Was

It being Pride season, we have a new Pride Storybundle for you. This one includes Of the Emperor’s Kindness by Chaz Brenchley, which is a fabulous book. And you can also pick up Yoke of Stars by R B Lemberg (reviewed in this issue), and fourteen other great books. One of those is Was by Geoff Ryman which is an absolute classic. Don’t believe me? Here is the review I wrote for Emerald City when the book first came out. Read it, and then buy the bundle, because Was is worth the $30 all by itself.

Oz that Was

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Dorothy. She lived in the big city of St. Louis with her mother and father and baby brother. But the big city was a dangerous place in those days. Dorothy’s mother and brother died of diphtheria, and her father ran off in fear, so she had to go and live with her family in the country.

Uncle Henry and Auntie Em were as dry and poor as the Kansas dirt that they farmed. They had no room in their budgets, and little room in their hearts, for a little girl from St. Louis and her pet dog. For Dorothy and Toto, life was thoroughly miserable.

“On the wall, there was an old sampler, slightly charred in one corner.
‘There’s no place like home’, it said.
And there wasn’t, not anywhere.”

Was, by Geoff Ryman, is a fantasy about a fantasy. Well, more than one fantasy actually. It is about a story called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It is about the film of that book and the legends that surround it. But the book itself is about fantasy, about a child’s view of a magical place that is nothing like dreary old Kansas. And, as Geoff Ryman shows, the book is also about a fantasy known as the Great American Dream. The dream that said that if you worked hard, even in Kansas you could reach a land of milk and honey.

“Now those memories come back to haunt me,
They haunt me like a curse.
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it something worse…”

Bruce Springsteen, ‘The River’

Frances Crumm’s home life was not much better than Dorothy’s. Her parents split when she was young, though no one would tell her why. Her mother was determined to make the girls into stars, and Frances, it seemed, unlike her sisters, had what it takes. She seemed a natural on the movie set, oozing charm, understanding the process, and getting on well with most of the adult actors. For some reason that no one could fathom the little girl seemed particularly drawn to gay men. She could learn her lines too, and delivered them well. All except the ending of The Wizard of Oz, where for some reason something she was required to say caused her to burst into hysterical tears.

“She dreamed it was wartime. There was a war between children and adults. Adults were hunting children across the landscape, on wagons and horseback. The children had to hide under the leaves. If the adults caught you, they made you a slave like in ancient Egypt. But if it was your parents who caught you, then they killed you.”

By far the most powerful message in the book is the one that Baum himself championed. When they were first published, the Oz books were almost universally despised by American society. They were thought, to put it mildly, unsuitable for children, because they encouraged them to dream.

But of course the adults of the time were no less guilty of fantasy than their offspring. Indeed, they indulged in it rather more. Awful things happened in small town America. But no one ever spoke of them, because it was not polite to do so. That sort of thing did not happen in a proper, God-fearing town. So no one saw the bad things happening around them, because that would mean that they themselves might not be good, God-fearing folk.

“Bill took all of this home to Carol, and Carol was disturbed. What she loved in Bill was his normality. She had been trained to confuse that with virtue.”

When he was very small Jonathan’s favourite colour was red. He would paint it everywhere: jam, lipstick, any source he could get his hands on. His parents were relieved when he appeared to grow out of his obsession. What he had actually done was grow into colour blindness. This was Jonathan’s first experience of growing up.

Now Jonathan is fully an adult, and coming to terms with adult problems. To be precise, he is dying. But his counsellor, Bill, had once met this crazy old lady in Kansas whose name was Dorothy and who claimed to have had a dog called Toto. Jonathan had always loved that film. The real Dorothy, if what was who she had been, was long dead, but if she had really existed, perhaps Oz did too. Jonathan was determined to find out before he died.

“Jonathan sat in the back, where he always did. He tried to pretend the bus was full of Munchkins, all of them talking in speeded-up voices. The bus was full of Angelinos instead. Angelinos have never met each other and cannot trust each other. They suspect each other of carrying murder weapons, possibly with some reason. Angelinos sit alone, in silence, no one next to them.”

Was is not a comfortable book. Indeed, the Daily Mail, in a rare moment of perspicacity, commented, “The book and the characters will haunt you”. And so they should. We have all been children. Most of us have seen Oz. And we all long for the day when once again we are not in Kansas any more.

Title: Was
By: Geoff Ryman
Publisher: Gollancz
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
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