Also in the package from ParSec which contained my latest review copies was a book of short stories in honour of my dear friend Eric Brown, who died last year. This collection is titled To the Stars and Back and has some impressive contributors plus a brilliant cover illustration.

I did attempt to write something for this book (I would have been honoured to have been included) but I couldn’t get it to flow.

I still have four of Eric’s books on my tbr file but have not been able to face reading them. The memory is still too raw.

P&S Publishing, 2022, 92 p.

Humans live in domes and the underground Levels because they are frightened of the outside; of “The rain that burns, the light that blinds, the air that kills, the water that poisons,” as the hymn to Father Bahan sung by Followers of the Eternal Truth has it.

Life in the Domes is restricted, there is a curfew every night, patrolled by Enforcers. Adults have to register with the authorities every year. Employment is within Guilds and runs through families. (Our protagonist Pinto’s father, a sculptor and painter of heads, is unusual in that regard.) Society is stratified. Aliens known as Enigmats seem to be the power behind the human authorities, though. They are said to have saved humans from the savage environment outside, though the Followers of the Eternal Truth attribute that salvation to Father Bahan.

Pinto is one of a group of young friends, which includes Mags, a girl from the Levels and therefore not of his class, who are curious about their surroundings and like to explore the spaces where no-one else usually ventures. One day she sets Pinto to thinking about outside and he decides to find out what it is like.

The story from then on proceeds as it must though there are complications involving Pinto’s parents’ arrangement for him to marry his cousin and her father’s apparently revolutionary activities putting in danger – or at least at risk of arrest – anyone connected to him.

Enigma Season is well written and engaging, exactly what you expect of Brooke and Brown together and individually.

“‘Time interval’” later count – 7.

Pedant’s corner:- “so that you drowned on your own blood” (in your own blood.) “He knew that marriage only with someone of one’s own class or Guild was allowed in the Domes” (He knew that in the Domes marriage was allowed only with someone of own’s own class or Guild.) We are twice told that on reaching adulthood (21) citizens had to register with the authorities and repeat this registration every year, (once would have been enough,) “Sorenson” (x 2, always spelled Sorensen elsewhere.)

On Monday myself and the good lady had an emotional day when we said our final goodbye to Eric Brown, Science Fiction writer, crime novelist, devoted husband and father, a dear friend, a gentle man and gentleman.

He had an interesting life which took in his origins in Haworth, Yorkshire, and a sojourn in Australia before returning to his Yorkshire roots then visiting India without first ever having tasted a curry. He soon learned to cook curries from scratch and was a devotee of that food from then on. He also spent some time in Greece. All of these influences fed into his fiction.

After his marriage to Finn they moved to Cambridgeshire before, with their beloved daughter Freya, coming up to Scotland to live in Berwickshire.

I first met Eric at a Science Fiction convention and immediately recognised him as one of nature’s good guys. It wasn’t until the move to Scotland that we were able to have extended conversations with him, though he and I had been emailing each other for a long time. In his emails he frequently would note a particularly good performance by Sons while usually bemoaning how Leeds United had fared. Football, SF and literature (probably in that order) were our perennial talking points, though the conversation would roam far and wide.

He always sought out a good curry house and would be disappointed when the fare wasn’t to his liking. I remember he told us a story about a meal in a curry restaurant in Dunbar where he said to the owner afterwards that it had not been formulated properly – only to receive the reply that that was how their patrons liked it. A year or so later he went to the same establishment to try to obtain for one of his own curries an ingredient which he had run out of. The owner was surprised Eric cooked his own curries and, being short of a chef, immediately offered him a job! Eric refused, no doubt courteously.

Eric sometimes solicited from me my comments on a story or novel he had not yet submitted to a publisher and never moaned at my nit-picking. He also took with very good grace my irritation at the use of the ‘time interval later’ turn of phrase.

(Edited to add: this was such a difficult post to write I knew I would miss out something. I had intended to say that the good lady and myself felt incredibly honoured when Eric dedicated one of his books to us.)

Eric, it was an absolute privilege to know you and call you friend. I still cannot bring myself to believe you have gone and that those emails will no longer drop into my in-box.

Eric Brown: 24/5/1960 – 21/3/2023. Much missed.

This is a post I’ve been dreading.

My dear friend Eric Brown has died.

He had not been well for some time and had borne it with fortitude and good grace (and not a little optimism, or so it seemed when we visited him) but though this outcome was always likely the news nevertheless came as a shock.

A proud Yorkshireman – born and brought up in Haworth – and not shy of living up to the stereotype, Eric was neverthless one of the kindest, friendliest people I have ever met. His writing embodied those attributes and always had a warm, human heart to it but was not appreciated as widely as it ought to have been and never achieved as much success as it deserved.

Among many other things I’ll miss our mutual commiserations about the fortunes of our respective beloved football teams (in his case Leeds United.)

He is a great loss not only to the field of Science Fiction (and with his Langham and Dupré stories to the ‘cosy crime’ genre) and as a friend to the good lady and myself but most of all to his wife Finn and daughter Freya, taken from them far too soon.

Words are not enough.

Eric Brown: 24/5/1960 – 21/3/2023. So it goes.

Angry Robot, 2022, 381 p.

Brooke and Brown have usually collaborated only on shorter pieces but this novel shows their partnership also works at longer length. It is an unusual amalgamation of the detective story and the SF trope of first contact in that the police officer, Gordon Kemp, (passed over and relegated to cold case files) travels to another planet, Mu Arae II, to help solve a case.

It is the late 2100s. Eight decades ago the Strasbourg set off to travel to Mu Arae using suspended animation technology to keep its crew alive till it got there. Widely thought to have been destroyed by an explosion shortly after the voyage began, Kemp discovers that the ship is still on course and due for imminent landfall when he is called in to investigate the death of suspended animation technology entrepreneur Sebastian White just before the Strasbourg’s launch. “‘That’s not a cold case. That’s an archaeological dig.’” White’s wife, Rima Cagnac, was suspected but had an alibi. As a prominent scientist she was on the Strasbourg’s crew. Now the quantum lattice, wormhole technology carried on board, will allow instant travel to Mu Arae and Kemp is designated for the job of bringing Cagnac back to Earth. (One of the things the reader has to take on trust here is that its developers would have been able to keep the wormhole technology’s existence secret for 80 years.) Before Kemp goes, his superiors require him to have an update to his imp – an implant that allows access to the net but may also give his bosses control over him. He has a tame tech whizz called Martin give it the once-over. Martin finds anomalies and supplies Kemp with a device to override it. Chekhov’s gun comes to mind.

The narrative viewpoints switch between Kemp, his associate, Danni Bellini, looking into the case’s background on Earth, and Cagnac, as the Strasbourg arrives in the Mu Arae system and the expedition begins to explore Carrasco, Mu Arae II. Tension builds up with the revelation that the Strasbourg contains six extra sleep pods for the wormhole technicians, the necessity for maintaining bio-hazard protocols, the eventual emergence of cloud fever and deaths due to exposure to pathogens in Carrasco’s atmosphere, the appearance through the wormhole of a goon squad under the control of a Major Gellner and hints of first contact. Connections are established between the murderer and the ruthless conduct of those who want to exploit Carrasco at any cost.

In this sort of scenario there is the danger of the author(s) falling between two stools. Brooke and Brown have managed to avoid that particular hazard. There is enough here to satisfy both the SF reader and the crime aficionado. And it is very neatly done. It helps that human nature does not change over time.

“Time interval” or equivalent count; at least forty.
Pedant’s corner:- fit (x 2, fitted,) heaviside layer (usually capitalised; Heaviside,) “‘when I lasted dated’” (when I last dated,) the Gambie (the Gambia.) “‘Great-nephew, or even something more removed’” (is framed as a question, so needs a question mark at the end,) “for all intents and purposes” (usually it’s ‘to all intents and purposes’,) “had not yet knit together” (knitted,) “you could have just laid low” (OK, it was in dialogue; but strictly it’s ‘lain low’.) “She peered at her softscreen unrolled” (as her softscreen,) “an image sprung up” (sprang up.) “‘I don’t now.’” (I don’t know,) “to look in through library window” (through the library window.)

The Kon-Tiki Quartet, Part 4. PS Publishing, 2021, 114 p.

The last thing Kat Manning and Travis Denholme can remember is being in an operating theatre on the colony planet of Newhaven where their minds were to be scanned for the secrets they held. Now they have been woken up in new bodies and find themselves back in Earth orbit a century later – and, due to the neurotransmitter they had discovered, with the ability to read minds. They have been sent to Earth to forestall the plans of their old enemy Ward Richards to form society in his own image and also to bring the benefits of the neurotransmitter to the remaining inhabitants of Earth. This brings them back to their old base Lakenheath in East Anglia where the Kon-Tiki project was brought to fruition.

Conditions back on Earth have regressed. Kat and Travis fall into the hands of a group known as Mayflies who are in thrall to an overclass of Longlords. In some respects these correspond to the Eloi and Morlocks of Wells’s The Time Machine. Old antagonist Daniel DeVries helps them into the Longlord compound where they discover that the Longlords in effect prey on the Mayflies in order to extend their own lives. But the technology is imperfect and faults have crept in. A now very decrepit original of Ward Richards is at the head of the Longlords but unknown to him, Paulo Martinez, the version of him printed on Newhaven and whose followers ensured he got back to Earth is fully intent on ruling the roost. Kat, Travis and DeVries conspire to thwart his plans.

Both Brooke and Brown are never less than readable. The Quartet of which this is the final part is more of an action adventure than a cerebral endeavour. It has the usual betrayals, setbacks and triumphs but above all it makes a case for humans being ultimately cooperative creatures and that the ability to read minds will only encourage that in us.

Pedant’s corner:- “Time interval later” count: less than ten.
Otherwise; “She wondered how Travis … Mediterranean lineage?” (Isn’t a question so doesn’t need a question mark,) “comprised of “ (just comprised here; no ‘of’,) “DeVries’s arms” (Travis’s arms makes more sense,) resister (register,) not a typo but as to “like Cortés conquering the Aztecs with Christianity and syphilis” (I don’t think syphilis was involved, and the Christianity was more like an afterthought. [It was actually more that Cortés seemed to fulfil an ancient Aztec prophecy which led to his success.])

NewCon Press, 2021, 276 p. Reviewed for ParSec 2.

This summation of British SF published last year contains 26 stories, some very short and none even approaching novella length. They are culled from a wide variety of sources, range from jeus d’esprit to more serious endeavours and cover a wide variety of SF tropes. Reasons of space preclude in-depth consideration of individual works but these are all highly readable.

Donna Scott’s Introduction reflects on a Science-Fictional year as regards Covid and its lockdown scenario but that in 2020 SF writers did not concern themselves overly with that subject. Given the usual long lead time between writing and publication that isn’t too surprising. One story here that does confront disease, though, is Infectious by Liz Williams, which features the type of inversion of which SF writers are so fond. Here, infection is the latest forbidden thing to become desirably cool.
2020’s BSFA Award winning short story, Infinite Tea in the Demara Café by Ida Keogh where a man finds himself being propelled between the same café in parallel worlds incorporates a nice pun in its title. Fellow nominee Anne Charnock’s All I Asked For explores an early ramification of the artificial wombs, which Charnock dubs baby-bags, whose consequences she elaborated in her novel Dreams Before the Start of Time.
The book’s opener, War Crimes by M R Carey, deals with the effects of a time-bomb which was detonated in London. The army unit designated to deal those forever held in stasis in its aftermath does not dispose of bombs.
Blue and Blue and Blue and Pink by Lavie Tidhar is a little bit ho-hum, its tale of smuggling over a mysterious line curiously familiar.
The Savages by David Gullen is set on an alien planet where children are ‘they’ till their parents choose what sex they will be. The act of reproduction on this world lives up to the story’s title.
Lazarus, Unbound by Liam Hogan utilises AI controlled freezer cabinets for interstellar travel to extra-terrestrial colonies; or not as the case may be.
In The Cyclops by Teika Marija Smits the narrator can see wavelengths of light beyond the visible. The story’s style is reminiscent of Flowers for Algernon but Stephen Oram’s Chimmy and Chris, the narrative of the development of a human brain organoid, lies much closer to that template.
Brave New World by Oscar Wilde by Ian Watson describes a time travel expedition to scoop up Oscar Wilde from 1897 to take him to 2050 to write his masterpiece Brave New World.
Neil Williamson inundates a near future Glasgow where forced recycling is the basis of everyday life in Mudlarking.
Cofiwch Aberystwyth by Val Nolan, where that town has been devastated by a nuclear blast and the narrator is forced to come to terms with his past, must be one of the few SF stories to feature Welsh words. Each section’s title is in that language.
In Panspermia High by the ever reliable Eric Brown, a bufotoxin from outer space which has spent ten thousand years inhabiting cane toads conjoins with an Australian druggie.
The very short Exhibit E by L P Melling sees the Moon used as a canvas for an art work warning of environmental catastrophe.
A battle tank goes unusually rogue in Fiona Moore’s The Lori.
Wilson Dreams of Peacocks by Melanie Smith is set in a far future where Earth is long dead, humans’ bodies have evolved, and a woman uses a somnus kit to read the dreams of the eponymous Wilson.
Variations on Heisenberg’s Third Concerto by Eleanor R Wood has a neat premise; a physicist brings back the manuscript of said Concerto from a parallel world. Every time the piece is played, the score changes. And so do the worlds.
The World is on Fire and You’re Out of Milk by Rhiannon Grist is from the staring moodily at a can of baked beans school of narration. In a heat-scarred world, going shopping requires an all-but armour-plated expedition.
The last remaining wind turbine is the only power source remaining to the characters in James Rowland’s The Turbine at the End of the World, so must be kept in operation.
The remembrance of the number 70 is the key to enabling time travel in What Happened to 70 by C R Berry.
Rings Around Saturn by Rosie Oliver is an example of the kind of solid tale of Solar System exploration which had gone somewhat out of fashion. A near-bankrupt salvage operator has to brave the canyons of the rings of Saturn to gain her fortune.
London, the city, narrates The Good Shepherd by Stewart Hotson – or rather its controlling AI does. It fears it has been hacked but in tracking down the hacker comes to know itself.
Pineapples are not the Only Bromeliad by R B Kelly is a reworking of Romeo and Juliet. Two bots programmed to please humans find themselves irresistibly attracted to each other.
Like Clocks Work by Andi C Buchanan features a (not)generation starship, whose AI is slowly growing flesh, becoming human. Clocks are a symbol of the past to be remembered.
The only thing that makes SF out of ghost story Watershed by John Gilbey is its virtual setting. It is effective though.
Here Today by Geoff Nelder has an alien lifeform crash on Earth and transfer to the nearest consciousness.
From this evidence it would seem the British SF short story is in fairly rude health.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; “green grocer’s” (not of a grocer who was green; of a greengrocer.) In “About the Authors”; “in such places Dark Matter Magazine (in such places as Dark Matter Magazine, NewCon Press’ (NewCon Press’s.) Otherwise; focussed (focused.) “The team are still baffled” (the team is still baffled,) focussing (x 3, focusing,) “NASA want me to go” (NASA wants me to go,) “unimaginable in 1890s” (in the 1890s.) “Mum’s generation are blinded by …” (OK it’s a noun of multitude but ‘Mum’s generation is blinded by …’ still makes sense.) “Everything from … are dwindling resources” (Everything usually takes a verb in the singular; everything from …. is a dwindling resource?) “bad land left return to wilderness” (left to return,) from what they what they” (only one ‘what they’ needed,) “that had been left fall” (left to fall,) “she soon she fell” (she soon fell,) “I stepped placed a hand on her shoulder” (is missing a word – or three,) “a lose line” (a loose line?) “Nothing to edit out so.” (Again is missing words to make sense of it,) sprung (sprang,) Sun Tze (Sun Tzu?) “to deliver on their promise” (the promise was by a business; so, ‘on its promise’,) snuck (sneaked,) but “no way he was going to leave” (but no way was he going to leave.) “And then I laid down next to him” (then I lay down next to him,) “spilled out and span away” (spun away.) “The room span and pitched” (spun,) non-descript (nondescript.) “Down at the wall by the local shop, a man hunkers” (no need for the coma,) “she might have saw” (seen.) “She laid there in perfect stillness” (she lay there,) “army officers” (the ‘officers’ concerned were doing sentry duty. Army officers don’t do such menial tasks,) “decided to go see him” (to go to see him.) “Provium was an isotope of voron” (if they are isotopes their names would be the same. Isotopes are atoms of the same element, their separate identities are indicated by their different mass number, carbon-12/carbon-14 etc. But this is an altered universe, so…) “All missing page 70s” (Each would only have had one such page, so, ‘All missing page 70’,) “where a little bit of difference early on makes a hell of a lot of difference later on” (‘makes a hell of a difference later’ is more economical,) “‘I got you out jail’” (out of jail,) “of giant shark’s mouth” (of a giant shark’s mouth,) “and let it attach to emergency backpack” (to the emergency backpack, “last known position up the screen” (up on the screen.) “‘Looks like the stuff thinning is out there’” (‘Looks like the stuff is thinning out there’ makes more sense,) “the thinning ice and dust becomes shower of arcs” (either ‘a shower of arcs’, or, ‘showers of arcs’,) “pointing along line of least density” (along the line of least density.) “‘Any idea of our orientation the spaceship is with respect to…’” (of the orientation the ship is …) “latch onto” (latch on to,) focussed (focused,) donut (x 4, doughnut,) “the way the water and fuels slopes” (slope,) “will get to satellite” (to the satellite,) “to be picked up by another spaceship other than Miroslav’s” (by another spaceship apart from Miroslav’s is less clunky.) “There are an extremely large number of” (there is an extremely large number,) “who’s only recourse” (Good grief! ‘Who is only recourse?’ Does no-one understand the difference between a contraction and a possessive pronoun any more? – ‘whose only recourse’.) “|None of us like to admit our fallibilities” (none of us likes to admit,) “it had to the be the” (it had to be the,) “in a shell of hard calcium” (actually calcium carbonate,) focussed (again; focused,) “half a dozen of the little AI” (AIs,) “ended up wondering uncertsainly up Granville Place” (wandering,) one sentence implies pineapples are citrus flavoured; they are not. “In a just a few short weeks” (remove first ‘a’.) “Tinan might be taller on average” (taller than average.)

The Kon-Tiki Quartet Part 3. PS Publishing, 2019, 102 p.

Several years on from Parasites, the second in Brown and Brooke’s Kon-Tiki quartet, Kat Manning and Travis Denholme have not revealed the secret of how Daniel DeVries died, nor of Travis’s discovery of the neurotransmitter the geosaurs on the planet of Newhaven produce from their symbiosis with their marmoset companions. This can allow telepathy at short range and for a short period and was instrumental in the circumstances of DeVries’s death. Ever since then, Kat and Travis have been working clandestinely together, he to synthesise the transmitter, she to work out the effects such a drug may have on the attitudes and behaviour of the human population.

Kat arranges a meeting where they can thrash out their problems but it is forestalled when Travis is shot by a stranger. Before the hit can be finished off a man called Meyers saves Travis by wrestling with his attacker, who is seriously injured. Something about the two is odd, there is a new, fresh quality to their skin and a recognisable aspect to their behaviours.

This incident plunges the pair into a plot involving the printing technology which allowed the present colonists to be produced on Newhaven and the question of whether or not the deep-frozen passengers on the Kon-Tiki ought to be resurrected, mixed in with a political dilemma about the direction the colony ought to take – and one reprinted man’s megalomania.

It’s unfortunate that the constraints of the series – plot has to be incorporated into each instalment – do not quite allow a fuller exploration of the implications for the characters of the printing technology. Though it is touched on, how it would feel to have memories of a marriage that the other person involved does not, the dynamics of that skewed relationship are somewhat lost.

Both Brown and Brooke, individually and collectively, are never less than readable though.

‘Time interval later’ count: 9.

Pedant’s corner:- well done for using that excellent Scottish word havering.
Otherwise; whiskey (whisky, please,) “Or ‘We need to’” (Or, ‘We need to’,) “Or ‘Can you imagine’” (Or, ‘Can you imagine’,) “if Travis and I lay low for a while” (is this the conditional? In which case I think it’s okay. Or should it be ‘if Travis and I lie low’? Stick in the ‘were’ and it would certainly be ‘if Travis and I were to lie low’,) “made her wanted to punch him” (want to punch him) “said in a barely a whisper” (remove the first ‘a’) “ful-length” (full-length.)

The Kon-Tiki Quartet Part Two, PS Publishing, 2018, 79 p.

At the start of this second part of the authors’ quartet the cloned would-be colonists on the starship Kon-Tiki are waking up from their hundred-year suspended animation in preparation for landing on their destination planet Newhaven. A shock awaits them. A city on the planet. A human city. Psychologist Kat Manning now has more on her plate than she had imagined when the voyage began.

In that one hundred years technology has moved on, faster ships have been developed – along with fabrication abilities. Everything humans have created down on the planet has been manufactured from data sent along with the fast ship. That includes the colonists, printed into being once the infrastructure had been built. Two of them, Travis Denholme and Daniel DeVries, are characters familiar from Book One of the quartet. Travis has reason to be excited and apprehensive about meeting Kat again. In the time between the two ships’ departures from Earth the originals of Travis and Kat back home had got married, living well enough together until one day she had been murdered in the bolt-hole she kept in East Anglia. But the data he was printed from is for a Travis in his fifties, balding, and paunchier than in his younger days. The Kat on the ship is still in her subjective thirties and will have no memory of their marriage. The two’s first meeting on Newhaven is profoundly awkward.

The plot revolves around a native Newhaven creature something like a marmoset, which Travis has been studying and which has an unusual ability – hence Parasites being the title of this instalment. It also concerns the triangle between Kat, Travis and Daniel, the latter of whom has too high an opinion of himself and not high enough of the other two. Through this trio we see some of the vagaries of human relationships, their awkwardnesses, jealousies and resentments.

However, the novella’s conclusion seemed like a natural end and I was left wondering how Brooke and Brown would develop their scenario in the next two books.

Pedant’s corner:- “Time interval” later count: five. Otherwise; “None of them were” (None of them was,) “Daniel’s DeVries’ mind-set” (Daniel DeVries’s mind-set.)

The Kon-Tiki Quartet Part One, PS Publishing, 2018, 100 p

The Kon-Tiki is an interstellar colony ship weeks from lift-off with its cargo of cloned humans, soon to be imprinted with their originals’ personalities, originals whose expertise is held to be too valuable to send away from Earth themselves. Our two viewpoint characters Travis Denholme and Kat Manning are part of the crew readying the mission. In this eco-catastrophe-threatened world a group called the Allianz, vehemently opposed to this use of resources which it sees as a waste, pickets the base’s entrance while its foreign associates perpetrate worse actions.

Denholme is attracted to Manning but her affections lean more towards his friend and fellow worker Daniel DeVries. In the eyes of the authorities a past relationship with Ute, now an Allianz activist, hovers over Denholme’s reliability.

Anyone familiar with the work of co-author Brown will recognise aspects of this. There is a certain style to it which bears his stamp. This is not to deny fellow writer Brooke’s input. I could not say for sure which parts were written by Brown and which by Brooke as it reads seamlessly. It is possible they undertook alternate chapters.

After the onset of the imprinting Manning is kidnapped, seemingly by the Allianz. Denholme is questioned about his association with Ute but his lack of involvement is accepted grudgingly. He and DeVries are instrumental in discovering her whereabouts and also what is the real threat to the mission.

The immediate story is satisfactorily resolved within the book’s 100 pages leaving us to wonder what is to come in the succeeding volumes of this quartet.

“Time interval” later count: 10.
Pedant’s corner:- in the blurb; “one of the eighteen specialist” (specialists.) Otherwise; “conduct with last woman he’d dated” (with the last woman,) “was it sooner that that” (sooner than that,) “Richards’” (Richards’s.) “Graphs sprung up” (sprang up,) “until he realised that that” (only one ‘that’ needed,) “‘Don’t looked so surprised’” (‘Don’t look so surprised’,) iced-covered (ice-covered,) “‘Tyres tracks’” (Tyre tracks,) “tyres marks” (tyre marks. I suppose this could be tyres plural but then it should be tyres’ marks.) “‘What if Lauren and Danvers planning to sabotage’” (‘What if Lauren and Danvers are planning to sabotage’,) “but he seems as surprised” (the rest of the story is in past tense; ‘seemed’.)