by TTA Press
The religion in the Crescent Moon Kingdoms – while obviously modelled in large part on medieval Islam – is tinged by an almost Protestant notion of man’s private relationship with God. So I guess I’d argue that the book is full of moments of worship – but that these manifest as silent prayers and spoken commonplaces rather than as public ritual.
Most fantasies end with the status quo re-established, yet Throne of the Crescent Moon ends with a regime change. Was this a dig at the consolatory nature of much fantasy?
Yes! The “restoration of the rightful heir” plot that drives so much fantasy depends heavily on a tacit celebration of hereditary, monarchical power. I wanted to at least touch on questions of what “rightful rule” even means.
Given Islam’s troubled history on the question of “rightful heirs” – the Shi’ites, the word Caliph itself also meaning “deputy” – do you see this topic as an antidote to typical Western fantasies or something intrinsic to an Arabic fantasy?
The whole novel was written with a sceptical eye toward political power, so in that sense it was an antidote to the prevailing mode of fantasy novel. I don’t think the Islamic world’s history on this front is any more troubled than the Christian world’s, but notions of hereditary power and divine right to rule are perhaps less entrenched in the former. So there’s a kind of ripe potential for fluidity there.
Your central characters are far from the typical privileged fantasy heroes (even Peasant Heroes usually turn out to have secretly had privilege all along). Was this also deliberate?
It was absolutely deliberate. In part due to my own class background, the socially marginalised working wizard strikes me as a much more interesting and under-explored figure than the wronged royal whelp or the Farmboy Who Is So Much More.
Throne of the Crescent Moon ends quite decisively. What’s next for the series?
Romances rifted and repaired. The first appearance of the djenn – also called the fireborn, or the Thousand and One. Answers to bloody questions about revolution and rulership. Glimpses of Rughal-ba, the Soo Republic, and the Warlands. The obligatory Battle of the Big Ole Fantasy Armies, which is also a Crusades analogue and a meditation on pacifism
* * * * *
NEXUS
Ramez Naam
Angry Robot pb, 448pp, £8.99
Matthew S. Dent
Hard SF is an interesting concept for me as a reviewer. It revels in being highly technical, and garners further esteem from being accurate. It’s an effect doubled with near-future SF, given that it’s more deeply grounded in present day ideas and technologies.
So it falls to me to say that I know precious little about the details, the nitty-gritties of nanotechnology, upon which Nexus is largely predicated. But it seems that Ramez Naam does, being a professional heavily involved in the technology, as well as the ethics surrounding it. So it’s safe to say that he knows what he’s talking about.
Nexus shows us a world where a drug can link human minds together, where bodies and minds can be improved beyond their physical constrains, and where the primary concern of law enforcement is stopping people exceeding the limitations of humanity. It takes the reader on a wild ride halfway around the world, with both practical and moral ramifications taking centre stage.
Of course, knowing the subject matter does not necessarily make someone a good writer, and at times the prose is rather stilted and perfunctory. It won’t be winning any awards for poetic storytelling, but in the almost unceasing fury of the plot progression this fades almost to insignificance.
And considering that blistering pace, he pulls off quite a lot of characterisation. The background characters remain little more than pieces on a chessboard, but he manages to inject real life and likability into the three leads. Mostly this takes place in the breathing moments before the action sequences.
So I enjoyed Nexus. Naam explains the technology surprisingly well and the premise feels, at times, all too believable. I think that’s kind of the point. The somewhat dystopian vision of a future where scientific research into post-humanism is limited seems all the more chilling when you can draw parallels to present day restrictions and debates around potentially life-saving stem cell research.
At times, though, the plot becomes simply a vessel for the debate Naam clearly wants to promote, but I’d be lying if I said it got in the way of my enjoyment. The epilogue is a perfect example of this – it isn’t strictly necessary, and feels a little out of place as part of the story, but I understand its purpose.
Overall, Nexus is a very readable book. It deals with real world ramifications of next-generation technology in a believable, if somewhat scary, fashion. It’s accurate without being boring, and action-packed without descending into the trite or vapid. There is a dictionary full of reviewer clichés mandated for this kind of situation, but actually I think I’m just going to say that Nexus was rather good, and you should read it
* *
BEDLAM
Christopher Brookmyre
Orbit hb, 376pp, £17.99
Paul F. Cockburn
Writing for The Guardian in May 2011, Iain M. Banks focused on the not-infrequent phenomenon of non-SF writers being “drawn to write what is perfectly obviously science fiction – regardless of either their own protestations or those of their publishers”. Banks welcomed their potential for engendering “further dialogue” between genres. Nevertheless, he underlined the necessity for authors to do their homework: “as with most subjects, if you’re going to enter the dialogue it does help to know at least a little of what you’re talking about, and it also helps, by implication, not to dismiss everything that’s gone before as not worth bothering with”.
Of course, Banks can claim a fairly unique perspective on this issue. We rightfully think of him as “one of us”, thanks to a quarter-century of ground-breaking science fiction novels. Yet it’s easy to forget that, when Consider Phlebas was first published in 1987, Banks was generally viewed as a promising young literary author, albeit with a taste for the surreal, who already had three successful novels under his belt. He had to prove he had something new to say.
Fellow Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre joins the ongoing science fiction “dialogue” with significantly more baggage; notwithstanding Pandaemonium, which pitted a group of teenagers against the forces of Hell, Brookmyre is primarily known for delivering action-packed, darkly humorous and often quite violent crime novels. While his two most recent Glasgow-based novels were deemed more “serious” examples of crime fiction – inspiring the publisher to rebrand him as Chris Brookmyre – it is interesting to note that Bedlam is listed alongside the more in-your-face novels that cemented his reputation.
This is appropriate enough; the gritty humour and energetic prose which helped Brookmyre stand out from the Tartan Noir crowd is certainly here: we’re shown nanite clouds that gust through ventilation systems “with missionary enthusiasm, like a sentient fart determined to be smelled”. A character is dismissed as “the cyborg equivalent of a Nissan Micra”, just one of a host of late 20th/early 21st century cultural references that successfully define its main character, a disillusioned scientist and computer game player called Ross Baker. Given his background, it’s entirely appropriate that many of the references are themselves from works of science fiction; for example, when Ross realises that an old friend has betrayed him, his response is: “You went Lando on us?” (As in Lando Calrissian, from The Empire Strikes Back.)
Present too is Brookmyre’s trademark focus on an anti-authoritarian character, someone trying their best to survive the repercussions of the machinations of “the establishment”. However, on this occasion, this theme is mostly contained within a disconnected timeline which is featured intermittently through the novel. As a result, the book as a whole seems somewhat skewed. At times, there’s a sense that Brookmyre is simply having too much fun imagining what it would really be like to live and fight within some of his all-time favourite computer games.
At i
ts heart, Bedlam is about world-building; how we each create worlds from our own perceptions and perspectives, and the fascination in working out what those worlds say about us – especially the ones we create or enjoy in order to “escape” from our own lives. In terms of style and subject matter, Brookmyre certainly brings something fresh to Banks’ science fiction dialogue. Yet, by focusing so much on the games’ shoot-em-up formats, and on the increasingly complex machinations of the neo-fascist Integrity (which wishes to stop all transfers between different game worlds, and is quite prepared to torture and destroy in order to achieve their goal), does Brookmyre miss a real trick?
For a few pages we’re shown a truly horrifying world, a small idealised English village created for people who “don’t feel right unless they’ve got something to be afraid of and somebody to look down on”. It’s a world where unreal, unruly teenagers are flogged; where virtual illegal immigrants are constantly rounded up and deported, or executed. Essentially, it’s a world for Daily Mail readers. “These ass-wipes would rather live in a world where criminals are caught and punished than a world in which there is no crime”, we’re told. “Except, of course, there is no crime; only an illusion of it and it’s an illusion they find bizarrely comforting”. It’s arguable that Brookmyre would have given science fiction some more social relevance if his hero had ended up in the Daily Mail world, rather than a retro 1990s vision of the future
* *
STEAMPUNK III: STEAMPUNK REVOLUTION
Edited by Ann VanderMeer
Tachyon pb, 432pp, £13.50
Simon Marshall Jones
Mention the word “steampunk”, and inevitably images come to mind of airships floating effortlessly through skies filled with gleaming spires, vast iron machines belching smoke that fills the air from horizon to horizon, and corseted Victorian ladies, along with pith-helmeted and monocled gentlemen, replete with handlebar moustaches, striding confidently across both the known and unknown worlds in search of adventure and mysterious artefacts, or battling dastardly villains going about their nefarious deeds.
For the most part, this has stood as a handy definition of the genre but, as Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution shows deftly and plainly, such constraints and tropes exist simply to be stretched, broken, and remade by those pioneers unwilling to tread the path forged by others. The tapestry from which this collection of twenty-six stories and four essays has been lifted is vast in both breadth and depth, and can indeed be considered a revolution. Some would say that many of the tales included merely skirt the very borders of what has come to be recognised as the “correct” interpretation of steampunk, a point well made in Amal El-Mohtar’s essay ‘Winding Down the House: Toward a Steampunk Without Steam’, essential reading if one is to properly deconstruct and contextualise what constitutes the genre in order to move on from there.
And therein lies this book’s problem, from a reviewer’s perspective at least; it is not one of either lack of context, subtext or variety, but instead the sheer embarrassing wealth of thematic riches, all written with equal brilliance and facility. The difficulty in such a short review is highlighting the most apposite exemplars out of so many. Just like the best science fiction, steampunk expresses ideas and concepts that go beyond mere storytelling: the potential of human destiny; the different shapes history could have taken; how people interface with the technology and its consequences, confronting both its marvels and its threats. In its broadest sense, steampunk is about failures as well as breakthroughs, with abject disasters and soaring successes both personal and global. With every story here, boundaries have been pushed and they’re not just testament to the inventive imagination of the writers, but also to the breadth of the human mind in conjuring and sculpting visions that might, if the Victorian era had gone in another direction, have come to pass.
The whole panoply of human experience and endeavour is here: high adventure, the exotic, royalty, love, disappointment, sadness, elation, medical marvels, deep friendships, overcoming the odds, global collapses. Lands the length and breadth of Empire and beyond, peopled with revolutionary agitators, villains, princesses in disguise, assassins, inventors, aviatrixes, circuses, surgeons, and captains of the air. Beneath all the wonder is something else, however: a harsh reality and unpalatable truths.
This collection is not afraid to push through the nominal boundaries and venture into a kind of no-man’s-land where the connection to the genre is tenuous. It starts off with the very epitome of steampunk, Carrie Vaughan’s ‘Harry and Marlowe and the Talisman of the Cult of Egil’, and then veers off into uncharted areas such as Jeff VanderMeer’s ‘Fixing Hanover’, or Ben Peek’s ‘Possession’, where the steampunk itself provides only the most distant of backdrops.
‘A Handful of Rice’ by Vandana Singh could be said to go even further – it eschews the familiar setting of Victorian England and transplants it to the Indian Subcontinent. The central pivot of the story is the friction between the old and the new, between pranic energy and steam-power, yet the latter is only incidental to the story itself but nevertheless essential to the telling. Bruce Sterling contributes ‘White Fungus’, set in 2040s Europe amidst a global collapse. Its crumbling cyberpunk aesthetic (which is, if you think about it, the logical conclusion of steampunk) signals a harsh critique of systems reliant on technology, whether those systems are home computers or large political bodies. It seems to be saying “what about people?” Curiously, the story inverts the focus of hope, from shiny technology to post-steampunk human invention and resourcefulness.
It is impossible to encapsulate the full spectrum of instantiations of the genre as contained in this anthology. It is by turns astonishing and audacious, emphasising just how wide the spectrum of steampunk can be. Absolutely essential reading for students of the genre
* *
TAKEN
Benedict Jacka
Orbit pb, 319pp, £7.99
Juliet E. McKenna
Having enjoyed Jacka’s first two books, I opened Taken with mingled anticipation and apprehension. Book three is often when prior knowledge of character and scenario becomes essential. That, or painstaking recapping sees the opening flow like cold treacle. Encouragingly, neither applies.
Alex Verus, low-level divination mage, sits in a Starbucks waiting to meet an unknown but very powerful mage woman. As Crystal offers him a job, and he turns it down, Jacka swiftly and deftly portrays the essentials of Alex’s character and grounds his story in contemporary London while simultaneously revealing the perilous parallel world of rival mages of Light and Dark. A new reader should have no problem picking up the series here while fans of Fated and Cursed learn new facets of Alex’s life. So far, so good.
Alex turns down Crystal’s offer because he has other responsibilities, notably training his apprentice Luna. Their relationship is now firmly master and pupil and it’s good to see Jacka avoiding the urban-fantasy-soap-opera pitfall. Luna’s currently taking classes in magical duelling. So far, so Harry Potter? Third books often see a new writer’s imagination running out of steam and resorting to imitation. Not so here. Jacka draws on broader traditions of magicians’ apprentices to expand his magical world. That said, I don’t think Potteresque echoes are accidental, but an indication that readers and characters alike shouldn’t leap to assumptions as this story unfolds.
Next, Talisid wants Alex’s help and turning down a request from a high level Council member isn’t easy. Not that Alex wants to. Apprentices are disappearing. If Dark mages are recruiting by abduction, this is serious. Even more so if some Light mage is letting information slip as to where vulnerable apprentices might be found, by accident or design. As in the earlier books, ‘Light’ and ‘Good’ are by no means synonymous. Light prejudice against magical creatures, the less magically powerful and particularly the non-magical world becomes apparent and ultimately significant. Meantime, Dark mages mercilessly pursue ambitions and grudges alike.
Events take a deadly turn as Alex follows a promising
lead into an unexpected hail of gunfire. Getting out of that isn’t easy, even if Alex can read the future. Jacka’s continued inventiveness with spellcraft is a continuing strength of these books. Magic’s full potential relies on its intelligent use as well as an understanding of its limits. Though that’s just the beginning of Alex’s challenges. Some mages would prefer to do away with all such limitations. A low-level diviner and a few apprentices can’t battle them.
This finely crafted story is a solidly satisfying read. Taken sees Jacka established as a writer with a distinctive voice within the best traditions of contemporary urban fantasy.
* *
ORIGIN
J.T. Brannan
Headline pb, 400pp, £7.99
Ian Hunter
For the world’s self-proclaimed most reluctant reader, Origin appears on the surface to be the perfect book. Split into five parts and seventy-two chapters, this has all the hallmarks of a short chapter page-turner. But is it? Well, we are in Dan Brown-ish territory, I suppose, and before the supermarket shelves became dominated by paperbacks with black or grey covers and a photograph of maybe a mask or a glove or a chain, then Origin would have been right up there on the shelves beside books with three words in the title, with one of them being Nosferatu, or Lucifer, or Doomsday, or Templar. You get the picture.
First-time author (and former army officer) Brennan knows how to spin a yarn at breakneck speed, and the military antics have more than a ring of authenticity to them. The action opens down in the Antarctic on Pine Island Glacier, where a member of an expedition lets his curiosity get the better of him and falls to what might be his death. His team follows to the rescue and find what he has just discovered, which is a mummified body with “anomalous artefacts” as they say in the trade. Something that couldn’t possibly be, but is, and no sooner does the expedition reveal that they have discovered something “anomalous” than shadowy powers, listening in via satellite, quickly join up the dots and wipe out our band of intrepid explorers. Apart from team leader Lynn Edwards who has nowhere to turn except into the waiting arms of ex-husband Matt Adams who, handily, was once a member of a crack government unit. Their relationship brings to mind Andy McDermott’s series of books featuring Nina Child and Eddie Chase.