Gollancz, 2021, 356 p. Reviewed for ParSec 1.

In the 1950s and up to the mid-1960s British SF consisted mainly of stories of worldwide disaster – a subgenre which Brian Aldiss somewhat unkindly dubbed cosy catastrophes – whose most prolific contributors were the Johns, Wyndham and Christopher, but also to which, at a stretch, J G Ballard’s early novels could be assigned. While the disaster story never disappeared completely the vogue did ebb and British SF began to cleave the paper light years with the best of them.

In recent times SF writers more generally perhaps sensed the coming contagion. Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven helped to revive the concept of a fictional worldwide disaster and Caroline Hardaker’s Composite Creatures (also reviewed for ParSec 1) has elements of the form. In this book Susannah Wise inhabits that global catastrophe tradition full on – and in a British context.

It is an altered Britain though, which has a heavy Chinese influence. Six year-old Jed’s schoolteacher is a Miss Yue, a supermarket chain is called Lianhua, noodles and rambutan are common foods and a mysterious company called Shīluò zhì lurks in the background.

The common elements of the catastrophe novel are present: communication breakdown, food queues, barricaded roads, troops on the streets. Less usual ingredients here are that bees have gone extinct (though attempts have been made to restore them synthetically) with their pollination tasks in the meantime replaced by tiny drones; following on from beetle blight a rampant disease called Bovine Staph is apparently transmitted through rainwater and can affect humans; venturing outdoors requires UV goggles to be worn to protect against eye damage from sunlight; the currency is exclusively digital – Litecoin spent via Lite-cards.

Pre-disaster just about every service is accessed wirelessly or via AI robots such as BinX, DoctreX, MediX and WaitreX. GScopes, mediated by a system named GQOS, have replaced mobile phones. Roads are constructed from fibre-glass panelling and road signs are exclusively electronic. Agrico-bots roam the countryside.

Then one day the drones start to malfunction, the electricity goes off and everything shuts down. Viewpoint character Signy comes home to a fridge in meltdown, its food rotting. Despite the resultant lack of amenities her partner Matthew keeps saying things will be all right “tomorrow” but one night, while Signy and Jed hide in the loft, Matthew confronts burglars at their house and is killed. Signy sets off from London with Jed to try to reach her mother’s home in Northamptonshire – by bicycle. Along the way they meet the usual assortment of people who either help or steal from them but also uncover the importance of TrincXcode and its links to musical form.

Wise’s writing is fine but in what is presumably a striving for immediacy she exhibits an over-fondness for verbless sentences. Like this one. Her characterisation is generally convincing enough but her portrayal of Jed is inconsistent. As indications of his youth he sometimes has to have words defined to him and he refers to “Mr Mack Wrecker” from the Peter Rabbit books but he also comes out with absurdly adult phrases supposedly remembered from Miss Yue. Things like, “Quantum field which allows the system to work out infinite possibilities,” and, “The system can work out in milliseconds every possible outcome that can happen from any action it takes in multiple universe models and make the best choice.” OK, the reader is getting the info dump but these sentences read as unlikely to come from the mouth of a six year-old, however tech savvy. There is also his memory from three years earlier of his grandfather telling him something “terrible and important,” to wit, “TrincX is the birth of true Artificial Intelligence – God’s daughter come to walk on Earth,” a warning now come true.

This central role of AIs in the background of the narrative has the effect of making the book’s resolution a literal deus ex machina, or, rather, dei ex machinae. Whether that makes it cosy or not is a fine judgement but it certainly leans towards it.

Pedant’s corner:- GQOS’ (GQOS’s,) “the Orkneys” (the locals prefer the designation Orkney, or, the Orkney Islands,) “more combustible that the old carbon boiler” (than,) gotten (in dialogue? In Britain?) Signy rushes out the front door with no mention of its mechanism previously not working due to the shutdown of communications, hummous (hummus.) “‘Danny!’.” (doesn’t need that full stop, the exclamation mark provides that function.) “It lay uncertain rays across” (It laid uncertain rays,) “‘I bought it from home.’” (brought it.) “‘It’s wasn’t Lau Chen was it?’” (‘It wasn’t’.)

Angry Robot, 2021, 267 p. Reviewed for ParSec 1.

Science Fiction is a broad church, which is arguably at its best when it examines the impact of technology on humans and their relationships. Composite Creatures is such a novel with its speculative background sketched out early on. Among other creatures, birds have vanished – in her youth our narrator’s mother made a collection of feathers in memento. Pollution is rife, even garden soil and plants are contaminated. The NHS is more or less gone, signed up with a private institute to make up for lack of funding; apparently in response to an endemic disease known as the greying. (Reviewer’s note: that institute at present would have to have enormous pockets; but this NHS appears much reduced in scale and ambition.) Technology is being used to synthesise or simulate versions of natural organisms. There are also hints that human fertility has been compromised.

The story is narrated by Norah, a woman in her thirties. She has entered a relationship with Art, a somewhat older writer of forgettable crime novels, who has emigrated from the US to live with her. Theirs is a curiously distanced liaison, little or no passion is displayed, even after Art proposes to her; it is certainly not a conventional romantic relationship. Norah has been in love before, though. There are frequent mentions of Luke, an ex-boyfriend. Her friendships with Aubrey, Eleanor and Rosa are also often in her thoughts. In her office job at Stokers, Norah tells us she is efficient but keeps her head down. (This aspect of the novel was a touch unconvincing. The interpersonal dynamics shown seemed odd.)

Norah and Art have signed up to a mysterious clinic called Easton Grove for which they were subject to a thorough vetting process. Hardaker leaves the terms of their contract vague while implying they can be over-intrusive, but this may be a reflection of Norah’s hypersensitivity. However, the Grove seems to have wider influence in society, as an exchange with Norah’s boss indicates.

The couple’s reward arrives in a cardboard box; a creature like a baby but clearly not one. A “faceless bundle of grey fluff” which is fed on what Norah calls “tinned slush”. This is the Grove’s product, an ovum organi (whose exact function Hardaker leaves unconfirmed until late in the book, leaving the reviewer with a dilemma.) Their interactions with the new arrival, a female, rapidly take on the aspects of parenthood, though the creature is kept in their loft, and later given the run of the house.

Despite cautions against, Art and Norah name their charge Nut, and Norah in particular becomes very attached to her in a series of scenes which could almost have been a depiction of the feelings of a new mother towards her child.

Ova organi are an option available only to the wealthy – or to those who can just afford it, a category Norah and Art fall into but her friends do not. The ova are not entirely acceptable to wider society as a group of protesters against the Grove illustrates on one of the couple’s visits there. This, along with Norah’s increasing fixation with Nut and failure to keep up with the problems in her friends’ lives are two of the contributors which lead to the disintegration of Norah’s friendships and to her descent into self-centredness. Her focus on Nut is entirely comprehensible. Nut is flesh of Norah’s flesh after all – and of Art’s. That self-centredness is the driving force throughout. The ova are a technological solution to both the greying and to an aspect of the human condition to which the society depicted in Larry Niven’s stories of Gil the ARM Hamilton adopted a very different approach.

Novels which hitch themselves to the literary end of the SF genre, which focus on small stories as this one does, sometimes find themselves overlooked in favour of more glittering vistas. Composite Creatures is, though, very well written,* and psychologically believable. It also manages to avoid the pitfalls of excessive information dumping (until it gets a bit more open towards the end.) It’s certainly one for those who prefer SF driven by its characters.

*At one point the text mentions Science Fiction, not generally regarded as a good idea in an SF novel as it tends to break suspension of disbelief.

Pedant’s corner:- innumerable instances of ‘to not’ followed by the required verb rather than ‘not to’, also many uses of focussed or focussing rather then focused or focusing, “Mom or Luke say something new” (the ‘or’ makes it singular; ‘says’.) “The final piece of …. were a pair of socks” (the final piece … was a pair,) bannister (banister,) “along endless roads that lead to” (context and previous tense implies ‘led to’,) sprung (sprang,) sat (sitting,) a semi-colon where a comma would have sufficed (and even that wasn’t necessary,) echo-y (echoey?) gamble (gambol – an odd error, Hardaker had gambolling later in the book,) “the tickling of his fingers on the nape of my neck were far more vivid” (was far more vivid,) “a larger crowd … were crowded around” (was crowded around.) “one of the woman” (women.) “I pressed it back together and returned to the grave before carrying on walking” (no grave had been mentioned, ‘returned it to the ground’ makes more sense,) sneakers (trainers, please,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (more than once,) snuck (sneaked,) “the men’s room” (this is set in Britain, it’s ‘The Gent’s’,) outside of (outside, no ‘of’,) inside of (ditto, just ‘inside’,) fit (fitted,) Markus’ (Markus’s,) “estate agents’ office” (estate agent’s office,) “to diffuse the situation” (x2, defuse,) “his trousers hug loosely” (hung loosely.) “Either me or Eleanor was” (Either Eleanor or I was,) stood (standing,) “that I’d already drank too much” (drunk,) “‘It’s New Year’s’” (New Year; no apostrophe,) piece de resistance (pièce de resistance.) In the Acknowledgements; beˋing (being.)