|
I was appointed as the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for London listings magazine Time Out in 1996, with my first
column appearing in March of that year. Officially, the column runs every six weeks, but sometimes other coverage pushes it
back and the gap is longer.
Time Out is a general interest magazine, and to some extent my column reflects the fact that most of its readers are casual consumers of sf rather than dyed-in-the-wool aficionados. Originally, I had 850 words per column; that was subsequently cut
back to 750 words to allow for illustrations. So expect brevity.
At the moment, jackets for the books reviewed aren't included here, but I hope to get around to that eventually.
My intention is to update this section by adding a column every time its successor appears - obviously I have to be fair to Time Out and let them have the mileage first.
I've kept the index that follows as simple as possible. Reviews are listed by Author/Title and Title/Author, along with the column
number - eg Col 1 - where the review appeared.
HOW TO SEARCH THIS PAGE USING YOUR BROWSER
Author
Aldiss, Brian: Supertoys Last All Summer Long Col 26
Aldiss, Brian & Penrose, Roger: White Mars, or, The Mind Set Free Col 22
Anderson, Kevin J.: Resurrection Inc Col 14
Anthony, Ray: Empress Col 29
Arden, Tom: The Harlequin's Dance Col 10
Asher, Neal: Gridlinked Col 28
Ashley, Mike: Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy Col 13
Asimov, Isaac: Foundation Col 29
Baird, Wilhelmina: Clipjoint Col 3
Baker, Will: Star Beast Col 2
Banks, Iain M.: Excession Col 3; Inversions Col 13
Barclay, James: Dawnthief Col 20
Barker, Clive: Galilee Col 16
Barnett: Paul: Strider's Galaxy Col 8
Bear, Greg: Foundation and Chaos Col 14; Dinosaur Summer C16
Baxter, Stephen: Voyage Col 6; Mammoth Col 17; Deep Future Col 26
Benford, Gregory: Foundation's Fear Col 8; Cosm Col 12
Berg, Carol: Transformation Col 27
Bonestell, Chesley: The Art of Chesley Bonestell Col 28
Bova, Ben: Return to Mars Col 19; The Precipice Col 27
Bradbury, Ray: Quicker Than the Eye Col 12
Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451 Col 29
Britain, Kristen: Green Rider Col 18
Brooks, Terry: The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara: Ilse Witch Col 25
Brosnan, John: Have Demon, Will Travel Col 2
Brown, Molly: Bad Timing Col 29
Bujold, Lois McMaster: Memory Col 12
Butler, Andrew M.: Cyberpunk (Pocket Essentials) Col 29
Butler, Andrew M. : Philip K. Dick (Pocket Essentials) Col 29
Butler, Andrew M. : Terry Pratchett (Pocket Essentials) Col 29
Burton, Levar: Aftermath Col 10
Calder, Richard: Malignos Col 24
Cadigan, Pat: The Making of Lost in Space Col 14; Tea From An Empty Cup Col 15
Canter, Mark: Down to Heaven Col 9
Chippindale, Peter: Laptop of the Gods Col 16
Clark, Simon: The Night of the Triffids Col 28
Clarke, Arthur C.: The Collected Stories Col 26
Clarke, Arthur C. & Baxter, Stephen: The Light of Other Days Col 25
Clarke, Arthur C. & Kube-McDowell, Michael: The Trigger Col 22
Clarke, Arthur C. & McQuay, Mike: Richter 10 Col 1
Clute, John & Grant, John: The Encyclopedia of Fantasy Col 7
Cobley, Michael: Shadowkings Col 29
Corran, Mary: Darkfell Col 4
Crowley, John: Little, Big Col 24
Crowther, Peter & Lovegrove, James: Escardy Gap Col 12
Crowther, Peter (Ed): Futures Col 29
Dart-Thornton, Cecilia: Ill-Made Mute Col 30
De Lint, Charles: Trader Col 11
Dick, Philip K.: A Scanner Darkly Col 22
Donaldson: Stephen: Reave the Just Col 16
Douglass, Sara: Battleaxe Col 15
Dozois, Gardner: The Best New SF - 9th Annual Collection Col 5; The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 11 Col 16
Duncan, Jody: The Making of The X-Files: Fight for the Future Col 15
Dunsany, Lord: Time and the Gods Col 24
E.R. Eddison: The Worm Ouroboros Col 24
Edwards, Ted: X-Files Confidential Col 5
Bob Eggleton: Greetings From Earth Col 24
Farland, David: The Sum of All Men Col 12
Feist, Raymond E.: Krondor: The Betrayal Col 16
Ferriss, Lucy: The Misconceiver Col 15
Freas, Frank Kelly: As He Sees It Col 26
Froud, Brian: Good Faeries Bad Faeries Col 16
Gaiman, Neil: Stardust Col 20
Garnett, David: Bikini Planet Col 23
Gemmell, David: The Legend of Deathwalker Col 1; Dark Moon Col 5; Winter Warriors Col 8; Sword in the Storm Col 15; Midnight Falcon Col 19; Hero in the Shadows Col 23
Ravenheart Col 27
Gibson, William: Idoru Col 5
Gray, Julia: Ice Mage Col 17; The Dark Moon Col 25
Greenland: Colin: Mother of Plenty Col 14
Grimwood, Jon Courtenay: Lucifer's Dragon Col 12; reMix Col 19; redRobe Col 23; Pashazade Col 28
Haldeman, Joe: The Forever War Col 17
Hardy, David A.: Hardyware: The Art of David A. Hardy Col 29
Harman, Andrew: The Scrying Game Col 1
Harris, John: Mass Col 24
Harrison, Harry: Stars and Stripes Forever Col 12
Herbert, Brian & Anderson, Kevin J.: Prelude to Dune 1: House Atreides Col 21
Herniman, Marcus: The Siege of Arrandin Col 20
Hobb, Robin: Fool's Errand Col 30
Holdstock, Robert: Ancient Echoes Col 2; Gate of Ivory Col 13; Celtika Col 26
Holt, Tom: Only Human Col 18; Nothing But Blue Skies Col 28
Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World Col 29
Ings, Simon: Headlong Col 17
Johnson, Oliver: The Forging of the Shadows Col 5
Jones, Diana Wynne: The Tough Guide to Fantasyland Col 2; The Dark Lord of Derkholm Col 16
Jordan, Robert: A Path of Daggers Col 16
Jude, Dick: Fantasy Art of the New Millennium Col 21
Kay, Guy Gavriel: Sailing to Sarantium Col 16
Keyes, Greg: The Blackgod Col 15
Kilworth, Garry: The Roof of Voyaging Col 4
Langford, David: The Unseen University Challenge Col 3
Langford, David: The Leaky Establishment Col 29
Lawhead, Stephen: The Iron Lance Col 15
LeFanu, Sarah: Writing Fantasy Fiction Col 4
LeGuin, Ursula K.: Four Ways To Forgiveness Col 2
Leroux, Lisa: One Hand Clapping Col 13
Lovegrove, James: Days Col 10
Mike Lepine: Extra-Terrestrial's Guide to the X-Files Col 7
MacLeod, Ken: The Stone Canal Col 5; The Cassini Division Col 13
Mariner, Carl K.: The Sex Files - File 1: Beyond Limits Col 9
Matheson, Richard: I Am Legend Col 17
McAuley, Paul: Whole Wide World Col 30
McDevitt, Jack: The Engines of God Col 4; Slow Lightning Col 23
McHugh, Maureen F.: Half the Day is Night Col 1
McKenna, Juliette E.: The Thief's Gamble Col 17
Mieville, China: Perdido Street Station Col 23
Miller, Ron: Firebrands: The Heroines of Science Fiction & Fantasy Col 16
Mitchell, Paul: The Duchovny Files Col 7
Moorcock, Michael: King of the City Col 24; The Dreamthief's Daughter Col 27
Newman, Kim: The Bloody Red Baron Col 3
Nickson, Chris: The X Factor Col 7
Niven, Larry: The Ringworld Throne Col 4; Destiny's Road Col 11
Palmer, Stephen: Memory Seed Col 2
Parker, Clive: Sci-Fi and the Internet Col 4
Powers, Tim: Earthquake Weather Col 9; The Anubis Gates Col 9
Pratchett, Terry: Feet of Clay Col 3
Pringle, David: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Col 6
Pringle, David (Ed): The Ant Men of Tibet and Other Stories Col 29
The Best of Interzone Col 6; The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy
Rankin, Robert: Snuff Fiction Col 20
Rawn, Melanie: The Mageborn Traitor Col 9; The Ruins of Ambrai Col 9
Reeves-Stevens, Judith & Garfield: Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Continuing Mission Col 16
Robb, J.D.: Naked in Death Col 1
Robinson, Kim Stanley: Antarctica Col 10
Robinson, Kim Stanley: Red Mars Col 29
Robson, Justina: Silver Screen Col 21
Russell, Ken: Mike & Gaby's Space Gospel Col 19
Russell, Mary Doria: The Sparrow Col 11; Children of God Col 18
Rydill, Jessica: Children of the Shaman Col 29
St Jude, R.U. Sirius & Bart Nagel: Cyberpunk Handbook [The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook] Col 4
Sammon, Paul M.: Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner Col 7
Sammon, Paul M.: Alien: The Complete Illustrated Screenplay Col 25
Sawyer, Robert J.: Illegal Alien Col 11
Shippey, Tom: J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century Col 30
Silverberg, Robert: Legends Col 16
Simmons, Dan: Endymion Col 1
Simpson, M.J.: A Complete and Utterly Unauthorised Guide to Hitch Hiker's Guide (Pocket Essentials) Col 29
Stephenson, Neal: Cryptonomicon Col 22
Sudworth, Anne: Enchanted World: The Art of Anne Sudworth Col 24
Sullivan, Tricia: Someone to Watch Over Me Col 9
Tepper, Sheri S.: The Family Tree Col 11; The Fresco Col 27
Thomas, Matthew: Before & After Col 18
Tolkien, J.R.R.: The Lord of the Rings Col 29
Tuttle, Lisa: The Pillow Friend Col 6
Turtledove, Harry: A World of Difference Col 14; The Great War: American Front Col 17
Vance, Jack: Emphyrio Col 22; Tales of the Dying Earth Col 24
Walotsky, John: Inner Visions Col 24
Ware, Paul: Flight of the Mariner Col 8
Warrington, Freda: The Amber Citadel Col 18
White, T.H.: The Once and Future King Col 29
Williams, Sean: Metal Fatigue Col 21
Williams, Tad: Otherland Col 6; River of Blue Fire Col 14; Mountain of Black Glass Col 21
Wolfe, Gene: The Book of the New Sun, Volume 1 Col 24
Wood, N. Lee: Faraday's Orphans Col 6
Zelazny, Roger: The Chronicles of Amber Col 24
Zimmerman, Sternbach & Drexler: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual Col 16
Zindell, David: The Lightstone Col 30
TOP
Title
A Scanner Darkly: Philip K. Dick Col 22
Aftermath: Levar Burton Col 10
Alien: The Complete Illustrated Screenplay: Paul M. Sammon Col 25
Amber Citadel: Freda Warrington Col 18
Ancient Echoes: Robert Holdstock Col 2
Ant Men of Tibet and Other Stories: David Pringle (Ed) Col 29
Antarctica: Kim Stanley Robinson Col 10
Anubis Gates: Tim Powers Col 9
Art of Chesley Bonestell Col 28
As He Sees It: Frank Kelly Freas Col 26
Bad Timing: Molly Brown Col 29
Battleaxe: Sara Douglass Col 15
Before & After: Matthew Thomas Col 18
Best New SF - 9th Annual Collection: Gardner Dozois Col 5
Best of Interzone: David Pringle Col 6
Bikini Planet: David Garnett Col 23
Blackgod: Greg Keyes Col 15
Bloody Red Baron: Kim Newman Col 3
Book of the New Sun, Volume 1: Gene Wolfe Col 24
Brave New World: Aldous Huxley Col 29
Cassini Division: Ken MacLeod Col 13
Celtika: Robert Holdstock Col 26
Children of God: Mary Doria Russell Col 18
Children of the Shaman: Jessica Rydill Col 29
Chronicles of Amber: Roger Zelazny Col 24
Clipjoint: Wilhelmina Baird Col 3
Collected Stories: Arthur C. Clarke Col 26
Complete and Utterly Unauthorised Guide to Hitch Hiker's (Pocket Essentials): M.J. Simpson Col 29
Cosm: Gregory Benford Col 12
Cryptonomicon: Neal Stephenson Col 22
Cyberpunk Handbook [The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook]: St Jude, R.U. Sirius & Bart Nagel Col 4
Cyberpunk (Pocket Essentials): Andrew M. Butler Col 29
Darkfell: Mary Corran Col 4
Dark Lord of Derkholm: Diana Wynne Jones Col 16
Dark Moon: David Gemmell Col 5
Dark Moon: Julia Gray Col 25
Dawnthief: James Barclay Col 20
Days: James Lovegrove Col 10
Deep Future: Stephen Baxter Col 26
Destiny's Road: Larry Niven Col 11
Dick, Philip K. (Pocket Essentials): Andrew M. Butler Col 29
Dinosaur Summer: Greg Bear Col 16
Down to Heaven: Mark Canter Col 9
Dreamthief's Daughter: Michael Moorcock Col 27
Duchovny Files: Paul Mitchell Col 7
Earthquake Weather: Tim Powers Col 9
Emphyrio: Jack Vance Col 22
Empress: Ray Anthony Col 29
Enchanted World: The Art of Anne Sudworth Col 24
Encyclopedia of Fantasy: John Clute & John Grant Col 7
Endymion: Dan Simmons Col 1
Engines of God: Jack McDevitt Col 4
Escardy Gap: Peter Crowther & James Lovegrove Col 12
Excession: Iain M. Banks Col 3
Extra-Terrestrial's Guide to the X-Files: Mike Lepine Col 7
Family Tree: Sheri S. Tepper Col 11
Fantasy Art of the New Millennium: Dick Jude Col 21
Faraday's Orphans: N. Lee Wood Col 6
Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury Col 29
Feet of Clay: Terry Pratchett Col 3
Firebrands: The Heroines of Science Fiction & Fantasy: Ron Miller Col 16
Flight of the Mariner: Paul Ware Col 8
Fool's Errand: Robin Hobb Col 30
Forever War: Joe Haldeman Col 17
Forging of the Shadows: Oliver Johnson Col 5
Foundation: Isaac Asimov Col 29
Foundation and Chaos: Greg Bear Col 14
Foundation's Fear: Gregory Benford Col 8
Four Ways To Forgiveness: Ursula K. LeGuin Col 2
Fresco: Sheri S. Tepper Col 27
Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner: Paul M. Sammon Col 7
Futures: Peter Crowther (Ed) Col 29
Galilee: Clive Barker Col 16
Gate of Ivory: Robert Holdstock Col 13
Good Faeries Bad Faeries: Brian Froud Col 16
Great War: American Front: Harry Turtledove Col 17
Greetings From Earth: Bob Eggleton Col 24
Green Rider: Kristen Britain Col 18
Gridlinked: Neal Asher Col 28
Half the Day is Night: Maureen F. McHugh Col 1
Hardyware: The Art of David A. Hardy Col 29
Harlequin's Dance: Tom Arden Col 10
Have Demon, Will Travel: John Brosnan Col 2
Headlong: Simon Ings Col 17
Hero in the Shadows: David Gemmell Col 23
I Am Legend: Richard Matheson Col 17
Ice Mage: Julia Gray Col 17
Idoru: William Gibson Col 5
Ill-Made Mute: Cecilia Dart-Thornton Col 30
Illegal Alien: Robert J. Sawyer Col 11
Inner Visions: Ron Walotsky Col 24
Iron Lance: Stephen Lawhead Col 15
Inversions: Iain M. Banks Col 13
King of the City: Michael Moorcock Col 24
Krondor: The Betrayal: Raymond E. Feist Col 16
Laptop of the Gods: Peter Chippindale Col 16
Leaky Establishment: David Langford Col 29
Legend of Deathwalker: David Gemmell Col 1
Legends: Robert Silverberg Col 16
Light of Other Days: Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter Col 25
Lightstone: David Zindell Col 30
Little, Big: John Crowley Col 24
Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkien Col 29
Lucifer's Dragon: Jon Courtenay Grimwood Col 12
Mageborn Traitor: Melanie Rawn Col 9
Making of Lost in Space: Pat Cadigan Col 14
Making of The X-Files: Fight for the Future: Jody Duncan Col 15
Malignos: Richard Calder Col 24
Mammoth: Stephen Baxter Col 17
Mammoth Book of Best New SF 11: Gardner Dozois Col 16
Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy: Mike Ashley Col 13
Mass: John Harris Col 24
Memory: Lois McMaster Bujold Col 12
Memory Seed: Stephen Palmer Col 2
Metal Fatigue: Sean Williams Col 21
Midnight Falcon: David Gemmell Col 19
Mike & Gaby's Space Gospel: Ken Russell Col 19
Misconceiver: Lucy Ferriss Col 15
Mother of Plenty: Colin Greenland Col 14
Mountain of Black Glass: Tad Williams Col 21
Naked in Death: J.D. Robb Col 1
Night of the Triffids: Simon Clark Col 28
Nothing But Blue Skies: Tom Holt Col 28
Once and Future King: T.H. White Col 29
One Hand Clapping: Lise Leroux Col 13
Only Human: Tom Holt Col 18
Otherland: Tad Williams Col 6
Pashazade: Jon Courtenay Grimwood Col 28
Path of Daggers: Robert Jordan Col 16
Perdido Street Station: China Mieville Col 23
Pillow Friend: Lisa Tuttle Col 6
Pratchett, Terry (Pocket Essentials): Andrew M. Butler Col 29
Precipice: Ben Bova Col 27
Prelude to Dune 1: House Atreides: Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson Col 21
Quicker Than the Eye: Ray Bradbury Col 11
Ravenheart: David Gemmell Col 27
Reave the Just: Stephen Donaldson Col 16
Red Mars: Kim Stanley Robinson Col 29
redRobe: Jon Courtenay Grimwood Col 23
reMix: Jon Courtenay Grimwood Col 19
Resurrection Inc: Kevin J. Anderson Col 14
Return to Mars: Ben Bova Col 19
Richter 10: Arthur C. Clarke & Mike McQuay Col 1
Ringworld Throne: Larry Niven Col 4
River of Blue Fire: Tad Williams Col 14
Ruins of Ambrai: Melanie Rawn Col 9
Sailing to Sarantium: Guy Gavriel Kay Col 16
Sci-Fi and the Internet: Clive Parker Col 4
Scrying Game: Andrew Harman Col 1
Sex Files - File 1: Beyond Limits: Carl K. Mariner Col 9
Shadowkings: Michael Cobley Col 29
Siege of Arrandin: Marcus Herniman Col 20
Silver Screen: Justina Robson Col 21
Slow Lightning: Jack McDevitt Col 23
Snuff Fiction: Robert Rankin Col 20
Someone To Watch Over Me: Tricia Sullivan Col 9
Sparrow: Mart Doria Russell Col 11
Star Beast: Will Baker Col 2
Stardust: Neil Gaiman Col 20
Stars and Stripes Forever: Harry Harrison Col 12
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual: Zimmerman, Sternbach & Drexler Col 16
Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Continuing Mission: Reeves-Stevens, Judith & Garfield Col 16
Stone Canal: Ken MacLeod Col 5
Strider's Galaxy: Paul Barnett Col 8
Sum of All Men: David Farland Col 12
Supertoys Last All Summer Long: Brian Aldiss Col 26
Sword in the Storm: David Gemmell Col 15
Tales of the Dying Earth: Jack Vance Col 24
Tea From An Empty Cup: Pat Cadigan Col 15
Thief's Gamble: Juliet E. McKenna Col 17
Time and the Gods: Lord Dunsany Col 24
Tolkien, J.R.R.: Author of the Century: Tom Shippey Col 30
Tough Guide to Fantasyland: Diana Wynne Jones Col 2
Trader: Charles De Lint Col 11
Transformation: Carol Berg Col 27
Trigger: Arthur C. Clarke & Michael Kube-McDowell Col 22
Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy: David Pringle Col 16
Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: David Pringle Col 6
Unseen University Challenge: David Langford Col 3
Voyage: Stephen Baxter Col 6
Voyage of the Jerle Shannara: Ilse Witch: Terry Brooks Col 25
White Mars, or, The Mind Set Free: Brian Aldiss & Roger Penrose Col 22
Whole Wide World: Paul McAuley Col 30
Winter Warriors: David Gemmell C8
World of Difference: Harry Turtledove Col 14
Worm Ouroboros: E.R. Eddison Col 24
Writing Fantasy Fiction: Sarah LeFanu Col 4
X Factor: Chris Nickson Col 7
X-Files Confidential: Ted Edwards Col 5
TOP
Column 1
Asked for one lesson life had taught her, Gypsy Rose Lee offered, "God is love. But get it in writing." She'd probably empathise with the protagonist in Endymion (Headline, 16.99), Dan Simmons' long-awaited continuation of his Hyperion sequence. The novel posits a galactic empire dominated by an all-pervasive Church. Its military force, Pax, is the stick. The carrot is cruciform symbiotes; implants guaranteeing believers resurrection from death - a literal born-again Christianity. Raul Endymion thinks bondage to Church too high a price for immortality and refuses the cruciform. Even imminent execution following a sham murder rap won't convert him. But he wakes from what should be final oblivion, stunned not killed by bribed executioners. His rescuer is ancient poet Martin Silenus, who wants Raul to find an extraordinary girl called Aenea, a prophesied messiah whose birth was engineered by vanished cybernetic civilisation AI TechnoCore. She entered the Valley of the Time Tombs when she was thirteen and hasn't been seen in the 247 years since. But the duration of her time trip is ... 247 years. She'll step out of the portal in 42 hours. Church/Pax also know this, and the threat Aenea poses them. In the best tradition of sf's lone hero, Raul sets off to outwit the 30,000 guards awaiting her return. 'Endymion' again demonstrates that Simmons has the front to sell big ideas without damaging belief suspension, and the ability to infuse his narrative with a truly mythic quality. Space opera is rarely invested with this level of sophistication and class. There is action, colour and pace, and layers beneath concerned with the power of technology, poetry and fable making. After the post-modernist moribundity much of the field has fallen into in recent years, it's a treat to rediscover that frisson felt as a kid when first encountering this kind of stuff.
Similar things have been said about Arthur C. Clarke, whose past achievements justify viewing him as the most influential living sf author. Lately, he's content to collaborate, or to generate concepts for other hands, as in Richter 10 (Gollancz, 15.99). His sole contribution to this near-future story of a scientist obsessed with perfecting earthquake prediction was the 850 word outline that inspired it. The actual writing chores were undertaken by the late Mike McQuay, in a creditable if slightly florid imitation of A.C.C.'s voice. There are few predictive strokes; the most interesting relates the ascendancy of Chinese conglomerates. More high-tech thriller than hardcore sf, and to a degree formulaic, 'Richter 10' is competent, occasionally exciting, but hardly in vintage Clarke mode.
The authorship issue also arises in J.D. Robb's Naked in Death (Hodder & Stoughton, 16.99), a 22nd century sf/police procedural fusion. Jacket copy explains Robb is the pseudonym of a prolific American crime novelist. A title page error identifies her as Nora Roberts. Oops. First in a series featuring N.Y. cop Lieutenant Eve Dallas, here she hunts a self-publicising serial killer. In an era when the usual street weapons are lasers, this murderer is using antique (20th century) handguns, which he leaves at the scene. 'Naked in Death' is a decent enough whodunit, despite the standard cliché quotient, and cleanly written. But the sf is little more than set dressing. In that respect it has a lack of gravitas of the sort you'd expect had Blade Runner been a made for TV movie. And genre crossovers risk missing both audiences.
Half the Day is Night by Maureen F. McHugh (Orbit, 6.99) occupies the quieter end of the sf spectrum; an almost languid style, slow-building pace, an emphasis on characterisation. Yet the prose manages an arresting quality, eccentric punctuation aside. Set in Caribe, a nation state on the Caribbean seabed, it depicts the relationship between outsiders Mayla Ling, a rich banker, and her newly hired French-Vietnamese bodyguard, David Dai. He proves an action man who shuns violence when she attracts hostility from terror group La Mano de Dios. Thoughtful rather than gosh-wow adventure.
Editors dread letters beginning, "Enclosed is a novel in the vein of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams ... " 'Humorous' sf/fantasy may be the single largest slush pile category. But publishers can't afford to miss a Discworld-sized jackpot, so every list carries at least one Pratchett clone. Though it might be unfair to tag Andrew Harman that way. Central conceit of his latest, The Scrying Game (Legend, 16.99 & 4.99 pb), is an incompetent prophet. Shameless puns and daft character names are alleviated by pacey drive.
When it comes to heroic fantasy, few do it better than David Gemmell. The Legend of Deathwalker (Bantam Press, 15.99) recounts an early episode in the life of Druss the Axeman, first introduced in the author's debut novel, 'Legend'. Here, Druss is embroiled in military and political machinations over possession of magical, totemic jewels, the Eyes of Achnazzar. Gemmell's plots rely on more than action; they address redemption, love, comradeship, the nature of heroism. He explores the moral ambiguities of good and evil, loading his text with an emotional wallop not often found in this genre. Muscles are connected to heads and hearts. Conan it ain't.
TOP
Column 2
In the vast celestial ballroom of sf many dance around their handbags. Others gavotte to the strains of hard science, fox-trot in the slipstream or do the cyberpunk bop. A decade after Ursula K. Le Guin checked out her hat and left the Palais, she's glided back, the stately waltz of her prose as elegant as ever. Four Ways to Forgiveness (Vista, 15.99) is a further segment of the future history that includes her consummate novels The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Alien race the Haimish seeded the universe with human life aeons ago, resulting in myriad worlds rich in cultural and political diversity. The planet Werel has evolved into an oligarchy of slave owners, orbiting the same star as its twin, Teowe, a colony for their "assets". Encroachment of the space-faring Ekumen civilisation, and prospects of joining its galactic federation, sparks revolts on Werel and Teowe. But overthrowing the Bosses leaves a vacuum too easily filled by fresh tyrannies. The liberated must now struggle for a new order of social justice and gender equality. Employing a customary Le Guin device, the four related novellas depict these events from the varying viewpoints of a quartet of disparate women. True to form, the composite picture contains as much ambiguity as understanding. Past lapses into verbosity and occasional meandering are absent here. The milieu is meticulously worked out but we aren't force-fed the detail. There is grace in the dialogue, crucial to character-driven narrative. Best of all is the warmth and adroitness of the language; always exemplary, often sublime.
Will Baker's Star Beast (Hodder & Stoughton, 16.99) dances to a different tune, and on the face of it, a familiar one. A follow-up to Shadow Hunter, it's set in a post-apocalyptic future where power and high-tech concentrates in cities surrounded by desert wastes full of mutant outcasts. Bad civilisation versus good wild people. So far, so clichéd. But it's how you tell 'em. Baker scores on characterisation, ignoring the plot's beckoning stereotypes; a schizophrenic hero, and villainous talk show host Big Bad Beau, are notable examples. A scientist, Baker's well placed to speculate on gene manipulation, which the mutants use as a weapon, fiddling with an opponent's hormones to create fear or, equally debilitating, overwhelming happiness. Given we already live in a world where the cosmetics industry has Mnemonic Technology, enabling face creams to "remind" skin to moisturise itself, that doesn't seem so far-fetched.
Memory Seed by Stephen Palmer (Orbit, 5.99) should give hope to aspiring scribblers in that it achieved the near impossibility of being plucked from the slush pile. Humanity is approaching extinction in the face of a catastrophe reminiscent of early Ballard; an onslaught of lethal vegetation. Most inhabitants of the last city, Kray, invest faith in Authority or deities. A few ditch their political and religious differences and try to do something. The exotic horticulture is as inventive as anything in Aldiss' classic Hothouse; and parallels with present environmental concerns aren't bludgeoned home. Minor first novel faults and a slightly sluggish opening shouldn't obscure the fact that Palmer is a find.
Since instigating his excellent Mythago sequence in the Eighties, the theme of Mankind's relationship with a sometimes malign Nature has characterised Robert Holdstock's fiction too. Non-series novel Ancient Echoes (Harper Collins, 15.99) further extrapolates his notion that our internal landscapes store racial memory imprints of the real landscape around us. Holdstock works on the possibility of an interface between these internal and external factors. All his life, protagonist Jack Chatwin has had visions of a terrified couple, Greyface and Greenface, fleeing an unspecified disaster. Any doubts these apparitions are capable of objective reality are crushed when they steal his daughter. Brilliantly executed, and displaying the originality and intelligence that uniformly distinguish this author's output, 'Ancient Echoes' perhaps falls down a little in its denouement, a happy ending that's emotionally satisfying but not entirely intellectually so. The energy behind the book's conception and execution sweep that small reservation aside. Go for it.
The brace of humorous titles we end with aren't so much dancing as lounging at the bar. John Brosnan's Have Demon, Will Travel (Legend, 4.99) continues the unwieldy adventures of journalist Travis Thomson, who crosses a sorcerer in the guise of a media mogul and suffers various indignities, not least the attentions of a Hollywood producer resurrected as a foul-mouthed, flatulent demon, and a succubus called Sharon. Part mickey-take of heroic fantasy, mostly knockabout romp with some decidedly non-PC undertones, it's a good laff. The trouble with Diana Wynne Jones' The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (Vista, 4.99) is that its function is up the pictures. An alphabetical listing of genre staples, such as QUESTS and TROLLS, its object seems to be to satirise the clichés of bog standard fantasy, and in this it's intermittently funny. The assertion that LITTLE PEOPLE "come in all sizes", for instance, raises a smile. But entries eschewing gags read like straight reference. It'll probably be loved by people who detest fantasy. For me it was like a belt of nectar and silver polish. Not that I've ever drunk nectar.
TOP
Column 3
For jaded sf enthusiasts like your reviewer, authentic tingles are a rarity. But a new Iain M. Banks always gets the synapses firing. Excession (Orbit, 15.99) is set in the Culture, a freewheeling, near utopian spaceborne civilisation; a galactic playground for techno gee-whizzery. An impossibly ancient dead star appears in remote space. The perfect black-body sphere orbiting it is a deeper mystery. Both quickly vanish. Now, 2500 years later, the sphere is back, and could represent an Outside Context Problem, a threat that might terminate the Culture. The original discoverer, Dajeil Gelian, may know something about the artifact, even if subconsciously. Physically dead, her personality is stored aboard sentient starship Sleeper Service. Trouble is, the ship's gone Eccentric and withdrawn from Culture influence, its actions unpredictable. Ambassador Byr Genar-Hofoen's mission is to persuade Dajeil out for rebirthing. His "helper" is another Eccentric ship, Grey Area, which has an unfortunate propensity for blowing wrongdoer's minds to exact revenge. Banks' intellect is perfectly suited to the genre: fecund with ideas, lateral speculations and pleasing facetiousness. There are AI spacesuits that boast about how well they protect their wearers; sex between robot drones; half animal half vegetable creatures paid to cough hallucinogens up people's noses. And best of all the cognisant ships. The real stars here, their characterisation is as convincing as the human and alien cast members. Both cerebral and action-packed, 'Excession' conveys the fundamental otherness of its far future locale.
Banks and Terry Pratchett display a similar panache. Pratchett's latest Discworld, Feet of Clay (Gollancz, 15.99), features serial murders in Ankh Morpork city. The victims are inoffensive old men; the eccentric slaying methods include bludgeoning with a loaf of bread. City Watch Commander Sam Vines investigates, aided and hindered by subordinates of varying incompetence. Among them are dull but honest Captain Carrot, whose girlfriend, Constable Angua, is a vegetarian werewolf suffering Pre-Lunar Tension. A subplot reveals Corporal Nobbs (a dickhead, naturally) as possible heir to the throne. Some say Pratchett is a humorous writer who happens to work in fantasy, rather than a humorous fantasy writer. There may be truth in this, but despite Discworld books having long passed merely satirising the genre, only fantasy would seem to allow him the freedom to extrapolate in as funny and wide-ranging a fashion. Pratchett shows it's possible to be prolific without sacrificing quality, and remains unassailable.
David Langford's Discworld quizbook The Unseen University Challenge (Vista, 3.99) claims Mastermind contestants are forbidden taking Discworld as a subject. This tome stands as a solid substitute. More for dedicated Discographers than casual readers, it's written with enough enthusiasm and wit to be fun in itself. (Sample: Which character was killed by high-velocity tortoise impact?)
Kim Newman's The Bloody Red Baron (Simon & Schuster, 14.99) continues the saga begun in 'Anno Dracula', and takes place in 1918. An alternate world where fictional characters mingle with real historical personages, vampirism is a fact here, the living warily co-existing with the undead. Overthrown as Britain's ruler, Count Dracula, Prince Consort to the late Victoria, fled to Germany. As Chancellor, his political machinations ignite a Great War. Intelligence officer Edwin Winthrop's attempts to infiltrate Chateau du Malinbois, a French billet for German pilots central to an expected Big Push, leads him to fearsome vampire air ace Manfred von Richthofen - the Bloody Red Baron. Like the previous volume, the genius lies in the detail. Mycroft Holmes is a head of British Intelligence. A resurrected Edgar Allan Poe writes Dracula's official biography. Mata Hari, Asquith and Churchill are all vampires, the latter having a fondness for snacking on live rabbits injected with Madeira. Ingenious in-jokes and references to fantastic fiction and films add spice to this absorbing parallel history. It'd be tempting to liken it to Biggles on acid if he wasn't a character too.
Wilhelmina Baird's Clipjoint (Roc, 4.99), sequel to 'Crashcourse', is cyberpunkish. Cass Blaine and her boyfriends Dosh and Moke were a menage a trois until they appeared in a cyber-film, where audiences, via emotional implants, share the actors' feelings. Dosh was murdered during filming. Later, Cass and Moke learn of a new vid star who's Dosh's dead spit. In figuring the riddle the couple are soon laser-cannon fodder in a murky conspiracy. Background is the de rigueur toxic society nearing anarchy. Plenty of pyrotechnics are unleashed by various street toughs. Of one such, Cass opines, 'Guys are a weird animal. Some are so weird you practically meet them coming around the other side.'
Gabriel Soul, from Ian Watson's Hard Questions (Gollancz, 16.99), certainly fits that bill. A cult leader in the Koresh mould, he offers succour for suckers at his Waco-like Arizona HQ. Dr Clare Conway and lover Jack Fox attract his attention when a newspaper wrongly hints that Clare knows the secrets of Qua, the first quantum computer. Qua may be a conduit to alternate realities and life after death. Which puts it a cut above your average Amstrad. Initially high-tech chase thriller, 'Hard Questions' blossoms into full-blown sf. And with Gabriel Soul, Watson amply demonstrates that these nuts aren't all they're cracked up to be.
TOP
Column 4
Larry Niven has ideas big enough to choke a horsehead nebula, and The Ringworld Throne (Orbit, £16.99) takes a third bite at one of his largest. The Seventies saw a flurry of Big Dumb Object novels; encounters with gigantic spacefaring artefacts built by unknown intelligences for unknowable purposes. Ringworld snaffled the awards. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama was at least as good, Bob Shaw's Orbitsville maybe better. But sequels to both diminished the originals because they explained too much. And a sense of wonder needs fuelling with mystery. Paradoxically, Niven thrives by appearing to break that rule. In 1979's Ringworld Engineers, and here, he pulls off the trick by solving minor riddles and immediately giving us more to chew, keeping the greater enigma of his BDO's origin satisfyingly obscure. Ringworld Throne's dense plot reintroduces central protagonist Louis Wu, now two centuries old. With renewed youth the prize, he returns to Ringworld to parley with the alien groups squatting there, in order to establish which will dominate. As ever, the science is impeccable, the lifeforms ingenious. Fresh readers should note this is heavy duty stuff; checking previous volumes advised.
Jack McDevitt's The Engines of God (Voyager, £5.99) is further evidence of a resurgence in Big Idea sf. Ancient monuments are discovered in space. On Saturn's moon Iapetus, the carving depicts a fearsome alien. Art in a ruined temple on the planet Quraqua shows this creature as a personification of death. Quraqua's moon, Oz, has the likeness of a huge city, never intended to be occupied. Archaeologist Richard Wald believes there's a link vital to the human race. He has to prove it before Quraqua is terraformed and the knowledge lost. McDevitt also understands the importance of intrigue, and appreciating that a mythic quality feeds our imaginations in life and fiction, offers a fitting resolution.
Robert Silverberg's Starborne (Voyager, £15.99) has Humanity slipping to extinction via apathy. Conquering war, crime, disease has removed the spark. Starship Wotan and its fifty crew seek habitable worlds for a new beginning. The unnamed captain becomes romantically obsessed with Noelle, a blind telepath providing Wotan's only connection with home. But her talent is blocked by mental static from an abstruse source. Journey and novel's end is poetic, verging on mystical, while conforming to a plausible scientific rationale. Silverberg's exemplary prose is a delight, yet Starborne marks time; a notion warranting no more than novella-length treatment.
Mary Corran's Darkfell (Orion, £16.99) occupies fantasy's intelligent apogee. Heir to last matriarchal estate Arcady, young Ninian loses Quest, the man she loves, to the all-powerful Priesthood. Her embittered friend Kerron joins too, his thirst for power the antithesis of Quest's altruism. The pair's rivalry plays out against an empire beset by insurgency, looming ecological disaster and what could be godly intervention. A deft take on religion and politics from the perspective of feminist sensibility, Darkfell benefits from an opulently portrayed environment and sound characterisation.
Whereas Corran creates her world from scratch, Garry Kilworth draws on a once extant civilisation for Book 1 of The Navigator Kings, The Roof of Voyaging (Orbit, £16.99). His inspiration is Polynesian legends. Nobly born Kupe is a great navigator and warrior, a kind of Jason of the islands. Pursuit of a giant octopus leads him to discover a place he names Land-of-Mists. In a piece of geographical cheekiness, it turns out Kilworth has swapped New Zealand for Britain! But it works. It also serves to introduce a male Pict and female Scot, who act as everyman and woman for the reader in interpreting the strange culture of Oceania - a culture which treats women with commendable liberalism while being quite capable of serving a vanquished enemy's testicles for supper. This epoch of heroic deeds, with its pantheon of exotic gods, is a welcome change of locale for a field that's become a mite predictable in its settings.
Sarah LeFanu's Writing Fantasy Fiction (A&C Black, £8.99) is an accessible guide for aspiring fabulists. It makes a good fist at a working definition of the genre, advises on plot evaluation, building characters and realising worlds. Extracts from published stories and author quotes spice the text. Cleanly written, the book's no nonsense approach should fill a neglected niche. Cyberpunk Handbook [The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook] by St Jude, R.U. Sirius and Bart Nagel (Arrow, £6.99) is either celebration of a science fictional sub-genre transformed into cool, streetwise, anarchic lifestyle or a cynical exercise heralding imminent exploitation of same by crass commercialism. (Older readers recalling Marks & Spencer's 1967 Summer of Love fashion range might experience deja vu.) It's got an introduction by Bruce Sterling, pays its dues to Gibson, Brunner and Max Headroom, and made me laugh, so I'm inclined to accept a pure motive. Clive Parker's Sci-Fi and the Internet (Future Publishing, £12.99) is a bit pricey for 132 pages, and should be ashamed for using the dreadful word Sci-Fi (a derogatory term among aficionados), but is nevertheless welcomed by this reviewer in his continuing struggles with the technology. As someone who thinks necrophilia is the stuff ghosts put on bagels, I need all the help I can get.
TOP
Column 5
Whether the term cyberpunk ever had any real meaning is debatable. If it constituted something new in sf, the revolution was in style rather than content. Certainly we've got to a point where the prefix cyber is applied so promiscuously it's just a marketing tag. William Gibson instigated the whole deal with 'Neuromancer' in 1984, and joined that elite of sf writers commanding a mainstream readership. Idoru (Viking, £16) lacks much of the glitz characterising his previous output; although it has values, as you'd expect from one of the smartest speculative authors around. It depicts a familiar, near dystopian future, in thrall to global conglomerates and inescapable infotechnology. Netsurfer Colin Laney and teenager Chia McKenzie are separately drawn to a post-'quake Tokyo. The lure is ageing rock legend Rez, of megaband Lo/Rez, who wants to marry media star Rei Toei. As she's a computer generated personality construct this is disconcerting and probably impossible. Laney's hired to discover what Rez is up to. Chia and her Lo/Rez fan club want to stop the wedding. The denouement has a typically Gibsonian amoral payoff. His bag is projecting contemporary scientific developments and cultural concerns into futurity in order to say something about now. Alas, the something he has to say this time doesn't amount to much. But it's accessible, with ample flashes of his cool, beguiling style, and will do until another comes along.
Ken MacLeod's The Stone Canal (Legend, £15.99) is the type of science fiction that doesn't overly weary us with the actual science. (A compliment not a put-down; hard sf's pedantry can fossilise eyeballs.) Jon Wilde wakes from death on New Mars in the late 21st century, cloned by robot Jay-Dub, who needs help fighting ruthless tycoon Dave Reid. Wilde and Reid were student friends in the 20th century, drawn together by left-wing politics. Initially reluctant to get involved, Wilde changes his mind after discovering it was Reid who killed him. They encounter Reid's runaway sex toy, beautiful replicant Dee Model, and fall in with the local resistance. If things drag a bit after that, it's because 'The Stone Canal' suffers slightly from second novel syndrome; there's an air of marking time about it. But not terminally. It's better technically than MacLeod's first; well constructed with sound characterisations and a tasty dry wit. Only the plot doesn't take us very far.
Among British writers at least, David Gemmell ranks as the finest exponent of heroic fantasy. Dark Moon (Bantam Press, £15.99) is set in a land where four duchies are engaged in a long-running war. A thousand years before, three races occupied the world: humans, Eldarin and Daroth. Eldarin lived in harmony with nature. Daroth were ferocious killers of humans. Then the Daroth vanished in a single night, leaving desert where their city stood. In more recent times, power-hungry magician Duke Sirano instigated a black propaganda campaign against the Eldarin, blaming them for a plague. They disappeared too, leaving him with the mysterious Eldarin Pearl, the prize that sparked the war. A dark moon rises and a tidal wave sweeps the desert. The Daroth re-emerge to resume war on Humanity. Three heroes move through the chaos - mercenary Tarantio, who shares his mind with a destructive demon; Karis, warrior and mistress of strategy; Duvodas, a human raised by Eldarin. Many of the author's perennial themes appear, yet one of Gemmell's talents is in ringing fresh changes every time. The pace is compelling, the delivery clean and economic. His intelligent handling of emotionality, and storytelling sensibilities, have done much to elevate this genre to a considerably more respectable status.
Oliver Johnson's The Forging of the Shadows, Book One of the Lightbringer Trilogy (Legend, £5.99), is sword and sorcery containing much that's commendable even if the whole isn't completely satisfactory. It suffers from excessive length and unevenness of style. Audaciously, the entire story takes place in one day. Originally dedicated to Reh, God of Light, the city of Thrull is now under the heel of the followers of Iss, God of Eternal Night. Vampire Lord Faran and his undead army rule. Young priest Urthred journeys to Thrull to visit his long unseen brother Randel, but finds he's been taken for sacrifice. Urthred meets warrior Jayal, and Jayal's former fiancee Thalassa, who's reduced to acting as Faran's concubine. They unite to oppose tyranny. Despite initial slow momentum, this is an imaginative debut avoiding most of the clichés. The heroes have a tinge of the bizarre mightiness associated with characters in kung-fu movies and anime. Sufficient action and colour kept me reading, but I'd like to see a tighter, more disciplined text next time.
The Best New SF - 9th Annual Collection (Raven, £7.99), compiled by Gardner Dozois, reprints some of 1995's finest shorts. Le Guin, Haldeman, Pat Cadigan, Dan Simmons and Brian Stableford head the quality entrants. Recommendable bumper volume. Spin-offs about a show beyond reason have got beyond reason, but Ted Edwards' X-Files Confidential (Little, Brown, £9.99) is meatier than most. Mountains of information; complete episode guides; an encyclopaedic section; lots of pix. I'm thinking of having "X-Files" tattooed on my forehead so I can be showered with money as I walk the streets.
TOP
Column 6
Tad Williams' Otherland (Legend, £16.99), beginning a four volume sequence, is set fifty years from now, when a viable alternative to reality exists in cyberspace. Maintained by a vast computer-generated VR network, Otherland offers an infinite number of environments, complete with 'characters'. Log on to star in your fantasies. The only limit is imagination. But as old folk tales warned against the perilous deceptions of the fairy realm, so all is not what it seems in this electronic wonderland either. Baffled digital pilgrims catch glimpses of a fantastical golden city. And increasing numbers of young people suffer alterations to their brain function while online, leaving them in a vegetative state. Disparate individuals get sucked into the mystery. They include African teacher Renie Sulaweyo; a tribesman called !Xabbu; Orlando, a 14 year-old American steeped in daydreams; Paul Jonas, ripped from a 1918 battlefield and sent on a Vonnegutian odyssey through time and space. Most enigmatic is Mr Sellers, an elderly man unaccountably held prisoner in a US military base. It transpires that Otherland is ruled by The Grail Brotherhood, a super-rich elite embroiled in a conspiracy involving the taking of Earth's children. Maybe. The novel has a plausibility both attractive and disturbing; its depiction of technology's potential to deliver nightmares as easily as dreams adheres to classic cautionary tale mode. Its premise is so flexible that anything's possible, but Williams knows where to impose parameters, remaining firmly in charge of a large cast and elaborate plot. 'Otherland' has true speculative grandeur, and a descriptive quality that sticks in your head like Zen toffee.
Alternate world stories are all the rage. In Stephen Baxter's Voyage (Voyager, £15.99), John F. Kennedy survives assassination, albeit he's consigned to a wheelchair. Out of office, he retains enough authority after the '69 moon landing to persuade Congress to payroll a manned Mars mission - Project Ares. To the disgust of the military-industrial complex, Apollo continues, the Space Shuttle is cancelled. Ares launches in 1986, when Earth and the red planet are closest. 'Voyage' describes the journey and how Ares' crew of three came to be on it, principally via the only female member, Natalie York. Not all post '63 history is altered; Nixon, Carter and Reagan still become presidents, the Vietnam war isn't avoided. Minor changes are more telling. Substituting fictional Joe Muldoon for Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, for example, and having the Mars lander named Enterprise following a campaign by 'Star Trek' fans. Baxter handles his alternate social, political and scientific history flawlessly. He's emerging as the most credible heir to the hard sf tradition previously monopolised by Asimov and Clarke.
Faraday's Orphans by N. Lee Wood (Gollancz, £16.99) features a more conventional vision. Reversal of Earth's magnetic poles screws the ozone layer. The affluent survive in shielded cities, the underclasses mutate in radiation-soaked wilderness. Hero Berkeley Nielson (rather unfortunately answering to the diminutive "Berk") is a Ranger, venturing by helicopter from domed Pittsburgh to trade with Outsiders. He loses 'copter and weapons seeking oil in a distant location. Befriended by psychopathic teenage girl Sadonya, they brave ferocious gangs and other dangers to reach civilisation. I liked the idea of "cooks", mutants who can visualise the molecular structures of viruses. Decently written, despite outworn stereotypical images. But the characters are uniformly unsympathetic and the ending seems an afterthought.
Lisa Tuttle's contributions to sf and horror fiction have always been characterised by subtlety and adroitness. The Pillow Friend (White Wolf, £12.99), which broadly falls into the fantasy category, is a gem of character-driven extrapolation. Beginning in early '60s Houston, Texas, it introduces Agnes Grey, whom we follow through infancy and adolescence to adulthood. An unhappy 7 year-old, she blanks out a depressive, erratic mother by retreating to an imaginary world. Her confidant is pillow friend Myles, an antique doll she believes can talk. As she grows, Agnes fantasises perfect romance. Her Aunt Marjorie's warnings regarding this seemingly harmless escapism have resonance when Agnes later falls for English poet Graham Storey and their marriage turns out far from idyllic. As the years pass, we watch Agnes weaving dreams and strangling in their threads. This is a fantasy about fantasy, superbly told, that reinforces the timeless adage cautioning against being careful what you wish for in case you get it. Seriously good.
The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by David Pringle (Carlton, £19.99), doesn't pretend to compete with the exhaustive John Clute/Peter Nicholls Orbit encyclopedia. This would be ideal for anyone who enjoys reading or watching sf and would like to broaden their general knowledge of the field. It's better on literature than films and TV, where trifling errors creep in. Well stuffed with classy visuals, production is lavish. Pringle also edits 'Interzone', the UK's very own world-class, Hugo Award winning sf magazine. The Best of Interzone (Voyager, £5.99) has Ballard, Aldiss, Disch, Baxter and two dozen others illustrating the argument that short stories could be sf's natural form. This tome may win a prize for dullest cover of 1997, but hopefully that won't put readers off sampling its splendid content. The standard is consistently dazzling.
TOP
Column 7
I was dead chuffed to hear about computational intractability; tasks computers can't do as well as humans. You don't have to be a luddite to rejoice that there are still some left. Certainly no machine could make the kind of defining judgements necessary for The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, edited by John Clute and John Grant (Orbit £50). Its indispensable predecessor, the Clute/Peter Nicholls 'Encyclopedia of Science Fiction', dealt with a genre largely confined to the 20th century and whose parameters are generally understood. But how do you arrive at an exegesis for fantasy? In theory, all works of imagination are applicable, which is another way of saying that every piece of fiction, irrespective of category, is a fantasy. And that way lies madness. Clute's yardstick for a fantasy text is that it's a self-coherent narrative: " ... it tells a story which is impossible in the world as we perceive it; when set in an otherworld, that otherworld will be impossible, though stories set there may be possible in its terms." Which could be the best definition anyone's yet come up with. The book covers all media, with literature given the lion's share, and takes the latter part of the 18th century as starting point for the bulk of entries. Although plenty of themes from earlier times are included, too, and put into historical context. A subject of this breadth dictates an eclectic mix - Conan the Barbarian and Shakespeare 'Yellow Submarine' and 'Naked Lunch', Absurdist Fantasy and Hobbits; 26 pages on Opera. The stated intention is to recognise fantasy not by its boundaries but by examples best representing it. This is the first time anyone has attempted a precise delineation of what is arguably more of an amorphous concept than a distinct genera, and to do it in the form of a practical source book. The result runs to 1072 pages, over 4000 entries and a million plus words. So is 'The Encyclopedia of Fantasy' any good? Yes. Better than good by several orders of magnitude, in fact. It achieves exactly what it sets out to do. Its range is staggeringly comprehensive, the balance of content ubiquitous and learned enough to appeal as much to academics as anoraks. The scope on offer makes it a perfect one stop guide, and where it can't cover a topic in depth it directs you to other sources. A lively, accessible style helps it avoid the dusty information-dump syndrome prevalent in so many encyclopedias; and it passes the dip-in test - a volume as entertaining to browse as it is to use. This is a considerable work, not only of reference but scholarship. Let's hope literary establishment biases don't stop it being recognised as such.
The non-fiction theme continues with Paul M. Sammon's Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner (Orion, £17.99). Despite Philip K. Dick's contention that, "You would have to kill me and prop me up in the seat of my car with a smile painted on my face to get me to go near Hollywood," he finally acceded to Ridley Scott's cajolery and let 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' form the basis of the film's screenplay. Notwithstanding Scott's assessment of 'Blade Runner' as "Just an entertainment," and the studio insisting on a cosier ending, it was quickly acknowledged as one of that handful of true sf screen classics. Journalist Sammon
based his book on over 70 interviews with cast and crew. His continuing fascination with the movie borders on obsession; fortunately it manifests as an incisive and informative record, as opposed to the sort of pedantic pseudo-intellectual self-abuse that can afflict movie aficionados who spend too long in the dark.
Talking of obsessives, here's a case for the X-Philes. (Cue spooky music.) Someone is cloning David Duchovny biographies. Chris Nickson's The X Factor (Arrow, £4.99) has the feel of a quickie scissors and paste job. Best that can be said of this light read is that it's efficiently written. The blurb promises "The Un-X-purgated truth about the man behind Fox Mulder." Whoever this bloke might be, he doesn't step into the light. Consequently it's difficult to give a Fox. Equally unauthorised but much better is Paul Mitchell's The Duchovny Files (Bantam Books, £ 9.99), which at least doesn't try to pretend that its subject has lead a life anything other than seemingly quite dull. Mitchell's effort is more rounded and includes two fairly revealing interviews with the eerie heart-throb.
A lot of 'X-Files' devotees are showing disturbing signs of becoming far too po-faced. They might be helped to lighten up a bit by Mark Leigh and Mike Lepine's much needed antidote The Extra-terrestrial's Guide to the X-Files (Headline, £7.99). A genuinely funny lampoon of the show, this tells the aliens' side of the story. Among the revelations are their campaign to destabilise Scully by leaving messages on her answering machine making fun of her weight, and what part the 'Smiley' badge plays in their plan for world domination. For some reason Headline sneaked this one out a couple of months ago with next to no promotion. Obviously a conspiracy.
TOP
Column 8
Every so often, someone comes along and revitalises a moribund genre. Wes Craven's shot in the arm for horror films, 'Scream', is a current example. With Strider's Galaxy (Legend, £5.99) Paul Barnett does the same for space opera. There are similarities of approach. 'Scream' is a horror movie about horror movies, an essentially post-modernist exercise that works because it takes its sources seriously. 'Strider's Galaxy' partly functions this way too. It embraces and celebrates the prototypical elements of the form. And like Craven, Barnett plays it straight.
Twenty-fifth century heroine Leonie Strider captains an expedition to Tau Ceti II with the intention of founding the first colony outside our solar system. En route, her starship falls through a wormhole in space. Emerging in a distant sector of the universe called Wondervale, she finds herself in the middle of a rebellion against the ruling dominion. Barnett scores by understanding that what raises action-driven sf above the routine is a liberal application of ideas. There's such a sprinkling of inventive notions, in fact, that pit stops are necessary for exposition, which slightly lessens pace and tension. That said, there are worse charges you can make against an author than over-abundant imagination. The important thing is that he discards restraints and lets rip. Unashamedly occupying the pure entertainment end of the spectrum, this is a primary colours read; exotic, extravagant, zingy. Pipe and slippers science fiction it isn't.
Gregory Benford also pulls off a difficult, perhaps unenviable, task in Foundation's Fear (Orbit, £16.99). Volume one of 'The Second Foundation Trilogy', and authorised by Isaac Asimov's estate, this follows-up the sequence of novels once voted the greatest series in sf. Classic works continued by other hands should be approached with caution, particularly when the originals are as formative and influential as here. But Benford makes a pretty good job of it. Principally because he's very much in Asimov's stylistic mode, and fortunate enough to inherit a concept of immense flexibility. Set in an unimaginably far future, the initial stories are dominated by Hari Seldon, legendary 'Mathist' and inventor of psychohistory, a means of predicting future trends affecting the mass of Humanity. Divining the imminent collapse of the galactic empire, he establishes rival power base the Foundation to ensure the perpetuation of civilisation. This book takes place as Seldon starts to acquire the political power he needs to attain his goal, an interval of Machiavellian scheming Asimov skimmed over. Like his progenitor, Benford's approach is character-centred. The Foundations mostly eschewed physical action; their appeal, as here, is largely cerebral. Thus 'Foundation's Fear' employs the typical Asimovian device of confronting its cast with a succession of knotty problems to be cleverly resolved. In addition, Benford undertakes some necessary tidying-up by inserting elements that didn't appear in the originals. Rectifying the absence of artificial intelligences, faster-than-light drives and a world-wide web, for example. The novel successfully emulates the authentic Asimov 'voice', and proves that despite the odds it's possible to add to rather than diminish an existing, respected canon. Subsequent volumes will be by two other writers. A suitably high standard's been fixed for them to match.
Flight of the Mariner, Paul Ware's first novel (Hodder & Stoughton, £17.99), is again traditional - dare I say old fashioned? - science fiction. Which is not to put it down. On the contrary, its evocation of pulp era ebullience makes for an engaging, pacey diversion. Sixth-form hero David Shaw and friend Kate Caitlin are transported to a planet, Shushuan, that somehow briefly connects to Earth. The original birthplace of Humanity, Shushuan is a barbaric, feudalist place with something of the flavour of John Carter's Mars. Soon the teens are embroiled in a war against the Librarians, custodians of the remaining knowledge of long-vanished race the Vinh. The setting is well realised and internally consistent; there's a grand villain in Librarians' leader Rohc Vahnn; action scenes are pleasingly staged. Adventure, a dash of romance, plenty of cliffhangers in high wobbly places, and a certain piquant poignancy fashion a sprightly debut.
David Gemmell's Winter Warriors (Bantam Press, £15.99) is a title with multiple meanings. As the last winter snows are melting, three old warriors are stood down from the Ventrian army: Nogusta, a blue-eyed, black swordsman; Bison, a dedicated brawler with disgusting manners; Kebra, the greatest archer of them all until time dimmed his sight. But an equally aged priestess dreams of the coming of an ancient demon race bent on returning the world to Fire and Ice. The key is an unborn baby, and it falls to this reluctant trio of disparate, fading, very unlikely heroes to protect the child. Sympathy and rage are what Gemmell handles best. Empathy for the gallant, indomitable, beleaguered protagonists; anger at the wickedness they have to face. Probably the finest living writer of heroic fantasy, he flawlessly creates high-souled heroes out of ordinary people, and shows that one man, or woman, really can make a difference. At its best, his work is genuinely stirring. His world is simultaneously familiar, beautiful, strange and scary. 'Winter Warriors' is another prime example of Gemmell's grievous bodily optimism.
TOP
Column 9
When it comes to off-the-wall alternate realities, Tim Powers takes some beating. Earthquake Weather (Legend, £17.99) postulates a '90's America that seamlessly blends the familiar with supernaturalism and mythology. Greek gods, vengeful spirits and magic are as much a staple as TV, automobiles and diners. Attracted by the vineyards, Dionysius has made his home in California. In an updating of the sacrificed gods theme, reminiscent of the Oak and Holly Kings of pagan England, he demands the death of benevolent West Coast ruler Scott Crane. This to maintain the land's fertility, and appease it to prevent earthquakes. Crane's daughter, Janis, her mind controlled by the ghost of a psychopath, duly obliges. The King's death isn't necessarily final, and Janis wants to make amends by offering her body for his resurrection. But there are those, including pretenders to his crown, who prefer him to stay dead. Among them is a stigmatic fourteen year-old boy possessed by the spirit of Thomas Edison. Another is the shrink treating Janis for multiple personality disorder, who's only interested in eating the ghosts in her head. Perhaps slightly overlong, the book still supports a brisk pace. Exemplary characterisation and an adroit use of language distinguish Powers' work. Legend has reissued The Anubis Gates (£6.99), his commendable 1983 steampunk outing, which also occupies the borderline between fantasy and sf, and sweats originality.
The kind of 'possession' taking place in Tricia Sullivan's Someone to Watch Over Me (Orion, £16.99) is a product of future technology. Via brain implants the super-rich can become Watchers, inhabiting bodies of the less well-off to experience vicarious thrills. Adrien's Watcher is an enigmatic woman known as C. She differs from other Watchers in having developed a form of biological feedback that enables her to take increasing control of him, and of his love affair with Sabina, a brilliant composer. C uses Adrien to steal a new piece of wetware and involves him in dangerous intrigues. Biotechnology and emotional exploration go hand in hand in this intelligent novel. Identities merge chillingly. Even if the intellectual pyrotechnics are a little ostentatious at times, here's a challenging, disturbing, often compulsive read. Sullivan's sharp inventiveness points to a bright future.
At the beginning of Melanie Rawn's career she shared the same unjust fate as anyone, particularly female, who writes about dragons. She was compared to Anne McCaffrey. The Ruins of Ambrai (Pan, £7.99) and The Mageborn Traitor (Macmillan, £17.99), volumes one and two in Rawn's 'Exiles' series, won't provoke that reaction. The world of Lenfell may have been seeded millennia ago by humans with a predilection for magic. Not that everyone there has magical abilities. Those who do, the Mageborn, are taken at puberty to the College of Ambrai and taught to develop their powers. Followers of the Malerrisi philosophy share a contrary vision. They believe individuals should have their allotted place in the Great Loom of Life, and anyone stepping out of line is a thread to be cut off. (Elitism versus collectivism. Spot the political analogy.) This conflict leads to Ambrai being destroyed and the magically talented banned from public office. Enter three sisters. Glenin sides with the Malerrisi. Sarra becomes a leading politician. Caillet trains secretly with the now clandestine Mage Guardians. When the trio finally come together again, war is inevitable. Rawn has worked out the detail of her world to the nth degree. A leaf can't fall or someone's stocking ladder without her telling us about it. The number of characters is huge, which makes for occasional confusions. And pace tends to be unvarying whatever the plot dictates. All that aside, she does have a way of hooking you in. Her imagination is copious and her sense of drama strong. For superior fantasy sagas, heavy on cast and plentiful storylines, she's your woman.
In Down to Heaven by Mark Canter (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99) the helicopter carrying a team of biologists crashes in the Amazon region of Venezuela, where mountains rise to plateaux ten thousand feet high.. The only survivors are a divorced couple. Tree Summerwood and Mason Drake had an ideal marriage until some dark event during the Vietnam war changed him. Now they can't stand each other. Eventually they discover a hidden city, but it's no Shangri-La. An unknown yellow-skinned tribe lives there, descendants of a Chinese expedition five centuries before. Male births having dwindled to zero, all of them are female. They won't kill Mason or Tree providing she bears him a boy child. The only problem is that Mason's impotent. It's hard to avoid using the word 'hokum' in relation to this one. But prefaced with 'enjoyable'.
There are no such libidinous difficulties in The Sex Files - File 1: Beyond Limits by Carl K. Mariner (£5.99), launching Delta, an erotic imprint from Headline. Government agents Hannah and Jarvis, specialising in the unlikely field of amatory paranormal happenings, investigate an outbreak of nymphomania among normally respectable women. It's actually quite mild in erotic terms. As marketing it's smart, though. All the X-Philes will buy it. And men in grubby raincoats can buy it too, pretending to be X-Philes.
TOP
Column 10
The old Jewish axiom, 'If God lived on Earth, people would break His windows' came to mind reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica (Voyager, £16.99). It likewise highlights human perversity by depicting our ability to screw the environment. In a near future setting, the book extrapolates what's already happening to the planet's last great untouched resource: nations running their patches as fiefdoms; the arrival of asset strippers; adventure holidays for well-heeled resilients. Another twenty, thirty years, Robinson speculates, and we'll have a Klondike cum Costa del Antarctica with exploiters and eco-terrorists pitched against each other. The story filters through a General Field Assistant we know only as X; his former lover, tour guide Valerie Kenning; Wade Norton, assistant to a US senator, and Chinese geomancer Ta Shu. An initially mysterious group, the Ferals, are revealed as unauthorised colonists out to establish a settlement. Thus bringing in utopianism, a perennial Robinson theme. It's debatable whether 'Antarctica' is science fiction at all - it could stand as a mainstream thriller - but the locale is every bit as alien as that in his acclaimed Mars trilogy, so we can call it sf by default. If there's a blemish in an otherwise flawless narrative it's the author mistaking a novel for Western Union. The last segment, in particular, has more disputation than plot. But these occasional longueurs don't blow the pace. 'Antarctica' is one of the best genre novels published this year and certain of a showing in the awards round.
Like 'Antarctica', James Lovegrove's Days (Phoenix, £6.99) takes place in the close future but is really about now. Days is the world's premier gigastore, a retail habitat two and a half kilometres square, occupying seven million hectares, stocking every conceivable commodity in its 666 departments. It sits at the heart of a decaying English city riven with crime. Not that Days isn't a dangerous place itself. People are regularly trampled to death in the sales, shot for shoplifting, or killed by customers maddened with bargain fever. Frank Hubble is a Ghost, a totally nondescript looking store detective in the Tactical Security department. (Motto: "The Customer is Not Always Right.") He's wedded to routine, but so washed out by it that, in a Kafkaesque touch, he can't even see his face in mirrors anymore. After thirty-three years he's decided to quit, and we follow him through his last day. A parallel thread has Linda and Gordon Trivett receiving their coveted Days credit card, which allows them into the store for the first time. The third strand concerns the owners, the seven sons of late founder Septimus Day, the more avaricious of whom mouth expressions like, "Mammon willing." What we have here is a satire on capitalism, a consumerist fable, that tastes like a blend of Pohl & Kornbluth, Ballard and Dick, with a dash of Borges. For the most part it's very entertaining, even when it veers into the
overly-obvious, like having assistants in the Book department called Oscar, Salman and Kurt. Much of the wit is murderously wry, and the central conceit is almost brilliant. Be thankful we've got sf as a home for this sort of quirkiness.
Levar Burton, author of Aftermath (Vista, £5.99), is best known for playing Kunta Kinte in 'Roots', and more recently Geordi La Forge in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'. Now his professed lifelong addiction to sf has found expression as a novelist. The good news is that this isn't just another celeb dabbling in writing (or taking credit for someone else's work). A post-catastrophe tale with strong characterisation and a cultivated, assured delivery, 'Aftermath' is an imposing debut. In 2012, the first African-American President is assassinated, triggering civil war. Then a Midwestern earthquake and the revelation that the space programme has disrupted Earth's atmosphere really puts the mockers on. The McGuffin is Dr Rene Reynolds' Neuro-Enhancer, a device that can treat any illness. She's kidnapped by ruthless people wanting to exploit it. A former NASA scientist, an orphan child and a Lakota shaman, linked telepathically, quest through the chaos to rescue her. Burton's perspective is genuinely liberal, the book chilling in its credible portrayal of social collapse.
Tom Arden's The Harlequin's Dance, Book One of The Orokon (Gollancz, £16.99), posits an 18th century sort of world, with jump-cuts from after to before to during a civil war between twin princes battling for kingship. There's a huge cast, most presented via apparently unconnected flashbacks, which proves confusing and quickly tedious. Many characters resemble a raree show. The bad ones, for example, always look the part; debauched, lecherous, drunken. Too frequently the narrative echoes the slow, over-written heaviness characterising the fiction of the era it apes. In this respect it's a bit like the less readable parts of 'Gormenghast'. On the plus side, as it warms up the novel does become more palatable, and it is very atmospheric. Though whether form and storyline should be subjugated by atmosphere is questionable. Every now and then a flash of magical light illuminates the murk, which goes some small way in making up for the feeling that we're being force-fed Polyfilla.
TOP
Column 11
We're hearing the expression 'millennial fiction' a lot, though mostly in as nebulous a way as buzz terms like 'magical realism' or 'slipstream'. If the concept has any validity, it's perhaps best exemplified by a novel like Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow (Black Swan, £6.99). Linguistically gifted Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz has seen suffering in many cultures and striven to overcome it. Sent back to his native Puerto Rico, he's present when the Arecibo radio telescope detects signals from the distant planet Rakhat. Decoded, the message proves to be an exquisite harmony. The Jesuits finance a mission to Rakhat, reasoning that a species which makes such beautiful music must know God. Emilio goes along. Two narrative strands, separated by many years, depict his return, the only survivor, brought home to stand trial for child murder and prostitution. Already found guilty by the media, the crippled shell of a priest faces universal hostility. At the denouement, the two time-lines converge, keen as an arrow, to reveal the truth. Russell's debut is a tangy blend of psychological insight and impassioned lyricism, passed through a sieve of diamond clear prose to filter out mawkish goo. She handles her material with a skill many more experienced writers may well envy. Exploring the nature of the religious impulse, and the prejudices and moral ambiguities it inspires, 'The Sparrow' has depth, pace, engaging characters, and an alien culture that knocks you sideways once Russell shows you how to interpret it. I tip this for the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist.
Where 'The Sparrow' addresses the question of identity on a Humanity-wide basis, Charles De Lint's Trader (Macmillan, £16.99) tackles it on an individual level. Guitar maker Max Trader is so consumed by work that almost his only human contact is Nia, a teenager living above his workshop with her mother. Little else exists to tie him to his life. And one day he wakes up to find he isn't in it anymore. Instead, he inhabits the body of feckless Johnny Devlin, a user and abuser of people. Only Nia realises what's happened, and who's going to take a pubescent teenager seriously? Certainly not her mother, who's also mysteriously 'become' somebody else. Devlin, suddenly possessing a nice flat and tasty bank account, sure isn't going to give the game away. Max's struggles to reclaim himself are interwoven with the daily hassles of living on the street. The body-swap premise isn't original, but there's a genuinely fresh perspective here, and a dramatic departure from the humorous Thorne Smith tradition. Thought provoking, animated, and benefiting from the unflaggingly high standards of De Lint's prose, 'Trader' handles well the tensions of survival and the metaphysics of existence.
A truly remarkable yet believably coherent ecology is the bedrock of Larry Niven's Destiny's Road (Orbit, £16.99). Little by little the strangeness of the planet Destiny is revealed through the picaresque adventures of Jemmy Bloocher, starting the night he murders a trader. This is a disaster for Spiral Town, for the traders bring speckles, tiny seeds which the citizens cook into practically everything. It isn't understood why, but anyone who goes without speckles becomes a virtual moron. With the supply in peril, Jemmy begins an odyssey, seeking to unravel the mystery of Destiny's original, long vanished colonists. This means travelling the spectacular Road that according to legend girdles the entire planet. Niven's prose is always workmanlike and accessible,
but it's his ideas-driven plots that matter most. His greatest strength is an extraordinarily fecund imagination, and it shines throughout.
The Family Tree by Sheri S. Tepper (Voyager, £11.50) has small town cop Dora Henry trapped in a sterile marriage. All her husband, Jared, wants is a perfect housewife, with the result that Dora's life is slipping away in immaculate, loveless surroundings. Spotting a weed bravely poking up alongside the porch, she spares it in a tiny gesture of rebellious sympathy. Incensed, Jared attempts to uproot it and lands in hospital, giving Dora the chance to break free. But her escape coincides with bizarre events: trees grow at an accelerated rate, choking the town; babies disappear; a group of geneticists are murdered. The culmination is the arrival of time travellers from a future that's lost technology and embraced feudalism. An exotic sf/fantasy hybrid, featuring Tepper's recurrent concern for ecological issues and mankind's destructive arrogance, this is probably her best to date.
The visitors from Alpha Centauri in Robert J. Sawyer's Illegal Alien (Voyager, £5.99) call themselves Tosoks, and offer futuristic technology in exchange for parts for their damaged ship. Joy greets this visitation, with celebrity astronomer Cletus Calhoun leading the human side in inter-species co-operation. After months of perfect harmony, Calhoun is murdered. What ensues puts the O.J. Simpson trial in the shade. But what are the consequences of condemning an alien from a more advanced civilisation? And what possible motive could a Tosok have for killing their staunchest ally? This might not be the greatest stylistic experience you'll ever have, but the plot is managed brilliantly. It will keep even hardened despisers of courtroom dramas turning the pages to find out who or whatdunit.
TOP
Column 12
Simon & Schuster's new sf imprint, Earthlight, debuts robustly with Ray Bradbury's Quicker Than the Eye (£5.99), his first collection in a decade. The nine original and twelve reprint stories parade a battery of typical Bradburyesque motifs; strange creatures, U-boat captains, geeks, Laurel and Hardy, circuses, portals to other worlds, autumnal evenings, small town Americana. As a conduit for his copious imagination and pleasingly luminous style, the short form is Bradbury's forte. For my money, the best title in Earthlight's launch bundle is Peter Crowther and James Lovegrove's Escardy Gap (£5.99). Rather in the Bradbury vein, and just as hard to pigeonhole, this has a fantasy tag, but could equally be classified horror or fringe mainstream. The story of a writer suffering a block (described with uncomfortable accuracy) and an idea that rescues him, is played out against the fate of plains community Escardy Gap, targeted by a trainload of grotesques called The Company. It takes a child to recognise their malignant intent. Smart fabulation, hip delivery. Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory (£5.99) is finely constructed, well-written space opera. But it's problematic in being the latest in a long series of books featuring Bujold's dwarf hero Miles Vorkosigan, and new readers are likely to be adrift. A slower start than its predecessors also conspires against accessibility. David Farland's The Sum of All Men (£9.99), Book 1 of the Runelords, conveys a genuinely epic vision. Its solidly realised world, cleverly contrived magical system and good action sequences augur well for a satisfying fantasy series with something fresh to offer. Earthlight's policy of publishing just twenty titles a year should keep up the quality.
Gregory Benford's latest, Cosm (Orbit, £10), stars black physicist Alicia Butterworth. Driven by an ambition to discover tangible proof of 'quark-gluon plasma', hitherto theoretical, she uses the world's most advanced particle accelerator in an attempt to slam through to a new realm of physics. The experiment misfires and an explosion trashes the accelerator. In the wreckage, Alicia finds a mysterious chrome coloured sphere, seemingly solid, the size of a basketball. It floats with no visible means of support, weighs as much as a mature adult and smells of ozone. Under a high-power microscope its surface appears perfect, and is impervious to a diamond-tipped drill. She keeps the oddity secret, fearing her superiors will bar research. Then a post-grad student is killed by an unexplained energy burst from the sphere. Following events have profound scientific, political, even religious ramifications. What the object proves to be may not surprise seasoned sf readers, but the solving of the mystery is almost secondary to the fascinating process of scientific methodology employed to do so. This novel's strength lies in its portrayal of scientists as real people and the explication of the poetry of sub-atomic physics.
The near future of 'Cosm' is dusty history to the 22nd Century of Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Lucifer's Dragon (NEL, £6.99), an age where Japanese and American English are the universal languages, sperm futures are traded on the stock markets, DNA manipulation refashions humanity. And Lucifer's Dragon, a computer game based on the Apocalypse, provides a total reality experience for the masses. Ageing street samurai Razz, her nervous system rewired for optimum combat efficiency, bodyguards the ten year-old titular boss of the biggest MetaNational at its HQ in media freeport neoVenice. Razz's murder at the hands of an assassin, and subsequent 'rebirth' as a clone, kicks off a multi-layered thriller in which the exotic, tech-saturated setting is as beguiling as the plot. Firmly in the Gibson and Sterling tradition, but much more than a mere imitator, Grimwood spurs cyberpunk one step on. The narrative steams with galvanising inventiveness.
Stars and Stripes Forever (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99), by Harry Harrison, instigates a trilogy based on an alternate version of 19th Century history. Fact: in the first months of the American Civil War, in 1861, Britain and France planned to recognise the South. A British warship, The Trent, was stopped at sea by the USS San Jacinto and two Confederate commissioners were removed. A message was drafted demanding President Lincoln return the men. Prince Albert rewrote the letter in more moderate language before it was sent and the prisoners were released. Harrison speculates on what might have happened had Albert died before intervening and Britain declared war on America. The premise is fertile, and there are nice touches, like the depiction of Queen Victoria as gaga. On the downside, characters have dialogue that comes over as speeches, particularly Lincoln and Palmerston; and there's an element of info-dump in many of the exchanges. It should be said, too, that some attempt at proof-reading would have been of benefit. There are places where quote marks are absent, and a sloppiness of punctuation changes meaning ('Have no fear this dog does not bite.') Fortunately, sheer verve and pace carries it through most crudities of expression and editorial oversight.
TOP
Column 13
Iain M. Banks fans might be surprised by Inversions (Orbit, £16.99). He's side-stepped from science fiction into something akin to fantasy. Not the fire-breathing dragons, magical pixies kind, but that strain played out in an invented feudal world and which furnishes itself with a minimum of swords or sorcery. The book posits a society emerging from a dark age, riddled with divisions and political intrigues. Parallel strands tell the two protagonists' stories. Vosill is physician to King Quience, ruler of Haspidus. She's burdened by being female and a foreigner in a culture hostile to both, and her charge's courtiers are jealous of her influence over him. The nearest Vosill has to a confidante is her young assistant, Oelph, and even he is spying on her. DeWar, the other main character, is beset by plotters too. He bodyguards UrLeyn, Prime Protector of Tassasen. DeWar's only close friend is Perrund, UrLeyn's ageing senior concubine, who sports a withered arm from an assassin's blade. Both Vosill and DeWar are indispensable to their masters, and better people than either of them. The plot ultimately goes into love story mode, but in a way likely to confound most readers' expectations. Banks may have temporarily switched genres but there's no diminution of quality. His style has been tailored to better accommodate the subject matter - it's more baroque, perhaps - but remains just as captivating. The incisive empathy with his characters, particularly women, is still there, along with the customary dry wit. Above all, that fine storytelling impulse prevails, as sublime as ever.
Ken MacLeod's The Cassini Division (Orbit, £15.99) takes place in the same 24th century as his previous novels, 'The Star Fraction' and 'The Stone Canal'; a socialist/anarchist future where collectivism and secularism have replaced capitalism and religion. Flies in this near-utopian ointment are the super-advanced 'fast folk', a hybrid of humans and AIs. Their descendants have settled on Jupiter, where they've created a hyperspace wormhole to another, distant solar system. Whether their intentions are antagonistic is unclear. But now, after centuries, there are signs they are active again. The Cassini Division, an elite force of 'ordinary' humans established as defence against the fast-folk, comes into play. Operative Ellen May Ngwethu's role is to scour a spent London for legendary scientist Isambard Kingdom Malley and enlist his aid. Malley's work helped make the fast-folk's wormhole possible. A doomsday weapon features, and the promise, or threat, of an imminent fusion of human minds with computers, making our race demi-gods. Given the tradition in sf, especially American sf, has been largely right-wing, or apolitical, it's good to see a contrary vision. This is imaginatively conceived, nicely written stuff. But my feeling is that it's time MacLeod moved on to fresher pastures.
One Hand Clapping by Lise Leroux (Viking, 9.99) is an example of a novel that, although not published as sf, will be embraced by genre enthusiasts. In a near future London, Marina is engaged in a round of meaningless sexual encounters. She offers herself as a body parts 'garden'; allowing implants to grow on her until they're ready for injured patients will, Marina hopes, provide the comfort she craves. Eventually she agrees to a multiple implant and carries ten maturing hands on her body. One she names Cecilio, and it seems to develop a personality. After its removal she obsesses and searches hospitals for the donee. Leroux sweeps smoothly into suspending our disbelief, and doesn't neglect to explore the blackly humorous side of all this. An engrossing, character-driven piece of serious weirdness, and remarkably affecting. Its eccentricities deserve a, er, big hand.
Robert Holdstock's 'Mythago Wood' (1984) had an enormously flexible premise that's grown into a fantasy series, the Ryhope Wood sequence. Gate of Ivory (Voyager, £16.99) continues it. A three mile-square, near impenetrable Herefordshire woodland, Ryhope draws from the collective unconscious of those venturing in to produce 'mythagos', flesh and blood manifestations of real historical personages and mythological entities. Many are far from benign. Historian George Huxley went insane investigating the wood. His wife committed suicide because of it. Christian Huxley, pursuing his father's research in manhood, encounters a mythago from the Iron Age called Kylhuk, a terrifying warrior accompanied by knights from Arthur's court. Christian learns of the Gate of Ivory and the Gate of Horn, the first of which lets deception into the world, the second truth. The power of these 'dreamgates' could restore his mother to life. Its originality of concept alone sets the series apart. Coupled with a terrific sense of place, of the British landscape and its inherent magic, the sequence stands as one of the major achievements of contemporary fantasy.
Talking of fantasy, that's where the sort of deflationary wit that used to be a distinctive part of sf in the '50s and '60s seems to have migrated. In The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy (Robinson, £6.99) Mike Ashley collects 35 stories, new and reprint, that amply demonstrate the breadth of the sub-genre. From old hands (including Goulart, Sharkey, Lafferty) to younger turks (Pratchett, Holt, Gaiman) this deft selection is low on duffers. And, by the gods, it's funny.
TOP
Column 14
Harry Turtledove's 'Worldwar' series, depicting an ET invasion in the middle of WWII that unites allies and Axis, was an entertaining concatenation of spitfires and spaceships. In other works he's tackled alternate versions of America's War of Independence and its Civil War. A World of Difference (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99) offers a more contemporary parallel universe, a might-have-been present day with two main departures from our reality. First, the Cold War continues. Second, the planet we call Mars is known as Minerva, and is big enough to have a life-sustaining atmosphere. In this time stream, the 1976 Viking probe sends back a photo of a bizarre-looking alien before being snuffed out. A joint US/USSR scientific expedition is eventually despatched to investigate. Their two spacecraft land in different locations and the crews befriend opposing clans of the multi-eyed, multi-limbed Minervians. Then a mutual misunderstanding of alien and human ways kicks in that mirrors the incomprehension the Americans and Russians feel towards each other. Backing opposite sides in the brewing conflict imperils the new détente, threatening war on Earth. Despite Turtledove's reputation for stories of martial strife, this is really a novel of first contact, a delving into the mysteries of an inexplicable culture. Maybe the Russians are somewhat stereotypical, and in the end no one would argue this is great literature, but it is good fun. It has an authentic speculative quality, energy and dash. Anyway, a writer who quotes Tom Lehrer has to have something going for him.
Kevin J. Anderson, best known for 'X-Files' and other spin-offs, is one of the better practitioners in that often unfairly maligned corner of publishing. But it's nice to see him turn out an original novel like Resurrection Inc (Voyager, £5.99). A future society inserts microprocessors in brains of the dead to create zombie androids. As every undead Servant means one job less for the living, this inspires riots, and attracts disgruntled ex-workers to a burgeoning Satanic cult. It should be impossible for Servants to retain memories of their previous lives. But newly-resurrected Danal, 'owned' by the cult's High Priest, is a unique exception, and could just be the living's saviour. This isn't a novel that bothers itself overmuch with moral or political ramifications; like Turtledove, Anderson's aim is to entertain. Its approach and style hark back to an earlier milieu, exemplified by writers such as Bester and Sheckley, when ideas-driven, pared-down narratives were more the sf norm. The plotting is robust and the twists are generally unexpected.
Probably more than any other genre, science fiction is blessed, or cursed, depending on your point of view, by a propensity for series. Many are interminable. Others deserve the space to realise their optimum potential. Here's a round-up of current titles that fall into the latter category. River of Blue Fire (Orbit, £16.99), volume two of the 'Otherland' sequence, confirms that Tad Williams has come up with something to rival Farmer's 'Riverworld', Moorcock's multiverse or the handful of other great sf notions with almost infinite flexibility. Otherland is a computer-generated virtual reality universe, built as a private fiefdom by a group of super powerful, immensely rich gits called the Grail Brotherhood. A small bunch of ordinary people have penetrated Otherland and can't find their way back to corporeal reality. They're forced to undertake a grand tour of worlds within this artificial world, each an incredible manifestation of a Brotherhood fantasy, all potentially terminal. The layers of imagination are superb. First volume in the series, Otherland, is now in paperback (Orbit, £6.99).
Colin Greenland completes his 'Tabitha Jute' trilogy with Mother of Plenty (following 'Take Back Plenty' and 'Seasons of Plenty'; all Voyager, 5.99 each). A triumph of this piece of thinking space opera is its endearing protagonist, feisty starship pilot and adventurer Tabitha Jute. Another is Plenty, her gigantic, sentient spacecraft. A cosmic backdrop doesn't swamp the human values. Sequels by other hands to an acknowledged classic a generation after its first appearance are a risky business. It's paying off in 'The Second Foundation Trilogy', not so much a continuation as a filling-in of gaps in Isaac Asimov's original saga. Volume two, Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear (Orbit, £16.99), takes place early in the epic cycle, when the old galactic Empire is about to fall and its ultimate successor, the Foundation, is beginning to rise. Bear works in a clever new take on Asimov's other glittery gift to the genre, the Three Laws of Robotics. This and volume one, Gregory Benford's 'Foundation's Fear', released simultaneously in softcover (Orbit, £6.99), keep the faith.
The trend among film producers to trawl the archives of ancient movies and TV shows for modern makeovers shows no sign of abating. Nor does the flood of concomitant spin-offs. Arguments about whether it might be preferable to commission fresh material aside, if you're going to have associated publications let them be as thorough as Pat Cadigan's The Making of Lost in Space (Titan Books, £9.99). Cadigan, whose day job as an author of speculative fiction rightly garners critical plaudits, has turned in an informative, useful companion to this latest sci-fi blockbuster.
TOP
Column 15
A prevalent theory says optimistic times see an upsurge in science fiction, characterised as it is by a generally outward-looking, expansive world view. Whereas pessimistic epochs favour fantasy, which tends towards insularity and the comfort factor of chimerical golden ages. Of course, this assumes everybody is feeling either up or down en masse; a kind of literary equivalent of the presumption that the entire population grieved deeply for Princess Diana. Anyway, whatever it indicates, fantasy is on a roll. It's salutary to bear Sturgeon's Law in mind - "99% of everything is shit" - but it could be that we're currently seeing more than 1% of good work in this genre. In David Gemmell's case, very good indeed. Sword in the Storm, Book 1 of the Rigante (Bantam Press, £15.99), draws on Celtic myth to tell the story of Connavar, a warrior whose father died an apparent coward. This determines Connavar to be brave, though he proves reckless. Assured of glory by a shaman, and warned never to break a promise, his carelessness with this admonishment causes his wife's death. Guilt crazed, he slaughters many of the clan responsible, triggering war. Gemmell's premium grade heroic fantasies stress the positive values of individualism. His rounded, believable characters strive to do the right thing, despite carrying the seeds of their own destruction. This is darker than usual, but no less stirring, emotionally charged or superbly written.
Stephen Lawhead's The Iron Lance, first volume of The Celtic Crusades (Voyager, £17.99), inspired by more recent and thus more verifiable historical happenings, is fantasy by default. It contains no magic, unless you count the Holy Roman Empire's interpretation of Christianity as such. Kicking-off in 1095, it's an absorbing family saga that follows the fortunes of the Ranulfsons, a Scottish dynasty threatened with extinction. Seen through Lawhead's eyes, the protagonist's journey to Jerusalem in the era of the Great Crusades could be a quest though an exotic fantasy world.
Battleaxe by Sara Douglass (Voyager, £6.99), beginning the Axis Trilogy, is unquestionably formulaic; a young martial hero of uncertain parentage, demonic enemy hordes, rivalry between mutually antagonistic half-brothers besotted by the same maiden. However, it's done with just enough panache, and rammed with sufficient detail, to satisfy those who eat up this stuff. Greg Keyes is a comparatively new voice in fantasy. The Blackgod (Orbit, £6.99), a sequel to 'The Waterborn', occupies that point of the spectrum where the language leans to the poetic, and the extravagance of plot and background requires a fairly measured pace. This teems with imaginative deities and stars a plausible heroine.
If fantasy is developing into a broader church, it's only doing the job of colonisation sf began decades ago. Lucy Ferriss' The Misconceiver (Sceptre, £10) is published as mainstream, but owes its genesis to our field as much as Amis' 'Time's Arrow' and Harris' 'Fatherland', to cite just two examples the critlit establishment wouldn't dream of acknowledging as science fiction. In Ferriss' convincing early 21st century dystopia abortion is outlawed. At great risk, her eponymous female lead seeks to return to women some small measure of reproductive rights. The clandestine nature of her work, and self doubts, imperil even this feeble lifeline. As Ray Bradbury once said, 'I'm not here to predict the future, I'm here to warn about it.'
There are plenty of aspects in the futures presented by Pat Cadigan we could well take heed of too, and the one in Tea From an Empty Cup (Voyager, £5.99) is no exception. Japan has been destroyed by earthquakes and the survivors have migrated to the Net, intent on recreating their nation whatever the costs. The foreground story concerns police Lieutenant Konstantin and her hunt for those responsible for seemingly motiveless online murders. Fresh ideas are this author's currency and there's some heavy dealing going on here.
Jody Duncan's The Making of The X-Files: Fight for the Future (£9.99), along with Elizabeth Hand's novelisation (£5.99) and her young adult version of same (£4.99; all Voyager), are slick, professional and will feed the gorge of millennial irrationality quite nicely.
TOP
Column 16
Publishing's high tide rolls in to flood the holiday season, and sifting the detritus reveals fantasy's continuing dominance. Legends, edited by Robert Silverberg (Voyager, £17.99), is the smartest marketing ploy in years, justifying the highest advance ever paid for an anthology. Eleven of the biggest names in contemporary fantasy - King, Pratchett, LeGuin, McCaffrey, et al - have written novellas set in their most popular worlds. Fortunately, the standard matches the notion; maybe the contributors were spurred by peer group rivalry. A great sampler for anyone thinking of dipping into hardcore fantasy, this just might defy the received wisdom that anthologies don't sell. Reave the Just (Voyager, £17.99) marks Stephen Donaldson's return to fantasy after his critically acclaimed but commercially disappointing sf series 'The Gap'. Donaldson's followers might prefer a novel to this collection of shorts, albeit their slightly Arabian Nights feel and baroque style makes for an entertaining diversion. Clive Barker consolidates his shift from horror to fantasy with Galilee (Voyager, £17.99), wherein an incredibly powerful family has secretly manipulated American affairs since the Civil War while opposing an equally pernicious competing dynasty. The supernatural element is minimal; the narrative is sinister, imaginative, a little overlong. Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers (Orbit, £17.99) and Raymond E. Feist's Krondor: The Betrayal (Voyager, £16.99), latest in The Wheel of Time and Riftwar sequences, are effectively beyond criticism as the readerships are already there, in vast numbers. This class of books is like a curry recipe. You know all the ingredients but can never put them together as well as the local balti house. Jordan and Feist add a pinch of something many other authors would kill for. Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay (Earthlight, £16.99) takes place in the early days of the Byzantium Empire. The novel's cleverness lies in fusing historical fact with skilful speculation. An enchanting, colourful fantasy adventure. It would be a pity if The Golden Cat by Gabriel King (Century, £16.99; Arrow, £5.99), sequel to 'The Wild Road', was dismissed as just another piece of cuddly anthropomorphism. Although the temperaments of its feline cast are presented with rare insight, this is quality high fantasy rather than mush for moggy fanciers. Humorous fantasy is the hardest sub-genre to pull off successfully. Diana Wynne Jones has written plenty of the straight stuff and knows the tropes well enough to lampoon them. The Dark Lord of Derkholm (Gollancz, £16.99) benefits from a finely-honed sense of the absurd. Peter Chippindale's Laptop of the Gods (Simon & Schuster, £9.99) is more witty than hilarious, but can boast an inventive plot: GOD, the computer running the universe, offers the still extant Olympian gods a chance to abandon their mortal charges and play eternal VR games instead.
Don't worry, there is some science fiction. In the alternate world of Greg Bear's Dinosaur Summer (Voyager, £5.99) Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger actually existed and the dinosaurs he discovered on El Grande plateau in Venezuela are minor attractions in American circuses, spurned by a jaded public. Showman Lothar Gluck mounts an expedition to take the animals home. The dinosaurs are brilliantly depicted. Things sag a bit midway, but pick up again for a barnstorming finale. There's no avoiding the word hokum as the most appropriate description. Gardner Dozois' The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 11 (Robinson, £8.99) maintains this anthology's reputation as probably the finest annual round-up. It's undoubtedly one of the best value; 250,000 words of choice fiction from the leading names, along with Dozois' in-depth summation of the past year in sf.
Other tasty gift items. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy, edited by David Pringle (Carlton, £19.99), isn't the prime reference (that's the Clute/Grant fantasy encyclopedia from Orbit), but its profusion of excellent illustrations certainly makes it the nicest looking. Perfect for someone with a blossoming interest. Trekkers will delight in Star Trek The Next Generation: The Continuing Mission by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, and Star Trek Deep Space Nine Technical Manual by Zimmerman, Sternbach and Drexler (Pocket Books, £12.99 each). Firebrands: The Heroines of Science Fiction & Fantasy (Paper Tiger, £14.99), illustrated by veteran Ron Miller, visualises a host of characters from six decades of the literature. Unusually for this kind of thing, not all of them are shown unclothed. And fantastic artist (in both senses of the word) Brian Froud finally offers the long-awaited sequel to his '70s hit 'Faeries'. Good Faeries Bad Faeries (Pavilion, £16.99) is beautifully rendered, and despite the title it's anything but twee.
Pray for book tokens.
TOP
Column 17
Stephen Baxter's Mammoth (Millennium, £16.99/£9.99) has a band of woolly mammoths surviving into the modern world, stranded on a remote, inhospitable Siberian island. They hand down story Cycles that embrace a creation myth, the passing of ice ages, and the comet that wiped-out the dinosaurs and gave the mammoths' ancestors, tiny mammals called Hotbloods, their chance. The Cycles also describe the advent of the most dangerous of all species, Man. Focus in this first of a trilogy is on female mammoth Silverhair, ablest of her dwindling Family, who could be destined to become its Matriarch. But when humans arrive, threatening the herd's survival, Silverhair's little group undertakes a hazardous journey across the island, which is itself imperilled by global warming. Anthropomorphic fantasy can so easily go wrong, often risibly, but here it works. Baxter handles the belief suspension so well that even when Silverhair's companion, Lop-ear, uses his trunk to draw her a crude picture of the island, you don't question the plausibility. The Family hierarchy's credible and the characters in it are totally engaging. Sentimentality is diligently avoided. An interesting departure from Baxter's usual hard sf, this retains his clean, accessible prose and talent for compelling narrative.
Millennium has also launched SF Masterworks, intended to build into a library of the best contemporary science fiction. We've seen classic lines before, but this promises to be of definitive quality, as demonstrated by the first two volumes. Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (£6.99), which was his debut novel, appears to be a horror story about vampirism, but is in fact sf with a scientific rather than supernatural rationale. One of the first genre crossovers, it remains a keywork in the field. Joe Haldeman's The Forever War (£6.99) rates high among the best sf novels of the '70s. A Vietnam allegory cast as galactic conflict, it plays cleverly with time dilation and still packs a hefty emotional wallop. A good start to what should shape-up into an outstanding reprint series.
In Juliet E. McKenna's The Thief's Gamble: The First Tale of Einarinn (Orbit, £5.99) Archmage Planir, leader of the Council that rules the Wizards' Isle, begins the discreet purchase of Old Tormalian artefacts in order to revive the lost art of aetheric magic. However, others are on the trail, including Casuel, a self-seeking wizard; and trio of friends Darni, Shiv and Geris. Narrator Livak, a thief and rune-sharp, gets herself mixed-up with the latter and thrown into an adventure that not all the good guys survive. McKenna creates real tension, and her battles between two sorts of magic - aetheric and elemental - are unique and excellently done. This is a well-written, impressive debut I'd give 9 out of 10.
Ice Mage by Julia Gray (Orbit, £6.99) has a pretty nifty story spoiled somewhat by info-dumps. In Tiguafaya, the President is old and ineffectual, and Senator Kantrowe plots to take power. When volcanic activity destroys a village, Kantrowe blames the unofficial use of magic by a group called the Firebrands, claiming they have angered the indigenous dragon population. It's no coincidence that in outlawing the Firebrands he condemns their leader, Ico Maravedis, to burning at the stake, as she happens to be the daughter of his main political opponent. Kantrowe's schemes also involve recruiting a gang of pirates. Ico and her impetuous lover Andrin, using a telepathic link with birds, search for Vargo, a musician who can communicate with the dragons, to avert Tiguafaya's destruction. There's a fine imagination on display here, and the telepathy aspect is just one manifestation of it. The pirate society is another strength, though marred by great chunks of exposition accompanying its introduction. Once we know who everybody is the sludge factor decreases dramatically, but doesn't altogether disappear. The denouement is brilliantly handled. 'Ice Mage' has solid entertainment value; it would have functioned better with a lot less telling and more showing.
In brief, two titles worth seeking out. Simon Ings, a bright star in the UK sf firmament, has three exceptional novels to his credit. The fourth, Headlong (Voyager, £5.99), depicting a wired-up near future, is set on the Moon and a chill, hard-edged London. It's a pacey murder mystery with real flair. With The Great War: American Front (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99) Harry Turtledove continues rewriting history, this time an alternate version of WW1. The twist is that the American Civil War was won by the South, and when the 1914 conflict starts the Confederacy sides with Britain, the Northern states with Germany. Cheekily inventive stuff.
TOP
Column 18
In fantasy, creating a world is just the beginning; equally important is animating it. Freda Warrington flawlessly achieves this in The Amber Citadel (Earthlight, £5.99). Aventuria has a richly-textured plausibility. It's a world you'd like to visit. The scenario that unfolds there may contain familiar tropes, but it's extremely well told, and the characterisation, a Warrington strength, is consummate. Resolute Tanthe longs for the cultured life of the big city. Her timorous sister Ysomir intends marrying local farmer Lynden and settling down. These aspirations nosedive when Ysomir's conscripted to help build a tower glorifying King Garnelys, who's entangled with black sorcery. Tanthe, Lynden and his arrogant brother Rufryd embark on a half-baked rescue mission, which takes on a graver purpose when Ysomir is crowned Queen. Unusual villains and colourful allies are encountered along the way. The novel may be overlong, but as chunky volumes are popular with fantasy readers that isn't detrimental. Despite being the first in a series, it has a satisfying conclusion, and avoids the 'With one bound she was free' device that bedevils much of the genre.
The still youthful Earthlight imprint is building a robust identity, and in Kristen Britain's Green Rider (£9.95) it has a tremendously good read from an exciting new talent. Green riders are messengers of the King, a kind of Pony Express with a dash of magic thrown in. Rider F'ryan Coblebay, carrying a warning of treason, is struck down by arcane arrows that bind his spirit to eternal torment. If he agrees to join the forces of evil the demonic Gray One will abolish his pain. But runaway schoolgirl Karigan stumbles across the dying Coblebay and takes on his mission, unaware of the import of the message. Through wild woodlands and wilder towns, she survives attacks by spies, mercenaries and uncanny creatures. This is excellently written and moves at an exhilarating pace. There's a likeable protagonist, believable supporting cast and bad guys who aren't caricatures. If Britain keeps up this quality we'll have a fresh name to add to the first division.
Tom Holt, stalwart standard bearer for humorous fantasy, reaches his fourteenth novel, Only Human (Orbit, £15.99). The Supreme Being takes a fishing holiday, leaving his inept younger son, Kevin Christ, in charge. Kevin tinkers with God's mainframe PC, inadvertently causing some soul transferences. In a Birmingham factory, a bolt-head cutting machine and its operator exchange bodies. A 14th century painting swaps with a boring accountant; a demon with a priest; the Prime Minister with a lemming. The resultant gag-laden farce is dusted with light irony. Holt's offerings aren't boxes of fireworks in the Pratchett or Douglas Adams mode; they're more like sparklers - dependable, comfortably familiar, essentially good-natured - and no less enjoyable for that. Matthew Thomas' debut, Before & After (Voyager, £5.99), wears trainers rather than Holt brand slippers, but while sharper in tone it's less focused. This is a millennium knockabout, something we're inevitably seeing lots of, centring loosely around the prophecies of ancient seer Mike Nostrus. It tends to the episodic and scenes that roar into cul-de-sacs. When concentrating on well-defined satire, targeting popular culture's sacred cows, it's at its sparkiest and most funny.
Mary Doria Russell's 'The Sparrow' justly won virtually every award going, including the Arthur C. Clarke. Now we have the sequel, Children of God (Black Swan, £6.99), although sequel isn't really the right word for what's actually a straight continuation; the two novels comprise a single epic narrative. Some were put off by the notion of a story about Jesuit missionaries in space questioning their faith. They missed one of the most affecting, intelligent genre offerings of modern times. 'Children of God' depicts a second mission to the planet Rakhat, again including linguist Emilio Sandoz, the sparrow. The plot isn't new in sf, which contains many tales of humans encountering alien races and having their perceptions radically changed. But Russell does it better than anybody else, bringing with her a rare facility for language, near perfect characterisation and a profound insight into the human psyche. What she reveals is often shocking, sometimes funny, unarguably authentic, all embedded in an ambitious, complex structure that nevertheless retains accessibility. The worst I can say is that taken together this pair of books could be a mite too long, and the accumulation of ethnological detail about the aliens does overwhelm a little. That's nothing compared to the overall achievement. The addition of this further volume makes for an even more remarkable work, destined for classic status.
TOP
Column 19
Science fiction's just like other popular genres in that much of it's regurgitation. Some authors recycle with verve. A few introduce genuine originality. With reMix (Earthlight, £6.99), Jon Courtenay Grimwood consolidates his place in the latter category. The novel portrays a clamorous alternate future just different enough from our time to be spookily outlandish. An ailing Third Napoleonic Empire is at war. Iron-eating viruses are destroying Paris's infrastructure; there's famine, riots, and wolves on the streets. 100,000 Cossacks besiege the city. Rebellious teenager LizAlec, feeling unloved, hangs out with Fixx, a thirty-something former reMix (DJ) star who's into drugs and no longer famous. LizAlec's mother, head of the Empire's Department of Internal Security, deals with this by sending her to a posh school on the Moon. The girl's kidnapped, has all sorts of high-tech, cyberpunkish adventures and discovers she was fathered by a dead "god". Those are the barest bones; persevere through the opening pages of narrative density and you'll find a compulsive, labyrinthine tale of intrigue with lots of action. The world, its characters and their vicissitudes are excellently imagined.
Sf readers are used to mainstream authors nipping into the field to pinch its tropes and claiming them for their own. We're less accustomed to the 'celebrity' sf novel, but maybe we should steel ourselves. (Geri Halliwell's forthcoming effort is set in the 22nd century, though you can bet it won't be labelled science fiction. My feeling is that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck - the book, not Geri - chances are a duck's what it is.) Ken Russell's Mike & Gaby's Space Gospel (Little, Brown, £15.99) sounds like it should be awful. But that's unfair to a perhaps surprisingly entertaining piece of hokum. Two robots, which Russell cheerfully confesses he based on R2D2 and C3PO, create the human race. Appalled to find humanity corrupted, the 'bots engineer the coming of a messiah. What follows is a parody of scripture. Mary is an over-protective Jewish mother. When the Devil takes Jesus to a high place to tempt him, it's the Empire State Building. The five thousand are fed on lox and bagels. What brings this to life is its Hollywood cast. Caiaphas looks like Sinatra. His pal Benny, the spitting image of Peter Lawford, suggests sending Jesus for a swim in cement sandals. Woody Allen is a paranoid King Herod. His wife resembles Barbra Streisand dolled-up for the Oscars. The book moves at a fair clip and there are a few authentic belly laughs among the chuckles. Despite Russell's controversial rep, the satire's gentle enough to offend none but the most pious. Even sf aficionados overly-familiar with the premise could get a rise out of it if they loosened up sufficiently.
Ben Bova's Return to Mars (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99) sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. His novels are always plausible, rigorously disciplined in their speculation and clearly written. He's also a good enough storyteller to make them appealing to a general as well as a specialist readership. Following his 1992 hit 'Mars', this tells of the second expedition to the Red Planet and enlarges on the theme of the seemingly inchoate life found there. A whodunnit element means the plot functions well as a thriller, and Bova uses half Navaho protagonist Jamie Waterman to explore a fascinating dichotomy between scientific rationality and spiritual aspiration.
For anyone who appreciates superior heroic fantasy, David Gemmell's offerings are mandatory. Midnight Falcon (Bantam, £16.99), continuing the series begun with 'Sword in the Storm' (Corgi, £5.99), focuses on Bane, a 17 year-old Wolfshead raised among the Rigante caste. This son of a legendary warrior king has a propensity for savagery that even the martial Rigante find hard to stomach. Bane winds up in the Great City of Stone, where wickedness and purity co-exist in the form of the Crimson Priests and the oppressed Tree Cultists. The author sets himself the task of morally re-casting Bane, of fashioning his unpromising clay into something approximating a high hero championing the cause of natural justice. It's pulled off brilliantly. Gemmell has made this strand of the genre his own. He presents us with a series of dilemmas as much as he does his characters; predicaments to do with Good and Evil, living up to the achievements of forebears, doing the right thing in a bad world. All without losing sight of the need to deliver a solid, action-laden plot. In the UK at least, there's no one to touch him.
TOP
Column 20
Neil Gaiman's Stardust (Headline, £16.99/£9.99) harkens back to the days before fantasy became a discrete, often formulaic genre. It echoes such honourable antecedents as Lord Dunsany, George MacDonald and Hope Mirrlees. The Victorian village of Wall by the wall is so named because its rampart separates it from a literal faerieland. Tristran Thorn, of half fairy ancestry, loves beautiful Victoria Forester. She'll grant his heart's desire if he retrieves a falling star that came down beyond the wall. Tristran encounters gnomes, witches, unicorns and talking animals; there are murderous ghosts and forests with fatally sharp leaves. The fallen star turns out to be a girl called Yvaine (the evening star, daughter of the Moon). She fell because the dying Lord of Stormhold threw his talisman from a window of his cloud palace to spite his squabbling sons, and it struck her. Tristran braves Yvaine's hair-trigger temper and takes her back to Wall with him. But what's transpired there returns them to faerieland for more adventures and a revelation about Tristran's parentage. Gaiman's elegant style isn't an everyday one, but is still immensely accessible and clear. Where melancholy enters, it avoids tooth-rotting whimsy. The fertile imagery sticks - sky-ships that hunt lightning, for example - and the characterisation is good, though I could have wished for a slightly less passive hero. That aside, 'Stardust' is charming, in every sense of the word, and deeply satisfying.
Fantasy ranges from the decorative to the plain bonkers, as exemplified by Robert Rankin's Snuff Fiction (Doubleday, £16.99). Set in Rankin's beloved Brentford, an area he's imbued with a clunky mythical status, this is the biography of local entrepreneur Doveston. It's told by his lifelong friend/enemy Edwin, writing in 2008, when the world's still recovering from the Great Millennial Computer Crash. Invariably the fall guy when Doveston's outrageous schemes failed, Edwin's chronicle takes in the ill-starred Brentstock rock festival, the secret life of yo-yos, and Brentford's Kalahari Bushmen quarter. It reveals the dreadful truth about the Millennium Bug, and Doveson's part in global civilisation's collapse. Snuff features a lot. A quintessentially English mix of fearful puns and awful jokes, its quirky, pleasingly anarchic approach makes 'Snuff Fiction' a delight.
James Barclay's Dawnthief (Gollancz, £9.99), beginning a trilogy, majors on sheer energy and frenetic pace. Its seven main protagonists (six men and an elf) comprise The Raven, a mercenary band going to seed. Against their better judgement they accept a commission from the Dark College, a magical sect of ill-repute, and get drawn into an epic clash with the highest stakes. An ancient evil grouping, the Wytch Lords, have broken from the sorcery that held them in bondage and are generating new, invulnerable bodies. The only thing that might stop them is Dawnthief, a long hidden, legendary spell of unimaginable potency; a cure as potentially terrible as the disease. The Raven's task is to gather the elements necessary to locate and activate the spell. In this respect the narrative follows a quest motif not unfamiliar to fantasy readers. But that's irrelevant because, as ever, it's how you tell 'em. Barclay writes with an assured gusto, has a great eye for action, and imbues his story with a fine imagination and jolts of wit. There's no surrender to sentimentality; the style is hard-bitten and the fates of his characters surprises, and shocks, throughout. The first few pages are just a little inchoate. Persist. If ever there was a case of a plot acting like a man trap, this is it. Barclay brings a genuine aesthetic to the fantasy action novel. A scorching debut.
The Siege of Arrandin by Marcus Herniman (Earthlight, £5.99), another trilogy opener, also displays a new author in confident control of his material. A dense but well executed, user-friendly plot depicts an empire, Lautun, caught in a religious schism. At the same time it has to repel a barbarian invasion threatening to take the strategically vital city of Arrandin, an invasion supported by a tyrannical rival Emperor. Female protagonist Rhysana, a Magi serving Lautin's ancient gods, bears the load of defending Arrandin until an allied army, worshippers of a younger religion, arrives to help. The narrative develops intelligently and the characters are excellently drawn, even if many of them enter with excess baggage in terms of personal back stories. This is colourful, epic stuff, cleverly interweaving political intrigue with adventure set pieces.
Complaints about a dearth of talent in the field are groundless as long as it can turn up the likes of Barclay and Herniman.
TOP
Column 21
On the strength of debut novel Silver Screen (Macmillan, £9.99), Justina Robson bears favourable comparison with many seasoned sf adepts. This is set in a risky future where multinationals battle equally ruthless environmental terrorists. Young protagonist Anjuli O'Connell, uncertain and overweight, has attributes, notably a computer-like memory, that make her doubt her own humanity. Her empathy with artificial intelligence AI 901 reinforces this feeling. 901 is the subject of a wrangle between its owners, the OptiNet Corporation, and the Machine-Greens, who want emancipation for AIs. The case for 901's 'human' status goes to law, with Anjuli as a witness. Upsetting vested interests, she's pursued by assassins, upsets a religious cult and gets drawn into the search for something called the Source, which might be the key to life itself. A blistering climax has her donning a biomech combat suit to storm the cult's redoubt. The dispute over 901's human standing, Anjuli's symbiotic relationship with the suit, people merging with cyberspace - 'Silver Screen' explores the increasingly blurred borderline between organic and synthetic life. Not a new notion, granted, but here it's given a truly fresh perspective, with Robson defying predictability in her adroitly constructed narrative. Pleasingly, we have a plot that's complex yet accessible. A very accomplished first outing.
You approach Prelude to Dune 1: House Atreides, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99), with some apprehension. After all, Frank Herbert's classic remains a highly regarded, even cherished, milestone on the sf landscape. So it's good to report that Brian (son of Frank) Herbert and Anderson haven't disgraced the original's good name. Wisely, they've written a prequel; this takes place decades before the advent of 'Dune''s hero, Paul-Muad'dib Atreides. Just as prudently, they haven't tried counterfeiting Herbert senior's style. They've worked to maintain the rich density of the original and gone at it their own way. 'House Atreides' shows the early years of Prince Leto Atreides, member of one of the galactic Imperium's lesser patrician families. Leto's entanglement with a scheme to locate an artificial substitute for melange, a spice critical to the economy of Arrakis, or Dune, is fraught with betrayal and inter-House rivalry. Another strand of an involved plot has Pardot Kynes, a planetologist, working clandestinely to turn Dune's desert wastes into a lush paradise, and uncovering an abstruse secret. Leto's sojourn on the mechanised planet Ix is particularly impressive. Some will question the necessity for a return to the Dune universe in a story by other hands (even if one pair's related to its creator), and comparisons are inevitable. But viewed on its own terms, this creditable extension holds up for all 600 pages.
Metal Fatigue (Swift, £16.99), first novel from Australian Sean Williams, melds sf with crime procedural, and does it energetically. A generation after America was savaged by nuclear war, the city of Kennedy remains segregated, though cautious negotiations are underway with the fledgling Re-United States. In Kennedy, cop Phil Roads hunts an elusive data robber, and investigates a wave of political assassinations that could be the work of someone whose abilities are boosted by illegal bio-modifications. Ironically, Roads has unauthorised bio-mods himself. The denouement isn't unguessable for genre aficionados, but it's an enjoyably brisk ride, with gritty characters and the depiction of a convincing hi-tech, lo-life future.
Tad Williams' Mountain of Black Glass (Orbit, £16.99), third in the Otherland quartet, steams along with as much brio as its predecessors. Various protagonists are trapped in Otherland, an amazingly elaborate VR construct created by the Grail Brotherhood, a cabal of the rich and unscrupulous seeking immortality. Otherland actualises the fantasies, light and dark, of everyone who enters. The riddle of why the Brotherhood is snatching Earth's children deepens, as does the threat of Otherland usurping the real world. Williams reinvigorates and delightfully subverts many sf and gaming tropes. His ideas and the multiple plots embracing them are brilliant. Long series of big books can flag. This just gets better.
For an eyeball feast, try Dick Jude's Fantasy Art of the New Millennium (Voyager, £16.99). It features ten of the best artists in the field, including Jim Burns, John Howe and Fred Gambino. Each portfolio is accompanied by intelligent interviews, and the book's fronted by a clear-sighted introduction. The selection's astute, sampling practically the entire spectrum of contemporary fantasy art. Finished pieces run on from their preliminary sketches or earlier-stage photographs. Apart from the sheer pleasure of gazing, there's a lot to be learned in this superior graphics treasury. Beautiful images, superbly reproduced.
TOP
Column 22
Neal Stephenson gained cult status with 'The Diamond Age' and 'Snow Crash', which are regarded as classics of cyberpunk (albeit the term's apparently now passé). Cryptonomicon (Heinemann, £12.99) is likely to enhance his reputation among hardcore sf fans, techie freaks and web-crawlers, for whom he's the epitome of techno-cool. General readers, while probably finding chunks to enjoy and admire, might be less patient with the fatiguing detail and relentlessly complex telling. 'Cryptonomicon' location hops with frenzied abandon. It also cuts back and forth between WWII and today. The 1940's strand features Detachment 2702, whose job is to break Axis codes. Leading lights in this secret group are genius cryptographer Lawrence Waterhouse and marine Bobby Shaftoe, a morphine addict. Their currency is double-dealing and conspiracy. The present day thread has their grandchildren, data geeks Randy Waterhouse and Amy Shaftoe, close to discovering hidden Nazi gold in south-east Asia. Enoch Root, another one-time member of 2702, turns up to present them with a crypto puzzle unsolved since the war, bringing murky deeds from the past and inspiring paranoia. The plot's quite thin; the way Stephenson relates it requires stamina to ingest. He generously sprinkles the text with mathematical conundrums, email messages, computer-speak and nethead jargon. No joke is left uncracked, no pun unmouthed. His characters are off-the-wall, some just this side of credence (one gung-ho type is actually called John Wayne). The book contains flashes of brilliance, but at over 900 pages it's far too long (yet the beginning of a series). Its ending is out of whack and unsatisfying. This is like buying a box of fireworks with an excess of squibs. And rockets so big they fit no known milk bottle.
Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Kube-McDowell's The Trigger (Voyager, £17.99) has a more conventional take on technology's implications. Privately-funded scientists, seeking an anti-gravity device, stumble on a ray that annihilates nitrates - which means it destroys any weapon using explosives. That gives the Trigger, as it's dubbed, an immense capacity for good or ill. Attempts are made to convince the US government of its pacifistic possibilities. Then a couple of the scientists use the Trigger to eradicate a menacing street gang and Pandora's box is opened. Though it contains a fair quota of action, the novel develops into essentially a disputation between liberals and militarists. What's appealing is that it logically works through the inferences of technological breakthroughs on our culture. The downside is that it reads a bit like a diatribe. And the physics of the discovery, if I dare say so about anything Clarke's involved with, seems rather vague. But the slightly harder-edged style makes me think the line by line writing is mainly the work of Kube-McDowell, based perhaps on Clarke's outline. Solid entertainment with a brain, and its heart's in the right place, though too often an earnest tone predominates.
I think utopian science fiction is due a revival, stoked by real or imagined millennial optimism. Sf author par excellence Brian Aldiss, writing in collaboration with Roger Penrose, seems to feel the same way, or at least that the theme is worthy of re-examination. Their White Mars, or, The Mind Set Free (Little, Brown, £16.99) is a sort of riposte to Kim Stanley Robinson's popular 'Red', 'Green' and 'Blue Mars' trilogy. Robinson depicted the terraforming of Mars and the prospect of a utopia there. Aldiss frowns on the notion of re-fashioning another planet to suit humans, seeing it as an unwarranted interference with Nature. And where Robinson's utopia came about via a series of dramatic events - war and environmental near catastrophe - Aldiss envisages a somewhat more prosaic birth for his. (The Wellesian subtitle hints at the gentility of approach.) But 'White Mars' isn't just a reply to another author's vision - and a good natured one, it should be stressed - it also probes the utopian impulse, human perceptions and the exotic reaches of physics. The discourse, I have to say, is more thought provoking than Clarke and Kube-McDowell's. I found this completely absorbing, suffused with common sense and on occasions genuinely profound.
Millennium's excellent SF Masterworks series crackles on. Jack Vance's Emphyrio and Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly (volumes 19 and 20; £6.99 each) maintain the high standard. Vance relates a sizzling tale of planetary rebellion; Dick has a future cop embroiled with the most lethal addictive narcotic ever known. Both are among their author's finest work. Companion series Fantasy Masterworks debuts next year. If the selection's as good as here, it'll be a treat.
TOP
Column 23
David Gemmell's Hero in the Shadows (Bantam Press, £16.99) sees the long-awaited return of one of his most popular characters. Feared assassin Waylander the Slayer worked for pay but killed for idealistic reasons too. His journey to some kind of redemption has brought him to benign retirement as a wealthy landowner under the nom de guerre the Grey Man. But Waylander and the land of Drenai can't escape the past. Millennia before, the city of Kuan Hador was a nest of depraved sorcerers who created a horde of human-animal symbiotes. The sorcerers and their army were forced to retreat to another dimension, and sealed there by an enchantment. Now the spell is weakening and the menace is breaking through again. Only Waylander and a typically Gemmellian bunch of unlikely heroes stand against it, among them a kitchen skivvy, an over-the-hill knight and a ditch-digger. 'Hero in the Shadows' lets us nearer to the enigmatic Waylander than ever before, but neatly avoids diluting the character's power by throwing just enough light on him. There's a greater feeling of irony and deflationary wit than previously, and the narrative benefits. The characterisation convinces totally. In the best sense of the word, you could say Gemmell's a brand; an assurance of passionate, cleanly written prose, imaginative plots and, above all, terrific storytelling. Like Gemmell, a writer in full mature flow, John Courtenay Grimwood is earning the status of a key player. redRobe (Earthlight, £6.99), set in the same threatening, tech dominated future as the recommendable 'reMix', also features an ex-assassin. Emotionally fragmented Axl Borja reactivates on behalf of a cardinal seeking huge amounts of money embezzled by the assassinated Pope Joan.
Borja's odyssey takes him to Samsara, a gigantic space construct doubling as a Buddhist prayer wheel and dustbin for Earth's refugees. The cast includes a Japanese child hooker whose brain carries some of the Pope's personality; PaxForce, a scary military unit with a propensity for loathsome torture, and - certainly the best 'character' - a talkative, AI Colt handgun. This is a world where nanotechnology mends the most grievous wounds, and our rewired hero actually has background music playing in his head. The pace is breathless, and like all smart sf this has something to say about contemporary issues.
The considerable triumph of China Mieville's Perdido Street Station (Macmillan, £16.99) is a spectacular city, New Crobuzon, and its fantastical population of human and insect, plant and animal melds, bizarre robots and startling mutants. The seedy, visceral, often repugnant inhabitants and setting frame a story in which scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin ignorantly unleashes something so nasty it terrifies even the resident demons. Once stripped of its extravagant dressing, the storyline isn't that original. But this is a rare case where the imaginative power of the staging is so good you don't really mind. New Crobuzon is one of the finest creations in speculative fiction. Comparisons with Mervyn Peake are inevitable, and for once have some substance, but Gormenghast is nowhere near as extraordinarily repellent as this wonderfully depicted metropolis.
In the 31st century of Jack McDevitt's Slow Lightning (Voyager, £10.99), humankind governs vast expanses of space. But aliens have never been encountered, leading many to the awesome and somewhat depressing conclusion that we occupy an empty universe. Dr Kim Brandywine questions this, and her suspicions are stoked when new facts emerge about an aborted exploratory mission that took place 30 years before. Risking job and life, she traces the mystery to a distant star called Alnitak, and uncovers the truth behind a massacre. Written in a confident thriller mode, this functions on both an action and cerebral level. An entertaining read with strong, well realised ideas.
Since humorous sf and fantasy became a staple, many authors have sought the pot of gold at the end of Douglas Adams' and Terry Pratchett's rainbows. Most fail. David Garnett's Bikini Planet (Orbit, £5.99) is a singular, authentically funny exception. Escaping the Mob, cop Wayne Norton undergoes cryogenic suspension, waking three hundred years in the future. Press-ganged into the GalactiCops, he's sent to resort world Hideaway, where gangsters vie for control. As much a rookie as when he started, Wayne has to plumb the depths to overcome aliens, hoods and baleful mega corporations. A noted practitioner of serious sf, here Garnett satirises the genre without putting it down. The result is a good natured, lightweight romp - neither description is meant insultingly - with delightful set pieces and snappy one-liners. This is, very much to its credit, a consummately silly novel.
TOP
Column 24
Publishing may be no more immune to creeping standardisation than anything else, but science fiction still offers a bolt hole for the outlandish and unclassifiable. That means authors like Richard Calder. His initial outing, the 'Dead Girls/Boys/Things' trilogy, and subsequently 'Frenzetta' and 'The Twist', eccentrically mixed fantasy, action and a strain of eroticism. In Malignos (Earthlight, £6.99), 53rd century Earth's technology has been derailed by an unexplained extraterrestrial force. A race paralleling mankind, the Malignos, has arisen. Resembling legendary demons, complete with horns and leathery wings, most of them inhabit a bizarre, artificial underground world. Richard Pike, a hitman (almost a de rigueur profession in contemporary sf), lives with a female malignos called Gala, one of a handful of her kind dwelling above ground. At best an amoral character, Pike is as much her pimp as her boyfriend. But when Gala ingests a poison that zombies her out, he undertakes a dangerous odyssey to the underworld for the antidote. His extraordinary adventures there make for the most entertaining, resourceful segment, with many an imaginatively exotic scrape before the denouement in the labyrinth's heart, Pandemonium. Pike isn't entirely redeemed - his less than pure nature is one of the book's interests - though he does go some way towards self-realisation. The human/malignos set up is a bit reminiscent of Wells' Eloi and Morlocks in 'The Time Machine', and the inner world owes something to Verne, but only assuming both had been on acid. 'Malignos' isn't wholly successful in its suspension of disbelief, and in places the plot takes a hike in wrong directions. But full marks for its singular taste and the virtue of being different.
Michael Moorcock's King of the City (Scribner, £16.99) isn't sf or fantasy but warrants mention because its author has had an immensely positive influence on both genres, and because its freewheeling narrative style is suggestive of the finest kind of speculative fiction. Like Moorcock's supremely accomplished 'Mother London', 'King of the City' stars the capital. Denny Dover is an East End lad who was once a rock star. Career on the buffers, he retreats to tatty coastal town Skerring, where he recalls his journey through '60s and '70s excesses to his 90s heyday as a paparazzo for the red tops. His reflections are packed with colourful events and an almost bewildering torrent of faces, real and imaginary; the players include Hitler, Jack Buchanan, Al Bowly, Jessie Matthews, Annie Lennox, Johnny Rotten, Princess Diana, Thatcher, Blair and countless others. A catalyst for this nostalgia-fest is the reappearance of Denny's childhood pal John Barbican-Begg, an entrepreneur embodying everything lousy about the '80s, and whom the world believes dead. The flypaper of the man's personality draws our hero into his machinations, one of which could be the sexual conquest of Denny's fetching cousin, Rosie. The novel's epic sweep embraces the cultural mores of a generation, and poses some uncompromising moral questions. Politically astute, contentious, an author who's always defied tidy categorisation, Moorcock offers here one of his most ambitious, satisfying works. I loved this book.
Millennium's reprint series SF Masterworks has gained definitive status. On the basis of the initial six titles, a companion line, Fantasy Masterworks, looks set to match it. Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, Volume 1 (£7.99), containing the first two volumes of four, is an acknowledged modern classic. Time and the Gods by Lord Dunsany (£6.99) gathers many of the adept's short pieces, though stylistically this is perhaps the least well weathered by time; and the same might be said of E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros (£6.99), but both are retrieved by their lavish visions. Jack Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth (£7.99) is a seminal example of the hybrid sometimes called science fantasy, and still stands up as a wonderfully vivid, pacey adventure sequence. John Crowley's Little, Big (£6.99), and The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny (£8.99), are milestones in the genre and equally worthy of inclusion. These and planned selections are excellently chosen, boding well for an indispensable series.
Paper Tiger are doing for the visual side of sf/fantasy what Millennium are doing for the prose. Their 'Art of ... ' line showcases, in beautifully produced editions, some of the field's most interesting artists, established and new. Enchanted World: The Art of Anne Sudworth (£20); Greetings From Earth: Bob Eggleton; Inner Visions: Ron Walotsky (£14.99 each), and Mass: John Harris (£20) display a wide range of styles and techniques encompassing the best in fantastical illustration. All are excellent, and recommended.
TOP
Column 25
They say you should never go back. But there are exceptions. Seven years after the last novel in his bestselling Shannara sequence, Terry Brooks revisits the Four Lands in The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara: Ilse Witch (Earthlight, £16.99). The first in a new series, it begins in suitably intriguing, if somewhat gruesome manner with the rescue of an insane, shipwrecked Elf, sans eyes and tongue. He carries a map that sparks the plot. (A self-confessed nod towards 'Treasure Island'; Brooks thinks of himself as an adventure story writer as much as a fantasist.) The mutilated Elf is a prince who disappeared years before on a secret mission. Walker Boh, last of the Druids, persuades Elf King Allardon Elessedil to authorise an expedition retracing the Prince's. Walker musters a crew consisting of types Brooks specialises in - outsiders and misfits. Aboard the airship Jerle Shannara, their fractious journey is shadowed by the young, corrupt Ilse Witch, accompanied by reptilian mercenaries supplied by her murderous confederate the Morgawr. The prize is a lost form of potent magic. 'Ilse Witch' shares the crisp, clean style and strong story drive of the previous Shannaras, and the characterisation's distinctive. It differs in its deeper examination of the moral issues raised. Basically, the question is whether there's a degree of evil beyond which a wrongdoer excludes themselves from deliverance. It's going to be interesting to see where Brooks takes it.
Astrology always struck me as a fertile system on which to base an imaginary culture, yet comparatively few fantasies employ it. Julia Gray's The Dark Moon, Book One of The Guardian Cycle, (Orbit, £6.99) is one of them. Divination governs the Empire of the Floating Islands; failure to observe predictive rules can condemn you. One prophecy is that the Emperor's son will be the legendary Guardian, a kind of Arthurian figure born at the time of the empire's greatest need. But nobody anticipated twins. One is assumed to be the Guardian, the other a personification of the evil that would have been part of him. The assumption's correct. The choice of who's who isn't. Terrel is consigned to an asylum; his depraved brother Jax eventually inherits the empire. A sort of prince and the pauper variation ensues, with the evil machinations of Jax and the naive stumblings of true Guardian Terrel having an element of pantomime about them. Not enough to detract from the entertainment value and some nice ideas, fortunately.
As would be expected, nice ideas also underpin the long-awaited collaboration between Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. The conceit in The Light of Other Days (Voyager, £17.99) is the discovery, in 2035, of countless minute wormholes permeating the universe. A device called the WormCam utilises these, making it possible to view in real time any event anywhere on Earth, irrespective of barriers. Further development sees the gadget able to penetrate time as well as space, revealing the truth about mysteries from the past - assassinations, Princess Diana's death, the authentic Jesus. Affordable WormCams let everybody join in. Privacy vanishes. New generations of the gadget allow the viewing of earliest Man, and the world before life appeared. A second layer is added to the plot with an Earth-busting piece of space debris heading our way.
But Clarke and Baxter are essentially optimistic, seeing the possibility of Humanity achieving a utopian future. Those well read in the field will notice definite similarities to Asimov's classic short story 'The Dead Past'; not to mention some striking parallels with Clarke's novel 'The Trigger' and Baxter's 'Manifold: Time'. No matter. This is enjoyable, thought-provoking stuff, with the balls to pursue its speculations to mind-boggling extremes.
Here's heresy. Ridley Scott's 1979 film 'Alien' was no classic. Its visuals were good, particularly in showing a future that looked lived-in, but what was it except a monster-on-the-loose horror flick set in space? In sf terms it was certainly nothing new, as evidenced by the out of court settlement its producers made to writer A.E. Van Vogt, acknowledging several of his old stories were an 'inspiration'. Just another example of how far cinema lags behind the literature. But my view won't sway the army of enthusiasts drooling for Alien: The Complete Illustrated Screenplay, edited by Paul M. Sammon (Orion, £17.99). It reproduces Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett's script, along with excised scenes, and appends an exhaustive history of the film's production, including some stills not seen before. Fanatics will love it. The less enamoured might agree that you should never go back.
TOP
Column 26
Recent years have seen skip loads of fiction based on the Arthurian legend. Much of it has been less than riveting. But readers turning a jaundiced eye on Robert Holdstock's Celtika, Book One of The Merlin Codex (Earthlight, £16.99), would miss a substantial treat. In fact, this cycle doesn't begin in Arthur's era. Immortal Merlin is first seen in the company of fabled heroes in ancient Greece. He's allied himself with Jason, and become embroiled in the bloody events played out between the Argonaut and his wife, the sorceress Medea. Across time and distance, to Britain, the narrative takes in the tale of Celtic chieftain Urtha, bent on avenging the loss of his family. The abstruse figure of Merlin is woven through a storyline embracing many elements of European mythology. 'Celtika' is a widening of the concepts Holdstock explored in his celebrated Mythago Wood sequence, where fabulous mythic archetypes take corporeal form. It isn't necessary to read those earlier books to appreciate this, though knowledge of them undoubtedly enriches the experience. The writing expertise makes an intricate plot entirely accessible. Intelligent, impeccably researched fantasy, and an excellent start to a series showing great promise.
Is sf's natural form the short story? It's a theory that has less force than when the stuff lurked in disreputable pulp magazines. But most old hands will still tell you they got hooked by ideas originally encountered in shorts. Many of them were written by Arthur C. Clarke. The Collected Stories (Gollancz, £20), with over a hundred offerings, contains almost every short story he's written. It could also support the opinion that he's a consistently better writer at this length than as a novelist. Given a career spanning more than 60 years, there's an incredible range of subject matter, and while some of the pieces from the '30's have yellowed, much remains fresh. 'The Sentinel', which inspired '2001', is here. As are stories that later seeded Clarke's novels 'Earthlight', 'The Songs of Distant Earth', and arguably his most accomplished longer work, 'Childhood's End'. Certain themes are apparent, including an adherence to solid scientific principles. But there's also a preoccupation with what might be termed spiritual concerns - notably in the classics 'The Star' and 'The Nine Billion Names of God' - an intriguingly ambiguous side of an author who otherwise presents himself as a rationalist. An introduction and brief notes accompanying many of the stories place everything in context. It almost goes without saying that this is an essential addition to any enthusiast's library.
In Supertoys Last All Summer Long (Orbit, £6.99), another master of the genre, Brian Aldiss, presents a collection that's much slimmer but at least as fetching in its own way. There's much to admire and be entertained by here, and the title story holds especial interest. It features a boy who doesn't know that he, and his beloved teddy bear, are actually androids. The notion entranced Kubrick so much he spent years trying to film it. Aldiss' introduction gives a fascinating account of his collaboration with the fastidious director. (Spielberg's now taken over the project.) And the book contains two equally imaginative follow-up stories.
Stephen Baxter's Deep Future (Gollancz, £18) is his first book-length non-fiction effort; one of those pieces of popular futurology sf writers are given to penning from time to time - and occasionally later regretting when scientific developments take completely unexpected turns. (No science fiction writer predicted the internet, for example.) But as most of Baxter's speculations concern the far future he's on comparatively safe ground. It's smart, thought-provoking stuff, surfing the outer edges of Physics and making a plea for colonisation of the planets, among other things. One of his more interesting notions is that there might not be other intelligent life in the universe. Somehow he manages to make this bleak, somewhat depressing thought seem like a wonderful opportunity for our species.
Most artwork simply dates. In rare cases it matures. The paintings of legendary sf illustrator Frank Kelly Freas definitely fall into the latter category. Celebrating his fiftieth year as a professional artist, As He Sees It (Paper Tiger, £20) collects many splendid examples of his fantastical vision. This is a guy who's interpreted the works of practically every notable genre writer. His numerous accolades include ten Hugos, the sf world's Oscar, and his was the hand which brought us that icon of 20th century absurdity, 'Mad' magazine's Alfred E. Neumann. Freas may be the single most influential artist in the field. This shows you why.
TOP
Column 27
The most celebrated of veteran fabulist Michael Moorcock's creations, Elric, albino prince of Melnibone, returns in The Dreamthief's Daughter (Earthlight, £16.99). In Moorcock's multiverse the Eternal Champion has myriad guises. Here, Elric, one manifestation of Law's never-ending struggle with Chaos, meets another - Count Ulric von Bek. Set in the years of Hitler's ascent, Nazi occultists hunt the Holy Grail and a fabled black sword, which they believe von Bek possesses. He's rescued from a concentration camp by a young woman called Oona, who transports him to a bizarre underground domain for a meeting with Elric, whom von Bek knows only from dreams. Time and space meld, the plot weaves through alternate universes, as Elric and von Bek, actually facets of the same personality, unite against rising evil. This is a supreme example of the fantasy adventure genre, and more. The book confounds our expectations, delving into political extremism, morality and personal freedom in the face of totalitarianism. Only Moorcock could blend vividly imagined fantasy with an unblinking look at some of the 20th century's most harrowing episodes.
David Gemmell writes powerful, grown-up fantasy too. He's on vintage form in Ravenheart (Bantam, £17.99), the third Rigante book, set 800 years after 'Midnight Falcon'. The Rigante people's hard won freedom has been lost to the conquering Varlish. Rubbing salt into the wound, the Varlish claim legendary Rigante liberator Connavar (see 'Sword in the Storm') as one of their
own. When a boy, Kaelin Ring was punished for insisting Connavar was Rigante, and his father was murdered by a Varlish governor. As a youth, Kaelin avenges a heinous rape and murder. Fate yokes him to a more unlikely hero: his one-eyed, drunken mentor, Jaim Grymauch. Seeking to aid a witch, this mismatched pair are tossed into the fight to regain Rigante independence. Characterisation, always a strength in this writer's work, is even deeper and subtler, but without sacrificing edgy pace. In the realm of people-driven, solidly plotted fantasy fiction, Gemmell sets the standard.
The first few pages of Carol Berg's Transformation, Book One of The Rai-Kirah (Orbit, £9.99), are overly dense. But things quickly lift. Years of slavery have stripped Seyonne of self-respect and made him forget he was once a Warden, a member of a wizard elite that battles demons. He's indentured to Prince Aleksander, heir to the conquering Derzhi empire, a capricious little snot with no apparent redeeming features. Discovering that the Prince is under demonic attack, Seyonne opts to save him. This is inspired by self-interest, but Seyonne comes to realise Aleksander has a spark of humanity. The Prince's redemption, his transformation, and the flowering of mutual esteem between master and slave, is at the story's heart. This is handled superbly, as is the characterisation generally, more than compensating for a less than original plot.
Fantasy's on a roll. One writer keeping the sf flame burning is Sheri S. Tepper. The Fresco (Gollancz, £17.99) has Benita Alvarez-Shipton trapped in an abusive marriage until aliens make her their intermediary with the American government. Members of benevolent race the Pistach, they're offering the many benefits of inclusion in a galactic confederation. The price is that we have to abolish all social injustices. Another groups of aliens, merciless predators, are also interested in us - as prey. The civilising, protective Confederation or the predators' onslaught? It isn't as simple a choice as it sounds: the Pistach's social engineering could be as severe as the ills they want to eliminate. This is Tepper's most approachable book to date, though not, perhaps, her best. An author with a social agenda - feminist, liberal, pacifist - she's keen to drive home her view of the world's inequities. Fortunately, she avoids polemic. Her characters, human and alien, are exceptionally well drawn.
In Ben Bova's The Precipice, The Asteroid Wars: 1 (Hodder, £17.99), Earth faces ecological disaster. Visionary industrialist Dan Randolph plans to save the planet by shifting manufacturing processes off-world and mining the asteroids' fabulous resources. He allies with rival Martin Humphries, whose corporation has developed a highly efficient fusion drive. Soon, Humphries reveals his true, villainous stripe and sabotages the project for his own gain. So Randolph commandeers a prototype ship and sets out for the asteroids himself, accompanied by a crew of fellow believers. Some plot aspects - the world run by an alliance of Chinese communists and dictatorial Eurocrats, for example - are a bit of a stretch, and characterisation shades into stereotyping. But Bova's good at combining sf with thriller elements, and always keeps things moving.
TOP
Column 28
In science fiction's post-cyberpunk landscape, smart writers focus less on technology than characterisation. Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Pashazade: The First Arabesk (Earthlight, £12.99) is set in an alternate 21st century, a near future where the Arab world remains under Turkish influence following a different outcome to the First World War. Petty criminal Ashraf Bey upsets his employers and flees to turbulent North African city El Iskandriya to cool his heels, but runs into more trouble when falsely accused of murder. The high-tech gadgetry that played such a large part in Grimwood's previous work is still present, but this time his concerns are much more with the cast and their travails. One element common to several of his novels remains; the AI mentor, here in the form of a vaguely Castaneda-like fox entity inhabiting Ashraf Bey's brain. There's a mature balance between sensibility and action, in what's essentially a rite of passage story allied with detection thriller; deftly told and laced with neat ideas.
If you embark on a sequel to a novel that's both a science fiction and mainstream classic, you'd better approach it with conviction. The hardcore sf element in particular will be sniffy about any such endeavour. But even they should ditch their reservations in light of Simon Clark's honourable The Night of the Triffids (Hodder & Stoughton, £17.99). This authorised sequel to John Wyndham's 'The Day of the Triffids' marks the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. Set 25 years after Wyndham's story, the focus shifts from his hero, Bill Masen, to Masen's son, David. Those blinded by the mysterious cosmic event in Wyndham's book are ageing and a sighted generation is on the rise, but the lethal, ambulatory triffids still dominate. Now they're evolving new abilities and threaten to overrun the Masens' Isle of Wight refuge. David sets out to contact a human enclave in New York with apparent immunity to triffid poison. Wisely, Clark doesn't try feigning Wyndham's style and sticks to a kind of halfway house pastiche. There's more graphic nastiness than Wyndham could have got away with, but otherwise this stays faithful to the spirit of the original. A respectful, creditable effort.
Neal Asher's Gridlinked (Macmillan, £10) stars cyberpunkish hero Ian Cormac, an operative with Earth Central Security. Cormac's brain is gridlinked - connected to the all-pervasive AI network - as an aid to his undercover work. Cover blown, he kills terrorist leader Arian Pelter's sister. Fearing Cormac has been gridlinked too long for his sanity, his masters pull the plug. So his next assignment, investigating the massacre of a planet's entire population, has him relying on his own resources for the first time in decades; though he does have the help of several androids and a cognisant throwing star. With Pelter seeking revenge via a determined assassin, he needs them. There's invention and wit here, and firm command of a complex plot. 'Gridlink's' weaknesses are common to many first novels: less than convincing characterisation and a somewhat hackneyed plot; and strain as it does to be as hard-edged as Gibson, Sterling or Dick, it doesn't quite succeed. Which is not to say there isn't a lot in 'Gridlinked' to be entertained by and admire.
It must be Summer, the rain's warmer. Tom Holt's Nothing But Blue Skies (Orbit, £15.99)
merrily exploits the English obsession with weather. But if you think it's all to do with isobars, cold fronts and intermittent precipitation, you're wrong. It's down to Chinese water dragons. Karen, the young, romantically besotted Dragon Marshall of Bank Holidays, is driven to take human form. Well, nominally human. She's an estate agent. But her ineptitude in love makes her angry, which triggers torrential downpours. Disgruntled TV weathermen hold Karen's father hostage against the return of sunny days. This inspires the wrath of imperialists who think lousy weather's good because it sent our ancestors to invade warmer climes and build the British empire. Mixed in are the machinations of an Australian media mogul and the royal family's predilection for human sacrifice. Holt has sharpened his funny bone over a number of increasingly assured novels and achieves perfectly pitched comic chaos.
Aficionados of space art regard the late Chesley Bonestell as one of the greats. The Art of Chesley Bonestell, edited by Ron Miller and Frederick C. Durant III (Paper Tiger, £35), shows how his lifelong interest in astronomy, combined with a supreme talent as a draughtsman, made him the foremost interpreter of planetary terrains and futuristic spacecraft. Over 300 of his paintings are superbly reproduced.
TOP
Column 29
Peter Crowther's excellent anthology Futures (Gollancz, £12.99) presents novellas from four leading writers. In Stephen Baxter's 'Reality Dust', aliens obliterate Earth's culture and history. Peter F. Hamilton's 'Watching Trees Grow' is a kind of whodunnit set in a 19th Century alternate world where Romans still rule Britain. Paul McAuley's 'Making History' mixes hard science and politics in the tale of an historian visiting a space colony after a war of independence. 'Tendeleo's Story' by Ian McDonald posits a bizarre, unstoppable alien invasion in Kenya, and its effect on a 13 year-old village girl. 'Futures' reminds us that the genre had its origins in story and novella length, and how suitable the short form still is for much of it. With talent like this, British sf can't be in too bad a shape.
Ray Anthony's first novel, Empress (Ace, £6.99), isn't space opera in the classic pulp sense, but does share its propensity for sweeping future history and mighty events. A faster-than-light drive allows Humanity to colonise space. When the galaxy plunges into war, the technology is lost. After a period of chaos it's rediscovered and a stable galactic empire rises. But anarchy threatens to return. Empress Morturina and Prince Kazii-Ra try to preserve order. Their foe is Morturina's cousin, Empress Hial of the Shadow Empire, whose machinations endanger civilisation. The book's milieu may be pulpish, with an element of hokum appropriate to the form, but this isn't an arch Star Wars. Its characterisation lifts it, and there's an intelligent attempt to envision the social and sexual mores of a far-flung culture. Minor crudities of expression aside, it's an entertaining read.
Michael Cobley's Shadowkings (Earthlight, £10), beginning a trilogy by a new author, has a fairly standard plot redeemed by the telling. When the evil Lord of Twilight was overcome, his essence was split into five fragments, each forming the soul of a shadowking. Years later, the shadowkings, martial sorcerer types, embark on a bloody campaign to return him to corporeal form. Remnants of opposition stand between dark magic and complete disorder. There's a gritty, desolate tone in depicting the grime and horror of conflict; Cobley's skill lies in establishing a sense of reality unusual in fantasy.
Jessica Rydill's Children of the Shaman (Orbit, £7.99) is another first novel, set in an ice-bound, post-apocalyptic world. Young brother and sister Malchik and Annat accompany their shaman father, Yuda, to Gard Ademar, where a railway tunnel is being built. Yuda's purpose is to discover why several workers have unaccountably died. Malchik passes through a magic portal into a realm called La Souterraine, and comes under the influence of female deity the Cold One. Annat and her father, along with the local sheriff and his wife, give chase in a steam train. Much argy-bargy ensues, during which Annat begins to master her inherent shamanic powers. La Souterraine too closely resembles the world they've just left, and the narrative occasionally suffers from snow blindness, obscuring the path. Actually, this starts quite imaginatively, with good, solid characterisation, but loses its grip about halfway through. The structure falters, the resolution's weak. Rydill has the makings of a competent storyteller; she needs to work on plotting.
Hardyware: The Art of David A. Hardy, with text by Chris Morgan (Paper Tiger, £20), pays tribute to a prominent British sf and space illustrator. Hardy's one of the handful whose vision fashioned the public face of the genre; this fine collection is a timely recognition of that fact. Voyager Classics presents milestones of the genre in smart uniform editions, kicking off with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings; T.H. White's The Once and Future King; Asimov's Foundation; Huxley's Brave New World, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars (£7.99 each). So far, an admirable selection; though another version of Tolkien could be a little superfluous. But how can you have a classics list without him? At £3.99, Pocket Essentials are slim yet surprisingly comprehensive. M.J. Simpson's A Complete and Utterly Unauthorised Guide to Hitchhiker's Guide provides an all-embracing overview of the work of the late Douglas Adams. Equally authoritative are Andrew M. Butler's companions to Terry Pratchett, Philip K. Dick and Cyberpunk.
Big Engine is one of the newer sf small presses. Molly Brown's Bad Timing (£8.99) showcases an accomplished practitioner of the short form; David Langford's The Leaky Establishment (£7.99) satirises Britain's nuclear weapons industry; The Ant Men of Tibet and Other Stories (£8.99), edited by David Pringle, collects ten top-notch stories from Interzone, our premier speculative fiction magazine.
TOP
COLUMN 30
It's official: the UK now has the highest concentration of CCTV cameras on the planet. Paul McAuley's Whole Wide World (Voyager, £16.99) is set in a near future London, two years after a terrorist Info War brought down the internet and nearly did the same for the economy. The capital has rebuilt its IT infrastructure, incorporating numerous cameras; in public places, privacy has gone. Misfortune left narrator Detective Inspector John Dixon wounded, discredited and desk-bound. Given a menial job on the edge of an investigation into the murder of artist Sophie Booth, Dixon thinks he can see how to rehabilitate his career. Sophie was the niece of the man who created the surveillance system, and it has a loophole that means it can be outsmarted - knowledge worth killing for. This functions well as both thriller and sf, and explores the impact of technology on privacy and freedom. It's lightly furnished with genre trappings; people rather than gadgetry are to the fore. A quality novel that further confirms McAuley's place in the first rank of British sf authors.
Robin Hobb enjoys similar status in American fantasy. Fool's Errand, The Tawny Man: Book One (Voyager, £17.99), sees the return of Fitz, hero of her earlier 'Farseer' trilogy. The bastard son of a noble, Fitz possesses two rare gifts - the Skill, a form of magical ability, and Wit, which enables him to communicate with animals. For the past 15 years Fitz has exiled himself from his uncaring highborn relations. Now the Witted are suffering persecution, and the son Fitz never knew, Prince Dutiful, has disappeared, accompanied by his own Wit familiar. Hobb presents her characters with absolute plausibility, and you believe they would have aged in exactly the way she depicts. In this respect there's warmth unsullied by cloying sentimentality. The pace is deliberate, but suits the complexities of plot and its political machinations.
David Zindell's The Lightstone, Book 1 of the Ea Cycle (Voyager, £17.99), is a huge tome with sweeping ambition. Valashu Elahad quests for the legendary Lightstone, an artifact with the power to erase the moral corruption rotting the land of Ea. A being fallen from grace, now a demon, plagues Val's dreams. Like-minded companions join him in his search, gathering various items of magical paraphernalia as they progress. A fairly formulaic story in other words, but that doesn't entirely do justice to its execution, much of which is vividly imaginative and truly grand. There's a richness of description, and a canvas that's about as broad and colourful as they come. I wish he'd cut it by a third though.
Cecilia Dart-Thornton's The Ill-Made Mute, The Bitterbynde, Book 1 (Macmillan, £16.99), the first novel from an Australian author, arrives with a fanfare of critical acclaim following its US publication. A young orphan suffers physical deformity, loss of speech and amnesia after being injured by a noxious plant. A life of drudgery as a servant ends when the mute meets crazy chancer Sianadh. He gives the runaway a name, Imrhien, and for the first time we realise that the orphan is a girl, not a boy - she was brought up as male to avoid her being used even more despicably. Imrhien learns of a seer, Maeve One-Eye, who might be able to mend her face and
memory, and sets out to find her. Many hazards attend the journey, during which Imrhien falls for a ranger, Thorn, who seems incapable of reciprocating her feelings. I found much to admire here, but had some problems too. What's good is that Dart-Thornton synthesises many elements of folklore and myth to generate something new and different. Her descriptive powers are strong and the plotting contains a couple of unexpected twists. On the other hand, the characterisation is shallow, often the narrative lapses into the overly-descriptive, and the tempo loiters. The beginning, in particular, is a struggle through treacle which I fear is going to shed readers. I found this sufficiently promising that I'll try the next volume, but it will have to get a grip.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (HarperCollins, £7.99), by Tom Shippey, draws its title from turn of the millennium polls naming the 'Lord of the Rings' author as the 20th Century's most popular writer. A chunk of the content previously appeared in Shippey's 'The Road to Middle Earth', but there's enough new to make it worthwhile purchasing this too. Shippey's insights into why Tolkien is the single most influential force in fantasy literature are compelling and persuasive.
|
Time Out SF/Fantasy book review archive