Jun 26 2019

The Record Keeper by Agnes Gomillion

Hi, Frumious Readers! I feel like I’ve been away foreeeever, but it’s been crunch time over at my other reading job with CriminalElement.com so my apologies for being infrequent over here. Anyway, with Doug away for a bit, I’m glad to be back with this really great new novel sent to me by our friends at Titan Press. It’s thrilling to be part of their blog tour for The Record Keeper, and do check out the other sites that are covering this book, as well.

In a post-apocalyptic world, the only surviving habitable land is a slice of the east coast of what was once North America. After years of bitter fighting along racial lines, the three surviving superpowers — the white English, the Asian Clayskin and the black Kongo — sign a treaty known as the Niagara compromise, which gives the three races separate but equal rights. Well, “equal” because we all know what that really means. The English are tasked with researching agricultural advances, while the Clayskin serve as merchants and tradesman. The Kongo themselves form the bulk of the agricultural labor, though stratify themselves further with the ranks of First Brother and Second Brother, along the lines of physical characteristics. The First Brothers include Record Keepers like our heroine, Arika of House Cobane, who live lives of relative privilege. They’re supposed to look after and champion their field hand brethren, the Second Brothers, but — at the risk of repeating myself — we all know how that works.

Arika studies at the Schoolhouse run by the sadistic Englishwoman Jones (she has a first name but I couldn’t be arsed to look for it because she is the poster girl for white feminism and, obviously, sucks.) Arika’s overweening ambition is to graduate as valedictorian so she can become a Senator, thereby escaping the arbitrary racial rules of the nation and securing herself an unassailable position from where she can truly advocate for her race, First and Second Brothers alike. She clings to logic and order without realizing that both have been framed for her by a society that wants to keep her docile and conforming. When a new student comes to the Schoolhouse and jeopardizes her standing, she begins to realize that there’s more to the world than she’d accounted for, inspiring the spirit that Jones had tried to break so long ago to unbend itself anew.

Okay, first let’s talk about this novel’s few but unignorable flaws. First, it is desperately underwritten. This is Agnes Gomillion’s first book, and she will look back on it in the future with a wince, not because it’s bad (it’s actually really good) but because she’ll know where she should have done better, taking more time to elaborate on plot points and interior lives and emotions instead of rushing from one cool idea to another. I absolutely understand the excitement to get this rich, vivid world out of one’s brain and on to the page, but there are a ton of what feel like missed moments that should have been dwelled upon instead of quickly presented then moved away from. This could easily have been a book twice its size that I would still have devoured with glee.

The second comes at the end of the book, and involves torturing an unconscious person. Yes, that person absolutely sucks, and yes, I believe that revenge isn’t necessarily evil or unwarranted, but come on. I don’t go for the honor card often, but it’s not heroic to inflict pain for the sake of inflicting pain, and it’s cowardly to do that when the other person can’t fight back at all.

Anyway, those aside, this is a fascinating dystopian take on the rule of divide and conquer perpetrated historically by white Europeans and perpetuated by their minority subjects upon their own bodies. It’s got excellent historical chops as well as sci-fi bonafides: I loved the idea of the Helix and the fangirl references to Frederick Douglass. I’m very interested in seeing where Ms Gomillion goes with this next, as I’m intrigued by the whole Obi Solomon thing as well as by the forces that seemingly lie coiled in Arika’s breast. Sequel please, and soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/26/the-record-keeper-by-agnes-gomillion-2/

Jun 23 2019

Off to the Wabe

Perhaps to gyre and gimble. Back in mid-July.

In the meantime, I have become a supporting member of Dublin 2019, an Irish Worldcon. I’m gutted that I won’t be able to attend in person, but what can ya do?

Dublin 2019

I had an amazing time at Worldcon 75 in Helsinki, and enjoyed being a Hugo voter for the first time that year, so I am taking up the task again this year. I’ve already read two of the six nominees for Best Novel — Space Opera by Catherynne Valente (which Doreen also read) and Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee. Doreen and I have both read the first Binti novella; the third one is a finalist this year. Doreen has read the first three Muderbot novellas; the second is a Hugo finalist in 2019. Doreen has read Beneath the Sugar Sky, which is a finalist this year; she and I have both read other novellas in the Wayward Children series. Among the Best Series nominees, I have written about several of Charles Stross‘ Laundry books. Doreen and I have both written about Yoon Ha Lee‘s Machineries of Empire series.

Good reading ahead as I pedal through southern Germany.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/23/off-to-the-wabe/

Jun 22 2019

My Real Children by Jo Walton

In 2015 Patricia Cowan has passed getting on in years and is definitely old. She’s reasonably well taken care of in the home where she lives now. She’s often confused, though, sometimes very confused, “VC” as it says in the notes the nurses and aides make. She’s not surprised, though; her mother struggled with dementia in her later years, too. She remembers her childhood well, the years during World War II that she spent at Oxford. And then.

It was when she thought of her children that she was most truly confused. Sometimes she knew with solid certainty that she had four children, and five more stillbirths: nine times giving birth in floods of blood and pain, and of those, four surviving. At other times she knew equally well that she had two children, both born by caesarian section late in her life after she had given up hope. Two children of her body, and another, a stepchild, dearest of them all. When any of them visited she knew them, knew how many of them there were, and the other knowledge felt like a dream. She couldn’t understand how she could be so muddled. If she saw Philip she knew that he was one of her three children, yet if she saw Cathy she knew she was one of her four children. She recognized them and felt that mother’s ache. (pp. 10–11)

My Real Children by Jo Walton

My Real Children tells the stories of those two lives. They start from the same childhood, the same wartime experiences and studies at Oxford. They share the same college boyfriend, the separation when she takes a teaching job after her degree while he goes on to finish, the letters that they exchange, letters that sustained her, letters that convinced her she was part of a great romance, letters that buoyed her as a young woman far from her fiancee, letters interrupted one day by a phone call. Mark, her intended, has gotten a very bad mark on his Oxford degree. The future of scholarship and philosophy that he had imagined is not to be.

“I won’t get a fellowship. I’ll have to become a schoolmaster. I’m calling to say I want to release you from our engagement now that I have no prospects.” Hysteria rose in his tones.
“But that’s ridiculous. I’ll stand by you, you know I will. I’ll wait as long as you like.”
“I won’t let you down, I promised to marry you, but you’ll have to marry me now or never!” Mark said.
Patty felt faint … She did not want to be a burden to Mark, to marry him when he could not afford to start a family. As a married woman she would not be permitted to teach, and what else did an English degree qualify her to do? Besides, if they married, she’d soon have a baby, and she’d be unable to work. Yet she couldn’t bear to give him up, to have his letters stop, for him to go out of her life.
“Oh Mark,” she said. “If it’s to be now or never then—”

The chapter ends. In the next chapter, she says “now” and in the one following “never!” That fulcrum levers Patty into two different worlds, one in which she is soon known as Tricia, marries Mark, does indeed start a family with him in short order, and in which all struggle with the strictures of the time that diminish his prospects and circumscribe hers even more tightly. In the timeline where she turns him down, she finds that without Mark’s letters, the school where Pat, as Patricia comes to be known, teaches is even more isolated and dreadful. Almost the sole ray of light is when a university friend invites her to come along on a trip to Italy during the summer break. “She replied to Marjorie and said she would go. … She could be miserable in Rome just as well as in Twickenham.” (p. 66) But of course she is not miserable. Pat begins a love affair that will last all of her life; she falls in love with Italy itself.

And so the two Patricias separate in 1949, grow to maturity, have families, survive heartbreak and trauma, live rich and full lives, and reunite, as it were, as a very confused patient in 2015. Neither of the worlds that Patricia knows is ours. It’s been a little while since I finished the book, and details of which events go in which timeline have faded, but the Soviets win the race to the moon in one of them. That may or may not be the one in which the superpower confrontation under JFK went down in history as the Cuban nuclear exchange (limited, fortunately; otherwise, one alternate history would have been much shorter than the other), and other tit-for-tat nuclear exchanges — between India and Pakistan, for instance — are a recurring part of international politics. Tricia’s timeline has more advanced space travel than Pat’s or ours; there’s a moon base, and academics spending a year there for research is routine by the 1990s. Pat’s has better biology, and a set of guidebooks to Italy by one P.A. Cowan.

Of Tricia’s four children who survive, the oldest is named Doug, which was fun for me. Although he has his own tragedies, which was of course less so.

In both worlds, Walton reflects on the burdens that women bear, and how so many systems work together to make them heavier. She writes of how larger currents of history ripple into the lives of ordinary people. My Real Children is not a fantasy of political agency; its characters do not shape the worlds that they live in, but they do contain those worlds and by showing them to readers, Walton invites reflection on life within more familiar constraints of gender, of class, of nationality, of background. Patricia’s stories are rich and well-told, two biographies equally real for readers, full of people with their own lives and tales. Now and never, forever and ever, in whichever world.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/22/my-real-children-by-jo-walton/

Jun 19 2019

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Becoming really is that good. Here’s a lengthy excerpt from the beginning.

There’s a lot I still don’t know about America, about life, about what the future might bring. But I do know myself. My father, Fraser, taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word. My mother, Marian, showed me how to think for myself and to use my voice. Together, in our cramped apartment on the South Side of Chicago, they helped me see the value in our story, in my story, in the larger story of our country. Even when it’s not pretty or perfect. Even when it’s more real than you want it to be. Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.

For eight years, I lived in the White House, a place with more stairs than I can count—plus elevators, a bowling alley, and an in-house florist. … Our meals were cooked by a team of world-class chefs and delivered by professionals more highly trained than those at any five-star restaurant or hotel. Secret service agents, with their earpieces and guns and deliberately flat expressions, stood outside our doors, doing their best to stay out of our family’s private life. We got used to it, eventually, sort of—the strange grandeur of our new home and also the constant, quiet presence of others.
The White House is where our two girls played ball in the hallways and climbed trees on the South Lawn. It’s where Barack sat up late at night, poring over briefings and drafts of speeches in the Treaty Room, and where Sunny, one of our dogs, sometimes pooped on the rug. … There were days when I felt suffocated by the fact that our windows had to be kept shut for security, that I couldn’t get some fresh air without causing a fuss. There were other times when I’d be awestruck by the white magnolias blooming outside, the everyday bustle of government business, the majesty of a military welcome. There were days, weeks, and months when I hated politics. And there were moments when the beauty of this country and its people so overwhelmed me that I couldn’t speak.
Then it was over. … And when it ends, when you walk out the door that last time from the world’s most famous address, you’re left in many ways to find yourself again.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/19/becoming-by-michelle-obama/

Jun 17 2019

Der Vater eines Mörders by Alfred Andersch

In May 1928, the director of an old-fashioned high school in Munich enters a ninth grade classical Greek class to check and see how the students are coming along with their lessons. Der Vater eines Mörders tells how one student, Franz Kien, experienced the hour, what he saw and heard, what he thought and felt. Andersch describes the hour in exquisite detail, from the relations within the class to what Kien thinks about his regular teacher, to Kien’s observations about the changing power dynamics within the class as the director quizzes one student after another, sidelining the regular teacher and giving lessons, most of them inadvertent, that reach well beyond Greek.

Der Vater eines Moerders

Why, though? Why did one of post-war Germany’s most renowned authors turn to that May afternoon at a distance of more than half a century for the subject of the last work that he completed during his lifetime? The explanation is in the work’s title, although the explanation of the title does not come until the half-way point in this 80-page novella.

Despite its short length, Der Vater eines Mörders addresses but does not answer the big question of twentieth-century Germany: how did Hitler happen? The book is set in Munich, which the Nazis regarded as the “capital of the movement” (in contrast to Berlin, which was the capital of the Reich both before and after their seizure of power). Five years before the book takes place, Hitler and his crew had attempted a coup in Munich but had been stopped by the republican authorities’ use of force. Hitler had been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for treason, though he served less than one. In the month that the book takes place his ban from public speaking had been lifted; he and his party had of course been active in Munich the whole time.

The school where Der Vater eines Mörders takes place is not just any high school in Munich. It’s the Wittelsbacher Gymnasium, a secondary school named for Bavaria’s ruling house. Wittelsbacher is a real school; Carl Orff, for example, attended. It is one of the “humanistic gymnasiums,” a type of school in the German-speaking world that emphasize classical learning, teaching Latin and ancient Greek to all students. In the early 20th century, only these schools were allowed to give the credential that allowed students to enroll in any type of university studies; graduates of non-humanistic schools had limits placed on their choice of university education. Education at a humanistic gymnasium was and is considered a means of entering Germany’s elite.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/17/der-vater-eines-morders-by-alfred-andersch/

Jun 15 2019

The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner

“No one sends for a niece they’ve never seen before just to annoy her family and ruin her life. That, at least, is what I thought. This was before I had ever been to the city. I had never been in a duel, or held a sword myself. I had never kissed anyone, or had anyone try to kill me, or worn a velvet cloak. I had certainly never met my uncle the Mad Duke. Once I met him, much was explained.” (p. 3)

That’s how you open the follow-up to a perfect book. The Privilege of the Sword starts about fifteen years after Swordspoint, and follows the fortunes of Katherine, the first-person narrator who was born around the time of the other novel’s events and raised as a proper country gentlewoman in one of the lesser branches of the Tremontaine family. She helps her mother in managing their modest estates, keeping track of the spoons and suchlike, until one day. Duke Tremontaine has been hounding his sister’s family with lawsuits over bits of property, never quite ruining them, but also giving them to know that if he ever turned his resources to the task, he surely could. Katherine’s family has been adjusted to the death of her father; one brother has gone to the city to try to make his fortune, the other cannot be spared because he is actually good at farming and stewardship, while Katherine and her mother keep up the domestic side of things, as well as appearances. Mother and daughter both harbor hopes that she will go to the city and make a good match. They are getting by when the lawsuits return, threatening to tie up their income and cost more lawyers than they can possibly afford. And then a letter arrives, turning things upside down again.

And now here was the Mad Duke, actually inviting us to the city to be his guests at Tremontaine House. My mother looked troubled, but I knew such an invitation could mean only one thing: an end to the horrible lawsuits, the awful letters. Surely all was forgiven and forgotten. We would go to town and take our place among the nobility there at last, with parties and dancing and music and jewels and clothes—I threw my arms around my mother’s waist and hugged her warmly. ‘Oh, Mama! I knew no one could stay angry with you forever. I am so happy for you!’
But she pulled away from me. ‘Don’t be. The entire thing is ridiculous. It’s out of the question. (p. 6)

Katherine is mistaken; much of the novel’s early parts are concerned with how very many different things Katherine is mistaken about.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/15/the-privilege-of-the-sword-by-ellen-kushner/

Jun 15 2019

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

A Deepness in the Sky is about as close to opposite of Just One Damned Thing After Another as it’s possible to be and still have both books inhabit the same genre. Deepness is big (774 pages in the mass market paperback edition that I have), full of carefully worked out ideas about space and science and technology and progress, plays faithfully within the known laws of physics with just a few exceptions, features aliens and at least two different kinds of humans, offers interplanetary battles, speculates about alternative economic arrangements, considers carefully what a slower-than-light interstellar collection of civilizations would be like, and much more. Deepness won the Hugo in 2000 for best novel.

It’s also a total slog.

Honestly, there was more life in the first forty pages of One Damned Thing than in the first four hundred of Deepness. I don’t know what happened; Deepness is set in the same Milky Way as A Fire Upon the Deep, which is terrific. Fire has at least as many nifty ideas, not least that our galaxy has several different zones in which the laws of physics behave differently. Out toward the edge, FTL travel, superintelligent AIs, and many other attributes of the technological singularity are not only possible, they occur with predictable regularity. Further in, none of these are possible; they are known to the characters of Deepness as the “Failed Dreams.” Fire has a memorable alien: a dog-like creature whose consciousness only arises in packs. They struck me as plausible, convincing, and truly different from human consciousness. That’s more or less a trifecta of science fiction creature creation.

There are aliens in Deepness; Vinge calls them spiders, but they talk like post-WWII white Californians. I was reading Ada Palmer‘s Seven Surrenders at the same time I was reading A Deepness in the Sky, and I found Palmer’s far-future humans far stranger than either of Vinge’s non-earth human civilizations or his aliens. There’s an argument from the text that the spiders are (through translators) presenting themselves as less alien than they actually are and thus manipulating for their own reasons the humans who have entered the spiders’ star system. It’s plausible, but (a) I’m not sure that I buy it, and (b) it doesn’t change the experience of reading the many, many chapters that take place before that explanation can make any sense. That experience had me very close to uttering the Eight Deadly Words.

Part of why I didn’t is that the setup of Deepness is genuinely nifty. The main site of the action is a system called On-Off, named for a star whose intensity rises and falls drastically over periods of time that are, by cosmic standards, extremely short. For the planet orbiting On-Off in the habitable zone, that means summers that last for many years followed by equally lengthy winters chilly enough for most of the atmosphere to freeze solid. (Seasons more extreme than Westeros; A Game of Thrones was published just a few months before Deepness. Ursula K. Le Guin, for example, posited a similar but less stark environment in her second novel, Planet of Exile in the mid-1960s.) Improbably, life has evolved on this planet, and just as improbably, it has achieved sentience and civilization, adapted to the need to go into hibernation and survive underground until the next thaw. Two starfaring civilizations have been observing On-Off for centuries, enough to know its profile and when it will change states. As luck, or the authorial hand, would have it, both civilizations have chosen to send expeditions to On-Off to catch the beginning of the next On phase.

One civilization, the Qeng Ho, is a loosely knit collection of trading systems and clans, tied together by common approaches to combating cultural drift, by families that control the interstellar fleets, and by a few extraordinary individuals who ration their conscious years carefully among decades or even centuries spent in cold sleep between the stars. The other, the Emergents, control a far smaller number of star systems, but do it much more tightly through tight hierarchies and a means to focus human mental abilities so tightly that they exceed the computation available in that part of the galaxy.

It’s an interesting set-up. Unfortunately, I found the characters one-note, going clickety-clack through their various machinations until the plot engine reached the high point it had been climbing toward through all those pages. It was too much for too little, in the end. There’s another book in the set, Children of the Sky. I own it, and may eventually read it. Online resources tell me it’s a direct sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep– That gives me hope that it’s more engaging than A Deepness in the Sky.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/15/a-deepness-in-the-sky-by-vernor-vinge/

Jun 14 2019

An Interview With G. S. Denning, author of The Sign Of Nine

Q. I’ve never done a follow-up interview before! I’d like first to thank you for the delightful first interview we conducted. What new and delightful things have you encountered since last we spoke that you’d like to share with our readers?

A. I’ve never done a follow-up interview, either. First! Double-first! Let’s do this.

Well, since we last spoke, Warlock Holmes has moved into its dark middle chapter. Book 4 and 5 are sort of the “Empire” section. I’m spending two years making all my characters and the readers who care for them suffer! Bwaaa-ha-ha!

Q. Irene has definitely been my favorite female character in your books so far, a view that has only been encouraged by the depiction of the dire Mary Morstan in The Sign Of Nine. Can I look forward to an eventual showdown between Irene and Mary in the final book in the series?

AI thought about that. I thought about having Mary present in all the following books (and this series might go to 8 or 9, if I get to parody all 60 Holmes stories). But there’s one big thing in the way of that: she dissapears from the original stories. Suddenly, she’s just… gone. I could write her in, but I’m already trying to get Adler and Moriarty bigger roles and I’m in danger of not being a very effective parody if I stray too far from the originals. I’ve got a fine balance to maintain, here. Now—without engaging in too many spoilers—there is a showdown planned for Mary. But I won’t promise it’s necessarily with Irene. All I’ll say is that my Mary is not just going to fade away. My readers will know exactly what happens with my Mary Morstan. Oh, yes they will… *rubs hands and cackles in a dark corner*

Q. While romance has always been a significant interest of Watson’s, much to the bewilderment of Holmes, it’s really the friendship between the two men that is the sustaining relationship of any fiction about them. What are your thoughts on the importance of friendship vs romance?

A. I have always thought people put too much distance between the two. The best romances are not usually the people who are just hot for each others’ pants. They occur between people who have a fundamental connection to which attraction can be added. Friendship is a great basis for this. In the case of Watson and Irene, it’s respect. Watson is fascinated with her because she’s smarter than him. She keeps besting him. So, of course, he can’t think about anyone else. By the end of book 5 (which I know is a long way away for you guys, sorry) I’ve made it pretty clear why she likes him. Because he’s a good man. Like Han Solo, he always says he’s playing it safe and looking out for himself, but he never does. He puts his wellbeing and safety aside to help others all the time. He even tries to help Irene (though she doesn’t need it). After all the shallow, awful men she’s accustomed to, she can’t help but admire how good he is. She knows Holmes is good. She knows Watson is good. They respect each other for it. She respects them. They keep calling her a murderer and a liar—which she knows she is—and she just has this frustration that she’s not allowed into their “good-person” club.

Q. You’ve been a big proponent of geek culture becoming mainstream. With two of the biggest geek properties in popular media, the Avengers and Game Of Thrones, recently winding down their effective main stories, what other stories do you think will come to the forefront, Sherlock and Lovecraft aside?

A. Honestly, I think there’s going to be a bit of a vaccum for a while. And yes, I know there’s never been so much geek-friendly entertainment. I know there’s never been such a focus on writing in television. But still, I have this fear that everyone is going to rush to try to fill that void. And the things they’re going to throw in are going to be like… well… like Penny Dreadful—based on a flavor that they know we geeks will like; filled with a lot of cool ideas and cool visuals; but definitely not the finished, polished, complete packages that are prepared to fill the shoes that have just been vacated.

That said: hey, Netflix, call me! You want to start doing movies, eh? How about movies, supported by streamed episodes of the same IP? Because there were 4 Holmes novels and 56 short stories. That’s 4 longer movies and 56 smaller episodes of Warlock Holmes that I’ll let you have for little more than the promise you’ll do them well.

And that’s the big thing for whatever geek-dynasty is going to supplant the MCU and GoT: you need to do that stuff really well. Even GoT faltered at the end. Star Wars has blown up the Death Star 3 bloody times! Don’t try to fool us. Be bold! Craft something marvelous!

Q. Speaking of Lovecraft, I know you’ve been very interested in seeing what other authors do with the setting now that it’s public domain. Do you have any recommendations of such that you’ve enjoyed so far? And do you think you’ll ever turn your hand to it yourself?

A. Well, in a sense, I am. There has always been an idea in Warlock Holmes that magic is dark and bad. That gods are not what we expect. That the idea of the human soul or immortality is laughable. And that outside our comfortable little reality are horrible, evil beings that would crush us utterly if they ever got in here. I owe most of my paycheck to Arthur Conan Doyle, sure, but Lovecraft should get a cut, too.

I think if I ever tried Lovecraft more directly, my take would be this: my protagonist is basically Cthulhu. He sees the humans and all they’ve built and he’s fascinated. He wants to experience it all. He wants to fanboy over all of it. He wants to be loved and included and have what people have: good friends with whom to enjoy all the marvels humans have created. Unfortunately, he’s 200 feet tall and destroys all he touches. And his only friends are the kind of humans who are glad he does. Poor fella.

As far as what I’ve seen that’s fun like that… hm… I see so little now that I spend 40 hours a week at my day-job, 25 hours a week on Holmes, and still try to have time for my wife and two young girls. Hell, I don’t even sleep that much. Oh! Here’s one! Go back and check out the much-ignored Todd and the Book of Pure Evil. Basically, it’s like dirtier, funnier, Canadian Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Q. In our last interview, we talked about your very intriguing YA novel, a sort of Romeo and Juliet with intrepid adventurers on one side and mad scientists on the other. Will we be able to look forward to reading that in print in the near future?

A. The project isn’t dead, really, but it is delayed. Honestly, Wonder-Woman, Squirel-Girl and Black Panther have done a lot of what it was trying to do: say welcome to a more diverse range of comic-book lovers. And since my writing hours are limited, Titan Books and my agent want to see that spent on Warlock. And they’re right. I have this cold, creeping dread of being time-crunched into putting out a bad book. Bad books last forever. My grandkids will be judging me on that. Marketing is wise. Sleeping is wise. But most importantly, I’ve got to spend my time making sure I’ve got a worthy book 5.

Q. What other projects are you working on with the Warlock Holmes series winding down?

A. Well… It isn’t. Titan has only purchased 5 books—and that’s normal. They’ve got to make sure I keep bringing in enough dough to support more, before they commit to making anything unprofitable. But I know it would take me 8 to 9 books to finish the series off. And… I don’t know… I’m so married to this series now that I think I’d finish it, even if Titan gave me the boot. I hate leaving stories unfinished, and I know how to finish this one.

Q. The Graphic Audio version of your books so far is so much fun, and I’m not ordinarily a fan of audiobooks myself. Are there any other media adaptations of Warlock Holmes forthcoming?

A. Yeah. I love those guys. And they just keep getting better. I enjoyed their version of my first and second books, but by book 3… well, let me just say: I’ll probably never read my own third book again. I’ll just listen to those guys’ radio-play version. They’ve agreed to do The Sign of Nine and I’m so happy!

No other adaptations on the horizon. We have had 3 film nibbles and a rumor that the Veep writers were adapting Warlock, but nothing with any teeth, so far. Don’t give up, though. I haven’t.

Q. On the subject of media adaptation, what would be your dream casting of a Warlock Holmes movie?

A. Right now I’m on a kick where I’d like to see it color-swapped or gender swapped. I’ve wanted to be more of an ally for geekdom as an opt-in culture. Unfortunately, the first project I’ve gotten into the public eye is very old, very white male-centric. But, come on, try and tell me that Key and Peele would make a fantastic Holmes/Watson duo. You know who else would make a charming Watson? Masie Williams. And I hear she just came available. I totally want to see Masie looking put-upon in a fake moustache, don’t you?

Q. You and I both love this series, but go ahead and tell the readers why you love this latest installment, The Sign Of Nine!

A. I think the real strength of Sign of Nine is in Watson’s drug-dream scenes. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that I go almost 20 pages without a joke in one of them gave me cold, hard terror-sweats. But they’re worth it. They give insight to the villains and the larger world of the story which—assuming my readers have been along for this whole ride—it was rather time for. I didn’t want this to come as a total addendum, absolutely outside the frame of the story. So, I made sure that even if the dreams themselves were extraneous, the price Watson paid to get them was central to the arch of the book. And—without spoiling too much—that price sets up book 5.

~~~

Author Links:

g s denning

~~~

The Sign Of Nine was published May 21st 2019 and is available via all good book sellers. My review of the book itself may be found here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/14/an-interview-with-g-s-denning-author-of-the-sign-of-nine/

Jun 13 2019

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

Here’s a cure for excessively serious or positively ponderous. In Just One Damned Thing After Another, Jodi Taylor took a premise that’s been used numerous times before — history as a practical academic discipline, aided and abetted by time travel — and simply wrote the hell out of it. St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research is an out of the way annex of Thirsk University, somewhere in the UK, and they definitely do not do time travel. As the director puts it, “We investigate major historical events in contemporary time.” (p. 11, emphasis in the original) And the first-person narrator, Dr. Madeleine Maxwell, thinks to herself, “Put like that, of course, it all made perfect sense.”

Just One Damned Thing After Another

That handwaving is as close as Taylor gets to explaining how the historians’ traveling machines work, which is to say not at all. She doesn’t care, because this isn’t the kind of book that looks at physics too closely, or carefully examines the implications of a technology that allows transportation through time and space, or that charts in exquisite detail the consequences of undertaking numerous hazardous missions with high casualty rates. This is the kind of book that in just over three hundred pages sends its major characters to the Western Front of World War I, to an unknown but predator-filled location in the Mesozoic, and to the very flames of the Library at Alexandria.

Maxwell has an unhappy family history that is never explained, but which leaves her unattached in the present; she has advanced training in history and archeology, which give her the skills and mindset for a hands-on approach to history. Together, they produce a devil-may-care approach that suits the book’s madcap pace. Then there’s her penchant for risk-taking or, as she puts it in her internal narration of a most unusual job interview, “Thinking carefully is something that happens to other people.” (p. 10)

While many laws of physics are waved away for the sake of the story, there is something of a law of conservation of history. Or History, as the director of St. Mary’s puts it.

“Think of History as a living organism, with its own defence mechanisms. History will not permit anything to change events that have already taken place. If History thinks, even for one moment, then it will, without hesitation, eliminate the threatening virus. Or historian, as we like to call them.” (p. 12)

So there’s dangerous but exciting work. Naturally there’s a team of people eager to do it, and a supporting cast that’s also full of quirks and striking personalities. The security team is particularly striking, but usually give fair warning when they are about to do it.

The new historians are put through rigorous training before they can be trusted to accompany more senior members on any missions.

Wednesday was [the] Self-Defence [examination]. I made no headway at all with Weasel as he none too gently chucked me around all over the place, grinning his stupid head off all the time. I waited until a particularly heavy fall then placed my hand on my lower stomach, curled into a ball and uttered, ‘Oh God, the baby!’
Weasel stopped dead, saying ‘What …?’ and I hacked his legs out from underneath him, leaped to my feet, ran across his chest, and rang the bell, which was the whole point of the exercise. Weasel shot me a filthy look and, at this point, there was no scribbling [on the examiners’ clipboards] at all. Major Guthrie threw down his clipboard and walked off.
‘Oh dear,’ I said to a watching Murdoch.
‘No, you’re OK. He’s gone round the corner where no one can see him laugh.’ (pp. 32–33)

The pace isn’t much slower anywhere in the book, and it’s so full of life that it’s a joy to read from start to finish. Plus it’s a cracking good adventure story because not only does History itself resent intruders from one part in another, the Institute has enemies within the University (disproving the old adage about stakes being low in academic politics), and not everyone within the Institute is a reliable as they first appear. Taylor pulled out all the stops, but, improbably, there are now at least six sequels in the chronicles of St. Mary’s. One damned thing after another.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/13/just-one-damned-thing-after-another-by-jodi-taylor/

Jun 04 2019

Wastelands 3: The New Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams

I genuinely cannot remember the last time I read a short story collection so consistently stunning. Honestly, there’s not a weak one in the bunch, and that’s saying a lot considering there are 34 tales of post-apocalyptic life in this hefty volume. Whether the end of the world comes about due to war or infection or alien invasion or climate disaster (or other reason I’m presently forgetting,) these stories chronicle the ways life goes on. It is a surprisingly joyous anthology. Hope is one throughline: survivors use the trappings of fallen civilizations to bring their fellows a reminder of a shared humanity, as in Tananarive Due’s One Day Only or Meg Elison’s Come On Down. Change is another, as in Susan Jane Bigelow’s The Eyes of The Flood or Ken Liu’s The Plague, which latter also offers biting commentary on cultural imperialism. The most interesting and worthwhile stories have to do with survivors who aren’t the average protagonist of dystopian fiction, such as the transgender hero in Emma Osborne’s Don’t Pack Hope or the physically disabled heroine of Corinne Duyvis’ And The Rest Of Us Wait.

As you might be able to tell, this is an unapologetically progressive anthology. John Joseph Adams has curated an impressive selection of science fiction that is truly forward-thinking, from some of the most famous names in the business. Even the stories that eschew hope for either a jaded acceptance of the end (Adam-Troy Castro’s inventive The Last To Matter) or to preserve the status quo (Catherynne M. Valente’s The Future Is Blue) do so out of a belief in the power and worth of humanity. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure how much of a downer 500+ pages of the end of the world would be but Mr Adams has put together the perfect blend of pathos, humor and courage with which to see through the horrors of the apocalypse.

It’s kind of shocking to me how unfamiliar I was with Mr Adams’ work prior to this considering how much speculative fiction I consume. I mean, Gardner Dozois and Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling are names embedded in my reader’s brain as editorial greats; after this collection, I have a new star to add to that pantheon. Reading this volume brought to mind the days when a tome like this was the most coveted book of the year for me: that interest has waned in recent times, but Wasteland 3: The New Apocalypse has re-sparked my love for sf&f anthologies.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/04/wastelands-3-the-new-apocalypse-edited-by-john-joseph-adams/