by John Grant
I would recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone seeking a primer in what we as a species currently know about "life, the universe and everything"; but it is, necessarily, less effective as a piece of polemic. Try George A. Erickson's Time Traveling with Science and the Saints, also from Prometheus, if it's a good piece of blood-stirring, tub-thumping rationalist polemic you're after. For a more reasoned (and more factually accurate) approach, you could hardly do better than this one.
—Crescent Blues
Return to Isis
by Jean Stewart
Rising Tide, 173 pages, paperback, 1992
In the year 2093 what is now the United States has been sundered into two parts as an ill defined political consequence of an AIDS-related plague that has killed the vast majority of the population. In the East is the land called, ironically, Elysium, where a patriarchal, right-wing-fundamentalist Christianity holds paranoid sway: women are victims here, the healthy ones being confined to Breeding Pens where their sole role is to be fucked a lot so they may perpetuate the species. In the Western USA, outside the forcefield of the ultra-virtuous Elysium, there are the seven or so scattered colonies of Freeland, all up and down the coast: most of these are all-woman lesbian cultures, their perpetuation guaranteed by parthenogenesis.
Young Freelander Whit ventures into Elysium to conduct a two-year campaign of espionage. She discovers that the dread law-enforcers of Elysium, the Regulators, are after her, and makes her escape in a light plane. This plane crashes on a farm at the very edge of Elysium, where supposedly disease-ridden serf Amelia has been tending the furrows for longer than she can remember; later in the novel she will start to remember more of her life before this servitude began.
Whit initially assumes Amelia is at best an idiot savant, with the accent less on the savant, but adopts her anyway in the belief that she deserves her freedom as much as any other. Together, all the while falling in love, the two quest towards the nearest exit portal from Elysium into Freeland. At the end of their quest they are met by lesbian Freelanders, some of whom are delighted to see them, others of whom reckon that certainly Amelia and probably Whit are Fifth Columnists.
Ten years ago the Freelander colony of Isis was invaded by the Regulators, who somehow broke through all of Freeland's defenses to make a militaristic shock attack. Isis was put to the sword: all the women there were burnt alive except one, Kali, daughter of colony-leader Maat. No surprises that Kali turns out to be the submissive pseudo-Elysian Amelia.
This is a novel with a political agenda. Specifically, it is declaredly feminist. It must therefore be considered twice over, first as a political polemic, second as an sf novel.
Some of the politics of this polemic are, to be frank, a bit naive: the Elysian males are presented uniformly as racists, rapists, sadists and murderous bastards. Stewart is aware enough of the danger of stereotyping to avoid at least some of the usual simplifications: somewhere offstage there is a heterosexual colony whose men do not conform to this halfwitted portrayal. Much more interesting is Stewart's back-story depiction of the right-wing-fundamentalist Christian takeover of the Eastern USA; she clearly regards fundamentalist Christianity – and fundamentalist religiosity of any denomination – rather than males per se as the enemy. To judge by this novel, she recognizes that fundamentalist feminism falls into the same dangerous category.
She has some difficulties which she may not fully realize in her depiction of the swinish males of Elysium. Her story is set less than a century hence. It is feasible that in the space of a few decades a fascistic patriarchy might establish itself in the Eastern USA; it is not, though, feasible that within this short a span all of the males should somehow, magically, turn into mad rapist persecutors of females. To think otherwise is to assume that, sometime in the 1930s, every German, male or female, suddenly became a Jew-persecuting Nazi – even Hollywood no longer makes that assumption. It is unfeasible, analogously, that there be no feminist-collaborating, or at least non-rapist, males in Elysium. Maybe Stewart just forgot to mention them.
A good test of any political novel is to start sticking in some equivalents of whatever section of society the author has decided are the baddies. Most feminist novels fail this test; swap the sexes or the skin colours and even the most politically correct writer gets into hellish difficulties. All men are violent bastards? Sounds a good bit of polemic until you substitute the notion that all blacks, or Japanese, or Jews, or lesbians, or Scots, or whatever, are violent bastards. The truth is that human beings cannot be compartmentalized in this simplistic way; to pretend otherwise is self-delusion.
One of the most laudable things about this book is the feel it conveys of post-Holocaust societies – whether male- or female-dominated – doing their best to muddle through. In Elysium the best is not very good; in Freeland it is better, but still not perfect. Stewart's Freeland is only on the surface a lesbian utopia: the worst villains in Return to Isis are not men but women. There's the bigoted Zoe, who wants to persecute Amelia/Kali for the supposed sins of her mother. There's another completely corrupt woman whom I shall not name in case I spoil the novel for you.
And there are some glorious feminist moments. Here's one:
They rarely talked because they were both struggling. Trying to distract herself from the ache she felt with each stride, Whit sang ribald marching songs about voluptuous women. After a few days, Amelia was singing along with the choruses, though Whit doubted that she understood what cunnilingus meant.
Who apart from Valerie Solanas said that militant lesbianism had to be grimly humourless? Here's another moment, a description of Freeland that could be regarded as the political summation of this book:
This was what old America had aspired to be hundreds of years ago, before justice and freedom had become the province of rich, white men.
The neatest political trick Stewart plays with the plot concerns the forcefield surrounding Elysium. This was originally erected by the Elysians in order to keep the tainted people out – "tainted" for reasons of skin colour or religion or sexual orientation – but somewhere along the road its control has been taken over by the outsiders, so that now it is a device to keep the Elysians in ... and the Elysians, of course, have not noticed the difference.
(Mention should be made, parenthetically, of the cover by Evelyn Rysdyk. Although the style of Rysdyk's illustration for this book is unfashionable today, it is a startlingly well done example of its kind. In effect, the artwork makes you feel as if you're constantly falling into the picture. Oo-ee-oo-ee-oo.)
Leaving politics aside, what is Return to Isis like as an sf novel?
The answer is: pretty goddam good.
This is not one of the great pivotal works of post-Holocaust sf – it is no Earth Abides, no A Gift Upon the Shore, no The Gate to Woman's Country – but it is constantly entertaining and thoughtful in the manner of a Wilson Tucker or a Leigh Brackett or a Lloyd Biggle. To be true, some of the dialogue is infuriatingly and (one loathes to use the term in this context) girlishly cute – there is nothing more tedious than being told in repeated slantwise references about someone else's bonk – but it's easy enough to skip over such stuff and concentrate on the main tale, which is very fine and in general very well told. Stewart has apparently written three more sf novels and one mainstream novel; all four have been put on this reviewer's "To Be Read" list. Stewart has her own rich voice, and somewhere down the line – hopefully already – she is going to produce the major novel of which Return to Isis is a foretaste.
—Infinity Plus
The Legend of Rah and the Muggles
by N.K. Stouffer
Thurman House, 267 pages plus 12 pages colour illustrations, hardback, 2001; reissue of a book originally published in 1984
By all rights, this review should be littered with instances of the letters "TM" in superscript, just as is the front cover of The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, for Nancy Stouffer is the author who has created minor shockwaves in the book trade by poin
ting out that the name "Muggles", used by J.K. Rowling in her Harry Potter series, was previously used by Stouffer, who is also the author of a pre-existing series of books for the very young based on the character Larry Potter. Moreover, Stouffer's illustrations of Larry Potter bear a very considerable resemblance to the depictions of Harry Potter on the covers of the Rowling books. The response of the book trade to Stouffer's objections, in the USA at least, has been a courageous unofficial boycott of Stouffer's books and a stolid silence on the whole matter: nothing must threaten the Harry Potter cash-cow.
Leaving the Larry/Harry Potter dispute aside, the Muggles of this book bear no resemblance beyond the name to Rowling's. Instead, they are the mutant descendants – bald, huge-headed, small, childish – of the people left behind in the island nation of Aura, many generations ago, when the wealthy deserted it and them in the wake of a nuclear war. Since that time Aura has been covered with a purple haze through which sunlight can barely trickle but moonlight, paradoxically, can pass undimmed.
All this changes with the arrival on the shore of Aura of two baby twin brothers aboard a makeshift raft; they were cast adrift by their mother, as per Superman by his parents during the destruction of the planet Krypton, when she saw that her own country was plunging into an all-destroying war. Aboard the raft along with the twins is a magical illuminating stone, which brings sunlight back to Aura.
The two brothers, Rah and Zyn, are nurtured by the Muggles. Although identical in every respect to begin with, their personalities come to differ radically: Rah grows up good and wise while Zyn grows up nasty and spiteful. The dispute between them is chronicled in the Muggles' ongoing Ancient Book of Tales, upon whose account the current volume is purportedly based.
Illustrated with a central clutch of Stouffer's own rather jolly colour illustrations, The Legend of Rah and the Muggles is a much shorter book than the page-count above might suggest: the type is extremely large and the page margins likewise. It is also a very badly published book; clearly Thurman House does not believe in quaint customs like editing, copy-editing and proofreading (I liked the idea of a bright star "shinning" in the sky, and especially approved of the term "dinning room"). The text reads as if it's a somewhat inaccurate transcript of an oral presentation, complete with shifts of tense (between past and present) and countless typographical and grammatical errors – a few spelling errors, too. Furthermore, this being a fantasy for young children, someone should have pointed out to Stouffer the meaning of the word "bugger", which she uses frequently and clearly regards as innocuous.
Delivered as an oral presentation for children, this tale, which comes complete with songs (the music for one of which is supplied at the back), would one imagines be tremendous fun; it is easy to envisage a youthful audience falling around with laughter at some of the jokes, for example, while the ramshackle nature of the plot wouldn't be evident – or, at least, it wouldn't be important – in a spoken, necessarily episodic telling. As a printed novel the text doesn't work nearly so well; most of the jokes just referred to fall flat when rendered in type. In their place are moments of humour that are certainly not deliberate, such as the Monty Pythonesque legend drawn from The Ancient Book of Tales about The Year of the Rabbits:
And so it was that the rabbits with protruding teeth lost their gentleness and ravaged the continent... .
Likewise, some of the early scenes, set in the castle where the noble Lady Catherine decides the only hope for her twin babies is to consign them to the mercy of the seas aboard a raft, smack considerably of Daisy Ashford's The Young Visitors (1919). Lady Catherine, although heartbroken over the death of her beloved husband Sir Geophrey (sic), nevertheless immediately starts flirting audaciously with her butler, with a strong suggestion that onstage flirting is likely to be matched by offstage naughtiness Real Soon Now, if it hasn't started already:
"Sir, there is no woman in this room that wouldn't trade dance partners with me right now; I'm not about to give them the chance. If that makes me wicked – so be it!" she said with a poor attempt at a Shakespearean delivery, and they both laughed.
Stouffer has not fully realized her fantasy world. Aside from the curiosity, already mentioned, of moonlight being able to penetrate where sunlight cannot, there are items such as the Muggles managing to grow fruit and vegetables in a sunless land. In the same context, the traditional Muggle songs make reference to such events as dawn, which the Muggles could not have experienced before the arrival of the twins; also mentioned in a song is the "star that's shinning bright", even though the very existence of stars, brightly shinning or otherwise, must be unknown to the Muggles. There are countless other such lapses.
Nevertheless, Stouffer's achievement in conceiving the fantasy shouldn't be underestimated. Although The Legend of Rah and the Muggles doesn't bear up well in any comparison with Tove Jansson's Moomins series, of which it is in some ways reminiscent, it has its excellent moments. I was much taken, for example, with the Greeblies, creatures amply worthy of inclusion – and this is high praise indeed! – in the ecology of Rene Laloux's animated movie Fantastic Planet (La planète sauvage, 1973):
Greeblies are fat ratlike rodents that live in Sticky Icky Swamp and often hide beneath boulders. They are nocturnal little pests with faces that resemble rabbits', and their large round ears curl slightly forward at the top. Their bodies are covered with gray coarse hair with black tips that look like they were dipped in ink.
Greeblies have short legs, but they can jump five feet in the air from a sitting position. Their long, coiled tails are used to quickly grab and snatch anything of interest to them, before being seen.
They have been known to grab hold of Muggle legs from behind and drag them frantically for yards and yards, before letting them go. Most often their goal is to steal food or raid the garbage.
Only two things frighten Greeblies: sand dogs called Nardles, and getting caught in a trap set by the Muggles – who would more than likely use them as dinner for their pet Nardles.
Nardles live in burrows along the shoreline, and Greeblies won't go near them. Even though the Greeblies are difficult to see, the Nardles can smell them a mile away.
It is at times like this, when Stouffer's imagination just suddenly lifts off the ground and carries her to who knows where, that The Legend of Rah and the Muggles is at its best. Given a thorough edit, this book could be much recommended; as it stands, however, the best that can be said is that The Legend of Rah and the Muggles is worth picking up primarily for its curiosity value and, of course, for its occasional delicious flights of fancy.
—Infinity Plus
Blade of Tyshalle
by Matthew Stover
Del Rey, 725 pages, paperback, 2001
There are ways to raise a reviewer's spirits, but putting in front of him a book that has 725 large pages covered in smallish print is perhaps not one of them – even if the book in question has a Dave McKean cover and is very nicely produced.
However ...
This long novel seems undecided as to whether it should be a science fantasy or a horror novel of that variety which horror devotees call "visceral". As a science fantasy it has a fair amount of interest; from such a viewpoint, it is marred by the copious bucketloads of grue that Stover feels constrained to tip onto the page at fairly frequent intervals.
In a not-so-distant future the Earth is ruled by multinational conglomerates, governments (and democracy) having fallen by the Darwinian wayside in the aftermath of cataclysm. One of the most powerful of these conglomerates is the Studio, whose business is entertainment of the masses through "second-handing", a kind of ultimate virtual-reality trip whereby the audience can vicariously experience the generally violent adventures of heroes, or Actors. So far this is all pretty standard stuff, of course; what is interesting is that those doughties perform their mighty deeds in a sort of alternate reality where magic works, the Overworld, which we can regard as a reified gameworld – as if all the RPGs ever invented had coalesced and su
bstantiated. This notion that created realities can be brought into existence has of course been treated before – Ralph Bakshi's 1992 animation Cool World is an obvious example – but Stover, although he does not fully explore or indeed explain it, handles it nicely.
Unfortunately, an inevitable consequence of the Overworld having this nature is that Stover's attempts at world-building are scuppered from the outset – it's by definition a generic venue, so new territories and peoples (elves, sorcerers, goblins, etc.) can be called into play at will, thereby destroying the coherence of the overall vision. But that is not too important, because Stover's focus is on the foreground – on the mighty deeds themselves, not their backdrops – so in a sense it's actually helpful that there's so little distraction from the world beyond them.
His world-building of the future Earth is much more interesting, and effective enough. The philosophy of that world is depressing; the fact that it is embraced by the character who is intended to be our hero, Caine (see below), is perhaps even more so:
There's only really two things about a man that matter: what he wants, and what he'll do to get it. Everythin' else we pretend is important – whether you're tough, or good-lookin', smart, stupid, honorable, whatever – that's just details.
Again, that is not an original philosophy; it is likewise not original to observe that this way lies the abyss. So much Stover implicity recognizes in his depiction of a future human society that is excruciatingly unpleasant – caste-ridden, with the lower castes being used as cattle by the higher ones, and ever liable to be murdered by them, with somewhat less compunction than cattle are sent to the abattoir. Oops: I shouldn't have said "murdered". I meant: legally slaughtered, on the slightest whim of the commercial aristocracy, by the faceless Social Police, who are like Judge Dredd but not so vivacious.
