Interzone 244 Jan - Feb 2013 (22 page)

But as beautiful as these essays are,
they’re let down by her defence of her definitions. She notes the
following distinctions between “science fiction” and “speculative
fiction”: “What I mean by ‘science fiction’ is those books that
descend from HG Wells’s
The War of the Worlds
, which treats
of an invasion by tentacled Martians shot to Earth in metal
canisters – things that could not possibly happen – whereas, for
me, ‘speculative fiction’ means plots that descend from Jules
Verne’s books about submarines and balloon travel and such – things
that really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened when
the authors wrote the books. I would place my own books in this
second category: no Martians.”

This is interesting on the face of it, but
couldn’t it be argued that Wells’ world seemed feasible at the time
of writing? Journeying to the centre of the Earth isn’t possible
now – did it seem any more likely in Verne’s time? Either way,
while I recognise what she’s getting at, her distinctions seem
arbitrary. Let’s face it: this road doesn’t get any less wearisome
the more people travel along it. Most genre-related definitions are
woolly and problematic, and as far as I can tell, this one adds
nothing useful.

When reading the second half of the book –
where we’re definitely not in Mischiefland anymore – I wondered if
Atwood’s discomfort with the term science fiction is derived from a
discomfort with science. Atwood doesn’t attack science per se, but
within the bounds of this collection, her references to science are
cynical. This makes me ask, what about the wonder? Why not mention
that? The lack of such is evident in her rave review of Bill
McKibben’s
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age
, a
nonfiction polemic challenging transhumanism. Atwood ends the piece
with the caution, “Perhaps we should leave well enough alone”.
Really? These quests for utopia, and indeed human perfection, might
well be disturbing – but perhaps we could try to understand
them?

I’m not convinced Atwood’s essays clarify
her position on science fiction at all. For me, they bring further
obfuscation, with her troublesome categorisations joining another
world – that pesky parallel universe containing malfunctioning
definitions of genre. But I’ve no doubt Atwood can pen a great
journey: even her more difficult writings are laced with wit and
elegance. I only wish I’d been able to stay in Mischiefland a
little longer.

* *

THE CORPSE-RAT KING

Lee Battersby

Angry Robot pb, 416pp, £7.99

Maureen Kincaid Speller

In September 2012, Lavie Tidhar identified
an apparent new trend in fantastic writing, which he dubbed
“slacker fantasy”, distinguished by the narrative’s “reluctance of
agency”, that is its lack of conflict, and by sympathetic but
passive characters. His exemplar was David Tallerman’s
Giant
Thief
(Angry Robot), in which Easie Damasco spent most of his
time trying to disengage himself from whatever action was going on.
In his review Tidhar nailed precisely what it was that had
irritated me about the novel: I also dislike contemporary slacker
fiction but hadn’t made the connection.

Lee Battersby’s
The Corpse-Rat King
seems to stray into similar territory. It is true that Marius dos
Hellespont has rather grander aspirations than Damasco, and indeed
comes from a wealthier background. It is true also that Hellespont
is much more knowledgeable and competent than Damasco, though
disinclined to put his skills to earning a more conventional
living. However, while the reader might see Hellespont as being
down on his luck – and it is difficult to imagine sinking much
lower than prowling battlefields, looting from corpses – he would
doubtless explain that he was taking advantage of a good business
opportunity. Whatever else happens, Hellespont knows how to tell a
good story, as well given that the novel relies on the reader being
more interested in the story than in the plot.

Except that the plot itself is potentially
fascinating. Hellespont has just robbed the late king of Scorby
when he suddenly finds himself down among the dead, who have
mistaken him for the king and wish him to rule over them. When the
error is realised, the dead insist that Hellespont find them a new
king. He determines that his replacement should be Tanspar, the
late king, not least because this will necessitate his returning to
Scorby to find and crown the body, and in doing this, Hellespont
has some notion of being able to escape. However, the dead, as they
point out, can reach him anywhere, and send Gerd, Hellespont’s dead
apprentice, to accompany him. Furthermore, Hellespont has been
mysteriously transformed into something that looks dead but isn’t
quite, though one begins to suspect this is a condition conferred
for later authorial convenience, given the way that it rarely seems
to trouble Hellespont.

One might suppose that Hellespont would be
off like a shot, to crown the new King of the Dead as soon as
possible. Instead, having shed Gerd, Hellespont meanders homeward
in a picaresque fashion, stopping off here and there to undergo
set-piece adventures, in which the reader learns more and more
about the real Marius dos Hellespont and the omniscient narrator
opines about this and that in a way that is at times slightly too
reminiscent of an overly well-lunched elderly buffer down the pub.
They’re very good set-piece adventures but more than once I found
myself checking the pagination, wondering how long it would be
before the story began to focus on the important stuff. It’s
halfway through the novel before Hellespont seems to remember he
has a job to get on with, after which the narrative kicks into
impressively high gear.

And that, perhaps, is the real problem with
this novel. A good half of it is scene-setting, throat-clearing,
procrastinatory narrative. There is little doubt that one way or
another Hellespont will achieve his aim, simply because he is that
kind of character, and this is not the kind of novel that
challenges one’s expectation of “that kind of character”. One could
perhaps see the picaresque element as providing a tour round
Hellespont’s interior life, explicating his motives, showing how he
became the person he is today, and crucially suggesting that he
does bad things for good reasons, so making him morally acceptable.
One could, but quite apart from the fact that one suspects
Hellespont would as a matter of course have several layers of cover
story, it would over-dignify the fact that the author, for whatever
reason, simply isn’t getting down to telling the story itself.

Which is a pity as the plot is ultimately
much more compelling than the character. We are clearly intended to
love Hellespont but often, while he was larking about above ground,
I wondered how the dead felt, waiting for him to bring them their
king, knowing that he was procrastinating. We are invited to
sympathise with Hellespont’s predicament yet he has brought it on
himself, while the dead, like all his other victims, are being
cheated. Which is funny if you like that slacker vibe. If you
don’t, you’re left with an affable but baggy novel which could be
so much more if it would just shape up.

* *

THE CREATIVE FIRE

Brenda Cooper

Pyr hb, 353pp, £15.99

Jim Steel

Sometimes an author can be too honest. One
of the first things that the reader hits is the author’s note which
states that this duology is based on the musical
Evita –
which, in itself, is enough to have many potential readers heading
for the hills regardless of whether or not they’ve actually seen
any of the screen or stage adaptions. Prejudice can be a terrible
thing. Yes, the protagonist is a talented if unschooled singer.
Yes, her trajectory is somewhat obvious. But no one can predict the
shape of a tree by looking at the seed.

Subtitled
Book One of Ruby’s Song
,
this novel opens on a generation starship. Ruby is a teenage girl
who is one of the grays – the working class – in this
rigidly-structured society. Life is decidedly dystopian for them.
The reds oppress the grays, and the upper-caste blues are rarely –
if ever – seen in this stratified society. It’s also a patriarchal
society, which makes Ruby’s position in it even worse. One of her
friends, arguably a borderline prostitute, is brutally raped and
murdered by reds early in the novel. We’re clearly not in
jazz-hands territory here.

A serious accident at the start literally
mixes the classes before the status quo is restored, bringing Ruby
into contact with one of the blues. She saves his life and
blatantly offers herself to him, but at this time her only ambition
is for an easier life and to become a singer. However, her strength
and ambition are obvious from the start and it is clear that she is
a complex and rounded person, and she not merely a vessel for the
transportation of the plot.

The setting, like the ship itself, is,
however, slightly creakier. The starship is nearing the end of its
journey and is starting to fall apart. The social set-up is
obviously something that has (de)evolved from the origin plan, but
it is still recognisable to the people within. Aldiss’
Non-Stop
this is not. However, water has to be carefully
managed, which suggests that either the closed-cycle system is
inefficient or that the author is manufacturing hardships for the
grays. They drink out of bulbs, objects which are only needed in
zero-gravity environments. Using them in the artificial gravity of
the ship is pointless – they would be much harder to clean than
cups and would probably present a health risk. There are other
curious customs. How easy can it be to bury someone in space when
the artificial gravity pulls objects towards the
centre
of
the ship? Cooper’s slick prose pulls the reader over these bumps,
but they are still there.

But space opera should never be confused
with hard SF. Its truths should be found within its characters and,
when looked at from that angle, Cooper has produced a fine
novel.

* * * * *

Jagannath

Karin Tidbeck

Cheeky Frawg Books pb, 160pp, £9.99

Reviewed and interviewed by Stephen
Theaker

Karin Tidbeck is a Swedish writer who,
frustrated by a lack of local opportunities, began a few years ago
to translate her own work into English, leading to appearances in
Weird Tales
and other US magazines. A previous Swedish
collection –
Vem är Arvid Pekon?
– included all but four of
these fourteen stories, but this is her first book in English.
There are many points of similarity here with Ekaterina Sedia’s
similarly strong new collection,
Moscow But Dreaming
. Both
write stories set in parts of the world and featuring legends and
character types not yet reduced to cliché by English and American
writers, stories that can be rather miserable, about ground-down
people and the difficulty of finding love and support in a
heartless world; both are part of a tradition of fantasy that takes
in Kafka but sidesteps Tolkien.

While
Moscow But Dreaming
tends to
focus on the women being damaged, Tidbeck’s collection is
interested in the effects of their absence. Some characters never
even met the person they needed. ‘Arvid Pekon’, for example, who
spends his nights alone and works among telephone operators who
frustrate the public for unknown purposes, or ‘Herr Cederberg’,
hurt by the casual cruelty of other people – when people spoke of
him, “the most common simile was pig, followed by panda, koala, and
bumblebee, in no particular order” – and tries to fly away from it
all. “I might have gone mad,” Pekon tells his terminal after losing
control of his behaviour: that’s a sentiment shared by many of
Tidbeck’s characters. The protagonist of ‘Beatrice’ seems equally
sympathetic at first, falling in love with an airship.
Unfortunately she has been sold, and he settles for
Beatrice
II
. By a landlord’s accident they come to share a warehouse
with Anna Goldberg, a printer’s assistant in love with a
semi-portable steam engine. This all seems cute and quirky, but an
unexpected ending resets the reader’s expectations for the rest of
the book.

Beatrice is not the last female lost in
these stories: wives, mothers, friends, and in ‘Reindeer Mountain’
a sister: “Cilla was twelve years old the summer Sara put on her
great-grandmother’s wedding dress and disappeared up the mountain.”
The loss, strangeness and confusion in that sentence give a good
sense of the book as a whole. ‘Some Letters for Ove Lindstrom’ are
written by a daughter after his drunken, lonely death, his life
ruined by his fey wife’s disappearance from the commune in which
they lived. ‘Rebecka’ is a friend lost first to pain and then to
divine judgment; it begins with her outline scorched against a
wall, “arms outstretched as if to embrace someone”. God exists, but
let a horrific attack last three days before interceding. The
‘Aunts’ are three immense women fattened by Nieces until their
grotesque bodies are ready to produce the next generation. As so
often here, an interesting idea is pushed that little bit further,
showing how the Nieces try to cope when the Aunts fail to
reproduce, reflecting our own efforts to deal with tragedy and
bereavement.

Like ‘Aunts’, many stories have the feel of
dark fantasy but can be read as science fiction. One such is
‘Brita’s Holiday Village’, where the narrator stays in a resort
unchanged since the seventies. In May, “white, plum-sized pupas
hang clustered under the eaves” of the bungalows, and in June she
dreams of distant relatives who stay in the cottages and hold
increasingly odd summer parties. ‘Pyret’ takes the form of an
academic article, presenting evidence that this mythical mimic is
not “a cryptid but
a real being
”. After examining historical
accounts of the creatures, including, most eerily, the
Sjungpastorn
, who held mass and sang a wordless song to
isolated churchgoers, the writer comes to worrying conclusions.
Title story ‘Jagannath’ is the last in the book, the second longest
(albeit at just eleven pages), and the most straightforwardly
science-fictional, in which the much-altered survivors of a great
disaster live and work inside Mother – but she can’t survive
forever. She’s the last and most important lost woman of the
book.