Books I Read In December

Just to say that while I slowed up towards the end of the year, actually having a bedroom of my own rather than having to sleep in the living room has boosted my reading and despite having some very poorly written, heavy going and long books, I have managed to get through 48 this year, 21 of which have been over 400 pages long and 2 have been more than 900 pages. Driving very little during the Covid period has meant audio books falling away for me.

Fiction

'Gridlinked' by Neal Asher

I was not surprised to find that this book had been published in 2000 (though Wikipedia says 2001). Where it had been sitting unread before it was taken to my local charity shop, I do not know. What betrayed its age was that from the outset it has a real 1980s/90s cyberpunk feel to it. It features a 'hero', Ian Cormac, so emotionless that he is mistaken for an android at the start of the novel. He is a government counter-terrorist officer. Ironically, having been gridlinked, i.e. connected to the Polity, the controlling computer system of the regime controlling multiple solar systems for thirty years, he soon disconnects and has to find his way using more traditional approaches. In theory his antagonist is Arian Pelter a terrorist whose sister Cormac kills brutally early in the book. Pelter keeps loading himself up with more cyberpunk augmentations and makes use of a heavy duty android. So far, so cyberpunk as Cormac pursues Pelter rather half-heartedly, guided by a perhaps immortal Oriental guru. However, Asher is not satisfied with simply a cyberpunk revenge plot filled with so much violence that at times it is difficult to see the characters as much more than psychopaths both on a rampage across the galaxy.

There is a second strand to this book which feels like a different novel has been levered into the first one. It is more classically science fiction and might have been written by Iain M. Banks and is around Cormac's relationship with a super-powerful being known as Dragon and its own attempts to explore mysterious artefacts on a planet that belong to an ultra-powerful being, Maker. Either of these storylines would have been sufficient in itself. There is sufficient drama in either the hunt/revenge or the handling the super-beings to fill a novel. By having both in the same book draws tension out of each.

A further challenge is that having two main characters who are both very cold and ruthless means that the reader feels very much like they are looking in, perhaps watching two predators killing other creatures until they come face-to-face to inflict violence on the other and his small army. Asher seems to realise this and towards the end the fixer Stanton and the pilot/smuggler Jarvellis are raised from being minor characters to being much more of a secondary storyline and their interactions 'softened' to give the reader something they might feel affinity with.

Though this book is very flawed, it clearly did nothing to harm Asher's career and he has gone on to have 18 more books published, including 4 more featuring Cormac. I do not know if he improved or if he was better advised/edited. I was a fan of cyberpunk, especially the work of Bruce Sterling, Walter Jon Williams and George Alec Effinger. However, Asher's book lacks something. It is almost as if he had a list of tropes not simply from cyberpunk but many from classic science fiction too, and felt he had not succeeded until he had squeezed every one of them in. I think even he realised that having too many characters lacking humanity makes it hard to human readers to engage with them. I know many people like action, I do myself, but it can become numbing when it is incessant and especially when scenes seemed to be set up just to allow Pelter and his current team to slaughter them as happens when they find they are being followed on Huma. As you can imagine I am not in a rush to seek out Asher's other novels and feel I could find much of the same, executed more skilfully, by others.

'Empire of Dragons' by Valerio Massimo Manfredi; translated by Christine Feddersen-Manfredi

Though he has written 24 novels, some of which are available in English, Manfredi was an archaeology academic. Much of what he researched about the ancient world has formed a basis for his fiction. Perhaps in the UK his fictional work is best known as the basis of the 2007 movie, 'The Last Legion'. Like that movie and the novel it was based on, Manfredi is willing to mix in the fantastical with the historical. This novel features a group of 11 Roman legionaries, led by Legate Marcus Metellus Aquila of the II Legion are captured by Persian troops while trying to defend the Emperor Valerian during the siege of Edessa (in what is now Syria) in 260 CE. Sent to a mine, they manage to escape and in league with a Chinese prince and a merchant end up travelling to China at the time of the Three Kingdoms. Ironically, as Manfredi outlines at the end of the book not only such contact was possible, some was actually likely.

Despite Manfredi's background this is very similar in style to the epic Roman military style to many books out there, I would just pick on Simon Scarrow, Ben Kane and J. Clifton Slater as three among very many. There is a load of machismo throughout with the required quantity of brotherly bonding between the soldiers and tragic deaths. Manfredi also has room for some romance along the way and unlike some authors of historical military fiction does feature the occasional woman.

I think I have probably now read too many books of this kind and so my palate was jaded for any more. The other thing, is despite all the grounding in historical fact, Manfredi cannot let go of the fantastical. Thus, the Chinese the Romans meet often have very mystical powers enabling them to achieve phenomenal acrobatic feats and sustain themselves with minimal sustenance. This portrayal of Chinese monks and their philosophy as providing magical abilities is very tired and probably was even when this book was published in 2006.

Manfredi had published 14 books by the time this one came out. However, the text in the early parts of the novel is very lifeless despite the dramatic scenes being portrayed. It improves in the latter half of the book. I am not sure, not reading Italian, if this reflects the original text or was a result of the translation. However, it adds to that sense that this is all rather a tired premise that has been done so many times before and since. Perhaps if Manfredi is the first author of Roman military epics you come to, this would seem fine. For me, though, despite the author's credentials and an interesting premise, the book is weighed down by too many tropes to really sparkle for me.

Non-Fiction

'Europe in the Eighteenth Century 1713/1783' by M.S. [Matthew Smith] Anderson

This another of those general survey history books of the A General History of Europe series overseen by Professor Denis Hay in the 1960s-80s, that at some time, probably in the late 1980s, I bought quite a lot of second hand and they have sat in storage ever since. Sometimes such books can be laboured. Sometimes, as in the similar series I read in September: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/09/books-i-read-in-september.html you find an author like J.R. Hale who really makes the text lively and engaging. Anderson proves to be somewhere in the middle. The period is a complex one, and explaining the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, let alone the Seven Years' War, the first global conflict and colonial rivalries of the various powers is not an easy task in a survey history book. Where Anderson does best is in looking at specific countries and their development in this period.

Probably aware that France in the lead-up to the revolution which broke out six years after this book ends, gets a lot of coverage, he focuses a good deal on Russia, Poland, Prussia and the Habsburg lands. I found his explanation of the development of these countries and how they impacted on the rest of the continent well handled. He also includes Sweden, the Ottoman Empire and Spain, which again can get lost on the periphery, even when looking at a period such as this when they were important in the balance of power in Europe.

While I have launched into the geo-political aspects, it is right to note that in fact these come after he h as explored the societies of Europe and shown how this period was one of developing but incomplete steps forward in terms of administering societies and beginning to shape them in a way which we would see as modern. He also does not neglect the cultural aspects and draws out distinctions in what we might see very broadly as culture of the time especially in terms of architecture and music. Indeed, much of this book whether political, administrative or cultural, emphasises just how complexly diverse Europe was at the time. To do that while largely not drowning the reader in masses of detail is quite an achievement. This might not be an impressive book, but for the large part, it is an effective book and I came away from it with a far greater sense of being an era of substantial transition these seventy years were.

The Books I Read In April

Fiction
'A Rare Benedictine' by Ellis Peters
This was the last of the Brother Cadfael books I had to read.  It was anomalous, featuring three short stories.  The first is set in 1120 when Cadfael is an ageing soldier.  The other two are set in the mid- to late 1130s when he is established as a monk. The stories are fine.  They show Cadfael solving three crimes even when this means him going up against his employer.  They show him using his knowledge of Shrewsbury and supporting the course of true love, all elements that are the backbone of the Cadfael stories.  What seems to be missing, contrary to what Peters notes at the start, is a sense of that transformation from warrior to monk.  It would have been really beneficial to have had 2-3 other stories set in the 1120s.  This would have shown us more of the character's development rather than simply presenting simply some further examples of him behaving in the way regular readers of the series are familiar with.  It is not a bad book, but it could have been a great deal more.

'The Winds of Altair' by Ben Bova
Ben Bova was an author I first came across as a teenager and was very impressed by his 'The Dueling Machine' [sic] (1969).  However, too many of his novels appeared to be space opera which did not appeal.  'The Winds of Altair' (1984) is about colonists being sent to a remote planet, but is more about issues connected to colonisation and religious fundamentalism.  The colonisers make use of mind connection devices to use wolfcats - huge six-legged predators and white apes, to operate machinery on the hostile surface of Altair VI/Windsong to make it habitable for humans.  The story largely features those involved in this connection between the creatures and humans.  This connecting and the sympathy for the indigenous population are very reminiscent of elements of the movie 'Avatar' (2009) with a religious group instead of the military.  The book moves along briskly and handles the big issues well.  The casual racism jumps out until you realise that the religions have made Earth suffering with a population of 17 billion, a racially-segregated planet.  I enjoyed reading the book but then it ends abruptly as if Bova felt he had got his message across and there was no need for any more or the publishers said that he had reached his page limit.  The difficulties of the colonisation, the challenge of the religion and the development of the two romantic relationships are all concluded at speed, though in the case of the relationships, largely unresolved.  This abrupt end is a shame for a book which I otherwise enjoyed.  I may be tempted to find some more of Bova's books in the future, but hope they will end properly.

Non-Fiction
'The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918' by A.J.P. Taylor
This book was first published in 1941 and the revised edition I read came out in 1947.  This is important to note because people would not write a history book this way nowadays.  It is important to note that this is not really about the Austrian Empire or Austria-Hungary, but as the title indicates, about the Habsburg monarchy in this period.  It is written very much from a constitutional perspective and at times is very dry and complicated when discussing the nuances of political developments at the highest level.  The main flaw of the book is that it rushes through all of these elements very quickly with few breaks.  This leads the reader easily lost.  At times the analysis of the politics seems to be in a vacuum, detached from social and economic developments which form the context.  It improves when covering the first decade of the 20th century, but then with the First World War returns to the break-neck speed.  A slower pace and more summary would have improved the accessibility of the book greatly.

Taylor writes that he purged his misplaced wistful optimism for Austria-Hungary and what it could have been between the two editions of the book.  However, what is painful for a contemporary reader is the retention of his bigotry which too often colours what he is saying and imbalances his judgements.  He derides the Austrians and Hungarians perceiving themselves as the superior nations in the empire, with the Poles and to a lesser extent the Italians following on behind.  However, then he generally adheres to their hierarchy of the different nationalities.  He is painfully patronising when discussing the Slovaks and Ruthenes, even the Croats and Slovenes.  He presents a number of these nationalities as if they were infantile and is dismissive of any political or national perspectives they may have.  He is also explicitly dismissive of the French despite the importance of their government in successor states to Austria-Hungary.  I gather his attitude to the Italians was also shaped by the Second World War.  Yet, the problem goes beyond his own time.  His attitudes were old fashioned  even in 1947.  This is emphasised by his disparaging of the term successor states and his constant reference to 'Austria' in inverted commas, even after 1918 when it was a sovereign states.  Though Taylor writes in English in this book his perceptions are those of a German living in the late 19th century.  This handicaps him in making a fair judgement in terms of the various nationalities and distorts how he articulates what went on depending on which of the 'historic' nations was concerned.  The book is comprehensive but is best saved for reference which allows avoidance of its overly-frenetic narrative and the painfully bigoted attitudes towards many of the people being discussed.

Sharing - Short Story

I am still battling to get the interface to work, even harder now that I cannot access it from computers using Internet Explorer as their browser, like all of the ones at the company I work for.  It is ironic given that almost 80% of the people who reach my blog come to it via Internet Explorer.  I am now having to write everything offline and cut and paste it here.  Anyway, this is another short story created as a writers' group exercise.  We were charged with writing something in the science fiction genre.  Once again I was primarily inspired by the fact that we meet in a library.  I cannot write any more, this constant saving interrupting my typing and sending my laptop's fan into overdrive, is driving me to despair!

Sharing

Rahn walked surreptitiously into the Sharing Room. As always, since he and Arco had split from their relationship with Scort, he looked around him nervously. Of course, the shifts that Scort was allocated by the City Givers meant she was rarely unassigned at this time of the cycle. However, Rahn worried he would pick precisely the wrong day to manifest when she was unallocated and here.

Despite its name, the Sharing Room lay empty. It had to be four or five years since such spaces had been at the height of fashion; when trios and septets would be found here indulging in shared perceptions the cycle long. It had been Kamal 5 that had brought such interaction into abrupt decline. It was ironic given the paranoia instilled by the disease and so the even greater need for actual contact; contact of the non-ether kind.

Rahn wondered however secure, however bond-guaranteed secure he was from infection that the symptoms were not able to penetrate. While he had no truck with the views of the Syncopators who had taken the fear of electron to cell contamination to the extreme, it proved hard for him to shake the irrational from his mind.

Rahn pondered if he would have felt better if there had been someone here, even some youths banished for the cycle from their refuge. He came here because his own refuge simply echoed too much; bounced back his words, his very ideas, too easily. Other people, even if just manifested, were somehow more absorbent. Perhaps that had been the difficulty with Arco and Scort, they had simply given too much and had taken, demanded, too little of him.

Rahn knew many of the titles by heart. He had been through all the Rozabai Conflict dramas enough that he could recall every nuance even when disconnected. He shied away from formalised Ginasi performances. Today, too, even ‘Scenes from the Games’ was not to his taste. Almost blindly he selected from the collection of the new and manipulated the scenario into his own system. He could have downloaded it to his refuge but, for him, the ritual of personal engagement was a vital element of the experience.

Then he was in, rushing through one of the Magenta Stampedes of the past century, swept among people like a skin cell going down a planet-based drain. It locked. He tried to turn; to shake the error; to restart; to exit. All the methods he well knew; all the advice he had received from Guiders, was proving ineffective. The crowd of those around him in their bright colours were standing static though their scents and even their sounds persisted. Steadily even these began to loop and Rahn knew he was trapped.

At least he was interfaced in what these days passed for a public space. Someone, he trusted, would see a locked machine and would remove his connection, at least, restart the scenario. Then he could hope for an exit. Now, however, he was left alone, divorced even from the communication interaction that provided work. Here, among the magenta and crimson and cerise he was stranded. While he struggled to stop it, as best he could, his thoughts, his desolate, lonely thoughts that Arco had cast him into returned to throttle his identity.

Reading Christopher Priest

As I have noted before on this blog, I have had tendency, which though it has declined, was strong in the 1980s-2000s of reading all the books that I could by a particular author.  I have written here of my engagement with the books of Michael Moorcock and Michael Dibdin.  Back in June, finishing the last (so far) published book by this author that I had not so far read, I was reminded that I could put Christopher Priest in this category.  In some ways he is similar to the previous two, that whilst he can write realistic fiction, often he writes along the borderlands between fantasy and magic realism.  I have been impressed by some of Priest's books and dismayed by others.  Yet, his writing is always engaging if only because it infuriates and I feel that despite his long career he is even more under-rated in mainstream culture even than Moorcock.

Priest was born in 1943 making him five years younger than Moorcock.  He began publishing short stories in 1966 including in 'Impulse' and in 'New Worlds' which Moorcock edited 1965-9 and 1971.  Unlike Moorcock and other British science fiction authors of the late 1960s/early 1970s, Priest's work does not engage with an overly fantastical approach and seems uninfluenced by the drugs culture of the era.  Perhaps that is not a correct statement, as many of his characters can have a distorted perception of reality or can be thrust into a delusional state.  However, whereas contemporaries at that time could see such states and perceptions as liberating for Priest's protagonists they are at least challenging if not down right dangerous. 

Priest's work, even when considering fantastical ideas, remains grounded in reality, sometimes cynically.  There is an air in Priest's work of the individual losing control whether to stronger individuals or to larger elements in society or the environment.  This is not to say that Priest's work is fatalistic, it is just that he is very adept at painting the kind of nasty people we can all encounter in real life.  Naturally this keeps Priest's writing 'grounded' even when touching the fantastical and his portrayal of characters can be more effectively painfully acute than those of strictly realist writers.

Priest published his first novel, 'The Doctrinaire' in 1970.  It is a short story collection and is of its time.  Whilst many of the stories could have been produced by many other writers of science fiction at the time, as reviewers note, Priest's ability with unpleasant characters and settings is apparent.  This should not be taken to suggest he is a horror writer and that makes his writing more penetrative, Priest knows that the greatest evil is not extravagant but mundane.

I have read 'Fugue for a Darkening Island' (1972).  I came to this book after having read many of his subsequent books.  I think if I had not read other Priest books by then I would have shunned him entirely.  There are a few reviews online which you can find for yourself which highlight how racist a book it is.  However, there seems to be no record on the trouble it caused.  As far as I can see it really only began to attract criticism during the 1980s in the context of race riots such as that in Brixton in 1981.  The book portrays a Britain in the near future which is under an authoritarian government.  Britain is overwhelmed by refugees from sub-Saharan Africa fleeing a nuclear exchange in the region.  By the time the novel is set, Britain is in the midst of a racial civil war between blacks and whites.  The story has little narrative direction, it is a 'slice of life' portrayal, but this can be said to characterise a number of his novels and in fact, many works of British contemporaries like Moorcock and J.G. Ballard.

The story has a clearly biased perspective, showing the blacks as more brutal and a greater threat to Britain and 'Britishness' than white authoritarianism.  Apparently it is not published often (though is available on Amazon still) and this may explain why it is not a 'set book' for the BNP and other racist political parties.  The entire principle of the books appears to pander to all the paranoia about Britain being 'over-run' by refugees from non-white ethnic groups, even during the 1990s when there was net emigration from the UK with so many middle class people moving to France, Spain and Florida. 

It is difficult to gauge Priest's political stance, though apparently he was angered by criticisms he received in the 1980s and this stance does not seem to appear in any subsequent books.  In addition, he features a lesbian couple in a positive way in a story 'The Dream Archipelago' (1999) in a brilliant piece of writing which misleads the reader very well in regard of the characters' gender.  Whilst tolerance of same-sex couples does not always go hand-in-hand with having a multi-cultural perspective, it does seem to jar.  I do wonder if after 'Fugue for a Darkening Island' Priest's views on racial matters shifted or he simply realised that if he continued to peddle racist propaganda in his novels he would not get published (the Race Relations Act became law in 1976).  This novel is certainly an indelible stain on Priest's career and unfortunately cannot but detract from the strength of his other writing.

The novels of Priest's that I first came to were those which can be seen as clearly magic realism.  I bought 'A Dream of Wessex' (1977), 'The Glamour' (1981) and 'The Quiet Woman' (1990) all in the same imprint from a remaindered bookshop in Oxford in 1993.  These books have a very British feel about them and in many ways are 'gentle' books, not shaking you with brash ideas in the way that some of Priest's other novels, for example, 'The Inverted World' (1974) do. 

These stories are set at the eastern edge of South-West England, areas like Dorset and Wiltshire.  'The Quiet Woman' is really about a woman unravelling how a local man has been party to manipulating the media to hound political activists.  It is set in the near future when the region is suffering from the fall-out from a nuclear accident at one of France's numerous power stations., if not for that future setting it could have been a realist novel.  'A Dream of Wessex' is more clearly science fiction, featuring a group of people seeking to learn potential future developments for the UK by going into a computer simulation of the country in the near future.  The exact nature shifts depends on who is overseeing the project and it is interesting when the source of power for Wessex (which has become separated from the rest of England) is shifted from wave power to oil rigs off the south England coast when a new project director with less ecological attitudes comes in.   In this context which is clearly reminiscent of stories such as 'The Matrix' movies, there is a search for individuals and an attempt to reassert the 'better than real' nature of Wessex. 

Priest's sympathies for those fighting against individuals repressing political activism and ecologically sound approaches to power supply seem to suggest Priest is a liberal and this makes it hard to reconcile with his authorship of 'Fugue for a Darkening Island'.  There was clearly a lot of turbulence in Priest's political attitudes which does not seem to be revealed to the average reader.

As 'A Dream of Wessex' can be seen as a precursor of 'The Matrix' and 'The Quiet Woman' of 'Edge of Darkness' (1985), 'The Glamour' contributes much to contemporary vampire stories like the 'Twilight' and 'True Blood' series.  The special characters in 'The Glamour' are not vampires, but do have an ability to make themselves unseen by ordinary people.  Following an accident the protagonist becomes involved in an almost love triangle including a male of these different people.  Again, Priest is excellent at crafting the antagonist in a way that you know that whilst he does not engage in overt violence, you know your life would be shattered simply due to his whim, if you encountered him for real.  In a low key novel like this, the reality of that character and the almost raw strength of his nasty personality stand out all the stronger.  As in many of his stories, like 'The Extremes' (1998) and 'The Separation' (2002), and in his novelisation of David Cronenberg's screenplay for 'eXistenZ' (1999)  Priest plays around with the sequence of events and time and people's perceptions of them.

In terms of the chronology of Priest's writing I have jumped ahead.  His third novel was 'Inverted World' which whilst more clearly science fiction encompasses familiar traits of Priest's work in an interesting way.  The story features a rolling wooden city moving across the landscape, which actually turns out to be Spain.  The residents of the city see time and space differently to the way we do.  What they see about their 'world' of the city and the humans they encounter is shown from their perspective so making 'us' appear very alien.  Like much of Priest's work this questions our views of what is true when discussion (mis)perceptions. It is well written and like the best of Priest's writing submerges you in the 'reality' of the context and the characters and it deservedly won the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) award.  

Priest's next novel, 'The Space Machine' (1976) which I finished reading this June, plays a little with time and space with the protagonists taking the time machine from H.G. Wells's 'The Time Machine' (1895) but using it travel to Mars on the eve of the Martian invasion of Earth as portrayed in Wells's 'The War of the Worlds' (1898).  It is a more conventional action science fiction story, written as a pastiche of Wells's work.  Only the focus on the development of the male protagonist's lust and then love for his female counterpart and reference to their growing relationship betrays the fact that the novel was written in the 1970s when it seems it was compulsory to include such elements.  It is well paced and portrays both late Victorian London and Mars as suggested by Wells vividly and far less whimsically than 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II' (2002-3) which also presents a different perspective of the invasion.  Priest's novel is a good read that sweeps you along.  In many ways it can be considered an overlooked steampunk novel at a time when Moorcock with his 'Nomad of Time' series was also stimulating the seeding of this genre.  Priest has been vice president of the H.G. Wells Society since 2006; other vice-presidents have included: Brian Aldiss, Stephen Baxter, Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Foot.  I very much enjoy this novel and hope that Priest returns to steampunk writing.

One setting that forms the background for a number of Priest's stories, is the dream archiepelago.  The collection 'The Dream Archipelago' encompasses all the stories from an earlier collection 'An Infinite Summer' (1979).  It features a fictional archipelago which even to the characters may be a delusion or a fantasy.  This context is the setting for 'The Affirmation' (1981) in which the protagonist battles to decide whether he is the author or his own character in a novel set in the archipelago; it reminds me of the similar merging of author or character seen in the movie '2046' (2004) which with its distortion of time flow and perception fits well within the Priest-style exploration of worlds.  The premise of 'The Affirmation' is well handled, despite the seeming complexity of the set-up. 

Stories among those set in the Dream Archipelago context do stand out.  Again, the mundane nastiness that Priest does so well is noticeable, especially the consequences of misunderstanding local social customs and unspoken communication when at a funeral.  This motivated me to write 'The Wedding Party': http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/04/wedding-party-short-story.html in a feeble attempt to mimic Priest's story.  In 'The Affirmation' and 'The Dream Archipelago' Priest demonstrates that science fiction can be light touch and from that approach allow the crafting of acutely observed and portrayed characters and interactions.

After a relatively quiet period in his career in the 1980s when Priest produced movie novelisations as diverse as 'Short Circuit' (1986) and 'Mona Lisa' (1986), he steadily rose in public recognition in the 1990s and his output increased too. 'The Prestige' (1995) was the one book which brought Priest a higher level of recognition than any other because it was made into a movie, 'The Prestige' (2006).  The novel won a World Fantasy Award.  As with much of Priest's work, there is a grounding in very credible reality, rivalry between two Victorian stage magicians, but with the added fantastical element of electrical power seemingly allowing teleportation.  The movie adopts a different approach, though equally steampunk, in that it replicates whilst transporting so creating multiple versions of the magician rather than a single semi-copy as in the novel.  The rival who simply uses his twin brother and the difficulties that causes for their family lives, is carried between the two and in other author's hands would have been the extent of the story. 

With this novel, Priest moved from the 'near future' into a different time context, but brought with him his usual themes and because of his successful portrayal of harsh individuals was well suited for portraying the bitter rivalry and hard people of the time and business.  The characters in the movie were felt to be underwritten, but that the actors, Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale lifted their roles above this.  Priest himself enjoyed the movie and saw the variations from his novel as innovative and exciting.  All credit to him for not adopting the Alan Moore approach to movie adaptations of his work!

'The Extremes' (1998) also won a BSFA award.  Like 'eXistenZ' and 'A Dream of Wessex' it features a protagonist going into a virtual reality to uncover truths about the 'real' world.  It features an American woman in Britain exploring events around her husband's death during a shooting spree in the USA by allowing her to 'go into' the event.  A friend of mine and I cannot agree whether ultimately the protagonist is transported back to that time and place or whether the virtual reality simply becomes her dominant reality.  Again it explores themes of reality and perceptions of it, but in a way which seems very contemporary both in terms of technology, the traumatic incident and the impact on those associated with it.  The US setting is a new departure for Priest, but I imagine was to address a potential American audience brought to his work by 'The Prestige'.

'The Separation' (2002) has counter-factual elements but also features discussion of what is 'real' and features a messing around in the sequence of events as seen in 'The Glamour'.  It features twin British brothers at the time of the Second World War who at a juncture experience different outcomes, one the war we experienced in our world and the other a world in which Britain made peace with Nazi Germany following the arrival of Rudolf Hess in Britain.  As with 'The Prestige' Priest shows good attention to period detail.  As with a number of his stories, there is no strong narrative thrust, but rather interesting speculation on how events would unfold in the different contexts leaving the reader to come to firm conclusions if they desire. This novel also won a BSFA award, Priest's third, and an Arthur C. Clark award too; 'The Prestige' and 'The Extremes' had both been nominated for this latter award when published.

It is difficult to find out biographical details about Priest, but he faded from my sight and that of the general public, I imagine, through the 2000s. Priest is now 68 so he may have been in semi-retirement. However, we are promised 'The Islanders' (2011) and 'The Adjacent' (2012).  Christopher Priest comes over as an erratic writer but one who has produced novels and short stories of recognised high quality.  Even in his 'quieter' novels, he produces acutely observed characters some of which that are almost so uncomfortable to read that you feel you have to set the story aside.  Yet, you are locked in by the ideas that he raises and toys with, giving answers though not easy ones and leaving much up to you as a reader to decide upon.  Consequently, his writing stays with you long after you have finished reading. 

For me, however, my enjoyment of such much of his writing and my true admiration of his skills notably in drawing characters and settings and stimulating thought, will be forever over-shadowed if not contaminated by a single novel, 'A Fugue for a Darkening Island'.  Whilst his political views seem complex and many of them liberal, to me this is one of the most aggressively racist books still in the mainstream and available freely to buy.  Its nastiness is heightened by contemporary debates about refugees, race, violence and the UK and that means it is a running sore on Priest's body of work, ripped open once again to spoil everything else which he has produced.  Despite all his good attributes, I can never forgive him for producing that foul book.

Books I Read In 2010

This is the latest in my annual series of reviews of books I have read.  See:
http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/01/books-i-read-in-2009.html
http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/01/books-i-read-in-2008.html
http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/01/books-i-read-in-2007.html
for previous postings in this series.

The number of books I am reading seems to be steadily falling from between 30-40 per year back in the 1990s to much lower figures now.  Interestingly there is a direct correlation between how much I am unemployed in a year and how little I read.  You might think that being out of work would leave me lots of time for reading, but it is also about being inspired to read and when I am without a job, the debilitating lethargy quickly creeps over me.  I guess this is why I know I could never be self-employed.  Like the huge majority of the population from the moment I started play school I have been conditioned to having my day structured for me whether directly or indirectly through people making timed demands.  As a result, being out of work so much in 2010 I have read less than even in the previous years.

Some people say that the book is dead and young people in particular tend not to read books.  Pre-secondary school children do still seem to engage well with books, as sales of things like the Beast Quest series show.  Reading is in fact at a height.  The internet, though providing lots of video content, is actually full of text.  A lot of that text is very badly spelt, but it is text all the same.  Blogging is a very text based art and develops writing skills, though I accept to a limited extent in some cases, and reading too.  The book as a medium rather than reading as an activity may be in decline but it is not that apparent.  I remember when supermarkets did not sell novels or any books in fact, and yet, these days even comparatively small branches have a row of books.  I find them in 99p shops too.  Some of this I imagine is about the digital divide; 30% of people in the UK have no internet access and many others have poor, low band access.  I am a well educated person who cannot afford a Kindle, whereas I can fill my house with books from charity shops and actually have a backlog of a few hundred books to read; I have not bought a new book in the past two years trying to keep the stack down.  People give me books too.  I think the tactile element of reading, the robustness of books, their ease of reading in a variety of light situations, the fact no-one is liable to steal your book, means that they will be around for a lot longer.  The recession means they will be more appealing to those with few funds and a lot of time.

Anyway, for me, not having travel on public transport, no longer having a lunch break and having a lover who is often averse to me reading in bed, my chances for reading for pleasure rather than for information or trying to find a job have declined severely, and last year's very short list of book titles shows that.  Expecting to have to move house at any time last year I focused on the heaviest books in my collection.  Many removal companies refuse to move books (certainly three companies out of the last four I have used) and so I was concerned that if I could not reduce the weight I would have to abandon large quantities of my collection if I could not fit them in my car.

Fiction
'The Daffodil Affair' by Michael Innes.
This was the third in a three-book collection of terribly over-rated novels by Michael Innes. I commented on 'Death at the President's Lodging' and 'Hamlet, Revenge!' last year.  This third book was even worse than them.  It is a weird fantasy of a police detective sent during the Second World War to South America to investigate a man interested in psychic phenonmena who has abducted various people, a horse and even haunted buildings and brought them to a settlement he was creating.  How anyone could do that during wartime seems odd.  Of course, many of the people simply have mental health issues.  The whole novel is very peculiar, totally unbelievable and a real waste of time.  In nothing I have read by Innes does he seem to warrant the acclaim he was given.

'Chimera' by John Barth.
I really seem to have had a bad run of novels.  This one was an utter shambles.  It received an award in the mid-1970s and I can only imagine the award jury were on drugs at the time.  It is supposedly a three-part novel that draws on Greek myths and stories from the Arabian Nights.  It starts rationally enough re-interpreting the stories from a 1970s perspective though set in the ancient world.  However, quickly the text becomes almost incomprehensible with the plot running out of steam and even if you know great details of the original myths, the writing is soon a mish-mash of phrases and snippets that seem to think they are so clever but in fact are pathetic.  I certainly would warn you away from this novel, though I imagine there cannot be many left in circulation.

'The Deadly Percheron' by John Franklin Bardin.
I immediately worried that this was a kind of re-run of 'The Daffodil Affair' being a story set during the Second World War and involving a disappearing horse.  In fact it is far better being about a plot to divert, even brain wash as leading psychologist so that he cannot reveal the identity of a murderer.  It is written from the psychologist's perspective and is especially well done when he wakes up after having been almost murdered by being pushed in front of a train and begins to try to recapture his identity.  As a European reader, seeing New York portrayed in the early 1940s, so apparently untouched by the war is interesting.  The novel has elements of film noir stories, but with a greater psychological element than even those.  Not a cheerful novel, but well written and engaging all the same.

'The World at Night' by Alan Furst.
Furst is renowned for his spy/intrigue/murder novels set in 1930s and 1940s Europe.  This one was a real disappointment.  It features a Parisian movie producer who is drawn into being a double agent working for SOE and the SD in wartime France and Spain.  In the meantime he tries to make movies during the period of occupation and has lots of affairs before falling in love with an actress living in Lyons, which unlike Paris, lay in the Vichy region of the country.  The whole novel feels like Furst is simply going through the motions.  There is a real lack of tension throughout even in scenes as when the protagonist is escaping from a Gestapo prison.  There is a lack of passion in the numerous sex scenes too.  Furst is pretty good at conjuring up the context and details of the period, but in this case it makes the book as dreary as living in wartime Paris must have been.  Something to engage the reader is really lacking from this book.


'The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology' ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr.
I have no idea where I got this book from but it is one of the best I have read in a long time.  It is a collection of stories from the US science fiction magazine, Astounding Stories, which became Astounding Science Fiction in 1938.  It is still being published, since 1992 under the title Analog Science Fiction and Fact.  The magazine started in 1930 and Campbell was its editor 1937-71.  This anthology published in 1952 includes short stories appearing in the magazine 1940-51, a period that Campbell feels was when science fiction was moving from being just the substance of 'pulp' magazines to becoming a more serious genre.  I will list the short stories below because you will see many familiar names.  I have included one of the stories from the anthology in a posting before: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/09/making-english-language-more-logical.html

I certainly think that a lot of contemporary science fiction writers especially those of the overblown, door-stop kind of writing should go back to these stories and see good writing in the genre.  These were clearly the cream of the stories over an 11-year period, but despite their age they stand up well today and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them.  Of course, in 1940 the nuclear bomb was guessed at but had not been created, but already writers were analysing the likely impacts on humans and the struggles of dealing with such power.  Interestingly only in a couple of the stories do you see Cold War sensibilities, and this is really only apparent in the later end of the collection.  Knowledge of the solar system seems a little naive today, with primitive life on the Moon and bases established beneath seas on Venus, but to some extent show writing at that cusp before all the fantasies of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells about our neighbouring bodies were finally dismissed by space travel.  Certainly 'Clash by Night' by Lawrence O'Donnell (1943) portraying battling companies of mercenaries on Venus could stand up beside the 'Dune' series even today. 

As you would expect from science fiction there are stories questioning assured mutual destruction, first contact with aliens, brilliant children and creating immortality through manipulating cells.  Though the language [for example people say 'good-by' rather than 'goodbye'], the clothing and some of the ordinary technology seems very dated now, it added to the charm for me as it gave a window into not only science fiction ideas but those of a mid-20th century US context.  As with all best short stories, these pack stimulating ideas into a small package and often have an excellent pay off, sometimes in the final phrase.

'Blowups Happen' by Robert Heinlein, 1940
About the psychological pressures on men overseeing nuclear weapons.

'Hindsight' by Jack Williamson, 1940
About personal and inter-planetary rivalry in a colonised solar system, involving weaponry firing through time.

'Vault of the Beast' by A.E. van Vogt, 1940
About unleashing a sleeping alien entity.

'The Exalted' by L. Sprague de Camp, 1940
 Rather comic tale of an intelligent bear investigating mischief at a US university.

'Nightfall' by Isaac Asimov, 1941
Great story about how, on a planet which suffers periodic eclipses, myths and cults arise explaining what is happening, with particular consequences.

'When the Bough Breaks' by Lewis Padgett, 1941
Parents' view of raising a genius child desired by a future civilisation, a kind of antidote to 'Terminator' (1984) and its sequels (1991; 2003).

'Clash by Night' by Lawrence O'Donnell, 1943
City-states on Venus use mercenary companies to fight their battles; tactical nuclear weapons are banned.

'Invariant' by John Pierce, 1944
A man has found a way for him and his dog to become immortal, with unexpected consequences.

'First Contact' by Murray Leinster, 1945
A really good exploration of the challenges of encountering new intelligent life on the edge of human space.

'Meihem In Ce Klasrum' by Dolton Edwards, 1946
Clever essay on the ridiculous aspects of English spelling.

'Hobbyist' by Eric Frank Russell, 1947
Lone human space explorer cannot determine why there is only one of each species on a planet.

'E for Effort' by T.L. Sherred, 1947
Really fascinating story of the careers of two men who develop a device which can show images from any time or place in history. A little reminiscent of 'Deja Vu' (2006) though on a far larger scale.

'Child's Play' by William Tenn, 1947
A very 'Twilight Zone' like story in which a man receives a child's kit from the future enabling him to create life.

'Thunder and Roses' by Theodore Sturgeon, 1947
Quite a sentimental story with a real 1940s feel about a female singer touring the USA in the wake of a nuclear war begging for the counter-attacks to cease for the sake of the world.

'Late Night Final' by Eric Frank Russell, 1948
Uptight commander of alien invasion fleet tries to prevent his crews fraternising with the humans.  The character reminds me of Arnold Rimmer in the 'Red Dwarf' comedy science fiction television series (1988-99; 2009).

'Cold War' by Kris Neville, 1949
Very similar to 'Blowups Happen' looking at the psychological pressures on men manning nuclear weapon armed space stations circling the Earth.

'Eternity Lost' by Clifford D. Simak, 1949
About a man who has already had his life extended centuries seeking to have one, last, vital extension.

'The Witches of Karres' by James H. Schmitz, 1949
A playful story, a kind of 'Dances with Wolves' (1990) on the borderlands of a vast space empire with mischievous inhabitants of Karres.

'Over the Top' by Lester del Rey, 1949
An explorer is stranded on the Moon while Earth is on the verge of a nuclear war; reminiscent of parts of 'The Martian Chronicles' by Ray Bradbury (1950).

'Meteor' by William T. Powers, 1950
Nice twist on the usual meteor-threatening-to-crash-into-Earth story; the oldest story I know featuring mining within asteroids.

'Last Enemy' by H. Beam Piper, 1950
About staff who monitor different parallel universes being drawn into exploration of reincarnation on one version of Earth; one of the two stories in the collection with apparent US-side Cold War sensibilities but an interesting portrayal of behaviour in a society in which reincarnation is an established fact.

'Historical Note' by Murray Leinster, 1951
Very much a Cold War spoof exploring the consequences of developing personal flying devices in the USSR.

'Protected Species' by H.B. Fyfe, 1951
Nice consideration of colonial attitudes in space exploration, with excellent final line pay-off.

Non-Fiction
'French Revolutions' by Tim Moore.
An entertaining account of the author cycling around the 2000 route of the Tour de France, which I should have read long ago.  Entertaining as all the best travel books are and especially good if you have enjoyed cycle touring and/or know France.  For the impact had on my perception of myself see the posting: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/04/not-as-pathetic-as-i-thought-i-was.html

'The Collapse of the Third Republic' by William L. Shirer
A very good exploration of the fall of France in 1940 and the reasons behind it dating back decades.  Shirer is renowned for his work on Nazi Germany.  As a US journalist he was in France and Germany during the 1930s and into the war period.  The USA being neutral until December 1941 he was pretty free to move around even during the war.  He is excellent on the political aspects in the 1930s and early 1940s.  He tends to get overwhelmed when describing the complexities of the fighting in 1940 and the book could have benefited from more maps at that stage.  His journalistic style makes the book very readable and it is very informative on the period.