Locus, December 2012

by Locus Publications

  The boy Hob, the splendid evocation of the wild world, and the language and the style of the book carry it past these issues. Nicholas is a poet, and his control of words and the rhythms of words makes for a very enjoyable read. This is his first novel, clearly about a place he knows well and a time he’s researched in great depth. His stock of knowledge is impressive, and he can’t resist telling all of it.

  This is a great pitfall of historical fiction. You don’t have to tell people how to make soap to say a character washed their hands. I don’t need (or want) to know every single detail of how a fireplace is built, or two pages on the portcullis, or how tally sticks work.

  The process of writing fiction – any fiction – is to tell people what they have to know when they need to know it, and not any more. In fact the best fiction tells the least but gets the details exactly right. Anything else gums up the works. I’ll be eager to see Nicholas’ next book, when he has more confidence in reticence.

  –Cecelia Holland

  RICHARD A. LUPOFF

  Nell Gwynne’s on Land and at Sea, Kage Baker & Kathleen Bartholomew (Subterranean Press 978-1-59606-464-5, $35, 176pp, hc) December 2012. [Order from Subterranean Press, PO Box 190106, Burton MI 48519; .] Cover by J.K. Potter.

  Kage Baker came to science fiction at the age of 45 and died just twelve years later. It was a short career but a prolific one. Between 1997 and 2010 (the year of her death) she produced an astonishing two dozen novels, standalone novellas, and short story collections. In the last year of her life she wrote a weekly blog about silent-era science fiction films, collected after Kage’s death by her sister, Katherine (Kate) Bartholomew. A thoroughly personal, engaging, and opinionated book, hardly of scholarly quality but intensely readable and entertaining, Ancient Rockets (2011) is worthy of the attention of any science fiction enthusiast as well as any fan of silent cinema.

  Nell Gwynne’s on Land and at Sea was left unfinished at the time of Kage’s death, and has been completed by Katherine Bartholomew. No indication is given as to how much of the book was Kage’s, and how much Kate’s. I’m not sure to what degree this matters, either. In any case, the transition is seamless.

  It’s a hard book to categorize. The ‘‘Nell Gwynne’s’’ of the title is a genteel whorehouse operating in 1848 London, named for the iconic Seventeenth Century orange-seller, actress, and courtesan. Two centuries later, as Victoria sits primly on her thrown, officially, English society keeps a stiff and puritanical attitude toward sexuality while all sorts of naughtiness goes on behind closed doors.

  Mrs. Corvey, the proprietress of Nell Gwynn’s, had previously lost her eyes and had them replaced with fully functional, telescoping prosthetics. She habitually hides these devices behind smoked glasses while pretending to be blind. The young ladies whom she employs are an intriguing group, including the sexually ambiguous Herbert/Herbertina.

  Ah, but this book is not merely a kind of latter-day Fanny Hill, although it swoops tantalizingly close to ultra-genteel pornography (or a parody thereof) on occasion.

  Chief patrons of Nell Gwynn’s are the members of the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society, a kind of proto-Center for Advanced Studies, more a scientific think-tank with patriotic leanings than a purely academic association.

  The Madame and her girls close up shop for a month’s holiday at the seaside resort of Torquay, where they encounter a half-mad American-born Anglophile who has invented a submarine steam-cannon and plans to use it to provoke a war between England and France. Our heroines communicate with their patriotic patrons via a wireless radio secretly invented decades ahead of its time, called the Aetheric Transmitter.

  I won’t go on. There’s just so much fun here, not the least being the endless mouthwatering descriptions of Victorian feasts, and the presence of a marvelous little terrier called Domina. But then I’m a dog-lover anyway.

  The story is madcap and further description might spoil the fun. It’s steampunk science fiction reduced (or should I say elevated?) to the level of opera buffa. The copy that I read is an ARC or advance reading copy, featuring a marvelous cover painting and interior illustrations by J. K. Potter. I hope the publisher retains these for the official publication of the book.

  Kage Baker was a true ornament to our field. She is sorely missed, and all praise is due to her sister Katherine Bartholomew for preserving and enhancing her heritage.

  –Richard A. Lupoff

  GWENDA BOND

  The Diviners, Libba Bray (Little, Brown 978-0-316-12611-3, $19.99, 382pp, hc) September 2012.

  It might seem from afar that Libba Bray is returning to her fictional roots with The Diviners. Her first three books, which made up the Gemma Doyle trilogy, were historical fantasy, after all. Set in a Victorian-era girls’ school, those novels managed to explore women’s place in society while also providing plenty of supernatural intrigue. She followed up those books with a radical departure, Going Bovine, the contemporary tale of a young man afflicted with Mad Cow disease, which won the Printz Award. And then came Beauty Queens, an acid and yet ultimately heartfelt exploration of the dangers inherent in unrealistic beauty standards and their related stereotypes, by way of plane-wrecked teen beauty queens trying to survive a not-so-deserted island. Now The Diviners finds Bray kicking up her heels and providing the passwords to more than a few speakeasies in a 1920s New York where evil is on the prowl. But while she may be returning to historical fiction, Bray is in no danger of repeating herself.

  The first of a planned quartet and clocking in at nearly 600 pages, The Diviners is an inviting beginning to what is clearly a larger story. While much of the novel is concerned with introducing its cast of heroes, readers need not fear the slack of a set-up volume: there’s a chilling murderer on the loose. But first, a little more about the cast, because what a cast it is. Evangeline ‘‘Evie’’ O’Neill is our primary focus, and we meet her still at home in Zenith OH, where she’s landed herself in hot water at a party – Evie has the ability to hold an object and see its owner’s secrets. Too bad in this case that she reveals a rich boy got a chambermaid pregnant. Exiled to New York as punishment, Evie couldn’t be happier. But while she wants desperately to be in the limelight, the flapper-styled life of every party, she also nurses the wound of her brother’s death on a far battlefield and a host of regrets for the way her actions sometimes hurt those around her. In lesser hands, Evie might be an unlikable character – and other members of our cast sometimes see her as selfish – but Bray allows us to understand her in a way that makes her anything but.

  Evie is staying with her Uncle Will, who runs the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, better known as ‘‘the Museum of the Creepy Crawlies.’’ Her serious uncle doesn’t really know what to make of Evie, nor does his assistant Jericho Jones, equally serious (a Nietzsche reader), but a tall and handsome boy. Evie’s no-longer-long-distance best friend Mabel Rose, the shyer daughter of political organizers, has an even more serious crush on Jericho. Add to this mix several dashing characters who may also have secret powers – Memphis Campbell, a gorgeous Harlem bookie who used to be a healer; charming con artist Sam Lloyd; and Theta Knight, a Ziegfeld girl on the upswing.

  In flawlessly executed omniscient point of view, Bray introduces this bustling cast, as well as the victims of a man whistling an eerie children’s song about Naughty John, an infamous serial killer long-since dead. As tidbits are dropped about the return of ‘‘Diviners,’’ the Creepy Crawlies crew – a bona fide Scooby Gang – begin to assist in the investigation of the gruesome occult-tinged murders. Bray’s descriptive powers shine throughout, and her ability to balance the emotional life and subplots of so many characters with the larger story she’s developing feels effortless. The roaring 1920s are also a character here, in all their political and social complexity, and one lovingly developed. The slang may strike some readers as a bit thick at first, but it doesn’t take long for following the patois to become second nature.


  With The Diviners, Bray moves into new ground with more thrills and chills than any she’s previously covered. There is, of course, a real and operatic darkness descending over the lively tail-end of the ’20s, and we can’t help be keenly aware of the Great Depression on the horizon. That makes the supernatural threat the characters are focused on all the more resonant. There is darkness coming, and we know it’s unavoidable. Bray’s finest and most assured work yet, The Diviners is an undeniable standout of the year. The next installment can’t get here soon enough.

  •

  After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia, Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds. (Hyperion 978-1423146193, $16.99, 384pp, hc) October 2012.

  With the immense popularity of The Hunger Games trilogy becoming even more immense thanks to the well-received first movie adaptation, and a slew of new and continuing series on the shelves, it can’t be denied that dystopia remains a major force in YA. In the introduction to their newest YA anthology, Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow offer some broad definitions of what the dystopian – or ‘‘dyslit,’’ to borrow their term – entails now, and why it holds such appeal for younger readers. The editors also tell us the parameters given the writers here: they were to write about the aftermath of ‘‘A disaster of any kind: political, ecological, technological, sociological….’’ While a collection of stories about what happens after the end of the world might seem to risk a grim sameness despite the leeway, in fact what many of these engaging, multifaceted stories ultimately offer is hope.

  Young women are at the center of many of these stories, including the opener, ‘‘The Segment’’, yet another well-turned tale from Genevieve Valentine. Poppy is an actress with ambitions, working for the agency, trying to angle some face time. When she gets a shot at a part on the evening news – which is staged for the ‘‘Uppers’’ in this future – she jumps at it. As a retired star coaches her for the part, Poppy begins to glimpse the truth behind the smoke and mirrors. N.K. Jemisin’s arresting ‘‘Valedictorian’’ introduces us to another ambitious girl, in this case Zinhle. We meet her at a breakfast table where her parents are suggesting she get pregnant, a smart reversal on present norms. Zinhle is a straight A student, a hyper-achiever at school, which is dangerous when the worst and the best are sent outside ‘‘the Firewall’’ after graduation, as a tithe to the enemy. Meanwhile, Sarah Rees Brennan’s ‘‘Faint Heart’’ inventively blends a far future setting with a high fantasy narrative where every generation of young men fights to the death for a newly cloned Queen Rosamond. Over the course of the story, Brennan introduces Tor, a devoted knight who has trained his whole life to be Rosamond’s champion, and Yvain, a lowborn thief who despises her as the symbol of all that’s wrong. But by far the most memorable is Rosamond herself, who wishes the trials – and her existence as prize – might be stopped.

  There are a wide range of troubled futures on display here, and as many approaches to revealing them. In the deadpan fashion no one pulls off like a Carol Emshwiller character, the narrator of ‘‘All I Know of Freedom’’ informs us she’s preparing herself to need less; the people who bought her for ‘‘a respectable sum’’ don’t beat her, but she’s beginning to have trouble being invisible. Dryly humorous childlike wisdom mixes with chilling adult realizations: ‘‘Trouble is, now that I’m getting breasts, I can tell that they’re beginning to see me no matter how quiet I keep.’’ The narrator runs away, promptly finds a dog and hooks up with a cult leaving soon for Proxima Centauri. As usual with an Emshwiller story, the result is unpredictable and unforgettable. Jeffrey Ford also provides a darkly humorous piece with ‘‘Blood Drive’’, a future spin on the tall tale where everyone totes guns to the local high school and practices their signature catchphrase. Garth Nix, with ‘‘You Won’t Feel a Thing’’, and Beth Revis, with ‘‘The Other Elder’’, both offer up revealing treats for fans of Shade’s Children and the Across the Universe trilogy, respectively. Other notable entries come from the likes of Katherine Langrish, Susan Beth Pfeffer, Richard Bowes, Jane Yolen, Gregory Maguire, Steven Gould, and Carolyn Dunn, in a rare anthology with no real misses among the swings. Speaking of which, Matthew Kressel’s ‘‘The Great Game at the End of the World’’ is a fun mash-up of the American pastime with a twisted future filled with ‘‘Creepies’’ and ‘‘Barbies and Kens.’’

  Two of the most affecting stories here feature infants in jeopardy, though in vastly different circumstances. Cecil Castellucci’s ‘‘The Marker’’ draws a mostly barren landscape in which genetic testing can render a death verdict. Scenes where main character Geo discovers how hard it is to follow The Way, when it means poisoning a child, are powerful. In Caitlín R. Kiernan’s gripping ‘‘Fake Plastic Trees’’, Cody Hernandez leaves what’s left of Jacksonville to cross a forbidden bridge in a plastic-coated future where most cities – most of the world – are considered LOST PLACES. She discovers a family with a baby in a car on the far end of the bridge, and, possibly with them, not just horror but hope. Switching to family dynamics of a different kind, Nalo Hopkinson’s ‘‘The Easthound’’ is an affectingly scary story about a race against becoming a monster that may not be possible to win. My personal favorite in this assemblage is zombie queen Carrie Ryan’s ‘‘After the Cure.’’ Ryan constructs a thoroughly convincing aftermath of a society attempting to reconstruct itself after being overrun with vampires (of a sort), created by a diet drug gone wrong. Vail is newly Rehabilitated, but she doesn’t exactly feel cured. Plagued by vivid sense memories, she meets James, who tells her it wasn’t just the infected who did monstrous things. This searing portrait of a girl who sees so clearly that ‘‘in everyone’s eyes, including our own, we’re worthless,’’ is a hauntingly potent story of survival and its true costs. But, while this was my favorite, other readers clearly have a wealth of bleak postapocalyptic delights to choose from in After.

  –Gwenda Bond

  KAREN BURNHAM

  AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers, Ivor W. Hartmann, ed. (StoryTime Press 978-0-9870089-5-4, e-book) December 2012.

  AfroSF will serve as an admirable antidote for all those who have to be reminded that Africa is a continent, not a single country. Both the stories and the authors are as diverse as any reader could wish. The anthology leads off with a story by the most prominent SF author gracing the table of contents, Nnedi Okorafor (Nigerian descent, working in Chicago). Her story ‘‘Moom!’’ is one of the least science fictional stories present, featuring a swordfish attacking an off-shore oil rig and somehow bringing about ecological healing. However, it is told in prose as pure as poetry, a lovely short gem.

  A few stories lean towards the absurd, such as ‘‘Home Affairs’’ by Sarah Lotz (Cape Town, South Africa), which deftly captures the horror of being lost in a bureaucratic system à la the film Brazil. ‘‘Heresy’’ by Mandisi Nkomo (Cape Town) intersperses media commentary with the story of the South African space program breaching a barrier around the solar system and letting some sort of ineffable and possibly religious force in. It put me in mind of Wizard of the Crow by Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in terms of the ridiculous nature of certain kinds of government action.

  Some of the stories venture out into space, as in ‘‘Azania’’ by Nick Wood (Born in Zambia, living in South Africa). It portrays a planetary colonization mission led by an African woman. The writing here is some of the strongest of the anthology, and the character tensions are effectively drawn. However, I was a little taken aback by the lack of regard that the crew had for potential harm to the environment of the new planet, taking the risk of cross-contamination without fully understanding their new surroundings. It seemed a little bit too much like replicating the mistakes of the past. ‘‘Angel Song’’ by Dave de Burgh (Pretoria, South Africa) is military SF with religious overtones, which falls down only in that it is unclear why the viewpoint character is singled out in the way that he is.

  Other stories have their focuses much closer to ho
me, as in ‘‘New Mzansi’’ by Ashley Jacobs (South Africa), a tragic story about the very immediate concern of the AIDS epidemic, although it also features a lot of social media and hip hop. ‘‘The Foreigner’’ by Uko Bendi Udo (living in the US) is a relatively straightforward story of immigration and the familial and political consequences of the children of interracial couples. ‘‘Brandy City’’ by Mia Arderne (Cape Town) is a story of slums and wealth, lust and tragedy.

  Some stories fit neatly into the context of Anglo-centric SF, but with their own spin. ‘‘The Gift of Touch’’ by Chinelo Onwualu (Abuja, Nigeria) could make an interesting episode of the late, lamented SF show Firefly, although perhaps the character arcs wrap up too neatly in the end. ‘‘Closing Time’’ by Liam Kruger (Cape Town) is a story of time travel and self-loathing. ‘‘Masquerade Stories’’ by Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu (Lagos, Nigeria) is an aliens-masquerading-as-spirits story that is unfortunately ill-served by its frequent point-of-view shifts. ‘‘The Trial’’ by Joan De La Haye (Pretoria) is a dystopian future where all must justify their existence or be judicially executed; a mid-list author has trouble arguing her case.

  Two of my favorites come late in the book. ‘‘Ofe!’’ Rafeet Aliyu (Abuja, Nigeria) is a fun story in which three women end up banding together and using their unique powers to avoid becoming victims of a mad scientist. The closing story is perhaps the strongest in the book. ‘‘Proposition 23’’ by Efe Okogu (Nigeria) has elements from 1984 and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash all mashed up into a future dystopia (set two hundred years hence) in Nigeria. It’s told via three perspectives: Lugard is a lawman who is banished from civilized society when he asks the wrong questions; Sayoma is a top-notch programmer and hacker who becomes instrumental in tracking down critical information; and Nakaya is an Osama bin-Laden style terrorist (responsible for the deaths of thousands in an attack labeled ‘‘7/13’’) and philosophical leader who is fighting against the totalitarian state. I found the worldbuilding more convincing than usual for a dystopia, and while in the hands of a lesser writer I would say that the story ended too early, Okogu completely sold it. I would love to see this story on awards ballots next year.