Book Review: Dead To Her by Sarah Pinborough

Dead To Her by Sarah Pinborough

Hardcover, 400 pages

Published February 11th 2020 by William Morrow

The wild mainstream bestselling success of Sarah Pinborough makes me super happy. She is an incredible writer, who worked her ass off in the salt mines of the horror genre for years. I am sure there are Oprah or Reese Witherspoon book club readers who think she has only three books to her name. I had the thought today as I was finishing this book that it would be interesting to get their reaction to older Pinborough books like the Dog-Faced Gods Trilogy. Those are nasty dystopian novels with a serial killer that would make your most hardcore horror readers cringe.

Before the wild success of her novel Behind her Eyes (coming to Netflix soon as a series) I didn't picture a SP novel being grouped with novels like "The Wife Stalker," or "The Other Mrs."  That said in the wake of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train Pinborough with her detail-oriented ability to plot was perfect to become the master of the feminine thriller.

I am certainly not the target audience for this novel, as this novel seems perfectly calibrated for the middle life crisis housewife that wants a thriller that speaks to them.  I am sorry if that seems reductive, I read Pinborough because I love how she plots and twists narrative with incredible skill. What she has also done is brilliantly targeted an audience over the last three books and reinvented herself.

Pinborough said in a Bustle.com interview: " I wasn't fueled by outside gender politics as it were, but rather my own. I reached an age a few years ago — I'm 46 now — when I became interested in telling stories about women – the good, the bad, and the ugly of women — and therefore they couldn't just be victims. That didn't interest me. I think, especially with Cross Her Heart, all the action in the novel is driven by women. There are men in my books obviously, some good and some bad, but they're not "in charge" of the book. For my past few books, and the one I'm currently writing, it's all about exploring female dynamics."

Dead to Her has many well-drawn characters but the bulk of the narrative is focused on Marcie. She is the second younger wife of a wealthy southern lawyer in Savannah Georgia. Marcie was a waitress who had a steamy affair with Jason and now has woven herself into the wealthy culture of the small town. The high society and southern backdrop make it feel different from other very British feeling books of SP's catalog but the novel seems to capture the feeling nicely.

I went into this cold, not knowing anything about the plot and so I was perfectly misdirected in the early pages. If you want that feeling preserved stop reading and come back when you are done.


If you read the description you are getting an idea of the first act, Marcie is the second wife of Jason whose older widower boss has returned with a younger black wife. She is beautiful and taking Marcie's role as the hot young second wife. The first act treads the tropes with rough edges. You really feel  Marcie's spite growing venomous as the younger Keisha flirts with her husband and opens wishes death on her wealthy older newlywed husband.

It is the rest of the novel that takes off. The story is driven entirely by the women at this point. The men around them are not exactly nice guys, and they think they are pretty important. Marcie might seem helpless at times, slave to her new privilege but that is the hidden subtext of this thriller.  It is the women in the orbit of this patriarchal subculture taking ownership of their lives and their stories at the heart of this book for both the heroes and villains.

It is Pinborough so don't assume for any amount of pages you know who is who.

Dead to Her is a great novel, that is subtle good. It appears on the surface to be fluffy thriller entertainment but it is a stealth piece of feminism. Not in a raised fist militant way, but in a grounded way it sticks a dagger into the heart of subtle but painful habits of patriarchy like a thousand cuts. There are plenty of sharp observations of male behavior that will not be fun for some men to read, it is a pity because it might be a good way for them to learn how they are treating their partners.

The more I think on it the better I think it is.  Sarah Pinborough, damn sister... you did it again!

Book Review: Star Trek Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

 

 

Star Trek Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

 Hardcover, 467 pages

Published November 1994

Fancy pants critics and literary types may not like Media Tie-in novels but I grew up reading them and enjoy many of them. There are various degrees of quality in any genre, but The tie-in genre is no different. There is nothing wrong with expanded universes and prose takes on beloved comic book, Movie, or TV characters. I love it when Award-winning genre authors like Brian Evenson does Aliens, or Christa Faust doing Fringe. Hell My favorite author in the world John Shirley gave us his takes on Hellblazer, Batman, Predator, and more. When these well-established writers bring their talents it almost always raises the bar.  Some writers are just born to write in the existing universes. I was thinking of Michael Reeves in Star Wars. I don't know that he has ever published outside of Star Wars but he writes amazing books in that universe. Authors like Greg Cox and Kirsten Beyers for two examples seem born to write Trek novels and the later has become important to Trek TV.

Somewhere in the middle is a married couple Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. They have written a lot of Star Trek, besides working on the final season of Enterprise, they ghostwrote Shatner's insane off-shoot Shatner-verse and mainline Trek novels. At the same time, the couple has written Techno thrillers like Wraith and several original sci-fi horror novels.

Their early original series novel Prime Directive is incredible and with good reason, this novel Federation is considered the Citizen Kane of Star Trek novels.  I read it when it came out, a few years later and one time fifteen years ago I listened to the audiobook. I am certain it is the only Star Trek novel I would read repeatedly.

This novel has a strange place in the ST universe, while almost universally loved and praised it is almost knocked out of canon by the existence of the second TNG movie First Contact, and at the same time, I think it greatly outdoes Generations in combining the crews. Thus it has a strange relationship to both those films as well which podcaster Seth Heasley and I will discuss deeper in an upcoming episode Star Trek Story, Myth, and Arcs.

While it is possible with a little bit of handwavium to say that Federation and First Contact can exist together they really can't.  That is a spoiler and we will come back to that. First, why is Federation and Reeves-Stevens team so goddamn good at Star Trek?

Federation is a story that spans over three hundred years of future history which is an epic task for any storyteller with perhaps Miller's A Canticle for Lebowitz being the best example in science fiction. The authors here had the benefit of being able to call on the known established canon but the connective tissue involved lots of creative stabs at the times that bridged our times to the primarily utopian future. In 1994 when this book came out Enterprise had not happened or the Bell riots on Deep Space Nine so this era was mostly a mystery.

One of the few hints was an often overlooked melodramatic romantic episode of the Original Series Metamorphasis written by producer Gene L. Coon. Featuring Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri who according to the episode invented the warp drive and disappeared into deep space.  Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are transporting by shuttle with a dying Ambassador, who just discovered her life is ending despite her concern for the war she was trying to prevent. They end up on a planet with the long-stranded Cochrane who should have died 100 years earlier but is being kept alive by a (ridiculously gendered as a female) cloud of energy named the Companion.

The story ends with the ambassador dying and allowing the Companion to become human in her body thus finally being with the lifeform she loves Zefram. Considering he is a famous person Kirk agrees to keep the mission secret and leave the Companion and Cochrane in peace. TOS stories like this mostly were stand-alone as TV did at the time. Like Wrath of Khan with Space Speed, this novel seeks to answer questions about the episode and look at the consequences. In the Sixties, the consequences of each episode were dropped but often the novels did pick up these threads.

The episode is essentially the foundation of this novel. Why had Cochrane disappeared into deep space and would Kirk lying about the death of a UFP Ambassador have consequences? The TOS  storyline also takes place just days after the events of the classic DC Fontana written episode Journey to Babel.  The chapters surrounding the TNG crew are directly after the episode when Picard's mind-meld with Sarek. (which lead to actor Mark Lenard reading the abridged Audiobook)

As Deep Space Nine was dipping its toes into the long-form storytelling Federation being tied to events in the timeline is an underrated aspect of what makes this novel great.  One of the skills the authors brought to Star Trek was making it feel real and lived in. Kirk still being in pain from being stabbed in Babel, Picard unable to get Sarek's thoughts out of his head.  It gave weight to episodes that the reader remembers.

This, not the only way the Reeves-Stevens manage to give Trek weight and life. Consider the Enterprise's operation to rescue hostages.  The author thought out details of how the crew had prepared medical and engineering teams for the mission. It is clear they studied the published Star Trek Technical manuals. Halfway through the narrative Kirk and the Enterprise rescue hostages being held by a crew of Klingon and Orion pirates.

This operation in the novel is one of the best ST action scenes in any media period. Like the best of the movies each member of the crew has a job, the operation required level of skill and strategy which required the Enterprise being the best at what they do. This is a little less obvious on Picard's Enterprise and it would be easy at first wonder how this part of the story fits in.  In the third act, the threads come together in genius ways.  (Spoilers in the podcast)

As a writer myself I am a fan of plotting, and structure the three timelines are so well-woven together. Most chapters end with intense cliffhangers and the storylines parallel each other enough that they build off each other in clever ways. It is hard to talk about what makes this ST novel so great without giving up details. Seth and I cover that in the podcast.

Let's just say this. Federation combines the first two crews across the generations in a way that has a deeper meaning than what we saw on screen. It is a story that is built on themes that span the generations with stakes that require the bold canvas in a way that Generations the film didn't. It is a story that couldn't be done on film and takes great advantage of the strengths of a novel. It is subtle the crews don't stand in rooms together but trapped in a singularity across time they see each other, have to trust each other and work together. It might sound goofy and hyperbolic but it has a beauty to it that the Kirk and Picard making breakfast and riding horses didn't.

The villain Arick Thorn is my second favorite Trek villain to Khan, his hatred and drive are so well woven into the story it makes him a powerful force. It is cartoony sure but in all the right ways. He is perfect evil, weird, and driven in a way the best bad guys always are. Cochrane's story is better explained and woven into the canon here compared to First Contact and it makes more sense with the history TOS fans know.

Federation is THE BEST Star Trek novel I have read and I have read probably 100 of them over the years. I admit I burned out on them, and don't have the space to read as many as I would like with my responsibilities as a critic and general science fiction podcaster. That said I don't think you can go wrong with this one.

Podcast is recorded, I will add it here in a few days...

Why Federation is the best Trek Novel podcast

Podcast with Video

Old audio bonus material added to the podcast feed

So I didn't do this alot but I posted a few bits and pieces of audio content on Youtube as bonus features for this blog over the years. I added a few up over the weekend. Some oldies but goodies. 

Brian Evenson Talking Feral in 2017

Cody Goodfellow interview recorded from 2013 bizarro con

Book review and Discussion of MR Carey's The Boy on the Bridge (w/ Marvin Vernon)

Coming soon...Chad Stroup, Jeremy Robert Johnson, F.Paul Wilson and new stuff too.

Podcast: June Book Reviews digest

Starting with June 2020 I am going to be recording an audio digest of all the book reviews for the month.  The first one is posted here:

June 2020 book review digest here!

Book Review: Star Trek Picard The Last Best Hope by Una Mcormack

 

Star Trek Picard The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack

 Hardcover, 322 pages

Published February  2020 by Pocket Books/Star Trek; Simon & Schuster 

 

 

I meant to read this before the show premiered but somehow I missed it until now when I have watched Picard the series twice. So yeah I am a fan of the show and I know the return of Star Trek under the guidance of Alex Kurtzman has been dividing the fans. This review is not really about the show but Una McCormack's excellent prequel to the show. I have to say this is the first time this author's work and I was very impressed. 

This novel not only felt like the ST universe but more importantly McCormack gave the world a sense of life and function that felt grounded. That is one of the key reasons that this book not only tells the backstory to the show it makes the show better and gives it even more weight.

I really appreciated that all the conflict and drama came from the fact that Picard was attempting to mount an impossible mission. There were no action scenes or battles forced into the story to give it an action vibe. The novel is a political drama that follow Raffi and Admiral Picard on their mission to try and save the Romulan empire from disaster even when they are not interested in help.

 

The story sets up and tells the back story of Picard's infamous mission to try and save the Romulans. We get most of the back story hinted at in the TV series. We get excellent details on how Picard, Raffi, Bruce Maddox, and Geordi (!) move mountains to save a species that has been the Federation's enemy for centuries held in check by the thin political line of the neutral zone.

 

The writing is excellent, top-notch work of weaving multiple storylines and POVs. I know there is this idea out there that tie-in novels are lesser works of literature. Here again, Una McCormack proves that from a writing task that is nonsense. The structure of the story takes place over three years, balances A, B, C, and D storylines while planting seeds for 10 hours of television. at the same time the story is compelling and the characters already established by the history of Trek or the still in production script she was working from. Not a simple job but this novel pulls all that off.

 

A good tie-in writer knows how to use the relationship the reader has with the characters to their advantage and this is done here often. I actually think I benefitted in my reading experience because I had already watched the show. The relationship of Raffi and Picard is so important to this book and I think will ad weight when I watch the scene when Picard shows up at her trailer. 

 

The moral weight of Picard, his role in Starfleet and his stubborn insistence on the mission and saving lives is the heart of the novel and in that sense alone it add depth to the show. That feeling is all there in the show but it is nice to see the level Picard worked for years on the mission. It means more when you watch the scene where He walks into the Romulan bar.

 

The novel also fills in information that some thought were holes in the show. This comes in explaining how the sudden crisis pushes the Starfleet shipyards to increase production to the point that they need android workers to pitch-in, plus pushing workers in ways that 24th-century citizens are not used to. At the same time, Picard is pushing federation colonies and worlds to accept Romulan refugees, something that a political operative on the Federation council pounces on.

 

Many Star Trek purists are really bothered that the stress of the Romulan crisis is putting such stress on the Federation. But look at what a tiny virus is doing to America as this is written. the Federation at the time of this story has just survived two Borg invasions and a Dominion War. As a show Picard is about one man's idealism saving The universe we all grown to love so nothing is more Roddenberry than that.   

 

I know many were bothered by Picard and Starfleet's distrust of each other and the fact that Clancy told Picard off. McCormack sets all that up nicely showing the number of times they showed him respect, but Picard challenged them over and over.  

While this novel had various obvious points of view it was trying to express. When Patrick Stewart sat in the writer's room with Kurtzman, Buyer, Goldsman, and Chabon. It is clear the border and the refugee crisis with the caravan coming to the border was on their minds. Although less than a year after it was released I felt a different political weight. While half of our country is refusing science and debating science behind wearing masks. I couldn't help think about that as Picard was debating with a Romulan Senator that he needed to believe him that his planet was about to die. The man refused to believe the science choosing to believe Starfleet was using the situation to exploit and destroy their civilization. Sound familiar? 

 

Some little things I want to note, there is a part where a Romulan scientist talks about his love for Science Fiction, and I loved thinking about the Romulan science fiction novels with the evil Starfleet in them. 

Was it perfect? No, throughout the novel I assumed the Romulan liason Tajuth would end up being the character living with Picard because I didn't remember his name. There is a character who is a personal guard of a Romulan Senator in the third act she dies but it would make sense to be Laris.  Even though they were only in the first three episodes Laris and Zhaban were my favorite characters on the show. It would have made sense to tell there back story and deepen their relationship to Picard. I suspect that was the plan, not sure why that was not the case here. 

 

If you enjoyed Picard I suggest you read this before a repeat viewing, put on the soundtrack as you read it, it is a quick read.  

Book Review: Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan, Ken Liu (Translator)

 

Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan, Ken Liu (Translator)

Hardcover, 352 pages

Published April  2019 by Tor Books (first published January 2013) 

 

Locus Award Nominee for Best First Novel (2020)

 

I have long been a fan of Chinese story-telling, it started with Kungfu movies as kids, I still have a shelf of Wuxia (kungfu high fantasy) movie DVDs.   I followed that passion to the hard to find translations of those classic novels. In research for my Wuxia Vampire novel Hunting the Moon Tribe I read the classics of Chinese fantasy like the bizarro collection Tales From a Chinese Studio and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. So  more than most Sci-fi nerds I have been dying for these translations for a long time. I know many Science Fiction readers and critics have read The Three-Body Problem trilogy, which benefited from Barack Obama putting on a reading list. 

I can't thank Ken Liu enough and hope that Waste Tide signals a fresh wave of Chinese Science Fiction translations. A few years back I read his first translation anthology Invisible Planets. That is an incredible book and a must-read for anyone who wants to get a flavor of science fiction coming from China. The book is kicked off by a totally bonkers story by Chen Quifan that was as much of a horror tale as it was cyberpunk.  Year of the Rat was the story of soldiers in a battle with genetically enhanced neo-rats. That was not the only story from the author in that collection but there was also a very PKD influenced neo-noir The Flower of Shazui that I talked about in the Dick Like suggestions on Dickheads at some point. 

Chen Quifan was on my radar at this point so Waste Tide has been on my list for some time. There are plenty of reasons it should be on your radar too. Science Fiction is a bit of a universal language while some international writers like Stanislaw Lem have been regularly translated for decades the translations coming how of Asia have taken longer to surface.  

Thanks to Kurodahan Press, a company formed by ex-pats living in Japan we have seen several Japanese translations including anthologies and novels.  Without the translations Ken Liu has brought us I am not sure in America we would ever be exposed to the fantastic fiction coming out of China. Waste Tide is a prime example of the importance of their work.

So to get focused on this novel. Chen Quifan clearly has a dark and rich imagination. This being my third story of his it is clear that the work is dripping with weird inventiveness. WT is science fiction reaching its greatest potential. Social-political message carefully woven into well thought out speculation that holds a mirror on the relationship between America and the country that produces the majority of the electronics it uses. This story not only benefits from a Chinese voice, but it depends on it.

Quifan has much to say in this novel about class divisions, environmentalism, corporate exploitation, technology addiction, and integration. I know it sounds like a lot of elements but the novel perfectly uses the setting and characters to explore multiple points of view.

Set on Silicon Isle a landmass that is partially artificial off the coast of China near Hong Kong. The majority of the isle is made up of discarded electronics and cyborg body parts that had become trendy with transhumanists. When we are first introduced to the district it is through the eyes of radical environmentalists trying to stop the shipment of electronic waste that has come across multiple oceans from New Jersey to this new hotbed recycling.

 

The reality on the ground is a giant waste dump that is inhabited by people called Waste People and the land is controlled by three constantly warring crime clans. We are also introduced to several native characters including gangsters but the most interesting character is not surprisingly is one of the Waste People. That is Mimi whose story becomes woven into the Mecha and transhumanist elements.  

.  

Much of the story is told through the point of view of an American corporate lackey Scott Brundle who is a veteran of several of these international operations with a company called TerraGreen. Their model for business is at the heart of the novel and Scott Brundle's conflict over his role in it is interesting.

 "The pollution generated by the process far exceeded EPA standards"... "It wasn't worth it."

This appears to be inspired by the author's real-life experience of living near an electronics dumping ground.  I have seen some commentary that suspects the author is placing all the blame on capitalism and outside forces for the mess at Silicon Isle but that is not the case.

"TerraGreen would transfer waste and pollution overseas, to the vast lands of developing nations. TerraGreen recycling would help them construct industrial parks and production lines..."

Waste Tide is not unfairly depicting capitalism here and the local governments play a huge role. While it is easy for American readers and critics to question Chen Quifan, he has written a savage piece of speculative protest. At the same time, the novel is fun and action-filled.

This is a very politically sharp novel and it doesn't exactly paint the most pretty outcome for China's future as the main electronics manufacturing hub for the world. I found myself thinking this is a bold and daring story for an American Science Fiction author but it seems even bolder coming from a writer who lives in a country that controls information like China.

The best reason to read international science fiction is the different cultural perspectives. It is disappointing to look at reviews of this book that seem to want the same science fiction they are reading from western writers.  Chen Quifan clearly holds a mirror to China throughout. This moment however stood out to me.

“The offices in the skyscrapers were lit bright as day. The giant eye zoomed in and observed a hundred thousand faces staring at computer monitors through closed-circuit cameras; their tension, anxiety, anticipation, confusion, satisfaction, suspicion, jealousy, anger refreshed rapidly while their glasses reflected the data jumping across their screens. Their looks were empty but deep, without thought of the relationship between their lives and values, yearning for change but also afraid of it. They gazed at their screens the way they gazed at each other, and they hated their screens the way they hated each other. They all possessed the same bored, apathetic face.” 

Once the cyberpunk and mecha elements kick in during the second half of the novel, the directly political elements could get lost. Thankfully this is not a problem. While I hesitate to talk about Mimi's arc explores transhuman issues and ideas. While early in the novel the props of discarded cyborg limbs are tactile how we exist as data becomes central to the themes.

“Welcome to Anarchy.Cloud. We provide information storage and remote computing services from low orbit server stations. Our operating entity belongs to no nation, political party, or corporation. As far as practicable, we endeavor to help you circumvent laws like the American PATRIOT Act and the supplements to the European Union’s Article 29 of the Data Protection Directive, which are designed to invade data privacy in the name of antiterrorism.”

and...

"What are you?" She squeezed out the question that had been plaguing her all this time. 
"A nuclear explosion that has been slowed down a million times; a by-product of billions of years of convergent evolution; your second personality and life insurance; the free will that emerges from quantum decoherence. I'm accidental; I'm inevitable."

Waste Tide is right up my alley in many ways. Is it perfect? No, but the faults are minor. To me the characters and setting are interesting enough to carry the book. The excellent cultural and political commentary are like icing on the cake. This is an important read for Science Fiction readers and academics. Its place in the cultural opening of Chinese Science Fiction is important but outside of that it is just perfect speculative fiction. I am willing to go 5/5 on stars and I don't take that lightly.

What is happening to your waste? What is happening to your species?  This Sci-fi masterpiece asks and answers even questions to be worth your attention buy it, read it.

Book Review: An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

 

 

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

 Paperback, 351 pages

Published October 2017 by Akashic Books

Stonewall Book Award Nominee for Literature (2018),  

Lambda Literary Award Nominee for LGBTQ SF/F/Horror (2018),

 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee for Debut Novel (2018),

 James Tiptree Jr. Award Honor List (2017)

 One of the most common subgenres of science fiction is the Generation ship novel. With hundreds of entries by some of the biggest names in the genre, it is easy to think that everything has been said. During a panel, I co-hosted for the Dickheads podcast I glibly suggested that Kim Stanley Robinson had the final word on the generation ship novel with his hard SF masterpiece Aurora. Panelist and professor Lisa Yasek disagreed and told me that I needed to read An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon.

I am glad they did because An Unkindness of Ghosts is indeed an important work in the subgenre and the wider field of Science fiction in general. I have to admit that this book took a little while to hook me but from the start, I knew the writing was excellent. It has nothing to do with weaknesses in the book which there are few. It is a bit on me as I am a space nerd and a science geek, that is why the hard science approach of Aurora is more up my alley.

An Unkindness of Ghosts is a generation ship novel for sure but the HSS Matilda is more of a literary device or mirror to the antebellum south than an actual spaceship. By the end it is clear that Solomon put a lot of thought into the function of the ship, the societal aspects came across stronger to me.  It is not until p.285 during the reveal of a major twist that we get a page that deals with orbital mechanics or how the ship works. That is totally fine for this novel just it was impossible for me to turn off my space brain, and I felt I may have been missing the point by overthinking how the ship worked at times. 

That is not the point at all. This book is a hardcore experience and not for the light-hearted. First and foremost I want to talk about the prose. Rivers Solomon is a powerful writer who paints this story with many shades of pain. There is a coming of age story here, but if there is a chart of trigger warnings you can pretty much check-off every single one of them. This is a painful read at times but the rich and raw truth of it is so powerful you feel the struggle of the characters.

Life in the lower decks of the Matilda is harsh and brutal, the way the society on the massive vessel is organized by deck. The different decks have different languages, customs, and classes. Humanity has escaped the dying earth and is trying desperately to find a new home for humanity. After generations in space, it would be easy to lose hope and believe that the promised land is not real.

The society on the ship is enclosed and a microcosm for the systematic oppression that strips slaves of their humanity. I got the impression that Solomon was using the Matilda to examine how the last slave ships in the dying days of the slave trade functioned and blowing that dehumanization up through the Science fictional concept. In this sense, An Unkindness of Ghosts reminds me of Mary Doria Russell's novel The Sparrow.

That said this book is more rooted in the genre than The Sparrow a book that didn't care for tried and true Science Fiction methods or tropes, and Russell shied away from being called SF.  That is not the case here. I will say that by the end the Science Fictional aspects were the least important thing to me.

Solomon uses the ship as a literary device to not only hold a mirror to racial issues but class, labor, and most importantly non-binary representation.  I loved the characters. One of the things I liked about the characters was that they were messy. Aster and Theo were not typical narrative heroes who strongly knew who they are and what they were about. Aster is on the autism spectrum, it seems also that her gender issues are also on a spectrum, as they are ones she is trying to work out during the story.

 Aster's main drive through the story is to try and understand her mother's suicide. Mother issues bleed off the page throughout the story. Like in slavery mothers inside Matilda sometimes lose their biological children and some times end up raising children not their own.

“I’m not maternal but that doesn’t mean I don’t love. I love Aster. I love all the girls and women I look after. It is hard to be in somebody’s presence for so long and not develop something like love.”

Life in this spaceship is not that different than life on earth and the struggle with and against conformity is at the heart of this tiny culture. With the added pressure of enclosed space, a world where every inch is used for some function and only the wealthiest on the upper decks can see stars. Nature is just not a thing.  Aster not being neuro-typical is part of makes her so wonderfully different and interesting of a character, but I personally loved how her non-gender-conforming binary lifestyle was related to the culture on her deck. I loved this passage...


“In my language, there is no word for I. To even come close, you must say, E’tesh’lem vereme pri’lus, which means, This one here who is apart from all. It’s the way we say lonely and alone. It’s the way we say, outsider. It’s the way we say weak. Everyone always wonders about I love you. In Ifrek you say, Mev o’tem, or, We are together. “How do you say, I’m tired?” people ask. “Ek’erb nal veesh ly. The time for rest is upon us.”  

When Aster travels up however see is confronted by being different. Two passages spoke well to this for me.


“Conform or die. That was his motto. I am oddly doing bits of both, each half-assedly.” 

Science Fiction or not this novel did the best job of conveying the feeling of being non-binary that I have read yet. Solomon gives the novel a rich texture that they clearly understand from experience. I have noticed from checking out a few reviews that many readers have focused entirely on the pain of the book, that said the coming of age aspect has moments of welcome growth for the characters and it is not all pain. Not only does the last act solve Aster's mystery but I loved this moment where Aster starts by explaining the pain of being different and then arrives somewhere else...

“Aye. You gender-malcontent. You otherling,” she said, the fog of anesthesia wearing off. She could see him clearly now. The curl of his lashes. The white flecks of skin over his dry lips. “Me too. I am a boy and a girl and a witch all wrapped into one very strange, flimsy, indecisive body. Do you think my body couldn’t decide what it wanted to be?” “I think it doesn’t matter because we get to decide what our bodies are or are not,” he answered. Aster sat up, and Theo helped her prop two pillows beneath her head. “Is that so? Then I am magic. I say it, therefore it is true.”  

I am Magic.

Without giving away the ending the science fictional elements and the answer to Aster's questions about her mother's death are the heart of the final act. "The Gods navigate Matilda." Well, that was the belief but more is going on. I liked this end to the story.

This is a book I enjoyed more and more as it went on. Once I got a handle on the world and started to figure out the setting and characters. It is the kinda book you don't read quickly. My last review was of the Afrofuturism issue of Extrapolation. I thought about this quote from Doug Stark's essay. "Sf’s representation issues do not merely reveal authorial biases and assumed readerships. They insidiously foreclose futurity for those who cannot find themselves in depictions of heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied white men."  Thanks to Rivers Solomon we have a science fictional response. No shock that it comes from a non-binary author of color. This is a book that gets better after you close the book and think about it. I just finished it yesterday and my appreciation for it has already grown. While it wasn't a perfect book for me personally I would say it is must read and a masterpiece of science fiction.

Journal Review: Extrapolation 61.1-2 Edited by Isiah Lavender III and Lisa Yaszek

Extrapolation 61.1-2 Edited by  Isiah Lavender III and Lisa Yaszek

Extrapolation is an academic journal covering speculative fiction. It was established in 1959 by Thomas D. Clareson and is currently a labor of love by various academics including two friends of our podcast. D.Harlan Wilson is the review editor and this issue is edited by three-time Dickheads podcast guest Lisa Yaszek.  The theme of this issue is Afrofuturism. I was very excited to dig into this edition. I have seen articles from the journal from time to time but this is my first time reading an issue cover to cover.

The term first came into being like many subgenres it was coined in an essay Mark Dery wrote an essay 'Black to the Future' in 1993. It is not as though black or African Science Fiction didn't exist before this point but many even serious readers in the field were hard-pressed to go beyond the two first giants in the field Samuel Delany and Octivia Butler. There is one good reason those two authors stand out - they were incredible. The lack of other voices of color through most of the 20th century in Science Fiction has plenty of reasons and blame to be spread around. 

Thanks to the works of academics like Lisa Yasak the Georgia Tech professor who co-edited this issue we have learned that the input of female Science Fiction authors in the early days of the genre was underreported. While that is super clear reading The Future is Female this journal has a very different point to make. 

In an essay towards the end of the journal Doug Stark made the point "Science fiction has always had a realism problem. This is not difficult to identify—you might say it is in the name. Conspicuously lacking are the realities of racial difference which have often been and continue to be erased in science fiction writing. Since its beginnings."

Afrofuturism is a movement that has grown in amazing leaps and bounds since the term was coined but as far as I can tell the effort to study it is less about rediscovery like the study of feminist science fiction. One of the coolest aspects of this journal is it not only highlights the African and Latinx speculative fiction but express in art, music, and social media. Black Panther coming out of the MCU has made it mainstream and now people are looking for MORE.

Andre Brock writes about black twitter and social media and presents the idea that Black cyberculture is post present, in a sense that a serious Afrofuturism discussion is constantly evolving on the internet.  "Informational blackness is not  post-human, instead it is a speculative cyborg blackness mediated by digital."  I related to this because I have found the way communities operate online to be head spinning at times. 

The next essay was very eye-opening to this very close-minded metal and hardcore dude who doesn't really listen to music I am not interested in. Taryne Jade Taylor wrote about Latinx futurism in hip-hop and honestly I had no idea that Cypress Hill had a song with Pitbull and Marc Anthony about decolonized counter-hegemonic Latinx futurism but that is why you read to learn. Hey, I learned about many cool songs that checked out.  They were not for me but I am glad to learn they are out there.

Lidia Kniaź in the next essay appears to trying to deal with the growing movement and how it has been expressed across media. It also deals with the debate that author Nedi Okorafor who I have reviewed several times here on the blog. It is important for her to not seperate herself from Africa, even in her Binto space opera trilogy the main character of the books wears the soil of her homeland on her face and in her hair. Okorafor has said “I am an Africanfuturist. BEFORE you start asking for or debating its meaning, please call me the name first” 

Kniaź is very sympathetic to Okorafor who makes this point often as she can. "Okorafor’s
spelling of the term Africanfuturism as one word indicates the inseparability of those two notions. By creating a blend, the novelist seems to reinforce the link between Africa and speculative thought."

One of the essays that provoked the most thought for me was Jessica Fitzpatrick's essay "Twenty-First Century Afrofuturist Aliens Shifting to the Space of Third Contact" 

"Following Haywood Ferreira’s idea that historical colonial human engagement is the moment of first contact, and science fictional (often alien-human) interactions are moments of second contact, then current Afrofuturist works suggest a progression from second contact into “third contact” between separated (often) human-human community factions."

Just the idea that first contact is something that needs to be re-framed is something I was not prepared to consider. It is a very interesting notion that without really meaning to do this the collective Afrofuturism movement has so often done this is fascinating. 

I have already quoted Doug Stark's essay about Sci-fi's problem with realism and I can say it had a real impact on me already. This quote was most important to me. "Sf’s representation issues do not merely reveal authorial biases and assumed readerships. They insidiously foreclose futurity for those who cannot find themselves in depictions of heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied white men."

Since the death of Octavia Butler the movement lost one of its earliest and strongest voices. That said closing with Samuel Delany is as strong as it could get. From reading both their interviews and enjoying following Delany on Facebook it seems like Butler was more fond of the label. Delany starts his essay stating "Unless we set up our critical mirrors very carefully, arguably there is no such
thing as Afrofuturism."

Delany like many of his generation is very concerned with teaching the history of the genre and that is something we have in common. In this essay, he highlights the strengths and weaknesses of two classics with black characters by white authors in the field.  More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon and Tiger!, Tiger! AKA the Stars my Destination.

Overall this journal is an excellent piece of academic work highlighting the growth of this subgenre and the cross-media offshoots. The most important thing is I learned a lot that will be helpful for the podcast and more importantly my citizenship in the Science Fiction community.

  

Book Review: Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

Hardcover, 372 pages

Published February 16th 2016 by Harper

There is a very simple reason I choose to read this now. We are one month away from the premiere of the HBO series produced by Jordan Peele (Us) and Misha Green (Underground) starring Jonathon Majors fresh off impressive roles in The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Da 5 Bloods. I was excited to see the show but knew I wanted to experience the story as it was intended before I saw it on the screen. What I didn't understand until I started reading was that Ruff's vision was always intended for this format.

Lovecraft Country is more X-files than Lovecraft in tone, the chapters provide an episodic structure, and reading interviews with the author only confirmed what was obvious on the page. Ruff had replaced Mulder with a science fiction reading Atticus Black who traveled through the Jim Crow fifties researching the Safe Negro travel guide, a slightly fictionalized take on the Green Book which has since become famous because of the embarrassingly saccharine-sweet Oscar bait white savior movie The Green Book.

Ruff said that he thought of it and pitched as a TV first, but it is excellent researched and written and it stands alone as an important work of horror fiction. Through mythology and monster of the week stories it transplants the X-files into a more openly racist 50s thus provided an excellent backdrop for horror.

All the stories work on some level and as a whole, the book is powerful as a work of horror but also a statement on the timeless horror of racism and the power of the system in America that wields it. The stories do at times address various Lovecraftian mythos but the book is not beholden to Howard's beasties and one of the most powerful stories has nothing to do with the mythos.  Jekyll in Hyde Park might sound in the title like it would tackle the classic monster inside tale but in this story, the character Ruby wakes up white, and thus explores issues of race in important ways.

The opening story works like a pilot setting up the characters, setting and mythology but to me the best story was Hippolyta Disturbs the Universe - a cosmic horror story about Astronomy.  Overall as a book, it stands alone as an important piece of work, and I recommend you read now before you watch the show.

The majority of this review might have to deal with two elephants in the room. First is Matt Ruff being a white author. I personally think this should not be an issue, he did his research and nothing in this book appears to have prevented Black creators like Jordan Peele and Misha Green from doing the show. That said in recent weeks we have seen the first time YA author Alexandra Duncan pulled her own novel Ember Days from publication because it was about Gullah culture. The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia. Duncan decided that she was not comfortable representing this very niche cultural minority as a white person in the same community.

Article about the Ember Days situation

Her statement on Twitter

I don't pretend to understand the ins and outs of Duncan's situation and the debate grew quite toxic afterward. I respect her decision, my personal feeling was that the novel deserved a chance to be published and judged before the debate raged.

Lovecraft Country is a novel about the black experience written by a white man and now it is being translated to the screen by Black filmmakers. It is messy in this greater debate. I think the work should be judged by the content, but also admit that as a white creator that getting diverse voices into publishing as been a struggle over the years. I can say as someone who is constantly submitting work, agents and publishers are asking and looking for diverse voices. Hopefully, things are changing.

That said I am reviewed Lovecraft Country purely on what I read on the page. A GREAT novel telling an important tale.

The second elephant in the room, this is the fun part. The publishing and the success of creative work whether film or book is timing. Lovecraft Country had some magical timing. Released on the same day was the incredible novella The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor Lavalle. When I saw magical I mean it is also a period horror story about Lovecraft and racism. The two authors both went to Cornell and studied under James Turner for Africana studies. It is cool to learn that the two authors loved each other's very different takes on the subject.

It is almost impossible to talk about one book without the other once you read both. I think the most important thing is that you should read both. They are very different, Lavalle is a New Yorker who used his novella to react to Lovecraft's most racist piece of fiction The Horror at Red Hook, which paints a very ugly picture of 1920s New York. By writing the novella from the point of view of a nameless black character offhandedly described in the Lovecraft story the story uses meta-fiction to address Lovecraft's most ugly stories.

Personally I find Ballad of Black Tom is more my jam, I find it a more stunning work of fiction as response and dialogue but it doesn't take away from the power of Lovecraft Country. They compliment each other so well. That brings me back to the debate over Alexandra Duncan's novel.  There is nothing wrong with Matt Ruff's novel commenting on race issues and Lovecraft, it is just important that we also have the African American voice in Victor Lavalle. Check the interview I linked below from the Barnes and Noble website.  The dialogue is so important. Both stories are horror as art, as activism. There is nothing better than that.

My 2017 review of The Ballad of Black Tom

Great interview with both authors on the Barnes and Noble website.

Journal Review: PKD Otaku e-zine # 41

PKD Otaku e-zine # 41

Get the new issue here!

Past issues here!


One of the greatest things about doing a Philip K. Dick podcast is the insane amounts of information out there on Phil and his work. Thanks to Nick Buchanan and this e-zine we have 41 issues of nerd-out deep dive and I promise you each one is awesome and valuable.

This issue has a couple highlights but the cover feature is an article/ interview with PKD's longtime Italian translator Maurizo Nati. This was pieced together from interviews and letters with the translator. He worked as a translator not just for Phil but for other various novelists and his stories presented here give us some interesting depth. Nati seemed most proud of editing Sam Delany's Dhalgren a novel PKD famously hated. None the less I enjoyed this piece and gives insight into how readers in another country came to PKD.

There is also a short essay by Umberto Rossi and I found interesting the passage about copy-editing of China Mieville's novel The City and The City. Indeed that novel is a very PKD concept but the author's style could not be more different. The BBC TV show based on it was a Dick Like Suggestion on our podcast last year at some point.

Every page of the journal is interesting and next up is an interesting piece called a PKD pandemic journal which is just an essay looking at PKD's themes by decade and has a few excerpts from various letters. This zine compiles many old articles and next up is one from an unknown year by Marc Laidlow in the Science Fiction Book review about Clans of the Aplhane Moon I don't think every article needs to be recounted here but they are always worth checking out for the serious PKD nerd.

We at the Dickheads podcast have highlighted PKD's humor so I liked Nick Buchanan's article the Absurd Brillance of PKD. Thomas Disch's 1976 article is also a fun read.  There are a couple articles from the UK fanzine Speculation and those are fantastic. Richard Gordan Picking apart  Three Stigmata in a 1966 issue is a super great look at the novel and he argues that Dick is the American Ballard. Who can argue with that except to say he really is the American Brunner, which to me is no less of a compliment.

What is most neat about what Nick Buchanan does with Otaku is find things like letters from 1983 science Fiction magazines reacting to PKD's obits. In one case we see that Peter Nichols seems to be blowing off Phil's contributions and inaccurately giving the impression that he had a friendship with Phil. Most important to me as a PKD scholar in this issue is the two letters from  Ted White, one from 1976 and one from 1983 after Phil's death.

This details the history of White's brief but interesting involvement with two novels Dues Irae and We Can Build You.  His story is consistent 7 years apart when he argues that he help match-make Phil and Roger Zelazny.  As well as the debates over the ending of First in the Family/ We Can Build You. This was a novel that Ted White published as a serial with a different ending than the final published novel that Don Wollheim and Daw Books put out.

Otaku is for serious PKD nerds only, but damn this is another great issue for us. I enjoyed the Speculation articles and the Ted White letters were most interesting but as always I enjoyed the whole thing overall. 

As noted in the comments I got the editor of Otaku wrong that the Editor and Publisher is Patrick Clark, it was my mistake, not sure how I made that mistake. In any case I apologize to Patrick, Frank and anyone else who worked hard on this and every issue. just trying to spread the good word on PKD