Author: Cheryl Morgan

Cheryl Morgan is the editor of Salon Futura and owner of its publisher, Wizard's Tower Press. She is also non-fiction editor for Clarkesworld Magazine. Cheryl has won three Hugo Awards: Best Fanzine in 2004 for Emerald City, Best Fan Writer in 2009 and Best Semiprozine for Clarkesworld in 2010. She is a director of San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions and of Association for the Recognition of Excellence in SF & F Translation. She lives near Bath in the UK.

The Salt Oracle

074, Book Review, Lorraine Wilson

As you may remember, I loved Lorraine Wilson’s We Are All Ghosts in the Forest. When I head that she had written a sequel I was very keen to get hold of a copy. Solaris had a launch event at World Fantasy, and The Salt Oracle was one of the books featured. Naturally I bought a copy.

I should note that this is not a sequel in the traditional sense. Katerina does not feature in the story save as an un-named Estonian witch who has developed a potential cure for ghost infection. It is, however, a story set in the same world, one in which civilization has collapsed and the world is haunted by the deadly ghosts of the internet.

Much to my delight, the story is set in Åland. The Oracle of the title is a young Russian girl who has a talent for attracting ghosts and thereby somehow being able to tap into electronic communications. With appropriate prompts, she can be made to babble streams of data from weather survey buoys scattered about the Baltic. This is enormously useful in a world in which weather forecasting has become a black art, and even compasses can no longer be relied upon. But attracting ghosts is a dangerous business. After an unfortunate event in Helsinki, in which many people died, the Oracle and her attendant academics has been exiled to a rig anchored in the Åland Islands where, it is hoped, her talents can be tapped more safely.

Wilson says in her Afterword that the book is her attempt at writing Dark Academia. That’s not a sub-genre that I am familiar with and, beyond a passing interest in the fashion movement that accompanies it, I have little interest in it. However, The Salt Oracle appears to be Dark Academia without the traditional tropes. That is, it is set in an academic institution, with academics being nasty to each other, but it is not fantasy, and nor is it properly romance.

What can be said about the book is that it is very much informed by what happens to academic research when the subject of that research is a) very valuable to commercial interests; and b) the subject of fear and suspicion among the general population. It is also, as seems rather fashionable these days, something of a meditation on Le Guin’s famous story, “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas”.

The Oracle was a child when her powers were discovered. She was taken from her parents by bandits and sold, presumably to the University of Helsinki. Her weather forecasting abilities are of considerable commercial value, and the powerful shipping magnates of Gdansk would love to have her under their control. There is a Finnish terrorist organization called the Survivors, founded by people who did survive the Helsinki incident, who are determined to kill her. And of course everyone is terrified of ghosts so the Survivors have a lot of sympathy. The Oracle needs a 24/7 paramilitary guard. Set against all this, the needs and even rights of one mentally unstable girl are far down the list of priorities.

Bellwether College, so named for its ability to attract ghosts, has three main academic departments. The most powerful is Metrology, headed by the ambitious control freak, Gabrielle. Next is Oceanography, headed by the laconic Finn, Uoti. Their job is mainly to study fish stocks, which have been greatly depleted since the Crash. Finally there is a small department who are there to study the ghosts. It is a small group: just Boudain Caron and his assistant, Auli Fraser. It is Auli, with Finnish lesbian mothers and presumably a now absent Scottish father, who is the focus of our story.

Auli, unusually at Bellwether, is an academic with a conscience. That’s hardly a problem when she is a junior in the most junior department. But, when Boudain is found dead in mysterious circumstances, Auli finds herself promoted to the exulted rank of Principal Investigator and thereby privy to some of Bellwether’s darkest secrets.

The Salt Oracle, then, is a murder mystery. As such is has a plentiful collection of red herrings, people with dark pasts, people having secret affairs, and an all round air of mutual suspicion. I’m not an expert on crime, but Wilson seems to manage the job well enough to keep me intrigued.

The book is also a story of a love affair. In the past, Auli had a relationship with Raphaël Giroux, the Head of Security for Bellwether. He proposed to her, sort of, but she had been warned by another female academic that he was not to be trusted beyond a casual fling, so she tuned him down. As such the book starts at the half-way point of a traditional romance plot. Our hero and heroine have already had their falling out, and must find their way back to each other before there can be a happy ending.

Most of all, however, The Salt Oracle is a story about the sea. Wilson, like me, is an oceanographer by academic profession. Unlike me she lasted a lot longer in academia, and probably spent a lot longer actually at sea. She understands its dangers well. And if you put something that attracts ghosts on a rig in the middle of the sea, even a relatively shallow and placid millpond like the Baltic, the sea will deliver up ghosts that mariners know only too well.

I should note also that the college doctor, Niki, is a non-binary person who has fled Poland because of the anti-queer attitudes there. They get accidentally misgendered a couple of times in the copy I have. I’m pretty certain that’s just typos, and I hope that can be fixed, at least in the ebook, and hopefully in a second printing.

As to the success of the book, it has something of the feel of a middle book in a trilogy. We don’t learn a lot more about the nature of the post-Crash world, or internet ghosts in general. I’m hoping that Wilson has a third book planned that develops that side of the story more fully. In the meantime, The Salt Oracle does well enough with its murder and romance plots to make a satisfying book on its own. You should probably read We Are All Ghosts in the Forest first to get a full sense of the world, but it is not essential.

I should also note that the number of SF&F books set in Åland is vanishingly small, and if Wilson doesn’t get an invitation to Åcon sometime soon I shall have words with my Finnish friends.

book cover
Title: The Salt Oracle
By: Lorraine Wilson
Publisher: Solaris
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

What Stalks the Deep

074, Book Review, T Kingfisher

The latest installment in T. Kingfisher’s Sworn Soldier novella series sees Alex Easton and Angus travel to the USA. This, inevitably, is cause for hilarity. Gallacia, the small, European country whence Alex hails, could not be more un-American. Its people are quiet and reserved, its landscape mountainous and forbidding. No one would ever dream of shaking anyone else by the hand, let alone doing so with gusto.

Equally, the USA is profoundly un-Gallacian. Alex elects to keep kan status as a Sworn Soldier secret because goodness only knows what the Americans would make of that. Thankfully ka passes for male and does not have to try to explain. It also means that Kingfisher doesn’t have to delve to deeply into social attitudes to gender, which might be interesting to me, but would probably detract from the main narrative.

Angus, being a dour Scotsman, does not hold with Americans at all, but loyally tags along to keep his employer out of trouble and/or social embarrassment.

Thus to Boston Alex must go. Ka has received a telegram from kan old friend, Dr James Denton, with whom ka faced the horrors of the house of the Ushers in What Moves the Dead. Denton is clearly in need of urgent help, and what is left unsaid suggests that supernatural horrors are the source of his troubles.

So it transpires. Denton has come into the ownership of an abandoned coal mine in Virginia. His young cousin, Oscar, has taken it upon himself to investigate the property and see if it can be re-opened profitably. But Oscar has disappeared and his letters back to Denton are sufficiently lurid to suggest that he might have been reading fiction by that Lovecraft fellow.

Alex, Angus and Denton head off to Virginia, accompanied by Denton’s friend, John Ingold. He’s a great character. He’s part native by birth, so has equally acerbic views of Americans to Easton, but for very different reasons. He is also a chemist, and thus fond of experiments that are prone to explode spectacularly. You need a chemist if you are going to explore a coal mine, because it can be full of all sorts of gases that you can’t see, and are reliably deadly in a variety of horrific ways.

Once at the mine, things evolve towards a conclusion, but probably not in the way you might anticipate. Firstly the very lovely UK cover of the book has absolutely nothing to do with the story. The US cover is more appropriate, though looks like it would be more at home on a Jeff VanderMeer book.

Alex turns out to be quite claustrophobic, but being the only actual military person in the party ka obviously cannot show weakness amongst civilians. And there is a definite air of horror about the proceedings. But the story has a twist that takes it in a very science-fictional direction. That is, if you think about it, quite in keeping with the Lovecraftian nature of the story, but possibly not what you would expect having read the two previous books in the series.

Personally I love these books. I am, of course, a sucker for stories with a trans hero. And Kingfisher writes very well. Quite what her fans will make of this one remains to be seen, but I hope they love it too because I want more Alex Easton stories in this world.

book cover
Title: What Stalks the Deep
By: T Kingfisher
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

A Mouthful of Dust

074, Book Review, Nghi Vo

It is the task of the clerics of the Singing Hills to collect stories. That, you might think, is not particularly horrible or dangerous. But not every story has a happy ending, and not everyone wants their story to be told.

The town of Baolin is famous for three things. It is famous for its soil, in which fabulous melons are grown. It is famous for a pork dish whose recipe is a closely guarded secret. And it is famous for a terrible famine which afflicted the town within living memory, and which many of the townsfolk did not survive. And so Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant are sent to Baolin to collect the stories of the survivors, if they are prepared to tell them.

Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills novellas are, I suppose, technically horror, given that they deal primarily with the doings of demons. Then again, Chinese folklore is full of stories about demons. I suspect that there isn’t much else to talk about. Famine demons are, of course, particularly terrible, both for the death they spread in their wake, and for the terrible things that people will do to survive them.

A Mouthful of Dust is named for the cookies that were made by the mason’s guild in Baolin to help feed the townsfolk during the famine. They are made of brick dust rather than flour, with just a sprinkling of salt on top to give the mouth something to savour. They are by no means the most terrible things that the people of Baolin ate in those awful times.

Cleric Chih, being insatiably curious, is ideally suited to being a Singing Hills monk. But their curiosity can also get them into trouble. That is partly because there are those who survived the famine who do not want their stories told. And it is partly because there are those who did not survive who want revenge.

As with the other tales in the series, this latest installment is small but perfectly formed. It is, perhaps, not a tale for anyone with a queasy stomach, but it is a reminder of what horrors result from famine. Despite our obvious wealth, there are parts of our planet where famine is still commonplace, and with a worsening climate such things will only become more common. Vo has given us a timely reminder that famine demons are to be feared, not to be wished upon ourselves.

book cover
Title: A Mouthful of Dust
By: Nghi Vo
Publisher: Tor Dot Com
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Patriarchy Inc.

074, Book Review, Cordelia Fine, Feminism

If you remember my report on the Hay Literary Festival you will know that I saw Cordelia Fine being interviewed about her latest book, Patriarchy Inc.. Fine is one of my favourite feminist writers, and this book looked to engage directly with my work because it is all about the DEI industry. I have finally got around to reading it.

Patriarchy Inc. is, sadly, a book that suffers from terrible timing. When it was written, the diversity industry was in full flow. Fine comments at one point that it was predicted to be worth $24.4 billion by 2030. But by the time it was published DEI was already coming under attack from the Tangerine Tyrant in the White House. As I write this, he has declared that practicing DEI is a breach of human rights, presumably the right to hate and oppress anyone who is not white, straight, able-bodied, male and nominally Christian.

Consequently Fine’s book comes across as aiming a peashooter at a target that is getting the full force of an assault rifle to the face.

Whether that matters or not is a different question, because the main thrust of Fine’s argument is that DEI hasn’t worked, does not work, and will probably never work. And that is something that should concern all of us who still believe in promoting equality.

Much of the book is devoted to explaining how attempts to promote diversity, equality and inclusion in the workplace have been misguided. Some of this is fairly obvious. Equality programmes that tell women that they are not behaving in the right way in the work environment, or that they need ‘fixing’ in some way, are essentially victim blaming.

Equally initiatives to ‘fix’ men won’t work if they are superficial and don’t address the underlying issues. For example, giving men the right to maternity leave changes nothing if the men are all afraid to take it in case doing so damages their careers.

Sometimes the problem is more subtle. Some DEI promoters have identified that women prefer to work with female mentors. They are much less likely to suffer casual sexism, or sexual harassment, that way. But if the workplace environment already privileges men over women then anyone with a female mentor will do less well than someone with a male mentor, and soon people start drawing the erroneous conclusion that women make bad mentors.

Fine also holds that some diversity training is counter-productive. Training that tells white, middle-class people that they all suffer from unconscious bias and need to change their bad behaviour is probably not going to go down well with a lot of the class.

The real problem, however, is money. The modern work environment in Western countries is geared to produce exactly one thing, regardless of what industry you are in. It is a vehicle for producing shareholder value. Nothing else matters. This is disastrous for a whole number of reasons, but from a DEI point of view it means that those at the top of the tree, who are overwhelmingly white men, and who are incentivised to produce shareholder value by being paid in stock, have no interest in the wellbeing of their employees or the long term future of the company for which they work. They just want to squeeze as much value out of it as possible and then move on to the next victim.

Along the way we are treated to some classic examples of Fine’s acerbic wit. She reserves her most pointed shots for evolutionary psychologists, which makes me very happy. She also managed to dig up this fabulous quote:

No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

That’s from a little book called An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes if the Wealth of Nations, by a fellow called Adam Smith. You may have heard of it.

Fine has a bunch of suggestions in the final chapter for how we can effect real change in society and the workplace. But the real problem is that our society is obsessed with gender differences, and this obsession is baked into children at a very early age. We (by which I mean Western society, because folks in the parts of the world we colonized did not always share our weird social ideas) have been fighting this gender war at least since the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire. Stopping that happening is going to take more than a few government initiatives and workplace training programmes.

book cover
Title: Patriarchy Inc.
By: Cordelia Fine
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

BristolCon 2025

074, Convention Report

Having an annual convention in the same hotel each year, run by roughly the same group of people each time, has to be the gold standard for science fiction conventions. Over time it should (if the committee and any good) develop into a well-oiled machine that runs along without any major issues. BristolCon has reached that state of convention Nirvana.

That doesn’t mean that things don’t change. Since it started, the hotel has added extra function space. The con has changed from a one-day to a two-day event. And this year they experimented with a different layout. It all seemed to work well.

Normally at BristolCon I do a launch for the new Green Man book. However, this year Juliet had to be in London on the Saturday, and we had a launch event scheduled for World Fantasy the following weekend, so we just did a soft launch for the new books. That is, they were available, but there was no associated party.

I did two programme items. One was a discussion on SF as Activism, which I think went very well. For the other I moderated a discussion on why our fiction should have more than two genders, with an entire panel of people who were at least trans-adjacent if not openly trans. That might have been a bit more lively, but again seemed to go OK.

Despite, or possibly because of, the new location, the Dealers’ Room went very well, at least for me. BristolCon traditionally has very good programming, so the room tends to be a bit of a desert except for turn-around time (the last 10 minutes of each hour). Some people suggested that the con should schedule a lunch break to give people time to visit the Dealers, but I suspect that folks would head out of the hotel if that happened because the hotel lunch options are not great.

Anyway, I sold a lot. I was very pleased.

The exciting news, at least from my point of view, came at Closing Ceremonies. Apparently I am going to be a Guest of Honour at the convention next year. It will be my first time being a GoH in the UK, and I’m delighted that it will be for a convention that I helped found. As to what I will be doing, I don’t know right now. I guess I won’t be able to be in the Dealers’ Room nearly as much. I get the impression that GoHs are expected to participate in the Saturday night karaoke, but I can’t see that happening. If I try to sing someone is likely to call the police to report a song being murdered. But there are many other things that I could be doing.

Watch this space. BristolCon next year will be fun.

World Fantasy 2025

074, Convention Report

Well, here we are again, the good old Brighton Metropole. I was at the last World Fantasy held there, at which Steve Jones contrived to upset as many people as he possibly could and the convention was rescued by the then nascent Redcloaks corps. Given that Jones is now persona non grata at World Fantasy, and FantasyCon has gone from strength to strength, I think we probably have a net win from that event.

I should note that no one in their right minds would choose to hold a convention in the Brighton Metropole. It is an accessibility nightmare, albeit slightly improved on last time. The space is really badly organized. And the hotel itself is big and poorly managed so getting the staff to do anything sensible is really hard.

I’m not casting aspersions on the convention committee here. Their original plan was to use the Birmingham Metropole, which ran a successful Eastercon a couple of years ago, and will be the Eastercon venue again next year. But their booking was gazumped and they had to find a new venue. At that point they ran into the perennial rightsizing problem. There are very few hotels of a suitable size for a World Fantasy in the UK, and so we ended up in Brighton again.

Ah well, at least I got a pile of Hilton points out of it.

I can’t say much about the programming because I had to be in the Dealers’ Room most of the time. I did have one panel, where I moderated a discussion on fantasy in translation with two Romanians and a Russian. It went the way these conversations normally do: we all agreed that translation was important and valuable, but we despaired of encouraging people to buy it, and had no idea how to finance it. With the prospect of the major publishers using AI to do their translations from now on, things are likely to get much worse.

One thing I noticed during the panel was that the soundproofing between rooms was very poor. There was a bigger programme room backing on to ours, and they were Very Loud. But, as it turned out, we got off lightly. Here’s Andrew Knighton from the BFS blog talking about his reading:

But then the problems started. First, the room was locked. Then, when we got in, we found out that there was a wedding disco next door. I ended up reading serious passages about landscape and grief while Michael Jackson and the Village People sounded through the wall, raising my voice every time the DJ turned up the volume.

I had at least two people come to the table the next day asking for Wiz Duo 3 because they were so impressed with Andrew’s heroic efforts in terrible circumstances the night before.

Anyway, there was programming, and people seemed to enjoy it. Some of it is available to members on replay, but I haven’t had the time to look at any of it.

The other program item I was involved in was a book launch for Wizard’s Tower. We had three new books: a new Green Man book from Juliet McKenna; a new novel from Chaz Brenchley; and a new Wiz Duo featuring Ruthanna Emrys and Andrew Knighton. All of the authors except Chaz were at the con, and it was lovely to get to meet Ruthanna at last.

The organization of the event involved a substantial amount of frantic paddling below the surface. The first problem was wine. The hotel was charging over £30 a bottle, which is probably something like a 200% markup. Thankfully corkage was only £12 a bottle, and I am able to source good quality wine for much less than £20. But there was still the problem of getting it to the con. Thankfully, Ben Baldwin lives near Brighton and I was able to ship it to him and collect it the day before the con started. Ben also kindly took delivery of some books, because there wasn’t room in my car for books for BristolCon, books for World Fantasy, Kayla and myself.

We also promised people cake. The convention said that the hotel wanted details of the ingredients beforehand for food safety purposes, which was fine by me. Jo and I were going to make the cakes. But when I got to Brighton I discovered that the hotel wanted other things too, such as copies of my food safety training certificates, and details of when my premises were last inspected by the Council’s food safety officers.

The only way around this was to buy a cake from a local cake shop. Fortunately Brighton is not short of such things, but it did result in substantial extra expense and the need to go and collect the cake first thing on the Saturday morning. Huge thanks are due to Cielo Cakery for coming up with a great cake at very short notice.

Collecting the wine and books from Ben, and the cake from the shop, both required that we take the car out of the hotel car park. This, is turned out, was another major source of problems. The hotel’s underground parking fortress is designed on the assumption that you will put your car in at the start of the stay, and pay on exit when you leave. Taking the car out part way through is major exception that causes all sorts of problems for the hotel.

It didn’t help that most of the staff we spoke to didn’t know how the system worked. Everyone we spoke to gave us a different answer. The person who let us out to go to Ben’s house said that we should have paid in advance, but as we were at the exit she’d let us out on the condition that that we paid for the parking as soon as we got back.

When we got back we tried to pay for the parking, but the staff on reception could not make it work.

Thankfully the car park let us out to collect the cake without needing to call for help.

When I went to check out there was an additional charge on the bill which I figured was probably for the parking, but the receptionist insisted that it must be a mistake and took it off.

When we left we were only charged for one day’s parking. But when I got home I found another charge from the hotel on my credit card. They did not let me know they had done that, nor did they send me a new bill.

Yes, the hotel staff really were that bad. And that’s without going into the whole saga of getting the cake put in a fridge on Saturday morning until we needed it, which was a whole new adventure.

Thankfully the launch went off very well. We had around 50 people there. No one complained about the wine or cake. We did not run out of either. And we sold lots of books. Which is just as well because if we hadn’t the takings from the event would have been very poor indeed.

Everyone in the Dealers’ Room was complaining about the lack of sales, and indeed the lack of footfall. We initially put it down to us having been hidden away in an upstairs room that wasn’t easy to find. Programming was on the ground and first floors (UK numbering). We were on the second floor, and finding the way up to us was challenge enough. Most people seemed not to want to leave the main programme floor, which was the first. There was much jealousy of the Art Show, which was right next to the main programme room, the convention bar and the convention food service.

However, conversations late in the convention suggested that the Art Show had also sold very little, with some big names having no sales whatsoever.

The poor sales appear to have had multiple causes. Firstly the wealthy Americans who normally splash lots of money around at WFC had spent most of what they had available on air fares. The local attendees, who were mostly British Fantasy Society members, are not big spenders in the same way. And, of course, everyone is worried about the state of the world, so free cash was in short supply for everyone.

Nevertheless, I did more business per day in BristolCon than I did at World Fantasy, and had I not had the book launch the total revenue from the two conventions would have been about equal. That was very disappointing, given the cost of attending WFC, and the fact that WFC had around three times the attendance of BristolCon.

The other key aspect of World Fantasy is the socializing. Last time we were in Brighton I went out to dinner with Scott Edelman, which is always an amazing experience given his skill and searching out top quality restaurants. Sadly my hearing is now so poor (even with hearing aids) that I now avoid bars and big restaurant groups because I have to spend all of my time apologizing for not being able to hear what people are saying.

Anyway, we survived the experience. Also Kayla and I got in quite a bit of tourism on the way to and from Brighton, so the weekend was not a complete bust.

I’m looking forward to next year’s FantasyCon being a much more predictable experience in a much better suited hotel, even if I will have to drive to Glasgow for it.

Running a Kickstarter Campaign

074, Wizard's Tower

One of the things that kept me crazy busy through October was the Kickstarter campaign for They Are Still Here. It was my second attempt at doing crowdfunding. The first attempt failed, but I learned a lot.

One key to a successful campaign is a good budget. The tools that Kickstarter provide to help you with this are useless and the independent advisors don’t give you anything useful unless you pay them (and probably not if you do pay). The way I did the budget is as follows:

  1. Work out how much everything is going to cost.
  2. Set your initial goal at twice the minimum amount you need.
  3. Price each reward at twice what it costs to fulfill.
  4. Don’t forget to allow for Kickstarter and credit card fees.
  5. Have postage charged separately after the campaign.

By having a consistent pricing strategy, you can be sure how much profit you are making. If your margin is different on each reward then you will have great difficulty knowing how much profit you are making because it depends on which rewards have sold.

Forgetting the fees is an easy mistake to make, but if you do it can throw a real spanner in the works. I budgeted 10%, and it was very slightly over that.

Interestingly, there are some parallels between Kickstarter and batting second in a limited overs cricket match. You know what your target is (either in pounds or runs) and you know how long you have to get there (in days or overs). So you have a target rate (in £/day or runs per over), but it helps a lot to get a fast start so that you are always ahead of the rate. Once your current rate drops below the starting required rate you are in trouble.

Getting a fast start is all about having a large number of people committed to back you. That is hard for a small press like mine. You need a mailing list of hundreds, preferably thousands, of people. Having a pre-launch helps, and we were at 39% after 4 days, but then things started to slacken off.

Once you are into the campaign, the trick is to keep getting the message in front of new people. You can do that for a while by being relentless on social media. Not all of your followers will see your initial posts, but if you keep at it then they will eventually get the message.

After that it is a problem. By day 13 I had clearly maxed out my own social media following. That day’s income was only £30. The next day was worse. At that point it was obvious that we were in serious trouble.

So I called in some favours. I wrote to a bunch of well-known writers that I knew and asked them to boost the campaign. That worked. We had a couple of very good days, and we funded with a few days to spare. My sincere thanks to everyone who helped out.

I would have liked to do much better. Hitting some stretch goals would have enabled us to offer authors bigger advances. But so it goes. Now we have to make the book.

If you are waiting for news, I will be in touch with all backers this week.

Strange New Worlds – Season 3

074, TV Review

Well that was something of a mess. I gather that the production of this season was heavily impacted by a strike in Hollywood and a certain amount of pantsing on the part of the production team was required. The result was a highly episodic season with each episode having a very distinct flavour. Weird one-off episodes have been a thing in Trek for a long time, but in this season they became very much the main thing.

The trouble with this sort of thing is that if every episode seems like it comes from a different show, just with the same cast, then almost everyone is going to find something in the season that they really dislike. Personally I hate the Holodeck, and I also very much disliked what was done to poor Dana Gamble. Your mileage may differ.

There was some continuity and character development, which seemed to work. Both Kirk and Scott are learning a lot about working in Starfleet, and becoming friends, which works well within the remit of Strange New Worlds. I’m disappointed that we haven’t seen anything of McCoy yet, but there is another season to come.

The other character arcs worked less well. I was unimpressed with the Marie Batel saga, and I am very confused by the Ortegas-Gorn thing which was set up to be something huge and then seemed to get forgotten.

The ‘Four and a Half Vulcans’ episode was particularly silly, relying as it did on the idea that Vulcan character is somehow encoded in Vulcan DNA, and that anyone injected with Vulcan DNA would immediately take on the worst aspects of Vulcan culture. However, the suggestions I saw on social media that this episode was intended to me some sort of metaphor for trans people seems equally silly. The whole TERF argument is that, no matter what you inject trans people with, you can’t change their fundamental nature.

Anyhow, I cancelled my Paramount+ subscription after Bari Weiss was put in charge of CBS. There are further Star Trek shows planned. At least we should get season 4 of Strange New Worlds, and the new Starfleet Academy show. But given the current political climate in the USA I suspect that they will not be much like the Trek we know and love.

Editorial – November 2025

074, Editorial

October is now well into the rear view mirror, but it took me a couple of weeks to wind down. I think things are finally returning to normal. December and January look to be very quiet. I have an Assyriology conference in February, and perhaps some LGBT+ History Month stuff as well. March is quiet again, and everything will kick off in April with Eastercon and the Senedd elections.

As always at this time of year, I have all sorts of plans for things I will get done over the holiday periods. Probably, as usual, I will not have time for any of them. But hopefully I will at least get some books read.

I do have one more official engagement this year. The lovely folks at Storyville Books in Pontypridd are having a Christmas Book Fair on the 13th. I did very well at their LGBT+ Book Fair earlier this year, and I am hoping that Christmas will be just as good.

Anyway, enough of this chat. I should be reading.

Issue #73

Issues

This is the September 2025 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Cover: Gwydion: This issue's cover is Gwydion by Josh Arklin

  • Lessons in Magic and Disaster: The new Charlie Jane Anders novel is a triumph of both storytelling and historical research

  • Fevered Star: Cheryl looks at part 2 of Rebecca Roanhorse's Hugo-winning fantasy series

  • The Gnomes of Lychford: Paul Cornell returns to the world of Lychford, where the Gnomes are distinctly unhappy

  • Introducing Maen Nhw Yma O Hyd: Wizard's Tower will be running a Kickstarter campaign in October. Here's a brief preview of what it is all about.

  • Queer as Folklore: How queer is the world's folklore? Far more than you could possibly have imagined. Sacha Coward tells all.

  • Carthage: We all know that the city of Carthage once existed, but what do we know about its people? A new history by Eve MacDonald sets out to answer than question.

  • Who Killed Nessie?: Poor wee Nessie has been murdered. Who is responsible? Well she was attending a convention of the world's monstrous creatures, so there are plenty of suspects.

  • A Day in Czechia: The Czech government is keen to get their national literature translated. Cheryl went to find out more.

  • Captain America – Brave New World: The Marvel Cinematic Universe is lumbering towards a new Avengers movie. Here's another step along the way.

  • Thunderbolts*: Did we mention steps on the way to the next Avengers movie? Here's another one.

  • Foundation – Season 1: Can you really make a gripping TV serial from the Foundation trilogy? Apparently you can.

  • Editorial – September 2025: If it is October it must be chaos for Cheryl

Cover: Gwydion

073, Art

This issue’s cover is the art that Josh Arklin has given me for the new anthology, Maen Nhw Yma O Hyd, which I talk about elsewhere in this issue. The art comes from a game called WOAD which Josh and some colleagues are creating after a successful Kickstarter campaign last year. One of the stretch goals for our Kickstarter for the book will be to have more of Josh’s art as interior illustrations.

The image shows the sorceror, Gwydion, a character from the Fourth Branch of The Mabinogion. He is shown with a wolf, a deer and a wild boar, which echoes some of the events of the myth. If you want to know more about it, I will be explaining in one of the campaign updates.

As usual, an undorned verson of the art is available below.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster

073, Book Review, Charlie Jane Anders

I have been reading books by Charlie Jane Anders for some time now. They have always been heartfelt, entertaining, and sometimes clever (less so in the YA, because one is not supposed to do deep philosophy in a YA book). Lessons in Magic and Disaster may sound like another YA novel, but trust me, it is anything but.

The first thing to note is that this book is very much a novel of character. Yes, some of the cast do magic in a limited and folky way, much in the fashion of Tim Powers’ Fault Lines novels, but that’s not what is really important. This is a novel about Jamie Sandthorn negotiating her place as a trans woman in an increasingly transphobic world, and negotiating her relationships with her mother, Serena, and her partner, Ro.

However, that isn’t all that the book is about. Jamie is a postgraduate student at an imaginary Boston college. She is doing a PhD on 18th century women novelists. In order to make this believable, Anders has to know something about the subject. It turns out that she knows a heck of a lot. The list of academic references at the back of the book is impressive.

I am by no means an expert on this. I know a bit about the characters in question because of my work on the life of la Chevalière d’Eon. But my eyebrows shot up at random mention of Christopher Smart, a lesser known poet and satirist of the era. Smart has crossed my radar because he had a Welsh mother, and a queer connection. He can perhaps lay claim to being Britain’s first drag queen, which I knew, and I suspect Anders does too even though it is never mentioned in the book.

In order to get this right, Anders not only has to know the characters involved, she has to be able to write convincingly in the style of 18th century fiction, and she has to be familiar with academic discourse about the novels of the period. Again this is way beyond my level of competence, but it all seems very impressive to me.

The ambition of the novel doesn’t end there. Because Jamie is a trans woman academic, she exists in the very precarious environment of present-day American academia. The primary villain in the book is a right-wing podcaster who specialises in getting students to report ‘woke’ academics so that he can launch social media hate campaigns against them. I wonder who that reminds me of…

Anders makes the point, which I think is a fair one, that 21st century social media has a lot in common with the gossip culture of 18th century London.

Finally, Jamie is also a witch. Growing up she mostly does small magics, but she decides to teach her mother her skills as a way of reconnecting. Serena is a feisty, lesbian civil rights lawyer who, having seen the potential of magic, wants to use it for much bigger things. Consequently there is a whole lot in the book about the ethics of witchcraft. Again this is somewhat beyond my area of expertise, but having read a lot of books by the likes of Starhawk, Margot Adler and, of course, Liz Williams, it seems authentic to me.

To sum up, this is a really ambitious book, grounded in solid scholarship about 18th century British society and literature, but also firmly rooted in today’s desperate political crisis. And it still manages to come through with a message of hope. I was seriously impressed. I hope other people are too.

book cover
Title: Lessons in Magic and Disaster
By: Charlie Jane Anders
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Fevered Star

073, Book Review, Rebecca Roanhorse

The middle volumes of trilogies are tricky things. Book one introduces you to the new world and sets up the plot. Book three provides resolution. Book two, all too often, just moves the plot along. Given that publishing seems addicted to the trilogy format, authors are probably stuck with this problem even when they would prefer to just do two books. It is challenging.

I very much enjoyed Black Sun, the first volume in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky trilogy. But, with a To Be Read pile like mine, it is all too easy for books to fall by the wayside. In this case I have the Hugo Award for Best Series to thank for nudging me to get back into these books. I’m glad I did, even if Fevered Star does suffer somewhat from book-two-itis.

The world of Between Earth and Sky is a fascinating re-imagining of pre-conquest North America. Black Sun introduced us to the city of Tova (modeled on Cahokia) and the various clans that live there. We also learned of the enmity between the Crow clan and the rest of the city, and the plans of some Crow extremists to exact revenge. As we know from that book, things did not turn out exactly as planned. In particular, neither Naranpa, the High Priestess of the Sun, nor Serapio, the avatar of the Crow God, is dead, though most people in Tova do not yet know that.

Fevered Star explores the fallout from Serapio’s attack on the city’s religious hierarchy. The leaders of the Crow clan are keen to control him, or destroy him if he can’t be controlled. Naranpa, meanwhile, has gone into hiding while she looks for allies.

The main innovation of this volume is the introduction of the Coyote Clan, formed from the criminal underworld of the city of Tova. These are the people to whom Naranpa goes to for help. We also get an intriguing visit to the Cuecola (modeled on Chichen Itza) where we meet a very different society. Both of these groups are a long way from the traditional Europe-based fantasy societies.

There is not a lot more I can say about the book. Roanhorse is busy doing plot and character development, which is important in the second part of the trilogy. I am, however, keen to move on the book 3 to find out how all the various strands of plot get resolved. More next issue, I hope.

book cover
Title: Fevered Star
By: Rebecca Roanhorse
Publisher: Solaris
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Gnomes of Lychford

073, Book Review, Paul Cornell

It has been a while. To be honest, I didn’t think we were going to get any new Lychford novellas. The last one seemed pretty final. But life goes on, even for imaginary people. For the good people of Lychford, there are always going to be more supernatural threats.

The last book, Last Stand in Lychford, was heavy on the emotion, what with the death of a beloved character and a rather apocalyptic plot. The new one, The Gnomes of Lychford, is much lighter. It is about gnomes, after all, and gnomes appear to be inherently funny, even without the inevitable David Bowie and Smurfs references.

Anyway, there are many groups of supernatural beings that live in or near Lychford, and now that they have become visible (at least to the inhabitants of the town) there are bound to be issues. The gnomes, it transpires, are upset. And why wouldn’t they be? Half of the houses in the town have at least one shameful mockery of gnome-kind decorating their gardens. Reverend Lizzie has three at the Vicarage, and they are dressed in Star Trek uniforms! How insulting can you get?

And that, it transpires, is not the half of it. There are other things that certain townsfolk have done that have upset the gnomes even more.

Unfortunately the gnomish complaints do not go down well with many of the townsfolk. In particular there is Jim, one of the members of the town council, who would probably be a member of Reform if the UK libel laws were not such a boon to the litigious wealthy amongst us. Jim doesn’t hold with all this magic nonsense. Indeed, he is Against It. And the gnomes too. Another councilor, who is a Liberal Democrat, will not stand for such speciesist nonsense. And so the stage is set for conflict.

If that wasn’t enough, word of the strange goings on in Lychford have reached the wider world. Enter Robin Daniels, host of the hit BBC podcast, Unworldly. He is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, or at least bag a new episode of his highly sensationalist show at the expense of innocent townsfolk.

It will of course fall to Lizzie and her friends, Amber and Zoya, to put things right, but they have issues of their own. Amber is freshly married to Luke and getting used to her change in circumstances. Zoya, as a refugee from Ukraine, is constantly worried for her country and the people she has left behind. And Lizzie has discovered something about herself that she finds deeply disturbing.

All of this packed into a novella-sized package. Well, Paul Cornell is very comfortable with the Lychford setting now, so it is not surprising that he is able to deliver an excellent piece of fiction that is both pleasantly cosy and very much about the problems facing Britain today. There might have been a large protest by far-right bigots in London recently, but there was one in Lychford first. Cornell has his finger on the pulse of the country.

book cover
Title: The Gnomes of Lychford
By: Paul Cornell
Publisher: Tor.com
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Introducing Maen Nhw Yma O Hyd

073, Wizard's Tower

October is going to be busy. The editorial lists all of the events I will be attending during the month, but there is also the small matter of a Kickstarter campaign. It might seem rather foolish to try to run such a thing while I am on the road so much, but there is method to the madness. Kickstarter campaigns are all about momentum, and getting myself in front of audiences is a very good way to build that sort of momentum. That’s the theory, anyway.

But what is this campaign about? Well, it is about time that Wizard’s Tower produced a follow-up to Fight Like A Girl #2. We didn’t fancy doing a third volume, so we are doing something very Welsh instead. In particular we wanted to do something about communities coming together in the face of adversity, because frankly life in the UK is a bit shit right now, and in Wales it is worse because we always get the dregs of the economic barrel.

However, we are also an SF&F publisher, so we need to bring in something speculative. Maen Nhw Yma O Hyd (which means They Are Still Here) will therefore be a folklore anthology of contemporary fantasy stories. In each story there will be community resistance and resilience, but there will also be something, or someone, from Welsh history or legend who gets to help out.

That’s the plan anyway. But first we need some money. This time around I would really like to be able to offer close to professional rates for the stories, but there’s no way I can afford that without having guaranteed sales, hence the Kickstarter campaign.

The campaign will launch on October 2nd and will run for 5 weeks through until after World Fantasy. We have some excellent rewards on offer from the likes of Juliet McKenna, Kari Sperring, Claire Fayers and, of course, Roz & Jo, who will be editing the book. The cover is by Josh Arklin whose work I have been wanting to use for some time. He lives in Swansea, so the production team is very local.

The thing of most interest to you lot is going to be the updates. In order to drum up interest in the campaign I will be publishing regular short posts about something to do with Welsh history and folklore. Claire Fayers is going to be talking about giants. Gareth Powell has promised me something about The Mabinogion. Tej Turner has sent me some travelogues about prehistoric sites worth a visit. Jenny Hannaford will be doing a piece on Welsh mermaids. You get the idea. There will probably be quite a few from me too. I’ll be telling you about my favourite saint, about the monstrous afanc, and maybe even posting a story I wrote earlier this year.

As with any Kickstarter campaign, we will be very dependent on getting the message out. The pre-launch page is here, and we’ll be spreading the main page far and wide on Thursday. Your help to get the word out will be very much appreciated.

Queer as Folklore

073, Book Review, History, Sacha Coward

Ah, here is a community project. My community, that is, being the community of queer historians and mythographers. Sacha Coward is a friend. Years back he asked me to speak at an event he was curating at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. I gave a talk about Amazons. Some of what I said seems to have found its way into this book, though Coward quite rightly credits Adrienne Mayor as she was my source too. The book also cites my pal, and professional sword-lesbian, Claire Mead. So Queer as Folklore is a book that I am pre-disposed to like, and to have a strong interest in reading.

Much of what it says is, of course, entirely familiar to me, but Coward has ranged far and wide in his research. Every so often I found something new and delightful. If you are less deeply immersed in the subject matter than I am you will doubtless find far more to astonish. The book was also book of the month for the Swansea Queer Book Club, and most of them expressed astonishment at what they had learned from reading it.

Something that stood out for me was the discovery that Victorian mediums were often lesbians, thus somehow, presumably unwittingly, carrying on the ancient, shamanic tradition of liminal folk being more able to pass between worlds.

More generally there is a whole lot of interesting stuff about mermaids, fairies, vampires, werewolves and so on. All of these beings have queer connections of some sort. Nor is Coward afraid to turn his attention to more modern stories. His chapter on superheroes, for example, begins with Gilgamesh and Achilles before ending up with the likes of Jean-Paul Beaubier. (Coward is by no means an expert on queer comics characters, and these days they deserve a book of their own, but the point is to compare them to those mighty heroes of the past. And to note that Magneto was right.)

Coward was one of a number of queer writers (Christine Burns was another) to take advantage of the crowdfunding model presented by Unbound to get backing for a book that the mainstream publishing industry would not touch with a ten foot, sterilized bargepole. The book went on to become a Sunday Times bestseller. I hope Coward hasn’t lost too much money in the collapse of Unbound. The good news is that the rights to the book have been picked up by Manchester University Press. Hopefully they will have the good sense to price it for the mass market and not just for university libraries.

I note also that Coward was one of the first people to withdraw his book from the Polari Prize shortlists because of the shortlisting of the notorious transphobe, John Boyne. Missing out on a major award like that isn’t good for a writer’s career, and I am very grateful to Coward, and the other friends of mine who took a similar stand, for doing so.

book cover
Title: Queer as Folklore
By: Sacha Coward
Publisher: Unbound
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Carthage

073, Book Review, Eve MacDonald, History

The ancient city of Carthage is famous for two particular things. Firstly there is the great general, Hannibal Barca, who led his army over the Alps to attack Rome. And secondly the city was utterly destroyed by the vengeful Romans who deemed that the Carthaginians should never again be able to challenge Roman supremacy in the Mediterranean.

Neither of these things are of much interest to me, but Eve MacDonald’s new history, Carthage: A new history of an ancient empire, covers much more than the Punic Wars. MacDonald wants to help us understand the Carthaginians as a people, which is hard because the Romans did such a good job of wiping them off the face of the planet. For example, we know that the Carthaginians wrote books. Only traces of one survived the sack of the city: a treatise on agriculture which a Roman writer deemed useful enough to quote from. Almost everything else we know about Carthage comes from archaeology, or via hearsay.

Not that the Romans were very good when it came to Carthaginian history. The third most famous thing about Carthage is the doomed romance between the Carthaginian queen, Dido, and the refugee Trojan prince, Aeneas. We know that Carthage was originally a Phoenician colony. We even know that it was founded by a woman called Dido (actually Elishat, the Romans got that wrong too) who fled Tyre due to some political unpleasantness. But we also know that this happened in the 9th century BCE. That’s some 3-400 years after the sack of Troy. Aeneas must have been sailing west very slowly indeed for that timeline to work. Sorry, Vergil, mate, you messed up there. But I guess you made Augustus happy, which is all that really mattered.

One piece of Carthaginian writing that has come down to us, because it was so famous it got copied a lot in antiquity, is The Periplus of Hanno the Navigator. Periplus is a Latin term for a story of a voyage. Explorers, both at sea and on land, would write reports of their adventures to sell their own legend, and as a potential guide book for those who would follow them. Hanno, a Carthaginian nobleman, took a fleet of ships through the Pillars of Heracles and down the African coast, at least as far as modern-day Cameroon. Bear this in mind next time you see some twat complaining that the recent DNA testing that found the bodies two Anglo-Saxon burials in England to have West African descent must be wrong.

I was vaguely aware of Hanno’s journey. What I did not know was that he was not the first Phoenician sailor to explore Africa, nor the farthest travelled. Forget about Prince Henry of Portugal, the real patron saint of maritime explorers was Pharoah Necho II of Egypt.

Necho II is an interesting chap. He belongs to the 26th dynasty, a family which took control of Egypt after the 25th (Nubian) dynasty came unstuck thanks to endless wars with the Assyrians. They were the last native African dynasty to rule the country, though they may have been Libyans rather than Egyptians. Our man Necho was big on trade, and he had some outsized ideas as to how to improve it. His biggest idea was to dig a canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Sadly he died before it could be completed, and future pharaohs saw no value in the grand design, so the world had to wait 2500 years for Necho’s dream to come to fruition.

The other amazing thing that Necho did was commission a group of Phoenician sailors to head as far as they could down the east coast of Africa to see if they could reach the end of the continent and come back up the other side. Miraculously, they managed it. Their voyage is reported by Herodotus. Like many of his contemporaries, he wasn’t convinced by the story. Indeed, he thought he had proof that it was all made up. You see, the foolish sailors reported that, when they rounded the southern tip of Africa, they could see the sun on their right at midday; that is, to the north. As every ancient Greek knew, the midday sun is only ever seen to the south. Herodotus did not know that the Earth was round, and had never been to the southern hemisphere. But we know that the sailors told the truth, bizarre as it must have sounded to anyone who had not been where they had travelled.

There is much more in the book. For example there is quite a bit of material about Carthaginian religion, which is of great interest to me but probably not to you. There is also a lot about Hannibal, the Barca family, and the Scipio family from Rome who became their nemesis. MacDonald writes entertainingly while presenting a lot of recent historical research. If the ancient world is your thing, you will enjoy this book too.

book cover
Title: Carthage
By: Eve MacDonald
Publisher: Ebury Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Who Killed Nessie?

073, Comic Review, Paul Cornell, Rachel Smith

Wow, so Paul Cornell has two books in this issue. Sometimes that’s just how publishing goes.

Who Killed Nessie is a graphic novel, with art by Rachel Smith. It is not from Cornell’s new comics publishing company. That won’t come for a while yet. Rather it was crowdfunded through Zoop, a platform that specialises in the comics industry. I backed it ages ago, and am delighted to finally have the book in my hands.

The story is fairly straightforward. In a country hotel in Wisconsin there is a convention for monsters. No, not a convention for serial killers. That’s a completely different comic you are thinking of. This is a convention for actual mythical creatures: the minotaur, medusa, a mermaid, a unicorn, the yeti, and, of course, Nessie. Lyndsay Grockle, fleeing an unhappy relationship, takes a job at the hotel and, as the new girl, is left to tend to the monsters all by herself.

Which, you know, would not be that hard. Monsters are OK people. They just have very bad press. But not this time. This time there is a murder, and poor, wee Nessie is the victim. Bob, the Beast of Bodmin, suggests that Lyndsay be asked to investigate as she’s the only human present and therefore untainted by inter-species rivalry between the various monsters.

So Lyndsay gets to channel her internal Miss Marple and, surprise, will eventually solve the mystery. I should note that I twigged who did it early on. There are some fairly obvious clues. But I did not get the why of it, so kudos to Cornell there.

Having said that, the mystery is not entirely the point. Rachel Smith’s bio says that she is known for “making comics with warm, relatable humour”. The script very much matches her drawing style, and much of the enjoyment of the book comes from meeting the various attendees at the convention and reading their stories. My favourite was the unicorn who is obsessed with virginity because he can’t abide any mention of sex, not even a chaste kiss. He’s a terrible prude.

This book isn’t going to win any plaudits for ground-breaking comics work, or for tackling serious themes. Indeed, despite it being a murder mystery featuring monsters, I think it is fair to describe it as cosy. Certainly Smith’s art fits that ambience well. If you like that sort of thing, this may be the comic book for you.

book cover
Title: Who Killed Nessie?
By: Paul Cornell & Rachel Smith
Publisher: Zoop
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

A Day in Czechia

073, International

No, I haven’t been rushing off to Europe again. But I have recently had the pleasure of spending several hours on Czechian soil. Most countries in the world maintain an embassy in London, and the Czech Republic is no exception. I was fortunate enough to be their guest for an afternoon.

Each year the Frankfurt Book Fair chooses one country to be their Guest of Honour. That distinction will befall the Czechs in 2026 and they are determined to make the best of it. Consequently the Czech ministry of Culture has put some money into encouraging the translation of literature from Czech. Their primary target languages as German and English. This means that grants will be available.

The Czech Republic may not be top of your list when it comes to thinking of countries with a tradition of speculative fiction, but they do have a good claim to fame. Back in the early days of science fiction, before Hugo Gernsback introduced the genre to the USA, three names stand out. They are Jules Verne, HG Wells and Karel Capek. (I omit Mary Shelley here because, though she undoubtedly wrote science fiction, she was not recognised as a giant of the field until much more recently.)

Capek is most famous for his play, Rossum’s Universal Robots, though he credited his brother Josef with coining the word for an artificial being. He also wrote the novel, War with the Newts, and together with his brother the satirical play, The Life of the Insects. I had a small part in a production of the latter when I was at school.

No other Czech writer has stood out in the same way since, but that does not mean that there is no SF scene their country. I know of this partly from my translator friend, Isabel Stainsby, and also from Czech writers such as Lucie Lukačovičová and Julie Nováková. Isabel approached me at Worldcon regarding an epic fantasy series that she was working on, and which I am pleased to report has found a home with a bigger English language publisher. Lucie and I had a long chat at the Eurocon in Mariehamn, partly about some of her own work, and partly about an anthology she has a story in. Julie was busy promoting Czech SF&F at the recent Worldcon in Seattle.

The event in London was intended to introduce smaller UK presses to Czech publishers and agents. Wizard’s Tower was one of the British invitees, alongside companies such as Comma Press, Pushkin Press and And Other Stories, who regularly publish translated work. The comics field was presented by Paul Gravett, as one of the Czech companies had graphic novels to sell.

There were several books on offer at the event that I was interested in, though some of them were clearly outside my ability to handle. Chief amongst the latter was the Mycelium series, an 8-volume science fantasy saga set on a planet that uses mycelial technology. It sounds fascinating, and I’m hoping that I will be able to talk to the author, Vimla Kadlečková, to find out more about it. With any luck a bigger publisher will pick it up.

For obvious reasons I can tell you more about the books I did express an interest in. News will be released as and when any of it is firm. If anyone reading this is a publisher and wants to know more about the grants on offer, please do get in touch. Or come and talk to me at World Fantasy.

Captain America – Brave New World

073, Movie Review

It has taken me a while to get to see this film. I didn’t catch it in the cinema, and although it has been available on Disney+ for a while, I haven’t managed to put two hours aside to watch it. Frankly, given the reviews I have seen, I was expecting it to be awful. I was pleasantly surprised.

The most obvious thing about the film is that, with William Hurt having died, Marvel needed to get someone else in to play Thaddeus Ross. They got Harrison Ford. That’s quite a coup, and I suspect that, alongside a big pile of cash, Ford also asked for a role that he could get his teeth into. Brave New World gives him that. I’m not going to suggest that Hurt could not have done the role as well. The guy has an Oscar. But Ford definitely has to do some acting in this film, which is not always the case for characters in a superhero movie.

So what’s the problem with the film? Why did it get so badly panned? Well, as I mentioned in my review of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, a project like the Marvel Cinematic Universe sometimes has to do stories that simply move the overall plot along. Brave New World has two jobs to do. First, it has to get The Avengers back into the good graces of world governments following the mess of the Civil War era, and the disaster of Thanos. In theory the Sokovia Accords are still in place, and it is hard to see how a publicly known team like The Avengers could exist under them.

Second the ridiculous Eternals film has a giant Celestial emerge from inside Earth and ends up as a giant stone island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is inconceivable that world governments would not notice this, and attempt to profit from it.

Neither of these things are terribly sexy as far as superhero movies go. So instead the scriptwriters turned to events from The Incredible Hulk. This is an old film. It was released in 2008 alongside the first Iron Man film. Somewhat to my surprise, I haven’t seen it. That gave me some catching up to do, and I suspect that many present-day film-goers may have been equally confused. Heck, there will be teenagers going to see Brave New World who were not even born when The Incredible Hulk was released.

Nevertheless, a sequel to The Incredible Hulk is exactly what the script team needed to fill this hole in the developing MCU saga. Thaddeus Ross, by nefarious means, has become President of the USA, and finds himself having to deal with the Celestial crisis. He knows he is dying, and he’s desperate to secure his legacy, and repair relations with his daughter, Betty, from whom he is estranged thanks to the events of the Hulk movie (she was Bruce Banner’s girlfriend at the time). Samuel Sterns (aka The Leader) is a perfect villain, determined to get revenge on Ross, and handed a perfect opportunity by the Celestial emergence.

So why Captain America? Well firstly because any story involving the USA in an international crisis has to involve Cap. And secondly because the situation with Ross is perfectly suited to Sam Wilson’s other career as a counsellor. Sam is good at talking to people as well as punching them.

My main complaint about the film involves the big action sequence in the second act. The USA and Japan are about to go to war over the Celestial, and Sterns has used his mind control powers to take over two American pilots. At one point Sam has to stop what appears to be a kamikaze attack on what I assume was the Japanese fleet. I thought that was rather tasteless.

The final problem that the film has, and this is by no means Marvel’s fault, is that it has rather been overtaken by events. It is a film about how the President of the USA turns into a rampaging monster and has to be stopped. But we now live in a world in which the President of the USA is a monster, has always been a monster, and is apparently too powerful for anyone in that country to stop. Where is Captain America when you need him?

Thunderbolts*

073, Movie Review

A lot of people I follow online really like Thunderbolts*. I can see why. I can also see good reasons for disliking it. The MCU is getting very complicated these days.

Let’s start with the bad stuff. The plot is ridiculous. It is a superhero movie, so it is going to be pretty silly. This is worse than most because it goes into that “character so powerful he is effectively a god” territory. That’s seriously godlike, not just worshipped as a god as per Thor and Loki.

The list of characters is complicated too. Some of them are little-known, even if you have been following the MCU. Ghost just has a supporting villain role in an Ant Man movie. John Walker is an incompetent villain in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Red Guardian is a supporting character from Black Widow and a thoroughly ridiculous character who exists mostly to make fun of Soviet Russia.

There are also some weird disconnects. I can’t quite get my head around Bucky being a Congress-critter, and frankly he doesn’t seem very good at it. Nor can I understand Sam Wilson going to court over the Avengers name. I can see he’s annoyed, but Sam is the sort of guy whose first move is always to try to find a compromise. As for Valentina, she’s been built up as this ruthless, genius manipulator, but in this film she’s often incompetent and strangely forgiving of Mel’s treachery.

All that said, Lewis Pullman does a fine job as Bob, The Sentinel and The Void. Playing three incredibly different aspects of the same character can’t be easy.

Even so, I suspect that the film would still have been a flop had it not been for Florence Pugh. She totally carries this film, and is given a nice, meaty story arc with which to do it. If you have the film on disc, which I do (because I don’t trust streaming services) then you will see from the Extras that Pugh has even more personality off screen than she has on it. She’s quite extraordinary.

The focus on mental health is also quite interesting, though it is hard to tackle such a difficult subject in a frivolous vehicle such as a superhero movie. The fact that it is a team show makes it even harder. Ghost and Walker obviously have their own issues, but there isn’t space in the film to do them justice because Bob, Yelena and Alexi take up all the room. I suspect that the group hug thing fell flat for a lot of viewers too. It was very California.

And now, of course, we are all set up for Avengers: Doomsday. In that we will have the old Avengers (led by Falcon), the new Avengers (aka Thunderbolts) and the Fantastic Four. Because this is a superhero movie, they are all going to end up fighting each other before they can properly tackle Doctor Doom. I have an awful feeling that it is going to be a mess. If it isn’t, we will probably have Florence Pugh to thank for that too.

Foundation – Season 1

073, TV Review

Because I bought an Apple TV subscription in order to watch Murderbot I figured that I might as well make the most of it and try some of their other SF output too. There has been a lot of interesting chat about Foundation online, so I dived in.

It is quite a while since I read Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. I’m pretty sure that it was before I went to university, which is a very long time ago indeed. I have had no desire to read the books again since, or indeed any other Asimov.

However, the one thing that everyone seems to agree upon about the Foundation TV series is that it bears almost no resemblance to Asimov’s books. It has the concept of psychohistory, and some of the named characters and planets are in both (though often very different). Nothing much else is the same. Some people are absolutely outraged about this. Others are duly relieved. I am in the latter camp.

I’m not going to go into detail about what is different between the books and the TV series. That’s partly because I can’t remember much about the books, but mainly because I don’t care. The TV series has to be able to stand on its own, and if it does that then the books are only relevant to people who have a huge attachment to them.

And stand on its own it does. At least as far as season 1 is concerned, Foundation is solid, thoughtful science fiction. It pulls ideas from Asimov, but it is very much its own thing.

The biggest problem with adapting the Foundation Trilogy to the screen is the timescale. The books take place over many generations, as indeed is necessary to explore the concept of psychohistory. The TV series leans into this by having the Emperor Cleon repeatedly cloned to ensure the continuity of the galactic empire. Three generations of Cleon, of different ages, are alive at once. They are named Dawn, Day and Dusk, and a new Dawn is decanted each time a Dusk dies. In theory they are all the same person. In practice, of course, each is shaped by his environment, and they are inevitably different.

They are, however, mostly played by the same actors. That is, Day is always Lee Pace; Dusk is always Terrance Mann. Dawn is harder as they need different actors dependent on whether he is a baby, a child or a young man, but the concept remains.

Other science fictional concepts used include cryogenics, mind-uploading and robots. Gaal Dornick spends a lot of time in cryonic suspension while traveling through space. Hari Seldon dies early on in the series (sorry, spoiler) but comes back as an uploaded mind. Robots have supposedly been outlawed in the empire, but the Cleons have kept one on as a composite advisor and nanny. This Demerzel is supposed to provide continuity of policy down the generations, but of course has a mind of her own. All of these things allow the scriptwriters to preserve a sense of continuity through the vast periods of time over which the story unfolds.

Oh, and they also steal the collapse of the space elevator scene from Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy. It is a bit shameless, but it is a fabulous set-piece and I’m glad someone has used it.

All of this makes for a solid concept following the collapse of the empire, and the attempts of the Foundation to preserve knowledge. The scriptwriters are duly suspicious of the concept of psychohistory, but also of the attempts of the Cleons to preserve themselves and their empire in stasis.

What struck me most about the series, however, is that it is about trying to preserve human knowledge and culture through a time of social collapse. We happen to be living through a time when social collapse seems likely as a result of climate change, and when fascists such as Trump and his cronies are actively destroying scientific knowledge and cultural capital. That makes this series very relevant. I will be interested to see where it goes in the other two seasons that have been broadcast.

Editorial – September 2025

073, Editorial

After the embarrasment of last month, this is something of a bumper issue. Hopefully you will find plenty to read. You’ll need to, because October is completely crazy for me. There’s no way I will have time to get an issue out.

First up I am one of the featured writers at Queer Lit Quarterly in Aberystwyth. If you can make it to that, I will have books for sale. I might even read something from one of my stories, but don’t let that put you off.

I’ll be driving home from Aberystwyth on the Saturday, which means I will miss the first day of Octocon. I will, however, be attending virtually on the Sunday. I have two panels to do. Details here.

The next weekend I will be off to fetch Kayla from Heathrow, after which we will head to BristolCon. I don’t have panel assignments yet, but presumably I will be doing one or two. Also we’ll have the new Green Man book and the wonderful new Chaz Brenchley book for sale.

During the week, Kayla and I will be driving slowly to Brighton, taking in some tourist sights on the way. After that it is World Fantasy where there will be a launch party.

Throughout all of this I will be busy running a Kickstarter campaign. There’s more about that elsewhere in the issue.

And somehow I have to manage to do my contracted hours of day job in amongst all that.

Issue #72

Issues

This is the July 2025 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Cover: The Jicker Man: This issue's cover is The Jicker Man by Ben Baldwin

  • Lords of Uncreation: Adrian Tchaikovsky's Final Architecture trilogy comes to its dramatic conclusion

  • Mythica: Emily Hauser takes a fresh new look at Bronze Age Greece through the lens of the women in Homer's poems

  • Murderbot – Season 1: What happens when one of your favourite book series gets adapted for TV? Cheryl gets to find out.

  • Ironheart: Riri Williams gets her own TV series. Can a teenage Black girl be a superhero? Well...

  • The Fantastic Four – First Steps: Every previous Fantastic Four movie has been a flop. Can the MCU save Marvel's First Family?

  • Archipelacon 2: This year the Eurocon returns to Finland, and we all get an excuse to spend several days in beautiful Åland

  • Introducing Turku: To get to Åland from Finland you will probably go through Turku. This year Cheryl got to spend a bit more time in the city.

  • Doctor in the House: In which Cheryl becomes a Doctor, but does not get a TARDIS

  • Editorial – July 2025: Cheryl needs more reading time.

Cover: The Jicker Man

072, Art, Ben Baldwin

The cover for this issue is the art produced by Ben Baldwin for the Ben Mears novel, The Jicker Man. It shows the hero of the book, Ebadiah, and various other elements from the story. The central inset shows the steampunk van, Clansly, in which Ebadiah and his friends travel north.

The Jicker Man is currently available for pre-order from the usual venues.

A larger and unadorned version of Ben’s art is available below.


Lords of Uncreation

072, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Book Review

Reviewing the last in a trilogy of massive space opera books is a bit of a challenge. It is hard to say anything about the book to hand without giving spoilers for the previous volumes. I shall talk mostly about how Adrian Tchaikovsky has structured the book, which I think is seriously impressive.

Looking back at my review of Eyes of the Void, I see that I left the story at the point where Idris Telemier, with the help of the mad Naeromathi who calls himself Ahab, has found a way to navigate Unspace, the parallel dimension through which interstellar travel takes place, and in which the monstrous Architects live. Idris, as an Intermediary, is still hoping to do his job and persuade the Architects to stop their campaign of genocide against intelligent life. Everyone else wants Idris to guide them to the Architect homeworld (such as it is, there being no ‘words’ as such in Unspace) and help them destroy it.

It is a small but important spoiler to note that Idris is aware that the Architects do not do as they do willingly. They are unwilling and sorrowful slaves of a greater power that also lives in Unspace. Hence the title of the book, Lords of Uncreation. The artistic shapes that the Architects make from the planets that they destroy are somehow an expression of their grief for the lives they have been forced to snuff out. Idris, and Idris alone, wants to save the Architects too.

In order to pull this off, Tchaikovsky has to provide an explanation as to who these Lords of Uncreation are, and why they want to destroy all intelligent life in the universe that is not them. And he has to do so without waving his hands and calling them ‘gods’. I’m pleased to say that he provides a rational explanation for them. The physics is doubtless a little hand-wavy, but it is physics. And this despite the fact that his explanation has a distinct similarity to the reason why the god Enlil decides to destroy mankind in the original Sumerian flood myth.

There is also some similarity to this:

In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

Idris, however, is determined to take himself off to R’lyeh and give Cthulhu a good talking-to.

The other thing that Tchaikovsky does , and could probably have gotten away without doing, is choreography the ending so that all of the major characters in his story have a role to play. Olli and Kit in the Vulture God, Kris; the knife-fighting lawyer; Solace, the Parthenon warrior; Havaer Mundy, the secret agent; all of them have their role to play. Idris could not succeed without the skills that each of them brings to the party. Even The Presence, the monstrous shadowy being that haunts Unspace, has a key part in the denouement.
Along the way we get to learn a bit more about the mysterious and powerful aliens known as the Essiel. In particular, The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook, has an important role to play in the story. We also meet a second, and much less renegade Essiel called The Resplendent Utir, the Prophet and the Judge.

The Essiel are quite clearly grown-ups as far as civilisations go, albeit rather too fond of cosplay. The humans, sadly, are anything but. As I noted in my review of Eyes of the Void, this series is in part an allegory for Climate Change. The universe is beset by an implacable threat that will wipe out intelligent life, and all that the various human, and human-adjacent, factions want to do is make sure that their little group is the last group standing. They might be all going to die, but they will have killed everyone else first.

Of course some of them are convinced that they, and only they, are the Master Race subset of humanity that will survive the apocalypse and end up rulers of the universe.

It was doubtless depressing when Tchaikovsky wrote it. It is far more depressing right now when so many of the more powerful nations on Earth are doing exactly as he foretold. Nor are there any Essiel around the knock sense into us.

To summarise, Tchaikovsky set himself the challenge of writing an epic space opera trilogy with a very important message for the present day, and he executed that task quite brilliantly. With all due respect to Ann Leckie (whose work I also love), this trilogy deserved that Best Series Hugo.

The good news is that the series may become newly eligible because Tchaikovsky is writing a graphic novel prequel for Paul Cornell’s new comics company.

book cover
Title: Lords of Uncreation
By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Mythica

072, Book Review, Emily Hauser

It is commonly said of writers these days that you have to have more than one string to your bow. As well as being a novelist you might work on comics, or games, or run creative writing courses, or be a journalist. Whatever pays the bills. These days the same seems to be true of academics. For example, if you are an historian, you might start a podcast, or write historical novels.

Someone who has done the latter very successfully is Emily Hauser. She has Classics degrees from Cambridge and Yale, but she has also written a popular trilogy of novels based on the Trojan War. And of you are a highly competent Classicist who can also write novels, doing a popular history book is an obvious thing to do.

Mythica seems to have begin life as something a little more academic. Hauser’s Wikipedia entry mentions a book called Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It published by Chicago University Press. Someone clearly thought the book deserved a bigger audience. With a new title, but the same subtitle, it has been published by Doubleday and is all over Waterstones of late. And deservedly so.

The approach that Hauser takes is to pick women out of the Iliad and Odyssey, and use each one to explore a facet of Bronze Age history so as to guide her readers through the latest academic research on the presumed time of Achilles and Hector. Being a novelist, Hauser opens each chapter with a short fictional section introducing us to the woman whose (presumed fictional) life she will next cover.

Some of these women are well known, such as Helen, Circe and Penelope. Some are goddesses. Others are less well known. There is a chapter on Briseis, the slave girl over whose ownership Achilles and Agamemnon quarrel. Here we get to see how taking women as slaves was a common feature of Bronze Age warfare, not just for use in bed, but also to power the winning king’s textile industry. Hauser returns to this subject in the chapter on Calypso, pointing out that Odysseus’s long stay on her island was not so much a result of his lust, or her sorcery, but the enormous amount of time it would take one woman so make a sail for a ship on which he could leave.

Much of the research that Hauser highlights was well known to me. The chapter on Penthesilia, Queen of the Amazons, covered very familiar ground. I was also aware that Troy is now considered to be the city known as Wilusa to the Hittites. But the chapter on Hecuba, Priam’s queen, opened my eyes to the importance of queens in Hittite society. I was delighted to discover that Puduhepa, the wife of King Hattusili III, was considered so important that her seal appears alongside his on the treaty signed with Ramesses II after the Battle of Qadesh (famous as being the world’s first written peace treaty between nations).

In other places Hauser points out things in Homer’s texts that we really should have noticed. For example, when Odysseus winds up on the island of the Phaeacians it is not King Alcinous whom he has to beg for help, but Queen Arete. Quite what the Iron Age Athenians who so loved Homer’s work would have made of this is a mystery to me, given how awful they were to their own women. She also notes that Menelaus is King of Sparta only by right of his marriage to Helen, which hints of some sort of matrilineal descent such as we see in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion.

Hauser’s knowledge of Bronze Age Greece, and of Cretan civilisation, is superb, and I have to bow to her knowledge of the Hittites as I know no better. When it come to Egypt and Mesopotamia she is perhaps not quite as well read on the latest research as she might be, but her audience is not going to notice.

This does, however, bring me to one small quibble. Hauser is, in general, trans positive. The chapter on Athena points out how gender-fluid that goddess appears in myth (not to mention her being born of Zeus rather than of anyone female). This leads her to discussion of the gender-variant followers of Inana/Ishtar is Mesopotamia, and a character known as Silimabzuta who appears to self-identify as a ‘man-woman’. There are, as far as I know, only two references to this person in the literature. One is in a paper by Julian Reade in a 2002 edition of the German journal, Archäologie Zeitschriften. The other, somewhat more accessible and detailed, is my essay trans people in Mesopotamia on the Notches website. It is great that Silimabzuta is getting noticed but, if you are going to write about them, is it really too much to ask to cite the trans woman historian who brought their story to the world? Apparently it is.

Anyway, matters of academic pride aside, Mythica is a wonderful book that taught me a lot, and I think of myself as someone who has good knowledge of the subject matter. Although it does contain a lot of very good history, it is also very readable and can certainly be enjoyed by anyone with a passing interest in Homer (whoever he, or she, or they, might have been).

book cover
Title: Mythica
By: Emily Hauser
Publisher: Doubleday
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Murderbot – Season 1

072, TV Review

It is no secret that I am a big fan of Murderbot. Having one’s favourite fiction translated to screen is always a bit nerve-wracking, but I am pleased to say that this all turned out very well indeed.

One of the big questions in such an exercise will be, do the characters look like you expected? I gather than some people had envisaged Murderbot as more feminine, or as darker-skinned, and I don’t recall its appearance ever being defined. But in this case Alexander Skarsgård was producing the series and wanted to star in it, so a white man is what we got. True to the book, that was white man with Barbie genitals.

Most of the rest of the cast was fine, but weirdly I had a problem with Pin-Lee. I had been expecting someone slim, sharply dressed, and with long hair in a pony tail. That’s what Asian women lawyers look like, right? What we got was something very different, but I got used to it.

It has become fashionable online to describe the people from Preservation Alliance as ‘hippies’. Those of us old enough to remember the 1960s will beg to disagree, but I think it is fair to describe them as what hippies would be with an extra 60 years of social development behind them. Science fiction is always about today, after all.

Because the books are told from Murderbot’s point of view, they only show the humans through its eyes. With the TV series, we can see them for ourselves. This required giving them more depth and presence than they have in the books. Mensah and Gurathin both have quite a bit extra to them, and I particularly appreciated what was done with Gurathin.

The half hour format for each episode has come in for quite a bit of criticism, and I can see why. The shows did feel a bit thin. But they were also enjoyable and the narrative breaks between episodes worked well. I enjoyed the series so much that I would like to make time to re-watch it. I will be interested to see how it feels in longer chunks.

A major deviation from the books is the inclusion of excerpts from The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. It is every bit as cheesy as I expected. I was reminded in places of Galaxy Quest. Of course the point of including it was to throw light on what Murderbot is thinking, and from that point of view it worked quite well. Heaven help us if anyone actually tries to make a spin-off series from it.

There are other deviations from the book. I have not gone back and read it to see what they are because I don’t care. Murderbot works as a TV series, and it definitely needs a second season (if only so we can get ART in the cast. I understand that it has been renewed, so we have much to look forward to.

Ironheart

072, TV Review

Riri Williams is a Marvel character who is so new that I have not read any comics that feature her. I did see her guest appearance in Wakanda Forever, but that didn’t tell me much. Ironheart is a 6-episode series that focuses just on Riri, so we get to know her much better.

The basic story is that Riri is a girl genius who can build iron man style suits as well or better than Tony Stark. However, due to being a) a teenager, b) Black, and c) not a neo-baby, she has to finance her work herself. The film opens with her getting expelled from MIT for charging her fellow students to write their essays for them, and she has to go back to Chicago to live with her mom, Ronnie.

The backstory is that, when Riri was a kid, she was caught in a random drive-by shooting. She survived, but her step-father, Gary, and best friend, Natalie, were both killed. All very Batman. When Riri tries to use her own memories to train an AI for her suit, she ends up accidentally creating an AI version of Natalie, which does not go down well with the family.

Having no money, Riri falls for the same trap as many other Black kids in Chicago: she gets involved in a criminal gang. As gangs go, they are pretty ethical. They major in robbing techbro oligarchs. But their leader, Parker, is altogether more sinister. It is clear that he is mixed up I some bad sorcery shit. Before long, Riri is in deep trouble.

Something that I noticed early on in the series is that Ironheart gives off a similar vibe to reading a Nalo Hopkinson novel. That is, it is clearly set in a culture that I have little experience and knowledge of. People are sometimes going to behave in ways that seem odd to me, but it have to take it as read that this is an authentic portrayal of Black Chicago culture. I’m certainly not in a position to notice if it isn’t.

A much more serious issue is that Riri is clearly not well suited to the superhero life. She’s very young, has an inflated view of her own competence, routinely lies to adults because they are adults, and generally gets herself into terrible situations. Frankly she’s lucky to get out of the series without either ending up in goal or getting killed. On the one hand, that’s probably a fair representation of a teenage genius with little life experience. On the other, there’s no way that would have been done to a male character in the same situation. Miles Morales is the closest parallel, and he gets a much softer ride in his movies.

There are two things I really like about the series. The first is Ronnie. As moms of superheroes go, she is absolutely ace. There should be more moms like that in the world. The other is Zelma Stanton.

As I understand it, Zelma is another example of the MCU taking a minor character and doing something great with her. In the comics she has a role as a sometime pupil of Doctor Strange who is based in New Orleans. Ironheart moves her to Chicago and makes her a genius teen sorceress – a magical counterpart to Riri’s technical ability.

The mixture of high tech and sorcery is a bold one, and it is unclear as yet just how well it will work. However, Regan Aliyah as Zelma has undeniable screen presence. I’m pleased that the final episode made it clear that Riri’s story is far from being done, and that Zelma will have a major part in it going forward.

Structurally the series makes some contestable choices. I understand why the script-writers chose to keep Parker’s backstory secret until late on in the series, but he is such an uninteresting character before that. It could have done with more teasing, I think.

The other thing that is kept secret right until the end is the nature of the Big Bad who is using Parker as a tool. That worked much better. And the choice of Sacha Baron Cohen to play the part is another of those genius pieces of casting for which the MCU is deservedly famous.

The Fantastic Four – First Steps

072, Movie Review

Several attempts have been made at a Fantastic Four movie. All of them have been reported to be flops of some sort or another. I haven’t bothered to watch any of them. As superheroes go, the FF are just not that interesting.

But the new movie, First Steps, is the first to be properly integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Also it stars Pedro Pascal who is a staunch trans ally and currently high on the list of people whom the TERFs want to destroy, so I figured I show support his new film.

The title is a bit of a pun, in that it is something of an origin story for the team, and also an indication that the story is, to a large extent, about the birth of Franklin Richards, the most powerful kid in the MCU. The film also leads into the next phase of MCU story-telling (don’t ask me which one, I have lost count) in that the immediate story will be continued in the next Avengers movie. As we all know, the next Big Bad for the Avengers will be Doctor Doom and he, famously, is a principal antagonist of The Fantastic Four.

There has been some complaint online that Sue Storm’s role in the film has been restricted to baby-making. I think this is a little unfair. To start with, the film uses a modern version of Sue’s powers. Back in the day, all she could do was turn invisible, which seemed the perfect metaphor for the superhero housewife. In the film she is the only member of the team who can match Galactus for raw power. She’s also shown to be a competent politician, and is in many ways the adult of the team. Admittedly there is the whole giving birth in the middle of fighting Galactus thing, but I know what I did in my story for Fight Like A Girl #2 so I am in no position to complain.

But I am getting ahead of myself. There are a number of things that the film does well. The first is to set the story in a parallel universe that has retro 1960s technology and fashion, and a feel of public confidence in the power of science. That perfectly suits the Marvel’s Most Wholesome Family vibe that the FF give off. They are going to have a rude awakening when they end up in Earth 616 (our reality).

Second, they did not waste time on the actual origin story. Anyone who is familiar with the characters knows it already, and it isn’t that exciting. So the film has it told in flashback as the introduction to a TV chat show (suitably cheesy and 1960s-looking) on which the team is due to be interviewed.

Third, they have made a determined attempt to give each of the four characters a bit of depth. Reed in particular can be a bit dull. He’s an obsessive science geek who is never happier than when he is scribbling equations on a blackboard. But in the film he is aware of that, can occasionally joke about it, and worries about how it affects his relationship with Sue.

Ben Grimm gets to showcase his connection to New York, his Jewish heritage, and his depression over his appearance. Jonny is always eating (that flaming takes a lot of energy) and gets to show that he’s not just some crazy kid who does the action stuff. And HERBIE the robot is delightfully retro. (He uses tape drives!)

Sue’s political skills are showcased in another piece of backstory. Although the Mole Man is one of the first villains that the FF faced, this is all in the past. Sue has negotiated a peace treaty between the UN and Subterranea, and this allows the underground world to play a significant role in the fight with Galactus. Very little about who the Mole Man is gets explained, and we never get a good look at the Subterraneans, so I did worry that people not familiar with the comics might be a bit lost. However, Jo Hall, who knew almost nothing about the FF going in, said she had no trouble following what was happening.

Galactus is the obvious villain for a Fantastic Four movie, and indeed this is not the first such film to feature him. This film does something interesting with the Silver Surfer, giving the role to Shala-Bal who, in the comics, was Norrin Radd’s girlfriend. I’m not sure that it added a lot, but it did show once again that the MCU is not afraid to do something different.

The mid-credits scene gives us a teaser for where the story will go next, and confirms that we can expect an Avengers movie featuring Doctor Doom. There is a end-credits scene as well. It isn’t important, but it is fun.

Overall I think the film does a decent job. It isn’t a great movie, but it is a competent one. With a project like the MCU, which occasionally has just get the story moved along, that is sometimes all we are going to get.

Archipelacon 2

072, Convention Report

As some of you may remember, the first Archipelacon was a Eurocon hosted by Finland with George RR Martin as the top billed Guest of Honour. It was by far the biggest thing that happened in Åland outside of a Tall Ships race. The repeat event wasn’t going to match up to that, despite having Jeff & Ann VanderMeer on board, but it was equally brilliantly run.

This being a Finnish con, I was kept very busy. I started out doing the On Writing panel that is traditional at Finncon. That provided an additional challenge because a family emergency meant that Mats Strandberg was unable to join us in person. While the con did re-arrange his solo panels to allow him to attend in person, they didn’t have enough time to organize hybrid panels so I had to work around the issue. Thankfully Mats was keen to make something work, so I was able to chair the panel armed with a bunch of responses from Mats to set questions. Jeff and Emmi Itäranta were their usual fabulous selves, so it all went very well. My thanks to the people who posted kind comments about my chairing on social media.

Before I get back to the con, a few words on the state of translation in SF&F. Emmi has a new book out that is a feminist take on the Kalevala (though sadly not starting the Golden Maiden, the android made by the smith, Ilmarinen, as he’s been unable to persuade a human woman to marry him. Emmi normally translates her own work into English, but she has no plans to do that for this book as yet as she doesn’t think she will be able to sell it. I also made time to chat to Maria Turtschaninoff because I very much want to read her Underfors, an urban fantasy set in Helsinki. The book was published in Swedish (Maria’s native language) in 2010, but there’s still no sign of an English edition.

The point here is that mainstream publishers are cutting costs wherever they can. Translation costs run into many thousands of pounds, so not doing translations is an obvious money saver. Also the big companies are holding out for using LLMs for translation so they don’t have to pay anything at all. Currently these software systems are nowhere near good enough to produce a decent translation of a novel, but the management at the publishers don’t want to hear that.

Personally I would love to publish both of those books, but there is no way anything that I publish could recoup the thousands of pounds I would need to pay a professional translator. So we are stuck. Big publishers don’t want to pay for translations. Smaller ones cannot afford them. So fewer books get translated. It is hard to see what we can do about this.

There was a small panel later in the con discussing what European fandom can do to encourage translations. I was invited to join it. The only viable option appeared to be EU grants. Of course, as a non-EU company, Wizard’s Tower cannot apply for them.

Back at the con, I did two presentations. One was an academic paper about lake ladies. Not just the famous one who gives Arthur a sword in Malory, but the many others that you find in Welsh folklore, and adaptions thereof. The other was an updated version of my queer animals talk that started life as a keynote for an academic conference in Graz. Both of them were packed out and had to turn people away. I’m told that there were queues outside the rooms. It would have been nice to have more space, but the auditoriums were largely reserved for GoH events and the only other option would have been to put me over the road in the hotel, which would have greatly reduced the audience because people are easily put off by minor hurdles. (The translation panel was in the hotel and had an audience of four.)

Anyway, if anyone wants me to do those talks at another con, I would be happy to do so.

The one traditional panel that I had was about the use of Scandinavian mythology in popular culture. Naturally there was a lot (and a Loki) to talk about. I brought along Fenris Puppy, the cute plushie world-eating wolf that I had bought in Copenhagen. He was a very good dog, and did not eat any of the panel, or the audience.

Ada Palmer was also on the panel. She entered into the spirit of things by bringing a plushie salmon. (Loki transformed himself into a salmon to escape after the death of Baldr). She also had some really interesting things to say about current academic research on Norse myths. I am very much looking forward to her new novel, Hearthfire.

My final panel was supposed to be an interview with Ann VanderMeer about publishing, but Ann was unwell on the final day of the con so that one did not happen. Ann and Jeff both looked very tired. Obviously there was jet lag, but I suspect that the stress of living under a nascent Fascist regime is starting to get to many of my American friends.

With all that program to do, I didn’t manage to get to any other aspects of the con. I was even excused the masquerade because Kevin Roche was on hand to take control of that. I was very happy to step aside for an experienced professional.

In summary, Åland is still lovely, and I was very happy to be able to share it with more fans from around Europe. There will be an Åcon next year. Emily Tesh will be the Guest of Honour. I very much hope to be there.

Introducing Turku

072, Travel Report

Whenever I go to a convention in Åland I have to pass through Turku. Normally that is all I do. My friend Otto drives me from Helsinki to Turku to catch the ferry, and drives me back again after the con. But this year was different, and I got to see a bit more of the city.

I had spent midsummer up in Jyväskylä as a guest of my friend Irma. From there I took a train to Turku, and stayed in town overnight before catching the ferry the next morning. At the suggestion of friend Tero, who lives in Turku, I booked a room on the SS Bore.

Yes, that’s right, I stayed overnight on a ship. The Bore has a long and distinguished history, and for a major part of its life it was a cruise ship. She is much too small for such work these days (the ferries to Åland are much bigger), but it does mean that she has a lot of rooms. And all of those rooms are en suite.

Obviously the rooms are not big, and the beds are a long way from being luxury. But they are cheap. I paid €60 for the night. It is also very convenient, being just a short walk from the ferry terminal. I don’t recommend it if you have lots of luggage and/or are not good with stairs, and the signage could be better, but for young folks it is a very good option. And then there is the river to explore.

Turku is a maritime city at the mouth of the River Aura. These days even the ferries are too big to get up the river, but in the past all manner of ships could be found going to and fro. As is the way of such things, the riverfront has been converted into a tourist attraction.

The Bore is part of a collection of elderly ships put out to pasture as part of a maritime museum. The others, being much less human-friendly, are just there to be looked at. There are retired military ships such as the Karjala (a gunboat) and the Keihässalmi (a minesweeper). There is a rare steel-hulled triple-masted sailing ship, the Suomen Joutsen. And there is the magnificent barque, Sigyn, which was sadly under renovation while I was there. In addition there are a museum and a restaurant.

Speaking of restaurants, the entire riverbank is lined with interesting places to eat. Tero gave me some recommendations and I ended up dining very well. The good food is expensive, of course, but think of all the money you have saved by lodging on the Bore.

By the way, you may be wondering about the name of the ship. It is nothing to do with the vessel being boring, not is it Welsh for morning. It is the name of the company that originally built the ship. As she was their first ever ship, they named her after themselves. However, when she was a cruise ship, she needed a much more elegant name. Signs in the cabin remind visitors that they are staying on the Regina Kristina. Yes, that Queen Chrstina. I spent the night on a ship named after a trans person.

At the end of the riverwalk, almost next door to the maritime museum, there is a castle. It isn’t a very impressive castle by Welsh standards, but at least it is still standing. Also it was allegedly a pirate fortress for a while, which is an impressive claim to fame.

(I am reminded that the maritime museum in Mariehamn, the capital of Åland, has an actual pirate flag captured from an actual pirate ship. There are not many of those in the world.)

Why am I telling you all this? Not just because I loved the place. Next year’s Finncon will be in Turku, and one of the Guests of Honour will be Adrian Tchaikovsky. The con will be a bit of a way from the waterfront, but Turku is a small city so you should be able to pop over and sample its maritime history should you wish to do so.

Doctor in the House

072, Personal

Earlier this month I got endoctorfied. That is, the kind people at the University of Exeter bestowed upon me an honorary Doctorate of Laws (that’s an LLD, not a PhD). I wrote about it briefly on my blog, but I was still a bit gobsmacked then so I figured I owed you a longer report on the day.

I first found out about this in October last year, and my first reaction was to ask them if they had the right person. They seemed to think that they did, so I accepted, firm in the expectation that, long before the graduation day, someone high up in the university hierarchy would get cold feet and withdraw the offer. People don’t get honorary doctorates for doing trans activism, especially not on TERF Island, right?

I needed to keep quiet about it anyway. One thing that I and the university were keenly aware of was that any advance publicity risked a campaign in the press to have the honour revoked. If it could be kept quiet until it was all done and dusted we would probably be OK. And so it seems to have proved.

Anyway, I couldn’t tell anyone, and didn’t want to because I would look very stupid if it did get withdrawn.

Part of that was that I was limited with respect to guests. I invited Kevin, and he was delighted at the prospect. This was, of course, long before he made the decision to embark on gender transition. We talked about this in the coming months, and decided that this would be a final Kevin visit. It is very hard these days for a trans person to travel internationally in the early stages of transition, but for the most part it will be Kayla who is here for BristolCon and World Fantasy.

Come June I was having to do things such as write an acceptance speech and I started to believe that it was actually going to happen. Thankfully it did, otherwise we would have wasted a lot of money on air fares.

Exeter kindly paid for us to have first class rail travel to and from the event. This made Kevin very happy. They also put us up in a hotel for a couple of nights. We had the Sunday free to explore the city and recover from the travel before the big day on the Monday.

Exeter is a lovely city, and the weather was fabulous, all of which helped with the relaxation. There is a flea market on Fore Street on Sundays and I managed to find a bangle that would go well with my dress so I had something from the city for the occasion.

I took Kevin to the Royal Albert Museum, because if you have an American in tow showing off depth of history is a cool thing to do. Sadly there is very little Celtic or Roman material on display. I’m guessing that a lot of the legionary fortress is buried under the modern city and can’t be excavated, but it is quite disappointing compared to Chester or Caerleon.

Graduation at a modern university is a major operation. It lasts for several days, and there are several ceremonies each day. Otherwise there would not be seating room for everyone. There is only one honorary doctorate in each ceremony. But there were two other ceremonies on the day so I got to meet two of my fellow honorees.

Before that there was a meeting with some of the academics. Sadly neither Jana Funke nor Rebecca Langlands could be there on the day. They are both professors at Exeter whom I have worked with in the past. I suspect that they may have had a part in suggesting me of the honour. But I did get to talk to some people from Classics, History and Languages.

Then there was lunch, where I got to meet my fellow honorees. One of them was Caroline Lucas, the former Green Party MP. I had met her before at the first ever Brighton Trans Pride, so we had something to talk about. The other was a woman called Pippa Warin who has done some amazing work in theatre and literature in the South-West. I wish I had had more time to talk with her as we seemed to have a lot of interests in common.

Each honoree was placed on a different table for lunch, so I ended up with a bunch of university people. Much to my surprise, one was a keen Iain M Banks fan, and another was working on SF&F by African and Caribbean authors. We truly have won the literary culture war.

After lunch Kevin was taken off to the audience while I got dressed up in academic robes and briefed on the ceremony. It was a little more complicated than accepting a Hugo, but not much, and I was provided with a lovely chap called Roscoe whose job it was to sit next to me and tell me what to do next. Mostly that entailed sitting quietly and applauding every one of the young people graduating in the session.

The actual presentation process begins with an ‘oration’, that is a speech by the university explaining why I was being honoured. That was given by professor Rajani Naidoo who is a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and also responsible for DEI work. She’s an amazing South African woman, just the sort of forthright feminist that I enjoy hanging out with.

I may have had a bit of a feminist rant in my acceptance speech.

Having been endoctored, I then had to process out through the audience. I did get a couple of very unpleasant looks from older white men, but that was more than made up for by the happy, smiling faces of many of the mothers and women graduates. After that it was official photographs and back to St. David’s station to catch the train back to Wales.




Left to right: Provost Professor Dan Charman, me, Vice Chancellor Professor Lisa Roberts and Deputy Vice Chancellor Professor Rajani Naidoo

My thanks are due to Helen and Megan from the university staff who planned the whole day and guided me through it, to Roscoe for keeping me on the right track during the ceremony, to Professor Naidoo for the oration and help with my speech, and to Vice Chancellor Professor Lisa Roberts and all of her staff for the incredible honour.

I won’t be using my new title very often. I still feel a bit of an imposter compared to people who have actually slogged through a 3 or more year university course. But I will most definitely use it when I am haranguing government over trans rights issues.

Editorial – July 2025

072, Editorial

It is amazing how much difference having travel time makes to my reading. When I am on trains or aircraft I can often race through novels. When I am not going anywhere, or only going places by car, or going places but with a companion, no reading gets done. Thankfully this issue benefitted from a bunch of other things to talk about. But I do need to finish some of the books I am reading before next issue.

I did at least manage to get this one out on time. I am not actually going anywhere much in August, which is a bit of a relief. I haven’t even got Worldcon in my diary. Maybe the reading time will come.

I’m putting the finishing touches to this issue while (virtually) attending the Science Fiction Research Association’s annual conference. The title of the event is Trans People are (in) the Future. I have heard lots of great papers already. It is good to see how much scholarship there is on trans-themed SF&F these days, and how many trans scholars are doing it. Despite the massive social backlash against trans folks that is currently taking place, I like to think that we have made a big enough impact on society that it will be impossible for the likes of (t)Rump and Starmer to erase us entirely.

Issue #71

Issues

This is the June 2025 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Cover: Radhika Rages at the Crater School: This issue's cover is by Ben Baldwin. It also graces the cover of the new Crater School book from Chaz Brenchley.

  • Blackheart Man: It has been a long time coming, but the new Nalo Hopkinson novel has finally arrived

  • The Folded Sky: The latest book in Elizabeth Bear's White Space universe has pirates, some intriguing aliens, and cats

  • The Ministry of Time: It is one of the most talked-about SF books of 2025, but is it any good?

  • The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses: The new Pleiti and Mossa book is out, and Cheryl has pounced on it immediately

  • Immaculate Forms: Are men and women different, and how could we tell? Helen King takes a trip into the history of body-sexing.

  • Urban Fantasy: Stefan Ekman looks deeply into what Urban Fantasy fiction is all about

  • Hay Literary Festival, 2025: In which Cheryl pays a visit to this year's Hay Literary Festival and gets a compliment from one of her feminist heroes

  • Testosterone Rex: Cheryl's trip to Hay reminded her of this blast from the past

  • Doctor Who 15.2: Another series of Doctor Who comes to an end. Which provides greater drama, the actual shows, or the online controversy about them?

  • Editorial – June 2025: Cheryl is back from Finland and looking forward to doing less travel for a while

Blackheart Man

071, Book Review, Nalo Hopkinson

A new Nalo Hopkinson novel is always a treat to look forward to. I’ve known that Hopkinson has been working on this one for many years. Sadly life has got in the way and slowed her production, but the book is now available and already picking up accolades. It is a finalist for this year’s Ursula K Le Guin Prize, which should give you some idea of what to expect.

The action takes place on the island of Chynchin which exists in an alternate world analogue of the Caribbean. The inhabitants are all brown-skinned. However, we learn that some 200 years ago they were enslaved by pale-skinned people called Ymisen who live far away across the sea. The people of Chynchin rebelled and, thanks to the intervention of three witches, the Ymisen army was drowned in one of the tar pits for which the island is famed. These days no one quite knows how the witches managed to make a tar pit appear suddenly under the enemy army, and make it solidify as soon and they have been subsumed, but everyone knows it happened, and the island has been free ever since. Now a Ymisen fleet has been spotted off the coast, and the island is in danger once again.

This being Hopkinson, things are not quite that simple. To start with, there are two distinct ethnic groups on Chynchin. There are the darker skinned people, who are in charge, and the Mirmeki, known as ‘Deserters’, who are very much second class citizens.

Our main character, Veycosi, is a young man from a wealthy family. He is training to be an academic, and once he graduates he is due to marry Thandiwe, who owns a fish farming business. However, Veycosi has many of the less attractive qualities of elite men. He is convinced of his own brilliance, and consequently prone to doing things on a whim without thinking of the consequences. Nor does he pay much attention to anyone else. And he is totally blind to his own privilege.

Fortunately for Thandiwe, the custom on Chynchin is for women to take two husbands. Her other betrothed, Gombey, is a much more sensible fellow. But Thandiwe already has a child, a girl about to become a teenager. This is not the result of a youthful dalliance. Kaïra was conceived by parthenogenesis, which is rare on the island but not unknown. Any girl child born in this way is destined to become a priestess in the service of the island’s twin cayman goddesses, Mamapiche and Mamagua.

So there is a lot going on, and that’s without a fleet of ships full of pale-faced soldiers in too-warm woolen uniforms showing up and attempting to annex the island. Really, Veycosi can cause enough trouble all by himself, without these foreigners making matters worse.

Meanwhile, in the tar pit, some of the dead soldiers are beginning to stir.

The title, Blackheart Man, is a reference to an island folktale of a demonic figure who emerges from the tar pits to kidnap badly behaved children.

The core of the story is Veycosi’s journey to self-knowledge, with the invasion being dealt with along the way. But a lot more has to happen to obtain that result in addition to having Veycosi learn to think before he acts, and to care about other people. A second theme running through the book is one of sexual and gender diversity. I’ve already mentioned the polyandry. The people of Chynchin have a very relaxed and sensible attitude to sexuality and gender. As with Hopkinson’s other work, this is a very thoughtful book. I can quite see what the Le Guin Prize jury picked it.

Oh, and there is a camel called Goat, who also has an important role to play in the story.

book cover
Title: Blackheart Man
By: Nalo Hopkinson
Publisher: Saga Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Folded Sky

071, Book Review, Elizabeth Bear

This is the third book set in Elizabeth Bear’s White Space universe. Unlike her fantasy work, which seems to come neatly packages in trilogies, these books more or less stand on their own. I’m pretty sure that you could read The Folded Sky without having read the other two books. You’d soon pick up on how the universe works and the various bits of futuristic technology involved. At least I hope that’s the case, because I want Bear to produce more of these books. They are very fine Space Opera.

As is often the case with Space Opera, The Folded Sky is a first contact story. It also has a murder mystery. And of course there is a Big Dumb Object. Well, not so dumb in this case.

The central character in the book is Dr. Sunyata Song (Sunya to her friends). She is an archinformist – someone who studies ancient archives – and she has embarked on a mission to study the Baomind, a vast swarm of computing structures created by the now vanished Koregoi civilization. The Baomind is almost certainly intelligent, but it communicates only in mathematics and music. Sunya hopes to establish contact with it and thereby reignite her flagging academic career.

Naturally things are not that easy. To start with the Orbital on which she is going to have to live is old and ramshackle. Also the star around which the Baomind orbits is becoming increasingly unstable. Sunya’s mission is combined with an urgent need to rescue as much of the Baomind as possible before it is too late. And then there are the Freebooters.

If you have read the other White Space novels you will know that the Freebooters are fanatically xenophobic human pirates. As well as hating aliens, they also hate all forms of artificial intelligence. And the star around which the Baomind orbits is far from the usual shipping lanes. It is an easy target.

So poor Sunya is going to be stuck on a rickety space station orbiting a star that might be about to explode while being attacked by pirates, and with a murderer amongst the crew. And yes, Bear does ramp up and tension from there. An important thing about Space Opera is that it should be a thrilling ride. Bear absolutely knows how to achieve that.

Another reason that I love these books is the aliens. Those of you familiar with my presentations on worldbuilding with sex and gender (or the article in the Luna Press book, Worlds Apart), will know that I despair of the tendency of science fiction writers (and fantasy writers) to create new species that are just humans with a few superficial modifications. Why do lizard women have two breasts, when they presumably lay eggs? I don’t know if Bear has seen or read any of my work on this, but she has absolutely got the message. There’s an alien in The Folded Sky whose species has multiple biological genders, and one whose species dies when they give birth to provide their offspring with food.

Towards the end, The Folded Sky gets deep into the weeds about the nature of the universe and the origins of intelligent life. It is fairly abstruse stuff at times, which may be off-putting to some readers. I’m also unsure of the wisdom of Bear nailing her colours to the twin masts of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The more I think about them, the more I conclude that they are sticking plasters over the broken equations of astrophysics and that one day some clever physicist will render the need for them moot. But they are, of course, what science fiction writers are stuck with these days.

In summary, this is a very intelligent, and very big-hearted, book that rushes headlong from one extreme peril to a succession of ever greater ones. Also there are cats. They are mostly very unhappy cats, as they spend much of the book stuffed into spacesuits, but books are always better with cats.

book cover
Title: The Folded Sky
By: Elizabeth Bear
Publisher: Gollancz
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Ministry of Time

071, Book Review, Kaliane Bradley

This one is clearly very popular. It is being promoted heavily by Waterstones, and is a Hugo and Clarke finalist. I can see why. But, as sometimes happens, it also irritated me quite a bit. Let me explain why.

One of the things that you need to do as a publisher is catch internal inconsistencies in novels. Writers, bless them, are forever doing weird stuff like killing off a minor character in one chapter, and having them alive again a few chapters later. Or having characters walk eastward into the setting sun. Novels are hard, so it is not surprising that such mistakes happen. Our job, as publishers, is to help the authors catch as many of them as they can before they go to print.

Or perhaps it used to be, because whoever had that job for The Ministry of Time seems to have been dozing at the wheel.

In chapter 5, Margaret, one of the time-travelled ‘ex-pats’, asks, “what is Hollywood?” Yet in chapter 4 she gives a presentation on the work of Charlie Chaplin. (And yes, I know about Niles, but he moved to LA soon after. He was one of the founders of United Artists, for heaven’s sake.)

In chapter 5 Graham Gore asks, “what is Guinness?” Yet in chapter two he and the narrator go to a London pub together.

I find it really hard to believe that the ‘ex-pats’ are given access to the internet and television, and yet they are kept unaware of the Holocaust.

There’s probably more of this stuff, those are just the issues that leapt off the page at me.

I don’t blame Kaliane Bradley for this. Like I said, writing novels is hard. It is the job of the publisher to help catch such things. But, with the increasing emphasis on profit margins, I suspect that mainstream publishers are becoming increasingly lax with regard to quality control, even for a book that is getting such a big publicity push as this one.

What I am less happy with Bradley about is the portrayal of the ‘ex-pats’ – people pulled out of their own time as experiments by the eponymous Ministry. Graham Gore is obviously a very well rounded, and researched, character. The others seem much more like caricatures of their periods. What’s more, I am not sure that, after a year of training to fit in to 21st Century Britain, some of them should be unable to shake a small number of obvious language habits that mark them out as having lived several centuries ago. I’m sorry, I’m an historian, I care about this sort of stuff.

Quibbles apart, this is a fun mystery novel. I spotted some of the twists in advance, but not all of them. The book is also deeply sceptical of the morality of Whitehall and the British political machine. That I very much approve of.

Something else I liked is that, with the story being set only a few years into the future, the weather in London has become terrible and unpredictable thanks to the unfolding climate disaster. More near future SF will have to deal with this.

Finally, because I am currently reading Absolution, it occurred to me that The Ministry of Time probably draws a lot on Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series. Both books involve agents of a shadowy, quite powerful and seemingly incompetent government department struggling to deal with something totally out of the ordinary. If you are going to be looking for inspiration, Area X is as good a place as any to start.

book cover
Title: The Ministry of Time
By: Kaliane Bradley
Publisher: Sceptre
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses

071, Book Review, Malka Older

Pleiti and Mossa are back. Hooray! I had The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses on pre-order and read it immediately it arrived. Didn’t you?

As we are now three books into the series, it is worth taking a step back and looking at the world that Malka Older is constructing.

For the benefit of those of you who have not read the books, they are mysteries set in universities that are in human colonies in the skies of Jupiter. Earth has become uninhabitable and, after a period of desperate survival in space stations, humanity has started to build a new life for itself. The main characters are loosely based on Holmes and Watson, with the main viewpoint character being Pleiti, an academic who tries to study life on Earth through the medium of novels written by people who lived there. Her on-off girlfriend, Mossa, is a professional if somewhat unorthodox detective.

A major theme of the books is the conflict between Classicists such as Pleiti (people who study Earth) and Modernists (people who study Jupiter). This book brings that conflict much more into focus as Pleiti is recruited to help a Modernist scientist at another university whose career is being threated by a jealous rival. That the rivalry is often silly is made very clear.

Of course the overriding theme of the books is the awfulness of so much of academic life. Older clearly has an axe to grind, but from my limited experience it is one that desperately needs use. Politics in academia can be even worse than in fandom.

Meanwhile Older is working on building up a vision of the new world she has created. Novellas don’t give you much space for worldbuilding, but over the course of a series more can be done. One of the things Older does very effectively is note a shift in language. She uses new words such as ‘graduents’ (graduate students) and ‘dafuq’ (a swear word). There’s just enough of it to show the reader that we are not in Kansas without the text becoming hard to decipher.

The plot of the new book is also tied in to the worldbuilding. On Jupiter (Giant, as it is called in the books) humanity lives on artificial platforms that float in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. Each platform is covered by an atmoshield which keeps the breathable air in. However, the air quality is not good, and when outside everyone wears an atmoscarf to provide further filtering. Vilette, the scientist to whose aid Pleiti comes, has invented a miniaturized version of this technology that is a threat to the existing atmoscarf industry.

A common theme of the books is the difficult relationship between Pleiti and Mossa. It seems that Mossa is highly neurodivergent and mostly incapable of rationally understanding her feelings for Pleiti. In the new book this spills over into fully-fledged depression. It is an interesting setup, but one that I think could become dull if it is repeated in every book, which I fear it might be because of the straightjacket requirements of the romance genre.

Finally we are seeing the beginnings of an overarching story arc. Academic rivalry notwithstanding, the key issue facing Giant society is whether to devote their efforts to the eventual re-colonisation of Earth (the Classicist position) or to make the best of their new world and forget the old. Pleiti, as a Classicist, has obviously devoted her career to the former position, but she is beginning to fear that she might be wrong. I look forward to seeing how that develops.

Which is another way of saying, “more please!”

book cover
Title: The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses
By: Malka Older
Publisher: Tor
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura
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