Books & Zines

In ‘Walthamstow Central’, author Ellis Sharp pushes the boundaries of what readers have come to expect from literature. Part other-worldly police procedural, part science fiction thriller, part political diatribe, with these components alone the novel would be fascinating. But more interesting is the engagement with the artifice of the text. The lines between author and authored, between reality and fiction, between character and history and time are all blurred, and this technique pervades every element of the novel.

Sharp’s narrative technique is underpinned by a certain sense of weariness, both with life and with fiction, and this tiredness is shared by his characters. In a telling early scene, PC Daisy Spenser converses with PC Andy Scurr in his home. The narrator asserts that “the dialogue was as banal as the interior of the kitchen in Scurr’s flat”; minutes later, Daisy makes her excuses to leave:

“Your speech has a cold, narcotic quality. It’s dead.” […] “The sooner we stop this dialogue the better.” (All quotes p.39-40)

These lines are issued and acknowledged without comment, accepted as part of the world in which the characters operate – or, more precisely, the narrative. Indeed, immediately after her departure Daisy reflects momentarily on Scurr, before realising that her mind is open, that her interior monologue is exposed for all to see. She draws a mental curtain before her taxi driver reads her thoughts. It’s perhaps too late, as the reader has already parsed them.

Even a simple exchange such as this is telling. There’s a critical weariness with the mundane triviality of human social interaction, the cold and passionless sexual endeavours of men like Scurr. Observations about the banality of this dialogue, of the emptiness of the setting, not only characterise the voices and faces of ‘Walthamstow Central’, but also critique the lack of ambition and imagination in fiction that does not seek to step beyond this. There are other tidbits to support this thesis (it is quite evident when reading the novel, but for the purposes of this review I must cite), including something Time Penetration Team agent Strobey reads on the train:

A variety of stories read over a long period of time from a variety of sources.

The Girls in their Summer Dresses, Irwin Shaw. Michael and Frances are a young married couple in New York City, and in many respects they’re a sweet duo. They make romantic plans, they joke and banter easily. But Michael cannot stop looking at other women and Frances cannot ignore it. Even when she brings it up he does not stop; when she tells him how it makes her feel he hushes and soothes her. Their plans deteriorate. They drink brandy at a bar. Michael is honest and lays out why he looks at women: he wants them, all of them. He even admits he might make a move on another woman. Forlorn, Frances asks if Michael will at least keep his opinions to himself, and he agrees. They attempt to move on with their plans for the day, but a coldness has settled over their relationship.

Nothing so much happens in this story, but over the course of a short walk and a conversation we see a sweet relationship irreparably fractured, essentially by a man who has a flaw and decides to combine honesty and inflexibility rather than, say, attempt to rein himself in, or at least respect his wife’s feelings. The way he also ogles his wife in the final paragraph, eyeing up her legs as she walks away from him, speaks volumes.

A variety of stories read over a long period of time from a variety of sources. Actually includes some non-genre stories for once…

Shit Flower, Anil Menon. One of the most interesting and entertaining stories I’ve read in ages, and it is for the most part a story about shit. Yep, the artificial intelligences running Mumbai’s sewer systems have told each other a bad joke and now the city is overflowing with shit. The people in a position to stop this are Simon, an Indian-naturalised Canadian mathematician, and Ada, a senior official in the city’s waste management department. Simon is old now, but long before had consulted on the creation of those sewage AIs. Ada, young and exploring a total identity transplant, reaches out to him to combat the problem.

This story feels casually polymathic, roving across mathematics, heterogeneity in social stability, history, cross-linguistic jokes and so on, with a conclusion that is warm and welcoming of interpretation. Hindu reincarnation? SFnal identity injection? Why not both, or neither?

Absolutely a story to come back to, and Anil Menon is an author I also now need to revisit.

Tim Lees, Night Town of Mars. A boy, not popular among his peers at school, has a fondness and respect for his uncle, an eccentric prone to expounding weird ideas and arguments. One Summer the boy insists that he go to stay with his uncle and aunt – it’s preferable to Scouts. Whilst there he learns of a crude plot by local worthies to un-home his uncle, who apparently is no more popular among his peers than the boy is among his. And at nights he begins to experience another place that is like but unlike his relatives’ home atop a hill, looking down upon the nearby town.

I’ve enjoyed Tim Lees’ work in the past but the only story of his I’ve read in the last few years, Soldiers Things, felt a little slight. This I enjoyed more: Lees has a knack for juxtaposing the strange and the homely, horror and humour, eccentricity and the banal. The scenes in the other world are a lot of fun and echo Alice in Wonderland (an over-used reference point, but hush for I rarely draw upon it) whilst the scenes in our reality are almost as fun. The ending drags on a little, but it works well enough.

This was a periodical sent out by the BSFA for members to review before voting in the 2019 BSFA Awards, although sadly – living overseas as I do – it arrived after the Awards had been awarded.

Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate. A bunch of astronauts travelling through space in suspended animation wake up and we see some glimpses of their characters. The narrator muses on the nature of space travel and the experience thereof, and on the history that has led to their journey, in a missive home that may take fourteen years to arrive. It concludes with an underdeveloped idea of crowdfunded space travel, born of frustration with, one supposes, states and private industry, though one wonders who administered and utilised the crowdfunds to make all this happen, and what infrastructure all that rested upon?

The conclusion that the narrator’s journey is the result of “a fragile endeavour that can only stand thanks to the contributions of many” is momentarily stirring, but I can’t say I found the idea of people donating to an Escape To Space, I Don’t Want To Live On This Planet Any More patreon a bit lacking in substance. There’s so little of the concept presented here that it feels like clicktivism, where some people threw what money they could at a problem and somehow money was magically transformed into a space program.

So: I didn’t care for what was in the magazine I was sent. But then I realised it’s about 6 pages of a 136 page novella. Ohhhh. The contents page does identify it as an extract, but the text itself doesn’t. Well, I’ve not read Chambers’ work since her debut, so perhaps I should – although not on the strength of this excerpt, which doesn’t work as a standalone at all.

Katie Kane, Road Kill. A story about the narrator’s mother, a woman who is “dangerous” because she “had knowledge she shouldn’t have had and none of the context for really understanding it.” We see little of the narrator save how she relates to her mother; her mother who always carries her buck knife with her, always planning to make use of dead things: a deer, a bird, a rattlesnake.

Laden with metaphor, I enjoyed this thoughtful short story more than I thought I would when I read the first two paragraphs and dismissively thought “another slice of Americana about hard lives in small towns”. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Cofiwch Aberystwyth, Val Nolan. It’s pleasing to see a near-future specfic story set in Wales and engaging with Britain’s current political and cultural schisms and travails, even if this is largely set dressing for a story of betrayal, denial and breakdown. Wait, actually…

There’s a tremendous sense of place in post-nuclear Aberystwyth and whilst the historical events that produced this setting feel improbable, is that not always true of many events until history and humanity deliver them?

We follow a “top 500” vlogger and the rest of her team as they explore this setting, risking radiation amongst the ruins in search of footage. This story is somewhat let down by a conclusion that presents binary options for a character, and tells us only that they chose – not what – but this indeterminacy doesn’t really fit with the character as experienced, so underwhelms. Otherwise, this is a story I greatly enjoyed.

Outer, Hollis Joel Henry. Memorably written, and a nice story with which to return to Clarkesworld. It has been a few years!

The author appears to be based out of Trinidad and Tobago and the speech patterns of characters are reflective of Caribbean English (at least in the opinion of someone who has never even visited the Caribbean), which I liked. The story itself concerns Toozen, a second generation child of “Septembers” – people who were afflicted with birth defects due to some kind of scientific experiment or contamination in the past. Many such second generation children ‘pass’ as normal until they grow out of childhood.

The story concerns the prejudices held about these September children, and how this grows into distrust, fear, hatred and ultimately church- and possibly state-endorsed vigilantism. Toozen is a warm, empathetic, trusting kid who wants to be liked and fit in, but no matter what he does it is never enough for those who see him as other. There are clear parallels that can be drawn from this, although most who could recount similar stories from their lives will lack adult Toozen’s unique and violent capabilities for self-defence and deterrence.

Published by Osuuskumma Publishing in 2017, ‘Never Stop’ collects 15 stories from Finnish SF & fantasy writers, mostly published between 2013 and 2017 (one outlier dates from 2006). The following is not a review, but a continuation of my project to share notes on my daily short story reading. If you would like to read a review there’s a good one on Strange Horizons by Duncan Lawie. 

M.A. Tyrskyluoto, Never Stop. I’m writing these notes almost a year after reading this story, and my memory is famously bad, but I remember this being a coming of age story in a dystopian setting, where the teen protagonist wants to escape the humdrum destiny planned out for him. One day he breaks a rule – an unthinkable act in his conformist society, and one that could ruin him and his family – but that tiny act of independence and rebellion opens him up to a whole new world. The story was engaging, but it more or less stops right after the veil is lifted from the protagonist’s eyes.

Jussi Katajala, Mare Nostrum. A random fact about me: I like cephalopods a lot. I think they’re fascinating creatures. I also won’t pretend I don’t love eating squid (although I made the decision some years back not to eat octopus). So I certainly found the idea of climate change producing hyper-intelligent Humboldt squid who begin a secret conflict with humanity over Earth’s seas a very appealing concept. This story has some fun skullduggery and its antagonists are quite sympathetic, all things considered. The story wraps up nicely, and I would actually love to read more in this setting.

Each Cell a Throne, Gregor Hartmann. A rich old man is prepared to die; a young policewoman has been hired to persuade him not to go through with it. The old man’s chosen form of assisted suicide is to let a possibly shady neuroscientist digitise his consciousness and upload it into the cloud. The young woman’s methods of persuasion include philosophical critiques of dualism, biology and theology, as well as the use of physical contact and reminders of food.

The territory this story roams through is certainly interesting, but I found myself uncomfortable with the protagonist’s motivations: all of her arguments were rational but none connected emotionally. The old man was unpersuaded perhaps because of this. Perhaps that was the point, since the story’s culmination involves emphasis on a very emotional human connection, but if so the irony was lost on the policewoman, who appeared inordinately committed to a crumbling old man perpetuating a life he evidently wished to leave behind. The idea the story is a proxy for critique of assisted suicide did come to mind, but the protagonist does state outright she has no issue with such things. Here she is apparently unhappy that the old man’s chosen form of assisted suicide involves the sin of vanity, and may involve digital littering and being taken for a ride by a huckster. He appears sanguine about such possibilities.