This is a collection of mini-reviews of science fiction and fantasy books which I liked enough to recommend but haven’t reviewed at length (often because I couldn’t find time).
The collection began as a string of comments to an identically-titled post on Green Path, one which drifted away from its environmental theme and into general SF. It is structured like a blog, with the most recent additions at the top; dates given are the dates reviews were added.
Index
• Anthropocene Rag • Zen Cho • Every Version of You • The Scar • Babel • The Year of the Jackpot • Children of Memory • Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits • Reconstruction • The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida • The Anomaly • Flyaway • From Here On, Monsters
Anthropocene Rag
Alex Irvine’s Anthropocene Rag (2020) is a roadtrip, somewhat in the manner of Spinrad’s People’s Police, through territory explored by Cory Doctorow, William Gibson and Greg Egan among others.
Consciousness is emerging in an artificial intelligence which has so much nano-tech at its disposal that it can casually make anything it likes. But it doesn’t understand itself or its own motivations. What could possibly go wrong?
(31.12.24)
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water
Zen Cho was born and raised in Malaysia and now lives in England. Her first fiction appeared in 2015 and she has been collecting awards ever since, so she is definitely a writer to watch. Here are two of her recent books.
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water (novella, 2020) is set in a pre-modern tropical country in which the Chinese minority is being persecuted. Its protagonist is a young nun who has escaped the razing of her monastery and joins a group of bandits carrying sacred relics through the jungle to safety. Black Water Sister (novel, 2021) centres on a young woman returning to Penang after education in America; but in Penang she is embroiled in the old feuds of her (ethnically Chinese) extended family.
Both books depend on Chinese folk religion, with its rich array of ghosts, gods, demons and magical powers, all of which are as real as the heat and humidity but even more challenging. They are, therefore, paranormal fantasy, and we might insert “YA” in that label, since the target readership seems to be teenage girls; but they are more interesting than most of the genre because they immerse us in unfamiliar cultures and new supernatural realms. Both are very good but I preferred the novella.
(14.10.24)
Every Version of You
The idea of uploading ourselves to hardware has been a staple of SF for decades. In Grace Chan’s Every Version of You (2022), almost the whole human population uploads to the cloud in the 2080s, to live there in virtual-reality communities. Back in the real world, the global population drops to a few thousands while the necessary computing infrastructure is maintained and extended by androids. “Was this evolution or extinction?” one of the remaining real people asks, and, even more poignantly, “Are they [the uploaded] still us?”
Chan’s focus is identity rather than technology and Every Version of You explores that very well indeed. The issues are too big to treat briefly so I’m not going to try – I’m just going to recommend Every Version.
(1.6.24)
The Scar
The Scar (2002) is set in the world of Perdido Street Station, China Mieville’s breakthrough second novel. It’s a completely separate story, however, set mostly on a floating city. It resists categorisation but I will call it epic steampunk with magical elements. Whatever it is, it’s very good. Iron Council, the third of Mieville’s novels set in the same world looks good, too
(30.4.24).
Babel
Babel (2022) by R.F. Kuang is an alternate-history novel presented as fantasy. The fact that the novel’s central characters meet and bond as first-year students of magic makes Oxford in the 1830s look like a grownup version of Hogwarts: so far, so generic. Never mind; the fantasy aspects will attract readers who wouldn’t pick up a straight historical novel and this one will do them good.
Kuang’s main concern is anti-colonialism. Babel eviscerates the British Empire via the protagonists’ political awakening. Its subtitle, on its title page but not on its cover, articulates its mood. In full, it is Babel, or the Necessity of Violence. In this alternate past England’s lead in ‘silver-work’, a specialised form of magic, has enabled British colonialism to become even more dominant than it was in reality. Silver-work drives the narrative but it makes remarkably little difference to the history: the Empire was built on misery just the same.
(17.4.2024)
The Year of the Jackpot
In Robert Heinlein’s apocalyptic 1952 novella, a statistician attempts to make sense of a world gone mad. Potiphar Breen has been carefully noting a rise in odd behaviors all around him in the hope of discovering some pattern or meaning in them. Then one day, he comes upon a beautiful young woman who is taking off all her clothes at a bus stop – and she doesn’t even know why.
I have added the novella to this page because it still stands up remarkably well, and because it resonates so strongly with William Gibson’s far longer and far more recent Jackpot which I’ve been talking about over on Green Path. Anyone wanting to read Heinlein’s story can find it as an e-book; anyone wanting a mere plot summary can get it on Wikipedia but be warned: the spoilers in it will ruin the novella for you.
(18.2.24)
Children of Memory
This is the third novel in a trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky which begins with Children of Time. It’s space opera, but lifted out of the generic by interesting explorations of identity and the nature of intelligence.
Tchaikovsky is a prolific youngish British author whose Cage of Souls impressed me enormously. He writes both fantasy and hard SF. Some of it seems to be aimed at the YA market but isn’t labelled as such, and has therefore failed to live up to my expectations, but most of it is very good.
P.S. The Doors of Eden (2020) is an epic many-worlds adventure which compares well with Children of Time.
(13.10.23,7.11.24)
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits
In Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (2015), David Wong (pen name of Jason Pargin) takes the ugly near-future American world of Gibson’s The Peripheral and Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife and uses it for black comedy. Like his John Dies At the End, which does the same for paranormal horror, its humor is gross but its central characters are engaging and its fundamental values are good.
Looking for light reading and don’t mind gore? This book is for you!
(So are the Laundry Files books.)
(21.9.23)
Reconstruction
Reconstruction is a collection of short stories by Alaya Dawn Johnson, all written 2005-2020 and all very, very good. They range from paranormal fantasy (both serious and spoof) to science fiction per se and magical realism. Most of them centre on women, people of colour, or both, which is a nice corrective to the bulk of the genre. She has written novels, too – I will be looking out for them.
Author’s site: https://alayadawnjohnson.com/
(6.4.23)
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
It won the Booker so it will probably be on the Lit Fic shelf, like The Anomaly, below, but apart from that it would be on the Fantasy shelf. Most of the action of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida takes place while the protagonist is in the bardo, the Buddhist version of Limbo. There are plenty of ghouls and monsters there, but some of the living people they track are far worse.
Read more about it on the Booker Prize site.
(19.3.23)
The Anomaly
More good non-generic SF: The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier. It will probably be on the Lit Fic shelf, not F & SF, but it’s definitely SF and very good. Big themes, well handled; good enough to win the French equivalent of the Booker; etc.
(6.3.23)
Flyaway
Kathleen Jennings’ Flyaway is another that deserves to be mentioned alongside Monsters (below). It’s Australian Gothic, fantasy with deep roots in both our landscape and our heritage of European mythology. More about it on Readings.
(15.6.22)
From Here On, Monsters
If you like books, Umberto Eco, ASRC, puzzles within puzzles, bookshops, the art world, thinking about the ways language shapes our thought, detective stories, Orwell, urban fantasy, literary hoaxes or any combination of the above, I think you will like Elizabeth Bryer’s From Here On, Monsters. It’s a book with both a heart and a brain and, in case you didn’t guess, I loved it.
Bryer is a prize-winning translator so although it is her first novel it doesn’t read like one. One of the few books I could compare it to was Vandermeer’s Hummingbird Salamander. Dyschronia is another.
(7.6.22)