The Clarke shortlist 2016 - Part 2 (Okorafor, Tchaikovsky & Hutchinson)

Preface

   There are times when all manner of THINGS feel pointless and even a little macabre. I feel this a lot at the moment especially in the light of the UK's referendum result: as racists and fascists become emboldened and as millions fear for their futures; as the Labour right capitulates to that rightward momentum rather than back Corbyn and some principled politics; as refugees are ignored and ostracised; as Trump lies and breeds hatred. Hell, it would be a very long list if I carried on. So this review doesn't feel like a very important thing right now. That said the three books speak to me a little nonetheless. Dave Hutchinson's book is about Europe, nations, imperialism and much more. His trilogy feels more timely than ever. Adrian Tchaikovsky's novel of wonder ends with a heartfelt plea for empathy and understanding. We need those simple things more than ever right now. And though I can't connect to Okorafor's novel as others have I suspect it will make many readers feel represented and give voice to their anger and pain.

Part 2

  As I thought of how to introduce these reviews I realised my responses to books come in three main categories (though of course it is more of a spectrum): 1) the first is a kind of excited puppy response as in 'Holy Crapola Batman' that is SO good. It's kind of like a phwoah! Most of those books have STUFF - usually a mixture of content, form, style, tone that I might find difficult to parse but are, at the same time, deeply pleasurable. I'd characterise these texts as having an overabundance perhaps: they are complex and they are plentiful. That said, every now and then my excited puppy response comes from a text that is modest but perfectly achieved: that's great too. I don't want to harp on about my preferred list but all of those texts fit in to this wow category.

   Next come the books that I think I understand fairly well on a first reading and that I can admire but wish for a little more. Or rather, more often than not, a little less: a little less obviousness, a little less direction, a little less repetition of the stuff that I need to remember, a little less telling; and often these days a few less pages too.

   The third category encompasses the texts that are bad, mediocre or dull, that are obviously reactionary, that perhaps desperately want to teach me something (I usually already know). They are not all terrible but if vaguely enjoyable then instantly forgettable. I've got to the stage where thankfully I don't have to read too much of the this category: I'm discerning, I've been reading a long time and I have little patience!

  

   If the first three texts fit too easily in to that third category - and sorry I don't mean to be unkind or dismissive - then the other three are a little harder to pin down. First and foremost I'm glad I read them. You'll find I'm still grumpy about The Book of Phoenix but in many respects it feels like the YA text that the judges seemed to want and at least it has the merits of a crazy kind of energy and righteous politics. I wonder too if Okorofor just isn't for me. I admire Binti but didn't really get on with Lagoon either.  I have however found a lot to admire about the novels by Adrian Tchaikovsky and Dave Hutchinson. 

As with Part 1 I will assume you've read the books.

The Book of Phoenix

   So, I'm not usually shy about criticising books and films but on this occasion I am, a little. Various people whose opinions I respect like this book a LOT - see From couch to moon and Ana at The Book Smugglers for example. I spent an hour reading the overwhelmingly positive set of reviews on Goodreads too to see if I could identify what I was missing. I understand and appreciate many of the sentiments I found but still feel like I was reading a different book.

   These are some of the words I found when I looked back through my notes attached to various passages and paragraphs: guileless, rough-hewn, wholesome, juvenile, outlandish, overwrought, weirdly formal, stilted, raw, angry, righteous, histrionic, dull, crude, portentous. Not good really!  Most of those feelings and descriptions related to style. This, for instance is just pure melodrama: “No! Get out of my HOUSE!” he screamed. “You’ve taken enough from me! You will NEVER have her.” Tears flew from his eyes, spittle from his lips. He turned to me, his eye twitching and blazing with warrior’s blood and rage. “I won’t let them take you, Okore.” (81) And this, repetitive and awkward: "This gentle, powerful man who’d understood matter so profoundly that it allowed him to pass through it. How could they kill him? Why?" (214). Elsewhere Phoenix's assertions just come across as bombastic and unnecessary: "I could have resisted Sarah. I was certainly stronger than she. But in me, no matter how hopeless I feel, is the instinct to survive" (76) and on the same page: "The smell of exhaust filled the car. I hated that smell. It was the smell of self-inflicted death." Perhaps some of this naivety and unevenness is meant to give voice to the discrepancies in Phoenix's age but if so then it was a misjudgement. 

   And plot wise it's a bit messy and episodic. The worst section is the middle when Phoenix, Saeed and Mmuo are in New York and in the Library of Congress - it's oddly dull and awkward. There are sentences like this: "My eyes were watering from the stress of what I’d just read about Mmuo. Had they really peeled away all of his already special skin, injected it with some sort of sentient molecular shifting compound and then grafted it back on?" (141) Straight out of the comic book of nonsense methinks. Furthermore, for large sections of the novel its heroes are virtually omnipotent so that plot contrivances can be explained away with some new power or other - a situation I find a complete bore. I'm fine without plot but if it is vaguely irrelevant for your purposes then there must be a more elegant way to negotiate it than this. 

   But now take a look at Brit Mandelo's review for Tor because she sees a book I would love to read: an urgent, political novel that avoids becoming a tract. Yet for me the novel often felt unsophisticated and obvious, like being smashed and thrown around by the Hulk. The Book of Phoenix has lots to say about contemporary geopolitics, global capital and the state of the world, the unbridled greed and inhumanity of corporate capitalism, the intersections of racism and sexism with inequality and class tensions, the catastrophic consequences waiting around the corner unless a fight back begins. Can or should we have all these elements in a novel? Of course!! But don't they require estranging metaphors, subtlety, symbolism that seeps down deep into the unconscious and won't let go.... or else, all too easily, they can end up as simplistic and pious - or else, you only succeed in preaching to the converted. And unfortunately the novel's answer is the same one given by numerous superhero narratives since their inception: Phoenix, taking on the role of villain must obliterate everything so that humanity might start again. That it is an African woman doing this, and that Okorafor is being somewhat playful, doesn't take away from the fact that revolution is figured as destruction, that it can only be implemented by powerful individuals and that it is seemingly everyone's responsibility that the world is in such a terrible state. Perhaps for some this will be read as a cry of pain and revolt for large sections of the world that aren't given a voice and whose history is forgotten or rewritten. Perhaps others will accept that Phoenix is the consequence rather than the cause, that her character literalises Armageddon and the hope of renewal.  But I can't accept that. To me her actions signify nihilism, moralism and a bourgeois outlook. It's too attached to the ideology of despair and a contempt for any kind of complex solution. God, why can't people get organised in one of these texts, smash the bastards and forge something new? Has all that anti-communist propaganda seeped so far into the American psyche that it can only see and imagine so narrowly? It reminds me of similar concerns and feelings when I finished The Fifth Season though I loved Jemisin's novel. Furthermore the elements of fable and the text's understanding of myths and the stories we believe about ourselves just don't offset its comic book simplicity. 

   And yet The Book of Phoenix is such an odd book. And odd is usually a good thing: The X-Files meets X Men or in this case African X Woman. I applaud Okorafor's desire to give a powerful voice to an African woman and I think the better moments are when she writes about the history of slavery and colonialism, and the exploitation of Africa - it's people, it's resources and its culture. And there's certainly energy here, and creativity, and a kind of power - a righteous anger that I could get behind at times. When Phoenix reports on Seven's murder and the destruction of the Backbone it speaks directly to the schizoid, and very dangerous, nature of our times: "Why hadn’t any of those people considered the damage such a huge thing would inflict when it fell? This was fear. And guilt. This was people scratching at their flesh to excise a demon so deep within that it was beyond their grasp." (196). That one passage almost makes it all worthwhile. It manages to be moving too especially when Phoenix visits her mother. 

   Even if I'm not sure the text earns those moments of grace. 

   One of the other things I often liked was how visual it was: "Thick vines and even tree roots quickly crept, stretched and blocked the elevator door. Leaves, branches and stems grew so thick around the guards to my right that they were blocked from view." (26). Many sections like this would work wonderfully well imagined as a comic or graphic novel. I suspect it would suit the declamatory tone too.

   There are also some reasonable meta moments: “The beginning and the end always matter.” (176) and the framing devices succeed in complicating the text a little. But do they make The Book of Phoenix a pleasing puzzle - a slidey, slippery thing to resist the reader? Does the mischievousness invocation of Roland Barthes work? The answer for me, as with so much of the text is not really. It's not earned. There are too many points where Phoenix is telling me what to think and feel. It often feels far too literal.  

  Other readers are obviously seeing something profoundly different in Okorafor's prose and storytelling style. Perhaps I just can't get along with her sensibility? It's a book I didn't enjoy very much but it's unusual and ambitious. I can see why someone would want to reread it and discuss it. 

Children of Time

   Children of Time is I suppose quite a traditional SF text - a novel of wonder and ideas that nods and winks to lots of other bits of SF knocking around in my brain. There was little that annoyed me and much that I enjoyed. Tchaikovsky shows a great deal of skill and ingenuity in holding the two strands of his narrative together. If someone were trying to write SF I suspect they could revisit this novel again and again to learn how to write about complex ideas with clarity and simplicity. 

   Just a few thoughts then. First there are some GREAT images and scenes in this novel. The human left to live on the spider's world as an exhibit, a zoo animal. Done in just a few paragraphs but long lasting in the desolate impression it leaves. The oddly moving scene when Fabian sacrifices himself to save Portia in the Space Nest (487). Holsten's moving, frantic speech when he has been woken up yet again: "‘What is it about us that we cannot live together in this fucking eggshell ship without tearing at each other? That we have to try and control one another and lie to one another and hurt one another? Who are you that you’re telling me where I have to be and what to do? What are you doing to the poor Gilgamesh? Where did all you freaks come from?'" (439) Just a little bit Planet of the Apes I thought. Also there are some lovely, elegant passages in the spider sections where genetic determinism and evolutionary psychology are questioned quite effectively (see 361 for example). Always a good thing!

   Doubts?

- Another book about the catastrophic future of humans? Is there any other way of imagining at the moment? Can there be, should there be more? Don't know, but I think of this book sitting happily beside Aurora and Clade this year - there's space for all three. 

- The dominance of the females in the spider society is used to draw out the obvious inequality of our own sexual relations. Good, but does the metaphor help us to understand inequality and oppression with greater depth or profundity? Probably not, but if these points are somewhat obvious and didactic they are earnest and well done nonetheless. 

- Just as Holsten bemoans their efforts as too closely tied to the mistakes and evolution of the Old Empire - Homo sapiens and our forbears - then does Tchaikovsky sometimes veer too close to the formulaic as he imagines the evolution of the spiders? In my most cynical moments I couldn't help but think of the stages of Sid Meier's Civilisation game at certain points - rather than their historical counterpoints - as the spiders seemed to go through quite distinct phases. But there are also playful and ironic notes to it all. The text wears its understanding and knowledge lightly and for the most part I really enjoyed these sections. So no massive doubts and the horrible, cynical side of the Beniston brain was silenced fairly easily.

   Children of Time is not always subtle but is skilfully achieved. It is plaintive, deeply humane and often ambitious. Tchaikovsky could have misjudged so much but again and again he gets it right. Just consider the fantastic moment when Karst and his crew begin to fight the spiders on the hull of the ship. Briefly you are excited and complicit in wanting to shoot those horrible alien things - you can happily have your "game over man, game over" moment. But then you are forced to admire the ingenuity of the 'alien' and to see from their point of view - it is genuinely thrilling. 

   This novel fits into my "modest but perfectly executed" category. My friend was disappointed with the ending. I think he wanted Tchaikovsky to follow through on the dark heart of his story - of humans unable to do anything other than destroy themselves and others but, even if a little cliched, I loved it. It's the book, along with Ancilary Justice, I'll be recommending to SF newbies for quite a while I suspect. 

Europe at Midnight

    I wrote about Hutchinson's excellent novel at length earlier in the year. It's a bit messy and as with most things I write here, it would have benefitted from a little more time and care but I stand by both the praise and the criticism. In addition I would recommend Helen Marshall's excellent review in the LARB. 

The winner

   I'll be in Greece volunteering in a refugee camp when the winner is announced and hopefully full to the brim with more important things. That said if Smythe, Pears or Chambers win I will probably spontaneously combust through anger and, unfortunately, a measure of contempt. In this 30th anniversary the judges had the opportunity to do so much more - to reward all kinds of skill, ambition and exuberance or to do something completely different - perhaps a list of all women. Readers hoping to experience the best of what SF has to offer has been ill-served by this shortlist yet I'm fairly sure anyone will find enough complexity, to enjoy, admire and discuss, in the novels by Okorafor, Tchaikovsky and Hutchinson. For what it's worth I think Hutchinson should win.

   In what I can only think of as a weird kind of revenge I'm rereading Alexis Wright's astonishing The Swan Book. It's making my head fizz, soar and crack. Phwoah!

   

The Clarke shortlist 2016 - Part 1 (Pears, Chambers & Smythe)

So it seems I can split the Clarke shortlist into 4 sections - a) can't be arsed b) mediocre if I'm being kind c) quite good really d) very good.

Here, briefly, I'll concern myself with a) and b) and I'll assume that you've either read the books or can get a quick précis of the plots online. 

And yes, this is a long way from a proper infinity plus/Strange Horizons roundup. I just can't be arsed when there is a lifetime of great books still to read. 

a) Arcadia - read 80 odd pages (out of 736!!!!!!) That's plenty. Life is too short. Don't care. Feels a bit like Harkaway without the skill, the crazy, complex ideas or the politics. And that's being kind.

b) Way Down Dark and A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Normally I would have read these and thought 'pacy YA' and 'Firefly fun' and bought copies for the library. Then I would have happily encouraged the girls to read them, swallowed down my reservations and forgotten them in a heartbeat. But no, someone somehow thought they were good enough for the Clarke shortlist - I would simply ask.... 

Why on Earth would anyone want to reread them? What riches do they hold? 

Because there are no riches here.  

And bear in mind that I wanted Smythe to win in 2014 - or to share with Priest - and I was more than happy to believe Chambers deserved her place on the Kitschies Golden Tentacle shortlist. 

Way Down Dark

So, action films are really hard to pull off right? Certainly if you're in any way discerning. The first Die Hard, Aliens, The Long Kiss Goodnight, the Bourne trilogy, Pitch Black, the latest Mad Max are my favourites. Way Down Dark is an action novel, turned all the way up to 11. Relentless action and not much pausing for thought. Nonstop action and lots of violence. So much action! So much violence! I like violence - especially in films - but here it gets a little monotonous. And btw I don't want to suggest that any of those films are without flaws - there's a lot of silly movie violence where it seems that characters are impossible to kill, dubious plots and so on. It's just that they are two hours long and make my heart beat a little faster. Smythe's writing certainly serves the need for pace and erm, action. And I appreciate that is a great skill. I do. I was relatively content on my first swift read through. But otherwise move along - there is nothing to see. Or enjoy. It doesn't have the visceral thrill or the beauty or the characterisation of those films - few books do - so without anything in the form, structure or writing to return to it's repeat value is nil.

   That said Smythe's novel deserves credit for its cast of uncompromising female characters. I think the 14-year-old me would have enjoyed the righteous asskicking, and exciting, second half. Moreover even if there's nothing great about it - I've read it twice and the second time felt like a complete waste of time - there are nonetheless a couple of interesting things worth talking about. There is something of a taunt I think in its mix of Mad Max and Ellen Ripley and especially in its portrayal of the villains of piece - the Lows and their reversion to a chaotic band of grunting Neanderthals over the course of a generation or three. Most of all that taunt is in thinking about how close to savagery and anarchy we humans are. And what are the fine lines in behaviour and morality that separate out the 'just about OK' individuals from the ones that have gone too far and are irredeemable. The trouble is that most of these debates are framed around fatuous distinctions and dichotomies.  Agatha's use of torture goes unquestioned. Will Chan kill or not? Yawn....she'll maim, disfigure, shock and leave people to die but can't quite bring herself to do it in cold blood. It's the old 'some violence is necessary, (especially to make this book exciting) but there are limits don't you know'. Many YA novels are well above this kind of fantastical delusion.

    Moreover the text makes very little sense. When the novel begins there is a status quo of sorts with half of the ship 'free' but the novel doesn't give the reader a sense of how that has been achieved. There is evidence perhaps of a slow decay and of stories and rituals that reinforce the power of certain individuals and groups. But what is the ideology that glues the 'free' half of the ship together? How are the balance of forces maintained? Without any kind of organisation or law or the self interest and organisation built around commerce and expansion? How on earth is there enough to eat for heaven's sake? 

   And the trouble is, all of this has implications for the figuring of humanity. Even the 'free' people are a bunch of selfish cowards or potential rapists in Way Down Dark. In a crowd they cheer when a trader is beaten and thrown to his death. Fine, if you want to discuss the ability of humans to revert to barbarity let's have context, social forces and ideology because the inability or refusal to give those details means the text just becomes a reactionary tract that crystallises silly notions about human nature. People are awful. Blah, blah, blah, tell me another one. Unless, miraculously you're Chan and you have a conscience. Despite the fact that we are told she is not special. A lot. 

   And let's not fool ourselves, this bunch would have died out decades ago.

And then there are nuggets like this: "Our stories are something we make for ourselves, not something we’re born into" (Ch 10, loc 3121) Chan assures us, which speaks to the other side of liberal ideology I guess - tokenistic idealism over materialism any day. 

During the last big fight in Chapter 11 Smythe tries to make it all a little more discursive and problematic but just succeeds in making the text even more annoying, offensive and hypocritical: 

"Jonah is watching, waiting for me; and so is Mae. I can’t let her see me kill Rex. I need her to believe that life isn’t just death and revenge. I would let Rex go, but I can’t. The war would end another way if I did. She’s ceaseless, and she’s had too many chances. I have to end it, I know that, but it doesn’t mean I want Mae to see it."

And: "‘No,’ I say. ‘You’re already done.’ She is in so much pain. She’s devastated, ruined. I do not need to lower myself to murder. Agatha was right, in the end. You can make your own story. And this is my story. You can be better than them."

Arrggghhhhhhhh!!!!! Laughable, bizarre and dishonest. If only it were ironic. Nothing in Smythe's work so far  - I've read all but one - had led me to believe he could get it so wrong. Hopefully this is a one-off. 

The cynic in me can only wonder if the Clarkemind wanted a YA novel on the shortlist to broaden its appeal. If that is the case then either The Death House or Railhead could have offered some grace, gravitas and imagination. 

A Long Way to A Small Angry Planet

519 pages.

I gave the reread a half-hearted try but I just can't bring myself to read it again.

My memory (and a little skim) is that there is far less to criticise than there is in Smythe's novel. And that it was kinda fun at various points. That's it. 

If anyone can convince me I missed out on some profundity then I'll contemplate the full-monty reread.

Next time....I promise to be slightly less grumpy about two of the other novels (and repost my discussion of the one that should win).

A bit more Clarke and some recommendations

Not much depth here I'm afraid. Busy!

Clarke Award

First, I've managed to read a few more of the books on the Clarke submission list. 

First up I reread Ancillary Justice and then read Sword and Mercy. I enjoyed them a lot. They are intelligent, fun and satisfying. 

Throughout The Watchmaker of Filigree Street my evil fairy companion sat on my shoulder whispering "stop now, it's NOT worth it". I didn't listen because there are some things Natasha Pulley does really well. She is concise and evocative in her scene setting and there are passages in the first half that are particularly good at making you think about space, time and perception. However, much of that good work is wasted and the last third annoyed me a great deal - not just because the last chapters have to explain so much - please don't explain to me!!!!! - but because the novel wastes it's poetic and metaphorical potential (especially the synesthesia) and can't do anything interesting with all its STUFF - especially terrorism and imperialism. And the things she does with one of her main characters, Grace - especially in making her so inexplicably mean and stupid, is bizarre. 

Quite a lot better is Al Robertson's Crashing Heaven. I read this on the basis of Christina Scholz's review at Strange Horizons and because Robertson seems such an interesting bloke. Well worth a look if not as good as I was hoping for.

I love Philip Reeve's books. Railhead isn't quite Reeve at his best but since he and Frances Hardinge can write the socks of just about everyone else writing YA it doesn't matter. Very good.

Nothing to vaguely challenge any of the fantastic books on my list.

I still plan to finish reading the shortlisted books but I can't whip up any enthusiasm at the minute. However check out Everything is Nice for more forthright discussions about the future of the prize.  Martin is also compiling reviews of the shortlisted books here. 

Fantasy

I also made a decision to try and read a bit more fantasy this year. This is in response to my dissatisfaction with two widely admired novels, Zen Cho's Sorcerer to the Crown and Aliette de Bodard's House of Shattered Wings. I should say that I read both novels with a degree of pleasure and I'm recommending Cho to all the girls at school. [it's a girls school!] However de Bodard's novel in particular felt like a text that wanted to tell me about imperialism and ruling class duplicity rather than a novel that wanted to tell me an interesting story first and foremost. It's BSFA win baffles me. I appreciate that the skill of creating subtle and suggestive metaphors and juxtapositions must be exceedingly difficult and hard won. I appreciate too, obviously, I hope, that both writers are trying to give voice to characters and histories that have been much neglected in fantasy and sf. Unfortunately I'm comparing and contrasting with writers like Nalo Hopkinson and Helen Oyeyemi who are doing it in much more interesting ways (see below) rather than the generic mass market crap that fills the Waterstones fantasy shelves. Anyways, hopefully this will be one project that I can come back to again and again this year in an attempt to analyse how texts as rich and disturbing as Viriconium work. Yeah, sorry, the benchmark IS high.

I began with Richard Morgan's A Land Fit for Heroes trilogy. I've still got The Dark Defiles to read, hopefully in the next week or two, but it is fascinating and often brilliant so far. More soon.

And yes, I am slowly making my way through the new collections by Oyeyemi (What is not yours is not yours) and Hopkinson (Falling in Love with Hominids) and finding them hugely rewarding. 

Great books

Before I launch into an excited torrent of 'you must read this' I have one slight disappointment to report. I admired Sarah Perry's singular and weird After Me Comes the Flood last year and so my expectations were high for The Essex Serpent. There ARE lots of things to admire about it and much is staying with me: the sense of place, the evocative and poetic writing about nature, certain scenes and images, plus I think you cannot help but discern Perry's wisdom and kindness. But it didn't work in other ways, perhaps most of all because the tone didn't feel right. It felt too light for its darker themes and metaphors to live vividly. I felt the presence of some of the great nineteenth century writers, especially Dickens but couldn't feel their weight. Nor did it achieve either the great storytelling of Sarah Waters or the meditative density of say, Woolf. I feel kind of guilty for feeling this way, so much so that if reviews and criticism emerge that convince me I'm wrong I'll happily reread.

And now......read THESE!

The Vegetarian - Han Kang. All the hype is fully deserved. 

Mend the Living -  Maylis de Kerangal. Intense and euphoric. I'd go as far as astonishing. Take a look at Mike Harrison's review here. 

The Beauty and, even better, The Arrival of Missives - Aliya Whiteley. I'm giving these to EVERYONE!!!

Central Station - Lavie Tidhar. My thoughts here. Novel of the Year.

The Emigrants - W G Sebald. Even trying to avoid hyperbole......this is one of the best books I've ever read. I can't remember any text - fiction or non-fiction - that has brought the past to life so vividly, that has made me want to read so slowly so as not to miss a single detail, idea or thought - even knowing that I'll have to reread again and again to even glimpse some of the subtlety and craft at work. 'Sublime' is the only word that fits. Now 2016 will be the year of Sebald as this is the first I've read and I mean to read them all, greedily.

Elsewhere on the interweb:

• Really enjoying Jonathan McCalmont's discussions of the short story collection Sisters of the Revolution.
• Discovered From couch to moon and Gautam Bhatia's blog.
• Practically Marzipan is always good.
• I love following what Ana reads here.

Central Station - Lavie Tidhar

  
   When Boris Chong returns to Tel Aviv from Mars, much has changed. But his vast, extended family continues to pull him back home.


   Boris’s ex-lover Miriam is raising a strangely familiar child who can tap into the datastream of a mind with the touch of a finger. His cousin Isobel is infatuated with a robotnik—a cyborg ex-Israeli soldier who might well be begging for parts. Even his old flame, Carmel—a hunted data-vampire—has followed him back to a planet where she is forbidden to return.


   Rising above all is Central Station, the interplanetary hub between all things: the constantly shifting Tel Aviv; a powerful virtual arena, and the space colonies where humanity has gone to escape the ravages of poverty and war. Everything is connected by the Others, powerful entities who, through the Conversation—a shifting, flowing stream of consciousness— are just the beginning of irrevocable change.




   I admired Osama and The Violent Century a great deal and I loved A Man Lies Dreaming but Central Station is a novel to fall in love with. Tidhar, it goes without saying now, is a fantastic writer and his new book is a rare and glorious thing, full of sublime ideas and beautiful, evocative prose:

"Boris Chong, who had once been beautiful, when she was beautiful, in the soft nights of spring long ago as they lay on top of the old building filled with domestic workers for the rich of the North, they had made themselves a nest there, between the solar panels and the wind traps, a little haven made of old discarded sofas and an awning of colourful calico from India with political slogans on it in a language neither of them spoke. They had lain there, and gloried in their naked bodies up on the roof, in spring, when the air was warm and scented with the lilacs and the bushes of jasmine down below, late-blooming jasmine, that released its smell at night, under the stars and the lights of the space port." (P7)

   The story of Central Station "that vast space port which rises over the twin cityscapes of Arab Jaffa, Jewish Tel Aviv" and a community of characters that live and work within and outside it is full of longing and sensuality, smells and sounds, textures and tastes. It's a novel set in an extraordinary, mind blowing, far future about ordinary people trying to live their lives with dignity.

   As often with sf I'm not entirely confident of my intertextual imaginings as my sf reading is so patchy* but I couldn't help but think of various other writers. Tidhar's novel is weird and wonderful in the manner of Philip K Dick and Cordwainer Smith; it is generous, calm, intense, elegant and dreamy especially in the way Tidhar connects his short stories into an organic whole, Martian Chronicles stylee. I kept thinking of Mike Harrison's Light too - in the ease with which the novel introduces difficult and surreal concepts and ideas but also because, as Robert MacFarlane has written "His [Harrison's] books gleam with the lustre of found beauty and brief happiness: moments of being that exceed the claims of market forces. This aspect of his work is, I think, what led Michael Moorcock memorably to christen him "an anarchist aesthete". There are no candy cane epiphanies or take-home morals – just occasional light-flares from unexpected sources and surges of sensation that might make existence worth enduring." Don't misunderstand this comparison - Central Station is very different too, most surely in its hopefulness and the hues of romanticism that colour it. Finally the novel put me, happily, in 2000AD space - that space that first fully engaged me in sf - all that detail, a tone carefully and knowingly constructed, all those ideas, many of them inspired by 60s and 70s sf, and a pulp sensibility, less present than in the other novels, but still there in the ether. 

   In previous novels Tidhar has used metafictional devices to investigate and complicate history and politics. That self reflexive impulse is still present in the new novel - a central character is a bookseller fascinated by genre and storytelling, and make sure you remember the prologue - but it's less central to the structure and has a gentler purpose. Otherwise there is much in the form and structure to appreciate and linger over: the use of those evocative lists and careful juxtapositions, an intriguing narrative voice, plenty of jokes and references to ALL kinds of stuff (Star Trek Voyager and Peter Davison era Doctor Who.....well, maybe I was imagining some of them!), plus a singular pleasure and play in language and style.

   One of my complaints this year, against even the better fantasy and sf texts is that they're so caught up in ruling class intrigue. Sure it can be a useful lens through which to examine power, greed and imperialism but part of me finds it increasingly difficult to connect with those stories any more. One of the delights of Central Station is that it successfully interrogates the legacies of war and imperialism, of poverty and immigration, of belonging and identity but does so with a cast of characters who exist on the margins but are still fundamental to the fabric of life: shop keepers, children, priests, workers, refugees, forgotten soldiers, beggars, lovers, romantics. In large part the novel is a testament to family and community, steadfastness and determination:

"Oz meant “strength,” in Hebrew. But the real strength, Miriam thought, wasn’t in intimidating helpless people, who had nowhere else to turn. It was in surviving, the way her parents had, the way she had—learning Hebrew, working, making a small, quiet life as past turned to present and present to future, until one day there was only her, still living here, in Central Station." (P19)

   So yes the lives that Tidhar gives us here may still be precarious and prey to larger forces in society but there is satisfaction to be had in the shapes and stories of everyday life, in the surprise and ardour of loving, in friendship.

   Central Station is a rich, complex and satisfying work of art. It manages to be spectacularly lyrical (I was going to write 'literary' but stopped myself) and spectacularly sfnal too. I'm not sure it has ploughed down into my unconscious like a Harrison text or as novels by Robson and Fagan have this year but I realise that doesn't matter. It's more of an aesthetic pleasure - the pleasure of language and ideas, of cerebral oohs and aahs and of wonder. It is metaphorically rich in its thinking about the relationship of places and spaces to time, memory and history. It is meditative and kind. It is daring and full of grace.

   It is a novel to fall in love with.

[Hold on though, isn't there a but? There's always a but....

Well the conversation I've been having with myself, in my gloomy, 'how on earth is humanity going to last another 100 years' and 'how the hell is there ever going to be peace in the Middle East' way is about whether Central Station is just too hopeful and unrealistic. On one level it IS fascinating that my pessimism about Palestine/Israel and my rage at the increasing barbarity (and stupidity) of Zionism impacts on my ability to accept sf tropes. Anyway, thankfully I've been able to tell that part of me to shut up and stop being stupid. Perhaps of all regions on this planet the Middle East deserves a little hope. And it certainly deserves this novel. 

That winning side of me remembered too that I have a treasured CD/DVD of the West-Eastern Divan orchestra with Daniel Baranboim playing Tchaikovsky's Fifth that I haven't watched for a while. Maybe I'll watch it again tonight again, for the umpteenth time, and let that hope breath a bit longer.]

*So, after I wrote this I couldn't resist a bit of detective work. First there's this lovely article at Tor about influences, a good interview here and a small paragraph on Lavie's blog here. I shall be reading Miguel Street and C L Moore asap. 

Shortlist discussions - Clarke, Kitschies and more.

The Discussion

There’s the beginnings of a discussion about the future of the Clarke Award with excellent posts by Nina Allan here, Jonathan McCalmont here and Martin Petto here and here. [I'd definitely endorse Niall Harrison’s all-female lists and David Hebblethwaite's comment]. The posts and the comments discuss the difficulties of judging and scheduling, hopes and ideas about how to keep the award relevant, interesting and vital plus hopes and ideas about how to broaden the discussion around the Clarke and Kitchies shortlists. If you haven’t read them already I’d urge you to asap!

Nick Hubble also posted a link to Allan’s essay on FB (posted, 29^th April on Contemporary British Fiction if you want to find it) and provides a useful reminder of “the dangers inherent to valuing the ‘literary’”, aware as he is about “how literary valuation and canons are complicit with hierarchical power relations across English studies as a discipline”. He also stresses that there are different ways of being ambitious and gives as an example Dave Huchinson’s fantastic Europe at Midnight. This is obviously important in any discussion opposing ‘literary sf’ with the ‘genre heartlands’.

The Kitschies

Part of me has little to add to what has already been written. The Kitschies, for all the brilliant books it has brought to my attention over the last few years, will become irrelevant to readers if it can’t adopt a decent structure and a clear timetable and forum for debate. I hope it does because there desperately needs to be a space for critical debate about literary speculative fiction.  But I won’t support it next year unless there is sufficient time to read the books and we get some kind of platform for discussion. Otherwise, Jonathan’s assessment seems depressingly spot on:

“If you want to know the future of the Clarke Award look no further than the Kitschies as they seem to provide publishing professionals with everything they could possibly want from an award: Winners announced two weeks after the publication of the shortlists in order to maximise free PR and a drinks party serving the second or third least expensive wine on the list. Tentacle headgear is optional, no riffraff.”

The Clarke

If the Clarke award is slowly taking a journey to the genre heartlands then it will simply become far less relevant to me. I’d like to be able to say that this is fine. I didn’t find my love of books in fantasy or sf. I found it in horror and thrillers, and later in my teen years, in ‘literary fiction’. Sf didn’t come until much later – first with Banks and Le Guin in my 20s and then, increasingly, with my discovery of Mike Harrison and China Mieville (and their lists). I’ll still be able to identify the books I want to read because I’ve built up a large store of knowledge and because I’ll continue to look to Strange Horizons, Nina Allan and various others for recommendations. And I still read more literary fiction over the course of the year even if I’m drawn most to that which messes and plays with genre boundaries.

However, a lot of that knowledge was acquired by reading the critical debate over the Clarke shortlists by Nussbaum, Roberts, Hartland and others (see Martin’s post above) over the years and by going back and reading many of the novels. Indeed many of those novels mean a lot to me. I already miss that debate somewhat but since it depends on a great deal of good will and intelligence I’m not confident it will be forthcoming. Furthermore shortlists that are fun and conservative, as opposed to difficult, provocative and challenging are likely to inspire less debate and less critical insight too.

Thus, for what it is worth, I clearly don’t want the Clarke to retreat to the genre heartlands. One look at my Clarke shortlist this year will show that I clearly favour ‘literary sf’. I can just about accept that The Shore and The Swan Book are too leftfield for the Clarkes but that Glorious Angels, The Thing Itself and Aurora aren’t on the shortlist is well, unforgivable? Preposterous? Inane? I’ll wait until I’ve finished all the novels until I give a full account. So far, Hutchinson deserves its place, the others really, really don’t.

   Of course, however objective one likes to think oneself, looking back through shortlists and their winners is highly instructive and of course should give anybody pause to question their certainties. Frances Hardinge, Adam Roberts and Claire North – 3 of my favourite authors - were judges for the 2014 Kitschies, but did I agree with their winners? Hell no, but that was fine because the shortlists were fantastic. I love the 2007 Clarke shortlist but Martin (see above) is less inspired. And then there is Naam and Mann in 2014???? And how did Richard Flannagan beat Ali Smith in the 2014 Booker (or even Fowler or Mukherjee)? I could go on and on. And this year’s Bailey’s shortlist is a stinker….

So, honestly, I don’t expect perfection, and I don’t expect to agree wholeheartedly. That would be ridiculously dull and conservative of me. Indeed I want to have my certainties challenged, my horizons stretched and my mind blown. Is that too much to ask?

Paraphrasing Jonathan’s last paragraph a little, I will continue to seek out, appreciate and praise criticism that is willing to rock the boat and ask awkward questions. Moreover I want art to push me and perplex me. I’ve never understood those people who tell me art is just for fun or consolation and here I’ll quote Jeanette Winterson:

Art cannot be tamed, although our responses to it can be, and in relation to The Canon our responses are conditioned from the moment we start school. The freshness which the everyday man or woman pride themselves upon; the untaught "I know what I like" approach, now encouraged by the media, is neither fresh nor untaught. It is the half-baked sterility of the classroom washed down with liberal doses of popular culture.                                                   

  The media ransacks the arts, in its images, in its advertisements, in its copy, in its jingles, in its little tunes and journalist's jargon, it continually offers up faint shadows of the form and invention of real music, real paintings, real words. All of us are subject to this bombardment, which both deadens our sensibilities and makes us fear what is not instant, approachable, consumable. The solid presence of art demands from us significant effort, an effort anathema to popular culture. Effort of time, effort of money, effort of study, effort of humility, effort of  imagination have each been packed by the artist into the art. Is it so unreasonable to expect a percentage of that from us in return? [Art Objects]

The Panoptican & The Sunlight Pilgrims - Jenni Fagan

The narrator of Jenni Fagan’s The Panopticon is Anais. She is 15, working class and she is TROUBLE. She takes drugs and starts riots, she fights and skives off school, she is disrespectful, she steals, she joyrides. She hates the police and any other authority figures. She is wildly out of control and it’s hard to know if you or I would be able to cope if we had a real Anais in our life.

 

   But she is honest too and hates bullies. She is fierce, charismatic and electric. I can remember a girl a bit like her at school—quite clever and funny when she wanted to be but always clashing with teachers, getting in fights, skiving, seemingly high on something or other a lot of the time. But she had a kind of integrity too—there was a hint of kindness behind the angry public façade and she never tormented people. Of course we’ve all come across disruptive people who ARE bullies and seem to have few redeeming features and it’s then much harder to sympathise with the reasons that might influence their poor behaviour.

   As the novel begins Anais is in the back seat of a police car being taken to a young offenders’ home called the Panoptican. For those of you who don’t know, a panoptican is “a circular prison with cells so constructed that the prisoners can be observed at all times”. In a world where we are increasingly observed in every aspect of our lives - think security cameras and social media for instance - it would seem to be quite a potent symbol for our consideration and Fagan makes good on it. Indeed the novel makes you think about the things that people watch for and, crucially, all the things we fail to see or don't want to see.

   In the course of the novel you discover a lot about Anais’s past and about the lives of other teenagers at the home. On one level this might not sound too unusual but there are several reasons to recommend Fagan’s brilliant first novel. First is Anais’s voice - funny, irreverent, shocking, thoughtful, defiant, tormented, sad, sincere. She has a punk heart and she is a rebel and a fighter. You’d want her on your side and you’d want to be on hers. Secondly it is worth asking how many novels concentrate on working class lives? Not that many is the answer. And next how many do so without coming off as too worthy or didactic or idealistic? Hardly any. Instead Fagan gives us a novel charged with electricity and righteous anger. It rages at injustice, inequality and stupidity as it makes you laugh and cry. Thirdly, if you choose to examine them there are weird and uncanny moments in the text and philosophical ideas to contemplate too. When I'm recommending to our students I have to warn them there is a LOT of swearing, some sex and some very upsetting bits. Sometimes you see straight away that the wisdom of a book has been hard won and that the electrifying writing is a mixture of hard graft and a singular sort of thinking and insight. The Panoptican is one of those novels. 

  

    I should point out that Fagan’s treatment of sex, sexuality and gender in The Panoptican is pitch perfect. In her new novel The Sunlight Pilgrims she puts gender firmly at the centre of the novel. It concentrates on three characters: after the death of his mum Dylan finds himself unexpectedly moving to a caravan park in a remote part of Scotland. There he meets 12 year old Stella and her mum Constance. Stella has, thirteen months previously, made the transition from boy to girl and is facing bullying, incomprehension and distaste from her peers and others in the community. There’s more. The novel is set in 2020. With climate change accelerating, all the cold water pouring into the sea from the Arctic is causing the North Atlantic Drift to cool precipitating a dramatic fall in temperatures throughout northern Europe. When the novel begins in November it is already minus 6 degrees and getting colder and colder all the time.

   There are lots of reasons to recommend The Sunlight Pilgrims as it has many of the qualities of The Panoptican and I could read Fagan’s prose all day (she is also a poet) but what struck me most is this. At one point Stella ponders her situation:

“Before it was just poverty, pestilence, terrorists, paedophiles, drugs, eating disorders, online grooming, meteors skimming a bit too close for comfort. Now every single person in this hall looks like they are terrified they’re all about to become frozen corpses”

 

   So in a world going (gone?) mad, the novel is asking: How do you find ways to live and still appreciate the moments of wonder in our existence? Perhaps even with bravery, integrity and kindness in spite of all our pain and bafflement? It would be SO easy to offer answers that are banal or nihilistic. Fagan just about manages to get the tone of her novel right by giving us hope, determination and wonder instead. The structure, symbolism and the mode of storytelling is striking - stream of consciousness flights of fancy mixed with beautiful descriptions of nature wrapped around a core of fable and fairy tale. Fagan concentrates on fairly short moments in time so that you witness the thoueght processes of Stella and Dylan, their sensations, their trails of thought, their observations, their worries and emotions: their yearning and desire for simple pleasures. The chapter breaks are fascinating too (and worthy I suspect of further investigation). There are passages that will live with me for some time: Dylan's walk in Chapter's 9 & 10, Stella's bike ride with the deer, are evoked lyrically and precisely; with great emotion and a touch of the surreal. I love the fierce and tender love of Constance and Stella and the voices and ways of thinking Fagan gives her characters. 

 

   Few novels have made have provoked and prodded me quite as much as this one all year even though Fagan's novel is essentially a kind and hopeful one. The reasons I suspect, are personal. I'm having a hard time knowing how to live at the moment. It feels like the world is going to fuck - with the Tories and Trump, and climate change, and refugees being treated like dirt and so on and on and on. And on top of that I'm lonely and dissatisfied; unmoored with no idea what to do with my life or how to make a difference. And it feels like I'll never get to love or be loved again. I try to tell myself to just do it day by day. To have small goals, be kind, drink less, go to the gym. The usual stuff. And yh, I know - first world problems and all, but its not easy at the moment. But Fagan's novel has a belief in people that I can't quite connect to at the moment. It's not that I can't have pleasant and kind exchanges with people - it's that I feel no connection. Fagan's text takes connection for granted. Obvious of course that texts will hit you in different ways at different times of life but this feels like a falsehood at the moment. Most obviously it's the way the relationship between Dylan and Constance is figured that doesn't feel quite right - there's a bit of whimsy and romanticism that doesn't fit. I suspect other readers will feel differently.

    I waded through The Panoptican feverishly, all in one day. I didn't want to read The Sunlight Pilgrims as fast. Maybe because there are more weird and uncanny sections and more description but mainly I think there's more to ponder and reflect on. Both novels feel urgent and necessary.

   I can think of no greater compliment than to say whilst reading the novels I kept contrasting and comparing with some of my favourite British contemporary novelists: Ali Smith, Sarah Hall, MJ Hyland, Liz Jensen, Jeanette Winterson: yes, Fagan really is that good. I urge you to get reading.

Easter reading and a Clarke shortlist

Easter reading

It's been a good couple of weeks of reading as I've sought to catch up on all the speculative fiction from 2015 that I hadn't already tackled for the Kitschies and the BSFA. In addition to many of the books below I also reread Jackie Kay's Trumpet and finally got round to Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. Both are glorious and highly recommended.

Clarke Shortlist

113 novels were submitted for the Clarke but I've only managed a handful (17) even though it feels like I've been reading nonstop for most of the year! I tend to go for the ones that have good reviews at Strange Horizons or by people like Adam Roberts and Nina Allan. The 17 are by: Atwood, Charnock, de Abaitua, de Bodard, Hutchinson, McDonald, Ness, North, Pinborough, Roberts, Robinson, Robson, Smythe, Taylor, van den Berg, Walton, Wright.

Then there are excellent novels that I've read and aren't on the Clarke list at all: Clade, Elysium, Dark Orbit, The Fifth Season, Making Wolf and of course A God In Ruins. This is a great shame as there seem to me to be some important novels here. Why isn't everyone talking about Jennifer Marie Brissett for example? If any of those were in contention I'd have to seriously reconsider my list!

Anyway my shortlist would be:

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts

The Shore by Sara Taylor

The Swan Book by Alexis Wright

If Then by Matthew De Abaitua

Glorious Angels by Justina Robson

Three of the books are relatively easy and pleasurable to read despite all their challenges. Otherwise Robson requires patience in the first half whilst De Abaitua requires patience in its second half. Wright is extraordinarily pleasurable throughout but perhaps, not easy. All of them are accomplished and ambitious, full of ideas and great writing. I don't believe for a minute that either Taylor or Wright will get on the shortlist unfortunately - too close to literary fiction - but I'd love to be proven wrong. I read Roberts and Taylor at the start of the year and I still find myself thinking about them. I would have reread them already if I had the time.

However I wish they'd go totes crazy this year and have a shortlist of eight as it would be good to see two other novels get some limelight. I'm not sure they have the same kind of complexity as those six above but they are perfectly formed. Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind by Anne Charnock made me feel a little like I do when I've read an Ali Smith novel (or story) - like I've had a conversation with a very clever, very imaginative, very kind human being and I feel better about the world and more open to its mysteries. That's a rare and lovely thing. I'm not sure whether Sarah Pinborough's The Death House is a YA novel or not but it really doesn't matter. I've seen comparisons made with Never Let Me Go, The Fault in Our Stars and The Girl with all the Gifts - novels I like and recommend to our students all the time - and seen criticisms too, mainly that it is too predictable. I think it's own thing though: the characterisation of its young protagonists is brilliant and throughout it feels as compelling as a Shakespearean tragedy. [sorry if you think that's hyperbole, but I don't care!] It doesn't matter that you guess what will happen because it's really not the point. Pinborough's novel is pitch perfect and I loved it. I'll be ordering copies of this (plus James Smythe's Way Down Dark and Zen Cho's Sorcerer to the Crown; we already have The Rest of Us Just Live Here obviously) for the school library immediately.

Either way that's an extraordinarily entertaining and intellectually challenging - not giving in to any kind of populism - shortlist. They are excellent novels and I'd happily read them all again immediately and discuss them. If I had to choose a winner? Aurora - it blew my mind in many, many ways. If not I'd like to see it go to Wright or Roberts.

I'm missing out some good novels of course. I admire those by Dave Hutchinson, Laura Van den Berg, Ian McDonald, and Margaret Atwood especially. 

And still on my list of the novels I really want to read soon: Speak, The Galaxy Game, The Three Body Problem AND Ancillary Mercy. I'm sure there are others I'd enjoy. Alas never enough time.  

More thoughts on individual books to come.