NewCon Press, 2024, 213 p. Reviewed for ParSec 12.

The pitch for this post-apocalypse novel must have written itself. “Lord of the Flies – with girls.” Job done. Don’t you want to read it now? (No matter what I say.)

Nevertheless, a reviewer must review.

The story is set in an alternative 1975 on the largest of the Near Islands, an entirely fictional small archipelago located fifteen miles from Aberdeen. The girls are survivors of a nuclear attack on that city in what becomes obvious must have been a world-wide war. Most of the school’s pupils and teachers were away on a trip when the bombs fell.

The tale is narrated in retrospect (of a few years later) by the only boy, Stephen Ballantyne, son of the headmistress who took advantage of the convention that such children attend their parent’s school. All but one of the girls plus Stephen survive but his mother dies in the second blast.

A classic children’s story arrangement, then, with the parents out of the way and no other adults at hand. But these are not youngsters. They are fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds on the cusp of adulthood forced to rely on their own resources, albeit with a well-stocked library at hand. It helps the island is well-endowed with rabbits and sea-birds – not all of them palatable though.

The writing style is more irreverent than you might expect, with stabs at levity (one running joke in particular) and occasional addresses to the reader. It is at times consciously alliterative. In Dexter’s outlining of his scenario he has narrator Stephen tell us one girl’s name evokes “the milky mystery of midnight mosques.” And he eschews describing foul-mouthed language, “This is, after all, an adventure story set on a desert island.” Stephen also claims his greatest fault is self-effacement.

Step forward Pearl Wyss, “the smallest and mousiest-looking of the girls,” who had previously shown her mettle on a trip to a farm on the mainland for a demonstration of artificial insemination and, invited to repeat the farmer’s no doubt spitefully given information, does so flawlessly. Pearl becomes the driving force behind the rump school’s efforts to ensure survival, steering their debates and swaying (most of) the girls with her arguments.

Her awareness of the treatment of women by men down the ages colours her approach: watches to be set for any encroachment from the mainland, the building of a stockade and later a wall, the reconstruction of the curriculum to be more useful in their straitened circumstances, the manufacture of bows and training in shooting arrows.

The first man to arrive – on a rowing boat – only confirms her fears when he attempts to rape one of the girls. He is thereafter caged and ostracised.

Not all the girls agree with her. Some of their worries, such as wanting to get married in due course, a future Pearl’s prescriptions would seem to deny them, exemplify attitudes of the time where it is set. But her answer to that problem of course lies in front of them all the time. She is willing to be ruthless in defending the school against incursion by men no matter how inoffensive they may appear to be or even if they’re accompanied by women. Towards the book’s climax she says, “We make war because we hate war.” Turning into her enemy? All through the book Stephen acquiesces in her designs but in the final paragraphs he lets his air of self-effacement slip.

In an enterprise such as this it does not do to become bogged down on the details, the scenario is all. But two A-bombs dropped on Aberdeen? One would surely be enough. And how likely was it that a single mother in the 1970s would have become a headmistress; particularly of a girls’ school? Plus radiation sickness would most likely have been more prevalent than is presented here.

These are nit-picking, though. This may be no Lord of the Flies but it is still a well written, solid piece of work. In its essence it is not concerned about girls or women or whether they behave better or worse in any given situation. It is really about the nature of men and whether that nature will ever change.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- H2O (H₂O,) knit (knitted,) rowboat (several times; rowing boat,) E=mc2 (E = mc²,) focussed/unfocussed (x 2 each; focused/unfocussed,) airplanes (aeroplanes,) Benn Gunn (Ben Gunn,) “a saree” (a sari,) a sentence framed as a question but lacking its question mark, row-boat (x 2; elsewhere rowboat but in any case ‘rowing boat’,) “‘any who disagree this choice’” (who disagree with this choice.)

Recently arrived from ParSec magazine and now on my sidebar, a new book to read and review; to wit City of All Seasons by Oliver K Langmead and Aliya Whiteley.

I haven’t read any Langmead up till now but have read a couple of Whiteley’s books. She writes well.

The deadline for ParSec 14 is probably a bit too imminent for the review to make that issue but there will be ParSec 15 to come.

Gollancz, 2024, proof copy unpaginated. £22.99. Reviewed for ParSec 13.

AT THE REQUEST OF THE BOOK’S PUBLISHER MY REVIEW OF THIS NOVEL WAS WITHDRAWN FROM ParSec 13. I felt under no obligation to refrain from publishing my review here.  As a result of that request, though, I have made an amendment to the original withdrawn review; the two words highlighted in bold below.

We meet Edie (Edith, but she doesn’t like it) Morikawa as she is about to be released on unexpectedly early parole after eight years in prison. The last person she imagined would meet her is Angel Huang, her former associate whom she assumes grassed on her to ensure her own freedom. On the way up to Kepler Space Station, which orbits the Rock, the planet where the prison is located and seems to be otherwise uninhabited, Angel offers her a place on a team to carry out a robbery with a potentially stupendous pay-off. Edie refuses since she desires to go straight in order to help her sister Andrea, who has two children, Casey and Paige, and another on the way, courtesy of useless partner Tyler. Paige has cancer and needs gene therapy, but there is no money to pay for that.

(I note here a failure in imagination. Perhaps that’s the way the world will go, but even in a supposedly distant future, light years from Earth, a more equitable health care system, or indeed social system, than that which exists in the USA of the present day seems to be inconceivable to the author. But I suppose it gives the author a lever to manipulate their heroine.)

Staying on the straight and narrow will require Edie to find a job, helping Andie out at the shop where she works won’t do. But Edie has been blacklisted by Atlas Industries, which seems to control everything on Kepler. Its head and founder, Joyce Atlas, (a man despite the forename) was the intended target of Angel’s planned sting. Angel’s offer is the one thing that promises anything hopeful. When the reader finds out Angel is Atlas’s chief of security s/he is well ahead of the narrative in knowing exactly who did the blacklisting.

A curiosity of this novel is that most of the main characters are of Hawaiian heritage and occasionally speak in Hawaiian patois. (The blurb describes the book as a love letter to Hawai’i.) No matter. SF readers are used to the odd unfamiliar word or phrase, such as the one used in the title. Hammajang is a Hawaiian pidgin word meaning in a disorderly or chaotic state; messed up. Mention is also made of a Korean heritage area of Kepler. Oddly, there seems to be little attempt to assimilate there.

We are shown as much of Kepler as is needed for the plot, which runs along the lines expected from its set up. The space station must be quite large what with Atlas Industries and the different environmental and maintenance levels described. SF elements to the book are fairly incidental though; not much has gone into fleshing out this future scenario. While Kepler has an artificial sun and a simulated night sky, there is the usual layering of habitats, the lower levels grimy and dim, the upper airy and bright. In Angel’s gang Cy has a cybernetic arm and Tatiana has mods. Atlas Industries is developing a method of accessing people’s memories, provided they have a mod. However, Joyce Atlas does not come over as the sort of person to accrue a fortune as a business head – and, if he was, he would surely not succumb to the sting as presented.

Parts of this scenario strike as being very old-fashioned. There is a railway station (and presumably others) on Kepler, plus buses and a monorail. It has the feel of a city on Earth in the late twentieth century rather than a future space habitat light-years away. People – well, Edie – smoke cigarettes.

It’s easy enough reading, and totally undemanding, but there is no particular reason why this novel has to be SF. It’s a crime novel with a few SF trappings.

Pedant’s corner:- I read an ARC (proof,) so some or all of these may have been altered for final publication. The spelling ‘jewellery’, though the text was in USian, “florescent lights” (fluorescent; used later,) “under Joyce Atlas’ watch” (lots of instances of Atlas’ for Atlas’s, of which latter there was one example,) “as a I left” (that ‘a’ is superfluous,) “savouring our respective vises” (I know vise is USian for the clamping device. Do they also use it for character flaws?) “no one would risk cross risking Atlas” (no one would risk crossing Atlas,) “grew into hotspot” (into a hotspot,) “Morris’ deal” (Morris’s,) “part of tWard 2” (of Ward 2.) “I creeped back” (I crept back.) “I was surprised by Tatiana’s alas to go after Solstice” (desire makes more sense,) “an empty k3rb” (kerb, though curb for kerb was on the previous page, so why the shift?) “of thieve’s self-esteem” (either thief’s or thieves’,) “from the keb” (from the kerb.) “‘Every one of his devices have backdoor accessibility’” (every one … has … accessibility,) “the hotel staff was clearing the breakfast table” (was there only one of them?) “Even professionals had their soft spots” (as a generalisation this surely requires present tense; have their soft spots,) “lined with dim white lights that lead to” (that led to.) “It’s jaws were closing” (Its jaws,) jerry-rigged (it’s jury-rigged,) “a conversation pitwhile Cy went to” (pit while.) “She took to naturally” (She took to it naturally,) “‘but that time will eventually.’” (will eventually what? [run out, presumably but the sentence just stopped],) “and made groaned” (and groaned,) “each of us were in…” (each of us was in,) “‘you weren’t going to come with, I didn’t want you to feel left out’” (to come with us, I didn’t,) “cold yet still – crunchy katsu” (cold – yet still crunchy – katsu.) “I       watched         her      go.       ‘Shoots.’” (why the spacing? And the ‘Shoots’ seems extraneous.) “I wish it didn’t. I wish I could have let her go” (the narrative is in past tense; therefore: wished, x 2,) “while Andie and Tyler talking” (while Andie and Tyler were talking,) “I grit my teeth” (I know USians use fit for fitted but grit for gritted?) “‘To no end’ Duke growled” (to no end does not mean – as was implied here –  without end [that is just ‘no end,’] but instead it means ‘without purpose’,) “now he was surroundedone of the guards” (surrounded. One of the guards,) ‘incentive payments‘ (‘incentive payments’.) “I felt my heart’s quicken” (heartbeat quicken?)

The Slab, 2024, 354 p. (No price given.) Reviewed for ParSec 12.

Notwithstanding the success of The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and the Discworld series (both of which editor Donna Scott mentions in her introduction) I have never found Science Fiction and humour to be easy bedfellows, though I do admit to having a few guffaws when reading Eric Frank Russell’s Next of Kin many (many) moons ago. Indeed, I read the first few Discworld books and was only amused once – by an outrageous pun. (In Equal Rites in particular I thought there was a more serious book struggling to emerge from under its surrounding baggage.)

But we all need a good laugh in these disturbing times. So, with a will, to the contents.

As with all anthologies the quality and execution vary but in one with a premise like this it is inevitable that the tone of each story tends towards being similar.

One story that certainly hits the spot is Sundog 4 by Alice Dryden. A homage to the corpus of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson – familiarity with that œuvre may be required for a full appreciation – its plot has the breathless yet carboard quality of the different puppet series (and of the ones with actors whose dialogue might as well have been uttered by puppets) while slipping in direct references to those many shows. Very enjoyable. One might even say FAB.

Elsewhere we have a marriage broker on a Venus where every inhabitant – even the tentacled ones – seems to be Jewish, struggling to find a match for his client. A man signs up for an Intergalactic Cultural Exchange Plan with predictable unlooked for results. There is a warning about the implications of (mis)using an up to four-dimensional photocopier, particularly as regards photocopying arses – or ex-girlfriends. A minor convict set to do community work in an old people’s home is surprised by the inhabitants’ behaviour. A bored spaceship Captain leaves an AI in charge of his ship while he goes into cold sleep: after a 60 year delay in waking due to a meteorite strike he finds the ship’s bots have gone rogue. A robot cobbled together from spare parts by an aged Professor to commit burglaries for him fails in its final attempt; but he doesn’t. A bunch of Spiderbots battles against Mandroids® and Robosapiens® to try to save the human world. A family finds their virtual holiday goes wrong; for a start they’re not all on the same one. A scenario where every living thing has its own type of Grim Reaper, De’Swine, De’Fungi etc, and they have a philosophical problem with the big one, De’Ath. On a world plagued by sand an experienced, not to say old, female drug smuggler has to negotiate yet another double cross. Would-be students of a Present Studies course are encouraged to kill Hitler via time travel while their attempts are monitored by a course tutor who knows those attempts will fail. Dating Apps are beyond old hat when 4C (foresee; get it?) comes along to show users a trailer of how any relationship will evolve: a situation itself not beyond manipulation. In a future depression where eggs have become horribly expensive a banjo player makes his money by his seeming ability to make chickens lay freely; but he’s really selling something else. A mad scientist invents a process rendering his body incorporeal seemingly only in order to torment his stepson (who is savvier than he thought.) Aliens attracted by Earth’s radio and TV emanations abduct a woman to explain it all: they remain baffled; she puts the experience down to a spiked drink. People who shuffle through existence after the bombs fall cope by going to open mic nights. A religious woman who dies in undignified circumstances – though not anything like as shameful as her husband’s demise – gets a surprise in the afterlife. An explanation of the history, and future, of humans’ fear of spiders. A waitress in an Australian restaurant discovers the menu’s ‘kangaroo in orange sauce’ option is a manifestation of an alien invasion. The malfunctioning of a teleportation device poses an ethical dilemma for the duplicates it spews out every twenty minutes. To pep up an ageing lothario from a long line of such with an affinity for ginger, his doctor arranges for him to attend a Ginger Girls Gala, a convocation of those delightful lovelies. A transcript of a Prime Ministerial Press conference where it is repeatedly denied that time travellers have come back from the year 2345 to interfere in the present day, and where the questions spiral into more and more bizarre territory. A report outlining the genesis and results of five failed experiments in eugenics. A newly married man buys the naming rights of a star for his wife: twenty years (and an impending divorce later) they find themselves transported to that star’s system, where they are being worshipped as gods. A rich man’s attempt to remove any influence of trade unions on business practice, by travelling back in time to have a law passed, has unexpected consequences: not least for him.

Comedic fiction can be hit or miss in the eye of the beholder. Laughs in Space has more than enough hits to satisfy the jaundiced reviewer.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Two stories’ titles are missing from the contents page – though they follow the starting title Random Selection. There are some uneven paragraph indentations. Otherwise; “‘He’s brain in a jar!’” (He’s a brain in a jar!) ambiance (ambience,) “then the girl up and asked” (upped and asked,) a piece of direct speech opened with a single quotation mark but ended with a double one, “a cut-and-dry case” (the phrase is ‘cut-and-dried’,) “and laid back” (and lay back.) “A horde of Flergians were spread out in the garden” (a horde … was spread out,) antennas (antennae [as used elsewhere],) “yelled to the top of his lungs” (yelled at the top of his lungs,) Jims’ (x2, Jims’s,) “the skin on her arms not as taught” (not as taut,) slipperier (what’s wrong with ‘more slippy’?) smidgeon (smidgin or smidgen but definitely not smidgeon,) “off of” (just ‘off’. Please?) “a per centage” (a percentage,) Professors’ (Professor’s,) Professors (Professor’s,) epicentre (centre,) “a trail of bone-white husks litter the highway” (a trail … litters the highway,) “none of them … have a clue” (none of them … has a clue,) miniscule (minuscule,) “Woward meister” (Meister,) “of a film … of a bean growing, its roots uncurling,” (its shoots surely?) “but he’s no idea” (but he’d no idea.) “‘Who’s Wendy,’ Candy asked’” (‘Who’s Wendy?’ Candy asked,) “the image pixilated (pixelated; pixilated means drunk.) “‘It was just figure of speech’” (just a figure,) D’Apes (elsewhere De’Apes,) “lay a … hand on” (laid a … hand on,) “into De’Apes face” (into De’Apes’s face.) Mortallity (Mortality – spelled correctly one line later,) “looked pointedly looked downwards” (only one ‘looked’ needed,) “steadied themselves” (x 2, in both cases this was an individual; steadied themself?) “‘And who come for them?’” (comes.) Gavrilo Principe (Gavrilo Princip,) “had lain the table” (had laid the table,) “Dai lay down the hammer” (laid down,) “‘I can say with them for good’” (I can stay with them for good,) “when you know fully well” (the idiom is ‘know full well’,) “the rest of the room are hanging on his every couplet” (the rest of the room is hanging on… ,) “from whence they came” (whence = from where, from whence then = from from where, just ‘whence they came,) a full stop after the closing quotation mark of a quote instead of before it, “it as too real” (it was too real,) “for six and a half decade” (decades,) in one story though not in others the convention of a repeated opening quotation mark on a new paragraph within an extended piece of dialogue was not followed (x 2,)  a missing full stop, “before fished them out” (before I fished them out,) “ginger nut biscuits and ginger snaps” (aren’t they the same type of biscuit) bikkies (x 6, this affectionate term for biscuits is usually spelled biccies.) Games of Thrones (the author probably intended the plural of Game,) “‘since record began’” (records,) “the committe were somewhat mollified” (the committee was…,) two out of five of one story’s subheadings were italicised when the first three were not, “seven hundred ninety two” (seven hundred and ninety two,) “taught and impressive muscles” (that’ll be ‘taut’, then,) “were stood” (were standing,) “were sat” (x 2, were sitting,) “it had taken her taken her quite a long time” (remove one ‘taken her’,) “‘this the leader of our army’” (this is the leader,) “barring Pilates’ way” (Pilates’s way,) “‘Ready!’ came Pilates reply’” (Pilates’s.) “Stood at either end of the generator they each pulled a leaver” (Standing at either end of the generator they each pulled a lever.)

I have received another book for review.

This is a collection of short stories plus a novella, taking inspiration from “Scottish folklore, landscapes, superstitions and omens” and written by Lyndsey Croal. It is titled Dark Crescent.

Ms Croal seems to write mostly in the fantasy genre.

You may have noticed on my sidebar the cover of The Hamlet by Joanna Corrance. This is the latest book sent to me by ParSec magazine for review.

Corrance is a Scottish writer, based in the Highlands, but I have not read any of her work before.

The Hamlet is short, being novella length. It shouldn’t take me long. To read that is.

This year’s winners were indeed announced at Eastercon and the full list can be found here.

As far as the adult fiction categories go we have –

Short fiction:

Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabelle Kim

Shorter fiction – which somewhat confusingly is for longer fiction than the short fiction category; ie novella and novelette (whatever a novelette is):-

Saturation Point by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Novel:

Three Eight One by Aliya Whiteley

I note there was an award for best translated short work:

Bone by Bone by Mónika Rusvai, translated from Hungarian by Vivien Urban.

I haven’t read any of them.

(I have read the novel withdrawn from consideration, Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky. My review appeared in ParSec 13 and will do so here in due course.)

In my post about the latest issue of ParSec magazine I said it would contain my review of Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto.

Well; it didn’t.

After the issue had been released I received an email from ParSec’s editor saying that just before the issue went live he had received a letter from the book’s publisher demanding that my review be taken down.

The letter apparently described my review as “hugely upsetting to the author and a lot of people.” Quite how that could be the case when the review had yet to appear is a point to ponder. The author maybe – if the review had been shared with them – but a lot of people?

The letter claimed that I had misgendered the book’s protagonist, Edie, throughout as “they are explicitly known as they/them throughout the entirety of the book” and I had failed to follow that designation. 

Now: the book was written in the first person singular by a narrator who was clearly not male. With such a narrator occasions on which the use of they/them will describe the protagonist will be vanishingly rare.

Regular readers of this blog will know how unlikely it is that something as striking as a still relatively uncommon use of personal pronouns would pass me by.

Nvertheless, just to check, I did a quick scan of the Advanced Reading Copy sent to me for review and, as I had recalled, the pronouns used to describe the protagonist are actually ‘I’ and ‘me’ (naturally so for a first person narration) – or ‘you’ when the narrator was being spoken to by other characters. I could find no instance of ‘they/them/their’ at all. In this circumstance it can surely be understood why a humble reviewer would assume that the normal pronouns for a female character would apply.

My review, as reviews must be, accordingly was based on the text as written – or at least as published in the ARC.

In the cold light of day and coming to the review afresh there was a three word passage which perhaps came across as more flippant and thoughtless than I intended. Had I been contacted directly about this I would have acceded to its removal/replacement without hesitation. I was not given the opportunity.

I will nevertheless alter that when I post the review here in due course.

I have no quibble with ParSec’s editor’s decision not to publish the review. He has after all a relationship with the publisher to nurture but I would add he has enough on his plate without having to deal with a back and forth about something so trivial as a book review.

I must add that it used to be considered bad form for an author to complain about a review.

But that a publisher can all but demand a review not be printed is surely a bit over the score.

Solaris, 2023, 339 p.   Reviewed for ParSec 12.

This is a collection of fiction of mostly fantasy stories, perhaps in keeping with Nordic traditions but there is a sprinkling of Science Fiction. They are split almost equally between translations and stories which first appeared in English, though they do contain a surprising number of Scottish terms. None of them would appear out of place in any speculative fiction anthology though, in most, character or place names display their provenance.

The book’s contents are ordered by the authors’ countries of origin.

Sweden:

She by John Ajvide Lindqvist, translated by Marlaine Delargy from the Swedish, Hon, has an epigram from Nathan Wahlqvist to the effect that “a haunting is dependent on a series of highly unlikely coincidences,” and so inherently rare. This tale of the haunting of a house newly built on the site of an older one relies on the facts that the owners, a couple trying to embark on parenthood, sourced its materials on the cheap and the grandfather of one of them had done wrong in the past.

Lost and Found by Maria Haskins, translated from the original, Vindspår, by the author tells of the mental disintegration of the survivor of a crashed escape pod from a ship surveying exoplanets for possible terraforming. Or was there really something out there?

Sing by Karen Tidbeck is set on a planet whose human inhabitants are strangely affected by the rising and setting of the system’s moons. Most can sing when a particular moon is up but our narrator can’t. She is also physically impaired and hence not fully part of the society. A visitor finds the planet’s parasitic ecosystem strange and is shocked by the method through which the singing is acquired.

Denmark:

The False Fisherman by Kaspar Colling Nielsen, translated from the Danish Den falske fisher by Olivia Lasky, concerns a man who did not take up fishing till he was over forty but nevertheless gets himself all the correct gear. He never catches anything (apart from one whopper.) This story could quite easily be read as having no speculative content at all – except for perhaps one sentence.

Heather Country by Jakob Drud is set in a world after what is always referred to as the impact, in a Jutland run by the NeuroClan a pair of whose investigators (both mortgaged to the Clan’s system of debt of body parts) stumble across a threat to the production of fuel from the local genetically modified heather.

The Traveller Girl by Lene Kaaberbøl, translated from the original, Rakkerstøsen, by the author, again has only a tangential relationship to the speculative. A man hoping to inherit land by marrying the landowner’s daughter is startled by the humanity he finds in the gypsy girl he encounters one day. Her group comes there so that their horses’ foals may be born on land that confers on them strength, sturdiness and speed.

The Faroe Islands:

The Abyss by Rakel Helmsdahl, translated from the Faroese, Dýpið, by Marita Thomsen, as a story, seems to be a metaphor for Limbo as our narrator climbs up and down and traverses across a never-ending series of iron bars too rigid and close-set to pass through, before deciding to fall into the abyss of the title and further adventures.

Iceland:

The Dreamgiver by Johann Thorsson. A child’s nightmares are relieved by a dreamcatcher hung up by her bedroom door. One night when our narrator, the child’s mother, carries out the daily task of emptying it she is startled by the Dreamgiver, who is not best pleased that his dreams are being discarded.

Hamraborg Babylon by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmson. Translated from the Icelandic Sódóma Hamraborg by Quentin Bates.

This Hamraborg is a tower dominating its city, Kópavogur. A woman penetrates its nightmarish depths in search of her brother. The story doesn’t quite deliver on the promise of its first two pages.

Norway:

As You Wish by Tor Åge Bringsværd. Translated from the Norwegian Som du Vil by Olivia Lasky. Brageson works in Mine-Blue 4 on the planet Nova Thule where the company provides all its workers with an idunn. Created from local crystalline sources these are not-quite-android simulacra of women with a highly developed sense of imitation. Their signature question is, “How do you want me?” –  a question which haunts Brageson as he struggles to accept his idunn’s presence in his life.

The Cormorant by Tone Almhell has more than a few similarities to Scottish Folk Tales. Not surprising really, given the same harsh northern climate, the salience of fishing as a means of earning a living and the overbearing presence of the sea. The story sets its stall out early when the narrator says she is a cormorant and if she spreads out her wings death will follow. She has been brought up without her father, who had mysterious origins anyway, and lives with her secretive mother on an island across a stretch of sea from the town of Grip. The townspeople view both her and her mother with suspicion. Possibly with good reason.

The Day Jonas Shadowed His Dad by Thore Hansen. Translated by Olivia Lasky. Jonas, whose mother has died, is intrigued by the vagueness with which his father describes his work, so decides one day to follow him. In a cottage in the woods he descends into a tunnel which leads to somewhere brighter and, to Jonas, more intriguing. Overall, though, this is a little underwhelming to regular readers of SF and Fantasy.

A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen by Margrét Helgadóttir. Global warming and migration have led to Longyearbyen becoming a destination city for its December light festival. One of the (unheard number of two) lions in its zoo – thought to be the last actually born in the wild – has gone from its cage. In the midwinter darkness a human hunter prepares to stalk it.

Finland:

A Bird Does Not Sing Because It Has an Answer by Johanna Sinisalo. A human monitors an extremely slow moving avatar suit overseeing the nesting site of a pair of (by now incredibly rare) flycatchers while not being supposed to intervene in natural processes. In the meantime, Central’s coordinating AI is decoding the meanings of birdsong. The story’s last word is devastatingly apposite.

Elegy for a Young Elk by Hannu Rajaniemi. In a world where most humans have disappeared into some sort of upload heaven, once and would-be poet Kosonen roams the woods with his talking bear Otso. Both like booze. He is visited by an avatar of his former wife who wants him to retrieve an object which fell into a firewalled city dominated by plague gods. Their lost son also happens to be in there.

The Wings that Slice the Sky by Emmi Itäranta. Translated from the Finnish Taivasta silpovat sivet by the author. Judging by the Author’s Note this seems to be a take on the Finnish epic Kalevala. Louhi, a woman with magical powers, marries into the well to do family which lives in Pohjola in the north. One day she rescues a shipwrecked man from the south and nurses him back to health. In return for a horse to take him back south she asks for a Sampo, a device which will ensure Pohjola will never again want for anything. The bargain is also to include one of her daughters. He sends a blacksmith to forge the Sampo but he in turn spreads the fact of Pohjola’s existence and soon many visitors arrive. Men being men – even (especially?) with magical powers – things don’t end well.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- some of the translations are into USian. Otherwise; Fin (Finn.) “None of these alternatives were appealing” (‘None …. was appealing’ and, strictly, there can be only two alternatives, not three,) “hockey cards” (being set in Sweden these would more likely be ‘ice hockey cards’,) Janosz’ (Janosz’s,) laying (x 2, lying,) “a wee bit of sarcasm” (a wee bit? The author must have spent time in Scotland.) “None of them were armed” (None … was armed.) “The only movement along its streets were those of plastic bags and battered tin cans” (The only movement … was …,) “to such a prophesy” (prophecy,) smothes (smooths,) Douglas’ (Douglas’s,) “the less electromagnetic emissions the better” (the fewer … emissions the better.) “She sat down …and swung its legs” (either, ‘It sat down …and swung its legs’ or, She sat down …and swung her legs’,) sprung (sprang.)

Gollancz, 2024, 312 p, plus 2p Author’s Note.    Reviewed for ParSec 12.

In the future universe this novel describes people live in kinds of utopias where they don’t bother to learn many languages or even to read and write, delegating translation to AIs and work to machines, an existence which in effect renders the typical specimen of humanity, to a degree, infantile. Nevertheless, two different modes of faster than light travel dubbed α and β have been developed. The first utilises simultaneous time and space dilation and is (fractionally) slower than the second, which deploys extremely rapid spacetime bubbling. (Not that this is important. Any putative FTL technology is only ever a handy device for getting characters from A to B.) The α and β spacecraft types in which their passengers travel are called startships (note that second ‘t’,) which are essentially hospitals; space travel, of any sort, is dangerous, a spaceship’s passengers require protection. And the ships themselves, contrary to some earlier imaginings, are not transplanted marine vessels since a spaceship doesn’t need a rigid framework nor corridors. Here, instead, they consist of woven clusters of moveable Meissner tetrahedra linked together by smartcable. Utopias, though, need to be escapable or conflict will arise. And escape from a spaceship is difficult.

As to the story, we begin with two startships, Sα-Niro and Sβ-Oubliette, sent to monitor the black hole HD 167128, aka QV Tel. Niro’s Captain Alpha Raine comes to believe there is an intelligence communicating with him from inside the black hole. The other members of both ships’ crews of course dismiss this out of hand. After all nothing can escape a black hole. Raine then sets about murdering them all.

The focus then switches to a historian named Saccade on the Masqueworld. She specialises in twentieth century serial killers in fact and fiction and so seems perfect to interview the since captured Raine. Rather than in person she meets Raine in a sim where his appearance shows all sorts of disfigurements even though he ought to have no control over it.

Raine calls the black hole dweller the Gentleman; a personage who alludes to himself with references to Sympathy for the Devil. Prior to this our narrator has addressed the reader of our century directly and the text is littered with (apparently misremembered from our time) mangled lyrics to popular songs (“we all live in a yellow sunny scene”) and film titles such as Two Thousand and One Odysseys or Surfing Private Ryan, along with references to the empire of Ancient Room and a description of nightmares as angsttraum. Roberts is clearly enjoying himself throughout here by dropping these nuggets. SF buffs will also recognise allusions such as, “‘My God,’ said Li, ‘It’s full of tears!’”

Raine says the Gentleman was imprisoned in QV Tel, presumably by the universe’s creator. We are, then, delving into the realms of religion and philosophy.

After this encounter Saccade, too, develops murderous tendencies but is nevertheless allowed, under observation, to travel to the planet Boa Memória where a flamboyant adventurer called Berd is planning to be the first human to walk on the metal core of a planet. This requires not only a heat-insulating suit but also a device to bend the angle of gravity and so obviate the crushing pressures to be encountered.

This device is really the core of the novel. Its construction may have been necessary to the universe in order to preserve information that would otherwise be lost when black holes evaporate. It is conjectured that the reason for the evolution of intelligent life was so that Berd’s device could be invented. But if deployed at the event horizon of a black hole…. What might occur? What might escape?

The rest of the novel is taken up with a race to QV Tel to prevent Saccade reaching there with the device and the various arguments among the characters as to whether the Gentleman exists and how or if to deal with him and Saccade both.

This is a fairly dense though intermittently playful novel brimming with ideas, enough to fill many a novel, but none of its scenes really evoke SF’s famed sense of wonder. And, though Matr Guunarsonsdottir, a self-centred physicist with a Trumpian attitude to reality – whatever she says she instantly believes even if it contradicts something she said before – is a recognisable type, nor do the characters really convince. (Except the Gentleman of course. The Devil always has the best tunes.) There is something perfunctory about many of their interactions. But Roberts has given himself a get-out clause here, these humans have been cosseted throughout their lives, they are immature.

The ideas are what make the book though.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- 10^20 (10²⁰. Is superscription some sort of lost art in typesetting? It can’t be. The ^ appears to be superscripted,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 3,) “Choe Eggs’ suggestion” (Choe Eggs’s,) coliseum (in our world, Colosseum, but this future universe has forgotten our spellings,) grotesquenesses (grotesqueries.) “She turned to face him four-squarer” (four-square?) siriusphis tree (I have no idea what that meant,) focussed (x 2, elsewhere – and correctly – focused,) annex (annexe,) crafts (craft,) “the milky way” (the Milky Way,) “in visible spectrums” (the plural of spectrum is spectra: but, in any case, there is only one visible spectrum,) profondimetre (it was a depth-measuring device; so, profondimeter,) miniscule (minuscule,) Joyns’ (several times; Joyns’s – which appeared once,) span (spun,) “believe rather than it emanates from” (that it emanates,) “on behalf of” (context demands ‘on the part of’,) hiccough (hiccup,) “effecting her emotions” (again context demands ‘affecting’,) shuggled (usually – certainly in Scotland – ‘shoogled’,) neurones (neurons,) “she was laying in the darkness” (lying,) sprung (sprang,) “the only thing that really mattered were …” (the only thing that really mattered was…,) shrunk (shrank.)