A Son of the Rock

Gollancz, 2025, 330 p. Reviewed for ParSec 15.

Halcyon is a generation starship en route to Vanderdecken’s star. The vast structure’s interior, containing many distinct neighbourhoods, including a large lake, is lit by a Skytube which contains the ship’s neuromimetic core and darkens at ‘night’ to display star configurations. Every so often Halcyon’s apparently serene progress is interrupted by disturbances known as growlers, when its forward shield is impacted by interstellar dust particles and the reverberations are felt throughout the ship. The ship’s social hierarchy is topped by the Urry and DelRosso families, whose behaviour is more or less like that of rival criminal gangs. A notable feature of ship life is the Hibernaculum, a building nicknamed Sleepy Hollow, where, for a price, the personalities of the recent (or not so recent) dead can be stored for later revival in new bodies.

Our viewpoint character is not an Urry nor a DelRosso but rather, one Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin (yes, that Yuri Gagarin,) emerged from Sleepy Hollow many years ago and complete with memories of that first human journey into space. Yet this illustrious history has not been parlayed into anything like celebrity for Yuri: he is a humble private detective and we first meet him when a surveillance job on a cheating spouse goes wrong.

Then we have a classic film noir/detective story set up. A woman calling herself Ruby Blue and claiming to be from the ship’s Department of Works turns up at Yuri’s office and asks him to investigate two suspicious deaths, those of Julianna DelRosso and Randall Urry, seemingly typical Romeo and Juliet-like star cross’d lovers, reported dead weeks apart. Being from those prominent families, the police are an unsuitable option to probe into their deaths, hence Ruby’s recourse to Yuri.

In all this something begins to nag at the attentive reader – unremarked on by most of Halcyon’s present inhabitants since it is their daily existence – but the technology on display is resolutely low rather than high. The camera destroyed in Yuri’s failed surveillance attempt wasn’t digital (or even something more advanced) but instead contained film. Telephones are restricted to fixed locations, there are printed newspapers, railway lines and tape recorders. How on Earth does this square with the developments required to build a generation starship; or indeed the operation of the Hibernaculum?

Only Yuri’s friend Milvus has suspicions about Halcyon’s situation, that the powers that be are hiding something. He suspects that Halcyon may in fact have stopped in space.

The wounds sustained by Randall Urry, as if he had been blasted by one of the ship’s photon cannon, deployed to ward off anything approaching Halcyon obliquely, suggest the answers lie outside the ship. As Yuri’s subsequent trip outside (in a submarine which doubles as an excursion vehicle) discovers, some of them do, but the real ones are internal and more alarming than Milvus had conceived of: revelations which both explain the true status of Halcyon’s journey and why the technology on board is now so low tech.

Throw in some degraded robots (Yuri forms an attachment to one he names Sputnik and which helps advance the plot,) Ruby Blue’s equally enigmatic sister Ruby Red, cynical but resourceful ex-policeman Lemmy Litz and wronged wife Vedette Apolisi, not to mention the supremely world-weary matriarch of the DelRosso family and we have a collection of characters to savour.

In sum, Halcyon Years is a clever and well-thought-out mash-up of the noir style thriller and SF but one which absolutely depends on its science-fictional content for its resolution.

I’m not so sure Halcyon’s Yuri Gagarin would have spoken with such garbled syntax, though.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian. Otherwise; sprung (sprang.) “‘Then I hoped you’ve booked’” (‘Then I hope you’ve booked’,) “‘to let them know you’re on your up’” (‘you’re on your way up’,) “outside of” (just outside; no ‘of’,) “to throw himself in the machinations of a case” (to throw himself into the machinations,) “‘and what makes think Lemmy Litz would’” (and what makes you think.) “He opened and it examined the documents” (He opened it and examined the documents,) “another black car heaved into view” (hove into view,) “pages that referred eyewitness accounts” (that referred to eyewitness accounts,) “and bid them temporary farewell” (bade them,) “the band were tuning up” (the band was tuning up.) “‘I didn’t think it would it help’” (the second ‘it’ is superfluous,) “keeping on automatic on her” (keeping the automatic on her; or, keeping one automatic on her,) “the door sprung out” (sprang out,) “Yuri bid farewell” (bade farewell.)

I haven’t done an astronomy post for a while. This makes up for that.

The image is from Astronomy Picture of the Day for 10/10/26.

It looks like maybe one of Jupiter’s or Saturn’s moons:-

It is in fact our own Moon but a view we don’t normally see.

This is the lunar far side.

With no maria and apparently many more craters it’s very different from the familar picture of our nearest celestial neighbour.

John Murray, 2023, 329 p, including 3 p Contents, 5 p Historical Notes and 1 p Acknowledgements.

In 1883 former emigré Niall Munro returns from the US to Scotland to practice his new trade of shoemaking with a firm in Rutherglen. He is told by someone on the bus to the town that the widow Bain may have a place for a lodger. Mrs Bain hesitates slightly before taking him in, setting strict ground rules for his stay.

She was once Jamesina Ross, from Glencalvie in Strathcarron, with a musical bent and hopes of fulfilment but has had a hard life since and bears the literal scars to prove it. In her youth the local Minister, Reverend Aird, had taken her under his wing, and taught her Latin, which in her later years she still used to examine the words and phrases with which people spoke to her. But life in Glencalvie was about to change, evictions were in hand. Reverend Aird says in answer to Jamesina’s questioning, “‘People have always had to leave the places they love because of the folly of others. They get by in the end, most of them, and some may even flourish, but no one should imagine on that account that dispossession is right.’” He tells her the evictions are about race and shows her a newspaper column sanguine about such clearances since, “This exodus might allow for settlement of racially superior people of Teutonic stock in districts from which the Gaels have been removed.” (The main replacement, of course, was by sheep.)

Music in the Dark, however, is also a story of love in later years. In interspersed chapters, all beautifully written, some set in the kitchen bed where the two reflect on their lives and relationships, others as a relaying of Jamesina’s experiences of growing up, we see, because of Mrs Bain’s singing her songs of remembrance, Munro realise that, as a boy, he knew her, and, despite themselves, their closeness grows.

In a fairly restrained manner, matter of fact but not gratuitously, in Music in the Dark Magnusson has placed the forced removal of Gaelic people from their ancestral homes at its focus, and, moreover, highlighted the resistance of local women to those evictions and the brutality meted out to them. It by no means a chronicle of doom, though. As Reverend Aird said, most people get by in the end. Take solace where you find it.

SPFL Tier 4, The Rock, 17/10/26.

I wasn’t at the game since I was otherwise engaged yesterday but it seems a draw was a fair result and the team played quite well.

Mind you, there’s a bit of doubt as to whether their goal crossed the line or not.

Josiah Sowa got ours and the man of the match.

We’re up against Keith of the Highland League in the Cup next week at home.

This rather splendid sight greeted us as we were leaving Drummond Castle:-

Luckily we were able to get closer and catch him preening:-

Peacock reclining:-

Bassist Jackie Jackson, a cornerstone of Jamaican music, died last month. He was a player on many records of the ska, rocksteady and reggae genres as well as dub and discomix and played bass with Toots and the Maytals for over 50 years. Among the artists on whose records he played are Desmond Dekker, Bob Marley, Ken Boothe, Paul Simon and Jimmy Cliff.

This is one of the sixties hits.

The Upsetters: Return of Django

Clifton Courtney (Jackie) Jackson: 22/3/1947 – 23/9/2026. So it goes.

The above was the succinct and somewhat cryptic WhatsApp message I received from my younger son yesterday.

And yet I understood it immediately.

As would have any Sons fan receiving a similar message.

For the club had announced that manager Frank McKeown has stepped down and left the club.

This came after a 4-0 drubbing in the KDML Evolution Trophy (the Challenge Cup as was) at Clydebank, a side one division lower than us in the Scottish pyramid – though outwith the SPFL – and sometime derby rivals*. A result which saw the club lose out on the prize money available for qualification from the “league” stage.

Whether McKeown jumped or was pushed was left open.

Whatever, it will be a relief to the vast majority of Sons fans who had lost faith in him long since.

In the meantime Director of Football Danny Lennon will oversee team affairs.

It is to be hoped that a full and proper recruitment process will now take place: not like the previous time our manager was punted.

The club today announced McKeown’s coaching assistants have also left the club.

Sons fans will now be looking forward to Saturday’s home game against Stirling Albion with more of a spring in their step.

*Clydebank aren’t quite a Phoenix club. Their registration was transferred to Airdrie United when the original Airdrieonians were liquidated, leaving Clydebank supporters without a club to support, with the new club taking their Scottish League place. A group of Clydebank supporters then created a club for themselves and Airdrie United agreed to transfer the name and insignia to them. They have since moved up through various shared grounds and the Junior football divisions before moving to the West of Scotland Football League on its formation and won promotion to the Lowland League in 2025. Sons had therefore not played a Clydebank side in a competitive game for about 25 years. Airdrie United later adopted the Airdrieonians name.

In The Sea of Fertility, Penguin, 1987, 196 p. Translated from the Japanese 天人五衰 (Tennin gosui) by Edward G Seidensticker. First published 1971.

In this conclusion of Mishima’s tetralogy, not long after which he committed seppuku, once again we find ourselves following Shigekuni Honda’s obsession with the reincarnation of his boyhood friend Kiyaoki, this time in 1970. Tōru Yasunaga is a signalman notifying the imminent arrival of ships to Shimizu harbour. He is an orphan and has a female acquaintance, Kinué, who, in order to come to terms with her lack of attractiveness, has convinced herself that she is beautiful.

One day Honda and his platonic companion Keiko visit the signal station. Honda recognises on Tōru the three moles he believes signify the reincarnation and resolves to adopt Tōru to try to protect him from the early deaths the three previous incarnations had suffered.

Tōru will eventually work this situation to his own advantage but it only reveals his own selfishness.

The evolution of modern Japan is tangential to this final instalment of the tetralogy but its background nevertheless colours the novel. That Tōru is a kind of negative impression of Kiyaoki perhaps reflects Mishima’s own assessment of his work and life and the direction Japan took over his lifetime.

When a minor character refers to “people who commit suicide to establish themselves,” illustrating it with an elaborate analogy, it may be a prefiguration of the author’s own intentions.

Pedant’s corner:- “a crematory” (usually a crematorium,) “the hoi polloi” (‘hoi’ already means ‘the’; it’s just ‘hoi polloi’.)

Waterfall in folly. The waterfall cascades down the stonework behind the building:-

Sundial. Castle in background:-

In greenhouses:-

View beyond gardens:-

Red Fox, 2010, 366 p. First published 1965.

The Drew children, Simon, Barney and Jane, are off on holiday with their parents to their Great-Uncle Merry’s residence, the Grey House, in Trevissick, Cornwall. Great-Uncle Merry’s activities are something of a mystery, as he is prone to disappearing on various expeditions from time to time.

The family’s arrival in Trevissick was marred by an encounter with a surly message boy who turns out to be dealing with a swish yacht, The White Heather, recently arrived in the harbour.

While exploring the attic one day the children discover an illustrated manuscript telling of The Holy Grail, carried to Cornwall by Sir Bedwin, now buried over the sea and under the stone – hence the book’s title. At first they mistake the picture for a map but cannot fit it to the local landscape. Then they realise it is a drawing.

Matching the salient points to local landmarks involves climbing to outstanding stones and walks round the harbour, all the while being dogged by the attentions of the yacht’s owner Mr Withers and his sister, eager to keep the Grail to themselves. For these adventures their parents are not on hand, going off on a trip to London while at the crucial point Great-Uncle Merry has been steered away by his housekeeper Mrs Palk, to whom Jane had already taken a mistrust.

This is a fairly typical childrens’ adventure story riffing on the tales of King Arthur and embellished by snatches of Cornish dialect. To explicitly equate Great-Uncle Merry with Merlin, though, possibly overeggs the pudding.

Pedant’s corner:- workman-like (nowadays one word, workmanlike,) “in line with anyone of those blodges” (with any one of,) “was was” (only one ‘was’ required,) “duffle coat” (duffel coat,) a missing opening quotation mark, a missing full stop (x 4.) “Garefully”  (Carefully,)  ambiance (ambience.)