Solaris, 2008, 294p

The usual caveat applies to this review.

Despite having the outward appearance of a novel this book is in fact a fix-up, stringing together a series of shorter pieces which Brown has published in various magazines or anthologies over the years along with one original story. In addition there is an introductory prelude, shorter “interludes” to link the stories, and a coda; all written for this publication. Despite the potential scope the stories are without exception located in and around a small town in West Yorkshire which Brown calls Oxenworth.

The enigmatic aliens of the title have appeared suddenly, offering to restore the dead to life – either to come back to Earth or to help in populating the galaxy. An implant under the skin of the temple starts its mysterious work when its bearer dies. The uncorrupting bodies are then ferried to the nearest Onward Station for their essence to be beamed off-planet for the process to be carried out. Returnees come back six months later, subtly changed, to carry on with their interrupted lives or to say farewell to friends and family before departing to the stars on Kéthani business.

There is something about the Onward Stations that is reminiscent of the tower which featured in Brown’s collection The Fall Of Tartarus – see link above – and also recalls a similar structure in Brown’s early novel Meridian Days.

The Brown tendency to feature religion is again to the fore, this time mixed with those perennial literary issues of love and death as the author works through the many responses humanity brings to the aliens’ gift. A new focus, here, is on the vagaries of married life and the joys of fatherhood. An uncommon (or should that be common?) touch is the frequent mention in the earlier segments of Leeds United Football Club.

Curiously it always seems to be snowing in Brown’s West Yorkshire. Did the Kéthani bring a change of weather with them?

There is a huge erratum on page 59 of my edition, covering two lines of text. I had to read the paragraph containing it several times in order to get the full sense. Other typos were few in number. I mention this only because such things are avoidable.

The stories, despite the inevitable repetitions entailed in their initially disparate origins, do add up to a coherent, if disjointed, narrative, though on occasion they can feel a little rushed. (This could be explained if Brown had a strict word count to adhere to for their original publications.) Despite having different narrators most adopt a similar tone. All are eminently readable.

Throughout there is the nagging doubt about the nature of the Kéthani’s motives. Brown never fully resolves this issue – though the last segment comes close. A US author would certainly have taken the idea in a completely different direction to Brown and I was reminded a little of Murray Leinster’s The Greks Bring Gifts (whose title is a nice play on “timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”) a novel of which Brown may be unaware.

The inherent difficulty with a scenario such as this is how do you portray the returnees as different from the characters they were before resurrection? Brown does not quite bring this off, not helped by having the narrator of the interludes die partway through the book – though appearing in later segments as a returnee though.Force majeure, perhaps, in that that segment may have been written early in the sequence and Brown was stuck with it.

As a working-out of what it might mean for humanity if death were to have no dominion, however, the lassitude and ennui that may ensue, the new goals that would need to be sought, Kéthani is a worthy achievement.

PS Publishing, 2007

Even without the dedication on page 1, knowing the author and reading this book’s title I would have guessed that this might be an hommage to Michael G Coney.

As a standard to aspire to this is aiming high. Coney is (or was; he died in 2005) one of my personal favourites among writers of SF. While never being too obvious about it Coney’s emphasis on characters has been followed by Brown throughout the latter’s career. In Starship Summer, explicit echoes of Coney abound. The story is clearly Brown’s, though, and not in any way a pastiche.

David Conway has moved to the planet Chalcedony to get over the death of his daughter for which he feels to blame. He buys a starship (which the man who sells it describes as being more like an atmospheric craft) from a scrapyard to use as a dwelling and is quickly drawn into the vendor’s social circle. The ship turns out to be “haunted” by a holographic projection of one of the Yall (aliens who originally built and operated the craft and who also erected the striking feature of Chalcedony, an enigmatic, towering Golden Column which has become the focus for pilgrims of various stripe.)

As this last implies Brown’s theme of religion is again to the fore, as is his fondness for characters with a past they are trying to escape, or an affliction that distances them from others, and (another Brown trope from his early career) we also have an artist with fading powers.

The book (a limited edition of 500) is sumptuously produced with its cover painting embedded into the (hard) binding. The spaceships depicted thereon do more resemble downed World War 2 bombers than the typical representation of interstellar voyagers. All is revealed, however, when Conway’s new home finally flies.

The spaceship scrapyard is an almost Ballardian touch – starships have been replaced for interstellar travel by Telemass, a technology akin to the SHIFT mechanism I deployed for the same purpose in A Son Of The Rock. (I merely make a comparison here. This sort of thing has become part of the tool kit SF writers can use to move characters across galaxies; I’m not suggesting Brown filched it from me. He has used a similar concept before.)

As is Brown’s wont, the focus is on the characters – the SF stuff is background, but background which heightens, and in one case alleviates, their dilemmas and problems. Yet there is still a large quantity of plot in the 120 pages.

I’m sure Brown won’t mind me saying he does not manage quite to achieve Coney’s sublime heights but Starship Summer is nevertheless a worthy effort.

Gollancz, 2005

Disclaimer:- Eric is one of my many acquaintances in the SF world. I have been in his company at various conventions and shared many talks over a glass or a meal. We stay in touch. He, for example, steered me in the direction of ‘Postscripts’ which recently accepted my story “Osmotic Pressure.”

The Fall Of Tartarus is a collection of short stories/novellas Brown set on the planet Tartarus in the two hundred years before its sun was to go supernova. Published in various magazines between 1995 and 2000 they were not collected in the one book till 2005.

As a playground for Brown’s imagination Tartarus provides fertile soil. Tartarus is terrestrial and therefore familiar in some respects; jungles, lakes, extinct volcanoes and so on. In others it is not like Earth at all; bizarre plants, exotic locales, alien creatures, a rather restricted social organisation described as mediaeval. This gives the place a dated feel – the adolescent sexuality of A Prayer For The Dead notwithstanding. In particular the planet has affected some of its inhabitants, who, though descended from immigrants from Earth, can be totally unlike their forebears. There is a dreamlike quality to some of the events which adds to the strangeness. At times there is a stilted tone to the writing, emphasising the old-fashioned feel. Above all, life on Tartarus is never comfortable.

Reading the stories together it is possible to pick out various common threads. There is the same tonal quality throughout (which is not an absolute requirement of tales such as this) and extensive use of flashbacks. One character, usually the narrator, will be on a quest of some sort. Someone will be seeking to atone for past deeds. There is a strong emphasis on the importance of family. Religions feature strongly, with their usual exhortations to sacrifice and martyrdom, heightened here by adherents of various faiths that their excessive devotion may stem the sun’s demise. In several stories characters explicitly state that their destiny lies on Tartarus, though that, of course holds for everyone in all the stories, whether their characters realise it or not. Most obviously, and not surprisingly for such a doomed setting, there is a preoccupation with death. Not that all of the tales have a downbeat ending. Occasionally we are allowed a life-affirming conclusion.

I found myself wondering if sometimes, for original publication, Brown had to accommodate a particular story to the limits of a word count. The People of The Nova rushes a bit in the run-up to its climax and makes too little of the partly redemptive event that occurs afterward, though the reverse is true of The Hunting Of The Slarque which has a few longueurs.

It would be interesting to discover in what order the stories were written, how Brown developed his ideas. It is as well, though, that Dark Calvary finishes up the collection as there is nothing redemptive in it at all. This, of course, is when the supernova finally strikes. Farewell then, Tartarus.

If you like stories which, while not neglecting ideas or action, focus primarily on characters and their dilemmas, Brown won’t fail you.