Cheryl Morgan

Conventions Go Virtual

March 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 017, Articles, Con Running

Regular readers will know that I have long been an advocate of getting more people involved in conventions, in particular Worldcon. It seems crazy to me that we should get a few thousand people attending the event each year, only to then up and hold it in a completely different part of the world the following year and provide no easy means for them to take part. Most people simply can’t afford to go to Worldcon wherever it is in the world, and that seriously restricts people’s loyalty to the event.

When I have brought this up before, it has often been met with sad shaking of the heads, or outright mockery. The technology isn’t up to it, people would say. There’s no way Worldcons could afford it. People wouldn’t want to be on panels if they knew they would go online. All of these criticisms have a germ of truth to them. But none of them are the showstoppers that people think they are, if only someone had the will to carry things through.

Now, of course, our hands have been forced. The current global health crisis means that we have no choice but to make the 2020 Worldcon virtual. Inevitably some fans are grumbling about it, but there are no reasonable alternatives. What’s more, we are not alone. All sorts of other events are going virtual as well. Lots of companies are shifting to working from home. Schools and universities are moving to teaching online. And what we re seeing as a result is the sort of massive leap forward in technology, and technology use, that your normally only get in wartime. Right now we have to make this work, so we are doing so.

The most obvious benefit of this is that people now understand that the technology works. People who had previously scoffed at online meetings are now happily using Zoom on a daily basis. What we are finding is that most of the problems are not technical any more, but human. People need time to learn to use the new tools, and they need to lean to communicate effectively in an online environment.

For example, last weekend I gave a talk to an LGBT+ youth group in Somerset. The talk itself went fine, but it was very useful to have someone managing the tech for me as I talked. Also there was little in the way of Q&A. No one asked questions during the talk, and after it they did so in an orderly fashion. If I there had been 200 people in the audience with many of them wanting to ask questions, and a few determined to put forward, “more of a comment than a question” I would definitely have needed help.

Zoom, however, does have features that help with this. The person hosting the meeting can mute everyone’s microphone. There’s a feature where you can “raise a hand” if you want to speak. Anyone asking a “question” that goes on for more than a few sentences could easily be cut off. I’m sure that there are tricks that we will learn for successfully moderating the Q&A after a talk, but we are clever monkeys so I’m sure they can be learned.

Moderating a panel with Zoom is a different matter. It is certainly harder to see who is wanting to speak. Moderators might need to learn new tricks, and have to be prepared to be a bit more ruthless, in such an environment. The good thing is that we are not the only the only people having to learn these lessons right now. We can watch what other people are doing and pick up on what works.

Any new technology does, of course, come with potential downsides. I’ve been seeing stories of school kids sabotaging their lessons by sharing the URL online and encouraging trolls to interrupt the lesson. There are security features on Zoom that should allow you to prevent this, but you have to learn to use them.

A more serious issue is provided by Zoom itself. Like every other company in the online market it has gone down the route of providing its services cheaply and selling data to make up for the lack of income. Various scare stories have surfaced about the software, and Zoom has been forced into humiliating climbdowns on at least two occasions. IT journalists have started writing about how to keep yourself safe on Zoom.

From a privacy point of view, it seems to me that Zoom is currently no more nefarious than Facebook. If you already spend a lot of time on social media, using Zoom won’t make things any worse. Where it has major issues is firstly confidentiality of sensitive business information; and secondly in the way it can be used by unscrupulous employers to monitor the behaviour of their staff. Neither of these things appear to be much of an issue for an online convention.

Many people’s concerns about online events come from unfortunate experiences of the way some things have been put online in the past. The Hugo Award ceremony is available online in two ways. The current Worldcon generally puts it out over a streaming video service such as YouTube. The comment feed on such things is usually unmoderated and an utter cesspit. The text-based coverage that Kevin and I have done, with help from Mur Lafferty and Susan de Guardiola, is a much more pleasant environment. It is ruthlessly moderated. I know because I do it. People do come on and try to trash-talk everything. It doesn’t take them long to realise that the only person who ever sees their nonsense is me.

Cost is another major issue. You need to pay for all that bandwidth. A meeting attended by 5 people is cheap. A talk watched by 1000 people is not. Right now Worldcon committees have very little idea how to budget for such things, and therefore how much they should charge for access. I don’t envy CoNZealand for the learning experience they are going through. The good news is that if they are only doing virtual then they don’t need to worry about providing cameras in every programme room, which you would do if you wanted to make the whole of an in-person Worldcon also available online.

We have no way of knowing how many people would sign up to attend a virtual Worldcon. However, I suspect that it may well be a lot more than people expect. Over the weekend I got to talk to friends in Finland and the Caribbean. In both cases the people I spoke to were really excited about the possibility of being able to attend Worldcon regularly without having to pay a fortune in travel and accommodation.

There are aspects of Worldcon that do not transfer well to an online environment. I’m not sure, for example, how an online masquerade would work. How would you do workmanship judging? Would entrants have to find a space large enough to film their performance? I’m sure people are thinking about this, but I don’t have any solutions right now.

Then again there is the WSFS Business Meeting. Controlling that is hard enough face-to-face. How would you manage if you had 1000 people attending online, all of them wanting to speak? How would you do voting? Could the Puppies arrange to crash the meeting? Again these are things that probably can be solved, given thought and time, but they might mean that we have to fundamentally change the system of governance of WSFS. The BM is a “town hall meeting”. It cannot work in that form with thousands of attendees.

There’s a lot to do, then. And CoNZealand has to do it in a very short time. I’m sure that they will be keeping a close eye on what other people are doing. This year’s Nebula Conference will be online, and will be a good opportunity to find out what works and what doesn’t. I’m hoping to attend, though I am concerned about time zones, an issue that will be much worse when the con is in New Zealand. There’s more information as to what to expect, and a link to the registration page, here.

In the meantime I would like to offer my deepest sympathy to the CoNZealand committee. I have had senior roles on Worldcon committees before. I know how much work goes into putting on the event, and how unreasonable some fans can be. I would not want to be in their shoes for anything right now, but I am happy to offer what help I’m able from the other side of the planet.

We can get through this. And when we have we may find that we have built something that will allow Worldcon to become truly international. If that happens, the pain will probably have been worth it.

Star Trek: Picard

March 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 017, TV Review

We all knew that this was going to be an exercise in nostalgia. Jean-Luc Picard would probably win any poll of favourite Star Trek captains hands-down, and Patrick Stewart is a superb actor who has gone on to wow the geek community in other roles as well. In some ways, therefore, it was a project that had no risks. All it had to do was deliver fan service.

Thankfully that’s not all that the creators wanted. If they had, they would never have hired a writer as capable as Michael Chabon to craft the story arc. So the question most people will have been asking themselves is whether Chabon would manage to deliver the required nostalgia-fest and still produce a story worthy of Next Gen. And, of course, whether he could do that with a lead character and lead actor who are both getting a bit geriatric.

Wisely Chabon chose to focus on the most interesting philosophical question posed by Next Gen stories: the problem of artificial life. On the one hand we have Commander Data, by far the most interesting member of the Enterprise crew, who is an android who wants to be accepted as human. On the other we have the Borg, people who have become mere cogs in a giant machine intelligence.

Data, of course, is dead. He was killed saving Picard’s life in the film, Star Trek: Nemesis. I gather that film is almost universally despised by Trek fans. I watched it, and it didn’t seem that bad, though I’m afraid I will always find the Romulans to be very silly because the idea of an inter-stellar empire based on ancient Rome belongs in a Patricia Kennealy novel, not Star Trek. I asked about Nemesis on Twitter and apparently the director had said and done some pretty dumb things at the time, but my suspicion is that it is hated mainly because it kills off a well-loved character.

On the other hand, Data was an android, so it should be entirely possible to decant his personality into a new body. There was therefore a possibility that this series might bring him back. Whether it does or not, I will have to leave as a mystery. What it does do, fairly early on, is introduce us to his daughters.

Most science fiction is not really about the future, it is about the now. Any new Star Trek therefore has to be about the difference between America now, and America as it was when Gene Roddenberry first thought up his post-scarcity utopia. A key difference is terrorism. Picard therefore begins with a terrorist attack on the Starfleet construction yards on Mars. The attack is carried out by androids (synthetic beings, in the language of the series), and consequently their manufacture is banned. Picard, of course, continues to defend synthetics, and ends up resigning from Starfleet in a fit of pique.

Years later the appearance of two young women who appear to be synthetic beings modelled on Data in some way proves that someone, somewhere in the galaxy, is still manufacturing such things. Suspicion falls on the maverick scientist, Bruce Maddox, which is excellent use of past Next Gen stories. The plot of the series revolves around the question of whether Picard can find these people first, or whether they will be found by a Romulan secret society dedicated to eradicating all synthetic life.

This being Star Trek, there are some elements that are deeply philosophical, and others that are profoundly silly. There are a couple of episodes in the middle of the season that go completely off the rails and almost lost me. I still don’t understand the point of the Romulan Legolas character. Fortunately Chabon brings the story back on track before the end.

The nostalgia elements are, for the most part, handled well. Will Riker is his usual avuncular self, though somewhat thicker around the middle. Deanna Troi has aged far more gracefully and naturally than knowing her mother would have led us to suspect. Hugh the Borg makes a brief appearance. And of course the whole story is about Data.

The new characters are less convincing, at least in part because we don’t have much chance to get to know them. Narek, the hot Romulan spy, is at least interesting. Captain Rios, Raffi Musiker and Dr. Juradi might become more interesting with time, and if there is a second season I’m assuming they will be back. The less said about Romulan Legolas the better.

That leaves one other character who, at least for me, cemented the whole thing as proper Trek. Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine looked like she had barely been away, except to become even more badass. Given how old everyone else looked, I was impressed with the quality of Borg longevity treatments.

Now of course the question you are all asking is, “Did he pull it off?” (Or perhaps, in what I believe is the current vernacular for TV series, “Did he land the ending?”) I have a few observations. Firstly, this was absolutely a Next Gen story, with Picard doing what Picard does so well. Second, Picard does this while also being an elderly and somewhat grumpy old man who is long past his military service days and is scared that he can no longer cut it. Having a genuinely old man as a hero is a nice change. Thirdly, I was in floods of tears by the end of the final episode. I think that counts as a win.

Beneath the Rising

March 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 017, Book Review, Premee Mohamed

Well, this is a weird one. That’s a compliment, of course.

Beneath the Rising is a story of tentacled monsters from beyond the stars trying to take over our world, and being fought off by a couple of plucky teenagers. But if you think that makes it standard Lovecraftian fare, or standard YA fare, you would be wrong on both counts. Premee Mohamed has crafted something quite different.

Nick Prasad is an ordinary teenage boy of South Asian descent via the Caribbean. He and his family now make their home in Canada, so he does stand out a little from the crowd, but other than that there is absolutely nothing special about him, except for his best friend from school.

Johanna ‘Johnny’ Chambers is an ordinary teenage girl in the same way that Smaug is an ordinary lizard. She is The Girl Einstein; the Girl Who Cured HIV; the Girl Who Cured Alzheimer’s; and so on. She has more billion-dollar patents to her name than most teen girls of her age have lipsticks. Her home has a massive, multi-story basement full of laboratories and stuff, and Ben, her pet Giant Pacific Octopus.

So what exactly do Nick and Johnny have in common? Well it so happens that when they were both much younger they were caught up in a terrorist attack. They both survived, and ended up with a strange friendship. Nick idolises Johnny, and she see him as one of the few humans that she is able to have a connection with; someone who doesn’t only see her as the great Girl Genius.

Johnny, of course, cannot rest. A mind like hers is forever coming up with new ideas. Her latest scheme is to help stop climate change by coming up with a means of generating limitless free energy. Maybe it is cold fusion that actually works. Maybe it is zero point field energy. Or maybe she is tapping into a source of energy that is Somewhere Else. And that Somewhere Else might just be inhabited.

So it transpires that Nick and Johnny have to save the world, while it is falling apart around them. They have to deal with strange and ancient cults. They have to journey to the world’s oldest libraries and look for books that seem to have a mind of their own. And they have to face down That Which Man (and Girl Geniuses) Was Never Meant To Know; all the while facing up to the fact that their relationship is deeply dysfunctional.

The trouble is that while Nick might see Johnny as an ordinary human, her view of humans, and her ways of having relationships with them, are anything but ordinary. Nick explains:

When you have money you think the way people with money think, because that’s the influence. Ordinary rich people buy homes, plural. The super rich make homes everywhere. People like her, though, don’t need a home; they have nothing that they are worried about keeping, they know they can replace anything, literally anything, even if it is supposed to be one of a kind.

One of the places that they end up (it is in the cover blurb, but hey, old libraries) is Nineveh. Obviously this attracted my attention. I have to say that Mohamed knows far more about tentacled monstrosities than she knows about Assyriology, and that’s OK. It is all fantastical in an Indiana Jones sort of way. Besides, she also features the University of Fes in Morocco, which pleases me greatly because it is the oldest university in the world and was founded (in 859) by Fatima al-Fihri, the wife of a wealthy Muslim merchant.

Getting to Nineveh is another matter, because it is in Iraq. Because of that, the book is not set in the present day. It is set in an alternate 2002 in which the al-Qaeda attack on New York was an embarrassing failure. Mohamed doesn’t really examine the effects of this very much. Airport security still exists because the attack might have succeeded. Everything else is pretty much the same, except that travel to archaeological sites in Iraq is not as deadly as it would be now. That’s an interesting conjecture that I can see people having convention panels about.

Anyway, that’s a bit of a red herring. What is the book like? As I said earlier, it is not what you might expect. This is not a Call of Cthulhu adventure in novel form. Nor is it a teenage romance. It is by turns funny, weird, terrifying and full of tension. Above all it is a story built on the dysfunctional relationship between Nick and Johnny, which must be resolved if the world is to be saved. It is very much its own thing. And that, I think, is a very good thing.

Title: Beneath the Rising
By: Premee Mohamed
Publisher: Solaris
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Interview – Juliet E. McKenna

March 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 017, Audio, Interviews, Juliet E McKenna

With the paper re-issues of the Tales of Einarinn series rolling out from Wizard’s Tower this month, I took the opportunity to interview Juliet about the project. Other topics discussed include free fiction for lockdown reading, book three in the Green Man series, and a potential River Kingdom novel.

The Golden Key

March 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 017, Book Review, Marian Womack

Well, here’s an interesting one. The Golden Key is a debut fantasy from Marian Womack. It is being very heavily promoted by the publisher, Titan. And by “very heavily” I mean adverts on the Tube sort of expenditure. It also has a rave recommendation from Cat Valente who was one of Womack’s teachers at Clarion. That’s a heck of a lot to live up to.

To some extent the book does. What I don’t understand is the combination. That is, a book that Cat Valente loves, while obviously attractive to me, is not necessarily the sort of book that will sell in the volumes necessary to justify adverts on the Tube. Don’t get me wrong, I love Valente’s writing, but it took her a few years to learn the difference between appealing to me and appealing to a more general audience. Womack, I suspect, is not quite there, and I worry about what that means for her career, given the amount invested in it, but she’s definitely someone worth watching.

Meanwhile, back with the book. The Golden Key, as some of you will know, is also the title of a story by George McDonald. It was published in his 1867 book, Dealings with Faeries. The story is also available as a 1967 standalone volume with illustrations by no less than Maurice Sendak. McDonald, a Scot who looked disturbingly like Rasputin, was a friend of Lewis Carroll and has been cited as an influence by everyone from CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien to Neil Gaiman and Peter Beagle, via Mark Twain and L Frank Baum in between. He’s that key figure in the history of fantasy that you have never heard of. Womack is well aware of this. In some ways her book is a love letter to McDonald.

I’m no great expert on the man myself, but I get the impression that he was very good at the creepy, edgy, almost-horror side of faerie. I haven’t noticed Susanna Clarke listed as being particularly influenced by his work, but there was one character in Womack’s book who reminded me strongly of The Gentleman with Thistledown Hair from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. And yes, “Gothic” is a description that could be applied to all three books.

Womack’s version of The Golden Key is set at the start of the 20th Century. Queen Victoria has just died, and a passion for spiritualism is sweeping the country. There are seances, and one of the themes of the book is the question as to whether mediums are really in contact with another world, or are just charlatans. Womack’s answer is “both”, and this is characteristic of her approach to the book in general. We are on a threshold all the time, and nothing is quite true or false.

The main character of the book, at least according to the blurb, is Helena Walton-Cisneros, a lady detective famed for her ability to find that which is lost, reputedly by occult methods. And yet we quickly learn that Helena is a fierce rationalist who was forced to accept the media portrayal of her work as informed by magic because that was the only way she could get the police to take her, a mere woman, seriously.

This feminist streak is also a major feature of the book. Helena spends some time partnering with Eliza Waltraud, a scientist who at one point comments:

“It is curious, to say the least, is it not? The way most female maladies are put down to shock, over-exhaustion, hysteria. It almost seems as if the good doctors are trying to find reasons not to worry about our ailments.”

However, there is more to Womack’s examination of Victorian society than simple sexism. The main plot of the book is about missing children. Helena is hired to find out what happened to the three daughters of Lady Matthews who disappeared in mysterious circumstances many years ago. But children are also going missing now. If they are poor, no one cares. If they are rich but female, many people still don’t care. And there is a suggestion that there might be reasons why girl children go missing. That they might be frightened of adults close to them who force them to do things that they don’t like.

Cat says about the book that it is, “like slipping into a warm bath and finding secret thorns there to pierce the heart.” You are always on edge with this book, never quite knowing if it is a Holmes-like investigation into fraudulent mediums, or a genuine case of fairy abduction, or something far more sinister.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s great. As far as the more casual reader is concerned, it might be an issue. The way in which the book skips constantly between modes, between viewpoints, possibly between times, might cause some people trouble. I’ve not got around to watching The Witcher yet, but I followed the debate on social media about the tangled timelines used in the series and generally despaired of TV watchers. The Golden Key is almost certainly more confusing. It also goes places that the reader is not expecting.

I’m giving a cautious thumbs up here. Womack’s work is not as richly poetic as Cat’s early books. Nor is it the sort of instantly accessible Victorian romp as purveyed by the likes of Theodora Goss. It is something altogether more ambitious, something informed by a deep love of the creepy side of faerie lore, and something that may fail to satisfy unless you are prepared to accept it on its own terms. Definitely worth a look, though.

Title: The Golden Key
By: Marian Womack
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Unspoken Name

March 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 017, AK Larkwood, Book Review

This one took a little getting in to. The Unspoken Name is a debut fantasy novel by AK Larkwood. It is a large tome, and begins as if it is going to be very serious, and possibly a bit gloomy. Our hero, Csorwe, is an adept in a religious cult known as The House of Silence, devoted to the worship of The Unspoken One.

In the library of the House of Silence, there was a book bound in the skin of a murdered king, or so it was said. There were books in cipher, books in obsidian, books in whale hide. There were atlases of ruined cities and blighted worlds. There were useless maps to every treasure ever lost to time, and lexicons of every forgotten language.

Csorwe, it transpires, has been chosen to be sacrificed to her god on her 14th birthday. But she is rescued and spirited away by a mysterious wizard called Sethennai who is trying to regain his throne in another world, and find a mysterious thing called the Reliquary of Pentravesse. So far, so very fantasy.

However, it soon becomes clear that Larkwood isn’t taking things nearly as seriously as you might have supposed. The whole regaining the throne thing takes just over 100 pages of a 450 page book. It is, it transpires, backstory. Had I been editing this one, I might have suggested that Larkwood start at the beginning of the real story, and put all this preamble in flashbacks. I nearly gave up after the first section, and I suspect that other people might too.

Thankfully I didn’t because, once the main story gets going, it pulls you along at a fair old lick. You discover that the book is part comedy, and part slow-burn lesbian romance. Csorwe is tasked by Sethennai with chasing down the mysterious reliquary. She is given a partner called Tal who is one of those gay guys whom everyone else dismisses as useless because he’s a bit effeminate and inside is burning with macho desire to prove everyone wrong. Csorwe, in contrast, is a competent if somewhat reckless thug. The two of them hate each other, but need each other’s talents. They are opposed by Oranna, the Evil Librarian of the House of Silence who wants the Reliquary for herself so that she can become one with The Unspoken One and conquer the universe in true Evil Overlord style.

The book lurches between the amusing banter of Csorwe and Tal, and the absolute horror of the things that Oranna is prepared to do in order to get her own way. Meanwhile we get to meet a girl wizard called Shuthmili who is beautiful and doomed and absurdly deadly if she ever loses her self-control.

Having got into the book, I really enjoyed the rest of it, but I have questions, so many questions.

The worldbuilding is really interesting. The book is set in a universe where there are multiple worlds (I hesitate to call them planets because they might not be) that are connected by what seems to be a wormhole system called The Maze through which people sail in boats. It is interesting and innovative, and we learn very little about it.

Magic, in this world, is done by siphoning power from gods, actively if they are weak, and by importuning them if not. The Unspoken One wants blood. Lots of blood. Some of the worlds our heroes visit have been laid waste by powerful magics and/or angry gods. The search for the Reliquary means that much of the action has an Indiana Jones tinge to it.

Csorwe is an orc. Or maybe a troll. Anyway, she has tusks. One of them gets broken off in a fight in the backstory section and is replaced with a prothesis. This is apparently important enough to be used in the cover art, but is hardly ever mentioned again. Some people in the worlds of the book have tusks and others don’t. There’s no racism.

Finally, there is the Reliquary, which is apparently full of all sorts of magical knowledge. If Oranna gets hold of it she might be able to become an immortal avatar of The Unspoken One, and yet no one seems to take this danger seriously. All of the characters are much more interested in their personal objectives.

I’m pretty sure that hard core fantasy fans will be upset by this one. It has lesbians, for a start, but also it makes no attempt at cod-medievalism. At times the milieu of the book seems to be 21st Century Earth.

It wasn’t fair to pull someone out of a horde of revenants and immediately leave her to fend for herself on public transport.

That could have come straight out of an urban fantasy novel. And that might be a key to what we have here. Backstory aside, the book reads like an urban fantasy story set in an epic fantasy universe. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but might throw some readers.

There’s one more thing that I should mention. The book is replete with themes of ambition and duty ranged against life affirmation. Most of the main characters, at some point, turn their back on a life that has been mapped out for them by someone else. This might involve not getting sacrificed to a bloodthirsty god, or it might involve opting out of a safe but frustrating career to have a life. That’s something I can sympathise with. I tried being a corporate drone. It was horrible. I’ve been much happier, if much poorer, since.

Title: The Unspoken Name
By: AK Larkwood
Publisher: Tor
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The City of a Thousand Feelings

March 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 017, Anya Johanna DeNiro, Book Review

This is another book from the Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces series. It is thus quite short. (I read it in a few hours one morning.) It is also definitely a conversation piece and what one might term “experimental”.

The author, Anya Johanna DeNiro, is a trans woman. She had work out prior to transition so she’s had little option but to take that step very publicly indeed if she wanted to continue writing. The City of a Thousand Feelings is, to some extent, an allegory about gender transition. The City of the title is a place where socially acceptable people live, and at the start of the book it is being besieged by an army of trans folks who want admission. The City would rather flee or fight than open its gates to them.

While the people of the City are merely stand-offish, the true villains of the story are a cult of necromancers called Corpse-Mongers. If you look at them askance you might catch a glimpse of religious fundamentalists hiding behind their cowls.

Such a work is not going to resonate with everyone. Indeed, because gender transition is an intensely personal process, it won’t even resonate with all trans women. But there are two aspects to the story that I think work well and are worthy of examination.

The first is focus on feelings and loss. The City in the story is a place where emotions are celebrated. The fact that the army of trans people is kept outside is not just a mark of their lack of social acceptance. It is an indication that they are not allowed to feel happy, or safe, or loved. The only emotion that they are allowed is one of loss. That’s a brutally sharp observation of the trans condition, and it is one that thankfully will not resonate with all of us, but for far too many it will ring uncomfortably true.

The other aspect is a form of resolution that strongly echoes the one in Dark and Deepest Red. It is fascinating to see two books by trans writers in the same month that come up with very similar forms of salvation. That gives me a lot of hope for a community which, these days, is very much under siege.

If you are not interested in the trans themes, you may be interested in a fantasy story that is determinedly different and ambitious. It is also short, of course, so there’s not much to invest. Why not give it a try?

Title: The City of a Thousand Feelings
By: Anya Johanna DeNiro
Publisher: Aqueduct Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Editorial – March 2020

March 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 017, Editorial

Well, here we are living in interesting times.

Things are going pretty well for me. I still have plenty of work, which is good. I also have a lot more free time, which I have been putting to good use working on Wizard’s Tower projects. I may have had a mild case of the virus as I was somewhat ill for a while and have ended up with shortness of breath and a dry cough that won’t go away. But while I am reluctant to go out for fear of scaring people with the cough, I am otherwise healthy and able to get on with life in isolation.

The end result of this is that I’m very busy. In addition to the Tales of Enarinn reprints from Juliet McKenna, we also have a new Tate Hallaway novel due out in April. I will be talking to Tate about it for the next issue.

This issue has gone live on the Transgender Day of Visibility. I’m pleased that we have at least two boks by trans-identified authors reviewed here.

And finally we have the whole question of virtual Worldcons to think about. I have put some initial thoughts in this issue, but I’m sure there will be a lot of learning over the coming months.

Issue #16

March 1, 2020 Cheryl Morgan Issues

This is the February 2020 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.

Cover: Mystical Mysterious Secret: This months cover art is "Mystical Mysterious Secret" by 024-657-834

Agency: A review of Agency, William Gibson's long-awaited sequel to The Peripheral

The Light of Impossible Stars: A review of Light of Impossible Stars, the final volume of Gareth L Powell's Embers of War trilogy

Maresi: Red Mantle: A review of Maresi: Red Mantle, a YA novel by Maria Turtschaninoff

To Be Taught if Fortunate: A review of To Be Taught if Fortunate, a novella by Becky Chambers

Vei — Volume 2: A review of volume 2 of the graphic novel series, Vei, written by Sara B Elfgren and drawn by Karl Johnsson

Watchmen — The TV Series: A review of Damon Lindelhof's TV series using Alan Moore's Watchmen characters and universe

The Rampant: A review of the novella, The Rampant, by Julie C Day

Picard — Countdown: There is a comic book series that acts as a prequel to the Picard TV series. Who knew? Now you do.

Editorial – February 2020: In which I apologise for being a bit late with this issue, and have further Hugo thoughts.

Maresi

March 1, 2020 Cheryl Morgan Archive, Book Review, Maria Turtschaninoff

On a remote island in the Northern Seas there is a secret religious establishment. One might call it a nunnery, for it is staffed entirely by women. The Red Abbey, however, is not like any nunnery of our world. In the Red Abbey, even god is female.

Maresi Enresdaughter is a teenage girl fairly newly arrived at the Abbey. She loves the freedom that she has there. She loves the company of the other young women. But most of all she loves books, and wants nothing more than to sit and read all day long. Naturally the older sisters despair of her at times, but perhaps she will make a good Librarian when she is older.

That’s a good enough lure for a YA fantasy novel, isn’t it? Maria Turtschaninoff sure knows her audience. However, our idyllic sojourn with Maresi in the Abbey library will not last forever. As the book opens, another young girl arrives at the Abbey. Her name is Jai, and she is a run-away. The culture that she was born into is deeply patriarchal, so much so that women who don’t follow their men-folk’s orders are liable to be killed to preserve the “honor” of the family. Jai’s mother has managed to get the girl to freedom, but is the Abbey truly far enough away to make her safe?

Jai’s people, of course, are tall, fair-haired and fair-skinned. You had guessed that, hadn’t you?

There’s no doubt which way this story will go. The only question is what sacrifices the women of the Abbey will have to make to fight off the attentions of Jai’s vengeful father and his band of hired killers. While this may be a book written for teenagers, Turtschaninoff doesn’t pull her punches. Maresi, having befriended Jai, and being rather more resourceful than most of her sisters, has to grow up very quickly indeed.

I have several reasons to love this book. One of them is a realistic depiction of a pagan community centered on goddess worship that doesn’t shy away from any aspect of women’s lives. Another is that this is a fast-paced, gripping tale that will have you rushing through it, consumed with anxiety for the women.

It is atmospheric too. I know it is a bit of a hostage to fortune posting passages that you particularly liked, because tastes vary enormously, but I’m going to take risk here:

I heard a rustling around me. In the faint moonlight I saw hundreds of iridescent butterflies flutter up out of the bushes. Their wings look unnaturally large and they shone silver and grey in the soft light. The butterflies seemed never-ending as more and more flew out of the bushes and into the night. I was entranced by the beauty and stayed hanging there, enraptured. It was like a goodnight greeting from the island itself.

When the last butterfly had flown I heard the voice.

Maresi, it whispered. My daughter.

It came from the hole beneath me. She was there, in the darkness. Waiting.

You need to imagine that small piece of speech being in an aged, rasping but firm voice. Then you need to go and listen to The Pretenders’ “Hymn to Her”.

Credit should also go to the translator, A.A. Prime. Turtschaninoff wrote the original in Swedish.

Most of all, though, I love Maresi because it is firmly and unabashedly feminist. It is a book that I would like every teenage girl to read. Sure, there is magic in the book, and it is fiction, but it is full of hope and courage. It suggests that we can make the world a better place, hard and painful though that journey will sometimes be.

It is also the first book in a trilogy. Can we have the next one, please, Pushkin Press?

Title: Maresi
By: Maria Turtschaninoff
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Cover: Mystical Mysterious Secret

February 29, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 016, Art

This is another piece of art from Pixabay. The artist is German and goes by the handle of 024-657-834. You can find the original image here.

As always, the original image is much bigger than what I needed for a magazine cover. You can find the whole image below.

Agency

February 29, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 016, Book Review, William Gibson

Two things are known to be hard. One is making the middle book of a trilogy interesting. Another is writing near future SF in a time of rapid social change. William Gibson has sailed straight into the storm created when these two problems collide.

I really liked The Peripheral. I thought it was the best thing I had seen from Gibson in a long time. Agency, however, is just more of the same. Now of course that same is good. Gibson writes really well. The setting is interesting. Wilf Netherton and Inspector Lowbeer are fascinating characters, and a lot of the supporting cast are good too. Beyond that, however, nothing much happens. Agency is simply another tale of our heroes sorting out a problem in another parallel universe.

That universe is interesting, of course. Famously it is one in which Hilary Clinton is US President and Brexit never happened. That, however, will not prevent The Jackpot. As Gibson explained when I saw him speak in Bristol, the apocalypse that we are living through is a slow-acting one. It started long ago, and will take decades more to reach its full potential. It is hard to understand that you are being boiled when the temperature of the water rises very slowly, but we’ll be no less cooked at the end of it. Possibly the actions of Netherton, Lowbeer and co, with their benefit of hindsight from the future, will help other timelines do better. Maybe Gibson has an idea for the final book of the series. But something tells me that for most universes it is too late. The Jackpot is a train and we are in a tunnel. It hasn’t hit us yet, but there’s no time to go back.

The sad thing is that there will probably be many people out there who see the post-Jackpot world as a utopia of sorts. The population has been dramatically reduced. Technology has carried on making life easier. And who needed all those animal species anyway, right? This is, of course, part of the far-right wet dream. The way to save the planet is to get rid of all the useless people. No one who holds such opinions ever thinks that they might be among the useless.

Agency does briefly revisit some of the characters in the other timeline from The Peripheral. Things have moved on for Flynne and her friends. Possibly book 3 will bring together the alternate timelines from both The Peripheral and Agency, and maybe a third world as well. However, we don’t see any more or Janice, or Flynne’s mother, who were my favourite characters from The Peripheral.

The new timeline, despite its superior electoral sense, is rather dull. It is set in San Francisco, which should make it feel like home for me, but that was mostly for the presence of high tech industry. There was little there there. And don’t get me started about differences in highway nomenclature between northern and southern California. Our heroine, Verity, is supposedly an expert app tester, which sounds a bit like a cheap Cayce Pollard knock-off. She spends most of the book running away from the bad guys while waiting for an ending that we can all see coming.

I don’t want to say that Agency is a bad book, because I enjoyed reading it. But it did feel like it was treading water. The obvious long-term focus for the series is the nature of The Server. Who created it, and why? That is the carrot that has been dangled in front of the reader, and Agency gets us no closer to finding out.

Title: Agency
By: William Gibson
Publisher: Viking
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Light of Impossible Stars

February 29, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 016, Book Review, Gareth L Powell

The final books of trilogies are often nervous-making experiences because you so much want the author to round off an intriguing story in a satisfying manner. For me that was doubly true for Light of Impossible Stars because Gareth Powell is a friend and I want him to do well. Thankfully he seems to have pretty much nailed it.

The first thing I should say about the book is that it is very readable. I sped through it in a day while traveling home from Austria. The book kept my attention throughout, which is an excellent sign. I was engaged with the characters, and I wanted to know how the story would pan out.

For fans of the series, I should note that there’s rather less of Trouble Dog and Nod the Druff in this book than they might have hoped. They are well-loved characters, and of course Chapter 49 of Fleet of Knives has passed into legend. As I expected, the Druff do have an important art of play in the dénouement of the series. However, the stakes have got incredibly high by the end of the series and there’s not much that individuals can do, unless they have god-like powers.

Of course, this is space opera, so that isn’t entirely out of the question.

There will, I think, be more in-depth articles written about how well Powell deals with the themes of the series. In particular, for a set of books that was supposed to be set after a major war, it has an awful lot of war in it. Personally I’m still digesting everything and not really in a position to come to a conclusion. For most readers, however, what will matter is that the series has come to a satisfying ending. Powell is probably keen to get onto new projects. What he’ll find is his fans clamouring for more books featuring the Druff.

Title: Light of Impossible Stars
By: Gareth L Powell
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Maresi: Red Mantle

February 29, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 016, Book Review, Maria Turtschaninoff

Trilogies seem to be something of a theme in this issue. William Gibson is in the middle of one; Gareth Powell has finished one; and here too is another book, three. The Red Abbey Chronicles, however, have a rather different structure to the other two.

Both Powell, and presumably Gibson, have a single narrative thread running through the series. Maria Turtschaninoff has tried something different, which may have saved her from Middle Book Syndrome. After the first book, Maresi, we were all expecting the continuing adventures of the titular heroine. However, with Naondel Turtschaninoff chose to go back in time and tell the story of the founding of the Red Abbey. Red Mantle picks up the story of Maresi once more as she returns to her homeland, proudly wearing the red cloak of a priestess.

There are two main issues to be resolved in the book. The first is how well Maresi will get on with her avowed plan to start a school in her home village. It is, after all, a place where no one else can read, let alone write. It is a place where most people are kept much too busy just growing food, making clothes and staying one step ahead of the local lord’s tax collectors to do anything else.

The other is how Maresi will come to terms with the events of the first book. When she arrived at the Red Abbey she had no expectation of becoming a priestess of the Crone, let alone having to use that connection and the power that came with it to save the Abbey from a large group of very violent men.

Like the first book, this one is a slow burner. The first two thirds or so are simply Maresi dealing with everyday problems. Her neighbours think schooling is pointless. Her mother is upset that she won’t braid her hair like other village girls. Everyone wants to know which boy in the village she is going to marry. Slowly but surely, however, menace rears its ugly head, and by the end of the book Maresi has had to deal with a major crisis once more.

Being intended for teenage girls, the book is a very easy read. However, it does not shy away from difficult topics. There is mention of contraception, rape, the dangers of childbirth, and pressure to conform to social expectations. The Red Abbey Chronicles books are just full of feminist politics. I am all in favour of this. We need to be teaching young girls about feminist issues, and these books are an excellent vehicle for doing so.

I should note that the book is written entirely in epistolary form, as letters from Maresi back to the Abbey. One of the charms of the book is noting the different style that Maresi adopts when writing to her superiors in the Abbey, and when writing to her younger friends.

There is also a romance plot, though it is by no means the main part of the book. I was very happy with it, and indeed saw it coming a mile off. That’s because Kevin is from California and Turtschaninoff dropped a heavy hint in Finnish.

Which brings me to the fact that these books are all translated, though from Swedish rather than Finnish. (AA Prime has translated all three books) I understand that the first book in the series is available in 21 different languages, and a movie is in production. I am delighted to see Turtschaninoff have so much success. It is hard getting anywhere when you write in a language other than English, but it is possible, and hopefully that will encourage more people to seek out translated works.

Title: Maresi: Red Mantle
By: Maria Turtschaninoff
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

To Be Taught if Fortunate

February 29, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 016, Becky Chambers, Book Review

Up until now, Becky Chambers is someone whose work I have enjoyed, but not specifically sought out. Generally I would read her when other people voted her onto award ballots and I needed to have an opinion. To Be Taught if Fortunate has changed all that. I will now be buying new Becky Chambers books when they come out, because this is very good.

The book is a novella, and tells the story of a human expedition to another star system. You could describe it as a first contact story, but none of the lifeforms the crew encounters is what we would regard as intelligent. It is more a story of space exploration, how it happens, and why we do it. If I had to write an elevator pitch for it, I would say it was, “A Kim Stanley Robinson story written by a woman.”

It reminded me a lot of parts of Red Mars, where Robinson is talking about the process of sending a spacecraft and crew to another planet. There’s even a certain amount of listing of equipment. But Chambers is also very interested in her crew as human beings, and not in a “someone must go crazy so we can have conflict” way.

The crew’s target system is 14 years travel away and the crew is in cryosleep for the duration of the journey. Chambers has her narrator note that each crew member has a cabin, and care has been taken to help them adjust when they wake up. It is a small detail, but one that shows she’s thinking about how such a mission would work.

Of course people will ask what Chambers knows about “real” science fiction. Her previous novels have not been what one would describe as “hard SF”. This one definitely is, so there will doubtless be dudebros itching to point out perceived errors. However, Chambers’ mother is an astrobiologist and I’d happily wager that she knows far more about life on other planets than the average “well actually” guy on social media.

The plot, such as it is, is mainly about the various planets that the crew explores, the things they find there, and what this means to them. Towards the end of the book, however, they are influenced by events back on Earth, a place to which they are expected to return. I won’t say more than that because of spoilers, but I found this a delightful little book and one well worth going up against an incredibly competitive novella field in this year’s Hugos.

Title: To Be Taught if Fortunate
By: Becky Chambers
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Vei — Volume 2

February 29, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 016, Comic Review, Karl Johnsson, Sara B. Elfgren

I was delighted to have been sent the second and final volume of Vei by Sara B Elfgren and Karl Johnsson. My review of Volume 1 explains the set-up, but basically it is a couple of Swedes being very creative with Nordic myth.

At the end of Volume 1, Vei has been appointed Champion of the Jotun in the Meistarileikr, a brutal gladiatorial contest between the Æsir and Jotun that takes place at intervals ridiculous to humans but entirely normal to god-like beings. Already she has killed many of Odin’s champions, but there are more fights to come before the contest is over.

As the story develops, both Æsir and Jotun show themselves to be arrogant, cruel and careless of human lives. But they are as gods, what can one do? Only one person seems to care about Vei’s plight, and would you trust Loki? With anything?

As I said last time, Loki is one of the best things in the book. They also get the best scene, in which they transform into a cat in order to get petted by Freya. But Loki also has a plan. Inevitably it involves significant amounts of chaos.

Occasionally Elfgren’s plot seems to play fast and loose with the common understanding of Nordic mythology. But hey, she and Johnsson are Swedish. It is their mythology. Besides, for all I know they may know of alternate versions of the myths that tell very different tales.

Johnsson’s art continues to be very impressive.

In this volume there is an ending. If you expected it to be a “they all lived happily ever after” one then you clearly don’t know much about Norse myths. It is, however, a satisfying one. And that, of course, is all that one can ask for.

Title: Vei -- Volume 2
By: Sara B Elfgren & Karl Johnsson
Publisher: Insight Comics
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Watchmen — The TV Series

February 29, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 016, TV Review

Long ago there was a very famous comics series that set the world alight because of its innovative treatment of the superhero genre. The writer on that series got rather grumpy about things and said he didn’t want there to be any sequels, adaptations, or any of the other nonsense that corporations like to produce off the back of a successful creation. The corporation took little notice of him.

There was eventually a film adaptation, of course. It was quite faithful to the original comics. It was also quite dull. That was partly because the world had moved on in the meantime, and partly because it had nothing new to say.

Then, years later, there was talk of a TV series, that would be a sequel to the original story. Everyone groaned. This was going to be the poor writer’s worst fears come true, right?

Wrong. Damon Lindelhof’s Watchmen is some of the best TV in a long time. It is, in its own way, very faithful to the original comic. It is also very much its own thing. Rather than provide “more of the same”, which is what every Hollywood mogul actually wants, it used some familiar characters to tell a very different story.

Specifically, Watchmen is about race politics in the USA. It kicks off with the 1921 race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which most people (even most Americans) had never heard of before. It directly addresses the white supremacist nonsense that is at the heart of present-day American politics. And it riffs off the fact that a white man in a mask can be a hero, whereas a black man in a mask is seen as a threat. It is all so very relevant right now.

Some of the music choices that go with individual episodes are superb. The original music is by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails, but it is the use of well-known pop songs that is at genius level. I’m very disappointed that Wikipedia does not yet have a full list of the songs used, but kudos to Liza Richardson for her choices.

Some of the acting is also top class. I thought that Jean Smart as Laurie Blake (Silk Spectre II) was very good. And Jeremy Irons was brilliant as Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias). Irons also looks like he is thoroughly enjoying every minute of it.

Amusingly Lindelhof has said that he doesn’t want there to be any sequels to his story. I have no idea what Alan Moore thought of this, but both of them are right. Both of them have created brilliant stories that are perfectly capable of standing alone. If the Watchmen franchise is to be mined again, then it should only be done by someone with enough imagination and artistic integrity to stand alongside what Moore and Lindelhof have achieved. That’s a very tall order.

The Rampant

February 29, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 016, Book Review, Julie C Day

Well there’s a thing. A new novella from Aqueduct Press set in a post-apocalyptic world in which the apocalypse in question is Sumerian gods returning to Earth. In theory the world should have been destroyed, but something has gone wrong and the expected Rapture has been delayed. In the meantime, lots of people are dying and ending up in the Plains of the Imperfect Dead, rather than in the Netherworld. Fortunately for us humans, one young girl from Decatur, Indiana has been receiving prophetic dreams. It is apparently up to Gillian, and her Best Friend Forever, Mel, to journey to the Netherworld, find a being known as The Rampant, and get the apocalypse re-started.

So, teenage lesbians v monsters from Sumerian myth it is. Bring it on!

Of course, I had to read this. Mainly I had to read it to see if Inanna was mentioned and if so how. Much to my surprise, she doesn’t feature at all, despite being the original star of the Descent into the Netherworld. Thinking about it, however, Julie C Day might have dodged a bullet here. Knowing how quick Herself can be to take offence, and Her penchant for smiting people when She does, leaving Her out might have been a wise move. Besides, Day redeems herself. Of course Ereshkigal has to be in the story. The Netherworld is her domain. But Day portrays her as a) not in charge, and b) a pompous twit. She does get to ride a rather cute elephant (don’t ask), but it is clearly a nicer person than she is so that’s OK.

Day is therefore safe from smiting, and free to craft a fun story that an impressive degree of originality. I found The Rampant a little obscure at times, because while Gillian and Mel are clearly speaking English the way in which they do so is somewhat foreign to me. The speech patterns of teenage girls from Indiana are clearly not that close to the English I speak. But I did manage to follow the action, and I enjoyed the story. It is great to see someone prepared to do something so completely off-the-wall.

Also no smiting, which is always a relief where Herself is concerned.

Title: The Rampant
By: Julie C Day
Publisher: Aqueduct Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Picard — Countdown

February 29, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 016, Comic Review

It seems like almost everyone in my Twitter timeline is watching the new Picard TV series. We all love Jean-Luc, whether we are Star Trek fans or not. Quite a few people, however, including me, have been a bit confused, because the series assumes a level of fannish obsession with the Trek universe that most of us don’t share.

Much of this comes direct from Next Generation, which many of us will have seen. We have a reasonable idea of who Data, Bruce Maddox, Hugh and Locutus of Borg are. Other plot points arise from the move, Star Trek: Nemesis, which is not as bad as everyone told me it would be, but is nevertheless a bit silly. You can get away with reading the Wikipedia synopsis if you don’t want to watch it.

That much Trek lore is fairly accessible, but that still leaves a whole lot of mystery people. Who the heck is Raffi Musiker, whom Picard seems to know so well? Who are Zhaban and Laris, the two Romulans who live with Picard on his vineyard? I had no clue, so I Googled. It turns out that the TV series has a 3-part comic prequel. It is produced by IDW and written by the same creative team as the TV series. The individual issues are available for a very reasonable $1.99 each.

As comics go, these are not particularly great works of art. However, they do fill a gap in the narrative. If you are a little confused by some of the TV series, this will help you.

Editorial – February 2020

February 29, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 016, Editorial

OK, so February is a short month, even in a leap year. Also it is my busiest month of the year because it is LGBT History Month here in the UK and I end up going all over the place giving talks. I’m relieved to have got this out only a day after the end of the month.

And now we are into March, which means Hugo Nominating Deadline. You need to get it done by March 14th, and ideally you should get it done before then just in case there are any IT meltdowns.

Talking of which, when I did my Hugo suggestions last month I totally forgot that Captain Marvel was a 2019 film. That means that Avengers: Endgame won’t make the cut. I think that BDP: Long could be quite interesting this year with so many good seasons of TV eligible.

Oh, and please don’t forget to nominate in Fanzine. You don’t have to vote for this one, but you do need to support the tradition of long-form fannish writing. Please.

Finally on the subject of awards, huge congratulations to Juliet E McKenna for getting The Green Man’s Foe onto the Best Novel short list in the British Science Fiction Association Awards. That means that I will be at Eastercon doing the proud publisher thing, and will have a dealer table. I’ll be fresh off a plane from Western Canada and jet-lagged to the nines, but I should also have something rather exciting and Juliet-related for you folks to see (and hopefully but). More news next issue.

Cheryl

Issue #15

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan Issues

This is the January 2020 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.

Cover: Robot Planet Moon: This issue's cover is Robot Planet Moon by Kellepics.

The Absolute Book: A review of The Absolute Book, the latest novel from New Zealand's Elizabeth Knox.

The Ghurkha and the Lord of Tuesday: A review of Saad Z. Hossain's novella, The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday.

The Stories We Don’t Tell: Cheryl has some thoughts about what sort of stories can be told about trans people.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: A review of the Netflix series, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

Some Hugo Thoughts: Cheryl has some thoughts about this year's Hugo nominations.

The Lights Go Out in Lychford: A review of the latest volume in Paul Cornell's Lychford novellas, The Lights Go Out in Lychford.

Shadows of the Short Days: A review of Shadows of the Short Days, a debut fantasy novel by Icelandic author, Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson

House of Whispers: Volume 1: A review of Volume 1 of Nalo Hopkinson's Sandman Universe comic, House of Whispers.

The Menace from Farside: A review of Ian McDonald's novella, The Menace from Farside

Titans : Season 2: A review of Season 2 of the Netflix superhero series, Titans.

Editorial – January 2020: What has Cheryl been up to in January?

Cover: Robot Planet Moon

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, Art

Once again I have been scouring Pixabay for art that I can use freely. This issue’s cover is Robot Planet Moon by KellePics. There’s a donation link for the artist, so I chucked over a few bucks. You can too.

Also as usual, the full image is much bigger than I needed for a magazine cover. The full version is available below.

The Absolute Book

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, Book Review, Elizabeth Knox

I have been a fan of Elizabeth Knox for some time. I reviewed one of her books back in Emerald City days. But living in New Zealand is not good for a writing career. Going to conventions, or doing book tours, even in Australia, can be very expensive. Knox hasn’t had the support from publishers or readers that she deserves. Her latest novel, The Absolute Book, is available only from a university press in Wellington. Thankfully you can get an ebook, so it is not that expensive to buy if you are OK reading electronically, but you have to know where to look, and why. Fortunately I am here to tell you.

The Absolute Book is the story of Taryn Cornick, the younger daughter of an upper middle-class family in England. Her family used to own a stately home in the Welsh Borders, but that has had to be sold because of upkeep costs. Her father is only a top character actor currently famous for his roles in a trilogy of fantasy movies, and a long-running fantasy TV series. That doesn’t earn enough. Stately homes are expensive.

When Taryn was young her elder sister, Beatrice, was murdered. A man in a car saw her out jogging on a quiet country road and thought that if he knocked her down he could rape her, but he miscalculated and she died from wounds sustained in the impact. At the trial he claimed he had no idea what came over him.

Fast forward now a few years. Taryn is married to a wealthy businessman who can afford a stately home. She is still processing her grief and anger at Bea’s death. On a hunting trip to Canada she meets a woodsman who befriends her. He offers to help her grieving by killing Bea’s murderer when he gets out of prison. It’s a favour he wants to do to help an unhappy young woman. No strings attached.

Fast forward again. The murderer is dead. A young police officer who interviewed Taryn is convinced that she was involved, despite her cast iron alibi. Taryn is newly famous as she has written a successful book about lost libraries: not just Alexandria, far too many have been burned. Meanwhile she is being stalked, and she has started to suffer from mysterious seizures. While in hospital for tests she is visited by a man from MI5. He’s interested in two Arabic-looking men who came to a book signing. Oh yes, says Taryn, the Lovecraft fans. One of them gave me a card with the name Abdul Alhazred on it.

If, at this point, you have no idea what this book is about, don’t worry, I didn’t either. But it will all come clear in due course. What we have, as you can guess from the title, is a book about a book. An apparently very important book. One that people, and beings that are not people, will kill to get hold of. A book that has a very important role to play in a very long-running war.

It is also a book that is heavily steeped in that glorious mash-up of mediaeval Christianity and Celtic myth that is Arthurian legend, and yet it mentions Arthur by name just once. Mostly it just alludes to him, as in this passage.

He recalled the very erudite lawyer he regularly had a drink with explaining to him why the current referendum wasn’t going to devolve into the usual political point-scoring but, instead, produce something extraordinary. ‘[…] No, it’s an almost mythical yearning, as though, if we can only create the right conditions, a stranger might come out of the mist, thrust a sword into a stone, and say, “Whosoever draws forth this blade…”’

So yes, this is a book about the modern world, but it is also a book that is infused with mythology. In particular it connects to myths about idealised otherworlds, and heroes who might come to rescue us from our folly. God is not going to save us. The old fellow has apparently retreated from the world, driven mad by the conflicting demands of his fractious legions of followers. It is down to Arthur, or the Fae, or Odin, or someone like that. Of course you do have to be careful, even with them.

‘We’re hoping the sisters will turn up. We can’t summon them without maybe also summoning the god. Odin is best left out of this. We’re not sure what his intentions are. He’s not himself these days. His head has been turned by many new worshippers. Of the wrong kind.’

All of this mixing of the modern world and mythology sometimes allows very weird things to happen.

Neve frowned at their approach, but greeted each of them by name. Her small party of humans made room. Introductions were exchanged and Taryn found herself sitting one place along from Franz Schubert.

Of course there is much serious in the book as well. It reminded me in particular of two things. The first is Ursula K Le Guin’s legendary short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. As you doubtless know, the city of Omelas is a utopia with a dark secret. The vast majority of citizens lead idyllic lives, but the price of this is that in a dungeon below the city a young child is being continually tortured. In Le Guin’s story, some people choose to leave the city rather than have their happiness depend on such horror. Many other writers have had their own takes on the moral conundrum since.

Here’s what Knox asked. Imagine that you, yes You, had the power to stop it all. If you were willing to give up your own life, and submit to eternal damnation, in return for which the utopia of Omelas would continue with no child ever being harmed again, would you do it?

The other thing that came to mind is that this is something of a Sheri Tepper novel. Now I have had some fairly bad things to say about Tepper in the past, but that’s because her solutions to the world’s problems tend to come from a position of arrogance and disdain for mankind. Tepper presents mankind (and she means MANkind) as a failed species that needs to be taken in hand and disciplined. Knox, I think, comes from a kinder place. Yes, we human are a mess, and we seem to be incapable of fixing the problems we have created. What we need, however, is not a stern parent who will stop us from ever being bad again, but supportive parents who will teach us to love.

It is a nice thought, and this is a lovely book. Unfortunately, in the world outside of the book, no one is going to come to save us.

Title: The Absolute Book
By: Elizabeth Knox
Publisher: Victoria University Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
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The Ghurkha and the Lord of Tuesday

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, Book Review, Saad Z. Hossain

Melek Ahmar, the Lord of Mars, the Red King, the Lord of Tuesday, Most August Rajah of Djinn has been asleep in a coffin in the Himalayas for over 4,000 years. Now he is awake and looking for a good party. But the world he finds himself in is very different than the one in which he was unfortunately bashed over the head while drunk. The humans, it seems, have been busy.

The world has been through a nanotech apocalypse. Those cities that survive are now mini-Utopias, and none more so than Kathmandu. Peace and luxury, however, come at the price of constant vigilance; the sort of vigilance that can only be provided by an AI. In Kathmandu’s case that job falls to Karma. Not only does she keep her inhabitants safe from all of the deadly nanotech plagues with which the planet is still infested; she provides a benign rule based on a points system where citizens can grow wealthy through doing good deeds; or happily live on social security while being merrily but benignly debauched.

The legendary Ghurkha knife fighter, Bhan Gurung, does not live in Kathmandu. No one in the city remembers him now, which is probably just as well given what he has done. Gurung has not forgotten. He still bears a grudge against the city. And the arrival of an incredibly powerful, but rather confused and suggestible, Djinn lord seems like a gift from Heaven.

Hamilcar Pande is the closest that Kathmandu has to a policeman. He doesn’t need to keep law and order. Karma does all of that for him. But it is his job within Central Admin to keep an eye on Karma and ensure that she continues to function correctly. Goodness knows how he would ever tell if something had gone wrong, or how he could do anything about it if he did, but there it is. He has a job, as much as anyone in Kathmandu actually needs one, and he is determined to do it to the best of his ability.

So when two strange and disreputable looking people turn up at the gates of the city demanding entrance, it is to Hamilcar that Karma delegates the job of keeping an eye on them. Because one of them seems impervious to all forms of surveillance.

This is the set-up for a rather wonderful novella from Saad Z. Hossain. He lives in Bangladesh, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet he has been able to sell his work to the Western world, and in this case to Tor.com. I discovered the book because its editor, Jonathan Strahan, had been enthusing about it on The Coode Street Podcast. I know I can rely on Jonathan’s good taste, and in this case my faith in him was more than rewarded.

The Ghurkha and the Lord of Tuesday is many things, which is impressive for a novella. It is, at core, a crime story. There are some murders in it, though the crimes involved are rather more complex than simple killings. It is also a nanotech story, bearing some debt to its forebears — in particular Kathy Goonan’s flower city novels. It is a book about a future society run on reputation points, similar to the concept of Whuffie used in Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It is a story about a world beset by (un)natural disasters, and how humans respond to that. And it is a story about humans seeking to deal with an AI whose workings they cannot hope to understand.

Oh, and it is a book with a couple of comedy Djinn as major characters.

Now if all that strikes you as interesting, and I think that it should, then you will want to be buying a copy of this book and reading it before you submit your Hugo Award ballot for 2019. These days Novella is a very competitive field, but in my view this book absolutely deserves to be a finalist.

Title: The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday
By: Saad Z. Hossain
Publisher: Tor.com
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The Stories We Don’t Tell

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, Articles, Feminism, Writing

Most of you will be familiar with the furore surrounding the “Attack Helicopter” story in Clarkesworld. I don’t discuss that story here. Both Neil Clarke and the author, Isabel Fall, know that they stepped into a minefield there, and I am sure they have learned lessons, but I do want to talk about the minefield.

One of the reasons that this issue blew up is that well-meaning people, both cis and trans, wanted to be able to tell interesting and edgy stories about the trans experience. Writing interesting and edgy stories is what good writers want to do, and what good editors want to publish. However, there are things that I, as a trans woman, would not want to write about, either in fiction or nor fiction, because doing so would cause way too much trouble for me, and for others. I want to explain what some of those things are, and why they are so problematic.

I should start by saying that there are no hard and fast rules here. What you can get away with in writing for a trans-themed anthology from a small press is very different to what you can do in a high-profile venue such as Clarkesworld. There are plenty of great stories in the Transcendent anthologies, many of which came from small presses. Who you are also matters. I continue to be amazed that Charlie Jane Anders got away with writing “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue”. Personally, I would not have had the mental fortitude, let along the literary talent, to write that story. But it also touched on some of the issues I will mention here. I presume that one of the reasons there was no great backlash against it is that Charlie Jane was already a hugely respected writer, and openly trans, when it was published.

That said, few of us have the stature of Charlie Jane. We have to be careful, and there are a variety of reasons for that.

One issue that trans people face these days is that we are the focus of a great deal of interest from the media and right-wing political activists. It is far worse in the UK than anywhere else, but the international nature of social media means that no one is safe. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that everything that I write online is scrutinised by anti-trans extremists looking for excuses to initiate a social media pile on, to have me banned from platforms, or to pass to their friends in the media as the basis for another “trans outrage” article. I note that the right-wing media are already using the Clarkesworld affair as an excuse to portray trans people as aggressive and intolerant.

In view of the fact that we are so often portrayed as monsters in the popular imagination, one thing I would be reluctant to do is write a story with a trans person as a villain. To start with there’s really no need. There are plenty of such stories out there, all of them intended to incite hatred against us, or simply using our alleged status as outsiders, as “freaks”, and as mentally ill. If you need an explanation as to why someone might be a serial killer, making that person trans is still an acceptable and common tactic in many circles.

That said, having a trans person as a villain is probably preferable to yet another transition story. Yes, I know that the one thing that is endlessly fascinating to cis people is the story of a man becoming a woman. (Much less so the other way around. Ask yourselves why that might be so.) But transition stories have been done to death, mostly badly, and frankly they aren’t that interesting to us unless we are currently embarking on that journey. Transition is a relatively short part of any trans person’s life. It is also a deeply traumatic one. That obviously makes for good fiction, but see below for why we shouldn’t go there.

What I want out of fiction is not stories about the transition process, but stories about trans people living their lives. After all, the whole point of transition is to move away from the trauma of being forced to live a lie and get on with being you. The standard trans narrative, as peddled by the media, is that life post-transition is no happier, and probably much worse, than it was before, because no one will ever accept you. The reality is very different. Trans people have all sorts of interesting and successful lives. And even if they are just dull and boring, that’s far better than the media would have you believe. We need more stories where some of the characters just happen to be trans.

However, the main topic that I would avoid as a trans writer is anything to do with the nature of transness itself. We are curious monkeys, we like to have explanations of things. Faced with the reality of trans people, it is entirely natural to ask, “why?” Cis people are not alone in this. Every trans person I have discussed this issue with would love to know why we are the way we are. The inconvenient truth is that no one knows. And the smart folks among us know that we shouldn’t be asking.

When I do trans awareness courses for clients I have to talk about this. There are all sorts of theories as to why people are trans. Some are biological in nature, and some psychological. None of them has any basis in experimental results. The only thing that we know for certain is that no one seems able to cure anyone of being trans. (Charlie Jane’s story was all about someone discovering the means to do so.)

The point I make to my classes is that there might not be a simple answer. In fact there almost certainly isn’t. The processes that make someone assigned male at birth a trans woman might be very different from the processes that make someone assigned female at birth a trans man; and both might be different from why anyone is non-binary, in any of the many ways that people can be non-binary. So picking any single, simple explanation pretty much guarantees that you will be wrong as far as large parts of the trans community is concerned. Speculation about simple explanations therefore does no one any good. And long term, if an explanation is found, Charlie Jane’s story eloquently details the awful consequences that will result for trans people.

Nevertheless, cis people continue to obsess over why people might be trans. The anti-trans brigade, for whom it is an article on faith that trans people cannot “really” exist, are forever on the lookout for an excuse to have us labelled insane once again. Any fiction that purports to explain transness therefor becomes fodder for their speculation.

As for the trans community, many of us would rather not be trans. Life would be so much easier if we were not. Young trans people can spend years agonising over the transition decision (I know I did). Everyone tells you what an awful mistake it will be. Your family, in particular, will probably be desperate for you not to do it. And yet eventually you will reach a point where life is no longer liveable if you don’t transition.

The inevitable result of all this is that trans people are also obsessed with the question of why they are trans. No one can ever know for certain, but many of us will find an explanation that works for us. That explanation may become a core part of our identity. It is something that you can cling to as justification for everything you are doing, in particular the pain that you are told you have caused your nearest and dearest.

But of course there is no explanation. There are lots of theories, but none of them work for everyone, and many of them are contradictory. Everyone’s experience of being trans is different, and consequently any story that discusses the nature of the trans experience will speak directly and personally to some trans people; and will painfully invalidate the experiences of others.

This would not be such a serious problem if trans people were not so much under siege. However, that is where we are. Pretty much the whole of the trans community is feeling very vulnerable right now. Therefore anything that appears to be attacking the validity of people’s experiences is going to cause a huge fuss. That is what appears to have happened in the case of the Clarkesworld story.

There are ways around this. It is safer to experiment in less high-profile venues. It is safer to experiment if you already have a reputation for writing good stories about trans people. If you have plenty of space in a story, you can have a variety of trans characters who have different experiences. But it is all still very risky and the temptation to self-censor is very strong.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, TV Review

It has taken me a while to work through this show on Netflix because I kept getting distracted by other things (Good Omens, Picard, etc.). However, I have now seen the whole thing and I’m glad I did. Like most people of my, ahem, advanced years, I greatly enjoyed the movie despite the cheesy plot because the look of the thing was amazing, and because the Chamberlain was such a sleazy villain.

The new version has all of the same advantages and disadvantages.

So yes, the plot is more of the same cheesy fantasy tropes that we’d laugh at if they turned up in a novel. But there are Henson puppets, Brian and Wendy Froud are back on the creative team to make sure that it all looks amazing, and we have several decades of improvements in puppetry and film technology to make it even better. Plus an all-star cast many of whom grew up on Henson puppet shows and loved the original movie as much as we did.

Much credit should go to whoever at Netflix made the decision to go with a full puppet show. The Henson company had been quietly developing the Dark Crystal property for some time before the TV series became a thing. Their initial proposal to Netflix was to go with CGI because a 10-episode TV series done all with puppets would be fantastically expensive. Netflix had some trials done, and after a quick look said that CGI was out of the question as it didn’t look like Dark Crystal. It was puppets or nothing.

They were absolutely right.

So all of the gang is back together, except many years earlier. Thra is still heavily populated by the Seven Clans of Gefling. The Skeksis have yet to discover how the drain Essence from their subjects. And Mother Aughra is off in a dream world exploring the galaxy, which is how the Skekis got her out of the way so that they could take over.

But wait, I hear you say, we know from the film…

You have all seen the film, haven’t you? Well if you haven’t, the statue of limitation on spoilers has well and truly expired. Tough.

…we know from the film that Jen and Kira are the last two Gelfings. Goodness know how they intend to repopulate Thra with that shallow a gene pool, but there it is. All the others are dead. So this TV series is going to end in tragedy, isn’t it.

Well, yes and no. There may yet be some retconning done. The current 10-episode season ends with a whole bunch of plot points unresolved. They are clearly hoping to get a second season out of it. And there is no guarantee that everyone will die at the end. The Mystics and Mother Aughra have to survive. But this is not a story in which the Chosen One saves the world. That was the story of the movie. This is a story about people rising up against Fascism.

Oh noes! Politics in our fantasy!!!

Yes, of course. There is always politics in fantasy, and those politics generally reflect the time in which the story is written. The plot of the TV series sees the rule of the Skeksis become ever more tyrannical, and the Gelflings arguing among themselves as to the best way to cope with this.

There are, as I noted, seven Gelfling clans. All of them have a matriarchal culture, being ruled over by a Maudra. One of these seven queens is chosen to be the All-Maudra, and that is usually the Maudra of the Vapra clan. The current All-Maudra, played by a very queenly Helena Bonham Carter, has three daughters, and they form a key part of the cast. Seladon, the eldest, is a career politician like her mother. She believes in doing whatever is necessary to keep the Skeksis happy. Tavra, the next eldest, is not expected to inherit the throne and enjoys being a princess with little thought of the problems of politics. Brea, the youngest, buries herself in books, and there she finds things that disturb her kind heart greatly.

Elsewhere we have three other key characters. Rian is a young soldier who is one of the first to discover the extent of the perfidy of the Skeksis. He is made outcast for speaking up. Deet is a Kira-like young woman from the cave-dwelling Grottan Clan who is sent topside by the mystic Sanctuary Tree because bad things are going down. And finally Hup is a brave, if very innocent, young podling who dreams of being a knight.

There is much adventuring to be done, and many plot tokens to be gathered. All seven Gelfling clans need to have a place in the story. The Chamberlain has to be his usual, sleazy self. And The Scientist has a greatly expanded role, made good use of by Mark Hamill. There are also some brand new Skeksis and Mystics.

Much of the plot concerns whether the Gelflings should appease the Skeksis, rise up in open warfare, or find some more covert way of fighting back such as whatever on Thra passes for throwing a ring into a volcano. Seladon’s appeasement strategy doesn’t go well, but then neither does the bravery of Maura Fara of the Stonewood Clan. One of my favourite bits of the season is where Seladon has a Cersei moment to try to bring the rest of the Maudras into line. Rian does much better at that particular task, through cunning use of a Labour Party slogan. If only it had worked as well for Jeremy Corbyn

I won’t be able to think of the Skeksis again without thinking of Boris Johnson and his Cabinet. And now you are infected with that image too.

That’s too much of the plot already, though. If you have access to Netflix you should go and watch it. If not, I’m sure it will be available on disc soon. It might be cheesy, but it is gorgeous to look at.

Having watched it, you should also watch the “making of” documentary which takes you behind the scenes and into the Henson creature shop. Brian and Wendy feature heavily, as does Toby Froud who is now very much not a cute baby. Cheryl and Lisa Henson get lengthy interviews, as do Jason Isaacs (The Emperor) and Simon Pegg (The Chamberlain). It is a thoroughly joyous documentary and reminds me strongly of some of the extras on the original Lord of the Rings films. The attention to detail that the crew put into creating the puppets and their world is just astonishing.

Some Hugo Thoughts

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, Articles, Awards

Well, it is that time of year again. Voting is open, and there is a nominations ballot to be filled out. What have I actually read?

The Novel category is, as usual, full of great stuff. Tim Maughan’s Infinite Detail is my favourite science fiction novel of the year, though Emma Newman’s Atlas Alone, Elizabeth Bear’s Ancestral Night, Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade, Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire, and Max Gladstone’s The Empress of Forever, are also great. Any year with a new Guy Gavriel Kay is a good year, and A Brightness Long Ago will doubtless be representing fantasy on my list, though it has strong competition from Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea, Alix Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and Theodora Goss’s The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. Tamsyn Muir, being a Kiwi with a stunning debut, will definitely be on my list for Gideon the Ninth, whatever genre it is. I also have no idea how to categorise Jeff VanderMeer’s Dead Astronauts, but thankfully this is the Hugos so I don’t have to. Is that more than 6 books? Oh dear…

I have not included The Absolute Book in that list because it has had such limited distribution that I think it is worth asking for an extension on the grounds that someone in the US or UK will come to their senses and publish it in 2020.

I’ve not mentioned Tade Thompson above because his having two novels out makes like difficult. However, Rosewater can be nominated in Series. Also on my list will be The Athena Club by Theodora Goss, Dominion of the Fallen by Aliette de Bodard, Luna by Ian McDonald, Planetfall by Emma Newman and Anno Dracula by Kim Newman.

Novella is a little easier, but still strong. This Is How You Lose The Time War is the stand-out of the year, but The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday runs it close. Paul Cornell’s The Lights Go Out in Lychford will also be on my list, as will P Djèlí Clark’s The Haunting of Tram Car 015 and Rivers Solomon’s The Deep.

For shorter fiction I have no idea, I read very little of it. I will be looking at the Locus Recommended Reading List (out tomorrow) to see what I can check out.

In Related Work I will definitely be nominating Farah Mendlesohn’s excellent The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein. I suspect, however, that AO3 will win again.

I have only read two Graphic Novels this year: Vei and House of Whispers. I enjoyed both of them, and will therefore nominate both. You can do that. The point of nominating is to vote for things that you have read/watched and enjoyed.

I’ve been unimpressed with movies this year and my long-form ballot is going to include some TV series. Good Omens, His Dark Materials, Watchmen, and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance will all be on it. I’ll probably nominate Avengers: Endgame, though it was a lot less impressive than Infinity War. When is Black Panther 2 due?

Nomination of individual TV episodes is a bit difficult for me as most of what I watch comes as story arcs that aren’t easily understood as stand-alone episodes. I guess the Doctor Who fans will do their thing again.

Artists and Editor categories always need a bit of research, but I want to put in a good word for Navah Wolfe (foolishly sacked by Saga) and for Ben Baldwin, who continues to do amazing work for Wizard’s Tower.

I suspect that Our Opinions Are Correct will have a lock on the Fancast category for a while, but I’d like you to take a listen to Breaking the Glass Slipper which I think deserves a place on the ballot.

There are loads of great fan writers out there, and the electorate seems good at finding them. Fanzines, as we saw last year, are rather less common. Obviously this ‘zine is eligible, but something I’d like to see get recognition is Rachel Cordasco’s SF in Translation.

As for fan artists, I don’t know. I try to pay artists these days.

Clearly there’s a lot of research to be done before I can complete a ballot, though of course you don’t have to fill every slot. I’m hoping that other people out there will recommend works as well.

The Lights Go Out in Lychford

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, Book Review, Paul Cornell

Paul Cornell’s Lychford series is one of several very successful novella collections produced by Tor.com. They are also probably the most connected to the real world. The stories are set in a small country town in England. Three women, one of whom is the local vicar, battle against supernatural threats. Now it so happens that Paul and his wife, Caroline, live in a small country town in England. She is the local vicar. So Cornell is very much writing what he knows. I sometimes worry what the people of Fairford in Gloucestershire think about these books, and how many have found themselves as minor characters. But Paul and Caroline have not been hounded out of the town yet, so I guess all is well.

The first of our heroes is Lizzy, the vicar, who is rather dubious about the whole magic thing, but has to admit the evidence of her eyes and knows that it is her duty to protect Lychford from Satan and his servants, by whatever means possible. Judith is the local wise woman. She actually can do magic, and indeed has been protecting the town from evil for years. Not that anyone even knows, let alone gives her credit for it. Cornell has created a marvellous portrait of a lonely, ostracised old woman who has become mean and bitter, but is still devoted to her mission of fighting evil. Finally we have Amber, who owns the local witchcraft shop. She is also the only Black person in the town. At the start of the series she can’t do any magic, but Judith reluctantly agrees to mentor her, because not even a witch lives forever.

This setting allows Cornell to explore themes that are very much of the moment in middle England. Book one, Witches of Lychford, is about the attempt by a major supermarket chain to build a huge store in the town, with potentially disastrous consequences for local businesses. Fortunately for Fairford they have enlisted supernatural help, which gives our heroes an excuse to fight them off. Book two, The Lost Child of Lychford, explores the sadly too familiar issue of child abduction, and is set against a background of Lizzy’s frustration over the commercialisation of Christmas. Book three, A Long Day in Lychford, is about Brexit. In the wake of the referendum, Amber is targeted by local racists. This brings her into conflict with Judith who sees her job as keeping the Wrong Sort of People (fairies, demons, etc.) out of the town. All of which leads us to book four.

The Lights Go Out in Lychford is about fake news. A demon comes to town, promising everyone that their greatest wishes can be fulfilled, and setting neighbour against neighbour. She operates mainly through Facebook, which means it is a while before our heroes even notice what she is up to. The story is told against a backdrop of Judith’s increasing struggles with dementia. Amber is finding her aged tutor increasingly difficult to deal with. And what will happen to the town’s defences if Judith’s son, a local policeman, decides that she’s no longer safe at home and needs to be put into care?

I’ve talked about the entire series here because I want you to see how brilliantly Cornell uses his fantasy setting, and very unusual heroes, to deal with hugely important issues in the real world. I mean, who else writes fantasy books about dementia? He uses it really well too. When we have Judith as the point of view character we know that not everything she is seeing is real. Her mind is playing tricks on her. But so is the demon.

I guess the very Englishness of the books may limit their audience somewhat, but there are over 50 million adults in the county and those of them that are fiction readers should all love the Lychford series. The Lights Go Out in Lychford is, I think, the best of the series so far. The ending is magnificent and heart-rending, and produces the sort of coming together that is the exact antithesis of the “we must all accept and celebrate Brexit now” line that the government is pushing. It sets us up for a fascinating climax to the series in Book five. I guess it will be out, as usual, just before Christmas. I’m looking forward to it.

Title: The Lights Go Out in Lychford
By: Paul Cornell
Publisher: Tor.com
Purchase links:
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Shadows of the Short Days

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson, Book Review

Well, that was grim. I’d hesitate to describe this book at Grimdark because that suggests big mediaeval battles in which everyone dies. Lots of people do die in Shadows of the Short Days, but mainly because they are innocent bystanders. Besides, the book is absolutely not mediaeval fantasy; it is more like a steampunk political thriller.

Let’s start with some background. Shadows of the Short Days is book 1 of the Hrímland saga by Icelandic author, Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson. The book blurb says that it was translated by the author, so presumably it was published first in Icelandic, though there’s nothing to indicate that on the copyright page. The English is perfectly readable, but the text does include a lot of Icelandic (or possibly Old Norse) words, mostly proper nouns. The book begins with a primer on the language explaining how to pronounce letters such as þ and ð. If you are into language, the book is probably worth getting for this alone. If you are not, it will seem a very strange way to start a novel.

The island of Hrímland exists somewhere in the north of the Atlantean Ocean. Not long in the past it was occupied by the Kalmar Commonwealth (Denmark?), ostensibly to protect it during a major European war, but mainly because the island is vital to Kalmar’s naval domination of the northern oceans. Hrímland is now ruthlessly exploited by Kalmar, and its unique non-human races are horribly oppressed. So Shadows of the Short Days is a story of struggle against Fascism. Funny how that seems popular these days.

Unlike The Dark Crystal: The Age of Resistance, however, there is nothing cute about this book. In some ways it is like getting a view inside the minds of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Our heroine, Garún, is a bit like the Scarlet Witch. She’s committed to the cause, but largely unaware of how scary her powers are to ordinary humans. She’s a blendingur, meaning that she’s half-human, half-huldufólk (i.e. half-fae). As the book goes on, she becomes more and more committed to dangerous direct action, and also becomes more and more consumed by hatred.

That would make Sæmundur Magneto, except that he’s not actually the leader of the revolutionaries, and he’s much more like Victor von Doom. He’s smart, very smart, and most definitely the best sorcerer in Hrímland. His tutors at the Royal University of Reykjavík were far too timid, and they expelled him for engaging in forbidden practices, but he’ll show them. He’ll show them all!!!

Both Garún and Sæmundur use their powers to help the revolutionaries, but it doesn’t go well, for anyone. There are people in Reykjavík who are much smarter than idealistic young activists. Some of them are not remotely human.

Which brings me to one of the best parts of the book, the wonderful collection of brings drawn from Norse mythology. In addition to the huldufólk we have a couple of other non-human races. The marbendlar are an aquatic species who would utterly terrify poor Howard Lovecraft if he were to encounter them. Much more terrifying are the náskári, the raven folk. These three-legged winged beings are ferocious warriors who seem to live for fighting. Then there are the Seiðskratti, bird-masked sorcerers in the service of the authorities. For reasons I didn’t notice explained, they use non-binary pronouns. That seems entirely appropriate to me, because seiðr is women’s magic, and it is Óðinn’s use of seiðr that gives Loki an excuse to call the King of the Æsir effeminate in the Lokasenna.

Overall there is much of interest in this book, and I’m delighted to see an Icelandic author being published in English. There’s no way that a British or American writer could have produced something this heavily rooted in Norse mythology without living in the Nordic countries for decades and studying hard. Having said that, this isn’t a book that I can imagine people enjoying reading. It is relentlessly grim, and by the end there’s little likeable, or even redeemable, about either of the main characters.

Content note: this book contains a particularly cruel and gruesome murder of an innocent cat.

Title: Shadows of the Short Days
By: Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson
Publisher: Gollancz
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
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House of Whispers: Volume 1

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, Comic Review, Nalo Hopkinson

Now that Neil Gaiman is Very Hot Property, DC are keen to make as much of the IP he created as possible. There is a Sandman TV series coming, which Gaiman will have some role in, but he doesn’t have much time for writing comics. Therefore we have the Sandman Universe series of comics. They feature the setting and characters that Gaiman created, and he has some level of script control, but the writers are people he has hand-picked to carry on his legacy. I was delighted that one of the people he picked was Nalo Hopkinson.

House of Whispers, then, is Hopkinson’s Sandman stories, and Volume 1 is now available as a graphic novel. It is set initially in The Dreaming, but Dream himself is not there. Lucien is doing his best to manage things in his master’s absence, but something is going badly wrong and he’s not going to get any help from the likes of Cain & Abel.

Enter Hopkinson, and in her train a whole heap of West African mythology, filtered through her native Caribbean lens. The lead character is Erzulie Fréda, the Haitian goddess of love and beauty. As befits someone of her dazzling charm, she has three husbands. She also loves to dance, and to encourage her worshippers to follow in her flirtatious footsteps. She doesn’t particular care about gender as long as people are enjoying themselves. Chief among her worshippers is Alter Boi, whose gender is decidedly mixed.

We also have Uncle Monday, a Florida legend of an alligator god. He was once an escaped slave, but he encountered the alligator worship of the indigenous Seminoles and was able to transform himself into a giant gator.

Villainy, such as there is, is provided by Shakpana, the god of smallpox and other things that might be viral. He’s a smart boy. Having made his name in infectious diseases, he’s keen to make use of the modern world and infect people with other things as well. Whether he’s the main villain here, or if he’s only a pawn of whatever is attacking The Dreaming, is as yet unclear.

Finally we have some actual humans. Latoya, her girlfriend Maggie, and younger sisters, Lumi and Habibi, live in New Orleans. They are among the first victims of Shakpana’s mischief-making, and become key to the story.

Little is resolved by the end of Volume 1. The story is very much a slow burn. For me the main attraction of the book is discovering the many interesting mythological characters that Hopkinson clearly knows well but are a total mystery to clueless white girl here. I’m particularly intrigued by Erzulie because it appears that there’s a whole family of goddesses with the same first name but different second names. Some of them appear in the book.

I’m reminded of how Suyi Davies Okungbowa made use of variations in the Orisha between different ethnic groups in Nigeria for David Mogo: Godhunter. I note also that in ancient Mesopotamia there were different versions of the gods and goddesses worshipped in different cities. The idea of a unified pantheon like that which we were fed for Greek and Roman religion when we were kids seems very much a modern construct now.

The art is not really to my taste, but it is very Sandman so it will doubtless be OK with fans of the series. I’m happy to go with it.

Aside from the mythology, I’m here for the unabashed queerness of the cast. I particularly loved the scene in which the girls finally encounter Erzulie’s worshippers and little Habibi addresses Alter Boi as, “Mister Lady, Sir”. Kids are great. They understand.

Title: House of Whispers
By: Nalo Hopkinson
Publisher: DC Comics
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Menace from Farside

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, Book Review, Ian McDonald

I have been a big fan of Ian McDonald’s Luna series (or Dallas on the Moon, as it is often known). Therefore when I heard that there was novella available in the same setting I had to get hold of a copy. The Menace from Farside is set somewhat earlier that the dramatic events of the novels, but it is very much in the same vein.

The story revolves around the complexities of lunar polygamy. Part of the diplomatic structure of lunar society is the concept of a “ring marriage” where two parents raise children (some of whom may be adopted), but each parent also has a second partner and second home, and perhaps even second family. This is a means of making all of the great families of the Moon interconnected, and hopefully less likely to kill each other. As if Lady Luna herself wasn’t good enough at killing humans already.

Cariad Corcoran is a self-assured teenager who has ruled over her siblings for some time. However, a divorce and re-marriage in the ring has resulted in a new parent, and a new sibling. Sidibe Sisay is tall, fit, elegant, and older than Cariad, and therefore a clear threat to Cariad’s position. There is much teenage angst.

For reasons that never quite made sense to me, Cariad organises an expedition to the site of the original Apollo moon-landing so that the kids can take a selfie there to make a wedding gift for the new parental unit. But this, dear readers, is the Moon. No matter how well planned, such an expedition is fraught with danger. When it has to be planned in secret by a bunch of teenagers, well, you can guess. Teenage pranks on Earth can go badly wrong; teenage pranks on the Moon are almost always deadly.

That’s pretty much all there is to the book. It allows McDonald to do some more exploration of the interesting identities and customs that have grown up in lunar society. One of the kids is a neko; someone who identifies as a cat. It also allows for a certain amount of examination of the nostalgia around the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s famous footprint. It is a fun addition to the Luna series, and especially to the social themes that underlie that series.

Title: The Menace from Farside
By: Ian McDonald
Publisher: Tor.com
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Titans : Season 2

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, TV Review

As you probably know, I am a sucker for superhero stories. However, I am mainly a Marvel reader. I know who the major DC characters are, but there are many others who are a complete mystery to me. I was therefore able to approach the Titans series on Netflix unencumbered with too much knowledge of how things “should” be. While the series made use of a whole bunch of standard Teen Titans characters, it also did its own thing. I was intrigued enough to watch it through, and was especially impressed by the final episode in which the demon, Trigon, who is the main villain of the season, gets inside Dick Grayson’s head and works out all of his frustrations about Batman.

Of course one of the reasons I loved Season 1 is that it featured Doom Patrol in a couple of episodes. I still don’t understand why Netflix won’t show that series in the UK. Its not as if Coagula is part of the TV team.

Season 2 starts with a big let-down in that the Trigon plot is resolved way too easily, and several members of the team then quit. It looks very much like a new creative team has come in and decided to junk everything that went before. Fortunately that is not quite the case. The team are eventually brought back together, primarily through the introduction of Deathstroke, a major villain from the old Teen Titans days back when Dick was still Robin.

Much of the storyline is about what it means to be a hero, and whether people who have done bad things in trying to do good are any better than those who just set out to be bad. That is, of course, classic superhero stuff. It is particularly an issue for the Titans. Raven, being the daughter of Trigon, is half-demon. The script team makes good use of the Deathstroke/Jehrico storyline to set up another angle. And they top that off by introducing Conner, a character who is a clone made from the DNA of Superman and Lex Luthor.

Mostly it works. The script hangs together fairly well, though Dick’s descent into self-pity seems a little overdone. There’s a more or less satisfying ending, as opposed to the massive cliff-hanger of Season 1. One really interesting feature is the introduction of Bruce Wayne as a recurring character. This is definitely Bruce, not Batman. For much of the series he’s a figment of Dick’s imagination, but he does turn up in person eventually. And he’s old. He’s still very sharp, but he’s actually old. I liked that.

If you are watching the series and were totally mystified by the whole Elko Diner thing, don’t worry, it really is not what it seemed. It hasn’t been explained yet, so I’m hoping we get a Season 3, but it is not totally daft. Kevin, who lives in Nevada these days, has been to Elko. He tells me that they do actually have a pretty good donut shop.

Quite why Conner has Krypto as a companion is a mystery to me. However, I have to say that Krypto is by far the best character in the series. Yes, he’s a dog. I’m a cat, I still think he’s great.

Something that’s a bit strange is that the TV series seems to keep shying away from the superhero thing. The characters are all known primarily by their ordinary names, and they often go into battle in their street clothes rather than in costume. Half the point of the costumes is that they are armour, so it all seems a bit silly to me.

If I have a complaint about the series, it is that the lighting is relentlessly dark. Much of the action is deliberately set at night to exaggerate this. I know the script is supposed to be Gloomy and Serious, but it would be nice to be able to see what’s going on.

Set against that is the fact that the team are headquartered in San Francisco. Am I homesick? You bet. Part of me is just waiting or them to pop across the road into the Ferry Building and go shopping for cheese and elk burgers.

Editorial – January 2020

January 31, 2020 Cheryl Morgan 015, Editorial

This issue is a little thinner than usual. That’s not because I have read fewer books, but because not all of them have been suitable for review. Two of the books I read in January have been books that I will be publishing later this year. Others have been history books, because February is LGBT History Month and I have a bunch of talks to give. What I have done is review a couple of TV series. And when putting the ‘zine together I realised that I have forgotten to write a review of Watchmen, so that will be in the next issue.

I will be on the road quite a bit in February, including a trip to Salzburg for an academic conference. Hopefully that will mean that I will get a lot of reading done. There’s a new William Gibson novel out, and I’ll be going to see him when his tour takes him to Bristol on Monday. There’s also a new Maria Turtschaninoff novel out, which I need to get read and reviewed before Swecon in March.

Issue #14

December 30, 2019 Cheryl Morgan Issues

This is the December 2019 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.

Cover: Cloud Island Castle: This issue's cover art is by Ponte Ryuurui.

Dead Astronauts: A review of Jeff VanderMeer's book, Dead Astronauts.

The Starless Sea: A review of Erin Morgenstern's novel, The Starless Sea.

The Dragon Waiting: A review of The Dragon Waiting by John M Ford, which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1984.

Storm of Locusts: A review of Storm of Locusts, the latest book in the Sixth World series from Rebecca Roanhorse

The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl: A review of The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl, an Athena Club novel by Theodora Goss

Incarnations of Cats: First it was a hugely successful stage show, then a widely reviled movie. What went wrong for Cats?

Interview – Kate Macdonald: An interview with Kate Macdonald of Handheld Press.

Alice Payne Rides: A review of Kate Heartfield's novella, Alice Payne Rides.

Remnant: A review of Remnant, by Lania Knight, which is a work of post-apocalyptic feminist science fiction.

The Taiga Syndrome: A review of The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated from Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana; winner of the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novella.

His Dark Materials – Season 1: A look at the first season of the BBC's adaptation of the well-loved Philip Pullman fantasy books.

Editorial – December 2019: Cheryl survives the holidays and looks forward to 2020.

Cover: Cloud Island Castle

December 30, 2019 Cheryl Morgan 014, Art

Once again I have been scouring the internet for artwork that is tagged with permission to use with modification. There is plenty of stuff out there, of course, but it isn’t all good, and crucially much of it won’t work as a magazine (or book) cover. There needs to be space to add text, and an awful lot of the art you can find online doesn’t have that.

However, I have once again been fortunate to find something that does work. This is by Ponte Ryuurui. You can find the original post for the art here. As I once again had to crop quite a bit out of it, I’m posting the whole thing below.

Dead Astronauts

December 30, 2019 Cheryl Morgan 014, Book Review, Jeff VanderMeer

The new book from Jeff VanderMeer is set in the same universe as his novel, Borne.

I used two words very carefully there: “book” and “universe”.

In Borne one of the main characters, Rachel, discovers a courtyard in the city where three bodies are half-buried in the dirt. They look like astronauts as they are wearing all-encompassing white suits. Inside the suits are only skeletons.

Rachel soon realises that they are in fact wearing biohazard suits, which is entirely understandable given that the city in which Borne is set is overrun by escaped, experimental biotech. Borne himself is the most obvious example of that. But the label, “Dead Astronauts” stuck. VanderMeer talks about why in this interview from Weird Fiction Review (which is also where I found the magnificent art by Kayla Harren that I have included here).

It just came to me in a flash and then I had to decide if they were really astronauts and what people thinking they were astronauts meant in terms of the story — in a sense, people in the City thinking they’re astronauts is a kind of hope about the future or perhaps about the past. But I knew it was a potent image and had some symbolism and so I felt it deserved to enter the story further.

The book, Dead Astronauts, is the result of that exploration. Borne’s world, as I noted, is one of biotech run amok. In the past the city was run by The Company, a monopolistic organisation that employed and used pretty much everyone. But The Company died some time ago. All that is left are its labs, a few biotech geniuses, and the more successful of its creations. The Astronauts, in their role of symbols of hope, have taken it upon themselves to fight against The Company and put the world to rights.

They are not astronauts, of course. Except that one of them is. Grayson, a black woman, is the sole survivor of a doomed Moon colony who returned to Earth after all her colleagues had died. Grayson is also the only one of the Astronauts who is fully human.

Chen, though he was made to be human, is a thing created by The Company. He is perhaps a clone. Maybe there was once a human ur-Chen. But now there is perhaps what Victor Frankenstein would have created had he been able to make copies of Igor at will.

Moss is not human, and never has been. Moss is, well, moss. But Moss is able to take on bodily forms. For convenience that form is human. In this story that human is female, though we are told that has not always been the case. Moss is who Moss wants to be at the time.

These three, then, take it upon themselves to become crusaders against the evil that is The Company. But they are not just fighting here. One of Moss’s strange powers is the ability to link alternate realities. This is not the first time that the Astronauts have fought The Company. There is a multiverse out there, and the fight has taken the Astronauts to many worlds. In all their previous encounters with The Company, the Astronauts have lost.

Remember my opening remark with its carefully chosen words? I said that Dead Astronauts takes place in the same universe as Borne. Which means that somewhere in the city there is a courtyard where three dead astronauts are half-buried in the soil.

OK, so that’s a bit of a spoiler, but it is in the title of the book. The Astronauts are dead. They lost.

We find this out for certain about half way through the book, and from then on things get very weird. Which is why I described Dead Astronauts as a book rather than a novel. Obviously it is a novel — it says so on the cover — but it is a novel quite unlike anything that you, dear reader, might be used to. This is VanderMeer at his most experimental. Think back to City of Saints and Madmen, with its collection of short fiction and bizarre appendices. Some of the remaining sections of the book are more poetry than prose. Indeed, this is one of the few books where I really want to listen to the audiobook, to feel the text wash over me. Simply reading it seems somehow inadequate.

Much of the second half of the book is told from the point of view of the non-human inhabitants of the world. These tend to be company creations because they have sufficient cognitive ability to tell their stories, but they have not lost contact with their animal natures, nor with their less manufactured relatives.

The rest of the world is pretty angry with the humans. They have good cause.

I was a little confused for a while after finishing the book. What the heck was the point of all that, brilliantly evocative though it was? Thankfully this review by Alison Sperling in the LA Review of Books reminded me that science fiction is not about the future, it is about the Now.

We are living in a time of runaway climate change. If nothing changes, we may lose between 30% and 50% of all animal species to extinction by 2050. Some of us are still trying to fight The Company, but it is quite possible that we have already lost. Dead Astronauts is a book that faces that possibility head on and asks, “What the fuck were you thinking?”

There is no sane answer to that.

Title: Dead Astronauts
By: Jeff VanderMeer
Publisher: MCD
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Vei – Volume 1

December 30, 2019 Cheryl Morgan Archive, Comic Review, Karl Johnsson, Sara B. Elfgren

I don’t often review graphic novels here, because I’m not sure I’m competent to do so. This one, however, is written by my Swedish friend, Sara B. Elfgren, and is gorgeously illustrated by Karl Johnsson. It is newly available in English translation, and comes with an enthusiastic blub from Mike Carey who knows far more about graphic novels than I do.

The story of Vei is based on Norse myth, but it is very much a new thing, not simply a re-telling of well-known tales. I’m not exactly surprised that the Swedes want to get in on the act, seeing as how Americans have taken their stories in a very wild direction.

Our tale begins with a young Viking chief called Eidyr taking his longship crew to Jotunheim where he intends to win fame and fortune. Close to shore the crew spot a body in the water. It is a young woman called Vei who claims to be part of a tribe of human-like people who serve the Jotun.

Very mild spoiler: the Vikings mostly don’t last very long. Only Dal, Prince Eidyr’s slave bodyguard, has enough wit and martial ability to survive Jotunheim. He’s also the only one smart enough to trust the local rather than want to kill her for superstitious reasons. Vei, it turns out, is a better warrior than any of them.

There is a reason for that, and a reason why she is found in the sea. This is a story about the Jotun, and their endless war against the Æsir. Vei and Dal are but pawns in that war. Odin, as you might expect, is a cunning, duplicitous bastard. The Jotun seem better people, but they are giants, and they are very much not human. (I’d say someone has been listening to my lecture from Graz, except that this must have been drawn long before last December.)

The portrayal of the Æsir is particularly interesting, especially given that the creators are Swedish. Thor looks more like Obelix than Chris Hemsworth, and Freyja isn’t the lithe beauty we have come to expect (though she does have her cat chariot). Then there is Loki, and Loki is everything we have come to expect: cunning, alluring, and very gender-fluid.

I’m really looking forward to volume 2, partly because I want to find out what Loki is up to, and partly because I want to see more of Princess Sól, the Jotun queen’s sulky teenage daughter, who is adding a much more personal dimension to an otherwise mythic tale.

Title: Vei: Volme 1
By: Sara B. Elfgren & Karl Johnsson
Publisher: Insight Editions
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Starless Sea

December 30, 2019 Cheryl Morgan 014, Book Review, Erin Morgenstern

Although I had the new Erin Morgenstern book before last issue, I elected not to try to read it in time. That’s partly because it is long so I wasn’t sure I’d get it finished. But also I didn’t want two books about doors and keys in the same issue. The Starless Sea and The Ten Thousand Doors of January both feature keys on the cover. Both feature heroes striving to keep doors to another world open while enemies try to close them forever. Thankfully there the similarities end.

When I reviewed The Night Circus my take-away was that Morgenstern was brilliant at description and atmosphere, but less good at character and plot. It has been seven years since her last book, and she has definitely learned a lot in the meantime. The atmosphere is still there, the characters are a lot more interesting (though some aren’t human which complicates matters), and there is a plot. More about that later, but first, seven years? Why?

I saw Morgenstern on her book tour which, thankfully, came through Bath. She talked a lot about process during the event. Some writers plot everything out beforehand. Some writers start the story and let the characters guide them. Morgenstern says that both methods sound much too organised for her. What she does is start writing scenes and wait until they coalesce into a story.

There is a pirate in the basement.

The results of this are not always easy for the reader, but if you have patience the end results are worth it. Morgenstern has been very open about the fact that she’s asking her readers to do a lot of work here, and she is. The line above is the opening line of the book. It begins a story about a pirate who is in prison awaiting execution, and a girl who comes to his rescue. There are many such stories scattered through the book. Their significance may not become clear for a hundred pages or more, but you get there in the end.

On page 268 we learn how one of the major characters deliberately bumped into a waitress, spilling a tray of drinks and thus saving the life of another major character whose order had been poisoned. That event is described, in a throwaway line and as an accident, on page 45. Morgenstern expects us to remember. You don’t have to pay attention as much as you do when reading Gene Wolfe, but you do need to stay sharp.

This has some effect on the pace of the book. With The Ten Thousand Doors of January we switch between viewpoints as Alix Harrow takes us through two stories that will meet up eventually. This is a classic technique. You keep reading because both stories have momentum. With The Starless Sea the main story is intercut with one-off tales, or chapters of a seemingly unrelated story that ends fairly quickly. You have to trust that it will all make sense eventually. And it does. By around halfway the plot gathers momentum and the switches are now between different viewpoint characters, just as we have come to expect. If you are finding the book slow, hang in there. It gets faster.

So there is a plot. Here it is. Zachary Ezra Rawlins — always Zarchary, never Zack — is the only son of a fortune teller, Madame Love Rawlins. As a boy he once saw a painting of a door on the wall of an alleyway. It looked just like the sort of door that would lead to a mysterious magical kingdom, but Zachary was a sensible boy and he did not try to open it. The next time he passed that way, the door had been painted over.

Years later, Zachary finds a mysterious book in his university library. It has no author listed, and when he tries to check it out the librarian can’t find it in the catalogue. He takes it back to his room to read, and in it he finds a story about a young boy who finds a mysterious painted door on an alley wall.

Being now the curious sort, Zachary investigates, and so he finally finds his way to The Starless Sea and its Harbor. But what he finds is far from the idyllic magical realm that the book, Sweet Sorrows, describes. There have been changes. The Starless Sea is a world of story, and stories never stay the same for long.

In the meantime there is the story of Zachary Ezra Smith to unfold. Will he manage to avoid the mysterious secret society that wants him dead? Will he manage to leave The Starless Sea and return to his friends and family? Will he be changed if he does?

Along the way, the two books this reminded me of most were The Magus by John Fowles and Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. It is not either of those things, but there are times when it very easily could have been.

Zachary’s tale is the story that most people will read, and it is a good story. It also has gay stuff in it, which will make a lot of you happy. But it is not all that there is to the book.

Reading a novel, he supposes, is like playing a game where all the choices have been made for you ahead of time by someone who is much better at this particular game.

That’s from page 16, and it sets out early on Morgenstern’s philosophy of fiction. It is the philosophy of the role-playing generation, of the fan-fic generation. Those who want stories to stay the same, to stick to canon, are closing off doors. Morgenstern wants to encourage us to keep them open.

This is not where our story ends, he writes. This is only where it changes.

Title: The Starless Sea
By: Erin Morgenstern
Publisher: Harvill Secker
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Dragon Waiting

December 30, 2019 Cheryl Morgan 014, Book Review, John M Ford

Back in November, SF&F Twitter was all abuzz with the news that Beth Meacham of Tor had done a deal with the estate of the late John M Ford. Many of you could have been forgiven for saying, “who?”, and wondering why the likes of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Neil Gaiman and Roz Kaveney were so excited. Ford is most famous for a book called The Dragon Waiting, which won the World Fantasy Award in 1984. For historical context, that’s the year before Neuromancer won the Hugo. Someone born in that year would be in their mid-thirties now.

Ford died in 2006. Click through on the link above for the full story of how his literary estate became lost, and how it was recovered. It is a great story in itself, and also gives a real sense of how loved Ford was by his peers.

For additional context, the other novels on the World Fantasy short list that year included George Martin’s Armageddon Rag, Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, and RA McEvoy’s Tea With the Black Dragon (the only cross-over with the Hugo, which was won by David Brin’s Startide Rising). That’s excellent company to be in.

This is also long before Emerald City. I wasn’t reading a huge amount of SF&F in ’84, and was generally only up to date when Marc Gascoigne thrust a book in my face and told me to read it. So despite Roz keeping telling me that Ford was the best of us, I’d never actually read anything by him. But I did have a copy of The Dragon Waiting, so I thought I would give it a look over to see what all the fuss was about. And, of course, to see if the Suck Fairy had visited the poor book.

The opening chapters introduce us to three of our major characters. Hywel Peredur is a young Welsh boy who turns out to have a talent for magic and goes off to Byzantium to learn how to use it properly. Dimitrios Ducas is the son of a Byzantine nobleman who is murdered on the orders of the Emperor for that classic Roman crime of becoming too popular with his soldiers and the people he is governing. Cynthia Ricci is the daughter and heir of the best doctor in Florence. Her father’s patients include Lorenzo di Medici himself, but Vittorio Ricci has become a victim of the plotting of Duke Sforza of Milan.

So far, so conventional, perhaps. Good conventional. We have three characters brilliantly drawn in separate short stories, each one given an encounter that will be a defining feature of their lives. But not all is as it seems. After all, Hywel can actually do magic. The province that Dimi’s father governs for the Emperor of Byzantium is called Gaul. And Duke Sforza is a vampire.

What Ford gives us is a complex and strange alternate history. He has the depth of historical research that you might expect from Guy Gavriel Kay; the devious political scheming of Dorothy Dunnett; and the talent for weaving in historical characters that Kim Newman would later use to such great effect in Anno Dracula.

All of this is eventually put to use to tell the story of the latter part of the Wars of the Roses. Edward IV is on the throne. George, Duke of Clarence, has been politically stupid once too often. Richard of Gloucester is doing his best to serve his eldest brother by keeping the Scots at bay. Hywel, by now a well-known and trusted advisor of the Yorkists, is a friend to the mother of this brood, Cicely Neville. Dimi is now a soldier of fortune. As for Cynthia, a competent surgeon is always in great demand; as is our fourth major character, the artillery engineer, Gregory von Bayern. But the tides of history are flowing, driven, as always, by Byzantine scheming. If the previous sections of the book have told us anything, it is that the efforts of individuals to stand against those tides are generally futile, and often fatal.

One of the things that stood out to me about the book is how it is about propaganda. The Byzantine plot to put their man on the throne of England has two main thrusts. One is the assassination of key figures. The other is the spread of unfavourable stories about the Yorkists to turn the population against them. There’s also some very devious manipulation to create incidents that will give credence to those stories. Fake news is nothing new.

The Suck Fairy, I’m pleased to say, has given this book a very light touch. Cynthia, as one of the main characters, has a very important role to play and a great deal of agency. There is brief mention of a teenage gay relationship towards the end of the book, and this is taken as entirely natural and commonplace by the middle-aged knights discussing it. If I have one regret it is that the worship of Cybele is still important to the Byzantines and there is no mention of the Galli. There could easily have been trans people in the book, but there weren’t.

Oh, did I forget to mention that in the world of the book Christianity is still a minor cult among the many that were popular in Rome? Several of the knights, including Dimi, are proud devotees of Mithras, while Cynthia follows the path of Athena.

All in all, I was very impressed. The book is a little episodic because it has a lot of time to cover, but most readers will be OK with that. I found the description of the battle of Bosworth at the end a little hard to follow. However, these are minor complaints. From next year Tor will be producing new editions of some of Ford’s novels, starting with The Dragon Waiting. They might be old, but if they are all like this one then they are very well worth checking out.

“As Vortigern, king of the Britons, was sitting upon the bank of the drained pond, the two dragons, one of which was white, the other red, came forth, and approaching one another, began a terrible fight, and cast forth fire with their breath.” — from “The Prophecy of Merlin” in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain.

Title: The Dragon Waiting
By: John M Ford
Publisher: Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Unravelling

December 30, 2019 Cheryl Morgan Archive, Book Review, Karen Lord

There are some books that I can race through very quickly and write reviews of immediately. There are others where I have to think a lot while reading them and then let those thoughts marinate for a while before saying anything. Books by Karen Lord tend to be in the latter category.

Let’s do the easy bits first. Ostensibly Unravelling is a sequel to Redemption in Indigo. Paama does make a few brief appearances in it. But mainly this is a book about her sons: Yao and Ajit, or Chance and Trickster as they are sometimes known.

The book is also a murder mystery. It stars Miranda Ecouvo, a brilliant lawyer in a city somewhere. As the story opens, Miranda has just witnessed the end of a very high-profile case. She has finally seen the notorious serial killer, Walther Grey, put behind bars. But Miranda is not entirely convinced that the case is fully solved. She has a sneaking suspicion that Grey did not act alone. He just didn’t seem capable of committing those crimes by himself. And if he did have an accomplice, that person must be still at large.

Musing over these issues, Miranda steps into a road to cross it, and is run down by a bus.

Or is she? As far as Miranda is concerned, she was pulled out of the path of the bus by a young man who calls himself Chance. She immediately realises that he’s some sort of supernatural being, and together they begin to work on the case.

So what really happened to Miranda? Is she dead? Is she lying unconscious in a hospital bed and dreaming all of this? Or is she really still walking around and working? Oh, and was the accident, if it happened, actually an accident, or has someone decided that Miranda needs to be taken out?

One of the reasons that we don’t know is the way in which Chance and his brother set about helping Miranda solve her case. They can take her back in time to observe Grey’s victims. They can’t go everywhere in time, which suggests they are being opposed. But they can sometimes change things. Can you say, “time war”?

So what is this book? Well partly it is a fantasy novel featuring supernatural beings. We may remember that Redemption in Indigo was based, in part on Senegalese folk tales. And one character is called Trickster and sometimes takes the form of a spider. But one of the other supernatural beings in the story is the Archangel Uriel.

Partly the book is about class. Miranda and her colleagues are Freemen of the city. They own property there. They have rights. Grey’s victims were itinerant workers who have almost no rights. Investigating the case makes Miranda painfully aware of her privilege.

And partly this is a book about gender. People who get away with murder are often powerful men. Miranda’s boss, Khabir, is also a powerful man. He has access to communities within the city that are closed to her. But will he be prepared to risk his social position by exposing a member of his elite group?

By now you will hopefully have got the idea that Unravelling is a very complicated book, and one that will reward careful reading. I would expect nothing less from Karen.

For me, what I want to do most right now is sit down with Karen over a glass or two of rum and discuss the place of labyrinths in African & Caribbean mythology.

Title: Unravelling
By: Karen Lord
Publisher: Daw
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

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