Gollancz, 2020, 360 p

This is a collection of the late author‘s shorter work culled from throughout his career. Each story is prefaced by a ‘Before’ section saying how it came to be written and an ‘After’ section describing how the writing went and where the story was published. Priest’s writing is always controlled and well executed. In general it tends towards a feeling of unease, as if something is lurking below the surface or what has seemed to be reality morphs into something else but here I was surprised by how much of the contents leaned towards horror.

The Head and the Hand. A man who had become famous through allowing himself to be mutilated is persuaded out of retirement for a final cut.

A Dying Fall relates the thoughts that flash through a man’s mind as he is falling in front of a subway train. They are of travelling on a motorway in Belgium and of the training course in parachute jumping/sky diving he took there.

I, Haruspex is, I assume, in the mould of H P Lovecraft. (Priest’s ‘Before’word says it was solicited by a games company wanting something based on that author’s Cthulhu Mythos but he had no familiarity with that at all – similarly I have not. The company, while paying, never used the story and Priest later found a home for it elsewhere.) Effective in its own way it is told in an old-fashioned language of stilted particularity that, for a first person narration, is curiously distanced (not to mention distancing) and overladen with exclamation marks. After consuming his special meals, narrator James Owsley, descendant of a long line of haruspices, can halt or reverse time for a while. Off the Great Hall of his home, Beckon Abbey, lies a hagioscope over a pit which loathsome things are seeking to escape. In a nearby bog a German bomber plane is held in slow suspension as it crashes after being shot down, even though this is 1936. Someone, not a member of its crew, waves to him from the impending wreck and a voice speaks in his head.

Like the author’s novel The Space Machine, written as an hommage to H G Wells, Palely Loitering, a tale of time travel and thwarted love, bears the influence of Edwardian fiction. Despite including space travel (the McGuffin here – called the Flux Channel – was built to help launch a starship on its way,) the story has a resolutely antique feel to it. Its atmosphere of picnics and bandstands, its social and family dynamics were distinctly retro even in the 1979 in which it was first published. After the starship left, three bridges were built across the Flux Channel. The one leading straight across is the ‘Today’ bridge, two others, built at slight angles to the Channel, lead respectively to ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Tomorrow’. Our narrator as a boy one day leapt off the end of the ‘Tomorrow’ bridge and found himself thirty-four years in the future, where a young woman is pointed out to him by a man who says she is waiting for her sweetheart. The reader can from then fill in the gaps but Priest’s execution of the story is impressive.

An Infinite Summer again bears Edwardian hallmarks – but then part of it is set in 1903 where Thomas Lloyd is on the point of proposing to his intended, Sarah, when he is frozen by a camera-like device wielded by someone from the future. The frozen tableaux which result from these capturings can not be seen by contemporary passers-by but only by the unfrozen and the travellers from the future. The effect on Thomas wears off only in 1935 when he is free to move around again but has to wait more years for Sarah to unfreeze. In 1940 he, and Sarah’s image, are caught in the aftermath of the shooting down of a German bomber. The image of one of the bomber’s German crew held in suspension above a river after being captured by a freezer is unforgettable. I note the similarities here between this incident and the one in I Haruspex.

The Ament* is the tale of a man who was once part of a project to film two children, one male and one female, every week, to document changes during their growth and beyond, but who in his adulthood has dreams of committing murder. But are they dreams? The story is told in two alternating voices, his and a third person viewpoint.

The Invisible Men are those (not all men) who are detailed by their USian masters to spy on a British Prime Minister who feels he has to resign due to a financial scandal. (His statement that, “It’s British tradition for a public figure to resign his position if caught in the wrong,” seems altogether quaint now, 50 years after first publication.) His observations of his surroundings on a clandestine meeting on the Norfolk coast with his USian partner – a co-leader of a UK seemingly on the brink of becoming the 51^st State – imbue the tale with a sense of foreboding.

The Stooge is employed by a stage illusionist to fake amazement at his tricks on being ‘randomly’ picked from his audience. The story’s title becomes doubly apposite.

In futouristic.co.uk a man responds to an email offering to sell him a time machine. It doesn’t work. For him.

Shooting an Episode presents the ultimate in reality TV, though it’s more like reality streaming. For its subjects no holds are barred. The trouble comes when our narrator has to go in amongst the participants to clean up their mess.

In The Sorting Out Melvina comes home late one night to find her door lying open having been forced. With increasing fear she moves through all her rooms, wondering if the man she has recently dumped has something to do with it, but a phone call reveals he is an hour away. Yet various of her books have been misplaced, their dust covers placed upside down, their normal, random arrangement systematised. One has been glued to a curtain.

In its ‘After’word Priest describes the gathering of books (which is what most readers do) as a kind of quiet madness. Well, all obsessions are. At least it’s a harmless madness.

*Amentia is the condition of feeble-mindedness or other general mental deficiency.

Pedant’s corner: Méliès’ (Méliès’s – especially since the final ‘s’ of Méliès is unsounded, thus demanding the apostrophe ‘s’ for its possessive,) maws (used for ‘mouth’; a maw is of course a stomach,) interlocuter (interlocutor,) aureole (areola,) Mrs Adams’ (Adams’s,) “more yachts were parked further away” (parked? Can you park a yacht?) “the king” (x 2, the King,) “the sort of problems the bank were concerned with” (the bank was concerned with,) soccer (football.)

NewCon Press, 2023, 239 p. Reviewed for ParSec 10.

This is the author’s first collection of short stories. Ten of them appeared in a variety of publications over the past five years, eight are original to this book. Each is provided with an authorial afterword. Some of these mention Cristofari’s French background and the latitude she gains as a writer from having two languages to draw on. She casts her net wide, with settings ranging from prehistory through to the present day and beyond. A common thread running through them is ecological collapse and possible recovery from it, in perhaps a sign of recent events some feature characters living in the aftermath of a pandemic.

A few are set in France, two even in Québec. Most succeed well but The Fishery, where “fishing boats” scour the universe for usable materials while avoiding inhabited worlds, has a central metaphor which is unfortunately stretched beyond breaking point. All have a firm focus on the humans at their heart and the dilemmas which they face.

The scenarios vary widely: a woman lives in a house with a window which gives onto other worlds so providing a means of escape, a couple try to evade an ongoing apocalypse on an otherwise deserted island, an intrusive cat in a care home seems to be a feline angel of death, a girl in post-Great War France talks to her never born brother to honour her non-French origins, a dangerous encounter on a mountain road ends in various ways, a witch has an uneasy pact with a hangman, another woman, with the help of the Moon, flies to Pluto in a plastic bottle to find her son who set out to search for his dead grandmother, a research scientist in a kind of steampunk fascist dictatorship secretly works against the regime, two children put a cat into a quantum bag in a glorious excuse for the author to deploy numerous cat puns (the least of which is is it alive or dead, and in which world?) An alien reports back to her planet from World’s End in Tierra Del Fuego, a museum caretaker converses with the (long dead) exhibits after hours, three travellers bearing gifts for a newborn trudge through a post-apocalyptic Québec winter, a stone-age woman finds a home outside her birth group despite the disfigurement inflicted on her to prevent it, a woman meant for sacrifice is surprised to find herself in the goddess’s world, a witch and a space-faring knight come to an accommodation after the battle they fought destroyed the world. The end can come in three ways, by wind, by flood, and by someone singing “My Bloody Valentine”, a group of archaeologists investigating the interior of the god who fell to Earth on the local mountain find an unusual treasure.

With the single exception mentioned above Cristofari handles all of them very well.

The following did not appear in the published review:-

Pedant’s corner:- “outside of” (just outside, no ‘of’,) “knowing fully well” (the phrase is ‘knowing full well’,) “that forced me to quiet” (to stillness,) “a thick handful of filaments were already drying on the windowsill” (a thick handful … was already,) “sank behind underwater buffs” (bluffs?) “Madame Darmon sit up” (sits up,) “Gaspard withdraw his paw” (withdraws,) “between oaks trees” (oak trees.) “Door and windows were open everywhere” (Doors and windows,) “the brand news dreadnoughts” (brand new,) “I will not baulk at any sacrifice” (balk.) “None of us have.” (None of us has,) a missing end quote mark, “as soon as the oil had ran out” (had run out.) “They dragged me until the edge of the woods” (dragged me to the edge of the woods,) “terrified that the he would ride away” (no need for the ‘the’,) “in disgust of our marred faces” (in disgust at our marred faces,) “the moon waxed and waned nine more time” (nine more times,) “on all four” (all fours,) fit (fitted.) “Its flower-fruit were turning” (was turning,) “precious guinea fowls” (the plural of guinea fowl is ‘guinea fowl’,) “always easier than thriving for a real solution” (striving for?)

Earthlight, 1999, 595 p, plus ii p Map and vi p Dramatis Personae.

This is the usual Turtledove type of story-telling. An episodic narrative seen from many viewpoints; very similar to, indeed indistinguishable from, his Great War, American Empire and Settling Accounts series as well as his World War and Colonisation books. Only the setting here really differentiates it from those.

Unlike in those though everything is prefaced by a map. This world has seemingly only one major continent, Derlavai, though there is a counterpart to Antarctica to its south and a minor one to its northeast. Only the latter (plus a few scattered islands) is situated north of the planet’s equator. To the east of Derlavai is the Bothnian Ocean. This presumably goes all the way round the world to Derlavai’s west but there it is labelled on the map Bothian Ocean.

Magic or sorcery (both terms are used,) not technology, is the driving power in this world and there are frequent references to its governing rules of similarity and contagion. Since the discovery of ley lines from which power can be drawn (it’s not clear if this source is purely magical or if it derives from magnetism) travel has tended to follow those lines. Adding to the fantasy factor we have dragons, unicorns, behemoths, leviathans, and sticks firing energy beams. Rather than bombs, artillery fires eggs, also able to be dropped from dragons. Military units can be accompanied by mages. Beyond the range of ley lines magical energy needs to be procured by the sacrifice of human life. (Despite the exotic setting the people described are in effect humans – or as much as anyone in a Turtledove book can be said to be human.)

Dragons of course take the part of aeroplanes here, behemoths are in effect large rhinoceroses adapted and armoured for warfare, leviathans are counterparts of whales and take the role of submarines though with only one crew member. The unicorns are just glorified horses and don’t seem to have exotic uses. In amongst all this make-believe, names like Algarve, Cottbus and Ventspils do tend to break the spell a little.

Sometime in the past Derlavia was dominated by the Kaunian Empire. It was overthrown though, and now its successor realms of Unkerlant, Algarve, Forthweg, Valmiera, Jelgavia, Gyongyos, Lagaos and Kuusamo form various and variously shifting alliances. Each of these are monarchies with social hierarchies embedded in them. Ethnic groupings are frequently referred to in what amounts to racist terms, blonds, redheads etc. Those identified as of Kaunian descent are particularly disdained. There is also a high degree of sexism or outright misogyny in the way female characters are spoken about and treated by the male ones. Very few men here show any kind of respect towards them.

The story revolves around a war of revenge instigated by the Provinces of Algarve and Unkerlant but anyone with a passing interest in the Second World War (not as the back blurb has it, the First World War) or who has read Turtledove’s ‘Settling Accounts’ trilogy can spot resemblances and the tactical and strategic manœuvres to come. There even promises to be, in further instalments, a magical equivalent of the Manhattan Project whose nascent stirrings are given here.

As usual, Turtledove’s “characters” are no more than cyphers, in place merely to push the overall scenario forward or illustrate attitudes. Often we find them saying the same things over again in only slightly different ways. Unlike in Kate Atkinson’s Human Croquet, this is not beyond the purpose of emphasis, with the result it feels like being beaten about the head with words. Moreover, it reads as if parts of the book were written by different authors who did not know what the others had already told us.

There are five (five!) others of these ‘Darkness’ books to go. At least they’re not demanding reading.

Pedant’s corner:-Written in USian. Otherwise; a missing opening quotation mark at a piece of dialogue, “the Twinkings War” (many times; to avoid being misread this would have been better rendered as ‘the Twin Kings War’.) “He brought a chunk of melon … from a vendor” (He bought a chunk,) “that would have burned a hole in man” (in a man,) “‘wouldn’t by any chance by Algarvian ships’” (be Algarvian ships,) “on the other wide” (other side,) “had bee anything but idle” (had been.) “Bembo instead, he said,” (Bembo instead said.) “‘If I had to chose’” (to choose.) “‘You can borrow the book after I’d done with it’” (after I’ve done with it,) “a carried at his beck and call” (a carriage,) “found water with it in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Now people all over Derlavai dowsed for water with it in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Now people all over Derlavai dowsed for water, for metals, for coal,” (The sentence I have italicised is superfluous,) “‘till we shop up on their doorstep’” (till we show up,) a missing comma before a piece of dialogue, “even though a crystal” (even through a crystal,) a missing closing quotation mark, “wracking their brains” (racking,) ley lines/ley-lines (spelling switches between the two.) “‘We shall also put yachts to see’” (‘to sea’ makes more sense even if the next two words were ‘to peer’,) “on to the streets” (onto the streets,) Forgiathwens (Forthwegians.) “Wherever they were, though they had great strength.” (needs a comma after ‘though’,) “let alone to dot on a map” (let alone to a dot,) “to peasants haled before such tribunals” (hauled before,) an extraneous quotation mark at the end of one paragraph. “‘Just get the filth of my blackboard’” (off my blackboard.) “He patted Eforiel, bring the leviathan to a halt” (brought the leviathan to a halt.) “The first trousered soldiers was labeled Valmeria” (were labeled – and of course it’s ‘labelled’ in British English,) “had one of the tables up and spoken” (upped and spoken,) “Raunu shook his head” (the character concerned was Skarnu,) “arguing about for year” (for years,) maw (it’s not a mouth.) “Kaunian wheezed” (the character was Krasta, and she isn’t Kaunian.) “‘to send word or your doings’” (word of your doings,) “the ass’ ear” (x 2, ass’s,) “to find out of” (to find out if,) “squeeze in close behind him” (close beside him,) “in the paly” (in the play,) “the mist might lay on the sea all day” (might lie on the sea.) “They’d overran her” (overrun her.) “He thrashed for a couple of minutes, ever more weakly, they lay still” (then lay still.)

Plus marks for ‘stanch’ referring to a flow.

The latest edition of ParSec magazine (no 11) is available for purchase. At £5.99. It’s a bargain.

This edition contains no less than five of my reviews.

The Last Pantheon by Tade Thompson and Nick Wood.

The Phoenix Keeper by S A MacLean.

Dark Shepherd by Fred Gambino.

Sparks of Bright Matter by Leeanne O’Donnell.

And, last but not least, Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Those reviews will appear here after a decent interval.

I happened to be in my local library the other day. The good lady and myself were looking at the new books section when she said, “What is speculative fiction?”

“SF and Fantasy,” I replied, “Why?” and she pointed out to me a book called Nordic Visions and subtitled The Best in Nordic Speculative Fiction edited by Margrét Helgadóttir.

As well as the editor herself I recognised the names of the three Finns who have contributed, Hannu Rajaniemi, Johanna Sinisalo and Emmi Itäranta (here and here.)

I of course borrowed it on the instant.

Despite its publication date of 2023 and any review of it not going to be timely I offered my review to Ian Whates at ParSec magazine.

He accepted and as a consequence the review will not be appearing on here for some time.

NewCon Press, 2022, 331 p.

Billy Braid has been brought up in the Moulspur backwoods, apprenticed to Handmaster Benoit Kim. Kim is able to fashion from the local wood a type of animated treeperson known as a sylvan. (Other creatures can be made too.) The sylvans can speak to Billy in a sybillant tone. One day they warn him of the approach of a stranger. This is Bullivant Smout, a kind of larger than life, cartoonish braggart like something out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He carries a message to Kim from Karpentine, the city Kim had fled before coming to the Moulspurs. The message asks for a sample of his work to be sent back to the city. Despite Billy’s objections Kim has no choice. The message has been written in compellant ink. Kim entrusts Billy with the task of conveying the sylvan, named Seldom, with the instructions: go straight there under your own steam; avoid talking to people; don’t accept gifts; come straight back.

Life, not to mention fiction, is of course more complicated than that. Even before reaching the city Billy has encountered the slightly roguish Ralston Maundy, who agrees to look after Billy’s package while he enters the Tower of Hands to make the expected contribution, and then a woman who asks him to help fix her weird contraption before taking him up into the clouds. For she, Paraphernalia Loess, is of the Weathermakers Guild and the rain is not behaving itself, creating drought in parts of the country from which refugees have descended on Karpentine. Billy is startled to find the clouds are also full of voices, which although inarticulate as yet are more malevolent than sylvans. Paraphernalia turns out to be the daughter of Jelena Loess, Queen of Clouds, though by the end of the book deserves that accolade herself.

Karpentine is a hierarchical place run by the Guilds; Artificers; Printmakers; Constructors; Inkmasters etc. The city itself is also stratified by class, from the lower levels to the upper. Billy soon runs foul of the law (machines have been banished from this world and sylvans seem to be just that. Motes left over from the destruction of the machines are what produce the sentience in sylvans and the clouds.) He is imprisoned in the Institute of Improvement, basically a forced labour establishment whose inmates are helpless due to the compellant ink used to ensure their compliance. Billy’s abilities have been noticed by the Guilds though, and he is released to the Loesses after a bidding war. He is not, as the Law of Man commands, ‘Rightly Bound by the Limits of his Humanity.’ Due to his training, he can fashion wood to some extent but, later, his capacity to manipulate paper becomes more important.

Though Paraphernalia takes him under her wing he is still a servant, but she is almost as constrained as he is, frustrated by the looming necessity to make a marriage alliance to aid her family. For the Weathermakers’ stock is falling. Paraphernalia and Billy gradually from a mutually appreciative alliance.

Though there are several strands, the main plot revolves around the Guilds’ desire for carbon black made from the charred wood of sylvans, as it is believed that will have even stronger compellant properties, and Billy’s desire to protect the sylvans from harm.

Apart from the resourceful Paraphernalia and Billy himself, Queen of Clouds is replete with variously memorable characters; the twin enforcers, Innocent and Erudite Bello, Maundy’s nephew and niece Vern and Clymie, the needy Killick Roach, the haughty Stillworth Crane, the spider-like Moraine Otterbree, the slippery sisters Sin and Skin, and, despite being caught up in the fantastical scenario which surrounds them, even the minor characters here are well drawn and totally believeable.

There are also pleasing Scottish grace notes – a publisher called Blackie, the words skelped and skelfs, Billy being addressed as ‘son’.

This is emphatically not the standard mediævally based fantasy world. It is agreeably complex, well thought through, and despite its repugnant aspects (which world does not have those, and fiction would not be compelling without them,) engaging.

In our present world of communication silos it also acts as a warning to question what you read.

Pedant’s corner:-  “What echoed across the moor were brash caws and clacks” (What echoed … was …) “Whatever sense of adventure Billy had evaporated” (Whatever sense of adventure Billy had, had evaporated.) “He made that the wish that would drive him forward” (He made a wish that … ???) “What surprised him, were the crowds” (no comma; and, perhaps, ‘What surprised him was the crowds.’ If the sentence was turned round I think it’s natural to say, ‘It was the crowds that surprised him.’)  “the only family you need us the one” (is the one,) “that led his and Maundy’s rooms” (that led to his and,) ‘“What’s going?”’ (‘What’s going on?’) “‘Never mind, I already know?’” (is not a question,) “The valuable supply of Noteworth, Kim had used” (no comma needed,) “rather patronisingly, named Diligence Way” (no need for the comma,) benefactor (benefactress?) “The hoi polloi” (Common usage I know, but, strictly, hoi means ‘the’ so the ‘the’ before polloi is unnecessary,) Kinglsey (Kingsley,) “that even these Artificers” (even if these Artificers.) “What little he could see of the courtyards below the nest of roof ridges were in late afternoon shadow”  (What little he could see of the courtyards …. was in late afternoon shadow.)  “Who knew another attempt would” (Who knew if/whether another attempt would,) “in which the aerialists and horsemasters performed their shows in at the Canza fair” (only one ‘in’ needed,) “about emotionally attachments” (emotional attachments,) “‘All the way round to the low for’”  (the low for?) “but she had she didn’t let on” (but if she had she didn’t let on,) an unindented new paragraph, “while she guide it up” (guided it up.) “The base of it, all but touching the Weathermakers’ tower” (no comma needed,) “went meet the governor” (went to meet,) a missing quotation mark as a piece of direct speech is resumed, “Billy suddenly had shocking , vivid image” (had a shocking, vivid,)  “both inside and outside of his head” (doesn’t need the ‘of’,) “the destruction of refugee camp” (of the refugee camp,) “Alicia’s sniffed haughtily” (Alicia sniffed,)  “but he they should have been” (no ‘he’,) “many years in from now” (no ‘in’ needed,) focussed (as I recall this appeared on other pages too but usually had ‘focused’.) “Para got up from settee” (from the settee,) “to the anguish of city” (of the city,) “inside of” (inside,) dumfounded (dumbfounded,) “a ramp that down from the central room” (that led down from,) a missing full stop after ‘sums’,) “‘What the Institutionalised?’” (‘What about the Institutionalised?’) crenelated (crenellated.) “Then their threats changed then to” (only one ‘then’ needed,) “but in then he heard” (but then he heard.) “He right of course” (He was right of course,) “and the reeked of booze” (and he reeked of,) “and that the hallway a mess” (and the hallway a mess,) “a turn in the stairs. The hush of the house forcing him to whisper.” (a turn in the stairs, the hush of the house …,)  “birth right” (birthright.) “Roach’s said thickly” (looks a bit odd. ‘Roach said thickly’???)  phlemy (phlegmy,) “not be depended on have scruples” (be depended on to have,) Vern (needs a full stop,) “‘You have allow us’” (You have to allow us’,)  “And that was the ones who” (And those were the ones who”,) “The only signs  that the pair were still alive was their breathing” (The only sign that,)  “staunch the blood” (stanch the blood,) “done something disappear to, something to change her in body” (I can’t decipher something disappear to,)  “‘to compliment your inks’” (complement.) “‘Stick him in there too,’ he can give her a hand.’” (‘Stick him in there too, he can give her a hand’,)  “looked to on the verge of collapse” (looked to be on the verge.)

I also noticed indentureship. I’ve always considered indentiture as the noun for this condition but I can’t find a reference for it. It may just have been indenture.

ParSec magazine, for which as you know I review SF and fantasy books, is having a promotion (see the Facebook post here) where a tour of seven blogs can be found reviewing issues 1-6 + 9 in a succesion of links each of which has a discount code for 25% off issues 1-9. Read and enjoy.

The links start at Fantasy Book Nerd here.

NewCon Press, 2023, 228 p.  Reviewed for ParSec 9.

This is the author’s first collection of stories, twenty-one in all, plus one poem. Sixteen of them were culled from appearances in a variety of outlets over the past ten years, five are making their first appearance in print. The contents range in genre over SF, fantasy, myth and horror, with stories sometimes crossing over their borders.

In general, literature deals largely with the themes of love, sex and death. Science Fiction tends to be more restrictive (love for example tends to be bypassed and sex for the most part avoided) but its signature feature is in making its metaphors literal. (The outstanding example of that here is the title story, about the bond between a daughter and her mother.) Fantasy, myth and horror act more as warnings and as stripped-down guides to human relationships.

In the first few stories here the theme of death seems to be a connecting thread but this does not then extend to the collection as a whole.

The poem, Icarus Dreams, opens proceedings and partly sets the tone by inviting Icarus to heed his father and rewrite his story. Smits is more than adequately equipped to provide new shapes to old tales. To that end there are herein updated treatments riffing on the Blackbeard and Theseus stories, while the Baba Yaga of Russian folklore meets an AI.

But the author has further strings to her bow. Elsewhere, moles on the skin are a marker of long, perhaps immortal, life, and carry the threat of incarceration to unravel their genetic secrets. We meet an AI repairman whose encounter with his charge becomes reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. One story (not narrated by Dr Watson) features Sherlock Holmes, but only in a bystanding part as he asks his psychic investigator – and female – cousin to help him. We have tales where a psychological decline follows the break-up of a relationship which had settled into routine, the Green Man appears to rescue a ravaged future Britain, a woman inherits a bookshop with an unusual kind of ghost, AI/human hybrids question each other over their origins – and the nature of God. One story centres on the reliving of bottled memories. There is an African inspired SF/fantasy cross-over. A woman falls in love with her witness protection AI android bodyguard, another tells of the lengths she went to in an attempt to get pregnant, a brother and sister hatch a plot to rescue their twin siblings from VR addiction in a warehouse, a female painter who sells pictures under her brother’s name finds she cannot hide her expertise from J M W Turner (with whom she shares the same reverence for sunlight,) two people celebrate their involvement with the commercial start-up of nuclear fusion at Sellafield, a woman on the point of death remembers incidents from her life while subjectively traversing a fantastical purgatorial maze.

Their telling requires a comprehensive array of authorial registers and Smits handles them all well, with very few infelicities. She is a talent to watch.

Pedant’s corner:- Theseus’ (x 2, Theseus’s,) focussing (x 2, focusing,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech,  Holmes’ (x 2, Holmes’s, which appeared later,) shrunk (shrank,) focussed (x 3, focused,) sunk (sank,) Geena Davis’ (Davis’s,) “legs akimbo” (I doubt it. It’s extremely difficult to put your feet on your hips,) “and laid down again” (lay down again,) data used as a singular noun (that would be datum, data is plural,) Jesus’ (Jesus’s,) “the settings on each gamer’s capsule isn’t” (the settings … aren’t,)  “‘it’s okay to chop down all the forests and poison the soil.’?” (has that question mark in the wrong place. It ought to be where the full stop is,) “him and Kel had looked to the stars” (he and Kel,) James’ (x 3, James’s; annoyingly employed a few pages later.) “A trail of soapy bubbles stream after his fleeing form” (a trail streams.) Plus points, though, for using maw correctly as a stomach.

The latest books I have received for review for online SF magazine ParSec arrived this week.

They are The Last Pantheon by Tade Thompson and Nick Wood and Dark Shepherd by Fred Gambino.

I have read books by Thompson and Wood as individuals but not in collaboration. Thompson is Nigerian and Wood South African. It therefore make sense that The Last Pantheon has African (super)heroes. The novel contains illustrations.

Fred Gambino is new to me.

I assume the reviews will appear in ParSec’s issue 11.

The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2002, 267 p, including vii p Foreword, xi p Appendix and xiii p Afterword by Susan M Squier and Julie Vedder.

Earthsong is the third in Elgin’s Native Tongue trilogy, the first of which, Native Tongue, was published in 1984 and the second, The Judas Rose, in 1987. This edition is a reprint of  Earthsong’s 1994 publication.

The trilogy’s premise was that due to aliens coming to Earth and requiring translators a group known as Linguists came to have a monopoly on the trade. (As I recall their expertise had been developed by talking with whales and dolphins but my memory may be tricking me.)

Despite the trilogy being set in the 22^nd century, society was still largely male dominated and though women linguists were utilised they were very much subservient to the males – as were women more generally with very little in the way of autonomy. Women past child-bearing age go to live in Barren Houses and in these was developed a language (which Elgin named Láadan,) so that women’s perceptions could be expressed more adequately. This was kept secret from the males of course. In The Judas Rose Láadan was introduced to non-Linguist women but failed to catch on and was indeed opposed vigorously. But their new language changed the women and men could not bear being with a woman for longer than thirty minutes – some (not myself) might say not much difference there, then – to the extent that they lived in separate Womanhouses.

Those two books were an interesting thought experiment and, while being perfectly adequate as SF, were marred for me by the fact that seemingly every single man in them was characterised as being incredibly stupid.

In Earthsong, a crisis has been precipitated by the aliens suddenly disappearing from Earth (citing as their reason humanity – for which of course read men – as being too violent.)

A foreword supposedly written by the main protagonist of the earlier two books, Nazareth Joanna Chornyak, warns us that the story, as mediated by trancers channelling her thoughts, is going to be disorganised, told through many different voices, and not in chronological order. The trancers are necessary because Nazareth is dead and in some sort of limbo.

The book proper starts with her great granddaughter Delina Meloren Chornyak petitioning the head of the Pan-Indian Council of the Americas (PICOTA) to allow her to use their ceremonies invoking a vision quest in order to talk to Nazareth to ask her what to do about reestablishing relations with the aliens. When he is finally persuaded and Delina meets her forebear, what Nazareth says to her seems impossible. It is to eradicate hunger.

After a long time Delina realises the question boils down to ‘How can people eat less food and still thrive?’ The answer she finds is in religion. Throughout history ascetics, nuns, monks and so on claim to have got by, flourished even, on little food. The secret, Delina realises, lay not in religion itself but more specifically in chanting. But it turns out that any sort of singing will suffice. By analogy with photosynthesis Delina calls the process of deriving sustenance through song, audiosynthesis. (It was here I felt Elgin had gone over the score. Now we are in outright fantasy land. Sound is a form of energy, yes, but by what mechanism can it be converted to chemical energy. In any case, are these accounts of abstinence credible? Religious adherents have been known to engage in deception to ensnare the gullible, to impress the credulous.)

Yet what would lack of hunger mean? If everyone has access to food (or can gain the necessities of survival elsewhere) then conflict will be reduced, if not eliminated, a means of control of people removed. And, as happened with Láadan, humans would change, they would be in effect a new species, with a new outlook on life.

Elgin’s background is perhaps showing when a (male) character asks, “would you please explain how it happens that the President and Vice-President of the United States” [of Earth] “are always incompetent?” and when given a counter example says, “He thought Presidents were allowed to fix things. He didn’t last long,” which  leans into that pernicious strand of USian thought which distrusts government, which thinks government is a bad thing and which also, therefore, encourages conspiracy theories.

The same character’s assertion that “There cannot be a conspiracy that size to do good! …. Human beings are only capable of really buckling down and working together in groups when their goals are evil,” has simply misinterpreted human history. Co-operation (plus the passing on of knowledge) – not conflict, and certainly not individualism – is what allowed humans to become the dominant species on our planet.

As speculation, as SF, this is all fine, outrageous premises have often been turned into good stories. The story here, though, is only touched on obliquely, its ramifications for future human relationships left unshown.

The novel is our prime way of exploring what it means to be human. It is difficult, therefore, to convey a change in human behaviour using it as a medium. If Elgin doesn’t quite manage to, her attempt can be applauded.

Pedant’s corner:- “there were a number of” (there was a number of,) “had hid” (had hidden,) “the unlikely lay of this land” (lie of this land,) “none of them were” (none of them was,) “had that for search target” (for a search target,) “I’m put back back together now” (only needs one ‘back’.)  “‘For heaven’s sakes’” For heaven’s sake,) “but he was was tolerant” (only one ‘was’ needed,) youall (you all,) a missing end quote mark after a piece of direct speech, strategems (stratagems.)