Book two opens with some of the most repetitious passages so far, as if to, once again, underscore Tara’s predicament. Or perhaps to forewarn us that Book two opens with some of the most repetitious passages so far, as if to, once again, underscore Tara’s predicament. Or perhaps to forewarn us that this instalment will be filler. This time, Tara remembers she has parents and a sister – characters who were, presumably, withheld from the first book simply so they could be newly introduced in this one. She spends some time travelling around Europe in search of different weather conditions, seeking the seasons she should be living through but can no longer experience for real. She also does a lot of tedious research into the Roman Empire, for tenuous reasons. And then it ends on an out-of-the-blue cliffhanger.
While I wouldn’t rule out reading book three, I can’t help feeling that final-page twist is the only compelling reason to keep going. My interest is waning, and I continue to find Tara such a difficult character to get my head around (sorry, I still can’t buy her as a twentysomething woman – sometimes I struggle to buy her as a human being). Then again, the plot developments in the next two books do sound interesting. We’ll see....more
This is one of those rare books that’s become a sleeper hit, its buzzy status steadily creeping up since its initial English translation last year. ThThis is one of those rare books that’s become a sleeper hit, its buzzy status steadily creeping up since its initial English translation last year. The basic idea is, I think, pretty well-known by now: a woman lives the same day, the 18th of November, over and over again, while everyone around her – and, seemingly, so far, everyone else in the world – remains ignorant of this phenomenon.
It’s easy to see why On the Calculation of Volume has become popular. Despite the high-concept premise and the literary cachet of ‘seven-volume novel in translation’, it's very easy reading. The style is straightforward and often repetitive – although I can imagine it being frustrating for some readers (and I got tired of a few recurring phrases), I thought this was a clever, effective way to underline the sheer boredom and disorientation of living inside a repeating day. I was gripped almost against my will. I was carried along. The funny thing was that even though I knew the time loop couldn’t possibly be resolved in this instalment (this is book 1 of 7!), I was on the edge of my seat rooting for Tara to escape it.
I had what at first felt like a slightly petty issue with the narrative: Tara reads as much older than late 20s; in fact, I only know that’s how old she’s supposed to be because a reading guide on the Booker Prize website told me so. While actually reading the book, I thought I was reading about a woman well into middle age. The more I thought about this, the more it expanded outwards into further questions about the story – some frustrating, some intriguing.
There’s an almost dystopian aspect to Tara’s existence with Thomas, which seems remarkably old-fashioned for two youngish people in what appears to be the present day. I guess this might be explained by the fact that the author worked on the book for many years before actually publishing it. It could also be an intentional choice to make the story feel, deliberately and uncannily, timeless and time-less, with the unavoidable side effect of making the characters seem older. Yet Tara and Thomas are cut off from the world in other ways, too. It strikes me as notable that Tara never (that we know of) contemplates visiting any relatives or close friends in a whole year of looping days.
I also found it interesting to read others’ reviews of the book (which I only looked at after finishing it). Everyone sees their own thing in this story, and the range of interpretations is much wider than usual. For me, it has a sci-fi premise and I want Things To Happen in future books. This is a story in which a woman can live inside the same day for a year; is it a story in which other things are strange too? Will any of the unanswered questions raised by part 1 be addressed in part 2? Are key elements of Tara’s life missing simply because, with six more books to go, something has to be held back? Will On the Calculation of Volume prove to be a speculative epic or, less interesting to me, a literary ‘meditation’ on something or other?
A lot rides on where Balle goes with this story next. But the ultimate proof of its success lies in the fact that I definitely want to read the next instalment....more
Always a good day when there’s a new issue of Archive of the Odd to read. This one contains a spectacular standout story by Ash Egan, ‘Alice is MissinAlways a good day when there’s a new issue of Archive of the Odd to read. This one contains a spectacular standout story by Ash Egan, ‘Alice is Missing’, which fleshes out the story of a missing girl in the form of an oral history (Ash Egan please write a novel in this format!!). I also loved ‘A Gradient Descent’ by David Worn, the juicy, entertaining story of a programmer's futile battle with an evil AI, and the simple-but-creepy approach of Martin Taulbut’s ‘The Ogilvie Transcript’. As for the visual aspect, the found documents in Biscuit Starberry’s ‘You Are Going to Die’ take the prize for best presentation, and with ‘Making a Claim’, Louise Hughes delivers an actually original twist on climate change satire. Great fun as ever, I loved the creativity of every approach here. ...more
Sometimes brilliant, sometimes maddening, always fascinating. Unusually, the best stories are grouped together towards the end. Apart from the delightSometimes brilliant, sometimes maddening, always fascinating. Unusually, the best stories are grouped together towards the end. Apart from the delightful ‘Having a Wonderful Time’, the first two-thirds are a mixture of weaker pieces (‘Zodiac 2000’) and acquired taste (the two longest stories; see below). I wasn’t sold on the book until I hit ‘The Dead Time’, after which every story – ‘The Smile’, ‘Motel Architecture’, ‘The Intensive Care Unit’ – was a hit.
Together, ‘Myths of the Near Future’ and ‘News from the Sun’ clearly form the centrepiece of the book. They’re the most substantial and also, I discovered, the only two stories original to this collection; the others were all first published in magazines. The echoes between them reminded me of Anna Kavan’s Ice and some of her other novels, the way her arrangement of three character archetypes recurs across different novels in different guises. Here Ballard’s central group is of a similar makeup but slightly refracted, there’s the doubling of obsessions with voyeurism, sickness, abandoned Americana – plus the idea of space travel as an aberration that’s thrown humanity so out of joint it's resulted in mass infirmity and madness.
Ballard is a writer I always think I’ve read more than I actually have, and apart from anything else, this was incredibly useful as a snapshot of his short fiction. I can now see connections with both Ballard's peers and contemporaries, and writers I love who were clearly inspired by him (Nina Allan and Joel Lane, to name a couple). ‘The Smile’ would make a great pairing with Daphne du Maurier’s similarly macabre ‘The Doll’, and ‘The Intensive Care Unit’ reminded me so much of Izumi Suzuki’s ‘Terminal Boredom’ (has anyone done an anthology of 20th-century stories that predicted a video-centric society? If not, they should)....more
(3.5) An elderly woman, Margaret, wakes up in a bizarre situation. She’s in an abandoned swimming pool, getting interrogated by a menacing yet oddly c(3.5) An elderly woman, Margaret, wakes up in a bizarre situation. She’s in an abandoned swimming pool, getting interrogated by a menacing yet oddly charismatic guy, Hassan, who’s desperate for her to recount the events of the last few days in perfect detail. Why? Because her husband, Stanley, apparently discovered something that could change the course of human history. And since Stanley now has Alzheimer’s, Hassan needs Margaret to literally enter his memories and retrieve whatever it was. Quickly, too – powerful people are willing to kill for this secret (they might even have engineered Stanley’s memory loss in the first place). If this all sounds overly convoluted on paper, Binge makes it pleasingly easy to fall into.
The best parts, by far, are the chapters that explore Stanley’s perspective – his miserable childhood, his strained friendships, his introduction to the theory and science of memory via an eccentric mentor. Margaret’s sections, though? Trickier. The whole thing is framed as a transcript of everything she tells Hassan, and it takes intense suspension of disbelief to buy into that. There are some MacGuffins to explain Margaret’s improbably perfect and novelistic recall: Hassan gives her a memory-enhancing drug that supposedly ‘encourages verbalisation of your inner monologue’. But, needless to say, one’s inner monologue doesn’t generally involve describing dialogue the same way it’s written in a book.
I kept bouncing between ‘this is way too polished’ and ‘ooh, that was actually a really good twist’. Dissolution is one of the most obvious examples I’ve read recently of something that feels like it’s written with the express aim of being adapted into a film or TV series. Whether or not that’s an issue is a matter of taste. I think it’s fair to say that although I enjoyed the book – because it’s slick and compelling and all those things you’d expect from a story like this – I wished the style had been pared back a bit. I wanted more ambiguity, more restraint, something with a little less of a relentless drive towards the next big action sequence.
This is Binge’s third novel; I’ve read them all, liking each a little less than its predecessor. I think this is because his writing is moving in a more commercial direction, which, fair enough, good for him, that’s its own kind of skill; it’s just not for me. Dissolution might appeal to those who have enjoyed books by the likes of Blake Crouch, Claire North and Stuart Turton. Personally, this action-packed, kinetic style just doesn’t represent what I want to get out of, or find most rewarding about, speculative fiction in general. Nevertheless, it’s undeniably gripping and fun – and look, if that big-budget adaptation does happen, I’ll definitely be watching.
I received an advance review copy of Dissolution from the publisher through NetGalley....more
In a future, ostensibly unified Korea, robots are integrated into society as servants, companions and even ersatz children. We explore this world throIn a future, ostensibly unified Korea, robots are integrated into society as servants, companions and even ersatz children. We explore this world through three characters: Jun, a detective in the ‘Robot Crimes’ division; his sister Morgan, a programmer for robot-making corporation Imagine Friends; and Ruijie, a disabled girl who befriends an unusual robot she meets in a junkyard. Linking them all is Yoyo, Jun and Morgan’s missing-presumed-dead robot sibling. There’s a lot going on in Luminous, and I’d be lying if I said I could follow 100% of its threads 100% of the time. This is a book with such a busy, colourful setting that the worldbuilding threatens to overwhelm everything (think Samit Basu’s Chosen Spirits), although there is, eventually, an actual plot emerging from the tangle (think Grace Chan’s Every Version of You). Park is good at introducing just enough emotional context to ground the characters. Speaking of which, Stephen is a great character through which to explore ideas about personhood, and the group of teen friends is well-drawn (Mars is the MVP). Really good stuff: evocative style, great worldbuilding, chewy themes.
I received an advance review copy of Luminous from the publisher through NetGalley....more
A lesser-known – but cult classic – cyberpunk novel, originally published in 1996 and reissued by Tor last year. Does that typical cyberpunk thing of A lesser-known – but cult classic – cyberpunk novel, originally published in 1996 and reissued by Tor last year. Does that typical cyberpunk thing of being prescient in some ways while very much of its time in others (the language and pop-culture references are so very 90s/Gen X it’s difficult to situate yourself in the book’s centuries-into-the-future setting). I found this interesting in parts, but very much not for me overall. You can’t love everything!...more
Journal entries tell the story of a tumultuous season in a mystery world. This chapbook weaves together strange events with backstories for each of itJournal entries tell the story of a tumultuous season in a mystery world. This chapbook weaves together strange events with backstories for each of its character, telling a lot of story in a small number of pages. Enjoyed the creative names for months (Meltwater, Stillwind, Amberlight)....more
(Review written April 2017.) Every time I started a new story in Children of the New World, I kept thinking: surely at least one of these is going to (Review written April 2017.) Every time I started a new story in Children of the New World, I kept thinking: surely at least one of these is going to be something less than absolutely brilliant, surely this is the one that's going to let me down. Spoiler: it doesn't happen.
The stories here are soft sci-fi, sitting in the near-future genre alongside Black Mirror, Her and Luke Kennard's excellent The Transition. A few of the stories hint at a shared universe, different points in could-be future, giving the collection a David Mitchell vibe. Virtual existences loom large. Memories are bought and sold, jobs performed remotely, social media accessed through implants rather than devices. Real-life parenthood is an anachronism: instead, couples raise clones of themselves or adopt, and buy robot siblings for their kids. Real-life relationships are replaced by artificial memories and real-life sex supplanted by impossible erotic experiences in virtual reality. Meanwhile, the real world is ravaged, depleted. The background details are just as effective in setting the scene. In one story, a baby gnaws on a discarded iPhone; in another, hybrids have been superseded by solar cars – to the point that the next-door neighbour who still insists on driving the former is depicted as the equivalent of a climate change denier.
Several of the stories come with commentary (but not preaching) built in, taking aim at the tendency for technology to create as many problems as it solves – or solve problems that never really existed in the first place. This is most obviously satirised in 'Moksha', in which spiritual enlightenment is achieved by way of an obscenely expensive, underground electrical procedure, with seekers of this high ignoring and avoiding anything that might actually make them happy; and in a section of 'Excerpts from The New World Authorized Dictionary', in which we learn that addiction to 'continual wireless therapy' leads to the creation of a social network for chronic users to provide each other with virtual support, and so on, ouroboros-like. Weinstein also works in a number of nods to climate change and what the 'new world' might mean for nature. In 'Heartland', soil has become such a valuable commodity that everyone's sold it off, turning land into clay fields; on the news, 'it's day nine hundred of the oil spill'. 'Fall Line' is set in a rapidly melting ski resort, post-'Big Thaw'. The characters in 'Migration' rarely leave their homes – they log in to school and work, order their food online – and when one of them ventures outdoors, they encounter a positively post-apocalyptic landscape of overgrown gardens and abandoned malls.
It's hard to pick favourites, but for what it's worth... 'Saying Goodbye to Yang' opens the book with a bang (rhyme not intended) and perfectly sets the tone, combining a futuristic scenario with direct, matter-of-fact narration. 'The Cartographers' is an ingenious tale, a kind of cyber-noir which feels too complete for you to have any sense of the devastating twist until the last minute. 'Children of the New World' perhaps realises the potential of the collection most successfully: I loved the humorous details (spam emails and viruses embodied as sinister or pathetic figures appearing unexpectedly in your home), but this is also the most emotionally affecting story. 'Fall Line' is one of the simplest, in that its portrait of an ex-skiier whose career comes to a halt after a terrible accident could be set against almost any backdrop – it just happens to take place in a world where people stream video through their eyes and snow is the stuff of legend. 'Migration' balances reality and fantasy as immaculately as anything I have ever read (which is something you could also say about the entire book).
What makes the stories work so wonderfully is not their vision of the future, but their human elements. It's the way in which Weinstein draws a line through the past, present and potential future to show what remains constant. There are all types of relationships here, families and couples and friendships, and almost everything about the interaction is familiar, full of sentiment and empathy and ordinary mistakes. As one character says, 'human contact is all there really is'. There are a couple of little weaknesses here and there, but nothing with the power to dull the transcendental glow of Children of the New World as a whole. A fantastic collection.
I received an advance review copy of Children of the New World from the publisher through NetGalley....more
(3.5) Favourite stories: ‘TRUTH SERUM’ by Jacob Steven Mohr, a cursed-TV-show story (so, automatic fave) spanning many different mediums; ‘The Troubli(3.5) Favourite stories: ‘TRUTH SERUM’ by Jacob Steven Mohr, a cursed-TV-show story (so, automatic fave) spanning many different mediums; ‘The Troubling History of Boddington’s Inlet’ by Rajiv Moté, a weird travelogue that riffs on Lovecraft; ‘~if the sky can crack~’ by Meep Matushima, in which we read backwards through LiveJournal entries from a troubled girl who’s begun to believe she can travel to an alternate world. Cool formats: a document that includes tracked changes (‘Heritage Assessment Daemonium’ by Chris Moss); an illustrated cheese journal (‘A Partial Record of Enchanted Cheeses I’ve Fed My Wife’ by Devin Miller); a series of increasingly odd product reviews (‘KentGent’ by Ren Wednesday). Once again, lots of great ideas and a really enjoyable anthology. See also issue 2 and issue 1!...more
(See also my review of Issue #2.) Again, some great ideas in here, with my personal standout being Daniel Simonson’s ‘The House of Fitted Stones’, in (See also my review of Issue #2.) Again, some great ideas in here, with my personal standout being Daniel Simonson’s ‘The House of Fitted Stones’, in which ex-residents of a mysterious house reunite on an online messageboard, discussing their strange yet unforgettable experiences. With research as the theme, several contributions run along the same lines: they gradually reveal a portrait of a dystopian near-future society through the author’s chosen format. This could describe a few of the best stories – ‘The Securities & Exchange Commission v. The Undying Sea’ by Simo Srinivas (found documents), ‘The Comments Section’ by Andy Tytler (which plays out in the comments on an online advice column), and ‘Welcome’ by Alexis Ames and Kat Veldt (chats and emails within a marketing company, with a similar vibe to Several People Are Typing). I also liked the increasingly creepy letters in Barrie Darke’s ‘Goblin Universe’. A few other stories have good concepts but are lacking in execution. I assume things had been refined a bit by #2 because I found that to be a stronger, tighter collection, but this was still extremely fun....more
I picked this up a) on the strength of a glowing review at Strange Horizons and b) because I thought it was mixed media. Strictly speaking, it’s mostlI picked this up a) on the strength of a glowing review at Strange Horizons and b) because I thought it was mixed media. Strictly speaking, it’s mostly epistolary, switching between diary entries and emails as it tracks a father’s determined search for his 12-year-old daughter. The missing girl, Liza, was obsessed with ‘the Hidden World’, the setting of her favourite fantasy series, and it’s these books (and their enigmatic author) that prove key to untangling what happened to her. I can never resist something that has plot points like ‘person follows clue to to place and ends up in a weird museum’, and Dreambound combines that with whimsical fantasy – something I wouldn’t usually enjoy, but here it gives the narrative an edge, makes the book feel like something fresh. Pure fun with a big heart....more
The premise of The Other Valley is high-concept, yet so simple it seems amazing no-one’s written this book before now. There’s a community in a valleyThe premise of The Other Valley is high-concept, yet so simple it seems amazing no-one’s written this book before now. There’s a community in a valley. Some distance either side lie duplicate valleys – exactly the same, except one is twenty years in the past, the other twenty years into the future. Movement between valleys is both physically taxing and strictly controlled: requests must be approved or denied by a special council, the Conseil (and they are almost always denied).
Our protagonist and narrator, Odile Ozanne, is a 16-year-old schoolgirl who hopes to join the Conseil. At the same time as she enters the competitive ‘vetting’ process to win an apprenticeship, she accidentally witnesses a visit from residents of the future valley. She recognises them as the parents of her classmate Edme, and realises what this must mean: in the near future, Edme will die. Odile is drawn to him; they become friends; she begins to fall in love. In the second half of the story, we meet Odile as an adult and see how the events of her youth have affected her life.
This is a beautifully written book. One of the most impressive things about it is the clear distinction between its two parts. In the first half of the book, the valley is wistful, nostalgic and magical. The elegant prose, the evocative settings, the sense of potential surrounding both Odile’s future career and her putative relationship with Edme – all combine to create an impression of a place that feels at once familiar and entirely otherworldly. In the second half, however, that pretty facade is ripped away. We’re clearly in the same place, just seeing behind the curtain, being shown the details of the dirty work that makes this idyll possible for the lucky few. It’s such an effective way to illustrate different facets of a fictional world.
I was worried, early on, that this would be one of those books in which the course of someone’s entire life is dominated by a brief, youthful infatuation – a common plot point and one I dislike. But Howard is clearly aware this is a cliche. There’s a good balance between the obvious fact that the story’s world is unlike ours (time travel is possible here; regrets can be fixed, at a cost) and Odile’s own acknowledgement that she barely knew Edme. It’s a refreshingly unsentimental take on the trope, one that still allows for pathos and emotional heft.
The Other Valley is my favourite kind of speculative fiction, mastering the formula of compelling genre hook + stunning writing. So interesting, accomplished and such a smart idea, it’s not the type of book that immediately strikes you as a debut. I’d go out and get all the author’s other books if I could.
I received an advance review copy of The Other Valley from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
Aliya Whiteley’s latest novel is unique, a ‘hero’s journey’ more colourful than life, a sense that there is a lacquer over the top of what we read aboAliya Whiteley’s latest novel is unique, a ‘hero’s journey’ more colourful than life, a sense that there is a lacquer over the top of what we read about Fairly – a young ‘quester’ setting off from her home village to explore a strange land. A feeling that we’re reading a description of a videogame rather than seeing the coding underneath, or the inspiration for the story. Which makes it perfect that there is in fact an additional layer of interpretation: hundreds of years later, an archivist living in a very different world (where the individual no longer truly exists, as human consciousness is shared) finds Fairly’s story and annotates it, trying to decode its meaning.
Fairly’s story, titled The Dance of the Horned Road, is weird and sometimes inscrutable, with repeating motifs such as mysterious creatures called cha, a ‘chain device’ Fairly must press at pivotal points in her journey (and which always causes the narrative perspective to shift), and the sinister ‘breathing man’ who stalks her all the way. It can feel useless to try and impose a moral on any of it. My take is that it’s best understood by way of the tension between Fairly’s solitary quest and the archivist’s existence as a person in whom ‘all the information ever amassed’ is contained. It reminded me of books like Confessions of the Fox, The Book of Luce and The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas – none of which are SFF, but all centre on a similar idea about a narrator trying to excavate the truth from a document/cache of evidence, layers of reading on top of reading.
I received an advance review copy of Three Eight One from the publisher through NetGalley....more
In the alternate history of The Strange, humans travelled to Mars in the 19th century, and 60 years later have established a few (sparse) settlements In the alternate history of The Strange, humans travelled to Mars in the 19th century, and 60 years later have established a few (sparse) settlements there. Mars trade is largely organised around a substance called the Strange, which is used to give ‘life’ to android-like workers and companions known as Engines. Or at least it was, until the recent advent of ‘the Silence’, a mysterious cessation of all contact with Earth, which has cut off the Mars towns from everyone else – and 14-year-old Anabelle from her mother. When Anabelle’s family diner is robbed, she channels her rage into a quest to get back what was stolen, taking her away from the town she’s grown up in and across a vast, treacherous crater. Basically, it’s science fiction-slash-horror-slash-western. This is a vivid, near-cinematic, story that held my interest by constantly shifting its horizons. I never knew quite what we were going to encounter next.
Really, the only issue I have with The Strange is its surprisingly narrow narrative focus. Reading the first page, in which Anabelle is speaking from the vantage point of old age, I assumed the story would be about her whole life on Mars, not just this one episode when she was a teenager. It is, in fact, just this one episode when she was a teenager. It’s still a captivating story, but it does all feel a bit YA as a result. Anabelle as a character reminded me of Lalage in Antonia Honeywell’s The Ship: she’s a believably written teenager, but that means she is often quite annoying and makes frustrating decisions. It’s also, frankly, a bit unbelievable that a bunch of hardened criminals would do everything a naive girl says just because she’s threatening to dob them in to the sheriff. That’s the weakest aspect of the plot and, again, makes it feel more juvenile than I’d like.
But the imagination on display in The Strange is wonderful. I could picture it all perfectly – Ballingrud is a master of providing just enough detail. The journey across the crater is like Dune meets Mad Max, with its own unique flourishes: the image of Peabody, in particular, is a stroke of genius and will definitely stay with me....more
The Arrival of Missives is set in a rural village in the early 20th century, but it feels like it could be much earlier than that; this is a traditionThe Arrival of Missives is set in a rural village in the early 20th century, but it feels like it could be much earlier than that; this is a traditional place, where old customs not only persist but define the community (the celebration of May Day, and the crowning of a new ‘May Queen’, form the story’s climax). Shirley Fearn, a naive 16-year-old, is infatuated with her young teacher, Mr Tiller. But she gets more than she bargained for when she spies on him and discovers something inexplicable. This leads Tiller to confide his secret: he believes he is receiving ‘missives’ from the future, and wants Shirley’s help to ensure a terrifying threat is neutralised. Is he telling the truth, or a fantasist? Shirley herself is delusional and not entirely reliable – but is Tiller dangerous?
Whiteley weaves together a coming-of-age story with science fiction, an examination of rural British life in the age of encroaching modernity, and even a bit of romance, and it’s all balanced very well. Shirley’s voice is believable as that of a pretentious yet ultimately likeable teenager. There’s a richness to the portrait of the unnamed village that adds depth to an offbeat plot and helps smooth the edges off its more outlandish aspects. My favourite of the author’s since Greensmith, and another win from the now sadly defunct Unsung Stories....more
Unpopular opinion time. I really wanted to love this, but I was often bored. As much as I appreciated the writing (lucid, precise), basically the entiUnpopular opinion time. I really wanted to love this, but I was often bored. As much as I appreciated the writing (lucid, precise), basically the entirety of Leigh’s story – more than 80% of the book – feels like exposition. We are close to her, yet she is still a blank slate. I think In Ascension would appeal to anyone who loved The Moonday Letters, and vice versa, as I came to the same conclusion about both: each book is impressive in its worldbuilding and vision as a work of speculative fiction, but frustratingly sterile and lacking in anything recognisable as real emotion....more
Australia, circa 2080: life is increasingly lived inside the virtual world Gaia, but our protagonist, Tao-Yi, is a little more reluctant than most of Australia, circa 2080: life is increasingly lived inside the virtual world Gaia, but our protagonist, Tao-Yi, is a little more reluctant than most of her peers. When the concept of ‘Uploading’ – transferring a person’s consciousness to Gaia in its entirety – is launched, things get more complicated, especially as Tao-Yi’s boyfriend Navin is immediately enchanted by the idea. Every Version of You reminded me of books like Chosen Spirits and Moxyland, which colourfully depict future worlds, but with a much more focused plot and strong emotional core. It pulls off something rare for this type of story: the tech is thoughtfully written and Tao-Yi feels like a real person whose relationships (with her friends and her mother as well as Navin) actually mean something. I loved the closing chapters’ account of the post-Gaia real world, full of desolation, glimmering with hope....more
(Review written January 2019. Nina Allan’s novelette Neptune’s Trident was previously listed on Goodreads as a separate book; looks like that listing (Review written January 2019. Nina Allan’s novelette Neptune’s Trident was previously listed on Goodreads as a separate book; looks like that listing has now been combined into the magazine issue it was published in. This is a review of Neptune’s Trident only.)
Originally published in issue 129 of Clarkesworld magazine, Neptune's Trident is a science fiction novelette. It's set in a future version of Scotland in which a series of disasters and slow changes have precipitated the breakdown of society as we know it. There's also the phenomenon of the 'flukes', people afflicted by a new sort of infection. Some believe it to be a form of alien invasion, but its exact nature is difficult to define. Caitlin compares it to cancer. At one point, a character makes it sound like one version of a file being overwritten by another: 'their template placed over ours... a kind of bleed-through'.
This story has a similar feel to 'The Common Tongue, the Present Tense, the Known', and like Noemi in that story, the protagonist Caitlin makes a living by scavenging valuable objects from the polluted coast. She also cares for her partner, Steph, who is one of the infected, and who often (increasingly often) glitches into what Caitlin calls 'not-Steph'. (The transition is described in vivid, chilling terms: 'she turned slowly away from the kitchen counter, moving in jerky increments, like a robot... [her] words slightly blurred, as if two identical recordings of her voice were being played over each other, a millisecond apart'.) One day, while selling her finds at the local market, Caitlin meets a parson – a man still wearing a dog collar despite the disintegration of old religions. At first, she takes pity on him, but it soon becomes clear he has extreme views about the flukes, and that his arrival will change the quiet community.
The more explicitly science-fictional of Allan's stories are not usually my favourites, but I do appreciate their attention to detail. Allan's worldbuilding always focuses more on the things that would actually matter to real people, in their day-to-day lives, than stuff like technology and governance. It's the smallest things that make Neptune's Trident real: Caitlin's memories of watching horror films with her brother; the Johnson's shampoo she finds at the beach; the parson's resemblance to a man Caitlin's mother once had a relationship with. The ambiguous ending reflects the void at the heart of this new society, the stillness and silence of the ancient Earth in the face of human disaster....more