The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2002, 267 p, including vii p Foreword, xi p Appendix and xiii p Afterword by Susan M Squier and Julie Vedder.

Earthsong is the third in Elgin’s Native Tongue trilogy, the first of which, Native Tongue, was published in 1984 and the second, The Judas Rose, in 1987. This edition is a reprint of  Earthsong’s 1994 publication.

The trilogy’s premise was that due to aliens coming to Earth and requiring translators a group known as Linguists came to have a monopoly on the trade. (As I recall their expertise had been developed by talking with whales and dolphins but my memory may be tricking me.)

Despite the trilogy being set in the 22^nd century, society was still largely male dominated and though women linguists were utilised they were very much subservient to the males – as were women more generally with very little in the way of autonomy. Women past child-bearing age go to live in Barren Houses and in these was developed a language (which Elgin named Láadan,) so that women’s perceptions could be expressed more adequately. This was kept secret from the males of course. In The Judas Rose Láadan was introduced to non-Linguist women but failed to catch on and was indeed opposed vigorously. But their new language changed the women and men could not bear being with a woman for longer than thirty minutes – some (not myself) might say not much difference there, then – to the extent that they lived in separate Womanhouses.

Those two books were an interesting thought experiment and, while being perfectly adequate as SF, were marred for me by the fact that seemingly every single man in them was characterised as being incredibly stupid.

In Earthsong, a crisis has been precipitated by the aliens suddenly disappearing from Earth (citing as their reason humanity – for which of course read men – as being too violent.)

A foreword supposedly written by the main protagonist of the earlier two books, Nazareth Joanna Chornyak, warns us that the story, as mediated by trancers channelling her thoughts, is going to be disorganised, told through many different voices, and not in chronological order. The trancers are necessary because Nazareth is dead and in some sort of limbo.

The book proper starts with her great granddaughter Delina Meloren Chornyak petitioning the head of the Pan-Indian Council of the Americas (PICOTA) to allow her to use their ceremonies invoking a vision quest in order to talk to Nazareth to ask her what to do about reestablishing relations with the aliens. When he is finally persuaded and Delina meets her forebear, what Nazareth says to her seems impossible. It is to eradicate hunger.

After a long time Delina realises the question boils down to ‘How can people eat less food and still thrive?’ The answer she finds is in religion. Throughout history ascetics, nuns, monks and so on claim to have got by, flourished even, on little food. The secret, Delina realises, lay not in religion itself but more specifically in chanting. But it turns out that any sort of singing will suffice. By analogy with photosynthesis Delina calls the process of deriving sustenance through song, audiosynthesis. (It was here I felt Elgin had gone over the score. Now we are in outright fantasy land. Sound is a form of energy, yes, but by what mechanism can it be converted to chemical energy. In any case, are these accounts of abstinence credible? Religious adherents have been known to engage in deception to ensnare the gullible, to impress the credulous.)

Yet what would lack of hunger mean? If everyone has access to food (or can gain the necessities of survival elsewhere) then conflict will be reduced, if not eliminated, a means of control of people removed. And, as happened with Láadan, humans would change, they would be in effect a new species, with a new outlook on life.

Elgin’s background is perhaps showing when a (male) character asks, “would you please explain how it happens that the President and Vice-President of the United States” [of Earth] “are always incompetent?” and when given a counter example says, “He thought Presidents were allowed to fix things. He didn’t last long,” which  leans into that pernicious strand of USian thought which distrusts government, which thinks government is a bad thing and which also, therefore, encourages conspiracy theories.

The same character’s assertion that “There cannot be a conspiracy that size to do good! …. Human beings are only capable of really buckling down and working together in groups when their goals are evil,” has simply misinterpreted human history. Co-operation (plus the passing on of knowledge) – not conflict, and certainly not individualism – is what allowed humans to become the dominant species on our planet.

As speculation, as SF, this is all fine, outrageous premises have often been turned into good stories. The story here, though, is only touched on obliquely, its ramifications for future human relationships left unshown.

The novel is our prime way of exploring what it means to be human. It is difficult, therefore, to convey a change in human behaviour using it as a medium. If Elgin doesn’t quite manage to, her attempt can be applauded.

Pedant’s corner:- “there were a number of” (there was a number of,) “had hid” (had hidden,) “the unlikely lay of this land” (lie of this land,) “none of them were” (none of them was,) “had that for search target” (for a search target,) “I’m put back back together now” (only needs one ‘back’.)  “‘For heaven’s sakes’” For heaven’s sake,) “but he was was tolerant” (only one ‘was’ needed,) youall (you all,) a missing end quote mark after a piece of direct speech, strategems (stratagems.)

Harvill Secker, 2019, 234 p, including 2p Contents and 2 p Acknowledgements.

This is Logan’s latest solo collection of stories, her first, The Rental Heart and other fairytales, I reviewed here. I have also read her novels The Gracekeepers and The Gloaming.

The stories here are chiefly burdened with overly long titles eg Birds Fell From the Sky and Each One Spoke in Your Voice or We Can Make Something Between the Mushrooms and the Snow. As the title implies the subject matter tends to be dark. On the whole the collection is tinged with magic realism or outright fantasy and often tips over into horror.

The stories are prefaced and interspersed with what at first appear to be authorial interjections about the circumstances of writing the book and the author’s private life but these short passages soon evolve into what is obviously as much of a fiction as the stories which surround and envelop them.

The book is divided into three sections: The House, The Child and The Past. The first story in each is composed of four short pieces labelled respectively First Fear, Second Fear, Third Fear, and Fourth Fear but most of the stories deal with fear of one sort or another. These fears tend to be female concerns: childbirth and the things attendant on it (apprehensions about what is gestating, what has appeared, is the child safe and well? Am I a good enough mother?) abduction, rape, domestic restriction. One, about seeing a Punch and Judy Show and recognising its hideousness, is told almost entirely by way of footnotes. Another takes the form of a questionnaire – including its rubric. Another alludes to the story of Snow White but takes it in an even darker direction.

From my experience of her writing so far (see links above) Logan presents herself best, as here, at short story length.

Pedant’s corner:- “and fold it on itself” (‘fold in on itself’ makes more sense,) “for heaven’s sakes” (is USian. Britons say ‘for heaven’s sake’,) “into his screeching maw” (stomachs don’t shriek,) “aren’t I?” (Scots say ‘amn’t I?)

Last week one of British Science Fiction’s stalwarts, Brian Stableford, died.

Of the more than eighty books he published in his lifetime I have a mere eight on my shelves. He also wrote many shorter works of  fiction, being a copious contributor to Interzone over the years.

I see from the BSFA’s obituary in the link above that he also translated over 200 novels of early French SF and Fantasy into English. Prolific doesn’t cover it.

Brian Michael Stableford: 25/7/1948 – 24/2/2024. So it goes.

Canongate, 2018, 137 p.

This is part of a departure for Kennedy. Her earlier books were short story collections and novels intended for adults. However in 2017 she started producing a series of children’s stories about featuring Uncle Shawn and Badger Bill – and llamas. The Little Snake is another diversion. On one level it is a children’s story, on another a fable, and on a third a meditation on death.

Mary is a girl living in a strange city where kites are flown from rooftops. One day she feels a strange sensation and observes a golden circlet round her ankle. This is the little snake Lanmo. Usually he is the angel of death, but with Mary he forms a friendship. Lanmo comes and goes many times throughout her life seeing her grow up, fall in love and mature while her (nameless) city becomes less and less hospitable as time goes by and war encroaches on its inhabitants.

Lanmo tells her of his sense of oddness that humans spend so much of their time contriving so many different ways to kill each other when their lives will end in any case. Selflessly he helps her escape to a better life but is in turn changed by her.

This is a book coloured by intimations of the modern world, the shadow of war, the necessity of migration, the kindness of strangers, the acceptance of death at the end of a life well lived.

For such a short book it carries quite a punch.

Pedant’s corner:- remarkably – even though the book is short – there is nothing to report here.

I was sad to read in the Guardian on Thursday of the death of Science Fiction writer Michael Bishop.

He was one of my favourite SF writers of the 1970s and 1980s.

I have read eleven of his books including two short story collections and the novel he co-wrote with British SF author Ian Watson.

His was always a humane approach to writing SF.

He had a knack for memorable story titles. From my early days reading the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction his story The White Otters of Childhood stood out as demanding to be read.

Then who could not be intrigued by And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees? (This story is also known as Beneath the Shattered Moons. So good he named it twice.)

And there is his novel Philip K Dick is Dead Alas.

Michael Lawson Bishop: 12/11/1945 – 13/11/2023. So it goes.

Vintage, 2011, 220 p.

This is a companion piece to Rushdie’s earlier book Haroun and the Sea of Stories, written for his son, but also as a defence of the art of story-telling. Like that novel this one could be described as a children’s book but there is plenty to delight the adult reader.

The hero this time is not Haroun but his younger brother Luka. Their father, Rashid Khalifa, is renowned for his storytelling abilities and known as The Shah of Blah from his ability to draw inspiration from what he calls the Ocean of Notions.

But Rashid has fallen ill and to save him Luka must seek out and bring back The Fire of Life that burns at the top of the Mountain of Knowledge. In his quest he is accompanied by Dog the bear and Bear the dog and a spirit presence calling himself Nobodaddy who is Rashid’s double and whose appearance becomes more transparent the more Rashid’s life wanes.

He it is who tells Luka, “Man is the story-telling animal.” In stories are his identity, his meaning and his lifeblood. By way of emphasis Nobodaddy asks, “‘Do rats tell tales? Do porpoises have narrative purposes? Do elephants ele-phantasise?’” This is typical of Rushdie’s style here of free association, word play and allusion. In a riff on time-travel stories there are mentions of the clock-bearing rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, intimations of Doctor Who, Time Bandits, Back to the Future, and A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.

Luka’s journey through the Magic Land up the River of Time takes him to the land of Oh-Tee-Tee (Ott,) where everything is done to excess, and whose Queen is referred to as the Insultana. All sorts of weird and wonderful things happen by way of P2C2E, Processes Too Complicated To Explain. Luka picks up other companions along the way, among them Elephant Birds (fearful of losing their memories in the Mists of Time they pass through,) and the great Native American mythological character Coyote. We also encounter an arid expanse of land called The Waste of Time.

Whether you can be doing with all this punnery depends upon your toleration of exuberant word play. Myself, I found it delightful.

The Magic Land of Luka’s journey is Rashid’s creation and Luka reminds its inhabitants that if they prevent him from restoring the fire of life to his father they will disappear along with him.

On returning home (Spoiler: this is a children’s tale after all, of course Luka returns home) Rashid admits to Luka he stole the idea of the few particular children who can defy Time’s power just by being born , and make us all young again, from his wife, Luka’s ma. “‘If you’re going to be a thief,’” he says, “‘steal the good stuff.’”

Well, you could say Rushdie has.

Pedant’s corner:- Pythagoras’ Theorem (Pythagoras’s,) “the stink of sulphur dioxide” (this is supposedly the result of rotting eggs. However the gas they give off is hydrogen sulphide, H₂S; not SO₂,) “reached a terrible crescendo” (No: the crescendo is the climb, not its end,)

You may have noticed this book on my sidebar a few days ago.

It is the latest book I had for review from ParSec a collection of Cristofari’s short stories.

I have sampled her prose before from her contributions to Interzone.

I’m afraid that since I contracted Covid* in the intervening days my mind hasn’t been on constructing the review. I will get round to it though.

As to Covid, I think I’m recovering. It’s not been too bad (but I was fully vaccinated and boosted) though I experienced a strange mixture of flu and cold symptoms, the classic loss of smell and taste included, none of which were utterly debilitating. It’s left me a bit listless, though.

*Galling that I managed to avoid it for nearly four years till now and only caught it once shops and so on stopped providing sanitiser.

Star, 1985, 188 p. Based on the screenplay by Lloyd Fonvielle.

Film tie-in novelisations are not my usual reading matter but this was written by Vonda N McIntyre, whose back catalogue I have been trying to catch up with.

The premise is that Charles Frankenstein has promised to create a companion for his creature – a female companion. The book begins on the night when Frankenstein and his assistant await the arrival of the electrical storm which will animate her. She is of course beautiful, her only flaw a slight discolouration at the wrists. She is brought to life ignorant of the world and its ways. When introduced to Frankenstein’s earlier creation she instinctively shies from it though. (I shrink from that ‘it’. The “monster” is never less than a creature worthy of sympathy – even empathy.) The creature is angered but not totally surprised by this. He is used to being reviled.

It is here that McIntyre made an authorial decision which elevates the narrative above where it might have lain. Most of the text is related in third person (this is of course how a viewer experiences cinema) but the creature’s thoughts are given to us in his first-person viewpoint. That night, the creature’s rage results in a fire in Frankenstein’s castle and the creature resolves to flee. Later in the book, once he has taken up with a dwarf called Rinaldo, with whom he forms an effective pair, Rinaldo decides to call him Viktor. (I also wondered why, here, Frankenstein the creator had been given the name Charles rather than Victor.)

Charles calls his new ward Eva, after the biblical first woman, and sets out to educate her, not only in the normal sense but in the ways of society. She at first scandalises the housekeeper Mrs Baumann by her feral habits, especially where food is concerned, but soon more considerate behaviour becomes her hallmark. She notices the different attitude Charles has to her and his social equals as compared to the servants and takes one of them, Hannah, from the kitchen to be her personal maid. She is also confused by the manners and customs of Charles’s acquaintances.

In the meantime after various ignominies suffered on the road, Viktor and Rinaldo become a great success as a circus act (Rinaldo is particularly adept on the trapeze.)  This leads to jealousy on the part of the circus owner and his chief employee and a tragedy, whereupon Viktor is left to his own resources again.

Gradually Eva becomes aware that the tale Charles told her of her origin is false and she seeks to find her true self elsewhere. He has of course come to consider she is his alone and is unwilling to let her go.

This all written in a much better way than the rather corny premise itself merits. Not great literature but enjoyable enough.

Pedant’s corner:-  delibertely (deliberately,) “lingered on her body longer than they need” (longer than they needed,) an unindented new paragraph (x 2,) “on the try” (on the tray,) “snatched t a third piece” (snatched at,) “who’ll heave to clean it up” (who’ll have to,) “in the underbush” (underbrush?) “and let myself dissolved back” (dissolve back,) “put one handon” (hand on,) a missing full stop between two sentences (x 2,) creature (creature,) Thucidides (Thucydides,) “‘Is that you idea of’” (your idea,) Rinald (elsewhere always Rinaldo,) a missing opening quote mark before a piece of direct speech (x 2,) “Rinaldo siad” (said,) a capital letter on a word in the middle of a sentence, “‘hat you’ve got the feel of it’” (that you’ve got,) “‘If you trust mer’” (trust me,) ounging (lounging,) “and showed Magar and straps” (showed Magar the straps,) glard (glared,) “make them laughed at me” (laugh at me,) “‘get out of her’” (of here,) emtpy (empty,) peddler (pedlar.) Wht (What,) cuatiously (cautiously,) “the serving women” (woman,) “but be more more could have climbed down thatn he could fly” (but he no more could have climbed down than he could fly.) Evan (elsewhere always Eva,) “it was no unpleasant” (not unpleasant.) “‘You must take note to town for me’” (take a note,) rached (reached.) “She slide her hands up his back” (slid her hands.) “‘Make you own way’” (your own,) “pocked the key” (pocketed,) “the last dangling plan from its hinges” (plank.) Frankenstin (Frankenstein.)

Thirty four Scottish books read this year; equally divided between female and male authors. Fiction, Poetry, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Non-fiction, Football. I have linked to my reviews if they have appeared here.

No Dominion  by Louise Welsh

Hieroglyphics by Anne Donovan

For the Good Times by David Keenan

Wild Geese by Nan Shepherd

Paper Cup by Karen Campbell

The Christmas Truce by Carol Ann Duffy

A Would-Be Saint by Robin Jenkins

Something Like Happy by John Burnside

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark

The Dark Remains by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin

Scotland’s Lost Clubs by Jeff Webb

The Oath Takers by Naomi Mitchison

Vinland by George Mckay Brown

Beethoven’s Assassins by Andrew Crumey

Chimera by Alice Thompson

Hester by Mrs Oliphant

Antimacassar City by Guy McCrone

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

The Philistines by Guy McCrone

Fishnet by Kirstin Innes

A Gift From Nessus by William McIlvanney

Sea-Green Ribbons by Naomi Mitchison

Companion Piece by Ali Smith

Night Boat by Alan Spence

Europa Deep by Gary Gibson

Murder in the Merchant City by Angus McAllister

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker

The Puritans by Guy McCrone

King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett

Escape From Hell by Hal Duncan

The Pearl-fishers by Robin Jenkins

The Bachelors by Muriel Spark

Klaus by Allan Massie

Early in Orcadia by Naomi Mitchison

Grafton, 1991, 444 p.

After Lady Delivev of Castle Spinweb turns down his offer of marriage, fellow sorcerer Lord Rezhyk of Castle Ringforce, ever one to think the worst of people, believes she wishes ill on him. He conceives a plan utilising his enslaved demon Gildrum to go to Spinweb, disguised as a knight called Mellor, to seduce Delivev and make her pregnant as under those conditions she will not feel Rezhyk weave for himself a protective covering of metal. Neither he nor Gildrum ever thought that she would go on to bear the child or that Gildrum would fall in love with her (a fact which Gildrum conceals from his master.)

Delivev’s special power is affinity with spiders and snakes. She can use spiders’ webs as a means to see far and wide across the world as they spin a sort of screen for her to witness what they see and hear. (Though the screens are temporary this is a literal world-wide web, but of course on first publication in 1979 no-one would have thought of it in those terms.)

The child she bears is the Sorcerer’s Son of the book’s title since, as a demon, Gildrum could not have provided the necessary procreative material, which came from Rezhyk. The child is named Cray Ormoru.

As he grows up, despite being close to his mother, he does not want to become a sorcerer but instead to find his father so he goes on a quest to discover the knight, whose shield bore three pink crossed lances on a white ground; a quest doomed to failure.

Deceived by Gildrum – through Rezhyk’s instructions – into believing his father is dead (Gildrum has a way with manipulating matter and appearances) Cray decides the only way he can find out who his father was is to conjure a demon himself and so must seek apprenticeship. Rezhyk wants the true situation to remain unknown to Cray but invites him to learn the arts but with the intention of misleading Cray. Many years of fruitless endeavour ensue until Gildrum reveals to Cray Rhezyk’s duplicity.

As with many such fantasy tales we are presented with a society having mediæval value systems and hierarchies, only here with sorcerers replacing Lords as the ruling class. This default fantasy setting I find irritating. I suppose they are trying to represent less enlightened times but can fantasy writers not eschew such lazy backgrounding? The effect is made worse here by the dialogue being couched in cod mediæval language.

The summoning of demons is presented as being akin to alchemy, with gold extraction its most important aspect. Again this seems somewhat lacking in imagination. Still, this sort of thing is not read for its newness of treatment. It slips down easily however.

There is a sequel, The Crystal Palace, and a third in the sequence which was never published.

Pedant’s corner:- “‘none of them ever know’” (none of them ever knows,) callouses (calluses.) “‘I an not one’” (I am not one.)