To be fair, he didn’t last long.
What purposes and possibilities are unlocked by the archaistic thread in Annihilation? Is the (New?) New Weird stuck in the past, or can it come back from the early part of the Twentieth Century with something necessary to our present moment?
So one of Annihilation’s big themes, and one of its big mysteries, is what counts as coming back? The survivors of the mass conscriptions of the First World War – those survivors who were not just psychologically damaged, in some way intelligible under the existing social order, but carried spores of an entirely new social order – did they ‘come back’? It’s a trilogy, so there may be more answers ahead. There will definitely be more mysteries.
* * *
THE BURNING DARK
Adam Christopher
Titan Books pb, 372pp, £7.99
Paul F. Cockburn
It’s the future, obviously. We’re sufficiently ahead of the 21st century for humans to have discovered faster-than-light interstellar travel, and started fighting with sentient alien machines, referred to as “Spiders” (for regrettably all-too-obvious reasons). These Spiders are so big, by the way, that one of their Mother Ships can literally tear a planet apart with its “legs”, and it’s in such a situation we’re introduced to the novel’s main protagonist Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland – or Ida, to his few friends. By some rather unorthodox methods, he manages to destroy a Mother Spider as it attempts to destroy the planet Tau Retore, which leaves him with an injured knee, a medal and early retirement, with a final posting to a semi-deserted research space station, Coast City, which is in the process of being decommissioned and dismantled.
Here we’re introduced to the novel’s other significant point-of-view character Psi-Sergeant Serra, who is among the small number of marines left as a skeleton crew on Coast City largely kicking their heals until the final transport ship arrives to take them somewhere more exciting. But she’s hearing voices, sensing a presence that disturbs her, and increasingly concerned about the mental well-being of her lover, former Black Ops marine Carter. To add to their isolation, the rare star which the station was originally set up to observe and investigate (the light from which turns black space purple, for example, and fries technology and human brains sooner or later) is also interfering with Fleet communications. In short: they’re isolated in the back end of beyond, doing nothing of much value, and no one likes it.
In a standard military science fiction novel you might expect the Spiders to turn up in force, but Christopher has other ideas: here, he uses that sub-genre’s familiar furniture to present a psychological horror story. At the heart of this is Ida, who begins to sense a conspiracy in the Fleet, not least when he learns that his actions at Tau Retore have not officially been recorded, and his fellow officers from the sortie have been scattered to equally far-distant and obscure postings – almost as if something is being covered up. But with communications out, he can do nothing, so, to take his mind of his woes, Ida builds an old fashioned radio – radio having long been overtaken by lightspeed communications. This proves to be significant: he picks up a radio message from a seemingly long-dead woman that’s somehow echoed, via the forbidden frequencies of subspace, to a space station millions of light years away from Earth, a trigger for events that will put Ida, Serra and the rest of the humans on the half-dismantled station in all-too-real danger.
There’s a lot which is wonderfully solid and familiar about Adam Christopher’s military space opera cum ghost story. In terms of structure, the novel is as solidly written as the modules which his space marines use to build their spaceships and stations. It is, on occasions, genuinely claustrophobic. There are some truly memorable images. And, of course, the novel offers readers several characters of real depth and emotional complexity – Ida, in particular, is someone you come to care about, even if on occasions you also want to punch him in the face for being so self-absorbed. (And you even, eventually, feel sorry for the one guy who does.)
Yet, despite starting with a warp-filled space battle, The Burning Dark is also something of a slow-burner: sometimes it’s only a growing sense of ‘something being wrong’ that pulls you through what appear to be otherwise innocuous, plot-setting scenes. Which is problematic, as it means you can get distracted, not least by those moments when a brief point-of-view character is given information well before the reader in an all-too-obvious – and frustrating – authorial attempt to generate mystery and suspense. Also, can any science fiction writer nowadays seriously expect to get away with creating a human future without in some way recognising the personal and societal consequences of social media, even in what is obviously a very military-focused book like this?
Thankfully the novel’s momentum builds somewhat in the last quarter, towards a climax that’s clearly intended to draw you in for the next novel in the series, and for many readers it will certainly do so. For me though, despite being genuinely creepy, it lacked that knockout punch I was hoping for.
* * *
DESCENT
Ken MacLeod
Orbit hb, 416pp, £19.99
Paul Kincaid
Ken MacLeod is a son of the manse, or at least he is the son of a minister in the Free Presbyterian Kirk. He is also a graduate of the innumerable turf wars that have interminably affected the different sects of the political left. He is, therefore, thoroughly familiar with belief in all of its aspects. And Descent is, above all, a novel about belief.
Oh it pretends to be a novel about UFOs (more convincingly in some places than in others), but the whole paraphernalia surrounding unidentified flying objects, from lights in the sky to alien Greys to abductions and sexual probes and Men In Black, is just one more iteration of our need to believe. It matters not one jot whether any of these belief systems might be true; in fact, if any of them could be shown to be true or false they would cease to be a matter of belief. The shadows of belief, however, have an incredibly powerful effect on the way we live our lives, and this is a novel that explores just such an effect.
It is not, it has to be said, one of the best novels MacLeod has written.
It opens with a fairly conventional account of a UFO experience. The conventionality is, of course, part of the point, yet it still feels that this could have been written with rather more engagement and originality than is on display here. It is only in the last third of the novel, when technological and political complexity are added to the mix, that the book really starts to command our attention. It is worth the wait, though, for in the end we encounter the rich mix of ideology and characterisation that are hallmarks of MacLeod’s work at its best.
We begin in the near future, immediately after some sort of political or economic revolution that has saved the world, though the imprecision of all of MacLeod’s references to this event add to a sense of woolliness throughout the book.
Ryan and his best friend Colum are nearing the end of their school careers in Greenock (is it just because the book is dedicated to Iain Banks that we see echoes of MacLeod and Banks in this relationship?), when a ball of light falls upon them from the sky. They come to some time later, dazed but otherwise unharmed, but Ryan, our narrator who seems very suggestible, is convinced that they had a close encounter with a UFO. This impression is confirmed a few days later when he has a strange visit from a creepy clergyman called James Baxter who has the classic appearance of a Man In Black.
Baxter reappears a few years later, again dressed as a clergyman, to have a long strange conversation with Ryan at his university, including giving him advice to study Divinity despite being an atheist. In fact the numerous discussions about religion are among the liveliest and most interesting scenes in the early part of the novel. More years pass, Ryan is now a science journalist, and Baxter appears for a third time, but now he is a charismatic right-wing politician who once worked for an aerospace company. At last, the story starts to come into focus, though there is still a little way to go before the whole enterprise really starts to take
off.
Part of the problem is that there is simply too much going on in the book, as if MacLeod was aware that the UFO plot was too conventional to sustain a novel and kept adding subplots to liven it up a bit.
Some of these, the relationship with Calum and his ancient family, the love affair with schoolfriend Sophie that never seems to get started, work very well; others, such as the notion that the human race is dividing into different species that cannot interbreed, seem to have wandered in from a completely different novel and don’t really seem to belong here. But it is only when the UFO story is pushed into the background to make way for a tale of ambiguous technological innovation and complex political machinations that the book really takes off.
As ever, MacLeod is at his best when describing moral ambiguity. This only emerges from the rather bland ufology setting late in the novel.
But when it does, all the belief systems we have seen in the novel are inverted, distorted, questioned, so what had seemed clear becomes confusing, and is all the better for it.
In the end, Descent is a novel worth reading, but you can’t help feeling it would have been much stronger if the ambiguities at the end of the novel had been there at the beginning.
* * *
TESSERACTS 17: SPECULATING CANADA FROM COAST TO COAST
edited by Colleen Anderson & Steve Vernon
Edge pb, 271pp, $16.95
Duncan Lunan
I feel some sympathy with the editors of Tesseracts 17. Twenty five years ago I was commissioned to edit a Scottish anthology. I wasn’t asked to provide a map as a frontispiece, but I have had to do it for a nonfiction book more recently. This book has a map of Canada by region, with no specific place-names, not even ones mentioned on the jacket. Reading through the book, it becomes apparent that it isn’t there to show the locations of the stories (one of which is set in Venice, and several not even on Earth) but instead the regional locations of the authors. Sure enough, in his afterword Steve Vernon reveals that the editors were charged with including a story from every province and territory of Canada. The huge variations in population density gave them problems: only one submission was received from Prince Edward Island, for example. Fortunately the poem from there, by J.J. Seinfeld, is a good one, with an allusion to ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, and recalling a similar one in a novel with a supernatural subplot which seriously scared me, a long time ago.
Without having seen the guidelines for submissions, I would guess that having a minimum number of stories to include caused the preferred lengths to be short. As a result, the more populous parts of Canada are represented by several stories each and there are twenty nine stories in all. Consequently, they tend to be short – often descriptions of situations, with something either unexpected or inevitable happening at the end, with little room for plot or character development. Without exception they are well written within those limitations, and therefore the book is a quick read, but the recurring format does tend to become repetitious.
There’s also a certain sameness of subject matter. One might suppose from this book that Canadian writers are heavily preoccupied by the supernatural, and have a gloomy view of it. The cheeriest thing about the book is the smiling ringmaster on the cover. As Colleen Anderson says in her introduction, the protagonists have a wide range of ages and occupations, and they have to face “Wendigo, werewolves, vampires and a host of reanimated dead, though not all of them zombies”, and that’s not to mention Rhea Rose’s carnivorous bedroom wall or Lisa Poh’s living graffiti. What all of those have in common is that they have it in for the living. So too the aliens of Dwaine Campbell’s ‘Hermione and Me’, but they come as a welcome exception, with a humorous storyline and an upbeat ending. Mark Leslie’s ‘Hereinafter Referred to as the Ghost’ allows its protagonist to stop scaring people and play a more positive role in retirement; but in Lisa Smedman’s ‘2020 Vision’, even the Church of Spock has turned murderous. I felt that the line that summed up the whole book was in the bio of Catherine Austen at the end of ‘Team Leader 2040’: “She is proud to be a Canadian and she hopes our future will not be as grim as the one she imagines.”
(The Wendigo is a nasty piece of work from Algonquin mythology, featured in ‘Blizzard Warning’ by Jason Barrett. When it changes shape this one seems to be part polar bear and part squid, which I found somewhat confusing.)
Like humour, SF is in short supply. ‘The Path of Souls’ by Edward Willett involves interstellar travel, but as the title implies its topic is life after death. William Meikle’s ‘In the Bubble’ is couched as an SF detective story, but its case of possession could just as well be the result of an incantation or a potion. ‘M.E.L.’ by Dianne Homan looked to be a space habitat story, and at first I thought it might rank with Bob Shaw’s ‘Small World’ (the best habitat story I’ve read), but it turns out to be allegorical, set on an actual planet which the settlers have sheathed in plastic. From The Word for World is Forest to Avatar to this, the message is always the same. ‘Why Pete?’ by Timothy Reynolds is another of the many stories that used to appear in New Writings in SF, where the pilot of a starship awakes from suspended animation to learn that there’s a problem. But Ben Godby’s ‘Star Severer’ presents a more imaginative challenge for an executioner of solar systems who develops a conscience.
At the end of it, Anderson and Vernon have done very well with the difficult job they’ve been assigned. But I wouldn’t recommend reading these stories in big bites, as I did: for this collection, as my father would say, “One at a time is good fishing”.
* * *
THE THREE
Sarah Lotz
Hodder & Stoughton hb, 470pp, £14.99
Simon Marshall-Jones
Judging by the rather lush ARC received for review (spot varnished cover, edges of text pages finished in black) Hodder appear to be investing a great deal in promoting this novel. As well they should – without doubt it’s one of the best reads from a ‘debut’ author this reviewer has read for a good while. (Lotz is no newcomer, however – she writes under various names for different guises, but this is her first solo book.) What’s more, despite its apparent simplicity this is a highly plotted and deeply complex novel, written from a genuinely human perspective with an assured facility that’s quite enviable, and graced with some very sharply realised characterisation.
On a day which comes to be called “Black Thursday” (January 12th 2012) four passenger planes crash on four different continents. That in itself is remarkable, but the weirdness quotient is increased when there are four survivors: one adult (who dies very soon after) and three children. Furthermore, the adult, Pamela May Donald, leaves a mysterious message on her Pastor’s answering machine, which itself triggers off a chain of events that will have their own devastating effects. The surviving children, known as The Three, are changed dramatically by the accidents, the effects of which send ripples throughout the world. They become a focus for the hopes, dreams and fears of the world. Here are the stories of those affected by Black Thursday, from witnesses, crash attendees, those who had close contact with The Three, and those who lost loved ones.
It’s an uncategorisable work, blending as it does elements of science fiction and horror, laced with liberal doses of social commentary and observation. The narrative isn’t a linear one either: Lotz employs the device of a ‘book within a book’, essentially a chronicle of what happened on the day itself and afterwards, by writer Elspeth Martins. Using interviews, memoirs, eye-witness accounts, transcriptions of instant messaging threads and official reports, conspiracy theories, blog and website interpretations (and exhortations), a complex web of disparate yet unconsciously connected stories weave a vast tale which carries with it consequences for the whole world.
Where Lotz excels, apart from her ability to keep all these threads relevant and pertinent, is in delineation of character. Every figure who has a part to play comes across as wholly real, from the insecure Paul Craddock (the would-be actor who looks after J
ess, one of the Three), to the self-assured but somewhat cynical seen-it-all-before prostitute Cando Lola, and from Pastor Len Vorhees (one of Cando’s clients), a batty US evangelical Christian fundamentalist obsessed with the apocalyptic tenor of the incident and who eventually promulgates a theory involving the Four Horsemen of Revelation (and who also sets up the “Pamelist” sect), to the unworldly Reba Louise Neilson, a member of the Pastor’s congregation and Pamela May Donald’s best friend. Each is drawn in exquisite detail. Additionally, Lotz uses the microcosm of the individual to reflect the macro in the global situation, whilst simultaneously exercising a sharply honed critical eye on the very human, if very frustrating, reaction to the aftermath of the plane crashes. Here, in all its sometimes uplifting but mostly sordid glory, is the complete panoply of human existence.
There are two main focuses here: the message left by Pamela while she lay dying in a field in Japan, and the three children, Jess, Bobby and Hiro. In the struggle to find pattern and meaning, each of these elements represents something of value to disparate groups of people, composed of those who seek confirmation of their particular worldview. This is highlighted especially by the End Times believers, who see the survival of the youngsters as unnatural and therefore a sign of the impending apocalypse. Driven by omens and portents, they see connections where none exist, cherry-picking events which superficially appear to confirm certain biases. Lotz portrays these people as those who have gone well beyond the pales of rationality, are fervent yet gullible, willing to take on board anything which gives shape and substance to their beliefs no matter how bizarre and irrational.
Interzone 252 May-Jun 2014 Page 12
