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Reading Locus Redux

1. Remember the review that put me off Lavinia, from the March Locus? Gary K Wolfe’s review in the April issue has won me back over:

What’s even more shrewd is the manner in which Le Guin addresses the fantastical elements of the tale. Gods and goddesses, and Juno in particular, have their paw-prints all over the events of Vergil’s epic, but as Le Guin reminds us in an afterword, she’s writing a novel, and Ritalin-deprive meddlesome gods don’t work too well in a modern novel, so she simply omits them (some might argue with her assertion about gods and novels, but it’s certainly true of the novel she’s written here). What she offers in their place are some surprisingly postmodern fantasy techniques that work to give her narrative a vibrant contemporary sensibility: Lavinia, the narrator, doesn’t hear from the gods, but she does hear from the aging Vergil himself, dying centuries in the future, and more important, she’s aware that she’s largely Vergil’s creation. “No doubt someone with my name, Lavinia, did exist,” she muses, “but she may have been so different from my own idea of myself, or my poet’s idea of me, that it only confuses me to think about her. As far as I know, it was my poet who gave me any reality at all.” That remarkable passage, from the very beginning of the novel, sets the tone for all that comes after, and lends a particular poignance to the part of the narrative that is largely Le Guin’s own invention, the part that takes place after Aeneas vanquishes his rival Turnus, which is where the Aeneid ends.

The reasons this make the book sound appealing to me: I agree entirely with Le Guin’s assertion about gods in modern novels; the description of how the novel works makes it sound like Le Guin’s really thought carefully about what she wants the book to achieve and how; the suggestion that Le Guin carries the story on past where the original ends; and just the fact that the timeslip element sounds neat.

2. This issue has Locus‘s 2007 summary of British Books. They say:

Orion/Gollancz returns in top spot on the chart of Total Books Published with 131 titles. Little, Brown UK/Orbit moved up into second with 110 titles. Hodder & Stoughton moved up a notch into third place with 71, with last year’s second-place publisher HarperCollins UK/Voyager hot on their heels with 70. Below that we saw the usual shifting around. Among the climbers, BL Publishing/Black Library/Solaris moved up from eighth place into fifth, largely due to their new non-gaming SF line, Solaris.

(Bear in mind that these figures include reprints.)

Over at the Orbit blog, Tim Holman offers another perspective:

[I]f one wishes to look at the actual market shares of publishing imprints in the UK (as I assume anybody reading the Locus article might be), these were the Top 3 imprints in the SFF market last year:

Bloomsbury: 26.07%
Orbit: 13.22%
Gollancz: 7.18%

(The very large Bloomsbury figure is almost entirely owing to the huge sales of the adult edition of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. In 2006, by contrast, Bloomsbury’s share was 2.5%.)

To bring things up to date – and to reflect the current market shares without the influence of a new Harry Potter release – the top 3 imprints in 2008 to date are:

Orbit: 23.27%
Gollancz: 10.94%
Corgi: 8.05%

Make of that what you will; as someone whose primary interest in the state of British sf publishing is that there be books I want to read, I have to say that Gollancz still has the go-to list as far as I’m concerned — closely followed by Faber & Faber. Faber publish relatively few sf books, but the’re usually all of interest to me.

Sunday Reading

Nic has started her reviews of this year’s Clarke shortlist with her take on The Execution Channel:

MacLeod is excellent at conjuring this atmosphere of all-pervading suspicion, and is clearly interested in examining how it affects people’s interactions; in light of this, it is odd that there is no Muslim viewpoint character to give us the view from within. The hostile Othering of Muslims — the kneejerk fear directed at neighbours, shopkeepers, fellow commuters — is decried, but MacLeod only replaces it with an ostensibly positive Othering. James (who is heroically more tolerant and clear-sighted than his countrymen, naturally) rescues a Muslim family from their firebombed shop and the angry mob baying for their blood, but this only substitutes the dodgy fifth-columnist image with pitiable victims, rather than real people. In some ways this is a reflection of the treatment of character more generally; none of the major characters really stand out as vital, well-rounded creations. Rather, they operate more as vehicles by which the story-world’s paranoid injustice may be felt by the reader; their lack of individuality and distinctiveness arguably means that we put ourselves in their position, rather than feeling for them as people afflicted.

(I may have quoted the most negative paragraph in the review for effect. You’ll have to read the whole thing to find out.)

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

A palate-cleanser before the final Clarke Award re-read, this, Xiaolu Guo’s follow-up to last year’s Orange-shortlisted A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (except that the Chinese edition of 20 Fragments was her first novel; although this English translation has, apparently, been substantially revised). You could, if you wanted, run through a list of similarities between the two. Both are lively and interesting and worth reading. In both the subject matter — in 20 Fragments, a young woman moving from the Chinese countryside to Beijing and trying to bootstrap her way into a career in the film industry — feels more than a little autobiographical. The narrator is, in both cases, a young, determined, spirited woman, although 20 Fragments‘ Fenfang is nowhere near as emotionally naive or culturally adrift as Dictionary‘s Z. Fenfang’s voice recalls what we see of Z’s writing in her native tongue: direct, spare, oddly innocent. (It reminded me of Yiyun Li, though I have no idea whether the similarity is a coincidence or an artifact of translation from Chinese.) And both books are concerned with, among other things, the tension between community/constraint and individuality/loneliness.

But 20 Fragments examines that tension through a portrait of a place, rather than a love story, taking from the get-go an unsentimental, unromanticised look at Beijing. When Fenfang arrives in the city, the first apartment she moves into is one left vacant after she sees its owners mown down by a bus; her second home is next to a huge rubbish tip where children play in the summer. The sheer scale of Beijing is something Guo captures well, as is the daunting challenge that carving out a space and an identity in the face of such hugeness represents. The book’s structure, a series of vignettes, often deliberately banal, strung together very loosely, helps with this, as though the scale of the city overwhelms any hope of coherence — as one review put it, events are dictated “not by logic or structural unity but by a hotline to emotions”. And Fenfang’s reflections on the few occasions she ventures to other parts of China throw the city into perspective. She misses, for example, the “sharp edges” it brings to her life.

20 Fragments is also, as you would hope, a culturally enlightening book, although often as much for its presentation of the ways modern China is assimilating emblems of America — Tennessee Williams, McDonalds, Scorsese — as for its specifically Chinese observations. In some ways the deployment of Western cultural references recalls Victor Pelevin; but the larger point, perhaps, is made by an (American) friend of Fenfang, who says he likes China because China is better at being American than America. There’s a sense in which 20 Fragments is an exploration of what that might mean; you feel at times that Fenfeng’s hunger, and the hunger of others of her generation, is something driven by China’s economic rise and drives that rise in turn. A trip home is rendered unreal by the changes that modernity has brought — a TV that looks wrong in her parents’ house, pollution and litter in the nearby stream. What’s real for Fenfang is Beijing, majestically cruel and intense. She goes to Beijing University cafe, to get a free drink, and watches the college kids, and we watch with her. “You could really feel,” she reports, “that, in the future, these kids were going to be running the world.”

Three Notices

1. British people! Pushing Daisies starts tonight on ITV1 at 9pm. It is awesome and lovely. You should all watch it. It’s much better than Doctor Who, I promise.

2. There is a suggestion that the sf community is not paying as much attention as it should to Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer win. I am not entirely convinced by this, but just in case anyone hasn’t heard: there’s a book called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by a writer called Junot Diaz, and it won a Pulitzer. It’s about an sf fan, and packed with sf references (including the title, in a convoluted way), and by all accounts wonderful. I haven’t read it yet (it’s only just been published in the UK), but the epigraphs alone are enough to win me over. One is the second verse of a poem by Derek Walcott; the other is:

“Of what import are brief, nameless lives … to Galactus??”
— Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (Vol 1 No 49, April 1966)

3. This isn’t exactly an “as others see us” moment, but it does make me want to read the book:

Science fiction makes you think of spaceships, magical technology, visionary futurism. Yet “science fiction” might also be a good name for a kind of fiction that contains no robots or galactic battles but simply engages with science on a deeper and more authoritative level than your average novelist who borrows a vague understanding of quantum mechanics as a little moondust to sprinkle over the story. Andrew Crumey has a PhD in theoretical physics, and his sixth novel answers in a way to both possible descriptions as “science fiction”, concocting something dreamily strange out of what initially seems to be a resolutely naturalistic comedy of nostalgia.

And with that, I leave for a BSFA committee meeting.

Super Mario Bros: The Epic

This is one of those things that I assume everyone has seen, but is worth posting because (a) it’s ace and (b) I only realised this evening that I’d never seen the conclusion. It’s a flash animation of Super Mario Brothers, redone as an epic, with appropriate soundtrack, battles, the works. There are some longueurs in the middle, and it has to be said that some of the dialogue could have done with proofreading, but all in all it is, as I said, ace. At least, it is if you have any joy in your soul and/or nostalgia for Super Mario Bros. Without further ado:

I am particularly impressed to find that, despite the two-year gap between parts four and five, the ending was clearly planned from the start.

Review of 2007

And in other news, this should have started arriving over the weekend:

Torque Control — editorial
Vector Reviewers’ Poll — the best books of 2007, compiled by Kari Sperring
Threes and 2007s — the films of 2007, by Colin Odell and Mitch LeBlanc
Transmission, Interrupted — the TV of 2007 (and the start of a regular column) by Saxon Bullock
Logic and Loving Books — Laurie J Marks and Kelly Link, in conversation at last year’s Wiscon
First Impressions — book reviews edited by Paul N. Billinger
Foundation Favourites — a column by Andy Sawyer
Resonances — a column by Stephen Baxter
The New X — a column by Graham Sleight

As you’ll see, this is an issue that marks a few changes. For one thing, it’s bigger than usual (48 pages, up from 36); for another, we’ve inherited a few features that aren’t making the jump to Matrix’s spiffy new online home; and finally it’s a transitional issue, as Kari Sperring starts to take over from Paul Billinger as reviews editor, compiling this year’s reviewers’ poll. Many thanks to Paul for all his work over the years, and welcome to Kari!

As ever, comments on all aspects of the issue are welcomed (as are confirmations that it has arrived! As part of my preparation for the “It Was Ten Years Ago Today” panel at Eastercon, I read through the relevant back-issues of Ansible, and was cheered, or something, to see an announcement that some parts of the January mailing had gone missing. Some things stay the same, it seems).

Guess the Source

Science Fiction Mavens Offer Far Out Homeland Security Advice

[…]

Among the group’s approximately 24 members is Larry Niven, the bestselling and award-winning author of such books as “Ringworld” and “Lucifer’s Hammer,” which he co-wrote with SIGMA member Jerry Pournelle.

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.

“Do you know how politically incorrect you are?” Pournelle asked.

“I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work,” Niven replied.

Terrifyingly, it’s not the Onion.

Yet more Clarke reactions

The Guardian:

The shortlist for the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction, announced earlier today, suggests a broad definition of the genre. Along with tales of androids and genetic engineers, the six books nominated this year include prize-winning literary fiction, a novel for young adults, and what has been described as “a postmodern psychological mash-up”.

(…)

Hall, who was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2004 for Electric Michelangelo, was delighted to find herself in contention for the science fiction prize.
“Any collapsing of imposed literary boundaries heartens me,” she said, “and the possibility that writers might be freer to exercise imaginative versatility is tremendously exciting.”

The nomination for The Raw Shark Texts, an exuberant fantasy about a man whose memory is being eaten by a psychic shark, might surprise some readers, but pleased author Stephen Hall.

“The book has been described as a thriller, a romance, metaphysical adventure, part of the new horror revival, slipstream, fantasy, postmodern psychological mash-up, and science fiction too,” he said. I’m happy with all those descriptions because I’ve always felt that it isn’t a writer’s job to tell a reader how to read. If a reader decides my book is science fiction, then it is. That works for me I’m glad it worked for the judges and, who knows, it might even get me one step closer to writing that episode of Doctor Who…”

Martin Lewis:

The 2008 Arthur C Clarke shortlist has been announced. So that gives everyone something to moan about. I’ve not read Brasyl but I can easily believe that McDonald could be justifiable aggrieved to have missed out, particularly after River Of Gods ludicrously lost to Iron Council a couple of years ago. However, it is a strong, interesting list. I am constantly bemused by the suggestion that the judges set out to pick controversial or idealogical books for the award rather than just the best science fiction available.

Jeff VanderMeer:

I’m thrilled to see so many books on this list that I haven’t read, to be honest. Half of the nominees couldn’t be called the “usual suspects” at all, while Richard Morgan richly deserves his nomination for Black Man. MacLeod’s The Execution Channel was too didactic for my tastes, but a worthy attempt to inject politics into fiction. One glaring omission from this list, however, is the lyrical, daring, satirical, and just plain brilliant The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson. (US readers are just now having a chance to experience this novel, as it will be published in North America next month.)

2008 Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist

It may look as if everything is normal, but actually, I’m in Switzerland, where I’ve just had an absurdly early breakfast in anticipation of a long day’s work. But I’ve found time (and some internet) to bring you the shortlist for the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award anyway. (OK, I wrote most of this post at the weekend. But the principle stands.) Am I good to you, or what?

Tom Hunter, Award Administrator, says:

Featuring visions as diverse as a dystopian Cumbria and a future Hackney, time-travel adventures in 1960’s Liverpool and an alternate world British Isles in the throes of terrorist attack, through to tech-noir thrillers and a trawl through subconscious worlds where memories fall prey to metaphysical sharks, the Clarke Award has never been so close to home and relevant to the British literary scene.

The Clarke Award has always been about pushing at the speculative edges of its genre. It’s one possible map amongst many, never the whole territory, and this year’s shortlist stands as both the perfect introduction to the state of modern science fiction writing as well as a first tantalising glimpse of possible futures to come.

And those books? Read on.

Shortlist overviews
Abigail Nussbaum at Strange Horizons
Adam Roberts at Futurismic
Lisa Tuttle in The Times
Steven Shaviro
Tony Keen

A poll

The H-Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter

The Red Men by Matthew de Abaitua

The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod

Black Man by Richard Morgan

So. Run the numbers. Six novels, five publishers. Four stories set in the future. Three first-time nominees — two debut novels, in fact. One young adult book. What else?

(When everyone in the UK’s woken up, there may well be some discussion here, here and here.)

Reactions
John Jarrold
Abigail Nussbaum
Paul Raven
The Guardian
Martin Lewis
Jeff VanderMeer

Reading Locus

1. Cecelia Holland managed to put me off Ursula K Le Guin’s Lavinia with one paragraph of praise:

Most of the time, Le Guin is vivifying a seamless, sacred, blessed time which may never have existed but which we all fervently long to believe in: the morning of the world, when the whole of nature was suffused with spirit, and people lived in reverence to it. The details of sacrifice and rite and oracle are lovingly described not for their own sake but because they reveal the deep sense of oneness with the world that supported and uplifted the ancients.

Speak for yourself: not only do I not believe in any such time, I do not fervently long to believe in it. (And if anything, I’m a bit sceptical of people who do.) If Holland’s review had said something like, “Le Guin manages to make us long for a time which may never have existed …” then I might have still been interested. But if the book doesn’t do that work, then it’s not for me, I’m afraid.

2. It’s a forthcoming books issue! Highlights from the UK section that I didn’t already know about:

PALMER, PHILIP
Ketos, Little Brown UK/Orbit, Aug 2008 (tp)
[I had no idea his next book was coming out so soon.]

JOYCE, GRAHAM
Ascent of Demons, Orion/Gollancz, Oct 2008 (hc, tp)

MIEVILLE, CHINA
Kraken, Macmillan/Tor UK, Nov 2008 (hc)
[I can’t imagine what this is about.]

SWAINSTON, STEPH
Above the Snowline, Orion/Gollancz, Nov 2008 (hc, tp)
[Time to get around to reading The Modern World, then.]

On other books, Ian MacLeod’s Song of Time is now listed (a) as a June book, sigh and (b) as being by Ken MacLeod; and I’m intrigued by this, which I think is a tie-in to this, but doesn’t seem to be being promoted as such.

3. You may want to shield your eyes for this bit, particularly if you thought the cover for the US edition of Halting State wasn’t up to much.

Astonishing, isn’t it?