>>Nostalgia For Infinity

Although it was originally released in 2004, and I bought it in 2005, it was only this year that I finally read this book – which courted some controversy when it originally shot up the bestseller lists. The short summary is that this purports to be an autobiography which focuses on some of the most significant events of the author’s life in relation to US foreign and economic policy. In Perkins’ college years he was put under observation by the NSA, who felt that he fit the psychological profile of an economic hitman, EHM for short; a combination of intelligence, patriotism and manipulable weakness. He joined the peace corps for a spell in South America after which he was recruited by an organisation known as MAIN, a US engineering and consultancy firm which specialised in overseas contracts for states the NSA wanted to bind together with the USA in a mutually beneficial economic arrangement. This meant that these nations would either accept development loans from the IMF and World Bank or utilise their own wealth, which funds would then be funnelled into US corporations who would modernise private and public infrastructure in the client states.

The general facts of these relationships are not particularly controversial these days; it’s common knowledge that the IMF and the World Bank are institutions in which the USA has a lot of power, and that states which accept development funds are obliged to adopt certain neoliberal doctrines (primarily privatising state assets and infrastructure and opening them up to bids from international, often US, corporations). It’s also common knowledge that this process of ‘modernisation’ often does as much bad as it does good. Where natural resources are opened up to exploitation indigenous peoples see their lifestyles destroyed; where hydroelectric dams are constructed tens or even hundreds of thousands of people find themselves forcibly relocated. Serious health risks can arise as a result of pollutants or disease; funds often find themselves funnelled into the pockets or pet projects of elites in client states at the expense of those who are worst off.

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It’s a while since I reviewed anything from British genre publisher Abaddon Books (see here), and indeed since I read anything from them. I’ve got a certain measure of admiration for what they’re trying to accomplish but the fiction I’d read from them to date had not exactly blown me away. However, I didn’t count on a friend pressing this book into my hands and insisting that I must read it. “I thought it would be rubbish,” she said. “But it has zombie elephants!” She did, originally, pick it up on the basis of the barely-clothed “barbarian” woman on the cover (check out that underboob – now that’s what I call a literary quality, phnarr phnarr).

I think these two facts tell you just about all you need to know about the unique selling points of Anno Mortis.

Oh, sarcasm aside it’s fun enough. Here’s how it goes: in the age of Emperor Caligula (casual mass murderer and serial fucker of all things with holes), the barbarian warrior Boda (as in Boudica, get it?!) is brought to Rome to fight in the coliseum as a gladiator. She quickly gets caught up in some shady business involving dark rites and the bodies of dead gladiators. Around the same time, the feckless playboy and wannabe playright Petronius is forced into the apprenticeship of the Senator Seneca, who it turns out is involved in some shady business involving dark rites and the bodies of dead gladiators. I hate to spoil it for you, but they toootally end up sharing some adventures and unlikely chemistry!

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American Hardcore: A Tribal History by Steven Blush

It’s difficult to approach this book, originally released in 2001, without bringing a certain amount of baggage with you. It’s probably among the most well-known collected histories of the early American hardcore punk movement, particularly after it was adapted into the notorious film of the same name. It’s widely regarded as an essential resource in tracing the bands, people, geographical and musical trends of the time; a book almost anthropological in its attempt to thoroughly document a long-dead scene (no no no hardcore is not dead, nor is punk, but in this exact form it’s gone). It’s almost as widely castigated for attempts to assert itself as ‘the’ undeniable true history of American hardcore, 1980-1986, for maintaining a pretence at objectivity even as it recounts personal recollection as fact and presents stories that are sometimes one-sided and often poorly recollected by those quoted.

I’ve got a good amount of distance from the book, being an English bloke who was only born a year before Minor Threat split up. Whilst I can’t and won’t attempt to dispute any of what the book claims as fact, I can observe that where a particularly controversial subject arises (such as the infamous dispute between the Bad Brains and the gay Texan band Big Boys over the former’s homophobic attitudes and generally shitty behaviour) a variety of participants and observers are given space to speak their piece. The difficulty in retrospectively covering something that was erratically documented at the time speaks for itself, especially bearing in mind that a lot of early participants were young and prone to extensive indulgence in alcohol, drugs and extreme violence; the sort of thing that, over time, can fuck with your head pretty thoroughly. And that’s not even to mention the amount of difference time can make to memories: over time people’s minds will inevitably distort details to fit their opinions.

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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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Books on music can be a funny thing. The old saying that writing about music is like dancing about architecture holds as true with the long form as it ever does (by which I mean, shut up, I will write about music as much as I like). This leaves authors a few options: to focus on the autobiographical aspect of their subjects, to focus on their cultural impact, or to adopt a more historical fact-checking technique. The latter is probably the method I struggle with the most as it demands an already somewhat encyclopaedic knowledge of its subject from the reader; this is a problem I had with the one book of Ian Glasper’s I’ve read. To be fair, such books are intended as more of a resource to be dipped into than something to be read cover-to-cover.

Examining the cultural impact of various bands or a scene can be equally tricky; manage it just right and you have something like Our Band Could Be Your Life, a book so successful and widely-read that it re-introduced many of the classic 80s bands it championed to a generation growing up with bands several generations down the line. You can also end up wallowing in cliche, romanticising history and aggrandising it to an almost embarrassing point – such as any number of books about punk written by people who lost interest after ’79. (You can usually find these books in shops specialising in unsold trade paperbacks and hardbacks; they can usually bought quite cheaply. Ha!)

Then there is the autobiographical approach. This has the inherent strength that most people, being people, tend to find reading about other people interesting. It also has the risk that, well, most people lead quite boring lives, even those in famous bands. And I don’t just mean clean-living; after you’ve read a few coke or booze or glue-sniffing stories, you’ve pretty much read 99% of them.

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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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I’ve written about the independent comics publisher Big Head Press once before, indirectly, when I wrote about their excellent story La Muse. Their tagline is “thoughtful stories” and this was certainly true of La Muse, a comic in which a young woman with superpowers set about to change the world to something better.

They have recently concluded the story Odysseus the Rebel, which begins ten years after the fall of Troy. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s a re-imagining of the classic Odyssey with a distinct spin. Writer Steven Grant (an industry veteran, thought as a comics n00b I’m not that familiar with his work – he did a Punisher mini-series and has written for most of the major IP of the biggest comics companies in the last three decades) presents a much more cynical view of the great Greek heroes. Achilles and Ajax are simple-minded bullies, Agamemnon a selfish murderer, and Odysseus is a man determined to make his own way in life in defiance of what is demanded of him by higher powers. Following the fall of Troy, Odysseus’s fate tangles directly with vassals of Poseidon – god of the sea – who demands that Odysseus bend his knee to the will of the gods. Odysseus rejects him, refusing to willingly play a role as a mere pawn. And so begins an Odyssey quite distinct from the one you may be familiar with, in which the plots and power struggles of the Greek Pantheon, heroes and monsters play out in a manner not entirely expected.

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My review of Paul McAuley’s space opera The Quiet War is in the latest issue of Vector to hit doormats around the world (but mostly the UK). Vector is the critical journal of the BSFA and this is my second review to be published. I continue to be stoked about writing for Vector. The journal’s official site, which hasn’t been updated in a while, can be found here.

[Edited for me being a numpty. McAuley's book has nothing to do with Deus Ex...]