Corvus, 2021, 283 p.

Two Tribes is narrated as if by a historian called Zoe from 250 years in the future. She lives in a post-Catastrophe England now under the rule of something known as The Guiding Body which consists of “qualified, able and scientifically minded people the Liberals now regard as the correct way to run the country.” The world is globally warmed, with parts barely habitable. What were roads are now underwater, with boardwalks at first floor level to allow access to buildings’ upper floors. Praying mantises are a common sight. Culture is heavily Chinese influenced after a Protectorate which helped the Guiding Body into power. The currency is the yuan. Militiamen patrol the streets, their goggles giving them information about everybody. The poor work on flood defences and in one scene are patronised by an official.

As well as having access to twenty-first century social media records Zoe has come across the diaries of two people from our time, before the Warring Factions era. These are Harry, an architect, and Michelle, a hairdresser, but who actually met and whose differing attitudes she sees as a precursor to the times now in her past. Despite her friend Cally’s reservations Zoe conceives of writing Harry and Michelle’s history in the form of a novel to illustrate the beginnings of how her society came to pass saying that the past’s remoteness makes it comforting.

The bulk of Two Tribes is made up of that novel and describes the evolution of the relationship between its two protagonists, one from either side of the Brexit debate, each impatient of the other and each embarrassed by their families and friends but each beginning to accommodate the other’s viewpoint.

This is a subtle but risky piece of writing by Beckett. Subtle because it captures the slightly off note that manuscripts by inexperienced writers tend to have; but risky since it may fail to provide the richer satisfactions readers find from more accomplished practitioners.

Beckett renders that unpolished type of writing (the kind of story treatment that we’re often told authors who are later successful have consigned to a drawer in the deepest part of their desk, never to be resurrected) well; the unnecessary repetition of information, the going over the same ground in a slightly different context, some characters who are little more than mouthpieces and others who at times lean over into the cartoonish, the somewhat stark oppositions between those with contrasting attitudes, the necessity for Zoe to explain things to her putative readership which do not need explanations to Beckett’s readers. (For example, the derivation of the term Brexit.)

The sections set in the future of course do not suffer from any of that and read as assuredly as any “normal” novel. Whether that is enough in this case to offset the infelicities of the part supposedly written by Zoe is debatable.

Pedant’s corner:- “He had no other marketable skills other than designing buildings” (has one ‘other’ too many,) “men and woman pole shallow punts” (women,) reindeers (the plural of reindeer is reindeer,) “as a way booting nuisances upstairs” (as a way of booting.) “The rest of the party were already there” (the rest … was already there,) “counts out the points out with gusto” (has one ‘out’ too many.)

Tor, 2021, 492, including 12 p Glossary of persons, places and objects, 2 p On the pronunciation and writing system of the Teixcalaanli language and 2p Acknowledgements.

After her part in the transition of the Teixcalaan Empire from the indiction of Emperor Six Direction to that of Nineteen Adze, ambassador Mahit Dzmare has returned to Lsel Station. There she finds herself under threat from Councillor Aknel Amnardbat who suspects her of treason – or at least being too sympathetic to the Empire. There is also the illegal nature of her imago (a copy of the memories and personality of her predecessor as ambassador, Yskandr Aghavn, and previous personalities of his line – none of which seem to impinge on Mahit’s consciousness, though) of which she has two versions, the deliberately damaged one implanted by Amnardbat’s operatives, plus the one illicitly salvaged from Aghavn’s body on Teixcalaan.

In the meantime a group of apparently ruthlessly implacable aliens has been invading the boundaries of Teixcalaanli space just beyond the Lsel Station area and the local Teixcalaan commander, Imperial yaotlek Nine Hibiscus, has sent back to Teixcaalan a request for a translator, to which Ministry of Information officer, Three Seagrass, Mahit’s former liaison on Teixcalaan, has responded in person, with the intention of enlisting Mahit’s help.

Also, on Teixcalaan, in the imperial capital, The Jewel of the World, the former Emperor’s clone sibling Eight Antidote, eleven years old, is being trained in statecraft and the military arts while also being enlisted by Nineteen Adze to spy for her. (Imperial politics is never an easy situation.)

The aliens have devastated the planet of Peloa-2, leaving little but eviscerated bodies behind them. The only form of communication the Teixcalaan forces can decipher is a hideous sound that causes humans to retch.

Martine’s book’s title here invokes the words which the Roman writer Tacitus placed in the mouth of the Caledonian chief Calgacus, and indeed the full quote (of which “They make a desert and they call it peace” is a part) is given as one of the book’s epigraphs. Its relevance is that Peloa-2 is now a desert and is the place where Three Seagrass and Mahit meet with the aliens’ representatives to attempt to broker a peace.

The aliens are vaguely humanoid in form, bipedal, heads on top of their bodies etc but seem to be able to communicate with each other without speaking; as if they were telepathic. Despite their nausea-inducing noises, Three Seagrass and Mahit manage to achieve a sort of communication back by singing to them.

[Aside. The aliens (one of whose bodies is taken from a destroyed space ship for examination) are said by several of the characters to be mammals. Creatures which are true mammals could only originate from Earth. There is no suggestion in the book that the aliens are derived from terrestrial creatures. Evolution elsewhere may produce a similar kind of animal which feeds its young from secretions from a parent’s body but they could not properly be described as mammals.]

The nearest description of the nature of the aliens is that they have a kind of hive mind and are seemingly incapable of understanding that humans have not. But the Teixcalaanli military employs single seat spacecraft known as Shards who are connected in an instantaneous network which means they experience everything the other Shard pilots do. This so-called Shard Trick provides a key to conflict resolution.

Teixcalaanli politics is as full of intrigue and personal manœuvring as any reader could wish. Add in the external conflict and the interpersonal relationships and the whole is a diverting read.

Pedant’s corner:- “open-mawed hangar” (a hangar does not have a stomach,) “who would rather bleed into a bowl for propriety rather than give up” (has one ‘rather’ too many.) “None of them were trying” (None of them was trying. There was another instance of ‘None … were.’) “She was going to have to live with it, wasn’t she.” (Is a question, so needs a question mark at its end,) “sharp-toothed maws” (and stomachs don’t have teeth,) “an insolvable political problem” (either ‘unsolvable’ or ‘insoluble’ but not ‘insolvable’.) “‘Did he now,’ said Nineteen Adze.” (‘Did he now?’ said Nineteen Adze.) “There was no hesitance in it” (no hesitancy.)

19 this year; 12 by men 7 by women, 4 with an SF/fantasy tinge (5 if you count Beloved,) 1 non-fiction, 1 fictionalised memoir. Not in any order; apart from of reading.

News of the Dead by James Robertson

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

Tomorrow by Chris Beckett

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Landmarks by Robert McFarlane

Toby’s Room by Pat Barker

Independent People by Halldór Laxness

Confessions by Jaume Cabré

Sparks of Bright Matter by Leeanne O’Donnell

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

Lizard Tails by Juan Marsé

Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé

Xstabeth by David Keenan

Borges and Me by Jay Parini

Beloved by Toni Morrison (review to appear here soon.)

I found out on Saturday that SF writer Barry Malzberg has died.

I knew I had several of his books but hadn’t realised until I checked my records (the actual books are in the garage; after downsizing, our house wasn’t big enough to store them all)  that it was as many as fifteen – though two of those were anthologies edited with other people.

Malzberg was fairly prolific in the 1970s – all those fifteen books have 1970s publication dates,  his was one of the names I looked out for back in those days – but seemed to disappear thereafter.

Though nominated for quite a few SF awards he only seems to have won one, the John W Campbell Memorial Award in 1973 for his novel Beyond Apollo.

Barry Nathaniel Malzberg: 24/7/1939 – 19/12/2024. So it goes.

I don’t normally do this year summation thing before Christmas (it offends my sensibilities to do such a thing before the full time span has elapsed) but in this case I don’t think I’ll be adding to the total before New Year.

I seem to have read 26 Scottish books so far this year (the definition of Scottish is loose;) 13 by women and 13 by men. Four were Science Fiction, Fantasy or Fable, two collections of shorter fiction, one was poetry and one was a fictionalised memoir. The links below are to my reviews of those books.

World Out of Mind by J T McIntosh

News of the Dead by James Robertson 

The Little Snake by A L Kennedy 

Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides by Kevin MacNeil

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

The Second Cut by Louise Welsh

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Things We Say in the Dark by Kirsty Logan

Solution Three by Naomi Mitchison

Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark

Dust on the Paw by Robin Jenkins

The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett

Queen of Clouds by Neil Williamson

Kitchenly 434 by Alan Warner

An Apple From a Tree by Margaret Elphinstone

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

Squeaky Clean by Callum McSorley

The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark

The Other Side of Stone by Linda Cracknell

To the Dogs by Louise Welsh

The Changeling by Robin Jenkins

Aunt Bel by Guy McCrone

Conquest by Nina Allan

Xstabeth by David Keenan

Borges and Me by Jay Parini  

The Silver Bough by Neil Gunn  (review to be posted here soon.)

NewCon Press, 2024, 298 p. Reviewed for ParSec 11.

In his first novel Gambino gives us space opera of a fairly traditional type, though shorn of big interstellar battles. Nevertheless, fans of the form will likely lap it up.

Via the kind of wormhole known as a Reality Interstitial Paradox, RIP, humanity has spread across the galaxy but is restricted to a certain volume of space beyond which trips cannot be made. There is evidence that a previous space faring civilisation known as the Firsts deliberately blocked off expansion beyond this, possibly to prevent whatever their nemesis was from affecting any subsequent culture which evolved to expand into space. Legend surrounding an alien spacecraft known as the Derelict suggests that an artefact from those First times was retrieved from it by the expedition which found it.

At the book’s start our protagonist, Breel, is working breaking up scrapped spaceships on the Beach, a more or less desolate plain on a minor planet called Hope. She is plagued by her sexually predatory boss and other workers trying to deny her the salvage rights that are her due. A confrontation leads to her being sacked – though she was on the point of quitting anyway.

Winding down alone in the pub before she goes home to tell her (step)father, Falian, the news, she is approached by Matt Harken-Court, a spaceship owner, whose interest she at first misinterprets. During an intrusion by proselytisers of the Church of Second Light, each marked by a distinctive white circle round one eye, Harken-Court vanishes. On her way home, in an alleyway, Breel rescues him from an extremely violent encounter with hired thugs. When it comes to it Breel is no shrinking violet.

She takes Matt home to clean him up but his questioning of her stepfather reveals that Falian, a survivor of the encounter with the Derelict, had indeed brought something back from there, a detail which Breel had not known about up till then. Their examination of the artefact is interrupted by agents of the Church, Matt and she have to flee with it, chased by an augment, whom they with great difficulty finally manage to shake off, while Breel’s childhood home is destroyed, Falian presumably with it.

Orphaned and disorientated, examining her life in this new context, Breel agrees to go along on Matt’s ship, the Scavenger, which is crewed by Ellyella, Matt’s longtime associate, the Deacon, a renegade priest, and Kaemon, another refugee from the Church. Scavenger is piloted by Cross, a symbiont who can interface with the ship’s controls and through it sense everything which it does, across all wavelengths of light. The Deacon apparently knows the coordinates of an RIP which would give access to space beyond the boundary, something which the Church would dearly love to find in order to precipitate the Coming of Light and the salvation of true believers. The Deacon and Matt have plans to block that RIP instead, in case what lies beyond is inimical.

During the first stage of the trip, to a hub known as All-Points for its many RIP connections, Cross introduces Breel to the ship’s symbiont interface, with which she has a natural affinity, while the Deacon notices her unnaturally quick healing abilities. At All-Points, Matt’s meeting with fellow Church opponents and Ellyella’s, Cross’s and Breel’s R&R while the ship undergoes necessary repairs are cut brutally short by a Church invasion from which they barely escape, though Cross was deliberately assassinated. It is left to Breel to fly the ship, though she has to overcome resistance to the idea. After doing so strange patterns appear on her skin.

In the meantime and subsequently, some chapters dwell on the Church’s head, the Emissary, a charismatic and hypnotic individual, who started off cynical but came to see the light and rose rapidly through Church ranks. Life on worlds saved by the Church is harsh, restrictive and far from woman friendly as is evidenced by Church soldiers on All-Points using the term breeder as a form of abuse.

More adventures ensue before the ship, pursued by the Church and the Emissary himself, reaches its destination RIP, and the final confrontation. During these Breel finds out the truth about her nature and origins via a message her mother left in the artefact.

This is all good space-operatic stuff, if sometimes a bit heavy on explanation of acronyms and information dumping, with the occasional dose of visceral violence.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “dust …. like the waves of a particulate sea” (seas made of water are actually particulate as well, only the particles are very much smaller,) “mechanics grated” (these were parts of machines, not people; ‘mechanisms grated’,) “two story building” (two storey,) “temperatures of 40c” (40C,) “that could comfortably fit a billion suns’ inside it” (no need for the apostrophe.) “‘That the murder you talking about?’” (you’re talking about,) meters (innumerable times, metres,) “a visitors eyes” (visitor’s,) “the crushed stories” (storeys,) “potential problems of any addiction, an addiction,” (only ‘an addiction’ not in addition ‘any addiction’ needed.) “‘I could give a Deshi-damn for any of it’” (I couldn’t give,) “on my resume” (in my resume.) “Breel eyes widened” (Breel’s eyes,) “adapting to the dark.- It” (has an extraneous dash.) “New Haven” (elsewhere always Blue Haven,) “but Emissaries soul” (Emissary’s.) “‘Don’t thank me, Breeder,’ He snarled” (either full stop after Breeder or ‘he’ before ‘snarled’,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “‘playing us for fools, girl.’ the armed man growled” (comma, not a full stop, after girl,) “to find something anything to hold onto,” (to find something, anything, to hold onto,”) Amaris’ (Amaris’s – as elsewhere,) hanger (several times; hangar,) “pleasures of flesh” (pleasures of the flesh,) “believe Deacons’ evidence” (Deacon’s,) CO2 (CO₂,) “inertia sling-shot the Scavenger away from Hygot” (slung-shot?) “as shocked las the rest of us” (as the rest of us.) “Now her father had died” (this was about something that happened years ago; that ‘NowC is inappropriate,) “to the Deacons tests” (Deacon’s.) “‘Aw, come on ‘Deac’” (no need for the apostrophe before Deac,) gasses (gases,) “mother load” (mother lode.) “‘He said Brokers a dick’” (Broker’s.) “‘I’m Sorry Riva’” (no capital needed on Sorry,) “beyond anyones experience” (anyone’s,) Sarcophagus (in the middle of a sentence, therefore ‘sarcophagus’.) “It’s engines were” (Its engines.) “‘It had to the Firsts, right?” (It had to be the Firsts. And elsewhere Firsts is usually italicised.) “‘as we approach the transit.’ The Deacon supplied” (as we approach the transit,’ the Deacon replied.) “‘Look here.’ Breel said” (Look here,’ Breel said,) “‘along with everyone else’” (along with everyone else’s,) “‘of full disclosure we, should go through everyones room’” (no comma required; and ‘everyone’s room’.) “‘Who’s going to do it,’ Kaemon demanded” (should be a question mark, not a full stop, after ‘it’.) “‘You sure about this, Matt,’ Breel said” (question mark, not a comma, after ‘Matt’,) “clothing draws” (drawers,) “paused crouched and pulled a trunk out” (paused, crouched and…,) “the Emissaries fleet” (Emissary’s.) “ ‘Just what is it you think we can do, Breel?’ The Deacon asked” (‘… we can do Breel?’ the Deacon asked,) “a shout of fear anger and frustration” (a shout of fear, anger and frustration.) “The Emissaries preferred method” (The Emissary’s,) Rip (elsewhere always RIP,) “on the one hand the room the Deacon and Ellyella” (on the one hand the room, the Deacon and Ellyella,) “by creating a damn” (creating a dam,) “if a small build up of energy might arrived at that collection” (might arrive.) “The whole drama was playing out silence” (… playing out in silence,) “By nowHarken-Court and his companion reached the far side if the chasm. rendered in harsh chiaroscuro by the troopcarrier lights” (… Harken-Court and his companion had reached the far side if the chasm, rendered in harsh chiaroscuro by the troopcarrier lights,) “the Scavenger” (the Scavenger,) “the troopcarriers cabin” (troopcarrier’s,) “revealed in, the Scavenger’s outer hull” (revealed in the Scavenger’s outer hull,) “‘he is not to disturbed’” (not to be disturbed.) In About the Author; “the peak district” (the Peak District.)

riverrun, 2023, 315 p.

Allan’s writing has always been idiosyncratic, never straightforward. While skirting the borders of Science Fiction, though absolutely acknowledging the genre’s existence, often tipping over into Fantasy, there has usually been something that sets it apart. It has never quite been full-on SF. Perhaps this is as it should be. Her writing has all the qualities the reader of literary fiction would expect and any writer would want to broaden her possible readership. So much the better then from that point of view if any Science-Fictional allusion can be taken as just that, or a manifestation of a character’s state of mind.

Such is the case here. Frank Landau imagines the Earth is engaged in an interstellar war and he is in training to be a supersoldier in that war. A friend of his is convinced that the next war will be fought against aliens, single-celled organisms and viral pathogens, biological contaminants that have been introduced into Earth’s eco-system without our realising. Which might already be here. Frank is also an enthusiast for music, especially of Bach. Indeed a fair bit of the book is given up to considerations of the merits of various recordings of differing, not necessarily classical, musical pieces – not a feature of your average SF novel it has to be said.

To give some flavour of these musings on music consider this, “I don’t think he (Bach) discovered tonality. I think tonality discovered him. Either that or he was given it. Tonality is like code – a complex programme that is all the more ingenious because it’s universally applicable. Everyone understands tonal counterpoint the moment they hear it. It’s as if the human brain is hard-wired to receive it.”

But the novel is more complicated than the above suggests. Of course it is. It’s by Nina Allan.

Frank may be the book’s driving force but the main narrative is actually concerned with Private Investigator Robin’s search for him after she is contracted to do so by his girl-friend Rachel Gabon when he disappears after meeting up in The Netherlands with a group known as LAvventura, a group whose obsession is The Tower, a 1950s SF novel as by John C Sylvester.

This book, no more than a novella really, is given us in its entirety as one of Conquest’s twelve sections, two others of which constitute a,) a review of The Tower by one Edmond De Groote, a LAvventura luminary, and b,) another review (by De Groote’s acquaintance, Jeanne-Marie Vanderlien,) of a concert at the Concertgebouw. Each of these is of course written in a different register to the rest of Conquest and each is entirely complete in itself. I note here that any dialogue in Conquest is not punctuated as such.

The plot of The Tower is important to Frank’s world view. In the future, Earth has won a gruelling war against an extraterrestrial civilisation. As a monument to human resilience and his own awesomeness, an egotistical billionaire plans to build an enormous residential tower out of a unique kind of rock mined from the alien homeworld. The rock is black and gives off a curious warmth. But what if it is also alive?

Which is fine – and arguably necessary to Allan’s creation. My problem with it is that it doesn’t actually read like a 1950s SF novella. But I suspect it’s not meant to.

LAvventura take The Tower to be an accurate prophecy of an actual forthcoming war among the stars. This is, of course, known to terrestrial governments, who have developed the secret supersoldier programme to deal with it and are probably quietly eliminating people who find out too much.

Robin’s search for Frank takes her to Scarborough to research the of a journalist who’d contacted Frank’s brother Michael about his disappearance but who died the day after the interview. There she discovers Edmund de Groote’s involvement with Frank.

There is a Scottish flavour to the book too. Ex-cop Robin’s memories of the speech of her former Chief Inspector Alec Dunbar, a man with a past to hide, and Robin’s trip to Tain, in Ross-shire, where the train’s journey through the landscape is described.

Robin has the perception that “my entire career has been focused on the dividing line between delusion and genius, which a lot of the time is barely a line at all,” and at one point begins “thinking about a story in which a private detective sets out to discover the truth behind the disappearance of a man who believes Earth stands on the brink of an interstellar war. I ask myself what might happen if the detective becomes convinced the war is real,” which prompts thoughts that maybe the book is about to disappear up its own fundament.

Then a late twist reveals Robin’s heretofore obscure and unsuspected parentage – this is perhaps another elaboration too far – before we are presented with alternative endings.

Robin is an engaging protagonist and Conquest is an accomplished and exceedingly well-written book with many strings to its bow. But is it hedging its bets?

Pedant’s corner:- cul-de-sacs (culs de sac,) “Nunc Dimitis” (Nunc Dimittis.) “De Groote” (Okay, it was the beginning of a sentence but the man’s surname was de Groote, not De Groote.)

Once again my post contained books from ParSec magazine.

This time they are:-

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky and

Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto.

The former is of course a multiple award winner. Ms Yamamoto is new to me. According to the accompanying blurb hammajang means in a disorderly or chaotic state.

The reviews ought to appear in ParSec 13.

ParSec 12 is due for release this Friday, 8th November. By my count there will be six of my reviews in this edition.

Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts

Nordic Visions. The best of Nordic speculative fiction edited by Margrét Helgadóttir

Laughs in Space edited by Donna Scott

Birdwatching at the End of the World by G W Dexter

Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi

and Strange Beasts by Susan J Morris.

Dobson Science Fiction, 1979, 201 p.

On a far future Earth from which nearly all humans have fled to Mars and which is dominated by a vast blue creature called Indigo which has been consuming everything, a fourteen-year-old girl named Reee lives alone. Years before, her mother had been snatched away by a Martian space ship. For all the years since Reee has been protected by Emeroo, a shapeshifting green entity who communicates with Reee telepathically. Periodically human like forms whom Reee calls blue boys try to fool her into leaving the safety of her surroundings. Ree also has a flying (what? lizard? dragon?) to help her move about the world. In fah she has two, Belios to begin with, then later Bellis.)

Fairly often Martians fly to Earth in their spaceships to snatch any humans that are left or else to try to exterminate Indigo with fire, (which of course doesn’t work.)

On one of these expeditions a Martian – ie one of the humans who now live on Mars – is left stranded and becomes a companion for Reee. He is disturbed by her nakedness but she has never worn clothes and finds them irritating to her skin when she eventually does wear any. Later still she is taken away to Mars and is bemused by everything she finds there, before returning to Earth again.

Oh, and there are intervals of time in which Ree is suspended for five hundred years.

If all the above didn’t make much sense or seem to sum to anything that pretty much describes the book.

There were times when I detected echoes of A Voyage to Arcturus or Solaris – but only faint echoes – however overall Earthchild is an odd piece without really any of the compensations which fiction usually provides. Full of ideas certainly, but fiction needs more than just ideas to be fulfilling.

Pedant’s corner:- “but what it experienced excruciating pain” (‘but that it experienced excruciating pain’ makes more sense,) “had a way of capitalising on each and every new phenomena” (each and every new phenomenon.) “Nothing crept upon me” (crept up on me,) “Belios’ head” (Belios’s,) “beside which to gro and ripen” (grow.) “‘They don’t look as if they’ve been in a crash?’” (isn’t a question so should not have a question mark,) “loathe to move her position” (loth; or loath.) “I let my long black hair lay across him” (lie across him,) maw (x 2; a maw is not a mouth.) “‘Those with is are closer to water’” (Those with it are…) “It I hadn’t been so angry” (If I hadn’t been,) “compressed molecules of air, water and food Theoretically” (compressed molecules? And there should be a full stop after food,) later “Compressed mols of air …” (air can be compressed but its constituent molecules cannot,) “but water was clear, not blue” (clear does not mean colourless, and in any case water is actually faintly blue.) “All that showed of the trees were huge trunks” (All that showed … was …) miniscule (x 2, minuscule,) botthered (bothered.) “The intended to prove” (They intended,) “too busy to comprehend other than” (to comprehend anything other than,) Bellis’ (Bellis’s,) two lines are in a swapped position, sling shots (elsewhere slingshot is rendered as one word,) “was supposed to have appeared and showed me” (supposed to have appeared and shown me.)