Locus, May 2013

by Locus Publications

  For a short novel, that’s a lot of stuffing, and in general this is a characteristic of Tidhar’s plotting – he keeps putting more stuff on the table before you’ve finished what’s before you, and refilling your glass without asking. This can be viewed as the generosity and enthusiasm of a youthful and profligate imagination, or the work of an overeager host who’s a bit of a nudzh, but page by page it’s really a lot of fun, and a kind of loving tribute to its traditions. Along the way, there are some sharp insights about identity, history, and the possibility of utopia, and its reminder of what the Holocaust might not have been lends a surprising gravitas to the pulp-adventure trappings. Tidhar – who also risked this sort of combination of pulp adventure and dark real history in Osama – may be on to something here.

  •

  It’s not surprising that London, and cities in general, hold such a grip on the imaginations of SF and fantasy writers: they pretty much come pre-storied, either with deep mythical histories (the older ones) or utopian schemes (the newer ones). Probably the first thing most readers will think of when encountering Gheorghe Sasarman’s collection Squaring the Circle: A Pseudotreatise of Urbogony, translated with such elegance by Ursula K. Le Guin that you wonder if Sasarman’s Romanian original could be quite so lovely (and she translated from the Spanish translation!), is Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, in which Marco Polo and Kublai Khan discuss the unique qualities of some 55 cities that Polo claims to have visited. But in fact these sorts of short, pithy, sometimes satirical descriptions of imaginary places are far from unique to Calvino. Le Guin herself visited similar territory with Changing Planes a few years ago. Sasarman, though, is far less known than Le Guin or Calvino, which may be one reason why it’s taken 38 years for this 1975 collection to wend its way into English. Yet Sasarman looks to be – and turns out to be – a very interesting writer who can straddle both the SF world and the sort of experimental postmodern fictions we’ve sometimes gotten tantalizing glimpses of from Eastern European writers. He began his career winning an SF short story contest in 1962; another story alluding to ‘‘Flowers for Algernon’’ won a Europa Award at the 1980 Eurocon, and as recently as last year he won one of the first Ion Hobana Awards for Romanian SF.

  And, on the basis of these 35 short pieces, he knows his way around genre SF as well. One, ‘‘Cosmovia’’, is a classic generation-starship-that-doesn’t-know-it’s-a-starship tale with distinct echoes of Heinlein’s ‘‘Universe’’. There’s an echo of first-contact tales (and specifically of Carl Sagan’s Contact) in ‘‘Quanta Ka’’, in which an astronomer spends decades trying to decode a mysterious burst of unknown radiation from deep space, eventually being rewarded with a vision of an alien city. Other stories depict underwater cities (‘‘Poseidonia’’), ancient ruined cities overgrown by jungle (‘‘Senezia’’), a nameless, probably apocryphal city meant to stretch over the entire width of South America (the story title is simply ‘‘…’’), even an ice-city in Antarctica (‘‘Antar’’), inadvertently destroyed when an obsessive drummer arrives and causes the inhabitants to speed up their movements, melting the ice. Some cities are familiar from myth or legend, like Atlantis or the Gnossos of Daedalus, while others seem familiar from their allusions to actual Asian cities, like ‘‘Vavylon’’ (a ziggurat-like city which is a version of Babylon) or the concentric ‘‘Moebia, or the Forbidden City’’, a Kafkaesque piece in which a determined European explorer must answer a series of questions to pass into each successive inner circle, until he arrives at the gateway to the Sacred City, where no European has been. Kafka comes to mind often, as does Borges, who might well have imagined a city like ‘‘Musaeum,’’ which long ago passed a law that no structure could be destroyed, with the result that, over centuries, the newer cities are layered on top of the older ones.

  Few of the stories are more than three or four pages long, and we’re sixteen stories in before we come to anything resembling conventional characters and dialogue, but this may well be part of a deliberate arrangement of the tales, a matter of laying out broad themes and then developing them with more conventional story materials. When we do start meeting actual characters, they tend to be intrepid obsessives, like the explorer risking his life to be the first European to reach the Sacred City, the astronomer who dedicates his life to decoding the extraterrestrial signal, or Lord Knowshire (one of the few characters granted a name) who, in ‘‘Sah-Harah’’, discovers a two-mile-wide circular city surround by a massive wall with apparently only one entrance. Once inside, he spends weeks following a curving tunnel, until, half-dead, he finds the central chamber and another Kafkaesque fate. We have, of course, met versions of Lord Knowshire before, as far back as Haggard and Burroughs, but it’s this resonance with other tales and narrative traditions that give these short pieces much of their charm. Other writers might well make entire novels out of any of these gems, but Sasarman is content to give us a crash course in what cities are good for in fantastika, in shotglass-sized portions.

  •

  There seems to be no end to contemporary fantasy adaptations of ancient myths, and there shouldn’t be; after all, these old tales didn’t get where they are without knowing how to change with the times. But the task of the modern fantasist isn’t so much to update these stories or try to make them relevant, like staging Oedipus with gangsters, as to make their own stories seem ancient, tapping into what Tolkien called the Cauldron of Story. A very skilled example of how to do this is Nina Allan’s novella Spin, which revisits the Arachne myth in a near-future alternate Greece, where sibyls have been recognized for generations but where clairvoyancy was until lately punishable by death. Allan strikes a crucial and necessary balance between the ancient arts of weaving and dye-making and a version of Greece which, despite its moments of comparatively high-tech wall-sized high-resolution holograms, remains clearly economically stressed.

  The story begins with what seems like a classic coming-of-age tale of a young woman leaving her rural home to try to make it in the city. Layla Vargas leaves her harborside village one morning to catch a bus to the more vibrant Atoll City, where she lands an unrewarding job in a textile factory. But Layla is no Sister Carrie; her real talent and passion lie in the gorgeous panoramic tapestries she makes on her own, and that she suspects might be her heritage; her father is a skilled dye maker, and her late mother may have been a sibyl herself. And there’s some evidence that Layla’s own talents may extend beyond the artistic: one of the tapestries she ‘‘made up’’ at the age of twelve turned out to be a depiction of her own mother’s execution by drowning, which her father had never told her about. En route to Atoll City – the bus trip is described in fine, almost naturalistic detail – she encounters a strange old woman, who later claims to know things about Layla that she doesn’t know about herself. After a few weeks at her job, Layla is approached by a wealthy woman named Nashe Crawe, whose fortune comes from her famous ‘‘marksman’’ husband, who is actually a hit man. Nashe’s son Alcander is suffering from an apparently fatal disfiguring disease, and Nashe is convinced that Layla has the skills to ‘‘recast his future’’ through her weaving, but Layla is skeptical of any such powers, apart from the fact that clairvoyancy is still illegal. Making no promises, she agrees to simply visit the boy, and receives in payment a fortune in ancient gold coins. Much of the rest of the narrative details the rather touching relationship that develops between Layla and Alcander, who discover that they share tastes in poetry and philosophy. This eventually forces Layla to confront a crucial question about her own identity, beliefs, and powers.

  Allan’s prose is as adaptable as her juggling of SF and mythical materials: finely observed and realistic when it needs to be (as during the bus trip into the city), lyrical when it begins to focus on romance and self-discovery. There is, not surprisingly, a recurring pattern of spider imagery, but it’s never intrusive enough to shout ‘‘metaphor’’ at the reader, and works well thematically with the related pattern of weaving imagery. It’
s an elegant, quiet, and quite satisfying fable.

  –Gary K. Wolfe

  Return to In This Issue listing.

  LOCUS LOOKS AT BOOKS: FAREN MILLER

  Without a Summer, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor 978-0-7653-3415-3, $24.99, 364pp, hc) April 2013.

  The Aylesford Skull, James P. Blaylock (Titan 978-0857-68979-5 $14.98, 428pp, tp) January 2013.

  Doktor Glass, Thomas Brennan (Ace 978-0-425-25817-0, $15.00, 320pp, tp) December 31, 2012. Cover by Jason Gill.

  London Falling, Paul Cornell (Tor UK 978-0230763210, £12.99, 400pp, tp) December 2012. (Tor 978-0765330277, $24.99, 416pp, hc) April 2013.

  Wolfhound Century, Peter Higgins (Orbit 978-0-316-21967-9, $25.99, 330pp, hc) March 2013.

  The first four books this month are fantasies set in some kind of alternate England: Regency era for Kowal’s Without a Summer (third in a series); steampunk Victorian for James P. Blaylock’s The Aylesford Skull (a new clash between Professor Langdon St. Ives and evil mage Dr. Ignacio Narbondo); late Victorian for Thomas Brennan’s debut novel Doktor Glass; and modern for London Falling by Paul Cornell. Despite great differences in tone, all of them have some element of darkness: kidnappings, major threats to protagonists’ lives (or souls), two plots against Queen Victoria, and two villains addicted to child sacrifice.

  While the Glamourist Histories series mixes romance in the manner of Jane Austen with a magic that can seem more decorative than dangerous, along with some genuine history, these were never entirely lighthearted romps or tongue-in-cheek takeoffs. Book two, Glamour in Glass, turned what was meant to be a pleasant European honeymoon for glamourists David and Jane Vincent into a nightmare of war, captivity, and an endangered pregnancy. Sequel Without a Summer brings them safely back to England, where their plans include both an ornate new commission for a wealthy client and the introduction of Jane’s unmarried sister Melody into upper-class London’s social ‘‘Season,’’ but once again Kowal’s take on genuine events helps to knock it all awry.

  The title comes from an actual description of the year 1816, when ash from the immense explosion of volcano Tambora in the East Indies managed to affect weather over the whole world: reducing temperatures, causing famines and social unrest that mingled justified anger at the ruling classes with oubreaks of more paranoid, fervent hatred of enemies – both real and imaginary. In England, Luddites rebelled against newly mechanized forms of manufacture, some Irish began protesting against the harsh political occupation of their homeland, and tempers rose to a point where allies came to seem like foes. Without a Summer brings magic into the equation more as a target for such fears than as a destructive force in its own right. In these volatile times, all glamourists bear the taint of suspicion, but the most rabid hatred is reserved for the distinctive form of magic practiced by ‘‘coldmongers.’’

  Unlike glamour’s supposedly effeminate, frivolous use by experts on the fringes of the upper class to amuse the elite (a description that applies to the Vincents more than they’d care to admit), coldmongers work the streets. While they resemble (proto-) Dickensian urchins dragging blocks of ice through the filth of a London summer to provide some relief for its sweating populace, after Jane’s chance encounter with one of them, Kowal gradually reveals fascinating specifics about the nature, and the perils, of their craft.

  For much of the book, there’s a delicate interplay between such social issues (both real and fantastical) and Society in its narrower sense, as Melody attends formal gatherings and attracts the interest of a number of young men. When a specific romance seems to bloom, Jane wonders whether it’s truly suitable, until major events in the greater world of London make her question her own doubts.

  A largely peaceful protest march draws violent governmental reaction, leading to trials for treason where she and her husband, along with Melody’s beau, are drawn into the mess, suddenly imprisoned and under threat of execution. The schemer who engineered their plight adds a touch of family tragedy to these later scenes, while the suspense heightens as the Vincents realize that glamour alone won’t save them – and could condemn them.

  Romance, danger, history, and that touch of magic all come together to mingle and subvert tropes into a vivid new substance.

  •

  Known for his role in the origins of steampunk, with his tales of Professor Langdon St. Ives vs. the sinister Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, James P. Blaylock isn’t content to rest on his laurels as a Legend. He returns in top form in The Aylesford Skull. Questions about the title object force scholarly St. Ives to confront things that seem impossible, even now. As the occultist Mother Laswell tells him, ‘‘At Hereafter Farm, we’ve got no grudge against reason, Professor, as long as it isn’t the only star in the firmament. But there are other ways of seeing…. As a man of science, a rationalist, perhaps a materialist, you no doubt disagree, but that’s the sort of strange company you’ve fallen in with this evening.’’ She’s not interested in gaining immediate trust: ‘‘Belief that comes too easily is a shallow and often foolish thing. Stubborn disbelief is much the same.’’ (On that they can agree.) What she goes on to tell him goes deep into the unpleasant history of the man who became Ignacio Narbondo.

  The skull, already stolen from its grave, may provide some sort of gate to the nether world. While most of Blaylock’s alternate England of 1883 is rife with the inventors of new steam-tech devices and shining glass architecture, Narbondo wants out, and he’ll do anything to further his plans – misdeeds ranging from murder to the kidnapping of St. Ives’ young son, potentially for ritual death. In a London sweltering from true summer but just as politically and socially troubled as Kowal’s in an earlier decade, the search party gains a well-known historic figure in its ranks. They gradually uncover a scheme that could also pit the supernatural against Queen Victoria in the guise of a Fenian (Irish) plot.

  The closing chapters provide fast-paced yet complex suspense in the growing chaos of a fancy cathedral set for its official debut. Dark villainy intrudes upon spectacular feats of engineering, as a steam-driven grand organ pumps out Bach! The action crests at wild melodrama, and Blaylock has a keen eye for zaniness (even the calmer aftermath includes an elephant). But amid delightful absurdities, The Aylesford Skull won’t neglect keen minds, and equally urgent feelings.

  •

  Moving ahead to later 19th-century Victorian years filled with marvels of steampunk tech, Thomas Brennan’s Doktor Glass involves a stupendous British project: the construction of a suspension bridge that spans the Atlantic Ocean between Liverpool and New York City. None of this book’s tech exists merely for dazzlement or fun, and the pseudonymous Doktor gives it an occult spin with a machine that captures the soul at the moment of death.

  Not long before the inauguration ceremony for the Span, Inspector Mathew Langton is called to the Liverpool end of the bridge to investigate a faceless corpse. Langton may see himself as a thorough rationalist, but he’s still grieving the premature death of his wife. He will come to worry (against his own better judgment) about the state of her soul, when occult mystery joins the high tech – and a terrorist plot against the aging Queen may be dwarfed by a dark scheme to breach a barrier between worlds.

  People connected to the case of the strangely tattooed, faceless corpse keep dying, as Langton ventures further into the occult doings of the Doktor. The cultural divisions of Liverpool take him between posh neighborhoods, a major hospital, and a slum at the foot of the span. This comes as the city is in the grips of Britain’s major new fad for things Egyptian, after the discovery of a certain tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

  Brennan fashions all this material – alternate tech, history, the supernatural, and the feelings of a widower still gripped by loss – into a moving whole, more noir than sheer adventure, SFnal or occult.

  •

  While investigating an odd death, a group of four police officers in modern London encounter an unnatural artifact and develop the Sight in London Falling, the first of a new fantasy s
eries by a writer better known for his Doctor Who spin-offs. Though things start to get weird after a mobster boss dies strangely in custody, the fantastic element doesn’t really kick in until a specific moment at the end of chapter six. Afterward, all four protagonists react to their new visions about a side of London they haven’t really known before. Ross, the only woman in the bunch, has the most interesting – and interested – reaction: ‘‘She had kept herself a little apart from all she was experiencing, as if recording and reporting on her own fascinating breakdown. This familiar stance had calmed her a little.’’