Book Review: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

 

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published January 18th 2022 by William Morrow

 

 I am on a super-hot streak of reading new novels. In some ways it is luck of the draw, I put books on hold at the library, they come in when they come in. After reading the over-the-top insanity of Manhunt (which is both Sci-fi and horror, don’t get me started) the sober tone of this book was just as welcome, but in a totally different way. I don't remember where I heard about this book. I put it on hold months ago, and Sequoia Nagamatsu is not a name I had ever heard of before. I did however hear a glowing review on the SFF Yeah! podcast from Book Riot just a few days before I cracked it open.

 From the moment I started reading this book I was immediately struck by the power of the prose, the strength of the narrative, and the powerful feeling I got when I read each and every story in this book. It is a novel sorta, I mean it could also be called a short story collection all set in the same universe, but collections do not sell - at least we are told that all the time. On a technical level, it wasn’t until something I consider a spoiler tied it all together in the last story that really made it feel more like a single work. Doesn’t matter it is fantastic no matter how you market it.
 Sequoia Nagamatsu is a powerful and talented writer, the emotional and epic scope of these stories had me wondering where the hell these came from? The pandemic nature of it all had me wondering if this was written in response to COVID and if that sounds impossibly fast Remember that Anthem by Noah Hawley was written and already published in response to the January 6th insurrection. That is not the case with How High We Go in Dark is that Nagamatsu was working on these stories for more than a decade some of them written as stand-alone stories as far back as 2009.

The marketing of the book makes the cross-comparison between Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven. The format is clearly influenced by David Mitchell's style of narrative formatting, It wasn't just that novel as he used a similar structure, he also used it in at least The Bone Clocks. The Station Eleven comparison is mostly pandemic related, but also the tone of reaching for hope. Let's be clear before we reach for hope it gets really dark. I was not a fan of the title that I could never remember when people asked me what I was reading, but I understand what it means.

 So before we talk spoilers for the story or themes let me say outright. How High We Go in the Dark is a fantastic piece of work. Might be the best thing I have read this year and considering the last couple of books have all been amazing that is saying something. Okay mild spoilers, but still you might want to read it come back…
 
“In Siberia, the thawing ground was a ceiling on the verge of collapse, sodden with ice melt and the mammoth detritus of prehistory. The kilometer-long Batagaika Crater had been widening with temperature rise like some god had unzipped the snow-topped marshlands, exposing woolly rhinos and other extinct beasts.”

The concept of climate change unleashing a virus is one I also explored in my CLI-FI novel, so I am familiar with this concept and really enjoyed its use here. It is not that far-fetched and considering the themes, we will get to at the end, it was really important to the inter-linked stories. This also shows something underrated about this novel. SN took the science pretty seriously and the novel shows this with the climate elements but also the stuff that takes place off earth.

So yeah this takes place in the future when climate change has unleashed disease upon the world with melting ice that releases bacteria that has not been around in thousands of years. This is happening by the way. So far it hasn’t been deadly, but it could. In this case when the novel starts we are years into a virus that targets the young. Children can’t fight it. Adults are mostly immune but fifteen and under are at risk. When the novel starts we get a view into the scientists studying the melting ice and the roots of the plague. The second chapter is where it gets a little darker.

 “Everyone scoffed when the governor first announced plans for an amusement park that could gently end children’s pain—roller coasters capable of lulling their passengers into unconsciousness before stopping their hearts.”

 The POV character is a comedian and at first, I thought this was going to be a little more surreal. It has a radically different tone than the first chapter, an emotional gut-punch, one after another…

“We love you, Danny,” He said “My little Dan the man.”
“We’ll be right here, watching,” she said “You’re such a good boy.”
I couldn’t imagine being in their place. I thought about the tiny body bags lining the streets in the early days of the plague, how crying parents could be heard all hours of the night, the white buses that took away the deceased to be stored or burned or studied.”

 This chapter is painful, I am not a parent, but I imagine this seems impossibly dark, but when the chapter comes that shows humans working to escape earth you need this chapter to show how far they have fallen. How desperate the species is to get out of dodge.

This may be personal but there was only one story I didn’t like and found to be ineffective, kinda BS. As a 29-year (so far) vegan who has volunteered at for months at a time at Farm Sanctuaries, I have spent time around pigs. Sweet emotional and smart critters, I am an animal rights person. There is a chapter where a character wrestles with the ethics of exploiting animals for organs to save humans. This is done in a science fictional way when a character learns to communicate with a pig named Snortorious.

“Pig is food?
“Yes sometimes,” I say. “But some people keep pigs as pets and there are wild pigs like the ones you see on your nature shows.”
People eat pig.
Snortorious Snorts became frantic.”

 In the end, Snortorious decides shortly after this that he will be harvested for organs that he wants to help people. I will never agree with this in my decades of being vegan I have seen people tie themselves into ethical pretzels to try and defend eating food made in a cruel and brutal way and a lot of you people love your bacon. It may not have been SN’s intention but to me, this chapter came off as an elaborate way to justify meat-eating.  It didn’t ultimately hurt my view of the novel because as much as I didn’t like this chapter I liked the rest that much more.

 Okay moving on.  As a science fictionist and a space nerd I found the chapter set on the generation ship escaping earth just as heartbreaking as an amusement park for euthanizing kiddos.

 “The botanists dreamed of Trappist soil and wondered how our seeds would fare if any local flora would bring us food and medicine. The astrobiologists spoke of deep oceans that might contain creatures of unimaginable size, conjuring fantastic visions of giant squid and whales. But as we approached the system, we saw no continents or islands, no biosignatures of animal life. The observation deck was filled with silence and tears.”

 It would be easy for this far-out in space chapters that take place over thousands of years to mess with the tone for more mainstream readers but I think this will work for Science Fiction readers.  Similar to Kim Stanley Robinson’s genius novel Aurora at this point the novel is clearly bring home the message how important the earth is to our species.

The novel does return home, with a chapter about the humans left behind and how technologically dependent the species has become. This chapter didn’t seem that far off with a Japanese man announcing that he had married his hologram.

“I’m afraid none of our real-life meetings could ever compare to this. Look at where we are. Isn’t it amazing?”
 
The last story is a beautiful piece called “The Scope of Possibility.” This one does a wonderful job wrapping up and tying it all together. Any arguments that this is not a novel ends with this summation. In the end, it comes down to a chapter that starts this way…

 “When she was seven hundred years old, still a baby by world-builder standards, I walked my daughter to the seed field where I had been designing earth. Kids usually weren’t allowed in the fields until they have completed their apprenticeship in their second millennium, but I needed to show her, she needed to understand.”

 SN explored many dark themes with elegant prose, and masterful use of science fiction has a way to explore various ways the human species threatens everything they have been given or created. It doesn’t matter if you believe in high power or col science we depend on the earth and various beautiful and ugly moments to build a civilization. How do you tell a story that shines a light on the human experience and how fragile it is.

 That is what this novel and Sequoia Nagamatsu has done. A wonderful reminder that everything is in our hands fragile.

Book Review: Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

 

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

 Paperback, 304 pages

Published February 2022 by Tor Nightfire

In the sweet spot for my age, the first movie that I remember being a huge controversy upon release was The Last Temptation of Christ. If you were not witness to the media shit storm then you may not understand what the hell was the big deal? Certainly, as an adult, I understand how it happened, even if the why escapes me. Doesn’t matter the genre every once and a while a book or a movie has this effect, sometimes we see it coming others are surprises. This one was no surprise. From the moment of the cover reveal this was both a novel and a battleline. Right or wrong this novel is more than a sci-fi horror weird apocalypse novel, it is also a middle finger of social justice activism, coming from the unlikely but very welcome voice of an extreme horror author.

Gretchen Felker-Martin is an extreme writer who in the acknowledgment identifies her writing as “Gross Splattercore.” That is why I say unlikely, I don’t think of extreme horror as progressive. Political for sure, but even when Ed Lee (for one example) tries to write feminist points they often make me uncomfortable. It might be a funny thing for me to say as I have been nominated for a Splatterpunk award myself but Extreme Horror is not my favorite subgenre. More on that later.

There was no way I was missing Manhunt, if nothing else I needed the answer to the question of this... could GFM live up to the buzz her novel would generate? Tor NightFire is a pretty fresh horror subdivision of the publisher and this was a bold move for sure. A very bold swing because everyone involved knew that this book would stir up a shitstorm, some positive, some haters. I was probably going to read it anyhow, but it is really too bad that this novel can’t exist on its own with the hatred. Yes, the headlines have started…

“JK Rowling burned alive in trans author’s novel” or something to that effect.

I don’t really want to get involved in that. The headline is generated by one tongue-in-cheek paragraph, and Rowling can wipe away her tears with hundred dollar bills so can we just talk about the novel? The end of the world novel that looks at gender-specific pandemics is such a thing that I am already tired of it. Clumsy attempts at it in the past few years include Owen and Stephen King’s Sleeping Beauties, and Y: The Last Man whose TV series didn’t even get through a season which is impressive in this era. I mean how do you not even finish a season now???

GFM is smartly influenced by the OG, the 1977 classic novella by Alice Sheldon (AKA James Tiptree Jr. or AKA in this case Raccoona Sheldon) The Screwfly Solution. It is clear even with the author mentioning Alice in the end that this novel is an update or tribute. I would say it would not be a bad course to revisit that story before reading this novel.

Manhunt is a brutal extreme horror novel as advertised. The cover certainly should be warning enough. This novel has zero fucks to give for any pearl-clutchers (that even in a few cases) might include me. If you don’t want anything spoiled, let me just say that I really liked this novel, I had a few very minor problems with it. Some I admit might be on me. I think it should be read, and I applaud GFM for pissing off the people she intended to. That in itself is an accomplishment for a horror novel. So yeah, I am pro-Manhunt.

Alright, now we are talking minor spoilers and themes. Manhunt is the story of the world post-T-day, when a pandemic started turning us men into feral maniacs. Not to be a stretch for far too many of my gender but you get the set-up. The problem with The Kings or Brian Vaughn’s takes on this idea is they failed to deal with the spectrum that gender has become. I shouldn’t have to say this next bit but here we go. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. As a person who was roommates with a genderqueer person who came out in 1999,  I saw this close-up and tried to be supportive as I could.  It is wonderful that progress has been made. I know we have more to go, but let’s not get sidetracked. This kind of novel coming from a major NY publishing house would have seemed impossible even a decade ago. This is not Eraserhead, or Clash publishers that have delighted in middle finger high concepts this is Tor. So impressive, I want to thank everyone at Tor for giving this author and this story a safe space. Because the trolls and haters are attacking it with negative reviews without reading the book.

The world has not ended but it is re-organizing and there is still a bit of chaos. Beth and Fran are traveling and hunting feral men. They eat their testicles, my first minor issue with the novel is I don’t understand why they are eating balls. I mean it is a great cringe-worthy metaphor but I didn’t understand the in-the-universe reason. * ( Note: I asked the author why the hunter were eating the feral men balls and it was for the estrogen they produce) I admit I didn’t know that testicles carry estrogen, I assumed this, I went with it as I read but maybe it could have been more clear, or maybe it is just this reader.  It maybe a nitpick or my ignorance but I was confused by this.

The villains are the TERFS, which stands for Trans exclusionary radical feminists. In this novel the Terfs are violently rounding up and killing the members of the trans community who they see as feral timebombs. This is the major conflict of the novel. The trans community desperate to supply estrogen, the TERF hunters resort to hunting and eating the testicles of feral men.  The portrayal of TERFs as villains was very responsibly handled. GFM gave them the reasons and voice that all stories deserve, Ramona is the hero of her story. I disagree with the TERF agenda but it is fully developed and I think it is a strength of the novel. We are deeply invested in the Trans characters and their survival would have less weight if the threat of the TERFs didn't feel legit, and as antagonists they are scary.

Fran is a transwoman who was close to transitioning when the shit it the fan, while the novel starts with some intense man-hunting and all that brutal stuff the first most powerful moment for me came here.

“I was so close, she thought miserably, sitting down to a candlelight dining room table where on her plate an eight-inch cock sat crisped up beautifully under a thin drizzle of vinaigrette reduction. I was so close to being a girl.”  

This is a moment on page 21 where you are with this novel, or you are not.  Can you handle this deeply emotional moment wrapped with a finely cooked penis?  This is extreme horror after all and this page in many ways this paragraph serves as a mission statement. Personally, I love the cross-wiring of brutal visceral over-the-top, and very human moments.  

Manhunt is filled with these moments. Fran and Beth eventually meet Robbie who is a trans- man, and between these characters, we get many very tender and real human moments that you just never have seen before in a genre novel.  Trans visibility and normality are important for their travel and love stories in this world are important. GFM does a few serious magic tricks with the details and the narrative. The plot involves their attempts to start a new community and TERF's attempts to end it.

I was impressed by the prose that was constantly balancing of world-building, theme, visera and emotional honesty. Even if personally, it did a few things that made me a bit uncomfortable. This is a minor thing but I bring it up for a reason. I personally find the words cock and cunt to be ugly. GFM clearly doesn't. Just a personal thing, I don’t find them offensive. There are moments in this novel where GFM uses these words in moments that are meant to be sexy and beautiful. Doesn’t work for me, but here is the point. It doesn’t have to. I think a few moments that might turn you off shouldn't turn you away from this overall experience. That is why I mentioned it.

There is another important aspect to this novel – representing sexuality on a spectrum.  The reason I think I was sensitive to those words in this context is I didn’t want anything to detract from those moments. I understand on a certain level how important it is when the spectrum is represented on screen or in books.

This book is not a dark or sour affair, it has some adventure, weirdness, humor, and plenty of sex. It is probably not going to convince any of the haters, but that is by design. This novel is the war cry, it doesn’t need to please a mass-market or change minds, although I think it will do that. No Manhunt is an expression of rage, love, frustration, and joy by a one of kind voice. To combine the Trans experience, genre knowledge, love of gore, talent, and ability into one creator Grethen Felker-Martin has created a novel no other human being could write. There is nothing better to celebrate in a novel.  When In the final act the novel tips its hat at the Screwfly Solution I thought to myself. We have a worthy successor.

Book Review: Noor by Nnedi Okorafor

 Noor by Nnedi Okorafor

Hardcover, 214 pages

Published November 9th 2021 by Daw Books

 I have long been a fan of Nnedi Okorafor and have read several works at this point. While not as epic and sweeping as some of the other books in her canon, this is probably my favorite. Noor is a book of balance, simple in construction, but elaborate in theme. Meditative at times, and profound, but also filled with propulsive action. A novel of ideas and excellent characterizations. Noor is short, just 220 or so pages the average length of Sci-fi novels in the 50s or 60s but epic in the scope of ideas. At the heart of a novel built on the question of what is human, you have characters that I grew to care for very quickly. The very human characters drive this story that would have focused on the ideas in the wrong storyteller’s imagination.

The characters AO and DNA are an unlikely pair but they work. AO is a trans-human woman born with significant disabilities. Her nickname stands for Artificial Organism, she wears the name like a badge of honor. In utero, she lost a leg and was deformed. These health issues got even worse as she grew older. It was one thing to replace those parts but AO kept going, becoming cybernetic for a AO is a redefining of her disabilities. Early in the novel she is attacked and has to fight over her very humanity, which makes her a fugitive.

That is when she meets a tribal Herdsman who tells her that his name is DNA, a joke in response but that is how we know him for the rest of the book. Not subtle, but a touch I like. DNA is the opposite of AO in many ways including his attempt to live a nomadic, tribal life on the African plains. He becomes a fugitive when government officials kill his cows and declare him a terrorist after doctoring a video of him defending himself.

“Your generation has lost the art of proverb, the gift of wordplay, the science of fiction, the jujuism of the African,” he said picking up the joint he’d placed on the sand beside him.”

One of the many strengths of Afrricanfuturism* is more than lip service to diversity, it is how you realize that genre uses so many of the same world-building ingredients. One of the nice things, when you read this novel or the Binti books, is how African they are. Noor is a very African novel set in a future Nigeria. It was an accident, but this was the second novel in a row that I read by a Nigerian American author. One thing that is amazing is how singular the voice of a Nnedi Okorafor novel is. Those are the best novels often. Only this imagination could produce this novel. What a gift.

DNA as a character is struggling to keep his place with his tribal lifestyle. The relationship is uneasy at first. AO is very OK not being human, or being something more.

“Maybe I was becoming a spirit; that would explain a lot.”

In this future cultures struggling to stay traditional AO has to live with constant shame. Not that she agrees with it, she has doubts like anyone but her name itself is resistance. To the culture that rejects her, the corporation that used her, and the attempts of bullies to dehumanize her.

“…The corporation decided that a public execution of someone as damaged as me was bad press. He was sure that the Nigerian government may have done something to me, and they’d ordered the corporation to back off so they could retrieve their specimen.
Anything but me being a living machine connection, simultaneously human and machine; the result of an abnormal amount of flesh to machine wiring, some random glitch caused by a combination of violence inflicted on my body, and subsequent rage.”

“They hate what it does, yet Ultimate Corp continues doing it. It’s something more than human, by Allah. It’s the beast, a djinn. Fire and air, insubstantial, but very real. Human beings created it, but they will never control it.”  

We have seen thousands of Science Fiction stories at this point that question the nature of humanity, just as many that explore the cross between the biological and technological. It takes a real magic trick to write a novel at this point that feels as fresh as anything the genre produced in the early years when everything was new. Sure it is the hybrid of setting, point of view, and talent of the storyteller that makes this novel special.

Noor is a deeply rich work of science fiction, that has more invention in the short length than some novels twice its length.  The subtext is close to the surface and hard to miss. Africa is a part of the world that for so long now had to fight colonial invasion and definition. AO and DNA Are on the run for their lives and that is the action on the surface, the real battle is how they define themselves.

“I stood naked before him. Let him see every demarcation, scar, nonhuman part of me.”

Being seen is a point we hear expressed by fans again and again. I never saw myself on screen, or on the pages before.  There is so much in Noor to see that you haven’t had a story about. That is a beautiful thing.

*The author quite rightfully objected to my use of the term Afrofuturism in relation to her work. I should've known better as I read the blog post where she discussed the issue. "I am an Africanfuturist and an Africanjujuist. Africanfuturism is a sub-category of science fiction. Africanjujuism is a subcategory of fantasy that respectfully acknowledges the seamless blend of true existing African spiritualities and cosmologies with the imaginative."

I totally respect this, I edited the review to reflect this. The whole essay can be read here:
Read the essay!

Graphic Novel review: Strange Adventures Written by Tom King Mitch Gerads (Illustrator), Evan Doc Shaner (Illustrator)

 

Strange Adventures Written by Tom King  

Mitch Gerads (Illustrator), Evan Doc Shaner (Illustrator) 

Hardcover, 376 pages

Published December 2021 by DC Comics

I am not a huge comic reader but at some point on Twitter, I saw the cover art for this graphic novel and was intrigued. I knew it was DC comics but they were invoking golden age sci-fi. I was curious I assumed He was a new character and not in the full DC universe. I have no idea the history of the character, who is totally new to me. That said however The Justice League, Superman, Batman, Flash, and Mr. Terrific are in this book. So it is full-on a DC comic book, that said it also has a bit of cosmic feel and scope as Adam is the hero of war fought on the planet Rann. I suspect that his origins are in the Green Lantern comics where much of the DC cosmic stuff comes from.
I don’t totally understand his back story, and I didn’t really need to.  I think Adam is human, from the earth, ended up on Rann, who people look human but his wife who is a native clearly talks about their experiences being very different from different worlds. How he ended up on this other world fighting a brutal war, happened in another story. Cool.

He is back on earth, and importantly he is helping the Justice League with an invasion from the same aliens that terrorized Rann. While he does this he promotes his book of war stories and at a book signing, he is accused of war crimes. Adam and his wife who Cleary is managing his affairs want Batman to investigate but the JL sends Mister Terrific.

Based on a 12-issue saga by comic writer Tom King, whose work I now want to read more of. The book is packaged in a beautiful hardcover. The cover art has that golden age look, with an aged look and a giant tagline on the back “Amazing Science Fiction?!” Under the slipcover, it has the fake cover of Adam Strange’s memoir. Very neat design.

I enjoyed the story, at first, I was not excited to have the DC characters but it paid off nicely. The way the Justice League mixed with congressional hearings and co-existed with the government was interesting. Adam’s backstory during the war was also interesting. It seems what Tom King was trying to say was something about how the public and reality of these heroes could and probably is much different from the public perception.  

Book Review: Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

 

Book Review: Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published January 2022 by Tordotcom

 

Why do you read Science Fiction? What is it that really draws you in?  I could list many things that attract me. When I was a super young reader I was here for the spaceships, as an adult, my favorite thing in speculative fiction is the political stuff that challenges society. That is one reason why my favorite era of SF in the 20th century is from the New Wave on. As that is when the genre really began to challenge everything.  That is the key to this book CHALLENGE EVERYTHING.

This is my first-time reading Tochi Onyebuchi and I was more than just impressed, this is a masterwork of speculative (rightfully) angry activism that is equally literature. If you are going to read this book there are a few facts you are going to have to accept. This is opinionated fiction, that is meant to challenge the reader not only with a message but in narrative form. The narrative has a throw you in the deep end feel to it. The story is not told in a direct timeline, the structure of the narrative completely changes in the third part which is a major stylistic change for almost a hundred pages. Despite the radical change in form, this part of the book is the beating heart of the story.  The narrative also doesn't hold your hand, it is abstract at times and always requires a mind willing to think deeply about the text. There are times that the story might be confusing for some readers. Not me, but some readers.

 The challenges go even deeper. I laughed when I saw a list of trigger warnings for this book in a review. It is not that these things are funny but in a speculative fiction novel that highlights where systematic racism/ Classism collides with global climate and environmental disaster things will get ugly. As Fishbone would say U-G-L-Y Goliath ain't got no alibi. So trigger warnings will include references to rape; graphic instances of drug use; lots of murder, and death; racism, and racial slurs; references to lynching and suicide; descriptions of police brutality, incarceration, gun violence, and a whole bunch of violence in general. How about this, Tochi is keeping it very very real.

 There is nothing soft, gentle, or politically sensitive about this novel. Which is kind of a pleasant (from my perspective) divergence from much of modern fiction that at times is afraid to push boundaries.  I think the reaction will be interesting as it is a very progressive story politically, but the delivery is zero fucks given warts and all depiction of the post-climate world. Of course, the future TO envisions is one where most of the wealthy have escaped earth to orbital colonies while the marginalized struggle to survive in our mutual home.

I consider this book a masterpiece that has shades of one of my favorite novels of all time John Brunner's 1969 Hugo award-winning Stand on Zanzibar. I thought this book was so damn good that I was curious and looked up a few bad reviews just to see what the negative peeps were saying. TO did lose a fair amount of readers in the first act because people were lost with the slice of life all over the place nature of that first act. This to me was an effective tactic for giving a wide picture of this world. I don't mind being confused as long as the writing is good and interesting moments are involved along the way.  It provided excellent moments like...

“The bedsheets chilled their bodies with sweat-soak, rumpled beneath them. They lay side by side, David and Jonathan, and, behind their blindfolds, they traced the arc their drones made over the earth. Lux levels rose in golden bars just outside their vision as the drones dipped through clouds cover and flew past domed cityscapes. Chicago glowed through a blanket of clouds. The drones swooped upward and dwarf galaxies turned from cosmic smudges into multihued ninja shurikens.”

 This is not only great prose but excellent world-building where we get a view of the have and have nots. The idea that the wealthy colony folk monitor the earth and wistfully watch the planet they left doesn't drive the story forward but it builds the world. In the moment that will sail past many readers. I wasn't sure at the moment what it meant but I was curious. I am not sure why everyone wants to understand everything right away.

John Brunner in 1969 used a similar tactic of storytelling wise, not confining the story to one point of view, and giving a wide scope of points of view. Goliath does this in way fewer pages. Both books separated by half a century share themes and methods, but of course, the points of view of the authors are radically different. It is funny to see come of the same negative comments too. Not me both books are masterpieces and value radically different takes on the same general idea.  Sadly SOZ is hailed now as prophetic for predicting school shootings and reality TV to name just two things, we can only hope Goliath is warning we need, and we avoid this future.

The message as I saw it move from the page into my eyes and straight to my heart was clear. This novel is about the intersection between Racism/Classism and the growing climate change apocalypse. That was Brunner's message as well, but TO's window into it is fresh and vital in a way a book by a radical white Brit in 1968 just can't do anymore no matter how amazing it still is.  

“Had nothing to do with the type of life I lived beforehand. Because I think everybody comes to prison, deep down, wanting that. Or at least some version of that. Who comes to prison wantin’ to be turned into an animal?”

During that third part, the book takes on a historical feel. Based on some real events but pushed into the future and fictionalized this part is inspired by the Attica prison riots. It was at this point that I thought I was detecting the wavelength this book was putting out. There is no greater example of the dehumanization of modern racism than the modern prison industrial complex, something I know far too well as I experienced it as an activist. There are many punishments involved in the imprisonment system but the lack of dignity is the root of so much and this novel expresses that very well. There is no way to write about prison without admitting its dark nature of it. The masks come off, racism is open, the class strata of who is fully given human dignity and who is not is open and on the surface so to me this was a really great choice.

How about an example...

“…Your population of guards is pulling from the rural South Carolina job Market? Lotta poor white people bein’ eft behind while the planet’s getting’ warmer and the rich folk are fucking off to space. A lot of the bad stuff white did to Black folk, they did to these kids. Some of these kids came in beyond hope. They watched their parents get spied on by police and picked up in unmarked vans. Had their first taste of first-gen toasters. They just knew how the whole system was. They knew and didn’t give a fuck. I think it just made them more likely to blow the whole place up. Ain’t no cage for their kind of angry.”

 This is already a reality of the prison COs and the inherent problems in the system but TO extrapolates this into his speculative future perfection. The first generation toasters are AI mech fighters who alongside drones take high-tech police repression to support the ruling elite of this future. The prisons are full of frontline rednecks but the system is supported by technology.

So is the mission statement of this novel this simple...

 “And that is how it started. That’s how…all this got started. The red dust storms, the radiation, the fallout, the war, The Exodusters. All of it.”

A short but powerful moment, but nearly every page of the book contains powerful statements. It is a book that might not be understood when you first go through it. As I started this review I kept talking about the challenge of it.  A brutal and literary David Versus Goliath re-mix that never flinches anyway from the hard is what the genre needed this year. Give Goliath all the awards next year at least nominate it for everything. This is as vital a new sci-fi book as I have read in years. Maybe since Carrie Vaughn's Bannerless, or Rivers Solomon's Sorrowland.

The thing is TO has such a powerful voice, singular in tone, training, and writing ability this book is a miracle of awesomeness I have to celebrate. I am dying to have the author on my podcast, to break down this amazing work.  I will have to read Riot Baby, but this book feels like an author unleashed. Even though it is my first time reading him. So more than anything I can't wait till the next one.

Book Review: Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner with Jamie Durst

 

Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner with Jamie Durst

A Mem-Noir: Inspired by True Events

Hardcover, 256 pages

Published October  2021 by St. Martin's Press

 

As a Star Trek fan old enough to remember the syndication of TOS fondly, I was one of those viewers when Encounter at Far Point aired. It seemed impossible that a new crew would come to matter to me as much as Kirk and Spock did. It took a few seasons for TNG to get its legs under itself, but one of the first scenes to really work was the passing of the torch from Deforest Kelly playing a hundred plus old McCoy, and Lt. Commander Data played by Brent Spiner.
 
Spiner always had one of the toughest jobs in that series. Playing an android and often straight-man must have been a serious challenge for a funny dude like Spiner. Because the Star Trek fandom and internal families of casts are unique things, we fans feel like know the stars. Lots of Star Trek actors have written books because frankly, people want to read them.

Spiner has written my favorite so far. Leonard Nimoy gave us a candid look at his life, Shatner a window into his ID, Nichelle Nichols a view of her powerful work off-screen. Spiner gave me several laughs. I only learned after finishing the book, that he read the audiobook, at some point, I will have to return to that.

Spiner has called this a Mem-noir, which already gave me a chuckle. Sure he gives insight into his life on the set, his back story going back to his childhood in Houston. Instead of giving us an accounting of his life Spiner and his co-author gave us a murder mystery tied directly to the show and the character he is most famous for.

It was an interesting choice for a memoir, and certainly made the difference in why I sought it out right away. Another autobiography might have gotten my attention had I seen it at the library, but I have lots to read. The fact that Spiner was clearly having fun doing added to it. It just so happened that I sponsored the episode of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy he was on to promote my novel (Goddamn Killing Machines – Clash books) and he really sold me. Spiner didn’t have any interest in just another Trek actor blah blah.

So Fan Fiction tells the story of a Brent Spiner stalker, who claims to be Data’s daughter during the filming of the series 4th season. The Spiner of the book becomes worried that he will be murdered. So in true Noir mystery fashion, there is a femme fatale, well two, I don’t want to give it away. The mystery is not exactly Anthony Boucher worthy but that is not the point. The humorous observations and anecdotes about the actor’s life and fandom is like the crème filling in an oreo, The mystery is like the hard cookie part.

Because it is fictionalized Spiner gets to be extra playful with his castmates with really funny moments for all of them. It is clear onscreen and off this cast is a family and Spiner has fun with them. Franks and Dorn get the funniest needling in my opinion. It makes you wish you could see more of these moments as a fan.

A moment in Spiner’s real-life retold here that was important for him, and me too was recalled in the most powerful moment of the book. A famous doctor had visited the set and asked to talk to him.

“Mr.Spiner I have many patients with autism and Asperger’s syndrome. They often have extreme difficulties with basic social interaction. For many of them, you or rather Data is their icon. Their hero.”
I am momentarily speechless, taking this in. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“You see Mr. Spiner- the inner world of a person of a person with autism or Asperger’s syndrome is very much like the feeling of being an emotionless android in a society of emotional humans.”

I have worked for two decades with persons with autism, it is not just Data, but Spock, and Seven of Nine who served as icons of neurodivergent persons. The doctor was right though Data most of all. Spiner pointed out that it was good he didn’t think about that as he was developing the character. It was clearly important to the actor as it is to those of us who work with or live with autism.
Lastly, I want to say part of what makes this book sing is that Spiner fills the book with moments like this one.

“They are qualities of a fictional character who is very different from me. This is a mirage called acting. Surrounded by another mirage called celebrity.”
The young woman speaks again.
“I thought this wasn’t about you?” She challenges.

An interesting look not just at the life behind the curtain, but an insightful self-reflection that managed to also be funny and move the story forward. The book is filled with moments like this. Spiner is not a novelist so I am not going to say it was the best-written noir I ever read, but there were enough moments like these that no other human being could have written. That is a very cool thing with a book. A singular voice and point of view that no one else can bring to the table. Most important of all – I had fun reading it. That makes up for anything lacking in skill. I would read a sequel in heartbeat. Make it so.