hadn’t you?

There’s no doubt which way this story will go. The only question is what sacrifices the women of the Abbey will have to make to fight off the attentions of Jai’s vengeful father and his band of hired killers. While this may be a book written for teenagers, Turtschaninoff doesn’t pull her punches. Maresi, having befriended Jai, and being rather more resourceful than most of her sisters, has to grow up very quickly indeed.

I have several reasons to love this book. One of them is a realistic depiction of a pagan community centered on goddess worship that doesn’t shy away from any aspect of women’s lives. Another is that this is a fast-paced, gripping tale that will have you rushing through it, consumed with anxiety for the women.

It is atmospheric too. I know it is a bit of a hostage to fortune posting passages that you particularly liked, because tastes vary enormously, but I’m going to take risk here:

I heard a rustling around me. In the faint moonlight I saw hundreds of iridescent butterflies flutter up out of the bushes. Their wings look unnaturally large and they shone silver and grey in the soft light. The butterflies seemed never-ending as more and more flew out of the bushes and into the night. I was entranced by the beauty and stayed hanging there, enraptured. It was like a goodnight greeting from the island itself.

When the last butterfly had flown I heard the voice.

Maresi, it whispered. My daughter.

It came from the hole beneath me. She was there, in the darkness. Waiting.

You need to imagine that small piece of speech being in an aged, rasping but firm voice. Then you need to go and listen to The Pretenders’ “Hymn to Her”.

Credit should also go to the translator, A.A. Prime. Turtschaninoff wrote the original in Swedish.

Most of all, though, I love Maresi because it is firmly and unabashedly feminist. It is a book that I would like every teenage girl to read. Sure, there is magic in the book, and it is fiction, but it is full of hope and courage. It suggests that we can make the world a better place, hard and painful though that journey will sometimes be.

It is also the first book in a trilogy. Can we have the next one, please, Pushkin Press?

book cover
Title: Maresi
By: Maria Turtschaninoff
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Agency

016, Book Review, William Gibson

Two things are known to be hard. One is making the middle book of a trilogy interesting. Another is writing near future SF in a time of rapid social change. William Gibson has sailed straight into the storm created when these two problems collide.

I really liked The Peripheral. I thought it was the best thing I had seen from Gibson in a long time. Agency, however, is just more of the same. Now of course that same is good. Gibson writes really well. The setting is interesting. Wilf Netherton and Inspector Lowbeer are fascinating characters, and a lot of the supporting cast are good too. Beyond that, however, nothing much happens. Agency is simply another tale of our heroes sorting out a problem in another parallel universe.

That universe is interesting, of course. Famously it is one in which Hilary Clinton is US President and Brexit never happened. That, however, will not prevent The Jackpot. As Gibson explained when I saw him speak in Bristol, the apocalypse that we are living through is a slow-acting one. It started long ago, and will take decades more to reach its full potential. It is hard to understand that you are being boiled when the temperature of the water rises very slowly, but we’ll be no less cooked at the end of it. Possibly the actions of Netherton, Lowbeer and co, with their benefit of hindsight from the future, will help other timelines do better. Maybe Gibson has an idea for the final book of the series. But something tells me that for most universes it is too late. The Jackpot is a train and we are in a tunnel. It hasn’t hit us yet, but there’s no time to go back.

The sad thing is that there will probably be many people out there who see the post-Jackpot world as a utopia of sorts. The population has been dramatically reduced. Technology has carried on making life easier. And who needed all those animal species anyway, right? This is, of course, part of the far-right wet dream. The way to save the planet is to get rid of all the useless people. No one who holds such opinions ever thinks that they might be among the useless.

Agency does briefly revisit some of the characters in the other timeline from The Peripheral. Things have moved on for Flynne and her friends. Possibly book 3 will bring together the alternate timelines from both The Peripheral and Agency, and maybe a third world as well. However, we don’t see any more or Janice, or Flynne’s mother, who were my favourite characters from The Peripheral.

The new timeline, despite its superior electoral sense, is rather dull. It is set in San Francisco, which should make it feel like home for me, but that was mostly for the presence of high tech industry. There was little there there. And don’t get me started about differences in highway nomenclature between northern and southern California. Our heroine, Verity, is supposedly an expert app tester, which sounds a bit like a cheap Cayce Pollard knock-off. She spends most of the book running away from the bad guys while waiting for an ending that we can all see coming.

I don’t want to say that Agency is a bad book, because I enjoyed reading it. But it did feel like it was treading water. The obvious long-term focus for the series is the nature of The Server. Who created it, and why? That is the carrot that has been dangled in front of the reader, and Agency gets us no closer to finding out.

book cover
Title: Agency
By: William Gibson
Publisher: Viking
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Light of Impossible Stars

016, Book Review, Gareth L Powell

The final books of trilogies are often nervous-making experiences because you so much want the author to round off an intriguing story in a satisfying manner. For me that was doubly true for Light of Impossible Stars because Gareth Powell is a friend and I want him to do well. Thankfully he seems to have pretty much nailed it.

The first thing I should say about the book is that it is very readable. I sped through it in a day while traveling home from Austria. The book kept my attention throughout, which is an excellent sign. I was engaged with the characters, and I wanted to know how the story would pan out.

For fans of the series, I should note that there’s rather less of Trouble Dog and Nod the Druff in this book than they might have hoped. They are well-loved characters, and of course Chapter 49 of Fleet of Knives has passed into legend. As I expected, the Druff do have an important art of play in the dénouement of the series. However, the stakes have got incredibly high by the end of the series and there’s not much that individuals can do, unless they have god-like powers.

Of course, this is space opera, so that isn’t entirely out of the question.

There will, I think, be more in-depth articles written about how well Powell deals with the themes of the series. In particular, for a set of books that was supposed to be set after a major war, it has an awful lot of war in it. Personally I’m still digesting everything and not really in a position to come to a conclusion. For most readers, however, what will matter is that the series has come to a satisfying ending. Powell is probably keen to get onto new projects. What he’ll find is his fans clamouring for more books featuring the Druff.

book cover
Title: Light of Impossible Stars
By: Gareth L Powell
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Maresi: Red Mantle

016, Book Review, Maria Turtschaninoff

Trilogies seem to be something of a theme in this issue. William Gibson is in the middle of one; Gareth Powell has finished one; and here too is another book, three. The Red Abbey Chronicles, however, have a rather different structure to the other two.

Both Powell, and presumably Gibson, have a single narrative thread running through the series. Maria Turtschaninoff has tried something different, which may have saved her from Middle Book Syndrome. After the first book, Maresi, we were all expecting the continuing adventures of the titular heroine. However, with Naondel Turtschaninoff chose to go back in time and tell the story of the founding of the Red Abbey. Red Mantle picks up the story of Maresi once more as she returns to her homeland, proudly wearing the red cloak of a priestess.

There are two main issues to be resolved in the book. The first is how well Maresi will get on with her avowed plan to start a school in her home village. It is, after all, a place where no one else can read, let alone write. It is a place where most people are kept much too busy just growing food, making clothes and staying one step ahead of the local lord’s tax collectors to do anything else.

The other is how Maresi will come to terms with the events of the first book. When she arrived at the Red Abbey she had no expectation of becoming a priestess of the Crone, let alone having to use that connection and the power that came with it to save the Abbey from a large group of very violent men.

Like the first book, this one is a slow burner. The first two thirds or so are simply Maresi dealing with everyday problems. Her neighbours think schooling is pointless. Her mother is upset that she won’t braid her hair like other village girls. Everyone wants to know which boy in the village she is going to marry. Slowly but surely, however, menace rears its ugly head, and by the end of the book Maresi has had to deal with a major crisis once more.

Being intended for teenage girls, the book is a very easy read. However, it does not shy away from difficult topics. There is mention of contraception, rape, the dangers of childbirth, and pressure to conform to social expectations. The Red Abbey Chronicles books are just full of feminist politics. I am all in favour of this. We need to be teaching young girls about feminist issues, and these books are an excellent vehicle for doing so.

I should note that the book is written entirely in epistolary form, as letters from Maresi back to the Abbey. One of the charms of the book is noting the different style that Maresi adopts when writing to her superiors in the Abbey, and when writing to her younger friends.

There is also a romance plot, though it is by no means the main part of the book. I was very happy with it, and indeed saw it coming a mile off. That’s because Kevin is from California and Turtschaninoff dropped a heavy hint in Finnish.

Which brings me to the fact that these books are all translated, though from Swedish rather than Finnish. (AA Prime has translated all three books) I understand that the first book in the series is available in 21 different languages, and a movie is in production. I am delighted to see Turtschaninoff have so much success. It is hard getting anywhere when you write in a language other than English, but it is possible, and hopefully that will encourage more people to seek out translated works.

book cover
Title: Maresi: Red Mantle
By: Maria Turtschaninoff
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

To Be Taught if Fortunate

016, Becky Chambers, Book Review

Up until now, Becky Chambers is someone whose work I have enjoyed, but not specifically sought out. Generally I would read her when other people voted her onto award ballots and I needed to have an opinion. To Be Taught if Fortunate has changed all that. I will now be buying new Becky Chambers books when they come out, because this is very good.

The book is a novella, and tells the story of a human expedition to another star system. You could describe it as a first contact story, but none of the lifeforms the crew encounters is what we would regard as intelligent. It is more a story of space exploration, how it happens, and why we do it. If I had to write an elevator pitch for it, I would say it was, “A Kim Stanley Robinson story written by a woman.”

It reminded me a lot of parts of Red Mars, where Robinson is talking about the process of sending a spacecraft and crew to another planet. There’s even a certain amount of listing of equipment. But Chambers is also very interested in her crew as human beings, and not in a “someone must go crazy so we can have conflict” way.

The crew’s target system is 14 years travel away and the crew is in cryosleep for the duration of the journey. Chambers has her narrator note that each crew member has a cabin, and care has been taken to help them adjust when they wake up. It is a small detail, but one that shows she’s thinking about how such a mission would work.

Of course people will ask what Chambers knows about “real” science fiction. Her previous novels have not been what one would describe as “hard SF”. This one definitely is, so there will doubtless be dudebros itching to point out perceived errors. However, Chambers’ mother is an astrobiologist and I’d happily wager that she knows far more about life on other planets than the average “well actually” guy on social media.

The plot, such as it is, is mainly about the various planets that the crew explores, the things they find there, and what this means to them. Towards the end of the book, however, they are influenced by events back on Earth, a place to which they are expected to return. I won’t say more than that because of spoilers, but I found this a delightful little book and one well worth going up against an incredibly competitive novella field in this year’s Hugos.

book cover
Title: To Be Taught if Fortunate
By: Becky Chambers
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Vei — Volume 2

016, Comic Review, Karl Johnsson, Sara B. Elfgren

I was delighted to have been sent the second and final volume of Vei by Sara B Elfgren and Karl Johnsson. My review of Volume 1 explains the set-up, but basically it is a couple of Swedes being very creative with Nordic myth.

At the end of Volume 1, Vei has been appointed Champion of the Jotun in the Meistarileikr, a brutal gladiatorial contest between the Æsir and Jotun that takes place at intervals ridiculous to humans but entirely normal to god-like beings. Already she has killed many of Odin’s champions, but there are more fights to come before the contest is over.

As the story develops, both Æsir and Jotun show themselves to be arrogant, cruel and careless of human lives. But they are as gods, what can one do? Only one person seems to care about Vei’s plight, and would you trust Loki? With anything?

As I said last time, Loki is one of the best things in the book. They also get the best scene, in which they transform into a cat in order to get petted by Freya. But Loki also has a plan. Inevitably it involves significant amounts of chaos.

Occasionally Elfgren’s plot seems to play fast and loose with the common understanding of Nordic mythology. But hey, she and Johnsson are Swedish. It is their mythology. Besides, for all I know they may know of alternate versions of the myths that tell very different tales.

Johnsson’s art continues to be very impressive.

In this volume there is an ending. If you expected it to be a “they all lived happily ever after” one then you clearly don’t know much about Norse myths. It is, however, a satisfying one. And that, of course, is all that one can ask for.

book cover
Title: Vei -- Volume 2
By: Sara B Elfgren & Karl Johnsson
Publisher: Insight Comics
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Watchmen — The TV Series

016, TV Review

Long ago there was a very famous comics series that set the world alight because of its innovative treatment of the superhero genre. The writer on that series got rather grumpy about things and said he didn’t want there to be any sequels, adaptations, or any of the other nonsense that corporations like to produce off the back of a successful creation. The corporation took little notice of him.

There was eventually a film adaptation, of course. It was quite faithful to the original comics. It was also quite dull. That was partly because the world had moved on in the meantime, and partly because it had nothing new to say.

Then, years later, there was talk of a TV series, that would be a sequel to the original story. Everyone groaned. This was going to be the poor writer’s worst fears come true, right?

Wrong. Damon Lindelhof’s Watchmen is some of the best TV in a long time. It is, in its own way, very faithful to the original comic. It is also very much its own thing. Rather than provide “more of the same”, which is what every Hollywood mogul actually wants, it used some familiar characters to tell a very different story.

Specifically, Watchmen is about race politics in the USA. It kicks off with the 1921 race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which most people (even most Americans) had never heard of before. It directly addresses the white supremacist nonsense that is at the heart of present-day American politics. And it riffs off the fact that a white man in a mask can be a hero, whereas a black man in a mask is seen as a threat. It is all so very relevant right now.

Some of the music choices that go with individual episodes are superb. The original music is by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails, but it is the use of well-known pop songs that is at genius level. I’m very disappointed that Wikipedia does not yet have a full list of the songs used, but kudos to Liza Richardson for her choices.

Some of the acting is also top class. I thought that Jean Smart as Laurie Blake (Silk Spectre II) was very good. And Jeremy Irons was brilliant as Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias). Irons also looks like he is thoroughly enjoying every minute of it.

Amusingly Lindelhof has said that he doesn’t want there to be any sequels to his story. I have no idea what Alan Moore thought of this, but both of them are right. Both of them have created brilliant stories that are perfectly capable of standing alone. If the Watchmen franchise is to be mined again, then it should only be done by someone with enough imagination and artistic integrity to stand alongside what Moore and Lindelhof have achieved. That’s a very tall order.

The Rampant

016, Book Review, Julie C Day

Well there’s a thing. A new novella from Aqueduct Press set in a post-apocalyptic world in which the apocalypse in question is Sumerian gods returning to Earth. In theory the world should have been destroyed, but something has gone wrong and the expected Rapture has been delayed. In the meantime, lots of people are dying and ending up in the Plains of the Imperfect Dead, rather than in the Netherworld. Fortunately for us humans, one young girl from Decatur, Indiana has been receiving prophetic dreams. It is apparently up to Gillian, and her Best Friend Forever, Mel, to journey to the Netherworld, find a being known as The Rampant, and get the apocalypse re-started.

So, teenage lesbians v monsters from Sumerian myth it is. Bring it on!

Of course, I had to read this. Mainly I had to read it to see if Inanna was mentioned and if so how. Much to my surprise, she doesn’t feature at all, despite being the original star of the Descent into the Netherworld. Thinking about it, however, Julie C Day might have dodged a bullet here. Knowing how quick Herself can be to take offence, and Her penchant for smiting people when She does, leaving Her out might have been a wise move. Besides, Day redeems herself. Of course Ereshkigal has to be in the story. The Netherworld is her domain. But Day portrays her as a) not in charge, and b) a pompous twit. She does get to ride a rather cute elephant (don’t ask), but it is clearly a nicer person than she is so that’s OK.

Day is therefore safe from smiting, and free to craft a fun story that an impressive degree of originality. I found The Rampant a little obscure at times, because while Gillian and Mel are clearly speaking English the way in which they do so is somewhat foreign to me. The speech patterns of teenage girls from Indiana are clearly not that close to the English I speak. But I did manage to follow the action, and I enjoyed the story. It is great to see someone prepared to do something so completely off-the-wall.

Also no smiting, which is always a relief where Herself is concerned.

book cover
Title: The Rampant
By: Julie C Day
Publisher: Aqueduct Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Picard — Countdown

016, Comic Review

It seems like almost everyone in my Twitter timeline is watching the new Picard TV series. We all love Jean-Luc, whether we are Star Trek fans or not. Quite a few people, however, including me, have been a bit confused, because the series assumes a level of fannish obsession with the Trek universe that most of us don’t share.

Much of this comes direct from Next Generation, which many of us will have seen. We have a reasonable idea of who Data, Bruce Maddox, Hugh and Locutus of Borg are. Other plot points arise from the move, Star Trek: Nemesis, which is not as bad as everyone told me it would be, but is nevertheless a bit silly. You can get away with reading the Wikipedia synopsis if you don’t want to watch it.

That much Trek lore is fairly accessible, but that still leaves a whole lot of mystery people. Who the heck is Raffi Musiker, whom Picard seems to know so well? Who are Zhaban and Laris, the two Romulans who live with Picard on his vineyard? I had no clue, so I Googled. It turns out that the TV series has a 3-part comic prequel. It is produced by IDW and written by the same creative team as the TV series. The individual issues are available for a very reasonable $1.99 each.

As comics go, these are not particularly great works of art. However, they do fill a gap in the narrative. If you are a little confused by some of the TV series, this will help you.

Editorial – February 2020

016, Editorial

OK, so February is a short month, even in a leap year. Also it is my busiest month of the year because it is LGBT History Month here in the UK and I end up going all over the place giving talks. I’m relieved to have got this out only a day after the end of the month.

And now we are into March, which means Hugo Nominating Deadline. You need to get it done by March 14th, and ideally you should get it done before then just in case there are any IT meltdowns.

Talking of which, when I did my Hugo suggestions last month I totally forgot that Captain Marvel was a 2019 film. That means that Avengers: Endgame won’t make the cut. I think that BDP: Long could be quite interesting this year with so many good seasons of TV eligible.

Oh, and please don’t forget to nominate in Fanzine. You don’t have to vote for this one, but you do need to support the tradition of long-form fannish writing. Please.

Finally on the subject of awards, huge congratulations to Juliet E McKenna for getting The Green Man’s Foe onto the Best Novel short list in the British Science Fiction Association Awards. That means that I will be at Eastercon doing the proud publisher thing, and will have a dealer table. I’ll be fresh off a plane from Western Canada and jet-lagged to the nines, but I should also have something rather exciting and Juliet-related for you folks to see (and hopefully but). More news next issue.

Cheryl

Issue #15

Issues

This is the January 2020 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


Cover: Robot Planet Moon

015, Art

Once again I have been scouring Pixabay for art that I can use freely. This issue’s cover is Robot Planet Moon by KellePics. There’s a donation link for the artist, so I chucked over a few bucks. You can too.

Also as usual, the full image is much bigger than I needed for a magazine cover. The full version is available below.

The Absolute Book

015, Book Review, Elizabeth Knox

I have been a fan of Elizabeth Knox for some time. I reviewed one of her books back in Emerald City days. But living in New Zealand is not good for a writing career. Going to conventions, or doing book tours, even in Australia, can be very expensive. Knox hasn’t had the support from publishers or readers that she deserves. Her latest novel, The Absolute Book, is available only from a university press in Wellington. Thankfully you can get an ebook, so it is not that expensive to buy if you are OK reading electronically, but you have to know where to look, and why. Fortunately I am here to tell you.

The Absolute Book is the story of Taryn Cornick, the younger daughter of an upper middle-class family in England. Her family used to own a stately home in the Welsh Borders, but that has had to be sold because of upkeep costs. Her father is only a top character actor currently famous for his roles in a trilogy of fantasy movies, and a long-running fantasy TV series. That doesn’t earn enough. Stately homes are expensive.

When Taryn was young her elder sister, Beatrice, was murdered. A man in a car saw her out jogging on a quiet country road and thought that if he knocked her down he could rape her, but he miscalculated and she died from wounds sustained in the impact. At the trial he claimed he had no idea what came over him.

Fast forward now a few years. Taryn is married to a wealthy businessman who can afford a stately home. She is still processing her grief and anger at Bea’s death. On a hunting trip to Canada she meets a woodsman who befriends her. He offers to help her grieving by killing Bea’s murderer when he gets out of prison. It’s a favour he wants to do to help an unhappy young woman. No strings attached.

Fast forward again. The murderer is dead. A young police officer who interviewed Taryn is convinced that she was involved, despite her cast iron alibi. Taryn is newly famous as she has written a successful book about lost libraries: not just Alexandria, far too many have been burned. Meanwhile she is being stalked, and she has started to suffer from mysterious seizures. While in hospital for tests she is visited by a man from MI5. He’s interested in two Arabic-looking men who came to a book signing. Oh yes, says Taryn, the Lovecraft fans. One of them gave me a card with the name Abdul Alhazred on it.

If, at this point, you have no idea what this book is about, don’t worry, I didn’t either. But it will all come clear in due course. What we have, as you can guess from the title, is a book about a book. An apparently very important book. One that people, and beings that are not people, will kill to get hold of. A book that has a very important role to play in a very long-running war.

It is also a book that is heavily steeped in that glorious mash-up of mediaeval Christianity and Celtic myth that is Arthurian legend, and yet it mentions Arthur by name just once. Mostly it just alludes to him, as in this passage.

He recalled the very erudite lawyer he regularly had a drink with explaining to him why the current referendum wasn’t going to devolve into the usual political point-scoring but, instead, produce something extraordinary. ‘[…] No, it’s an almost mythical yearning, as though, if we can only create the right conditions, a stranger might come out of the mist, thrust a sword into a stone, and say, “Whosoever draws forth this blade…”’

So yes, this is a book about the modern world, but it is also a book that is infused with mythology. In particular it connects to myths about idealised otherworlds, and heroes who might come to rescue us from our folly. God is not going to save us. The old fellow has apparently retreated from the world, driven mad by the conflicting demands of his fractious legions of followers. It is down to Arthur, or the Fae, or Odin, or someone like that. Of course you do have to be careful, even with them.

‘We’re hoping the sisters will turn up. We can’t summon them without maybe also summoning the god. Odin is best left out of this. We’re not sure what his intentions are. He’s not himself these days. His head has been turned by many new worshippers. Of the wrong kind.’

All of this mixing of the modern world and mythology sometimes allows very weird things to happen.

Neve frowned at their approach, but greeted each of them by name. Her small party of humans made room. Introductions were exchanged and Taryn found herself sitting one place along from Franz Schubert.

Of course there is much serious in the book as well. It reminded me in particular of two things. The first is Ursula K Le Guin’s legendary short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. As you doubtless know, the city of Omelas is a utopia with a dark secret. The vast majority of citizens lead idyllic lives, but the price of this is that in a dungeon below the city a young child is being continually tortured. In Le Guin’s story, some people choose to leave the city rather than have their happiness depend on such horror. Many other writers have had their own takes on the moral conundrum since.

Here’s what Knox asked. Imagine that you, yes You, had the power to stop it all. If you were willing to give up your own life, and submit to eternal damnation, in return for which the utopia of Omelas would continue with no child ever being harmed again, would you do it?

The other thing that came to mind is that this is something of a Sheri Tepper novel. Now I have had some fairly bad things to say about Tepper in the past, but that’s because her solutions to the world’s problems tend to come from a position of arrogance and disdain for mankind. Tepper presents mankind (and she means MANkind) as a failed species that needs to be taken in hand and disciplined. Knox, I think, comes from a kinder place. Yes, we human are a mess, and we seem to be incapable of fixing the problems we have created. What we need, however, is not a stern parent who will stop us from ever being bad again, but supportive parents who will teach us to love.

It is a nice thought, and this is a lovely book. Unfortunately, in the world outside of the book, no one is going to come to save us.

book cover
Title: The Absolute Book
By: Elizabeth Knox
Publisher: Victoria University Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Ghurkha and the Lord of Tuesday

015, Book Review, Saad Z. Hossain

Melek Ahmar, the Lord of Mars, the Red King, the Lord of Tuesday, Most August Rajah of Djinn has been asleep in a coffin in the Himalayas for over 4,000 years. Now he is awake and looking for a good party. But the world he finds himself in is very different than the one in which he was unfortunately bashed over the head while drunk. The humans, it seems, have been busy.

The world has been through a nanotech apocalypse. Those cities that survive are now mini-Utopias, and none more so than Kathmandu. Peace and luxury, however, come at the price of constant vigilance; the sort of vigilance that can only be provided by an AI. In Kathmandu’s case that job falls to Karma. Not only does she keep her inhabitants safe from all of the deadly nanotech plagues with which the planet is still infested; she provides a benign rule based on a points system where citizens can grow wealthy through doing good deeds; or happily live on social security while being merrily but benignly debauched.

The legendary Ghurkha knife fighter, Bhan Gurung, does not live in Kathmandu. No one in the city remembers him now, which is probably just as well given what he has done. Gurung has not forgotten. He still bears a grudge against the city. And the arrival of an incredibly powerful, but rather confused and suggestible, Djinn lord seems like a gift from Heaven.

Hamilcar Pande is the closest that Kathmandu has to a policeman. He doesn’t need to keep law and order. Karma does all of that for him. But it is his job within Central Admin to keep an eye on Karma and ensure that she continues to function correctly. Goodness knows how he would ever tell if something had gone wrong, or how he could do anything about it if he did, but there it is. He has a job, as much as anyone in Kathmandu actually needs one, and he is determined to do it to the best of his ability.

So when two strange and disreputable looking people turn up at the gates of the city demanding entrance, it is to Hamilcar that Karma delegates the job of keeping an eye on them. Because one of them seems impervious to all forms of surveillance.

This is the set-up for a rather wonderful novella from Saad Z. Hossain. He lives in Bangladesh, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet he has been able to sell his work to the Western world, and in this case to Tor.com. I discovered the book because its editor, Jonathan Strahan, had been enthusing about it on The Coode Street Podcast. I know I can rely on Jonathan’s good taste, and in this case my faith in him was more than rewarded.

The Ghurkha and the Lord of Tuesday is many things, which is impressive for a novella. It is, at core, a crime story. There are some murders in it, though the crimes involved are rather more complex than simple killings. It is also a nanotech story, bearing some debt to its forebears — in particular Kathy Goonan’s flower city novels. It is a book about a future society run on reputation points, similar to the concept of Whuffie used in Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It is a story about a world beset by (un)natural disasters, and how humans respond to that. And it is a story about humans seeking to deal with an AI whose workings they cannot hope to understand.

Oh, and it is a book with a couple of comedy Djinn as major characters.

Now if all that strikes you as interesting, and I think that it should, then you will want to be buying a copy of this book and reading it before you submit your Hugo Award ballot for 2019. These days Novella is a very competitive field, but in my view this book absolutely deserves to be a finalist.

book cover
Title: The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday
By: Saad Z. Hossain
Publisher: Tor.com
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Stories We Don’t Tell

015, Articles, Feminism, Writing

Most of you will be familiar with the furore surrounding the “Attack Helicopter” story in Clarkesworld. I don’t discuss that story here. Both Neil Clarke and the author, Isabel Fall, know that they stepped into a minefield there, and I am sure they have learned lessons, but I do want to talk about the minefield.

One of the reasons that this issue blew up is that well-meaning people, both cis and trans, wanted to be able to tell interesting and edgy stories about the trans experience. Writing interesting and edgy stories is what good writers want to do, and what good editors want to publish. However, there are things that I, as a trans woman, would not want to write about, either in fiction or nor fiction, because doing so would cause way too much trouble for me, and for others. I want to explain what some of those things are, and why they are so problematic.

I should start by saying that there are no hard and fast rules here. What you can get away with in writing for a trans-themed anthology from a small press is very different to what you can do in a high-profile venue such as Clarkesworld. There are plenty of great stories in the Transcendent anthologies, many of which came from small presses. Who you are also matters. I continue to be amazed that Charlie Jane Anders got away with writing “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue”. Personally, I would not have had the mental fortitude, let along the literary talent, to write that story. But it also touched on some of the issues I will mention here. I presume that one of the reasons there was no great backlash against it is that Charlie Jane was already a hugely respected writer, and openly trans, when it was published.

That said, few of us have the stature of Charlie Jane. We have to be careful, and there are a variety of reasons for that.

One issue that trans people face these days is that we are the focus of a great deal of interest from the media and right-wing political activists. It is far worse in the UK than anywhere else, but the international nature of social media means that no one is safe. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that everything that I write online is scrutinised by anti-trans extremists looking for excuses to initiate a social media pile on, to have me banned from platforms, or to pass to their friends in the media as the basis for another “trans outrage” article. I note that the right-wing media are already using the Clarkesworld affair as an excuse to portray trans people as aggressive and intolerant.

In view of the fact that we are so often portrayed as monsters in the popular imagination, one thing I would be reluctant to do is write a story with a trans person as a villain. To start with there’s really no need. There are plenty of such stories out there, all of them intended to incite hatred against us, or simply using our alleged status as outsiders, as “freaks”, and as mentally ill. If you need an explanation as to why someone might be a serial killer, making that person trans is still an acceptable and common tactic in many circles.

That said, having a trans person as a villain is probably preferable to yet another transition story. Yes, I know that the one thing that is endlessly fascinating to cis people is the story of a man becoming a woman. (Much less so the other way around. Ask yourselves why that might be so.) But transition stories have been done to death, mostly badly, and frankly they aren’t that interesting to us unless we are currently embarking on that journey. Transition is a relatively short part of any trans person’s life. It is also a deeply traumatic one. That obviously makes for good fiction, but see below for why we shouldn’t go there.

What I want out of fiction is not stories about the transition process, but stories about trans people living their lives. After all, the whole point of transition is to move away from the trauma of being forced to live a lie and get on with being you. The standard trans narrative, as peddled by the media, is that life post-transition is no happier, and probably much worse, than it was before, because no one will ever accept you. The reality is very different. Trans people have all sorts of interesting and successful lives. And even if they are just dull and boring, that’s far better than the media would have you believe. We need more stories where some of the characters just happen to be trans.

However, the main topic that I would avoid as a trans writer is anything to do with the nature of transness itself. We are curious monkeys, we like to have explanations of things. Faced with the reality of trans people, it is entirely natural to ask, “why?” Cis people are not alone in this. Every trans person I have discussed this issue with would love to know why we are the way we are. The inconvenient truth is that no one knows. And the smart folks among us know that we shouldn’t be asking.

When I do trans awareness courses for clients I have to talk about this. There are all sorts of theories as to why people are trans. Some are biological in nature, and some psychological. None of them has any basis in experimental results. The only thing that we know for certain is that no one seems able to cure anyone of being trans. (Charlie Jane’s story was all about someone discovering the means to do so.)

The point I make to my classes is that there might not be a simple answer. In fact there almost certainly isn’t. The processes that make someone assigned male at birth a trans woman might be very different from the processes that make someone assigned female at birth a trans man; and both might be different from why anyone is non-binary, in any of the many ways that people can be non-binary. So picking any single, simple explanation pretty much guarantees that you will be wrong as far as large parts of the trans community is concerned. Speculation about simple explanations therefore does no one any good. And long term, if an explanation is found, Charlie Jane’s story eloquently details the awful consequences that will result for trans people.

Nevertheless, cis people continue to obsess over why people might be trans. The anti-trans brigade, for whom it is an article on faith that trans people cannot “really” exist, are forever on the lookout for an excuse to have us labelled insane once again. Any fiction that purports to explain transness therefor becomes fodder for their speculation.

As for the trans community, many of us would rather not be trans. Life would be so much easier if we were not. Young trans people can spend years agonising over the transition decision (I know I did). Everyone tells you what an awful mistake it will be. Your family, in particular, will probably be desperate for you not to do it. And yet eventually you will reach a point where life is no longer liveable if you don’t transition.

The inevitable result of all this is that trans people are also obsessed with the question of why they are trans. No one can ever know for certain, but many of us will find an explanation that works for us. That explanation may become a core part of our identity. It is something that you can cling to as justification for everything you are doing, in particular the pain that you are told you have caused your nearest and dearest.

But of course there is no explanation. There are lots of theories, but none of them work for everyone, and many of them are contradictory. Everyone’s experience of being trans is different, and consequently any story that discusses the nature of the trans experience will speak directly and personally to some trans people; and will painfully invalidate the experiences of others.

This would not be such a serious problem if trans people were not so much under siege. However, that is where we are. Pretty much the whole of the trans community is feeling very vulnerable right now. Therefore anything that appears to be attacking the validity of people’s experiences is going to cause a huge fuss. That is what appears to have happened in the case of the Clarkesworld story.

There are ways around this. It is safer to experiment in less high-profile venues. It is safer to experiment if you already have a reputation for writing good stories about trans people. If you have plenty of space in a story, you can have a variety of trans characters who have different experiences. But it is all still very risky and the temptation to self-censor is very strong.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

015, TV Review

It has taken me a while to work through this show on Netflix because I kept getting distracted by other things (Good Omens, Picard, etc.). However, I have now seen the whole thing and I’m glad I did. Like most people of my, ahem, advanced years, I greatly enjoyed the movie despite the cheesy plot because the look of the thing was amazing, and because the Chamberlain was such a sleazy villain.

The new version has all of the same advantages and disadvantages.

So yes, the plot is more of the same cheesy fantasy tropes that we’d laugh at if they turned up in a novel. But there are Henson puppets, Brian and Wendy Froud are back on the creative team to make sure that it all looks amazing, and we have several decades of improvements in puppetry and film technology to make it even better. Plus an all-star cast many of whom grew up on Henson puppet shows and loved the original movie as much as we did.

Much credit should go to whoever at Netflix made the decision to go with a full puppet show. The Henson company had been quietly developing the Dark Crystal property for some time before the TV series became a thing. Their initial proposal to Netflix was to go with CGI because a 10-episode TV series done all with puppets would be fantastically expensive. Netflix had some trials done, and after a quick look said that CGI was out of the question as it didn’t look like Dark Crystal. It was puppets or nothing.

They were absolutely right.

So all of the gang is back together, except many years earlier. Thra is still heavily populated by the Seven Clans of Gefling. The Skeksis have yet to discover how the drain Essence from their subjects. And Mother Aughra is off in a dream world exploring the galaxy, which is how the Skekis got her out of the way so that they could take over.

But wait, I hear you say, we know from the film…

You have all seen the film, haven’t you? Well if you haven’t, the statue of limitation on spoilers has well and truly expired. Tough.

…we know from the film that Jen and Kira are the last two Gelfings. Goodness know how they intend to repopulate Thra with that shallow a gene pool, but there it is. All the others are dead. So this TV series is going to end in tragedy, isn’t it.

Well, yes and no. There may yet be some retconning done. The current 10-episode season ends with a whole bunch of plot points unresolved. They are clearly hoping to get a second season out of it. And there is no guarantee that everyone will die at the end. The Mystics and Mother Aughra have to survive. But this is not a story in which the Chosen One saves the world. That was the story of the movie. This is a story about people rising up against Fascism.

Oh noes! Politics in our fantasy!!!

Yes, of course. There is always politics in fantasy, and those politics generally reflect the time in which the story is written. The plot of the TV series sees the rule of the Skeksis become ever more tyrannical, and the Gelflings arguing among themselves as to the best way to cope with this.

There are, as I noted, seven Gelfling clans. All of them have a matriarchal culture, being ruled over by a Maudra. One of these seven queens is chosen to be the All-Maudra, and that is usually the Maudra of the Vapra clan. The current All-Maudra, played by a very queenly Helena Bonham Carter, has three daughters, and they form a key part of the cast. Seladon, the eldest, is a career politician like her mother. She believes in doing whatever is necessary to keep the Skeksis happy. Tavra, the next eldest, is not expected to inherit the throne and enjoys being a princess with little thought of the problems of politics. Brea, the youngest, buries herself in books, and there she finds things that disturb her kind heart greatly.

Elsewhere we have three other key characters. Rian is a young soldier who is one of the first to discover the extent of the perfidy of the Skeksis. He is made outcast for speaking up. Deet is a Kira-like young woman from the cave-dwelling Grottan Clan who is sent topside by the mystic Sanctuary Tree because bad things are going down. And finally Hup is a brave, if very innocent, young podling who dreams of being a knight.

There is much adventuring to be done, and many plot tokens to be gathered. All seven Gelfling clans need to have a place in the story. The Chamberlain has to be his usual, sleazy self. And The Scientist has a greatly expanded role, made good use of by Mark Hamill. There are also some brand new Skeksis and Mystics.

Much of the plot concerns whether the Gelflings should appease the Skeksis, rise up in open warfare, or find some more covert way of fighting back such as whatever on Thra passes for throwing a ring into a volcano. Seladon’s appeasement strategy doesn’t go well, but then neither does the bravery of Maura Fara of the Stonewood Clan. One of my favourite bits of the season is where Seladon has a Cersei moment to try to bring the rest of the Maudras into line. Rian does much better at that particular task, through cunning use of a Labour Party slogan. If only it had worked as well for Jeremy Corbyn

I won’t be able to think of the Skeksis again without thinking of Boris Johnson and his Cabinet. And now you are infected with that image too.

That’s too much of the plot already, though. If you have access to Netflix you should go and watch it. If not, I’m sure it will be available on disc soon. It might be cheesy, but it is gorgeous to look at.

Having watched it, you should also watch the “making of” documentary which takes you behind the scenes and into the Henson creature shop. Brian and Wendy feature heavily, as does Toby Froud who is now very much not a cute baby. Cheryl and Lisa Henson get lengthy interviews, as do Jason Isaacs (The Emperor) and Simon Pegg (The Chamberlain). It is a thoroughly joyous documentary and reminds me strongly of some of the extras on the original Lord of the Rings films. The attention to detail that the crew put into creating the puppets and their world is just astonishing.

Some Hugo Thoughts

015, Articles, Awards

Well, it is that time of year again. Voting is open, and there is a nominations ballot to be filled out. What have I actually read?

The Novel category is, as usual, full of great stuff. Tim Maughan’s Infinite Detail is my favourite science fiction novel of the year, though Emma Newman’s Atlas Alone, Elizabeth Bear’s Ancestral Night, Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade, Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire, and Max Gladstone’s The Empress of Forever, are also great. Any year with a new Guy Gavriel Kay is a good year, and A Brightness Long Ago will doubtless be representing fantasy on my list, though it has strong competition from Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea, Alix Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and Theodora Goss’s The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. Tamsyn Muir, being a Kiwi with a stunning debut, will definitely be on my list for Gideon the Ninth, whatever genre it is. I also have no idea how to categorise Jeff VanderMeer’s Dead Astronauts, but thankfully this is the Hugos so I don’t have to. Is that more than 6 books? Oh dear…

I have not included The Absolute Book in that list because it has had such limited distribution that I think it is worth asking for an extension on the grounds that someone in the US or UK will come to their senses and publish it in 2020.

I’ve not mentioned Tade Thompson above because his having two novels out makes like difficult. However, Rosewater can be nominated in Series. Also on my list will be The Athena Club by Theodora Goss, Dominion of the Fallen by Aliette de Bodard, Luna by Ian McDonald, Planetfall by Emma Newman and Anno Dracula by Kim Newman.

Novella is a little easier, but still strong. This Is How You Lose The Time War is the stand-out of the year, but The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday runs it close. Paul Cornell’s The Lights Go Out in Lychford will also be on my list, as will P Djèlí Clark’s The Haunting of Tram Car 015 and Rivers Solomon’s The Deep.

For shorter fiction I have no idea, I read very little of it. I will be looking at the Locus Recommended Reading List (out tomorrow) to see what I can check out.

In Related Work I will definitely be nominating Farah Mendlesohn’s excellent The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein. I suspect, however, that AO3 will win again.

I have only read two Graphic Novels this year: Vei and House of Whispers. I enjoyed both of them, and will therefore nominate both. You can do that. The point of nominating is to vote for things that you have read/watched and enjoyed.

I’ve been unimpressed with movies this year and my long-form ballot is going to include some TV series. Good Omens, His Dark Materials, Watchmen, and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance will all be on it. I’ll probably nominate Avengers: Endgame, though it was a lot less impressive than Infinity War. When is Black Panther 2 due?

Nomination of individual TV episodes is a bit difficult for me as most of what I watch comes as story arcs that aren’t easily understood as stand-alone episodes. I guess the Doctor Who fans will do their thing again.

Artists and Editor categories always need a bit of research, but I want to put in a good word for Navah Wolfe (foolishly sacked by Saga) and for Ben Baldwin, who continues to do amazing work for Wizard’s Tower.

I suspect that Our Opinions Are Correct will have a lock on the Fancast category for a while, but I’d like you to take a listen to Breaking the Glass Slipper which I think deserves a place on the ballot.

There are loads of great fan writers out there, and the electorate seems good at finding them. Fanzines, as we saw last year, are rather less common. Obviously this ‘zine is eligible, but something I’d like to see get recognition is Rachel Cordasco’s SF in Translation.

As for fan artists, I don’t know. I try to pay artists these days.

Clearly there’s a lot of research to be done before I can complete a ballot, though of course you don’t have to fill every slot. I’m hoping that other people out there will recommend works as well.

The Lights Go Out in Lychford

015, Book Review, Paul Cornell

Paul Cornell’s Lychford series is one of several very successful novella collections produced by Tor.com. They are also probably the most connected to the real world. The stories are set in a small country town in England. Three women, one of whom is the local vicar, battle against supernatural threats. Now it so happens that Paul and his wife, Caroline, live in a small country town in England. She is the local vicar. So Cornell is very much writing what he knows. I sometimes worry what the people of Fairford in Gloucestershire think about these books, and how many have found themselves as minor characters. But Paul and Caroline have not been hounded out of the town yet, so I guess all is well.

The first of our heroes is Lizzy, the vicar, who is rather dubious about the whole magic thing, but has to admit the evidence of her eyes and knows that it is her duty to protect Lychford from Satan and his servants, by whatever means possible. Judith is the local wise woman. She actually can do magic, and indeed has been protecting the town from evil for years. Not that anyone even knows, let alone gives her credit for it. Cornell has created a marvellous portrait of a lonely, ostracised old woman who has become mean and bitter, but is still devoted to her mission of fighting evil. Finally we have Amber, who owns the local witchcraft shop. She is also the only Black person in the town. At the start of the series she can’t do any magic, but Judith reluctantly agrees to mentor her, because not even a witch lives forever.

This setting allows Cornell to explore themes that are very much of the moment in middle England. Book one, Witches of Lychford, is about the attempt by a major supermarket chain to build a huge store in the town, with potentially disastrous consequences for local businesses. Fortunately for Fairford they have enlisted supernatural help, which gives our heroes an excuse to fight them off. Book two, The Lost Child of Lychford, explores the sadly too familiar issue of child abduction, and is set against a background of Lizzy’s frustration over the commercialisation of Christmas. Book three, A Long Day in Lychford, is about Brexit. In the wake of the referendum, Amber is targeted by local racists. This brings her into conflict with Judith who sees her job as keeping the Wrong Sort of People (fairies, demons, etc.) out of the town. All of which leads us to book four.

The Lights Go Out in Lychford is about fake news. A demon comes to town, promising everyone that their greatest wishes can be fulfilled, and setting neighbour against neighbour. She operates mainly through Facebook, which means it is a while before our heroes even notice what she is up to. The story is told against a backdrop of Judith’s increasing struggles with dementia. Amber is finding her aged tutor increasingly difficult to deal with. And what will happen to the town’s defences if Judith’s son, a local policeman, decides that she’s no longer safe at home and needs to be put into care?

I’ve talked about the entire series here because I want you to see how brilliantly Cornell uses his fantasy setting, and very unusual heroes, to deal with hugely important issues in the real world. I mean, who else writes fantasy books about dementia? He uses it really well too. When we have Judith as the point of view character we know that not everything she is seeing is real. Her mind is playing tricks on her. But so is the demon.

I guess the very Englishness of the books may limit their audience somewhat, but there are over 50 million adults in the county and those of them that are fiction readers should all love the Lychford series. The Lights Go Out in Lychford is, I think, the best of the series so far. The ending is magnificent and heart-rending, and produces the sort of coming together that is the exact antithesis of the “we must all accept and celebrate Brexit now” line that the government is pushing. It sets us up for a fascinating climax to the series in Book five. I guess it will be out, as usual, just before Christmas. I’m looking forward to it.

book cover
Title: The Lights Go Out in Lychford
By: Paul Cornell
Publisher: Tor.com
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura
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