Tag Archives: science fiction

Choosing to fly: When We Have Wings by Claire Corbett

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Allen & Unwin, 2011
9781742375564 
(buy Aus paperback, ebook, US/Kindle) 

The main theme, and dilemma, for the two main characters in When We Have Wings is an old one: how do we deal with technological progress, the divides it can create (between classes, between generations), and the power it may provide to a privileged few? More specifically, how does someone raising a child in a rapidly changing environment make decisions about their future?

But the main reasons you should read this novel are:

1. people can fly
2. one of the main characters is a private detective
3. there is a miniature lion

Did I mention that people can fly? Yeah. Wow.

Peri was abandoned as a child and grew up poor in the regions outside the city. When we meet her in the novel, she’s been given her wings, and she works as a nanny to baby Hugo, for a wealthy, influential couple. Her employer, the architect Peter Chesshyre, is the creator of exclusive buildings for fliers, and is a little too in love with his own power. The wings are due to advances in science—genetic engineering—as are much of the spectacular materials for building and fashions. Even pets are hugely altered (if one has the money). It’s natural for people to choose their baby’s eye and hair colour. This is already something that doesn’t seem far away, so When We Have Wings asks: how far would we go?

The other main character—our private dick Zeke Fowler—has to let his ex-wife know whether or not their three-year-old son will go ahead with the treatments to become a flier. Of course, he wants his son to have every opportunity to go forward, and be happy, in the world, but what he’s learning about fliers on his current case isn’t very attractive. His case is to look for Peri, who has taken off with baby Hugo.

The story is addictive: there are adventures (with flying), mysteries, and intense encounters. The book is large and so there’s plenty of time to get to know both Peri and Zeke; their histories, their passions, their weaknesses. Corbett creates a great deal of sympathy for her main characters by giving them both ‘tough-but-caring’ natures. Peri is very protective of Hugo; Zeke is genuinely concerned about Peri. There are also some lovely moments between Zeke and the aforementioned tiny lion.

Corbett has built an imaginative, complex world: a city where permanent residency is like a Wonka golden ticket, plus edge cities, swampy outlands with nasty diseases, and a burgeoning world in the sky. The weather is tropical, the population is multicultural. Technological and genetic advances are for the haves. The have-nots may be left behind, but there are groups working (as there would be) to try to make sure there will be more choice, and clearer ethical guidelines.

Corbett, in creating this world and her characters, has also engaged with theology and mythology, with nature, and with history. When We Have Wings is hence densely layered. It’s smart and political, raising the kind of questions the best science fiction should raise (about ethics, about progress, about how future generations will make meaning), but it’s also just damn entertaining. The characters are well-rounded, the story is genuinely exciting, and best of all, Corbett does not pander to her readers. She does not tie everything into a neat little bow. The future is possibly bleak and strange, it may also be exhilarating. Either way, we will have to deal with many of the same issues we deal with now.

This post will be added to my tally in the Australian Women Writers Reading + Reviewing Challenge.

Guest review: Andrew Wrathall on 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

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Harvill Secker, 2011
9781846555497
(hardcover, ebook: books 1 & 2, book 3) 

by Andrew Wrathall

Aomame is warned: ‘Things are not what they seem,’ before she leaves a taxi on a backed-up freeway in Japan and walks down an emergency stairway, which causes her to slip out of 1984 and into the alternate reality of 1Q84. Aomame is a gym instructor, who has lived alone since leaving her family of doomsday proselytizers as a girl. She is also contracted to kill the husbands of women who’ve escaped domestic violence.

There’s also Tengo, a mathematics teacher at a cram school, whose love for literature leads him on a dubious path as a ghostwriter. While reading manuscripts for a literary award, Tengo is intrigued by the story Air Chrysalis, written by a strange young girl called Fuka-Eri. When asked to rewrite the story, the offer is far too compelling to turn down. The rewritten book wins the literary award and becomes a bestseller, with the media lapping-up the story of Fuka-Eri as a gifted 17-year-old emerging writer.

Fuka-Eri’s story is about mysterious beings known only as the Little People, who enter the world through the mouth of a dead goat. The metaphysical Little People are a manipulative entity with an unknown agenda and originally exist as fiction within Fuka-Eri’s novel, then later appear within the world of 1Q84.

Murakami’s idea of the Little People, as an invisible and malevolent controlling force, is juxtaposed against the idea of Big Brother from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four, as the totalitarian force that causes people to rewrite history so often that they forget which history is the true history. One character says that upon arriving at the year 1984, ‘There’s no longer any place for a Big Brother in this real world of ours,’ because Big Brother would be too obvious to people since the concept is universal. The Little People, however, are unheard of, and can easily remain hidden.

The characters identify the world as an alternate reality by the change in news stories which places the cult of Sagikake into the world, and by the appearance of two moons—a large one and a smaller moss-green one.

The three-part book is an epic 925 pages and is a slow-going read, but rewards the reader with richly painted scenes that border between the real and surreal. At times Murakami’s fantasy elements can seem incomprehensible, but readers should allow the narrative to unfold rather than attempt to decrypt the fantasy. Readers may question whether the original Japanese had other meanings, but certainly the prose in the translation (by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel) is flawless.

The story contains an adolescent connection between the main characters that drives the plot as a love story. There are sexual depictions that tread the line between erotic and disturbing. While Aomame is a tough and highly sexual character, she can easily be seen as an action hero born of male fantasy.

The narrative contains stories within stories, which inwardly explain the direction of the plot, then outwardly and self-reflexively reveal the motives of Murakami in writing the narrative. For example, Tengo explains why he thinks Anton Chekhov went to Sakhalin Island in Japan, as though Murakami were explaining why he created the world of 1Q84.

Murakami most likely bases Tengo on himself. Aomame at one point says, ‘Are you telling me that I was transported to this other world of 1Q84 by Tengo’s storytelling ability […] ?’, which can be viewed as a metafictional reference to the author.

In reference to Air Chrysalis the story reads, ‘Her readers followed along, very naturally adopting her point of view, and before they knew it, they were in another world—a world that was not this world,’ which could refer to the readers of 1Q84.

Murakami also seems like he is mocking the literary community when he writes sentences like, ‘More than a few of the reviewers seemed perplexed by—or simply undecided about—the meaning of the air chrysalis and the Little People [...] “we are left in a pool of mysterious question marks. This may well be the author’s intention”.’

There are few references to Japanese ideas within the book, but very many Western references, which may be designed to appeal to Murakami’s Western audience. 1Q84 does appeal to a wide audience, but the fantasy may scare some mainstream readers away.

Andrew Wrathall is publishing assistant at Bookseller+Publisher and enjoys a quick trip to fantasy-land via the pages of a book before bed.

Short story ‘Ariel’ published in Seizure

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Seizure is a fresh literary journal coming out of Sydney. Each issue imitates the style of a different type of magazine. The first issue looked like a glossy food magazine and all its pieces were linked to the subject. The second issue is ‘Sci-fi’, and it looks like a pulpy science fiction mag. I have a story in the issue, called ‘Ariel’. It’s a pretty traditional narrative about an AI being relied upon to come up with the answer that will save us all. But the story has a bit of a homoerotic twist.

Like a lot of the fiction I have found myself writing in the past couple of years, the story combines a bit of ‘speculation’ with aspects of the everyday. I like to write about desire, sensation and emotions in extreme environments or contexts. In the end, I guess I am asking pretty ancient questions about the effects (and ethics) of ‘progress’. But mainly, I want to write stories that will make you think and feel something.

Other contributors to the Seizure sci-fi issue include PM Newton, Kate Forsyth, Ben Jenkins, Pip Smith and Dinosaur Comics.

I attended the launch of the issue last weekend in Sydney. It was held at the end of the Speculative Fiction Festival at the NSW Writers’ Centre, so there was a good crowd. I enjoyed the festival, hearing writers talk about works in a range of genres that come under the spec fic umbrella (ie. SF, fantasy, supernatural, steampunk, horror). Basically, spec fic covers works that explore ‘what could be’ outside ordinary, rational reality. I’ve always liked fiction that has an element of strangeness, the odd or the slightly off. But I do also like straight realism, too. The great thing about the festival was getting to hear authors who are often sidelined at bigger festivals, or who get stuck at those festivals debating genre vs lit fic (yawn).

Sci-fi rations

But the launch… The Seizure team had bright blue Andorian Ale waiting for us. I mingled and drank under the Jacaranda trees on the gorgeous Writers’ Centre property. Then we received our ‘sci-fi rations’: a protein pill, Soylent Green, Soma-pop and Phlogiston. Yum and fun.

One of the best parts of the day and evening was meeting and catching up with a lot of Sydney peeps and tweeps. You know who you are. Thanks for the great chats.

I hope you will all check out and enjoy Seizure. It’s available in print and as an iPad app. There’s a bit of a sample on the website, too.

20 Classics #8: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

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I’m reading 20 classic, modern-classic or cult books. I aimed to read them all in 2011, but that’s beginning to look unlikely. Read more about this project here.

Why did I want to read it?

I had vague ideas about Gulliver’s Travels. I remembered Ted Danson being tied up by some little people in a film version I saw as a kid. I always loved the Michael Jackson film clip for ‘Leave Me Alone’, which plays on that moment with the Lilliputians. And Tom Cho riffs on that part in the last, eroticised story in his book Look Who’s Morphing. But it was Gideon Haigh’s recommendation of Gulliver’s Travels as a brilliant satire that made me seriously consider reading it.

When was it published?

All the way back in 1726, though it’s more accessible than many books I’ve read from later eras, such as the 19th Century. Oh, those romantics. My copy is from lovely Vintage Classics range (super cheap).

What’s it about?

Gulliver can’t sit still. He finds himself in a series of fantastical lands with strange races (or species). He sometimes gets into a lot of trouble. He makes unforgettable friends. He learns how other societies can be run. When he tries to explain England to his new companions, it often comes across as ludicrous.

Tell us more about the author.

Jonathan Swift was born in 1667 in Dublin, and was educated at Trinity College and Oxford. He worked as secretary to Sir William Temple, in England. In 1694 in Dublin he was ordained as a priest. He spent the rest of his life between England and Ireland. He wrote under another name, and the first of his major satirical works was A Tale of a Tub, published in 1704. Through his writing he became close friends with Alexander Pope. They helped to found a literary group in 1714, called the Martinus Scriblerus. He wrote prose, satirical pamphlets, poetry, essays and sermons in his lifetime. He died in 1745, and his estate was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill, St Patrick’s, which still exists.

So, what did I think? Does it deserve to be a classic?

Undoubtedly. Not only was Gulliver’s Travels a hit in Swift’s lifetime, the book has been continually relevant to Western society. It has apparently never been out of print. It is also genuinely funny. I’ll give you a few examples of its brilliance. When Gulliver is in Lilliput (the land of the tiny people) he observes that there have been six rebellions raised on the breaking of an egg. His present Majesty’s grandfather once cut his finger on the shell when breaking it by the ancient principle, so an edict was published commanding all subjects to break their eggs on the small end. ‘It is computed, that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end’. The ‘Big-Endians’ found sympathy in Blefuscu, the neighboring nation, and so a ‘bloody war hath been carried on between the two empires for six and thirty moons’.

To me, this seems a parody of wars begun (and continued) over differences in religion. England was in the process of crushing the Jacobites, when Swift was writing. Gulliver is eventually suspected of being a ‘Big-Endian’ in his heart and is accused of treason, after putting out a palace fire by pissing on it.

In Brobdingnag the people are giants and the king makes many observations of England. He has been carefully calculating what Gulliver has told him about taxes. Gulliver writes: ‘But, if what I told him were true, he was still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its estate like a private person. He asked me, who were our creditors? and, where we found money to pay them?’ You can see why this book still strikes a chord. The king also wonders what business England has out of its own islands ‘unless upon the score of trade or treaty, or to defend the coasts…’. Swift is mocking England’s excessive conquering and colonising. When Gulliver tries to give the king the secret of gunpowder, he is horrified.

There is humour of a more ‘base’ kind in Gulliver’s Travels too. Satire works best if political and observational humour are mixed with slapstick and the rude (as with contemporary texts, like the Simpsons). In the Brobdingnag section, Gulliver remarks at the hideousness of the skin of the giants when seen up close. He describes a nurse’s ‘monstrous breast’, the nipple ‘was about half the bigness of my head… and the dug so verified with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous’. Later on he is astride the nipple of a maid of honour, ‘a pleasant, frolicksome girl of sixteen’.

On the other fantastical worlds, briefly: Laputa seems a place where logic or reason has gone too far (everything is judged by mathematical and musical terms). And there is a very fun passage in Glubbdubdrib where Gulliver is assisted in bringing back the dead. He learns from dead people of note that ‘the royal throne could not be supported without corruption; because, that positive, confident, restive temper, which virtue infused into man, was a perpetual clog to publick business’. Many of these dead owed their greatness and wealth to perjury, oppression, fraud – Gulliver observes – and worse: sodomy, incest, the prostituting of their wives and daughters, betraying their country, poisoning, and perverting justice.

My favourite land was the final one, of the Houyhnhnms. These horse-folk have no terms for power, government, war, law or punishment. The human-like creatures in their world are base, unintelligent and barbaric, called Yahoos. There is a brilliant passage when Gulliver’s host Houyhnhnm asks him what are the usual causes or motives of war, back in England:

‘Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern: sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinion hath cost many millions of lives: for instance whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh: whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue: whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire: what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or grey; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be things indifferent.’

It goes on, ‘Sometimes one prince quarrelleth with another, for fear the other should quarrel with him’, and so on. It is sad, funny, true. For the first time, staying with the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver really begins to see the ridiculousness of his race of ‘Yahoos’.

One reason this land struck me is because the seductiveness of a simpler, quieter, structured life is so understandable to contemporary readers. I was thinking of the desire for a sea change/tree change that many possess; my own desire (sometimes) to be tucked away in the sparsely populated, naturally beautiful Scottish Highlands. The ‘downfall’ of human nature into greediness and pride that Swift depicts has escalated, in many ways. In other ways, we are so much better off. That doesn’t even really need to be said. His criticisms are still relevant and still amusing. The book still has the ability to make you think about society, politics, war, religion; about human nature, history and the present. Parts of it induce laughter, delight; other parts stir a kind of longing. Well they did for me, at least. I have itchy feet.

One last thing I’ll say is that I felt sorry for Gulliver’s wife, the whole time. He would come back, tell her stories, get her pregnant and then run off again! My annoyance was somewhat appeased, though, by Alexander Pope’s Verses on Gulliver’s Travels included at the back of the book. One poem is called: ‘Mary Gulliver to Capt. Lemuel Gulliver: An Epistle’. In this, Mary Gulliver is reading over his adventures, lamenting them. She has kept herself for him, and is pretty cranky about him getting out his giant ‘appendage’ to put out the palace fire, among other things:

‘How did I tremble, when by thousands bound,
I saw thee stretched on Lilliputian ground;
When scaling armies climbed up every part,
Each step they trod, I felt upon my heart.
But when thy torrent quenched the dreadful blaze,
King, Queen and nation staring with amaze,
Full in my view how all my husband came,
And what extinguished theirs, increased my flame.
Those spectacles, ordained thine eyes to save,
Were once my present; love that armour gave.’

These poems perfectly complement the main narrative. It’s like putting the book down at the end and having a discussion with someone very clever about it, going over all your favourite parts.

What’s next?

I’ve finished Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and I’m reading Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well. Maybe some Chandler or Beckett will follow.

Guest review: Lyndon Riggall on Embassytown by China Miéville

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9780230754317
Pan Macmillan, May 2011
(Aus, UK, US/Kindle)

Reviewed by Lyndon Riggall

I admit defeat. I’ve been trying to present these events with a structure. I simply don’t know how everything happened. Perhaps because I didn’t pay proper attention, perhaps because it wasn’t a narrative, but for whatever reasons, it doesn’t want to be what I want to make it.

China Miéville has widely become regarded as the genre reader’s messiah. His books have consistently thundered the prize scene, and his name has become synonymous with both the Hugo and the Arthur C Clarke awards.

Embassytown represents his first dive into pure science fiction, and as typical for Miéville, he takes to the new ground like he’s been working in it all his life. Without spoiling too many of the surprises, Embassytown follows Avice Benner Cho, a rare human prized with the gift of being able to travel the ‘Immer’. She ends up in Embassytown, a living city, home to creatures known as ‘Hosts’, who speak ‘Language’, a form of discourse so complicated that specially bred ‘Ambassadors’ must be trained as a duo for the purpose of speaking it – it requires multiple words to be spoken simultaneously. The power of the Ambassadors over the Hosts is intoxicating, and when they abuse that power things spiral quickly out of control. Avice has the power to change things, but she does not have Language, and so she does not have a voice.

The world of Embassytown is impressively crafted. Time, for example, is typically measured in hours regardless of length – megahours and kilohours replace days, months and years. Miéville has invented term after term, many borrowed creatively from different cultures of our own world – to the average reader some pages or sections of the book could be nigh on indecipherable. Reading Embassytown is an immensely challenging experience, chapters and events pop in and out of sequence, and the world is meticulously, but by no means accessibly crafted. The book demands dedication before it spills its secrets.

But beautiful secrets they are. Embassytown is about love, war, life, death, truth and lies. It’s about the struggle for freedom, and the gaps forged by power between the elites and the populous. I don’t think personally that it will go down as one of Miéville’s most popular novels – it’s inaccessibility can be tiring for those unfamiliar with the promise of his reputation. For the hardcore fan however, this may be just the ticket, for while it is difficult to tread new ground in SF, the way Miéville walks will certainly set him apart. It’s a weird, hard, frustrating and detailed novel, but while that may put off many, for those avid fans who have read all of China Miéville’s works, I imagine this will be exactly what they’re after.

Lyndon Riggall is an avid sci-fi, fantasy and horror reader, and an aspiring writer. He collects his thoughts on life and books on his blog and on Twitter. It has been 1600 megahours since his last drink.

See also the LiteraryMinded interview with China Miéville from October, 2010: part one and two.

20 classics in 2011 #6: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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I’m reading 20 classic, modern-classic or cult books in 2011. Read more about this project here.

Why did I want to read it?

I love Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and dystopian fiction in general. Plus, the sections of my work-in-progress that people have read have been compared to Brave New World. I thought it was about time I read it (also to make sure I’m not accidentally riffing on it too much).

When was it published?

In 1932. Several years before Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) and in many ways containing more progressive ideas. Huxley wrote to Orwell in 1949, congratulating him on his book, and predicting:

‘Within the next generation I believe that the world’s leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.’ (via)

My edition was published by Longman, and of course there are many editions (see Aus, US, UK).

What’s it about?

Set in London in the year 2540, children are grown, rather than born, and are conditioned via Pavlovian methods and sleep-learning to be citizens of different castes. The idea is that society will be stable, and that people will be happy. They are essentially free to pursue pleasure through multiple sexual partners, soma (a form of medication/recreation) and ‘feelies’, which are movies with added sensation. The Model T Ford and Sigmund Freud are the fathers of this society. Ford is their God.

Bernard is a bit of an outsider both physically and mentally. He thinks his fellow Alphas are ‘morons’, and he fights internally against his own conditioning. He is able to see that happiness is a construct, and is therefore, of course, not happy. He sees the value in delaying gratification, and in being alone (both blasphemous in this society).

Bernard takes a woman he likes, Lenina, to a Savage Reservation, where they meet a woman from their World who had been lost there, and her son, who has learnt English through Shakespeare and who is curious about this place he’s heard so much about. The second half of the novel then deals with ‘the Savage’ and his encounter with civilisation.

Tell us more about the author.

Aldous Huxley was born into an educated family in Surrey, UK in 1894. He was educated at Eton college and was disqualified from service in the WWI due to an illness that left him mostly blind for two to three years. He would struggle with eyesight problems all his life. He studied English literature at Oxford and graduated with first class honours.

Huxley began writing seriously in his 20s. His first published novel was Chrome Yellow in 1921. Brave New World is probably his most famous novel. He moved to Hollywood in 1937 and became interested in Vedanta (and introduced Christopher Isherwood into the circle of Hindu Swami Prabhavananda). He earned a bit of money as a screenwriter, but his synopsis of Alice in Wonderland was rejected by Walt Disney ‘on the grounds that “he could only understand every third word”. (via) Huxley was at the time beginning to experiment with psychedelic drugs as an experiment in the search for enlightenment. I’d like to read that synopsis…

Huxley famously requested and took LSD on his deathbed in 1963. He was 69.

So, what did I think? Does it deserve to be a classic?

‘What fun it would be if one didn’t have to think about happiness!’ – World Controller Mustapha Mond

For a book that was apparently completed in just four months, Brave New World is almost shockingly prescient, dealing with issues of consumption, conformity and complacency. The idea that citizens will be conditioned to be able to fulfil themselves through the means available in order to create stability (as opposed to through threat or punishment) is even more relevant today. Other aspects are dated, of course, such as the psychoanalytic overtones, and the hypnopaedic ways of learning. But then again, some people do still buy into ‘subliminal learning’!

The retro-future aspects are still enjoyable, aesthetically, such as the fact there are lift operators, and helicopters are the advanced mode of transport. It’s like seeing the DOS computer systems in Blade Runner. You can’t read a futuristic novel written in the past and not think about what has and hasn’t come to pass, and what might by the date in which it’s set. There is still an environment in 2540, for example, where as any futuristic novel written today would surely grapple with the issue of climate change.

Bernard is a great character, both inside and outside his society – conditioned by it, like everyone else, but also fighting against it. He has a weak personality, and a large ego, and is easily buoyed by popularity and praise in the rare instances it is bestowed upon him. I think readers of the novel over time would have related to his character, particularly in the earlier chapters, when everyone else is loosening up and having a good time and he feels something is a little off. He is painfully aware of himself and the way he’s feeling. He is interested in ideas of the benefits of feeling pain and of delaying gratification – ideas I’m fascinated by in this era of rampant consumerism. Natural human desires have always been ever-renewing, but what happens to us when they can be fulfilled easier and easier? Huxley deals with the way dissatisfaction or boredom might set in with soma, where citizens can take a little drug-holiday. Soma reminds me of both valium and ecstasy. It calms, and it also creates heightened sensation. Bernard is too aware of its effects (but he still uses it). The Savage refuses to use it.

I enjoyed the ideas, too, about the way we are constructed through language – about how powerful language is. In the brave new world, all ‘old’ texts have disappeared, because they are unnecessary and will interfere with the conditioned ideas. A language of worship to a commercial god has replaced them. But the Savage, too, is constructed by words. His ideas about the world come from Shakespeare. He cannot reconcile himself with the (normatised) promiscuity of the world, and repeats phrases like ‘impudent strumpet!’ from Othello. He thinks and speaks in Shakespearian, and so becomes subversive to both his Savage society who do not read in English, and to his mother and civilisation, who are conditioned to think in specific oppositional ways. There is an Oedipal undertone, too, where he tries to kill the man in bed with his mother. His love and disgust for her is then transferred into his love and disgust for Lenina. He does not wish to ‘defile’ her, thought she literally throws herself at him. Conditioned to be sexually open, she doesn’t understand his response at all. The Savage is a tragic character. The greater message, here, I think, is that none of us escape some kind of ‘conditioning’ through language, during our socialisation process.

I was quite disturbed by the Savage’s repulsion of Lenina, though it is justified in the story. I was worried about a parallel message of nostalgia for female chastity and virginity. I suppose Huxley could have wanted to explore these thoughts (as he’s exploring the dangers of excess in general), and that’s also why Linda, the Savage’s mother, is rendered so repulsively (not just to the civilised, but to the reader). Lenina is a character who, if the novel were written now, I believe could have been developed further. Her tiny awakenings were due to the male characters she encountered and her desire for them. She could be more active, now.

I underlined and dog-eared much in Brave New World and I think it’s a novel that will continue to make people think, and definitely to entertain. I forgot to mention that it’s funny – particularly in relation to Bernard. The style is a little all-over-the-place, but it works. It’s a brilliant piece of art.

‘What you need,’ the Savage went on, ‘is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.’

What’s next?

I’m currently reading The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. It’s a big’un so be patient with me.

Have you read Brave New World? What are your thoughts? I have to say that the mood of Nineteen Eighty-Four is quite different. I remember it well: a certain weightiness. Is there a dystopian vision you prefer?

20 classics in 2011 #4: Heroes and Villains by Angela Carter

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I’m reading 20 classic, modern-classic or cult books in 2011. Read more about this project here.

Why did I want to read it?

I only heard of Angela Carter, strangely, when I started my doctorate and attended a seminar about one of the stories in The Bloody Chamber. It included a hand-out with an extract of the story. Feminist, erotic fairytales with layers of socio-political meaning, written in an enjoyable, playful manner – they sounded like heaven. I was also, recently, looking for something allegorical to read as part of a mini-research task within my thesis. I decided to go with Angela Carter, but I didn’t mind which text. I just wanted a taste of her. I came across Heroes and Villains for just $5.50 in Berkelouw Books, Newtown, and it seemed perfect.

When was it published?

Heroes and Villains was first published in 1969. My edition is a 1986 King Penguin with a wonderfully symbolic cover: a black snake, coiled around and ready to strike into the heart of a dewy, pink flower. There are other editions available (see Aus, US, UK).

What’s it about?

In a seemingly post-apocalyptic world, Marianne grows up among the Professors, who live in gated communities and are protected by Soldiers from the Barbarians attacking and from the diseases of the Out People. Marianne is somewhat an outsider, and bored, within her community, so when she has the opportunity to escape with a fearsome though surprisingly intelligent Barbarian, she does.

What she finds is that though the Barbarians live roughly and putrescently, they have their own rituals and structures within society, still patriarchal, and Marianne is both frustrated by, and caught up within them. The man who she ran away with, Jewel, is both a myth and a man. He seems just as trapped by his role in his tribe and his performances of honour and duty. Their relationship is one of seething hate combined with small moments of vulnerability and tenderness. Both are in conflict with themselves, each other, and the rules and structures (within the chaos). There is much erotic tension and conflict as Marianne is both repelled by and drawn to Jewel.

Tell us more about the author.

Angela Carter is an absolute legend. She was a postmodern writer in that her novels and stories worked within the traditions of genres such as science fiction, fantasy, magic realism and romance, but she also appropriated and renewed them with social and political comment. She started publishing at 26 (in 1966) and was very prolific until her sadly early death at age 51 in 1992, from lung cancer.

She travelled a lot after leaving her first husband and living in Japan for two years. She was a writer in residence at many universities around the world, including the University of Adelaide, South Australia. She married again in 1977 and had one son.

Besides novels and stories, she wrote articles, screenplays, radio scripts and a libretto. Totally inspiring.

So, what did I think? Does it deserve to be a classic?

Carter would probably come more under ‘cult’ than classic, and it isn’t her best-known work, but I do hope her books continue to be reissued. Heroes and Villains was a completely visceral read: dirty and sticky and stinky. It’s future-gothic, in a way. The buildings are broken-down baroque things with runaway moss and hanging bits of meat, and slippery, mucky stairwells. There are towers, there is mud, there is hunger, but then there are flowers and streams.

I enjoyed its pessimistic outlook, and I liked the fact that the male character, Jewel, was also trapped by a kind of fear outside what he knew. No one could act according to their own will – nor could they figure out their true motivations, or what came from need and what came from desire (and what the difference really was).

The book was written 12 years after Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, probably the most famous post-apocalyptic story of the Cold War era. But Carter was, as mentioned, working within and also appropriating a known genre. The narrative is entirely accessible, the writing is rich with imagery:

‘He picked her up; she climbed inside his jacket as much as she could and would have climbed inside his breast to vanish there if such a thing had been possible. Her nostrils were full of wood smoke, the rank richness of horses and the disturbing odour of imperfectly cured animal hide, all of which combined in Jewel’s particular perfume, but when she looked upwards towards his face, she saw no palpable structure, only a series of hallucinations.’

Marianne often sees people and space in a distorted way, particularly Jewel. She almost nonchalantly reflects, at times, on the fact that he may not be real. Even when they are making love, she cannot see his face. So there is a layer to the novel, too, about reality and unreality and the creation of stories, structures and myths. This also gives the novel a metafictional bent. The Professors wish to see the Barbarians as savage and fearful, and exotic, so they have nothing to fear within their walls. Within the Barbarian tribe is an ex-Professor, trying to create his own structures, symbols and myths – through fear.

It’s po-mo, it’s feminist, and you know what, it’s also just damn sexy.

Here’s a great BBC (audio) interview I found with Angela Carter, if you’re interested: ’Refusing to write about the bourgeoisie and their cleaning ladies‘.

What’s next?

The Picture of Dorian Gray. For reals.

Have you guys read Angela Carter? I know my Facebook page went nuts when I said I was reading her. Which novel or collection is your favourite? Are there other female authors of the era as delicious and political as Carter, whom I should check out?

A dream-logic London squid riff: an interview with China Miéville (part one)

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China Miéville’s Kraken (Aus, US, UK) is savvy, exuberant, sci-fantastical fiction – a novel about a stolen giant squid and the ensuing adventures of museum curator Billy Harrow. It’s a super-fun read, set in a richly imaginative alternate London, filled with sassy, dirty, sweet, dangerous and apparitious characters.

It was great to be able to have a two-on-one with China Miéville, alongside Benjamin Solah – political writer and blogger – whom I knew to be a fan of Miéville’s work and outlook. Miéville was in town for the Melbourne Writers Festival and AussieCon4. I’d first seen him the previous year and was enraptured by his intellect and gentle articulate nature (somewhat contrasted by his shaved head and buff bod).

We met at Miéville’s hotel. He was running a little late so Ben and I sipped whisky and gin, took advantage of the free cookies in the boardroom, and I drew a ‘welcome squid’ on the whiteboard. The view of the city was gorgeous and when Miéville arrived, we began by chatting about just that, cities…

ben_china_angela

Angela Meyer: I love the role that the city of London plays in Kraken, the literal entrails of it, the mood of it and the way the citizens react to it – those attuned to the shifts that are happening and then those who just feel something. I was wondering if you could talk a little about the role of London in the book and how that formed – did it form like a character alongside the other ones, or…

China Miéville: Well some of my other books have been very consciously riffing off London. This one came from a different direction – I knew I wanted to do the book about the giant squid because there was one in the London museum, so London followed from the fact that that’s where my local squid was, not because it was London per se. And specifically because it was a squid in a tank – which was really important for the book. But I’ve always been interested in that kind of tradition, of London phantasmagoria and so on – so it was also kind of riffing off a tradition. And there’s a very strong tradition of that kind of alternative London writing, you know, Moorcock, and Neil Gaiman, Thomas DeQuincey, Ian Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd and people like that – and I suppose to some extent I’ve always wanted to kind of homage that tradition a little bit. King Rat – although it’s a supernatural thriller – it’s probably a more realistic London. This is more of a kind of dream – it’s much more exaggerated and almost kind of absurdist. It’s supposed to be kind of a dream-logic London. And the idea of the city dreaming itself – so you’re walking through the city’s own dream of itself, and the book’s dream about the city’s dream about itself – if that makes sense…

AM: It does, it does when you’ve read it.

Benjamin Solah: Another thing to do with the city – because I’ve read King Rat as well, and I was obsessed with the thing about London, then The City and the City, well it’s all about the city, and the city is itself almost a character. Have you read anything to do with architecture? Because there are all these architectural descriptions in The City and the City that are quite extensive.

CM: I don’t have any expertise in architecture. My first academic essay from like 1998 or 1999 is a piece about architecture, the sociology of architecture. I have read some stuff, and I like architecture, and I like urban specificity, and I like trying to poke at what makes London different than Paris, different than Sydney, different than New York, you know. There’s nothing terribly unusual about loving different cities and writers liking cities but I do like big cities and every time I come to a city – you almost try and get a kind of mouth feel for it, you know, and it’s amazing how quickly it happens. You can get out of the plane and spend two minutes walking through a city you’ve never been to before and you can feel that it feels different from the last one you were at and you’re like okay, what is that? Trying to put words to that. In a way it’s trying to put words to that sense of the specificity of place that I hope is what you’re talking about – it’s very much trying to express that. It’s quite ineffable.

AM: I went to Europe for a month and I went to thirteen cities…

CM: Oh my God.

AM: That was my getting a mouth feel…

CM: Which was your favourite?

AM: Edinburgh and Prague are pretty tied. But – do you know PD Smith? The author? Because he’s just written a book on cities. He’s a science-culture writer, he’s amazing. He’s really good, have a look out.

CM: Okay, cool, I should chase it.

AM: I love how there’s a real mish-mash of ways of being and ways of communicating in Kraken – through morse-code streetlights, telepathic text messages, bla bla bla. Was it fun to come up with these different modes of communication? And do you think it’s in part reflective of the multiple streams and channels of communication in society now?

CM: Well I’m sure it is, but it wasn’t consciously that. Kraken is a very undisciplined book, and hopefully it’s undisciplined in a good way – I mean there’s a certain thing you can tap, with a certain rombustuous ill-discipline, that you can’t get with a more tight book. So with Kraken, when I was talking about, you know, passing messages, I was trying to think of the various ways that you could do that that were in some way really tied to the city. And it was a book that I sort of felt like – if I had an idea that I liked, that I thought was interesting or exciting or whatever, I would find a way of putting it in. I wanted it to be very excessive, you know? When it comes to modern communication and stuff I’m certainly not a luddite but I’m not particularly interested in it. I don’t tweet, I don’t Facebook, I don’t blog – and I’m fine with that, and I’m not opposed to any of these things it’s just not particularly what I wanna do. But I do text, I text a lot. And I like the way texting changes speech and I like the way text-speech is a new specific thing that has its own flavour, its own rules, and I like all that stuff, so yeah, it was not consciously riffing on all that but I’m sure it was all there.

AM: That stuff is just the context…

CM: Yeah, you can’t help it…

BS: One of the things I wanted to ask you about is the talk you did at a Marxist conference called ‘Marxism and Monsters’?

CM: Oh yeah, God.

BS: Because I was obsessed with that talk for ages, and my comrades and stuff we always talk about it. So you talk about these origins of monsters, and the socioeconomic origins, and then I was thinking – nowadays we don’t really invent new monsters, we kinda riff off old monsters like vampires and zombies, we use them over and over again. I wanted to know whether you thought we’d exhausted our ability to create monsters or is there a reason today’s society doesn’t really invent monsters like we used to?

CM: I’m not sure I’d agree, I mean, I think there’s two different levels. On the one hand there’s this kind of endless degraded reiteration of the old tropes, so you get these endless endless endless zombie or vampire films or whatever, but at the same time there is also, I mean particularly within geek culture, that kind of fascination with the monster creation. So, with movies there’s always this thing with like, y’no, ‘did you get to the monster shot?’ ‘Did you see the monster?’ and it’s like ‘what’s it gonna be?’ You remember when Cloverfield came out and everyone was like: ‘what’s the monster going to be like?’ You know, there was all these debates about it. There is still an attempt to create, or self-consciously an attempt to create monsters that haven’t been seen before. Or you think about something like Doctor Who where they’re always trying to come up with the new, y’no – but for me, as you know if you’ve heard the talk, I think the early 20th Century was the high point of absolutely explosive creation in the monstrous. But I would say, at the moment – particularly at the level of vampires and zombies – it’s very tired.

I think probably the ’20s was the anomaly rather than now, I think it was more of a question of that being a particularly fecund time than this being a particularly degraded one. And I think there’s probably more teratological innovation going on now than there was in the 1880s for example. I think it’s very culturally specific and at various moments there’s a kind of upsurge of creativity and others there’s not, so I think at the moment things are roughly sort of in balance, you know - we have a lot of very very tired stuff, there’s still some things that are interesting, but most of the time monsters disappoint. Like Cloverfield when the monster is revealed you’re like, uh. *laughs* And that’s a separate issue. But as to the social reasons, why there is such an obsession with sparkly vampires, or whatever it might be, I mean that’s a whole other question – then you have to get into the specifics of each case. And these things are very fashion driven, so, angels are something they’re trying to do at the moment. Angels are very trendy. So overall I think this day and age is kind of middling, in terms of monster creation.

Part two can be found here.

Guest review: Rhys Tate on Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing…

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andanotherthingcover420And Another Thing…
Eoin Colfer
Penguin
9780718155148 (Aus, US)
Reviewed by Rhys Tate

I’ll admit when I heard that Eoin Colfer was ghostwriting a sixth Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy volume, nine years after the death of original visionary Douglas Adams, I fired up the torches and pitchforks and got me a good old fashioned village mob together. It’s more than the fact that handing the reins over on signature projects is, in general, a horrible idea; it’s that Hitchhiker’s was a brilliant trilogy* that spawned very good radio and television serials, and eventually a middling big budget movie. The Law of Diminishing Returns did not offer a kind projection on Colfer’s chances.

And Another Thing… starts much as Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy did, with situational heroes Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect et al. in imminent danger from aliens contracted to destroy the Earth because it’s ‘in the way’. But where Adams populated this scenario with fresh characters and immediately riffed off the ensuing chaos, Colfer is obliged to prove to the fans his familiarity with the inhabitants of the Galaxyand ability to handle same. Cue forty pages of bickering and Adamsesque observations which fail to mask that the story isn’t actually going anywhere quickly.

Things pick up, though, as things usually do. There are some inspired sequences featuring Gods struggling through job interviews, and mobs of personal trainers who have run off from their resorts and turned feral in the bush. Colfer stays faithful to Adams’ style without being toofaithful (a critical distinction), and his dry, self-deprecating humour is well judged, much of the time. He admits to crippling doubt as he was writing the novel, to the point that he began to steer clear of the fan backlash brewing online. This, however, did not save him from the ravages of Facebook, which one day merrily suggested that he join the ‘The Stop Eoin Colfer Writing Hitchhiker’s Society’. Not only did he join, but began to post messages along the lines of, ‘Yes, Eoin Colfer is an arsehole. I’ve known him for many years and I don’t like him’ – messages that eventually won him letters of support from the very people who hoped to stop him.

It’s impossible to think of the Hitchhiker’s series without comparing it to its fantasy equivalent, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. But where Pratchett wrote stand-alone books featuring very different sets of characters that could be largely picked up in any order, And Another Thing…cannot be recommended to the casual reader. It’s a novel for fans familiar with the backstory who long to visit Adams’ mindspace again, and on this note, it delivers. However, I can’t help wondering what Colfer might have achieved if he was allowed to leave Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and Trillian on the shelf and write a Hitchhiker’s Guide sequel that was truly his own.

* In five parts! Aren’t the English absurd?

Rhys Tate has never been into space, not even in a story, and thus feels entirely unqualified to review science fiction.

Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam

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twdsccvrSleepers Publishing, 9781740667012, 2009 (Aus, US)

Things We Didn’t See Coming is a series of vignettes, from different stages of the unnamed protagonist’s life in a dystopian alterno-present/future. It is a post-apocalyptic story, but told in a hard-boiled, yet highly resonant literary style. The sentences are sharp, the character is hard and the environment is one of rapid change and ruin – but throughout there is also deep resistance. The book acts to massage you at your core, and every secondary character met along the way (no matter how fleeting) leaves a poignant stain on character and reader. They are examples from all of humanity’s shredded social standings – how different people would deal with natural disasters, segregation (between urban and land environments), political situations (and radical politics), survival against disease, and more. There is so much imagination at work in describing employment the character undertakes throughout the novel, and in his family situation, his love life, and his drive for physical and emotional survival. Though it is a series of stories, they run linear – from a small boy taken to his grandparents house on the eve of Y2K (which isn’t named, but that’s what the situation seems to be) and his father’s rant about the world we live in, to a conclusion which shows that through all the rapid fluctuations in the world, some people don’t change, and there will always be pockets of good, of nature, of things that don’t make sense at the time. There will always be meaning to a fleeting existence.

The character is adamantly nonreligious, but there really is a spiritual essence in this book – in his personal ethical struggles, and the overriding hope within the bleakness. The character fights with his instinctual nature to steal, and to live for survival and himself alone. This is a great part of his journey that isn’t played out overtly, but is present in his actions throughout the novel.

There are many moments of struggle and sadness, such as the chapter ‘The Theft That Got Me Here’, an incredibly poignant escape with his grandparents, on the day his grandmother’s pills kick in and she becomes herself again, fleetingly.

There are also moments of pure imaginative fun – sexual encounters; a difficult and moving love story; a cocky kid the protagonist has to guard; the jobs; the conflict; and the pharmacopia.

One interesting thing to note – the setting of the book is unknown and never made explicit. Deer are mentioned, and some landscapes that seem North American, so it will also sell in that market, I presume, but my imagination still planted the story in Australia. I know it’s due to my awareness of the author’s origination, but I think one of the points of it is it could be imagined in just about any Western country. A kind of nowhere-land of modern Western civilisation and societal mores, politics, religions, etc.

Another experience of reading this book, is the realisation that so much of it actually seems plausible. It is rooted in a speculative framework, but it is very near-future, or even alternate future. Droughts and floods, for example, don’t seem so implausible – and the political situations that may arise due to technological class divisions, generation gaps and opposing urban/nature mindsets. Not to mention evolving illnesses and an ever-increasing cocktail of drugs. Of course while much of it is imaginable, much of it is highly fantastical, and both prove the quality of Amsterdam’s skill and imagination.

Things We Didn’t See Coming is bleak yet inspiring, a little like retro-future text Blade Runner. It’s a completely refreshing literary work from an Australian writer who I predict huge things for.

See the official website for the book.