Corvus, 2015, 481 p.

This is Beckett’s sequel to Dark Eden which won the Clarke Award in 2013. The premise was that three people had been marooned on a planet without a sun located somewhere outside the galaxy – the sky is filled with a view of the Milky Way its inhabitants call Starry Swirl – and that novel was set among their descendants. (For my review of Dark Eden see here.)

This book develops the scenario several generations after the events of the previous one and centres on the artefact known as Gela’s ring, the possession of one of the founders which had been lost and was rediscovered in Dark Eden.

We start in the small community of Knee Tree Grounds where decision making is consensual – and where there are no restrictions on sexual partnering. Very soon Starlight Brooking makes a trading voyage with some companions to the much larger community of Veeklehouse where institutions like guards emphasise the descent from the idyllic the wider world has made and which was instigated in Dark Eden. In Veeklehouse she meets Greenstone Johnson, a visitor from across the large sea known as the Worldpool. Their instant attraction is complicated by his status as Headmanson and her incomprehension of the ways of the settlement of New Earth from where he came. She agrees to go to New Earth with him to become his housewoman (a position of sexual exclusivity – for the housewoman.) Only when she arrives does she discover she will be a figure of adoration, the reincarnation of Gela herself, and the wearer of her ring.

Starlight could have settled for a life of luxury and pampering, but New Earth is a harsh and prejudiced industrial society which appals her. Its big people have discovered how to make their own metal from local rocks, exploit both the small people and the indigenous bats and practise a horrific form of capital punishment (and incidentally due to an old feud, plan to recross Worldpool in force one day and take over the whole of Eden.) New Earth’s motto, carved into the rock above its large entrance door, is Become Like Earth. Sadly, it has.

Greenstone is not a natural leader and faces problems even before his father dies and he succeeds as headman. Together with Gela’s Secret Story – passed down from mother to daughter only – these two circumstances combine to determine Starlight’s actions.

This is a book about foundation myths and their perversion, the persistence of such tales, the unreliability of written sources, their susceptibility to mistaken exegesis, and the genesis of cults. One passage late on suggests that Starlight will herself become an object of veneration in Eden’s future.

Like Dark Eden the narrative is carried via multiple viewpoints, through which we get into many people’s heads. The character of Starlight is engaging, developing from naïvety to suspicion – others are as convincing – and the power dynamics of a “primitive” society are well portrayed. Becket’s world is well-imagined – any quibbles about the viability of human life on Eden are easily laid aside in the following of story (even if the possibility of the local bats being intelligent may be adding a layer too many) – but that story shows that humans are humans no matter where they happen to be and in whatever circumstances they find themselves.

Pedant’s corner:- despite this being a British edition it contains US spellings (center, colored.) I assume the publishers simply lifted the US text. Yet “fitted” appeared as a past tense as it would in Britain. “that it must punished (must be punished,) I look round anxiously (all the rest of the verbs in this passage are in past tense, so “looked”,) sunk (sank.)

NewCon Press, 2013, 239p. Reviewed for Interzone 247, Jul-Aug 2013.

This is Beckett’s second collection, containing twelve short stories – with a few commonalities in background – that have been published during the past five years. Four are from the pages of Interzone. They span a wide range of perennial SF concerns – social or technological extrapolation, global warming, enigmatic aliens, their strange worlds, parallel universes, stargates, altered histories – plus a genuflection to Arthur Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God.

Atomic Truth contrasts the seeming connectedness of the digital world with the distancing it carries along with it. Everyone wears bugeyes, interactive goggles that form an interface between the real and virtual worlds and display emails, ads etc. Everyone, that is, except Richard, who has no need of goggles to see visions. His encounter with Jenny provides a small moment of humanity in his disorientated world.

The style of Two Thieves is reminiscent of a fairy tale – a form which has less than cosy attributes. The thieves, exiled to a remote and totally secure penal colony, start work on an archæological site, where they uncover a relic of the Old Empire. It’s a spatial gateway, which of course they jump through. There is some nice foreshadowing here that is both blatant and subtle at the same time.

Johnny’s New Job is set in an Orwellian society with a Stakhanovite labour force and a justice system to gladden a tabloid newspaper proprietor’s heart. Offenders against the public good (who all seem to work in Welfare) are demonised by the authorities. These unfortunates are named and worse than shamed, guilt by association is afflicted on their families. Johnny goes along with the general mood, then gets an unrefusable job offer.

On the planet Lutania lies The Caramel Forest, a malodorous place of grey, brown and pink vegetation contrasted by the bright green of settlers’ lawns. The Lutanian indigenes nicknamed goblins can project settlers’ thoughts back into human minds. The Agency running the planet tries to protect them but the original human settlers have their own way of dealing with them. Cassie, the child of a constantly arguing Agency couple on a tour of duty, is influenced to escape the rows by running off into the forest.

Greenland. Juan Fernandez is a refugee from Spain scraping an ever more insecure living in a slowly submerging south-east of England flooded both by global warming and the so-called beachrats, illegal immigrants lucky to escape the machine-gunners on the shores. He loses his crap job but his future is determined by a lucrative offer to copy him in a hazardous matter-replicating machine.

The Famous Cave Paintings on Isolus 9 depict a God fashioned, as all gods are, in the image of the locals. He is imprisoned and can only dream of escape. The narrator’s Uncle Clancy, a famous womaniser who has finally fallen in love, sees them, and is terrified.

Rat Island is a take on our reckless consumption of fossil fuels. A child whose civil servant father confides to him the inevitability of the consequent crash and likens us to introduced rats on an isolated island eventually eating all the seabirds’ eggs, finds his only consolation is the taking of photographs.

Day 29. Lutania again. Stephen Kohl is coming to the end of his tour of duty for the Agency and is frustrated and worried by the thought of the memories of 29 days he will lose when he undergoes Transmission back to civilisation.

England is occupied, taken over by Brythonic Celts expelled from Britain by the Romans into France, Iberia and the Americas. They have come back to the land they claim that God gave them. The scenario has implicit and explicit parallels to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and, in common with that, isn’t resolved. Beckett’s framing device lets its story, Our Land, off that hook, though.

Jacob Stone is The Desiccated Man, transporting cargoes over the solitary spaceways, accumulating money till he can retire to a life of indulgence. But old habits die hard.

In Poppyfields, a brownfield site subject to a development delay, waif-like Tammy Pendant – who has taken slip, a drug which pierces the membranes between universes – materialises in front of bird-watching Angus Wendering. Angus is easily led.

The creator of a fabricated world called Esperine finally enters it. The copy of himself he installed there comes to confront him wearing The Peacock Cloak, a shimmering all powerful device he has used to rebel against Esperine’s tameness.

Some of these tales have an overly conversational tone, parts have a tendency to be told rather than unfold, info dumping can be intrusive and there are occasional disjunctions where story elements seem to clash but, in all of them, Beckett never loses sight of the humans he is writing about. Here we are in all our folly – and occasional glory.

It’s traditional at this season of the year to list what has most impressed over the past twelve or so months. Except I’ve only done it once before. Twelve months ago.

Once again I find ten books stood out over the year.

In order of reading they were:-

Snow by Orhan Pamuk
Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
Empty Space by M John Harrison
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
Spin by Nina Allan
The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
Girl Reading by Katie Ward
Planesrunner by Ian McDonald
Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky

4 are translations, 4 are SF*, 3 are by women. Make of that what you will.

*If you count the last section of Girl Reading, that would be 4 and a bit.

Corvus, 2012, 404p. This is the novel that has recently won the Clarke Award.

Family (there is only one, hence no qualifying article is required) lives in Circle Valley on Eden, a planet with no external light source save that of the faint Starry Swirl in the sky. The forbidding mountainous surroundings are known as Snowy Dark and no-one has ever climbed over them – nor wanted to. From the founding pair Tommy and Angela, marooned when their companions took the Landing Veekle up to the damaged spaceship Defiant to try to get back to Earth and help, Family has grown to over 500 members. Respect for tradition and its Oldest keep Family’s way of life as it has always been. But life is a continuing struggle. John Redlantern has realised that someday the food will run out. The novel describes the consequences of his actions in breaking Family tradition.

This reworking of the Adam and Eve story could have been a disaster (it is one of the hoariest clichés in SF) and there is a certain inevitability about John’s behaviour; we know it must be so to drive the plot. We also know that someone will eventually climb over Snowy Dark.

However, Beckett has peopled his novel with some compelling characters – not only John Redlantern, but also Tina Spiketree and clever, clawfooted Jeff, who is given to saying, “We are here. We really are here.” (Apart from claw feet the main genetic consequence of the inbreeding unavoidable in Family’s situation is in severe hare-lips, “batfaces.”) Moreover at the conclusion the plot also delivers a twist so that we and the characters are forced to reappraise their situation. And a nice touch is the reworking of the old phrase about Tom, Dick and Harry into a Family profanity.

The main viewpoint narrators are John and Tina but others also have the odd chapter. The frustrations John and his fellow youngsters feel at the restrictions and boredom of the AnyVirsies and Strornies where Family’s past is mythologised (mentions of telly vision, kee boards and lecky-trickity serve only to confuse the youngsters) or where disputes are resolved, are well articulated and so is the point of view of the adults who cling to what they know. The young count in wombtimes rather than years and are upbraided for it. The transition of the matriarchal, consensual, more or less cohesive Family life where even the concept of rape is unknown – there is nevertheless a lot of relatively guilt free sex – to a more confrontational, male dominated future of strife, of events allowing the domineering to take over, is a key one.

Beckett’s story-telling brio overcomes any nagging doubts at the scenario. (There can be no photosynthesis here, so what kind of carbohydrates would be available? Would the local flora and fauna really be compatible with humans? Would they be comprised of the same amino acids as on Earth, allowing them to be eaten successfully? Would the necessary vitamins be present? Who is this story being told to? These have to be discounted, for without these conditions there would be no story for us to read – and the last applies to any work of fiction.)

While the characters frequently repeat adjectives for emphasis – cold, cold; dark, dark etc – the issues of inadequate proofreading which slightly marred the readability of Beckett’s previous novels Marcher and The Holy Machine are more notable by their absence here.

Whether read as Science Fiction or simply as fiction Dark Eden is good stuff, well worth its Clarke Award. I suspect it will stay with me a long time.

Congratulations to Chris Beckett whose Dark Eden has won the Clarke Award. It’s reasonably unusual for a book firmly within the SF genre to win the Clarke so double congratulations for that. (I have just started to read the book and so far I’m impressed.)

For review in Interzone I have been also reading Chris’s collection The Peacock Cloak. This was in tandem with reading The Blue Book (now finished) and Dark Eden. The review of The Peacock Cloak will be with Interzone soon.

Chris has recently been placed on the short list for the Clarke Award for his novel Dark Eden which I was on the point of reading.

However, I have now received from Interzone his latest collection of short stories, The Peacock Cloak, so I may postpone embarking on Dark Eden for a while.

Another option would be to read the two books in tandem, which might be interesting.

Last year it was Chris Priest who incited controversy over the Clarke Award, this year it seems to be the judges themselves – for not including a book by a woman on their shortlist.

The contending books are:-

Nod by Adrian Barnes (Bluemoose)
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus)*
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway (William Heinemann)
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (Headline)
Intrusion by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)*
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)*

I’ve read the last two of these and Dark Eden is on the TBR pile.

The overlap with this year’s BSFA Awards novel short list is strong (asterisked titles) but only 2312 is also up for the Hugo.

I’m a bit surprised that M John Harrison’s Empty Space didn’t make the list, it’s the sort of book that Clarke Award juries tend to like.

Cosmos Books, 2008, 304 p.

A drug called slip allows people, shifters, to move between parallel universes – which are arranged in a tree shape. Charles Bowen is an immigration officer in a universe (not ours) where his main job is to deal with shifters in an effort to eradicate the problem they represent. Here the poor and unemployed are kept in sink estates known as Social Inclusion Zones from which it is difficult to break free. Unusually, and all the more welcome for it, the main setting for the novel is the Bristol area. Bowen likes to think of himself as a guardian of the borders – between universes in his case – the “Marcher” of the title. He is himself attracted to shifting without at first quite knowing why.

Shifters are treated as criminals because they can do what they like and then evade capture by shifting. To be fair some of them follow the cult of Dunner, based on Norse mythology, and are dedicated to mayhem. These misfits commit a massacre in Clifton which allows the government to crack down hard on Social Inclusion Zones and any shifters – cultees or not – who are captured.

In the chapters written (in first person) from Bowen’s viewpoint his relationship with a social worker called Jazamine and his part in her shifting are treated as haunting him but the relationship itself is only portrayed at its beginning, its end (her shift) and otherwise in snapshots. Other sections are written in third person but as narrated by Bowen.

The proof-reading is at times inadequate. At various points a word required to make complete sense of the sentence is missing, “He was (a) decent man,” “He looked as if he’d (be) more comfortable,” “But (it) was hard to turn away,” and there are places where the author has clearly changed one part of a phrase or sentence but not another where sense requires it, “I’ve never understand this bit,” “Carl that he had always known that acts of courage would lead to something new,” “he had been moved him to another high security unit.”

Beckett’s previous book The Holy Machine was a treat despite suffering from the same issue with words missing. Marcher is less focused and also has too much telling rather than showing plus some not too well integrated info-dumping. His latest novel, Dark Eden, has been nominated for this year’s BSFA Award.

The BSFA Award shortlist for stories published in 2012 has been announced.

For best novel we have:-

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus)

Empty Space: a Haunting by M. John Harrison (Gollancz)

Intrusion by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)

Jack Glass by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit.)

Unusually I have read three out of the five already, two of those courtesy of Interzone and its kind reviews editor. Thank you, Jim.

My views on 2312 I posted on this blog only two days ago. Those on Empty Space will be forthcoming.

Intrusion I reviewed here.

As for the short stories I have read only one of them so far, the last on this list; and very good it was too.

Three others, though, are available to read on the net. Doubtless the BSFA will be producing its usual booklet.

Immersion by Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld no. 69)

The Flight of the Ravens by Chris Butler (Immersion Press)

Song of the body Cartographer by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz (Phillipines Genre Stories)

Limited Edition by Tim Maughan (1.3, Arc Magazine)

Three Moments of an Explosion by China Miéville (Rejectamentalist Manifesto)

Adrift on the Sea of Rains by Ian Sales (Whippleshield Books)

On one of our two nights in Cambridge I had agreed to meet up with Eric Brown who lives nearby.

He arranged for other SF writers from the area to join us. They were Chris Beckett, Una McCormack, Philip Vine, BSFA chairman Ian Whates and Rebecca Payne, most of whom I had not met before. The six of them have semi-regular meetings in the Pickerel Inn in Cambridge.

The good lady and I had a meal in the Pickerel before everyone else arrived. Our plates groaned. So many peas were heaped on them we must have been served about half a kilogram between us.

I had meant to take some pictures of the gathering but such a good time was had by all that I forgot.

(No. I wasn’t drunk. I had to drive back to the hotel.)