Reading Present
Unforeseen positive side effect of becoming a parent: I've become a reader of books again. In fact I've probably read more novels in the past three weeks than I did in quite a few of the years of my late-twenties-early-thirties (a somewhat shameful statistic). Here's some reviews, in easy-to-swallow capsule form.
Mistress Masham's Repose, by TH White. Billed as something of a "lost classic" because everyone still remembers The Sword in the Stone, but not so much this; I suspect this is because (a) it never got the Disney treatment, and (b) the title is spectacularly undescriptive of the content. This is in fact a neat little sequel to Gulliver's Travels, with Lilliputians living in hiding in the grounds of a run-down British stately home. Their discoverer, the 10-year-old Maria, must also survive the machinations of two vile, Dahl-esque adults, her governess and the marvellously named reverend, Mr Hater. The writing style is frequently superb, especially in some of the comic portraits; it does veer off into a few odd philosophical essays about people of one size lording it over people of another, which I suppose to be authentically Swiftian, but might be too hard for modern 10 year olds. Much like Gulliver's Travels itself, probably. 7/10
The Mind Parasites, by Colin Wilson. An allegedly Lovecraftian work, in practice a few early references to the canon, as the archaeologist narrator discovers evidence of an impossibly ancient city buried far below the surface, are red herrings, and Wilson gets on with expounding his own personal ideas. Which are quite interesting: that there is much unexplored space inside the human mind as there is out of it, and that humanity's massive potential has been systematically blocked by alien "mind parasites" for the past few centuries, explaining why in recent centuries human genius seems to have gone hand-in-hand with a propensity for depression, self-destructive behaviour and suicide. Unfortunately the author very quickly drops the pretence of writing an interesting novel around these ideas: there are many named characters, but zero characterisation beyond being one of the 5% of humanity with the mental potential to be more than a sheep; only one of these "outsiders" is a woman, other females mentioned only in terms of their usefulness in satisying geniuses' sexual needs; and there's no plot or action to speak of beyond lazy, token gestures. Strangely finishable, but I haven't felt this much contempt for a science fiction "novel of ideas" since Asimov's Foundation, and I was very young back then. 4/10
Outside The Dog Museum, by Jonathan Carroll. For about the first third of this book, I thought it might be the most amazing thing ever. Harry Radcliffe, wunderkind architect, suffers a mental breakdown and enlists the help of a guru who does things like make him lie on the bottom of a swimming pool and watch the patterns formed by swirls of multi-coloured M&Ms bobbing on the surface. More Douglas Coupland than Douglas Coupland, in other words. But as the story wore on, I found the constant explosions of whimsy ever more irritating. While Harry sets about building a dog museum in Vienna for a magical Middle Eastern Sultan, everyone he meets may or may not be an angel or a jinn, every bizarre encounter may be coincidence or it may be God working in mysterious ways, he may be building a new Tower of Babel or I guess he may just be completely crazy. We are somehow meant to care which of two quirky women this smug genius ends up with, but neither is very interestingly drawn. The leader of the violent Islamic fundamentalist faction is called Cthulu, for no apparent reason. Nothing really gels or comes together by the end, so it must be hoped that the combined effect of all the charming mystic experiences and cryptic, partial revelations are more than the sum of the parts. For me they weren't, really. 6/10
Anno Dracula, by Kim Newman. The shocking thing about this book is not that it's a bit like Alan Moore's From Hell mixed with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but that it basically already has EVERY element that we will subsequently see in those graphic novels of Moore's. I'm willing to give Moore a pass for From Hell, as that was broadly contemporary to Anno Dracula, but I don't see how he can claim League as any kind of an original work. We shouldn't forget that Halo Jones Book 3 was a straight rip-off of Haldeman's "Forever War" and Skizz was just the plot of ET rewritten in 2000AD house style: now I'm wondering if he's ever done anything original, or if he thinks the role of a comics writer is just to reenact other people's work in a new medium, and the things that seem original to me are just the ones I haven't cottoned onto the source of yet. ANYWAY! Anno Dracula might not be deep or meaningful literature, but it's a hell of a yarn. This is a parallel universe where Van Helsing's head is on a spike outside Buckingham Palace: the vampire count has become Victoria's new Prince Consort, and the population of Great Britain is now split between the "warm" and newborn bloodsuckers, in uneasy coexistence. Meanwhile Jack the Ripper is none other than Jack Seward, hunting down and killing vampire prostitutes. Every major contemporary fictional or historical character seems to make a cameo appearance, just as in League; one of the main protagonists is the noble vampire Genevieve Dieudonne, from the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay novels I ate up in my youth; but what really sold me on Anno Dracula was an extensive showdown with the ridiculous, hopping Mr Vampire from the absurd and brilliant kung-fu movie of the same name. Then again this is a vampire novel that seemingly manages to namecheck every other vampire bloodline in all of fiction, to the extent of a reference to Blacula. Newman writes in a rollicking, page-turning style and I thought it was all absolutely superb. 9/10
The Languages of Pao, by Jack Vance. Vance is almost always a pleasure to read, just because he's such a distinctive fantasy writer, with his ornate sense of language and his unremittingly vain, self-important characters being humiliated in a variety of ways. This book is I suppose SF, but it reads like fantasy, being firmly in the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" sphere of things. There are some very good SF ideas at its heart though: nicking some ideas from Plato's Republic, the leader of a populous planet of passive, stoic people resolves to increase his race's fortunes by creating enclosed population enclaves where the children will be brought up speaking new languages individually tailored to make of them warriors, engineers or thinkers. There are various alien races who are distinguished, and I think this is a key to good SF aliens, not by their physiology but by their different conceptual apparatuses, manifested in their languages. It never gets too heavy, though, because there are always characters with awesome names like Bustamonte, Palafox, or Buzbek of the Brumbos inflicting elaborate torments on one another. The resolution wasn't quite as neat as I was hoping, but still, this was a quick and fabulous read. 8/10
Other things on the go at the moment: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, which I am reading aloud on a chapterly basis to my new family, and which is quite beautifully written; The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, which has quite a reputation, and does seem possessed of a robust sense of humour, but whose English translation reads insufficiently well for me to think I'll get farther than about p100; and Zelazny's Jack of Shadows, my current bathroom reader, which is so pathetically sub-Vancian that I fail to understand its high reputation - my old compadre Jack Harris spoke of its Lord of Bats and Colonel Who Never Died in reverent tones, and it was nominated for a Hugo, for a start. My research indicates that it was written "in one take", never edited: maybe I'm the only person who really thinks it shows? I never did get Zelazny, though I know many who do.
Mistress Masham's Repose, by TH White. Billed as something of a "lost classic" because everyone still remembers The Sword in the Stone, but not so much this; I suspect this is because (a) it never got the Disney treatment, and (b) the title is spectacularly undescriptive of the content. This is in fact a neat little sequel to Gulliver's Travels, with Lilliputians living in hiding in the grounds of a run-down British stately home. Their discoverer, the 10-year-old Maria, must also survive the machinations of two vile, Dahl-esque adults, her governess and the marvellously named reverend, Mr Hater. The writing style is frequently superb, especially in some of the comic portraits; it does veer off into a few odd philosophical essays about people of one size lording it over people of another, which I suppose to be authentically Swiftian, but might be too hard for modern 10 year olds. Much like Gulliver's Travels itself, probably. 7/10
The Mind Parasites, by Colin Wilson. An allegedly Lovecraftian work, in practice a few early references to the canon, as the archaeologist narrator discovers evidence of an impossibly ancient city buried far below the surface, are red herrings, and Wilson gets on with expounding his own personal ideas. Which are quite interesting: that there is much unexplored space inside the human mind as there is out of it, and that humanity's massive potential has been systematically blocked by alien "mind parasites" for the past few centuries, explaining why in recent centuries human genius seems to have gone hand-in-hand with a propensity for depression, self-destructive behaviour and suicide. Unfortunately the author very quickly drops the pretence of writing an interesting novel around these ideas: there are many named characters, but zero characterisation beyond being one of the 5% of humanity with the mental potential to be more than a sheep; only one of these "outsiders" is a woman, other females mentioned only in terms of their usefulness in satisying geniuses' sexual needs; and there's no plot or action to speak of beyond lazy, token gestures. Strangely finishable, but I haven't felt this much contempt for a science fiction "novel of ideas" since Asimov's Foundation, and I was very young back then. 4/10
Outside The Dog Museum, by Jonathan Carroll. For about the first third of this book, I thought it might be the most amazing thing ever. Harry Radcliffe, wunderkind architect, suffers a mental breakdown and enlists the help of a guru who does things like make him lie on the bottom of a swimming pool and watch the patterns formed by swirls of multi-coloured M&Ms bobbing on the surface. More Douglas Coupland than Douglas Coupland, in other words. But as the story wore on, I found the constant explosions of whimsy ever more irritating. While Harry sets about building a dog museum in Vienna for a magical Middle Eastern Sultan, everyone he meets may or may not be an angel or a jinn, every bizarre encounter may be coincidence or it may be God working in mysterious ways, he may be building a new Tower of Babel or I guess he may just be completely crazy. We are somehow meant to care which of two quirky women this smug genius ends up with, but neither is very interestingly drawn. The leader of the violent Islamic fundamentalist faction is called Cthulu, for no apparent reason. Nothing really gels or comes together by the end, so it must be hoped that the combined effect of all the charming mystic experiences and cryptic, partial revelations are more than the sum of the parts. For me they weren't, really. 6/10
Anno Dracula, by Kim Newman. The shocking thing about this book is not that it's a bit like Alan Moore's From Hell mixed with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but that it basically already has EVERY element that we will subsequently see in those graphic novels of Moore's. I'm willing to give Moore a pass for From Hell, as that was broadly contemporary to Anno Dracula, but I don't see how he can claim League as any kind of an original work. We shouldn't forget that Halo Jones Book 3 was a straight rip-off of Haldeman's "Forever War" and Skizz was just the plot of ET rewritten in 2000AD house style: now I'm wondering if he's ever done anything original, or if he thinks the role of a comics writer is just to reenact other people's work in a new medium, and the things that seem original to me are just the ones I haven't cottoned onto the source of yet. ANYWAY! Anno Dracula might not be deep or meaningful literature, but it's a hell of a yarn. This is a parallel universe where Van Helsing's head is on a spike outside Buckingham Palace: the vampire count has become Victoria's new Prince Consort, and the population of Great Britain is now split between the "warm" and newborn bloodsuckers, in uneasy coexistence. Meanwhile Jack the Ripper is none other than Jack Seward, hunting down and killing vampire prostitutes. Every major contemporary fictional or historical character seems to make a cameo appearance, just as in League; one of the main protagonists is the noble vampire Genevieve Dieudonne, from the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay novels I ate up in my youth; but what really sold me on Anno Dracula was an extensive showdown with the ridiculous, hopping Mr Vampire from the absurd and brilliant kung-fu movie of the same name. Then again this is a vampire novel that seemingly manages to namecheck every other vampire bloodline in all of fiction, to the extent of a reference to Blacula. Newman writes in a rollicking, page-turning style and I thought it was all absolutely superb. 9/10
The Languages of Pao, by Jack Vance. Vance is almost always a pleasure to read, just because he's such a distinctive fantasy writer, with his ornate sense of language and his unremittingly vain, self-important characters being humiliated in a variety of ways. This book is I suppose SF, but it reads like fantasy, being firmly in the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" sphere of things. There are some very good SF ideas at its heart though: nicking some ideas from Plato's Republic, the leader of a populous planet of passive, stoic people resolves to increase his race's fortunes by creating enclosed population enclaves where the children will be brought up speaking new languages individually tailored to make of them warriors, engineers or thinkers. There are various alien races who are distinguished, and I think this is a key to good SF aliens, not by their physiology but by their different conceptual apparatuses, manifested in their languages. It never gets too heavy, though, because there are always characters with awesome names like Bustamonte, Palafox, or Buzbek of the Brumbos inflicting elaborate torments on one another. The resolution wasn't quite as neat as I was hoping, but still, this was a quick and fabulous read. 8/10
Other things on the go at the moment: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, which I am reading aloud on a chapterly basis to my new family, and which is quite beautifully written; The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, which has quite a reputation, and does seem possessed of a robust sense of humour, but whose English translation reads insufficiently well for me to think I'll get farther than about p100; and Zelazny's Jack of Shadows, my current bathroom reader, which is so pathetically sub-Vancian that I fail to understand its high reputation - my old compadre Jack Harris spoke of its Lord of Bats and Colonel Who Never Died in reverent tones, and it was nominated for a Hugo, for a start. My research indicates that it was written "in one take", never edited: maybe I'm the only person who really thinks it shows? I never did get Zelazny, though I know many who do.