Penguin, 1982, 219 p.

In a South American city possibly modelled on Manaus which at one time the “diabolical” Doctor Hoffman filled with mirages – nothing was what it seemed, “nothing at all” – in order to drive the inhabitants mad, an old man named Desiderio, too sardonic, too disaffected to be influenced by the mirages, is writing down his memories because he became a hero by surviving. The manifestations of Doctor Hoffman’s depredations included a dollop of synaesthesia and inspired the creation of the Determination Police, a seemingly fearsome body endowed with the duty of deciding whether something is real or not, though the name also implies a degree of tenacity.

Through Desiderio we are party to a conversation between Doctor Hoffman’s ambassador to the city (sent to demand surrender) and Desiderio’s employer, the Minister, where the ambassador says, “What if I told you we were engaged in uncovering the infinite potentiality of phenomena?” a get-out for describing any number of impossible things. The Minister refuses the surrender demand and sends Desiderio as a special agent to assassinate Hoffman “as inconspicuously as possible.” Complicating his mission is the fact that Desiderio is in love with Albertina, Hoffman’s daughter.

We follow Desiderio as he spends time at a peep-show, goes on a sojourn with river people, falls in with a troupe of acrobats (Carter seems to have had a thing about circuses – I suppose because they present illusions of various types,) meets a mysterious Count, and is captured by centaurs, before finally encountering the Doctor himself.

Carter indulges in various philosophical musings, “The introduction of cinematography enabled us to corral time past,” while the motion picture, “offers us nothing less than the present tense experience of time irrefutably past.” “Even if it is the dream made flesh, the real, once it becomes real, can be no more than real.” Desiderio tells us, “The habit of sardonic contemplation is the hardest habit of all to break.” She also makes an aside to the reader, “Those are the dreary ends of the plot. Shall I tie them up or leave them unravelled?” In this regard Desiderio’s encounter with the Doctor reminded me of the film of The Wizard of Oz even down to “clanking, dull stage machinery” – this is not a spoiler as a clue to this – desire machines – lies in the book’s title, though their power source eroto-energy doesn’t.

Imagine a series of surrealist paintings rendered in prose, mashed up with a picaresque adventure chronicle somewhat akin to Gulliver’s Travels – though Desiderio meets those centaurs rather than Houynhnhmns – then throw in a smidgin of James Bondery at the end and that is pretty much this novel.

Pedant’s corner:- “all they could do to make a living was to sell to the credulous charms and talismans against domestic spectres” (‘make a living was to sell the credulous charms’ makes more sense,) tetrahydron (tetrahedron?) statis, (stasis,) In ‘Dr Hoffman will make metaphysics your business’ the emphasis ought to be on ‘make’ rather than ‘your’.) “They gilded their finger and toenails” (finger- and toenails,) focussed (focused,) “teeth in a maw” (a maw is a stomach, not a mouth,) colossi (colossus is from Greek not Latin, its plural will be colossodes,) shantys (shanties,) unharmonious (I prefer inharmonious,) “the shape of tears laid on their sides” (laid what on their sides? Oh; ‘lay on their sides’,) ensorcellating (ensorcelling,) “I thought the military were roused at last” (was roused.)

Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks, 2005, 456p. First published 1992.

As I posted in my review of the same author’s Air (or Have Not Have) I didn’t much take to Ryman’s earlier (short) works. I remember Colin Greenland at an Eastercon pointing this book out and saying, “You’ll have read this.” I shook my head and said I had a blind spot where Ryman was concerned. He seemed taken aback. When I saw this recently in a second–hand bookshop I thought I might give it a whirl.

Following her mother’s death a young girl called Dorothy, along with her dog, goes to live with her Aunty Em in Kansas. Any similarity to a well-known film (and slightly lesser known book) is entirely intended. Was is suffused with references to them. But this is no mere retread. Ryman takes the opportunity to illuminate life in late nineteenth century Kansas and so contrast his realistic approach to the smoothed out film version.

Dorothy Gael’s life in her new home is harsh – and unremitting. She does not get transported by a tornado to a more colourful world. Moreover, there are enough wicked witches in our own to suffice for anyone – and not only witches. Dorothy’s lack of understanding of her new environment only exacerbates her estrangement. The main focus of the book is on Dorothy’s experiences but there are chapters setting out Judy Garland’s life as viewed by herself as a child, by her make-up artist on The Wizard of Oz and by her mother after her success, with quotes at chapter heads from various sources commenting on the making of the film, the book on which it was based or the history of Kansas. Topping and tailing it all is the tale of a 1980s (HIV positive) actor trying to find traces of Dorothy Gael in historical documents.

Ryman’s imagining of Dorothy’s story has her surviving into the 1950s where, as a troublesome inmate of a home, she is befriended by a young man who goes on to a successful career in counselling (and one of whose later clients is the actor.) Dorothy tells him, “People are the only thing that can make you feel lonely,” and that Was is “a place you can step in and out of. It’s always there.”

Yet Fantasy comes to the book late. For the most part the tone is resolutely realistic and until very near the end any intrusion of the strange can be taken as imagination or illusion.

In what is perhaps a touch of overkill Ryman has The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s author, L Frank Baum, encounter Dorothy while employed as a supply (Ryman uses the term substitute) teacher – but it does precipitate a further deterioration of Dorothy’s young life. After this, “Dorothy needed magic….. She began to have another fantasy… walking backwards through the years… back home… away from Is into the land of Was.”

As a re-examination of, a commentary on, the mythology of Oz, this is a fine work. It’s also a damn good read.

Ryman’s afterword, where he discourses on the relative utilities of realism and fantasy, of the necessary distinction between history and fantasy, is also worth a look.

Pedant’s corner. Apart from the USian in which the whole book was produced, it was page 246 before I came across an irritant – laying instead of lying, which occurred once more. Unusually, I didn’t spot any typos. This may be because the book is a reprint.