Sable Aradia's Blog, page 20

Book Review: Phoenix in the Ashes by Joan D. Vinge

Phoenix in the Ashes by Joan D. Vinge

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I admit, I picked up this book because I heard there was a Cat / Alien Blood story in it that I had not read. Cat is one of my favourite characters, a love from my youth. I first encountered Cat when I read the YA version of Psion as a nominee for the Children’s Choice Awards, and I ate it up. Imagine my delight when, as a teenager, I discovered there was another book, Catspaw; then later as a young adult when I discovered there was a third book, Dreamfall! This whole series has been like that for me!

The story is called “Psiren,” and it’s Cat 1.5, taking place between the events of Psion and Catspaw. And it was awesome. Cat is still my favourite, and it filled in a lot of missing gaps in the storyline that I had wondered at (though I want to assure the reader that it’s not like things didn’t make sense, it’s just that I felt at the time that some character stuff had been left out – and I was right!)

I also really enjoyed the poignant, rare fantasy story called “The Storm King” that Vinge included, with its lovely message of being careful what you wish for. It has all the beauty and mystery of her The Snow Queen series.

The rest of the stories, honestly, were kind of meh.

One was a story about a superstitiously opposed-to-technology community who encounters a helicopter pilot after a nuclear war, which had some promise and passion, and it was basically a Western romance, which I liked, but it wasn’t spectacular.

One was a largely pointless story about some random Martian ruin that was mind-controlling two people to blow it up so that humanity wouldn’t obtain its secrets, but I don’t understand why it did so when the people had already been on Mars for quite some time, and it didn’t even work out right.

One was a story about a “magic peddler” who was using high technology no longer available to most of humanity, that was mostly remarkable for the fact that it’s a classic fantasy trope told entirely with science fictional explanations, like Anne McCaffrey‘s Pern series.

And one was a good story (that’s the novella at the end, called “Mother and Child”) that isn’t at all what it seems, and is a bit like a Gene Wolfe story I read combined with Octavia E. Butler‘s Imago. Good, but not spectacular.

So all in all, I have to give this book a 3 star rating overall. Still worth your time, but maybe not worth running to the store to grab (unless you’re a Cat fan, like me.)

View all my reviews

Book Review: A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files

A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m always up for a good Weird Western, always up for interesting LGBTQ characters, and always up for excellent Canadian science fiction and fantasy. This book fit the bill perfectly!

Ed Morrow is a Pinkerton who has been assigned to infiltrate the gang of one “Reverend” Rook, former Confederate soldier hung for shooting his commanding officer (which he didn’t,) now transformed by his near-death into what they call a hex; a powerful sorcerer. He’s supposed to gather a sense of how powerful the man’s magic is. But what he doesn’t know is that Rook’s lover, Chess Pargeter, is more than just an angry, violent, hot-headed young man who has a talent with gun – he’s also a hex; who doesn’t know it.

Hexes aren’t supposed to be able to work together, because they can’t resist feeding off of each other’s magical energy. But since he doesn’t know he’s a hex, Chess doesn’t know he’s being used. Rook has a plan to save him from himself; if it doesn’t kill him. And Ed Morrow is the tool he needs to help do it.

It’s a page-turning, on-the-edge-of-your-seat adventure, unpredictable, horrific, beautiful and glorious. It was like jumping the back of the Pale Horse itself and hanging on for the ride! The language is positively poetic. I wish I could write like this!

So why did I only give it four stars instead of five?

Two reasons. The first is an unrelenting deluge of stuff like this:

And here Songbird raised her face to what light there was, revealing herself as a truly spectral vision: twelve years old at most, a porcelain doll dressed all in red bridal silk whose features matched those of the painted courtesans decorating her walls almost exactly, aside from one peculiarity– a near-complete lack of colour in the face under her sheer red veil, pig-pale skin, crone-white hair and faded hazel eyes all bleached by some hideous trick of nature. Her hands she held folded in her lap, interlaced fingers covered with long-filigree spikes which gave off a dry, squeaking tone as they rubbed together, a distant cymbal’s crash.

Later followed by:

Songbird screamed out some new phrase, prompting Morrow to look up just in time to see– her whole bottom jaw unhinge, snake-wide, and a stream of live bats pour our of it like fluttery black vomit, filling the air around all three of them with shrieks and teeth. Chess pivoted with one of ’em already clinging fast to the side of his head, and emptied both guns in a matter of seconds. The results, though spectacular– delicate wings shred-torn, furry bodies popped apart like clay pigeons full of blood– were so sadly inefficient overall, he was soon reduced to trying to pistol-whip the damn things to death.

The technique is called an eyekick – a kickass visual in comics, science fiction, fantasy or horror which is meant to stun the brain with overwhelming imagery. And Files does it really, really well. The problem was, she never stopped. Whipsawing back and forth from beautiful to horrible to disgusting and back to beautiful, by the time I got two-thirds through, my mind-eyes were swollen shut, I was punch-drunk, and I could hear nothing in my head but a test pattern. It was just too much. I really don’t think the explosive ending had as much impact as it ought to have as a result.

The other is that the style and point of view shifted suddenly and without warning, just as you started settling into the perspective you had. It was a bit like trying to watch a 70s French art film. While I don’t agree with a lot of the other reviewers I’ve seen in that I did not find it in the least “confusing,” the overall effect gave me some mental whiplash.

In the end, between the two, I felt a bit like I’d just been on an all-night acid trip and someone had tried to mess with me the whole time.

However, Files also has a talent for making you care about characters who, on the outset, seem to have little to recommend them. By the end of the book you like both the Reverend and crazy little Chess, unrepentant murderer and arrogant, lippy bastard though he is. That’s impressive! And somehow, although he is WAAAAAYYYYYY outpowered and, through most of the book, apparently helpless, Morrow manages to keep from being just a meat puppet. Pretty amazing!

I will certainly read the rest of the series! I have the second book already. It’s just that… I think I’m going to give myself a little while to get over the hangover first.

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Little Goblin Girl by Illy Hymen

The Little Goblin Girl: Book One of the Goblin Girl Series by Illy Hymen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Imagine you’re playing World of Warcraft, except that every one of the quests has a sexual element to it. Imagine that someone decided to write this into a novel, but they set it in a totally original world that still captures that feel. Imagine that this was done by a talented writer who creates vivid, memorable characters and keeps you turning the pages, with a story that would be well worth reading even without any of the sex in it. Now imagine that the sex is vivid, unapologetic, and full of many different flavours that should appeal to just about everyone at some point.

That comes close to describing this book!

I would probably classify The Little Goblin Girl as “LitRPG-erotica.” I don’t know why it hasn’t become a huge sensation among World of Warcraft and D&D players yet – because, let’s face it, there’s a huge market for related erotica out there, and this definitely fits the bill.

Maja, the Little Goblin Girl, is a plucky and thoroughly likable character, endearing in her innocence and her innocent and fully realized sexuality. When she ventures outside of the goblin slums and into the wider city-state of Trinity for the first time, she discovers a dangerous and complex world that is hostile to goblins. Fortunately she is surrounded by good, although flawed, people, who seek to protect her and the goblins of the city because it’s the right thing to do.

Faced with the threat, Maja works to come into her own power and become a major asset to her new companions, not just a passive victim of fate, and she does this without losing any of the beautiful and compassionate nature that makes her who she is. The message is overwhelmingly one of love being stronger than any hate. It’s delightfully refreshing in this age of “grim-for-grim’s-sake” writing and the cynical public discourse.

Each one of her companions, from her human lover, to her half-goblin friend-with-benefits, to her half-goblin friend’s somewhat unusual girlfriend, to their adventuring companions (the other “guildies”) has their own story and their own motivations for getting involved in the situation, whether it’s love, friendship, sympathy for the goblins’ plight, or just a desire to do the right thing. You quickly care about each of them, and, I imagine, choose your own favourite to follow.

As to the erotic elements: you can find everything here from relatively vanilla heterosexual sex to gender-switching BDSM and rape play. But understand that everything is consensual; and moreover, Hymen (what a choice of a name!) goes out of her way to make that clear, even when demons are involved. There are even intersex and transgender characters. The only thing missing are gay men, and I understand that’s because Illy chose to focus on the women (and femme) characters in this story. Above all, I really approve of Maja’s playful view of sex. For her, it’s all about joy, and what you like is what you like, and in an ideal world, that would be what it would be.

Not to mention, Hymen pulls no punches. We’re immersed in erotica by page 17 and you can pretty much expect something sexy as a feature of every chapter. Her language is absolutely unapologetically sizzling too! Be prepared to lock the door!

The only reason I’m giving it four stars, and not five, is that I think it suffers a bit from the entrenched RPG language. Guilds and quests and tanks exist without a lot of explanation or in-world justification (at least, not that’s revealed in this book; maybe it’s going to be a feature of the rest of the series) and the motivations of the Trinity Guard confused me somewhat at about the two-thirds mark of the book. If you’re a fan of LitRPG, this won’t bother you in the least. But on a broad scale of fantasy lit it can feel like a flaw in the worldbuilding.

Of course, if that’s the only complaint I have in an erotica book, it’s definitely coming out ahead! It certainly reads better than pretty much every erotica thriller I’ve ever read, with their plethora of poorly-researched secret agents and military operatives!

If adventure fantasy is your thing and you wish there were more sexy stuff out there in that vein, or even if you’re just a grown-up adventure fantasy fan who’s willing to stretch your horizons a bit, I would definitely recommend this book! I look forward to seeing more from Illy Hymen and I’m waiting for the second book in the series with bated breath. Take that any way you want.

Book Review: The Princess Bride by William Goldman

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Unlike just about everybody else in the world, it seems, I stumbled on this great book by accident, well before the movie came out. I’d like to share the story because it’s one of those wonderful stories of discovery that only true bibliophiles tell.

I was babysitting at a new house. I think I must have been about 11 or 12 (the rules were different then.) The kids were watching cartoons and I was bored. As I am wont to do, I snooped through the bookshelf. Most of it was full of legal thrillers (BOR-ring!) but naturally, as an already-confirmed SFF fan, this title caught my eye.

Then I saw it was by William Goldman. I recognized the name. I used to snoop through my mother’s books, too (which is how I discovered Stephen King) and one of the books I had discovered in that manner was called Brothers, one of the first thrillers I remember enjoying; which was the sequel to his much-better known Marathon Man. “He’s a good author,” I thought to myself. “Let’s check this out.”

I’m afraid for the next two days, I was not a very good babysitter, because the book absorbed me completely.

As a child, I skimmed all the metafiction in between what I saw as the main storyline. I wanted a tale of true love and high adventure – although the humour wasn’t lost on me. Later on, when the movie came out on video, I exclaimed excitedly, “This is based on a book! And I read it!” (No one seemed to believe me back then. Nobody ever believed me about stuff like that back then, and it was before the Age of Google, so I had no way to prove it, either. Google has made my life a lot easier.)

I picked up a copy of the 30th Anniversary edition when I saw it at the bookstore I was working at, because it was a good opportunity, since I got an employee discount. And it promptly went back on my shelf, because I had a huge TBR pile and was doing a bunch of reading challenges.

The other day, my partner was watching an episode of “Lost in Adaptation” on YouTube, where a book that was made into a movie is compared and contrasted between the two versions. And they featured “The Princess Bride.” And I thought, “I’m still sick. Now seems like a good time to re-read that book.”

Of course, this book is even better to an adult that it was to a child. First of all, the main story is deeper. Second, the metafiction is both wise and hilarious, and it contains just enough truth in it (including anecdotes from the making of the movie, which were included in the 25th Anniversary edition, along with some new material for the 30th Anniversary edition) that you find yourself wondering how much of what he’s writing is true, and how much is fiction? Including a convincing tale of a missing “reunion scene” that Goldman says he wrote for his “abridgement” of the “S. Morgenstern” classic that doesn’t exist and never did. In this version, he even includes a website where you can supposedly find it (hint: the website goes to an error page.) Goldman’s metafiction is satirical of Hollywood, academia, history, and human nature at equal turns.

Not to mention the main story, which has become such a pop culture classic that its quotes are common parlance and require no explanation. This may be the premiere “fractured fairy tale,” paving the way for Shrek!, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Ella Enchanted, Uprooted and many others. Goldman masterfully satirizes the tropes of fairy tales, fantasy, and adventure fiction with tongue-in-cheek humour, even as he preserves the spirit of all the things that make all those genres great.

Above all, the message of this story is a great one: life isn’t fair. But often, we can all have a “happily ever after” anyway – at least, until the next story.

This edition is also beautifully illustrated, but keep in mind that it’s heavy because the paper quality is excellent. I like the artist’s alternative versions of Buttercup and Fezzik very much, although these actors will always be their characters for me, especially Andre the Giant.

A book everyone should read at least twice: once as a child, and once as an adult. Maybe at least once more when the sunset of life approaches, too.

View all my reviews

When Words Collide Literary Festival

[image error]I’m really excited to be attending & presenting at the When Words Collide literary festival in Calgary this coming weekend! I’ve never been before, but it seems it’s a gathering point for quite a lot of the Canadian SF/F community. I’m excited to be seeing writers I’ve only read!

Here’s what I’ve got going on (aside from all the awesome workshops and readings and book releases and talks I can’t wait to attend!)

Friday, August 9, 6 pm: Panel – Storytelling with Swordplay – also featuring Gunsmoke & Dragonfire contributor Claire Ryan, and Vanessa Cardui, a sister filker I got on well with at the Sun Wheel Pagan Arts Festival a few years back. Looking forward to seeing her again! (1 hr)

Saturday, August 10, 4 pm: Book Social – Gunsmoke & Dragonfire book launch – Claire and I will be joined by our fellow G&D contributor, local Calgarian Ron S. Friedman, Amazon Canada and Calgary Herald bestseller. We’ll be talking about the Weird West subgenre, reading from our stories, and signing books! (1 hr)

Saturday, August 10, 8 pm: Autograph Session – Ron and I will both be among the authors signing books, along with the festival headliners and 70+ authors! This event is open to the public, so come on out, even if you’re not making the festival! (2 hrs)

Sunday, August 11, 10 am: I’ll be at the SFWA meeting if any Canadian SFWA folks want to meet! (1 hr)

Sunday, August 11, 12 pm: I’ll be working at the Shared Authors merch table, selling ALL THE BOOKS! Come by to chat and stay to pick up some great Canadian writing! (1 hr)

The event will be taking place at the Delta Calgary South Hotel. I hope to see you there!

Book Review: The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read for the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club.

“What a lovely book!” I said to my partner with a delighted sigh as I closed the cover, after having done nothing all day but glue my eyes to these pages, and turn them, one after the other, so quickly I hardly realized I was doing it.

I suppose, in part, I can be forgiven, because I am still sick. My neck still hurts (although less) and now I have a doozy of a cold to go with it.

Fortunately, Le Guin’s liquid, luminescent prose took me away from all that for a while, completely immersing me in her world where a man’s dreams literally change reality.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a fairy tale. This is the Monkey’s Paw. As Le Guin points out, the subconscious mind is immoral and illogical, and it’s the subconscious that holds sway in dreams.

The trouble starts when a man is sent for “Voluntary Treatment” for drug abuse when he suffers from an overdose. Turns out he is trying to suppress his dreams, and the reason is that he has become aware that what he dreams becomes reality. Not all the time: just when a particularly deep, “effective” dream is reached.

The psychiatrist he is sent to, Dr. William Haber, is a dream expert who has invented a machine that uses brainwave entrainment to get a patient to follow a programmed sleep pattern. This psychiatrist genuinely means well, but his is the self-assured mentality of the scientific specialist or the Evangelical minister. He is convinced, through both his perception of his intelligence, and his belief in his own righteousness, that he knows what is best for everyone. When he discovers the truth of his patient’s ability, he begins to consciously manipulate the patient’s dreams in order to change reality according to his personal image of Utopia; with increasingly horrible results.

He is contrasted with the patient, George Orr, who is almost a non-entity. He would really rather just go along to get along, and is kind of a timid and mild-mannered man. But the juxtaposition between the two is fascinating. Although Haber seems strong, at heart, he requires constant propping to his ego; and George carries an internal reserve of amazing patience and strength.

Le Guin winds up the tension like a tourniquet; slow and hard. I literally could not put the book down, wondering what on earth was going to happen next! And the conclusion was deeply satisfying, as only a long journey, where you know the characters have suffered much, and both gained and lost, can be, even though it’s a relatively short little book.

The contrast between this and the last book I read, VALIS by Philip K. Dick, could not have been greater. In many ways, it was like what would happen if Ursula K. Le Guin wrote Philip K. Dick – and according to some reviews here that I’ve read, that was the intent. Having researched it, I find no tangible proof of that, just speculation from scholarly works that are quoted in Wikipedia. But I could see it.

The plot reminded me quite a lot of Now Wait for Last Year, but the contrast in style could not have been greater. I find that while both writers are excellent in their critiquing of society, psychiatry, and the egotism of authority, Dick is full of nihilism, confusion, and despair. Instead, Le Guin’s approach is overwhelmingly one of gentle chastisement, hope, and even a little whimsy.

My nature is more like Haber’s than Orr’s. I find it difficult to accept the world as it is. I always question and fight, always want to change things and make them better.

But do I really know what is best? Can I effectively visualize the unintended consequences of the changes I would make? Is there some point at which we must just accept what is, and embrace the mysterious without trying to understand it?

And yet, Orr’s way, at least at the beginning of the book, is not the best way, either. He’s afraid to take any responsibility or to make any changes. And how he discovered his ability was that when he was dying of radiation sickness in a starving, climate-changed world scarred by nuclear war, he dreamed that there hadn’t been a war. Eventually he points out to the other characters that the ability has a purpose, but it should only be used when it is needed.

And how do you know when that is? As Le Guin tells us, you get by with a little help from your friends. We need other people to check ourselves against, especially those who are quite different from us. That might well be the most poignant scene in the whole book, and it’s where we get one of Le Guin’s legacy of brilliant quotes:

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone,

it has to be made, like bread;

remade all the time,

made new.

And thus by reading this great work from a wise and beautiful soul who made the world a better place, I, too, am made new.

Up until now, my favourite book of all time has been Watership Down. I re-read it about once every five to ten years, and get something new out of it every single time, as age and maturity give me a greater appreciation of things I missed before. I expect this book will join that rare and precious category. I cannot recommend it enough.

View all my reviews

Limited Edition Postcards! Join My Patreon AUGUST ONLY!

[image error]I’m celebrating my Patreon anniversary by making limited-edition Gunsmoke & Dragonfire postcards available to my Patrons during the month of August!

These postcards were previously only available to G&D Kickstarter Backers as a reward package! They feature original art by Aaron Siddall our cover illustrator, and three of our authors. Each one is tied to one of the stories that appears in the anthology. They are limited collector’s items and each will be signed and numbered. I think they’re beautiful! The photo really doesn’t do them justice.

“So how do I get one?” you ask excitedly.

4e D&D, the After Action Review

An excellent “after action report” on D&D 4th edition, and why it didn’t work, from my friend @POCGamer.

POCGamer

It is safe to say, without much doubt, that the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (4e D&D) is the most contentious edition of the game ever to issued by either TSR or Wizards of the Coast (WotC). It was also the shortest-lived edition since the game made the leap from the 1974 “Original D&D” to Basic and 1st Edition in 1977, lasting only four years (2008-2012) before work on its replacement started. So what happened? How did everything unfold so disastrously? This post is going to be an AAR (after action review) of 4e D&D.

View original post 1,978 more words

Book Review: VALIS by Philip K. Dick

VALIS by Philip K. Dick

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Read for the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club.

I gotta tell ya, I’ve read enough PKD on the SF Masterworks imprint list by now (holy sh*t, FOURTEEN PKD books on this list and NOT ONE Lois McMaster Bujold?! Are you people out of your f*cking gourds?!) that I think I have a pretty good idea of what to expect. That is, I hold my nose and prepare to eat my peas. I don’t like peas; never have. But I feel I have an obligation to finish them anyway.

Why do I feel that way? I guess in part it’s because it’s on the list. If I read all the books on the list, I’m a bit of an authority on classic SF, I would say. So in part, it’s for that sense of completion.

But by now, it’s also because I want to make sure my cred is good when I start my active effort to dethrone old Phil. You see, I’ve come to a conclusion: I believe Phil was a fraud. Phil wrote one pretty great book (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and everything else he did was a rehash of either Alfred Bester or William S. Burroughs; often both at once. Sometimes I’ve enjoyed the rehash (see my review of Ubik) and sometimes I really have not (see my review of Now Wait for Last Year.)

Not only that, but I’ve also come to the conclusion that most of what he wrote is not really science fiction, and if it is, the science fiction is a thin veneer that gives him an excuse to navel-gaze endlessly on the nature of time, space, and reality, madness and drug addiction, his cynical view of humanity, his utter contempt for and hatred of women, and his existential horror of death.

And speaking of “out of one’s f*cking gourd,” this book proves just that. If Dick weren’t already accepted as a science fiction writer by the time he wrote it, this book would, at best, be on the shelf next to ERIC VON DANIKEN, Castaneda, Carlos, and Shirley McLain. At worst, it would be dismissed as the demented ravings of a complete lunatic.

I am somewhat of an authority on this. You see, I am a Wiccan and I used to own a metaphysical store. I have read an enormous number of autobiographical accounts of wacky mystical experiences (drug-induced or otherwise.) I have even had some wacky mystical experiences myself (drug-induced or otherwise.) Those experiences have had great personal meaning for me. But they’re not science fiction, and I’m sure you wouldn’t give a flying fig about them.

I am also somewhat familiar with psychotic breaks. My mother is bipolar with periodic psychotic breaks induced by her manic phases, and my husband is a schizophrenic. Much of this book sounds exactly like the stuff my mother scribbles for hours on end in her own journals when she’s in one of those phases.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t nuggets of wisdom in this book, or in the writings of people in psych wards. There really are, and many of these insights are consistent in the insights of mystics throughout the millennia of human history (time and space are illusions and depend greatly on your perception; reality was split into two halves ages ago – choose your preferred polarity – and that’s not the way it’s supposed to be and we’re supposed to break through the illusion to become whole; death exists because the world is controlled by an evil god, but there’s really a good god behind that if we break through the illusion/get off the wheel of incarnation/become enlightened/Ascend/achieve Nirvana/accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Saviour/become One with the Universal All).

I’ve had similar insights in the mystical experiences I’ve sought out (except that I have a different point of view about death and the nature of physical reality; I’m saving that for my next book on Wicca.) Dick does give us some good stuff, in between the crazy.

But there are many more books that can give you that much more clearly. Try the The Rig Veda, the Gnostic Gospels: Including the Gospel of Thomas – The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, The Book of the Law Rumi… or, even Carlos Castanada. Because Dick’s version is as dark and weird as a Rick and Morty cartoon, and as lucid as a bad art film.

Reading this book was like an acid trip. And not even a good acid trip, because it starts with a girl committing suicide. It’s a bad trip, the kind that makes people throw themselves out of windows because they think they can fly.

And blaming it on what might possibly be aliens from Sirius and an ancient satellite with an artificial intelligence called VALIS does not excuse it as science fiction. There was a theory going around in the 80s that Starchildren (who were all the mystically-enlightened people, of course) were descended from aliens from the Pleiades. Eric Von Danikan thought that all ancient civilizations, from Sumer to Egypt to the early Jews, saw aliens, and aliens interfered with our evolution. Lots of people have claimed to be channeling alien intelligences in the New Age Movement, and New Age people even now speak of receiving “downloads” of wisdom (ever since the Matrix.)

And no, you cannot point at PKD and claim he influenced the Matrix with this book. No, if this is science fiction, it’s The Demolished Man yet again. Just like most of Uncle Phil’s other books.

This belongs on the shelf of “weird channeled sh*t” that every metaphysical store has moldering in the back corner; the one where you find old books on the alien origins of humanity and how the Mayan calendar told us we were all going to cease to exist in 2012, and how the Bible’s “manna from heaven” was actually psilocybin mushrooms.

Still… as much as I want to completely hate it, it’s strangely compelling in places, like picking off a scab, or slowing down to watch a car wreck, or staring, horrified, at the crumbling towers of 9/11 again and again.

Don’t read this if you have any questions at all about your mental health, because it just might finish the job. Definitely don’t read it if you’re high.

I think it was brave of Dick to write this. I think he spent his whole life trying to understand this experience, and it’s cool that he was willing to let us look inside his head this way, from a time when he was clearly at his most vulnerable. If you have someone in your life who suffers from psychotic breaks, it may give you some understanding and empathy.

But it is NOT science fiction, so let’s stop pretending PKD is a science fiction writer, okay?

View all my reviews

Book Review: Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore

Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read for the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club.

One might be deterred by a book with a Confederate shield on the front of it, and rightfully so. But don’t let it dissuade you; this isn’t what it looks like.

This is a well-written and thoroughly enjoyable alternate history in which the South won the American Civil War, which is now referred to as “The War of Southron Independence.” The Confederacy is a rising economic power, while the United States of America is a country in decline, and the protagonist, Hodgins Backmaker, is a country boy with a bookish nature from the destitute USA, where reparations have bankrupted their economy and selling yourself into indentureship is considered a legitimate way to make a living.

But don’t believe a word of this hype in the description:

“Time, moving backwards, and other notional reversals and transpositions attend the picaresque experiences of Hodge Backmaker and the aftermath of a Civil War in which the South was victorious.”

What kind of happy horsesh*t is this? There’s not a thing in this book about time moving backwards or any other such thing! It’s just a well-written alternate history with a dash of time travel at the end. An influential and important book because it’s an early alternate history, written in the 50s, but that’s all. And that ought to be good enough.

Moore shows us a horribly fascist alternate past in which slavery continues, People of Colour are killed wholesale or deported in both the United States and the Confederacy, and technology lags considerably behind the technology of our world. Some things are better: I imagine, since airships replace airplanes, and horse-drawn buggies and locomotives adapted for overland travel replace motor cars, that hydrocarbon pollution is a lot less. Then again, I imagine coal remains in wider use, so who can say?

The protagonist does a lot of not-making decisions when faced with moral choices, and that’s an interesting exploration. The one time he does choose to act, he screws up everything. And that’s also interesting.

My one critique with this book is that I think that once again, this American writer is prone, like most American writers, to overestimating their own importance.

In the absence of a powerful and unified United States, the Spanish possessions in the American continent either fall to the Confederates or remain the property of an autocratic Spanish Empire. I think it’s far more likely that Central and South America would have followed Haiti’s example and overthrown their oppressors, without the big, oppressive, expansionist, unified United States hanging literally over them like the Sword of Damocles.

World War I basically happens, except that it’s called the Emperor’s War. Why would that have changed? The United States was almost entirely insignificant in that war in the first place, and the only reason they entered it at all is because German U-boats started attacking their shipping. I imagine they’d have just attacked the Confederate ships instead, and the Confederates would have entered the War on the side of the Allies. In this book, Moore has the Confederates allying with Germany, and I can’t imagine why they would do that, other than Moore wrote this in the 50s and is used to thinking of Germans as fascists. Well, they weren’t in 1914.

As usual, not one damn bit of attention is paid to what’s going on north of the American border, either; not even when the USA is a struggling, pathetic shell of its former self. Let me tell you what would have happened.

First, Canada wouldn’t exist, because there would have been no need to confederate without a unified American threat. So it would still be an English dominion, with a large French dominion still smack-dab around the Great Lakes. Those dominions would have reasserted sovereignty over the Great Lakes and a considerably more southern border, without America’s “Manifest Destiny” to contend with. Nor would the US have Alaska, because they would not have had the means to purchase it from Russia, and a lot of us Western Canadians would probably be speaking Russian right now.

World War II didn’t happen in this book, and that’s probably legit. Certainly Russia, France and England would be a lot more tense about their possessions in North America, and may not have allied quite so quickly. If it did happen, I imagine that Russia would have been in a better position, so American intervention may not have been necessary. On the other hand, it might have been a different set of belligerents on either side, which might have resulted in Axis victory, what with the Confederacy siding with them (which they almost certainly would have; America only came in on the side of the Allies because of Pearl Harbor, and Hawaii wouldn’t have been part of the US, so that would never have happened – and the US had an immense amount of fascist sympathy as it was!)

The biggest thing is that I don’t think things would have gone as badly for People of Colour. For one thing, there would have been no Missouri Compromise, so black people would not have been entrenched as second-class citizens. For another, many more would have escaped the Confederacy and the US to join the British and French dominions (as many did to join Canada, and they would have had even more motivation to do so.) Slavery was already outlawed in the British Empire by the time the American Civil War broke out. I realize that’s not something Americans give Brits credit for – you all think they’re evil, you can’t help it, you’re taught that as soon as you can read – but I imagine the dominions would have used the pretext of the anti-Chinese and anti-black pogroms described in the book to invade and seize control of all that lovely farmland that’s part of what would have been the remains of the US. So, chances are, the US would simply not exist, and PoC in North America would have done a lot better. Except it’s hard to tell if that would have applied to the First Nations or not.

Maybe I’ll write that novel someday. But at any rate, that’s my big critique, so all in all, an excellent, well-written, enjoyable book that makes you consider the consequences of a single moment of choice; which makes for an excellent science fiction novel.

A note about this edition: this book was cheaply and poorly printed, with font sizes that differed on facing pages, and all kinds of mistakes in punctuation, like leaving out apostrophes entirely in most, but not all, cases. Plus the font is a bit blurry, reminding me of cheap tracts. Get a different edition if you’re going to buy and keep this book.

View all my reviews