Hodderscape, 2024, 374 p. Reviewed for ParSec 12.

In September 1903 Samantha Harker is a librarian at The Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena, an organisation which investigates mysteries and monsters and whose field agents hunt them. Since her grandfather suddenly disappeared, leaving only an enigmatic message in Morse code – a series of numbers, probably a book cipher – Sam has been anxious to find out what happened to him and if he is still alive. A report from Paris of incidents being called the Beast murders excites her because an illustrating photograph shows the same series of dots and dashes as in her grandfather’s note. She petitions the Society’s Mr Wright to be assigned the case only to be told it has already been allotted to Dr Helena Moriarty (daughter of the “infamous” Professor who had “snuffed out” Sherlock Holmes.) Hel is one of the Society’s best agents but her last three assistants were all killed in various ways. Only if she assents can Sam accompany her. Despite misgivings, she does.

Another of the Society’s field agents is Jakob Van Helsing, son of the Professor who helped trace and kill Count Dracula. Sam has known him since childhood as her parents were Mina and Jonathan Harker who had also been enmeshed in Dracula’s activities. Indeed, Sam was apparently conceived while Mina was under Dracula’s influence. Van Helsing is wary of Sam as he believes, rightly, that she can channel, is able to feel the influence of spirits, a fact Sam needs to keep from the world for fear of being put in an asylum.

What we have here, then, is a riff on two of the nineteenth century’s most well-known fictional creations; only set a couple of decades later. As a result of that and its mostly Parisian mise en scène the book has a fin de siècle feel (though – given it’s 1903 – perhaps début du siècle would be a better description.)

Morris does not pastiche Stoker nor Conan Doyle, though. She has her own approach and intentions, with her book also a vehicle for the deployment of a thesaurus of beasties and things that go bump – or worse – in the night. As well as vampires, there are mentions of a glaistig, trolls, duendes, a cockatrice, a grindylow, barghests, kelpies, drudes, wolpertingers, rusalkas, a carcolh, boggarts, a basilisk, púcai and werewolves – though the werewolves have all been exterminated decades ago.

The grisly Beast murders, the victims’ bodies eviscerated, their hearts torn out and likely eaten – and perhaps meant to invoke the real-life Whitechapel killings by Jack the Ripper (but with the sex of the victims changed) – have all been of well-off men who had mistresses. A banner reading The Wages of Sin is Death has been left at each murder scene. Sam’s facility to detect odours leads her to the pre-eminent perfumier in Paris, Arsène Courbet, to see who might have commissioned the scent she identifies the deaths have in common.

Along the way to the denouement we have encounters with an entirely human quasi-revolutionary underground organisation called The Wolves of God whose logo is also displayed beside each victim, an odyssey into the voluminous catacombs which underly Paris, and a night at the opera where Sam tries to prevent another murder.

This is incident packed stuff but still finds plenty of time to explain Hel’s extremely estranged relationships with her father and her brother Ruari, who are both manipulating the circumstances of Hel’s life and of others around her. Through it all Hel and Sam are very engaging company.

That we have two strong female characters at the book’s focus and occasional anachronistic uses of language, like an invocation to “Get it together” and the phrase “I’m in recovery,” signal that this is indeed a modern novel, not an hommage. The murders are of course solved but enough in the scenario is left unresolved to provide scope for a sequel or two. Which readers are likely to welcome.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- written in USian, “not one of which has returned” (the ‘which’ were people so ‘not one of whom has returned’,) imposter (impostor,) “magnum opuses” (fine in English I suppose, but the Latin plural is ‘magna opera’,) professionality (professionalism – used later,) rarified (rarefied,) “none of the victims were religious” (none of the victims was religious,) parliament (Parliament,) craniums (crania?) “an pain aux raisins” (a pain aux raisins,) “the chimes rung out” (rang out.) “To think, Sam had regaled Hel with” (no comma required after think,) “like a black and shipwrecked sea” (can a sea be shipwrecked?) “mortar and pestles” (mortars and pestles,) “row houses” (that would be “terraced houses” – they were in Wales, not the US,) “she seemed like to make” (an odd usage; ‘she seemed likely to make’ is more natural,) “trapping púca in her backyard” (the plural is púcai.)

Plus points for ‘wills’-o’-the-wisp’.

Gollancz, 2024, 252 p. Reviewed for ParSec 12.

The book is set in the near future, after a series of disasters known as the Decade of Plagues. Most people now have an ASPIS chip, a miniature mRNA factory capable of immunising against viruses as they appear. The price is your bodily chemistry, and anything that affects it, is known to the authorities. Another apparently universally used technology is a device known as Eyes, a sort of superannuated smart phone, head worn – but can also be hand held – goggles of a sort, allowing internet contact, and blink-activated. These are treated as unremarkable, everyday objects.

Our protagonist Inara has been living in The Harbour, one of a number of Darkome villages, a network of conscientious objectors to the big-tech likes of ASPIS, where people live off-grid and construct their own anti-viruses. Like all women in her extended family Inara has the rare Li-Fraumeni syndrome. Her body lacks the crucial protein named p53, which guards against damage to DNA and kills mutated cells. As a result, she is a tumour hotbed. At seventeen she has fought cancer twice and bears the scars to prove it. Her mother had been trying to find a cure but failed and died of a brain tumour. Inara is trying to carry on the work using her mother’s cells as test subjects.

This youthful not-quite idyll comes to an end when her father manoeuvres her into enrolling in an ASPIS trial called PROSPERITY-A, which can detect pre-cancerous mutations and target them, therefore nullifying her lack of p53. Inara’s decision to comply means she has to leave The Harbour, and boyfriend Jerome.

Some while later, living in rented accommodation which she can’t afford, she discovers a lump in her breast, a lump which ought not to be there if her aspis is working properly. Somewhat unseriously, both on Rajaniemi’s and her parts, this malignancy is referred to as the Heffalump. The replacement aspis she requests also quickly malfunctions and she slowly realises that the Heffalump’s cells have the ability to hypermutate, and may be able to take over the aspis. Not that she knows quite how that works. Nevertheless this is an ability Darkome has been looking for, the capability of an aspis-jailbreak.

Her discovery kicks the story into thriller mode as Inara seeks to alert Darkome and bargain with ASPIS. Stepping into the lion’s den of ASPIS headquarters she finds all sorts of skulduggery occurring and mayhem arising.

The text is full of biochemical terminology which in a story like this is necessary though may be off-putting to some. But if it is, just plough through it. No harm done.

Inara is an amply engaging protagonist in a ‘it’s me against the world’ kind of way – lone hero(in)es have of course long been an SF staple. (Not so much the heroines, to be fair, at least until recently.) However, other characters can at times feel as if they are there only for her to react against. But this is in the end a thriller. The form demands that sort of thing.

Normally the presence at a book’s end of the phrase TO BE CONTINUED (in those capitals) might have felt something of a let-down. Inara’s story and situation are, though, intriguing enough to welcome the thought of being reacquainted.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “in vitro” (possibly an uncopy-edited authorial instruction to italicise. In the old days before word-processors, underlining took that function. in vitro, then, which did appear later,) “there was no way for two Aspises fail on me in a row” (for two Aspises to fail on me,) “a mRNA drug” (since the letter ‘m’ is pronounced as beginning with a vowel this would more naturally be spoken as ‘an mRNA drug’,) “‘to cover these, ,’ he said” (no need for the extra space and comma.)  “‘Aaaand there is’” (no idea why this is represented as an extended ‘ah’ sound,) “Ca2+ channels” (Ca²⁺,) zmey (elsewhere zmey,) “drivers’ licences” (driving licences, please.)

NewCon Press, 2024, 213 p. Reviewed for ParSec 12.

The pitch for this post-apocalypse novel must have written itself. “Lord of the Flies – with girls.” Job done. Don’t you want to read it now? (No matter what I say.)

Nevertheless, a reviewer must review.

The story is set in an alternative 1975 on the largest of the Near Islands, an entirely fictional small archipelago located fifteen miles from Aberdeen. The girls are survivors of a nuclear attack on that city in what becomes obvious must have been a world-wide war. Most of the school’s pupils and teachers were away on a trip when the bombs fell.

The tale is narrated in retrospect (of a few years later) by the only boy, Stephen Ballantyne, son of the headmistress who took advantage of the convention that such children attend their parent’s school. All but one of the girls plus Stephen survive but his mother dies in the second blast.

A classic children’s story arrangement, then, with the parents out of the way and no other adults at hand. But these are not youngsters. They are fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds on the cusp of adulthood forced to rely on their own resources, albeit with a well-stocked library at hand. It helps the island is well-endowed with rabbits and sea-birds – not all of them palatable though.

The writing style is more irreverent than you might expect, with stabs at levity (one running joke in particular) and occasional addresses to the reader. It is at times consciously alliterative. In Dexter’s outlining of his scenario he has narrator Stephen tell us one girl’s name evokes “the milky mystery of midnight mosques.” And he eschews describing foul-mouthed language, “This is, after all, an adventure story set on a desert island.” Stephen also claims his greatest fault is self-effacement.

Step forward Pearl Wyss, “the smallest and mousiest-looking of the girls,” who had previously shown her mettle on a trip to a farm on the mainland for a demonstration of artificial insemination and, invited to repeat the farmer’s no doubt spitefully given information, does so flawlessly. Pearl becomes the driving force behind the rump school’s efforts to ensure survival, steering their debates and swaying (most of) the girls with her arguments.

Her awareness of the treatment of women by men down the ages colours her approach: watches to be set for any encroachment from the mainland, the building of a stockade and later a wall, the reconstruction of the curriculum to be more useful in their straitened circumstances, the manufacture of bows and training in shooting arrows.

The first man to arrive – on a rowing boat – only confirms her fears when he attempts to rape one of the girls. He is thereafter caged and ostracised.

Not all the girls agree with her. Some of their worries, such as wanting to get married in due course, a future Pearl’s prescriptions would seem to deny them, exemplify attitudes of the time where it is set. But her answer to that problem of course lies in front of them all the time. She is willing to be ruthless in defending the school against incursion by men no matter how inoffensive they may appear to be or even if they’re accompanied by women. Towards the book’s climax she says, “We make war because we hate war.” Turning into her enemy? All through the book Stephen acquiesces in her designs but in the final paragraphs he lets his air of self-effacement slip.

In an enterprise such as this it does not do to become bogged down on the details, the scenario is all. But two A-bombs dropped on Aberdeen? One would surely be enough. And how likely was it that a single mother in the 1970s would have become a headmistress; particularly of a girls’ school? Plus radiation sickness would most likely have been more prevalent than is presented here.

These are nit-picking, though. This may be no Lord of the Flies but it is still a well written, solid piece of work. In its essence it is not concerned about girls or women or whether they behave better or worse in any given situation. It is really about the nature of men and whether that nature will ever change.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- H2O (H₂O,) knit (knitted,) rowboat (several times; rowing boat,) E=mc2 (E = mc²,) focussed/unfocussed (x 2 each; focused/unfocussed,) airplanes (aeroplanes,) Benn Gunn (Ben Gunn,) “a saree” (a sari,) a sentence framed as a question but lacking its question mark, row-boat (x 2; elsewhere rowboat but in any case ‘rowing boat’,) “‘any who disagree this choice’” (who disagree with this choice.)

The Slab, 2024, 354 p. (No price given.) Reviewed for ParSec 12.

Notwithstanding the success of The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and the Discworld series (both of which editor Donna Scott mentions in her introduction) I have never found Science Fiction and humour to be easy bedfellows, though I do admit to having a few guffaws when reading Eric Frank Russell’s Next of Kin many (many) moons ago. Indeed, I read the first few Discworld books and was only amused once – by an outrageous pun. (In Equal Rites in particular I thought there was a more serious book struggling to emerge from under its surrounding baggage.)

But we all need a good laugh in these disturbing times. So, with a will, to the contents.

As with all anthologies the quality and execution vary but in one with a premise like this it is inevitable that the tone of each story tends towards being similar.

One story that certainly hits the spot is Sundog 4 by Alice Dryden. A homage to the corpus of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson – familiarity with that œuvre may be required for a full appreciation – its plot has the breathless yet carboard quality of the different puppet series (and of the ones with actors whose dialogue might as well have been uttered by puppets) while slipping in direct references to those many shows. Very enjoyable. One might even say FAB.

Elsewhere we have a marriage broker on a Venus where every inhabitant – even the tentacled ones – seems to be Jewish, struggling to find a match for his client. A man signs up for an Intergalactic Cultural Exchange Plan with predictable unlooked for results. There is a warning about the implications of (mis)using an up to four-dimensional photocopier, particularly as regards photocopying arses – or ex-girlfriends. A minor convict set to do community work in an old people’s home is surprised by the inhabitants’ behaviour. A bored spaceship Captain leaves an AI in charge of his ship while he goes into cold sleep: after a 60 year delay in waking due to a meteorite strike he finds the ship’s bots have gone rogue. A robot cobbled together from spare parts by an aged Professor to commit burglaries for him fails in its final attempt; but he doesn’t. A bunch of Spiderbots battles against Mandroids® and Robosapiens® to try to save the human world. A family finds their virtual holiday goes wrong; for a start they’re not all on the same one. A scenario where every living thing has its own type of Grim Reaper, De’Swine, De’Fungi etc, and they have a philosophical problem with the big one, De’Ath. On a world plagued by sand an experienced, not to say old, female drug smuggler has to negotiate yet another double cross. Would-be students of a Present Studies course are encouraged to kill Hitler via time travel while their attempts are monitored by a course tutor who knows those attempts will fail. Dating Apps are beyond old hat when 4C (foresee; get it?) comes along to show users a trailer of how any relationship will evolve: a situation itself not beyond manipulation. In a future depression where eggs have become horribly expensive a banjo player makes his money by his seeming ability to make chickens lay freely; but he’s really selling something else. A mad scientist invents a process rendering his body incorporeal seemingly only in order to torment his stepson (who is savvier than he thought.) Aliens attracted by Earth’s radio and TV emanations abduct a woman to explain it all: they remain baffled; she puts the experience down to a spiked drink. People who shuffle through existence after the bombs fall cope by going to open mic nights. A religious woman who dies in undignified circumstances – though not anything like as shameful as her husband’s demise – gets a surprise in the afterlife. An explanation of the history, and future, of humans’ fear of spiders. A waitress in an Australian restaurant discovers the menu’s ‘kangaroo in orange sauce’ option is a manifestation of an alien invasion. The malfunctioning of a teleportation device poses an ethical dilemma for the duplicates it spews out every twenty minutes. To pep up an ageing lothario from a long line of such with an affinity for ginger, his doctor arranges for him to attend a Ginger Girls Gala, a convocation of those delightful lovelies. A transcript of a Prime Ministerial Press conference where it is repeatedly denied that time travellers have come back from the year 2345 to interfere in the present day, and where the questions spiral into more and more bizarre territory. A report outlining the genesis and results of five failed experiments in eugenics. A newly married man buys the naming rights of a star for his wife: twenty years (and an impending divorce later) they find themselves transported to that star’s system, where they are being worshipped as gods. A rich man’s attempt to remove any influence of trade unions on business practice, by travelling back in time to have a law passed, has unexpected consequences: not least for him.

Comedic fiction can be hit or miss in the eye of the beholder. Laughs in Space has more than enough hits to satisfy the jaundiced reviewer.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Two stories’ titles are missing from the contents page – though they follow the starting title Random Selection. There are some uneven paragraph indentations. Otherwise; “‘He’s brain in a jar!’” (He’s a brain in a jar!) ambiance (ambience,) “then the girl up and asked” (upped and asked,) a piece of direct speech opened with a single quotation mark but ended with a double one, “a cut-and-dry case” (the phrase is ‘cut-and-dried’,) “and laid back” (and lay back.) “A horde of Flergians were spread out in the garden” (a horde … was spread out,) antennas (antennae [as used elsewhere],) “yelled to the top of his lungs” (yelled at the top of his lungs,) Jims’ (x2, Jims’s,) “the skin on her arms not as taught” (not as taut,) slipperier (what’s wrong with ‘more slippy’?) smidgeon (smidgin or smidgen but definitely not smidgeon,) “off of” (just ‘off’. Please?) “a per centage” (a percentage,) Professors’ (Professor’s,) Professors (Professor’s,) epicentre (centre,) “a trail of bone-white husks litter the highway” (a trail … litters the highway,) “none of them … have a clue” (none of them … has a clue,) miniscule (minuscule,) “Woward meister” (Meister,) “of a film … of a bean growing, its roots uncurling,” (its shoots surely?) “but he’s no idea” (but he’d no idea.) “‘Who’s Wendy,’ Candy asked’” (‘Who’s Wendy?’ Candy asked,) “the image pixilated (pixelated; pixilated means drunk.) “‘It was just figure of speech’” (just a figure,) D’Apes (elsewhere De’Apes,) “lay a … hand on” (laid a … hand on,) “into De’Apes face” (into De’Apes’s face.) Mortallity (Mortality – spelled correctly one line later,) “looked pointedly looked downwards” (only one ‘looked’ needed,) “steadied themselves” (x 2, in both cases this was an individual; steadied themself?) “‘And who come for them?’” (comes.) Gavrilo Principe (Gavrilo Princip,) “had lain the table” (had laid the table,) “Dai lay down the hammer” (laid down,) “‘I can say with them for good’” (I can stay with them for good,) “when you know fully well” (the idiom is ‘know full well’,) “the rest of the room are hanging on his every couplet” (the rest of the room is hanging on… ,) “from whence they came” (whence = from where, from whence then = from from where, just ‘whence they came,) a full stop after the closing quotation mark of a quote instead of before it, “it as too real” (it was too real,) “for six and a half decade” (decades,) in one story though not in others the convention of a repeated opening quotation mark on a new paragraph within an extended piece of dialogue was not followed (x 2,)  a missing full stop, “before fished them out” (before I fished them out,) “ginger nut biscuits and ginger snaps” (aren’t they the same type of biscuit) bikkies (x 6, this affectionate term for biscuits is usually spelled biccies.) Games of Thrones (the author probably intended the plural of Game,) “‘since record began’” (records,) “the committe were somewhat mollified” (the committee was…,) two out of five of one story’s subheadings were italicised when the first three were not, “seven hundred ninety two” (seven hundred and ninety two,) “taught and impressive muscles” (that’ll be ‘taut’, then,) “were stood” (were standing,) “were sat” (x 2, were sitting,) “it had taken her taken her quite a long time” (remove one ‘taken her’,) “‘this the leader of our army’” (this is the leader,) “barring Pilates’ way” (Pilates’s way,) “‘Ready!’ came Pilates reply’” (Pilates’s.) “Stood at either end of the generator they each pulled a leaver” (Standing at either end of the generator they each pulled a lever.)

Gollancz, 2024, 312 p, plus 2p Author’s Note.    Reviewed for ParSec 12.

In the future universe this novel describes people live in kinds of utopias where they don’t bother to learn many languages or even to read and write, delegating translation to AIs and work to machines, an existence which in effect renders the typical specimen of humanity, to a degree, infantile. Nevertheless, two different modes of faster than light travel dubbed α and β have been developed. The first utilises simultaneous time and space dilation and is (fractionally) slower than the second, which deploys extremely rapid spacetime bubbling. (Not that this is important. Any putative FTL technology is only ever a handy device for getting characters from A to B.) The α and β spacecraft types in which their passengers travel are called startships (note that second ‘t’,) which are essentially hospitals; space travel, of any sort, is dangerous, a spaceship’s passengers require protection. And the ships themselves, contrary to some earlier imaginings, are not transplanted marine vessels since a spaceship doesn’t need a rigid framework nor corridors. Here, instead, they consist of woven clusters of moveable Meissner tetrahedra linked together by smartcable. Utopias, though, need to be escapable or conflict will arise. And escape from a spaceship is difficult.

As to the story, we begin with two startships, Sα-Niro and Sβ-Oubliette, sent to monitor the black hole HD 167128, aka QV Tel. Niro’s Captain Alpha Raine comes to believe there is an intelligence communicating with him from inside the black hole. The other members of both ships’ crews of course dismiss this out of hand. After all nothing can escape a black hole. Raine then sets about murdering them all.

The focus then switches to a historian named Saccade on the Masqueworld. She specialises in twentieth century serial killers in fact and fiction and so seems perfect to interview the since captured Raine. Rather than in person she meets Raine in a sim where his appearance shows all sorts of disfigurements even though he ought to have no control over it.

Raine calls the black hole dweller the Gentleman; a personage who alludes to himself with references to Sympathy for the Devil. Prior to this our narrator has addressed the reader of our century directly and the text is littered with (apparently misremembered from our time) mangled lyrics to popular songs (“we all live in a yellow sunny scene”) and film titles such as Two Thousand and One Odysseys or Surfing Private Ryan, along with references to the empire of Ancient Room and a description of nightmares as angsttraum. Roberts is clearly enjoying himself throughout here by dropping these nuggets. SF buffs will also recognise allusions such as, “‘My God,’ said Li, ‘It’s full of tears!’”

Raine says the Gentleman was imprisoned in QV Tel, presumably by the universe’s creator. We are, then, delving into the realms of religion and philosophy.

After this encounter Saccade, too, develops murderous tendencies but is nevertheless allowed, under observation, to travel to the planet Boa Memória where a flamboyant adventurer called Berd is planning to be the first human to walk on the metal core of a planet. This requires not only a heat-insulating suit but also a device to bend the angle of gravity and so obviate the crushing pressures to be encountered.

This device is really the core of the novel. Its construction may have been necessary to the universe in order to preserve information that would otherwise be lost when black holes evaporate. It is conjectured that the reason for the evolution of intelligent life was so that Berd’s device could be invented. But if deployed at the event horizon of a black hole…. What might occur? What might escape?

The rest of the novel is taken up with a race to QV Tel to prevent Saccade reaching there with the device and the various arguments among the characters as to whether the Gentleman exists and how or if to deal with him and Saccade both.

This is a fairly dense though intermittently playful novel brimming with ideas, enough to fill many a novel, but none of its scenes really evoke SF’s famed sense of wonder. And, though Matr Guunarsonsdottir, a self-centred physicist with a Trumpian attitude to reality – whatever she says she instantly believes even if it contradicts something she said before – is a recognisable type, nor do the characters really convince. (Except the Gentleman of course. The Devil always has the best tunes.) There is something perfunctory about many of their interactions. But Roberts has given himself a get-out clause here, these humans have been cosseted throughout their lives, they are immature.

The ideas are what make the book though.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- 10^20 (10²⁰. Is superscription some sort of lost art in typesetting? It can’t be. The ^ appears to be superscripted,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 3,) “Choe Eggs’ suggestion” (Choe Eggs’s,) coliseum (in our world, Colosseum, but this future universe has forgotten our spellings,) grotesquenesses (grotesqueries.) “She turned to face him four-squarer” (four-square?) siriusphis tree (I have no idea what that meant,) focussed (x 2, elsewhere – and correctly – focused,) annex (annexe,) crafts (craft,) “the milky way” (the Milky Way,) “in visible spectrums” (the plural of spectrum is spectra: but, in any case, there is only one visible spectrum,) profondimetre (it was a depth-measuring device; so, profondimeter,) miniscule (minuscule,) Joyns’ (several times; Joyns’s – which appeared once,) span (spun,) “believe rather than it emanates from” (that it emanates,) “on behalf of” (context demands ‘on the part of’,) hiccough (hiccup,) “effecting her emotions” (again context demands ‘affecting’,) shuggled (usually – certainly in Scotland – ‘shoogled’,) neurones (neurons,) “she was laying in the darkness” (lying,) sprung (sprang,) “the only thing that really mattered were …” (the only thing that really mattered was…,) shrunk (shrank.)

ParSec 12 is due for release this Friday, 8th November. By my count there will be six of my reviews in this edition.

Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts

Nordic Visions. The best of Nordic speculative fiction edited by Margrét Helgadóttir

Laughs in Space edited by Donna Scott

Birdwatching at the End of the World by G W Dexter

Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi

and Strange Beasts by Susan J Morris.