Yatterings

I’ve just read Chu’s Day which is, admittedly, shorter than I was hoping for. It is one of Neil Gaiman’s novels for younger children, in the vein of the Blueberry Girl .

When Chu, the small panda, sneezes, the world really takes notice. Except for his parents.

Although they do ask early in the story, like Coraline or Helena in Mirrormask, the parents ignore the small panda when it comes to the essential moment. Of course, if they do not, the novel  does not have its moment of crisis and the world becomes overturned, but it is a common theme in his children’s novels. As it is aimed towards a younger audience, the overturned (but not carnivalesque) world is short-lived.

Adam Rex’s illustrations are a joy and so well observed. They have a wonderful detail in them and gives the short text an extra depth. The book suggests that accidents can be overcome but it does feel slight in comparison to his other children’s books.

Redshirts are a well known part of media Sf. The short lived extra characters who die early in the show or to prevent a main character being killed have already been mentioned in passing on the Galaxy Quest parody of media genre. It has a certain culture and expectation which is used and mined. In Redshirts , John Scalzi has taken the idea and run with it for a whole novel which begins taking some surprising turns.

When four new recruits join the Intrepid, they begin questioning the spate of deaths and the equipment that is on board the ship. Hatching a slightly crazy plan, they try to find the person considered responsible before the world becomes slightly more odd. Jenkins, the quarry, turns the book from a caper comedy into a post-modern novel which thinks about the Narrative. He comments to Dahl, the main redshirt protagonist, that “in this universe, God is a hack” (p 218). Through being aware of the narrative and its limitations, the redshirts go on a quest to find the writer and fix what is happening in the original television show.

The appearance of the characters in the real world breaks the fourth wall for the fictional writer. By approaching the writers, the characters realise that they all have a part to play in the new work. The writer is also challenged to stop writing hack work and to improve their game. After the initial crisis is solved, the writer is discussing it with another author who experienced something similar and then gave them agency; making them real characters not just canon fodder. The nub of the matter is whether the writer is doing their best work or writing to order for a deadline.

So the book becomes meta-narrative ostensibly about media but the redshirt appears in books. It does ask questions about writing and whether one is writing at their best. Yet Paul Kincaid has posed the question about whether this is really pushing the genre along and extending it in his article on the genre which references the exhaustion of genre. Redshirts is a fun book and poses some useful questions about genre writing from Scalzi’s own experiences on the Stargate franchise but it is a novel which really speaks to the genre about the genre. It almost becomes a novel about creative writing and a clarion call to improve standards around the genre. Since shows like Star Trek are popular, references will be picked up but this is still an insular book in some ways.

It strikes me more as a creative writing novel than an Sf novel, aiming to encourage readers and viewers to think about the characters and the story. It asks writers to push themselves in stories and characterisation. Should genre still be doing this? Is this not a retrograde step? Questioning genre, any genre, is a good thing. Sf regularly comes back this though: either in meta-fiction or the new . A quiet strand of the novel set in this world is the deal that Sf is easy and does not need thought. It is hack work but how much of this becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. Only writers and audiences can really change this in the long term. This is certainly not an easy task.

That said, this is the first Scalzi novel that I have read and I’ll be trying to find more in the New Year. As a novel, it is a fun caper with a deeper motive. However, it does not necessarily push the genre along. Genre itself needs not only to ask but to do something about itself to push itself along. It should not need attentive authors such as Scalzi to be waving a redshirt to bull in the ring.

Jeremy de Quidt’s The Feathered Man , his second novel, continues the same strong style which he showed in The Toymaker . Neither of this novels shy away from difficult subjects and assume that his readers will pick up clues rather than having to explain everything.

Klaus, a tooth-puller’s boy, finds himself the prey in a hunt for a diamond after his master steals it from the mouth of a dead client at Frau Drecht’s house. Drecht wants the gold teeth but when the feathered man appears, Klaus’s life becomes far more difficult. Drecht’s put upon servant, Liesel, decides to help Klaus and to help him when the Feathered Man appears.

The chase intensifies when Father Henriquez, a Jesuit priest who is searching for proof of God, and Ramon, an Aztec priest, and Karolus, a professor of anatomy who has been chasing the dead man, join in the chase. The man had been the foreman of a mine who had discovered a man in feathers. De Quidt folds in the pre-Columbian belief in child sacrifice and ways of seeing the boundaries between life and death.

In the Toymaker, de Quidt asked similar questions in his construction of the puppet. Pullman had used von Kleist’s essay, On the Marionette Theatre, in His Dark Materials but de Quidt took it somewhere else with a very real puppet who lived in the world. He mused on the notion of the creation of life and whether it might have a soul, taking one of the perspectives of Frankenstein ina different direction. In The Feathered Man, he muses on whether a god might exist and the lengths to which the question is approached, from a sacrifice to chasing proof. In all it appears to be futile but perennial in its asking. He also muses on the nature of riches and their meaning: is the chase to prove the existence of God any more or less worthy than Frau Drecht’s obsession with the diamond and gold teeth.

His style really stands out though, not so much in its darkness but its depth. Drawing from the German Romantic tradition, he is unafraid to ask big questions but also adapts them to changing times. He becomes an active part of the bazaar of stories, taking and remoulding as required. De Quidt is a diamond of children’s fantasy in that he asks larger questions and presents novels which continue asking questions long after the final page has been reached.

Lemony Snicket’s latest set of (un)fortunate adventures have moved on from the Gothic pastiche adventures to a take on the detective story. This latest series is to be a quartet rather than the 13 volumes of a series of Unfortunate Events.

In “Who Could That be at This Hour? ”, Snicket joins in the story as a junior detective to S. Theodora Markson (perhaps a nod to Law & Order?). When they arrive in the town, Stain’d by the Sea, they are hired to find the missing statue of the Bombinating Beast.

Using the framework of noir and detective fiction, Snicket appears to be having some fun with the idea of a statue that becomes a McGuffin for future volumes. To be fair, I am not entirely au fait with Hammett or Chandler’s works which I suspect would help in this but the author does present a rattling good mystery. The author presents everything that one would expect – dangerous damsels, moral ambiguity, a mcguffin, and high drama. Seth’s artwork brings out the quirkiness of the writing but echoes the writing in its muted colours and strong lines.

Snicket indulges in the word play which littered the last series and is perhaps a little less intrusive as the characters are the equally balanced rather than slightly (and increasingly) forced tone of the Baudelaire children. In one sense this is a detective version of the previous series, but it is good natured and fun. It is great to see children’s books which continue a playfulness with language and form but one does wonder how many times that this formula can be reproduced.

An Apple for the Creature is a collection of stories on the theme of education, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner.

It approaches horror and the supernatural from a range of directions, some of which are more successful than others. Given the school theme presents opportunities to offer a certain revenge of the nerds. Yet it also offers chances to educate the world about the darker side of life.

The first two stories explore the horrific acts that humans can undertake. Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse short story, “Playing Possum”, sees the eponymous heroine watching Brady attack a school. The strength of the story is its understated nature and the backseat of the paranormal. Even as a story which comes from its own universe, it acts as a stand alone story, something that some of these stories might well consider.

Jonathan Maberry’s “Spellcaster 2.0” updates the neophyte summoning the demon story, perhaps taking a slight queue from Buffy. The horror story’s DNA contains a certain amount of interaction with belief, from escaping a stronger religious atmosphere to the inverse here where there is no belief apart from cynicism. What Maberry begins questioning is that if the summoner has now has no belief, then how can the citizens of hell exist in the universe of the story? His answer is that perhaps the supernatural needs protecting from the atheist mundane one, that is being exploited.

The God game is played in other stories with unwitting people tricked out of their souls, yet struggling to regain them. But with an absence of God, could the Devil exist? Although this is not the collection to answer this question, it is a relevant one for any one writing supernatural stories and one that requires a thinking through. Perhaps it does echo a previous time when these beliefs were more prevalent but in this case, the supernatural writer needs to rethink this rather than use the individual props.

For me, one of the strongest stories is Mike Carey’s “Iphigenia in Aulis”, riffing on Euripides’ play. Rather than rushing into the story, he builds up layers and reveals a more nuanced world which asks questions of the characters. Using the uncertain ending of the original play, Carey’s story moves through versions of nightmare and creating uncertainties in the world which resembles an urban story. The story reveals a world made paranoid by invaders, unable or unwilling to accept them.

Yet the tone is made lighter in a couple of stories. Tom Sniegoski’s story is lighter in tone with some nice touches but Steve Hockensmith’s “A Primer on Jewish Myth and Mysticism” uses the Dybbuk and plays on the potentials of mythology. Slightly reminiscent of Christopher Moore’s writing, the story plays on the central archetype with humour, yet keeps an uncertainty in the final sentences, but still drawing from a Judaeo-Christian perspective.

In a variety of tones and voices, this anthology is a slight rag tag bag of stories. Questions can be raised about the nature of horror. As it moves around the religious perspective, it shows a certain terror when it is removed. Some of the stories skirt around the theme or rely on the reader knowing the characters.

The ghost story, a type which is never quite in or out of fashion, is the frame for Cornelia Funke’s latest novel, Ghost Knight .

Jon resents being sent to boarding school in Salisbury. Believing the move to be powered by his mother’s new boyfriend, the Beard, he is slightly bewildered and frightened by the move. On his first night, he sees the four ghosts who chase him as a Hartsgill, his mother’s maiden name. His room mates, Stu and Alistair, cannot see them. Only the slightly odd Ella, a day pupil, believes him and introduces him to her grandmother, Zelda, who runs ghost tours.

In the mad cap adventures which follow, Jon becomes a squire and begins a slight roman a clef, learning his place in the world and accepting it. In the beginning he sees himself as Harry againse the Dursley’s, projecting himself as the picked on child. When Zelda’s son comes to visit, whom Jon recognises as the Beard, he overhears that he is spoiled. Rather than feeling out of place with his new school, Jon grows up and accepts that the family has changed slightly.

The apprenticeship with Sir William forces him to grow up and to accept responsibility for his own life and to make his own decisions. Seeing the Beard help him in his quest makes his accept him. His friendship with Ella and perhaps odd relationship with his dormitory mates means that he sees the world in less black and white.

Funke uses the first person narrative to create an unbalanced narration and builds the fear up. In a very subtle way, she uses the horror to discuss Jon’s internal world, making his own fear very real. Knights and the apprenticeship becomes a conceit to think about how to deal with suddenly being sent away to boarding school and the first time of being away from one’s family. Using Salisbury cathedral, she echoes the MR James’s way of unsettling the reader but, unlike adult horror, never goes for the full effect.

The horrific is cast with the overtones of Heaven and Hell. Using the ghosts, she discusses the horrors of war as well as showing that actions have consequences. Instead of being about the world and its darkness being put on to the individual, young adult horror is more about the internal world of the protagonist and being able to see that the monsters in the world can be defeated. Rather than echoing John Clute’s seasonal theory of horror, intimately linked to a Story of the world, it is tied to an individual’s story.

Funke’s novel is perhaps a more subtle book than I had initially thought. Although not absolutely comfortable with the English ghost story, Ghost Knight is a good supernatural novel that explores and reveals the inner world.

Kenneth Oppel’s Such Wicked Intent is the second novel in the prequels to Frankenstein, the Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein. In a similar vein to Priestley’s Creecher, this prequel explores the making of the central character, though with far less a twist than the Priestley novel.

Following the destruction of the Dark Library after Konrad’s death, Victor becomes increasingly obsessed with bringing him back to life. His ancestor, Wilhelm, appears to have found a way of crossing into the afterlife. As he, Elizabeth and Henry cross over into it, they find it mirrors the real one but contains a copy of the library.

In an early exchange, Victor and Elizabeth are talking about their desires to complete the journey. She says,
“You doubt my passion for my faith.”
“No, no. You’re very passionate. That, I think, might be the problem”(page 7)
In a moment both lucid and clouded, Victor identifies the core theme to this story and yet cannot see it himself. Elizabeth’s own passion for Konrad and Victor’s for power and knowledge drive them to the point of obsession. Oppel sets up the hubris which will lead to Frankenstein’s downfall, developing the desperation which drives him.

Oppel’s Frankenstein abandons magic and superstition for science with asides and premonitions. In doing so he moves away from some stock horror motifs of forbidden knowledge. We do perhaps get an insight into the central trio of Shelley’s later novel but it still relies on these motifs. It does mix in some mythology with the defeat of the monster and their willingness to try and move on from Konrad’s death. It does not have quite the spark to take the leap of faith and to play with these ideas to take a sideways look at the story as horror.

Philip Palmer’s Artemis is more of the same: a frenetic, action heavy novel which almost revels in its inhumanity. Like Version 43 , the central character is a version of a human, reborn after major damage or death.

The entity lives in a hellish universe of continual conflict and is reborn into subservience under a new master. Eventually they realise that perpetual conflict is counter-productive and begin to find some humanity. Each incarnation of the being under goes this change and slowly moves towards being a person. Perhaps Version 43 was the most successful version of this once the version realised what he was and began to remember his past lives and begin to make some sort of atonement. He became a character rather than what feels like an exercise in writing military space opera with a crime aspect to it.

Artemis is a career criminal and mass murderer who is offered a get out of jail card by going on several jobs which become a revenge tragedy of their own. Each mini-story builds a larger tale of violent response to an earlier wrong eventually echoing the Scott Card Ender’s War with the virtualisation of conflict whilst finding some sort of short lived reconciliation with her estranged mother.

Echoing the anger and frustration at the universe of Bester’s Gully Foyle, Artemis moves around the universe seeking her primary goal. The ultra-violence becomes almost mechanical and when Earth is attacked again, the reader is almost numb.

Artemis feels like an exercise in riffing off authors, such as Bester or Pohl or Card, without exploring their strengths and weaknesses. Foyle burns with a righteous anger at being left to die in space before fighting his way back to Earth. Artemis never achieves this righteous anger and the eventual reunion feels brutally short-lived. It is a style of SF which ignores possibilities; rather it plays to the stalls, singing the Debatable Space opera.

Review of Hell Ship

Terry Pratchett’s Dodger is a wonderful skit on early Victorian London which plays with Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens. Rather than fashionably going with steam punk, Dodger is a historical fantasy with a distinctly darker social history of manners.

Dodger is a tosher, making his living from delving in the pre-Bazalgette sewers of London. One evening he saves Simplicity after she has been beaten badly and gets her to the Mayhew’s house. Meeting Charles Dickens, Dodger makes his way from the sewers of society through his use as an informant to both Mayhew and Dickens. On the way he burnishes his own mythology when he is involved in the capture of Sweeney Todd.

Whilst hiding Simplicity, Dodger and Dickens play on Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White but changes it slightly. A detective story becomes a spy story, changing voice from passive to active.

Given the setting, just before the great works which sorted out the sewage, Pratchett paints a Britain that teeters on the edge of being great but also being forgotten. Bazalgette, Babbage. Names which inspire for those who know them and their ideas, but who are still largely forgotten. You can almost see the argument for great public works and leaders who have that vision rather than short term goals.

Dodger, who will appear in one of Dickens’s more famous works, almost made me think of Chris Priestley’s Mr Creecher (earlier post here).  I suppose it sets up an origin story but I am a little glad that it went a different direction.

Having set up the story, he argues that all stories can be changed if there is the will.