Book Review: Foe by Iain Reid

 

Foe by Iain Reid

Hardcover, 261 pages

Published September 4th 2018 by Gallery/Scout Press (first published August 7th 2018)

Iain Reid kind of burst on the scene with a novel called ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ it was made into a strange Charlie Kaufman film. I was interested in this one because Reid's second novel was also coming out as a film starring Saoirse Ronan and  LaKeith Stanfield from director Gareth Davis who made Lion and the 2018 Jesus snore-fest  Mary Magdalene.

I was curious how this dude was 2/2 novel to films. In sports when a team gets a championship and other teams try to replicate the success pundits always say it is a copy-cat league, and maybe that was it because this novel was really not super compelling to me. I wanted it to be. I heard it was near-future SF. I would say this novel is only Science Fiction because it needed to be. It doesn’t seem to me that Reid has any interest in familiar elements of speculative fiction. This is more of a surrealist novel. The plot could have survived just going magical and surreal.

None the less on the surface the plot could be called Phil Dickian to a degree, but if you are looking for a twist don’t read Foe. The ending was clear from a few pages in and that is fine. This book is more about the creepy uncomfortable nature of a long-term relationship. The first-person narrator doesn’t know much about anything. That is your first clue.

If the novel has a mission statement…

“Why do people stay together"? They stay together because it's expected, because it's what they know. They try to make it work, to endure it, and end up living under some kind of spiritual anesthetic. They go on, but they are numb. There is nothing worse than to live your life this way. Detached, but abiding. It's immoral.”

There are moments of actual discovery and interesting examination of marriage…

“Walking is nonverbal communication. Like I can tell if [she's] mad by her footsteps. Walking isn't as overt as other signals, like the way someone smells, their voice, their laugh, their facial expressions. Steps can be frivolous, but they're often distinct from person to person. Familiarity grows over time, slowly, inadvertently. I never tried to get to know her to walk deliberately. This stuff happens unwittingly...”

These moments of character that examine the fine details of the long-term relationship are some of the novel's best moments. There is an argument that the novel requires the cold detachment to express this point, it doesn’t make for a good reading experience. I would find myself wishing for more story and less mood and tone. Those who prefer those elements might enjoy this novel more than I did.

The SF elements are purely McGuffins. Junior is the narrator of the story that takes place in an undetermined location living with his wife Hen. A man comes to visit and tells him that he will be going on a mission to space and will be gone for years. This man tells him not to worry he is being studied so they replace him with an android copy.  

Before I get into spoilers let me say this is a cold, creepy affair that takes a look at how strange and alien relationships can become after years. There are some interesting things at play here, the writing is experimental and gives away serious clues. None of the first-person narrators speak tags are in quotes but the other characters are.

The writing is at times very well craft and devoid of emotion. That is why Gareth Davis who directed the Matzah bread flat Jesus movie seems like an odd choice of director. As I was reading I thought well at least actors could breathe some life into this thing.

I know this book is supposed to be out of the genre ghetto and actual capital L – Literature but I was not exactly impressed. This would not be a recommendation but I will see the movie.  Now if you are not worried about spoilers….  

The fact that Junior doesn’t remember much, or that Hen wants very little to do with him meant I knew the “Twist” right away. If you have not guessed the story we are being told is by the story of the copy, there are a few because of plot things that happen along the way.

Look Reid has won awards, and I am sure to most this book may be an example for high art. The book didn’t work for me and worst it did nothing interesting that Philip K Dick didn’t do better in the Mother thing short story in 1953. I know they are different I talking vibe. None the less not impressed.

Book Review: The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Anthony Boucher

 

The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction  by Anthony Boucher 

Mass Market Paperback, 256 pages

Published January 1st 1990 by Carroll & Graf Publishers (first published January 1st 1969)

 A couple of years ago I heard a couple of writers talking about their experience at Bouchercon. It was a crime fiction convention. It never crossed my mind to ask how or why the con had that name and years passed before I learned about Anthony Boucher, he was the Boucher the con was named after. In fairness, I think plenty of people who attend the Con don’t know him either. I would later learn that he was a foundational writer in the mystery genre. So, I didn’t even think it was possible when his name kept coming up as an editor and friend of Philip K Dick in the sci-fi community that it was the same dude.

Most writers can write for their whole careers and never make an impact that defines a single genre. William Anthony Parker White wrote books and edited magazines that defined both Mystery and Science Fiction. It is one thing to have had such an impact in one genre that awards and conventions are named after you, but amazing to have impacted multiple genres. Boucher is known for being a godfather of American mystery novels but it was his impact on Science Fiction goes well beyond the amazing stories he left behind personally.

As a magazine founder, he published many of the debut stories from titans such as Philip K Dick and Richard Matheson. He was an active member of the community who socialized and worked with writers like Dick, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Ray Nelson during his time in the Bay Area From the 50s until his death) and in the early forties when most of these stories were written he was hanging out in a writers group in LA. That group had several sci-fi giants in it. From Heinlein, Hubbard, and the Kuttners his world was influenced by these major voices that were his friends. He wrote about them in a classic mystery novel Rocket to the Morgue that I reviewed here last year.

All the stories in the Compleat Werewolf were written during this period Boucher was publishing stories in both fields and hanging in LA with the Heinlein gang. They were not collected until the '60s but this book represents his wartime Science Fiction and Horror.  The stories appeared in pulp magazines such as Unknown Worlds, "Astounding Science Fiction," "Weird Tales" and a few others from 1941-45. Think about it this way most of these stories were written when Hitler was still alive just to put the stories age in perspective.

For that reason, they have a certain surreal feel as speculation from a time so long ago. Of Course, the sci-fi stories have some silly robots and private tubes going directly to spaceports but if you don’t find that charming I don’t know what to tell you. Out of date Science Fiction is special for the window into the mind of the speculator – in this case, Tony Boucher.  

It is almost impossible for me to not see this book through my Dickhead lens because Boucher was an important personal influence on Dick. It wasn’t just that he bought Dick’s first story but it was Boucher being a cool dude that helped Phil eject his notions that Sci-fi was just kids stuff. So his style of writing has some similar tones should not have surprised me.

From the opening title Novella with its sarcastic tone to the last story Ghost of Me that has a narrator questioning their sanity you can see the influence Boucher had on the guy who sold him Opera records. Let us start with that first Novella.

The Compleat Werewolf is a funny tale. The story of Professor Wolfe Wolf, an academic who is surprised when a mystic tells him that he has always been a werewolf and he knows just the spell to unlock his power. Published one year after Universal’s Wolf-Man. It presents the idea that a werewolf is automatically evil and the story more than any other in the collection has elements of Boucher’s detective stories.  

I knew I was in for an amusing experience as soon as I read this scene early on…

“But a werewolf is a man that changes into a wolf. I’ve never done that. Honest, I haven’t.”
“A mammal,” Said Ozymandias, “is an animal that bears its young and suckles them. A virgin is nonetheless a mammal. Because you have never changed doesn’t make you less of a werewolf.”
“But a werewolf-“Suddenly Wolfe’s eyes lit up.  “A werewolf is better than a G-man!”

There is some hilarious stuff relating to the professor trying to get closer to his crush as a dog, which as you can imagine doesn’t go well.  Perhaps the funniest scene in the entire book is a part where Ozymandias talks about the word that unlocked his “were” skills.

“There is no telling what would happen if I taught her The Word.”
“Not the least. Of course, there’s some werethings that just aren’t much use being. Take a wereant. You change and somebody steps on you and that’s that. Or like a fella I knew in Madagascar. Taught him the Word and know what? He turned wereiplodicus. Shattered the whole house into pieces when he changed and damned near trampled me under hoof before I could say Absarka!”

The second story the Pink Caterpillar is an interesting story as it is very weird, almost hard to explain. Set in a small town in Mexico It opens with a time travel discussion where the characters talk about traveling 100 years into the future. Being 80 years in the storyteller’s future as I read I found that striking. It is the story of a supernatural pact with a rural medicine man.

The next two stories are robot stories that were published under the name H.H. Holmes without the internet Boucher got away with the in-joke of using the first American Serial Killer’s title as a pen name.  These stories Q.U.R. and Roboinc are basically one long novelette. This is a very forward-thinking Sci-fi stories about the inventors who decide to stop wasting time making androids futuristic. While the story has forced sterilizations and travel tubes it also has black world leaders. Speaking to his audience in 1942 decades before the civil rights act Boucher said this…

"...ten centuries ago people would have snorted just like that at the idea of a black as Head on this planet. Such narrow stupidity seems fantastic to us now. Our own prejudices will seem just as comical to our great-great-grandchildren."

Snullbug was Boucher’s first short story as such it is important, containing magic and time travel it is a funny one. OK Gennie my wish is that you go to the future one day in the future and bring me back a newspaper. Fun one.

The Expedition is the best and weirdest sci-fi story in the collection. This story is bonkers and entirely built on a reversal. This is a story about the first contact between Martian and earthers during a Martian Expedition. This first contact is hilarious.

“…We have not fully deciphered his language but I have, as instructed, been keeping full phonetic transcriptions of his every remark. Trubaz has calculated psychologically that the meaning of this remark to be:
“Ministers of the Great one, be gracious to me.”
The phonetic transcription is as follows:
AND THEY TALK ABOUT PINK ELEPHANTS!

However, don’t leave this review that Boucher was only capable of humor. There is one truly great horror stories. For me the best of the collection is one F.Paul Wilson pointed out in our Tony Boucher panel (see links below). This story is a frightening horror story set in the sun-soaked California desert – They Bite. The set-up of this story in many ways reminded me of the classic Doctor Who story Blink. The set-up is great. Two characters are talking about the monsters that just barely stay out of sight.

“Optical fatigue-“ Tallant Began.
“Sure. I know every man to his own legend. There isn’t a tribe of Indians hasn’t some accounting for it. You’ve heard of the Watchers? And the twentieth-century white-man comes along and it is optical fatigue. Only in the nineteenth-century things weren’t quite the same and there were the Carkers.”
“You got a special localized legend?”

“Call it that. You glimpse things out of the corner of your mind, like you glimpse lean, dry things out of the corner of your eye. You encase them in solid circumstance and thy’re not so bad. That is the growth of the legend. The Folk Mind in Action. You take Carkers and the things you don’t see and you put them together.  And they bite."

Are they monsters or just a cannibal family Like the Hills Have Eyes? Not a product of nuclear testing but being left alone away from civilization and growing in legend and isolation. This is a fantastic horror story on every level, every world. To me the best thing I have read by Boucher.
    As a whole, The Compleat Werewolf should be essential history for fans of Horror and Science Fiction. It should be essential for serious Dickheads who want to understand Boucher or the development of the genre. A must-read.   

 
Check out the panel I hosted about the author of this book on Dickheads... Featuring Gary K Wolfe, F.Paul Wilson, Gordan Van Geldermand myself.

https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodcast/dick-adjacent-7-shout-out-to-tony-boucher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsz67cLwmuI&t=341s

Book Review: A Master of Djinn by P.Djeli Clark

 

A Master of Djinn

Hardcover, 392 pages

Published May 11th 2021 by Tordotcom

“His eyes took on a storyteller’s twinkle, and Fatma sighed. This was going to take a while.”
 
Fresh off the Locus and Nebula award victories for Ring Shout it is a great time for P. Djeli Clark to unleash his first epic full-length novel A Master of Djinn. This is not my normal genre, I am not a big fantasy reader, and steampunk fiction is not my thing. That being said when I discover a supremely talented writer like Clark(who is also a trained and active historian) then I am going to follow him.

Clark’s book Ring Shout was a near-masterpiece, excellent storytelling with an activist edge. I had him on the podcast (link below) and I think all the awards are well deserved. Ring Shout is a  horror hybrid of Birth of a Nation, the TV show Supernatural, and maybe a sprinkle of the movie Mandy. A dark horror fantasy involving monsters, occult, and history is so up my alley.

A Master of Djinn is another work suited to the author’s unique skill set, training, and talent. It is a one-of-a-kind novel that no one else could write and, in that sense, I really dig it. The setting and the world-building are strengths but all the elements are there. None of that would matter if the characters were not vivid and the story compelling.

Good Reads lists it as number three in a series, but don’t be confused the first two were novellas, with a short story that sorta half counts. According to Clark, the novellas stand-alone and so does A Master of Djinn. Even without reading those earlier works that serve a purpose as the novel feels lived in like the dirt on the starships in Star Wars.

We may not have spent time in this alternate 1912 Cairo but PDC has spent time there. It shows on nearly every page. The World Building is A + throughout. So what makes this world so fun and compelling. Sure it is alternate steampunk history with automatic trolleys and all kinds of weird tech but the world is also populated with genies, Djinn of all kinds. So the world is full of supernatural creatures and magic, the perfect conduit is Fatma and the agent for the ministry that polices the weird in this world-power version of Egypt.

How weird is it?

“The three of them sat there - A Ministry agent, a half-djinn, and a cat (likely), staring out past the balcony to the sleeping city they somehow had to find a way to save.”

Plenty of stranger moments that connect to the plot, I am just making a simple point this is not your standard cookie-cutter genre anything.

A Master of Djinn I am not sure everyone will have this experience but I think I will remember the world more than the characters. Fatma is really cool character, an out and open lesbian in this magical world who has a serious edge. The relationship with Hadia the rookie partner forced on her is a pretty cliché dynamic but in this case, I found that it grounded the story. Like a stabilizing handhold that we could grab on to for all the otherworldly elements.
There is a murder in a secret society that sets off the procedural elements of the narrative. The whodunit elements drive the first act but the immersive magical took hold of the story in the second and third acts for me. The mythology of ancient Egypt weaves in and out of the mystery. Fatma also leaves she is closer to the magic than she thought possible.

A Master of Djinn would not work if the author didn’t have a keen eye for the realities of how this world would interface with the ugly reality of that region. The breaking down of Colonization is as important as the breakdown of the world of the natural and magic.  

“And among His wonders is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the diversity of your tongues and colors. For in this, behold, there are messages indeed for all who are possessed of innate knowledge.”

This novel is a work of balance. It is impressive for a first novelist (even though I feel Ring Shout is a novel). The novel balances a delicately and stylishly built fantasy world with many other elements. Vivid characters, sly and stealth historical and political commentary. Fun magical action and wrapped together with a murder mystery. One of my favorite moments is a spoiler but there is a intimate moment between a human a half Djinn on page 246 that was powerful. 

If you like Steampunk fantasies it is a must-read. If that isn’t your genre you might still consider giving it a spin for all it manages to do. Not as impressive personally as Ring Shout but further proof that P.Djeli Clark is an author who will get my attention every time.

Podcast interview I did with P.Djeli Clark

The interview video 

Graphic Novel Review: Stephen and Own King's Sleeping Beauties Adapted by Rio Youers

 

Sleeping Beauties, Vol. 1
(Sleeping Beauties #1-5)
Based  on the novel by Stephen King  and Owen King
Alison Sampson (Illustrations),
Rio Youers (Goodreads Author) (Adaptation)

On the surface Sleeping Beauties is a very Stephen King idea, in the vein of Cell or Under the Dome it is a weird speculative Apocalypse novel. The story is global but the point of view is narrow and focused much like Cell. When I read the novel it felt very influenced by the HBO show The Leftovers. I believe Owen King has said that they wrote first as a teleplay for a mini-series.

So it makes sense to translate this epic story into episodic comic book series, Rio Youers who adapted this was gifted with more set structure than King or Hill family novels. You can almost see where the Kings were planning cliffhangers and such. None the less it is never an easy job drilling down a 700 page novel like this so give Rio lots of Credit for that. He was greatly assisted by the amazing art of Alison Simpson.

In this story, the women of the world are subject to a pandemic called Aurora. The women affected fall asleep and their faces break out in a cocoon that keeps them asleep but alive. In the days that follow men have to deal with the loss and certainly, most men in our world don't understand everything important that women do. A few women are trying desperately to stay awake and some of their struggles provide the story's most suspenseful moments.

Focused on a fictional West Virginia town called Dooling the novel follows events in the town and in the nearby women's prison. The Kings did a great job of making the characters vivid. We know this is a family strength. Youers and Simpson bring the characters and novel to life to the point that I felt I did not need to read all the word bubbles the novel was coming back to me quite strongly.

Simpson has lots of horror credits to her name and she was an excellent choice for the art, it is detailed and vivid. The novel was 700 pages and honestly, I didn't need more than 400 pages to tell the story so this book telling half the story and eventually in two volumes makes sense.

Rio Youers fixed some of the cringe-inducing moments where King let slip some unintentionally sexist moments old-timey gender roles. That was welcome and in many ways, this is a better more simple take on the story. I would have to say I recommend this experience over the novel.

Book Review: The Best of Judith Merril by Judith Merril with notes by Virgina Kidd

 

The Best of Judith Merril  by Judith Merril with notes by Virgina Kidd 

254 pages

Published January 1st 1976 by Warner Books 

 

In the time that I have been doing the Dickheads podcast and have taken learning the history of 20th century Science Fiction it has happened a few times. The first example was Tony Boucher whose name came up many times. Early in the process of doing the show, I discovered the book the Future is Female edited by one of our most popular guests Lisa Yasek. A few stories into the anthology I knew I had to have her on the show.

In that collection which collected the best of the pulp era SF ranging from the 20s to the end of the 60s was a story from the 40s called “Only a Mother.”  The story of fall-out sickened children of atomic wars was a brutal and powerful stand-out. When Lisa gave us background on the story and author it was clear that JM was an important figure in the community and I needed to know more.

Since then reading several histories from Damon Knight, Boucher, and Malzberg further made the point Judith Merril is an important voice in SF. Her role as a founding member of two major NYC clubs The Futurians and the Hydra club predates her publishing that began in 1948. Her year’s best, and country-themed anthologies for England and Soviet SF were important. Her line of books collecting the best of the Magazine of Fantasy and SF were foundational but it was her writing were here to talk about.

I am very excited and interested to check out her novels co-written with C.M. Kornbluth but most of all I want to read her post-Atomic war novel from Shadow of The Hearth. When making this purchase I debated between that novel and this collection. I ultimately choose this collection to get a wider look at her work. Also because I really wanted to read the story Dead Center for reasons we will come back to.

This is a fine collection of feminist SF, and compared to the standards of today that definition might not be so obvious but one has to understand how male-dominated the scene was. To call Merril a trailblazer is an understatement. It is not that women were not writing SF, plenty was but without the contributions of CL  Moore and Judith Merril, the path may not have been as ready for your Joanna Russ and Leguins.

There is an infamous story that Merrill had to challenge John W. Campbell the notorious backward-thinking editor to buy her work. When you read her stories you can see she would have been stupid not to. It might seem weird to modern members of the community that JM would care if JWC bought her work or not. Remember in the early days there were only a few places to publish at all. While women in TV and film often choose male or non-gender specific names in those days it was not as common in the SF. Judith Merril however still was first to do many things.

The book. OK the cover is amazing and nothing in the collection is that trippy, but yes it rules super hard. It comes with a very informative introduction I personally wish was longer. The stories themselves are super great and wonderful time capsules of the era they come from. Mostly from the late 40s and early 50s with a little of 60s mixed in. Every story in the collection is good there was not one story I found boring or felt the need to skip and I can do that from time to time in collections.

The three stand-out stories for me were Dead Center, Only a Mother, and the novella Daughters of Earth. Let's start with the one I had read before, Only a Mother I read in The Future is Female and I watched a Lisa Yasek lecture on the story on YouTube (Linked below). A second read was no less powerful. A subtle surgical tale about the effects of radiation on children born into the atomic age. The story builds to one of the most powerful of endings one that could earn it a place on the best horror short story lists

Dead Center was the reason I bought this book. In Breakfast in the Ruins, Barry Malzberg highlighted this story not just for its quality but for its place in history. It was one of only two stories taken from any science fiction or fantasy magazine for the Best American Short Stories volumes edited by Martha Foley in the 1950s. The fact that a story published in a 1954 issue of the Anthony Boucher co-edited Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was a huge deal.

This story uses multiple points of view to tell a heartbreaking story of the space age. Written 16 years before moon landings were actually a thing. The points of view revolve around a family, the child and his parents who build and fly spacecraft. The story highlights the danger and sacrifice of space travel in a genre that at the time was seen as cheerleading the space race. While not as critical as Malzberg would later become with novels like The Men Inside and Beyond Apollo  JM’s Dead Center is a powerful story that still holds up.

Daughters of Earth is a great story and the most feminist of the tales. This story is about women becoming front and center in the efforts to expand into the great galaxy. I was struck as a space nerd, how good the science was for 1953. I mean this was two years before Elvis released his first single and JM is writing about relative time dilation and getting a great deal of Pluto’s orbital mechanics pretty close to what we still know today. More than that the story works because despite all the SF ideas the fully realized human characters with beating hearts just work.

Merril is one of the most important voices in SF and what is clear to me reading this book and researching her life that she can not be forgotten. Read Judith please, and this is a good place to start.
  

Lisa Yasek Lecture
Only a Mother audio story
Dickheads The Future is Female interview: