Interzone #244 Jan - Feb 2013 (22 page)

Atwood’s personal account includes a world borne of her childhood mind’s creation – Mischiefland – comprising superheroes of the flying rabbit persuasion. She considers Mischiefland and others like it as descendants of the earliest storytelling, and explores why they manifest in the human psyche. The superhero’s power of flying, as a means of transcending the body’s material limits, is one such example. Atwood notes the winged creatures in myths tend to be tricksters, and their stories warnings. This lust for ideals – and the question of whether or not to trust them – is an integral theme in this collection.

But as beautiful as these essays are, they’re let down by her defence of her definitions. She notes the following distinctions between “science fiction” and “speculative fiction”: “What I mean by ‘science fiction’ is those books that descend from HG Wells’s
The War of the Worlds
, which treats of an invasion by tentacled Martians shot to Earth in metal canisters – things that could not possibly happen – whereas, for me, ‘speculative fiction’ means plots that descend from Jules Verne’s books about submarines and balloon travel and such – things that really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened when the authors wrote the books. I would place my own books in this second category: no Martians.”

This is interesting on the face of it, but couldn’t it be argued that Wells’ world seemed feasible at the time of writing? Journeying to the centre of the Earth isn’t possible now – did it seem any more likely in Verne’s time? Either way, while I recognise what she’s getting at, her distinctions seem arbitrary. Let’s face it: this road doesn’t get any less wearisome the more people travel along it. Most genre-related definitions are woolly and problematic, and as far as I can tell, this one adds nothing useful.

When reading the second half of the book – where we’re definitely not in Mischiefland anymore – I wondered if Atwood’s discomfort with the term science fiction is derived from a discomfort with science. Atwood doesn’t attack science per se, but within the bounds of this collection, her references to science are cynical. This makes me ask, what about the wonder? Why not mention that? The lack of such is evident in her rave review of Bill McKibben’s
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age
, a nonfiction polemic challenging transhumanism. Atwood ends the piece with the caution, “Perhaps we should leave well enough alone”. Really? These quests for utopia, and indeed human perfection, might well be disturbing – but perhaps we could try to understand them?

I’m not convinced Atwood’s essays clarify her position on science fiction at all. For me, they bring further obfuscation, with her troublesome categorisations joining another world – that pesky parallel universe containing malfunctioning definitions of genre. But I’ve no doubt Atwood can pen a great journey: even her more difficult writings are laced with wit and elegance. I only wish I’d been able to stay in Mischiefland a little longer.

* *

Lee Battersby

Angry Robot pb, 416pp, £7.99

Maureen Kincaid Speller

In September 2012, Lavie Tidhar identified an apparent new trend in fantastic writing, which he dubbed “slacker fantasy”, distinguished by the narrative’s “reluctance of agency”, that is its lack of conflict, and by sympathetic but passive characters. His exemplar was David Tallerman’s
Giant Thief
(Angry Robot), in which Easie Damasco spent most of his time trying to disengage himself from whatever action was going on. In his review Tidhar nailed precisely what it was that had irritated me about the novel: I also dislike contemporary slacker fiction but hadn’t made the connection.

Lee Battersby’s
The Corpse-Rat King
seems to stray into similar territory. It is true that Marius dos Hellespont has rather grander aspirations than Damasco, and indeed comes from a wealthier background. It is true also that Hellespont is much more knowledgeable and competent than Damasco, though disinclined to put his skills to earning a more conventional living. However, while the reader might see Hellespont as being down on his luck – and it is difficult to imagine sinking much lower than prowling battlefields, looting from corpses – he would doubtless explain that he was taking advantage of a good business opportunity. Whatever else happens, Hellespont knows how to tell a good story, as well given that the novel relies on the reader being more interested in the story than in the plot.

Except that the plot itself is potentially fascinating. Hellespont has just robbed the late king of Scorby when he suddenly finds himself down among the dead, who have mistaken him for the king and wish him to rule over them. When the error is realised, the dead insist that Hellespont find them a new king. He determines that his replacement should be Tanspar, the late king, not least because this will necessitate his returning to Scorby to find and crown the body, and in doing this, Hellespont has some notion of being able to escape. However, the dead, as they point out, can reach him anywhere, and send Gerd, Hellespont’s dead apprentice, to accompany him. Furthermore, Hellespont has been mysteriously transformed into something that looks dead but isn’t quite, though one begins to suspect this is a condition conferred for later authorial convenience, given the way that it rarely seems to trouble Hellespont.

One might suppose that Hellespont would be off like a shot, to crown the new King of the Dead as soon as possible. Instead, having shed Gerd, Hellespont meanders homeward in a picaresque fashion, stopping off here and there to undergo set-piece adventures, in which the reader learns more and more about the real Marius dos Hellespont and the omniscient narrator opines about this and that in a way that is at times slightly too reminiscent of an overly well-lunched elderly buffer down the pub. They’re very good set-piece adventures but more than once I found myself checking the pagination, wondering how long it would be before the story began to focus on the important stuff. It’s halfway through the novel before Hellespont seems to remember he has a job to get on with, after which the narrative kicks into impressively high gear.

And that, perhaps, is the real problem with this novel. A good half of it is scene-setting, throat-clearing, procrastinatory narrative. There is little doubt that one way or another Hellespont will achieve his aim, simply because he is that kind of character, and this is not the kind of novel that challenges one’s expectation of “that kind of character”. One could perhaps see the picaresque element as providing a tour round Hellespont’s interior life, explicating his motives, showing how he became the person he is today, and crucially suggesting that he does bad things for good reasons, so making him morally acceptable. One could, but quite apart from the fact that one suspects Hellespont would as a matter of course have several layers of cover story, it would over-dignify the fact that the author, for whatever reason, simply isn’t getting down to telling the story itself.

Which is a pity as the plot is ultimately much more compelling than the character. We are clearly intended to love Hellespont but often, while he was larking about above ground, I wondered how the dead felt, waiting for him to bring them their king, knowing that he was procrastinating. We are invited to sympathise with Hellespont’s predicament yet he has brought it on himself, while the dead, like all his other victims, are being cheated. Which is funny if you like that slacker vibe. If you don’t, you’re left with an affable but baggy novel which could be so much more if it would just shape up.

* *

Brenda Cooper

Pyr hb, 353pp, £15.99

Jim Steel

Sometimes an author can be too honest. One of the first things that the reader hits is the author’s note which states that this duology is based on the musical
Evita –
which, in itself, is enough to have many potential readers heading for the hills regardless of whether or not they’ve actually seen any of the screen or stage adaptions. Prejudice can be a terrible thing. Yes, the protagonist is a talented if unschooled singer. Yes, her trajectory is somewhat obvious. But no one can predict the shape of a tree by looking at the seed.

Subtitled
Book One of Ruby’s Song
, this novel opens on a generation starship. Ruby is a teenage girl who is one of the grays – the working class – in this rigidly-structured society. Life is decidedly dystopian for them. The reds oppress the grays, and the upper-caste blues are rarely – if ever – seen in this stratified society. It’s also a patriarchal society, which makes Ruby’s position in it even worse. One of her friends, arguably a borderline prostitute, is brutally raped and murdered by reds early in the novel. We’re clearly not in jazz-hands territory here.

A serious accident at the start literally mixes the classes before the status quo is restored, bringing Ruby into contact with one of the blues. She saves his life and blatantly offers herself to him, but at this time her only ambition is for an easier life and to become a singer. However, her strength and ambition are obvious from the start and it is clear that she is a complex and rounded person, and she not merely a vessel for the transportation of the plot.

The setting, like the ship itself, is, however, slightly creakier. The starship is nearing the end of its journey and is starting to fall apart. The social set-up is obviously something that has (de)evolved from the origin plan, but it is still recognisable to the people within. Aldiss’
Non-Stop
this is not. However, water has to be carefully managed, which suggests that either the closed-cycle system is inefficient or that the author is manufacturing hardships for the grays. They drink out of bulbs, objects which are only needed in zero-gravity environments. Using them in the artificial gravity of the ship is pointless – they would be much harder to clean than cups and would probably present a health risk. There are other curious customs. How easy can it be to bury someone in space when the artificial gravity pulls objects towards the
centre
of the ship? Cooper’s slick prose pulls the reader over these bumps, but they are still there.

But space opera should never be confused with hard SF. Its truths should be found within its characters and, when looked at from that angle, Cooper has produced a fine novel.

* * * * *

Karin Tidbeck

Cheeky Frawg Books pb, 160pp, £9.99

Reviewed and interviewed by Stephen Theaker

Karin Tidbeck is a Swedish writer who, frustrated by a lack of local opportunities, began a few years ago to translate her own work into English, leading to appearances in
Weird Tales
and other US magazines. A previous Swedish collection –
Vem är Arvid Pekon?
– included all but four of these fourteen stories, but this is her first book in English. There are many points of similarity here with Ekaterina Sedia’s similarly strong new collection,
Moscow But Dreaming
. Both write stories set in parts of the world and featuring legends and character types not yet reduced to cliché by English and American writers, stories that can be rather miserable, about ground-down people and the difficulty of finding love and support in a heartless world; both are part of a tradition of fantasy that takes in Kafka but sidesteps Tolkien.

While
Moscow But Dreaming
tends to focus on the women being damaged, Tidbeck’s collection is interested in the effects of their absence. Some characters never even met the person they needed. ‘Arvid Pekon’, for example, who spends his nights alone and works among telephone operators who frustrate the public for unknown purposes, or ‘Herr Cederberg’, hurt by the casual cruelty of other people – when people spoke of him, “the most common simile was pig, followed by panda, koala, and bumblebee, in no particular order” – and tries to fly away from it all. “I might have gone mad,” Pekon tells his terminal after losing control of his behaviour: that’s a sentiment shared by many of Tidbeck’s characters. The protagonist of ‘Beatrice’ seems equally sympathetic at first, falling in love with an airship. Unfortunately she has been sold, and he settles for
Beatrice II
. By a landlord’s accident they come to share a warehouse with Anna Goldberg, a printer’s assistant in love with a semi-portable steam engine. This all seems cute and quirky, but an unexpected ending resets the reader’s expectations for the rest of the book.

Beatrice is not the last female lost in these stories: wives, mothers, friends, and in ‘Reindeer Mountain’ a sister: “Cilla was twelve years old the summer Sara put on her great-grandmother’s wedding dress and disappeared up the mountain.” The loss, strangeness and confusion in that sentence give a good sense of the book as a whole. ‘Some Letters for Ove Lindstrom’ are written by a daughter after his drunken, lonely death, his life ruined by his fey wife’s disappearance from the commune in which they lived. ‘Rebecka’ is a friend lost first to pain and then to divine judgment; it begins with her outline scorched against a wall, “arms outstretched as if to embrace someone”. God exists, but let a horrific attack last three days before interceding. The ‘Aunts’ are three immense women fattened by Nieces until their grotesque bodies are ready to produce the next generation. As so often here, an interesting idea is pushed that little bit further, showing how the Nieces try to cope when the Aunts fail to reproduce, reflecting our own efforts to deal with tragedy and bereavement.

Like ‘Aunts’, many stories have the feel of dark fantasy but can be read as science fiction. One such is ‘Brita’s Holiday Village’, where the narrator stays in a resort unchanged since the seventies. In May, “white, plum-sized pupas hang clustered under the eaves” of the bungalows, and in June she dreams of distant relatives who stay in the cottages and hold increasingly odd summer parties. ‘Pyret’ takes the form of an academic article, presenting evidence that this mythical mimic is not “a cryptid but
a real being
”. After examining historical accounts of the creatures, including, most eerily, the
Sjungpastorn
, who held mass and sang a wordless song to isolated churchgoers, the writer comes to worrying conclusions. Title story ‘Jagannath’ is the last in the book, the second longest (albeit at just eleven pages), and the most straightforwardly science-fictional, in which the much-altered survivors of a great disaster live and work inside Mother – but she can’t survive forever. She’s the last and most important lost woman of the book.