Pincent, Magic Mirror (2010)

Ed Pincent, Magic Mirror. Eibonvale Press, 2010. Pp. 354. ISBN 9780956214799. £12.99.

Reviewed by Jaym Gates

Magic Mirror is a giant compendium of 44 of Ed Pincent’s graphic works from over the years (1982-present), personally selected by the artist and including out-of-print material. The pieces range from one page in length, to the 90+ page story ‘Saga of the Scroll’. The illustrations are entirely black and white. Pincent has been heavily involved in the small-press British comics scene, at one point buying the magazine and distributor Fast Fiction. His work has also been published in Australian magazines such as Escape Magazine, Knockabout Comix and Fox Comics.

Baddeley, Vampire Lovers (2010)

Gavin Baddeley, Vampire Lovers: Screen's Seductive Creatures of the Night. Plexus Publishing Ltd, 2010. Pp. 192. ISBN 9780859654500. £14.99/$19.95.

Reviewed by Kate Onyett

Gavin Baddeley is a new writer to me. There appear to be no formal academic credentials attached to his previous oeuvre, but there is a list of cheerfully robust gothic titles to his name: novels, examinations of lurid episodes in history (‘Devils Histories’ series), ‘guides to’ themes of gothic subculture and a profile of Marilyn Manson. Baddeley is vaunted as an ordained Priest in the Church of Satan and journalist, with Kerrang! Magazine dubbing him 'King Goth' and The Journal of Popular Culture naming him as 'the patron saint of Gothic journalism' (quotes from author’s blurb on Amazon). His books are widely promoted through multiple sites that link back to commercial giant Amazon, establishing pop-culture appeal. I approached Vampire Lovers as a newcomer to his work; expectations based more on the saturation of vampire-themed books on the market, and wondering how Baddeley could make his stand out.

Slavnikova, 2017 (2010)

Olga Slavnikova, 2017. Duckworth Overlook, 2010. Pp. 414. ISBN 9780715639108. £16.99.

Reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy

Acclaimed Russian writer and critic Olga Slavnikova’s 2017: A Novel won her a second Russian Booker Prize three years ago. London-based Duckworth Publishers has recently released an English-language translation by Marian Schwartz, which given Duckworth’s list, can be taken as either a rare foray into speculative fiction (like their publication of Brian Aldiss’s HARM back in 2007), or a reminder of the often blurry line between “literary fiction” and “science fiction.” (As might be expected given Slavnikova’s standing, and as I quickly confirmed, the latter strikes me as more useful.)

2017 centers on a gem-cutter named Krylov living in a large city in Russia’s Riphean region at the titular near-future date. (The city is unnamed, and the fictional Riphean mountains are only vaguely located for the reader, though it has been common to take them as drawing on Slavnikova’s native Urals.) In the book’s opening pages Krylov is at the train station, seeing his old colleague Professor Anfilogov off on a prospecting expedition in the Riphean mountains. Before he departs the scene he encounters a mysterious woman named Tanya, with whom he begins an unconventional liaison. Meanwhile, a bizarre replay of the events of a century before—the October Revolution of 1917—seems to be getting underway inside the country.

There is a touch of the thriller here in Krylov’s involvement in the illicit gem trade, and the intrigues in which his affair with Tanya embroils him, the stirrings of political revolution, and later on, the business scandal Krylov finds exploding around him. However, the thriller elements are essentially a framework for Slavnikova’s satirical portrait of an ultra-commodified, decaying world where humanity has become superfluous.

To be frank, I found many of Slavnikova’s themes and techniques rather familiar. The novel’s preoccupation with authenticity and its absence in a late capitalist context; the exhaustion of history and politics; the touches of conspiracism and anachronism; the epistemological pessimism and the declarations of humanism as dead; the science fictional and fantastic touches blurring the boundaries of what is conventionally thought of as reality (and the organic and inorganic); the quality of rendering the familiar strange, and the deliberately oblique, diffuse, even hazy storytelling which deprives almost everything of solidity—this has been standard, even textbook postmodern fare for decades.

Nonetheless, the central subject, Russia one hundred years after the Bolsheviks, is a substantial one, and the book is compellingly ambitious in taking it on. Some parts of the story are quite memorable, like the depiction of the funeral home business run by Krylov’s ex-wife Tamara, which offers its customers a lottery drawing with prizes like Caribbean vacations. (The “Masker’s” revolution, in which Red Cavalry did battle with White Guards, is nothing short of brilliant.) There is an impressive touch of atmosphere in various places in the story, and the whole effectively conveys a sense of a shabby, decrepit, unreal world.

Yet, the novel only occasionally reached that level, and the fragments never quite added up to the postmodern epic the book seemed to be aiming for. The Riphean mountains intended to offer a counterpoint to Krylov’s city never came alive for me, and for that matter, neither did Krylov. Additionally, the narrative rarely gave me a sharp sense of the extremes of which Slavnikova’s characters speak, and which are essential to the story—those extremes of greed and commodification run amuck, of wealth and poverty, of the vulgarization, marginalization and even destruction of what should be respected as essential to life, even the best bits losing some of the punch they should have had. The vast journalism on the state of post-Soviet Russia I have seen these last two decades (fact more striking than fiction in this case), and a great deal of far less celebrated fiction (from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to Frederik Pohl’s The Space Merchants to the cyberpunk science fiction writers of the 1980s and their heirs) have much more vividly conveyed such visions.

Consequently, Slavnikova’s 2017 did engage me as a reader, but less often and more briefly than I hoped, especially given what the book accomplishes when it is at its best. When it was over, I felt that the book fell short of both its promise, and the unqualified praise that it has attracted from many reviewers, though its strengths still made it worthwhile.

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Connell, Metrophilias (2010)

Brendan Connell, Metrophilias. Better Non Sequitur Press, 2010. Pp. 102. ISBN 0974323578. $12.00.

Reviewed by Nathan Lea

Metrophilias is a collection of short stories that explore the nuances of obsession and desire whilst focussing on a series of individuals in thirty-six different cities across the world. The obsessions range from the unusual to the bizarre to the grotesque: whilst they include descriptions of sexual pleasure derived from intercourse with amputees, deep meditation leading to orgasms after physical contact with blades of grass and insect feet, through to the total consumption of one character by his fervour for absynthe, the author writes without judgement in a detailed, honest and revealing style. These are difficult themes, and whilst grotesque in many ways, the reader is compelled to read on and honestly explore this raw yet fundamental aspect of the human condition (though in one case, the focus is on a woodland creature’s desire).

There are several striking features of this book, even aside from the vulgarity and bizarre nature of the desires. The lavish, beautiful and ekphrastic descriptions of the settings in which these tales are told, the wealth of immersive storytelling that truly captivates the reader and eases them into caring about the characters in such short stories, the honesty about the wish to keep reading and open mindedness that it demands of the reader, and the detail that the stories go into in terms of mapping desire and raw physical need to a credible piece in an incredible and often outrageous premise are especially noteworthy. There is also the use of sensuality and contradiction: food as a metaphor; much told with little; cities and people described in wonderful detail, all of which make these works breathe. Throughout the stories there is a dry humour interwoven with an earnestness and seriousness that demands respect. With so much richness, the reader needs time to absorb and appreciate these features.

I would be remiss if I did not complement Connell on his technical skill. Each character has its own voice, each story its own spark. These tales are rarely formulaic, and each has its own tale to tell. This work has an air of Catullus, Sappho, and Ovid, all of whom have explored the nature of desire, love, need and obsession using earnestness and humour. This is not to say that Connell is unoriginal or inadvertently seeking “money for old rope”—indeed, the exploration of desire is all the more vivid and revealing because he truly pushes all boundaries by using the bizarre and unthinkable, sometimes detestable, to flesh out the details. One small criticism is that on occasion, the style becomes so intensely and literally expressed that it is almost too much to swallow. However these issues can be overlooked given the overall quality and use of a philosophical style in some of the stories.

The notes of the book do say that some of these works had appeared elsewhere with a corresponding list of publications over the last decade, and as a collection of stories that explore desire and obsession, I found that reviewing this work raised questions about the significance of gender in this exploration of desire: I am left wondering how a female reader might take to this book. It is worth noting that the majority of the protagonists are male and the folly of men when succumbing to their desires is clearer than their female counterparts, who have a far more measured response (which one might argue is art imitating life!). It would not be fair to go as far as to definitively conclude that this work suffers from a gender or other cultural bias or assumes a male audience—in fact it seems to attempt an even-handed style where gender is concerned and it would be inappropriate for me to speculate on how a female audience might respond. That said, this work does focus on desire and obsession, and need not necessarily be expected to address gender explicitly.

I can certainly recommend Connell’s Metrophilias. Try to read one story at a time, maybe before bed. Each of the stories should be given appropriate time to digest so that you can appreciate their nuances.

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Wilson, They Had Goat Heads (2010)

D. Harlan Wilson, They Had Goat Heads. Atlatl Press, 2010. Pp. 148. ISBN 9780982628126. $12.00.

Reviewed by Terry Grimwood

One of my favourite albums is Rain Dogs by the unique Tom Waits. From the first track you are transported into a dark, surreal, noir-ish universe of accordion-playing slaughterhouse workers, ships captained by one-eyed dwarves, a woman with a set of tear tattoos (one for every year he's away, she says) and the most menacing version of ‘The Rose of Tralee’ you are ever likely to hear. Why am I muttering about Tom Waits when I should be reviewing D. Harlan Wilson’s collection, They Had Goat Heads? Well, it’s because this book took me instantly into that dark, threatening, often incomprehensible, Waitsian world. In fact, I had the album’s songs spiralling through my head all the time I was reading the book.

They Had Goat Heads is best swallowed whole. A set of individual stories, vignettes, flash fictions and single-sentence narratives, it is by turns menacing, hilarious, eccentric, surreal and downright incomprehensible. Taken as a standard collection the book is difficult and a little too splintered to be fully appreciated, but as a complete work it is almost an epic poem of the absurd.

Kafka-esque enigmas litter the book, flavoured darkly with hints of menace. For example in ‘PO Box 455’, the narrator visits a post office and finds himself confronted by layers of ludicrous bureaucracy which include a visit to the Key Insertion Room, where keys are, well, inserted. Every so often a trapdoor slides open in the ceiling, then slides shut again, a touch of delicious menace that unnerves as well as puzzles. In fact this entire story could be read as a satire on the plethora of mostly unnecessary processes and procedures that control the modern world and end up achieving nothing other than the fulfilment of their own self-contained existence.

Two excellent stories provide interludes of Pythonesque humour. The first is ‘The Arrest’ in which a number of unnamed characters attempt to arrest each other with increasingly farcical violence. The story is told with great comedic energy and reminded me in many ways of the opening passages of Joseph Heller’s Something Happened (read it as well as this book and you’ll see what I mean). The second stand-out comedy was ‘The Storyteller’ in which the narrator is pursued and beaten down by a colleague who insists on telling him a story.

‘The Kerosene Lantern Tour’ is a further mix of humour and utter futility. A guided tour of a lantern is now in its 86th day and begins to fall apart as the tourist themselves engage in the most bizarre activities and the guides run out of things to say. ‘Strongmen and Motorcycles (and Monkeys Too)’ has one of he best first lines I have ever read, and it maybe it is true. ‘Balloon’ asks an interesting question about the nature of murder.

Lurking in the midst of all this insanity and mayhem is a graphic story called ‘The Sister’, illustrated with unnerving skill by Skye Thorstenson. This tale is an unsettling slice of very black humour and horror in which atrocity is piled on atrocity with a matter-of-factness that makes the darkness even more disturbing.

While we’re on the subject of illustration, the book’s cover art (the work of Brandon Duncan) is delightfully surreal and its orange brown and yellow colour-scheme gives it a distinctly pulp-feel—an irony in itself because pulp fiction this book is not.

The narrative style is simplistic yet complex, detailed descriptions of the strange, conversations, rituals and actions of the protagonists, reminiscent of a cross-eyed, cross-tempered Ben Turpin berating Laurel and Hardy with an angry “You gave to him and he gave to you and you gave to him, you’re all nuts!” Many of the stories have no obvious plot or direction, yet, as stated earlier, reading the book as a whole, complex work rather than a dip-in collection gives a sense of the absurdity of the world in which we live, the pointlessness of bureaucracy and, sadly, our own obsessions and actions, and the random nature of life itself.

Often infuriating and puzzling, but glorious anarchic, satisfyingly different and immensely rewarding, They Had Goat Heads is not an easy read, but then shouldn’t difficult be an essential part of our reading experience?

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Daniells, The King's Bastard (2010)

Rowena Cory Daniells, King Rolen's Kin: The King's Bastard. Solaris Books, 2010. Pp. 640. ISBN 9781907519017. $7.99.

Reviewed by Sam Kelly

The King's Bastard is most definitely a book that wears its subgenres proudly. The title, cover, map, and blurb all let us know we're in for kings-and-princes stories in a recently founded fantasy kingdom, with inventively spelt mythological monsters (foenix, unistag—which, sadly, has a traditional unicorn horn rather than a single stag's horn like a tree—and leogryf, for instance), fractious barons, and a neighbouring country with which it may or may not go to war. On the other hand, it is an interesting subversion of the traditional high-fantasy tropes; neither kingdom qualifies unambiguously as good guys or bad guys, which is a pleasant relief. The cover radiates “dark fantasy”, with a brooding, wild-haired gentleman carrying either four dangerous-looking weapons or a set of extremely gothic bagpipes. (The dim mood lighting makes it rather difficult to tell which.)

The presence of all those monsters is quite neatly explained within the text, and tied in neatly to the kingdom's social structure, but Cory Daniells has (thankfully) resisted the temptation to explain away everything here. There are two more books to come, but we knew that from the front cover, so it's no surprise that this one ends with the beginning of a new plotline; the old reaches some resolution, though, and the next two books are due out in the next two months in any case.

There is one element that is both new and praiseworthy here, and that is the treatment of bisexuality. Male-male love is both socially and politically taboo in the kingdom, so a young man's impulsive confession (and the characters here are realistic young people, with all the plot-driving impulsiveness and passion that implies, without the annoying childishness it can often default to) lands our protagonists in rather a lot of plot, and affects their relationships with each other in subtly sketched ways rather than taking the obvious paths of condemnation or immediate acceptance.

If there is one thing I dislike about The King's Bastard, it is the unsubtlety of our major villain; I have seen this same conspiracy before, and if I'm marking time waiting for the protagonists to catch up with me as a reader then I expect a payoff at the end, with a new and unexpected twist on the plan when it's done. I did not get that here, which was disappointing. The quality of the prose is unremarkable; there is rather more internal monologuing and infodumping than I like, but it is still engaging, and the only reason that it didn't keep me up all night was that I had finished it by bedtime.

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Di Filippo, Roadside Bodhisattva (2010)

Paul Di Filippo, Roadside Bodhisattva. PS Publishing, 2010. Pp. 174. ISBN 978-1906301941. £20.00 / $32.00.

Reviewed by Christopher Michaels

Roadside Bodhisattva is a good example of the way a teen central character and narrator does not necessarily mean its readership will be limited to young adults. There is none of the literary revolution suggested by the author’s dedication to Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski or the central character’s continual references to Jack Kerouac. The only similarity is in that this is a first person story about being on the road (well mostly beside it). It is told by a sixteen year old about life at a roadside diner and motel. It is one of those “spiritual apprenticeship” stories, but without the magic of Harry Potter, Twilight, The Teachings of Don Juan or The Peaceful Warrior, though possibly with more quiet wisdom. The author is suggesting that Buddha is found in everyday life through ordinary relationships between ordinary people—as contrasted with the young central character’s desire for something extraordinary.

Kid A is a sixteen year old runaway anonymously seeking a life of adventure on the road guided by, even better living through, Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. He meets Sid, a man whose long experience on the road, knowledge and generous attitudes reflect a practical understanding of the real Buddhism the boy is looking for. He contrasts with his parents’ Buddhism which sees them with “their heads so far into some kind of jackass mysticism that they tended to let a lot of ‘unimportant’ things like grocery shopping and mortgage payments and laundry slide.” Kerouac had proved for him there were other types of Buddhists.

Sid on the other hand lives by simple rules like, “I start out friendly, and see how the other guy responds. After that, based on what he does, I follow tit for tat.” His attitude to the boy’s guides is clear cut but mixed: “Your Kerouac is a shot of super-antibiotic to cure you of mental clap. But the other one is like a stolen blank prescription pad. You can write yourself all the prescriptions you want from it, but there’s no authority behind ‘em, and you’ll never get ‘em filled.” Kid A quotes directly from Gibran from memory whilst he associates himself and Sid with the main characters and events in Dharma Bums.

The two stop at a roadside diner and motel for breakfast when Sid talks the owner Ann into giving them both jobs. We meet a group of ordinary people in ordinary pain. Sue, a girl about seventeen, about a year older then Kid A, who’s been in trouble and sent to live with her aunt by parents who don’t know how to handle her; Sonny the stuttering cook; Angelo the grumpy mechanic; and Yasmine the sexy but bitchy waitress. Through the story we find out each of their stories as Sid intervenes to change their lives for the better, apparently out of generosity. Meanwhile our main character stumbles along, accidentally helping out each person while he tries to get it on with Sue. Kid A finally becomes impatient to get on the road and continue his search for the adventures that will let him live his Kerouac fantasy life, leading to a somewhat surprising climax.

Roadside Bodhisattva has a simple direct narrative style of storytelling; it is an easy read, probably comfortable for a sixteen year-old readership, as suggested by the narrative voice. But we don’t really see even the darkness that plagues Harry Potter, which has driven the Kid to run away and to base his life on a literary fantasy. It doesn’t even stretch the reader’s vocabulary as much as the Potter books. It is a pseudo-Buddhist fable set in small-town America. It is a little slow in places and the plot is convenient in others, but as you’d expect from a fable it points to depth whilst focussing on daily life, apparent simplicity and surface appearances.

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Hughes, Mister Gum (2009)

Rhys Hughes, Mister Gum. DogHorn, 2009. Pp. 108. ISBN 0955063191. £7.99.

Reviewed by N.A. Jackson

Mister Gum is silly. The more you read, the sillier it gets. Eventually it becomes so absurd that it threatens to become psychologically disturbing.

The book defies the usual critical methodology: do the characters and plot stand up to scrutiny? What are the themes and conceits of the work? How good is the writing? A serious approach doesn't work. It has no conceptual depths; it's basically an exploration of man's all-consuming obsession: his ejaculate. The characters are vehicles for humorous situations. The themes: tits, bums, cocks and come. The writing: awful puns, desperate metaphors, excruciating alliteration and puerile wordplay. One of the great achievements of the book is the sheer number and variety of synonyms Hughes manages to find for “sperm” or any other word associated with the act of regeneration. It made me laugh—often, and groan and retch (there's a particularly horrific scene involving a sombrero and a bank manager's anus).

Beckett, The Holy Machine (2010)

Chris Beckett, The Holy Machine. Corvus, 2010. Pp. 288. ISBN 9781848876569. £10.99.

Reviewed by Christopher Michaels

This book has many of the elements of classic science fiction. At first impression, it is full of clichés, but its takes these ingredients in interesting directions that make reading on worthwhile. Like the best classic sci-fi, The Holy Machine has captivating writing that draws in the reader’s imagination. It explores a future that is an extension of current social movements. It has conflict between robots and workers, and looks at the social consequences of technology. It has questions about sentience and personhood for robots that go back to Asimov in the 1940s and ‘50s. Of course there are robots designed for pleasure, one of the morally problematic economic functions that many hope they could help solve. You have philosophical and political ideas being explored to their logical extreme, and as with the best of classic sci-fi you have all of these being explored through an emotional personal story as you journey with a few people struggling to cope with this world.

The world we are visiting has been engulfed by “The Reaction,” a movement across religions which has meant they each now rule their home territories. In this irrational darkness the one beacon of light is the Mediterranean island-state of Illyria off the coast of the Balkans. This city-state has the sense of Western philosophy’s mythic place for ancient Athens surrounded by barbarism. Illyria is populated by rationalist refugees from the rise of radical fundamentalist religion. Atheist scientism (my coinage) is the state religion.

The older generations have horrifying memories of persecution by the religions of their mother cultures as they took power. So if you are southern European you were persecuted by the Catholics and the Orthodox. If from the USA, as our hero’s mother is, then it was by the protestants. If you were Indian or Japanese then it was the Hindu and the Shinto radicals that gained political power and persecuted intellectuals and scientists.

Illyria is a hi-tech world with virtual reality for escape and robots being developed and produced to free the inhabitants of dependence on uneducated religious, and therefore dangerous, guest workers from neighbouring countries. They outmatch any society in the world for war machines. The post-traumatic stress of the older refugees has meant they are fundamentalist militant atheists and rationalists, introducing laws intolerant of anything that cannot be scientifically proven. The younger generations though are realising the shortcomings of pure scientific materialism and can see the similarity between the intolerance of their politicians and those of the theocracies surrounding them.

Enter George Simling, hero or maybe better anti-hero, the primary first person narrator of this story. We do have snap moments offered of the first person experience of some other characters, in particular his robot lover, and his mother. He is a nerd in a society of nerds, deeply isolated and dissociated from the culture of “the City”, as it is called. He gets involved with some of the milder rebels and moves towards the more radical militants of the younger generation. But his passionate love for one of the newest versions of pleasure robot deflects him from participating in violent political action.

We get to see some aspects of the internal life of the “Syntec” pleasure robot, Lucy, as she comes to sentience, to a sense of a self/identity beyond her programming. This was some of the best writing. George gradually notices her growing sentience; he decides to take liberate her when the self-evolving programming of other robots leads to unpredictable behaviour. Some just walk off, but when a police robot becomes a mass killer a law is passed that all robots will be rebooted and set back to their default programming every six months thus wiping their memory and their evolutionary progress towards sentience.

The latter part of the story then turns into the after-story of one of the endings of Blade Runner, when Harrison Ford runs off with the beautiful robot, but without the four year life span. In the medieval religious world of the City’s neighbours the robots are demons they proudly destroy as proof of their religious fervour.

Again like good classic sci-fi this story is a metaphor exploring deep philosophical questions relevant to modern life. In this case the central problem is how do you find spiritual depth as an atheist. As George journeys through the Outlands, first with his disguised robot then by himself, he explores the different religions he meets, trying to find satisfaction for his scientifically trained, inquiring mind.

The Holy Machine edges almost too close to cliché in places but it is saved by the writing, and by the emotional intensity of the protagonist’s journey through the world of medieval religion versus so-called atheist enlightenment. Occasional readers of sci-fi will definitely enjoy it; more accomplished readers of science fiction will either not get past the beginning with a sighed, “here we go again” or will enjoy the twists it takes in setting a lot of standard science-fictional ingredients in a relatively unique world to explore important and interesting philosophical and human questions at the core of atheism and religion.

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Tracy, Half-Sick of Shadows (2010)

Erika Tracy, Half-Sick of Shadows. Shadowfire Press, 2010. Pp. 62. e-Book $3.75.

Reviewed by Sam Kelly

This novella is a tricky thing, and every time it looks as though it’s settled on a set of tropes then it turns a corner and becomes something else. The evacuee child arriving in a strange new place that isn’t the magical fairyland she expected, but instead a grim mining village... the child going to live with her mysterious magic relatives in their rambling gothic house... the talented teenager finding her place among other witches and among normal people... real fears and imagined ones, and learning to tell the difference...

There are a couple of strands running right through the tale, though; one of them is the idea of difference and prejudice. Witches and warlocks are feared and tolerated, the victims of bullying and casual prejudice; it’s easy to draw an analogy to Jews, given the World War II setting. The other is the relationships between men and women, made sharp and tense by tradition, poverty, and fear.

Magic is presented as a very feminine thing throughout the book. There are warlocks, we’re told, but we never see or hear from an adult warlock, and all the uses of magic we see are for very traditional womanly things—there’s even a spell for washing up, and another to cover the signs of domestic abuse. It’s explicitly contrasted to coal-mining, which is a masculine occupation; it’s the only thing the two men in this horribly dysfunctional family can bond over. As in all mining villages, the pit is the centre of life in Glynarien, and the rescue efforts when a shaft collapses are the only communal purpose we see. Of course, there’s a lot that our protagonist, doubly an outsider, doesn’t see; it’s as though once she’s made the decision to marry, her life outside the home is gone, and all we see is the isolation and depression of a foreign pit wife as her relationship with family withers and twists.

The PDF design is acceptable enough, with a readable font at a sensible point size, and the cover shows a predictable landscape-and-faces montage. It’s very clearly a modern British village street, not a 1940s one, but I can forgive a lot for a relationship novel with a man and a woman on the cover, both looking directly at the reader.

The world-building is good but sparse, with sketched details showing us the shape of a society; the Welsh names ring true-enough, if not perfect, and the social exclusions are all the more real for what we aren’t shown. This isn’t the Celtic-twilight, English-children-on-holiday Arthurian Wales of so many books; it’s the real working-class, churchgoing land.

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Vandermeer, Finch (2010)

Jeff VanderMeer, Finch. Corvus, 2009. Pp. 320. ISBN 9781848874770. £12.99.

Reviewed by The Exploding Boy

I am not a detective, Jeff Vandermeer’s eponymous hero tells us at the beginning of Finch. I am not a detective.

It’s an interesting confession, considering the novel’s rich noir influence and the character of Finch evidently based on that of Philip Marlowe. All the same, it soon becomes clear that the writer has mischievously wrong-footed the reader, and that the denial perfectly fits all the paradox and paranoia about to come. This is not downtown LA of the 1940’s but the City of Ambergris in some unspecified future, the same Fantasy milieu that informed Vandermeer’s previous outings City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword.

Finch, however, easily works as a stand-alone novel. Readers of those earlier books will revisit the same industrial, rust and emerald city, where mercantile houses Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe destroyed each other in their war for power. Readers of those earlier novels will find that much has changed. The gray caps, a race of subterranean humanoid fungi, have Risen and overwhelmed the city. Giant, spore-laden mushrooms have sprouted from the streets, looming to rival the tendril-choked spires. The walls and pavement are spongy and flesh-like, and Partials, those humans half-transformed into fungi themselves, keep an ever-watchful eye over the drug-suppressed and terrified population. There are internment camps reminiscent of the Third Reich. There are unexplained disappearances. There is ever present threat.

Against this vivid and sinister background, Jeff Vandermeer unfolds his mystery with the panache we have come to expect from him. There has been a murder at 239 Manzikert Avenue, Apartment 525. One corpse cut in half (à la The Black Dahlia). One corpse human. With no leads and a truly unsettling gray cap overseer breathing down his neck, lawman Finch finds himself plunged into a search for the truth where the truth quickly becomes stranger than fiction, or perhaps, considering the already fantastic environment, even stranger than that. The victims remain unidentified. One resembles a man thought 100 years dead. Surrounding these puzzles are the wider puzzles of the city itself. What is the purpose of the twin towers rising over the bay? What connection do the murders have to an attempted genocide 600 years ago? Who is the Lady in Blue, the enigmatic leader of the rebel underground? Vandermeer draws us into a tangled web of intrigue and suspense, and the ride is never less than thrilling.

As a concept, Finch is breathtaking. The book’s flavour is a collision of weird and urban influences. Most notably, the Chandleresque noir, always at the forefront with the crisp style, the inner gritty musings and deftly controlled set pieces. Draped over this are allusions to Lovecraft and Burroughs, peppered with a modernistic dash of Philip K.Dick, Richard Matheson and James Ellroy. It’s a heady brew and one gets the feeling that in less capable hands, this tale may never have become more than just interesting homage. But Vandermeer pulls off a rare trick. Not only does Finch deliver one of the best noir thrillers of modern times, it also manages to transcend influence and becomes something remarkably other. Vandermeer has not just genuflected to Great American Writers, with Finch he has squared up against them and potentially joined their ranks. The characters are real—they live, love, despair and mutate—and cannot fail to move or repulse you. The plot is tight and convincing. The pages fly by. The atmosphere is genuinely disturbing. Finch provided many a shudder to this reader, more than I can recall from other works in recent years. Parts are deliciously gross. Through it all is a compellingly human and melancholy streak, which lifts this novel into literary realms.

It is doubtful you’ll have read a book like this before. There have been comparisons to China Miéville’s The City and the City, an equally stunning novel, but here gritty emotion in relation to the alien replaces the politics of Mieville’s work. Newcomers to the New Weird may find themselves on uncertain ground. Those unfamiliar with steampunk noir might feel a need to adjust their sets. I did wonder how a reader unaccustomed to Vandermeer’s milieu might engage with the novel, at least initially. The back-story is a little on the sparse side and Vandermeer does not coddle his readers, a style that undeniably suits the book, but one that may not prove so alluring to the novice. That would be a crying shame because Finch deserves a much wider audience than slipstream genres can generally provide. Nevertheless, the warp and weft (and there is a lot of warp here) of Vandermeer’s world will soon grow on anyone—much like fungi—and fans of weird fic and those hungry for something different will more than quench their thirst here.

In the final analysis, Finch isn’t about genre. Vandermeer’s genius lies in showing us the power and potential of speculative fiction, mapping a road into the twenty first century. With Finch, the author reinforces his reputation as a pioneer and if it has to be about genre, then this novel more than proves that the New Weird—or whatever you want to call it—is very much alive and kicking, perhaps even in its infancy.

On the strength of Finch, one certainly hopes so.

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Greatest Uncommon Denominator #5 (2010)

Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD), issue 5 (2010). Pp. 200. $3.50 PDF / $12 print.

Reviewed by Terry Grimwood

Stephen Hawking is reported as saying that if we find intelligent life out there somewhere, we should not attempt to make contact, presumably because to do so would be very dangerous indeed. Well, T F Davenport’s story ‘Nature’s Children’ makes abundantly clear some of the potential perils and disasters inherent in inter-species contact, not least the complete misunderstanding and incomprehension on all sides when faced with alien culture, civilisation and behaviour. The story is, quite frankly, a masterpiece, complex, beautifully observed and set against a vivid, lush backdrop of a planet seething with life, both animal and vegetable. It also sets the standard for this impressive, but sadly (at least to me) unknown journal, GUD.