A Son of the Rock

Time was when the Science Fiction crime/detective story was a rarity. This may have been because there is a fundamental disparity between the two forms. In Science Fiction the essence is that the tale is of something changed or changing, by the end of the tale the world is no longer the same. In crime fiction, by contrast, order – normality – is restored, the world is made safe again. There is also a necessary withholding of information in the crime story (or at least a need to disguise it.) In Science Fiction the more information is granted to the reader the more real the changed world seems, the more we believe in it.

The first truly successful SF crime stories that I recall were written by Larry Niven and featured teleportation booths. In A Kind of Murder the resolution and solving of the crime depends solely on a ramification of this SF element. Niven then went on to write novels featuring the detective Gil the ARM Hamilton who as the result of an accident lost one physical arm but then developed a psychic one which he subsequently used in his investigations.

Perhaps because of the infiltration of so much of what was SF into both the modern world and the modern detective story/thriller, especially televisually; perhaps because the conventions of the detective story are so embedded, the SF crime story is nowadays no longer so problematic and SF detectives are far from rare.

These thoughts were prompted by the SF book which I am reading at the moment, The Night Sessions by Ken Macleod. It has elements of the detective story and part of the action takes place in Edinburgh.

Edinburgh is a marvellous setting for detective/horror/supernatural fiction as it is so wonderfully Gothic. There is the unmissable landmark of the castle brooding on its rock, Arthur’s Seat, Calton Hill with its curious, apparently unfinished buildings in the classical style, the bizarre under and over layout of the streets just off the Royal Mile, the contrast between the Old Town and the New (and nowadays the peripheral estates.) The Old Town itself has so many mediæval associations – not to mention underground warrens – several atmospheric churchyards with attached cemeteries and of course there is the bodysnatching/Burke and Hare connection; all of which make it almost perfect for the unfolding of skullduggery of various sorts. Glasgow, by contrast, while its estates are bleak, has only the area by the Cathedral which is truly old. Its streets tend to be more grid like – with no dark, tunnel-like thoroughfares analogous to The Cowgate (unless you count the Hielanman’s Umbrella.) For all its energy and (misplaced?) reputation for violence it seems so much more prosaic a place, more bustling certainly, but more modern, more down to earth, less prone to fancies.