>>Nostalgia For Infinity

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The Arcade of Cruelty, by Joseph "J.P." Larkin

I’ve reviewed a fair mix of self-published books in my time. They included a few gems but quite often they were frankly fucking awful genre novels, written by people who evidently didn’t read widely. As such I stopped accepting them for review. For some reason, in 2008, I accepted for review The Arcade of Cruelty, a book which sounded like an oddball collection of self-hating diatribes and darkly humorous artwork. About three months later, after I’d all but forgotten about it, a copy arrived in the post – sent from the US via the cheapest international tariff available, a very sensible move as it’s a huge, weighty book.

Since then it’s sat on my shelves as I’ve not really known what to do with it. I’ll be frank: it’s more of a vanity project than any of those terrible SF books I’ve read have been, even the ones that middle-aged men had been dreaming up since their university days (oh, I loved those press releases, let me tell you). You see, it’s more like a scrapbook than anything else, albeit one that’s 250 glossy, high-quality and colour printed pages. It’s also sub-titled “A Tender Cry For Help in Words and Pictures”. There’s a lot of self-deprecatory humour in this book, although most of the time it’s much more generous with the self-loathing than it is with the funnies.

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I’ve not bought many new SF or fantasy books in the last three or so years and I’m sure there’s a lot of good material I’ve missed. Now, obviously I will be rushing to the bookshops to buy the complete Stephanie Meyer, but what else have I missed that is held in high regard?

Here’s a list of books that have been recommended to me that I can remember…

Older

• Joe Hill – 20th Century Ghosts
• Kelly Link – Magic For Beginners (how have I not read this yet?!)
• David Marusek – Counting Heads
• Ian McDonald – River of Gods
• Geoff Ryman – Air
• Charles Stross – Accelerando
• Peter Watts – Blindsight

2007

• William Gibson – Spook Country
• M. John Harrison – Nova Swing
• Cormac McCarthy – The Road
• China Miéville – Un Lun Dun
• Richard Morgan – Black Man
• Sarah Hall – The Carhullan Army

2008

• Stephen Baxter – Flood
• Nick Harkaway – The Gone-Away World
• Ian R. MacLeod – Song of Time
• Ken MacLeod – The Execution Channel
• Ian McDonald – Brasyl
• Richard Morgan – The Steel Remains
• Alastair Reynolds – House of Suns
• Neal Stephenson – Anathem

2009

• Paolo Bacigalupi – The Wind-Up Girl
• Stephen Baxter – Ark
• Anne Berry – The Hungry Ghosts
• Ursula le Guin – Lavinia
• Jonathan Littell – The Kindly Ones
• China Miéville – The City & the City
• Patrick Ness – The Knife of Never Letting Go
• Adam Roberts  – Yellow Blue Tibia
• Kim Stanley Robinson – Galileo’s Dream
• Ellis Sharp – Dead Iraqis: Selected Short Stories
• Bruce Sterling – The Caryatids
• Conrad Williams – One

More recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

(Though given that I can’t read everything I’d prefer to hear about the novels you thought were great or particularly important rather than merely good. I’d like to try reading some books published in 2010 as well, yes?)

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Originally published in Vector at the beginning of the year.

October, and a storm is coming. A travelling lightning rod salesman arrives and alerts two young friends to what he senses on the horizon. Throughout the town, others feel the tension in the air. Something is coming. And that night, 3 am, that something is come. Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show: a travelling carnival, promising rides, freaks, wonders and delights. But Will and Jim watch the carnival arrange itself outside town, and what they see unfold that night is not the rosy funfair that the townsfolk find the following day. Soon enough the carnival folk, the twisted slaves captured by Mr. Cooger and Mr. Dark over their timeless centuries, are led by their masters in a hunt for the boys who alone grasp at the truth. Alone, that is, but for Will’s reclusive father Charles, a man half-lost in his own past.

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Back at the outset of August I promised to post one of my book reviews for Vector every Saturday, and then repeatedly forgot to queue up the reviews for the rest of the month. Duh. Here’s the first of the two, of an understated and clever space opera by Paul McAuley.

The Overturn, a period of catastrophic political and climatic change which saw the deaths of hundreds of millions throughout the solar system, lies several centuries passed, yet its shadow still hangs over humanity. Earth’s old nations have conglomerated into three international super-states under authoritarian and militaristic systems of rule, pursuing ecological doctrines and endeavouring to restore their planet to some of its former natural glories. Elsewhere in the solar system the loosely affiliated networks of democratic Outer colonies pursue their own agendas, be they posthumanism, scientific research, or the simple pursuit of pleasure.

The conflict and atrocities of the Overturn left many tensions between Earth and the Outers, but tensions also lie between their internal factions. On Earth, the super-states still squabble for power at every level. The most established players uneasily eye the Outer colonies, afraid that as the Outers continue to evolve and expand Earth will lose any ability to exert influence over them. Among the Outers the older and younger generations disagree about their future: the old are conservative, desiring controlled populations on already established colonies, whereas the young argue for change and expansion further out into the unknown.

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