The first thing that captures your attention is that rather brash title, How Quini the Squid Misplaced His Klobučar, which apart from being intriguingThe first thing that captures your attention is that rather brash title, How Quini the Squid Misplaced His Klobučar, which apart from being intriguing contains quite a bit of information. Perhaps the keyword is ‘misplaced’, which seems odd, as this is a heist story about liberating the last-mentioned work-of-art from the tentacles of Quini, an underworld-type figure modelled on a stereotypical African-South American druglord-cum-arms-smuggler.
If you think I have given too much of the plot away, fear not … The surface gloss of this hugely entertaining, fast-paced caper hides a lot of sly misdirection and subversion. This includes a lovely twist on gender involving one of the heist members – and if you’re one of those hidebound readers who feel that SF is selling out to political correctness, do not worry your pretty head, for this is not a PC sop but is instead integral to the ending.
Prior to reading this I had not heard of Rich Larson, but was so impressed that I have his short collection Tomorrow Factory and his first novel Annex lined up to read as a result. Apart from the flashy, hip cyberpunk and neat twists and turns, there is a really nasty, seedy streak that runs like a fault line through the middle. And all of that in a mere 40-odd pages?
I read online that Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger, has lived in Canada and Spain, and is now based in Prague. Which kind of explains why his SF feels like a European art movie that subverts the tropes of a traditional Hollywood blockbuster, while celebrating these tropes at the same time.
It is a difficult balance to pull off, and can backfire spectacularly in the wrong hands, but Larson knows the nuts-and-bolts of SF and how to bend its structure to his own anarchic vision. He is one of those firecracker writers likely to go off in any direction, but who demands to be followed for the light he throws in the darkness.
Merged review:
The first thing that captures your attention is that rather brash title, How Quini the Squid Misplaced His Klobučar, which apart from being intriguing contains quite a bit of information. Perhaps the keyword is ‘misplaced’, which seems odd, as this is a heist story about liberating the last-mentioned work-of-art from the tentacles of Quini, an underworld-type figure modelled on a stereotypical African-South American druglord-cum-arms-smuggler.
If you think I have given too much of the plot away, fear not … The surface gloss of this hugely entertaining, fast-paced caper hides a lot of sly misdirection and subversion. This includes a lovely twist on gender involving one of the heist members – and if you’re one of those hidebound readers who feel that SF is selling out to political correctness, do not worry your pretty head, for this is not a PC sop but is instead integral to the ending.
Prior to reading this I had not heard of Rich Larson, but was so impressed that I have his short collection Tomorrow Factory and his first novel Annex lined up to read as a result. Apart from the flashy, hip cyberpunk and neat twists and turns, there is a really nasty, seedy streak that runs like a fault line through the middle. And all of that in a mere 40-odd pages?
I read online that Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger, has lived in Canada and Spain, and is now based in Prague. Which kind of explains why his SF feels like a European art movie that subverts the tropes of a traditional Hollywood blockbuster, while celebrating these tropes at the same time.
It is a difficult balance to pull off, and can backfire spectacularly in the wrong hands, but Larson knows the nuts-and-bolts of SF and how to bend its structure to his own anarchic vision. He is one of those firecracker writers likely to go off in any direction, but who demands to be followed for the light he throws in the darkness....more
Thanks to Nataliya for bringing this delightful little gem to my attention. And to all those who thought that China Miéville did not have a sense of hThanks to Nataliya for bringing this delightful little gem to my attention. And to all those who thought that China Miéville did not have a sense of humour. This short story (it is not a novella by any stretch of the imagination) is wickedly funny and on the nose, skewering both a capitalist and socialist over-compensation to the Festive Season. Published originally in the 2005 collection ‘Looking for Jake’, it is the perfect antidote if you are harbouring any secret Scrooge-like feelings towards Christmas™....more
Being a long-time Charlie Parker reader – it is incredible that it’s been 18-odd instalments over a 20-year period to date – I do hold the books up toBeing a long-time Charlie Parker reader – it is incredible that it’s been 18-odd instalments over a 20-year period to date – I do hold the books up to a higher level of criticism and expectation as a result. The lodestone question for any new book is simply: How does it advance or contribute to Charlie Parker’s quest?
I am unsure if John Connolly is working from any kind of a Grand Plan, but the last couple of books have been fair to middling. When I first heard about ‘The Dirty South’ touted as a ‘prequel’ that gives new blood to the series, my immediate reaction was: WTF!? Poor Charlie Parker needs resolution, not reinvigoration.
If you remove Charlie Parker from ‘The Dirty South’, it makes no difference to the main story at all. In fact, the man himself says at the end that he never gives another thought to Burdon County ever again, possibly to explain the total absence of any repercussion from what transpires there in his ongoing quest (view spoiler)[to track down the serial killer who so artfully butchered his wife and child. (hide spoiler)]
Make no mistake about it, ‘The Dirty South’ is a perfectly okay crime thriller set in Clinton-era Arkansas. Connolly’s insights into State-level corruption and nepotism in both law enforcement and local government are depressing but spot-on. The characterisation is as usual exemplary, particularly the odious Cade clan.
Fans will be pleased that both Angel and Louis, as well as Woollrich, surprisingly enough, get a shout-out. Plus there is a casual mention of a major revelation that, as far as I can recall, was teased out over several books (view spoiler)[(the rabbi mole in the FBI). (hide spoiler)]
But you clearly get the feeling that Parker is just cooling his heels here. Well, not actually, because this takes place quite a way back in the timeline, so he is yet to experience most of the horror and sorrow that is to come. Does this make any difference to how we perceive Parker to be in this book? Absolutely not.
This has always been a series where it has not been advisable for readers to jump in at any point. Which must be extremely frustrating for Connolly’s marketing team. Well, now with #18, ironically, he has gone and done just that: Given us a book that is a perfect entry point for newbies. And also one that long-time fans can comfortably skip until the next one pops along....more
The most scurrilous assertion in this book – and one I am surprised that author Tim Teeman has not been called out on – is that Gore Vidal was ‘afraidThe most scurrilous assertion in this book – and one I am surprised that author Tim Teeman has not been called out on – is that Gore Vidal was ‘afraid’ of William Buckley, who allegedly had a ‘file’ on, among other things, his sexual activities with minors, which would have meant that Vidal was a pederast. Yes, granted he visited Thailand on several occasions for shady sex holidays and had a lifelong fixation on the ‘great love of his life’, Jimmie Trimble, but … a pederast!?
Buckley and Vidal clashed famously in a series of televised debates staged by ABC to cover the 1968 Presidential nomination conventions. In one of the later debates, a visibly harried Buckley totally lost his shit and snarled: “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddam face, and you’ll stay plastered—” The fallout would see both men publish duelling articles in Esquire and engage vigorously in a three-year lawsuit that ultimately cost Vidal $1 million in legal fees alone (a sum he borrowed from his half-sister Nina Straight and never repaid).
Of course, it is Nina whom Tim gets to twist the knife in about the underage sex allegations (perhaps understandably in the above context?): “Buckley claimed to have evidence that Vidal was having sex with underage males, I ask? Straight nods. ‘It would be hypothetical but you can cover that range, yes.’” Surely such murky conjecture does not count as solid evidence. But then Vidal did love to obfuscate, especially on the matter of his sex life, the arena where Tim’s authorial spotlight shines brightest.
I was a bit hesitant to read this book initially as, especially with that title, I expected a grubby raking-over-the-coals of the impact of rampant same-sex desire on Vidal’s life, both private and in terms of his literary output (he only ever claimed to be bisexual). Much to my surprise, this is probably one of the most accessible books about the Great Man you could possibly read, apart from the official Fred Kaplan biography.
Tim teeters occasionally on the fine line between being biographical as opposed to unnecessarily salacious, as evidenced by his account of Vidal’s “intimate and steamy” one-night stand with Jack Kerouac in New York in 1953:
Here, one of literature’s most famous gay hook-ups took place between two men, Vidal and Kerouac, whose own sexualities were of no fixed abode. Kerouac was three times married with one daughter, Vidal gay but defiantly un-self defined. But their evening together was memorable enough for both men to set it down — contested accounts, still wreathed in mystery — in writing.
Nina and her son Burr Steers (meaning Vidal was his uncle) are the main ‘inside’ sources for this book, with Tim noting that “Those overseeing Vidal’s estate would not co-operate … or give me access to whatever papers and documents of Vidal’s the Estate holds.” I think it is important to note that, at the time of publication in 2013, Nina and Burr were knee-deep in what was termed ‘Vidal’s Final Feud’ (cousin Andrew Auschincloss was in the fray as well), litigating against a last-minute codicil that made Harvard his sole heir, including copyright, even though he had even been a student at the university.
Yes, there is a fair amount of salacious tittering throughout, with some jaw- and name-dropping accounts of Vidal in full stud mode, but this only adds to the necessary messiness of a life lived, literally, in utter gay abandon. Or not nearly gay enough? Despite boasting of having had sex with (at least) a thousand men by 25, Vidal never referred to himself as gay:
“The ‘homosexualist (sometimes known as gay, fag, queer etc)...does not exist. The human race is divided into male and female. Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex, many don’t; many respond to both. This plurality is the fact of our nature and not worth fretting about.’”
Or the fact, much later on, that he was in a devoted relationship. Vidal effectively renounced any labelling, repeatedly stating there was no such thing as a gay lifestyle, aesthetic, sensibility or identity – only gay sexual acts. And that all people are naturally bisexual, according to the Kinsey definition. Indeed, one of the most frustrating chapters is number nine, ‘Lovers or Good Friends? Vidal’s Women’.
“He had an absolute distaste for identity politics,” says Altman. “Gore was a patrician: he had a very strong sense of himself as needing to play a central role in the affairs of his country. He had a continual bitterness that not everyone agreed with him. Queer theory would have annoyed the shit out of him.”
Vidal famously said that he only fucked. He reportedly never even gave head, which lead Christopher Bram to comment drily: “… well gee, did he really miss out on one of the greatest pleasures of sex between men?” Vidal also claimed, rather notoriously in my opinion, to never have been concerned about the gratification of any partner (which is why his main sexual outlet was hustling, even after he became involved with lifelong partner Howard Austen).
I wonder what Vidal would have made of Tom Ford’s (in)famous 2004 assertion in a GQ interview that “Every man should be fucked at some point in his life”. Ford went on to clarify his, er, position in a 2016 GQ interview to promote his movie ‘Nocturnal Animals’: “I think it would help them understand women. It’s such a vulnerable position to be in, and it’s such a passive position to be in. And there’s such an invasion, in a way, that even if it’s consensual, it’s just very personal.”
While reading this book I watched ‘Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia’ (2013) and ‘Best of Enemies’ (2015), which focuses on the Buckley vs. Vidal ABC debates. Directors Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville argue that this ushered in the trend of “public discourse and pundit TV”. I am not entirely convinced, as I’d hate to draw a direct line to the recent calamitous Trump vs. Biden presidential debates, which surely marks a new low in such an august lineage. Of course, it would be impossible now for two such white privileged males to claim any exclusive or privileged insight into the public discourse.
When Howard passed away in 2003 aged 74, it seemed to have totally unhinged Vidal. They had been together for 53 years. Vidal never believed in romantic love, or was able to express genuine emotion or feeling towards his partner in a public forum (he famously steered well away from any hint of gay or identity politics, including the battle against AIDS). Yet the death of Howard unmanned him, marking the beginning of an ignominious decline:
The proper name for the syndrome is Wernicke-Korsakoff, a brain syndrome suffered by long-term alcoholics characterized by a number of symptoms, including confusion and hallucinations. When Vidal and Steers had taken Austen’s ashes to be interred, Vidal had said “that he really didn’t want that kind of long, drawn-out thing to happen to him, and yet it happened and in the worst way,” says Steers. “It was a really horrible final act.”
Vidal spent most of his final years embittered and increasingly isolated and lonely, slowly shedding all of his closest friends and support structure as the madness of his disease took hold. This is where Tim begins his book, with Vidal (finally) succumbing to pneumonia on 31 July 2012, aged 86, “in the early evening in a bed set up in his downstairs living room so he could look out to his garden, including the tall fir trees that so reminded him of his years living in Rome in the 1960s: his very own Dolce Vita featuring a lot sex with beautiful young men.”...more
It is amazing how urgent and relevant this novel remains, even though it was published in 2017 and takes place over a century from today. In contrast It is amazing how urgent and relevant this novel remains, even though it was published in 2017 and takes place over a century from today. In contrast KSR’s latest novel, ‘The Ministry for the Future’, takes place a mere three decades later, and is a much more urgent call to action in terms of the impact of climate change.
Already UN News reports that this year may be the third-hottest on record, with the average global temperature set to be about 1.2°C above the preindustrial (1850-1900) level in 2020. There is at least a one-in-five chance of it temporarily exceeding 1.5°C by 2024, according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
It is clear that the world needs radical action to slow this inexorable temperature rise, which prompted UN Secretary-General António Guterres to categorise the fight against the climate crisis as the top priority of the 21st century. Of course, ‘New York 2140’ is set in a world that ignores all of this. The combination of inexorable global temperature and sea level rise alters our planet’s coastlines almost beyond recognition in a frighteningly short period.
Yes, this is a disaster novel, kind of. But it is definitely not a dystopia. Despite the fact that much of New York is under water by the time it is set, KSR chronicles its transformation into a ‘Super Venice’, where advances in materials and construction techniques allow Wall Street to become a hub of super-tall skyscrapers that not only dominate the skyline, but the zeitgeist.
One of the eight viewpoint characters of the book is a trader who specialises in what KSR rather cheekily terms the Intertidal Property Pricing Index (IPPI), “used by millions to orient investments that totalled in the trillions”. Essentially it correlates sea level with the housing index, allowing for the world’s drowned coastlines to be commodified.
Now it is clear what KSR’s intentions are with ‘New York 2140’: He uses a climate-change scenario as a pressure-cooker situation to analyse the fundamentals of capitalism itself. Not surprisingly it thrives in this waterlogged doomsday, turning disaster into profit like Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold. And what is the price we have to pay, for we all know that an economic system can never be benign or benevolent in and of itself? Well, that is the one variable that cannot be accurately pinned down…
In the SF genre KSR is probably unique for his singular political voice. Yes, there are ‘political’ writers like Ken MacLeod, Charles Stross and China Miéville. But I don’ think there is any other writer who has fused politics with his fiction in quite the same manner, while still maintaining the ‘big picture’ viewpoint of celebrated ‘futurists’ like William Gibson and Iain Banks.
Yes, KSR is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and a keen proponent of the Green New Deal. All of this seeps into his work like water into cracks in the basement of the Metropolitan Building in New York, which forms a handy microcosm of the world he maps out for the reader to explore. Yes, his PhD (on the novels of PKD) was supervised by celebrated philosopher and Marxist political theorist Fredric Jameson, whose seminal works include ‘Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ (1991) and ‘The Political Unconscious’ (1981).
This, too, inevitably informs the mindset of KSR. But it is wrong to simply pigeon-hole him as a socialist lurking behind his fiction as if it were a mere front for party indoctrination. Yes, there is a running critical thread that KSR’s books are all too idea-heavy and insufficiently humane in the sense that the world building (or re-imagination) dwarves the perfunctory characterisation. And then there is the unintentional bias introduced by being a ‘white American male’ and a lack of attention paid to the nuances of identity politics, among other contemporary issues and concerns.
But SF is by its very nature a political genre, with classic writers like Samuel R. Delany and Ursula K. Le Guin not only positing, but championing, alternative social structures and ways of behaviour. It is a perfect marriage of form and function, I think, especially as SF is, and has always been, about the Big Ideas, even if these are deemed to be anti-establishment or quasi-revolutionary. In ‘New York 2140’, in particular, KSR lauds the role that civil unrest plays in bolstering democracy.
Why not then simply write textbooks like Jameson did? Well, mainly I think because KSR is a writer and an artist with a vision of, and for, the future. He engages with readers via the medium of genre fiction, and thereby hopes to inform the outlook we have on the world around us, from a cultural as well as a scientific viewpoint (for science is part-and-parcel of the Big Ideas approach).
What I loved about ‘New York 2140’ is that it is KSR’s most accessible book to date. Using the simple structure of alternating chapters between eight viewpoint characters, including the eponymous ‘Citizen’, whose function is of course info-dumping, KSR compiles a dizzyingly complex mosaic of his future world.
It is dynamic and feels entirely lived in and of the moment. There is an excitement and a tenacity to his writing that is truly inspiring. The book bristles with ideas and vigour. Of course it is at least 200 pages too long, but an artist at the top of his game, as KSR is here, can at least be tolerated, if not outright celebrated....more
'Blue And Blue And Blue And Pink' by Lavie Tidhar ***** One of my favourite short stories of the year'Blue And Blue And Blue And Pink' by Lavie Tidhar ***** One of my favourite short stories of the year...more
...the one thing she still had was the freedom to follow the narrative that suited her best.
The problem with a book like ‘Such A Fun Age’ by Kiley Rei...the one thing she still had was the freedom to follow the narrative that suited her best.
The problem with a book like ‘Such A Fun Age’ by Kiley Reid that seems so effortless in its execution, and that so cleverly hinges on the soap-opera shenanigans of its plot, is that it is paradoxically easy to dismiss as an inconsequential piece of fluff.
Yes, this is a quick and light read, but it also deals deftly with some thorny contemporary issues about the intersectionality of race and class privilege. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I enjoyed this book more than the rather heavy-handed and opaque ‘Luster’ by Raven Leilani (if you’re looking for ‘kind of’ comparisons for Reid, I’d suggest ‘Writers & Lovers’ by Lily King and ‘Shelter in Place’ by David Leavitt.)
The title obviously refers to an era, as in ‘The Age of Innocence’ by Edith Wharton, as well as the biological age of babysitter Emira Tucker, who turns out to be something of a ticking timebomb in the Chamberlain household. Emira is in that irritating 30s zone where she should already be well-established as an adult, but instead is stuck in a poorly-paid job (two jobs, in fact), fretting constantly about affording her rent, keeping up with her expensive friends, and D-Day when she is taken off her parents’ medical insurance as she is now deemed to be ‘independent’.
I read somewhere recently that these plot devices are fast becoming the modern version of the dearth of suitable marriage proposals that gets the narrative engine revving in a Jane Austen novel. Indeed, there seems to be an awful lot of ‘slacker’ novels recently about aimless characters burdened with student debt and a crushing sense of futility in the face of a capitalist system that does not prioritise their success in life. Throw in concerns about race and privilege, and you have quite the literary trial by fire.
Reid deftly solves the problem of writing about reprehensible characters without alienating the reader by taking a ‘goldfish bowl’ view from the ‘outside in’, as Emira does on the world of the Chamberlains. (There is even a bona fide goldfish in the book, which turns out to be something like Chekhov’s Gun). We also get an inside track on Emira’s own world and social circle, which seems far less hung-up on race and guilt than does poor Alix, who embarks on a social-engineering project to ‘understand’ Emira better after she gets harassed in an upmarket supermarket.
Frankly though, both her and Alix seem equally self-absorbed and narcissistic. A lot of the novel’s best comedy comes from the scenes where Alix and Emira successfully talk over each other and completely miscommunicate their intentions or understanding. Reid is a fine writer of dialogue, and these scenes are both wince-inducing and sad in how much they reveal about the characters’ true motivations and ingrained prejudices.
There is a running gag about how undesirable it is to live in Philadelphia versus the ‘Manhattan scene’. Alix’s brief visits to her home state gives her just enough Instagram ammunition to keep the illusion going … but she is not far enough away to escape the claws of her editor who is trying to coax the first 50 pages of her long overdue book out of her.
Of course, this is partly why she hired Emira: To give her a bubble in which to function creatively while insulated from her two demanding toddler daughters. However, said bubble turns into a comfort zone more than anything else, to the point where her book deadlines breeze by without a single word being written.
Reid veers perilously close to caricature, especially with the working-mom-influencer Alix (how her name changed from ‘Alex’ is essentially the chronicle of her own burgeoning ‘wokeness’.) Kelley Copeland, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to parse. I found him a sympathetic character throughout, but perhaps this says more about me than it does about his role in this comedy of (non) manners?
My only real problem with the book was the ending, which I thought took an unnecessary pot shot at one of the most endearing characters in the book, the toddler Briar, who is achingly well-written. Plus there is a hint, like Ripley being impregnated by the xenomorph in the flashback beginning of Alien 3, that Emira is more than capable of becoming a (black?) version of Alix in all her woke glory. Perhaps that is the ending Edith Wharton herself would have written. But I would have preferred a smidgeon of happiness for our modern Jane Austen slacker heroine....more
Thank you to NetGalley and publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the review copy of a book only due to be published in June next year. I can honestlThank you to NetGalley and publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the review copy of a book only due to be published in June next year. I can honestly say this was my only read of 2020 that kept me up until the wee hours, it is that compulsive. I expect it is also going to court quite a bit of controversy for its lurid take on some hot-button gay issues.
With a title like ‘Yes, Daddy’, which makes it seem like a M/M romance novel, combined with that weirdly disturbing cover image, the reader is immediately alerted to the fact that this is one strange fish of a book. Also, you would be hard-pressed to rank Jonathan Parks-Ramage with the likes of Garth Greenwell and Edmund White, two pillars of contemporary gay fiction (the former a wunderkind and the latter the old codger propping up the establishment).
The book is not even out yet, and Amazon Studios has announced an adaptation. Having read it, I can easily see why. Parks-Ramage is a very visual writer and his story has such broad strokes that it is ideal streaming fodder. Not to mention that a large chunk takes place in the Hamptons, which seems to be getting a bad rap for the place to be where privileged people behave badly.
It will be interesting to see exactly how the adaptation deals with some of the racier content, which very much revolves around its shock value. If you skirt around it, you run the risk of diluting it. But if you go balls-to-the-wall, you’ll probably end up with a weird gay hybrid of ‘Mommie Dearest’ and ‘Showgirls’ (please God don’t let Paul Verhoeven anymore near this book).
It is also one of those books the less you know about, the better a reading experience it will be, as it was for me. So I sincerely hope that all the Goodreaders who managed to nab a review copy do not reveal any spoilers. Which is difficult, because as soon as you have finished reading that ending, and you have stopped screaming at the sheer audacity of it, you immediately want to tell everybody about it! So … just read the bloody thing and then we can all argue about it later.
I remember the following line in an article in The Atlantic that caught my eye: “After the Harvey Weinstein news came out, everyone thought Bryan Singer would be next.” That was written in March 2019, and Singer seems to have disappeared from the radar entirely since, despite the fact that ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was such a massive hit. Well, silence speaks volumes, I suppose.
Anyone who reads ‘Yes, Daddy’ will immediately see the not-too-subtle parallels with the Singer saga. If by any chance you live under a rock (actually, we all do nowadays due to this fucking virus and its lockdowns), Parks-Ramage kindly trowels on the Singer/Weinstein/#MeToo vibes in spades. This is one of the things I really like about the book, and which I think is going to be a big turn-off for a lot of people: The deliriously giddy OTTness of it all.
And just because I am enough of a gay literary snob to declare that Parks-Ramage is no Greenwell or White, from a technical and narrative point of view, it is deviously clever and exceedingly well-written. Despite the broad brushstrokes of the main plot, the thematic doubling is intricate and nuanced. I was worried for a minute near the end that the entire house of cards would fall in on itself, but Parks-Ramage ups the ante and really nails the ending.
Of course, as the title implies, the reader is forced to confront not only the complex dynamic of fathers and mothers in families with gay children, but authority figures in general, especially those in the church (here ‘father’ takes on a rather different meaning). Parks-Ramage goes completely Old Testament here. Being a bit of a reprobate myself, I quite enjoyed his sheer brazenness, but I can equally see how a lot of people are really going to be rubbed up the wrong way. Also, given that diehard evangelicals lack any sense of humour (or testosterone), it is a no-brainer that this will probably cause the most number of people to splutter in indignant outrage.
There is a particular coding in the phrase ‘Yes, Daddy’ that refers to the tendency of the elderly and well-off to prey on the weak and vulnerable. It is certainly not only a gay tendency, especially when you consider the number of young girls exploited by dirty old men. Parks-Ramage makes it abundantly clear from the outset that the young and eminently desirable Jonah Keller is on the prowl, and that Richard Shriver is his perfect target. The tables quickly turn though on who is the hunter and who is the prey. Both men are equally unlikeable, but it is a testament to the skill of Parks-Ramage as a writer that we never lose sight of Jonah’s innate humanity.
Richard and his Hampton gang can’t escape being stock villains, and retain a sense of mystery and allure well up to their inevitable fall from grace. But the attention span of the media, and the gay community itself, invariably seems shorter than that of a goldfish’s memory. One just has to consider how quietly the Singer saga got buried, and how the testimony of key witnesses who came forward was subtly discredited, to realise that there are very dark forces out there hellbent on unravelling the fabric of what we hold most dear and sacred.
Does the author step over the line of good taste? A lot of people are going to say yes, but they will be looking past the very valid questions posed here, specifically in the form of a sordid potboiler that will be quite easy to dismiss and be muttered at for all its craven excesses. I honestly think Parks-Ramage gleefully and deliberately pushes all them damn buttons, simply because they are so darn pretty and inviting!...more
Most of all, deepest thanks to President Ronald Reagan, who deregulated the hell out of children’s television programming in the early 1980s (among maMost of all, deepest thanks to President Ronald Reagan, who deregulated the hell out of children’s television programming in the early 1980s (among many other things), and without whom Transformers would not exist.
One star off for a thoroughly lame ending. I know that Goodreads lists this as the first part of a series, but the actual book makes no reference to it. And then even if this is only the first book, no reason to saddle it with such a perfunctory ending.
The main problems I have with ‘Axiom’s End’ are highlighted in an interview with Lindsay Ellis herself: She said that her aliens were way too ‘human’, but that they had turned out that way for narrative purposes; and that her publisher had asked her to tone down the linguistic and scientific jargon.
It is a book like this that makes me realise I am something of an SF snob. ‘Axiom’s End’ falls into that peculiar sub-genre of ‘SF books for people who do not like to read SF’. Interestingly, this made the final round of the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards. Last year’s winner, ‘Recursion’ by Blake Crouch, also falls into that category of The Genre That Dare Not Speak Its Name.
I think of all the SF themes for a writer to tackle, First Contact has to be one of the most difficult. Not only has it been done to death and beyond, it has become increasingly politicised and entangled with ancillary zeitgeist concerns. Writers-with-chops like Paul McAuley can get away with it, and still have fun and make it seem all weird and fresh, with seminal novels like ‘Something Coming Through’ (2015) and ‘Into Everywhere’ (2016), where the Jackaroo are a masterclass in that ephemeral ‘sense of wonder’ that the best SF does so well. A more recent example is the superb ‘Semiosis’ (2018) by Sue Burke.
The trouble with SF is that, with a theme like First Contact, you are bound to invoke all kinds of different associations and contexts in a reader’s mind, depending on how well-versed they are in the genre. ‘Axiom’s End’ reminded me of everything from ‘Alien’ to ‘E.T.’ and, definitely to its detriment, ‘The Shape of Water’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (especially the last section, which I wish Ellis had scrapped in its entirety. I just did not buy into that particular plot twist at all.)
I don’t want to say too much about the relationship between Cora and Ampersand, except that it is quite ballsy of Ellis to frame the entire book pretty much in the context of their developing human/alien interaction. Many of the other characters are secondary, or curiously in the case of the main conspiracy theorist who sets the plot in motion, make no appearance at all, except by means of quoted documentation.
I had a bit of trouble parsing the period the book is set in, which I think is 2007. There is another thread to the narrative about truth being an inalienable human right, and how governments manipulate information as a form of control and domination, that I found far more interesting than learning about Ampersand’s home world and caste set-up, to be honest.
Still, this is a fast-paced and engrossing read. I do think it is more of an introduction to the Hollywood idea of First Contact than it either extends or subverts its thematic development in literary SF, but that is probably only my genre snobbery showing. If Ellis can get people who normally raise an eyebrow at the very mention of ‘SF’ to read a novel about aliens-on-earth, then it is a job very well done....more
Jujubee and her beloved cat Priss look absolutely radiant in the cover photograph of this book. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to captureJujubee and her beloved cat Priss look absolutely radiant in the cover photograph of this book. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to capture a shot like this, but if on point as it is here, it reveals a lot of the personality of both feline and owner.
In fact, a lot of the celebrity cat owners featured here (a lot of whom I had never heard of before) seem more relaxed in the presence of their furry friends, which adds a wonderfully disarming quality to many of the portraits.
Some are really old photographs, such as the sepia shot of Clifton Webb, while others are old in the sense that they show the cat owners at an impossibly young age (Elton John and George Michael spring to mind.) Others stretch the definition of ‘cat’, such as Ahohni at the Bronx Zoo with an orphaned big cat.
One of the cleverest pics is that of Sharon Needles and her careful positioning of a cat statue (there is a real pussy as well, no need to raise an eyebrow), while the severest shot is of Judith Butler, looking stern against a white staircase, with a cat positioned a few steps behind her – and looking even sterner, if that is possible.
My only complaint is that some of the portraits are clearly ‘snaps’, in the sense that there is little professionalism involved (where the poor cat has ‘green’ eye and appears to be a blob held rather gamely by their human, as if they will make a bolt for it at the slightest relaxation of the hold – which of course they will do. They are cats, after all.) Plus the fact that one can never have enough cat pics, so the limit of one per celebrity is a tad parsimonious.
Each photograph is accompanied by a brief essay elaborating on the human’s claim to fame and their connection to the feline world. The collection is certainly eclectic, ranging from trailblazing trans porn star and producer Buck Angel (love that name!) to Matthew Mitcham, Chaz Bono and Marlene Dietrich.
Despite the assertion in the introduction that the emergence of ‘cat men’ is challenging toxic masculinity, the majority of these photographs are of women. Not that this is any issue, of course, as the authors note:
Ultimately, the nonhuman animal world is not as binary as our human society’s gatekeepers would have us believe. Animals don’t about human social constructs like gender, and they don’t discriminate based on sexuality. Cats, in particular, expect to be revered and adored by all humans …...more
The New York Times called this “a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass”. I found the book to be anything but that, The New York Times called this “a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass”. I found the book to be anything but that, with Vance cherry-picking statistics to support a very shaky argument about culture and ethnicity. In terms of this, I still know virtually nothing about ‘hillbilly’ culture having read the book. Why does Vance use this as a blanket term for all Scots-Irish in the US? The impression that the reader gets is that all so-called ‘poor whites’ are from Appalachia.
Vance makes no attempt to dig at the structural roots of poverty and unemployment, instead blaming laziness and an over-reliance on social handouts from the government (which squanders the hard-earned money of those successful upstanding people who conform to the system and its requirements. Indeed, the ‘good fight’ is to prevent the US turning into a welfare state of deadbeats overnight, which negates the principles of hard work and self-worth.) Rather than rehabilitate ‘hillbilly’ as a pejorative term, he has a to-put-it-mildly skewed vision of its relevance:
I believe we hillbillies are the toughest goddamned people on this earth. We take an electric saw to the hide of those who insult our mother. We make young men consume cotton undergarments to protect a sister’s honor.
I have huge respect for Vance’s achievements, but the book would have been so much more powerful if he had simply told his life story and left the pseudo sophistry to other (better) writers. Plus, I completely and utterly disagree with his central tenet, which is “that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society”. What does that Hallmark slogan even mean?
Vance goes even further by arguing that “there will never be a purely government-based solution to the problems I write about”. Perhaps this has never been truer under the Trump administration, with the Donald’s focus on self-aggrandisement and winning-at-all-costs to the detriment of every other sacred duty of his democratically-mandated duty to serve the people – classic hillbilly values, actually. Which probably makes Trump an uber hillbilly....more
'Living in Wartime' by R. Garcia y Robertson **** 'The Voice' by Bruce McAllister ***** 'Perfect Blue' by Tegan Moore *** 'Pax Mongolica' by Evan Marcrof'Living in Wartime' by R. Garcia y Robertson **** 'The Voice' by Bruce McAllister ***** 'Perfect Blue' by Tegan Moore *** 'Pax Mongolica' by Evan Marcroft ***** 'Brave New World by Oscar Wilde' by Ian Watson *** 'Against the Stars' by James Gunn ***...more
Primer for E01 It does not bode well for a tv series if you watch the pilot, only for it to make some kind of sense after reading a short comic book. IPrimer for E01 It does not bode well for a tv series if you watch the pilot, only for it to make some kind of sense after reading a short comic book. I only found this passably interesting because it is Ridley Scott and it hints at a broader mythology. This became overly burdensome for the Alien franchise, so it will be interesting to see if Scott can make something fresh here....more
I wasn’t a big fan of ‘The Outsider’ because I thought the idea was preposterous and the book overwritten (as usual). Reading ‘The Institute’ though, I wasn’t a big fan of ‘The Outsider’ because I thought the idea was preposterous and the book overwritten (as usual). Reading ‘The Institute’ though, I am struck that preposterous is what King does best. Do not look for neat rationalisations or tidy explanations; it is a strange world (and universe) out there that not only defies our attempts at normalcy at every turn, but actively conspires against what we hold to be dear and true.
I am unsure if this was King’s intention, but ‘The Institute’ is the third in a line of books about children with psychic capabilities. Of course, King’s career started off with the hugely successful ‘Carrie’, also helped by the phenomenal movie adaptation by Brian De Palma and Sissy Spacek in the lead role. Then came ‘Firestarter’, a much better book than ‘Carrie’ in many respects, made into a particularly uninspired movie by Mark Lester with Drew Barrymore in the lead, fresh from E.T.
One of the more mysterious aspects from ‘Firestarter’ was the government agency simply known as The Shop, which operated in the shadows and with seeming impunity. It is clear that ‘The Institute’ is a kind of origin story for The Shop. In fact, we get an infodump towards the end that attempts to place the Institute into a kind of James Bond geopolitical context, with its origins rooted in Nazi Germany. Drum roll, please.
The Shop works as a narrative device in ‘Firestarter’ precisely because it is so mysterious and omnipotent. Attempting a rational explanation as King does in ‘The Institute’ not only saps his narrative of any kind of supernatural agency, but raises the bigger problem of ‘we have been here before’, from X-Men to Stranger Things. Usually so good at appropriating popular culture in his books, this is a rare instance where King seems to be riding its coattails.
What also made me scratch my head about ‘The Institute’ is that King seems to deliberately subvert his earlier books. These captured kids ain’t special at all: Luke’s superpower is being able to move an empty pizza box from a table. But still they are targeted and captured by government agents and bundled off to a secluded, top-secret research facility in the Maine woods (of course). The subtext is: All will be made clear in the (overwrought) conclusion.
This brings me to another point: The introductory section about the children in The Institute itself is so long and drawn out that we forget the opening of the book, its best, which introduces us to Tim ‘Night Knocker’ Jamieson, how he happens to drift into the one-horse town Dupray, and the weird clutch of characters he encounters, like conspiracy theorist and professional hobo Annie.
Tim is a wonderful combination of Gun Slinger and Bill Hodges, and is probably one of my favourite King characters ever. (I can just imagine Timothy Olyphant playing him.) But he disappears for most of the book and only enters stage left again for the showdown, at which point he is no longer a player but is being played by the forces behind The Institute. So why the big deal about Tim at the beginning and how he just ‘happens’ to drift into Dupray? It really could have been anyone, which is a wasted opportunity.
It seems as if I have spent this entire review complaining … Make no mistake about it, once you start reading this, you will find it hard to put down. King is so good at long narratives that still manage to take you by surprise, and which slowly ratchet up the tension until you realise that, hey frog, the water is boiling. The problem with this slow-and-then-full-speed-in-the-final stretch approach is that the ending is always going to feel rushed.
There is a kind of coda here that attempts to end the whole shebang off with a note of ambiguity, but it falls flat. The coda hinges on the revelation of a character only hinted at in the book, the Big Boss as it were (and no, it is not the Devil. Or Randall Flagg). I immediately thought of the Cigarette Man from The X-Files, which could have been deliberate on King’s part.
Billed as a ‘horror’ novel, but rather pseudo SF instead, ‘The Institute’ is the kind of genre mashup that King specialises in. His attempts at SF have always only been partially successful, I have felt, like ‘Tommyknockers’ and ‘Dreamcatcher’. ‘The Institue’ hums along as efficiently as the little kids in Back Half. But at this late stage of his career, we really do not want King to be recycling ideas or revisiting old books, but rather to put pedal to the metal and go hell for broke....more
This is an interesting book to read in the last couple of days before the US election, as the entire world holds its breath to see if Americans will fThis is an interesting book to read in the last couple of days before the US election, as the entire world holds its breath to see if Americans will finally come to their senses and vote out Donald Trump. As Michelle reminds us of Barack’s words: ‘Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are.’
It would be one thing if America were a simple place with a simple story. If I could narrate my part in it only through the lens of what was orderly and sweet. If there were no steps backward. And if every sadness, when it came, turned out at least to be redemptive in the end. But that’s not America, and it’s not me, either. I’m not going to try to bend this into any kind of perfect shape.
That reflective and sobering tone is not what I would have expected of such a book, but it certainly adds a lot of gravitas and gets the reader invested emotionally in Michelle’s story. She is at pains to avoid the simple dichotomy of the ‘working-class-to-White-house’ progression. She also debunks the myth that Barack’s election ushered in a ‘postracial’ era in the US.
As minorities across the country were gradually beginning to take on more significant roles in politics, business, and entertainment, our family had become the most prominent example. Our presence in the White House had been celebrated by millions of Americans, but it also contributed to a reactionary sense of fear and resentment among others. The hatred was old and deep and as dangerous as ever. We lived with it as a family, and we lived with it as a nation. And we carried on, as gracefully as we could.
Which is all that anyone can do at the end of the day, and that is ‘carry on’. Michelle expresses her dislike for the dog-eat-world of politics fairly early on, and declares quite emphatically towards the end that she herself will never run for office. In this sense, Becoming is much more a cautionary tale than it is a celebration.
It is a tale of a naïve young couple from disparate backgrounds who are convinced that not only can they overcome their racial and class invisibility, but that they can empower their own communities and eventually an entire country.
It is a dream that ends with the White House, where paradoxically the Obamas become cocooned in another bubble of invisibility, this time their own fame and the reaction against that fame, both good and bad. A lot of the book recounts Michelle’s struggle to define her own role as FLOTUS, and especially as the first POC in such a position, against the backdrop of the work that Barack was doing. The aim was to work as a team, tackling the myriad problems of the US on a united front.
And then there is the incredible pressure of maintaining a relationship and trying to raise a normal family under such circumstances. No wonder the book begins with a simple description of Michelle waking up in their home and going to the kitchen to make a toasted cheese sandwich, listening to the silence around her and realising that, at last, she herself is free....more
If this had been an episode of one of Murderbot's beloved serials, its reaction would have been: 'Meh'. Also, it is a stickler for details: 3 typos inIf this had been an episode of one of Murderbot's beloved serials, its reaction would have been: 'Meh'. Also, it is a stickler for details: 3 typos in 17 pages, including a name spelt wrong? 'Fucking humans'....more
The summer night glowed; in the field, fireflies were glinting. And for those who understood such things, the stars were sending messages: You will leavThe summer night glowed; in the field, fireflies were glinting. And for those who understood such things, the stars were sending messages: You will leave the village where you were born and in another country you’ll become very rich, very powerful, but always you will mourn something you left behind, even though you can’t say what it was, and eventually you will return to seek it.
This year I decided to read poetry. I read a lot of short fiction, largely due to time pressure, but also because of the form itself. In genre fiction like SF, for example, many writers either begin their careers as short-form writers, or many end up specialising in it (one only has to think of Ted Chiang’s ‘Exhalation’).
So why not read poetry, which is even shorter, and therefore seems the ideal reading experience in our mad rush of a modern world? I simply began my poetry-reading journey by jumping in wherever I felt like, and reading collections and poets that caught my fancy.
When I heard that Louise Glück won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, I immediately thought of Bob Dylan doing the same in 2016. Songwriting? Poetry? What was up? Curious, I grabbed two of Glück’s collections at random to see what all the fuss was about, ‘Averno’ and ‘A Village Life’.
Off the bat, I have to say that it has been my most frustrating and difficult poetry-reading experience so far. Like ‘Averno’, ‘A Village Life’ is a themed collection that slowly accretes into … I don’t really know what. A vision of the world? A cry out against the futility of it all? An acknowledgement of the beauty of life and nature and how it all will end up in darkness and decay? The cruelty and epiphanies of human beings? All of this, and so much more.
Glück’s writing style is oddly fragmented and conversational at the same time. To be honest, a lot of her poetry reads like prose. But as I slowly read ‘A Village Life’ (you don’t read poetry faster because it is a shorter form, unfortunately), the same thing happened as with ‘Averno’: I became fully immersed in Glück’s world, with her murmuring in my ear.
Certainly not a great experience that – Glück is supremely depressing and downbeat. But there is something so seductive and mesmerising about the world that she conjures in the reader’s mind. Like the best fiction, it is fully formed in all its contradictions and revelations, filled with flawed people who fulfil both their biological and societal destinies with depressing conformity.
It is a haunting experience that stays with you days, if not forever. I am still thinking about both ‘Averno’ and ‘A Village Life’. Flashes of Glück’s imagery, which finds its power in focusing on minute details of things, or unusual and seemingly random comparisons, creates a kind of synaesthesia in the reader that does not fade easily. Think of Glück as a shaman in the dark, whose regard of the world through her poetry is a benediction of wisdom....more
Anyone who has studied English at university in South Africa is likely to have encountered Stephen Gray’s seminal work as an editor. For me, it was ThAnyone who has studied English at university in South Africa is likely to have encountered Stephen Gray’s seminal work as an editor. For me, it was The Penguin Book of Southern African Stories (1986). Gray takes the mickey out of his own reputation in his novel Born of Man (1989). He refers to this particular title as having being edited by Michael Chaplin, who received the Human Sciences Research Council Medal for Social Sciences and Humanities in 2018. ‘What’s this? … Believe me, I can tell you some they haven’t heard’, the epistolary narrator says archly.
Such a sense of playfulness seems out of keeping with Gray’s reputation (and image) as an academic and critic. It is a side of his mercurial nature as a writer that only emerges if you read this novel in particular, as well as the two others loosely linked to it, namely John Ross (1987) and Time of our Darkness (1988).
Set in 1988, Born of Man recounts events from 1986, the year that South Africa introduced a state of emergency. The narrator defines this dark time in the country’s legacy of oppression quite succinctly:
‘Do you realise –’ I said, ‘the police have got this country by the balls and they’re fucking it to death?’ ‘Yes, well,’ said Jannie. ‘That’s what states of emergency are for.’
It seems odd to reflect in a time of a global Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 about how a novel published in 1989 could project or reflect the future. Gray – one can imagine the twinkle in his eye – highlights a quote by Pieter-Dirk Uys: ‘The future is known in South Africa; only the past is unpredictable.’ The narrator echoes this sentiment in Born of Man: ‘We live in the future, not the murky European past’.
The book takes the form of an impassioned, and rambling, letter that the narrator types out ad nauseam on his new-fangled word processor to his friends Paul and Klaus, who have emigrated to Switzerland. Informing them of events that transpired since they left, the letter is also a defence of the narrator’s lifestyle with his husband Jannie, and by inference the potential of South Africa for revolutionary versus societal change.
While the narrator refers playfully to their ‘mixed marriage (Afrikaans and English)’, it is only much later that we find out Jannie is what, during Apartheid, was referenced as Coloured. This adds yet another layer of significance to their relationship as a gay couple, especially in a time when it was ‘against the law to proclaim you’re gay’.
This is a perfect summation of Gray’s intent with Born of Man, which takes as its central premise a (gay) male bringing a foetus to term ‘inserted through his rectum and implanted in the lower intestine’ . After the child’s birth, referred to as ‘the great accouchement’, Kevin returns to the rural idyll of the ‘Barefoot Republic’, the mock name for Bainsford Nurseries. The narrator is quite phlegmatic about the whole matter: ‘Now that moffies can have babies, I tell you none of the old rules on which human history has been predicated apply … The world is a different place.’
It is clear that Born of Man is what Gray refers to as ‘that old South African sub-species of fiction, the ‘Immorality’ novel … little more than a pitifully bourgeois shocker that needed drastic renovation if it was to reflect the post-Immorality Act intrusions of the law into private loves.’ The point of the novel’s not-so-subtle inversion of nuclear family dynamics is that ‘the relativity of class, race and gender is strongly, crucially related to South African issues.’ It is a remarkably prescient vision that even flirts with the modern focus on gender identity as a separate social construct: ‘Pity it has to be either/or. Pity it can’t be a bit of both.’
The farcical and often highly camp and satirical narrative voice that Gray adopts allows him to add some elements of darkness that perhaps would otherwise have been unpalatable on their own. The novel is book-ended by an event that haunts the narrator throughout, namely having to retrieve a stillborn baby from a pit latrine at the nursery and then burying it under a eucalyptus tree, a site he returns to after the drama of Kevin’s miracle birth is over.
The new can no longer be aborted. It is being born. Its advent is unstoppable. The morbidity may persist, but a way out of it is foreseen; please, may it come after a lifetime, before we all die of longing for it.
“And no one understands the nature of fear better than a Kelpien.”
This is my first book by James Swallow, so I was pleased to read recently that he wi“And no one understands the nature of fear better than a Kelpien.”
This is my first book by James Swallow, so I was pleased to read recently that he will be penning the second tie-in novel for the Picard series. The character of Saru is probably one of the most interesting in Star Trek: Discovery, thanks in no small measure to the brilliantly understated performance by the magnificent Doug Jones. Indeed, one of the joys of watching S03 at the moment is to see how far his character has come.
The problem with any Disco novelisation is that we already know quite a lot about Saru’s back story, especially as to how biology and culture are such drivers as to who he is as a sentient being. Another problem is that the tie-in novels, by their very nature, have to find their scope and detail in the cracks of the television series. Some of the novels have not managed this delicate balancing act, and have floundered. ‘Fear Itself’, on the other hand, shows what a gifted writer can do with an enigmatic character like Saru.
The general trend with these novels seems to be to focus on the characters themselves, with the plotting as an afterthought. Here the Shenzhou discovers a damaged ship in the buffer zone between Tholian and Peliar space. Saru leads an away team with chief engineer Johar in order to stabilise the ship’s malfunctioning warp core … only to discover that the cargo hold is full of what seem to be Gorlan refugees.
Saru is soon separated from the Shenzhou and finds himself in a difficult position whereby he has to make some achingly tough choices on the fly – choices that have profound implications for his own away team and the Shenzhou. In addition, he is confronted with a rather thorny relationship between three different and irascible alien species.
Saru finds that simply falling back on the principles (and platitudes) of Starfleet does not cut it in this particular situation. Not only that, he has to attempt to subsume his own ‘fight-or-flight’ nature in order to gain control of an increasingly fractious and precarious situation.
Are the Gorlans refugees or captives? And is it the place of the Federation to interfere in internal politics, especially when it could trigger a regional war? There are no easy answers here for Saru, all while negotiating quite a steep learning curve about himself and the principles he has pledged to uphold.
The concept of ‘fear itself’ is intrinsic to the Kelpien nature. Fear is a corrosive emotion that not only breeds conflict, but can be very destructive as well. One only has to look at the current state of our divided world, where fear plays such a large part in driving the narrative of otherness and division. And it is an emotion that short-sighted leaders like Trump are only happy to feed the flames of, until it threatens the very stability of everything we hold dear.
I love the way that Swallow addresses the prevailing zeitgeist, while also being unafraid to engage with the idea that Starfleet may itself be a coloniser and an interloper to the very people it is trying to protect and bring into its fold. The fact that Star Trek can sustain such a topical discourse, and still be entertaining to boot, speaks volumes about its longevity and relevance. May we all live long and prosper....more
Loading...
