Or at least it ought to be.

The publication date was yesterday.

I’ve not accessed my copy yet but this one should contain my reviews of:-

City of All Seasons by Oliver K Langmead and Aliya Whiteley

The History of the World by Simon Morden

Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston

Those reviews will appear here in due course.

Titan, 2019, 363 p, including 5 p Author’s Foreword and 1 p Acknowledgements.

“Time doesn’t give a damn about the laws of physics. It does what it wants.”

So goes a line in one of the stories in this book, which is made up of a series of connected narratives of varied length, many featuring characters with the same name but whose circumstances are subtly different. Time here – place too sometimes – is slippy. There is a contingency to the narratives, some in third person, others in first, somewhat (though not fully) reminiscent of the œuvre of Allan’s late partner Christopher Priest. Frequently, the characters themselves are not entirely sure of what is going on.

In the first tale, The Hurricane, there is a sense of distance to the telling, an opacity, which I have noticed in Allan’s work before. By the time I reached the last two, Darkroom and Ten Days (both published here under the heading out-takes) either I had got used to it or that opacity had disappeared.

The settings often have the feel of our universe but others quite clearly are not, or not yet anyway.

At least one is set in the aftermath of an unspecified war (possibly World War Two as Hitler gets a mention – though not in a war context – yet the social arrangements feel earlier.) This is (these are?) an England like, yet not identical to, our historical one. One future/present (temporal location in these stories is fluid) is an authoritarian one – under the Billings Government.

Much of the focus is on timepieces and play is made of the fact that a watch, or a clock, is a time machine of sorts. The tourbillon regulator, which stabilises a timepiece’s mechanism, counteracting the effect of gravity, making a watch or clock more accurate. Its inventor, Louis Breguet is here said to have discovered a way of making time stand still.

“The Silver Wind,” a military project to utilise this is “a quantum time-stabiliser that certain military scientists had subverted to their own purposes.” Ghosts are the living products of unsuccessful experiments with a TimeStasis, conducted from a time stream parallel with ours, manifestations of seepage between universes.

With this technology the possibility of time-bridges is asserted, but such time travel is subject to rules. “Time is an amorphous mass, … a ragbag of history. Time Stasis might give you access to what you think of as the past, but it wouldn’t be the past that you remember. The pivotal events in history still occur, even if the cause and effect are subtly different.” Hence the slippage between the stories, the air of unfamiliar familiarity. In several of them appears what at first seems a slightly sinister figure, the Circus Man, parading up and down a beach, but who in one tale administers aid to Martin Newland, one of the main recurring characters. The Circus Man is revealed elsewhere (in another timestream?) to be an accomplished watchmaker called Owen Andrews.

Don’t expect unequivocal rationales when reading any of the stories in The Silver Wind. This is not straightforward Science Fiction, but an examination of contingency.

Pedant’s corner:-  “members of parliament” (Members of Parliament,) “rarer than the both of them put together” (no need for that ‘the’; ‘rarer than both of them put together’,) unfocussed (unfocused,) “it was beginning to grow dusk” (an odd construction; ‘it was beginning to grow dark’ is fine but usually the appropriate phrase would be something like ‘dusk was drawing in’,) “I had spent a half an hour at least talking to….” (no need for that ‘a’; ‘I had spent half an hour at least talking to…’, or ‘I had spent at least half an hour talking…’) “the engine-stoker” (this was of a worker on the footplate of a steam locomotive. He – they were always male back in the day – was called a fireman,) focussing (focusing.)

34 Scottish books this year, 17 by men, 17 by women. Five were fantasy or SF, one was non-fiction.

(For my reviews type the book title into my search box.)

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

Greenmantle by John Buchan

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid

Hex by Jenni Fagan

The Wind That Shakes the Barley by James Barke

The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid

Guy Mannering by Walter Scott

Olivia by O Douglas

Poor Angus by Robin Jenkins

Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett

Born Leader by J T McIntosh

Nothing Left to Fear From Hell by Alan Warner

The Hamlet by Joanna Corrance

Poor Tom by Edwin Muir

Rizzio by Denise Mina

Dark Crescent by Lyndsey Croal

The Hayburn Family by Guy McCrone

The Takeover by Muriel Spark

Columba’s Bones by David Greig

The Keelie Hawk by Kathleen Jamie

The Song in the Green Thorn Tree by James Barke

Now She Is Witch by Kirsty Logan

Black Sparta by Naomi Mitchison

Life for a Life by T F Muir

Out of Bounds by Val McDermid

Dead Catch by T F Muir

Some Kind of Grace by Robin Jenkins

The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett

The Green Isle of the Great Deep by Neil M Gunn

To See Ourselves by Alistair Moffat

The Setons by O Douglas

Auld Licht Idylls by J M Barrie

Gliff by Ali Smith

The Wonder of All the Gay World by James Barke  (review still to appear here.)

Luna Press, 2025, 187 p. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

At the start of this novella Elif is the sole inhabitant of the apparently desert planet Maoira-I. At twelve years old she has hitherto known only the companionship of the AI, VAS-H, her Vital Auxiliary Support: H-unit, and her knowledge of other humans is derived solely from the films and shows available to her on screen.

Contact from Commander Isabel Aremu of the Interplanetary Mission, based on Polaris, who addresses Elif as Warden, comes to her out of the blue, as does the task she is assigned of growing, or attempting to grow, plants to see if Maoira-I might be a suitable future home for humanity. The Mission is on an indefinite space flight fleeing something unspecified back on Earth. VAS-H retrieves the seeds Elif will need, seeds she had not known were there, from the base’s storage freezer.

Part One centres on Elif via both a third person narrative tightly focused on her unfolding experiences and the log entries VAS-H asks her to compile. While these are not the reflections of an unreliable narrator they are those of one without knowledge of the full picture. Helping to fill in those gaps for the reader there are also two italicised sections dealing mainly with the consequences for Commander Aremu on Polaris of the Mission having to admit that Elif exists and its failures regarding her. This leads to Aremu’s replacement as contact by the much less sympathetic Lieutenant, later Commander, Julian Bishop.

In the meantime Elif uncovers a buried Transporter vehicle on the surface and learns to drive it while Maoira-I’s long-term climatic variations begin to manifest themselves.

Part Two makes a step change. Mission operative Rokeya Khan, whose grandfather Latif was on the original team to land on Maoira-I, has set off on her own to get to the planet and find out what happened. Her arrival shocks Elif but they learn to work together.

Rokeya’s presence is the catalyst for the discovery of what became of the original crew, one of whom, naturally, but against all protocol, must have been pregnant.

It also crystallises Elif’s feelings towards the rest of humanity and towards the only home she has ever known.

There are some caveats to this. The premise does stretch credibility a bit. Could an infant human really thrive under only the influence of an AI and old videos? Could she retain sanity even? Could the original expedition genuinely have been forgotten by the Mission for twelve years?

But Reza has written this well. She captures Elif’s initial ingenuousness and growing confidence. The claustrophobic atmosphere of an isolated environment comes across, as does the slightly sinister sway of an AI companion.

This is an impressive long form debut.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:-  shrunk (x3, shrank,) CO2 (several times. It’s CO₂,) “wherever the fleet of ships were” (wherever the fleet … was,) fit (fitted,) “than several millions” (than several million,) “about to reach a crescendo” (you don’t reach a crescendo, you reach its end,) sunk (sank.) “Rokeya’s opened her mouth in shock” (Rokeya opened her mouth.)

I recently sent off to Parsec magazine my review of Solstice by Ruth Aylett and Greg Michaelson, a book which I picked up* at the first Pictcon in Perth a month or so ago. A very successful first con it has to be said. Pictcon focuses on the Scottish SF and fantasy scene.

Editor Ian Whates has chosen to run it so that review will not appear here for a while.

Meanwhile he has sent me Reality Rift by Fred Gambino, a follow-up to that author’s first novel Dark Shepherd.

*By picked up I mean “blagged with the promise of a review on the blog and the chance of ParSec running it.”

Pyr, 2008, 453 p.

A catastrophe in a spaceship traversing a Kardashev tunnel, a kind of wormhole, leads to the discovery of a wrong kind of neutrino – wrong angular momentum, wrong spin state, “‘Reversed actually,’” – evidence of another dimension, a parallel universe.

Minerva Company, which operates the tunnels, now realises that its ostracised former employee, Titus Quinn, who had turned up a few weeks later and light years away from the disaster which destroyed his ship – but with memories of being in a parallel universe – might have been telling the truth.

Eager to preserve the Company’s business (failures in transit not being good for that) they persuade him to return to negotiate on their behalf to secure ways to make interstellar travel easier; shortcuts, basically.

Quinn has his own reasons to return; both his wife, Johanna, and daughter, Sydney, had been transported with him but they became separated and remained stranded. His Jacobson’s organ is altered to enhance his sense of smell before he undergoes the procedure. This is a curious detail of the story but not much is actually made of this enhancement latterly.

The narrative then takes a step change as he ventures once more into the Entire, a vast universe lacking stars, with many different habitats but all seemingly in the one plane, lit by the sky-bright, a churning river of light, constantly changing, yet always the same, ruled by enigmatic creatures known as Tarig, one of whom he had assaulted in his previous sojourn. For the Entire’s power sources we are told plasma cells harvest photons from the bright. “The Tarig had remade photosynthesis in inorganic form. It made Earth’s fusion technologies seem crass by comparison.”

Kenyon seems to have modelled the Entire – at least the parts where Quinn journeys – on China. The clothes, names, and some of the inhabitants’ customs at any rate, fit that template.

Several chapters are preceded by extracts from Entire doctrine, The Radiant Way. Its first tenet is that knowledge of the Entire must be kept from the non-Entire. Quinn faces an uphill struggle on that count, then, as do those who knowingly help him. Much of the book is taken up with Quinn’s travels, face altered and using the name Dai Shen, to the power centre. Within the Entire, Quinn’s – our – universe is known as the Rose. It is peopled by various different sentient beings, some of them supposedly modelled by the Tarig on creatures from the Rose. The Chalin seem to be all but indistinguishable from humans.

Several chapters deal with Sydney’s continued existence in the Entire. She has been dispatched to a region inhabited by horse-like sentients called the Inyx, telepathic animals who need riders but insist they be blinded, a fate Sydney has suffered. She is able to ‘see’ though, through the mind link with her mount. Her personality is beginning to alter the Inyx’s relationships with their riders and potentially that with the Tarig.

There are hints that Johanna, too, may have survived.

Though it is not really like it at all the whole thing reminded me of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow. Maybe it was just that First Contact via a sole human thing.

Nothing is resolved at the end, of course. How could it be? There are three instalments of Kenyon’s saga to go.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian, “orthopositroniums’ missing energy” (orthopositronium’s?) “intended accomplish” (intended to accomplish,) aerie (USianism for eyrie,) garroted, garrote, garroting (several times, garotted, garotte, garotting) a capital letter on the word following a colon (several times,) “in deeply accent English” (deeply accented.) “A ochre-colored bird” (An ochre-colored [but preferably ochre-coloured,]) “sent simulacra, automatons” (automata. And why use the Latin plural of simulacrum but not the Greek one of automaton?)  “murmured at Yulin side” (at Yulin’s side,) a capital letter following a comma when a question was embedded in a piece of direct speech; it needs internal quotation marks instead,) “they saw what one of the cameras had captured Quinn from a low angle” (they saw that one of the cameras … ,) “like an aurora borealis made of knives” (there’s no need for the borealis here; ‘like an aurora made of knives’ would be fine,) “a contingent of Tarig were swarming” (a contingent of Tarig was swarming,) “‘tell us the rest it’” (tell us the rest of it.)

Luna Press, 2025, 198 p. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

Well. They do say you should start with a bang – and this novel does begin with a sentence reminiscent of the first in Iain Banks’s The Crow Road, though what unfolds is neither a bildungsroman nor (quite) a murder mystery but a decent enough piece of Science Fiction.

Viewpoint character Jocelyn Carsten (Joss,) is a hostage negotiator on the way home from managing a crisis on the planet Haitch when her passenger ship Tiktaalik suffers an explosion. She is still alive, just, but is injured, and is the sole survivor. All contact with the ship’s Central Hub – and the outside world – is lost. Only Harbour, the controlling intelligence of passenger mod Petal 4, is available to aid her.

After a trip to the med bay and an EVA to survey the damage to the ship, Harbour advises her to rest. When she wakes up there is another presence in the mod, a gemel; a holographic copy of Joss’s personality, but this has the physical appearance of her ex-wife, Alice Dray.

“A gemel” (the plural is also gemel) “is a sentient being generated from an individual’s psyche,” usually, but not always, taking on the appearance of their sires, “fuzzy copies of their progenitors, interpolated from memories and neurocircuitry, and can resemble their users to a disturbing degree,” but can be “warped by narcissists with fat wallets and the desire for more intimate personal assistants,” as had been the case with Gabrielle Vecher, on-site CEO for Haxen Mining Corps, and his gemel Malachi. Narcissus and Echo in the same package, thinks Joss. Gemel were not allowed physical bodies but, with safeguards, could patch into systems and control them from the inside. They “drew force from external sources, running off the excess electricity in the machines around them.”

This Not-Alice becomes a psychological prop for Joss and a device for the author to run Joss’s backstory past the reader, in instalments. Indeed, at times our access to Joss’s thoughts shifts between the present and her past memories with little or no signalling.

Joss’s rescue from isolation – when it comes (rather abruptly it must be said) – is by a military force co-commanded by none other than Alice Dray: the real one. Its mission is to investigate both why Tiktaalik and the tunnels on Haitch were blown up and to try to obtain the release of the humans still there held by gemel, an endeavour where Joss’s negotiating skills come to the fore. But Alice Dray’s co-commander – something of a loose cannon of the gung-ho military type – threatens to undermine Joss’s steps towards a solution of the situation.

It turns out Vecher had constructed a highly dangerous device deriving from mysterious markings on the tunnels on Haitch. And time is running out. “‘That thing Vecher made tore a hole in the fabric of the universe or whatever the hell you want to call it, and it’s growing, becoming less stable by the hour,’” says Joss during the negotiations.

Given her initial circumstances, Joss is unsurprisingly prone to periods of introspection and questioning both of herself and others.

Despite some problems with structure and pacing this is an engaging read and will push enough familiar buttons for SF readers to emerge satisfied.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian but with some British spellings. The planet Ross128 H’s nickname of Haitch is an egregious mispronunciation of that letter of the alphabet, “on a round-a-bout route” (roundabout – which was used elsewhere in the text for a meander -) once there was a single quotation mark where double ones are employed elsewhere, shlock (schlock,) back-peddling (back-pedalling,) hostage takers “174 million miles away” morphs to “140 million mile silences” during the communications gap, “sliding the stack of credits Joss had won back from her back across the table” (Joss was playing her opponent for the first time, so just ‘had won from her’.) “This is ….. based on …..?” (wasn’t a question so full stop, not question mark,) C02 (It’s not C zero two as was printed in the text, and the 2 ought to be a subscript,) “wracking your brain” (racking,) “sending some part of her ex’s upper-class snobbery would revolt” (sensing some part.) “‘Tell and I send you outside to repaint the serial number.’” (No clue. Who is Tell?) “what she can offer them are options” (I read ‘what she can offer them’ as a singular subject to the following verb; so ‘what she can offer them is options’,) “is different thing” (is a different thing.) “‘Ph damage right here’” (‘pH damage’ was meant and pH always has an upper case H and a lower case p – even at the start of a sentence,) “drowns out nothing but Callen’s voice” (everything but Callen’s voice,) “‘I pretty sure’” (I was pretty sure,) “for having sunken so low” (for having sunk so low.) “She doubts its convincing” (doubts it’s convincing,) “amid glow of the launch” (amid the glow of the launch,) a missing extraneous end quotation mark, a missing comma before the quotation mark at the end of a piece of dialogue. “‘How is that that they’ve got people down there?’”  (How is it that they’ve got…,) “‘if we so much get within the distance’” (if we so much as get within…,) “it takes her moment” (it takes her a moment.) “Alice takes her seat again and switching back to their private comm.” (and switches back to,) “the metal partition the separated them” (partition that separated them.) “A name that inferred family, and what she’d always been taught to mean trust, love and guidance” (and that she’d always been taught…,) “but do they do afford” (but they do afford,) “of the Florenz’ cargo bay” (the Florenz’s,) “breathing apparatuses” (the plural of apparatus is apparatus,) “nothing but the judder of the engine and the clatter of equipment as rattles against the bulkheads” (could be rewritten more clearly,) “‘I can’t let you can’t do this’” (either, ‘I can’t let you do this’ or, ‘You can’t do this.)

The latest book I have received to review for ParSec is Exiles by Mason Coile.

This was one of only two SF books in the most recent list of upcoming publications up for review.

I have not previously read anything by the author.

However, the accompanying blurb tells me Mason Coile is a pseudonym of Andrew Pyper, award winning author of William and ten other novels. These seem to be works in the thriller or horror genres. William was published as by Mason Coile, though.

Sadly, the blurb also says Pyper died in January 2025.

Andrew Pyper: 29/3/1968 – 3/2/2025. So it goes.

MacMillan, 2025, 347 p. Reviewed for ParSec 13.

Twenty years ago the Soundfield appeared overhead. Ever since, temperatures have continued to soar, UV radiation makes going out in daylight all but deadly, food is short, parts of the world up to and including Italy are devoid of humans, and refugees are countless. People in Britain now sleep during the day and carry out whatever business they can at night.

Hannah Williams lectures on genetics at a college but her life is complicated by her son, Isaac, who cannot speak, only sign, must be kept occupied and also looked after by someone else if she is busy.

They are living in a dystopia. The Government is essentially authoritarian, dissenters can be shot, (refugees have been in the past when trying to come ashore,) agents of the Atavism Programme are ever vigilant, looking for children who connect with the Soundfield’s constant hum and its occasional musical calls. Isaac’s tendency to sing at these moments is why Hannah is so protective of him. She does not wish to lose him to the Programme. (How Isaac can sing when he can’t speak is unexplained.) The ongoing story of their lives in this harsh world has its menace heightened by the author’s use of the present tense. The passages where Hannah remembers her past life, before the Soundfield and when she was part of the first investigations into it, are in the past tense. Hannah’s part in that investigation was carried out in collaboration with a team led by Elias, a physicist, with whom she had a relationship.

Examination of the field showed it to contain the components of air, in the normal proportions, but also small dust particles, inert minerals and silica, some bacteria and fungi, “as if a microscopic layer of the ground had been scooped up and held in suspension thirty kilometres up, creating a dome that sealed the Earth.” Video footage revealed it to be moving, like waves. “A thin taut membrane that vibrates thousands of times a second.”

Hannah’s lectures centre on the FOXP2 gene. This is usually invariant and has been for millions of years – except for the (relatively) recent two changes which coincided with the development of language in humans.

Her breakthrough in trying to understand the Soundfield came with studying the EK family, who all had developmental verbal dyspraxia. In them, one of the bases on the FOXP2 gene had reverted to its previous state.

This is an unusual piece of SF as writers in the genre do not usually consider the evolution of language nor its connection to music.  Through Hannah, Martin tells us language and music are combinatorial, made up of individual units that stack together to give new structures, but are also recursive and innate. But as Hannah says to Elias, “We are biologically programmed to speak, but also to listen to and produce music.” She suggests speech and music co-evolved from a musical protolanguage and wonders if that might be what the Soundfield is producing. The publishing of her results, though, is the trigger for the Atavism Programme and Hannah’s present predicament.

The dystopian aspects of the novel are reasonably similar to other works in that vein (autocracies do tend to be similar in their repressions, as are people’s reactions to them) but Martin combines them with a concern for family and relationships. As in all human interactions, though, betrayal and jeopardy are never far away.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “on his hoody” (usually spelled hoodie, as it is later in the book,) “of the front frow” (front row,) “much more hands-on that it used to be” (than it used to be,) “a man with a short beard wearing a bullet-proof vest” (why would a beard wear a vest? Try ‘a short-bearded man wearing a bullet-proof vest,) “the old stationary store” (stationery store,) “‘what do you parents do?’” (do your parents,) “outside of” (x 2, just ‘outside’ no ‘of’,) “‘there was only once choice’” (only one choice,) “in Elias’ team” (Elias’s – which appears later,) phenomes (the passage was about phonemes,) sat (several times; ‘sitting’,) span (spun,) focussed (focused,) “in the middle of wide, open room” (of a wide, open room,) “‘to make sure your safe’” (you’re safe.)

Gollancz, 2016, 506 p.

Briddey Flannigan is a woman under pressure, in her work at Commspan, a phone app company apparently a rival to Apple, with her Irish-descended family, with her boyfriend Trent Worth. She is deluged by work and family emails and seemingly rushed off her feet. All this makes for a breathless introductory chapter showcasing the author’s signature style of scenes or dialogue interrupted by events, constantly breaking off to deal with something else.

Not that the pace slows much thereafter. In a Willis novel things do seem to cascade, with incident piling on incident, misunderstandings and crossed wires, things forever on the point of being resolved only to be diverted onto other paths.

Briddey’s sister Mary Clare is an overbearing, overprotective parent to her daughter Maeve. Her other sister Kathleen, as Briddey once was, is constantly being urged to marry a “foine Irish lad” by their Great Aunt Oona who, despite not being a first or even second generation immigrant, speaks using Irish syntax and rhythms.

Boyfriend Trent meanwhile while wants her to undergo with him a procedure to fit an EED, a device which will enhance ability to sense a partner’s feelings and thus bring them closer together. The EED “creates a neural pathway that made partners more receptive to each other.” Notwithstanding their relationship, Trent from the outset is a somewhat aloof, absent figure, whose speech does not carry any conviction of affection.

Briddey is at pains to keep any hint of getting an EED away from Commspan gossip Suki, while in the works basement C B Schwartz, nicknamed the Hunchback of Notre Dame, toils away perfecting the latest app.

An unexpected gap in the EED surgeon’s schedule bumps Briddey and Trent up the queue for operation. It is then disaster strikes. In the aftermath, Briddey finds herself telepathic. Worse, it is C B, not Trent, whom Briddey can hear in her head.

Still worse, Briddey is soon to be overwhelmed by a tsunami of unexpurgated thoughts pouring into her head from people round about. Only C B’s aid and tuition in protection from the racket, building in her head perimeters and safe rooms, helps her survive. This involves a kind of technique C B compares to Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr’s invention of a frequency-hopping device to frustrate radio jamming by the Germans of Allied torpedoes. (See here; paragraph 2.)

In one of their conversations about the desire to communicate (or lack of it) C B tells her, “If people really wanted to communicate, they’d tell the truth, but they don’t,” and the phrase “‘Of course’, is a dead giveaway that you’re lying.”

He has been able to receive and broadcast for a long time and has done a lot of research. Hearing voices in your head is not a survival trait, he tells her. It didn’t do much for Joan of Arc after all. He has been worried about her for a while since he knew that telepathy is to do with the haploidgroupgene R1b-L21, the Irish carry. He himself was adopted hence the non-Irish name.

It is clear very early on where all this is going in terms of a “normal” plot. The SF and scientific aspects are merely window dressing. This is actually a romcom.

Diverting enough, though.

Pedant’s corner:- a missing comma  before a piece of direct speech, “and rounded the corner and breathing in the sweet smells of grass and wet earth” (doesn’t need the second ‘and’,) “about Joan of Arc being captured by the British” (it was the English she was captured by. It long predated the formalisation of the UK,) octopi (the plural is octopuses; or octopodes if you’re Greek.)