Corvus, 2016, 398 p

The narrator here is Angie Redlantern, childhood friend of Starlight, the protagonist of the previous novel in Beckett’s Dark Eden sequence, Mother of Eden, but long since struck out on her own from Knee Tree Grounds and living among the Davidfolk in Veeklehouse on the near side of Worldpool. Angie is a batface, one of the many such in Eden as a consequence of the inbreeding unavoidable in the scenario. She had for a long time been companion to Mary, a shadowspeaker faithful to the cult of Gela but was rejected by her after failing to hear Gela’s voice in the sacred Circle of Stones. The novel kicks off when Angie’s daughter, Candy, is the first to notice the men in metal masks coming across Worldpool in wave after wave of boats. Soon Angie’s family is heading out over Snowy Dark to Circle Valley to escape this invasion. There, in a strange left turn that falls outside the narrative pattern of the trilogy so far, the event that marks Angie’s life occurs. To reveal it would be a spoiler of sorts.

Beckett is of course examining origin myths and belief systems and here explicitly the question of what happens when evidence arises that directly contradicts the stories you have heard all your life, stories which that life revolves around, especially if they are stories on which your self-esteem and means of living depend. Well, belief is a stubborn beast. If you truly believe, you just rationalise that evidence away.

Beckett’s depiction of the evolution and entrenchment of social hierarchies is not an especially optimistic view of humanity. Perhaps all Edens are dark. Within it, however, while he shows us humans bickering and fighting, we also find loving and caring; so there is hope. Readable as always, Beckett involves us fully in Angie’s world, and presents us with characters who behave in the way we know they would. I’m still not sure about that life-marking event though.

Pedant’s corner:- sprung (sprang,) when when (this is not one of those instances where Eden folk use repetition of an adjective to express the comparative, a habit Beckett expands on later; just one “when” needed here,) me and her had fallen out (the English ought to be I and she or she and I but of course Angie is writing in Edenic,) me and Mary (I and Mary; Mary and I, ditto.) “Their bones, those that were left unpulverized, would be twice as old as the cave paintings at Lascaux” (twice as old as the cave paintings at Lascaux? Those cave paintings [being older than the bones] would themselves be three times as old as the ones referred to by the time concerned. “Twice as old as the cave paintings at Lascaux are now” would make more sense.) “Come Tree Road” (this corruption of the song Country Road is elsewhere “Come Tree Row”,) Johnfollk (Johnfolk,) a new kind of, story (kind of story.)

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.)

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.

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.