Harris’s Loki is indeed more man-child than mythic figure. He may be Wildfire, son of Chaos, but this daemon behaves more as though he is suffering from a mid-life crisis. He might as well be propping up a bar in the Middle World, whingeing about how he hates his wife, his mistresses don’t understand him, his children are running wild, and worst of all, his dad has it in for him so he won’t inherit the family firm, all the while eyeing the barmaid and hoping she’ll take pity on him.
Harris’s retelling is faithful in many ways to the original stories – all the familiar events are here, from the building of Asgard, through Odin’s acquisition of writing and magical objects, the humiliations of Thor, and the death of Baldur. Yet somewhere along the line, Your Humble Narrator has turned into the worst kind of pub bore, droning on relentlessly, while myth becomes second-rate soap opera. There is little variation here: Loki describes all events in much the same tone. There are no moments of grandeur – not even in the fall of Asgard – or of pathos, though Sigyn’s protection of Loki, chained while a snake sprays venom into his eyes, momentarily touches the heart, though one does want to lean in and say ‘leave him, Sigyn, he ain’t worth it’.
It may be that every generation gets the reworking of Norse myths that it most deserves. Harris’s reworking is perfectly competent but to my mind bland: all surface, no depth, like a coat of magnolia paint in a rented property. Myths persist, surely, because of their continuing power to move the reader or listener yet Harris’s version offers stories that have been somehow denatured. Loki provides a smoothly commercial account that reeks of mythic suburbia rather than epic grandeur. For all he may chafe at the situation in which he finds himself, it is Loki who told us this story in the first place. And Loki, it seems, has no imagination.
EMPRESS OF THE SUN: EVERNESS BOOK III
IAN MCDONALD
Jo Fletcher Books hb, 389pp, £20.00
reviewed by Duncan Lunan
Empress of the Sun is the third of a series of young adult novels, set in a series of alternative worlds – which puts the reviewer new to the canon at something of a disadvantage. There are an infinite number of alternative worlds, but hitherto only ten of them have been accessible to ours. The novel begins with the airship Everness emerging over an eleventh, unexpectedly in a nosedive instead of level flight, and not pulling up sufficiently to escape becoming embedded in the treetops, with two engines pulled off and lying somewhere astern on the forest floor.
The teenage navigator who finds himself unpopular as a result is Everett Singh from Earth 10, whose preoccupation is to find his father Tejendra, missing somewhere Out There among the many worlds (not the other father who died on E1). But Everett too has his counterparts on the other worlds, and the one on E10 has to deal with the usual young adult issues of school days, the opposite sex, etc, with the additional burden of hidden weaponry to deal with an infestation of the self-replicating nanotech nasties which made E1 uninhabitable. So he has to keep his best mate, his girlfriend and his family from becoming targets without telling any of them what’s happening or why his behaviour has changed so much.
The alternative Earths have major differences between them but there’s an attempt at overall government called the Plenitude of Known Worlds. The technology of the nonhuman Thryn is everywhere, especially on E4, whose people “had not developed a technology or made a scientific discovery of their own in thirty years”; E2 has the fullest grip on what’s happening and the best of everything, E5 has Victoriana and five different varieties of humans, and E3 is a good compromise if you can live where you choose. E7 is a world of twins which has adapted most readily to an expanded reality of multiple worlds. On E2 Britain is apparently merged with Gibraltar, on E4 Michael Portillo is Prime Minister, E3 has no oil and E8 is “an ecological wreck with a runaway greenhouse effect”.
There are a lot of in-references. Terry Pratchett is explicitly cited, but in real life Hugh Everett was the originator of many-worlds theory, and Tejinder P. Singh is a prominent researcher in the field. Here the unique device which gives access to all possible worlds is called the Infundibulum, the word for a space-warp in The Sirens of Titan; Everett’s arch-enemy is Charlotte Villiers, sharing her surname with M’s assistant in the Bond canon, and her sidekick is called Zaitsev, after the real-life chief planetary scientist of the Soviet space programme. Everett’s featured counterpart is Everett M. Singh, not to be confused with Iain M. Banks, either. The all-devouring Nahn have a lot in common with the nanites of Stargate SG-1; and of course E3 has to have airships to go with the steampunk and Tesla’s electricity, but the airship’s captain is called Anastasia, like Dan Dare’s personal transport. When invasion comes, it focuses on London, not Washington, as if in honour of H.G. Wells. On E7 the land bridge between Europe and Britain still stands, as it does in Stephen Baxter’s Northland trilogy. Everett M.’s difficulties are very like the android’s in The Last Starfighter. But the school bullies whom he faces down are Jennings and Derbyshire, inescapably linked in my day to the public school fiction of Anthony Buckeridge; either you loved it or you hated it, and I’m glad to see them parodied at last.
But younger readers may not get these references, or may be amused to catch up with them later. The big idea of this novel is that the world of the Empress is the one where the Chicxulub impact never happened, and the dinosaurs’ descendants are in charge, with a culture of six ‘clades’ locked in rivalry and conflict. Yes, there are echoes of Harry Harrison’s Eden trilogy…but their 65-million-year lead on us is in physics, not biotechnology, and they’ve cannibalised the planets of their Solar System to create an Alderson Disc, a filled-in Ringworld like a giant DVD with the sun in the middle (hence the airship crash at the beginning). The sheer scale of the thing, the multiplicity of life it supports and the alienness of rulers who could destroy it for purely personal gain, make the threat that the winners pose to the Earths of the Plenitude truly chilling. For adult readers that may not sit too easily with the in-jokes and the girlfriend problems, but we are not the target audience, who will probably enjoy it all.
NEWS FROM UNKNOWN COUNTRIES
TIM LEES
Amazon Media ebook, 240pp, £3.21
reviewed by Matthew S. Dent
I’m reliably informed that this is the first self-published book which Interzone has reviewed. So no pressure then… Tim Lees is very well known to readers of TTA publications. His short story ‘Unknown Cities of America’ featured in issue #249 – of the others in the collection, three each appeared in Interzone and Black Static, and two in The Third Alternative. When he sent me the collection, Tim said that he saw e-publishing as the future, and viewed this as a sort of experiment. So at least I’m not the only one sailing boldly into the unknown here.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘Unknown Cities of America’ doesn’t itself feature in this collection, but thirteen other tales do.
Opening story ‘Grumps’ starts the collection in exactly the way that a collection of short stories should begin: punchy, creative, and filled to the brim with often-troubling ideas. Narrative-wise, it consists of an inter-dimensional exploratory mission to meet God, turning into a grotesque theological arms race with a form of life beyond anything imaginable. It takes the classic nature of god philosophising, and twists it with levels of what-if to bring it to a dark conclusion.
‘Two Moon City’, on the other hand, is a different beast, painting a picture of a colonised Martian landscape which put me in mind of John Carter of Mars. The harsh landscape and society is rendered beautifully, and the indulgent world-building is tempered with a gentle plot which leads the reader through. It feels, though, like there is a lot more to tell of this world, if Lees so wished.
‘Homeground’ is, at first glance, a rather quaint story about aliens visiting a small town. Which it absolutely is. But it captures the realities of such a happening, the way that the weird can simultaneously be humdrum. The interplay of local politics with an alien spacecraft as a visitor attraction rings
depressingly true, and the simmering frustration of the main character at the interference of trivia with both life and big picture ideals is understandable. It’s an understated story, with a power of its own. Greedy, officious men and women toting easy answers and get-rich-quick schemes would – unfortunately – of course be drawn to an alien landing site.
One of the Black Static offerings, ‘Cuckoos’ was a story I loved when I read its first appearance. Nestled here amongst its siblings, I found I enjoyed it even more. Or perhaps that isn’t the right word. Because as with ‘Grumps’, it’s a resonatingly dark story, this time emphasised by its sheer plausibility. A totalitarian regime takes power during a possibly alien incursion, only to be less than willing to surrender it once the danger has ostensibly passed. The personalisation of it all will make this story chillingly real to anyone with the slightest knowledge of history.
Continuing on what seems like a fascination with odd alien arrivals, ‘The Corner of the Circle’ envisions a world where extra-terrestrials are an established – if mysterious – part of life. It is a growing-up story, focused on the main character’s encounters with an eccentric aunt, who claims to be pregnant by her alien lover. As with some of the other stories in the collection, it does an excellent job of putting the absurd next to the everyday, and this story is pregnant with meaning – no pun intended. We see a part of the main character’s story, with events and motives hinted at, but the focus all the while remains on the oddity of the aunt. As much as anything, it is a masterful demonstration of storytelling.
The final story, ‘From the House Committee’, takes us to an alternate 1950s, with a world beset by monsters and Bobby Kennedy (along with Joe, Jack, and even Tricky Dicky) the only hope. Or maybe not; maybe God is simply winding down to die, and the world with it. It seeps with culture and mystery, and the yawning maw of complete lack of understanding.
Lees is an excellent writer, and these stories stand testament to that talent. It is easy to delve into the fantastical, the endlessly odd. What makes it all the more moving, all the more relevant, is for a story to keep a foot firmly planted in reality. If those fantastical elements have a grounding in the everyday lives of readers, how much more significant it makes them.
Lees moulds ideas and stories together, in a fusion of entertainment and speculation which opens a wider world for the sheer, joyous fun of it.
THE BLACK DOG EATS THE CITY
CHRIS KELSO
Omnium Gatherum pb, 156pp, $12.99
reviewed by Jim Steel
Happy birthday, Interzone. One hundred years old, eh? You’re looking good.
Of course, lonesome cowboy Bill Burroughs didn’t get around to publishing much until he hit middle age, which puts Chris Kelso way ahead of him in that respect at least. Kelso’s Ersatz is a city that uses the same architects as Interzone. The exact location is unclear but it has a mid-Atlantic twang that will be familiar to those of us who grew up with Mega City 3. Other antecedents include Disch’s 334 and some of the darker alleyways of John Shirley. We are not looking at Utopia.
Kelso is an exponent of Bizarro fiction, a sub-genre that behaves exactly as you would expect from its name. He’s more restrained than some of its practitioners and is a finer writer than most of them, although this will tell you little if you are new to it. It’s a zestful, taboo-baiting genre, with a swagger that hasn’t been seen since the high noon of cyberpunk, and one suspects that any commercial appreciation it acquires will be the ruin of it. However, the better writers will survive it and many will move beyond it.
The Black Dog of the title is a crushing contagion that goes far beyond the usual forms of depression. It is so bleak that it drives the sufferers mad. This also means that the Black Dog can become a real demon in this non-subjective world. Some characters, Kricfalusi and the rapist-dentist Baby Guts for example, flee, while others, such as Lester Proctor, search for a cure. Still others try and quarantine themselves in the spaceship-like Hollow Earth. Most, as people do, carry on their lives as best they can. They search for sex, confusing it with love, and put up with unspeakable degradations in the office. However, a dark humour is never far from the surface, deflecting any thoughts of torture porn which is an accusation that can be thrown fairly at several practitioners of Bizarro. A droid/clone goes in search of an identical clone with little more in the way of expectation than the hope of avoiding rejection this time. He finds his clone. They are not physically compatible. Perhaps power tools can help.
Characters find time to discuss the short stories of Philip K. Dick and feminist readings of the Alien trilogy. It’s a strange setting for Socratic dialogue, but there is validity in some of the arguments. Some of the characters, such as Fairfax the writer, are fully-rounded creations and reveal much more of the human condition than some of the one-dimension monsters that the reader also meets in the course of the book. As you are probably starting to gather, Kelso covers a lot of ground in this short novel. He also experiments with style. Modernism, poetry, script writing, graphic novelty, different column layouts; they all get a shot on the page. To Kelso’s credit, it generally works; although some of the dialogue is clunky, he rarely overwrites. However, there is no textual need for this. Form and content remain disconnected. It’s a bit like being handed a silver spoon with your glass of wine: very pretty, but why?
As the novel progresses, the passages start to stretch and this allows the reader to catch his breath. This also suggests an approach to outlining a novel that, if one is being generous, one might say leaned towards spontaneity. But it is certainly structured and plotted – by way of contrast, Burroughs, much of the time, relied merely on pyrotechnics to push us through the pages. Postmodernism also appears when the Mainstream enters as a villain – much more dangerous than the demon Black Dog, of course. Welcome back, Po-Mo – we’ve missed you!
The Black Dog Eats The City is a fast and easy read, despite any impression to the contrary that I may have given. There are certainly some rough edges, but not too many. It’s great fun. Kelso is committed to his craft and has already had several books published. Stylistically he resembles, at times, a rawer Hal Duncan (the pair of them have already collaborated on an anthology, although Kelso is showing signs of being the more prolific of the two). He will keep on getting better and someday soon people are going to be naming him as one of their own influences. He’s worth checking out.
THE ARROWS OF TIME
GREG EGAN
Gollancz tpb, 432pp, £12.99
reviewed by John Howard
The Arrows of Time is the third book of Orthogonal, following on from The Clockwork Rocket and The Eternal Flame. Orthogonal is a three-volume novel rather than a trilogy. Egan created a radically different sort of universe, going out of his way not to anthropomorphise these particular inhabitants beyond the demands of authorial communication with readers: the demands of fiction written by a human for other humans having to use their words to express and describe what would go on in any universe. Egan takes his creations for granted, and gives matter-of-fact aids and hooks upon which to hang what has to be. For example, they hum and chirp and buzz, have ‘rear vision’, and can rearrange their bodies to a considerable extent. Reproduction and family life, too, are suitably ‘alien’ (to us) yet of course natural (for them). They are not unalterable. Part of the ongoing conflict is over whether the advances really are advances or, instead, are causing the removal of another chunk from the foundations of institutions that have served society well, even if at a great cost to individuals.
In the beginning the home world was coming under increasing threat from Hurtlers – meteors that would probably, in due course, destroy the planet before science had advanced far enough for a solution to be discovered. Rather than merely wait, it was decided to construct a generation spaceship, Peerless (actually a whole mountain, tunnelled-out and adapted). This spaceship would be sent on a voyage of development, thus creating enough time for a solution to be found and brought back home – all with
in the lifetimes of the population at home, and hopefully long before any catastrophe.
This is possible because Egan’s universe plays to different rules. The Orthogonal universe follows laws based on the work of Georg Bernhard Riemann (1826–66). Egan invaluably explains the setup and implications on his website (gregegan.net). In a Riemannian universe “all the dimensions are treated as fundamentally the same. In contrast, in the Lorentzian space-time of our own universe, one of the dimensions, time, is singled out for special treatment.” This means light has no constant speed (so stars are seen as streaks rather than points). The properties of ordinary matter can be traumatic. Time need not only run in one direction: its arrows can fly in from the future as well as out of the past. And for a generation starship travelling at sufficient speed, time will pass at a much faster rate on board than outside (put that copy of Tau Zero back on the shelf: it’s not wanted on this voyage).
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