Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal (Books 2015, 4)

I won this in the raffle at a BSFA meeting several months ago (actually over a year: October 2013), when Mary Robinette Kowal was the guest. From her talk, it sounded like it would be a lot of fun, and now that I get round to reading it, it lives up to that expectation.

We are in Regency times, except this is not exactly the Regency of our own past; in this one, magic exists. At least in a limited form: “Glamour” allows people to form illusions by manipulating folds of the ether. Most people can do this to some degree, and well-brought-up young ladies are taught the art along with music and painting. But there are those who are more talented.

Our heroine, Jane, is one such. But as the novel opens, and for most of it, she is more concerned about the fact that, unmarried at 28, she seems destined to become (or already is) an “old maid”. Her prettier sister, Melody, is more likely to make a good “match”.

There are, of course, balls, officers, heartbreaks, and more. If you enjoy Austen, and fantasy, you’ll like this, I predict. It’s the first in a series, and I look forward to reading more.

One thing slightly puzzled me. When Kowal was at the BSFA meeting, I recall her saying that she is a Doctor Who fan, and that she likes to slip a mysterious traveller into each of her books. If she slipped him into this one, she did it so subtly that I didn’t notice it, even though I was expecting him. There is a brief appearance from the local surgeon, a Dr Smythe, so I guess that’s him. Oh yes. In fact, she says in that piece, “if you [notice him], then I’ve done it wrong.” So, nicely done.

But anyway, well worth a read, though I daresay the purist would say you should read all of Austen first (which I haven’t; only Pride and Prejudice).

Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson (books 2015, 3)

This is all very meta. It's a story within a story, with at least one other story within that (the last of which is not very relevant). And the two main ones are more intertwined, rather than one enclosing the other, with typefaces used to distinguish them.

The largest story is that of a young woman during her time at Dundee University – in fact really just a few days in one term thereat. She’s a bit of a drip, just drifting along letting stuff happen to her – including repeatedly getting into a car with an unknown strange man who claims to be a private detective.

But the same time she (and I can’t remember her name, which can be a problem with first-person characters, because how often do you use your own name?) is holding an extended conversation with her mother (who, we’re repeatedly told, is not her mother) on a remote Scottish island whereon they are the only residents. She is trying to get her mother to tell her story. The mother is not keen to do so.

The slice-of-student-life in seventies Dundee is interesting enough. I’ve never been to Dundee, but I was a student in Edinburgh in the eighties, and it doesn’t sound all that different. Indeed, that story could be enough to carry a novel, if you had a slightly more active protagonist, and more of a plot.

The plot, such as it is, is in the island story. Well, the mystery is mainly told there, let’s say.

I enjoyed it all well enough while I was reading it, but can’t help but wonder what it’s really for. That’s not something I would normally ask of a novel – they are their own justification, generally; they exist to tell their story, and that’s all you need. But here, well… there isn’t quite enough of a story. It describes itself – within the island story, of the Dundee story; that’s part of the metaness – as a “comic novel”. And yes, there’s humour in the university story, and maybe beyond. But it ’s not exactly funny, you know?

And the last section is a detective story that the protagonist of the Dundee story is writing. But it doesn’t really relate to either of the other stories – except maybe by some imagery – and it doesn’t go anywhere. So I don’t really see why it’s there.

When I read Atkinson’s debut, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, I likened it to The Crow Road. Sadly, this doesn’t live up to that promise. Luckily she went on to write Life After Life, which as you’ll recall, I loved.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (Books 2015, 2)

There's an old saying by Robert Heinlein (or by one or more of his characters): "It steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time." Technological advances -- and implicitly, other changes, such as social ones -- will happen when a certain weight of events and situations accrues, irrespective of the individuals involved. The steam engine would have been developed around that time with or without Stephenson; the radio in its era even without Marconi, and so on.

By that token these few years seem to be time-jump-story time. For here we have a story that, superficially at least, is very similar to Life After Life, which I wrote about last year as part of The First Three Books of the Year.

The similarity is that we have a character who lives his life, dies, and then lives it all over again. The major differences in this case are that he remembers his previous lives; and that there are others like him.

Also in this one the characters – some of them, at least – question their situation, wonder about how and why it happens. They make use of their gift or curse. As such it is more a work of SF than Life After Life was.

Claire North, we are told at the start, is the pseudonym of a British author. Turns out it’s Catherine Webb, of whom I’ve written before, here. I see that I was critical then of her plotting, and the ending. The current book is much stronger in both regards.

Though it’s not entirely satisfactory. I find it slightly annoying because – and I’m moving into spoiler territory, so you might want to stop reading – while the people who have this affliction – members of the Cronus Club, or kalachakra, as they are called – do ask some questions of their situation, the only one who really tries to explore, to investigate, to understand it: he’s the bad guy. The engine of the plot is to preserve the status quo.

True (within the book, and probably in reality), messing with the status quo – trying to make significant changes to the way historic events play out – tends to make a big mess of things, because history is too complex for anyone to really understand all the causes and effects and so guide it. But Vincent, the antagonist in question, is at least trying to gain some understanding. An alternative to trying to stop him might have been to work with him, but find a less destructive way to do it.

On the other hand, of course, that would have made for a less interesting, less fun story. And as it stands, this is both. So I can’t really complain.

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (Books 2015, 1)

This is kind of a frustrating one (and could, like the last one have been considered 2014, as I started it before the year ended; but it was well into January before I finished it.

Anyway, Pynchon can be difficult. I read V years back, and remember next to nothing about it; and I started Gravity’s Rainbow once, but ground to a halt and never quite got round to going back (this despite the fact that I was originally drawn to it by Alan Moore talking about reading it).

This one is a lot less difficult, to say nothing of significantly shorter. Its problem is more to do with how our heroine comes to find out about the weird postal conspiracy that she investigates, and why it matters. We have some engaging characters in interesting situations, but it’s hard to get terribly enthused about a conspiracy to route the post by some means other than official government mail channels.

Especially in these deregulated times, when most of the post is deliveries from Amazon anyway. We Await Silent Bezos’s Empire, I guess.

But it’s worth reading.

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. by Viv Albertine (Books 2014, 20)

A Christmas present: started on Christmas Day and finished just after midnight on the 3rd of January. So I could call it 2015 number 1, but it makes more sense to go with the year in which I started it and read most of it. Anyway, it’s all a bit arbitrary.

Viv Albertine, as I’m sure you know, was the guitarist in The Slits. They had only a short time in punk’s limelight (though as I learned from this, they released a second album, not just the one I’m familiar with).

This book is half about her early years and the punk days, and half about after. She went on to work as a filmmaker and then struggled to have a child, had serious health problems. Eventually she re-taught herself to play guitar, and started performing again (I saw her supporting the Damned a couple of years back, and then supporting Siouxsie at Meltdown a year and half back).

It’s really interesting reading about a time I lived through, events I experienced — from afar, true, but still ones I felt part of — from someone else’s point of view. Especially that of someone who was at the heart of many of the events.

And she writes with some style; it’s a compelling read. She makes some strange choices: for example, she only ever refers to her sister as “my sister”; we never get her name. Similarly with the man she marries. At first he’s “The Biker”, and then “my husband”.

I suppose it’s a matter of protecting the privacy of people who are still alive — especially in the latter case, because he doesn’t come out of it terribly well. Indeed, it may be the case that the only people who are named are those who were already in the public eye to some degree.

Any road, if you are into music, especially punk, at all, I would highly recommend reading this. I plan to get her new album — which came out two years ago, it turns out — The Vermilion Border.

The Schrödinger's Cat trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson (Books 2014, 19)

A sort-of-sequel to the earlier-discussed Illuminatus trilogy. More sex, more quantum weirdness, and a less coherent story. I don’t think he ever does explain where the missing scientists went, in any of the universes. It’s a lot of fun, though.

Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey (Books 2014, 18)

You know when you hear about a book, or read a recommendation, and you think, “That sounds interesting…” And then a bit later it’s available on Kindle for like 79p, so you download it? And then just a short time later you get round to reading it, and you think maybe you’ve heard that the author has written a sequel in the meantime?

And then you get to the end and discover that there are now six books in the series! Six! Do you?

That’s a definition of time passing without you noticing it properly. It’s very bad.

Unlike this book, which is very good; especially if you like tales of people escaping from hell and battling with demons, angels, and other creatures of the supernatural, while running a video store (sort of), drinking Jack Daniels, and stealing cars in LA (why does he steal cars when he has a key to the Room of Thirteen Doors, which can take him anywhere?)

Good stuff. And I daresay the sequels will be up to the mark too; though I’m not going to dive straight into those. I’ll give it a rest first.

The Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (Books 2014, 17)

A rereading, of course; in fact, this is probably something like the sixth time I’ve read this. I keep coming back to it. And why not? There’s music, magic, musings, sex, drugs, and conspiracies. Lots and lots of conspiracies.

It felt very on trend, as the trendy types say, to be reading it in 2014. We are at a time when the idea of the Illuminati is not just well known, but is discussed, or at least panicked about, among our nation’s schoolkids. Apparently lots of modern music stars — people like Rihanna, for example — are noted (by paranoid types) for being pawns of (or part of) the “actual” Illuminati.

The clues include any use of triangular imagery in their videos. You get the idea.

The people who believe in that sort of thing are just the types this great trilogy was written for. No, about. No: for.

The Circle by Dave Eggers (Books 2014, 16)

This is interesting. Seems to have got a lot of attention when it came out, but somehow I wasn't aware of it. It's very much a novel of now, though probably set slightly into the future -- five minutes or so, probably.

Our hero, Mae Holland, is a young woman, not long out of college, who is just starting a job at the Circle. The Circle is GooTwitBook, essentially: a massive internet company that has gobbled up all the previous incumbents (it owns 90% of search, for example) and redefined interaction on the net via its TrueYou identity technology. Real names are not just encouraged; they are required.

Internet trolling disappeared overnight, it seems.Unbelievable enough. Perhaps more so: no-one (almost no-one) seems to be in the least bit bothered by the reductions in privacy, the spread of The Circle into every aspect of life (putting chips in kids to prevent kidnapping; nobody complains; is kidnapping that much of a problem in the US?)

I thoroughly enjoyed it, I should say, before I tear into it too much. Eggers keeps the pages turning, which is always a plus. On the other hand, it takes a long time before anything significant happens. Mae starts her job, learns the ropes, meets people, gets more and more involved in the social-networking aspects of the circle… we know things are going to take a turn for the dramatic, because the blurb tells us so ("… the closer she comes to discovering a sinister truth…")

But it must be 200-odd pages in (of nearly 500) before we get much more than scene-setting.

And ultimately, while I can see how someone like Mae could be drawn further and further in after starting out with the best intentions, I find it very hard to believe that the entire rest of the world would go along with the extremities of the Circle’s plans. It’s set in essentially our world: where are the EFF? Where are the ACLU? Where are the voices from other countries that aren’t keen on an American corporation’s hegemony?

Where, even, are the corporations that stand up for privacy? I’ve just got a new iPhone 6 as I write this, and I can’t help but think that Apple’s pro-privacy stance – their assertion that no-one can get at our data stored in iCloud – not even them, not even if there’s a court order – is antithetical to everything that the Circle represents.

Which is one of the reasons why the Circle looks most like Google (it has three guys at the top, known as “the Three Wise Men”).

Of course, these criticisms might be just symptomatic of what can happen when you approach a “mainstream”, “literary” book with a science-fiction head: you question the worldbuilding, of course.

Ultimately it’s a shame: the Circle the organisation is completely believable and convincing in itself. It’s just hard to believe that it could expand in quite as unchecked a fashion as it does. And I found Mae to be partly endearing, partly annoying, which could be a realistic portrayal, and a good example of characterisation. In truth, though, she has no character. And possibly less believable than the growth of the Circle is the extent to which Mae gives herself to it, to its beliefs; even when they break her best friend, Annie, who got her the job in the first place.

So all in all, something of a wasted opportunity.

Sir Gawain and the Green Night translated by Bernard O'Donoghue (Books 2014, 15)

This is an unusual choice. It was a present; I do like poetry, but I probably wouldn’t have chosen it for myself.

But it’s great. I really enjoyed it. It’s a strange story. Set in King Arthur’s round table, of course — at least at the start. The titular hero (Gawain, I mean) is said to be the noblest, bravest, most humble, etc, knight.

A mysterious, supernatural, green figure interrupts the New Year feast at Camelot and issues a challenge. Gawain takes it up, and has a year to complete his side of the deal.

He’s clearly the top procrastinator of the round table, too, because he leaves it till after the following Christmas before he sets off to find the Green Knight.

The noble hero is tested and tempted, and (spoilers) wins through. It’s short, and fun. Oddly (or not) I remember the story, but nothing of the poetry. I could go and get the book and quote you some, but I think I’ll just leave it at that.

Oh, except to say, of course, this is an ancient work, and Tolkien also did a cover version of it. But I expect you knew that.

Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale: the Final Chapter by Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook (Books 2014, 14)

I read the original version this a few years back, when my sister bought it for my son. It was good, very interesting and informative. And I wanted to read this expanded edition when it first came out. Although it’s called “The Final Chapter”, as if it were purely an additional piece, it contains both the original book and the new work — which is a lot more than just a “chapter”. But it was always just ferociously expensive.

Like, old-school hardback price for a large-format paperback. And it never seemed to come down, or come to in a smaller-size, mass-market paperback edition. So it always just felt too daunting.

Then eventually I saw it was on Kindle for what seemed like a more reasonable price, so I grabbed it.

It’s nothing more or less than an edited, long, email conversation between Davies and Cook. Sometimes several emails a day, in which Cook asks Davies questions about the latter’s writing process and other aspects of making Doctor Who (and to a lesser extent Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures).

And it’s absolutely fascinating read, especially if you’re at all interested in the creative process, in how writers write, and so on. It also feels a bit like you’re eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation at times, Somehow that’s not a problem, though. After all, it’s an interesting conversation, and we’ve been invited to listen in.

It’s clear that Davies enjoys sharing his thoughts on his process in this way, and it sort of makes you wonder why he doesn’t blog. But then, if he had been writing these emails as blog posts at the time, he couldn’t possibly have shared as much as he did with Cook, and with us several years after the events.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Books 2014, 13)

This is the one that's won them all: BSFA (jointly), Clarke, Nebula, and more recently, the Hugo Award. Never before has a single book had such a sweeping effect on the world of SF awards.

And does it deserve them all? Does it live up to the effusive reaction of the community?

Err, well… no, not really.

Which is not to say it’s bad. In a sense, nothing could live up that level of praise.

However, my personal problem with it – at least at first – was this: I like my super-intelligent spaceship minds to be the good guys. To be part of, and defending, Utopia. In short, I want The Culture. And I guess I hoped that Ann Leckie might sort of take Banksie’s place.

Obviously there wasn’t much chance of that, and it isn’t fair to judge the book on those terms.

So, back to its own terms. In any case, these super-intelligent spaceship minds aren’t necessarily bad guys; but they’re in the service of a pretty unpleasant empire. Though things get ambiguous. And interesting. And of course, there’s the gender-blindness of the viewpoint character, which is great. So yeah, it was fun, I enjoyed it, it goes to some interesting places, and it sets things up nicely for a series.

Oh, god, a series. Does nobody write books in ones any more? I was just looking at the current crop of so-called “Black Friday” deals on Kindle. There were quite a lot of books for crazy-cheap prices. Except… there weren’t really that many if you count a series as one.

C’mon, folks, write a book that doesn’t have a sequel, hey?

But I digress. Go read about Ancillary Justice: you’ll find reviews of it all over the place. Then go and read it. It’s great.

Dotter of her Father's Eyes by Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot (Books 2014, 12)

Excellent graphic novel; part Mary’s autobiography, part the biography of Lucia Joyce, who was James Joyce’s daughter. Mary’s father, who was distant and borderline abusive, was a noted Joyce scholar.

Well worth a look if you enjoy comics. The “graphic biography,” if you will, is a little-used form.

On Writing by AL Kennedy (Books 2014, 11)

Unlike Stephen King’s book of the same title, this isn’t exactly “a manual of the craft.” You won’t find much about the writing side of writing here; nothing about crafting sentences, forming paragraphs, developing characters or plots.

It’s less about the craft of writing than about the life of a writer; and it shares with King’s eponym the part-memoir approach. Kennedy spends a lot of time describing how writing has been bad for her health in various ways, and how in turn her pathological fear of flying has made the writing life more difficult, (travelling to North America by ship for a signing tour) for example.

The largest and most entertaining part of it was originally published as blog entries on The Guardian’s site.

It’s very good. And not from the book, but with Doctor Who back (and nearly finished) you should read her meditation on it and on the state of Britain.

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (books, 2014, 10)

Always good to get a new JK Rowling, of course, whatever name she's using. I sometimes wonder if she's got loads of other things out there, under other as-yet-undisclosed pseudonyms; probably not, though.

Anyway, in the second Cormoran Strike book, we have more of the same sort of thing we had in the first. This time it’s set in the world of publishing, with all sorts of rivalries between more and less successful authors, agents, editors and publishers. “Write what you know”, Jo.

But can such rivalries drive someone to murder? It seems so.

My main, and very minor, complaint about this was that there wasn’t enough of sidekick Robin in it, I felt.

I don’t know how many of these she’s planning to write, but sooner or later Cormoran has to meet – and presumably solve a crime for, or concerning – his estranged rock-star father. who is a recurring offstage character.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon (Books 2014, 9)

In the interest of trying to catch up, I’m not going to say much about this. You probably know all about this already.

Also, it’s been quite a while since I read it, and although I enjoyed it, it hasn’t really stuck around in my head in a way that leaves me much to say. It’s clever in giving us some idea of what it might be like to live with autism. That might be its greatest strength.

The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell (Books 2014, 8)

I'm now so far behind in posting these that I'm just going to put very brief notes up for most of them.

As a sequel to the excellent London Falling this suffers slightly from what feels a bit like middle-book-of-trilogy syndrome; though I believe Cornell intends this to be an ongoing series, rather than a trilogy.

That said, there is an overarching mystery, which we must hope will be resolved over the course of several books. And at that point, maybe he’ll stop. But the actual story here is perhaps slight compared to the origin stories of the first one, and the horror that Quill and his wife, in particular, experienced.

A mysterious ghostly figure – invisible to all who don’t have The Sight, of course – is killing people in London. There appears to be little to connect them at first, but graffiti at some of the scenes suggests there might be a link to Jack the Ripper. Has his ghost come back and this time gone after rich white men? Or is it something else entirely?

It’s a fun read, despite my reservations above, with some amusing reference to fandom, and the terrible, terrible abuse of a giant of the fantasy genre.

The Rum Diary by Hunter S Thompson (Books 2014, 7)

I’ve read pretty much everything by HST that’s been published in book form, but I hadn’t read this, his sole novel, until now.

He wrote it before he started to get successful as a journalist, as I understand it, so it’s interesting that it’s a story about a journalist, or several. And they’re hard-drinking ones at that. But that kind of goes without saying.

As the novel starts it is 1959 and the first-person narrator is wanderer, unsure of what he wants to do with his life. He is leaving New York for Puerto Rico, to take up a post on the English-language paper there.

The story charts the ups and downs of his life over the next few months, along with various other people, mainly involved with the paper. It’s an entertaining enough read, but largely inconsequential as a story. You couldn’t really say that the character has grown or developed much by the end, and while we get some insight into the way the US was interacting with Puerto Rico at the time (unspoilt beaches being sold to developers to build luxury hotel complexes, that kind of thing), I wouldn’t say you get a great sense of Puerto Rico itself.

It’s mainly interesting for showing some early flashes of the writing style that Thompson would develop over the subsequent years into his signature gonzo style. For example:

They ran the whole gamut from genuine talents and honest men, to degenerates and hopeless losers who could barely write a postcard–loons and fugitives and dangerous drunks

Not up there with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, obviously, but you can see the beginnings of that style.

Pavane by Keith Roberts (Books, 2014, 6)

This is considered to be one of the seminal works of alternative history; often mentioned alongside The Man in the High Castle

Instead of the Axis forces winning the Second World War, as in Dick’s classic, the break point is Queen Elizabeth I being assassinated, which leads to the Spanish invading England (Scotland’s situation is never mentioned) via the Armada, and so the Catholic church becomes the dominant force in the world (at least Europe and the Americas) for centuries.

Most of which is told in a short prologue. The body of the novel (which a I believe is a fix-up, and certainly feels like it) consists of four short stories with some overlapping characters, which tell the tale of how rebellion against the Church comes to England.

I quite enjoyed it, but was put off at the start, because frankly the nuances of the workings of a traction engine running the freight across the country through a frozen winter night, were not all that interesting. In fact, it was downright boring. Would it have been less so if it were about a spaceship, instead of a traction engine? Obviously; anything is more fun with spaceships in it. But that’s not the point.

In fact, the point is largely our old friend “show, don’t tell.” I don’t automatically hold with that myself; there are plenty of examples of good stories working by “telling.” The problem is that if you rely entirely or mainly on telling, it’s easy to lose either or both of the characters and the action. Certainly you can tell us what’s happening; but it’ll have a much stronger impact if you make us feel it.

The second section, for example, starts with a young man bleeding to death in the snow, and then jumps back to his training as a signaller. A much more gripping way to handle things.

The time period appears to be from around the sixties through to the eighties, but the Church’s dead hand has so stifled technological progress that semaphore and steam remain the height of technology.

And there are fairies; old English magic that the Church hasn’t quite managed to wipe out. But they are kind of abandoned after the second (maybe third) story.

Anyway, after that initial hump it was enjoyable enough, but it’s a pleasingly slim book. If it had been the size of a modern novel, I’m not sure it would have held my interest.

Not-Exactly-Books, 2014, 5: What Has Gone Wrong With Short Stories?

Preamble

(Is there such a thing as a “postamble”, I wonder?)

After reading the previous novel I decided it was high time I caught up on some short-story reading. I had several months of Interzone backlogged, for example.

Trouble is, it seems that short stories have lost their way.

I know, that’s ridiculously sweeping. Obviously any such perceived change is far more likely to be in me, than in all recent short stories. And yet, I feel sure that short stories used to be more interesting. So could it be an age thing? Perhaps, but let me first describe what I think it is that’s wrong with them.

In short: nothing happens.

In slightly longer: too many of what people are presenting (and selling) as stories are in fact not really stories at all. They are little more then scenes, vignettes at best. There’s nothing wrong with such pieces of writing per se, of course. They can be powerful, evocative, enjoyable… but they’re not stories, it seems to me.

In a story, something has to happen; something or someone has to change. And too often in my recent reading, they don’t. Or if they do, it’s in a way or to a degree that just doesn’t compel, enthuse, excite.

The BSFA Awards 2013 Booklet

I should discuss some specifics, and with the recent1 announcement of the BSFA Awards, what better stories to pick than the four that were nominated? The BSFA very helpfully curates and distributes a booklet containing all the nominated fiction (also reproductions of the nominated artworks, and this year for the first time, extracts from the non-fiction nominees). Conveniently, this booklet arrived during my short-story-reading period, and I read it straight away, to give me the chance to actually vote, for a change.

How disappointing it was.

By now we know that the lead story in the booklet, “Spin”, by Nina Allan, won the short fiction award. So I’ll deal with it last.

"Selkie Stories are for Losers", by Sofia Samatar.

Our unnamed first-person narrator hates stories of selkies, and swears she’ll never tell one. Why this might be something that she is called upon or tempted to do seems to be related to her forebears: American, her family background is Norwegian. She grew up with selkie stories. As time goes on there is the suggestion that her mother is one of the changeling creatures.

However, the story is good because of the characterisation. It’s the shortest of the four, but has the strongest, most interesting characters. Well, character: our selkie-story-hating narrator. As the story starts she is working as a waitress and falling in love with a co-worker, Mona. And from there it’s a love story with a slightly-weird background, and always the sense that something related to the selkie myths is going to happen.

There’s a good review of it on Martin Petto’s blog, actually. I pretty much agree with that.

"Saga's Children", by EJ Swift

This is an odd story about a solar-system-famous astronaut, Saga, who has had three children by three different fathers in different places. She took no part nor much interest in their upbringing; and none of them knew the others existed until they were adults.

Saga summons them to meet her at a station in orbit around Ceres, and something happens.

But not much, as I was complaining above. The telling is unusual: throughout, the children refer to themselves as “we”, but when they discuss their various careers, for example, they list all three of their names; none of them refers to themselves as “I”. In other words, it is first-person plural.

But this has a distancing effect; we don’t really get to know any of the three. And a mystery happens and is not resolved, and we’re left none the wiser as to Saga’s motivations, or what the children will do.

I should just let Martin Petto do this for me, because his take on this story. too, is very accurate.

"Boat in Shadows, Crossing", by Tori Truslow

Maybe I should just let Martin deal with this one, too. On the other hand, he is annoyed by it in ways that didn’t bother me. It was, in fact, my favourite of the four, and the one I voted for first in the BSFA Awards (“Selkie Stories are for Losers” second, and no others).

Why was this the best? An intriguing, mysterious environment, an immediately-compelling narrator, a problem to solve, a world – or at least a city – to change.

"Spin", by Nina Allan

“A retelling of the Arachne myth”, we are told. It turns out that I didn’t know the Arachne myth, and that makes a difference.

We are in something like modern-day Greece – people use iPads, for example – but time is out of joint: the currency is the Drachma, and there are suggestions that ancient events actually happened within living memory. And the protagonist’s father is a dyer, and all mentions of his trade imply that modern chemistry is all but unknown.

We start with the protagonist leaving the family home – running away, it feels like, though she is an adult – and making a new life for herself in another town. She gets a job, and practises her art of weaving in her spare time.

A mysterious old woman speaks to her enigmatically.

Her art soon earns her success and some recognition.

But some people – one woman in particular, with a sick son – think that she has a power, that her images can influence the future, if not cause it. It emerges that her mother was executed (or murdered) because she was believed to be some kind of witch.

She strikes up a relationship of sorts with the sick son (who may not be very sick at all), and we think we begin to see how things are going.

But then the old mystery woman is back and our hero is looking at some spiders on a bush and feeling weird and it’s all over.

What? What the hell just happened?

It turns out that Arachne was a weaver who claimed to be (or was) better than Athena, and got turned into a spider as a punishment. So there you are.

I’ve liked several of Nina Allan’s stories before this, but this one just doesn’t cut it for me; and I find it hard to believe that in all the science fiction (and fantasy) in all the world, there wasn’t a better short story published in 2013.

(My namesake Petto didn’t review this one, but instead posted a link to a review of it that no longer exists.)

Maybe I’m just grumpy cos on the rare occasion I’ve get round to submitting my own stuff, it’s been rejected.

Anyway, there we go. Back to novels.

  1. Recent when I first drafted this, maybe… ↩︎