My ears listen to a story much, much worse than one lost baby.
“Terrible events found your world,” he says. “Some disasters were too large to ignore, but the more dangerous events were tiny and unobserved. Humanity in its glory was responsible for most of the trouble, and I don’t know very much. About the history, I mean. But that kind of knowledge wouldn’t help. Since I would probably try to heal what was wrong in your nature. In the human animal. And that would make my work even less possible than it is already.”
I have never been more confused, but I nod just the same. “You’re some kind of historian,” I say.
“No.”
“And a machine,” I say.
Again, he says, “No.”
Which gets me angry enough to stand and do the only thing that I can manage just now. I put on last night’s shirt, just the shirt, smelling my sweat and a spilled drink and him too.
“A machine has a physical existence,” he says. “I lack that quality.”
I nod again. A nod implies that you understand, which can be another kind of lie.
“The world was afraid of dying,” he says.
“Who isn’t?” I ask.
He laughs in the saddest way.
I say nothing else.
“Fear,” he says. “That’s why the world built a system of elaborate instructions. Not machines because machines break. But commands. Commands existing outside the shells of any device or frail animal.”
“So you’re a bunch of commands?” I ask.
“Wrapped around contingencies, yes. In case of the ultimate disaster, my duty is to find what survives and remake the world to the best of my modest abilities.”
Taken alone, each word is understandable.
Together, they make me feel stupid. And scared. But then as I think hard about what he has said and what I feel, what I know and feel and instinctively want to believe, hope reveals itself.
“So I survived,” I say.
The subject is difficult. And not just for me, plainly.
“And you built all of this,” I guess, pointing at the room around us.
“From your memories, yes.”
I don’t like the pictures on the walls. That’s my first and biggest thought, hearing that news.
“Survival is measured along a continuum,” he continues. “And I’m sorry to report that most of you is missing.”
“Most of humanity too?”
He winces.
“And our planet?”
“I’m talking only about you,” he says.
“I’m not all here,” I say.
“You’re complete in the sense that I found everything that can be found,” he says.
“Oh, that explains that,” I say.
He watches my face, waiting.
“I’m not the shittiest mother ever,” I point out. “It’s just that the memory has been stolen too.”
He sighs, and his face changes again, beginning to resemble that gorgeous, angry husband.
“Who else is there?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond.
“When do I get to meet the other survivors?”
His expression says everything.
I am the only one.
We sit for another hour, nearly. The living are being as quiet as the dead.
In the end, I say, “Well,” and pull off the dirty shirt. “I guess it’s lucky you found this much.”
He starts to weep, obviously overwhelmed by his mission.
But I’m not sad. Not a little bit. All at once, I start to laugh, saying, “Okay, this is how we’ll do it.”
“How we will do what?” he asks.
I pick up his hand. “Rebuild everything.”
“Everything,” he repeats, doubtful as hell.
I put one of his fingers into my mouth, sucking at the strange taste of it and then biting down hard.
He pulls away.
And I’m laughing, and not quietly laughing, saying, “But we’ll begin with you, not with me. Because you’re the better one between us. And I have a good feeling about your nature.”
***
Robert Reed has published eleven novels and over two hundred stories. He won his first Hugo Award for the 2006 novella ‘A Billion Eves’. His most recent book is the The Memory of Sky (Prime Books, 2014).
BOOK ZONE
THE CURIOUS AFFAIR OF THE SOMNAMBULIST AND THE PSYCHIC THIEF
Lisa Tuttle
plus author interview
EXTINCTION
Kazuaki Takano
CHILDREN OF EARTH AND SKY
Guy Gavriel Kay
NOT SO MUCH, SAID THE CAT
Michael Swanwick
INTO EVERYWHERE
Paul McAuley
THE WINGED HISTORIES
Sofia Samatar
TWO YEARS EIGHT MONTHS AND TWENTY-EIGHT NIGHTS
Salman Rushdie
WORLD OF WATER
James Lovegrove
HUNTERS & COLLECTORS
M. Suddain
LISA TUTTLE: WALKING THROUGH DREAMS
REVIEW & INTERVIEW BY JULIET E. McKENNA
THE CURIOUS AFFAIR OF THE SOMNAMBULIST AND THE PSYCHIC THIEF
Lisa Tuttle
Jo Fletcher Books tpb, 416pp, £14.99
Victorian and Edwardian fiction currently inspires a range of fiction from Sherlockiana to Steampunk. So it’s an increasing challenge for writers to come up with something distinctive. Then there are the complexities of rooting a story in an era of such different values, assumptions and prejudices. Creating characters who are true to their time while still comprehensible and appealing to modern readers really isn’t easy. That Lisa Tuttle does all this with such seemingly effortless ease is a testament to her skill and experience.
Miss Lane has been a lady companion to a noted Psychical Society researcher, investigating fraudulent spiritualists. In June 1893 they have parted ways and as a single woman without independent means, her position is precarious. Scanning the advertisements, she sees a consulting detective requires an assistant. Surely her research experience has honed the necessary skills in observation and memory? Surely she’s about to become a female Watson to some quasi-Holmes? Not so, as Tuttle swiftly makes clear.
Politely acknowledging Conan Doyle, she draws on an array of other period sources to create Jasper Jesperson whose upbringing travelling the world has given him an array of practical and eccentric skills from martial arts to climbing drainpipes. This makes him very well suited to detective work – and precious little else. His mother’s struggles with the mundane demands of rent and bills effectively counter any inclination to see him as a romantic hero. Better yet, Jesperson’s acknowledgement of his debts to her make him a far more rounded and interesting figure than many of his literary forebears.
Male partner notwithstanding, this remains Miss Lane’s tale. Enquiries into a case of somnambulism are advanced through her insights based on a woman’s knowledge of servants and of social tensions. She also brings in work through her Psychical Society contacts, though not without qualms when this means dealing with her former employer, the glamorous and unscrupulous Gabrielle Fox. But personal concerns must be set aside when she learns several men and women famed for psychic powers have mysteriously vanished. There’s soon good reason for grave concern.
Tuttle has a deft touch with narrative summary to keep the plot moving smoothly along, combined with vividly detailed encounters and conversations that draw the reader in deep. This definitely keeps the pages turning. She evokes the world of Victorian séances and mediums with an assurance that indicates the research solidly underpinning this story without ever overburdening the reader with exposition. However bizarre acceptance of such things may be to modern eyes, she also manages to make this seem perfectly rational. And this is far more than a simple tale of frauds deceiving the gullible. As the various plot strands intertwine, twists wrong-foot the reader as Tuttle uses our expectations and assumptions against us; of such mystery stories and
of such characters. She also uses the practicalities and technology of the period to good effect. Don’t assume any detail is merely set-dressing.
Miss Lane remains resolutely and engagingly matter of fact throughout, in the face of the dangerously irrational, and when facing genuine peril. This is not to say she remains unshaken. Neither Jesperson and Lane emerge unchanged at the end of this story. This adds an intriguing extra dimension to what I fervently hope will become a lengthy series of ongoing adventures.
Victorian inspired fiction is currently very popular. What drew you to the era, and what inspired this story?
I’ve always been attracted to the period prior to the First World War, from the 1890s right through to 1914. It mainly stems from my childhood reading, and early love for writers such as E. Nesbit, Conan Doyle, Saki, Robert Louis Stevenson and more. My father had a lot of older books he’d inherited; a crimson-backed set of the collected works of E.W. Hornung, for instance. Although many were incomprehensible (or simply uninteresting), one I remember fondly is An Amateur Cracksman – the criminal adventures of the society thief (and cricketer) A.J. Raffles and his pal Bunny. (A man called Bunny. That was even weirder in mid-twentieth century Texas than ‘A Boy Named Sue’.)
Another reason, more adult/intellectual, is the feeling that WWI was this great dividing line chopping us off from the world that had been, with all its hope and potential, its visions of the future, the new discoveries, opportunities, inventions and excitements, and determining a duller more prosaic world for the rest of the 20th century. So that turn of the century, the decade before and after, is in my imagination a lost golden age.
This particular story began with Miss Lane. Years ago, I came across a word that was new to me: deodand. The definition immediately gave me an idea for a short story but I didn’t know how to tell it. It was just an idea…and it was the revealing of the idea that would comprise the story. At some point it occurred to me that this is the natural format of the detective story. But who was the detective? Then I heard her voice and glimpsed her slight figure standing before a looking-glass as she adjusted the pins in her hair and made certain she looked respectable before going out to investigate…so I wrote ‘The Curious Affair of the Deodand’. As I wrote, I learned more and more about Miss Lane and her partner in detection, Mr Jasper Jesperson – far more than I could fit into that one story. Even before I finished it I knew I wanted to write more adventures for Jesperson and Lane. Originally I envisioned a series of short stories, but even the first story was over 10,000 words, and the second (‘The Curious Affair of the Dead Wives’) turned out to be over 15,000. I realised that unlike the horror story, which I think works best at shorter lengths, a mystery may need more space to unfold. I have just finished writing the second ‘Curious Affair’ novel, The Curious Affair of the Shrieking Pits.
You acknowledge Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s influence early on before taking this book down your own, original path. What did you read to round out your understanding of that era?
Too many books to name! A few that come to mind are Constance by Franny Moyle, a biography of Oscar Wilde’s wife, and although it is a novel, The Story of a Modern Woman by Ella Hepworth Dixon (1894) is particularly good on the difficulties faced by women struggling to survive and support themselves. I could not do without my Baedeker’s Guide to Great Britain 1890, and Baedeker’s Guide: London and Its Environs 1900. Thirty Years of Psychical Research by Charles Richet, Ph.D. (1923) gives great insight into the mind-set of scientists who believed they had a thoroughly scientific, rational approach to their investigations into spiritualism and psychic phenomena, as well as describing many mediums and séances from that era. And, just for fun, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis, a series of stories that originally appeared in 1893–94, published by Dover in 1986 with an excellent and informative introduction by my friend Michele Slung.
Why spiritualism? What does that offer you as a writer?
I’ve been fascinated by the subject, and the whole subculture around it, for a long time. It probably goes back to my teens, when I was drawn to all things occult, strange, supernatural and psychic…although with a very sceptical, rational outlook suitable to the science fiction reader I was, rather than as someone yearning to believe. I wanted proof and I wanted explanations for the things that people told supposedly true stories about (haunted houses, telepathy, precognitive dreams, etc). I had a group of like-minded friends from school and the Houston Science Fiction Society, and we went on ghost hunts and used the Ouija board and even indulged in a bit of table-tipping and other attempts to contact ‘spirits’. It sometimes feels to me now that the 1960s were quite a lot like the 1890s in that one respect…although perhaps even the scientists then were a bit more gullible and eager to believe than my gang? There is also a lot to be said about the powers and position spiritualism offered to women at a time when society disempowered them, but I didn’t even manage to touch on that fascinating subject in this book. (For further reading, may I suggest The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England by Alex Owen or my own short story ‘Mr Elphinstone’s Hands’. Although, with typical perversity, far from empowering the main character, her brush with spiritualism ends up a trap…well, it is a horror story, after all.)
How well do you think sceptical modern readers can understand the Victorian mindset that was so ready to accept psychic phenomena?
You don’t really think people today are so much more rational and sceptical than their ancestors in late Victorian times? All those weird photos floating around on the internet? Even knowing how easy it is to photoshop stuff, people are positively aching to believe in Slender Man or that weird doll purchased on eBay, or ghostly figures appearing in empty rooms. The thing about spiritualism was that it was supposed to be scientific, and results were ‘proven’ rather than taken on faith – although of course it was also a religion that I believe survives to this day.
Do you consider yourself primarily a short story writer or a novelist?
I began as a short story writer, and for a long time that is what I was. But I have adapted and changed. I no longer feel that I am naturally a short story writer but neither am I only or mainly a novelist. It’s horses for courses. Some ideas are best expressed briefly, others require more expansive treatment, and in recent years I find myself having more ideas that I think need to be explored at length. I probably have more ideas for novels than I have the time to write them, but maybe not as many good short story ideas these days, so maybe I have finally turned into a novelist who also writes short stories.
What advice would you give someone starting out now and hoping to make a living out of writing?
I would probably say “Isn’t there something else you want to do? Are you sure?” Write if you must, but don’t expect to make a living out of it, unless you can get into TV or movies. Even then, although the pay is much better, there are no guarantees you will be able to continue to sell your work. Look at the surveys done by the Society of Authors about how much the average full-time writer can expect to make in a year, and ask yourself if you could live on that, and for how long, and do you think you could stay positive and not become embittered by the struggle? I keep thinking there must be new ways of making money as a writer, but despite all the hopeful talk about writing for internet sites and new forms of patronage, it doesn’t look terribly hopeful to me. I hope I am wrong because the world still needs storytellers and novelists and writers and artists and creators of all kinds, and if they (we) are not rewarded for their (our) work, how can it continue?
You studied English Literature at university and worked as a journalist. Which have you found more useful?
Working as a journalist is good for craft and discipline, learning to write to deadlines, to edit, to cut out the unnecessary and to accept editing instead of being too precious about your precious work. My degree in English – well, that is what I got in the end, but for much of my time I wa
s tending towards a major in Anthropology, so I probably took as many anthro courses as I did English. I also took as many linguistics courses as I could and wish I could have done more in that direction. I think I took away more from the anthropology and linguistics courses than I did from the literature courses. My advice generally for anyone wanting to write is to study something other than literature at university. Read as much as you possibly can, and a course or two in critical theory or close study of writing would not go amiss, but better for the fiction writer to know something else, something more about the world, about history or economics or neuroscience.
EXTINCTION
Kazuaki Takano
Mulholland Books pb, 512pp, £8.99
Jack Deighton
Jonathan Yeager has just finished a tour working for a private defence contractor, protecting VIPs visiting Baghdad when he is recruited for a secret mission in Africa. Operation Guardian is to seek out and kill a group who may be infected by a deadly virus, but its members are also given the strange instruction to kill on sight a “living creature you’ve never seen before”.
Kento Koga is a pharmaceutical research worker whose father, a virologist, has just died. He receives an email from his dead father asking him to look in a certain book. In there he finds an ATM card and a memo informing him about a hidden laptop of which he is never to relinquish control, an address to go to and to expect all his communications to be monitored. The building contains equipment for carrying out Organic Chemistry reactions and he is tasked with researching and synthesising an agonist for a mutant form of the protein GPR769, to be completed within one month.
Unfortunately the prologue, which describes a meeting in the White House, dissipates any sense of mystery about the reasons for Operation Guardian as it reveals the existence of a new life form (an evolved human, or more precisely a Pygmy born into the Kanga band of Mbuti). This may lead to the extinction of the human race and is of course seen as a threat to the US. The President here is named as Gregor S. Burns but reads as an extremely thinly disguised version of George W. Bush, as he ordered an invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and declared victory before the war was won. The US security apparatus is also concerned about leaks to human rights organisations concerning extraordinary rendition (a procedure which Takano feels the need to explain at length). A secondary purpose of Operation Guardian is to kill the leaker, Warren Garrett, who wishes to intimidate President Burns into stopping rendition/torture by revealing the evidence to threaten him with a war crimes tribunal. We all know this could never really happen, and like the text’s attempts to soften Yeager and the other members of the operation is rather limp. These are killers after all.
Interzone #265 - July-August 2016 Page 13
