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.

Ghost Stories for Darwin

063, Banu Subramaniam, Book Review

I owe this one to Finncon, or more precisely to the traditional academic conference that takes places on the Friday before Finncon. Irma messaged me to tell me that one of the papers was about Oryx and Crake, and this strange academic book, neither of which I was familiar with. Could I help? Well, I had some memory of reading Oryx and Crake, and being deeply unimpressed. But as for this Ghost Stories for Darwin thing? A book on evolutionary biology written by a woman with a very Indian name. WTF? As I believe people say these days.

My expectations were not improved when I started to read the book on the train to Jyväskylä. I explained to Ursula Vernon and her husband, Kevin, why I would have my nose in a book during the trip. They looked at me as if I had just confessed some sort of masochist fetish. What good could possibly come of this bizarre exercise in self-immolation?

I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting much myself. I have always viewed evolutionary biologists as being insecure white men who are racist, misogynist, queerphobic and ableist, and who invent pseudoscientific theories to justify their bigotries; said theories being provable as correct solely by the existence of patriarchy.

Thankfully I soon changed my mind. Banu Subramaniam grew up in India and traveled to the USA to pursue a PhD in evolutionary biology. She was, by her own admission, naive and starry-eyed. She saw the USA as being a land free of the classism she was familiar with in India, she saw science as being a discipline free of sexism, and she had no idea about the level of racism in US culture. That she survived the experience is a testament to her strength of will, and also to the support she gained from the Women’s Studies department in her university.

Subramaniam’s subject for her PhD was the Morning Glory, a plant closely related to the notorious British Convolvulus, hated by gardeners throughout the land. The convolvulus does have very pretty white flowers (there will probably be lots in my back yard when I get home), but the morning glory has a wide variety of flower colourations, and it is these that Subramaniam was planning to study.

Doing so, and in the process experiencing life as a woman of colour in the USA, led to a political awakening that has established Subramaniam as one of the foremost experts on gender in the sciences. And if that immediately brings to mind the phrase, “women in science”, well you are exactly the sort of ill-informed person that Ghost Stories for Darwin is intended for.

I should note at the start that the book does not entirely succeed. Subramaniam is not a professional science communicator, and there are times, particularly when she is talking about her own academic specialisms, that she veers into complex jargon. Thankfully I have a science degree and was able to make sense of most of it, but other readers may find it very hard going.

Being an academic book, Ghost Stories for Darwin has a subtitle. It is, The Science of Variation and The Politics of Diversity. This is a good place to start looking at the argument. One of the great debates within evolutionary biology is the role of variation in evolution. Some people in the field believe that diversity has an evolutionary advantage for the species, as that provides a wide range of mutations to help it evolve into something better. Others believe that all variation is bad, and that only the fittest variation should be allowed to pass its genes on to new generations. This latter view leads inevitably to eugenics.

But, and here is our first important feminist lesson of the day, all binaries are false. Neither of the explanations above helps us understand why variation in the colour of morning glory flowers persists through hundreds of generations, and can exhibit stable shares of the population to which the species will return if the balance is perturbed. Variation in flower colour appears to be baked in to the morning glory as a species.

The answer to this conundrum is that evolution is not just driven by genetics. It is also influenced by a range of environmental factors including, but not limited to, climate, pollinator preference, soil conditions, human cultivation and so on. Subramaniam quickly discovered that the scientific ideas of doing a simple, one-variable experiment on a field of morning glory flowers tells you nothing.

Exploring the underlying assumptions of her field, and seeking support as a doubly marginalized person within US academia, led Subramaniam both to discover the horrendous eugenicist underpinning of her discipline, and the fundamentally masculinist nature of science as it is practiced.

One interesting aspect of Subramaniam’s section on eugenics is the fact that many of the pioneers of the field saw themselves as striving for a better world, and even as being good Socialists. The idea that the socially inferior should, for their own good, not be allowed to survive, is deeply seductive. While most of the extreme horrors perpetrated in the name of this belief have been minority ethnic groups, the differently abled and queer communities can recognise the syndrome. There have been many times when I have been told that my life would have been easier had I not been born.

Subramaniam moves on from eugenics to matters of race, and the complicated discipline known as Invasion Biology. We are all, I am sure, familiar with stories about how our native ecosystems are being “invaded” by dangerous foreign plants that are “taking over” and “crowding out” native species. Would it surprise you that there is a direct correlation between the frequency of such stories in the newspapers and the level of popular concern about human immigration? And the two types of story use exactly the same types of language.

Of course migration of plant species around the world has a long and in many cases glorious history. Where would our cuisines be without the potato, the tomato, and the chili pepper, all of which were unknown outside the Americas before Columbus accidentally ran into them on his way to India. The famous Georgia Peach is an immigrant from China. The same is true for animal species, though sometimes a little creative marketing is required. The Patagonia Toothfish was unheard of in restaurants before it cleverly changed its name to the Chilean Sea Bass.

The final section of the book is about gender, and it focuses on how the practice of science has been socially constructed in a very masculine fashion. A woman wishing to practice science has to buy into that construction and present herself as “one of the boys” in order to be taken seriously as a scientist. She must not wear make-up, she must not show emotion, and so on. Or at least, she should do so inside the lab. Outside the lab, in social spaces, she must present as conventionally feminine. After all, she will soon want to give up her career and become a wife and mother instead.

Feminist lesson two of the day is that all too often talk of gender focuses solely on the “woman problem”. It talks about how women must change themselves in order to fit into the masculine world, or about the accommodations that must be made for women because they do things like have families. (Men never have families, they have wives to do that for them.) Subramaniam says:

[…] the consistent emphasis on family and women reinforces essentialist ideas about women. What has remained unchallenged is the normative model of the male as the ideal scientist, which insists on productivity that can only be achieved by very long hours, a singular dedication to work, and an exclusive focus on one’s profession.

It occurs to me that many of the lessons Subramaniam presents about life in academia, particularly about the sink-or-swim culture of graduate education, are equally applicable outside of the sciences. Indeed, the failure of senior staff to properly train their subordinates in anything other than the technical aspects of the job at hand (and not in how to do things like be a good manager) is endemic in the world of work at large.

Ghost Stories for Darwin was published in 2014, and there are probably areas where its analysis of academic culture in the USA are out of date. In particular, while Subramaniam did see the commercialization of universities coming, she did not know how close it would come to destroying the institutions it was supposed to rescue.

I noted also that there is very little discussion of sexuality as a marginalized identity. Subramaniam does note that it is an issue, but when she actually talks about it she tends to do so by contrasting the profoundly asexual nature of laboratory life with the expectation of normative heterosexuality outside of the lab. She does make brief note of the famous trans masculine neurobiologist, Ben Barres, to illustrate just how foolish misogynist ideas of what makes a good scientist are, but her discussion of gender is primarily limited to performance rather than identity.

These, however, are minor quibbles. Ghost Stories for Darwin is a fascinating and well-argued book that gave me lots of useful pointers as to how to think about gender and its effects on the world.

Which leaves us with one question: where do the ghosts come in? It turns out that Subramaniam has borrowed the metaphor from Bollywood cinema. In a Bollywood movie, a ghost is always someone who has been unjustly forgotten and ignored after their death, and perhaps in life. They desperately want to be listened to, understood, acknowledged, and recognized so that they can stop haunting the living and rest in peace. The history of feminism, in all areas of life, is a story of Bollywood ghosts.

book cover
Title: Ghost Stories for Darwin
By: Banu Subramaniam
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

What Is Hopepunk?

063, Lit Crit

For me, the most interesting panel at Finncon was the one on Hopepunk. It is not a genre that I have paid much attention to in the past. I had a vague idea that to qualify as Hopepunk a book had to be unchallenging, heartwarming and relentlessly positive, after the manner of a Travis Baldree novel. This panel disabused me of that notion, and also got me thinking that Wizard’s Tower might have published some Hopepunk.

Please note that this essay will contain some spoilers for Welcome to Boy.net and Generation Nemesis.

The term, Hopepunk, was first coined by Alexandra Rowland in 2017 as a counter to Grimdark, and the official definition, at least according to Wikipedia, is that Hopepunk books are about, “characters fighting for positive change, radical kindness, and communal responses to challenges”. There’s nothing necessarily soft and fluffy about that. What I learned from the panel, and the Wikipedia entry, is that Hopepunk practitioners have embraced the necessity to fight for a positive future.

What I took away from this is the idea that to qualify as Hopepunk, a book (or other work) has to show belief that a better world is possible, and can be achieved by people acting in a positive, progressive and cooperative way. This does relate well to the original concept, because the primary ethos of Grimdark is that, no matter what anyone does, things will always turn out badly.

So how does this relate to Wizard’s Tower? Firstly I would like to point readers at Lyda Morehouse’s Welcome to Boy.net. On the face of it, this is hardly a cuddly book. It features a pair of lesbian bounty hunters fighting against an oppressive military dictatorship that wants to take over the Solar System. One of our heroines is a former senior officer in that society who defected so that she could undergo gender transition. It all seems rather grim.

But, and this is the thing I loved most about the book when I first read it, while Lucia del Toro does occasionally have to make use of her cyborg abilities, this is not how our heroines win the day. Victory is achieved, not through force of arms, but through the citizens of the free colonies of the Asteroid Belt refusing to be cowed by thugs in uniforms. There is political protest. People get out on the street with banners. That is not the usual ending for a piece of space opera. And it very much suggests that a better world is possible if we all work together for it.

The other book that I want to discuss is Sean McMullen’s Generation Nemesis. That’s a book that has been getting very negative responses when I’ve talk to people about it at conventions. It is, after all, set in a world in which Earth’s climate has been comprehensively wrecked, and vast numbers of people have died. It seems that a lot of people don’t want to admit that climate collapse is now likely, and prefer to read books in which it is not an issue, or where it is somehow prevented. Sean takes what I think is a more realistic view. We are probably already past the point of no return. The question now is how we deal with it.

The plot of Generation Nemesis suggests that humanity will react with anger, and that young people who have seen themselves denied the sort of future that their ancestors enjoyed, will turn upon the old. Drawing on the Terror of the French Revolution, Sean creates a world in which the only choices facing the elderly are a matter of how soon, and how horribly, they are executed.

And yet the book is not without hope. The plot revolves around the attempts of the scientist hero, Jason Hall, to convince the climate courts that revenge is a wasteful strategy. While a few elderly people are indeed wasters in every sense of the word, most of them have some useful skills and can be useful to a society that desperately needs all the help it can get to adapt to the radically different world it has inherited. If the book has a message, it is that humanity can survive climate collapse, but only if we all work together rather than turning on each other. That sounds like Hopepunk to me.

Of course your mileage may differ. And I’m not advertising either book as Hopepunk. That’s partly because I find such labels limiting, and partly because I don’t want to get into any fannish fights about whether the books deserve the label. However, hopefully this essay will help you see both books in a different light. I know that the Finncon panel did that for me. My thanks to Xan van Rooyen for organizing it.

Editorial – August 2024

063, Editorial

Well, Worldcon happened. Not doing an issue last month was definitely a wise idea. And in fact it was touch and go whether I would get one out this month. Kevin has been staying with me since Worldcon, so I have been having a life outside of work for a change. It is very nice, but it means that I haven’t read or written much since getting back from Glasgow. Thankfully I had banked a few articles in July.

Worldcon went pretty well, as I explain in my con report. But things have been quite busy since I got back because I needed to process the accounts and order a lot more stock. The latter was quite urgent as I need copies of some books for Carmarthen Pride which is taking place tomorrow (Saturday 31st). Also I have a bunch of new books to get ready for BristolCon. If all goes well, I will have four new books on sale there. Plus I have a bunch of people interested in being published by Wizard’s Tower. That’s partly thanks to Juliet McKenna winning Best Novel in the BSFA Awards, and partly thanks to issues with other publishers. Wizard’s Tower was founded to help mid list authors who were being dropped by their publishers, so I am very happy to be able to help out again.

I won’t be at any conventions in September. Next issue will have more news about BristolCon, and about Fantastika in Stockholm the following weekend where Juliet will be a Guest of Honour. Nordic readers, I can’t import books into the EU, but the English Bookstore in Stockholm is able to do so and they will be handling getting copies of Juliet’s books for sale.

Finally I should say something about the ongoing Neil Gaiman situation. I haven’t said anything to date, partly because trying to explain things on social media is fairly pointless, and partly because I am just too angry. I’m angry with Neil, primarily for the way he treated those young women, but also for other reasons, including the damage this affair has done to the trans cause. I’m also angry with a whole bunch of other people who have pitched in in various unhelpful ways. Maybe when I have calmed down more about it I will say more.

What I will say is that the TERFs are not in this to protect women. Indeed, their insistence that trans women are the primary threat to the safety of cis women provides a valuable smokescreen for government who can claim to be doing something about VAWG (by removing trans rights) while leaving cis men free to continue preying on women unfettered. Having seen the way that TERFs have exploited vulnerable detransitioners, I am very worried about those of Neil’s victims who have fallen into their clutches.

Issue #62

Issues

This is the June 2024 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Cover: Mary Ellen, Craterean!: The cover is taken from Ben Baldwin's art for the latest Crater School book

  • What Feasts at Night: The new Alex Easton novella sees our hero once again in the wilds of Gallacia, though this time without the homicidal mushrooms

  • Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature: The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow is producing some very interesting books, including this one

  • Waypoint Seven: A new space opera novella from a Finland-based author and a South African small press

  • Unexploded Remnants: Elaine Gallagher's debut novella is space opera with a strong Indiana Jones influence

  • Tolkien Lecture 2024: This year's Tolkien Lecture was given by Neil Gaiman. Cheryl was there.

  • The Book Blinders: John Clute is justifibly angry about the vandalism perpetrated by the British Library upon its collection of books

  • Doctor Who 15-1: As always, some people absolutely adore the new incaration of The Doctor, while others hate him

  • 3 Body Problem – Netflix: The people who allegedly ruined A Game of Thrones on TV have turned their hands to a famous science fiction trilogy

  • Furiosa: More gorgeous Australian scenery, more car chases, but does Furiosa have anything new to offer

  • Editorial – June 2024: There will be no July issue, but hopefully a bumper one in August

What Feasts at Night

062, Book Review, T Kingfisher

I’m a little surprised to see a new Alex Easton story. The first one seemed complete in itself. But novella series have been very successful so I’m not too surprised that this is happening.

As you may remember, What Moves the Dead was neat little re-working of “The Fall of the House of Usher”, with added homicidal mushrooms. It co-starred Miss Eugenia Potter, a thinly disguised version of Beatrix of the same surname, who was actually an expert on mushrooms. That book also provided us with an introduction to Alex’s status as a Sworn Soldier; that is, someone assigned female at birth who has taken up a male identity on becoming a soldier. That was a lot to fit into one novella.

What Feasts at Night has difficultly developing that theme. Miss Potter once again makes an appearance, but there are few mushrooms to be examined and none of them are homicidal. Instead she is there as an excuse for being out in the wilds of Gallacia, and because of her ongoing and rather cute relationship with Alex’s batman, Angus.

The Ushers, of course, have no role in the new story.

As for Alex, we hear rather more about the horrors of war than the horrors of gender transition. Everyone seems perfectly happy to accept Alex as a man. Indeed, the Widow Botezatu, the peasant woman that Alex hires as a housekeeper for his hunting lodge, treats him with exactly the same amount of disdain that she would have for an assigned-male member of the minor nobility who has taken up soldiery. The only person who expects Alex to be treated in any other way is Alex because, like any other trans person, he can’t forget who he is. That’s a nice touch that I appreciated.

So what is T Kingfisher planning for what will presumably be an ongoing series of Alex Easton novellas? Well, they will probably be neat little horror stories based on European folklore. Having come from a Ruritanian country allows Kingfisher to borrow from many different European countries, which I am sure will be useful as the series develops.

That may be the plan. But I’d like to suggest another one. Alex is clearly a man of the world. He has sufficient means to travel, and he clearly has done. It would be interesting, I think, to see him and Angus in environments other than the dark woods of their native country. Alex is certainly fond of Paris:

Paris, when we left, had been in full glory. Much is made of springtime there, but for my money, a warm autumn is just as spectacular, and you don’t trip over nearly as many poets.

Ouch! That was sharply observed. Alex has clearly also been to Finland as he knows the Finns well.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Finns. Some claim they’re unfriendly, but every one that I’ve met has been quite pleasant, if reserved. They have the quiet confidence of a people who know that, at any moment, they could strap on skis, go into the woods, and take out an entire squad of enemy soldiers before anyone knows they are there.

Yeah, that’s Finns alright. For some strange reason, Alex isn’t much taken with salmiakki. Clearly no one has persuaded him to try terva yet.

Anyway, my point is that taking Alex out of the woods would give plenty of opportunity for more observations of this type. It may also bring Alex’s trans status more to the fore. Because the more civilized people thing they are, the more daft social mores they tend to come up with.

book cover
Title: What Feasts at Night
By: T Kingfisher
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature

062, Book Review, Taylor Driggers

One of the great things about the ‘Perspectives on Fantasy’ series of academic books being produced by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow is that all the books get a paperback edition at a price that mere humans can afford. You do have to wait about a year after the publication of the hardcover, but you will get it. I’ve been eagerly awaiting Taylor Driggers’ book, and am pleased I can finally own a copy.

This being an academic book series, it is a bit heavy going. Driggers leans heavily on the theory of deconstruction as propounded by Jacques Derrida. It also helps to have some knowledge of the work on gender by Judith Butler. Those two I can manage. As for the feminist theologies of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Marcella Althaus-Reid and Linn Marie Tonstad, nope, I’d never heard of them either. Consequently I was required to take Driggers’ word as to what their positions were, which is not ideal when reading academic works, but thankfully that didn’t matter too much.

Cixous, by the way, seems like my sort of feminist. Driggers quotes her as saying, “we have to be careful not to lapse smugly and blindly into an essentialist ideological interpretation between man and woman.” I might need to read some of her work.

Deconstruction, of course, is one of those things that the ‘Anti-Woke’ love to complain about. It doesn’t help that it is not an easy concept to understand, and is often poorly explained by academics. One of the best explanations I have found is this essay by Catherine Turner on a legal website. She describes deconstruction as “an on-going process of questioning the accepted basis of meaning”. That makes it sound very like the scientific method, because no matter what current science accepts as true, a good scientist will always question that orthodoxy.

Of course this is anathema to authoritarians, because they love to roll out “fundamental truths” in support of their position of supremacy. This is very much true of organized religion.

Inevitably a book titled Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature also leans heavily on Queer Theory. That sometimes gives me pause for thought, because I’ve seen rather too many examples of people doing versions of, “I’m going to give a queer reading of this text because it will be fun and I want to, even though there is no other justification for it.” Thankfully, Driggers doesn’t go there. He also provides a rationale for something that has been puzzling me for a while.

Here in the UK we have a history of using “queer” as a synonym for the alphabet soup of LGBTQIA+ and variants thereof. But a US-based history group that I follow has recently had a massive internal fight over the use of “queer” as an umbrella term because, so many members say, it is trans-exclusive. Also there was a panel at the recent Nebulas Conference that specifically used “queer and trans” in the title. Driggers cites Cáel M Keegan as pointing out that Queer Theory has an “insistence on the instability and incoherence of sex and gender identity”. That in turn can lead to an insistence that gender identity is purely a choice, which is clearly at odds with the lived experience of many (though not all) trans people.

One final thing before I stop talking about theory and get back to the book. Having written an essay on queer gods for the most recent Academia Lunare publication, I was interested to see what Driggers made of gods in fantasy. As it turned out, he led me to a quote from The Left Hand of Darkness that I wish I had used in that essay because it perfectly encapsulates what I was trying to say:

If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion…

Le Guin, a genius as always.

But wait, I hear you say, The Left Hand of Darkness is science fiction, what is it doing in a book about fantasy? Well that depends on what you mean by fantasy. Driggers has a very expansive view of the term. His book focuses primarily on three texts, of which Le Guin’s is one. The other two are Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve, which is also generally classed as science fiction, and ‘Til We Have Faces by C S Lewis.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about The Left Hand of Darkness in terms of what it has to say about gender. I have tended to forget that it has a lot to say about religion as well, and is infused with Le Guin’s fascination with Taoism. Driggers makes the point that it is the absence of a gender binary on Gethen that allows the Gethenians to develop a religion that is not patriarchal, or even obsessed with stereotyped gender roles, as so many Earthly religions are.

The Passion of New Eve is also fairly obviously about religion. The title makes that clear, and Mother’s transformation of Evelyn into Eve is very much intended to be the foundation of a new, feminist religion. The book certainly pokes away at essentialist ideas of gender that can underpin “goddess religion”, but Driggers seems unaware of the nascent ideas of transphobia within feminism at the time the book was written, which makes his analysis of the text less useful.

That leaves us with ‘Til We Have Faces, a book that I had largely ignored because Lewis is notoriously a Christian apologist and a misogynist. However, it is his last novel, and Driggers suggests that it has a far more interesting approach to religion than Lewis’s other works. Here are a couple of choice quotes:

She [Ungit] is a black stone, without head or hands or face.

…pigeons, which are specially sacred to Ungit.

Cybele, like many near-Eastern gods, was represented by a black stone rather than a statue. And doves were specially sacred to Ishtar. Lewis has clearly been reading up on Mesopotamian religion.

I was so impressed by Driggers’ description of ‘Til We Have Faces that I have bought a copy. Hopefully I’ll get time to read it soon.

So were does this leave us? Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature is a difficult read, but a rewarding one if you have the necessary academic background and an interest in the subject matter. I was very pleased with Driggers’ nuanced approach to the issues, and very much applaud his willingness to question doctrine and seek to create a Christianity that is less patriarchal and more welcoming to women, queers and minorities of all sorts.

As to the general thesis, fantastic fiction is absolutely a tool for asking “how might things be different?” and as such is ideal for the sort of theological thought experiments that Driggers’ champions. Because of this it is rather a shame that so much ‘religion’ in fantasy is nothing of the sort. Perhaps this is why Driggers had to pick his examples from the field of science fiction.

book cover
Title: Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature
By: Taylor Driggers
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Waypoint Seven

062, Book Review, Xan Van Rooyen

Here’s one you may not have heard of. Xan van Rooyen is a South African non-binary person currently living in Finland. Xan and I have been on a number of panels together at Nordic conventions, and at this year’s Finncon we will be discussing Queer Fantasies. Waypoint Seven, however, is not exactly a fantasy, it is a space opera with magic.

The book, by the way, is published by Mirari Press. You probably won’t have heard of them either. They are a relatively new small press based in Cape Town. I know how tough it is to start a publishing company, and I wish them well on their journey. Especially as they have a commitment to publishing diverse voices.

As to the book, well, the universe is under threat. It is space opera, right. One of the more technologically advanced civilisations has sent missions out through the universe looking for a solution to the problem that threatens their survival. These ‘wayfarers’ have been given strict Prime Directive instructions.

Waypoint Seven is one of their targets. To date, three missions have been sent there. All have been lost.

Meanwhile, on the planet that has been named Waypoint Seven, magic is literally falling from the skies, from a rent in the universe. Runo and his friends live by scavenging this bounty. They work for a vicious gang boss called Malikin who has a reputation for abusing his underlings. They’d love to run, but they need money to do so, and keeping profits from Malikin is a dangerous business. It doesn’t help that Runo is a member of a minority culture in their city, and liable to be executed by the city’s racist high priestess if he’s found out.

Then, one day, an angel falls from the sky.

As you can see, there is a lot going on here. It may surprise you to learn that the book is a novella. Given the amount of worldbuilding that van Rooyen has done, I could feel a novel straining to burst out of the confines of this little book. Then again, novellas are popular these days, and if you are interested in trying a new author, perhaps a shorter book is more appealing.

Anyway, I hope you do. After the first couple of chapters, there’s a breakneck pace to this book. Also it asks interesting questions about how people respond to looming disaster. And if that isn’t topical these days, I don’t know what is.

book cover
Title: Waypoint Seven
By: Xan van Rooyen
Publisher: Mirari Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Unexploded Remnants

062, Book Review, Elaine Gallagher

When I first started writing book reviews, I could count the number of trans authors active in the speculative fiction field on the fingers of one hand. These days they are everywhere. So welcome, Elaine Gallagher, previously best known as a Scottish poet, but now the latest in the stable of novella writers for Tor.com.

Unlike Waypoint Seven (also reviewed in this issue), Unexploded Remnants is one of those books that focuses tightly on the plot, leaving only vague sketches of the vast galactic canvas against which it is set. Alien species are introduced in a sentence and then never heard of again. Our heroine, Alice, goes fleeing through wormhole gateways at dizzying speed, briefly leaving a few footprints on a new world each time, before heading off somewhere new.

Why so much running? Well one of the major influences on the book is Indiana Jones. Alice thinks she has scored a bargain from an antique dealer in a bazar. But before she has a chance to celebrate her fortune she finds herself being chased by an ever-increasing collection of bad guys who are keen to separate her from her prize, preferably with a clean laser cut.

So Alice ends up getting chased over the galaxy, and inevitably there are interludes of extreme violence during which various AIs deploy ridiculously powerful weaponry at speeds mere humans cannot follow. It is very space opera. Reminds me a bit of Banks.

Gallagher, like the Wachowskis, seems obsessed with Lewis Caroll and white rabbits. There is Alice, obviously. Her personal AI is called Bugs. She spends a lot of time going down rabbit holes. I’m not sure if there was supposed to be a purpose to this, but it was fun.

The point of the story, however, is much more serious. The treasure that Alice has picked up is not just a fantastically powerful weapon. It is a soldier in a genocidal war that ended millennia ago. The point of the book is that the most likely response to an atrocity is a retaliatory atrocity, and so on through a cycle of ever-escalating violence. The only way to win such a conflict is to refuse to play. It is a message that many parts of the world need to hear, and none of them seem to want to.

book cover
Title: Unexploded Remnants
By: Elaine Gallagher
Publisher: Tor.com
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Tolkien Lecture 2024

062, Lecture

It was that time of year again, so off I went to Oxford for the annual Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature. This year was a bit special. That was partly because at long last a memorial to Professor Tolkien was to be unveiled in Pembroke College. That was as much a project as the lecture series itself: something that Gabriel Shenk, Will Badger and their colleagues had pressed the college for from their student days. Because really Pembroke should make more of its most famous Fellow.

The other reason this year was special was because the lecture was to be given by a chap called Neil Gaiman, of whom you may have heard. Whereas previous lectures had all been held on Pembroke’s premises (they do have a lecture hall), this one was planned for Oxford Town Hall. I gather than tickets sold out on the first day they went on sale.

Being a Friend of the Lecture Series (not to mention an old friend of the lecturer), I got a freebie. That also meant an invitation to the memorial unveiling. So on a sunny afternoon in Oxford I ended up in the Master’s Garden eating cream teas and sipping bubbly in the company of the Great and Good. That included quite a few of the Tolkien family, because the memorial had been designed by the Professor’s nephew, Tim. Much to my delight, it also included Kim Stanley Robinson, whom I’d not seen in ages, and Geoff Ryman, so I was able to thank him for HIM.

Also present were Maria Dahvana Headley and little Grim, because they are part of the Tolkien Lecture Family now. Roz Kaveney, being a Pembroke alumnus herself, was there, and Neil had asked her to write a poem for the unveiling. A surprise to me was the presence of historian, Kate Lister. I hope I didn’t fangirl too badly. And if you have not heard the episode of her podcast that Neil guested on, you really should give it a listen. It is hilarious.

The memorial was duly unveiled. I’ve included a photo of it with this report. Inevitably reply guys on social media were jumping on my posts complaining that it is ugly. That’s art for you though. If you haven’t upset some idiots in the process, you are probably not doing it right. I can’t find a copy of Roz’s poem online, possibly because internet search is rubbish these days.

Neil’s speech was very Neil. If you have heard him talk before you’ll have some idea of what it was like, even though each speech is quite different. Juliet McKenna has a post about it here, in which she picks up on her mention of the idea that the only people opposed to escapism are jailers (via CS Lewis, credited to Tolkien).

Neil spent much of the speech talking about his childhood, and how he got into reading fantasy. This led to favorite authors from his childhood, one of whom was Nicholas Stuart Gray. For those of you who missed the social media storm this produced, Gray was a 20th Century trans man. He’d had a fairly successful career as an actress in the 1930s and 40s, but during the War he took the opportunity to disappear and reinvent himself as a man. Many fine books ensued.

That’s very early, as far as modern trans history is concerned. For comparison, Michael Dillon, who pioneered medical transition for trans guys, also transitioned during WW2. Gray would have had no idea that such things were possible when he began his journey, but he made it nonetheless.

The fact of Gray’s transition was known to very few people. Neil had to do quite a bit of digging to get to the truth, including ordering a copy of Gray’s death certificate. That’s a fascinating document because laws about gender transition were decades away when Gray died. It gives his sex as male, but cites one of the causes of death as cancer of the ovaries. There is a fascinating note on that: “NB Sex Change 1959”.

Dillon was outed in the Daily Express in May 1958. Gray presumably read that story, and may have learned from it that medical transition was a possibility. If he did, he clearly wasted no time in availing himself of what was possible.

These days Gray’s books are all out of print. This is a great shame, as they are much better than the books written by a certain well known transphobe. Hopefully they can be brought back into print, though as is often the case with deceased authors, there are legal issues to be resolved.

Oxford Town Hall, by the way, is a beautiful building. I hope we can go back there again sometime soon.

After that we all trooped back to Pembroke for dinner in Hall. I was lucky enough to end up sat next to Carolynne Larrington, and we had an interesting chat about Spear and mediaeval Welsh literature.

A recording of Neil’s speech will be made available on the Tolkien Lecture website in due course.

The Book Blinders

062, Book Review, John Clute

Our story begins in 2011 with the British Library’s first ever exhibition of science fiction. John Clute, inevitably, was called in to advise on the project. But he ended up doing rather more than that, including lending some books from his own collection for display. Because the British Library (BL), an institution tasked with being a repository for the nation’s literature, does a rather shoddy job of preserving books.

The BL is entitled to receive one copy of every book published in the UK. I know, I have to send them copies of every Wizard’s Tower publication. Given the choice, they prefer to have hardcovers. But for some inexplicable reason, over many, many decades, it has been the BL’s policy to remove the dust jacket from each book before storing it.

Consider, for a moment, a typical Wizard’s Tower hardcover. It is our policy to use the cover of the book to showcase the cover art. For legal reasons we have to have the ISBN bar code box on the back. But aside from that there is nothing but art. No title, no author name, no publisher logo, no blurb. All of that is only on the dust jacket. Which means, if you take the dust jacket off, you can’t tell what the book is without opening it and reading some of it.

That, of course, is by no means the worst of the BL’s crimes. The technology required to print the cover art on the actual cover without it costing a fortune is fairly new. In days gone by, covers tended to only carry the title and author name. Everything else, including the cover art, was on the dust jacket. Stripping off the dust jacket separates the book from the cover art which, in some cases is a fine piece of work by a famous artist. Because publishers tended not to credit the cover artist inside the book, without the dust jacket we may not even know who the artist was.

It get worse, and that is why Clute has written The Book Blinders. In a state of not inconsiderable fury at the BL over their wanton vandalism, he has done some research to find examples of the true horror of what has been perpetrated on our national literature. Initially this work took the form of posts on Farcebook whenever a new suitably awful example was found. Now there is an entire book of them. Hopefully it will stand as a dreadful warning to librarians the world over, and an example of What Not To Do.

One of the most egregious examples in the book is Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (written under the name of Murray Constantine because selling SF as a woman was even harder in 1937). The book is set a few years into the future, and describes the awful consequences for the world of the triumph of Nazi Germany. Fearing that a mere image would not get the message across, the publishers (Gollancz) devoted the entire dust jacket (front, both flaps and back) to an essay summarizing the plot. Legend has it that it was written by Victor Gollancz himself, though Malcolm Edwards says not. The BL has thrown away this vital part of the book.

‘Til We Have Faces by CS Lewis is referenced elsewhere in this issue where I discuss Taylor Driggers’ book on fantasy and religion. It should be clear from that, that the novel is a fairly serious endeavor. The first edition of the book had a long section on the back of the dust jacket in which the origins of the book (as a re-telling of Cupid and Psyche) are described, and Lewis himself explains his reasons for changing the story from the original. By the second edition, this had gone, and the publisher described the novel as a book for children. The BL has the first edition, but no dust jacket.

The first edition of Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man has, for a dust jacket illustration, a half-face photograph of the author. Behold the man indeed. Yet again, the BL did not see fit to preserve this fascinating authorial statement.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Also that’s enough spoilers. Because the book necessarily contains photographs of all the dust jackets that it discusses, it is quite expensive. But maybe you could borrow it from a library. It is a hardcover. Make sure you get a copy with the dust jacket.

book cover
Title: The Book Blinders
By: John Clute
Publisher: Norstrilia Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Doctor Who 15-1

062, TV Review

I’ve not been a great fan of Doctor Who over the past decade or so. That’s partly because I seem to be allergic to almost everything that Steven Moffat writes. But also I just didn’t get it. I mostly wasn’t very invested in the characters or the stories. I’m pleased to say that, with the new season, that’s all changed.

There have been a lot of complaints on social media about the current season, especially the finale. Some of them are just dudebros frothing about the Doctor having gone Woke, as if the whole idea of fighting Daleks wasn’t being anti-Fascist. But a lot of it is from people who, for some inexplicable reason, want the stories to make sense. People, this is Doctor Who, it is a show about an incredibly old being with two hearts and indeterminate gender who bums around space and time in a police phone box fighting evil. His main weapon is a screwdriver that seems able to do anything the plot requires of it. Do you really expect it to make sense?

Jelly baby?

Of course previous seasons have, to some extent, bought into the idea that making sense is something the show should strive towards. Various actors have played the Doctor as being quite a serious chap, with the weight of the universe on his shoulders. Not so Ncuti Gatwa. His Doctor is delightfully camp and flippant, and consequently everything around him is less serious too.

I mean, we started with singing goblins. It was ridiculous, and hilarious, and it set the tone for the series. We had space babies and a snot monster. We had aliens who wanted to conquer the world through cosplay. And we had the glorious Jinxx Monsoon eating up the scenery with impeccable style. How is any of this supposed to make sense?

And yet…

“73 Yards” was about the dangers of Fascism. “Dot and Bubble” was about how racism warps people’s sense of reality. “Boom” was about the commercialization of war for profit. Which just goes to show that you don’t have to be serious to make a serious point.

Now you can fairly argue that many of these points were clumsily made, and that consequently the show is tending to lose politically committed viewers that should be supporting it. But this is the BBC we are talking about. We shouldn’t complain about the talking pig because the only language it knows is English.

There were no episodes that were specifically about trans rights. And yet there is an openly trans character in a fairly major role. The show itself is unashamedly queer, and introduced a male love interest for the Doctor in a way that inhabited the traditional tropes of Regency romance, the setting for that episode.

Having watched the Doctor Who Unleashed episodes that followed each show, it is clear that there are a lot of queer folks working backstage too. Oh, and Russell lives some 15 miles south of me, while Steffan from Unleashed is from Glanaman, which is the next valley east of me up into the Bannau Brycheiniog. Local boys. Very proud of them, we are.

So try to relax, folks. This is not hard science fiction. It isn’t even remotely firm science fiction. It is wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey camp adventure, that occasionally shows its teeth. And in doing so, pipes a little ray of sunshine into the awful right-wing propaganda machine that the BBC has become.

3 Body Problem – Netflix

062, TV Review

I gave up on the first of Cixin Liu’s novels because it was very slow, and reminded me of the sort of science fiction that I read when I was a teenager. Consequently I can’t comment on the quality of Benioff & Weiss’ TV show as an adaptation of the books. As I understand it, they have diverged radically from the original. So I’m going to judge it in isolation.

Whereas what little I read of Cixin Liu reminded me of Asimov at this most expository, the Netflix TV series is very character driven. The ‘Oxford Five’, as I believe they are known, are all interesting in their own right, and their various interactions are much more interesting than the science, which is just as well.

The plot occasionally shows signs of the script team having had to condense a trilogy of fat novels into very few TV episodes, and the CGI is sometimes rather wonky. But the series maintains a high level of drama throughout. I certainly finished each episode wanting to watch the next one straight away.

I thought the acting was pretty good. Benedict Wong steals the show, of course, but I was very impressed with Alex Sharp as Will Downing. It is a great part.

Something that may cause problems for other viewers is the way that the show teeters between trying to be a hard SF story and verging into fantasy. I’m not in a position to judge the physics, but I’m assuming that was taken from Cixin and is therefore good. Certainly the show has an impressive collection of science fiction ideas that it plays with. But the technology deployed by the aliens is very much in the Indistinguishable from Magic ballpark, regardless of how much technobabble is deployed in support of it.

I understand that there is a Chinese TV series available on Amazon Prime. That supposedly adheres much more closely to the original books, and also keeps the largely Chinese cast. Providing Western characters to front the show was probably necessary to finance a version for Western TV, but I can quite see why many people prefer something that hasn’t been wrenched from its cultural context. I hope to give that a try.

Having said that, I am also looking forward to a second season of the NetFlix 3 Body Problem. I am doing so with some trepidation because, by most reports, Benioff and Weiss missed sticking the landing on A Game of Thrones by a margin measurable only in units used by astrophysicists. But we shall see. Season 1 was good enough for me to give them a chance.

Furiosa

062, Movie Review

Furiosa is a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road. It tells the story of the titular character from her girlhood through to become the capable woman that we know from the earlier film. It is, in other words, cashing in on the success of Fury Road. But is it worth it? Well…

The first thing to note is that our heroine is not played by Charlize Theron. The movies can do amazing things with ageing actors, but making them younger is much harder. So young girl Furiosa is played by Alyla Browne, and the rest of the time she’s Anya Taylor-Joy.

Taylor-Joy is hot property as far as actresses go these days. She’s had a bunch of high-profile roles, and looks set of play Paul’s sister in Dune 3 if it happens. I can totally see her as Illyana Rasputin, and indeed as Princess Peach in the Super Mario movie. I’m much less convinced of her as a young Charlize Theron. She’s too petite and cute. On the other hand, having seen Furiosa, I am very keen to see her play Joan of Arc, because I think she’d be absolutely perfect.

Of course the main villain of this film cannot be Immortan Joe, because he has to be still around during Fury Road. So the film introduces a rival warlord called Dementus, who is camped up wonderfully by Chris Hemsworth (who actually gets to play an Australian for once). This includes him getting to do a Ben Hur thing in a Roman chariot pulled by motorbikes. (Don’t ask how that works, this is Mad Max, not reality.) I loved the fact that he got to wear a red cloak for part of the film.

The core of the film is, of course, the vehicle action. There is lots of it. As special effects go, it is very well done. But the visual jokes were all done in Fury Road. Furiosa has nothing new, just more of the same. You can tell that the filmmakers were unhappy with what they’d done, because they put a whole lot of clips from Fury Road in as an epilogue. It was obvious which film was better.

The other thing that is notable about the film is the change of emphasis. Fury Road was a film about hope. It is about Furiosa’s quest to find the “Green Place” where she lived before she was kidnapped. We now know (spoiler) that it no longer exists, but Furiosa finding that out doesn’t change the hopeful attitude of the film, because the characters still believe that a better world is possible.

Furiosa, on the other hand, is a film about loss of hope. Dementus doesn’t believe that hope is possible. Furiosa, perhaps, ends up working for Joe because she has lost hope of getting home. Praetorian Jack, the kindly truck driver who takes her under his wing and teaches her everything he knows, is very obviously doomed to die, if only because he isn’t in Fury Road.

“Where are you going, so full of hope? There is no hope!” – Dementus

Maybe Furisoa is a film for our time. Given the ongoing rise of Fascism around the world, and the losses suffered by Green parties in the recent European elections, perhaps a film about loss of hope is playing into the zeitgeist. Who needs The Mighty Thor when you can have Dementus? But Furiosa is a prequel, not a sequel. It has meaning only in that it informs what happens in Fury Road. We need to remember that. There’s more to life than car chases.

Editorial – June 2024

062, Editorial

It has been an other month of not getting much reading done. Or at least not much reading I can talk about. The best reading time for me is always when I’m on trains or aircraft. That bodes well for this month as I’m off to Finland tomorrow and then France, so I’ll have plenty of good reading time.

Having thought about the practicalities, I’m not going to put out an issue in July. I’ll be very busy trying to fit a month’s worth of day job, and last minute Worldcon prep, into the small part of July when I will be home. Also, if I just write stuff and get some of it online, I’ll be better placed to get an issue out in August, including a Worldcon report.

Not that I’m hugely looking forward to Worldcon. Obviously I’m looking forward to selling books and seeing a whole bunch of friends, especially Kevin. But I’m seeing a lot of people writing furiously about what WSFS Should Do, or indeed Must Do, and very little consideration of what it will take to get these ideas past the Business Meeting, let alone make them work in practice. I suspect that the Business Meeting in Glasgow will be a train wreck, and everyone will be Very Angry again.

Please remember, folks, political change does not happen just because you want it to, or because you have written an angry blog post setting out the moral case for your ideas to be adopted. You have to put in the work. Because if you don’t, you can be sure that the people with far less scruples than you will end up winning again.

Issue #61

Issues

This is the May 2024 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Cover: Green(ock) Woman: This issue's cover is Green(ock) Woman, by Iain J Clark

  • Ninth Life: The latest novel in Stark Holborn's Factus Sequence focuses on the lives of Gabi Ortiz: child general, rebel commander, and wanted murderer

  • The Brides of High Hill: Cleric Chih is back on the road again. But where is Almost Brilliant? And what about all those dead women...

  • Thornhedge: There is a princess trapped in a tower. Goddess help us all if she ever gets out.

  • The Association of Welsh Writing in English Conference: Cheryl is off into the wilds of Wales for a weekend of academia

  • The Word: Is there science fiction written and published in Wales? Of course there is. But because it is written and pubished in Wales, you probably haven't heard of it--until now

  • Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Could witch trials in the early modern period be evidence of a survival of shamanistic practices among the country folk of Britain? Emma Wilby thinks so.

  • X-Men ’97: The X-Men animated series is back. Can comics' greatest soap opera have another hit? Or, like the movies, is this another X-Men disaster?

  • Star Trek Discovery – The Final Season: Discovery had boldly gone and re-invented the past, and explored the future. Now we say goodbye to Michael Burnham and her crew. Has the series found its feet at last?

  • Editorial – May 2024: In which there are new things.

Cover: Green(ock) Woman

061, Art, Iain J Clark

This issue’s cover is the last of the Iain J Clark covers that I’m running to help promote the Glasgow Worldcon (and, of course, Iain’s work). This one is called Green(ock) Woman. I have no idwa what Scottish thistles smell like, having never got close enough to one to find out, but I love the concept.

As usual, you can find a larger, unadorned version of the art below.


The Glasgow committee noted:

Glasgow 2024 has been incredibly privileged to have been supported by the donated artwork of Iain J Clark. He was a Hugo nominee in the ‘Best Fan Artist’ category for three consecutive years and he won the BFSA award for best artwork in 2020 with ‘Ship Building Over the Clyde’ and in 2021 with the ‘Glasgow Green Woman’ which are available along with his other beautiful work at https://www.etsy.com/shop/iainjclarkart

If you want to know more about the Glasgow Worldcon, their website is: https://glasgow2024.org/.

Ninth Life

061, Book Review, Stark Holborn

If you, like me, have been avidly following this series from Stark Holborn, you will know that the first two books were called Ten Low and Hel’s Eight. You too many have been expecting the new book to have a Six in the title, and be somewhat bemused by the reversal of the counting sequence. However, there is sense to this (or at least what passes for sense on Factus, the Outlaw Moon).

Ninth Life is not a book about Ten, or Hel the Converter, or whatever she is calling herself right now. It is about Gabi; that is, Gabriella Ortiz, Implacabilis, Hero of the Battle of Kin, the Dead General. Gabi, you may remember, was a child soldier, a Captain-General of the Minority Force, genetically engineered to be a perfect weapon in the armed forces of the Accord. Once the war she was created for was over (oh, Ten, you did that, didn’t you), the Minority Force was surplus to requirements and the Accord sought to destroy them. But Gabi ended up on Factus, where she died, met Ten, and met them. Which is how she became the rebel leader known as Nine Lives.

The thing about Factus is that it is home to the Ifs, them, the mysterious alien creatures who seem to live off, thrive off, probability. The Ifs exist across all possible worlds and, if you can call upon them in just the right way, they can ensure that the path through the multiverse that you end up in is the one in which the outcome you wanted, no matter how improbable, has actually happened.

Needless to say, calling upon them is a very imprecise science. Also, they are not exactly the most reliable of allies. But they do seem to like the plucky rebels of Factus, perhaps because their cause is so obviously hopeless.

The trouble is, the existence of the Ifs is now known outside of Factus. In particular it has come to the attention of the fabulously wealthy mining magnate, Lutho Xoon. He believes that the power of the Ifs can make him immortal, and he will stop at nothing to get it.

Much of this you should know from the first two books. Where has Holborn chosen to take the story next?

The first thing to note is that, because this is a book about Gabi, it is less of a Western and more of a war story. Gabi is, after all, a soldier. As we shall see through the course of the book, she spends most of her lives fighting against Xoon, his mercenaries, and the forces of the Accord. It is, inevitably, a hopeless task.

Our story begins in the future with Gabi crash-landing on Jaspal-Pero Mining Satellite V (Jaypea V to its inhabitants). There she falls into the custody of Havemercy Grey, a young deputy in the Accord law enforcement service. Gabi is wanted for the murder of one Lutho Xoon. The reward is fantastically high. Hav’s family are dirt poor. She has to try to collect. But every bounty hunter in the system is going to be trying to stop her and claim the reward for themselves.

As for Gabi, she’s cool about the whole thing. When the Ifs saved her on Factus, they gave her nine lives. Well, eight more anyway. She’s on her last. Given what she has done, it seems likely that it will be a short one. So she agrees to go with Hav on the condition that she is allowed to tell the story of how she spent those other seven lives.

That in itself would make for a fascinating book, but Holborn ramps up the complexity by adding another layer of abstraction. Military Proctor Idrisi Blake is an employee of the Accord. He has been assigned to investigate the so-called Luck Wars, and in particular the impossible story of Gabriella Ortiz. Of course no one can really have nine lives, so presumably there have been multiple rebel leaders over time who assumed the identity of Ortiz. Or perhaps she was just very lucky…

Blake has in his possession several important pieces of evidence. Others he has to track down in the decrepit and corrupted computer systems on backwater worlds such as Jaypea-V. As fast as he can find them, these records seem to disappear, sometimes shortly after he has read them. But he does, at least, have his own copy of the most important source: the Testimony of Havemercy Grey. It is a strange document. Ortiz’s life, as filtered through Grey, seems too crazy to be true. Also, if Grey is to be believed, while in the middle of a story, Ortiz occasionally addresses Blake in person, as if she knows he will be reading what Grey writes down.

If that hasn’t whetted your appetite for these books, I don’t know what else I can say. Holborn has created something amazing here. The voices of the Western in the first two books, and the War Novel in this one, are beautifully rendered. The Ifs are a truly fascinating alien species. Lutho Xoon is exactly the right villain for a story being written now.

But, you know, just in case, and because style is everything with these books, there is one more voice on the page. It belongs to DJ Lester Sixofus of the non-stop wire show, ‘Perpetual Notions’. Lester exists in Hav’s timeline, and he’s keen to keep his listeners up to date with the story of how the notorious Nine Lives is finally being brought to justice by a plucky young deputy from a backwater moon. Lester, I am fairly sure, was inspired by DJ Crash Crash who provides updates on the hunt for Cindi Mayweather on Janelle Monae’s classic concept album, The Electric Lady.

Power Up, y’all.

Ninth Life will be published on July 23rd. Stark kindly sent me an advance copy.

book cover
Title: Ninth Life
By: Stark Holborn
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Brides of High Hill

061, Book Review, Nghi Vo

You know the drill by now. Cleric Chih and their neixin, Almost Brilliant, are somewhere out in the world. They get into an adventure. Stories are told, and a mystery is solved. Except, of course, if Nghi Vo did the same thing with every story in the Singing Hills cycle, it would get quite dull. So she doesn’t. While every story has those core elements, each one proceeds very differently. Sometimes we are even deprived of the company of Almost Brilliant, as is the case for most of The Brides of High Hill, though I hope Vo won’t do that too often because the neixin is very much the star of the show.

The Brides of High Hill, as you might perhaps expect from the title, starts of with something of a Bluebeard theme to it. Cleric Chih has fallen in with a party on the road. The Phams, a somewhat impoverished noble family, are taking their young daughter, Nhung, to get married. She is to wed Lord Guo, of the city of Doi Cao. He is very wealthy, and very old. He has had several wives before. He also has a son, whom Nhung is told is insane. Of course the young man is handsome, and he tries to give Nhung a terrible warning.

Nhung’s parents are far too keen to avail themselves of part of Lord Guo’s fortune, and his impressive hospitality, to worry about the fate of their daughter. Fortunately for Nhung, she has taken a liking to Cleric Chih, and clerics have sufficient status in society for our hero to be of some small assistance to the unfortunate girl.

You can see where all of this is going. Except of course you can’t, because this is a Singing Hills novella, so you know that there will be a twist somewhere towards the end of the story.

This latest installment in the series is somewhat darker than previous books, though it is apparently nowhere near as dark as the legendary baby-eating story that Vo talks about in her recent appearance on The Coode Street Podcast. Tor.com are probably right to have passed on it, because the market these days seems to be very much in favour of fluffiness, but I do hope that it gets to see print at some point in the future.

Beyond that there is not a lot I can say, except that I love these books, and I will keep buying them as long as Vo keeps churning new ones out.

book cover
Title: The Brides of High Hill
By: Nghi Vo
Publisher: Tor.com
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Thornhedge

061, Book Review, T Kingfisher

Once upon a time there was a princess in a tower.

That, you might think, has already been done to death. But writers are endlessly inventive and, in Thornhedge, T Kingfisher has found a new angle. What if, she asked, the princess has been put there for a reason? What if people are terrified of what might happen if she gets out.

This, then, is the story of Toadling, a human princess who was stolen away by wicked fairies shortly after her birth. Thanks to the weird way time works in Faerie, she grew up happily amongst a group of pond folk, and she learned a little magic on the way. Meanwhile, in the royal castle where she was born, and a changeling has been left, all hell was about to be let loose. Only one person can prevent it.

Our story begins hundreds of years later. The castle containing the sleeping faerie princess has long since vanished behind a wall of thorns and brambles. Toadling still watches over it, just in case. And here, along the road, comes Halim, a young Muslim knight who is far more interested in books than tournaments, and who has found references to a mysterious lost kingdom and a hidden tower containing a sleeping girl.

Toadling has fought to keep her changeling foster sister contained for centuries. People she can manage. Magic she can counter. But can she fight the power of story?

Despite what budding writers may think, having the idea is only a small part of the job. Lots of people could have come up with a similar take on Sleeping Beauty. Few, if any, could have told it the way Kingfisher does. And that is the difference between an ordinary story and a great one.

“Tomorrow,” said Halim. “Tomorrow we will try to break the curse.”

“And if, as I keep saying, there is no curse?”

“Then I will brave the curse for you, Mistress Toadling. I have brought climbing equipment and an axe. The monk said that there aren’t many curses that can hold up to an axe.”

“He sounds very wise, this monk,” said Toadling. “I wish he’d been wise enough to tell you to stay away.”

“He is as curious as I am. It’s a dangerous thing, curiosity.”

book cover
Title: Thornhedge
By: T Kingfisher
Publisher: Tor.com
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Association of Welsh Writing in English Conference

061, Convention Report

One of the interesting things about conquests and colonization is how language shifts as a result. England was conquered by the Normans in 1066. The Norman aristocracy continued to speak French for a long time thereafter, but the English people never adopted that language and eventually the nobility started speaking English. It took the Normans a lot longer to extend their conquest into Wales, and it wasn’t really until the time of Henry VIII that Wales became fully subsumed into the British state. People in Wales continued to speak Welsh right up until the 19th Century, when the Victorians decided that the Welsh should be forced to speak English, on pain of strict punishment. Since Devolution, the Welsh language has seen something of a revival, at least in official spheres, but the rise of English as a world language has made it hard to explain to young Welsh people why they should have to learn their native tongue.

What does all this mean for Welsh Literature? There are some who think that to count as such a work has to be written in Welsh. But if you insist on that strict definition you are ruling out, amongst much else, the entire oeuvre of Dylan Thomas, arguably the greatest Welsh poet ever. Not to mention the great Welsh fantasy and horror writer, Arthur Machen. So most people accept that Welsh literature can be written in English. They still argue over whether the author has to have been born in Wales, live in Wales, be eligible to play rugby for Wales, or any other definition of nationality, but Welsh Literature written in English is officially a thing. And that means that academics will study it.

So, an academic conference, at a lovely location in central Wales, and an opportunity to give a paper about Nicola’s Griffith’s brilliant novel, Spear. How could I resist?

Let’s start with the venue. Gregynog Hall is a mock-Tudor stately home situated in large grounds a few miles north of the town of Newtown in Powys. While the area has been occupied since at least the 12th century, the current building is only around 150 years old. The ‘half-timbered’ look is entirely artificial. Of rather more interest is that the whole thing was done using what, for the 19th century, was a new and unusual building material—concrete.

Prior to the reconstruction, there was a Jacobean mansion on the site. The builders left one room of that house standing, and built the new house around it. The so-called Blayney Room dates from 1636 and is entirely wood-paneled, with all sorts of interesting carvings that I would love to investigate more.

The Hall has extensive gardens (including several Redwood trees which just love the damp Welsh climate). I’m told that we got a superb view of the aurora on the Friday night. Sadly I had gone to bed and missed the whole thing.

One downside of the venue is that it is not very accessible. In particular the two conference rooms are on the second floor (third floor if you are American) and there is no lift. However, there is good wifi in the conference areas and the event is mostly hybrid.

This being Wales, much of the content was about poetry. We even had some well-known poets at the event, including the fabulous Taz Rahman. But there were things more in my wheelhouse as well. I was particularly impressed by the opening keynote from Dr. Mary Chadwick. She has just edited a new edition of Ellen, Countess of Castle Howel by Anna Maria Bennett. That’s a book you have probably never heard of, and indeed this is the first new edition since 1794, but it was a massive best-seller in its time, alongside works by Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding. Along with Bennett’s six other works, it was almost certainly read with enthusiasm by the teenage Jane Austen. There were, after all, not many women novelists for her to read.

Bennett has been forgotten for many reasons, starting with her being a woman. She was also Welsh, hailing from Merthyr Tydfil with a family name of Evans. After an unhappy marriage to a Bristol man called Thomas Bennett, she ran away to London where she caught the eye of Admiral Thomas Pye. She was his mistress for many years, and turned to writing only when the relationship began to sour. All of her books were published after Pye’s death, and the income from them helped Bennett and her daughters survive. One of those daughters, Harriet, became an actress and mistress of the Duke of Hamilton.

I do love a bit of forgotten feminist history, and this was a fine example of the genre.

There were presentations from some current creative writing students. My friend Jo Lambert is working on a story about the legendary Welsh outlaw, Twm Siôn Cati, who seems much more interesting than the modern, sanitized versions of his story make out. Also Mari Elis Dunning has a forthcoming novel called Witsch, about an alleged witch from early modern Wales. The history of witch trials in Britain is fascinating for many reasons, one of which is the geographic distribution. While the Scots condemned thousands of alleged witches to death, and the English hundreds, the Welsh executed precisely 5. Mari argues that a Welsh witch would only be found guilty if she had fallen foul of the local nobility; otherwise she was a valued member of the community.

My own paper went down well enough, though it did suffer from being in the part of the schedule that was double-streamed. I also got to meet and chat to some of the great and good of Welsh publishing, which will hopefully be useful for Wizard’s Tower. I very much enjoyed the weekend, and look forward to going again next year.

The Word

061, Book Review, J L George

One of the reasons I’m interested in the subject of Welsh Writing in English is to enable me to track down Welsh science fiction and fantasy. There have been a few science fiction novels written in Welsh. Not all of them have been translated into English. There are also Welsh people who are famous in the SF&F community: Al Reynolds, Jo Walton and Gareth Powell, for example. There are Welsh immigrants you will have heard of too, including Jasper Fforde, Stephanie Burgis and Tim Lebbon. Mostly these folks are unknown on the Welsh literary scene. But there are also people writing SF&F in Wales, and being published in Wales, who seem completely unknown in the wider SF&F world.

One such writer is JL George. A copy of her debut novel, The Word, was thrust into my hands at the AWEE conference (thanks Kirsti!). The book won the Rubery Book Award, which is an award for self-published books and books from small presses, in 2022. The Word is published by Parthian, a well-respected Welsh publisher that also does a lot of translations. I have a collection of Slovak fantasy stories that they did on my TBR pile.

I don’t know why George elected to go with a small Welsh mainstream publisher rather than an SF&F press, but I suspect it is because The Word is very much a Brexit novel. The subject matter would have been unpalatable to a London publisher, and impenetrable to one outside of the UK. This is a shame, because the book deserves to be much more widely read.

The Word is set in the near future in what Britain is likely to become if the Tories win the coming election, and was probably influenced by 1984. ‘Foreigners’ of all sorts are viewed with deep suspicion. We have always been at war with Europe (and occasionally random streets get bombed as an example of ‘European aggression’). The internet, and computers in general, were heavily restricted and eventually banned. Christian belief is becoming a social necessity.

Into this, George tosses some teenage mutants. Not, you will understand, people with fantastical powers who run around in gaudy costumes saving humanity. There is one sole mutation. It gives the mutant the power to force others to obey. If you use The Word, people will do what you tell them.

Nor is there a lovely old mansion in Westchester County where kindly Professor Xavier helps his young pupils come to terms with their abilities. Instead there is The Centre, a grim government establishment somewhere on the Welsh borders where mutant kids are brought in ‘for their own good’ and clipboard-armed people in white coats do experiments on them to see if The Word can be deployed in the service of the government.

The story switches back and fore in time as we discover something of how the world of the novel came to be, and get some backstory on the four inmates of The Centre: Rhydian, Jonno, Rachel and Cadi. We also get to meet May, the deaf teacher who has been employed to tutor the kids, and Irena, a Polish woman searching for a lost daughter. All of this is brought together in a satisfying way at the end.

From a science fiction point of view, there’s not a lot innovative about the book. Its portrayal of post-Brexit Britain as a small-minded, bigoted country, isolated from the world and in thrall to a far-right government is, however, the most brutal I have yet seen. For that alone, The Word deserves to be more widely read. In addition, George has that talent that all novelists wish for: the ability to keep you reading because you desperately want to know what happens next.

book cover
Title: The Word
By: J L George
Publisher: Parthian
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits

061, Book Review, Emma Wilby

The history of witchcraft is a popular subject these days. However, most historians tend to focus on the social conditions that made witch hunting a popular and profitable occupation in early modern times. When asked to think about the accused, historians tend to assume that these were marginalized people who were easy to make into scapegoats, and whose confessions were largely the result of suggestion by their captors/torturers.

Emma Wilby of the University of Exeter takes a very different tack. What if, she asks, the accused witches were actually telling the truth? What if they believed that they could commune with spirits and faerie people? What if they were practicing some sort of dimly remembered version of shamanic magic?

It is important at this stage to note that Wilby is NOT making the argument that witchcraft was evidence of the survival of a pre-Christian religion. Indeed, she is making the argument that the pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain did not really have a religion at all. Because if you look at existing shamanic cultures in the world today—for example in Native American cultures, or in Siberia—they are nothing like what we regard as a religion. Rather they exhibit a general belief in a spirit world with which some gifted individuals can make contact, and from which they can gain magical powers.

Common characteristics of religions are that they have some sort of official priesthood, and they often have a relationship with the state. If there is no organised priesthood and no state, but merely autonomous individuals in tribal units, there can be no religion as we usually understand it.

Wilby’s argument falls roughly into three parts. Firstly she examines the testimony of accused witches from trial records to look for common features of witch belief and practice. Next she looks at the beliefs and practices of modern-day shamanic practitioners. Finally she argues that these two groups of beliefs and practices have significant degrees of similarity, and that therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the people being condemned as witches were engaged in a form of shamanic practice, and may well have believed in the existence of spirit guides, familiars and so on.

With any piece of history like this, the non-specialist reader is, to a certain extent, at the mercy of the evidence presented. I have no way of knowing whether the conclusions that Wilby presents are a fair and reasonable inference from the data at hand, or whether they are the result of cherry-picking examples to fit her thesis. What I can say is that her ideas seem far more plausible to me than theories of survival of pagan religions. What’s more, Ronald Hutton has blurbed the book. He uses words such as ‘interesting’, ‘novel’ and ‘courageous’, which sounds to me that he’s not won over by the argument but feels that it is worth considering further.

I’d like to see more work in this area too. In particular I’d like to see people apply theories of parasocial relationships to the testimony of the accused witches. If modern day people can genuinely believe that they have relationships with characters from soap operas, surely witches can believe in their familiars.

Wilby herself has published two further books on the subject. Both of them look in detail at specific examples of witch trials: one a single case in Scotland; the other a series of trials from the Basque region. I’ve not read these, but from reviews it seems like Wilby is doubling down on her thesis.

I should note that Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits is a very academic tome. There’s a colon in the title, after which we get: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic. The academic style is essential to the argument that Wilby is making, and the type of audience she will have to convince, but it does make the book tough going for the casual reader. If, on the other hand, you are writing a book about witchcraft in early modern Britain, I would suggest that you take a look at this one because you may find it very useful.

My thanks are due to Kit Whitfield for pointing me at this book. I look forward to seeing what she does with the ideas presented in it.

book cover
Title: Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits
By: Emma Wilby
Publisher: Sussex Academic Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

X-Men ’97

061, TV Review

Data Point 1: I grew up on the X-Men. Thanks to Power Comics, I had access to X-Men stories from issue #1 (in Fantastic). I could also follow The Avengers in Terrific. Both of these became firm favourites because they had reasonable female characters (unlike British comics which were very gender-specific). Janet van Dyne was my role model—the sort of capable, independent and fashionable woman I hoped to grow up to be. But Jean Grey was my big sister—the closest thing I had to a character to identify with.

Data Point 2: By 1969 I was able to buy the actual Marvel comics. I adored the magnificent Neal Adams artwork towards the end of the original run. But sadly the book was cancelled. Then, in 1975, it was relaunched with some guy called Claremont in charge. He did awful things to Jean. I was furious and stopped following the book.

Data Point 3: The 1990s were a difficult time for me, ending with moving to Australia and gender transition. I entirely missed out on the original animated series.

Bearing all that in mind, what did I make of X-Men ’97?

The trouble with the X-Men movies is that both series felt the need to climax with the Dark Phoenix storyline. It is a terrible story, and inevitably ends your movie sequence on a massive downer. In contrast, X-Men ’97 takes place after Jean has regained control of the Phoenix force, and we are back to what passes for normality in the X-Men world again. Jean and Scott are recognizably Jean and Scott, and are doing typical Jean and Scott things. Hank is his usual loveable self. Ororo is serene. Logan is grumpy. All is right with the world.

Well, almost. At the end of the original animated series, Professor X is assassinated. He’s actually still alive because the Shi’ar have spirited him away just in time, but everyone on Earth thinks he’s dead. In his will he leaves his school to his old friend and sometime enemy, Magneto. Scott is not happy.

Poor Scott, he always has something to be unhappy about. The series piles on the agony with a very truncated version of the Madelyne Pryor plot, in which Mister Sinister creates a clone of Jean to infiltrate the X-Men and Scott is totally fooled.

Mainly, however, the series arc focuses on The Sentinels and the growth of anti-mutant sentiment. The season finale is a three-parter called “Tolerance is Extinction”. As we all know by now, Magneto was right. X-Men has always worked brilliantly as a queer allegory, and it has never been more important than it is now, with anti-trans legislation becoming commonplace in both the US and UK, and further anti-queer legislation likely to follow. It is notable that the script has America showing far more sympathy to mutants after a genocidal attack than it is currently doing to the Palestinians.

Neither the original animated series, nor this new version, is a direct book-to-screen version of the X-Men story. There is far too much of it for that. It is, effectively, a re-boot, and that allows the scriptwriters to look at the original stories with the benefit of hindsight and, hopefully, make them make more sense. The stories do get heavily truncated, and sometimes that shows, but you can live with it because it is a cartoon and therefore liable to be a bit weird.

Apparently a second season is currently in production and a third in development. This is a big relief because the first season provided some massive cliff-hangers. I want to know what happens next.

Star Trek Discovery – The Final Season

061, TV Review

Having sent the Discovery and her crew into the far future, Paramount seem to have decided to use the series to explore some classic science fiction themes. The finale of Season 4 owed a lot to the movie, Arrival, and of course the brilliant Ted Chaing story on which it is based. Season 5 mines another classic plot: alien technology so powerful that only our heroes should be allowed to have it.

The plot has its origins in the Next Generation episode, “The Chase”. In that story, an old archaeology professor who once taught Picard is chasing down rumours of an ancient alien race whom, it is said, seeded all of the life in the universe. The Klingons, Cardassians and Romulans are also on the hunt, but obviously the Enterprise gets to the prize first. The aliens, known as Progenitors, claim to have the power to direct evolution, but the key to that technology is hidden elsewhere in the galaxy. This is the last we hear of the story in Next Gen.

Skip forward now to the Discovery timeline where we learn that a group of scientists from various planets conducted a search for the Progenitor technology, and eventually found it. But they deemed the galaxy too warlike for such power to be made available. Rather than claim the power for themselves, they created a complex puzzle which, they hoped, only a sufficiently moral and upstanding sentient being could solve. Oh yes, that would be you, Michael Burnham.

Drama is added to by the presence of a couple of clever chancers called Moll and L’ak who have discovered the existence of the Progenitor technology for themselves and are determined to get hold of it first and sell it to the highest bidder. For complicated [spoiler] reasons, this means that the Breen get involved.

That’s the structure for the story arc of the episode. It works pretty well. Of course that can’t be all that there is to the series. We get sub-plots involving various characters as well. Burnham and Book are trying to repair their relationship after the unfortunate events of Season 4. Obviously they do, because Book is the Dishiest Man in the Galaxy. Stamets and Culber continue their role as Gay Dads to Adira, who has some growing up to do.

The bridge crew are mostly their usual place-holder selves. However, this season does introduce a new First Officer. Rayner is a crusty older captain who gets asked to take early retirement because he can’t adapt to service in peacetime. Burnham gives him a second chance, and their relationship is one of the more interesting aspects of the season.

So where is Saru, you ask? Well, he has transitioned to a role as a Federation Ambassador which allows him to spend more time with his beloved T’Rina, the President of Vulcan. Watching two people who are massively uncomfortable expressing emotion fall in love is, in my humble opinion, the best entertainment of the season. They are unbearably cute.

There is, of course, the main plot to resolve. I’m pleased to see that the scriptwriters came to the correct decision, though it did seem remarkably easy. We could have done with Philippa Georgiou around to mess things up a bit. But, as seasonal story arcs go, this is probably the best of all five seasons.

The decision to cancel Discovery seems to have come shortly after filming finished for the season. At any rate, the Discovery team were given permission to film an epilogue. This takes the form of a sequence featuring an older Admiral Burnham and her family (Book and son, Leto). I’m not sure how long it was, but it felt at least as long as the interminable ending to Peter Jackson’s film of The Return of the King (not as long as the ending to The Battle of the Five Armies though, I’m too old to live through that again and would be doing a Miss Haversham impression by the end if I did). It is nice that Paramount let them do it, but really, was it necessary?

It is unclear what will happen next with the Discovery timeline, but it has recently been announced that Star Fleet Academy will be set in the Discovery era. This will allow Tilly to guest star as one of the instructors and provide some continuity. We might expect people such as Admiral Vance and Saru to also pop in from time to time. It could be a good show.

Meanwhile it is much too long to wait until the next season of Strange New Worlds.

Editorial – May 2024

061, Editorial

This issue is a bit thin again, but at least my life is starting to sort itself out. Most importantly, I have a car again. Which means I should be able to get to Worldcon with a bunch of books for sale.

On that topic, we have a new book due out from Wizard’s Tower in June. It is Mary Ellen, Craterean!, the latest in the Crater School books from Chaz Brenchley. I know I am biased, but I think Chaz has out-done himself this time. I found myself tearing up every time I did any work on it.

Also in the works, I’ve just exchanged contracts with a new writer, the first of whose novels should be out for Worldcon. Press release about that coming soon.

I’ve also been getting contracts back for a new anthology. Whether that one makes it in time for Worldcon depends mainly on whether we can get a cover in time. But it is very exciting.

Less exciting for you, but more so for me, is that I have a new kitchen tap. This means that said tap is not running continuously, and that I am not having to keep the water off at the mains for most of the day.

June is looking fairly quiet, save for a trip to Oxford to see Neil Gaiman give the Tolkien Lecture. But in July I will be off to Finncon, and having a brief side-trip to France thereafter. August, of course, is mad.

Issue #60

Issues

This is the April 2024 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


The Book of Love

060, Book Review, Kelly Link

For a couple of decades now, Kelly Link has been one of the stars of the fantasy short fiction scene. She’s won a Hugo, three Nebulas and three Word Fantasy Awards amongst a fine collection of trophies. And in all that time, people have been asking her, “Kelly, when are you going to write a novel?”

The longer it goes on, of course, the harder it becomes. And then the MacArthur Foundation went and gave her a million bucks so she could go and write in peace and security. No more excuses. Can you imagine the pressure? You have to deliver, and you can’t just produce any old fantasy novel. You are Kelly Link, you have to produce the Great American Fantasy Novel.

So does The Book of Love fit the bill? Well obviously everyone’s reaction to a book is different. Suffice it to say that, a few chapters in, I was starting to think, “why does anyone else bother writing, when Link can do this?”

The Book of Love is set in the small Massachusetts seaside town of Lovesend. Is that Love Send, or Love’s End? Who knows? It is, however, the home of Caitlynn Hightower, America’s most successful and celebrated romance writer. And we all know that people in romance novels have happy endings. If only that were true of ordinary people.

Let’s meet our protagonists. Laura and Susannah Hand are two sisters currently attending the town’s high school. Together with their neighbour and childhood friend, Daniel Knowe, they have formed a band. It is called My Two Hands Knowe You. Terrible name. Not a great band either. But Laura knows that she will make it in the music business one day, with or without the band. As for Susannah and Daniel, well being in a band is fun, and despite Laura’s insistence on No Fucking between band members…

Then, one day, Laura, Daniel, and their friend Mo, all vanish. The police are baffled. There’s no trace of them. The book begins eleven months later. Despite Laura being the most annoying younger sister any girl could possibly have, Susannah is still distraught and furious. It’s a good job that, unlike Laura, she didn’t have any plans for her life. But something strange is about to happen.

In the music room of their school, Laura, Daniel and Mo step back into their real world. Their music teacher, Mr. Anabin, appears to be some sort of magician, and may have brought them back from that awful place they now only part remember. It appears that they have been dead, and now they are not.

That would be quite enough of a problem. But also there is this fellow called Bogomil who can turn into a wolf and who appears to be the lord of wherever they had gone. He and Anabin are enemies of some sort. Bogomil wants the kids back, and unless they can solve some sort of riddle he will get them.

Oh, and someone else came through into life at the same time as the kids. Someone who has been dead for a very long time.

The most immediate problem is what to tell friends and family. Mr. Anabin has a fix for that. Now everyone in Lovesend thinks that the three kids have been out of the country on a music scholarship. So folks, next time that you hear someone say that they are “going to Ireland”, be aware that this may be a euphemism for spending some time dead. Thanks Kelly, that’s hilarious!

What else do you need to know? Well for starters Mo is actually Mohammed Gorch. He is Caitlynn Hightower’s grandson. And yes, he’s brown and Muslim, and gay. As for the sainted Ms. Hightower, beloved of women all over America, she’s just a penname. Her real name is Maryanne Gorch. She’s a Black girl from Tennessee who, years back as a single mother in the Deep South, decided to try her luck at romance writing and made a fortune.

You may also have noticed that our two heroines have the surname, Hand. Obviously Kelly Link and Liz Hand know each other. Neither Laura nor Susannah is much like Liz, save for their love of music. Susannah, however, strikes me as the sort of girl who might, given the wrong choices in life (and Susannah is a master of making wrong choices) grow up to be someone like Cass Neary. As for Laura, all I’m going to say is that I think Link loves Waking the Moon as much as I do.

In style, The Book of Love seems to me very reminiscent of John Crowley. I was pleased to discover, on a recent visit to London, that John Clute agrees with me on this. And frankly, if you are going to write the Great American Fantasy Novel, you pretty much have to reference Little, Big in some way.

I should also note that The Book of Love is very long. I think it is worth the time, but your mileage may vary. Around half way through we start to find out a lot of what is actually going on, and who Anabin and Bogomil actually are. If you can make it that far, I think you’ll want to go to the end. But you may give up before then because you find it all too confusing.

Finally I should note that this is a book I would class at YA. That’s because it is a book about actual teenagers who have genuine teenage preoccupations that are treated seriously by the author. It doesn’t strike me as something that actual teenagers would roll their eyes at. Some adults, on the other hand, might think those kids just need to grow up a bit.

Which reminds me, the characterization of all of the humans (and tigers) in this book is spot on. The supernatural characters are perhaps a little less convincing, but the book isn’t really about them. Link’s portrait of a small seaside town struggling to some extent with the onset of multiculturalism also seems very real to me.

It should be clear that I love the book. Lots of other people do too. Many of them are big name writers. Comments like ‘genius’, ‘pure enchantment’ and ‘greatest living fabulist’ are being bandied around. But the blurb that struck me was one from Cory Doctorow. He said:

“Link wraps a terrifying core of rusty razor blades in deceptive layers of charming, daffy quirkiness.”

He’s spot on. You have been warned, but you will be charmed.

book cover
Title: The Book of Love
By: Kelly Link
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Song of the Huntress

060, Book Review, Lucy Holland

I’ve been looking forward to this book for some time. I know Lucy Holland quite well and gave her a bit of historical help on her previous book, Sistersong, so I was aware of the struggles she was having with the new book. I’m very glad that all came to a successful conclusion.

Song of the Huntress is also set in the South-West of England (or, as the Saxons used to call it, West Wales). However, we are two hundred years on from the events of Sistersong. Cerdic’s descendants still rule the nascent kingdom of Wessex, while Dumnonia is still proudly independent (and Welsh/Cornish). The men of Wessex have pushed as far west as a line defined by the River Parrett, but have to watch their backs due to potential threats from other Saxon kingdoms. Penda, whom you will be familiar with from the Hild books, is long dead, but his descendants still rule Mercia.

Ӕthelberg is the Queen of Wessex and, much to the distress of the Saxon menfolk, is clearly their most competent general. Her husband, Ine, is much more comfortable doing diplomacy than war, but together they make a good team. There is only one problem: they have yet to produce an heir. Rivals for the throne (and obviously the clergy) are starting to mutter that the Queen’s “unnatural” habits are to blame.

That’s one half of the story. The other half centers on Herla, once the leader of an Amazon-like group of women cavalry in the service of Queen Boudica. Herla, being something of a disaster lesbian, had a massive crush on her sovereign. With a confrontation with Rome looming, Herla sought to trade with the Otherworld for power beyond imagining. The crafty Gwyn ap Nudd granted her wish, but Herla and her troupe found that, while they had become immortal, they were now bound to lead the Wild Hunt for all eternity.

800 years have passed, though it seems like a dream to Herla and her companions. Then a chance encounter in the Summer Country brings her face-to-face with another woman warrior crowned with a mass of tawny hair just like Boudica’s. Herla is about to fall in love with the wrong woman again, and when she does it will have profound consequences for the Wild Hunt, for Wessex, and for Dumnonia.

Fans of Sistersong will be pleased to know that Emrys, the gender-fluid shaman, is still around to cause trouble. Also the great Dunmonian king, Constantine, has passed into legend, though mainly thanks to the angry rantings of Gildas.

I am, I suspect, much too close to this book, and the people and landscapes it features, to have a balanced opinion of it, but I love what Holland has done here. She’s having to work with much more clearly defined history than last time. The intrigues of the various nobles and clergy that make up Ine’s court are well done, and both Ӕthelberg and Ine seem entirely plausible given what we know about them. However, Holland still finds a way to make an excellent fantasy novel out of it. And, like with Sistersong, there is much for queer readers to enjoy.

book cover
Title: Song of the Huntress
By: Lucy Holland
Publisher: Macmillan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Butcher of the Forest

060, Book Review, Premee Mohamed

Premee Mohamed is hugely popular with many of my friends. A lot of what she writes sounds a bit too much like horror for my tastes, but The Butcher of the Forest is a novella and it sounded more like dark fantasy, so I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did.

If I were to do one of those horrible elevator pitch things for this book it would be Hansel & Gretel in Mythago Wood. There are indeed two young children lost in the woods in this book. But witches in gingerbread houses are the least of the threats that they face. Parents tell their children not to go into the North Woods because no one has ever come out of them. No one.

Well, not quite no one. There was Veris Thorn. And she brought a young girl back with her. Aside from that, no one has ever returned from those woods.

Veris thought getting out with her life, and the life of the girl, would be an end to it. After all, no one in their right minds would go in there. But some children are just too foolish. Especially children who have been raised in such an atmosphere of power and authority that they assume that no one and nothing could ever be a threat to them.

Thus it is that Veris Thorn finds herself dragged before The Tyrant. He will stop at nothing to get his children back. As military force has proved spectacularly ineffective, he wants Veris to go instead. And if she doesn’t return with both children alive, he will have her entire family killed. Simples.

What I love about this book is the way that Mohamed describes the denizens of the North Woods. Here’s an example:

Last time she had seen but not spoken to this creature—or something very like. Smaller than her, skinny, dark-haired, like a cross between a man and a hare and a deer, antlers bone-white out of a wood-brown body, wearing only a loose cloak of leaves woven into some kind of net. Now, closer, she looked down at his three-toed feet, which seemed real enough, and were stained with mud and bits of broken leaf. His eyes were large, liquid, and reminded her of nothing so much as the night sky: black from corner to corner, filled with innumerable little glints of light.

He edged closer to her. “Is that…cheese?”

At Luxcon I was on a panel about The Weird and we were desperately trying to find a definition of what weird was. That there was weird. Very much so.

The ending, perhaps, let the book down a little. Clearly Veris is in a lose-lose situation. Even if she gets out with the kids alive, The Tyrant isn’t going to thank her. He’ll still be as vicious and implacable as ever. So Mohamed had to come up with a resolution that didn’t betray that reality, but didn’t sound utterly hopeless either. Whether it works or not will be down to individual readers. But the rest of the book is lovely as long are you are OK with lots of dead things.

book cover
Title: The Butcher of the Forest
By: Premee Mohamed
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Bird, Blood, Snow

060, Book Review, Cynan Jones

As I’m writing a paper about Nicola Griffith’s Spear for an academic conference, I figured I should look for other modern versions of the Peredur story. As it happens, Seren’s series of Mabinogion re-tellings includes a version of Peredur. It is by Cynan Jones, who is a successful Welsh literary writer (published in Granta and the like). He’s not, as far as I can see, known for fantasy.

In Bird, Blood, Snow, Jones sets Peredur in a modern day working class housing estate. Peredur’s lost father was a minor crime boss. His mother an alcoholic. In one of her more lucid moments, the mother takes Peredur away from the estate to try to raise him away from gang culture. It doesn’t work. One day Peredur sees a group of older boys go past on their bikes. They seem to him like knights out of a story book, and he decides to follow them.

Thanks to childhood trauma, young Peredur has serious mental health issues. The only way he knows to interact socially is through violence. Unfortunately he is very, very good at it.

The story is mostly told from the point of view of police officers, social workers and health workers, all of whom, with the best of intentions, try to get Peredur to live a normal life. They all fail. Many of them die. Killing is all that Peredur knows how to do.

I’m at a bit of a loss to understand what Jones was trying to do with this book. Is he making a comment on the violent nature of Arthurian romances (the Peredur of his book doesn’t kill anywhere near as many people as the Peredur of legend)? Is he pouring scorn on the well-meaning but useless service workers? Is the book a statement about the inherent violence of life on working class housing estates? It all seems a bit nihilistic.

What I will say is that Jones writes very well, and even though a lot of the text is somewhat experimental it is easy enough to follow the action. But I’m not sure that this book engages with The Mabinogion original in any useful way.

book cover
Title: Bird, Blood, Snow
By: Cynan Jones
Publisher: Seren
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

LuxCon 2024

060, Convention Report

Made it at last!

For those of you not up to speed with the saga, I was supposed to be a Guest of Honour at LuxCon last year. But I got COVID at Eastercon and could not go. Very kindly, they asked me back this year.

LuxCon is, of course, the annual science fiction convention of Luxembourg. Given that Luxembourg is a rather small country (it has about a fifth of the population of Wales), they can’t run to separate conventions for different types of fandom. LuxCon is all in. That means that the majority of attendees were interested only in comics, TV and movies. A significant proportion were in costume. (The cosplay contest was very good.) Girls in cat ears and boys dressed as stormtroopers were everywhere. But tucked away upstairs was one room running a literary programme in English. (I think there was also a literary programme in German, but my German is hopeless so it was hard to say.)

Surprisingly for such a small event, there were a lot of guests. In addition to myself the English language programming had Samatha Shannon and Lavie Tidhar, plus Peadar Ó Guilín who apparently turns up every year because he loves the event. There was also Eric Stillwell who has done a lot of writing and production work on Star Trek over the years. His panels were separate from ours, but he hung out with us quite a bit of the time. I was pleased to see that he was as sad as me about there being only one more season of Lower Decks.

The panels were fun. That was at least in part because I had either Lavie or Peadar on with me, and they are both very sharp and very funny. They were not on the one about female representation, but it turns out that Samantha has an excellent line in feminist ranting so that was fun too. I don’t think we managed to come up with a definition for The Weird except that it is what Jeff and Ann VanderMeer point to when they say something is Weird. I did get to talk about the history of punk rock on the xxxxpunk panel.

The other thing that they had us do was participate in a live role-playing session. Well, when I say “us”, I mean Peadar and myself. The other two chickened out. It was quite silly, though nowhere near as alcohol-fueled as I had been promised. I did, at one point, manage to save the lives of the rest of the party by summoning Lady Gaga.

Samantha, by the way, is lovely, and has legions of adoring fans. She’s just finding her way into the SF&F community having come up through self-publishing and then having a massive hit with The Priory of the Orange Tree. The girl read Olde English at Oxford, so she knows a bunch of weird stuff. If you are looking for a headline GoH, she’d be a good pick. She tells me that she’ll be at Worldcon this year so you can check her out.

I should note that the organization was a little chaotic at times. It wasn’t entirely the con’s fault. Apparently the venue withdrew some of the rooms they’d been promised at the last minute, entailing some emergency relocation of panels. Also the local bookshop pulled out the day before the con, apparently claiming that they didn’t think it would be worth their while. Samatha and Lavie were not impressed.

One good thing the con did was that the car park for the venue was full of street food trucks. It was all a bit German (or in some cases Polish), but a hot dog made with a French baguette and a German sausage, and served with Belgian fries, is far better than an American hot dog, and also very Luxembourg.

There are a couple of things I should note about Luxembourg. Firstly, all public transport is free. Whether it is a bus, a tram, or conventional rail, as long as the journey is within the country, you can just get on and off when you want. The second is that, being a very small community, the country does actually care about economic prosperity for all.

On the Sunday evening we took advantage of the free trains to travel south to the community of Belval. In past times, this was a big steel town. Parts of the huge steelworks still dominate the town. But, thanks to changes in the global economy, steel-making is no longer a viable industry in Europe. So the steelworks has closed, and the government of Luxembourg has embarked on a €450m redevelopment programme for Belval. This includes a new science campus for the University of Luxembourg, and a big concert hall. All of this is being built in and around the old steelworks, which is being treated as an art installation. I know that sounds weird, but it looks amazing.

Contrast that to South Wales where the huge steelworks and Port Talbot is closing, and the reaction in Westminster is that if a large number of Welsh people starve that will make the UK stronger and fitter.

My thanks are due to Ani, Audrey & Keren for looking after us so well, and especially to Jean for not only looking after us but also being a wonderful tour guide. On the Monday we all got a tour of the fun historic parts of Luxembourg and on Tuesday Jean and I headed across the border into Germany for a look at Augusta Treverorum, a city that was one of the capitals of the Roman Empire during the 4th Century. It was Maxen Wledig’s capital, which is a huge thing if you are Welsh. Also they had the most beautiful little bronze statue of Attis, and one of the most famous examples of flying penis Roman wind chimes.

I’m not sure that I would recommend anyone from the UK coming over for the weekend as the con is very small, and the literary part of it even smaller. But Luxembourg is a wonderful place to visit, so if you fancy a bit of conventioning with your tourism it might be a good bet.

The Silver Arm

060, Comic Review, Jim Fitzpatrick

I have owned a copy of Jim Fitzpatrick’s The Book of Conquests for many years, but for some reason I never got a copy of the sequel. When I noticed a copy in my local bookstore, I figured it was about time to get one.

Fitzpatrick’s book is, of course, a graphic novel adaptation of the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann, the Book of the Taking of Ireland. The first part is mostly taken up with the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann and their war with the Fir Bolg, culminating in the first battle of Maighe Tuireadh. Although the Dé Danann are victorious, their king, Nuada, loses his right arm in the battle. The laws of the Dé Danann state that their king must be physically perfect, so Nuada is forced to abdicate. Book 2, The Silver Arm, takes up the story.

The Dé Danann elect as their new king a chap called Breas the Beautiful who had fought bravely in the battle and is also very handsome. Unfortunately he turns out to be a terrible king, being ungenerous and prone to favouring flatterers. The Dé Danann turf him out, and Nuada, who has been made a silver prothesis to replace his lost arm, resumes the kingship.

Unfortunately, Breas’s father was one of the mysterious Fomorians. Those people take badly to his ousting, and war once again looms. It ends in a second battle at Maighe Tuireadh in which the young hero, Lugh, saves the day by killing the Fomorian wizard, Balor One-Eye.



King Nuada, from The Book of Conquests

That’s a very brief summation of the plot. It is much more complicated than that. And, because this is a story written down by Christian monks based on ancient oral traditions, it is quite confused in places. The most mysterious aspect of the story is the Fomorians themselves, because they are not treated as inhabitants of Ireland, and yet they are always there. Possibly this is because they spend much of their time on their fastness of Tory Island (which is a real place, not a euphemism for England). Or possibly because they are not human at all.

These days we are used to thinking of the Tuatha Dé Danann as fairy folk, but at one point in the story, being short on manpower, Lugh enlists the aid of the Sídhe. Although Nuada is probably best known for his silver arm, at one point in the story it is deemed insufficient for him to qualify for kingship so he gets a replacement flash arm instead. From a literary point of view it is all a bit messy but, as with The Mabinogion, it is all we have.

If I simply wanted a version of the Leabhar Gabhála, I could get a modern translation. But I love Fitzpatrick’s version because of his amazing art. Hopefully the examples I have included here will help you understand why.



Lugh fights Balor, from The Silver Arm

book cover
Title: The Silver Arm
By: Jim Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Paper Tiger
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

060, Movie Review

As noted elsewhere, I’m currently writing an academic paper about Spear, the Nicola Griffith novel based on the Mabinogion story of Peredur. Whenever one is discussing Peredur, it is necessary to also discuss the Holy Grail, even though that artefact never actually appears in the story. Later versions of the legend do include the Christian references, and these days they have taken over the narrative. And the most famous modern version of the story is undoubtedly the one featuring coconuts, anarchist peasants, and a great deal of running away.

I can’t remember whether I have watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail before, but it turns out that it didn’t matter because I knew most of the dialog off by heart. People quote it so often that it has become part of the cultural background. I suspect that if you asked a lot of young people these days where the phrase, “I fart in your general direction” comes from, they’d have no idea. But they would be very familiar with the phrase, and probably even know that it should be said in a very bad mock-French accent.

However, I was not watching the film to consider its impact on Western culture, I was interested in its relationship to Arthuriana.

When you ask a question like that, you also have to ask what period of Arthuriana you are looking at. Is it The Mabinogion, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Thomas Mallory, Tennyson, TH White, Disney? Each age re-invents the Arthur story for itself. As it turns out, the Python version is a bit odd. It claims to be set in the 10th Century, which is both too late to see much in the way of actual resistance to Saxon rule of the Eastern part of Prydain, and too early for the cod-mediaeval idea of knighthood that the film uses.

Mostly the film is making fun of the view of mediaeval life that was common when it was made (and not that different from the one in A Song of Ice and Fire). Lancelot’s excessive violence and Galahad’s struggles with his chastity sound more Mallory to me than anything else. Miraculously the character of Tim the Enchanter manages to poke fun at John Boorman’s Excalibur even though the Python film was released 6 years earlier. But there are a couple of places where the film digs deeper.

Firstly there is the landscape. A defining feature of Arthurian landscapes is that they are vast wildernesses punctuated by castles. There is little evidence of any society outside of the castles and their inhabitants. And, as in A Song of Ice and Fire, there is little sign of any economic activity that could finance the knights and their wars. Dev Patel’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight illustrates this well, and so does the Python film.

My favourite part of the film, however, is the encounter with the Knights Who Say “Ni!”. They live deep in the forest. Michael Palin’s character as the head night, with his vast height and antler-crowned helmet, is very Celtic. And while I don’t think there is any mention of shrubberies in The Mabinogion, I can quite imagine one of Arthur’s men being asked to chop down a tree with a fish (probably a salmon rather than a herring), and somehow succeeding in the quest. In part because it has come down to us via Christian monks and dodgy English translations, The Mabinigion is often a very silly place.

Editorial – April 2024

060, Editorial

This issue is a little thin. My excuse is that I have been travelling for a couple of weeks during the past month. That was first to Malta for an Assyriology conference, and then to Luxembourg for LuxCon.

Malta is an incredibly beautiful place, but as I spent most of my time in university buildings, and had to rush off to Luxembourg, I don’t have much of a tourist report. In particular I did not get to visit the Neolithic temple complex on Gozo. Must go back.

Luxembourg was great fun. See the con report elsewhere in this issue.

Travelling is great for getting reading done. I got through a couple of long novels while I was on trains and aircraft. But it is useless for anything else, because your entire day is given over to the travel, or the thing you have travelled to do.

By next issue I should have finished both The Three Body Problem (on Netflix, which I an very much enjoying this far), and Discovery Season 5. I also have an ARC of the new Stark Holborn novel, which I am very excited about.

Also in next issue I should have a report from this conference. Should be fun.

Issue #59

Issues

This is the March 2024 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Cover: Nøkken on a Bridge: This month's cover is 'Nøkken on a Bridge' by Peter Dobbin, and is taken from his book, Mythical Monster Stories

  • The Library of Broken Worlds: In Cheryl's opinion, this was the best SF novel of 2023

  • HIM: The perfect read for this year's Easter Sunday? Geoff Ryman re-imagines Jesus as a trans man.

  • ElfQuest, The TV Series: Paul Driggere looks forward to what will hopefully be an epic animated TV series

  • Mythical Monster Stories: A very beautiful collection of monster-themed art

  • Enheduana: Who was the world's first author? As far as we know, she was a royal priestess from Sumer who lived al around 4500 years ago.

  • Dune 2: If ever there was a movie made for the big screen, this is a fine example of one.

  • This Year’s Hugo Finalists: Fresh from the catastrophe of Chengdu, the Hugos are back. Can they restore their reputation?

  • Museum Bums: Naked buttocks are everywhere in our museums and art galleries. At last they are being celebrated.

  • Spirited Away: Cheryl is possibly the last person in the world to watch this famous movie.

  • Editorial – March 2024: Awards: you lose some, but occasionally you win. Also the Locus fundraiser and April travel plans.

Cover: Nøkken on a Bridge

059, Art, Peter Dobbin

This issue’s cover is Nøkken on a Bridge by Peter Dobbin, taken from his book, Mythical Monster Stories. The Nøkken is a water spirit from Scandinavian folklore, apparently fond luring young women to their deaths. A full version of the art as it appears in the book is included below.

The Library of Broken Worlds

059, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Book Review

I am annoyed with myself. I know how good Alaya Dawn Johnson is. I’ve really enjoyed some of her previous work. So I bought her latest book, and then put it aside because it is marketed as YA and I had lots of high-profile adult books to read. Consequently, until very recently, I did not get to what, in my humble opinion, is the best science fiction novel of 2023.

There are many reasons why a book gets marketed as YA. Sometimes it is a genuine coming-of-age novel. Sometimes it is just because the characters are mainly teenagers. And sometimes it is because the author is a woman. There is a certain amount of coming of age to be done by the main character in The Library of Broken Worlds, but she’s an AI inside a human teenage body, so I’m not sure the lessons are entirely appropriate for actual young adults.

But then there is all the other stuff. The Library of Broken Worlds is one of those books that will enthrall people who started books like The Shadow of the Torturer, or Gideon the Ninth, and thought to themselves, “I haven’t got a clue what is going on here, but it is fascinating so I’m going to keep reading to find out.” You have to work hard at books like this, just to keep up with the journey on which the author is taking you. I’m sure that some YA readers will love this book as much as I did. I’m equally sure that very many adults will put it aside because it is just too confusing and hard work.

So let’s try to give you an idea of what it is about. The Library of Broken Worlds is set in a universe where there are four important solar systems. There may be others, but if they have intelligent life it has not yet been contacted. One of those solar systems has worlds called Tierra (with its satellite, Luna) and Mars, so it might feel familiar to us. Another has Mahām with its satellite, Miuri. There is the third system with the world of Awilu. And finally there is a star around which revolves a constructed disk which is home to the great Library.

The various solar systems are linked by wormhole transits known as tesseracts. Each system is also home to at least one Material God. A material god is distinguished from a spiritual god in that it has an actual, physical existence and may be communed with.

The non-divine inhabitants of all four systems are described as humans, though it appears that humanoid life evolved separately on the three planetary systems.

Around 500 years ago, these worlds were engaged in a Great War. Eventually peace was declared, and a Treaty signed to ensure that no such conflict should ever happen again. The Library was created to be the guardian of the Treaty, and the place where inter-system disputes are resolved.

Our main character is Freida. As noted earlier, she is not entirely human, though she is indistinguishable from one from the outside. She is actually the daughter of Iemaja, one of the four Material Gods that reside in the Library system. No one knows why Iemaja decided to create a human-like child.

Freida has friends of her own physical age. Joshua is a young law student from Tierra. He belongs to an indigenous tribe from that planet whose ancestral lands are under threat from Lunar colonists. He has come to the Library in the hope of finding a legal argument to help his people. Atempa is the daughter of a powerful priest from Mahām. The Mahām god, Namaren, is particularly warlike and bloodthirsty, not to mention fanatically patriarchal. Atempa has come to the Library to spite her father. Finally there is Nergüi. She is a disciple of the Lighted Path, a spiritual religion based on Mirui. The Miuri people form an ethnic minority that is regularly oppressed by the Mahām. Nergüi has come to the Library seeking asylum in fear for her life.

There are two other important characters that we need to meet. Nadi is the Head Librarian. Ze is an Awilu, and a person of their third gender. (It is not explained whether this has a social or biological basis, and it is not relevant.) Nadi has adopted Freida, feeling that Iemaja must be up to something important. But having Freida as a ward is dangerous, because Nadi’s position is under threat from zer ambitious and corrupt rival, Quinn. Anything that Freida does that is controversial is liable to be used against Nadi. And Freida is nothing if not controversial.

Nadi still holds to the view that the duty of the Library is to defend the Treaty and the peace that it ensures. Quinn cares for nothing but wealth and power. Meanwhile the Mahām priests are rattling their sabres. Namaren is restless, they say, and demanding blood. To placate him they must declare a War Ritual, which is essentially a ritual sacrifice of large numbers of Miuri. It is necessary, they say, to maintain peace.

Then there is Joshua, and his search for a legal basis to defend his own people, which might just have implications for oppressed peoples elsewhere.

Hopefully you can see that this is an incredibly sophisticated political novel, but it is also one that has at its heart the mystery of Freida’s creation which, like Joshua’s legal case, can only be solved by digging into the remote past.

In her Author’s Note, Johnson notes, “The political conundrums philosophies, stories and histories in this novel are entirely fictional and not intended to represent modern human cultures, beliefs or conflicts.” This statement is in a similar vein to when Tolkien insisted that The Lord of the Rings is not “allegory”. What both authors mean is that there is not intended to be a one-to-one mapping of things in the book to things in the real world. This does not mean that the books are not relevant to the real world.

It should already be obvious that The Library of Broken Worlds has much to say about colonialism and the exploitation of indigenous peoples. But that is by no means all that it has to say.

The book is, for example, in conversation with the history of science fiction. In discussing the origins of the War Ritual, there is mention of Tierran history, before contact with the Awilu, when the Tierrans were using generation ships to flee the planet they had so thoughtlessly set on a path to environmental destruction.

“It started because the seed ship’s life systems were failing, and they claimed that some must die for the good of all. That was not true, but survival would have made their rigid social hierarchies unsustainable. So they sacrificed the ones whose philosophy threatened revolution. They continue to do so, for much the same reasons.”

I think you can all guess which famous SF story that is referencing, alongside the equally obvious attack on austerity politics.

Then there are issues relevant to current US politics:

“The Treaty enshrined two kinds of Freedom in the primary node; freedom from, a state of being unbound, and freedom to, a state of potential actualization.

At one point Johnson mentions a saying attributed to a famous Tierran philosopher. I’ll save you looking it up. It is Karl Marx.

There is also a subtle reference to the causes of Earthly climate change, but I can’t give you an example of that without a significant spoiler.

Not content with all that, Johnson reveals her story though the medium of myth. Not for nothing is the subtitle of the book, Daughter of the God of Stories, Writer of her own destiny. The various Material Gods each have a number of semi-autonomous avatars created to converse with humans, and each only has a partial grasp of actual history. They talk in stories, The skill of a Librarian is knowing what questions to ask of them, and how to interpret the answers.

In Freida’s case the most relevant story is that of the girl who finds herself working in a great bathhouse by a river, and who falls in love with a boy who is also a lizard. It is, as she admits in the Acknowledgements, the plot of Spirited Away. But it is a plot that is twisted and changed through multiple tellings over many years, and through many mouths. Johnson describes it as a series of jazz riffs on an original theme, which I think is a lovely way of putting it. It is also very reminiscent of the way in which literature worked in the ancient world, as explained by Helle in his discussion of the work of Enheduana.

I could talk way more about this book, but really you should just go read it yourselves. And also not worry when books are marketed as YA, because they can be every bit as sophisticated as the best adult novels, if not more so.

book cover
Title: The Library of Broken Worlds
By: Alaya Dawn Johnson
Publisher: Magpie
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

HIM

059, Book Review, Geoff Ryman

The right wing part of social media has been in meltdown once again this month, this time over the fact that the disgusting trannies have failed to move the Trans Day of Visibility to a different day because Easter Sunday happens to have moved onto March 31st. How dare they? Easter has been cancelled!!! Oh dear.

In view of which, it is just as well that none of them have read HIM by Geoff Ryman, because there might be actual heart attacks rather than just cases of the vapours.

HIM starts from a very simple and obvious scientific fact. Virgin births are common throughout the animal kingdom, and in all such cases the new life produced is female, usually a clone of the mother. Therefore, if Mary gave birth by parthenogenesis, Jesus must have been born a girl. And if He hasn’t come down to us in history as a girl, why he must obviously be a trans guy.

Thus begins a re-examination of the New Testament on that basis. What would it mean? Can it help us make sense of the story? Ryman is, after all, a science fiction writer. Extrapolating from a premise is what he does.

It makes a lot of sense too. Jesus’ message is very much one of anti-Patriarchy, about caring for others rather than being an angry old man with an imposing beard. It is one that someone not born and raised male might have come up with, and certainly one that might attract women followers.

That we know is true. Ryman makes good use of the characters of Joanna and Susana from the New Testament. They are not people we learned anything about when I was in school, but it seems clear that Joanna bankrolled Jesus’ movement. Also we know from history that women were hugely important in the early Christian church under the Roman Empire, despite all of the nonsense from St. Paul.

The central character of the book, however, is not Jesus, but Mary, or Maryam as Ryman would have her. She does, after all, bookend Jesus’s life on Earth. And she makes a fascinating narrator. Ryman’s Maryam is a smart young woman from an important Jerusalem family. Not wishing to be lorded over by some beardy misogynist, she contrives to marry a bookish lad called Yosef whom she is sure she can order around. But Yosef has heretical ideas that he can’t keep quiet about, leading to him being exiled from Jerusalem. And Maryam, well, who is going to believe a young woman who claims she has become pregnant without having had sex?

Now it gets complicated. As an intelligent woman, Maryam is delighted that God has given her a daughter. Here at last will be a prophet who can preach on behalf of women. She is therefore horrified when her daughter claims that she is a boy called Yehush. Maryam does everything she can to get her daughter back, while the sweet, kind-hearted Yosef just accepts everything calmly. It is a fascinating gender reversal of what all too often happens to trans kids.

Maryam, because she really wants a woman prophet, eventually comes around because she realises that the message is more important than the messenger. A harder nut to crack is the sister, Babatha. She’s very conventionally feminine and is furious that her elder sibling gets away with avoiding all of the women’s work around the house. She eventually does the ambitious woman thing of finding a rich idiot to marry, and therefore gets to represent White Feminism in the book.

Eventually young Yehush becomes a cult leader, and here Ryman provides us with a convincing portrait of a revolutionary movement that is growing too quickly to control. And of a young person who is finding it increasingly difficult to embody the role for which He has been created.

Someone who is a better theologian than me will doubtless write a fascinating analysis of this book, but my simplistic view of Ryman’s argument is as follows. God has decided that He doesn’t understand humans properly, so He creates an avatar so He can walk among them. But young Yehush quickly realizes that God has been wrong about many things, and that smiting humans when they don’t do what they are told isn’t a very good strategy. Unfortunately, channeling God, and trying to change God’s mind at the same time, is way to much for a human body and mind to cope with, and things start to unravel.

One of the interesting things that Ryman does is to try to fit stories from the Gospels into his narrative. One clear example is that Yehush does not raise Lazarus from the dead on a whim, but rather because He knows that He will rise from the dead soon and He needs to work out how it is done.

Possibly less successful are some of Ryman’s choices about how to embody 1st Century Judea. On the one had he has his characters talking in a very modern way. On the other he insists on what I assume must be period-correct spelling for the names of people and towns, and for some nouns. That makes it difficult to work out who is who, and I don’t see the point of that because we all know the story.

Overall I found HIM a fascinating book, and one that I whipped through quickly. But judging the argument(s) that it makes will take a whole lot more reflection, and knowledge of theology. I’m really looking forward to hearing some conference papers about this book.

As to the trans content, it is well done, but rather less central to the book that you might imagine. But I do appreciate the book having a pronoun for the title.

book cover
Title: HIM
By: Geoff Ryman
Publisher: Angry Robot
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura
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