>>Nostalgia For Infinity

As I sit down to write this review in mid-August, 2011, the riots that have erupted across Britain over the past week have begun to subside, the energies that drove them dissipating in the face of a coherent police response and that most British of demotivators, the weather. But the anger, social exclusion, vanishing economic possibilities, lack of faith in police relations and sense of political betrayal that initially produced this eruption among Britain’s poorest urban communities remain.

Gary McMahon’s The Concrete Grove plumbs the fertile ground of such forgotten areas, its dark tale derived as much from the existential horror of hopeless or wasted lives as the natural and supernatural forces that prey upon them.

Lana and Hailey, single mother and daughter, have been forced into a life on an estate – the eponymous Concrete Grove – which surrounds the Needle, a derelict and sinister Brutalist block of flats. The Needle pierces the heart of a community racked with poverty, desperation and accompanying social issues like drug abuse, violence and entrenched petty criminals with a penchant for cruelty. One such ambitious thug is Monty Bright, a loan shark obsessed with the history of the Grove. Monty takes an interest in Lana and Hailey, using Lana’s debt to him as leverage while he tries to understand the growing connection between Hailey and the Grove.

A few roads over, just outside the estate, a middle-aged man named Tom supports and cares for his bed-bound and clinically obese wife. Tortured by his own demons and a sense of being trapped in his own life, Tom finds himself drawn to Lana and Hailey and by extension involved in whatever plans Bright and the Grove have in store.

The Concrete Grove’s most interesting conceit is its fusion of old mythologies with present realities. The backstory describes how the Needle and surrounding estate were built over an ancient Pagan site of nature-worship. The power of the old Grove remains but it has been corrupted by the pathologies of the human community that now surrounds it. Forces bleed out into our world, and not all of them are as ambivalent as those the Pagans once worshipped.

Although the actions of McMahon’s characters may not always convince – Hailey in particular makes a few leaps of faith and illogic that I struggled with – and Tom is one of those frustratingly frustrated middle-aged characters whose internal monologue is dominated by a desire to fuck anything with a blouse and a pulse, they are on the whole a sympathetic bunch who draw us into the worlds he has built around the iconic Needle. The thematic juxtaposition on which the novel is based is maintained throughout: England’s past and present, the powers produced by suburban sickness and health, all revolving around by the ambiguous forces of nature. The novel’s conclusion reflects this state of thematic balance well, although it’s also possible to read in a much more traditional horror motif.

The Concrete Grove itself clearly has more stories to tell. By the book’s close it remains a source of substantial mystery, and the desperate poverty and anti-social behaviour that surrounds it remains unaddressed and ignored by the wider world.

384pp paperback, published by Solaris Books.

[This review originally published in Vector #268, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association. This version of the review precedes the published version being reformatted for printing but is otherwise identical.]

“DON’T TALK TO HIM ABOUT THE WAR!!!”

As the discerning reader might observe from the opening line of this book’s blurb, quoted verbatim above, this is not a novel trading in subtle and elegant prose. No, Major Karnage is a shameless throwback to the days of pulp SF adventure.

Gord Zajac is a fiction editor for the Chiaroscuro webzine and writes for TV, including numerous cartoons for Cartoon Network. These two roles feed into Major Karnage in a very obvious way: the novel benefits from its author’s obvious versed familiarity with genre fiction and it is informed by a cartoonish sensibility. To whit: after a war to end all wars, the multinational Dabney corporation seizes global control of Earth and locks away all its war heroes. Fast forward a few years and the planet is a very different place, with odd flora and fauna spreading and a secret alien invasion underway.

The eponymous Major Karnage is incarcerated in a mental institution alongside a squad of soldiers with whom he shares an intense loyalty. Karnage is a soldier driven by rage and instinct and part of his rehabilitation involves a ‘sanity patch’ at the base of his neck. This device is rigged to explode if Karnage’s temperament escalates too far. This is something that happens a great deal after Karnage’s soldiers are alien-napped and he sets out to defeat the ‘squiggly’ menace from beyond the stars.

Zajac obviously revels in his thoroughly pulpish, tongue-in-cheek narrative and there’s a playful attitude throughout. Unfortunately, whilst humour is a major aspect of the novel, Major Karnage suffers from the problem of not being that funny. Mileage will always vary when it comes to jokes but the novel rarely drew out more than the wry smile of a shared joke. There are also weak long-running jokes, such as the colour-coded ‘sanity levels’ of Karnage’s patch: the penultimate level before his head is blown off being “Strawberry Shortcake”.

Structurally the novel is predictable, clinging to Karnage’s viewpoint with a few brief asides to see minor characters being written off. Whilst Karnage’s motives drive him forward convincingly, he spends a lot of time being knocked out or captured in order to get to where he needs to be. Although the book is pacey I found the first half significantly less interesting than the second, with too much time devoted to getting the plot moving and dropping a few guns on Chekov’s mantlepiece. And one last criticism should surely be pointed at the global dominance of the Dabney corporation: Disney doesn’t reflect the modern zeitgeist of controlling corporate greed any more, surely? We’re past the idea of an entertainment multinational controlling every aspect of our lives; nowadays it’s the internet giants lead by the mighty Google.

I found Major Karnage a moderately enjoyable read and as a first novel it’s a competent enough outing. Unfortunately it’s not a novel I would have persisted with were I not reviewing it. Had it proven funnier, more satirical or more gonzo then my conclusions might be different.

[This review originally published in Vector #265, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association. This version of the review was edited by Martin Lewis.]

In the near future, ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) get big. Some – such as those produced by Dagmar, lead writer and planner for Great Big Idea and fondly nicknamed “the puppetmaster” – are so big that they are played by hundreds of thousands of people across the world. As the book opens she is in Jakarta for the climax of one such game. She is trapped when Indonesia’s currency abruptly collapses; the government soon follows leading to widespread civil disorder.

Dagmar’s story is at the heart of this novel but is also interwoven with the tales of her college acquaintances, friends who bonded over pen and paper role-playing games. Foremost among them is Charlie, a self-made billionaire who funds Great Big Idea. The first act describes Dagmar’s escape from Jakarta, a story in which Charlie’s limitless funds and a professional mercenary group are pitted against the contacts and ingenuity of Great Big Idea’s thousands of players. It’s a tense thriller with a well-envisioned setting, juxtaposing the precarious luxury of the Royal Jakarta Hotel with the poverty and violence outside. The hotel soon becomes a prison and Dagmar is forced to choose whether she should follow the instructions of a military professional, or put her life in the hands of individuals who may believe her plight is only a game.

The book has an interesting premise and it’s pleasing to see a thriller engaging with relatively new technologies and concepts like ARGs, social networking and cloudsourced knowledge. This also represents its Achille’s Heel: technology enthusiasts and players of ARGs may not find some aspects of Williams’s novel wholly convincing, exacerbated by the fact the novel is self-consciously imprecise about when it is set. For example, the first chapter describes laptop “turbines” which supply power and extend battery life; this sits anachronistically alongside a custom-made PDA that sounds less impressive than the latest iPhone.

Similarly the design of the ARG that is entwined with the novel’s other narratives feels dated and claustrophobic. Aspects of this game, supposedly played by hundreds of thousands, operate on a first come, first served basis. Thus only one player gets to participate, under the assumption that they will then share what they have learned with other players. It’s understandable that the game design is structured this way in order to work within the book, but it doesn’t convince as a game that would be played by more than a few hundred devotees. Williams does attempt to justify this by stating that many of the ‘players’ are observers rather than active participants, but compared to ARG projects like Superstruct the fictional game design feels lacking in imagination.

This Is Not A Game is a novel that is somewhat let down by its lack of intimate familiarity with the concepts that underpin it and this will be obvious to readers who are drawn to it by way of these concepts. However, it remains a highly entertaining speculative thriller that attempts to engage with the modern world, rather than ignoring the aspects of it that are inconvenient to plotting.

[This review originally published in Vector #264, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association. This version of the review was edited by Martin Lewis.]

There is an argument to be made that it is a difficult time to be writing action-packed fiction with a pulpish bent: more modern forms of entertainment media continue to grow in popularity, and whilst videogame narratives struggle to claw their way out of the ghetto of barely-coherent melodrama and machismo it seems probable that it will be the game, not the film or the novel, that will retrospectively define the youth of this generation.

There is also an argument to be made that this trend need not be relevant: there will always be space for novels that build themselves around action and adventure, and there will always be readers. The young are not the only demographic worth pursuing, and nor are they the only demographic who, to put it hyperbolically, enjoy having their adrenaline raced.

John Trevillian’s first novel, and the first of a trilogy, is what I would consider pulp fiction for the modern SF reader. It’s full of ideas, many of them – as is inevitably the case in a culture saturated with media production – familiar. It picks and chooses from sub-genres; the decadent megalopolises and megacorps of cyberpunk, the iconic villains and heroes of the more light-hearted end of post-apocalyptic fiction (an oxymoron, yes, but a highly entertaining sub-genre), the gun-porn and gung-ho attitude of MilSF, plus a smattering of satire.

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A recent collaboration between new genre imprint Angry Robot and the British Science Fiction Association saw all BSFA members sent a free copy of Colin Harvey’s new novel, Winter Song. Vector (the BSFA’s critical journal) editor Niall Harrison and reviews editor Martin Lewis organised a reading group for the novel, and the end of April saw a swathe of bloggers and reviewers sharing their thoughts on the book. I’ve missed the boat on this one – I’ve missed a fucking  flotilla – but what the hell, I’ve read it so I may as well add my two pence.

Winter Song is set on a partially terraformed human colony that is structured around the emulation of old Icelandic cultures (the novel, in fact, is inspired by the old Icelandic Sagas as well as contemporary Icelandic fiction), with the planet’s scattered population gathered into small clans under the leadership of “Gothis”. The clans exist in a perilous and freezing environment in which scraping out a living is a challenge that occupies every waking moment, to which must be added the danger of local fauna. The terraformers who once oversaw the planet’s development are long gone, political and economic factors leading to abandonment of the colony and its inhabitants. The novel’s protagonist, Karl Allman, is plunged into this world when his starship is ambushed and destroyed by a faction of humanity that opposes modified Radicals like him.

For much of the novel Karl is nursed back to health by the clan that found him. Principally he’s cared for by Bera, the unmarried mother of a dead bastard child, under the watchful eye of the Gothi Ragnar, a harsh and pragmatic man prone to fits of rage. Ragnar is determined that the stranger pay his dues and work off his debt to the clan. Karl is eager only to leave the planet and return home, where his wife is expecting a child. Bera, desperately unhappy among her adoptive clan, first transfers her mothering instincts to the wounded Karl and later develops more complex feelings for him. Ultimately Karl and Bera set out to find a shrine known as Winter Song, a relic of the colony’s murky past that may be the only way Karl can find his way home.

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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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(It occurred to me after writing the review of ‘Feels Like Steven King’ last week that I’d promised to post my Vector reviews online a month or two after they appeared in the magazine itself. That deadline has long since passed for the first three reviews, so I’ll post one on Saturdays for the first three weeks of August.)

This all-new story set in Brooks’ world of Shannara is not only its first appearance in a graphic novel, but also my first experience of the setting. Fans may wish to take my opinions with a pinch of salt.

Set after the events of ‘The Wishsong of Shannara’, ‘The Dark Wraith of Shannara’ resumes the story of Jair Ohmsford, a young man capable of using a form of magic known as the wishsong. As the story begins Jair’s sister has him swear not to risk using the dangerous wishsong again, but Jair is troubled by portentous dreams. The following day he learns that several old friends have been kidnapped, and so Jair and those allies he can round up set out to rescue them. Along the way Jair learns more about the wishsong and about his own potential.

This story is generic, inoffensive quest fare, featuring appearances by various characters who I assume will be known to Shannara fans. The central plot works well enough; it is unoriginal but comprehensible to a newcomer. But it is as a graphic novel that ‘The Dark Wraith of Shannara’ is flawed. » Read the rest of this entry «

Steven Deighan has been plugging away in the indie horror scene for almost a decade now, and published his first collection in 2006 (which I reviewed for now-defunct site Yet Another Book Review). It was a promising if unpolished set of stories and I felt it was worth keeping an eye on Deighan’s work. Now, along with illustrator Terry Cooper, he brings us a short graphic novel titled ‘Feels Like Stephen King’. At a bit under 40 pages it’s more of a graphic short story than a graphic novel, but who’s counting? Aside from hardcore comics fans who are already grumbling at my use of the term “graphic novel”, of course…

Deighan’s story focuses on a somewhat autobiographical subject: Eric Bain, a young horror writer who is struggling to get his work noticed by a publisher. As the story opens he receives a returned manuscript in the post, and at first is filled with anger at another rejection. Once he reads the cover letter, however, he realises that DM Publications wish to publish his novel ‘The Dying Game’. As his relationship with the head of the publishing house develops, however, Eric finds that his life is beginning to resemble something out of one his stories.

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I forgot to mention this at the time, but the most recent issue of Vector featured my review of Ray Bradbury’s reissued classic Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Vector is the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association and is only available to members. The main BSFA site is here, Vector’s rarely-updated site is here, and the much more happenin’ Vector editor’s blog is here.

My review of The Dark Wraith of Shannara - a graphic novel written by Terry Brooks, adapted by Robert Place Napton and drawn by Edwin David – appeared in Vector #257. If you’re a BSFA member you’ve probably already seen this issue. If you’re not, the best place to go to find out more about the journal is the official site, here.

I’ll probably post the review online in about a month’s time – I believe this is generally considered a courteous amount of time to wait before republishing.