A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
The Star Road by Gordon R Dickson
Timescape by Gregory Benford
Polaris by Jack McDevitt
Seeker by Jack McDevitt
Bridge by Lauren Beukes
The Volunteers by Raymond Williams
The This by Adam Roberts
Starfarers by Vonda N McIntyre
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Synthajoy by DG Compton
As per the science fiction kick, April saw a boatload of skiffy and nothing else. In the good camp sits Chris Beckett and Lauren Beukes, both of whom have a good chance of making it into the ten best reads of this year. Dark Eden follows the tribulations of a marooned tribe of humans who've descended from a single pair of astronauts, and eke out an existence on a habitable but sunless world. Life is sustained by Eden's internal heating and the local wildlife make liberal use of bioluminescence. That's the premise for an excellent and literary study of group dynamics vs individuality, and the emergence of patriarchy and class in a pre-industrial society. Bridge is completely different, and concerns journeys through parallel worlds while marrying dreamy SF tropes to hunter/prey thriller writing. I still hope to write a post about it, so there might be more to come. Both are strong recommends for the science fiction curious who appreciate good writing.
Perhaps the most potentially interesting for readers of this blog is Raymond Williams's The Volunteers. Yes, he wrote an SF novel. Set in the late 1980s (this was published in 1978) during an intense period of class struggle, after a picket is shot by army strikebreakers a Welsh politician survives an assassination attempt launched by 'the volunteers' - a shadowy left wing organisation that has infiltrated the institutions of state to use the apparatus against itself. Imagine Socialist Action with guns and a bit of dynamism. Despite forecasting the coming of 24 hour rolling news, I didn't find The Volunteers compelling - though the occupation/shooting scene was brilliantly written.
Also of interest was the Adam Roberts. I blow hot and cold with his work, but I'm happy to say The This sits on the like/appreciated side of my ledger. Deleuze and Guattari wrote about conceptual personae in What is Philosophy?. Here, Roberts has not only turned Hegel's Absolute into a character, it's the hinge around which the novel hangs. A quick shout out to the McDevitt books too. I've always found our Jack's novels straightforward uncomplicated fun, and these two - in his Alex Benedict sequence - are no exception. I was also looking forward to Martine's A Memory Called Empire, seeing as booktubers generally rave about it and the book bagged a Hugo. But, in all honesty, it was very, very average. I think the vibe was trying to be Game of Thrones-style shenanigans on the imperial home world of an interstellar empire, and as Martine is a Byzantine specialist in her day job, she was better placed to carry this off than most but ... no. It lacked genuine urgency and has none of the compulsive pacing a political thriller requires to be successful.
But we do have a contender for the bad books for this year, and that's A Half-Built Garden. It wasn't badly written as such, and it does offer a different take on the first contact staple of SF. But where this goes awry is the massive deal she makes about recognising people's pronouns. Other writers, like Beukes above, seamlessly integrate non-binary characters into their narratives. In Garden, Emrys signposts and shoehorns pronoun clashes in to the detriment of the story, leaves them sounding unconvincing, and it looks too try hard and preachy. Not a favourite.
What have you been reading recently?
2 comments:
Sleeper Beach then went back to re read Titanium Noir - very good reads indeed and the author has something to say politically
Mostly been rereading -- went back to Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars recently and although Robinson isn't very capable at characterisation, at least not in the Trilogy, I was fairly impressed by his sociology.
Of the above, about the only one I've read is the Beukes. As usual she's capable, but my wife and I agreed that she could use a decent editor; ideas good but way, way too long for the content.
Oh, and Tim Winton's Juice also struck me as worth looking at.
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