A Son of the Rock

It was with great sadness that I heard today of the death of Iain M Banks.

A great hole has been torn in the fabric both of British SF and of Scottish literature.

We can only mourn for the novels he will now be unable to write.

Iain Menzies Banks, 15/02/1954 -€“ 9/06/2013. So it goes.

Hodder, 2010, 496 p.

The usual fare from Turtledove. This time the altered history is that World War 2 starts in 1938 – though the actual Jonbar Point seems to be when Spanish General Sanjurjo survives his aeroplane flight from Portugal to Burgos to head up the Nationalist army in the Spanish Civil War which continues long after it did in our history as, after a failure of the talks in Munich two years later Hitler declares war on and invades Czechoslovakia. Major differences are that Poland then becomes a German ally, the invasion of France is not swift enough (apparently due to the early German panzers not being quite as effective as their later 1940 counterparts would be) and Japan eventually attacks the already war-embroiled USSR in Siberia.

The viewpoints are many, but hardly varied as the characters are as cardboard (or as functional) as always, or there simply to outline the war’€™s progress. The writing is as annoying as ever with its repetitions of information we already know. Particularly irritating was the observation that someone or other didn’t like some aspect of warfare “one bit” occurring again and again.

The reading is easy though; something I felt I needed after Gardens of the Sun. I don’t think I’€™ll be following the rest of The War That Came Early series though. There’€™s now another four of the beggars!

FIFA World Cup Qualifier: Europe, Group A. Maksimir Stadium, Zagreb, 7/6/13

This just shows how unpredictable football can be. Most people (including apparently Croatia’€™s manager and at least one of his players) gave Scotland not a hope. I wasn’€™t too hopeful myself. Then again Scotland quite often do this sort of thing in this sort of situation. But this was more of a triumph for organisation, determination and application. And, despite a couple of scares, a surprising absence of shooting ourself in the foot.

We had one chance and took it. Croatia had a couple of chances – one glaring miss when the guy only had to chip into an almost open goal. That’s football.

True, Croatia didn’€™t play well but perhaps we didn’€™t let them. Keep it up, lads.

You may have noticed a lack of postings here recently.

The blog has been playing silly beggars again; something to do with hosting. There are plans afoot to move it to another host.

Fingers crossed.

The Women’€™s Press, 1985, 248 p.

This is an anthology from a time when it was thought there had to be a Women’s Press and a collection of SF stories by women writers only. Given the relative rarity, still, of published SF written by women – though the barriers are no longer so high and the practitioners are at least on a par with and often surpass their male counterparts – arguably the desideratum is as important now as it ever was. The avowedly feminist perspective, the didacticism, of a lot of these stories dates them though. Then again most SF from the 80s would be similarly dated.

Big Operation on Altair Three by Josephine Saxton
On a regressive colony world an advertising copywriter describes the unusual procedure devised to illustrate the extreme stability of a new car.

Spinning the Green by Margaret Elphinstone
A fairy tale. It even begins, “€œOnce upon a time.” A treacle merchant on his way home from a convention encounters a group of green-clad women in a wood. They demand a price for the rose he has picked for his youngest daughter. Curiously this world has computers, televisions and round the world cruises but the merchant travels on horseback.

The Clichés from Outer Space by Joanna Russ
Satirises the portrayal of women in the typical slush-pile SF story of pre-enlightened times -€“ like the 1980s -€“ with four overwrought, overwritten examples. (As they no doubt were.)

The Intersection by Gwyneth Jones
Two space dwellers from an environment where privacy is impossible, “SERVE sees all, SERVE records all,”€ take a holiday to observe the indigs of the underworld. Bristling with acronyms and told rather than unfolded this is more an exercise in information dumping than a story as such. (And de rigeur ought to be spelled with a “u”€ after the “g”.)

Long Shift by Beverley Ireland
A woman who is employed to use her mind to demolish buildings safely is given a priority assignment monitoring a subsidence which turns out to be worse than expected.

Love Alters by Tanith Lee
Women only have babies with women, and men only with men. This is the right, the straight way to do it. Our female narrator is married to Jenny but then falls in love with someone else. A man.

Cyclops by Lannah Battley
A space-faring archaeologist discovers Earth was not the cradle of humanity by uncovering an ancient manuscript written by “€œAeneas.” It has a clever explanation of why the Cyclops appeared to have one eye. The story’€™s balance is out of kilter, though.

Instructions for Exiting this Building in Case of Fire by Pamela Zoline
A remedy for the world’€™s ills involves the kidnapping, and resettlement, of children.

A Sun in the Attic by Mary Gentle
In Asaria, women take more than one husband. Roslin, head of House Mathury, is married to a pair of brothers one of whom has gone missing. The Port Council does not like his scientific investigations.

Atlantis 2045: no love between planets by Frances Gapper
In a repressive future society letters are too dangerous to write. Jene is a misfit, earning her family penalty points to the extent that they have her classified as a Social Invisible. Then one day her equally invisible aunt returns from being Ghosted.

From a Sinking Ship by Lisa Tuttle
Susannah works trying to communicate with dolphins. She is happier with them than with humans; so much so that she is unaware of the impending nuclear war. The dolphins understand the danger; and have an escape plan.

The Awakening by Pearlie McNeill
In a heavily polluted future world Lucy has doubts about her daughter’s participation in the Breeding Roster.

Words by Naomi Mitchison
Is about the inadequacy of language to describe new experiences – especially those induced by a device to stimulate brain synapses.

Relics by Zoë Fairbairns
A woman’€™s visit to a Greenham Common type peace camp is overtaken by the beginning of a nuclear war. She is placed in a freezing cabinet and woken decades later to be part of an exhibition illustrating her times. The future people get it hopelessly wrong of course.

Mab by Penny Castagli
A post-menopausal woman who takes a yoga class gives birth – from a lump on her head – to a tiny child. This apparently prefigures the demise of the male.

Morality Meat by Raccoona Sheldon*
A simple morality tale. Droughts and grain diseases have killed off the supply of meat but as always the rich still manage to get their share. Meanwhile every pregnancy is forced by law to go to full term. Adoption Centres provide a service for those who do not want or otherwise cannot keep their babies. But parents cannot be found for all the children.

*Raccoona Sheldon (Alice Sheldon) is also known as James Tiptree Jr.

Apples In Winter by Sue Thomason
People from another world interfere with a native culture.

I see from Locus and The Guardian that one of SF’s luminaries, Jack Vance, has died.

I can’t say I’ve read a lot of his work – I picked up his Araminta Station on the raffle at the BSFA stall at an Eastercon once and I have the “tribute album” Songs of the Dying Earth on my tbr pile so have that to look forward to.

He was prolific, though.

Jack Vance (John Holbrook Vance.) 28/7/1916 -€“ 26/5/2013. So it goes.

I’ve been having some problems accessing my blog over the past few days.

I’ve asked my blog administrator to have a look at it. I’m here, so I hope it’s fixed now.

Thank you, Duncan.

I’m not sure if this video is of a genuine Dumbarton fan or not.

If she is, she may be in for a big disappointment when she sees the mighty Sons in the flesh.

About a week ago in the Beveridge Park I took these two photos of 6 cygnets and an army of goslings. You can see trailing from her mouth the weed the pen has pulled up from the bottom of the pond to feed the cygnets.

Gollancz, 2009, 440p.

In the aftermath of The Quiet War, the Outers – humans altered to cope better with living in the further reaches of the Solar System – have been driven beyond the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Parts of Gardens of the Sun are set in bubble habitats round Uranus, Neptune and Pluto or on wandering asteroids but the action, such as it is, also ranges back to Earth. This division of humanity – which also includes so-called Ghosts who follow a mystic claiming to have messages from the future – is the source of conflict in the novel. There are several sub-plots including the ongoing search for the gene wizard Avernus, one of the many characters from The Quiet War to reappear here, along with others such as Sri Hong-Owen, Macy Minnot, Loc Ifrahim, Felice Gottschalk and Cash Baker. The gardens of the title turn out to be habitats gengineered by Sri Hong-Owen to allow life to be easier amid the harshness of space.

Despite there being enough in this book to fill a whole series of novels, reading this one was hard going. The different characters’ stories are too remote from each other, even if some do overlap by the end, and are not in any case the main focus of the narrative which often reads like a history of the future (except with use of the pluperfect – usually a sign more is being crammed in than the story can bear.) It is in effect one long info dump and the scenes where the characters interact seem like addenda.

McAuley’s future environment is impressively detailed, though, as indeed was Kim Stanley Robinson’s in his 2312 which tended to neglect plot. It’s a pity we’re told most of it instead of being allowed to experience it.