My review of Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief for Interzone must have been acceptable as I see Jim Steel has it down for what looks like lead review in the Sep-Oct issue.

They’ve also sent me another book for review. This Is Kurt Vonnegut’s Look At The Birdie which is a collection of previously unpublished fiction.

Ever since I read his masterpiece Slaughterhouse Five he’s been one of my favourite writers.

Sadly Vonnegut died in 2007. So it goes.

I must say that the formulation of previously unpublished works issued posthumously doesn’t usually bode well.

I hope this book doesn’t disappoint.

Gollancz, 2009. 296p

Lavinia is a historical novel set in mythical antiquity, Bronze Age Italy in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Le Guin has taken a (very) minor character from Virgil’s epic The Aeneid – in the poem Aeneas’s last wife Lavinia has no line of dialogue whatsoever – and given her voice. And a powerful and seemingly authentic voice too. The landscape, homes, religion, politicking, people and battles are all convincingly portrayed. When reading this you feel as if you are there, immersed in prehistory. Even the scenes in the place of oracles where Lavinia talks to the apparition she knows only as the poet – she could merely be dreaming of course – have the stamp of authority. At any rate Lavinia believes in him, and his revelations are borne out by events. There is, too, enough of a body count – foretold by the poet in a long, disturbing list – to satisfy the bloodthirsty.

For Lavinia starts a war. Not by allowing herself to be taken by men, she says (in a beautifully understated inference to the much more famous Helen) but instead by choosing one for herself. I quibble slightly at who actually chooses Aeneas for Lavinia; she is swayed not only by the lack of suitability of the other candidates for her hand but also by her conversations with the poet. Otherwise she is a strong decisive character, who stands up to both her father, the King Latinus, and mother, Amata, and later to Ascanius, Aeneas’s son by his previous marriage.

Given the book’s context the perennial follies of men are an unsurprising theme of Lavinia, the character and the novel.

Despite its setting the book was on the short list for the BSFA Award for best novel of 2009, which on the face of it is baffling, even if Le Guin is a stalwart of the genres of SF and fantasy. I suppose its proposers could argue that since in the book Lavinia speaks with the ghost of a poet not yet born in her time there is an element of fantasy present. (Le Guin uses the spelling Vergil. I know his Latin name was Vergilius but in my youth the poem was always known as Virgil’s Aeneid.) True too, the past is always a different country. Fictionally it takes as much imagination to invest it with verisimilitude as it does to describe an as yet unrealised (SF) future. Except – sometimes – you can research the past.

This is an admirably realised and executed novel, though, whichever genre you wish to pigeon-hole it with.

Or you could say, as I do, that it is simply an excellent novel, full stop.

Little, Brown, 2009. 404p

Despite being published without the M in the author’s name – except in the US – this Iain Banks novel features parallel worlds, and flitting between them, and has as a plot point the existence or not of alien intelligences somewhere out there. As such it can scarcely be described as mainstream. But then early Iain “no M” Banks offerings (Walking On Glass, The Bridge, Canal Dreams) were suffused with SFness and/or sensibility (The Wasp Factory.)

Transition does, though, signal its literariness from the outset – its strapline is “based on a false story” and the first words of its prologue are, “Apparently I am what is known as an unreliable narrator.” There is, too, a high degree of characterisation throughout even though, with the aid of a drug known as septus, most of its main characters can flit from one body to another. In typical Banksian fashion there is a shadowy organisation – here known as l’Expédience, or the Concern (which last is a pun) based on a world unusually known as Calbefraques rather than Earth – in charge of the use and distribution of septus and of recruitment to and training for the transition process.

I did notice that while at one point it is said that there has to be a recipient body for transitioning to take place – the one left behind has only rudimentary function as a husk – later transitions to uninhabited worlds do take place without added explanation.

The narrative is divided between various viewpoint personalities, Patient 8262, who is in hiding in a hospital in a country where the local language is not his own, The Transitionary, who may be an earlier incarnation of Patient 8262, Adrian, a former drug dealer turned hedge fund manager, Madame d’Ortolan, foremost member of the Concern’s ruling council, The Philosopher, a legal torturer, and occasional others. The Transitionary’s is a first person present tense narrative, others are past tense, sometimes first, sometimes third person. The most intriguing character is the rather prosaically named Mrs Mulverhill – who is not married, merely likes the name.

In the sort of inversion beloved of SF authors one of the parallel worlds has a set of Christian fanatics pitted against the state and indulging in suicide bombings and the like. The scenario gives Banks the opportunity to riff on how proportionate a response society ought to have to terrorism and on the (in)efficacy of torture. One of his characters also skewers “the invisible hand.”

Devotees of Iain M Banks will probably find this a treat. Followers of his M-less namesake ought also to find enough in it to satisfy them.

It was apparent from early on that the title of this book was going to be a pun.

The Gentian Line builds stardams. Using ringworlds constructed by a lost civilisation known as the Priors they surround suns completely. Not even a supernova can get through. These suns, then, are housed.

The galaxy-spanning society where the novel is set contains many Lines known as Houses who employ stasis technology in their aeons long trips around the galaxy. The Lines’ members are called shatterlings, clones of their respective founders – but of both sexes – each with their founders’ memories. The Gentians’ founder, Abigail Gentian, had a strange, artificially extended childhood, brought up in near isolation on a small asteroid enclosing a tethered black hole, with only the game of psychological immersion known as Palatial for diversion.

The shatterlings Campion and Purslane – all the Gentians have names derived from plants – are aberrant in that they are lovers. They are late for their Line’s reunion, an important gathering where all the members’ memories of their latest “circuit” of the galaxy are collected and shared. Before they arrive they receive the news that most of the Gentian Line has been destroyed in an attack. The novel works through their attempts to find out why, the significance of the mysterious occlusion of the Andromeda galaxy, and of the hidden Line called the House of Suns.

The book is split into eight parts each of which begins with a section which follows Abigail’s childhood. Thereafter succeeding chapters are, in turn, narrated from the viewpoints of Campion and Purslane. At first it is difficult to make sense of this as Reynolds does not differentiate their voices clearly enough. The other “characters,” some of whom are machine intelligences, step forward Cadence and Cascade – a King Crimson allusion? – are also not well delineated, even the elephant-like Ugalit Panth.

What Reynolds does give you is plot, in abundance. 500 pages of closely packed print is pushing it a bit, though.

Gollancz, 2010, 267p

My review of this book has been delivered to Interzone. I’ll let you know the publication date in due course.

Btw, the cover image is arresting and ought to shift some copies.

Black Ace, 1994, 143p.

Butlin had made a reputation as a poet but this was his first novel* and an unusual debut it was. Presented from the viewpoint of Morris Magellan, a married man with two children he refers to as “the accusations” it is an absorbing study of an alcoholic and his descent into self-disgrace.

What marks The Sound Of My Voice out as especially bold is the use of the second person to carry the narrative. Second person novels are rare; successful ones are rarer still. That Butlin carries the conceit off is a tribute to his writing skill. It helps that in its opening the novel concentrates on Magellan’s childhood where his remote father is presented as a major (negative) influence on his subsequent life.

Using the second person could have been an invitation to the reader to be complicit in Magellan’s woes but it is not merely a literary trick, the voice is there for a purpose – which I shall not spoil even though the introduction, by Randall Stevenson, does. (Or would have had I not taken the precaution of avoiding reading it till after I’d finished the novel.)

This is a short book but all the better for it.

* Published in 1987 by Canongate. This Black Ace edition is described as definitive; corrected and revised by the author.

8/7/10-11/7/10
Phoenix, 2007, 329p.

This is an odd artefact. It depicts an attempt to introduce salmon to rivers in the Yemeni Highlands via the largesse of a local sheikh and the expertise of a UK government agency.

The book – it can scarcely be described as a novel – is constructed from supposed diary entries, letters, emails, extracts from Hansard, fragments of autobiography, a TV game show script, transcripts of television and press interviews, Select Committee Report conclusions and interrogations of the various participants in this madcap scheme. All have differing viewpoints and narrators. As such the whole becomes diffuse and bitty.

While there is an overall narrative thread the disparate voices too often fail to suspend disbelief. Instead of being presented with a convincing rendering of a diary extract or interview transcript we are given novelistic embellishments. The diary extracts contain information that we as readers ought to have but a diarist would not find it necessary to include. In one of the interviews a respondent states a person spoke mildly when surely they would report only the relevant conversation’s content, in another there is an (uncredited) interruption which reads, “The witness became emotional after the consumption of custard creams and was incoherent. The interview was resumed after a break of four hours.” This authorial interpolation is, I suppose, intended humorously but is, instead, bathetic, if not pathetic. The Hansard extracts do not quite reflect accurately the format of Prime Minister’s Questions. While it might be said that this is a comic novel and some licence is allowable, to get details such as this last example wrong detracts from the intended effect. Infelicities such as those above totally fail to create the necessary degree of verisimilitude. The name dropping of real people as interviewers – Andrew Marr, Boris Johnson – while the politicians and aides are fictional (yet recognisable) is also a mistake.

The book is obviously meant to be a satire but its approach is so scattershot that it is difficult to tell exactly what or whom is the intended target. Is it the workings of bureaucracies, office politics, communications directors/spin doctors, career women, politicians, even Islamic terrorists? All are featured, but the focus never stays in one place for long. The only character who has any semblance of solidity is the supposedly mad sheikh; and he has no viewpoint narrative.

After the novel’s end we also have “Reading Group Notes” containing items “for discussion.” Some may find this condescending.

Salmon Fishing In The Yemen has its moments; but they are few.

Abacus, 2007, 373p.

I’ve not read them in order of publication but it’s possible to discern a recurring pattern in Brookmyre’s novels, apart from the obvious humour and violence. A bunch of bad guys (mercenaries/terrorists here) interrupts the daily business of some ordinary punters (in this one it’s a school reunion.) Add in too a denouement in an isolated setting (a converted oil rig.) There may also be passing reference to someone living in, or a citizen of, the US.

The more interesting parts of One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night are based on the interactions of the former schoolmates. Brookmyre manages to convey the excruciating nature such reunions surely entail. That scenario might have been enough to carry a novel on its own without the intrusion of the thriller elements (which admittedly would have been a different kind of book.) Here, while the comedy terrorists are necessary for the book’s plot, they are too unconvincing to suspend disbelief.

I note that schooldays have also figured strongly in the pasts of other Brookmyre protagonists, particularly Angelique Di Xavia.

One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night might be a good enough introduction to Brookmyre’s oeuvre but I didn’t find it as satisfying a read as A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away nor The Sacred Art Of Stealing.

Pan, 1989, 241p.

In the part of the galaxy known as the Tzist Arm, a human culture known as Caean has perfected the art of clothes making. The suits their sartorialists make change the behaviour of their wearers in all sorts of ways and influence those they meet. The government of the Ziode Cluster sees this as a form of attack but a black market exists for the products. A Caean freighter has crashed on an isolated planet and an expedition has been mounted to secure samples. One of its members, Peder Forbarth, gains for himself the ultimate expression of the sartorialists’ art, a Frachonard Suit. The novel mainly consists of the subsequent adventures into which Forbarth is drawn as a result of the influence of the suit and the material Prossim from which it is made.

The sartorialist concept is another typically bizarre piece of Bayley imagining, which, however, means the characterisation is made rudimentary by it. The notion barely stands up to a moment’s scrutiny yet somehow, in the novel, has a perverse logic of its own. Bayley can do that to your brain.

Not vintage stuff, then; but diverting.

The cover shown above is from the 1978 Fontana edition.

Corgi, 1971, 160p.

Sturgeon is famous for his Law which originally was a riposte to the complaint that “90% of SF is crud” which he reformulated to “90% of anything is crud.” Which is to say it is unfair to criticise SF by its worst examples while praising other areas of endeavour for their best.

I remember Sturgeon’s story Microcosmic God with affection so when I saw this volume in a second hand bookshop (yes, they still exist) on the other side of town I bought it. Starshine contains six stories published, I assume, in the early 1960s. (The copyright date is 1966.)

From a 2010 perspective this is not vintage stuff. Things have moved on since these stories were written. They come from an era when the idea was all in SF and show no indication that the New Wave would ever happen (despite Wikipedia citing Sturgeon as a precursor.) I doubt they’d be published today. The stories are for the large part told, not revealed, and there are prodigious info dumps or lumps of exposition. The characterisation is crude, too.

Only the last in the collection, How To Kill Aunty, survives this treatment. That story is not SF but rather a mainstream tale of repression and revenge.

Starshine is a historical curiosity only, not one to be recommended as an introduction; either to the SF field or to Sturgeon’s work overall.