Rjurik Davidson's Blog, page 2

Chicago Review of Books Recommends The Stars Askew

One of the top 10 books to read in July:

“Forget the flippant summer beach read. Ring in the dog days with these 10 science fiction, fantasy, and speculative novels picked as July’s best by the Chicago Review of Books. From dark, masterfully constructed plots to stories that probe the human condition, the following books will keep you perplexed—and bewildered—until the leaves begin to change.”

 

The Stars Askew Review – from Pop Mythology

I have been waiting with anticipation for the follow-up to Rjurik Davidson’s strikingly original debut, Unwrapped Sky (2014), and The Stars Askew does not disappoint. The “young master of the New Weird” fleshes out his wonderfully bizarre world, a world that blends familiar elements of history and mythology in unique ways.

Read the review here.

Alan Moore’s take on Lovecraft: ‘Providence’

Years ago I first read Alan Moore’s early work, and I recall the visionary intensity of it, the structural and narrative ingenuity. Miracleman, Swamp Thing, V of Vendetta, Watchmen — I’m a big fan of these. His later work, for me, lacked the same vitality, and somewhere along the way I stopped reading him. For me, this fell somewhere in between the two eras. It’s, so far, pretty standard Lovecraftian stuff: a journalist who is led on a trail into the occult secrets of New England, hidden books and so on. There are some nice reversals and surprises too. All in all, I enjoyed it a lot, though I’m not sure it’s particularly original. Still, it’s well done.





View all my reviews

The Stars Askew

Lovely, huh? Well, it’ll be nicer when the beautiful front covers are on, but still!

Dark Tides – A New Collection

 

Dark Tides

From the author of Unwrapped Sky, Rjurik Davidson 

Forthcoming from Twelfth Planet Press in July 2017

 

Dark Tides collects together the short fiction of award winning, Clarion South graduate Rjurik Davidson. Dark Tides will be available in both print and ebook.

 

Twelfth Planet Press is delighted to announce the acquisition of Dark Tides from Rjurik Davidson.

 Dark Tides is an exciting genre-spanning collection featuring science fiction and fantasy, surrealism and magic realism. A man listens to his mysterious neighbour’s constant weeping; a future revolutionary faces terrible moral choices in the face of a surrounding enemy army; in the city of Caeli-Amur, a man visits the ghost-haunted ruins of the ancient forum; an immigrant searches for intimacy in a fascist Paris; a researcher joins an expedition to capture a Siren; a lost soul is hired to guard a corridor with six permanently closed doors—these and many more stories intrigue and sparkle, swing us from melancholy to triumph, and set our minds alight with ideas. Dark Tides is a collection that unveils the contradictions of life and turn them on an angle so that we might see them—and ourselves—more clearly.

 Rjurik Davidson is a freelance writer. He has written short stories, essays, reviews and screenplays. His first collection, The Library of Forgotten Books, was published by PS Publishing in 2010. His novel, Unwrapped Sky, was published by Tor Books in April 2014. Sci Fi Now claims it can “go toe-to-toe with China Miéville’s best.” Kirkus Reviews calls it “Impressively imagined and densely detailed.” Newtown Review of Books says it’s “one volume you cannot ignore.” His novel, The Stars Askew will be out in 2016 and his screenplay The Uncertainty Principle (co-written with Ben Chessell) is currently in development.

 Rjurik can be found at www.rjurik.com and tweets as @rjurikdavidson.

 

For further information, please contact:

Twelfth Planet Press at contact@twelfthplanetpress.com

 

 

 

Sometimes it’s good to remember

A lyrical and evocative novel of ancient magic, minotaurs and myth; of dreams and nightmares, sacrifice and redemption. Highly recommended. Garth Nix Rjurik has a brilliant, fecund imagination, and I absolutely love the setting and the sense of place in the book. Caeli-Amur is one of the more memorable cities in recent fantasy. Hannu Rajaniemi Rjurik Davidson works the sharp edges where epic fantasy, uncanny science fiction, and the New Weird collide. An amazing debut. Scott Westerfeld A dark, strange invitation for lovers, losers and lunatics. BEN PEEK Impressively imagined. KIRKUS A brooding tale of civil unrest and personal destinies PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Unwrapped Sky would be hard to imagine in a world before China Mieville. However, this debut novel from Australian author Rjurik Davidson can go toe-to-toe with Perdido Street Station and Iron Council as an imaginative, immersive read with a point to make. SCIFINOW Unwrapped Sky will thrill fans of rich mythologies … It simultaneously delivers something new, while feeling engagingly comfortable. MANIA.COM Davidson immerses readers in his blend of fantasy and science fiction via striking characters who rush headlong into chaotic and dangerous situations from which they belatedly realize they’re unable to extricate themselves. SEATTLE TIMES One of the best and most original fantasy novels I’ve read to date. It’s an impressive achievement, because it’s a refreshingly different kind of a fantasy novel. Its wonderfully new weirdish atmosphere will leave readers holding their breath and wanting more. With this novel Rjurik Davidson proves that he is the new master of new weirdish fantasy that sparkles with creativity and originality. Very highly recommended! RISINGSHADOW.NET Unwrapped Sky is an ambitions fantasy novel with a breathtakingly vast world tangled in a web of deceit, betrayal, and revolution … I highly recommend it to anyone interested in an engrossing fantasy that will whisk you off to faraway places. EMPYREANEDGE.COM An original story that sets 19th century political struggles in a fascinating fantasy world. Davidson’s characters are flawed and compelling. This is an ambitious debut from a very promising writer. POPMYTHOLOGY.COM This book is a journey, and that’s the kind of book I like the most. It’s one of those novels that I had to savor and read slowly, and I just know I will catch something different every time I read it. What a gift. BOOKWORMBLUES.NET A lyrical and evocative novel of ancient magic, minotaurs and myth; of dreams and nightmares, sacrifice and redemption. Highly recommended. GARTH NIX Rjurik has a brilliant, fecund imagination, and I absolutely love the setting and the sense of place in the book. Caeli-Amur is one of the more memorable cities in recent fantasy. HANNU RAJANIEMI Rjurik Davidson works the sharp edges where epic fantasy, uncanny science fiction, and the New Weird collide. An amazing debut. SCOTT WESTERFELD A dark, strange invitation for lovers, losers and lunatics. BEN PEEK Impressively imagined. KIRKUS A brooding tale of civil unrest and personal destinies PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Unwrapped Sky would be hard to imagine in a world before China Mieville. However, this debut novel from Australian author Rjurik Davidson can go toe-to-toe with Perdido Street Station and Iron Council as an imaginative, immersive read with a point to make. SCIFINOW Unwrapped Sky will thrill fans of rich mythologies … It simultaneously delivers something new, while feeling engagingly comfortable. MANIA.COM Davidson immerses readers in his blend of fantasy and science fiction via striking characters who rush headlong into chaotic and dangerous situations from which they belatedly realize they’re unable to extricate themselves. SEATTLE TIMES One of the best and most original fantasy novels I’ve read to date. It’s an impressive achievement, because it’s a refreshingly different kind of a fantasy novel. Its wonderfully new weirdish atmosphere will leave readers holding their breath and wanting more. With this novel Rjurik Davidson proves that he is the new master of new weirdish fantasy that sparkles with creativity and originality. Very highly recommended! RISINGSHADOW.NET Unwrapped Sky is an ambitions fantasy novel with a breathtakingly vast world tangled in a web of deceit, betrayal, and revolution … I highly recommend it to anyone interested in an engrossing fantasy that will whisk you off to faraway places. EMPYREANEDGE.COM An original story that sets 19th century political struggles in a fascinating fantasy world. Davidson’s characters are flawed and compelling. This is an ambitious debut from a very promising writer. POPMYTHOLOGY.COM This book is a journey, and that’s the kind of book I like the most. It’s one of those novels that I had to savor and read slowly, and I just know I will catch something different every time I read it. What a gift. BOOKWORMBLUES.NET

The Stars Askew

And here’s the UK front cover, which I think is rather wonderful and the opening bit, for those interested.

A revolution is a festival of the oppressed. Caeli-Amur was alive with color and energy. Demonstrations coursed along the thoroughfares. Chants reverberated among the buildings. Everyone seemed involved in that carnivalesque atmosphere. In the crisscrossing alleyways, hardy washer-women debated the new world; in the red-brick factories, committees discussed the conflict between the vigilants and the moderates; on street corners, avant-garde theatre acts performed bizarre agitprop. At the university, students held endless parties, breaking into orgies or fisticuffs before returning to their dwindling stocks of flower-liquors and their nasty Yensa fudge. Love affairs were begun; hearts were broken; new ways of living invented. Life itself seemed to have taken on a new intensity, and time itself expanded so that each moment seemed to last forever. And yet, everything was moving at such a pace!

In the grand Opera building’s northern wing, the moderate leader Thom pressed the letter into Kata’s hand, his eyes wild. Barrel-chested, his beard sprouting in all directions, the second-in-command of the moderate faction possessed an artist’s sensibility. He was nowhere more at home than in the Quaedian quarter’s galleries and theatres. Kata had always liked his unrepressed romanticism, and he was popular with the citizens. His strengths were suited to the moment of liberation.

Now, in the Opera, Thom’s passion seemed to have taken a dark turn. His eyes were those of a haunted man. “I was meant to meet Aceline here earlier, but was held up. Take her this letter. Guard it, though.” He turned his head, eyed Kata with a piercing sideways glance. “I must attend to something, something—”

As she slipped the letter into her jacket pocket, Kata felt a cold rush over her skin. Thom often acted extravagantly, but there had been something different about this request, a desperation which she had never noticed before.

Kata had become a go-between for various moderates. She spent most of her days scurrying up along the alleyways, across the white-topped cliffs, from Opera to factory to university. Most importantly, she carried letters between Thom and the moderate leader, the bone-white, childlike Aceline. It was a lowly role which suited her.

Thom grasped her arm, pulled her back. “Be careful.”

“What is it?” asked Kata.

Thom adjusted the considerably sized bag that hung from his shoulder. A shadow crossed his face as he looked at it. “Go.”

Then Kata was on her way, through the corridors, past the stream of people, and out into the square, where Dexion waited for her. The minotaur was like an image from ancient times, standing against that background of the red sun setting over the ocean. For a moment the rays blinded her, and all she saw was a magnificent silhouette: a creature too large to be a man, its bull’s head outlined against a ball of fire. Kata was mesmerized by his explosive energy, the scent of his spiced hide. The inky blackness of his eyes always captivated and frightened her, but occasionally his joyfulness would shine through and she would breathe again.

Gramsci’s Political Writings, 1921-26

Selections from Political Writings by Antonio Gramsci


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fascinating collection of Gramsci’s writings from the time of the split from the Italian Socialist Party and the foundation of the PCI. It includes Gramsci’s theorisation of fascism (a petit-bourgeois movement to destroy worker’s democracy), his slow transition to the ‘united front’ strategy, debates between him and his collaborators about the first PCI leader Bordiga and his group, his excellent ‘Lyons theses’, his famous essay on the Southern Question, and the first theorisations of many of the themes he would continue in his famous Prison Notebooks. The minutes of the PCI meetings before the Como and Lyons conferences are particularly fascinating: you almost feel like you can hear the arguments between Gramsci and Bordiga, the tension in the air, the feeling that there was so much at stake. In any case, it’s an extraordinarily rich collection, sometimes uneven, but at other times brilliant.

The book might be best to read in conjunction with one of the biographies, because at times the debates can be rather hard to make sense of – 1920s Italy is a long way away. Some things are hidden too: for example, one wouldn’t necessarily know that Gramsci disagreed with Bordiga’s line quite a time before he was prepared to come out an argue against it.

In some ways, this book is a picture of the Comintern at the time, through the lens of Gramsci. The first impression one gets is of just how confused the movement was in the early 1920s. It also seems, alas, that the Comintern was pretty flawed from the beginning. Gramsci seems slow on many things, but then events are moving at such a pace. For example, he initially supports Stalin in the debate with the Left Opposition, but later comes to a much more critical position (and if we believe Victor Serge, had himself sent away from Russia to escape the coming conflagration). By the time Gramsci was arrested by Mussolini, he had made himself into one of the preeminent leaders of the workers movement. Extraordinarily creative and original.





View all my reviews

David Harvey’s ‘The Enigma of Capital’

The Enigma of Capital: and the Crises of Capitalism by David Harvey


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an excellent introduction to the question, “Why is capitalism so crisis prone?” Harvey begins with the events of the 2008 financial crisis and then moves to more abstract considerations such as the widely accepted need for 3 percent growth, the various barriers to this, including geography, labour relations, the environment, technology and so on. In all this, Harvey gives a fairly comprehensible account of his own brand of Marxism. Perhaps the most obvious omission is any sustained attempt to theorise ‘imperialism’, that is, the division of capitalism into competing power-blocks and the systematic exploitation of the third world by the first world. There’s something a bit scholastic and bland about Harvey’s exposition – if this were a novel, you’d feel like it was a bit mechanical – but luckily the content is enough to keep the book buoyant. In addition, it’s impossible to read this without thinking about the future. Though Harvey doesn’t do much with the notion of ‘epochs’ of capitalism (i.e. Late Capitalism a la Mandel), one can’t reflect on the fact that 3 percent growth is fundamentally unsustainable. While one can never rule out another long boom, the last one was brought about by a combination of massive capital destruction during World War Two and the technological revolution that occurred immediately afterwards. This suggests that we’re entering a period of ongoing, cycling crises where politics will become increasingly volatile. Radical movements of left and right, terrorism, civil war, state repression — all these make sense in the context of economic crisis. It’s hard not to foresee more of them in the future. If you’re interested in these things, this book is recommended.





View all my reviews

Nick Mason’s ‘Inside Out’

Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a teenager, I was very much into Pink Floyd. There were a number of reasons. First that they had, pretty much, ended their careers by the time I discovered them and so had the exotic feel of a band from more interesting times. Band leader and bassist Roger Waters’ particular brand of alienation – ‘we don’t need no education’ – appealed to my anarchist tendencies. Dave Gilmour seemed like a magical guitarist. At a certain point that changed, partly from overlistening, partly because I outgrew them. Nowadays I can only really listen to their earlier albums – Meddle most of all – before they get too ponderous, and some might say pretentious.

Luckily, Mason’s memoir isn’t ponderous at all, and he has that breezy type of wry English humour one associates with someone like Michael Palin. Mason seems like a nice chap, the kind you might have been friends with had you known him. Like a good middle class boy, he’s a pretty good writer too. The writing is lively and full of illuminating detail. The history of the band, like the music itself, tends to become less interesting as time passes. Really, it’s the early years, when they are at the head of a particular zeitgeist that is most interesting. Still, rather than any of Mason’s observations, it was my own reflections that tended to dominate the experience of reading the book, and I may as well record those here.

To begin with, I was struck by just how young they were when they made it ‘big’. Their first album, ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn,’ was mostly composed by their first lead man – Syd Barrett – who was probably their only true genius, at the age of of 20-21. Youth is par for the course for popular music, but that’s still young to produce something so unique. Had Barrett not suffered a breakdown under the influence of industry pressure and drugs, and subsequently been ejected from the band, one can only imagine the work they might have produced a decade later. On the subject of youth, the band were all about 28-29 when they recorded their next big hit, Dark Side of the Moon. That’s about right for bands, but there are plenty of people who at 28 still don’t know what they want to do with their life, let alone go about producing one of the greatest albums of all time.

This had me reflecting on the vicissitudes of fate. Being in the right place at the right time — this seems to be a crucial factor in any success. Release an album (or book) too early or too late and it may sink. Collaborate with the right person, and they might drag you – as in this case – into the big-time. In this sense, Mason seems to have led a charmed life. Neither he nor Waters were really very good musicians, though Waters did later become an excellent songwriter. They just happened to have been lucky enough to be friends with Barrett. Barrett essentially gifted the other three (and then four when Dave Gilmour replaced him) a career. As Mason and Waters have said themselves, there would have been no Pink floyd without Barrett.

But once they had their start – and this was another of my ruminations – they gripped on for dear life. They toured incessantly, recorded a lot. Waters taught himself to become a great songwriter almost by force of will, but more importantly, the band seemed to bring out the best in each other. Each member had their own particular skills that they brought. The whole was more than the sum of the parts. I would have liked more of Mason’s reflections on the musical side of things, but as he was mostly an ‘active passenger’ in this, maybe he isn’t the right person for this.

You don’t get much reflection really on any of these larger questions – fame, genius, luck – from Mason in the book, which has more of an everyday approach to it. But you do get a sense of the dynamics of the band, their demanding schedule, the later acrimonious split, and their final reunion for Live 8. Mason is a genial guide to all of the events, and that makes it one of the better rock memoirs.





View all my reviews