Wool

Review

📖 Read more: https://sajalchoudhary.net/bookshelf/wool/

#postapocalyptic

Wool

Review

📖 Read more: https://sajalchoudhary.net/bookshelf/wool/

#postapocalyptic

Wool

Review

📖 Read more: https://sajalchoudhary.net/bookshelf/wool/

#postapocalyptic

Short SF Book Reviews: If All Else Fails…., Craig Strete (1980), My Petition for More Space, John Hersey (1974), and All Judgement Fled, James White (serialized 1967)

[Preliminary Note: This year saw a massive drop off in the number of reviews I’ve managed to put together due to professional pressures etc.  I wish I had been able to write fuller reviews–especially as much of the SF I read is lesser known and deserves a wider audience.  In some cases, I waited too long to write and thus loss the necessary momentum.  I have ten or so more waiting in the wings–hopefully they will allow me “to catch up” so to speak.]

1. If All Else Fails…, Craig Strete (1980)

(Margo Herr’s cover for the 1980 edition)

4.75/5 (collated rating: Very Good)

Craig Strete, one of the few Native American SF authors, picked up three Nebula Award nominations for short SF over the 70s and early 80s (“The Bleeding Man” in 1976, “Time Deer” in 1976, and “A Sunday Visit With Great-Grandfather” in 1981 although it was withdrawn).  The first two are in If All Else Fails… (1980).   They are both far from the best of the collection.

Favorites: “All My Statues Have Stone Wings” (1980), “To See the City Sitting on Its Buildings” (1975), and “A Horse of a Different Technicolor” (1975).

The pages reek with despair at the loss of Native American culture ….  The narrator of the “All My Statues” is reminded of his “grandfather who died humming all the songs he had kept silent because there was no one left to sing them” (11).  In “To See the City” the dead try to escape the concrete prisons of the cities that desecrate the holy places: “Buried animal and ground people were trying to reach out through the cracks in sidewalks.  The ground people moved restlessly under the concrete” (36).  The television, an embodiment of the white man’s control of mass culture, declares the Native American is a figment of the past, not of the present: “We make decisions for you.  Take you hand of the silver screen.  You are interfering with the projectionist.  Yes, we listen, we tell you, you are a book, and having been written, you cannot cancel a line of it” (46).

Filled with gorgeous lines, evocative images, pain….

I have a feeling that I am going to reread the collection (something I almost never do) in the near future and write a full-length review… Fans of SF tackling tough themes (such as oppression, the effects of technology, and Native American myth) in a literary and experimental manner—track down this collection!  Original authors such as Craig Strete, with distinct and diverse voices, are too often neglected in the grand narratives of SF’s past.

2. My Petition for More Space, John Hersey (1974)

(Uncredited cover for the 1976 edition)

4/5 (Good)

John Hersey’s My Petition for More Space (1974) is a quiet novel where the horror of the overpopulated future world sends only occasional currents of dread to surface.  My Petition is also a deceptively simple novel with a crystalline structure—the vast majority of the story takes place in dialogue form, with interior thoughts, between characters waiting shoulder-to-shoulder in a line waiting for a hearing for their petitions.  There is something so incredibly polished about the scenario of waiting in a line, and in this case the thoughts and actions of a narrator whose outlandish petition will never be granted.  The line as a manifestation of the travails and joys of life, brief transformative encounters, and the thoughts that might occur over the course of an afternoon… Beautiful.

Recommended for fans of literary + overpopulation themed SF.  Who knew that John Hersey, who won the Pullitzer for his coverage of Hiroshima, wrote two SF novels? (the other is The Child Buyer, 1961).

For Keith Laumer’s equally wonderful take on the endless line see my review of “In the Queue” (1970).

3. All Judgement Fled, James White (1968)

(Lawrence Edwards’ cover for the 1968 edition)

4.25/5 (Good)

James White’s All Judgement Fled (1967) is easily the most inventive 60s/70s “Big Dumb Object” novels I have encountered.  Far more complex than Clarke’s straight-laced so-called masterpiece Rendezvous with Rama (1973) or the fascinating veneer (and nothing more) of Larry Niven’s bland Ringworld (1970).  Notice that White’s novel predates both better known behemoths of this common subgenre.

Years ago I read and enjoyed James White’s The Watch Below (1966) but for whatever reason I did not read more of his novels.  All Judgement Fled (1968) is even better.  Unlike White’s most famous medical-themed SF, this novel psychologically dark and unsettling which often hints at themes that Malzberg would tackle a few years later (such as perpetuating the cult of the astronaut even in the face of incredible danger)…

“It was Walters who had the last word.  Deafeningly, apologetically, with the volume of his transmitter turned right up he said, ‘It was set to rebroadcast your last words as the Ship carried you out of the solar system to some dire, extraterrestrial fate.  This spirited exchange of ideas is being overheard by all the world.

‘I don’t think the general will approve of some of the language…'” (140)

The first third of the novel is claustrophobic and terrifying—the astronauts journey towards the strange Big Dumb Object in two tiny space capsules.  One crewman is wrecked by some psychosomatic illness triggered by his psychological state…. And, all hell breaks loose as all semblance of a potential peaceful first contact breaks down.  Wild theories proliferate, violence abounds, who is experimenting on who?

Recommended for all fans of dark first contact SF.

(Uncredited cover for the 1969 Corgi edition)

(Wayne Douglas Barlowe’s cover for the 1979 edition)

(John Harris’ cover for the 1987 edition)

For more book reviews consult the INDEX

The Batman actor Peter Sarsgaard joins The Last of Us season three, and he'll play a character we haven't seen before

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.eurogamer.net/the-last-of-us-season-three-peter-sarsgaard

Diz o que vais jogar neste fim de semana

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.eurogamer.pt/diz-o-que-vais-jogar-neste-fim-de-semana-123

Book Review: The Pastel City, M. John Harrison (1971)

(Bruce Pennington’s cover for the 1971 edition)

4.25/5 (Very Good)

One of the previous owners of my copy of M. John Harrison’s The Pastel City (1971) must have harbored a pernicious grudge against corroded landscapes and nebulous morals.  So much in fact that they propped up the first volume of the Viriconium sequence against a tree and used it for BB gun target practice. I am still trying to identify the cause of the book’s other wounds… [pictorial evidence below].

As one can expect from Harrison, decadence and decay seeps from the quires of The Pastel City as characters try to create meaning, or grasp hold of half-formed shreds of past purpose, in a world that will continue to crumble regardless of the defeat of evil.  Although not as forceful as The Centauri Device (1974) in its subversion of fantasy/SF quest tropes, M.  John Harrison’s fascination with degeneration of landscape and purpose attempts a dialogue about the nature of genre. That said, I suspect the narrative itself will intrigue most readers of more standard entries, although the characters are not the strapping young desperate to win passionate new love and resurrect the “Golden Age” of the past.  Rather, they are aged and weathered and more inclined to speculate on the nature of ideograms whose indices are long lost and brood on past cataclysm whose current effects cannot be escaped.

The Pastel City is followed by A Storm of Wings (1980) and In Viriconium (1982) along with various short stories including “The Lamia and Lord Cromis” (1971) and “Lamia Mutable” (1972)

Analysis/Plot Summary

The narrative impetus: A civil war breaks out in Viriconium between the young queen and the old queen. The young Queen Jane, the direct descendant of King Methven, holds the allegiance of (most) of a surviving tattered band of washed-up knights, called the Methven, which dispersed after the death of their king.  Canna Moidat, at the head of the Northman, whose “sprawling townships where intricate and beautiful machines of unknown function were processed crudely into swords and tribal chieftains fought drunkenly over possession of the deadly baans unearthed from the desert” (8), conjures terrifying forces to fight the battle against the Queen Jane and the armies of the Pastel City.

The characters: tegeus-Cromis, “of the nameless sword, who thought himself a better poet than fighter” leaves his tower, still filled with despair after the death of his wife, to fight for Queen Jane (34).  His poetic lines embody the state of the remaining Methven: “we are nothing but eroded men…” (65).  He is joined by Birkin Grif who dreams of “immense ancient forces moving in darkness” (42) and the decrepit Theomeris Glyn, who spends his time harassing women. Tomb the Dwarf joins their ranks of brigands, in power armor fashioned from some ancient metal skeleton, he provokes and capers “sniggering like a parrot” (69) as if in some ritualistic dance to ward off the melancholic film that covers all…

The landscape as character: The inhabitants of Viriconium, a decaying empire even before the civil war, “live […] on the corpse of an ancient science, dependent on the enduring relics of a dead race” (14). It is a landscape where scattered objects are covered with cyphers and sphenograms that have lost their meaning; ancient machines whose gears and mechanisms no longer function crumble into acrid dust; strange men ensconced in towers forget their own origins; and where sloth-like megatheria wander sinking cities.

The non-sentient megatheria mirror the movements of the characters:

“Between the collapsed towers moved the megatheria, denizens of the dead metropolis. They lived in sunken rooms, moved ponderously through the choked streets by night and day, as if for millennia they had been trying to discover the purpose of their inheritance” (131)

As Viriconium relies on excavating the machines of the Afternoon Cultures for its survival, the nourishing ruins will run out and turn to dust.  And, as the previous powers mined all the ore from the Earth, the end is neigh and unavoidable.

Final thoughts

Harrison’s first novel, The Committed Men (1971) remains my favorite due to its careful use of surreal scenes and social commentary.  And The Pastel City takes over second place from The Centauri Device (1974)…    The Pastel City’s motivating conflict appears as if a momentary event near the the end of the world.  The quest, but a preordained pattern enacting some lost meaning, cannot escape its deterministic constraints.  A haunting evocation of decadence and decline, M. John Harrison’s prose, filled with hypnotic intensity, is a joy to read.

“Burn them up and sow them deep:

Oh, Drive them down;

Heavy weather in the Fleet:

Oh, Drive them down;

Gather them up and drive them down:

Oh, Drive them down;

Withering wind and plodding,

Oh, Drive them down!” (50).

Recommended for all fans of 70s SF/fantasy.

For more book reviews consult the INDEX

(BB gun holes and other assorted wounds inflicted on my copy of the1974 Avon edition)

(Wendell Minor’s cover for the 1972 edition)

(Gray Morrrow’s cover for the 1974 edition)

(Karel Thole’s cover for the 1979 Italian edition)

The solar system has a problem; prison overpopulation. Solution, send the worst of society to earth. A ravaged wasteland abandoned by humanity. No one wants to go there.

https://amzn.eu/d/bIubrx5

#PostApocalypticAdventure #scifi #postapocalyptic