Book Review: Tongues of the Moon by Philip Jose Farmer

 

Tongues of the Moon by Philip Jose Farmer

160 pages, Paperback

Published 1981 by Corgi

First published in 1961 

 

This is a weird book for me to write about. I need to be writing and reviewing more Philip Jose Farmer in general; he is a classic author, whose award-winning Riverworld books are important works. His 50s classic The Lovers was groundbreaking for the portrayal of sex in genre fiction. He is important, so why did I randomly decide to read and review one of his lost novels from the early 60s.

For one thing, this is randomly the first Farmer book I bought. In the 90s, at a used bookstore in Syracuse, A city he lived in from 1956-58, before moving to Arizona. I picked up this paperback, and it has moved around with me, unread. A few weeks back, I was staring at my books and thought I finally needed to read that one. He likely lived in Arizona when he wrote Tongues of the Moon, but just three years after living in Cuse. 

The Farmer family moved to Syracuse, New York to a house on Evaleen Street, and Phil worked as a technical writer for General Electric. That doesn’t matter, but as someone who lived in Syracuse, I was interested.

Tongues of the Moon is not considered a major work like The Lovers or Riverworld. Personally, my favorite PJF novel that I have read so far is the Alternate history novel Two Hawks from Earth. You will not find many long, detailed reviews of this novel, and so I suppose that is one reason I feel compelled to do that. Like many authors of the era, I have read mostly the classics. The authors like PKD, Malzberg and Brunner had super high moments and comically silly moments. Reading their whole catalog teaches you a thing or two about them. I don't have time to read all Farmer, but reaching this little lost gem was insightful and better than I expected.

All the elements that make it a gem are entirely based on the ideas. Farmer has written good books, but the prose and characters are super thin. There is a lack of defined structure, leading to long chapters that ignore natural breaks. The characters are thin and hard to remember. That being said, as a work of cold war speculation, it is both wildly out of date and fascinating in its implications. While Farmer wrote better SF before and after, this novel is almost more fun before of the weak parts.

This novel takes place in a future somewhat far ahead, but not pinned down to a year or a concept of exactly when. The Soviet Union and nations as we know them still exist, and the space race has evolved into various colonies. Throughout the solar system, it has gone on long enough that Mars.  Well, the United States and Canada fell to Soviet control.

“America had fallen prey more to its own softness and confusion than to the machinations of the Soviets. Then, in the turbulent, bloody, starving years that followed the fall with their purges, uprisings, savage repressions, mass transportations to Siberia and other areas, importation of other nationalities to create division, and bludgeoning propaganda and re-education, only the strong and the intelligent survived.”

In hindsight, this speculation seems silly, but this was 1961, and hidden in the world-building is an alt-history Red Dawn that the Wolverines did even worse. There are lots of tiny but important details about the various nations, including feared now independent former colonies on Mars, although they are talked about so vaguely, I thought they were actual Martians for a minute. 

The defense against Mars colonists becomes a specter that drives the advancement of the story like the Cold War, pushing progress. The drive of the narrative is a destructive nuclear war that destroys most of Earth. Our story is focused on a small number of colonists on the moon. They are suddenly the only survivors left.  The driver of the suspense is the small groups from different cultures realizing their only hope is to work together.

“Unfortunately, there are other matters to be cleared up before we can discuss that. The main thing is, which base is the leader?”

A leader is one thing, but it becomes a matter of agreement to follow one culture and one language. Each of the cultures argues for its language and culture. Of course believes it should survive. Being the one agreed-upon language of the moon is the center of debate. 

“Remember, the situation is not the same here as it was on Earth. There, even a secondary tongue had many speakers to hand it to children.”

There is an excellent version of this story to be had; the execution leaves much to be desired. Still, as an SF concept, it is there.  So the title of the book comes from the expert who decides it is time to create a blended language.

Tongues of the Moon started life as a high-concept novelette. The story didn’t really have the room to expand the ideas, and the novel didn’t do much to expand them. There are moments of genius, but if this was the only Farmer I ever read I would not have believed he had classics in him.  I am glad I read it, but I would not be quick to assign or suggest to anyone. It is interesting but certainly not canon. 

 

Book Review: Inter Ice Age 4 by Kobo Abe

 

Inter Ice Age 4 

228 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1959

I have a couple of intense interests that collide here. First of all, I love Asian Science Fiction, I love retro science fiction. I understand that Abe has a readership besides this novel, more for surrealism than SF, but he was a new author to me.

Abe became famous for a surrealist novel that he wrote and published five years after this work of genre fiction. It was most fascinating for me to read an SF novel written by an author who was a child in Imperial Japan; he only avoided serving and probably dying in the war by choosing to study medicine in college. This is of course, an influence on this work.

His life story is interesting for sure. He was deeply affected by the death of friends in the war, and after the conflict, joined the communist party. He organized in the poorer neighborhoods of Tokyo while starting his career.  He considered himself a pacifist and helped organize workers. In 1951, he won the Akutagawa Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in Japanese literature. So it is cool that this well-regarded and yet radical dude wrote a super bizarro SF novel.

Yeah, he moved away from Communism, not impressed with the Soviet way of doing things, and that is clear in this text with the Moscow II machine. There are a couple of different plots that blend together. It is science fiction, and I wondered a few times if the translation was influenced by Western SF as much as the author.

The plot on the surface seems simple: a scientist builds a machine, similar to modern AI, that is meant to predict the future. Using this machine leads him to uncover a conspiracy to engineer transhuman animal hybrids. 

The predication machine, as Abe saw it in the late 50s, is not that far off from the large language model programs that we see happening today. The machine in this novel learns and predicts, but Abe views it as a tool of social control. As the superpowers race to control the technology, his strong feelings about the Soviet Union are clear in this passage…

 

“Repercussions from America came the next day. “Prediction and divination are fundamentally different. In the 1st place, only that which has a moral basis can rightfully be called prediction. Putting such power in the hands of a machine can only be denial of humanity. Here in America, the forecasting machine was perfected early, but we followed the voice of our conscience and avoided political application of it. The present course of the Soviet Union is to attempt to threaten the liberty of men and jeopardize international friendship by betraying their own claims for peaceful coexistence. We consider the Moscow II predictions to be a kind of violence against the mind; we advise early abandonment and revocation. In the event our statement should go unheard, we are prepared to petition the United Nations.”

It seems a bit idealistic to think America would respect the freedom of the people with the Prediction. The push and pull of prediction vs freewill in this future is much of the power of the first act.  The idea of predestination of predication operates in a way not that different from PKD’s story, Minority Report. Tanomogi feels compelled to prove his machine correct, but he also truly believes that it cannot be wrong. 

 “Tanomogi lapsed into silence. But he didn't seem all that disturbed. He had been working with me for five years and could read me like a book. I would never give up this pursuit. Whatever, I did not intend to offer excuses for it. If the machine ordered murder, I would doubtless commit murder, however reluctantly. The ordinary middle-aged man walking now before us, who had something just a little mysterious about him, would be stripped clean of his skin, his past and future laid bare. When I thought about it, I experienced a pain as if my own skin were being peeled off. But turning my back on the prediction machine was at this juncture much, much more frightening.”

Where the novel becomes even more Dickian is when the machine begins to take on feelings of life. 

“Not at all. Actually, you're not a human being. You're the personality equation of a man by the name of Tsuchida Susmu, that has been committed to memory by the machine.”

“Don't make me laugh. And stop this ridiculous deceit. Damn! All my sensations seem to be gone but where's Cheeto? Say, what about turning on the lights?”

“You're dead.”

“OK, drop it. I've decided not to be afraid.”

This narrows the cosmos down to this experience of the machine, and it is a powerful moment in the novel. We think of the universe as cosmic and vast, one of the ultimate horrors of finding out you are artificial, is it narrows that cosmos down to your experience, nothing can be trusted.

That is not the end of the weird elements, but the start…

 “Seven thousand yen... Three-week old fetuses… development outside the mother's womb... Mice with gills... Aquatic mammals.

The progression of the novel goes weirder and weirder; the machine seems to think humans need to be partially aquatic, and considering the way climate change is changing the dynamics of life today, this seems like better speculation than many surrealist fictions. Much like PKD Abe can be seen to be predicting better than some authors who actually try.

Inter-Ice Age 4 is fantastic SF. The cultural context and view into time and era it comes from make it even more fascinating.  I ordered a used copy, and while it wasn’t expensive, there were not many copies. The one I got was ancient, stained, and smelling of deep storage. It also added a certain otherworldly feeling to it.

Book Review: The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud

 

The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud

304 pages, Hardcover

Published March 2023 by S&S/Saga Press

 

The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud

The first book I finished this year is a doozy. As established as Ballingrud is, with a TV show and a movie already based on his work, it is hard to believe that this is his first novel. The quality is also well above what anyone would reasonably consider to be a first novel.  The quality of ideas and execution never at any time feels like a first novel. A loving tribute to pulp Westerns and science fiction.  I had this book on my radar because I asked a friend if he knew any SF inspired by Bradbury, the way many novels play with Lovecraft or PKD.

I really loved this cool retro Western that just happens to be set on Mars. Is it a realistic look at the red planet? No, this is more of Mars as the golden age authors like CL Moore, Burroughs, Brackett, and Bradbury wrote about it. The Songs My Enemies Sing by James Reich. One of my favorite 21st-century SF novels took the same approach to Mars, and I am here for more of it.  The Strange has more alternate history involved. This is a trick I enjoy on TV with For All Mankind or one of my top reads last year, New Tomorrow by Cody Goodfellow. That is to say, I like a wildly different history now and again.

I didn’t know that The Strange was a retro/alternate history story, and so the slow reveal over the first couple of chapters was delightfully confusing. The first time 1931 and Satchel Page were mentioned, I was confused. This excellent reveal through world-building really worked for me. I was not spoiled because I didn't read the description, but it is all there, so don´t @ me.  

Certainly, elements of this story also share vibes with Clinton Portis as much as Bradbury. Anibelle runs a diner with her father, and a bandit comes in with bad intentions. Some of the frontier elements are setup by the isolation from Earth, which happens when signals and ships from Earth go dead. Something the Martian colonists called “the silence.” The elements that weave SF and western are part of the story, so perfectly woven into the story.  Anibelle’s motivation is getting the stolen recordings of her dead mother’s voice; she chases the thief across the Martian landscape with her robotic dishwasher. Get set up.

I LOVE this novel. Haunting, weird, character-driven pulp homage that kept me turning pages.

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad

 

 

Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad

 368 pages, Hardcover
Published 2019 by Riverhead Books

One of the best books I read this year came in after I posted my best of the year, and that has been known to happen.  This was a book I read entirely because of an article about in the issue of Science Fiction Studies I picked up at SFAM in LA last year. The theme of the issue was Southeast Asian speculative fiction. I see no sign that this was marketed as a genre novel, but anyone reading my reviews knows how I feel about that. 

I have no proof other than a similar literary device, but I often thought of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell while reading this book. It is built on the concept of a single house over many decades, starting in the past and stretching into the future, which highlights the city as a character. Yes, it is the story of Bangkok that stretches into the future look at the effects of climate change. That is where the book gets speculative. That might lose some readers, in either direction. There are just a few SF elements early, not enough for some readers and others will think it gets too weird. 

That said, those readers are wrong. BWTR works on every level.  The speculative elements of this novel are more obvious in the back half, but that doesn’t mean they are not present in the early chapters, and that is stronger in the case of this novel. This becomes clearer the longer you get into the narrative. The novel is lyrical and powerfully written, and some might find it challenging to connect everything, but I was fine.

I know some elements of this story are over my head, as I don’t understand the history of Siam/Thailand or the people, as well as the folks who lived it. That is OK, that is one of the joys of reading international literature; I often choose books for that reason, it is a lens on these cultures. Thai-ness and the vibe of the city we know as Bangkok is a huge part of this novel. 

SF novels about cities have a long tradition, and I was surprised a few times to get the feeling of Delany’s Dahlgren or Shirley’s City Come a Walkin’, but this novel is never quite that strange. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of strange speculative elements.  What is really neat is how the nature of the city changes thanks to climate change, the characters adapt to nature and use technology. As with many of my favorite speculative fiction works, the nature of reality is a question woven into the fabric of the tale.  Pitchaya Sudbanthad creates a vibe of the city; you feel the heat and humidity drip off the page. Each of the interconnected sections feels lived in, even the fantastical. 

A towering achievement for a first-time novelist. Very impressed.