Luna Press, 2025, 198 p. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

Well. They do say you should start with a bang – and this novel does begin with a sentence reminiscent of the first in Iain Banks’s The Crow Road, though what unfolds is neither a bildungsroman nor (quite) a murder mystery but a decent enough piece of Science Fiction.

Viewpoint character Jocelyn Carsten (Joss,) is a hostage negotiator on the way home from managing a crisis on the planet Haitch when her passenger ship Tiktaalik suffers an explosion. She is still alive, just, but is injured, and is the sole survivor. All contact with the ship’s Central Hub – and the outside world – is lost. Only Harbour, the controlling intelligence of passenger mod Petal 4, is available to aid her.

After a trip to the med bay and an EVA to survey the damage to the ship, Harbour advises her to rest. When she wakes up there is another presence in the mod, a gemel; a holographic copy of Joss’s personality, but this has the physical appearance of her ex-wife, Alice Dray.

“A gemel” (the plural is also gemel) “is a sentient being generated from an individual’s psyche,” usually, but not always, taking on the appearance of their sires, “fuzzy copies of their progenitors, interpolated from memories and neurocircuitry, and can resemble their users to a disturbing degree,” but can be “warped by narcissists with fat wallets and the desire for more intimate personal assistants,” as had been the case with Gabrielle Vecher, on-site CEO for Haxen Mining Corps, and his gemel Malachi. Narcissus and Echo in the same package, thinks Joss. Gemel were not allowed physical bodies but, with safeguards, could patch into systems and control them from the inside. They “drew force from external sources, running off the excess electricity in the machines around them.”

This Not-Alice becomes a psychological prop for Joss and a device for the author to run Joss’s backstory past the reader, in instalments. Indeed, at times our access to Joss’s thoughts shifts between the present and her past memories with little or no signalling.

Joss’s rescue from isolation – when it comes (rather abruptly it must be said) – is by a military force co-commanded by none other than Alice Dray: the real one. Its mission is to investigate both why Tiktaalik and the tunnels on Haitch were blown up and to try to obtain the release of the humans still there held by gemel, an endeavour where Joss’s negotiating skills come to the fore. But Alice Dray’s co-commander – something of a loose cannon of the gung-ho military type – threatens to undermine Joss’s steps towards a solution of the situation.

It turns out Vecher had constructed a highly dangerous device deriving from mysterious markings on the tunnels on Haitch. And time is running out. “‘That thing Vecher made tore a hole in the fabric of the universe or whatever the hell you want to call it, and it’s growing, becoming less stable by the hour,’” says Joss during the negotiations.

Given her initial circumstances, Joss is unsurprisingly prone to periods of introspection and questioning both of herself and others.

Despite some problems with structure and pacing this is an engaging read and will push enough familiar buttons for SF readers to emerge satisfied.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian but with some British spellings. The planet Ross128 H’s nickname of Haitch is an egregious mispronunciation of that letter of the alphabet, “on a round-a-bout route” (roundabout – which was used elsewhere in the text for a meander -) once there was a single quotation mark where double ones are employed elsewhere, shlock (schlock,) back-peddling (back-pedalling,) hostage takers “174 million miles away” morphs to “140 million mile silences” during the communications gap, “sliding the stack of credits Joss had won back from her back across the table” (Joss was playing her opponent for the first time, so just ‘had won from her’.) “This is ….. based on …..?” (wasn’t a question so full stop, not question mark,) C02 (It’s not C zero two as was printed in the text, and the 2 ought to be a subscript,) “wracking your brain” (racking,) “sending some part of her ex’s upper-class snobbery would revolt” (sensing some part.) “‘Tell and I send you outside to repaint the serial number.’” (No clue. Who is Tell?) “what she can offer them are options” (I read ‘what she can offer them’ as a singular subject to the following verb; so ‘what she can offer them is options’,) “is different thing” (is a different thing.) “‘Ph damage right here’” (‘pH damage’ was meant and pH always has an upper case H and a lower case p – even at the start of a sentence,) “drowns out nothing but Callen’s voice” (everything but Callen’s voice,) “‘I pretty sure’” (I was pretty sure,) “for having sunken so low” (for having sunk so low.) “She doubts its convincing” (doubts it’s convincing,) “amid glow of the launch” (amid the glow of the launch,) a missing extraneous end quotation mark, a missing comma before the quotation mark at the end of a piece of dialogue. “‘How is that that they’ve got people down there?’”  (How is it that they’ve got…,) “‘if we so much get within the distance’” (if we so much as get within…,) “it takes her moment” (it takes her a moment.) “Alice takes her seat again and switching back to their private comm.” (and switches back to,) “the metal partition the separated them” (partition that separated them.) “A name that inferred family, and what she’d always been taught to mean trust, love and guidance” (and that she’d always been taught…,) “but do they do afford” (but they do afford,) “of the Florenz’ cargo bay” (the Florenz’s,) “breathing apparatuses” (the plural of apparatus is apparatus,) “nothing but the judder of the engine and the clatter of equipment as rattles against the bulkheads” (could be rewritten more clearly,) “‘I can’t let you can’t do this’” (either, ‘I can’t let you do this’ or, ‘You can’t do this.)

White Rabbit, 2021, 363 p.   Illustrations by Mark Edward Geyer.

This tale of a hanger-on of a rock-star, general factotum of the (oddly named it has to be said) big house, Kitchenly Mill Race, whose telephone number provides the novel’s title, at times reminded me of the style of Iain Banks. Espedair Street obviously, but also Dead Air, yet is a different beast altogether from those and different, too, from David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue, which also hymns the prog rock era.

Each chapter is preceded by an illustration of the house – or part of it – plus a few words, like those you might find in Victorian novels, indicating what said chapter will contain. The novel is markedly lighter in tone than Warner’s previous works. Reading those I could never have imagined myself laughing out loud while enjoying one of his books. But I did here at one particular scene.

Apart from first person narrator Crofton Clark, the house is in many ways the most prominent “character” in the book. It has an extensive set of connected buildings based on the Tudor original – mostly destroyed by a fire – with Elizabethan, Queen Anne, Georgian and Arts and Crafts extensions, different sections of which are connected by two air bridges. Here is where Marko Morrell, member of the band Fear Taker (and greatest guitarist in the world – according to Crofton,) lives with his Scandinavian wife Auralie and daughter Molly. Or at least where Marko stays when he is not touring or away seeing to his business interests. Crofton patrols the place every night, switching lights on or off depending on their location and shutting all the curtains. Through his eyes we are given an extensive depiction of the rambling pile. It is almost as if the house is taking the place of that delineation of landscape which is a feature of the Scottish novel. But that box is ticked by Crofton also extensively describing the house’s surroundings.

This attention to detail, and his obsessiveness about Fear Taker’s œuvre, indicate that Crofton may be in some way autistic. Though he believes himself to be essential to Marko and the house’s smooth running he only got the job after a stint as a roadie as he was a friend from way back. He has illusions of competence but he is not as close to Marko nor as privy to his employer’s intentions as he thinks. Then there is his belief that an intruder makes his or her way onto the property at night.

Minor mishaps begin to spin things out of Crofton’s control but his life really begins to unravel when two fifteen-year-old girls from the local village come to the gate to ask for a Fear Taker album to be signed for the brother of one of them. Crofton cannot resist showing off and invites them in for a tour of the house.

Kitchenly 434 is a portrait of a man who thinks he knows who and what he is and his station in life but who is deluded about almost everything – including Doris Boardman, the good time girl he had been seeing in his home town of Stafford before she found a better option.

(Though Warner clearly intended it as a signifier of different, less informed, times there was an unnecessary and therefore needlessly provocative aside about Jimmy Savile’s effectiveness as a presenter on Top of the Pops.)

Pedant’s corner:- “had strode” (had stridden,) “hide-and-go-seek” (USian, in the UK, Scotland certainly, it’s just ‘hide-and-seek’,) Whacky Races (this TV programme was titled Wacky Races,) Some Mother’s Do ’Ave ’Em (mothers plural, not ‘of mother’, Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em,) “which would lay … on … her thighs” (which would lie on,) “prime ministers” (Prime Ministers.) “The Cream” (x 2, that band was called, merely, ‘Cream’, and in the text its chronology seems a bit askew,) Prestos (Presto’s,) “‘was if fact spent’” (was in fact spent,) sunk (x 2, sank.) “Rose looked and me and frowned” (Rose looked at me and… ,) “troop of horses had shit all down the road” (had shat,) “in any good chemists” (any good chemist’s,) imposters (I know it’s an alternative but it just doesn’t look right to me; impostors,) “turned towards to me” (‘turned towards me’ or ‘turned to me’,) “abit like” (a bit like,) “‘ hasn’t had his barbers open since’” (barber’s,) “‘I amn’t’” (nice to see this grammatical Scottish usage but it was said by an English girl so unlikely. They usually say ‘aren’t’,) “in a weave patterns” (in a weave pattern,) Herstmonceaux (that village is spelled Herstmonceux) “Quick as shot” (Quick as a shot.)

British Library, 2019, 220 p, including a v p Introduction by Timothy C Baker, and Wild September a vi p article by MacPherson. First published in 1936. Reviewed for Interzone 290-291, Summer 2021.

In the mid- to late twentieth century Science Fiction by Scottish authors was all but invisible. Only four names spring to mind as being much in evidence at the time; J T McIntosh (who did though manage to publish over 20 SF novels,) Angus McVicar – whose output was aimed at YA readers (such books were called juvenile at the time) – and a reprint in the early 1960s of David Lindsay’s 1920 novel A Voyage to Arcturus, which despite its impeccably Science-Fictional title was arguably more of a fantasy than SF as such. Alasdair Gray produced his monumental Lanark in 1981 but that was such a unique novel (or four novels) that it hardly represented a trend or a model practicable to aspire to. And again it leaned towards fantasy, though some of his short stories were more recognisably SF. A tendency towards fantasy and horror in Scottish fiction had always been present – taking in George MacDonald’s Lilith etc and some of Robert Louis Stevenson’s stories (notably of course The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) – as was the tale of the supernatural or, at least, encounters with the devil, whose origins go back even further than Victorian times. Forty to fifty years ago though, of evidence of SF either in that present or from earlier decades, there was barely a trace, neither as reprints nor on library shelves. Not until Polygon’s republishing of the novels of Lewis Grassic Gibbon – some of them published originally under his real name of J Leslie Mitchell – did I become aware that there had indeed been a Scottish tradition of writing SF before the appearance of Iain (M) Banks. Ken Macleod swiftly followed him. That dam having been broken by their success in the field, there are as of now a fair few Scots active in the genre.

With Ian Macpherson’s Wild Harbour, the British Library, whose new editions of British Crime Classics from the 1930s have brightened up bookshop shelves with vibrant Art Deco style covers redolent of the railway posters of that decade, has pulled another long languishing work of Scottish Science Fiction out of obscurity.

The book was written in the shadow of the looming Second World War. In it, something has happened in Europe and war has been declared, exactly what and between whom is unspecified. The novel starts sometime after with protagonist Hugh and his wife Terry being woken up in the middle of the night by the sound (and sight) of gunfire in the distance, towards Inverness. It soon becomes obvious they are taking refuge in a cave – the text goes on to lay out how well they had customised it to the requirements of living in the wild – as an escape and hiding place from the outside world. Hugh had had no inclination to fight in a war, had refused to follow the instructions of his call-up papers and the pair made off into the country to fend for themselves. Despite his aversion to war Hugh nevertheless has to kill animals to survive, hunting deer, fishing, snaring the odd rabbit.

The text takes the form of diary entries by Hugh with chapter titles which usually consist only of dates (from 15 May 1944 – 11 October) except for the final one, Night. Oddly, despite numerous mentions of salting of deer for the winter, when October comes we are told they have run out of meat.

In an observation on modern humans’ capacity to get by unaided that has even more relevance these days Hugh remembers an acquaintance from before the war telling him, “Our senses are blunted. We depend on a multitude of people to make our clothes and food and tools for us. We have noses that can’t smell, ears that are deaf -”

The pair’s struggle to survive and maintain their seclusion is threatened by human intruders into their surroundings, intruders whose shadowy nature and motivations only heighten the sense of threat. In this context Wild Harbour prefigures British SF’s “cosy” catastrophes of the 1950s.

The Introduction tells us, “Place is formative in all Macpherson’s novels, but the human relationship with place is never an easy one.” That is a statement that could be made about the Scottish novel in general. Another Scottish novelistic trait displayed here is a close attention to depiction of the land.

The writing is of its time, though, and the feel very reminiscent of Gibbon’s slightly earlier SF novels Three Go Back and Gay Hunter, both of which involve sojourns in almost deserted countryside, but also of John Buchan’s John Macnab, (plus there is the merest whiff of Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male.) Macpherson, however, has an absurd overfondness for the phrase “commenced to” and from the perspective of over 80 years after publication it is noticeable that Terry’s contribution to the pair’s survival is confined almost entirely to the domestic sphere, within the cave.

In valediction, Macpherson offers us the thought that, “We are victors over fate when we choose well, though it destroy us.”

A subsequent article by Macpherson, entitled Wild September, which was published in September 1940, rounds off this edition, and in it he reflects on the actual war which started in 1939.

As Science Fiction, though, Wild Harbour on balance falls down. Its background is too sketchy and there is no real necessity for such a story to be placed in a putative future (except for the international situation at the time it was written.) It could as easily have been a present-day narrative with a more mundane reason than dodging conscription for escaping to the hills. However, that might be argued to be an unwarranted criticism as it projects twenty-first century ideas onto an older text and a work of SF is always about the time it was written, never the future. As a historical curiosity and a reminder that SF by Scottish writers has an extended history Wild Harbour is welcome. Modern SF readers, though, might prefer more meat on its bones.

Pedant’s corner:- in the Introduction; “depictions of violence in books bears little relation to” (depictions …. bear little relationship to.) Elsewhere; a lower case letter at the start of a sentence after a question mark at the end of the previous one, ditto after an exclamation mark, digged (dug,) “‘there didn’t use to be’” (used to be,) a switch of tense from past to present then back, “where I sunk his rifle” (where I had sunk his rifle,)

This week’s entry for Judith, Reader in the Wilderness‘s meme now being run by Katrina at Pining for the West.

These are all on the top shelf of my “Scottish” bookcase and comprise all of Iain Banks’s non-SF fiction works plus his non-fiction wander round the world of Scotch whisky, Raw Spirit.

Lying around in a file somewhere I’ve got reviews of these that (except for the last four) haven’t been put on here. They were in preparation for a piece giving an overview of Banks’s work in a book that never saw fruition.

Maybe I’ll post them sometime.

Large SF paperbacks this week for Judith’s meme at Reader in the Wilderness.

I keep these in an old music cupboard I inherited from my great-uncle. I’ve got so many of these they have to be double-parked, so you can’t actually see the first and third shelves shown here when the cupboard is opened. Stacking some on their sides gives me an extra 4 cm of space. Click on the photos to enlarge the pictures.

These include a J G Ballard, Iain M Banks, Chris Beckett, Eric Brown, Ursula Le Guin and Ian McDonald:-

Annoyingly, even these large paperbacks do not all come in one size. The upright ones to the right here are smaller than the previous books. More McDonald, Tim Powers, Kim Stanley Robertson, Adam Roberts, Hannu Rajaniemi, a lesser Robert Silverberg, Kurt Vonnegut:-

More Ballard, Banks, Beckett and Brown. Lavie Tidhar, Neil Williamson and another step down in size:-

John Crowley, M John Harrison, Dave Hutchinson, Stanisław Lem:-

My contribution this week to Reader in the Wilderness’s Bookshelf Travelling in Insane Times meme. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

These are some of my hardback SF and Fantasy books. I didn’t buy many hardbacks back in the day (except second hand) so most of these are fairly modern SF and some are review copies.

Above note some J G Ballard (his Empire of the Sun ought not really be shelved here but it keeps his books together,) Iain M Banks, Eric Brown, Alan Campbell, Ted Chiang, the wonderful Michael G Coney, the excellent Richard Cowper, Hal Duncan, and Matthew Fitt’s amazing But n Ben A-Go-Go, an SF novel written entirely in Scots.

The next shelf still has some of its adornments in front:-

Stand-outs here are Mary Gentle, the all-but indescribable R A Lafferty, the sublime Ursula Le Guin, Stanisław Lem, Graham Dunstan Martin, Ian R MacLeod, Ken MacLeod, Ian McDonald.

You’ll also see the proof copy of a novel titled A Son of the Rock perched above the books at the right hand end on row 2.

The good lady is taking part in a meme, which originated with Reader in the Wilderness in the USA.

It’s not quite in the spirit of the meme but I thought I would give you a glimpse of some of my bookshelves over the next few weekends. (Monday counts for this.)

So these are the top four shelves of the bookcase where I keep those works of Scottish Fiction I have already read. (Unread books are kept elsewhere.) The bookcase was bought from IKEA and fitted well in our old house which had high ceilings. When we moved to Son of the Rock Acres we wondered where it could go. Not downstairs, not enough clearance. Upstairs though, the ceilings are three inches higher! The removal men were great at manœuvring it into place with so little margin for error. It now sits on the top corridor just outside my study. (You can’t always see the books so clearly, there’s usually more stuff placed in front of them. A few history books are still perched above some in the bottom row.)

Edited to add:- The meme was set up to include recommendations for reading. Well, on that note Lewis Grassic Gibbon is always worth it, most especially Sunset Song in the A Scots Quair trilogy. So too are Alasdair Gray, Iain Banks, Anne Donovan, Margaret Elphinstone, Andrew Crumey, Andrew Greig, James Robertson.

Short fiction nominees:-
The Enclave¹ by Anne Charnock (NewCon Press, Feb 2017) is not obviously Science Fiction. Written well enough, it focuses on Caleb, a refugee seemingly from Spain but it could be further south, at a time when the world seems to have global warmed. It has some echoes of Oliver Twist as Caleb is variously exploited and learns to trust no-one. The titular enclave lies somewhere near Manchester.
In These Constellations Will Be Yours by Elaine Cuyegkeng (Strange Horizons, 7/8/17) oraculos from the planet Buyin have enabled much swifter interstellar travel at the cost of having their backs opened, spines, brains and nervous systems attached to the galleon-ships which ply the celestial sea. Some avoid this fate by paying to opt out. There is a revolt.
Uncanny Valley² by Greg Egan (Tor.com, 9/8/17) is an extract only. The full text is available online but I dislike reading fiction from a screen so this one page sample had to do and was consequently hard to adjudge.
Angular Size³ by Geoff Nelder ( SFerics, 2017) is in the tradition of the big dumb object story, or, in this case, the maybe not quite so big as something the apparent size of the moon but only detectable in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum suddenly appears in the solar system. However it may be as small as a button but, more importantly, a precursor to alien invasion.
The Murders of Molly Southborne⁴ by Tade Thompson (Tor.com publishing) is also an extract, two pages this time; too short an extract to appraise properly.

In the non-fiction items the extract from Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Iain M Banks^a by Paul Kincaid is mainly about Feersum Endjinn, Whit, A Song of Stone and Excession.
Juliet E McKenna’s The Myth of Meritocracy and the Reality of the Leaky Pipe and other Obstacles in Science Fiction and Fantasy^b examines the ways in which women are undervalued in and marginalised from SF.
There is an extract from Wells at the World’s End^b by Adam Roberts in which he looks at The Invisible Man.
Various contributors consider The 2017 Shadow Clarke Awards^c.
The Unthinkability of Climate Change: Thoughts on Amitav Ghosh’s ‘The Great Derangement’^d by Vandana Singh deals with the unwillingness of people to think about climate change.

Pedant’s corner (fiction):- ¹focussed (focused,) sat (sitting,) “no sense of daring-do” (it’s derring-do.) ²a stationers (stationer’s.) ³”they might consider humanity are a scourge on the planet” (is a scourge,) miniscule (minuscule,) focussed (focused,) “‘The White House are having kittens’” (is having,) “‘take it Edwards’” (take it to Edwards,) “‘it’s slowing down but still heading for the Moon’” (unless it was very close to the Moon already, not in any trajectory I’ve ever heard of.) ⁴feces (faeces.)
(Non-fiction):- ^ain a passage about Banks’s prefiguring of txt spk, “duz she 1/2 a naim” (I read that as one/two, not ½,) rumor and center (in a British piece about a British writer! Rumour and centre, please.) ^bCandaules’ (Candaules’s, yet we have Wells’s and Griffins’s,) “to talk an individual caught up in … is to describes” (to talk of an individual… is to describe,) “as good as stopping photons” (as good at stopping.) ^b”which that presenting evidence” (which presenting that evidence,) practise (practice,) selfevidently (self evidently.) ^c”as a third wave of riots break out” (a wave breaks out.) ^dCO2 (CO₂.)

This year’s BSFA Awards (for works published last year) were announced at Eastercon on Saturday 31^st March.

The winners were:-

Best novel: The Rift by Nina Allan

Best Short Fiction: The Enclave by Anne Charnock

Best Non-fiction: Paul Kincaid for Iain M Banks

The Best Artwork Award: was shared between Jim Burns and Victo Ngai

The shortlists for the BSFA Awards for last year went live while I was traipsing about down south.

They are:-

Best Novel

Nina Allan – The Rift (Titan Books)

Anne Charnock – Dreams Before the Start of Time (47North)

Mohsin Hamid – Exit West (Hamish Hamilton)

Ann Leckie – Provenance (Orbit)

I have read the Leckie (and will post a review on Saturday.) Two others are in hand.

Best Shorter Fiction

Anne Charnock – The Enclave (NewCon Press)

Elaine Cuyegkeng – These Constellations Will Be Yours (Strange Horizons)

Greg Egan – Uncanny Valley (Tor.com)

Geoff Nelder – Angular Size (in ‘SFerics 2017’ edited by Roz Clarke and Rosie Oliver, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform)

Tade Thompson – The Murders of Molly Southbourne (Tor.com)

I’ve read none of these so far.

Best Non-Fiction

Paul Kincaid – Iain M. Banks (University of Illinois Press)

Juliet E McKenna – The Myth of Meritocracy and the Reality of the Leaky Pipe and Other Obstacles in Science Fiction & Fantasy (in ‘Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction’ edited by Francesca T Barbini, Luna Press)

Adam Roberts – Wells at the World’s End 2017 blog posts (Wells at the World’s End blog)

Shadow Clarke Award jurors – The 2017 Shadow Clarke Award blog (The Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy). The 2017 Shadow Clarke jurors are: Nina Allan, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Victoria Hoyle, Vajra Chandrasekera, Nick Hubble, Paul Kincaid, Jonathan McCalmont, Megan AM.

Vandana Singh – The Unthinkability of Climate Change: Thoughts on Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement (Strange Horizons)

Best Artwork

Geneva Benton – Sundown Towns (cover for Fiyah Magazine #3)

Jim Burns – Cover for ‘The Ion Raider’ by Ian Whates (NewCon Press)

Galen Dara – Illustration for ‘These Constellations Will Be Yours’ by Elaine Cuyegkeng (Strange Horizons)

Chris Moore – Cover for ‘The Memoirist’ by Neil Williamson (NewCon Press)

Victo Ngai – Illustration for ‘Waiting on a Bright Moon’ by JY Yang (Tor.com)

Marcin Wolski – Cover for ‘2084’ edited by George Sandison (Unsung Stories)