A Showcase of Scottish Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction, Shoreline of Infinity, 2025, 174 p.

The book does what it says on the tin. It’s a collection of SF and Fantasy from a Scottish perspective as promulgated by the website SF Caledonia including poetry and non-fiction. It’s an offshoot of the same publisher’s magazine Shoreline of Infinity now on its 40th edition. I did think it slightly odd that, albeit she lives in Edinburgh, in such a venture the opening story is by a Welsh writer, but then SF Caledonia’s definition of Scots is by no means exclusive – six months residency qualifies. Fair enough.

So there are new(ish) stories by Rhiannon A Grist, Chris Kelso, Anne Charnock, T L Huchu, Ken MacLeod, Katie McIvor, Iain Bain, R/L Monroe, Gwyneth Finlay, Callum Dougan, E M Faulds and Kirsti Wishart, a graphic strip by Mark Toner, a facsimile extract from what was most likely the first ever Scottish SF story, Armata, written by Thomas Erskine, the first two chapters of Gay Hunter, one of J Leslie Mitchell’s (aka Lewis Grassic Gibbon) two SF novels, the start of Space by John Buchan, poetry by Jeda Pearl and Rachel Plummer and a non-fiction piece by Pippa Goldschmidt plus puffs for other SF Caledonia endeavours.

Those familiar with the magazine will find the mix to be much the same. Both it and SF Caledonia are very worthwhile projects.

Pedant’s corner:- “The multitude of deaths ricochet through my brain” (The multitude … ricochets,) “outside of” (x 2, outside; no ‘of’,) “there’s deep red hole” (there’s a deep red hole,) “a peace here the kind of which I am wholly unfamiliar” (a peace here the kind of which I am wholly unfamiliar with; or, better, ‘a peace here with the kind of which I am wholly unfamiliar,) “the dense undergrowth in which lurks all manner of predators” (in which lurk …. predators,) “‘like DHL, now.’ The messenger-boy replied’” (the full stop ought to be a comma,) sat (sitting, or, seated,) “with epaulette on his shoulders” (that’s a big epaulette; epaulettes,) “she sprung up” (sprang up,) “stubble grew on his cheek a few days old” (his cheek was only a few days old? ‘stubble a few days old grew on his cheek’,) “was stood at attention” (was standing at attention,) franticly (frantically,) “florescent lights” (fluorescent,) “she’d do it style” (do it in style,) “Michelle Kodaof the Times” (Michelle Koda of the Times.) “Mal couldn’t keep his eyes on her” (context suggests ‘couldn’t keep his eyes off her’.) “‘Here tae us’” (this traditional Scottish greeting is usually ‘Here’s tae us.) “Comma Press have been publishing” (has been publishing,) “Luna Press have published” (has published,) billio (billy-o,) fit (fitted,) sprung (sprang,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 2,) “what was going on one the other side of the screen” (going on on the other side.) Kirsty Wishart (elsewhere Kirsti Wishart,) caldron (usually spelled cauldron.)

Strange Fiction of Scottish Descent, Eibonvale Press, 2013, 270 p, including 1 p Contents, 7 p Introductions (one by each editor,) 3 p Contributor Biographies and 1 p Editor Bios.

This is a book which celebrates the “Guid Scots Tongue” as Hal Duncan’s Introduction has it, with stories written by Scots or descendants of Scots, each inspired by a particular Scots word. Words such as wersh, clarty, maukit (twice,) sweirt, scroggy, laird, rammy, cludgie, ramscootrify, canny, murnie, thrawn, stravaigin, guising, greetin, boak. Most of the tales are in standard English with Scottish trimmings but two are in very broad Scots indeed.

Though most have a speculative bent the definition ‘strange’ in the book’s subtitle does not necessarily mean fantastic or science-fictional. Rob McClure Smith’s Palais 1930 (riffing on the word rammy) is a resolutely realist account of goings-on at a 1930s dance-hall.

On the whole this collection demonstrates that Scots is neither a dead nor dying language, can bristle with vitality and is a perfectly suitable medium for writing – in whatever genre or mode.

Pedant’s corner:-  whacky (wacky,) dipthongs (diphthongs.) “The crowd have fallen silent” (The crowd has.) Chieftans’ (Cheiftains’,) “the prophesy” (the prophecy,) gasses (gases,) “let him breath again” (breathe,) a question without a question mark at its end, innoculation (inoculation,) focussed (focused,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 2,) carnapcious (carnaptious,) “a vertebrae” (a vertebra,) a full stop following a question mark at the end of a sentence, stotious (more usually spelled ‘stocious’,) colored (coloured,) “shadowed figures plod slow around and again” (????) hoi-poloi (usually spelled hoi-polloi,) miniscule (minuscule,) “the clean-cut, regular features, immaculate dress, and individuality” (clean cut; plus, such a list doesn’t usually have a comma before its last component,) Behaviorism (Behaviourism,) a missing comma at the end of a piece of direct speech (x 2.) “A tableful of weak smiles flutter into existence” (a tableful … flutters,) “‘there are no English words that have Xĩ in it’” (that have Xĩ in them,) practiced (practised,) an unindented new paragraph (x 2,) woolen (woollen,) trash cans (bins,) “a blaize football pitch” (blaes,) “took out a some cigarettes” (superfluous ‘a’,) “that that her gran” (a superfluous ‘that’,) a  missing full stop, a closing parenthesis that ought to be an opening one, “a vertebra.!!!!” (doesn’t need the full stop before the exclamation marks,) “across the UK and Us” (across the UK and US.)

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.)

Jonathan Cape, 1971, 249 p. Illustrated from drawings by Pat Marriott.

Sixth in “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase” sequence, (though seventh if counting The Whispering Mountain which acts as a prequel to the series,) The Cuckoo Tree sees Dido Twite returned to England with Captain Hughes of HMS Thrush, carrying a warning to the Admiralty of a Hanoverian plot to blow up St Paul’s Cathedral during the planned coronation of Stuart King Richard IV.

Their carriage is wrecked and Captain Hughes badly injured. Did has to solicit help from a group of men she meets on the road, who point her towards Tegleaze Manor. (The men are smugglers, using canals to ferry their wares to London, a route later used by Dido.)

At the manor Dido is treated with some disdain by Lady Tegleaze but befriends her mollycoddled grandson, Sir Tobit. Lady Tegleaze allows Captain Hughes to be housed and nursed in a tenant cottage by the unlikeable and hostile Mrs Lubbage.

Dido wants to send the Captain’s dispatches to London but mistrusts the post and goes to the smugglers’ rendezvous at The Cuckoo Tree to enlist their help. There she meets orphan Cris, a slightly uncanny child who plays a part in thwarting a plan to swindle Sir Tobit out of his heritage. Mixed up in all the shenanigans is Dido’s Pa, but Dido’s presence gives him some pause.

This is all good adolescent fun, featuring adventure and mishap, locals with malapropistic speech, mind altering sweetmeats called Joobie nuts, long lost siblings etc, with authorial touches to appeal to adults; a firm of solicitors named Pickwick, FitzPickwick and Wily, the valuable family heirloom, The Tegleaze Luck-piece, a painting by P Breughel stolen in order to be sold to the Margrave of Bad Fallingoff.

However, why King Richard is portrayed as Scottish, with a Scottish accent and speech patterns is beyond me. He would certainly have been brought up as an English gentleman. (I noted this about his father here.) That his coronation takes place in St Paul’s Cathedral rather than Westminster Abbey is excused by the fact it’s an Altered History.

Pedant’s corner:- Bruegel (Brueghel, [used later],) “nobody could take if from him” (take it from him.)

I discovered yesterday that SF/Fantasy writer, John Crowley, has died.

I have read seven of his books, the novels The Deep, (Bantam, 1975;) Beasts, (Orbit, 1976;) Engine Summer, (Methuen, 1979;) Little, Big, (Methuen, 1981;) Ægypt, (VGSF, 1987;) Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, (William Morrow, 2005) plus the collection of novellas Novelty, (Doubleday, 1989.)

Each (in their own various ways) was a delight.

The first five of those were well before my blogging days but you can see my thoughts on Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land here and on Novelty, here.

Also on my shelves, to be read, are The Translator, (Perennial, 2002) and Four Freedoms, (Harper Perennial, 2009) and there are others I haven’t yet bought to look forward to reading.

John Crowley: 1/12/1942 – 8/8/2026. So it goes.

Dolphin, 2000, 121 p.

After her father died in an accident Roshana Kemal’s family – mother and younger brother Jino – lives in a caravan in the grounds of the factory where her mother works. At night Roshana has strange dreams involving The Shadowman and a jackal named Shivalu.

All too soon, in Roshana’s eyes, her mother remarries; to a plump businessman called Rajah, making good in the India of the twenty-first century. Even though the family is now much more comfortably off – all Rajah’s business friends show signs of enjoying life – Roshana resents the disruption to her life and the betrayal of her father it represents.

Her friend at school, Jeevamani Anjumbandare, frequently regales Roshana with tales of her sister Smita’s latest boyfriends. This seemingly inconsequential detail has plot ramifications.

There is a slight disconnect between the resolute realism of the depiction of Roshana’s everyday existence and interactions with her friends and the undercurrent of menace in her dreams, aspects of which can pop into her daily life. Menace appears soon enough, though, when Jino is abducted from outside a shop into which Roshana had gone to make a purchase.

Partly it is her dreams which lead Roshana to the discovery of where Jino has been taken.

True to its YA milieu the jeopardy in Spiritfeather is not over the top. A solid, straightforward read through which Greenland’s professionalism as a writer shines.

Pedant’s corner:- hiccough (it isn’t a cough; ‘hiccup’,) “in Roshana’ picture” (Roshana’s picture,) Anjumbandane (Anjumbandare.)

Pocket Books, 2005, 661 p, plus vi p Dramatis Personae.

The usual fare from Turtledove as his mirroring of the Second World War in a world where magic/sorcery is a prevalent feature and fantasy creatures abound comes to an end. The episodic structure, returning to its viewpoint characters every so often, continues to frustrate with its repetitions of things the reader already knows about the people portrayed and their circumstances. So, too, does the misogyny of many of the characters. But this is an unenlightened world, and while it has good people in it there are not enough of them to make a material difference. They are only operating at the margins.

The equivalences with our world are not exact. For example there are no republics here, King Mezentio, the leader of the racist aggressors, does not die by his own hand but asks a soldier to do it and the magical counterpart to the Manhattan Project achieves its goal only unlike in our world is demonstrated to citizens of its proposed victims before its final deployment – on the capital city rather than provincial ones. It is interesting, though, that the developed magic/sorcery has been throughout the seven Darkness books subject to theoretical calculation. (Not quite magic then?) Though apart from drawing energy from the not always handy ley-lines it still needs life force to power it.

As Turtledove’s Derlavaian War winds down several of those we have come to know (very few of whom have experienced character development) meet their ends, others have happy endings – of sorts. The parallels with our world extend to an equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials. The book doesn’t end so much as stop, but as far as its survivors were concerned this was also true of our Second World War. Life goes on, if in different circumstances. Not all of them congenial.

Pedant’s corner:- “Tsavellas’ small kingdom” (Tsavellas’s,) “Iskakis’ wife” (Iskakis’s,) “not as if he’d take a step” (context suggests ‘not as if he’d taken a step’,) “floating fortress’ stick” (fortress’s,) “the marquis’ air” (marquis’s,) “but we liked to come into Priekule to listen to him” (not Priekule; Pavilosta,) “‘I should have won Algarve should have won’” (is missing a punctuation mark after that first ‘won’,) “Captain Frigyes’ bloodthirsty magic” (Frigyes’s,) “‘Assuming what you say about Mezentio is true, will will grant your soldiers their lives’” (… is true, we will grant …,) “Balazs’ smile” (Balazs’s. Balazs’ appeared again once,) “the ballocks” (I assume Turtledove, being USian, has only heard this word and doesn’t realise it’s spelled ‘bollocks’,) “Gyongos’ skirmishes” (Gyongyos’s,) Kunhegyes’ battered old palisade” (Kunhegyes’s.)

Unwin, 1989, 188 p.

This is apparently the third in Greenland’s Daybreak series but I wasn’t really aware of this when I bought it recently. I read The Hour of the Thin Ox many years ago and reviewed Daybreak on a Different Mountain on the blog in 2009.

Other Voices is a slightly unfocused tale set in the standardised pre- (or never-) industrial fantasy milieu. Greenland doesn’t fall into the clichés of the genre though, he’s too good a writer for that.

At the novel’s start Luscany is on the verge of being conquered by the Eschalan, a people to all intents human, but orange. The book promises to be the story of Serin, daughter of Tarven Guille, a medical experimenter.  It soon spreads out, though, to encompass the life of Luscany’s Princess Nette kept unwillingly in her palace by the victorious Eschalan as a figurehead.

Tarven and his wife Amber’s first two children either didn’t survive birth, or only barely did. Nevertheless, their bodies are kept in the house in a drawer in which Serin is forbidden to look. For Tarven is on the point of discovering how to bring the recently dead back to life.

The fantasy elements don’t overwhelm the story which is mainly one of accommodating to the occupying power and of resisting it.

Not one of Greenland’s major works but eminently readable.

Pedant’s corner:- “seemed to sooth her rage” (to soothe her rage.)

Luna Press, 2025, 176 p including Author’s note on Finding Inspiration in Scottish Folklore. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

This is a collection of one novella and 22 short stories – some very short; the title story is barely three pages long, a couple are only two, with the longest, The Frittening, just twelve – all taking inspiration from Scotland’s folklore, superstitions, or landscape.

The short pieces are loosely bunched under headings for the four seasons with each section’s stories prefaced with a wood- (or lino-)cut engraving of one of the Moon’s principal phases and a scene illustrative of a story within it. A ‘Bonus Section’ at the end outlines those particular tales and legends which sparked Croal’s imagination.

An individual story here can contain relatively familiar apparitions or hauntings – selkies, kelpies, hagstones, seer stones, magpies, omens and shape shifting, Will-o’-the-Wisp, the Otherworld, Changelings – but others like the Sluagh, the Frittening or the Boneless, the Cat-Sith, the Ghillie-Dhugh, Baobhan Sith and the Fiddlers of Tomnahurich Hill, the Cailleach, the Nuckelavee, the Marool, the Ceasg, Bee-telling, the Sea-Mither, Each Uisge, the Wulver, the Bride and Angus, may be less so. Some are set in depopulated post-disaster worlds and border on Science Fiction; others touch on gothic, weird horror, dark fantasy, and solarpunk. Many draw stimulus from nature, climate, and the environment, with feminist and eco themes prominent. Croal’s Author’s Note informs us three of her tales do not have a specific derivation but are original to her.

Hence, among others, we have omens in the sky, tappings on windows, a strange puddle emerging on a doorstep, pebbles appearing in a nest in the night, a will-o’-the-wisp manifesting more strongly each day, a fiddler finding his muse in a painting whose scene gradually changes, the green man as a malevolent influence, the thoughts of the last surviving whale as it roams the deserted seas. Except for a common thread of the sea there is little beyond the Gaelic names of the various phantasms to mark these stories out as specifically Scottish.

The novella, Daughter of Fire and Water, with its intermingling of gods/goddesses and mortals in fact reads more like a Greek, or perhaps Norse, myth – except for the prince in it being named Angus.

Taken individually the stories here are perfectly fine but the cumulative effect of Croal’s general style tends to the dry. She has a fondness for italicized paragraphs, especially in throat-clearing beginnings, and there is the occasional odd choice of verb, which can be jarring. There tends to be a kind of distance between the tale and the reader and the stories are too often told rather than shown while some are not really given enough room to breathe fully. There is not much emotion evoked in these tales but then stories of weird creatures and the whole apparatus of fairy tale have always been admonitory in intent.

This is a collection to be sipped rather than quaffed. (Not really an option available to a reviewer.)

Curiously, a few lines on Content Notes and Warnings come dead last in the book though a signal to them does lie on the publishing information page. Surely if such warnings are needed they ought to be more prominently placed?

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- focussing (focusing,) maw (more than once. A maw is not a mouth,) several USianisms (cookies, snuck, dove [for dive,] inside of, etc,) sunk (several times; sank.) “The only muscle the woman moved was her mouth” (a mouth is not a muscle,) razor—sharp (razor-sharp,) sung (x 2, sang.) “She lay the Seer’s map on the table” (She laid the Seer’s map on the table.) “She was his only companion, his confidant” (she; therefore ‘confidante’,) “Then she said with sharp cruelty, ‘no. Not if you…’” (she said with sharp cruelty, ‘No. Not if you…’,) “Everyone knelt and lay the offerings at her feet” (and laid the offerings,) “all that kept me company were layers of clouds” (all that kept me company was ….) “If I wanted so bad not to be alone” (If I wanted so badly not to be alone,) “and lay it over my chest as a pendant” (and laid it over my chest,) “and lay her in blankets” (and laid her in.) “When the sea witch, turned away and disappeared” (doesn’t need the comma, which in fact detracts from the sense,)  “that I’d wove so carefully” (woven,) “mouth scrunched up into an eclipse” (only makes sense if ‘ellipse’ was meant,) a new paragraph that was not indented, a missing full stop, “span” (spun,) “as if expecting me turn into” (to turn into.) “‘Your association with them isn’t exactly customary’” (sense expects, ‘Your association with them isn’t exactly exemplary’,) sat (seated; or; sitting.) “The fall made the landscape blur, and then a screech” (needs clarification,) “there were no sign of burns or marks” (there was no sign.) “then he swept out the room” (as written this means he cleaned the room with a brush; what was intended was ‘he swept out of the room’,) “the hot water stung into my legs” (the hot water stung my legs,) focussed (focused, annoyingly used two pages earlier.) “They looked between one another” (looked at one another,) galivanted (gallivanted.) “Much of these stories are inspired by” (Many of these stories are.) “I became fascinated in the dark, strange, and rich folklore” (became fascinated by,) “rife with unexplained phenomenon” phenomena makes more sense.) “Hagstones are stones with natural holes bored in centre are thought to be,” (the holes can’t have been bored; plus the sentence needs an ‘and’ before ‘are thought’.)

ParSec 15 is indeed live and I now have my copy.

I found it does contain my reviews of City of All Seasons by Oliver K Langmead and Aliya Whiteley along with The History of the World by Simon Morden but not that of Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston.

I have four other reviews there though:-

The Measurement Problem by David Whitmarsh,

Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds,

Exiles by Mason Coile,

plus Solstice by Ruth Aylett and Greg Michaelson.