Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy - Issue 249 - Nov-Dec 2013
Author: Unknown
Date: 2013-11-18 16:11:46+00:00

science fiction & fantasy

2013 british fantasy awarD winner: best magazine john shirLey
new story & interview

Lavie tiDhar
cLaire humphrey
tim Lees
jason sanforD
sarah brooks
new stories

DaviD LangforD’s
ansibLe Link
news
nick Lowe’s
mutant popcorn
tony Lee’s

Laser foDDer
fiLms

book zone
jonathan mccaLmont’s
future interrupteD
books
printe

D

249
in t
he uk
cover art by jim burns • nov–Dec 2013 • £4.99
interface

3
interZOne WinS a BritiSH fantaSY aWarD!

inter

On November 3rd at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton face

Interzone received the British Fantasy Award for Best Magazine.

This was a very pleasant surprise! Many thanks to everybody who voted us onto the shortlist, to the judges who then made the Subscribe to interzone:

final decision, and to every one of Interzone’s contributors for providing us with such high quality work.

6 issues

£24 uk

A few contributors to Interzone and other TTA publications

£27 europe
appeared on various British Fantasy Award shortlists: Stephen

£30 usa/row

Volk for his Black Static column Coffinmaker’s Blues, Nina Al an for her Black Static story ‘Sunshine’, Mike O’Driscoll for 12 issues
his TTA Novel a Eyepennies, Ben Baldwin for his artwork here

£45 uk
and elsewhere, and a gobsmacked Ray Cluley to whom Ramsey

£51 europe

Campbell handed the Best Short Story award for ‘Shark! Shark!’

£57 usa/row

( Black Static #29). You’ll know Ray from his appearances in Interzone, but he’s a more regular contributor to Black Static with Lifetime

£210 uk
a story in the current issue, and another in the latest volume of

£240 europe
our genre-bending Crimewave anthology series. Congratulations

£270 usa/row
to Ray and all the other winners, listed by Dave Langford in this issue’s Ansible Link.

w
reaDerS’ POLL

Subscribe to interzone

Once again we’re asking you to let us know what you enjoyed in

+ Black Static:

Interzone over this past year. You may vote for and against any 6 issues
number of stories published in issues #244 to #249 inclusive. You

£45 uk
don’t have to have read every issue in order to cast a vote. Martin

£51 europe

McGrath will be overseeing the poll as usual, and there are two

£57 usa/row
ways you can send him your votes: by email to interzonepoll@
ttapress.com, or via the form on ttapress.com/interzone/

12 issues
readerspoll/. We’re as keen to hear your opinions of the magazine

£80 uk
as we are to get your votes, so don’t be shy in letting us know what

£92 europe
you think. The results will be published in issue #252, so please

£104 usa/row
make sure your votes are in before March 31st.

Lifetime

£400 uk
anOtHer DeLaY fOr OVerSeaS SUBScriBerS

£460 europe

We must apologise for the length of time it took issue #249

£520 usa/row
to reach overseas subscribers, approaching six weeks to some destinations instead of the six days it should have taken. We’ve w
been assured that it won’t happen again but please continue to let us know when your copy arrives, or when it doesn’t, so we can cheques etc should be
made payable to tta Press
keep trying to improve this erratic service.

and sent to the address
overleaf, or you can

OnLine SUBMiSSiOnS
transact securely using any

At long last we have set up a proper system for receiving and credit/debit card or PayPal
responding to online submissions of short stories. Please read the at ttapress.com/shop/
updated guidelines on our website and follow the link there. You’ll need to set up an account but it’s free and will enable you to log in any time to check on progress of submissions. As always, we’re looking forward to hearing from you!

ISSN 0264-3596

Publisher

TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane,

Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, UK
w: ttapress.com
e: interzone@ttapress.com
f: facebook.com/TTAPress
t: @TTApress

Editor

Andy Cox
e: andy@ttapress.com

Assistant Fiction Editor

Andy Hedgecock

Book Reviews Editor

Jim Steel
e: jim@ttapress.com

Story Proofreader

Peter Tennant
e: whitenoise@ttapress.com

Events

Roy Gray
e: roy@ttapress.com

© 2013 Interzone and contributors

Worldwide Distribution

Pineapple: pineapple-media.com

Central: centralbooks.com

WWMD: specialistmags.co.uk

If your local shop doesn’t stock

Interzone please ask them to
order it for you, or buy it from
one of several online mail order

COvER ART: XIANTH BY JIM BURNS
distributors – or better yet
prints are available: contact the artist via his website at
subscribe direct with us!

www.alisoneldred.com/artistJimBurns.html

Subscriptions

The number next to your name
on the mailing sheet refers to the
final issue of your subscription.

If it’s due for renewal you’ll see a
mark in the box, and again on an
inserted subscription reminder,
next to the corresponding issue
number. Please renew promptly,
and please do so direct with us
rather than a third party.

Submissions

Unsolicited submissions of short
stories are always welcome, but
please follow the contributors’

guidelines on the website. We
now accept online submissions.

JOHN SHIRLEY: THREE STEPS FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK
interview conducted by Andy Hedgecock

interface

ANSIBLE LINK

DAvID LANGFORD ........................................................................6
news, obituaries
fiction

UNKNOWN CITIES OF AMERICA

8

TIM LEES ........................................................................................8
illustrated by Richard Wagner
rdwagner@centurylink.net (email)

PAPRIKA

16

JASON SANFORD ........................................................................ 16
illustrated by Ben Baldwin
benbaldwin.co.uk

30

FILAMENTS

LAvIE TIDHAR ........................................................................... 30
illustrated by Wayne Haag
www.ankaris.com

38

HAUNTS

CLAIRE HUMPHREY ...................................................................38
illustrated by Martin Hanford
martinhanford1974.deviantart.com

48

THE KINDEST MAN IN STORMLAND

JOHN SHIRLEY ............................................................................48
illustrated by Wayne Haag

62

TRANS-SIBERIA: AN ACCOUNT OF A JOURNEY

SARAH BROOKS ..........................................................................62
illustrated by Richard Wagner
reVieWS

BOOK ZONE ................................................................................ 70

81
books by John Shirley (plus author interview), Alden Bell,

Snorri Kristjansson, David G. Hartwell & Patrick Nielsen

Hayden, Fabio Fernandes & Djibril al-Ayad, Paul McAuley,

Lavie Tidhar, SF Said, Mark Hodder, Peter Liney, Neal

Stephenson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Tim Powers, Brenda

88

Cooper, plus Jonathan McCalmont’s Future Interrupted
column

MUTANT POPCORN by NICK LOWE ........................................88

93
films, including Thor: The Dark World, Ender’s Game, How

I Live Now, Justin and the Knights of Valour, About Time,

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, Riddick, R.I.P.D.

LASER FODDER by TONY LEE ...................................................94

97
blu-ray/DVDs, including Ikarie XB-1, Lifeforce, Grimm Season

2, Dr Mabuse the Gambler, My Amityville Horror, The Night of
the Hunter, Pacific Rim, Under the Dome

6
neWS › OBitUarieS

DaViD LangforD’S anSibLe Link

Sir Ben Kingsley says the Ender’s The analogizer™. ‘If Lord Justice
creatures that actual y exist now.’

Game film (he plays Mazer Rack-

Leveson is the Voldemort of press

Diesel: ‘I would say King Kong,
ham) has transcendent qualities
freedom, then I guess that makes
but I’m not real y scared of King
which mere sf fans won’t appreci-
the editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Kong. That would be inaccurate.’

ate: ‘I think there’s a much bigger

Dacre, Harry Potter.’ (Fearlessly

( Time interview)

audience than just your science
outspoken Daily Mail columnist
fiction fans – we’ll get them as well

Sarah Vine on BBC Radio 4 What

David Birnbaum, US

– but we’ll also get people who
the Papers Say)

jeweller turned philosopher,
want a philosophical journey, that
solves the mysteries of the
journey of spirit through the film.’

robert Silverberg, in London
universe in his self-published

(Getreading.co.uk)

en route to the World Fantasy

Summa Metaphysica (‘The

Convention, had a heart attack on
cosmic trajectory is from the
awards presented at the 2013

29 October. Treatment went wel ,
bottomless VOID to the limitless

World Fantasy Convention. British
with a stent inserted and discharge

EXTRAORDINARY’). According

Fantasy. Fantasy Novel: Graham
from hospital after only two
to a comment at the US Chronicle

Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale.

days; but sadly he had to skip the
of Higher Education website, this

Horror Novel: Adam Nevil , Last
convention.

‘reads like L Ron Hubbard had

Days. Novel a: John Llewel yn
drunken sex one night with Ayn

Probert, ‘The Nine Deaths of
richard Dawkins missed out on

Rand and produced this bastard

Dr Valentine’. Short: Ray Cluley,
a Hugo nomination, according
thought-child’. ( Guardian)

‘Shark! Shark!’ ( Black Static #29).

to the retired Pope Benedict

Collection: Robert Shearman,

XVI, who in a recently published

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-

Remember Why You Fear Me.

letter declares: ‘ The Selfish Gene

Five was cleared by the Sunday Anthology: Jonathan Oliver, ed.,
by Richard Dawkins is a classic

Times literary tribunal of any

Magic. Small Press: ChiZine Publi-
example of science fiction.’

horrid genre taint: ‘The cultish
cations. Nonfiction: Pornokitsch.

( Independent)

Vonnegut’s part memoir, part

Magazine: Interzone. Artist: Sean
study of psychosis and escape is

Phillips. Comic/Graphic Novel:

Jennifer ridyard explicates:

not the sci-fi it’s often dismissed

Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples,

‘I guess sometimes they just call
as.’

Saga. Screenplay: The Cabin in the the science fiction that girls love

Woods. Newcomer: Helen Mar-

“fantasy”, because girls tend to shy

Thog’s Masterclass. Hostage
shall for Hair Side, Flesh Side. Spe-away from the tacky sci-fi label.’

to Fortune Dept. ‘And then, as
cial: Iain Banks. • Gemmel (heroic ( Guardian)

if written by the hand of a bad
fantasy). Novel: Brent Weeks,
novelist, an incredible thing

The Blinding Knife. Debut Novel:

The Weakest Link. Dan
happened.’ (Jonathan Stroud,

John Gwynne, Malice. Cover Art:

O’Connel : ‘How many dwarfs

The Amulet of Samarkand, 2003)

Didier Graffet & Dave Senior for
were there in the Snow White

• Joy of Anatomy. ‘The hole was

Joe Abercrombie’s Red Country. •
story?’ Caller: ‘Ten.’ ( XFM) •
off-centre, so the end of the belt

World Fantasy. Novel: G. Willow

Hallowe’en dialogue. Richard
projected upwards and then

Wilson, Alif the Unseen. Novel a:

Bacon: ‘Is there a ghost story you dangled down again under its

K.J. Parker, ‘Let Maps to Others’

would recommend for children
own weight, like a failed erection.’

( Subterranean). Short: Gregory
under 11?’ Susan Hill: ‘Anything by (Anne Holt, Blind Goddess, 1993;

Norman Bossert, ‘The Telling’

M.R. James.’ RB: ‘Oh, she’s great.’

trans Tom Geddes 2012) • Dept

( Beneath Ceaseless Skies). Anthol-

SH: ‘She is a he.’ RB: ‘I did not of Bilocation. ‘A single walnut
ogy: Danel Olson, ed., Postscripts
know that.’ (Radio 5 Live)

door stood either end of the long,

#28/#29. Collection: Joel Lane,
grand hal way.’ (R.S. Johnson, The

Where Furnaces Burn. Artist: Vin-

Vin Diesel may need a quick

Genesis Project: The Children of
cent Chong. Special Professional:

reality check. Time: ‘You fight

CS-13, 2011) • Secrets of Elegant Lucia Graves, translation of The
some scary aliens in Riddick. Are

Sentence Construction. ‘But Zuberi Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz
there any creatures that you’re
did not see this, nor did anyone

Zafón. Special Non-Professional:

scared of in real life?’ Diesel: ‘Huh.

else, and as he slid his pistol back

S.T. Joshi, Unutterable Horror.

Uh…dinosaurs?’ Time: ‘I meant
into its holster, the main door to

interface

7
the room flew open and about
sea.’ ‘Lars, looking with all his

The Messiah of Stockholm, 1987) •
a dozen men and women, who
strength, felt his own ordinary

Neat Tricks Dept. ‘A gang of priests had been sleeping only moments

[eye] pupil consumed by a
gathered around Cushing’s old
earlier, poured in, their weapons
conflagration in the socket. As if
white head, kissing his ass.’ (John
held and ready to fight if need
copulating with an angel whose

Flood, Bag Men, 1997) • Dept of be, a few more arrived soon after.’

wings were on fire.’ ‘Dr. Eklund,

Eyebrow Motility. ‘“Things here

( Ibid) • Multiple Messianic Mot meanwhile, was nodding his big
are just hopping,” he told me, his

Juste Dept. ‘The look of Polish had face up and down, cheering her
eyebrows flying all over his narrow
begun final y to fit his eye-sockets
on like a human baton.’ ‘One idea
face.’ [A different chap:] ‘His
without estrangement…’ ‘A moan:

remained like an exclamation
eyebrows were winging around
or not exactly a moan. Rather, the
mark in the sweet-tasting pink
his face in interrogation.’ (both
sound of indecipherable syl ables
wax of their heads: the stewpot,

Charlaine Harris, Real Murders,
evaporating at the bottom of the
the stewpot!’ (all Cynthia Ozick,

1990)

r.i.P.

ann c. crispin (1950–2013), US

Dot (Dorothy) Lumley, UK
author made Grandmaster by
agent who ran the Dorian Literary

Patricia anthony (1947–2013),
the International Association of

Agency and represented various

US author whose 1987 story

Media Tie-In Writers for her Star
genre authors including former
debut was followed by seven

Trek, Star Wars, V etc franchise husband Brian Lumley, died
idiosyncratic novels from the sf
novels, died on 6 September
on 5 October. Earlier, as Dot

Cold Al ies (1998) to the World
aged 63. Solo work includes

Houghton, she was a publisher’s

War I slipstream fantasy Flanders
the sf StarBridge sequence; she
editor at NEL and Methuen.

(1998), was reported on 2 August
co-founded the essential scam-
as having died; she was 66.

alert service Writer Beware.

nick robinson, UK editor/
publisher who founded Robinson

Martha Bartter (1932–2013),
anthony Hinds (1922–2013),

Publishing in 1983 and chaired

US critic, editor and author of

UK film producer and (as John

Constable & Robinson (merged
some short sf whose major work

Elder) scriptwriter who created

1999) from 2009, died on 30
was The Way to Ground Zero: The
the X-rated Hammer Horror

August aged 58. He published

Atomic Bomb in American Science
film phenomenon, died on 30
many genre anthologies including

Fiction (1988), died on 18 June

September aged 91. His first
the Mammoth Books titles edited
aged 80.

productions in this vein were The
by Mike Ashley, Stephen Jones

Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and
and others, and UK editions of

Gary Brandner (1933–2013),

The Curse of Frankenstein (1956).

Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best SF.

US horror/thriller author best
known for his werewolf novel The

William Harrison (1933–2013),

Leland Sapiro (1924–2013) US

Howling (1977), its two sequels and US author and screenwriter who
fan who edited the thrice-Hugo-
the film franchise it spawned, died
adapted his 1973 ‘Roller Ball
nominated academic fanzine
on 23 September; he was 80.

Murder’ – title story of his 1974

Riverside Quarterly (formerly
collection – for the film Rollerball

Inside, with others) from 1962 to
tom clancy (1947–2013),

(1975; remade 2002), died on 22

1993, died on 8 October aged 89.

bestselling US author of spy

October; he was 79.

technothrillers, died on 1 October;
takashi Yanase (1919–2013),
he was 66. His ‘Jack Ryan’

Stanley Kauffmann (1916–2013),

Japanese manga writer/animator
sequence enters near-future sf

US critic, author, editor and film
famed for his widely franchised
territory with nuclear terrorism in
reviewer who while at Bal antine
superhero Anpanman (whose

The Sum of All Fears (1991; filmed Books acquired Ray Bradbury’s
replaceable head – sometimes fed

2002), war with a nuclear-armed

Fahrenheit 451, died on 9 October
to the needy – is an anpan, a bun

Japan in Debt of Honor (1994), and aged 97.

stuffed with red bean paste), died
further doomsday scenarios.

on 13 October. He was 94.

8
tim lees
unknown cities of america
illustrated by richard wagner

10

UnKnOWn citieS Of aMerica BY tiM LeeS › iLLUStrateD BY ricHarD WaGner

“He can say ‘bananas’. Go on, boy – it was a night flight, Denver to Newark, three say it. Say it, boy.”

hours twenty; I was ten years old. I slept a while,

“Bananas,” says the dog.

and when I woke, the land beneath was blotched Everyone laughs. Even the dog looks pleased.

with light, the yellow spattered on the black like A big man in a baseball cap says, “Go again?”

floating galaxies, and I thought of all the lives and cracks a peanut shell between his teeth.

going on right below me, right that second, all

“Ba-na-nanas,” says the dog. It has a squishy, the people there I’d never meet or see or know not-quite-human voice, like a slowed-down about. I tried to pick out shapes, put names to Donald Duck. I don’t know what kind of a dog it things, familiarise the stuff I saw: a bal park or is. A terrier or pug cross, maybe. The old geezer a shopping mal , a freeway or a railroad track…

who owns it puffs his chest out, rocks from foot We passed a seven-pointed star, big as – what?

to foot, and puts his nose up in the air. A long Manhattan? Something like that, anyway. Dark white braid hangs down his back.

in the middle, dark all round, bright at the

“Say other stuff?” asks someone in the crowd.

edge, a cookie-cutter shape, stencilled in light.

“Oh, sure.”

I watched it sliding slowly past, and vanish inch

“Go on,” they say. “Let’s hear.”

by inch behind the window seal. I pressed my

“He can say – ” The old man chuckles wick-
face against the glass; but by the time I woke my edly. “Pardon, ladies. He can say ‘Fuck the Dem-Mom, it was already gone.

ocrats’.”

There’s nothing on the map, on any map of any

“Let’s hear, let’s hear!”

route that we could possibly have taken, and I’ve

“Come on, boy. Say it. You say ‘Fuck the Dem-checked them all a hundred times since then. Yet ocrats’. You say it, boy.”

it was real, I know; real as the lights of Jersey that

“Bananas,” says the dog again. It looks up at its would sweep towards us in the hours to come.

master with a puzzled, half-expectant air.

In those days, I believed what I’d been taught

“No boy. Not ‘bananas’. ‘Fuck the Democrats’.

in school, and seen on television. Later, I’d learn You say it now.”

other things: a notion of the vastness of America,

“Bananas,” says the dog.

the limits of cartography; and of the cities, some

“Al right!” The old man claps his hands. “Y’all strange, some almost whol y unremarkable, that hear that?”

don’t show up on maps.

“Yeah,” says the big guy, spitting shel s into his fist. “Kinda…yeah. I think.”

treetops, arizona, has been named ironi-

“I heard it,” says his wife.

cal y: there are no trees, not one, although the

“I heard it too,” says someone else.

man I meet, standing at the crossroads, is so The old man stoops and pets the dog. “Clever, tall and massive that he’s like a tree himself. He clever boy!” He takes a treat and flips it to the doesn’t move. A broad hat shades his face. He animal, which gulps it down, looking for more.

leans both hands upon an aluminium cane. The Here miracles can happen every day; here signs hands are very large, twisted like roots.

and wonders are expected of the world. The old

“Sir. If you can help me please.”

man’s crowd drifts off. The little dog jumps up at I show the picture. I say, “She’s got a tattoo of him. “Bananas,” it keeps saying, scrunching up an owl – here,” and I touch my shoulder blade.

the word as if its jaws are mashed with gum. I He turns his head, shying away, as if the pic-call the guy aside, then take the photo from my ture hurts his eyes.

wallet, show him.

“Sir. If you’d take a look. Please.”

“Seen this woman?”

He’s squeamish, like a child. I’m sure he knows.

He squints, running a hand over his head. A But he just shakes his head, his lips twitch, and smal , pink tongue peeks through his teeth. He he swivels on his stick and struts off stiffly down frowns.

the street, away from me. I stand there with the

“Show it the dog,” he says at last, and so I do.

sun upon my face, my hands, feeling the sweat You can guess the dog’s reply.

run drip, drip down my back, and let him go.

fictiOn

11

›

You learn to pick them out. The ones who

“Don’t matter where…”

know, or might know, and the ones who’ve
brushed against it without ever understanding We Motel 6’d that night. One room, twin beds.

what they’ve seen.

I turned my back while she undressed. She said, It’s not a country. That’s the thing. This place

“Look if you want. It’s OK.”

we live. It’s not a country and it never was, nor So I looked because she’d said I could, which even an idea. Only a long sequence of statutes, made it sort of clinical, like staring at a statue or ordinances, a map cut up, split into colours, some other work of art.

states…stars on a flag.

“Nice ink,” I said.

The map was wrong. The map was ink on

“My nickname. ‘Little Owl’.”

paper; the stars, stitched cloth.

“Native American?”

America was something more.

“Uh-uh.” She craned around, trying to see the I’ve travelled now for years, back and forth, delicate cartoon sketched on her skin. The mus-picking up traces, here and there, anywhere I cles in her neck stood out, long and powerful.

can: Ohio, Texas, Oregon…

“My folks…I guess they took from everywhere, There was a name she’d used. I’d asked her you know? Some Christian, some Eastern, some where she came from and she’d said, “Nagosha.”

Hopi, some…yeah. All that.”

“Where?” I’d said. “I’m never going back,” she

“OK.”

said, like she was answering the question. And

“They had this…you know. Kind of free love that’s all she’d tell me for a time.

thing.”

I’d met her in a bar down Richmond way. She She let that hang a while. “Sounds fun,” I said.

picked me up, to tell the truth, though she was She pulled the sheet back and her body slid in cool about it, didn’t come on desperate or brassy cold beside me.

or like that. And she was nice. She was. She had

“No. Not fun. Not anything. Just how it was, a broad, strong, freckled face – a farm-girl’s face, you know? Just how.”

I thought – and cropped blonde hair, cow-licked and gelled. She wasn’t real y dressed up for a north, then. a look-out point over the Hud-night out on the town. Sweater, jeans, cerise son, the water down below like sheet steel, rain cloth jacket. Duffle bag dumped at her feet. We just hanging in the air, about to fal …

sat across a table, yelling over sports news and

“His name’s the Turk,” she said. “He’s like their the juke box tunes.

go-fetch, see? Someone moves away, they want

“You’re different,” she said then, and took my them bringing back, he brings. You get it now?”

hand.

I didn’t move. I stared across the river and the

“Wel , thank you.”

wind pulled at my hair and her arm was linked

“Me – I’m different, too.”

in tight to mine. I said, “You’re telling me…?”

“I see that.”

“I saw him once. I think I saw him, anyhow.

But she didn’t smile, just leaned up close and Not here. A few weeks back. Before I met you.

talked into my ear: “I need to get somewhere.”

That’s why, you know. That’s why I had to leave.

“Hey. Say the word.”

That’s why…”

I was flippant stil . She wasn’t.

She was crying, shivers running through her

“Look,” she said. “You seem a nice guy. This is chest, her shoulders. I looked down, wiped her a lot to ask. Don’t want, that’s fine. You know?”

cheeks clean with my thumb. She pushed against I felt her interest slip, said quickly, “Sure, I’ll me, but she kept on shaking, and the tears came do it. Tell me where.”

back, and nothing I could do or say would stop She sank her drink and she was heading for them.

the door. I set my glass down, followed.

I walked her to the car. Soon the rain began, In the car I said again, “Where?”

and as we drove the landscape melted into

“Somewhere. Anywhere.” She hunched down
shades of grey, and the downpour wrapped
in the seat like she was scared of being seen.

around us like a screen, and for a short while she

12

UnKnOWn citieS Of aMerica BY tiM LeeS › iLLUStrateD BY ricHarD WaGner was calm again.

“Wel …presidential limo, I suppose.”

“The SS-100-X,” she said, faint smile softening There was a place the freeways met, looping her lips. “Which is…what? Brand name?”

over one another in great concrete arcs; and the But I knew this one from school. “A Lincoln?”

town had grown up underneath and all about,

“Right!” she clapped her hands. “And Lincoln and taken on some of the harshness of the condied – you tell me how?”

crete and the stink of smoke and gasoline.

“Hold on, hey? What you saying? It’s an omen?

A junkyard town. A salvage town. A town

Like, he picked a different car, he’d be alive?”

where no-one chose to stop, but people stopped

“Maybe.”

there anyway: maybe a detour sign, big letters,

“Bad luck? Fate? What?”

THIS WAY, and nothing up ahead but blackness

“A Lincoln Continental. Made by Ford. Lin-
and the barrel of a gun; or else the roar of engines, coln, shot in the Ford Theater. Both men, back of and a fleet of humvees, bikes and souped-up the head. Presence of their wives. Both men – ”

trucks, all swooping down like wolves to fasten She could be funny sometimes. Funny about
on some poor lone traveller, then hem him in weird shit, true, but funny, just the same.

and herd him, out into the darkness on the high-Or serious. Or both at once.

way’s edge…

“It all fits in,” she said. “It’s all linked up, you Not everybody vanished. Not for good. Some know? From sea to shining sea.”

made it back on foot, alone, no car, no goods, no

“‘A butterfly flaps its wings…’”

money or ID, wandering for miles until at last,

“A butterfly, a president. So what’s the diff?”

by accident far more than anything, they’d come We kept moving, stopping two, three nights upon familiar roads; then sit there in the sher-at most, each place we went. By the last night iff’s office, trying to explain, to tell him where she’d be edgy, checking windows, jumping at a they’d been, not even clear about the place’s car door slamming in the forecourt, or the wind name; facing the blank looks of the sheriff and rattling the trees… And we’d move on.

the clerk, till someone has the wit to bring a She talked about the Turk and she’d no humour map. “Alright!” exclaims the traveller, and rubs in her voice at all those times; nothing but fear.

his hands. He knows exactly where it has to

“He’s like a hunting dog. He gets your scent, be. He knows just where he was. He checks the and then – ”

route, that last town that he went through, that

“He can’t make you go back.”

last sign he saw… He plots his course. And then, She didn’t answer me.

and then…

“There’s laws,” I told her. “You’re of age. Means Then nothing. Nought and nix and nada. No you got rights. Means you’re protected.”

place where the highways meet, no town below…

Her fingers knotted in her lap.

The roads marked on the map don’t even touch.

“I know this…friend. Practices law. Chicago.

And yet he knows it’s close, it has to be. He cal-We’ll talk to her. She’ll help. We’ll deal with this.”

culates, works out the mileage, landmarks, any-She said, “Will we?”

thing that comes to mind. “It’s wrong,” he says.

Her tone said no, we wouldn’t. And we drove

“Your map’s all wrong.” And the sheriff gives a in silence then, for many, many miles.

warning about wasting county time, and maybe says, “You shouldn’t smoke that stuff,” and wants We passed a burger joint, its entrance flanked a blood test; and the town stays hidden. And by two huge dancing pigs, twenty feet tal , gar-unless by some incredible bad luck, you’ve been ish, piggy-plastic pink. “Did we just see that?”

there, then you’ll never, never know.

She was laughing, so I turned the car and we went in to eat. Burgers, bacon, fries and shakes.

“alright,” she said. “So JFK gets shot. What She dabbed a blob of mayo on my nose. “Hand-car’s he in?”

some,” she said. I did the same right back. “Cute,”

“Is this a joke?”

I said. And later, as the meal went on, she talked

“What car, hey?”

about her past, her childhood.

fictiOn

13

›

And Nagosha.

still my family. I’m theirs, they’re mine. That’s

“No property,” she said.

how it goes.”

“Communist…?”

“This Turk guy too.”

“Spiritual. Everything in common. Includ-

“Oh yeah. The Turk a whole lot. Right now, ing…”

him more than all of ’em.”

“Each other?”

She gave a nod. I tried to tell her that it didn’t She asked me, “Will you buy me something?”

matter, her past wasn’t important to me; while

“Sure.”

in my head, I saw a bunch of grey-haired hip-

“For me, and no-one else?”

pies dancing on a lawn, dressed only in a daisy I put the money in her hand. I paced the fore-and a sunflower or two, the burned-out refugees court, watching through the gift store window.

of some past time, dumb and lost yet, in some I couldn’t get it all inside my head. Too much vague way, still innocent.

to think about, too much to comprehend… She Her face said otherwise.

took twenty minutes in there. Came out with a

“You’re just a kid, you know? A kid. And
heart-shaped scarlet-coloured ashtray. STUB
there’s like, stuff all round… None of it’s yours.

IT!!!! said the label, The FUN way to quit!! There Not your toys, your clothes. Not your favourite was a heat-sensor of some kind in the base, and dol . Not your crayons and your drawing book.

when you stubbed your smoke, the lights would Not your Mom and Dad.”

flash around the rim and tell you wel done.

She wasn’t eating now. She was staring out the She had a little pack of batteries to power the window, at some place no-one else could see.

thing.

I’d known that this would come, this conversa-

“You don’t smoke,” I said. She shrugged. She tion, and I’d put it off and put it off. But now I didn’t even take it out the package, just cradled it took a breath.

there in her hands, and smiled.

“Was there…you know. Exploitation?”

It seemed a safe word. Neutral. But she Driving. trying to tell her stuff I’d seen on TV, scrunched her mouth up, frowned, said, “Sex.”

read in magazines, how her body was her own,

“Was there?”

how she’d a right to say what happened to it, who

“Yeah. Yeah, there was sex. Sure. ’Cept you could touch it and who couldn’t. Trying to tell can’t exploit if nothing’s owned. It can’t be done.

her, give her some perspective. Thinking, this is You know?”

counselling, a thing you’re meant to train for and

“I don’t – ”

have letters after your name, long before you go She said, “Who owns you? Who d’you belong
do it for real.

to, huh?”

“There’s times people don’t realise. They think

“No-one,” I said, then quickly changed it.

it’s all their own fault, like they deserve it, or

“You! That’s who. You, yourself – ”

like…like the other’s got a right, you know? It

“No property.” She pushed her meal away, she gets all twisted in your head, and sometimes…”

pushed the cutlery and condiments away. “Re-

“That’s not why I left,” she said.

nounce it al . Give everything to God and to the

“Looks like a good reason to me.”

Universe from which it came. Who owns you?”

“You make them sound like monsters, and

“You! Still you…”

they’re not.”

“Give everything. Everything. The way we saw

“Wel …out here in the real world, I dunno
it – they saw it – nobody owns. Everything’s in how else you describe them. People who do that.”

common. What you do to one person, you do

She was angry. It came quickly: angry and de-to everyone. Yourself too. So – can you exploit fensive.

yourself? That even possible?”

“They are ethical. They are moral people.

She picked her fork back up, turned it in her They’re the most moral people I have ever met.

hand.

And when you’re right – when you’re always

“They’re family,” she said. “My family. They’re right – it doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t

14

UnKnOWn citieS Of aMerica BY tiM LeeS › iLLUStrateD BY ricHarD WaGner matter! Every possibility is open, it’s the ultimate I woke up in the dark, pre-dawn. Heart thump-freedom. Everything is right. You understand?”

ing, no idea why. Sat up…and froze.

“Some things,” I sounded slow and weak,

He stood there at the far end of the bed, just

“some things are never…”

watching me, and it struck me even then as a

“‘To the righteous man, all things are right-peculiar thing: I’d pictured him as squat and eous.’”

powerful – that’s what the name evoked for me

“What righteous man? What fucking right-

– but he was tall and thin and didn’t need the eous man?”

muscle, because he had a handgun pointed at my

“‘The righteous man has power over al . The chest.

righteous man – ’”

To her, he just said, “Up. Get dressed.”

“You left.”

He’d pulled the curtains back a foot or two so I wished I was still smoking. I wanted some-that the light shone in, letting me see the gun. It thing – a cigarette, a drink. Something to hold was like part of him, the way he held it, easy and in my hand, to take away this glimpse into the yet firm. I saw it and I’d no doubt he could kill abyss.

me if he chose. My legs began to shake. A tremor She said, “I’ll tell you why I left. And why I’ll swept up through my body. I kicked the sheets.

always be below them. I will always be unfit for He told me, “Stay, Fido.”

them, because, because…”

I stayed.

And the rage was gone again, as quick as that.

From time to time he’d glance towards her as Her voice was smal , a whisper, underneath the she dressed. There was a kind of sadness in it, engine noise.

it seemed to me, the manner of a disappointed She told me, “Everyone loves everyone. That’s parent. A hundred crazy schemes went racing it, you know?”

round my head – I’d grab the gun or kick him

“What they call ‘love’ – ”

hard, or bribe him, or just talk to him, persuade

“Everyone loves everyone.”

him to go home and leave us… One mad plan

“OK,” I said, not seeing it.

after another. Hero stuff. Movie stuff. The kind

“So who loves you?”

of stuff you always hope you’ll do when some-She beat her hand against her thigh, harder body’s depending on you, till it final y happens, and harder, like trying to distract herself from and you find out that you don’t, and for one good toothache.

reason, too: because if you try it, then you’ll die.

“Who the fuck loves you?”

That’s all there is.

He asked her, “What do you need?”

She was bothered by a Buick that she said was She looked about. She didn’t speak. She started following us. Then there was a guy in a conveni-picking up her clothes and threw them in her ence store and when we left she saw him make a bag. Once she caught my eye, and for a moment cal . I told her it was nothing, just some guy talkI was certain she was going to cry, except she ing to his wife. No-one could track her here, I didn’t. She took the soft-toy elephant I’d bought said. We were on my cards. Even if they checked, her, sort of a joke, and Turk said, “No. Leave half the time I paid in cash. No way were we that.”

traceable, I said, no way on God’s green Earth.

He took the iPod from the bedside table,

I tried to reassure her, time and time again, and slipped it in his pocket, looked at me.

yet the more I did, the more I started worrying

“Hope you got taste, kid.”

myself, and wondering if maybe she was right.

Wolftrap, Virginia. A name just full of omens.

The world seemed to have slowed while he But like JFK, I wasn’t listening.

was there. Like watching from above, everything Motel again. There was a sign up warning us to sluggish and deliberate, as in a dream. I heard lock the door, even when we were inside. And we the door click shut. I lay a while, still paralysed, did. We always locked the door. Always, always.

still scared.

It didn’t stop him.

Then I was up and out, naked on the walkway,
fictiOn

15
the rumble of an engine starting, three floors surprise I lose. The search goes on. Sometimes down, a big black Buick backing out…

I’ll find a town so plain, so down-home, so norI dashed back to the room, snatched up my
mal in just every way, it’s only when I check the coat, my shoes, my wallet. Couldn’t pull the map I find out I’m in unrecorded territory. Stop coat on with my shoes in hand and so I dropped for coffee and a piece of pie. See the landmarks, them, running barefoot down the stairs the same view the bait shop and the church up on the hill; moment the Buick roared out of the parking lot.

visit the chocolatier. Drive on. Forget just how Then in my car. Slow. Slow. Everything too slow.

far off the map I’ve been.

Door too slow to shut, engine slow to catch.

In Indiana, south of Marion, you’ll find a city I backed out, hearing the wing scrape on the like a ribbon mal , a hundred miles in length, wal . Spinning the wheel, wondering which way that just goes on and on and on.

to go.

Or else you won’t. Depending how things are.

I drove a long time in the dark, and then it And me, there’s only one name that I’m look-was no longer dark. The morning traffic flowed ing for. One name, painted in big, bold letters, around me, but I didn’t stop. I drove for hours. I on a sign I’ve never seen.

took the side roads. Cruised the parking garage Nagosha.

and the shopping mal . I swung around, went Nagosha, Nagosha, Nagosha.

back, retraced my route, then back and back Sometimes I’ll hole up, take a job a few weeks, again. On the floorboard of the car the things try to get to know people, and scratch the sur-she’d asked for rolled and clattered every time I face of their lives. Hoping, always hoping. “You took a bend, and I’d kick them out from clutter-hear about a place called…?”

ing the pedals: a salad spinner and a Simpsons Mostly, though, I travel. I keep her things coffee mug, a card of rainbow-coloured shoe-packed in the trunk, all neatly wrapped in tissue laces; a perfume bottle and a single track shoe and in boxes and in plastic bags. All the junk and and a lighter shaped like Jesus on the cross… I gimcrack shit she wanted, all there, every single checked the gas stations, the roadside stores, I’d piece. I’ve never thrown a thing away. And one ask about a big black Buick, only now the sun day, when I find her, I’ll just nod, and smile, like was pouring down, il uminating and incriminat-we were talking only days ago, and then I’ll say, ing as I stood there in my long coat with my bare

“Oh yeah. Think you forgot something,” and pop feet and my naked shins, the leg-hairs shining in the trunk and see her face go bright and shiny the summer light.

with the joy of it.

I never found the Buick or the Turk or her

“That’s yours,” I’ll say. “I kept it safe for you. It’s again.

yours and yours alone, you know?”

They’d slipped away, to that place where the I’ll look into her eyes. They say that you can roadsigns didn’t point, and the cameras were all tell a person’s happiness like that, by measuring blind.

the size and blackness of the pupils. And then I’ll say again, “OK?” and she won’t speak, won’t in Port cythera, Florida, a man says, “Girl like say a word. She’ll smile. And go on smiling. And that. She’s everyone’s, she’s no-one’s. Know what I’ll shut the trunk and open up the side door I mean?”

and say, “Where?” and this time, she’ll know just I hit him in the face. We wrestle, falling to exactly where she wants to go.

the ground. It’s crazy. It’s ridiculous. I know he And I’ll get in and drive.

doesn’t know her and I’m angry and I keep on hitting till he gets on top of me and grabs my Tim Lees is author of the much-praised novel Franken-
hands. He’s leaning over me and I can see the
stein’s Prescription (Tartarus Press). He has been a staple spittle gather on his lips, hanging, swinging, just of TTA Press for many years. A new story, ‘Scenes From about to fal … He grins. I close my eyes and turn Country Life’, is in Crimewave 12: Hurts (out now!). Tim is my head.

British but now lives in Chicago. He occasionally rants at It’s my first real fight since High School. No timlees.wordpress.com, and has been known to tweet.

illusTrATed By Ben BAldwin
papJrAsonika
sAnford

{

“Ah PAPrikA, you dAnce so well,”

satoshi exclaimed each bright-sun
morning, his praise always pleasing no
matter how many times Paprika heard it.

And Paprika could dance, she really could.

not like some of the olds, who’d spent
millennia shaping their locked-down
bodies through graceful movements.

But still she could dance.

Ballet. The Twist. Bhangra.

16

18

PaPriKa BY JaSOn SanfOrD › iLLUStrateD BY Ben BaLDWin Sometimes she’d make herself as tiny as Sat-The woman held out her upturned palm,
oshi’s hand and pirouette for hours on his work-which shimmered to a rainbow of colors. Even bench while he reformed nano into exciting, though Paprika sat at the wrong angle to read long-lost toys. Other times she’d dance full-sized the data with her eyes, her core easily interfaced

– child-sized as Satoshi would say, although with the stream. The woman’s hand contained a Paprika knew to never speak that depressing notice from Satoshi, telling a customer the train word to customers. Paprika would create a full-he’d ordered had been created.

flowing lehengas skirt – always the brightest of

“So wonderful,” Satoshi said, the glee in his greens – and she’d dance in the store window, voice almost unheard of among the olds. “I’d spinning and spinning until she was so overcome worried Mr Tanner might be unable to pick it with happiness she’d dance through the window up. When he ordered the train he was so…wel , into the outside world, leaping and spinning to perhaps excited would be a close-enough word.”

imaginary partners, bowing and smiling to the Paprika instantly knew something was wrong boys and girls who never came, flying across the by the way the woman clenched her youthful y deserted streets and passing in and out of the recreated hands, but Satoshi was in the thral s empty but perfectly preserved buildings sur-of his imagination and didn’t notice. He walked rounding Satoshi’s shop.

quickly to the other side of the shop, dust and But whenever any of the few olds left in the city unbonded nanobits flickering in his wake. He visited, Paprika restrained herself by simply sit-stood over the train set Mr Tanner had ordered, a ting at her table in the window display. Not that replica of a Lionel 2333 diesel locomotive Papri-she was for sale – Satoshi always made that clear ka had copied from Mr Tanner’s few remaining to any customer who mistook her for other than childhood memories. Paprika remembered the what she was. With her young girl’s body and glee in Mr Tanner’s stiff eyes when he’d described innocent happiness, Paprika knew she helped the train, which had already been ancient when Satoshi sell more than merely the bright toys Mr Tanner was a young boy.

which populated his store. She sold nostalgia.

Satoshi picked up the train. The front of the Happy memories of long-vanished childhoods.

engine shone bright red, the back a striking And if nostalgia helped keep Satoshi alive, that silver, and to Paprika it seemed the train could was fine with Paprika.

zoom across the universe faster than even light One day an old she’d never seen – which
dared dream. She’d been disappointed to learn was surprising because there were only a few trains only travelled on their tracks, but once hundred left in the city – visited the store. The Satoshi completed the set she’d still enjoyed woman’s bright red hair shimmered from head watching it run circle after circle, hour after to waist and her tight-crafted face was bound in hour, across the days.

a rigid mask of anger and irritation from who

“It’s a marvel of replication,” Satoshi told the knew how many years of life. Paprika instantly woman as he placed the engine back on the
loved the woman’s hair and would have spun tracks and attached a boxcar and red caboose.

her own nothing-imagined locks into a perfect He tapped the control pad and the train began imitation. But she didn’t want to risk alienating moving around the circular track. “The cars are one of their rare customers. So Paprika simply rebonded nano, as is the crystal heart powering sat quietly at her window table reading one of the engine,” he said with pride. “But the tracks the ancient paper books she sometimes found in and wheels – I wanted to give Mr Tanner more the city’s empty buildings.

time than allowed by mere rebonded nano. So The woman approached the workshop desk
they are original nano filaments. Never broken.

and rang the tiny holographic service bell even Never degraded. He can run the train continu-though Satoshi stood directly before her.

al y for the next hundred thousand years.”

“May I help you?” Satoshi asked in a calm

Satoshi was so pleased with his creation he voice, never one to be angry or irritated no mat-didn’t see the woman tear up. Paprika knew ter how pushy the customer.

from previous interactions with olds that tears
fictiOn

19

›
were a bad sign, but no matter how Paprika tried

“A copy of Tan’s memories and self is now
to catch Satoshi’s eye he didn’t see her warning.

stored in one like you,” Anya said. “Perhaps that He finished describing in loving detail the train time angel saved all of him. But I wonder…”

and how it so completely captured Mr Tanner’s Paprika glanced at her tears on the table be-original childhood memory. Only then did he fore turning them yet again into il usion. She notice the crying.

didn’t want to speak. She didn’t want to discuss

“I see,” Satoshi said awkwardly. “Is this why the duty she so rarely performed. Besides, this Mr Tanner didn’t come today?”

woman was an old. While she had lived for many

“He has become dead. I’m his great-grand-
hundreds of thousands of years, she was still hu-daughter, Anya.”

man. How could she comprehend Paprika’s life?

“I see,” Satoshi repeated. Paprika was grateful How could she understand the memories and
he didn’t ask what had happened. Except for the sentience-maps of the six people trapped inside rare accident, most olds died during rejuvena-Paprika’s self-contained pocket universe? How tion treatment. Or, less often, they lost the desire each stored memory and glimmer of awareness to live and no longer commanded their bodies to tickled Paprika’s endless days? How she continu-keep going – which to most olds was the same as al y fought her programmed need to copy the an accident, only an accident of mind and soul.

consciousness of every old she met?

The woman touched the train’s control pad, But Anya knew nothing of this. Instead, the bringing it to a stop. “The rejuvenation went old sighed, no doubt merely seeing Paprika as a poorly,” Anya said. “In the end, as Tan’s body potential vessel for her own immortality. “This col apsed, the only thing on Earth he desired is why my family refuses nostalgia,” Anya said.

was this train. But my family doesn’t hold with

“There’s nothing in it. Only ghosts.”

pointless nostalgia.”

Paprika and Satoshi both remained quiet. As Satoshi nodded sadly as Paprika began to cry Paprika had observed across so many years of woven drops of light which disappeared into her existence, such outbursts as Anya’s were often an table. If she and Satoshi had known, they would old’s final plea before some memory – pushed have brought the train to Mr Tanner. Nothing from the mind for eons – demanded a return to would have stopped them on such a noble quest, life.

no matter the wishes of his family.

Sure enough, Anya walked over to the train As Paprika’s tears flowed through the table, and ran her fingers along the shiny tracks.

she decided mere il usion wasn’t adequate for

“I remember a green teddy bear,” she said in a the occasion. She reformed the tears into solids soft voice. “Not very wel , but I think the mem-and they plinked on the table, wetting and danc-ory is still here. Can you find it?”

ing like proper tears should.

Satoshi bowed gently. “If even the slimmest of Anya Tanner heard the tears, having enhanced memories exist in your mind,” he said, “Paprika senses like all the olds, and nodded solemnly at will tease it out.” With a happy smile, Paprika Paprika. The woman obviously approved of such hardened her body and leapt from the window honorable displays of sadness.

display, taking Anya’s hand as she led the woman

“Do you still desire the train?” Satoshi asked.

to what she and Satoshi lovingly called their

“Mr Tanner would have wanted his family to memory chair. As the woman sat down, Paprika have it.”

ghosted her fingers through the woman’s mind, Anya restarted the engine, which again cir-searching for the green teddy bear.

cled the tracks with its boxcar and caboose. She Now that Anya was one of them, Paprika
walked over to Paprika and flowed her fingers didn’t mind touching her. Anya may still be an through Paprika’s ghostly hair. Paprika knew old, but Paprika figured she was now less of an it was insulting not to harden her body so the old than moments before.

woman could touch her, but she refused to do so.

While she was sorry Mr Tanner never received in honor of Mr Tanner, Paprika kept the train his train, she didn’t want this old touching her.

running for the next few thousand years. Day

20

PaPriKa BY JaSOn SanfOrD › iLLUStrateD BY Ben BaLDWin and night the train circled its tiny track, its head-her up to her fellow time angels. To the mil-light glowing faintly. Sometimes, when Satoshi lions and millions of olds they had copied and was focused on a project, Paprika sped up her stored. There were now so few olds left on Earth time sense so the train became a burning ring that many of the time angels refused to seek of red, going lightspeed fast. Other times she out any more humans. Instead, they embedded slowed her senses down so the train paused be-themselves into stone and land, protecting their tween one beat of its crystal heart and the next, pocket universes as they slept through fast-time.

its wheels forever hoping for the next move It’s not too late for you, her fellow time angels down those stiff unending tracks.

yelled in anger. Save Satoshi. Redeem yourself.

But as the centuries passed into millennia, and As the angry words flowed through her,
the few hundred olds left in the city died one by Paprika rocked back and forth in her window, one, fewer customers visited Satoshi’s shop. Nat-looking out at the dark empty street and the dark ural y, Satoshi took their lack of customers with empty buildings of the dark empty city. While his typical ease. “The mind adjusts to not work-she knew she shouldn’t give voice to the question ing after a while,” he said one day.

that was building – that doing so would be dan-Paprika frowned. While Satoshi’s machines
gerous – she couldn’t stop herself. She hated her could create anything he needed – food, water, programming. And she was tired, so very tired and an endless stream of toys – olds like him of the constant nagging to do her duty.

couldn’t exist forever without a goal to work to-

“What’s so great about living forever in an ward. Their minds weakened and their will to empty pocket universe?” she asked.

live ebbed.

The anger and pleading from both her fellow Paprika tried to keep Satoshi’s spirits up. She time angels and her internal programming fell teased out memories of toys from the six lives to silence, unable to answer. Paprika grinned, she’d already copied to her pocket universe. But pleased she’d final y said what she’d wondered while Satoshi always created toys from these about for so long.

memories – games and bouncing bal s and a

Then her pleasure turned to worry as the
pyramid which continual y rebuilt itself from silence continued, neither her fellow time angels self-rearranging blocks – his heart wasn’t in it.

nor her internal programming even protesting Paprika feared that without something to aim her question. The silence built the rest of that for Satoshi would stop desiring to live. That he night and into the next day, the sun rising and would let himself die.

setting as Paprika refused to move, afraid that One night while Satoshi slept, Paprika cursed mere motion might destroy her. The silence herself for being so selfish as to want her friend flowed again through fading sun into night, the to keep living. You are a time angel, other time stars sparkling without a care on Paprika’s dis-angels sang in her mind, their words reaching comfort.

her from all points across the world and echo-Final y, as morning returned a second time, ing the edicts of their original programming. Let the silence ended. “I’ll teach her,” a single voice him die so you can save his memories and self. All announced.

that he is will live forever, safe and sound until the Paprika nodded, pleased the silence had
universes themselves boil to an end.

ended but also wondering whether this was her

“Maybe he doesn’t want me to save him,” she programming speaking or one of the other time whispered back. “That’s why we’re friends. He angels, and what exactly she needed to be taught.

loves me for who I am, not what I can do for But she had no way of knowing so she stood up, him.”

stretched, and walked across the shop to see A disappointment! the time angels screamed.

what Satoshi had been up to the last few days.

That’s all you are. Can’t you feel what the other time angels have saved?

When Paprika’s lesson didn’t arrive dur-She could feel it, she real y could. When she ing the next hundred years, she stopped think-wasn’t around Satoshi her programming opened ing on what it might be. Instead, she worried
fictiOn

21

›
about Satoshi and his lack of customers. In an On one trip through the park, the memories attempt to keep Satoshi from losing his will to became too much and Paprika col apsed into the live, Paprika began wandering the ancient city, neatly gened giggle grass, which tickled her face looking for olds. Looking for someone who still as the green blades reached for her. Above her craved the toys only Satoshi could create.

several whisper oaks shaped the breeze into the She tried to pretend she was merely dancing pleasant babble of ancient words and conversa-like always, letting her happiness carry her out-tions. She smashed her hardened hand into the side the shop. But Satoshi knew better.

grass, cursing it for not knowing all the people

“There’s no need to trouble yourself, Paprika,”

they’d once welcomed were gone. But the grass he said one day while sweeping up nano dust. “If merely bent under her blow, not caring that she there are people who desire what I give, they’ll wanted it dead.

come.”

“Are you okay, Paprika?” a familiar voice asked.

“Perhaps they need a gentle reminder of what Paprika looked up to see Anya Tanner stand-we offer.”

ing over her, the old’s red hair blazing in the Satoshi laughed, his first laugh in decades.

dimming light of dusk. Anya held the green

“Spoken like a true time angel.”

teddy bear Satoshi had made for her. The bear Paprika frowned until she realized he was
waved a furry paw in greeting as Anya sat down right. She was merely being herself.

beside Paprika in the grass.

With a bow to Satoshi she walked out into the

“What’s the matter?” Anya asked. The teddy city.

bear stared into Paprika’s eyes, also curious about their friend.

Despite the brave face Paprika wore for Satoshi, Paprika wiped her face, even though she
it was difficult for her to remain happy when she hadn’t created any tears. “It hurts,” Paprika said.

walked the nearly empty city. Instead of seeing

“I remember what this park was like back then. I the gleaming towers rising two kilometers above mean, the people I carry remember.”

her, her pocket memories would surge forward, Anya sighed and ran her fingers along the
forcing her to remember when the towers were gened grass blades so they rustled to the faint, full of people. The six people she’d copied had whispered laughter of children. The teddy bear loved the buzz of conversations which constantly rolled across the giggle grass, adding even more flowed from their own lips and the mouths of laughter to the breeze.

everyone around them – discussions and dreams

“I know what you mean,” Anya said. “I try not and plans which had seemed so important at the to dwell on what has been. But sometimes the time but now rang as hollow as the city.

memories still come. Like when I see you here.

Each time Paprika recalled such memories,

You remind me of all the kids who no longer she would remind herself that they weren’t hers.

play in this park.”

Her memories were separate, kept in her pro-Paprika sat up and held Anya’s hand. In the gramming, while these memories arose from
thousands of years since she’d met Anya, she’d her pocket universe.

grown to real y like this old. She especial y liked But keeping them separate sometimes made

Anya because she refused to allow herself to be Paprika want to scream in pain. One moment copied and stored in the pockets of the few time she’d be dancing among the giant statues of for-angels who still passed through the city.

gotten heroes in the city’s Memory Park, and the

“Why aren’t there any more kids?” Paprika
next she’d see the park as it was three hundred asked. While she could access memories of kids thousand years ago, with crowds of people – and from the six people she’d copied, she’d never kids, always so many laughing kids – watching known any personal y.

the kite fights. She’d stare in amazement as red

“What use are kids when you can live forever?

triangle kites and blue neon squares and glowing When you can copy yourself to live on after you fabric boxes swooped and climbed as the crowd die?”

cheered.

“But what if it’s not true living?” Even as Pap-

22

PaPriKa BY JaSOn SanfOrD › iLLUStrateD BY Ben BaLDWin rika formed the question, her programming

“It’s Anya Tanner,” he said in a weak voice, sit-shrieked at her. Cursed her for daring to questing in their memory chair in front of the train tion her sole duty and purpose.

tracks. “I think she has died.”

“What do you mean?” Anya asked.

Paprika immediately reached out to the city’s

“I mean,” Paprika said, forcing herself to speak information net, which hummed despite its age over her programming’s anger, “what if the and decrepit state. Anya’s smiling face popped memories and sentience-maps we time angels up before her eyes and said, “Don’t be stupid –
save are only dead copies of who you are? Not I’m as alive as ever.” But Paprika knew the real the whole of who you are and have been?”

Anya never smiled such a sil y smile. This was Anya reached over and hugged Paprika. “I
one of many avatars Anya kept. All the olds used think you worry too much, little time angel. It them for communications. Even though the
helps people to know their memories and con-planet was nearly deserted the avatars still chat-sciousness might live on after them. That they’ll ted with one another, millions of them laughing never disappear. That’s why humanity created and gossiping as the nets around them frayed time angels in the first place. If your purpose and cracked in advance of their eventual col-makes people happy, why worry on the deeper lapse.

aspects of what exactly you save?”

“I’ll go check on her,” Paprika said, jumping up Paprika smiled at the reassuring words, and and running for the door. She wished now she snuggled closer to Anya’s body. “I’m worried hadn’t waited for Satoshi to tell her. Maybe then about Satoshi,” Paprika whispered. “Are there she could have helped Anya.

any toys you’d like him to create?”

“You should stay here,” Satoshi said. “There’s The teddy bear frowned, obviously jealous at nothing you can do to help Anya. If she’s alive, the thought of new toys, until Anya reached out she’s alive. If not, she’s gone.”

to rub its green fur. “Don’t worry, Boo, nothing Paprika paused before the door, her body
could take your place.” Anya then tapped her shaking as it ghosted in and out of solid form.

head. “However, I do remember a wonderful kite Go to Anya, her programming screamed. Copy I used to fly in this park. But you have to promise her before it is too late! Paprika tried to fight the not to go copying anything else in the old nog-urge. To tell herself she only wanted to check on gin. I’m not convinced there’s anything up there her friend.

worth saving for posterity.”

“Are you okay?” Satoshi asked.

Paprika giggled as she ghosted her hand and Instead of answering, Paprika ghosted through reached into Anya, quickly pulling out a glowing the door and ran down the street. She ran past memory of a blue, soaring kite.

tall buildings still looking impressively new, their windows beaming back blue skies and their it’s so easy to forget time when you have so wal s shimmering rainbow swirls. She ran past much of it. So it was for Paprika and Satoshi.

empty homes which should have been bustling After Paprika’s meeting with Anya in the park, to the lives of people.

she avoided leaving the shop for a few millennia.

But when Paprika stopped running and looked She and Satoshi kept to their usual routine, with closely, she found cracks in the nano. A tuft of Paprika dancing while Satoshi created toys.

grass growing through the black of a road. A But then came the year where Satoshi grew
door which hung slightly from its frame. A thick worried. The worries began in the winter when coating of grime and mildew on those buildings the first snows coated the empty city, and grew whose nano had lost their repulsive charge.

more and more as spring arrived and fresh gig-Paprika knew the city wouldn’t last beyond a gle grass burst forth from the cracks in the street half million more years. Not without people to outside the shop. Paprika yearned to ask what take care of it.

was wrong, but knew better than to say any-She walked to a small house on the eastern thing. These things always came out eventual y.

side of the city, where Anya Tanner lived. The And so, on a hot summer day, Satoshi told her.

houses there were a strange mix. Their nano
fictiOn

23

›
wal s and streets were still perfectly shaped, with Now more wary, Paprika continued her search.

vibrant colors and clear windows. But yards On the only unmade bed in the house, Paprika which Paprika remembered once being geneti-found a mummified body with faded red hair.

cal y trim were now choked with massive trees But where in life Anya’s face had been regrown and thickets. When she reached Anya’s house so often she rarely smiled, the mummy’s face she found a grove of whisper oaks blocking grinned as if death was the happiest event Anya the front door, the leaves having shaped them-had ever known.

selves to say “Paprika, Paprika” over and over Except death wasn’t what Anya grinned over.

as the wind blew through their canopy. Paprika As Paprika ran her fingers through Anya’s hair, thought this strange – Anya had never been she felt the slight magnetic caress of another partial to whisper oaks so why would she have time angel. One of her brothers or sisters had reworked the trees’ genetic memories so they copied Anya’s memories before her friend died.

whispered her name? Even the chatter squirrels Paprika’s programming screeched in fury.

living in the trees glared at Paprika and repeated That should have been you. You are a failure.

her name over and over in their usual y unintel-You should let yourself die. The programming ligible tongues.

shrieked so loudly Paprika’s body fell apart, her Paprika shivered. Someone had done this
ghostly pieces scattering across the room.

genetic manipulation on purpose. Was this her When she final y pulled herself together, sev-lesson?

eral years had passed. Once she could again Unable to reach the front door because of the solidify her body, she stood up and kissed her trees, Paprika ghosted through them, scaring the dead friend on the forehead.

squirrels into chastising her with more chatter-In the crook of the mummy’s arm rested a
ings of her name.

green teddy bear. The bear nodded at Paprika’s Once inside, she discovered that the doors and kiss and reached out as if to hug her.

windows were still shut, keeping all but a thin Paprika picked up the bear and hugged it back.

layer of dust out of the house. The dinner table was set for no one, the shelves and wal s filled even though Paprika had only been gone a with moving pictures of people who beckoned few years, time had been rough on Satoshi. His Paprika to come and gaze at them. In one photo body had stiffened so much he walked with a Mr Tanner waved at her. In another, a child-size cane, and when Paprika tried to hook him up Anya laughed in Memory Park as kites fought to the rejuvenation machine, she discovered the mock battles above her.

machine destroyed, just as Anya’s had been.

Like all the houses of the olds, this one con-

“A time angel did it,” Satoshi said sadly. “He tained a basic rejuvenation machine. The bed-looks young, like you, but he has a most cruel sized machine would envelop anyone who lay manner about his bearing.”

inside it in a massive hug of pseudo-flesh and

“But time angels don’t kill people,” she said, warmth, quickly rebuilding and replacing dam-shocked at the attack. “Our programming foraged body parts. But this machine no longer bids it.”

worked. The pink flesh of its exterior had been

“Ah, but this one hasn’t killed me, has he? He hacked and sliced, with long cuts showing where merely damaged a machine I occasional y need, the machine had bled out and died.

which isn’t quite the same thing.”

Someone had attacked the machine. Paprika

Unfortunately, Paprika couldn’t argue with reached out her essence and felt for anyone in that reasoning.

the house, but she was alone. She realized the That night she sat in her window, clutching to attack had probably happened centuries before.

her breast Anya’s green teddy bear. She reached The house was also secured from the inside, out her mind to both her programming and her meaning whoever did this had never left.

fellow time angels. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m Or, she thought, whoever did this didn’t need truly sorry for questioning my function. Please to use doors.

tell me what I can do to help Satoshi.”

24

PaPriKa BY JaSOn SanfOrD › iLLUStrateD BY Ben BaLDWin Her programming didn’t answer. Instead, the I don’t know when death will come.”

same voice she’d heard before, the one which had Paprika nodded. She suspected Satoshi knew promised to teach her, laughed. “You know what she’d been protecting him, and that doing so was you need to do,” the voice said, speaking with the slowly exhausting her, wearing down her will to same magnetic chill as the imprints left on the fight her programmed sense of duty. Having long destroyed rejuvenation machines of Anya and since resigned herself to this moment, Paprika Satoshi.

walked into the workshop, returning a moment

“I won’t do it,” she said.

later with the memory chair where people sat

“Then I wil .”

when she caressed their minds. She thought it Reaching into the vast powers which kept her proper that Satoshi sit here when she copied all pocket universe contained, Paprika slapped the he was to her pocket universe.

voice from her mind. She then ran to Satoshi’s

“No, my friend, I won’t be going with you.”

room, where her friend tossed gently in his sleep That caused Paprika to cry for real, tears which as if reliving a pleasant dream.

she couldn’t control, tears which phased in and She stood beside Satoshi’s bed and didn’t move out of solidity no matter how she tried to stop until he woke, refusing to let any other time them. She’d always assumed Satoshi would copy angel even dare to approach his life.

his life into her before he died. That he’d live on alongside the copies of the other people she’d for the next hundred years Paprika protected shared her life with.

Satoshi. She could sense the other time angel

“Forgive me,” Satoshi said, “but I don’t want to nearby, but she knew he wouldn’t risk approach-burden you with my petty life.”

ing Satoshi while she was around. Instead, the

“What if I want that burden?”

other time angel spun on the edge of her aware-Satoshi smiled and held her tiny hand, but he ness like a shooting star, far enough away that shook his head softly.

Paprika sometimes doubted if he existed, but Paprika cried as she hugged Satoshi. “Please,”

close enough that he could easily keep track of she asked a final time. “It’s what humanity cre-Satoshi.

ated me to do.”

She searched throughout the city for a work-

“There are always things we’re made to do,”

ing rejuvenation machine, but there were none.

Satoshi said. “But this, I cannot allow.”

Those that had worked were damaged, the same

“But you’ll live forever.”

as at Anya’s house. She also didn’t find any other

“Do you truly believe that?”

olds. They were all gone. Only Satoshi remained.

Paprika paused, wanting to say no, to say the On one of her searches, she felt the other time memories and sentience-map she’d copy to her angel approaching Satoshi’s shop. Paprika raced pocket universe wouldn’t be the same as the home to find a small boy about to enter the Satoshi she’d spent so many years with. That doorway.

Satoshi’s life in this toy shop, creating wonders He’s mine, Paprika’s programming shrieked for the world while Paprika danced in joy, would and she immediately grew her power until she never be the same as any mere copy of the man.

filled the street, flickering in colors of red and But her programming quivered at the forbid-black and anger, purest anger, howling as she den thought, causing her truthful response to attacked the time angel with all her strength. But dangle unspoken on her lips. “I copy and save all instead of fighting back, the boy merely grinned that you are,” she said instead, repeating the lies and ghosted away, as if pleased by how easily time angels had always spoken. “Your memories Paprika had given in to her programming. He and life will never be destroyed.”

disappeared back to the edges of her awareness.

Satoshi squeezed Paprika’s hand. “I already have that.”

Then one day Satoshi announced he would die.

Paprika’s body shook, unsure what Satoshi

“I suspect it is better to embrace my time,” he meant.

said, “than to slowly lose so much of myself that

“When I craft toys for people, the memories
fictiOn

25

›
they create last long after I’m gone,” he said. “And his body ghosted to extraordinary size, swelling those memories cause people to live their lives in with power and rage.

such a way that a touch of me is never forgotten.”

Paprika had never before worried what this

“But there’s no one left. Everyone you built time angel could do to her because his powers toys for is long dead. Their memories now only were a simple mirror of her own – at most they exist as copies within time angels.”

might fight to a draw. But this time the boy

“Not true. The memories of me and my toys
swelled with far more power than she possessed.

live on in you. Not in your pocket – in your Paprika realized the boy was drawing energy mind. In your life.”

from the world’s other time angels. She had so Paprika nodded, and a slight smile crossed her insulted their sense of duty and purpose that all face even as her programming screamed at her, of them were united in a desire to destroy her.

even as the anger from other time angels leaped For the first time ever, Paprika felt true fear.

at her and warned her not to do this. But she But not fear for what might happen to the six didn’t care. Satoshi was right. While the memo-people copied in her pocket universe, which ries and lives in her pocket universe might never according to her programming should have
die, they might as well be dead for all the good been the only fear which mattered. No, Paprika they did in this world.

feared for herself. If she died, there would be no Satoshi didn’t say another word. Paprika held one left who remembered Satoshi.

his hand through the night until, shortly after The boy reached for her, massive waves of
dawn, he gasped and didn’t breathe any more.

power ready to rip her core to pieces and even destroy her pocket universe. But instead of after that, Paprika couldn’t stay in the shop.

fighting Paprika simply ghosted away, passing Keeping her body solid, Paprika formed a
through Satoshi’s toy shop and shooting across backpack from her essence and placed inside the city and beyond until the boy lost track of it a number of Satoshi’s toys, along with Anya’s where she was.

green teddy bear. She was tempted to take the train but decided instead to keep it running. She from then on, Paprika walked. She couldn’t picked up the memory chair and set it beside the stay in one place more than a few months with-train, then carried Satoshi’s body and rested him out the boy and the other time angels locating there.

her.

This is good, she thought as the train ran cir-Depending on the latitude, Paprika walked
cles before Satoshi’s slumped form. When she around the Earth once every few years. Some-left she’d leave the shop’s door open. She’d seen times she stayed solid and walked along the how quickly human bodies decayed when not
ocean floor; other times she ghosted and walked sealed in houses and buildings – a few centuries the waves. But either way she circled the planet and Satoshi would be nothing but dust. But his over and over, from far north near the Arctic train would run and run and run. Perhaps the Circle to the equal y frigid wind-swept ice of chatter squirrels or other animals would stop by Antarctica.

and be touched by the beauty of the toy running As she walked she saw no other olds. All the on long after the man who created it had died.

cities were as empty as her city. All the homes As she left the house, Paprika saw the time and buildings were bare.

angel standing across the street. His small-boy-To pass the time she sometimes took Satoshi’s like face and body quivered with anger.

toys out of her backpack and played with them.

“You didn’t save him,” he said. “He died. And The green teddy bear would sing songs for her is gone. All gone.”

while she clapped and danced. If she closed her

“It’s what he wanted.”

eyes it was almost like Satoshi was still alive.

“You’re not worthy of being a time angel,” the She also dipped into the lives of the six people boy screamed, his words echoing to the voices in her pocket universe. Their sentience-maps and of the other time angels. The boy flickered as memories sat inside her like cold and unmoving

26

PaPriKa BY JaSOn SanfOrD › iLLUStrateD BY Ben BaLDWin creations – nearly alive, but total y unlike the around the shop. And most surprisingly, the people they’d once been. She realized Satoshi window she’d sat beside for so many centuries had been correct. There was a big difference had actual y broken. She wondered what could between a living person in this world and that have done that, then remembered the time angel person’s basic components stored unchanging boy. He’d probably done it out of spite at not for all time.

being able to kill her.

She was tempted to simply destroy their lives –

Paprika stepped into the shop. While the door to col apse her pocket universe in the explosion was still open, the plants and trees hadn’t been of bound energy which enabled her to keep it able to grow very far into the shop due to a lack intact. But she knew that would be disrespectful of sun and rain. A thick layer of dust coated to those six people.

everything, with tiny paw prints showing where Instead, she shared their memories. She im-families of chatter squirrels had made their planted many of them into the mind of the green home here.

teddy bear, which giggled as it suddenly remem-In the middle of the shop sat the table with the bered living in the ancient cities of Earth and train on it, which still ran circle after circle over playing with its own teddy bears as a child. She its tracks. Paprika stepped to the table, which also placed memories into the gened animals was clean of dust. On the chair before the table which now lived on the planet, such as the chat-lay Satoshi’s bones, which had been stacked into ter squirrels which mimicked human speech.

a neat pile sometime after the rest of his body She knew the ancient geneticists who’d created decayed.

these species would have hated her actions, but Paprika smiled. She hadn’t expected the train they were no longer around to complain. And to be still running. Obviously someone had she always took care to only gift the animals with kept the train’s tracks clear of dust and dirt and happy memories and genes, usual y related to made sure Satoshi’s bones weren’t scavenged by playing with toys.

animals.

She even reworked the genes of the whisper

“It seemed proper,” the boy said, stepping oaks, implanting the joy of Satoshi’s toys within from Satoshi’s old bedroom. “After al , thanks to their limited memories. When she finished the you this is all he has to be remembered by.”

wind made their leaves whisper his name over For a moment Paprika’s programming hissed, and over, and standing near their trunks left one reminding her of her now-forsaken duty before with a burning need to go and experience the dying down again. But she’d long since learned endless playtime of the forest.

to ignore what her programming said to do.

“If you want Satoshi to be remembered, you Whenever Paprika saw another time angel –
should let me live. I’m carrying around many usual y that boy but sometimes others like him memories of my time with him.”

– she ghosted away as fast as she could. But each The time angel twitched, as if physical y ill at time she escaped she felt their combined power Paprika’s heresy. “Your memories of the man are coming closer to capturing her.

an abomination,” he said, reaching out to the It would be only a few centuries before they other time angels around the world, who each caught her.

provided a bit of power to him. “If you prom-So it was that Paprika returned to Satoshi’s toy ise not to flee again, I’ll let us depart this place shop. She’d avoided coming here because she before I kill you. There’s no reason for me to de-knew the time angels would be watching. But stroy your friend’s legacy too. Even if that legacy now she didn’t care.

is only a single toy churning above dust and Satoshi’s shop stood as before, but in the thou-bones.”

sands of years since she’d left the building’s nano Paprika looked around the shop, from the
had weakened and no longer repelled dust and counter where Satoshi had waited on custom-dirt. The street outside had also completely bro-ers to his magical workbench to the window she ken down, allowing vines and trees to grow up used to sit beside. For a moment she smiled as
fictiOn

27

›
memories raced through her mind. But as much deserved to be destroyed. The boy was merely as she’d loved her time here with Satoshi, her doing his duty as a true time angel.

memories didn’t depend on this shop for life.

But even if the time angels couldn’t under-

“Do you know what I’ve realized?” she asked.

stand her reasoning, they now feared her. With-

“About the powers we have? Why all the world’s out the need to maintain her own pocket uni-time angels are only able to share a bit of their verse, Paprika had more power than the other powers with you right now?”

time angels combined. Unless they also forsook The boy shook his head, uncertain where this their pocket universes, which was something was going.

they’d never do.

“I realized we only have a little bit of power to Instead, they agreed to leave Paprika alone.

share because we use so much power constrain-And so time passed.

ing the pocket universes within us.”

The boy paled, and opened his mouth as if
for the first few centuries Paprika healed the to protest, as if to beg Paprika not to do what city. Not that she could rebuild what she’d de-she was about to do. But for once there wasn’t stroyed. But she carried in dirt and rocks by enough time for even a single word. Without hand, filling the massive crater a drip and a drop even a second thought, Paprika reached into her at a time. She planted whisper oaks and giggle being and destroyed the bound energies main-grass and even chased angry chatter squirrels taining her pocket universe. The energy rushed back there to live.

into her core, feeding her powers, feeding her Once the crater was gone, she gathered the soul, which she immediately directed toward biggest blocks of broken nano she could find the boy, who had barely begun to comprehend and built a massive pyramid, modeling it on the her ultimate heresy when the wave of energy toy pyramid Satoshi had once built. The pyramid smashed into him.

stood on the spot of Satoshi’s old toy shop. She As she released the powers constraining her even carved his name into its sides.

universe Paprika slowed her time sense. She Once Paprika was satisfied with her work, she saw every part of the boy’s essence as it was pulled off her backpack and removed her toys, destroyed. Saw him try to ghost away before the making sure to first play with the teddy bear energy wave overwhelmed him. Saw his own
and the various games and bal s and puzzles.

universe implode along with its stored memo-She then reached into herself and crafted a new ries and sentience-maps. Saw the red circling pocket universe. Not one as powerful as her last train turn to light. Saw Satoshi’s bones and the one, but it would do. With a final hug to the shop and the city around them convert to energy teddy bear, she placed the toys in her new uni-as the explosion swelled toward the horizon.

verse, where they would be safe.

When the counter explosion from the destruc-She then sped up her time sense, going faster tion of the boy’s own universe reached Paprika, and faster until there was no night or day, merely she threw up all the power she now possessed.

a continual gray merging of the two. Trees grew She rode the explosion out of the city, dancing like vines and vines moved like animals, the sea-on the energy like she’d once danced in Satoshi’s sons passing to blinks of her eyes. Vegetation shop.

and soil climbed the pyramid, eventual y covering Satoshi’s name. But by extending her powers The time angels never again troubled Paprika.

she could still sense the single word, and it com-They were horrified at what she’d done – that forted her that this remained of his life.

she’d not only destroy her own universe but take She sped up her time sense even more, so the the boy’s with her, destroying the thousands of ground began to ripple and rock like waves of lives he’d copied. Paprika tried to point out that water as thousands of years passed in a single the time angels had planned to do the same to breath. Dirt and stone rose around Paprika as her but they couldn’t comprehend such same-she closed her eyes. She felt the other time angels ness. To their eyes Paprika was perverted and around the world, who had long since given in to

28

PaPriKa BY JaSOn SanfOrD › iLLUStrateD BY Ben BaLDWin their own programmed urges for fast-time sleep.

words – they now spoke in sentences and even Even though she knew she’d never again be a complete conversations. She reached out and time angel, she was glad she wasn’t alone.

touched one of the trees, causing a feeling of She felt her mind beginning to calcify. Felt peace to flood into her. But she also felt a strong her thoughts ending and her self dying off. She sense of play – of joy at all the fun waiting to be sighed, happy at the bliss of nothing. She could experienced in this world.

feel herself about to end…when something

The remains of the pyramid rose from the for-caught her senses.

est before her. As she’d sensed during fast-sleep The pyramid had changed. Someone had units stones were clear of trees and vegetation, covered it.

while giggle grass flowered all around its base.

Paprika hesitated, yearning to give in to the As she stepped closer she saw where the long-nothing blur of fast time. To answer the final de-lasting bonds of nano had broken down, with mands of the programming she had otherwise many of the blocks now cracked and broken. On forsaken.

the pyramid’s lowest blocks lay what she guessed But she had to know.

were toys. Wooden bal s and blocks. Kites made So she awoke.

of carved sticks and large leaves. Teddy bears crafted from dried clay.

The world had changed and yet not changed.

Someone obviously kept the pyramid clear

After she woke she found herself in a grove of and maintained this area.

what looked like whisper oaks, yet the words Smiling, she reached out her senses. She felt they spoke sounded strange. In the millions of the remains of the time angels, now embedded years which had passed the trees had begun to deep in the Earth, their minds long since calci-shape the wind into far more than a few simple fied, mindlessly protecting their pocket universes

“Nina Al an’s re-imagining of the Arachne myth, with its receding overlays of the modern and the antique, creates a space all its own. The scene is clean and minimal, the light Mediterranean, the story seems musing and sad: but by the last two pages, Spin has you in a grip that persists long after you put it down” M. John Harrison in

“The writing is precise, the imagery vividly sen-dwal
sual; by re-imagining ancient myth in a stun-ningly realised alternate Greece, Nina Al an traps en B
you in a web of story” Paul Kincaid
y Bt b

“Al an expertly weaves SF, fantasy and mythology into a subtle, seamless, dreamlike whole. I loved over ard c
it” neil Williamson
oun

“This is why we have novel as, to let stories rapar
unroll at their own pace, to give us Layla’s long w
journey by bus with her embroidery hoop across the Peloponnese, the encounter with the old woman, the drink from a spring of mountain-cold water, the African hotel clerk in Corinth.

Journeys mean something in a story like this
fictiOn

29
full of unchanging lives as they fell through fast her gifts, Paprika danced away, pirouetting into sleep. She also felt around the planet. There were the air as the sun and trees laughed in tune to the still no olds. But a new species lived across most whisper of “Satoshi! Satoshi!”

of the world. Their genes tasted similar to the chatter squirrels she remembered. Except they

‘Paprika’ is Jason Sanford’s thirteenth appearance in were bigger, and much smarter.

Interzone, with these stories including several Read-And they definitely loved to play.

ers’ Poll winners and a Nebula Award finalist. Jason is She touched the trees again. Come and play, currently completing an SF novel based on his ‘Plague they said as her mind processed their new lan-Birds’ stories, meaning he’ll have to enter the hellish guage. Come. Play with us.

realm of agent and book publisher submissions in the She grinned. In the trees’ new language, the coming months. His website is www.jasonsanford.com.

word for play sounded similar to “Satoshi.”

Looking around the forest, Paprika saw the de-Of ‘Paprika’ Jason says: “It was inspired by the life of scendants of the chatter squirrels watching her.

acclaimed anime director Satoshi Kon, who passed Making sure they could see what she was doing, away in 2010 at the age of 46. In addition to animating she opened her pocket universe and removed the award-winning film which lent this story its title, the toys she’d stored there. The green teddy bear Kon also directed several other influential anime films stretched and yawned. The games and kites and including Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers.

bal s and puzzles waited expectantly for some-His final film, Dreaming Machine, was incomplete at one to play with them.

the time of his death. His fellow animators have been She placed the toys beside the already existing attempting to complete the film based on his script and toys on the lower blocks of the pyramid. Then, as designs, but funding remains an issue and no release several chatter squirrels edged closer to examine date has been announced.”

one. They shouldn’t be rushed. They should be is further evidence that Nina Al an is one of the full of places, of encounters: With the young man most interesting and rewarding new writers to afflicted with a curse. A fascinating epic poem emerge in recent years” amazing Stories on which Layla bases her newest work. The mas-terpieces of ancient sibyls, catching dust in the

“I heartily recommend Spin to fans of literary museum. Spiders weaving in the sunlight, busy SF and fantasy, and especial y to those already at their work. The details so clear, so well-chosen familiar with Nina Al an’s work” Lucian Poll to make a story” Lois tilton, Locus Online

“A beautiful y told story that bodes well for the

“Spin is probably one of the best literary tales future of the TTA Novel as series” Sf revu you’ll read this year” Upcoming4.me

“Al an’s prose is as adaptable as her juggling of SF

“If you’re looking for an extraordinary and beau-and mythical materials: finely observed and re-tiful y written story that will charm you with its alistic when it needs to be, lyrical when it begins happenings you’ve just found it. Spin is perfect to focus on romance and self-discovery. It’s an entertainment for SFF readers, because it’s a well elegant, quiet, and quite satisfying fable” Gary written and surprisingly literary novel a, which K. Wolfe, Locus
combines science fiction, fantasy and mythology. Excellent!” rising Shadow

Buy Spin and other tta novellas singly Or SUBScriBe tO tHe firSt fiVe

“Spin is ambitious and enigmatic. Call it dark nOVeLLaS fOr JUSt £25 POSt-free tO
fantasy if you wil , though that description seems anYWHere in tHe WOrLD!

at odds with a story so il uminated by bold Mediterranean light and colour. Whatever Spin is, it ttapress.com/shop

30
illustrated by wayne haag

Filaments
lavie tidhar

“reality,” said the robo-priest, “is a thin and fragile thing.”

32
fiLaMentS BY LaVie tiDHar › iLLUStrateD BY WaYne HaaG

R. Brother Patch-It looked at its small congre-

“Consensus reality is like a cloth,” it started gation. This node of the Church of Robot sat on again. The congregation listened, there was the the Level Three Concourse of Central Station, in sound of dry rustling in the small dark church, the station’s own multifaith bazaar, besides the the smell of metal and pine resin. “It is made of wire-head emporiums and games-worlds and
many individual strands, each of which is a real-flesh pits. R. Patch-It watched its congregation.

ity upon itself, a self-encoded world. We each Few followed the true faith any more. Robots have our own reality, a world made by our senses alone, it sometimes seemed to R. Patch-It, still and our minds. The tapestry of consensus reality believed. Others, those strange, bodiless digital is therefore a group effort. It requires enough of intelligences, had abandoned belief for worlds of us to agree on what reality is. To determine the pure mathematics, an infinity of virtual possibil-shape of the tapestry, if you wil .”

ities. While humans needed, sometimes craved, R. Brother Patch-It liked that last addition. If faith, they seldom knew which one to choose, you will. It lent a certain weight to arguments.

and competition was fierce when one had Juda-

“If you wil ,” it said, savouring the words. “For ism alongside Roman Catholicism, Buddhism
reality to exist we must all will it into being. We against Elronism, the Martian Re-Born along-dream – ”

side Islam.

It hesitated again. Robots didn’t dream, not as And the Church of Robot was austere, robots such. And the thrust of the argument was becom-saw themselves as metal shepherds, the awkward ing positively Buddhist. R. Patch-It had often link between human physicality and Other tran-contemplated reincarnation. Many digitals were scendence. R. Brother Patch-It coughed with practicing Buddhists. The digital being born in the voice of a long-dead man and resumed the the Breeding Grounds as a piece of specialised sermon. “Reality,” it said, and faltered. The conI-loop responsible for animating a coffee-maker gregation watched attentively. Missus Chong the could, in its next cycle, become a mind calculat-Elder in the pews at the back, and her friend Es-ing the diffusion of distant nebulas, or a subma-ther, they were religion-shoppers, sampling each rine shuttle riding to and from the underwater faith like connoisseurs, covering their bets the cities of the humans, or it could even transcend, closer they got to old age. A group of disgruntled become a true Other, disembodied, constantly house appliances watched the sermon in the vir-mutating and changing, seeking that which was tuality – coffee-makers, cooling units, a couple truth, and beauty, in the irreal.

of toilets – appliances, more than anyone else, But robots seldom changed, R. Brother Patch-needed the robots’ guidance, yet they were often It thought, a little sadly. They merely became wilful, bitter, prone to petty arguments, both more themselves.

with their owners and with themselves. There

“We dream a consensus of a reality,” it said had never been that many robots. Humanoid, now. It coughed again. It had a range of careful y awkward, they belonged in neither world, the selected coughs. “Imagine the world is a vast net-real or the irreal, and none had been made for a work, all living things are nodes connected to-century or more. To make ends meet, R. Brother gether by delicate threads. Without the network Patch-It doubled as a moyel for the Jews of Cen-we would each be alone, isolated nodes, pinpricks tral Station. In that, at least, it was valued. It was of light in a vast intergalactic darkness. The Way a good moyel, and had been ordained, and could of Robot is the way of seeking to be Joined with perform the delicate surgery of removing the all things. It is not an easy road. Often, it is a foreskin, expertly, there had never been com-lonely road. The living and the ur-living both plaints. In its younger days R. Brother Patch-It make reality. Let me guide you, now…”

had toyed with the idea of conversion. Becoming R. Brother Patch-It lowered its head and the a robot Jew was not that far-fetched, there was a congregation did likewise, the humans and the famous rabbi on Mars who was one of the first digitals who followed. “Our maker who art in robots ever made. But it was not easy becoming the zero point field, hallowed be thy nine billion a Jew. It was a faith that discouraged strangers.

names…”

fictiOn

33

›

The congregation murmured after the robo-
mired by its relatives, the crowd moved to the priest. Then, one by one, they lined up to receive next room, for the breakfast spread. Pastries the sacrament. The digital wafer contained high-and breads, shakshuka – fried eggs over a thick, encryption Crucifixation routines. The humans slowly-cooked tomato and capsicum sauce –
put it on their tongues, where it slowly melted coffee from a samovar, a cheese platter, burkeas and was absorbed into the bloodstream and into pastries filled with cheese or potatoes or mush-the biological-nodal interface. The digitals rerooms, omelettes, jam – hungry Chongs swarm-ceived it directly. For a short moment, the small ing over the breakfast buffet as though starved congregation of this Church of Robot node, on beyond belief. The robot moved amongst the Level Three of Central Station, there between family and friends, shaking hands, chatting – it the cities of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, was truly Joined, held a cup of black coffee, which it sipped from, forming one I-loop, agreeing on a consensus re-from time to time.

ality; however short-lived.

R. Patch-It stopped a moment before a man
who looked familiar. He had the Chong look, The bris went wel , R. Patch-It felt. It was but for a moment the robot could not place him.

the youngest Chong boy, Levi. R. Patch-It had The man seemed quiet, comfortable in his sur-known the Chongs for generations, from Zhong roundings, but there was something shy, per-Weiwei, the founder of the family, down to all the haps reserved, about him, too. He stood next to a cousins and nephews and nieces and aunts that woman the robo-priest knew well: Mama Jones, spread all around Central Station. The child’s proprietor of Mama Jones’ Shebeen, on the Ne’ve grandfather, Vlad Chong, sat in the seat of hon-Sha’anan street that led to the main gates of Cen-our, the sandak, or godfather, to the child. The tral Station. Beside her was her boy, Kranki.

old man held the baby, but his face was blank,

“Miriam,” R. Patch-It said to the woman. “It is unseeing. A sickness of memory afflicted Vlad lovely to see you, as always.”

Chong. R. Patch-It worried for him.

“You, too, R. Patch-It,” she said, smiling. They But this was a time for joy. Careful y, the robot knew each other of old. The robot turned to look separated the foreskin from the infant’s penis downwards. The boy’s hacked, Armani trade-with its special knife, the izmel, while making marked eyes stared at him, a mischievous smile the first blessing. Then it performed the pria, turning the corners of his mouth. “Hello, Kran-the revealing of the infant’s glans by separating ki,” R. Patch-It said. The boy made the robot feel from it the inner preputial epithelium, again clumsy, somehow. He unsettled R. Patch-It.

with the knife. The proud father made the sec-

“Hey, metal man,” the boy said. Miriam,
ond and third blessings. Then, watched by the shocked, said, “Kranki!”

attendant audience in the small synagogue, the

“It’s all right,” the robot said. It noticed the robot performed the metzitza ba’peh, sucking at Chong man beside Miriam couldn’t quite hide a the wound until drawing blood.

smile. “How are you, Kranki? Do you remember The baby was crying. Careful y pouring the me?”

wine for blessing into its cup, which the robot The robo-priest had been the moyel in Kran-held in its right hand, it announced the child’s ki’s own bris, of course. The boy said, “I went to name – Levi Chong – and the name of his father, the beach yesterday with Yussuf. We caught a Elad. The robot drank from the wine. The child fish!” He made a shape with his hands. “It was was now, by the ancient laws, a Jew. At last, R.

this big.”

Brother Patch-It dipped a metal finger in the Miriam – Mama Jones – put her hand on the
wine and put it into the infant’s mouth. The boy boy’s head. The robo-priest was about to speak suckled on the finger and stopped crying. Every-when the boy said, “Let me show you!” His small one cheered. Missus Chong the Elder, who had hand went to the robo-priest’s own metal one.

been sister to Weiwei and still alive, cyborged The robot reached out automatical y –
but sharp, cried salt-water tears.

The boy’s pointing finger touched the metal of The ceremony ending at last, the baby ad-the robot’s palm, lightly.

34
fiLaMentS BY LaVie tiDHar › iLLUStrateD BY WaYne HaaG

What is the real?

spiders moved, dull silver metal silent, two boys The words whispered in the robot’s brain. Bil-standing on the surface, helmetless, laughing, as lions of cycles, uncounted millions of branches at a secret joke shared, with their hands signing: on a quantum binary tree, shifting and merging, Wanem ia i ril?

an aristocratic small-world network like a planet or a human brain, billions of disparate elements r. Patch-it was shocked out of the data-storm.

making up a single, precious I-loop, an il usion It stood there, looking at the boy, the storm of being.

slowly receding.

What is real?

“R. Patch-It?” Miriam Jones said. “Are you The words whispered in the robot’s old brain, feeling all right?”

auto-translated into a dozen languages, chief The I-loop tagged R. Patch-It came back to amongst them Hebrew and Asteroid Pidgin: ma life, or on-line, or into being. “I am a robot,” it amiti? Wanem ia i stap ril?

said. “I seldom get sick.”

The images swarmed the robot’s mind, a high-Mama Jones smiled politely. The man beside level onslaught of data in which a single image her said, “I don’t know if you remember me, permeated: the boy, Kranki, and a seeming twin, Brother.” He extended his hand for a shake.

a boy whose eyes were a green Bose trademark

“Boris,” he said, seeming suddenly embarrassed.

for Kranki’s Armani blue. The two boys at the

“Boris Chong.”

Jaffa beach, walking on water, fishing with their R. Patch-It looked at him. “Boris Chong?” it small hands, reaching into the clear blue of the said – marvelled. Perfect images in its memory Mediterranean Sea…

– a shy boy, tal , gangly, with a smile, he always Which exploded into stars, galaxies swirling, had a smile, quiet child, before that the baby, R.

planets orbiting yellow suns like baleful eyes, Patch-It had sliced off his foreskin, it had been vast black-hulled spaceships moving like specks the moyel at that bris, too, and sucked at the of dust amidst the planets, the view focuses, wound until the blood came, and the ceremony shifts, rings spinning in the space beyond Titan, was concluded, making Boris, too, a Jew – “But killer drones fighting soundlessly in the Galilean you had left, it was – ”

Republics, intelligent mines tracking in orbit The robot stopped, it could recite it to the day, around Callisto, in the space beyond beyond, the the hour, the minute, had it wanted to. How had song of spiders as they seeded the Oort Cloud it not recognised him? But Boris had left a boy, with new nodes, on Dragon’s World, a frozen returned a man, space changed him, the robot moon off Pluto, the dragon’s millions of bod-saw.

ies moving in the tunnels on their mysterious R. Patch-It itself had been to space, of course.

rounds, the whole ice-moon a vast extensive ant Once, a century past, it had undertaken pilgrim-warren –
age, the robot’s hajj, to Mars, to Tong Yun City, Wanem ia i ril?

to the Level Three Concourse deep under the On Mars, in Tong Yun City, at a wooded shrine sands of Mars, where the greatest of all multi-under the great dome, the poet Bashō (the sec-faith bazaars lies, there to meet the Robo-Pope ond Bashō) translating Shakespeare into pidgin: itself, in the robot’s Vatican. It had been a glorious occasion! Hundreds of robots, some former Blong stap o no blong stap
battle drones, some scrap-heap refugees, all con-Hemi wan gudfala kwesen ia
gregating together, on Mars, from every habitable moon and planet they came, from Polyport And across space, away from moving Mars
on Titan and from the deserts of the Martian and its twin moons burning with human-made kibbutzim; from Lunar Port and Moscow, Newer lights, across solwota blong spes, images dancing, Delhi to the Baha’i rings in orbit around Saturn.

solwota blong wori, the sea of worry and these And one from Central Station. Hajji R. Patch-It, slings and bunaro of outrageous fortune –
ordained in that great communion of physicality On the Earth’s moon the vast terraforming
and digitality.

fictiOn

35

›

Then, too, at that meeting, some had chosen to Wu Emporium. The humans had found a way
go farther stil . To accompany the Exodus ships, to stimulate the brain’s pleasure centres with a on their slow, one-way journeys out of the solar low current of electricity. Sometimes R. Patch-It system. And some had chosen to remain, and in longed for Body, for sensation. The humans were the depths of Mars to fashion new of their kind, sensation-addicts.

to create children…

“Brother?”

Children!

The coffee had turned cold in the cup. R.

Perhaps it all came back to that, R. Patch-Patch-It deposited it on a table and went to take It thought, the data-surge fading, the image of another. Coffee was energy, a robot could con-these two Central Station children on the moon, vert food and drink into energy as efficiently as Kranki and his friend. Children. It had circum-any human. But could it derive pleasure from it?

cised hundreds of children, but never had one Pleasure was a difficult and bewildering con-of its own.

cept. R. Patch- It thought it might make it the

“Brother?”

subject of next week’s sermon.

The human’s voice brought it back to itself.

“Brother?”

“Boris Chong,” the robot said, marvelling.

The voice came again and this time it regis-

“Where have you been all these years?”

tered. R. Patch-It turned. The two smiling men, The man shrugged. His hand, the robot no-holding hands, stood before him. “Yan,” R.

ticed, went to Miriam’s, the tips of his fingers Patch-It said. “Youssou!”

touching hers. R. Patch-It remembered them, They, too, made a handsome couple, it thought.

together, the boy and the girl they had been.

Yan was a Chong; Youssou was of the Jones’ of Love made humans shine, as though they were Central Station. “Is it official?” R. Patch-It said.

metal filaments heated by an electrical current.

The two men beamed even more. “It is,” Yous-The human said, “I went to the Belt. Then
sou said.

Mars. I… I came back recently. My father – ”

“We had a fight,” Yan said – shy, proud. So Yes, R. Patch-It wanted to say. Vlad Chong much like his cousin Boris, R. Patch-It thought.

sat across the room, vacant eyes staring into

“He was going to do it that night – ” from space. Some humans suffered a gradual loss of Youssou.

memory, but for Vlad, the robot thought, it was

“I had it all ready. We were at the Grand
the other way around. Vlad’s mind was literal y Lounge – ”

swarming with memory, perfect and enduring

“I wasn’t ready,” Youssou said. “I didn’t think like diamond, memories stored since Weiwei’s I was ready.”

time and transmitted across the Chong family

“He walked away, we didn’t speak for a month.

line. Vlad – Vladimir – could not see, for his But…”

gaze was turned, terribly, inside himself.

“I missed him.” They both said it together, The robot nodded, shook Boris’ hand, touched then laughed.

Miriam lightly on the shoulder. The boy, Kranki,

“Mazal tov!” the robot said. It clasped them had gone to play with the other kids. Boris had on the arms. So much love, both young and old, worked in the birthing clinics, R. Patch-It re-in that room. It must be spring again, R. Patch-membered. What manner of children had they It thought. It almost hadn’t noticed. Spring had made there, hacked out of rogue genomes and that effect on humans.

stolen code?

“We made up, I couldn’t sleep, I was living in The robot felt – if robots could be said to feel, the adaptoplant tenements,” Youssou said.

it thought – weary. Its body was running at

“I was sleeping in the lab,” Yan said. “I was less than optimum capacity. Its body was old, working all the time.”

patched, the old parts were hard to come by,

“We got together, and – ”

no one had manufactured robots in decades.

“Mazal tov,” the robot said again.

R. Patch-It wanted to simply plug itself into Yan said, “Brother. We wanted to ask you
a current, like a human wire-head at a Louis something.”

36
fiLaMentS BY LaVie tiDHar › iLLUStrateD BY WaYne HaaG

“Anything,” R. Patch-It said. Meaning it.

mix of Chinese and Israeli Jew, the Chows were

“We’d like you to marry us,” Youssou said.

Roman Catholic, a Chinese-Filipino family sev-They both looked at him, expectantly. The
eral generations back, the Joneses were, wel , it robot looked at them both. “I would be hon-wasn’t sure, though Miriam Jones could often be oured,” R. Patch-It said.

found at the shrine for St Cohen of the Others.

Weddings it had done, officiated over before.

“Thank you,” the robot said. “Thank you for Weddings and circumcisions, and funerals, too.

asking me.”

A robot, R. Patch-It thought, more than any-Could a robot feel? If you pricked a robot, it thing a robot needed purpose. Shaking hands did not bleed. If asked, R. Patch-It couldn’t say all around, metal against flesh. “Thank you, whether it felt, for feeling was so much a func-brother!” relatives gathering around to congrat-tion of biological factors, of hormone levels ulate the young couple. Miriam Jones and Boris and nerve endings, of physical sensation. But came over, Boris clapping his young cousin on if it felt, then it felt, right then – overwhelmed, the back.

it thought. Tired, elated – suddenly the room

“Brother Patch-It,” a voice said. It was Missus full of humans felt oppressive, it needed space, Chong the Elder, coming over. They looked at solitude, time to withdraw from the physical-each other. She was more than half-machine.

ity. Some of the robots left the Church, they She smiled. “It will be an honour for my family abandoned physicality, went into the digitality, to have you officiate,” she said.

incorporeality, the realm of Others. Some went The ceremony would be conducted in the man-on the Exodus ships, some transformed, reinner of the Church of Robot. Central Station was carnated themselves into humbler vessels, one an amalgamation of faiths, the Jewish Chongs, a could sometimes encounter an ancient coffee bLack static

Bimonthly horror & dark fantasy from the makers of interzone take out a dual subscription using the enclosed form or the secure website: ttapress.com/shop

fictiOn

37
maker that had once been robot, seeking a dif-its mind to the Conversation, the vast and never-ferent path to enlightenment in service.

ending transfer of data across the worlds, and

“Brother?”

the words floated again in its mind, unanswered:

“Please, Missus Chong,” the robot said. “I wanem ia i ril?

must retire.”

Brother R. Patch-It floated through space, She looked at him and her eyes were inhu-watching multiple feeds through multiple nodes.

man, understanding. One day Missus Chong

A child was born on a Martian kibbutz, in the the Elder would shed the last of her humanity space around Io an ancient mine exploded it-and become a seeker like itself. It had hopes for self, committing suicide, on Titan a muezzin Missus Chong, she was the most promising of was calling the faithful to prayer. Space was full Brother Patch-It’s novices.

of questions, life was a sentence always ending She nodded, a smal , barely perceptible ges-in an ellipsis or a question mark. You couldn’t ture. The robo-priest made its way out of the answer everything. You could only believe there room. It was still uncertain as to what happened were answers at al .

with the boy, Kranki. The boy was not entirely To be a robot, you needed faith, R. Patch-It human, it realised. He was Other-touched.

thought.

The robot made its way to the elevators and To be a human, too.

rose to Level Three, and walked, slowly, to the node of the church. Once inside, it opened the Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award winning author door to its own private space, past the reception of Osama (2011) and The Violent Century (2013, reviewed room and into the smal , dark closet where it in this issue), in addition to many other works and sev-could truly be alone. It shut itself inside. Opened eral awards.

success…anD how to avoiD it

At long last, a hip writers’ book which doesn’t insult its readers’ intelligence. For the first time, a writers’ book written by a writer, which would-be writers won’t be embarrassed to be seen reading. If Ford Prefect wrote a writers’

book, this is the one he’d write.

Still available as a weirdly shaped paperback, with cartoons by Rob Kirbyson and cover art by Edward Noon

“If bursting into unstoppable fits of convulsive laughter – you know, when your bodily

— from the makers of interzone —
functions are seemingly controlled by some don’t miss out!

sadistic invisible force – is liable to embarrass ttapress.com/shop
you, do not read this book in public”

Tim Lebbon
the only writers’ guide that tells you how it really is!

38
illustrated by martin hanford
claire humphrey
haunts

The chirurgeon’s knife severs my little finger from my palm, just above the mount of Mercury.

“You are permitted to look away,” the chirurgeon comments.

I shrug the shoulder that isn’t locked down, and keep watching. The knife, obsidian, joints me like I’m a bird.

40

HaUntS BY cLaire HUMPHreY › iLLUStrateD BY Martin HanfOrD

Somewhere inside my forearm I feel the pull I bring the open bottle to the east window, of my tendon loosed. Little blood, and no pain; just under the eaves. From up here the haunts the chirurgeon knows her work, and the numb-are quite visible: standing apart from each other, ness of the lockdown extends all the way to looking aimlessly up and about, their shrouds my breast. In five minutes the chirurgeon has pale against the dark privet leaves.

stowed the finger in its cooler, joined flaps of All the graduates of the Flanders Park School skin over the hollow socket, and healed it over for Duellists, gathered here in its old garden. All with a couple of passes of a graft-stick.

but two. And then I see him, Kordelo, newly

“You’ll have minor pain for a few weeks,” she come, leaning against the high fence under an says. “You don’t need to keep it covered. The scar overhanging willow. So it’s all but one, and that will change colour; that’s normal. If you feel a one is me.

loss of sensation or have any discharge, come I wave to Kordelo.

back to me.”

He waves back, in the languid manner they

She takes off the lockdown and feeling surges all share. They used to be sharp, lusty, furious, back through my breast, up over my trapezius, darting, meticulous, gleeful, a hundred differ-down my arm. I flex my hand. Sure enough, it ent things according to their natures and their hurts. Nothing I can’t bear.

whims. Now they’re all like this, wandering be-She walks me to the front desk. The buyer
tween the garden wal s. Sometimes the constel-waits there. An attendant comes out and hands lation of their placement barely changes between him the tiny cooler tagged with my name.

dawn and dusk.

The buyer grins at her, then at me. He flips me I wonder if I’ll enjoy it, when I am with them.

the envelope with my cash in it.

They do not look sad, exactly, but they do not

“You’ll make another fighter very happy,” the look like duellists. Not even Kordelo, who still buyer says, shaking my right hand, the whole has the memory of his long blade with him, one; looking to the door.

drooping from his hand.

The chirurgeon is gone already, back into her They cluster slowly beneath the window as I operating room.

watch. When they’ve assembled, I tilt the bottle.

I don’t insult the buyer by counting the cash Pale wine spil s down. The haunts come in like in front of him; I wait until his van disappears moths drawn to the light of it.

round the corner.

The bottle empties fast. The haunts seem to The money’s all there. Halfway through count-wait for more.

ing it I find I have to lean against the wal . The After a long minute they drift apart again, chirurgeon’s attendant gets me a chair and a silent and separate. The ones who were lovers glass of water.

in life show each other no favour now; the ones She says the chirurgeon won’t mind if I lie who were rivals show each other no spite.

down for a bit, but I wave her away. I’ll be fine Once in a while they show me a flicker of some-in the fresh air.

thing: a hand raised to request or acknowledge.

I take my money to the office of the governor I am the last of them, and so long as I have the and I pay the taxes on the school for this quarter, power, I will keep us all in our home.

and the overdue ones from last. That does for the I still have many fingers, and I hear the thumbs envelope, almost all of it.

will fetch a bit more than the others.

My finger’s bought me three months.

I use a bit of my remaining fee to buy a bottle in the plaza, the flag is still at half mast for of vinho verde. At the school I let myself in and Kordelo, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from ascend the stairs. All the walking has my bad leg posting today’s duel.

aching, along with the new seam of skin where I cross the grounds. Chalk marks, dried blood, my finger was. When I uncork the wine I take a shoe-scuffs, and the dung of dogs. Tacked to the small swallow for myself. Only one. The rest is flagpole, the duel-sheet flutters in the breeze: for the haunts.

Paulo and Juvela.

fictiOn

41

›

It was Juvela who beat Kordelo; she came out When he died, he left me the place. I’d entered of it scatheless. If I was still duelling, I’d be hon-the lists by then, but only just. I didn’t know our-bound to challenge her. As I am a civilian how to balance books or manage staff. I couldn’t now, the code forbids me any reprisal.

imagine another duelling-master in place of my I am very nearly glad of that. Juvela has the guardian, so I never found the time to hire one.

kind of grace no duellist wants to see ruined.

The older students graduated. The newer stu-She might make it to the capital this year. Kordents drifted away to schools with more famous delo wouldn’t have gone so far, had he lived, and masters. I figured I’d keep the school afloat with someone else might have taken him less cleanly.

my winnings until I’d made enough of a name A guy in a fine woolen coat lounges on the rim for myself.

of the fountain. Thirtyish and with a soft bel y Then I went down against Hanana. It felt like on him. Even with my bad leg I know I could the end, but it was only one in a series of endings.

take him.

For a while the school lived on in its other stu-

“You Alekra?” he says.

dents. A number did very wel . Epifanio took the I incline my head.

triple garland in the capital a year before he suc-

“I guessed from the missing finger. Heard you cumbed to influenza.

started selling off. I hope you got a fair price.”

Kordelo was the last of the graduates still duel-

“If you’re opening negotiations for my next ling. Everyone else went earlier, some in the plaza sale, I guess I’d better tell you I don’t come cheap,”

and some later in the hospital; one by infection I tell him, easing down nearby on the stone foun-after selling off her forefinger; one by fire; one tain lip. “I took an opponent every day for thirty by drowning. Kordelo had been recovering well days in a row, in my second season.”

from his injury, but then was killed by a blood

“What happened?”

clot that travelled to his brain.

“What always happens. Got cocky.” Got drunk, I should have been among the crowd watchin fact; got laid; slept the sleep of the just and ing the procession of Kordelo’s bier. I should woke up so late I almost missed the bel s.

have been at his wake, held at the Albion House.

“I heard Hanana hamstrung you.”

All sorts of rabble turn out for the passing of a

“Beginner’s luck,” I tell him. Hanana only lasted duellist, though. I didn’t trust myself not to toss ten formal fights, all told; she gave it up to Kor-a glove at anyone.

delo not a week after ending my career for me.

Anyway, I figured I’d see him again soon

“My loss,” the guy says. “I came to the prov-enough. The haunts might have known, too.

inces too late. Wish I could’ve seen you work.”

When I watched them from my east window, the

“Yeah, I was something.”

day of the wake, they stood in a cluster, looking

“I’ll bet you were.” He extends his hand to me.

downtown.

“Adi Solomon.”

“Not a duellist, then.”

i tell adi Solomon about the eclipse: the day

“No bal s,” he says. “Huh. So you can laugh, of Paulo’s first fight, which was called at a draw, anyway. Want a plate of eggs?”

because the crowd had superstitiously broken so

“Thanks, but – ”

many eggs that the whole plaza was slick with

“Idiot. You’re selling off fingers, I know you albumen.

must be short of cash. Pay me back with some I tell him about Hanana: how Kordelo took
war stories, if you want.”

her in the femoral artery, as payment for me, and how I watched it on broadcast, from my hospital i know nothing other than the duel. My guard-bed. I tell him how I wept there. I knew already ian took me from the workhouse nursery right that I wouldn’t fight again.

after he founded the school. He taught me

I tell him about meeting the great Fajra, when himself, until the school grew larger, and then I was no more than a girl myself, and how she he would sometimes hand me off to the older chose her name, and how the rest of us still fol-students.

low her.

42

HaUntS BY cLaire HUMPHreY › iLLUStrateD BY Martin HanfOrD

I must be shocky from the chirurgeon, stil . Or but they shift aside for me. When I look at them it’s the coffee on my empty stomach. I tell him harder they shift a bit more for Solomon.

things he cannot possibly care to hear, things I Lounging on the sun-warmed stone, with my
did not even know I was thinking.

bad leg propped up, my hands folded against a I don’t tell him about my haunts.

stuffed bel y, and a third cup of coffee in me, I The plate comes: three eggs, two slices of feel so damned nice that I have to do something bacon, a mound of potatoes, four slices of rye to wreck it.

toast, a grilled tomato and a sprig of parsley. I I hold out my left hand for Solomon to see, eat. Adi Solomon watches.

and flex the ring finger.

When he isn’t watching me, he watches the

“Two grand,” I tell him.

plaza, where pigeons cross the white sky and He exhales. “You shouldn’t open the negotia-paper bags blow over the cobbles. He sips coffee, tions. You wait for the other person to go first.”

and licks a drop of it from his round lower lip.

“Go, then.”

“What will you do,” he says, “when you run

“I would’ve offered two at the outset myself,”

out of fingers?”

he says. “You could have beat me up to two and a half, if you were patient about it.”

around the time of my first fight there was

“So if we’re both in the neighbourhood of two, a quack selling fingers he claimed to be Fajra’s.

doesn’t that mean we can quit dancing and shake A couple of people bought them. They weren’t on the deal?”

real y Fajra’s fingers, of course, but some of them

“No,” he says. “I’m not a buyer.”

might have been someone’s. At least one of those

“I knew you weren’t a buyer. You haven’t even duellists went on to the capital and won garlands got a cooler for the finger.”

there.

Solomon raises his eyebrow at me. “You sold I saw him interviewed on broadcast. He held to one of those guys? This is breaking my heart.”

up his hand. The newer finger looked pale and

“I don’t need a manager, Solomon.”

knobby compared to his other fingers. The graft He shrugs, and looks away from me; he fum-scar ran in an uneven ring around his knuckle.

bles out a cigarillo, and lights one for me, too.

“It feels just like my old finger,” he said, “when The bel s ring, the crowd gets quiet, and I see I’m not fighting. Except that sometimes it gets the ushers coming up from the practice field, the rest of my hand to wrap itself around a pint bearing their white-ribboned staffs.

glass.”

Juvela waves to me, following behind. She’s I thought about nine other duellists, in nine shorn her head since last week. An old scar other pubs, ordering nine pints they didn’t know stretches from her crown downward, splitting they wanted. I thought about whose finger I’d the cartilage of one ear.

buy, if I lost one of my own to injury, or needed Paulo, holding Juvela’s hand according to cus-an edge.

tom, looks away from me.

I didn’t think about having to sell my own, not I shift my cigarillo to the corner of my mouth then. In those days, most of the people I knew to say, “He knows Juvela’s going to beat him.”

were alive.

“Maybe you should sell him your finger.”

“He wouldn’t take it. He never faced me; he adi Solomon pays for our meal from a fat bil -
thinks he’s better than me.”

fold. I think about knocking him down and tak-

“Is he right?”

ing it, but I’m comfortably full and besides, we

“He’ll never know.”

wouldn’t want to miss the start of the fight.

Solomon touches my ring finger with the tip Outside, the crowd thickens. Pushcarts sell of his own forefinger, careful not to brush the roasted chestnuts. Everyone mil s about outside fresh scar next to it. “Maybe he won’t. But you the bounds of the square.

know.”

I lead Solomon directly across the middle, I hold very still as his fingertip touches me, back to the fountain. Some kids are sitting there the way you do when a dragonfly lands on your
fictiOn

43

›
arm by the river. The touch glances away after a bared back is a shade less brown than his arms.

moment, leaving a phantom heat behind.

His ribs heave under his skin. His patron stands In the centre of the plaza, Juvela and Paulo dis-nearby, exhorting him, and Paulo nods and
play their favours, salute the cardinal directions nods.

and then each other. Juvela’s favour is a scrap of Solomon comes back just as the crier sings green silk to match the new gem studding her out again. He unscrews the cap of a rectangular ear.

bottle, sips, and hands it to me.

Her stance is wide and low. If I had to find fault It tastes of iodine and earth and gunpowder, I’d say she was a bit flat-footed. The moment the and I savour it.

crier sounds off, she skims up to Paulo, feints On the cobbles, Juvela’s feet stamp and shuffle.

with her right and lunges with her left blade, and She skates over the uneven ground.

Paulo barely evades her with an ungainly side-She misses Paulo’s trapezius with a thrust of slip.

her long blade, but punches the quillon of her

“I see what you mean,” says Solomon.

short blade left-handed past his temple, break-

“She killed her man last week.” I don’t tell him ing the skin like peach-flesh. At the same time I knew that man. “She’s training for the Midsum-Paulo lays the flat of his long blade blindly across mer Garlands now, and the capital in the fal .”

Juvela’s back, so that he catches her right elbow

“And Paulo’s not?”

on the backswing. Both cry out. They disengage.

“Sure, but he’s not going to make it. Not this Paulo attacks while Juvela’s arm is still numbed.

year. Maybe never.”

She backsteps, snaking her spine and hollowing

“Ought to find another career, then.”

her bel y so that the blade skims past her. She

“He’s sworn to his patron. Even if Paulo figures switches her long blade into her left hand, toss-out he doesn’t have a shot, he’s in it for the sea-ing her short blade so that it skitters over the line son. We don’t back out once we’re sworn.”

into the crowd.

“We? You aren’t a duellist any more, Alekra.”

Paulo lunges again and Juvela parries lightly, I take the last smoke of my cigarillo into my beating him off just enough to run up the out-lungs and I hold it there as long as I can. He’s a side of his guard and skewer him in the right civvie. You can’t explain things to them.

shoulder.

The crowd shouts and I train my eyes on the He fal s back, and salutes her left-handed, lips fight. Paulo’s managed to score on Juvela, lancing skinned back from his teeth.

a shallow groove up her tricep, cutting across the The crier cal s the fight then, a technical maroon ridges of a dozen older injuries. You can maiming, and a page carries forth the garland tell a lot about a duellist by the pattern of scars.

for Juvela. Solomon and I toast the fighters with Me, I always seemed to take it on my forearms.

the rectangular bottle, while the crowd claps.

Juvela retaliates with a double attack, high and People throw roses and handkerchiefs. Startled low. If her arm’s weakened, I can’t tel . She gets pigeons fly up from the surrounding roofs.

Paulo with her right point on a cross-thrust,

“I like to stay until it’s all over,” I say, when nicking him just under the col arbone. His jer-Solomon moves to rise.

kin stops most of it. The blood blooms slowly.

Juvela’s page helps her to bind up her bad arm Time. The two fighters retreat to their cor-and wipe down her blades. When she is put to ners, where white-ribboned staffs stand in sand-rights, her patron comes to her, and kisses her buckets. A page gives Juvela a water-bottle to upon both cheeks.

suck, and she bends down so that he can towel

“See their faces?” I murmur.

the sweat from her head and the blood from her

“Yes,” says Solomon, but when I look over at arm.

him, he is looking only at me.

Beside me, Solomon drops his boots to the
ground, pushes himself upright, and walks away.

i take Solomon with me, back to my school-I see Paulo, on the other side of the grounds, house.

exchanging his gored jerkin for a fresh one. His

“So this is where you learned to fight,” he says.

44

HaUntS BY cLaire HUMPHreY › iLLUStrateD BY Martin HanfOrD

“This is where I learned to do everything.”

ling-scars, they are, these autographs of pleasure The dining hall has been closed up for a year on my body.

or more, the wal s bare of garlands, the banner I leave my feet bare. The floor is as clean as folded up in a cedar chest in the storeroom. The my daily sweepings can make it. In the kitchen hall now contains nothing but a long table with I drink water from the tap, and I splash some a dusty sheet over it. I shove my trousers down into a glass along with more of the stuff from the past my knees and I sit up on the table.

bottle.

Solomon steps in close and cups his hands

The rest of it will make a fine meal for the under me, lifting me up against his body. He haunts, a rich treat.

yanks the tails of his shirt out from between us, They move below the window like dreamers
so that I can feel the heat of him.

turning in sleep, arms raised lazily. Their mouths

“You’re all sinew.” He runs a palm up my thigh.

catch the whiskey from the air. I pour it out in I wind my hands under his shirt and over his gouts, watching it sparkle as it fal s.

bel y. “You’re not.”

Afternoon lengthens into evening. Hazy shade

“Rich living.”

shifts over the garden. I’d find it peaceful, if it

“Indeed.” So rich it makes my mouth water. I wasn’t for all the noise next door. Someone’s think of him eating meat and butter, sleeping in chopping firewood, or beating a carpet.

fine cotton. Even his coat is new wool, no moth-Kordelo turns toward the fence, even before I holes, all of the stitches fine and neat.

empty the last of the whiskey. His head lol s in a

“Ready?” He touches me to find out, and
way it never would have done while he lived, un-brings his fingers to his lips, and then to mine.

less he was exhausted, or very drunk. He drifts out from beneath the willow, trailing the point after, i lie on my back on the table, and pat of his blade.

the sheet beside me, gesturing for Solomon to The branches of the willow shiver with the lie there too.

impacts of the neighbours’ noise. They cannot

“I don’t think your table will survive it,” he be cutting my tree. Can they? Its bark has grown says, leaning against the wall instead. He wipes thickly around the fence-posts, so that one can-himself dry with a white handkerchief, and puts not be felled without the other. I must not let his trousers to rights.

them breach my garden; even the branches shad-And he’s correct: when I lever myself up, the ing it must not be cut. I must persuade them. It dodgy leg of the table folds under, and spil s the may mean money. Another finger.

stained sheet in a crumple to the floor. I almost Before I have done more than lift my elbows follow it down as my bad leg cramps.

from the sil , though, I see the flash of steel splin-Solomon catches my elbow, and helps me
ter through the fence, tearing old wood. And lower myself. His warm hands knead the scar again: the wound widens, the new wood bright and the tight muscles around it, while I lounge where the axe lays it open.

back against the tilted plane of the tabletop and My haunts slowly turn to watch, angling their sip from the bottle.

bodies, trailing their winding-cloths, drifting in After a while he slips it from my hand. I’m too ones and twos closer to the breach.

sated to bother opening my eyes.

I drop my glass. I bolt for the door, and my bad leg twists under me, sending me sideways.

i wake in a slanted rectangle of half-light, with Careening down the stairs, any grace I ever my trousers folded under my head and the drop-had torn away, I nearly rip the banister from the sheet twisted around my legs. Silence.

wal . I burst out into the golden light and round He’s gone, then. He left me the bottle. I rinse the fence. My bare feet bite into the sod.

my mouth with it, and I sit up and slowly dress.

Solomon is raising the axe for another blow. I My leg straightens with a twinge. I can feel a ros-slam into him with my shoulder tucked. We fall ary of bruises forming on my back, where my in a tangle of limbs and my sleeve tears on the vertebrae met the table; almost as good as duel-axe-blade.

fictiOn

45

›

I wrench it from his hands and toss it down and my hand throbs. I purchase a pie and a few on the roots of the willow. I’m choking. I can’t leathery apples and a bottle of beer, and when I speak.

have eaten it al , I walk back.

Solomon sits up slowly, wincing. “Hey. Hey.

Solomon is waiting for me, in his long coat, I’m sorry about your fence, but there were leaning against a very fine automobile.

haunts in your garden.”

“Here,” he says, offering his hand.

He must see something in the wreck of my

I don’t take his hand, but I let some of my face. He raises his hands. “You knew.”

weight ease back against the gunmetal polish of Over his shoulder I see the great rending he’s the automobile, off my bad leg.

made in the fence. I scramble for it, half on my He reaches for my wrist, and fastens a brown hands. I seize the broken wood on either side leather bracelet around it.

and put my face to the gap.

“A favour,” he says. “I’d like to be your patron.”

In the garden I see last year’s rose canes,

“You’d sponsor a duellist who can’t fight?”

goldenrod not yet in bloom, an overturned

“I’d sponsor the Flanders Park School,” he says.

bucket, a square of bare earth where we used to

“It’s a poor investment,” I say, spreading my practice in good weather. A few early bees.

hands, gesturing to the shuttered facade, the No shades. None of my companions in their
stump of the willow.

winding-sheets.

“You’re still here,” he says. He runs his finger-

“They were reaching out for help,” Solomon tip over the grafted scar where my finger was.

says. “They raised their hands to me. I couldn’t

“And I think you might find it easier to attract just leave them.”

students now that the place isn’t full of haunts.”

“Is that what you saw?” I look back at him; I cannot strike him. The code forbids it. I can in the striped light under the willow he looks only walk away, as crisply as my leg will let me.

troubled, fearful, and sweaty, and nothing at all I lose the favour surreptitiously next day, while like a liar.

watching a parade winding downtown in the

They cannot have been reaching out for help.

rain. Later I regret this. I spend an hour searchI would have seen it. I know them; I knew them.

ing, but the gutter runs with dirty water and piss, They wanted to stay here, just as I do. They and I never find the favour.

loved this place in life. I cannot have been keep-The day after that, a solicitor arrives with Solo-ing them here unwilling. Can I?

mon’s money. I do not send him away.

I say none of this, but Solomon’s eyes widen.

He sits back on his heels on a willow root, and i pay a man to sweep the empty rooms and pol-he covers his face.

ish all the floors with cinnamon-scented bees-I limp back upstairs to the east-facing window, wax. I pay a seamstress to mend the banner, and even though I know what I will see: just another I hang it again in the dining hal .

view of the garden, untenanted.

I am not sure how far Adi Solomon’s money is And now the dead are dead, and I will never meant to go. The solicitor tel s me Solomon has know the truth of it.

gone to the capital, leaving no message for me.

I am putting away food in the larder when the The next day I sell the remains of the fence and bell rings. I set down a bag of potatoes and go the willow for firewood. A pair of boys with a to answer.

motorcart come to pick it up. While they take The fellow there is smal , a bit less than my own turns splitting and stacking, I sit on the over-size, with black hair shaved close to his head. He turned bucket in the garden, watching them.

is a duellist. I know before he speaks, by the ele-The night was dry, and the earth still smel s of gant balance of his weight.

spilled whiskey.

“Alekra?” he says. “I am Georgo.” He waits, as I tell the boys to take the broken table, too.

if his name should be known to me.

When they’re gone, I take the coin they gave

“Of what school?” I ask.

me and I walk out to market. My leg is weak,

“Of this one, I guess,” he says, and he extends

46

HaUntS BY cLaire HUMPHreY › iLLUStrateD BY Martin HanfOrD
his hand to me, and I see the fresh graft at the

“He sent Georgo here,” I point out.

base of the smallest finger on his left hand.

“Because Georgo was the guy who ended up
with your little finger,” Solomon says. “And I By the time Solomon returns from the capital, thought he could take over. His record was good, Georgo has been joined by Karesinda and Miela, before he was maimed.”

and our first four students have enrolled in day

“It’s even better now,” I tell him, and I lead classes.

him into the dining hal , where two of Georgo’s Georgo gets his own room because he is shy garlands now hang. And one more, from only and fastidious. Karesinda and Miela share, be-two days ago, when Karesinda and Miela took it cause they share everything. Georgo knows how together in the Midsummer melee.

to bake bread and pies, and I fill out our menu

“Who?” Solomon says. “I don’t know either of with soups.

them.”

Georgo teaches the younger two students.

“You wil ,” I promise him. “They got my other Miela teaches the older two. Karesinda teaches fingers.”

all four the art of the melee twice a week, and He breathes out, and looks away from me. “I does the accounts. I teach the history and phil-wanted to spare you any more scars, Alekra.”

osophy, except when I have been drinking, and He’s a civvie, I remind myself. I can’t expect then Karesinda steers me away to the back gar-him to get this all at once.

den while Miela takes over the lecture.

I push him back against the new table and run When Solomon returns, the students have
my remaining fingers over his shoulders and gone home for the evening, so we are all spared down his chest.

the ordeal of introducing the school’s patron. I

“Oh, no,” he says. “I remember this table.”

remember spit shining my boots before such an

“No, this one’s new. You bought it.”

introduction when I was young; Flanders Park

“I still don’t think it’s up to my weight,” he says, School has a way to go before it will pass a spit hands reaching under my thighs to lift me up.

shine test again.

“Then buy me another.”

Stil , Solomon is smiling as he gets out of his The table holds.

automobile. He wears no coat now that summer has come, and I see creases in his linen shirt, The new favour is an earring, with a brown where it tugs over his bel y. He is carrying a par-tiger’s eye stone dangling from it. Solomon cel wrapped in carmine-red paper. I watch from threads it through the piercing in my ear, his big the window until Georgo comes to fetch me.

hands sure and gentle.

I receive Solomon in the salon. We have a

After he leaves, I pour myself a glass of vinho salon, now. Solomon sets down the parcel on verde and I sit in the garden. I touch the tiger’s one of the wingback chairs. He reaches out his eye with the finger and thumb I have remaining hands to me and I grasp them in mine.

on my left hand. It’s glossy-smooth, just heavy His face twists, then. I see his teeth catch the enough that I can feel the constant little tug on corner of his lip.

my earlobe, where for years there was nothing.

“Damn my idiot solicitor,” he says, and takes Instead of finishing my wine, I pour it out onto my left hand more roughly, thumbing over the the earth beneath the rose canes, and the earth neat grafted scars where my ring finger and mid-drinks it down.

dle finger used to be.

Ah.

Claire Humphrey lives in Toronto, where she works in

“It’s not about the money,” I begin.

the book business, and writes short fiction and novels

“I told him to give you whatever you wanted.

“mainly about unhappy magicians”. Her stories have An apartment downtown. Introductions. Damn appeared in Strange Horizons, Crossed Genres, PodCastle, it.” And he presses my hand to his lips.

Fantasy Magazine and several anthologies. She is also The scars have feeling stil , I find. Especial y the reviews editor at Ideomancer. She can be found the freshest.

online at www.clairehumphrey.ca.

HaLf Price!

the kindest man in
stormland
john shirley

Webb peered out through the porthole beside his seat, not able to make out much in the green-gray murk. Was that part of a sunken freight barge? it was just a shadow in the shape of the frame of a long low vessel, half buried in the sand.

illustrated by Wayne haag

48

50
tHe KinDeSt Man in StOrMLanD BY JOHn SHirLeY › iLLUStrateD BY WaYne HaaG

He glanced around the confining cabin of the lence – the boat jarred repeatedly, as if some kid submersible amphiboat. Was it real y necessary were shaking a bath toy in his tub.

to travel in this creaky, claustrophobic tube?

“Shit, that’s hard on the stomach,” Bassett said.

There were nine seats, six of them empty. He and The vessel ascended to just under the surface, Bassett sat in the first row; farther back was the its wheels extruded and gripped the old concrete flabby gray-haired guy snoring with his mouth boat ramp. The shaking eased, settling into a open: a salvage engineer getting over a bender.

rumbling as the amphiboat rolled up onto the

“Bassett,” Webb said, “there real y wasn’t a ramp and out of the water, into the open air. The more expedient way to get to Charleston? I real-view through the porthole wasn’t strikingly dif-ize there’s a lot of flooding, and helicopters are ferent, up here – the air, lashed with spindrift, grounded in Stormland, but…the ocean’s dan-seemed almost as aquatic as the subsea.

gerous too.”

They drove up onto the broken asphalt of the Bassett snorted. “Hodey, have you tried to get onetime seaside freeway, and headed toward the there by land? You might get there, might not.

storm-crashed ruins of Charleston South Caro-Storms wrecked the roads – only one left and lina.

it’s barely passable. Freightbots can make it, but people don’t try. With this thing – ” he waved a K
hand to include the amphiboat “ – we’re below the mess, you know? Until we get in close. They The engineer was going to the salvage site, north got a ramp picked out, they know what works.”

of the city. Webb wondered how they got their It annoyed Webb, being called hodey by Bas-salvaged metals out of the area.

sett. It was patronizing. Bassett was young, slim, The big amphiboat dropped Webb and Bassett blond, recently tattooed; Webb was late forties, off on a dicey overpass, and trundled off with the getting sag-faced, and his tattoos were fading.

engineer. The captain wouldn’t go any closer to Hodey was a street term for friend, or friendly downtown.

acquaintance. Bassett was a hireling, probably This particular storm was ebbing. Standing trying to seem street-smart. Webb also sus-on the crumbling overpass with Bassett, Webb pected Bassett had exaggerated his knowledge could see downtown Charleston, a half-mile of Stormland. But Search In Person had been away, without protective goggles. Rain scratched willing to pay for Bassett. And SIP rarely paid at a sharp angle across the charcoal sky; clouds for guides. Webb didn’t want to go to Charleston roiled like chimney smoke behind the skyline of without one.

the ruined city; the wind sang like a sickly choir Find your own way, Webb, is what they usual y through the gaps in the skyscrapers. The weather told him.

would be uproarious here, most of the time, But not in Stormland.

with Charleston in the center of the eight hun-

“Even if you find this prick,” Bassett said, “how dred miles of coastland situated in Stormland: you going to get his ass out of Stormland? Mur-just one of climate change’s sore spots; one of derer doesn’t want to go with you. You’re not civilization’s open wounds in the era of extreme regular police. How you going to do it?”

weather. It was a region of permanent storms.

“Not your concern,” said Webb. After a mo-

Clusters of downtown towers, constructed in ment, realizing he’d let his irritation get the bet-the 2020s, were still standing, though some, blot-ter of him, he added, “I’ll have cooperation from ted with recently-evolved surface molds, looked Fed PD if I can I.D. the guy for sure.”

like decayed teeth; others were missing the big

“We’re moving up the slope toward the ramp,”

sections of high-flexibility layered-graph ene,
said the captain, voice coming thinly from some-chosen for weather flexibility – some of the win-where in the ceiling. “Make sure you’re harnessed dows facing prevailing winds had flexed right in, and just relax. Expect some turbulence.”

out of their frames. About half of the towers The amphiboat was angling upward, the deck were said to be occupied, on the lower floors, but tilting, and then – as it contacted storm turbu-most of the squatters were a mile or so inland,
fictiOn

51

›
where they had taken over surviving apartment Webb felt old.

housing, the deserted mansions and a few still-standing shopping mal s. Thousands of refugees K
had settled in the abandoned city, along with perhaps a hundred employees of salvage cor-The air was heavy out here. Like a steamed blan-porations. Most of Charleston’s Old Town was ket being drawn across his face, with every lick under water, broken to splinters by the churning of wind.

sea; between storm surges boats plied between

“Had to be a better way to get here,” Webb said, buildings. Webb could see a couple of low-slung waiting with Bassett on the improvised jetty. It motorized catamarans wobbling along, most
was just a heap of concrete slabs jutting into the of them scavenged from the anomalous places flood zone.

they’d fetched up inland, where they’d been de-

“No better way on your budget, hodey,” Bas-posited by waves and floodwaters.

sett said.

“We’re gonna need one of those catamarans if

“I’m not your hodey, Bassett,” Webb said. “That you want to go to the seaside areas first,” Bas-our ride?”

sett said. He activated an e-cigarette and sucked A dirty-white catamaran was skating toward vapor, blew it into the swirling wind. “I can usu-them like a pond insect, coming with reck-
al y negotiate a ride. Probably going to be safe.

less speed between the chimneys of submerged I hope. Cannot guarantee no one’s gonna try to houses, across great stretches of glutinous pur-rob us.”

plish-green algae, scarcely raising a bow wave as

“I’m starting at the seaside, working in,” Webb it came through the heavy muck, one of its two said. “I’ve got all the stops logged.” At least – he hul s lifting up slightly above the other. Just now hoped – GPS would work here. “Let’s do it while it was using its patched, mismatched sails, one the storm’s taking a time out. How long we got yellow and one blue. If the wind continued to before the next one?”

rise the crewman would probably take the sails

“Maybe an hour before it starts in strong again, in and fire up the engine, Webb supposed. Right if we’re lucky,” Bassett said. “We should hurry.

now the catamaran had the wind abaft and it was Half-mile to the Floods.”

making the most of it.

“That’s as close as they could get us?”

“Fuel hard to get out here?” Webb asked.

“They claim it’s the best spot. Come on.”

Bassett nodded. “Gas and diesel are. There’s Bassett led the way across the overpass, down only one hydrogen-powered boat I’ve seen out to an access road, its curbs and bays clogged here and it keeps breaking down. Used to be with debris and trash. They strode south, occa-solar power boats in the old days but now there’s sional y kicking a pale plastic sack wrapping not enough sun usual y, ’round here, to keep ’em itself around their ankles.

going… I had a brother was a gas diver…”

It was muggy warm when the wind dropped.

“What’s a…oh. He dives down to sunken cars?”

Sweat made Webb’s shirt stick to his back. The

“Yeah. Sets up a hose to suck out the tanks. He small backpack seemed heavier than it should actual y specialized in trucks for the diesel. Got have, its straps sawing at his shoulders. The crippled up from the bends, though. Long story.

twelve-shot .45 autopistol, complete with explo-He’s dead now. Stabbed by a raker in the clinic.”

sive-round mode, was holstered on his lower

“Sorry.”

back under the yellow slicker. It was a plastic-The catamaran hissed up to the ragged con-
based weapon – not heavy – but it was insistent.

crete slab, its sails furled themselves, metal masts How was he going to get his man out? No
folded down, and the boat’s pilot braked. He was police authority was coming in here to claim the a cadaverous man in a T-shirt so faded the image guy. Taking him on a boat, walking a half-mile on it was less than a ghost. He had long gray-with him, waiting an indeterminate time with streaked red hair, a bristly beard that seemed him for the amphiboat? All with a man who’d the product of neglect; his clenched teeth were killed at least eight people.

gapped like the decayed skyline of Charleston.

52
tHe KinDeSt Man in StOrMLanD BY JOHn SHirLeY › iLLUStrateD BY WaYne HaaG

He gestured impatiently. “Get the fuck on-

“It’s a vessel! I said it’s a vessel!”

board this vessel,” the pilot said.

“Say it’s a vessel! Say it’s a vessel! Say it’s a ves-

“Ha,” Bassett chuckled. “Vessel.”

sel! ” The third time spraying spittle.

He and Webb scrambled aboard the thirty-

“It’s a fucking vessel!” Bassett shouted back.

eight foot boat and weren’t real y settled into the Louk’s gun didn’t waver. “Don’t reach for that open area behind the wheel before the pilot put gun, Webb,” he said. His eyes didn’t waver either.

the two engines, one on each hul , in reverse.

They were locked on Bassett.

The boat lurched back against its own momen-Webb put his hand back in front of him.

tum and Webb fell on his rump. “Oh. Shit!” The

“You’re the captain. Of the vessel.”

gun had bruised his tailbone.

“Yes. I am.”

Bassett didn’t offer him a hand. Webb got awk-Louk put the gun away, nearly as invisibly as wardly up, clutching at the fiberglass cockpit wal .

he’d drawn it. It was tucked into his waistband in

“Webb,” Bassett said, as the boat turned around front, Webb saw. “Bassett. Move up for’ard, keep past the jetty, “this is Louk. Louk, Webb.”

your hands on the hull where I can see ’em.”

“Trip back, we use the engines,” was Louk’s Bassett complied.

only response. “Using fuel. Fifty more.”

Louk went back to piloting the boat as if noth-

“That’s almost doubling the price,” Bassett said.

ing had happened. Twelve queasy minutes later

“Twenty.”

they were in the wet shadows of the high build-

“Thirty.”

ings, heading into a flooded, broken-out cavity They ran on, Louk consenting with his rigid at the base of one of the older buildings, a dull silence. Halfway across the sunken area, with monolith of concrete and rust-bleeding steel wind butting at them from between the towers bolts.

in the canalized downtown, Webb was inwardly Louk tied up, then Webb touched smartbands cursing himself for not bringing an anti-seasick-with him, wrist to wrist, the fee was transferred, ness drug. The boat was bucketing against the and it was time to find their way up to the sky oncoming waves and Webb’s stomach took every bridge going to the next building west.

jolt personally.

He was close to throwing up, when suddenly K

Louk said, “This vessel doesn’t go past Building Five there, that big green one. Farthest inland we They had to take an elevator to the sky bridge.

go.”

It was a very old, large, wood-sided freight

“Vessel!” Bassett said, jeeringly. “You mean elevator built in the late 20th century. And they boat! Not hardly a – ”

had to pay a man to take them up in it.

Louk thumbed a button on the wheel that kept The elevator operator was a man in his thir-them on course, then spun around to point a ties, wearing a bathrobe over jeans, flip-flops gun at Bassett’s head.

on his feet. His skinny chest was bare under the Where, Webb wondered, had Louk kept the
old blue bathrobe. His clean-shaven face was gun? He had not a clue the man was carrying roughly V-shaped, his red-rimmed brown eyes a gun. And Louk was only wearing duck pants big and wide, his mouth slack. One of the alae of and a T-shirt.

his nostrils had been cut away, so that side of his Bassett gaped. “What the fuck?”

nose had a gaping hole; the edge of the wound

“Say it’s a vessel,” Louk said.

was still crusted in blood. His hair was dark Webb let his right hand drift back. It suddenly brown, tucked up in a watch cap. He stood at a seemed like a long reach to get under that wind-panel, his whole job pressing buttons, up/down, breaker to the .45.

open/close. But the elevator was his domicile, Bassett’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Fine. It’s a ves-Webb saw, looking around; the elevator opera-sel.”

tor had made it his own apartment. There was a

“Say it’s a vessel,” Louk repeated, as if he’d not cot with a mélange of blankets to one side, and heard.

in the other corner, something that looked and
fictiOn

53

›
smelled like a small portable toilet. An old lap-low hair tied back. Her blue coveral s were un-top was set up on a plastic crate in another cor-buttoned in front to show some cleavage and a ner, its screen flickering; a folding chair stood in tattoo of an angel fish.

front of the laptop.

The man with her, wearing an old, ill-fitting

“The sky bridge, Sid,” Bassett said, pressing security guard’s uniform, was smallish, raggedly himself against the wall in the only space avail-blond, his neck heavily tattooed, right up to the able.

jaw line, with inky blue imagery so overlapping

“Who’s paying?” Sid asked.

it was indistinguishable.

“He is,” Bassett said, hooking a thumb toward

“Rafe,” Bassett said, as they walked up. “Tina.

Webb.

How you kids rollin’?”

“Trading chits is better,” Sid said.

“Okay, Bassy,” Rafe said.

“Trading chits?” Webb asked.

“So what’s the toll here?” Webb asked.

“Never mind, I’ll pay it,” Bassett said. “You can Tina just glowered at Webb and muttered
pay me back later.” He tugged some folded slips something in an Eastern European tongue.

of printed paper from his pocket, handed one to

“She says for you guys, it’s twenty,” Rafe said, Sid.

his tone a touch apologetic.

Sid held it out at arm’s length to look sharply at Bassett grunted. “What, just because he looks it, stuck it in a pocket, and hit the close button.

like he’s from outta the storm?”

Old steel doors crashed together, with a sound

“Might be a cop or something,” Rafe said,
that made Webb’s shoulders twitch; the eleva-shrugging.

tor lurched, and ground its way upward, cables Webb tapped his smartband for a twenty and squealing. It took longer than walking up a stair-extended his wrist. Rafe tapped smartbands, way would have.

looked at the result, then nodded to Tina. She

“How’s this thing powered?” Webb asked.

effortlessly rolled the big gate out of the way.

Sid didn’t answer. After a moment, Bassett Bassett headed off across the sky bridge be-said, “When something’s powered here, it comes tween the two buildings, and he didn’t seem from wave energy. You’ll see the cams later.

hesitant, so Webb started after him.

Some places have some power, sometimes. Lotta Up ahead, the horizontal shaft of the bridge others don’t.”

was dripping, at regular intervals, where seams Sid just stared at his feet, lips moving sound-let rainwater in. The structure quivered with lessly, till they got to the sky bridge floor.

every blast of the storm; the scratched-up win-K
dows rattled in the orange-painted girders as currents of mist streamed past like whitewater in river rapids. Debris swirled by, whirlwinds of The storm was rising, rocketing clouds past the tile and plastic and cardboard.

sky bridge; they roared in their furious hurry.

Webb walked closer to the windows, reasoning Lightning forked out there, vanished, and reap-the sides might have more structural integrity, peared in another spot.

and jumped when a blue-white flash of light-Webb wasn’t feeling good about the sky bridge, ning cracked just outside; it was so close he felt in this rising storm.

the hair on his arms stand up with the charge.

There was another fee, a tol , before they could The sea, permanently white-capped, churned cross. A man and a woman stood in the way, and wrinkled below; the wet floor trembled and behind a white-painted waist-high steel fence groaned. Lightning flashed just above; electricity like something Webb had seen at the stockyards sizzled along the sky bridge framework. “Hey –
when he was a boy. The woman was about six Bassett!” Webb called.

feet tal , with wide shoulders and thick legs; her Bassett slowed up and turned. “What?”

crooked six-inch fingernails, painted gold, were

“The floor’s wet, there’s lightning around us – ”

folded over the improvised gate. She had a broad

“Oh get over it, Webb, you don’t think they’ve Slavic face, black eyes, her long wavy dyed-yel-grounded it? There’re lightning rods all over

54
tHe KinDeSt Man in StOrMLanD BY JOHn SHirLeY › iLLUStrateD BY WaYne HaaG

Stormland, and all over this thing – runs the Squatters sent appropriated freightbots, on the power down to storage. They burn out some of single remaining road out of Stormland, to the batteries but…just come on.”

pick up supplies paid for by energy credits. The

“How often you been across this bridge, in a freightbots made it back intact often enough.

storm like this?”

Scavenging was another source of relative abun-

“Half-a-dozen times. Maybe.”

dance. Freight containers washed up, sometimes Or twice? Or once before? Lying son of a bitch.

crammed with food or medical goods. There

Webb hurried after Bassett.

were a few fish that could be caught – but the The sky bridge moaned, the sky threw a tan-glut of enormous jel yfish and toxic blooms pro-trum, and rainbursts shattered on the windows.

moted by global warming had wiped out a great K
many species.

Webb hesitated, then asked, “Mr Paisil – did he leave her with her arms twisted around her

“When he killed my daughter,” Paisil said, “he neck? I’m sorry to…”

took a long time for that.” Paisil’s Cuban accent The reply came out as a croak. “Yes.” Paisil clung heavily but Webb decided not to try his looked at the solar lamp hanging from the
own broken Spanish. “We see this, when we find water-stained ceiling. “Broken arms, around…

her. We can…we know.”

I’m sorry I bring her to this place. But, free living

“You found her yourself?” Webb asked. He
here. Stay a while, store up some things worth shifted on the cot; he sat across from Paisil, who money, move inland, they say. Free home here.

was sitting on the neatly made-up cot his daugh-Not so good.”

ter had once occupied.

“And the man who saw the killer go down the

“Yes…” Paisil nodded. He was a short bandy-stairs – he said the killer was…?” Webb didn’t legged man with receding curly gray hair. The want to ask a leading question.

Cuban refugee looked toward the windows as if

“No one he sees before. The man who kill her, wanting to look at the world outside, but they his skin very light, his eyes squinting. His hair were sealed with taped insulation material, and yel ow.”

there was nothing to see. “Yes. I find her.”

“Clothing?”

They were in the former Global Insurance

“Mechanics, what you cal …”

building, about thirty floors up. The next storm

“Coveral s?”

was here, jostling rudely into place like someone

“Yes. Dirty and blue.”

cutting into a ticket line, and they had to speak

“Can I speak to the man who saw this?”

above the shrieking gale outside. The building

“Already I ask him. He won’t talk to you.”

shuddered and creaked.

“The murderer didn’t say anything, as he

The air was close, too warm, and the light passed? Didn’t speak?”

was dim. Bassett was standing with his arms

“No. Did not speak. My friend had shotgun, so crossed, his back against the wall near the open the man just walk by. My friend, he doesn’t know door, unusual y quiet. A softer sound ground my daughter is hurt. So…he lets him go.”

some of the edges off the wind’s screech: in a

“No notion how he came to pick your daugh-
corner of the room was a slowly rotating shaft, ter?”

an adapted girder stretching from a hole in the Paisil shook his head. “No. He didn’t say…

floor to a hole in the ceiling. It was turned by why…he kill her. I should not have brought her.”

energy transmitted from the incessant waves eating away at the remains of Charleston. The K
shaft, passing through the whole building, had been added by the squatters. Shafts like this were

“Some do better than others here,” Bassett said how some of the squatters survived – the power as they went down the stairs, Bassett leading it generated traveled through underwater cables with a small flashlight in hand. The concrete to dry land, and went inland to energy brokers.

stairwell made the rising storm-winds boom
fictiOn

55

›
like shots echoing in an enormous cannon; the head shaved, his graying beard cut short; he had flashlight il uminated random sections of stairs a heavy, pronounced jaw, watery blue eyes, an that seemed to float alone in space. “I did pretty elastic smile. “Got room for you, Mr Scott,” he good, selling fresh water to different squat colo-said. He had a deep, languid voice.

nies. But I don’t like to stay too long.”

The man with the bloodied bandage over his

“How far is the clinic?”

eyes said, “Oh!” and stood up. “Thanks Gerald.”

“This same building but a long ways down.

Gerald helped the blinded man through the

One floor above the water. I keep telling them door. Then he glanced at Webb and Bassett.

they need to move it up one, because that floor’s

“Gentleman, I’d tell you to take a number but getting undermined by the waves.”

we’re out of numbers too. Have a seat.”

This appearance of charitable concern on Bas-

“Gerald,” Bassett said, “we’re not patients.

sett’s part surprised Webb. “You get some help Webb’s here to talk to Lottie.”

there?”

“I see!” Gerald looked Webb over. “You look

“My brother did. Some comfort from ’em I
like a cop.”

guess. Some shit like that.”

Webb shook his head. “You have cops here?”

He seemed embarrassed and increased the

“Not usual y. You used to be a cop?”

speed of his descent so that Webb had to hurry,

“You have a good eye. I used to be. Not here almost stumbling.

to bother any of your patients. Just need a word

“So,” Webb asked, puffing, “most of the peo-with Lottie.”

ple being helped at this clinic were injured by

“Well – come in, but try not to upset her.”

storms? Debris, or…what?”

Lit by pools of light under dangling Coleman

“Lots of them. Lot of rakers too. Like that lamps, was a hodgepodge of bedding: futons, crazy fucker Louk.”

bunk beds, cots, mattresses, even a few open

“Was that his issue?”

sofa-beds, all of them occupied. Some of the

“Blown raker. Sure. Rake and that new synthy wider beds had two patients in them. The room smack they got, those’re the drugs around here.

smelled of blood, rot, seawater and antiseptics, Plus lots of homebrew booze.”

in equal measure. It looked to Webb like the They descended, floor after floor; at the fifth room had been some kind of large office suite at landing they passed a man sleeping on card-one point, probably full of cubicles.

board, next to a small boy who was eating a viv-

“What’s up with that white jacket, Gerald?”

idly colored breakfast cereal from a box with his Bassett asked. “Playing doctor?”

fingers.

Gerald chuckled. “Not that kind of playing Down and down. At the floor just above the and not that kind of coat. But it seems to make water, they went through a dented metal door, people feel a little better if I wear something and along a hal way to the right. The spongy car-white, like I know what I’m doing.”

pet was torn up in places, in others darkly dis-

“Where’s Harrington?”

colored by reeking mold. The wal s were draped

“Doctor’s sick. Down with that Dengue again.”

by rusty water marks. Several people hunkered

“Dengue fever?” Webb asked, as they wended on plastic tarps outside a door at the end of the past several sets of bunk beds containing bruised, hal , waiting for beds inside. One of them, a man whispering children. He knew tropical diseases with long brown hair and beard, had a bloodied had moved north, but he thought that one need-bandage covering his eyes.

ed lots of mosquitoes. “I’m surprised the mosqui-

“There it is,” Bassett said. “Stormland Volun-toes survive that constant wind blasting outside.”

teers Clinic.”

“Right,” Gerald said. “Outside! But see, half They walked up to the door, labeled with an of the buildings in Charleston are sumps, real y, outdated sign: Resident Health Spa.

now. There’s water, rainwater and everything The door was opened, just as they got there, else, in the lower floors. And the mosquitoes by a tall man in a grubby white sports jacket and find their way in there. Lots of them came from green trousers. He was a long-faced man, his before the storms got to be a permanent thing.

56
tHe KinDeSt Man in StOrMLanD BY JOHn SHirLeY › iLLUStrateD BY WaYne HaaG

I’ve just finished a new round of vaccinations ed machines, sends it on the freightbot. Then but there’s always some mutation that slips past he jumps right into doing stuff for people, no the vaccine and that’s what the doc’s got… We charge. I’ve seen him, oh, for three years, help-got some new antivirals in, though, seem to be ing out in every part of Stormland.”

helping him, he might be back tomorrow… I’m

“When the Civic Center col apsed on all those saying a prayer for him.”

people staying there,” Lottie said, “he was the Webb noticed a flickering around Gerald’s
first there, stayed longest, sat with people dying.

head. Beads of silver caught the light, and were He dug and dug in the rubble till he just fell over gone. But then it doubtless wasn’t strange for from being worn out.”

people to have probation flyers watching them

“How’d the building col apse?” Webb asked.

here.

“Weather stress,” Bassett said. “Storm pressure.

“Here’s Lottie,” Gerald said.

Wind. Corrosion. All that shit. What else?”

A dark woman who might be in her mid-

“He came over when I found Ginia. He put his thirties sat on a cot against a back wall near a arm around me and let me cry like I was an idiot.

curtained window; the heavy off-white curtains We just sat there for hours.”

were duct-taped over the window frame. Her

“About Ginia – when you found her was she…

hair was dyed auburn, showing black near the Any particular arrangement of her body?”

roots. Wearing a fading blue shift and no shoes,

“She had her arms all busted and purple and she sat bent over a magazine.

wrapped around her neck like…she was stran-She looked up as they came near. Her round, gled with broken arms…” Lottie’s lips trembled.

mixed-race face seemed to sag with fatigue.

Her eyes teared up.

“Lottie, this man would like a word, if it’s okay

“Any notion how long she’d been dead?” Webb with you,” Gerald said.

asked gently.

She wrinkled her nose, peering over reading Lottie shook her head.

glasses. She didn’t speak. The wind cracked and

“Anything else you can tell me about what you rattled behind her, as if articulating something found?”

she left unspoken.

“There was semen on her thigh. Most of the

“My name is Cyrus Webb. Are you Lottie
blood was up higher.”

Hadad?”

Webb nodded. “Did you notice blood on her

She nodded.

fingernails?”

“I’m a detective. Not the police kind. I under-

“Yes. I don’t want to… That’s enough.” She bent stand you lost your sister?”

over her magazine again and pretended to read.

She nodded, staring at him.

“Where did you get an actual printed maga-

A woman groaned, somewhere in the room,
zine?” Bassett asked.

and Gerald said, “I’ll leave you to this, Mr Webb.

“I found it in an old bathroom,” Lottie said, We’ll talk, but I’ve got to see to Mrs Chiang.”

not raising her eyes from the magazine. “It’s Gerald bustled off. Lottie looked after him.

twenty years old. I like to read about the celebri-

“He’s the one,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.

ties. Nobody seemed all that worried…”

Webb raised his eyebrows. “The one?”

The endless storm howled from beyond the

“The one kind man here. I mean, real y kind.

glass.

You know? He’s the kindest man I’ve met in this Webb patted Lottie on the shoulder, then
place. The sweetest guy for a hundred miles turned and looked for Gerald. He saw him across around. And I been up and down this coast.”

the room, and started for him – and stopped

“Yeah? A regular saint?”

short, noticing a man lying on his side, in the

“If he’s not here, helping Dr Harrington, he’s bottom bunk bed, partway across the room. The somewhere else, taking food to people, talking man was in dirty blue coveral s. He had blond to people. Trying to make them feel better.”

hair and his eyes were compressed in a squint.

“That’s true,” Bassett said, almost grudgingly.

He was staring into space.

“He works tearing out old copper from bust-Really? Was that him, just lying there?

fictiOn

57

›

Bassett caught up with Webb. “Where you go-near Gerald again. “Can I talk to you in private ing now, Webb?”

somewhere, Gerald?”

“Was going to ask Gerald about something…”

“Yes, I have a few minutes. There’s something I Webb paused a dozen steps from the man curled want to talk to you about, too. We can go to the up on the bunk, and held Bassett back with doctor’s cubby. Far corner over there.”

touch of his hand. He lowered his voice. “That Webb turned to Bassett. “Could you kind of guy there, you know him?”

keep an eye on our friend Mr Blythe here?”

“The guy in the…?” Bassett looked. “Sorta like

“Hodey, I’m not a – ”

the man Paisil mentioned…”

“I know you’re not. And I’m not your hodey.

“Had the same thought. I take it you don’t Just tell me if he decides to go anywhere, that’s know him.”

all.”

“Nope. Looks like a raker to me.”

“How do you know? The staring?”

K

“The squint. See, if you do raker a lot, it makes you squint and final y you can’t stop. Some peo-The ‘clinic cubby’ was the one remaining office ple binge and they squint while they’re bingeing, cubicle, and Gerald sat down behind a desk piled but if they keep on…”

high with a fairly random selection of medica-

“So, that squint that Paisil mentioned – doesn’t tions in little boxes and bottles. Webb sat on a mean the guy’s eyes were like that natural y.”

crate propped on end across from him.

“Nah. You going to arrest him?”

“Gerald – that man Blythe answers the descrip-

“I have to do tests and…I have to play it by ear.

tion of a man seen leaving the scene of a murder.”

Now shut the fuck up. You’re talking too loud.”

“Does he? Which murder?”

Webb walked over to the man on the bunk.

“The Paisil girl.”

“Hi,” Webb said, smiling, putting his hands in Gerald grunted. “In a storeroom just below the his pocket. “I’m new here. Cyrus Webb. Who’d roof of that building a rake dealer has his set-up.

you be?”

Man named Crewsky. I wish you’d take Crewsky The man looked up at him. His hands, clutched away, along with whoever else you want to take up close to his chest, clenched and unclenched.

away.”

But he didn’t say a word. He seemed a long, long

“You’re saying Blythe was up there with Crew-distance from speaking. Thousands of miles.

sky, buying his rake, is all?”

Webb reached out, gently shook the man’s

“Most likely.”

shoulder. “Say, uh…hodey. Can we have a word?”

Something was bothering Webb, actively nag-No response – except from Gerald, hustling ging at him. It was Gerald’s pronounced jaw. A up to them. “You won’t get anything out of Mr real jutter. Hadn’t he seen something like that in Blythe, there’s no point in shaking him.”

a police computer sketch, jutting out of a hoodie?

“His name is Blythe?” Webb ran his mind back

“Gerald…I should tell you why I’m here.”

through the list of possible suspects, from the Webb watched Gerald’s face closely as he went D.C. area, and didn’t come across that name. But on. “In the Washington D.C. area, about thir-that didn’t prove anything.

teen years ago, a man killed a number of young

“Leonard Blythe. He’s an engineer. He hooked women. He strangled them and had sex with the up with some rakers and just did a hit too much.

bodies. The killings stopped and we think he You know, you can go a long time on it but if you moved out of the area. Now, I’m with an outfit do that one too many…”

called Search In Person. We were hired by the

“You use rake, Gerald?”

father of one of those young women. Dad has

“No. Never. I know it though, when I see it –
a lot of money and he’s out to find the guy who we get a lot of people in here. If it’s not overdose, killed his little girl.”

they hurt themselves in some kind of psychotic

“Understandable,” Gerald said, nodding.

episode. Or get shot when they’re too belligerent.”

“We’ve had word that killer may be operat-

Webb glimpsed that flickering bead-shape
ing here – in Charleston. There have apparently

58
tHe KinDeSt Man in StOrMLanD BY JOHn SHirLeY › iLLUStrateD BY WaYne HaaG
been four strangulations of young women here,

“I’m not any sort of killer now. I was once the possibly a fifth, and normal y we wouldn’t know D.C. Strangler. You know – we have a semen about it when it’s in Stormland. But someone got sample from the killer here. From the body of word through to us. Anonymously…but he sent Lottie’s sister… I took the sample. It’s in a drawer, a good deal of information that fit right in with right here, in a vacuum unit. Should be still valid what we had.”

for your DNA tester. You won’t find my DNA in He kept watching Gerald’s face, hoping to see that particular sample though.”

some flicker of fear, some indication…

Webb shook his head. “This is not fitting to-

“Right,” Gerald said, nodding patiently.

gether.”

Webb cleared his throat. “So – one thing we do

“It wil .” Gerald looked at the ceiling, as if the have is a DNA sample from the D.C. Strangler.

memory were replaying there. “I was a medi-It doesn’t match anyone in police records. But cal student, in Georgetown. I killed those girls I have some equipment with me…” He took off in D.C., but – I wanted to stop. Final y I turned his backpack, and as he did it he discreetly loos-myself in and the Justice Department took me ened his gun in its holster. “I have a DNA tester off the street. They never announced the arrest –
right here.” Webb drew out a simple glass cyl-they wanted to use me in their Prevention Stud-inder about the size of a standard syringe, with ies program. I was a guinea pig. They’re looking all its intricacy hidden inside it. “This is the very for a way to prevent serial killers, you see. Do best, latest, nanotester, Gerald. Expensive and you know what Frontal Lobe Behavioral Modi-accurate. My plan is to test as many people as I fication is?”

can. Starting with this Blythe.”

Webb cleared his throat. “Ah…yes. In a gen-But right after Blythe, Webb figured, he’d eral way. In clinical trial for hospitalized people test Gerald, if he had to sit on the guy to do it.

– certain kinds of schizophrenics…and psycho-Great cover for a psycho killer, being the kindest paths. Stem cel s?”

man anywhere in the area. Helping run a clinic.

“Right. They inserted stem cel s into certain Knowing where most everybody was, what areas in the front of my brain, activated them everyone did…

with electro-stimulation, cell-seeding chemistry

“There’s no harm in you testing Blythe,” Ger-and…wel , the frontal lobe contains higher brain ald said, his elastic smile seeming a bit sad now.

functions that keep people from acting out on

“But he won’t be the man you’re looking for –
every impulse, keeps them from certain kinds of he’s not the one who’s killing people here.”

delusions. People need something called ‘mirror

“What makes you so sure?”

neurons’ for emotional and cognitive empathy.

“Because if you’re comparing DNA to the man They had to insert those too, and activate them who killed those people in Washington – that in me…” He looked rueful. “It was through the would be me, not Blythe. As you’ll find when Johns Hopkins Neural Anticipation clinic – you you test me. I was the D.C. strangler.”

should call Johns Hopkins directly. There’s a Webb stared. He wondered if Gerald was
cable you can use, just above the water, down about to lunge at his throat. But Gerald sat back below. We’ve got a pretty good interface set up.

in his seat, relaxed and calm.

Ask the clinic for Dr Philip Clemence. Tell him Webb reached behind him and, very care-you know about my history. He’ll confirm all ful y, drew his gun from under his coat. Gerald this – they think they have a cure for serial kil -
looked at the gun and his smile became wider ers. And I think they truly do, Cyrus. I am not at

– and sadder. “I’d have that ready now, too, if I all the same person I was. Not at al . Back when was in your place. But I’m not going to hurt you, I was acting out I had some little flicker of con-or anyone else. And I’m not the man who’s killed science – that’s why I turned myself in – but I the girls in Stormland.”

had no lasting self-control. I’d have killed again, Webb didn’t point the gun – he kept it on his on my own. Now…it’s night and day. And it’s no lap, under his hand. Ready. “You’re the killer –
longer night for me.”

but you’re not the killer?”

Webb snorted. “And I’m supposed to just…?”

fictiOn

59

›

“No. You can take me in, if you want. But
how it felt to me.” He let out a long, soft sigh.

there’s something I need to help you do first. I

“You could be bul shitting me. And the semen am the one who called you here, Cyrus.”

sample you have might not be the right one.”

“You called me here?”

“But it is. You can confirm that when I take

“I’m the anonymous source. The police you to the man… I think he’ll show his true col-wouldn’t come here. I wanted someone to come ors, if we insist. I pity him. But I can’t let him go and take care of the man who’s hurting women on and I doubt we can get him into the program.

here, you see. I can’t take him out on my own Now…would you like to find an interface? Goes

– and I haven’t got the portable DNA testers down to an old trans-Atlantic cable. Please – call you have, to prove anything. I needed you. I did Dr Clemence. I’ll give you a name at the FBI, some research…and your agency has the finan-too. Just so we can get our priorities straight.”

cial motivation to come here, when no one else Webb looked down at his gun. “Jesus. Does
would, so, I left the trail of crumbs, in my mes-this mean I have to go back over that sky bridge?”

sage to them. I was a bit ambiguous. It’s genu-

“Yes. I’m afraid it does.”

inely not me, killing these girls here, you see. But

“Shit.”

I know who it is. At least I’m pretty sure. Takes one to know one, if you like. I never broke my K
victims’ arms, however…that was his idea.”

Webb glanced at the flickering bead orbiting

“What floor you want?” Sid asked, as they walked Gerald’s head. “Those flyers… They’re not pro-into the freight elevator.

bation observers?”

“Just five floors up, Sid,” Gerald said affably.

“Yes and no. I was convicted. But quietly. This He handed Sid a trading chit.

is my sentence, being here in these circum-Sid clashed the elevator doors shut and they stances. I love it here! My friends there make lurched upwards.

it possible.” He glanced up at the three tiny sil-

“You been using the call cable?” Sid asked.

very beads orbiting his head, barely visible. “In

“Yes, Mr Webb has, Sid. He confirmed some
fact, the hospital put those beads on me. They things I told him. And in fact he’s here to talk to watch me, watch my brain activity. Every night I you. He just wants to test your DNA. To see if it download their data, into this – ” he took a small matches some we found on Ginia.”

silvery domino-shaped instrument from his

Sid gaped at them. Webb drew the little glass pocket “ – then I upload onto the cable. Storm-cylinder from his windbreaker pocket, and his land is where I could do the most good. And I hand on the gun in its holster, under his coat.

have a lot to make up for…”

“Won’t hurt a bit.”

Webb shook his head numbly. “You can’t just…

Sid suddenly stopped the elevator, jolting it to make up for those murders.”

a halt on the wrong floor, so that Webb almost

“I know I can’t. Still – there’s a sense in which fell over. The door was opening behind him.

it wasn’t quite my fault. Even though we have Webb drew his gun – Sid rushed past, knock-to hold people responsible for what they do. I ing into Webb with his shoulder as he went.

was born with brain damage, of a certain spe-Webb staggered back, turned, fired the gun. It cific kind. Some serial killers are damaged in the spat. He missed Sid, who was running down a course of their childhoods. Others, like me, in hall to the left, but the bullet struck the plaster-the womb… It’s complicated. In my case, it was board wall just behind him.

a cerebral birth defect. My mother was a methe-Gerald hissed, “Don’t hit the button, Webb – ”

drine addict. The drugs damaged my frontal But Webb had already hit the button that made lobe. Growing up, I couldn’t real y feel a connec-the little bullet explode, and the wall opened tion with people, you see…but I felt compelled up in a small fireball – which was immediately to make one, any way I could. Hurting them, all sucked out into the screaming storm outside.

that I did – that gave me a kind of…of artificial An oval opening, about five feet high and three connection with them, for a few minutes. That’s across, had opened in the wall between girders.

60
tHe KinDeSt Man in StOrMLanD BY JOHn SHirLeY › iLLUStrateD BY WaYne HaaG

Sid stopped, realizing the hall ahead of him was them that.”

blocked by old debris. He turned and looked at

“I think you did the right thing, for the girl’s Webb, who aimed the gun.

father, telling them that Sid was their man.”

“Come back here, Sid. Next one won’t miss.”

Webb shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

Sid stared – he looked at the hole in the wal .

“Hard to be sure. I don’t know what’s right, The storm outside shrieked a demand. Webb
except try to help. That’s all I’m sure of. Just try glimpsed spray and irregular sheets of construc-to help.”

tion plastic whirling by outside.

Webb grunted skeptical y. “How long will this

“Sid!” Gerald yelled. “There’s a program! May-storm last?”

be – ”

“It’s a hurricane. Maybe…a week?”

Sid turned and dived through the opening,

“Oh Jesus fucking Christ.”

headfirst out into the storm.

Gerald showed his elastic smile. “But you

Webb rushed to the wal , crouched, looked
know, since you’re here, and you used to be a outside. He could see Sid, caught up in a tor-cop, and we don’t have one… There’s Crewsky nado-sized waterspout, along with gray frag-to think of. And other things. You could be a big ments of rubbish, his arms twisting around his help. You might just want to stay here. Where neck, bones breaking as he spun, twisted, into you’re needed.”

the sea…

“Blown here like a piece of goddamn debris.”

K

“Do you have family to go back to?”

“Not in any way that… I have a grown son,
who’s not particularly friendly. An ex-wife. So –

“I’m sorry, but – he took the last boat,” Gerald not real y. Not even a dog. But…I’d be stupid to said, coming in. “Until the worst of this storm’s stay here. Just – stupid.”

over.”

Gerald nodded amiably. “I suppose that would

“That’s just like Bassett. The son of a bitch.”

be stupid. Yes.”

Gerald came to stand beside him. They were Webb swore softly to himself. “I might as well looking out the window of an old conference try to be of use, if I’m going to be here. I mean room on the twelfth floor, watching the storm,

– for now.”

rising to a fevered pitch, a delirious meteorologi-

“Sure. If you’re going to be here…”

cal frenzy, hammering at the buildings, ripping

“Gerald – shut up. Let’s see if there’s something off sections of thick polystyrene from the outer to eat in this place.”

wal s. The catamarans were all tucked away in

“Right this way…”

their hiding places. There would be no rides out They went back to Gerald’s place, above the that way for many hours…

clinic, and ate some canned food.

Webb snorted. “You real y think the sky bridge is going to last through this?”

John Shirley is the author of numerous novels and short

“No, probably not.”

story collections. His science fiction work includes the

“And this building?”

seminal urban fantasy City Come a Walkin’ and the A

“It’s solid. It’s been through a lot. We reinforce

Song Called Youth cyberpunk trilogy. He won the Bram it too. After this one abates some, we can go Stoker Award for his story collection Black Butterflies.

inland, see what’s there. Maybe you can hop a His latest story collection is In Extremis: The Most Extreme
freightbot, or you can meet the amphiboat, but

Short Stories of John Shirley. Shirley was co-screenwriter it’s hard to say if it’s going to be back for a while, of The Crow and wrote the lyrics for numerous Blue Oys-after this one. Probably wreckage all over the ter Cult songs, and for his own recordings. His newest landing ramp.”

novels are Everything is Broken (Prime Books), and Doyle

Webb growled to himself. “Going back after

After Death (HarperCollins) which we'll be reviewing giving them that story…” He shook his head. “It’s next issue. PM Press recently brought out the book New
not right for me to collect my paycheck anyway.

Taboos for its Outspoken Authors series, which you can You were caught a long time ago. I should’ve told read more about in this issue’s Book Zone interview.

61

“A must-have collection of the hottest crime stories around” Ian Rankin
cover art by

BEN BALDWIN
new stories by

CHRISTOPHER PRIEST

MELANIE TEM

STEPHEN vOLK

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

STEvEN J. DINES

RAY CLULEY

JOEL LANE

DANNY RHODES

JANICE LAW

SIMON AvERY

ANTONY MANN

JAMES COOPER

STEPHEN BACON

TIM LEES

SPECIAL OFFER:

SUBSCRIBE TO CRIMEWAvE

NOW AND GET CRIMEWAvE 11:

GHOSTS ABSOLUTELY FREE!

American Royal paperback

240 pages
litho printe
buy Crimewave 12 only or subscribe
securely at ttapress.com/shop

62
il ustration by Richard Wagner

•

STORY BY SARAH BROOKS

Tra
an a n
cc s
ou -
n Si
t of b
a j e
ou r
rn i
e a
y
with added notes from The Cautious Travel er’s Guide to Greater Siberia by L. Girard (Mauriac Publishing, Paris, 1859)

•

The sole means of passage across the Greater Siberian wastes is by train, for those who can afford the ticket, and the risk.

I left Beijing at seventeen, carrying a box of pencils and a suitcase held together with rope. At the station families sobbed and embraced. I tried not to look. Nor did I let my eyes widen at the size of the train, its wheels as tall as a man’s shoulder, the iron bars over the windows as thick as my arm. The green paint was faded, but the gold lettering on the carriages still stood out: Beijing to Moscow.

My breath caught in my chest.

Armed guards checked my Chinese papers and the letter of invitation from the Paris Conservatoire des Arts. I was handed waiver forms by representatives of the Trans-Siberia Company, releasing them from any responsibility for my safety and any guarantee of our eventual arrival in Moscow. I kept my expression blank because I was a man now and I could not be afraid.

But my hand shook as I affixed the seal bearing my name. Red ink smeared the paper.

64
tranS-SiBeria BY SaraH BrOOKS › iLLUStrateD BY ricHarD WaGner The great train of the Trans-Siberia Company elled slowly. Slowly enough to see the farmers’

(est. 1800) crosses the border wall two hundred faces as they straightened up from their work to miles from Beijing. It is three thousand miles to watch us pass. Some of them took off their hats.

Moscow. The journey takes seven days.

In Greater Siberia it is believed that the shadows The greater part of the train was the so-called have faces. In the deep forests yel ow eyes watch cattle-sheds, carriages partitioned by a dozen the train.

thin wal s, three bunks clinging to either side. I squeezed onto my top bunk, so close to the car-We crossed the border at night. The carriage riage roof that I was able to sit only if I hunched slept at last, rattling and snoring along the shud-my shoulders and lowered my head, for all that I dering rails but I lay wide awake, watching the was small and slight. But up there, at least, I was window for the last lights to blink out. A final away from all the nervous voices, raised as if to settlement, then the lights of the border wal , ward off gathering fears.

then nothing at all but the empty lands.

On the bunks below were loud, quick young

When I closed my eyes there were things in men from the south, with sunburnt skin. They the darkness. Things just outside the window.

splashed sweet-smelling liquor into chipped Things formed out of rumours and half-heard glasses and rummaged in their bags to produce stories. Whispering, creeping things. They parcels of nuts, dried fruit, packs of cards. One crowded clos er until I swore I could hear their took out a crumpled photograph and smoothed long fingers at the glass.

it on his knee, propping it up against the window, I woke, shaking. No sleep for me. Instead, I and the others whistled and shouted such things crept from the cabin and made my way to the as the aunties at the orphanage would have had dining car with my sketch book. Paper and pen-the skin off my buttocks for even thinking.

cils. Safety in shadows and lines.

I peered down, to see a grainy picture of a But my hopes for solitude were shattered.

woman, her silk qipao slit up to her thigh, her Every lamp in the dining car burned, every lips full and dark in her pale face. She stared table crowded with travellers, with laughter and right up at me. I looked away.

music and sweat.

“To keep us company through the long nights, I squeezed myself into the nearest seat. I was my friends!” They laughed and crashed their good at being smal , good at passing unnoticed.

glasses together.

Taking out my book, I tried to calm my breath-One glanced up at me. “She doesn’t bite, coun-ing, to banish the movement and noise and lose tryman. Come and join us in a drink to her fine myself in the familiar hush that seeing – real y health!”

seeing – always brought; a gemstone earring as I muttered my excuses and curled back into it brushed against a neck, the puckering of skin my bunk.

around a scar, the dark strands of a braid of hair.

“Maybe not to his taste,” came the whisper How the lights caught the gold embroidery on from below, and a wave of raucous laughter.

women’s dresses, how they lit their reds and pur-A familiar, empty feeling sat heavy in my gut.

ples from within and there in the dark glass of I will climb down, I told myself. I will pour their the windows we were all doubled, both within liquor down my throat, roar out meaningless, the train and without.

terrible words like a man should do, take up their A woman in blue caught my eye. I traced the picture and hold it to my lips. I will not be afraid.

curve of her neck, the curl of her dark hair. The Here, on this train, I will make myself new, make blue stones around her neck were deep and
myself into a man. Climb down, I said.

watery, her skin untouched by rouge. All around I didn’t climb down. I lay on my stomach and her men snatched greedy, stolen glimpses, but stared out between the bars of the window as the no-one approached her. She was more alone than low, ornate buildings of Beijing gave way to the anyone here. I bent my head closer to the page.

farmsteads of the borderlands. The train travA voice in my ear. “Do we scare you so much?”

fictiOn

65

›

My pencil skittered, drawing a line across her Some travel ers say that the cost of the train is cheeks. I looked up into dark blue eyes and I was much higher than just the ticket. They say that lost for words, as always, though the aunties beat there is another price, unique to every travel er.

me and told me Speak, boy, or are you as foolish as you look?

I slept until the morning was almost over and She gestured to the page. “Faces, trinkets, hair.

when I opened my eyes she was my first thought.

We are more than this, you know.”

Elena. Her name was Elena. She thought my

Her tone was serious but her eyes merry. She sketches were beautiful.

spoke in French, the common tongue of Europe, The landscape had moved in closer during
still unfamiliar on my own tongue then, though the night. Outside the window trees clustered so I had spent many hours over my books. So many near that they brushed the glass, and greenish words needed, to say so little. I felt the flush underwater light filtered into the train.

deepening on my face.

I watched for her all day, half hopeful, half

“I…I am a student, only,” I managed. I could scared, not letting myself look at last night’s not hold her eye but looked down at my paper work, afraid that I would not have captured her and twisted my pencil around and around in my as I hoped, that under my pencils she would have fingers, waiting for her to leave.

faded to a poor shadow of what she was. Instead, She didn’t leave. She sat down beside me, her I sat in the dining car and ate food I couldn’t pro-elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, and nounce, found the observation carriage, all glass watched me as I began to draw again. She was and iron bars, where there were ladies in silks so close that her hair brushed against my cheek.

and men who talked too loudly. And I looked

“They are beautiful,” she said, “your sketches.”

up at every rustle of skirts and every whispery, I told her, slowly, haltingly, that I would go to sibilant murmur of French.

study in Paris on a scholarship. I told her that I Once, a thump came from the roof above, and was lucky, luckier than I could ever have imag-to cries from my fellow passengers I looked up ined.

to see through the bars an orange eye amidst

“Orphans need to be lucky,” she said. “They feathers and scales, great claws and wings spread have to make their own luck.”

wide. A lady beside me swooned, careful y.

When I looked up, quickly, she laughed at my But I forgot to be scared. I forgot because all I expression.

could think was how beautiful those wings were,

“You can tel ,” she said. “You can tell the ones pale purple and laced with red veins. How beau-who travel lightly.”

tiful horror could be.

Orphans have to make their own luck. They

That night before I slept I turned at last to my have to find their own places. I have always re-book. To Elena and her voice in my head saying, membered this.

“You have nothing to be afraid of.”

“My name is Elena,” she said.

Yet as my eye fell upon the pages, I could not

“I am no-one,” I said. “My family name is
stop myself from crying out. The book dropped Wu, which means ‘nothing’, and is what all the from my hands.

orphans are called. My given name is Gulou, Impossible. Impossible. Perhaps I was more which means Drum Tower, and is where I was tired than I knew. Perhaps the journey had found, before the aunties took me in.”

played on my nerves. Shaking, I picked it up She looked at me for so long that my skin be-again. I blinked, but the pictures remained. Not gan to feel tight and funny. Then she smiled, a the face I remembered but something else en-great big smile, and said, “Well that is a name to tirely. A strange, clawed, twisted thing with dark, be proud of.”

inhuman eyes.

And I think, for the first time, I was.

I slammed the book shut. When I slept, it was I drew. She watched. The train hurtled through to troubled dreams.

the darkness and I forgot all about the things outside.

In this region grows an interesting genus of fir tree,

66
tranS-SiBeria BY SaraH BrOOKS › iLLUStrateD BY ricHarD WaGner identifiable by its red-tipped needles and sap. The I stumbled backwards. Other tongues darted tree is said to appear to be bleeding. The remains out, quick as snakes.

of human settlements can also still be seen, long

“The flowers are hungry,” said a voice beside deserted.

me. “Like everything here is hungry.”

Elena. I had not seen her since that first night.

The aunties told us the world is unkind. They In the daylight she seemed more real, more told us to rely on ourselves alone. They said that earthly. How could I have captured so twisted this would make us strong, that fear was for a likeness? The wrongness was within myself. I children.

could not meet her eye.

When I was afraid, I took out my pencils. I

“Where is your sketchbook?” she asked, stand-drew things to show they couldn’t hurt me. I ing beside me and watching the terrible, greedy drew the older boys as they slept because in sleep flowers. “Such rare things deserve preserving, they were gentle. And the aunties, as we studied too.”

they would let their faces fall slack, when they I shook my head, still unable to look at her. “I thought we weren’t looking. They would turn thought…” I began.

old before my eyes and I would be less afraid.

“That you had found something beautiful?”

But here, in the midst of the wastelands, I had she said.

lost even this small solace. I feared some twist-

“No,” I said. “Something that I didn’t have to ing of the brain. Something broken. Elena must be afraid of. But I was wrong.”

have seen what I created, she must think me a We stood in silence for a while, as the train monster. I tore out the pages of my book, kept picked up speed again, to its familiar rattling, them hidden against my skin. I feared my mad-rolling pace. Final y Elena said, “Well then, that ness could be seen by others.

just confirms my conclusions.”

Outside the window the trees wept red tears.

I turned to her. “Your conclusions?”

We passed a wooden church, alone on a low hil .

“That you, Monsieur Orphan,” she said, “may The roof was caved in, the whole structure lean-have been found in a drum tower, and may be ing, tilted by the wind. There were no windows.

prone at times to self-pity – ” (this with raised Never stopping, on and on across the conti-eyebrows) “ – but are nonetheless possessed of nent. Never stopping, the only way to be safe.

common sense, a most underrated gift.”

“Safe-ish,” the mutters went, the jokes. “Safer.”

I could not resist laughing.

But not yet saved.

“If you are not afraid of everything outside this On the third day we slowed perilously close train,” she went on, “then you are a foolish man.”

to walking pace, the track winding through still She put her hand on my arm, and I am happy lakes whose surfaces did not reflect the sky. I to tell you that I did not stammer, or blush, or stood, nose to the window, rapt and appalled by lower my eyes, but stood, contented and unfool-the non-colour of the water, if that is what it was, ish.

and the scuttering, scuttling things, carapaces A strange sensation! And strange that it
shining and black.

should be here, in this unknown land, with this And in the midst of it al , yellow flowers, a unknown, blue-eyed woman.

cluster of fragile petals around a central cup, green tendrils creeping upwards. I peered closer, If anything unusual occurs, remain calm. Return amazed that nature so delicate could exist here, to your cabin immediately and lock the door. Stuff and thrive. But as I watched, something fleshy your ears with wax, or cloth if no wax is to hand.

and red shot out from the flower cup towards a Make as little sound as possible. Keep an upright creeping, thorny creature. A flickering tongue; it position, your back against the wall and your eyes grasped the creature and pulled it towards those open. Keep your pistol in your hand.

pale petals, faster than I could have believed, and the petals opened, and the teeth were revealed.

By the fourth day a kind of patient inertia had Row upon row. Sharp and shining.

gripped the train. We became used to waiting
fictiOn

67

›
our turn for the washrooms and trying to keep

“There's something here.” She looked around, clean in the one tiny sink in each carriage. We her eyes midnight blue in the dim light. She took became familiar with the dining car and the both of my hands in hers. “You have to trust me,”

same diet of cured meat, bread and olives every she said.

day. We learned how best to propel ourselves I trusted her. The first person I had ever trusted.

down the corridors to the swaying rhythm of the She reached up to touch my face, her hands train, when best to close the curtains against the as chilled as if she stood in the snow. She moved approaching night and the shadows outside that closer to me and from somewhere just out of moved alongside us with eerie grace. We learned sight I thought I heard a muffled noise, like scuf-not to look.

fling footsteps. “Don’t look,” she said. “Don’t On the fifth night the lights went out.

look at anything but me.”

I was in the observation car, my sketchbook I looked in her eyes and saw that the blue was open on my lap, no longer afraid of what may flecked with silver. Her lashes were wet. I had appear beneath my pencils. A few other travel-never been so close to another person.

lers shared the car, talking or playing cards, for The noise came closer, closer. Elena’s arms the most part. They left me alone. They thought reached around my neck, her body pressed so me dull and awkward, unable to joke or boast close to mine I could feel the beating of her or flirt.

heart. Closer still and I thought I heard a breath Elena entered. I knew her by the rustle of her and a sound like the licking of lips.

skirts, the way she hesitated in the doorway. She For the briefest of moments Elena’s head
sat down beside me and opened her book. We turned. There was a hiss. A noise like a wet thing had taken to sitting like this, in companionable hitting the wall and the scrabble of fingernails.

silence. It was a relief, not to need words.

Then silence.

I was about to pick up my pencils again when She let go, pushed me away, and in the dim we were plunged into darkness. We reacted with light her irises were flooded with waves of dark no more than an intake of breath. No-one spoke.

ink, her hair wet, her fingers, whether reaching No-one moved. We sat in darkness such that I for me or warding me off I did not know, long had never known, with no sound at all but the and thin and crabbed. A vein stood out on her rails beneath us.

forehead, a thread of blue beneath skin stretched It felt like an age, but could only have been tight over bone.

a matter of minutes before the lights came on

“Monsieur Orphan,” she whispered.

again and we all looked at each other and burst And I stumbled away, stumbled down the
into nervous laughter.

rocking carriage, the hissing still in my ears and

“Nothing to worry about!” cried someone.

her hands still reaching like ghosts at my back.

“These things happen,” said someone else,

Stumbled all the way to the cattle-sheds where

“quite normal, I’m sure.”

the three southerners sat hunched on their One of the ladies drew a shuddering breath bunks.

and began to sob.

But if I had hoped to have time to gather my Elena stood up. “Come,” she said, “quickly.”

scattered wits, I was sorely mistaken. The men She took my hand and led me out of the carriage, darted towards me.

down corridors where worried faces peered

“There was something here,” one whispered, around doors and guards shouted for calm.

“something – ”

Her urgency scared me more than the dark-

But I was not listening. I looked at their faces.

ness had.

“What?” they said. “What is it?” – scrambling

“Listen.” She stopped. We were alone in the for the cracked mirror on the wal , pushing each space between two carriages, where a samovar other out of the way to be the first to see.

bubbled away and a couch for the guard was Each of them was missing the colour of their tucked up against the wal . One dim bulb above eyes.

us flickered.

68
tranS-SiBeria BY SaraH BrOOKS › iLLUStrateD BY ricHarD WaGner It is recommended that you drink two glasses of Faster the violin played, and faster. Elena vodka washed down with milk before bedtime, so laughed as stray curls flew in front of her eyes.

that you may have a dreamless sleep.

Couples spun around us, colours turning to dark gold beneath the lights, hair stuck to skin, lips The next morning it began to snow. Patterns parted, breathless.

appeared in ice on the window, like the lacquer I saw my cabin-mates, holding each other’s tracing on the houses of the wealthy in Beijing.

arms, their white eyes stark against their flushed When I put my fingers to the glass, the patterns skin. I saw the woman with hair of yellow grass.

moved.

And Elena, in my arms, her face lined with blue The southerners stayed huddled in their veins, her eyes cloudy, her hand in my hand bunks as other rumours sped around the train.

long-nailed and pale. Water dripped from her A woman who had lost the little finger on her hair. As I brushed her skin a few iridescent scales left hand. Another whose hair had turned into dropped onto her dress.

brittle yellow grass. A man who swore he could We danced into a new continent.

no longer see the colour red.

I wanted to lean forward and brush my lips

“Are we close? Are we close?” whispered some-against hers. I wanted to stay like this, as close one down the carriage, over and over again. “Are as we were. To imagine we were alone in all the we there, are we close?”

great unknown spaces of Siberia and that noth-

“Nearly there,” I whispered back. “Nearly
ing could harm us because she would keep all there.”

the bad things away.

I felt the tears well up in my eyes, but I was not The last night came. I combed my hair in the ashamed.

mirror and I walked towards the lights of the I looked down and saw that her hair had turned dining car.

to silvery white. I could feel water trickling over The tables were pushed against the wal s and my fingers, down her back, soaking her dress.

a man sat in the corner with a violin, playing The tears pooling in my eyes flooded down my a reel as couples danced, their bodies pressed cheeks. Heavier and heavier they flowed, over close together, sweat beading on their foreheads.

my lips and into my mouth. I struggled to draw Through the crowd, I saw her, alone and watch-a breath. I blinked and blinked but the water had ful.

blinded me and I felt something change, felt her

“May I have this dance?” I held out my hand.

stiffen in my arms, felt her try to pull away. She She raised her eyes to mine, and I could not raised her eyes to mine and she spoke words that tell if she wished to frown or to smile.

I could not hear, that I did not want to hear, that

“Remember what I said about foolish men?”

were Let me go. But I held her tight, though I was

“I remember,” I said.

weakening, held her as she twisted and twisted She took my hand. “You said you trusted me.”

in my arms, wet and slippery and icy cold, and I nodded.

her fingernails were in my skin, clawing at me,

“Then you must do what I say. Tonight espe-pushing me away, but I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t cial y. You must do what I say.”

afraid at all and for a moment she was still and

“I wil ,” I said, “I promise.”

I think I saw her begin to smile, but there was We stepped into the crowd.

only darkness before my eyes, and the roaring

“We will pass the dividing line soon,” said of water.

Elena.

“And enter Europe.” The word sounded strange Those who make the journey make it only once.

on my lips.

You can see its traces, if you know how to look. You

“We will dance into a new continent,” she said.

can see the iron that runs through them, forever.

I felt her hair against my neck, her cool hand in mine. The music was unfamiliar, a celebration They told me I was lucky. That I’d had a close and a lament all at once.

escape.

fictiOn

69

“Stronger than you look!” they said, “To fight who are in the bloom of their beauty and youth, it off like that.”

because they know I can capture it forever.

“To think it had been here all this time…”

And all the time, I look for the face I saw on a They shook their heads. “Monster,” they said.

train, in the middle of a lost country, many years They admired me.

ago. All the time I hold on to that thin iron thread And though I searched the train, banged on that links the two halves of my life together, that every door of every cabin, made myself into a links me across all those miles, across conti-madman, it was all to no end. She had vanished.

nents, to what I was, and what I became.

They are here, somewhere. The ones who are We arrived in Moscow in a rainstorm, cross-like her, who hide behind human faces, who ing the border wall into the frontier town. A walk amongst us. I have spent my life seeking week later I stood outside the Gare de Lyon in them out again. This is my price, the price we Paris with my suitcase and my box of paints and must all pay, we who ride the train across that walked into the city I had travelled thousands of terrible, wondrous expanse. Unique to every miles to reach.

traveller, it is said, and although the price is high And here I remain. Paris is filled with sun-I cannot regret it. I am not afraid.

shine and music. There are roses in bloom in For I know they are here, and that one day Montmartre. I paint. You may have seen me, I amidst all the many faces I draw I will find one have a spot on Rue Azaïs, just below Sacré Cœur.

that is twisted and strange and beautiful.

I call out to the tourists to come, let me sketch And they will tell me what she was, and what you a portrait! Only a few francs. A memory to she wanted, and where she has gone.

treasure, my friends, come, sit, once I studied at the Conservatoire des Arts, I am not just any Sarah Brooks has lived in China, the far south of Italy, street pedlar.

and the far north of Japan, but is now settled in Hebden And they come, the pleasure-seekers of Paris, Bridge, West Yorkshire, and teaches part time in the and I draw. I like the women the best, I like to Chinese department of the University of Leeds. She’s a draw their dark hair and full lips, the contours graduate of the 2012 Clarion West Writers’ Workshop, of their cheekbones. I have made something and has stories published or forthcoming in Shimmer
of a name for myself – they seek me out, those and the Journal of Unlikely Entomology.

Be certain nOt tO MiSS an iSSUe Of interZOne SUBScriBe nOW

Send a cheque or postal order made payable to tta Press (rates and address on page 1) or take out and renew subscriptions securely on our website with any card or PayPal

Tip for overseas readers:

If you take out 12-issue subscriptions online 6 of those issues
will have no postage charge added!

if you can afford to do so, please consider supporting our magazines by taking out a lifetime subscription
ttapress.com/shop

70

BOOK ZOne › neW taBOOS › JOHn SHirLeY interVieWeD

book

Three Steps forward, two Steps Back…

zone

John Shirley talks to Andy Hedgecock about optimism,
lunatic excesses and Vipassana Buddhism
neW taBOOS

John Shirley

I was thoroughly gripped by ‘A
plus author interview

State of Imprisonment’ – it works
as a tense, provocative short
eXit KinGDOM
story and as a jeremiad against
alden Bell
the surrender of judgement and
democratic responsibility as

SWOrDS Of GOOD Men
a result of creeping corporate

Snorri Kristjansson
control. It’s a dark vision and
yet there’s an optimistic edge

21St centUrY Sf
in the form of golden thread of
edited by David G. Hartwell
humane engagement, bravery

& Patrick nielsen Hayden
and decency. That optimism
is apparent in your TED

We See a Different
address and interview too.

frOntier

What experiences inform that
edited by fabio fernandes
optimism and what sustains it?

& Djibril al-ayad

You talk like a bitter, cynical
man who can’t imagine being
eVeninG’S eMPireS
neW taBOOS
optimistic about humanity…

Paul Mcauley

John Shirley
and I respect that! I was just

PM Press (Outspoken Authors) pb, 128pp, $12
looking at photos of men, women
tHe ViOLent centUrY
and children killed by nerve

Lavie tidhar

New Taboos Plus… includes a
gas in Syria today. It’s hard to
novel a, ‘A State of Imprisonment’;
be optimistic, seeing that. But

PHOeniX
an essay re-visioning America,
it could be that optimistic is

Sf Said

‘New Taboos’; a transcript of
the wrong word. It’s too easy to

Shirley’s provocative TEDx
generalize about humanity – and
tHe Secret Of aBDU
address on the threats and
there’s much to give us hope. The
eL YeZDi
promises of the real Singularity,
persistence of people who work

Mark Hodder

‘Why We Need Forty Years of
in organizations like Amnesty

Hel ’; and a wide ranging and

International, UNICEF, people
tHe Detainee
insightful interview with Terry
with true commitment – that gives

Peter Liney

Bisson, ‘Pro is for Professional’.

me hope. And some measure of
optimism.

SOMe reMarKS

And as a society, we do learn. We neal Stephenson
learned that lead poisoning caused
antisocial behaviour, all kinds of

SHaMan
illnesses, so we eliminated lead

Kim Stanley robinson
from gasoline. We gave women
and minorities the right to vote,
fUtUre interrUPteD
at least in this country, and yours.

Jonathan Mccalmont

We learned to be real y, truly
reluctant to use nuclear weapons.

HiDe Me aMOnG tHe

In the USA we got a blatant clue

GraVeS
about pol ution from a river
tim Powers
actual y catching fire. We learn.

Three steps forward, two steps
tHe DiaMOnD DeeP
back. But that leaves a profit of

Brenda cooper
one step.

BOOK reVieWS 71

›

72

BOOK ZOne › JOHn SHirLeY interVieWeD

What drew you to the conceit of

Not all my work is political y
a prison corporation colonising
engaged. Some of it is just about
an entire state? Is there a sense
the human condition. But my sci-
in which privatised prisons
ence fiction often has political and
stand for the worst aspects of the
social subtext, which is certainly
untrammelled free market?

not unprecedented. I find myself

As I understand it, the privatized
thinking of Spinrad’s The Men in
prison industry is the most profit-
the Jungle, or certain works by Phil able, fastest growing business in

Dick and Alice Sheldon (James

Arizona – that suggests a state-

Tiptree) and John Brunner’s Stand
wide prison is not such a fantasti-
on Zanzibar.

cal y improbable thing. But in my

If there’s been little political
story the extent of the prison is
statement in fiction lately it’s
satire real y, it’s a bit Swiftian. I
perhaps because there’s been a
don’t expect it to go that far.

warped, snotty perception that it’s

Yes, I think privatized prisons

“uncool”, here in the USA anyhow.

do a fine job of symbolizing what’s

People assume it must be self-
wrong with a whol y unregulated
indulgent, heavy handed. They
free market. If we toss out too
will sneer at it – a rather knee-jerk
many regulations, most of which

Performing with The Screaming Geezers
response. This snotty perception is
were there for good reasons, we
only reinforced by the fact that in
don’t get a better marketplace,
the heavy hands of some writers
we get a nightmarish condi-

Writers usual y write because of
and would-be writers…political
tion of bul ying dominance and
some inner compulsion. Vanity
fiction can be heavy handed! I
parasitism by a few “shops” in the
may also play a part. I do like the
have had young writers say they
market. We get lunatic excesses;
idea of “outwitting” reality. And I
are trying to be “the voice of the
we end up overrun with people
do think that some kind of benign

1%”. And when I sample the mate-
who go to extremes because
influence is possible through sto-
rial, I find it couched in a hector-
they’re in a sort of greed-induced
rytelling. Some will say that trying
ing “infodump”, a lot of sodden
drunkenness. It’s like a gambling
to make a difference in the world
writing that isn’t going to fly with
fever, it’s a form of insanity. And
through storytelling is not “pure
most readers. But find a way to let
in that state, as it were, they will
art”. I would ask those people
the story itself make the statement,
dehumanize people. What better

“Who are you to enslave art to
as Steinbeck and Heller and Dick-
place to accomplish dehumaniza-
your own detachment from suf-
ens did…and the reader will at
tion than in a prison? We’ve seen
fering? Who are you to define it to
least go along for the ride. They’l
a pattern in privatized prisons of
your convenience?”

consider your thesis more readily.

people used, ever more, as unpaid

Genre fiction, science fiction
labour for side industries all out

In the late 1980s the critic DJ
and horror do seem ready made
of proportion with the old days of

Taylor (in A Vain Conceit) for political statement and social

“making license plates” and such.

despaired at the lack of social
critique. Orwel , LeGuin, Marga-

We’ve seen that privatized prisons
engagement and unwillingness
ret Atwood…Michael Moorcock
are motivated to keep people in;
to face up to big issues in liter-
at times…Delany, Brunner – they
that municipalities are motivated
ary fiction. And in 2003 John
all seemed attracted to science
to consign people to these prisons

Pilger wondered: “But where are
fiction’s power to use powerful y
because they get financial benefits
the contemporary works that
dramatized social symbols. When
along the way, and that allows
go to the heart of this funny old
you can imagine, for example,
administrators to raise their own
world, as the books of Steinbeck
intelligent robots working for a
salaries.

and Joseph Heller did?” Your
privileged few to keep the many
work is unashamedly politically
enslaved (as in Elysium), you have Do you write to connect to peo-engaged: what is it about genre
the components of a parable glar-
ple, to outwit reality (to quote
fiction that lends it to the explo-
ing at you like over-lit stage lights.

Graham Swift), to dare the worst
ration of urgent themes such as

It can be rather too stark a par-
to happen in an act of benign
destruction of the environment
able and can lead us to a loss of
voodoo (to quote Iain Sinclair)?

and our slow but inexorable slide
complexity. You don’t want too

If not for those reasons, why?

into corporate fascism?

much complexity but you also

BOOK reVieWS 73

›
don’t want to be simple minded.

but who, quite wisely, is dubious

In the case of ‘A State of Impris-
about seducers. We “seducers”

onment’ in New Taboos, the set-
look for a way to real intimacy
ting is simplified perhaps a little
with the reader. The high energy
too much. But I tried to bring a
level in SF and horror, the psycho-
social texture to the story to give
logical power of it, opens doors
some verisimilitude alongside the
into the reader’s mind. That’s
science-fiction touches.

appealing to a writer.

Then again, there’s the access

I won’t be forgiven by my son
to ideas themselves. SF, fantasy

Max if I don’t ask you this: what
and horror are ideal for those of
appealed to you about the oppor-
us who are simply idea-oriented.

tunity to tackle the Bioshock:

And the ideas can take many

Rapture novel?

forms. I can explore spiritual ideas

Some of my work is done to make
as well as social ones or futuro-
a living – Bioshock: Rapture for
logical ones. I do so in The Other
example. But the Bioshock video

End; I do it in Doyle After Death game did dramatize the inher-

[published by HarperCollins/Wit-
ent shortcomings of Ayn Rand’s
ness in October 2013]. Doyle After
thinking. And, since extreme

Speaking at TEDx Brussels, 2011

Death imagines Arthur Conan
states of mind arise from the

Doyle solving crimes in an after-
abuse of the super power plasmids
life world: what would that world

“freely marketed” in the story,

What drew you to SF and horror
be like, if there was one? What
ah wel , that fits in with my own
as a reader and writer?

crimes could be committed there?

predilection for depicting mad-

SF and horror are colourful, vivid,

The dark fantasy/detective crosso-
ness vividly; I’m afraid I do it with
intense, and what young man isn’t
ver offered me a chance to create
an almost perverse pleasure. So I
drawn to that? At the same time
a sort of conceptual playground.

was able to make it fun as well as

I would read people like Bal ard,

Very enjoyable.

meaningful, I hope. Bioshock: Rap-
who evoked bizarre imagery but
ture has done quite wel .

also wrote finely; people like Phil

What can you tell us about the

Dick stimulated my social imagi-
joys and horrors of collaborative

You’ve produced eight short
nation, made me question real-
writing – in story and song?

story collections, crammed
ity – always useful to do, without

Col aborating with musicians is
with powerful and unsettling
rejecting some reasonable model
to some extent different to col-
ideas, and symbols, that test the
of reality. I was reading writers
laborating with another writer.

limitations of the form. What
who were at once over the top and

Musical col aboration feels more
maintains your faith in the short
refined, like Clark Ashton Smith
like a gestalt, more communal, at
story as an effective way of com-
and, at his best, Harlan Ellison. I
least to me. Authors by contrast
municating ideas?

read Poe, and saw mastery and yet
are used to “flying solo”. Compro-

Idea and the short story form go
was inwardly thrilled. Some of the
mise is much called for. It’s more
together – one idea, with ramifica-
attraction may have something
intellectual than based in artistic
tions, for each short story. There is
to do with an adolescent state of
feel; music, for me, is mostly an
a punchy quality to the short story,
mind, but I don’t think we should
emotional, artistic feel. I have tried
a right-hook-to-the-jaw directness
smother the adolescent within us
to bring some of that feeling, that
a writer of short stories relishes.

under a pillow. He has his place; at
intuitive energy, to my writing,

There’s also the polished-jewel
times he’s like the electronic part
and to col aborations, but it flows
quality they can have. As for test-
that boosts transmission. Plus, I
more natural y in music.

ing the limits, why not? That was
think SF and horror both offer
almost all I wanted to do, origi-
a writer routes past the reader’s

In ‘Pro is for Professional’ you
nal y. It was in my nature. Testing
defences. I don’t mean to sound
highlighted G.I. Gurdjieff’s
limits was part of the culture I
aggressive with readers – but
notion that we need to be shaken
came out of: the underground, the
they do have defences. The writer
into a more conscious and mind-
rock avant-garde, my liking for
engages in something more like
ful state of being. ‘A State of

Dada and the surrealists and poets
seduction, perhaps, with someone

Imprisonment’ heightened my
like Baudelaire…

who real y wants to be seduced
sense that we collude in our own

74

BOOK ZOne › JOHn SHirLeY interVieWeD › eXit KinGDOM › SWOrDS Of GOOD Men psychological imprisonment,
people to control the perception of
living in a manufactured reality
that issue.

defined through the control of

We should be as sceptical of
information. Is the notion of col-
conspiracy theories as we’re scep-
lusion hatched from my reading tical of a government’s military
or is it embedded in your inten-
agenda. Otherwise, we can be
tion for the narrative? To borrow
exploited by quite a different set
an expression from the late Iain
of people.

Banks, has the story wandered

But if we’re sufficiently politi-
off and come home with a punk
cal y conscious, and sufficiently
hairdo?

in touch with objective con-

Some readers will reinterpret sym-
science, we can get to some kind
bols to their own convenience. My
of consensus about what is real.

novel Everything is Broken is an

Overpopulation is still a real prob-
entertainment, slightly futuristic
lem; climate change is real; the
noir but also a fairly out-front
egregious corruption in places like
political statement dramatizing

India is real; the USA’s movement
the damage done by “Tea Party”

toward submission to the control
anti-government extremism. But
of major corporations is real.

eXit KinGDOM
someone sent me a note weirdly
alden Bell
claiming it was a “pro-gun” screed!

What else can we take from Gur-

Tor hb, 287pp, £16.99

In the end it’s the writer’s respon-
djieff? Does he have more to say
sibility to make sure the symbols
to contemporary readers looking

Maureen Kincaid Speller
are coming across, that they’re
for alternative approaches to
actual y communicating and not
making sense of their world?

Late in Exit Kingdom Father Igna-
muddying the painting.

Gurdjieff was not without “warts”;
tius tel s Moses Todd that no one

As to symbolism in ‘State of
he was not a saint; he was not
is ever lost in America: “It’s all des-

Imprisonment’, yes, it’s there,
right about everything. I’m just
tination. Every corner of it. […]

and I do try to make readers
as influenced, philosophical y,

Do you see it?” And Moses does
wonder if they’re col aborating
by Spinoza, Alan Watts, Aldous

– “the whole country, just one big
with someone else’s false reality

Huxley, Lao Tzu, as by Gurdjieff.

road, attached to itself in different
construct. And with the new

But it happens he had several key
ways”. For Moses, “a true frontiers-

CGI, we will eventual y have to
insights I hold dear. One is his
man”, “defined by forwardness”,
be sceptical about media reality.

insistence that we’re usual y asleep
his whole life has been a jour-

Imagine a news channel showing
when we think we’re awake. One
ney, especial y since the frontier
tanks rolling across the border
is the insight that we’re mechani-
abruptly reopened when the dead
from Mexico, say. Suppose it’s
cal in our responses when we
began to rise. In Bel ’s previous
total y fabricated, there are no
think we’re free. And then there’s
novel, The Angels are the Reapers, tanks at al , but you can’t tell this the idea that certain meditational

Todd was the adversary, hunting
from watching what seems to be
methods for consciousness expan-

Temple, the girl who killed his
real footage. And of course, in
sion free us up for empathy. You
brother, Abraham. Although Exit
the real world, the recent war in
can find parallels in Vipassana

Kingdom is nominal y set after

Iraq was supported in the media

Buddhism or Zen. These proce-
this time, the story Moses tel s at a
by false evidence of WMDs.

dures need not have any mystical
stranger’s campfire takes place wel

But it’s just too easy to say that
component whatever. They can
before Abraham’s death, making it
media is “controlled”. Media is
be purely neurological and psy-
both sequel and prequel.

more complex than that and, if
chological, if you like. Vipassana

The story is filled with motifs
anything, it’s harder to control
practitioners, Gurdjieff’s methods,
familiar from the previous novel,
than ever. So the process is more

Zen…are their techniques freeing?

not least the allegorical landscape
likely to be subtle. It’s likely to

I think they are; I think they do
which mysteriously continues to
use our knee-jerk reactions, or
offer that possibility, if one does
provide for its inhabitants as neces-
automatic responses to symbols.

the inner work. It takes time to
sary, even though many years have

Or, as in ‘State of Imprisonment’,
find a way out of prison. As in ‘A
passed since society col apsed. Bel
our moral lassitude. Just not

State of Imprisonment’, if you keep
attempts a cursory explanation of
caring about an issue allows other
seeking…there is a way out.

why the infrastructure survives in

BOOK reVieWS 75

›
various places but this is clearly not
sor become the power behind the
where his interest lies. The dead
throne.

continue to wait patiently for the

Meanwhile, marching toward
living, while the living for the most

Stenvik is King Olav, who is using
part prey on one another’s weak-
his vast army to forcibly convert
nesses, or else hide from outlaws
the Vikings to the religion of the
and form contingent communities.

White Christ. And there’s Skuld,

At one such, Moses and Abra-
the young woman who claims to
ham meet Father Ignatius, who
have been visited by the old gods
asks them to deliver a young
and seems to have some of their
woman, whom he cal s the Ves-
powers, and she has now gathered
tal Amata, to a facility where
a huge fleet of longships, also
they can investigate the fact that
heading for Stenvik…

she appears to repel the dead.

The first half of Swords of Good

Ignatius previously rescued the

Men introduces the main cast
woman from a carnival. Moses,
and sets up the situation. The rest

Abraham and Amata head north
of the book is a blow-by-blow
into an increasingly snowbound
account of the battle for Stenvik.

landscape, pursued by the carny

SWOrDS Of GOOD Men

The novel is written in short sec-
folk, encountering the usual set

Snorri Kristjansson
tions of between half a page and
of figures and tropes that inhabit

Jo Fletcher Books pb, 352pp, £14.99
two pages long, skipping between
contemporary zombie novels.

the many point of view characters.

Exit Kingdom poses the question Ian Sales

Much of the prose is dialogue,
of how, psychological y, one might
and what little descriptive prose
survive an apocalypse. Moses is

Jo Fletcher Books is a genre
that does exist tends to rely on
the product of a society permeated
imprint, and so the debut novel of
well-worn phrases and repeti-
by a simple but strong religious

UK-based Icelandic author Snorri
tion. Kristjansson’s decision to
faith. It is reflected in his speech,

Kristjansson has been packaged to
use modern phraseology for the
in his storytelling, in his expecta-
suit. The cover art depicts a war-
dialogue, however, does jar badly
tions of others’ behaviour. He has a
rior in mail and furs carrying a

– you do not, for example, expect
code of honour, and tries to main-
battle-axe, gazing out broodingly
a Viking to say “No problem”.

tain a sense of order in his life,
from beneath a Spangenhelm.

Given the short internal chro-
although he has lost everything he

The subtitle reads “Valhal a Saga,
nology of Swords of Good Men, the
held dear. His journeys may seem

Book I”. But this is no opener for a
fact that half of the book is spent
aimless but he is nonetheless in
fantasy saga. Swords of Good Men
describing a single battle, the
the grip of a powerful if obscure
is historical fiction, set in Scandi-
dialogue-heavy prose and modern
destiny. He is the gunslinger who
navia just before the turn of the
vernacular, the short sections and
arrives in a community when
second millennium.

multiple points of view, the book
most needed and moves on when

After two years of exile, Ulfar
was plainly designed to be a fast
the job is done: not a good man
is returning home with noble
read. There’s nothing wrong with
necessarily but a man who tries
cousin Geiri. They reach the town
that per se, but there’s a trade-
to do the right thing, all the while
of Stenvik, which has a reputa-
off between story and pace, and
uncertain what that might mean in
tion for successful raiding. Things
perhaps Swords of Good Men errs
a world so radical y changed.

don’t go quite as well as expected
a little too much toward the lat-

In this, Exit Kingdom is more

– Geiri’s diplomatic introduction
ter. At 352 pages, this is not the successful than its predecessor,
is rebuffed, and later when a fight
bloated tome typical of epic fan-
perhaps because Moses has more
breaks out in the longhouse, Geiri
tasy, though perhaps a little more
experience than Temple, more to
hits his head and fal s into a coma.

breadth of story would not have
consider, more to regret. This is

Just to make matters worse, Ulfar
gone amiss. Swords of Good Men
a much more intimate novel: the
has fallen in love with Lilia, the
will undoubtedly find fans, and
landscape Moses explores is inter-
abused wife of resident violent
they’ll eagerly await the second
nal rather than external and the
nutter, Harald. And then there’s
instalment… But despite all those
post-apocalyptic setting is merely
the healer, Valgard, who plans to
beefy Vikings swinging battle-axes
a beginning rather than the novel’s
use Harald to overthrow the king
the story could have done with a
apparent raison d’être.

of Stenvik, Sigurd, and as his advi-
little more meat on its bones.

76

BOOK ZOne › 21St centUrY Science fictiOn › We See a Different frOntier tasy fiction is the mithril-barded

Searle’s Chinese Room; Jackson’s
three-trunked oliphant in the

Mary’s room; also swampmen,
room, and it subtly colours and
blockheads, twin earthlings,
shapes the anthology throughout.

weather watchers, brains in vats,

Liz Williams’ ‘Ikiryoh’ is delicately
brain tissue gradual y replaced
poised on the threshold between
with circuitry, etc). Liu’s story blurs
fantasy and SF. “It would have
distinctions between ‘determined’

been called black magic, once.

and ‘predictable’, whilst Gregory’s

Now it is black science.” Paul
seems to fudge two different kinds

Cornel ’s faintly Moorcock-esque
of ‘self’ – roughly, stream-of-

‘One of our Bastards is Missing’

consciousness self vs psychological
is probably my pick of the swash-
and interpersonal self. However,
buckling yarns, though perhaps it
both stories are affecting and intel-
has more in common with histori-
lectual y provocative, and their eli-
cal fiction than fantasy per se.

sions do serve narrative purposes.

Three stories (Rachel Swirsky,

Overall the anthology offers a

Genevieve Valentine, Madeline
good diversity of subject, style,

Ashby) deal in different but com-
mood, accessibility and length

21st centUrY Science
plementary ways with sex and
but, with the exceptions of Karl
fictiOn
love between humans and robots.

Schroeder’s ‘To Hie from Far
edited by David G. Hartwell &

These stories share an interplay

Cilenia’ (a techno-thriller threaded

Patrick nielsen Hayden
between (a) the robot as metaphor
through a tapestry of augmented

Tor hb, 576pp, $34.99
for some real kind of oppression,
reality, MMORPGs-within-
and (b) the robot who implies a

MMORPGS, digital post-nations

Jo L. Walton
new axis of identity altogether,
and steampunk cosplay), Paolo
one which intersects with race,

Bacigalupi’s ‘The Gambler’ (about

21st Century Science Fiction
gender, class, sexuality, ability, age
clickbait journalism), and perhaps
assembles thirty-four stories from
and others. I take two things from

Cory Doctorow’s ‘Chicken Little’

the last thirteen-odd years. More
this. First, a fierce reluctance to

(about various things, including
precisely, it assembles thirty-
blur the lines between different
nudge economics), it also contains
four authors from those years,
forms of oppression; our zeitgeist
little sustained exploration of the
insofar as “nobody in this book
even takes care not to appropriate
hereafter of the buzz; as far as
came to wide notice before 2000”.

the experience of fictional robots.

I can remember, nobody hacks

One drawback of that selection

Second, prophetic expectation
cryptocurrency, snaps a selfie or
criterion is that the editors are a
of a new figure of oppression

3D-prints a harpoon.

bit less free to include authors who
may suggest unease with existing

I’ll just sign off with personal
should have come to wide notice.

struggles, unease with the existing
favourites: the robot triptych,

The anthology conveys that faint,
ensemble of political y-organised
especial y Ashby’s ‘The Education
inexpugnable belligerence of a
dimensions of identity.

of Junior Number 12’; the two
definitive textbook, positioned

John Scalzi’s breezy Golden
opulent and tyrannical y witty
somewhere between here’s the state

Age reboot sits nearby themati-
anthologies-within-the-anthology,
of the art, by its acknowledged mas-
cal y – Asimov’s Three Laws of

Catherynne M. Valente’s ‘How
ters and here’s the next big thing.

Robotics, only hold the robots.

to Become a Mars Overlord’ and

Stories do range from quite

James Cambias and Elizabeth Bear

Yoon Ha Lee’s ‘A Vector Alphabet
good to extremely good. They’re
also prod compellingly at machine
of Interstel ar Travel’; David
nicely sequenced too. I’m less wild
morality and machine mysticism.

Levine’s ‘Tk’tk’tk’, a charismatic
about the editorial metatext. We

Ken Liu and Daryl Gregory could
story of the Other, which has led
get a terse preface, then each story
fit into this cluster, with stories
me to believe that David Levine
gets its own little fanfare. These
drawing on neuroscience-savvy
has been somewhere on holiday;
intros are smart, but they’re fairly

Anglo-American philosophy of

Tony Bal antyne’s ‘The Waters of
spoilerish.

mind. It’s an interesting relation-

Meribah’, which out-Dicks Dick;

The preface points to “a world
ship, since philosophers working
and two incisive, physics-respect-
in which SF […] is a firmly estab-
in this area have already drawn
ing space operettas, Peter Watts’

lished part of the cultural land-
liberal y on speculative fiction

‘The Island’ and James Cambias’

scape”. That makes sense, but fan-
imagery (Chalmers’ zombies;

‘Balancing Accounts’.

BOOK reVieWS 77

›
centre of cultural colonialism.

themselves out. These include

In ‘Them Ships’ by Silvia
forging a disputed homeland in

Moreno-Garcia aliens have taken

Africa, intervention in the US
over Earth. Our narrator, a former

Civil War and a peaceful integra-
street scavenger, wonders why his
tion into Palestine. ‘A Heap of
cell-mate would want to escape

Broken Things’ by Sunny Moraine
what he regards as a cosseted life.

features a planet lit by two suns,

In J.Y. Yang’s ‘Old Domes’ Jing-
where human colonists carried out

Li is a cullmaster, charged with
a massacre a generation before. A
despatching guardians – the per-
local tour guide is confronted with
sonifications of buildings – before
that inheritance.

their renovation. The guardian

Sandra McDonald’s ‘Fleet’ is
of Singapore’s Supreme Court is
set a generation after the Night of
unwilling to go quietly.

Fire when solar flares destroyed

Fabio Fernandes’ ‘The Gam-
all electronic communication.

biarra Method’ reads a bit like a

The people of a Pacific island

1950s magazine story. Time travel
forge their future in isolation. In
is discovered in 2077. By accident.

‘Remembering Turinam’ by N.A.

We See a Different

In anti-gravitational lifts with an

Ratnyake a scholar from a defeated
frOntier
attached post-virtual environment.

people whose language and cul-
edited by fabio fernandes &

The mechanism is investigated
ture have been oppressed, all but

Djibril al-ayad
using the Gambiarra method –
forgotten, returns to his capital

Futurefire pb, 213pp, £9.00
how to do things with whatever
city to speak with his grandfather,
is at hand. Riya in ‘A Bridge of
the last remaining witness to the

Jack Deighton

Words’ by Dinesh Rao has spent
old days. Sofia Samatar’s ‘I Stole
most of her life in Krashnigar, the
the DC’s Eyeglass’ is the story of

By and large the language of
former colonial power. She is now

Pai-te and her sister Minisare who
science fiction has always been
involved in a project to decipher
has a spirit-eye and builds an iron

English, its explorations of other
the tattoos of the Thuri, one of the beast as a gesture of “defiance hon-worlds in the main tending to
two sects of her ancestral home-
our, dawn, tomorrow”.

describe their exploitation. This
land. Over this world hangs a

‘Vector’ by Benjanun Sriduang-
anthology il ustrates how lan-
mysterious spaceship broadcasting
kaew is set in a US-dominated
guage, or its suppression, has been
an unchanging coded message.

Thailand where no-one has dark
a primary tool of colonialism on

In Rahul Kanakia’s ‘Droplet’

hair any more, nor speaks Thai.

Earth. There is irony, then, that, as

Subhir has lived in India after his

A woman’s body has been turned

Ekaterina Sedia’s afterword notes,
parents took him there from his
into a viral weapon to undo the
all these stories were written in US
childhood home in California to
changes. In Gabriel Murray’s ‘ For-English. Yet the theme of resist-
avoid the ever worsening drought
ests of the Night’ the illegitimate
ance, the keeping of traditions,
conditions. On his return to the
son of the ex-colonial Captain
shines through.

US he finds out what real y hap-

Lyons, brought to Yorkshire to

‘The Arrangement of Their
pened. In Joyce Chng’s ‘Lotus’

act as his father’s valet, dreams

Parts’ by Shweta Narayan is a
most of the Earth is covered in
of the tiger that is stalking the
partly fabular tale of clockwork
water after an event called the
local neighbourhood. In ‘What
animals taken to pieces by an

Washing. Landers fight fiercely to

Real y Happened in Ficandula’ by

Englishman and the Artificer
hold on to their territories while

Rochita Loenen-Ruiz a cultural

Diva who stands up to him. The
boaters roam the Waterways,
misunderstanding leads to deaths
delightful y titled but pulpy ‘Pan-
exchanging and bartering. Boater
and reprisals, the memories of
cho Vil a’s Flying Circus’ by Ernest

Cecily and her partner one day
which are kept alive by the female

Hogan tel s how with the help of
come upon a source of precious
descendants of the colonised as

Nikola Tesla’s death ray Alejandro
drinkable water and food, giving
they themselves head for a new

Sahagún replaces Pancho Vil a
them a moral dilemma.

planet.

and sets out to recover his sweet-

Lavie Tidhar’s ‘Dark Continents’

As with most anthologies the
heart, abducted by Hol ywood
envisages several different ways
standard can be uneven, but each
producers. While a slight tale this
in which the past two centuries of
story works as speculative fiction,
rightly fingers Hol ywood as the

Jewish history could have worked
and four are very good indeed.

78

BOOK ZOne › eVeninG’S eMPireS › tHe ViOLent centUrY
there was more than just piracy
nor the will to sustain the diverse
involved: cloned sisters of the
range of human habitation that
group who took over his ship
had been built up.

arrive to attack him. Hari manages

One of the ways this comes
to turn the tables, leaving both
across is in a turning to the
assassins dead and making his
past. The novel is filled with
getaway, but straight away he
people telling stories about what
finds himself in peril again. So the
happened; some are presented as
novel progresses, in a breathless,
the unvarnished truth, though
nonstop sequence of flight and
mostly we recognise that they are
attack, capture and escape.

partial or incomplete truths at

Between the thril s, and McAuley
best. This dependence on story
writes the action scenes very well
is one of the major themes of
indeed, Hari begins to work his
the novel, reflected in a host of
way through the layers of betrayal
ways from the fact that Hari’s
that lies behind the initial attack,
most treasured possession is a
and at the same time discovers
book, to the titles McAuley gives
the true worth of the files in Dr
his sections: ‘Childhood’s End’,
eVeninG’S eMPireS

Gagarian’s head. Along the way he

‘Marooned Off Vesta’, ‘The Caves

Paul Mcauley
acquires a couple of unlikely allies,
of Steel’, ‘The Cold Equations’, etc.

Gollancz hb, 384pp, £14.99
the untrustworthy adventurer

This isn’t meant to tell us that this

Rav, and the independent-minded
is a recapitulation of old hard SF

Paul Kincaid
daughter of one of Dr Gagarian’s
works, but rather to suggest how
former colleagues, Riyya; but
much the stories we have been

There has been a strange progres-
he acquires far more enemies,
told shape the things we see.

sion in Paul McAuley’s Quiet War
including a religious sect known

The biggest story of all con-
sequence. The Quiet War and its
as the Saints, the cloned offspring
cerns the Bright Moment, when
immediate sequel, Gardens of the
of Sri Hong-Owen (a direct link
everyone alive across the solar

Sun, were set roughly five hundred with the other three volumes), and
system had the same brief vision
years in our future. The next vol-
most disturbing of al , members of
at exactly the same instant. This
ume, In the Mouth of the Whale,
his own family.

happened before Hari was even
took a great leap forward in time,

Evening’s Empires works as a
born, but it is still the greatest
and there has been another great
gripping action adventure, but it
thing in human experience, a mys-
leap in this fourth book, which
is more than that. Hari’s various
tery, a hope, the creator of cults
takes place around fifteen hundred
escapades take him to a variety
and instigator of wars. It is what
years after the whole sequence
of settlements scattered across

Dr Gagarian was investigating,
started. But as the sequence has
this far future solar system, and
but the truth about the experience
moved forward in time, so its
what we see is as convincing a
matters less than the legend. The
focus has narrowed. The first book
portrait of everyday life in space
way that so much is invested in the
had a wide cast of viewpoint char-
as anything McAuley has written,

Bright Moment seems to reflect
acters, this number was reduced
with the possible exception of The
all we need to know about how
in the next book, and In the Mouth

Quiet War itself. But there is one the expansion of The Quiet War
of the Whale moved between just
significant difference: where that
has been replaced by the decline
three viewpoints. Now, in Even-
first volume presented a system
of Evening’s Empires. Hari’s quest ing’s Empires, we follow the story of enterprise and optimism even
inevitably entangles with this great
of one character, Gajananvihari
in the face of war itself, what we
mystery, but the solution may not

Pilot, known as Hari.

see here is bankrupt, in social
be what anybody considered.

When we first meet him, Hari
and economic decline. We see

The Quiet War was one of the
has been cast upon a deserted
garden environments that have
best books McAuley has written,
rock, like some far future
been abandoned, systems that
and Evening’s Empires makes an

Robinson Crusoe. His family’s
are running down, economic
excellent companion to it. These
ship has been taken over by
structures that are close to slavery.

are books that, if there is any
pirates, and he has escaped, along

The posthumans are turning their
justice, will shape the stories we
with the head of Dr Gagarian.

backs upon humankind, and what
tell about our solar system for

Then we get our first clue that
remains has neither the energy
many years to come.

BOOK reVieWS 79

›
for the Gifted, but The Farm, a

Fogg is sent to eastern Europe and
training camp in Devon for super-
ends up joining local partisans
powered soldiers and spies. There
on a suicide mission, he thinks:

he develops a bond with Oblivion,

“Anything to justify this sojourn to
a handsome fellow whose power is
the outer realms of the war, where
to make things disappear. Within
nothing much happens but for the
five years they’re watching battles
mass transportation of the Jews”.

between the Union of Socialist

The book’s engagement with

Heroes and the rocket men of the
historical events is serious-

Reich over Leningrad, and as the
minded, past tragedies never
century passes it will take them to
reduced to a colourful backdrop
other wars, to Laos, Vietnam and
to adventure or a playground for

Afghanistan.

overgrown children. In the Marvel

The title might suggest compar-
universe, Hitler survived, his con-
isons with a comic like The League
sciousness transferred to a clone,
of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Cen-
and he became a super-vil ain:

tury, which showed heroes living
the Hate-Monger! There’s nothing
the length of the twentieth cen-
daft like that here. Yes, Werhner
tHe ViOLent centUrY
tury, but in tone this is more remi-

Von Braun does build himself that

Lavie tidhar
niscent of Ed Brubaker’s superb
squad of useless rocket-men, but

Hodder & Stoughton hb, 342pp, £18.99
run on Captain America, which
his brief presence serves to con-
similarly examined the intersec-
nect the post-war rush to acquire

Stephen Theaker
tion of war, spies and superheroes.

superheroes to the similar scram-

Comics aside, it covers similar
ble for rocket scientists that took

It’s a shame Patrick Stewart played
ground to Declare by Tim Powers,
place here on Earth-Prime.

Karla rather than Smiley in the
albeit at a much quicker pace, and

When the Jewish hero Sabra

BBC adaptation of Tinker, Tailor,
substituting Marvel and DC for
leaps into the air to battle blond

Soldier, Spy, because it deprives us that book’s Arabian Nights. Both

Schneesturm over the Warsaw
of the perfect one-man il ustra-
novels tell their stories mostly in

Ghetto, it isn’t just cool – though it
tion of The Violent Century: what
flashback, reflections prompted
is that too, very cool – it’s desper-
if George Smiley and Professor
by the handler who makes contact
ate and moving. When Fogg’s fel-

Charles Xavier were one and
again after a long period of silence.

low super-agent Tank is captured
the same man? In the Old Man’s

The main difference between the
and taken to Auschwitz, the book
world, Stanley Lieber (who adds
two is perhaps the one slightly
knows we can bear to read about
another excellent cameo to his
disappointing aspect of this book:

the pain of a tortured superhero,
already impressive list), Jerry

Declare eventual y moved past the
and uses that as a lever to force

Siegel and Joseph Shuster are
flashbacks, while the present day
us into thinking about the real
renowned experts on the super-
events here prove to be little more
atrocities of that place. Some of
heroes, rather than their creators.

than an epilogue.

that might make the book rather

The divergence from our his-

One frequent problem with
gruelling, but there’s plenty of dry
tory takes place in 1932, when
superhero fiction in prose is that it
humour, and lots of action, such
the German scientist Doktor
simply can’t keep up with the com-
as fog giants battling ice giants

Vomacht triggers the event that
ics; it could take paragraphs, even
in Paris, or “Dracul” versus the
creates a breed of super-powered,
pages, to ful y describe the con-

Wolfskommando in Transylvania.

ever-youthful humans. Our main
tents of even a single panel. Tidhar

There’s even romance, as Fogg fal s
interest is in Henry Fogg, who
cleverly uses French dashes for
for the mysterious Sommertag and
in keeping with the nominative
dialogue, short sentences, short
what she represents: she’s the one
determinism sometimes seen in
chapters (one hundred and sixty-
person who can step out of the
such matters develops the ability
four of them) and the present
war whenever she likes.

to control fog, mist and smoke.

tense to close that gap: “Oblivion

Coming hard on the heels of the

There’s no better power for a spy
kicks his door open. Slides out.

equal y good but stylistical y very
than to have somewhere to hide

Fogg follows. Crouching. Looking
different Martian Sands, The Vio-wherever he goes, and so Fogg is
up, shadow on the rooftop”. He
lent Century is an excellent novel in 1936 recruited by the Old Man,
also has a particular way with a
that demonstrates, once again, the
and taken not to Xavier’s School
subtly devastating sentence. When
impressive versatility of its author.

80

BOOK ZOne › PHOeniX › tHe Secret Of aBDU eL YeZDi › tHe Detainee spaceship home to a family of

Axxa, a star-worshipping, fire-eyed
alien race. Lucky has a bargaining
chip: a mysterious device that can
fly their craft. But sadly the Axxa
don’t have all the answers, and
things are getting worse: some-
thing is eating the stars. The story
follows Lucky’s quest across space
to find out who or what he is,
where he came from, and what he
can do to save the galaxy.

Lucky discovers he has unusual
abilities, which tie in to my favour-
ite part in the story: the physics
of Said’s universe. All matter is
mysteriously connected through
time and space, holding memo-

PHOeniX
ries of its previous atomic states.

tHe Secret Of aBDU eL

Sf Said

With the help of an astrolabe – a

YeZDi

David Fickling Books hb, 496pp, £12.99
cosmic compass of sorts – Lucky’s

Mark Hodder
consciousness can navigate these

Del Rey hb, 416pp, £16.99

Barbara Melville
connections, allowing him to plot
optimal courses for the Sunfire.

Peter Loftus

As a child, in my desperate

Then there are the stars, an intel-
attempt to grow up fast, I read a
ligence who communicate through

It is 1859, almost twenty years
great deal of adult science fiction.

song, but only ‘startalkers’ can hear
after the assassination of Queen

I never experienced the innocence
and speak with them. These and

Victoria. The British Empire is
and playfulness of stories for
many other elements are enriched
enjoying a period of peace and
children, which is something I’ve
through Dave McKean’s haunting,
prosperity facilitated by recent
always regretted. So now I’m in
beautiful il ustrations; an essential
leaps in science and technology. A
my adulthood, several hundred
dimension il uminating the story’s
select few work behind the scenes
years later, I like to pick up a book
more complex concepts.

to ensure the smooth running of
for young people, escape into their

At its heart, Phoenix is about
the Empire and furtherance of
shoes, and try to reclaim what I
identity, tolerance and relation-
its interests, a cabal that includes
missed. I often find I’m too much
ships. These themes are explored

King George V, Prince Albert,
of a stick in the mud, whimper-
throughout the quest, but one

Benjamin Disraeli, and Isambard
ing that the stories are patronis-
notable example is Lucky’s change-

Brunel. For years now they have
ing or shallow. So Phoenix, the
able feelings toward Bixa, a feisty
been guided by a mysterious
third of Said’s books for children,
young Axxa warrior with neon
visitor from the Afterlife: the spirit
surprised me on many levels. Not
needles in her hair. Initial y
of dead mystic Abdu El Yezdi.

only does it break new territory –
he is repelled by her presence,

But dark forces are at work. The
epic space adventures are, after al ,
convinced by scaremongering
leading lights of science, medicine
not in abundance on the children’s
rumours of the Axxa’s hostility. But
and engineering (such as Florence
shelf – but it is layered with depth
he comes around, learning humans

Nightingale and Charles Babbage)

and meaning right from the get go.

and Axxa have much in common.

begin disappearing in a spate of

It begins on the planet Phoenix.

These multilayered themes and
abductions. Abdu El Yezdi refuses

Our timid main character Lucky
ideas, reinforced by strong charac-
to speak with the living and in the
is a seemingly ordinary boy, until
terisation, make this book shine.

wake of a grisly sacrifice, a sinister
one day he wakes up covered with

It could have worked without
figure known as The Beast stands
ash. There’s no time to explain as
them, making for a fun but depth-
in the wings. The government, on
his mother guides him to escape
less guilty pleasure. I’m glad Said
the verge of signing a momentous
the imminent dangers of inter-
picked the path he did. The result
accord with the newly formed
planetary war. Lucky finds sanctu-
is a touching, meaningful story for

Greater German Confederation,
ary on the Sunfire: a dark, dank
children and adults alike.

and understandably anxious

BOOK reVieWS 81

›
about the recent turn of events,
by satellites, meting out godlike
summons intrepid explorer Sir
punishment to any offenders from

Richard Burton, fresh from dis-
on high. Clancy (along with the
covering the source of the Nile.

rest of the human detritus on the

The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi is
island) spends his life scavenging
the fourth book in Mark Hodder’s
amongst the piles of other people’s

Burton & Swinburne series.

refuse, recycling it for his own use.

Initiates of Hodder will know

It’s a miserable existence, made
what to expect: an alternative
even worse when the fog creeps
history mash-up of steampunk,
over the land at night, masking
time travel and derring-do set in
hideous terrors of its own – gangs

Victorian Britain. However, the
who use the heavy fog to go on
world-building that made the first
savage slaughtering raids. But,
three books so appealing is slightly
along the way he finds a ray of
muted this time around. Yes, the
sunshine in the form of a blind
reader is treated to more highly
girl called Lena, who lives in the
original technical marvels, but
tunnels underneath – she it is who
they don’t take centre stage.

gives him hope and, by extension,

The charismatic Burton makes
tHe Detainee
to the rest of the island.

a fitting protagonist, a noble sav-

Peter Liney

It does share an ideological
age endowed with a keen intellect,

Jo Fletcher Books hb, 298pp, £14.99
setting to E.J. Swift’s novel Osiris
statuesque bearing and quick fists.

in that there’s a deliberate and

Hodder provides enough nuance

Simon Marshall-Jones
divisive separation between rich
through back-story and character
and poor, physical y and social y.

quirks that our interest in and

Visions of dystopian futures have

The difference is that this is a
understanding of this iconic indi-
always been a popular subspecies
much grimmer book, getting to
vidual is furthered. Swinburne is
of genre literature, perhaps for
the heart of human nature in its
excellent too, although more than
reasons similar to why soap operas rawest state. The sights, sounds a few other historical characters
are popular: “My life may be bad,
and smel s of Clancy’s surround-
are name dropped rather than
but it’s not as bad as theirs”. Addi-ings, and the mass of humanity
fully realised.

tional y, there’s always the satisfy-
within it, invade the senses, with

The story is pretty simple at
ing spectacle of the underdog

Liney’s terse but descriptive prose
the outset, but as so often hap-
beating the system; that the spark
forming a pin-sharp picture of the
pens when time travel is involved,
of hope is still strong enough to
degradation this subset of human-
soon becomes a convoluted quag-
inspire and motivate. Dystopian
ity has been forced to endure.

mire that could very easily grate.

fiction appears to be particularly

However, with Lena as the cata-

Unfortunately, with plots like this,
apposite these days, given current
lyst, we gradual y see the Big Guy
authors tend to begin by filling
political climates. Perhaps here is
undergo a metamorphosis: from
whiteboards with alternate time-
yet another layer to ponder: the
a man who is very much shaped
lines that look like the wiring dia-
future is brittle, and human con-
by his environment to one who
gram of the Death Star, which for
trol over it is slippery. But does it
does the shaping. This is about
the reader can mean interminable
necessarily have to be so?

how, by changing and rearrang-
scenes of characters infodumping.

Protagonist Clancy, also known
ing one’s surroundings, one can

While Hodder hasn’t avoided this
as Big Guy, is an older man of
effect changes: by standing up and
trap completely, his neatest trick –
somewhat indeterminate age who
shouting, hearts and minds can
the Great Amnesia that followed
lives on an island which is essen-
be opened to possibilities. Despite

Victoria’s assassination – allows
tial y one large garbage dump. The
everything, humans are able to
the characters to operate without
place’s population consists of the
adapt to their circumstances –
knowledge of the manifold events
unwanted, the victims of a termi-
plus, with a little ingenuity, a dire
and reversals that precede this
nal y-broken society, divided from
situation can be made much more
latest instalment. The somewhat
the mainland where those who
bearable.

unwieldy exposition notwith-

‘have’ live in luxurious isolation

With this debut novel Liney is
standing, this novel is a cracking
from the ‘have-nots’. The island-
clearly setting out his genre cre-
romp set in a milieu to which I
ers are kept there, not through
dentials. It will be interesting to
will happily return time and again.

being guarded or fenced in, but
see what he will conjure up next.

82

BOOK ZOne › SOMe reMarKS › SHaMan
that Speculative Fiction (which
bursts rather than from cover to
would appear to be his preferred
cover. Undoubtedly, though, Ste-
definition of SF) “thrives because
phenson’s measured, intelligent
it is ideas porn”. If that’s the case,
authorial voice comes through
then tissues should be at the
strongly; the only exception being
ready as this collection of essays,
when he opts to write a foreword
lectures, journalism and even
to a book by fellow Midwestern
some short fiction zigzags wildly
author David Foster Wal ace in
through a wide range of subjects
what would appear to be his own
and ideas: the health dangers
approximation of David Foster
arising from us sitting around so

Wal ace. The dissonance between
much nowadays (‘Arsebestos’ – an
the two authors’ styles doesn’t
interesting choice to open a book
quite work, with the reader’s
that most people, presumably, will
attention likely to slip off his sen-
be reading while sitting down);
tences with little chance of finding
why secularists failed to under-
purchase.

stand the potential consequences

Arguably, the book’s contents
when dealing with the kind of
should have been more openly

SOMe reMarKS
religious beliefs found among
sign-posted; as it is, there are
neal Stephenson
members of the Branch Davidian
a couple of short stories here,

Atlantic Books pb, 326pp, £9.99
community in Waco; and why
dropped in just when you least
literary critics don’t tend to rate
expect them. Of the new content,

Paul F. Cockburn

SF, even though science fiction has
the alleged one sentence opener to
effectively become mainstream.

a thriller Stephenson suggests he

Seattle-based author Neal

For the most part Stephenson
will never complete, “about a serial

Stephenson has a reputation for
makes his arguments well enough,
killer on the loose in the Shire”, is
general y writing lots. Not in
and he can provide insights that
nowhere as amusing as his cyber-
the Barbara Cartland sense of
stick with you – such as his asser-
punked-to-the-max flight of fancy
quantity; we’re talking size here.

tion that crime dramas have been
when asked who would win a fight

Stephenson’s novels are long, not
drawn to the episodic nature of
between himself and William Gib-
least because of their narrative
most TV dramas while romance
son. I genuinely laughed out loud
scope and his attention to detail.

has become a significant movie
at his “they were only peasants, we

So this volume, which he intro-
genre for precisely the opposite
did not care” line.

duces as a “compilation of what are
reason. On occasions, though,

The principal aim of this kind
drol y referred to as my ‘shorter’

they can feel somewhat light; you
of collection, especial y in this
works” (though one essay, ‘Mother
can sense his frustration at the
internet age, is not so much to

Earth, Mother Board’, runs for 118
word counts imposed on him by
preserve an individual author’s
pages) is somewhat unusual.

their original publications. Not
writing for posterity, but to bring

Whether this real y is just the
that everything’s necessarily bright
examples of their writing together

“shameless white-washing of [his
and rosy when Stephenson’s given
in such a way to help give an inter-
own] historical record, picking
the chance to burrow down into
ested reader some impression of
only the good stuff, and editing
a subject. The aforementioned
the author beyond what might be
even that to make it look bet-

‘Mother Earth, Mother Board’, for
gleaned from their novels. Some
ter”, or simply a means for his
example, is a somewhat patchy

Remarks – an accurate enough,
publisher to get another Neal
piece of work; some glittering
if annoyingly self-depreciatory

Stephenson book out pretty damn
moments, but also far too many
title – certainly leaves you with
quick, is debatable. If the former,
data-heavy longueurs that you just
an impression of the man and
then the author is the first to point
want to skip past.

the wide spread of his geeky-
out that most of what is included

Some may also find the switch-
ness. Whether it is enough to
won’t be that difficult to track
ing formats disconcerting, as the
attract new readers to his novels
down online in its original form.

volume shifts from essays and
is another matter; all told, it lacks

If the latter, then it at least has the
articles to the odd university
the punch of his earlier book, In
potential to be an introduction for
address and a public online Q&A.

the Beginning…Was the Command
new readers.

True, this is less a concern if you

Line. One for completists rather

At one point Stephenson writes
read the book in (relatively) small
than newbies.

BOOK reVieWS 83

›
last Ice Age, as has been suggested,
materialist like me, the interest
then the date could be as late as
is in how Robinson plays it out
the Clovis culture of 11,500 bc in
within the detailed visualisation of

North America, and either coast
a world which differs from ours in
could be the location. Robinson
so many ways.

isn’t telling us because his focus is

For an alternative view I showed
completely on the early adult life
the book to a more spiritual y-
of his major character. The book
minded friend, but her initial
comes with the recommendation
comments were about its type size,

“perfect for fans of Iain M. Banks”,
paragraphing, weight and bulk
but if Orbit had decided not to

(it’s a big book) – Loon’s spiritual
present it as science fiction they
development didn’t impress her.

could safely have left out the M.

It’s often said that “there would

Fantasy elements are equal y
never have been chiefs and witch
scarce: the story is told by the
doctors if people had wanted the

“third wind” which visits and
witch doctor to be the chief”; but
boosts Loon the shaman at
the tribal groups of Loon’s world
moments of extreme physical
are so small that the shamans and

SHaMan
stress, but it’s only at those few
their female counterparts are the

Kim Stanley robinson
moments that the narrative
joint leaders. What marks Loon

Orbit hb, 457pp, £18.99
shifts into first person and has
out as a future shaman is his
a paranormal element. Loon’s
artistic talent, the ability to see

Duncan Lunan
culture views animals as persons,
and pull out the shapes of living
with whom one can have sex
creatures latent in wood and rock,

Shaman is neither SF nor fantasy
and with whose spirits one can
and his reluctant evolution as a
in any of the usual senses. The
converse, but the communication
shaman is traced by the growth
cover tel s us that it’s “An awe-
is normal y one-way unless
of his artistic skil s, along with
inspiring vision of how we lived
hal ucinogenic substances are
memory training in the narrative

30,000 years ago”, but the book
involved.

songs and the practical skil s
comes without the explanatory

In short, were Robinson not
required to be a leader. Because of
notes which Stephen Baxter
so well known for the Mars
his art, which is the one thing he’s
has placed at the ends of his
trilogy, Galileo’s Dream etc, then real y good at, there are no other

Northland trilogy, because there’s

Shaman could well be viewed as
candidates for leader – there is no
no alternative history involved.

a mainstream novel. It is none
external contest and the nearest

Robinson has set his story on
the worse for that: the landscape,
thing to internal conflict is that
the edge of the ice cap during
the climate and the cultures
he’s not very good at the memory
a glaciation – since there are
are portrayed with the kind of
work. In the struggle to regain his
mammoths, and if the ‘Old Ones’

attention to detail that would
freedom and his wife’s from their
with whom his characters share
be needed for survival in those
captors, he matures as a man but
the landscape are Neanderthals,
times – arguably the true history
his spiritual development is slight.

then presumably it’s during the
of the world over the 200,000

As a materialist, I’m quite
glaciation before last, perhaps
years or so that we’ve been here,
relieved that the action of Shaman
in the ‘Heinrich event’ cold
with interglacial warmings like the
isn’t spaced-out in imagined
snap around 27,000 BC. But
present one as mere interludes.

spiritual realms. Loon triumphs
there were several of those at

The plot is one of the oldest there
through a gruelling journey across

5,000–6,000 year intervals
is: young man matures in difficult
a glacier, not by a shape-shifting
between 21,000 bc and 46,000
circumstances, finds girl, loses
contest with the shaman of the
bc, accompanied by Neanderthal
girl, lands in trouble when he goes
ice people. If New Age readers
diebacks. The previous ice age,
looking, but makes it through due
are drawn by the title, expecting
around 70,000 bc and associated
to tough teacher who turns out to
spirit journeys of equal length to
with the eruption of Toba in
be good guy. Heinlein could have
be portrayed as vividly, they may

Sumatra, is probably too far back
drafted it, the older John Wayne
be dissatisfied or disappointed,
for Homo sapiens in northwest
could have starred in it – it’s
but Robinson’s message is that to

Europe, if that’s the setting; but if
definitely more True Grit than Star qualify as a leader, it’s real-world

Neanderthals survived into the

Wars or Lord of the Rings. For a experience that counts.

84

BOOK ZOne › fUtUre interrUPteD BY JOnatHan MccaLMOnt fUtUre interrUPteD
by Jonathan McCalmont

4.

You Don’t Have to Be Your Daddy’s Batman.

In my last column, I mentioned

What if Gernsback had actual y
dark psychotic force of Frank
my desire to widen my horizons
paid his writers? Chances are

Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns
and consider how other forms
that contemporary SF would
could never have existed without
of literature have dealt with the
be nothing more than official y
the camp and colourful Batman of
need to re-invent themselves
sanctioned Time Machine fan-

1960s TV.

and find new audiences.

fiction in much the same way that

This process of cultural drift

However, while this first
contemporary superhero comics
is universal. All elements of our
snapshot is devoted to the world
continue to tell and retell the
culture have a finite lifespan
of comics, I am less interested
story of a child who witnessed
and ideas that one day seem
in banging a drum for such
the murder of his rich socialite
vibrant and relevant inevitably
brilliant contemporary SF titles
parents.

grow hackneyed, decadent and
as Saga, DMZ, The Massive, The While the tight editorial control
oppressive unless they find a

Nightly News and Prophet than exerted by Marvel and DC may
way of renewing themselves and

I am in looking at some of the
ensure that most of their writers
adapting to the times. We see this
ways in which the mainstream of
are compelled to produce nothing
in the re-invention of Santa Claus

American comics deals with its
more than disposable fluff, it is
just as much as we do in today’s
huge back catalogue of old ideas.

clear that characters like Batman
preference for historical visions of

As with contemporary science
and Superman do occasional y

King Arthur at the expense of the
fiction, it is possible to trace a
undergo radical reinventions.

more romantic interpretations of
direct line between today’s super-

There is not only a clear difference
the character found in the work
hero comics and the pulps of
between the bored and drug-
of Thomas Malory. Most cultural
the 1930s. However, while the SF
addled playboy of Bob Kane’s
artefacts are little more than
magazines helped to establish
original run on Detective Comics
creative variations on established
a set of cultural commons that
and the bare-knuckle corporate
themes. We are trained to think
anyone can use to write their own
brand manager laid down by
of the history of our culture as
stories, comic publishers hoarded

Grant Morrison in Batman
a long, straight road out of the
ideas and policed who got to

Incorporated, there is also a clear past but human culture is more
write what and how. Indeed, the
sense in which each of these
like a vast Darwinian swamp,
structure of the American comics
iterations were responding to the
teeming with established species
industry could easily have been
times in which they were created.

and chance mutations that may
replicated in SF publishing if

Grant Morrison’s wonderful y
or may not find their place in a
only Hugo Gernsback’s legendary
self-aggrandising critical memoir
forever changing world. While
venality and corruption had been

Supergods charts not only how
these universal Darwinian
augmented by strategic vision.

Batman’s costume changed, but
processes may also shape the

What if Gernsback had secured
also how each new re-iteration
evolution of comics, the tight
exclusive rights to the works
of the character could be seen as
editorial and copyright controls
of H.G. Wel s and Jules Verne?

a direct response to the last; the
applied to superhero characters

BOOK reVieWS 85

›
means that their re-inventions
complain of how oppressive and
then the unstable utopia created
are significantly less common
restrictive it is to expect all genre
by generations of concerned but
and much easier to track. The
writers to have read the same
political y naïve vigilantes. While
recent history of mainstream
dead white men. The genre and

Miller and Moore’s attempts to
comics reads like a playbook of
comic-hating literary critic Harold
reboot the language of comics and
evolutionary strategies intended to

Bloom referred to the pressure
place it on a more ideological y
adapt 1930s ideas to a 21st Century
of cultural history as the Anxiety
sound footing may be reminiscent
world.

of Influence and explained
of both cyberpunk and feminist

Every form of popular culture
that creativity comes not from

SF’s attempts to radical y rewrite
comes with its own form of
internalising the influence of

SF’s cultural history, most
baggage; failed experiments,
other writers but setting out to
substantial comics published in
outdated successes, abandoned
deliberately mis interpret that
the last thirty years can be seen as
histories and fleeting obsessions
which came before.

attempts to deal with the legacy
continue to inform not only the

Arguably the most potent
of Miller and Moore’s artful
production of new culture but
misinterpretations of recent
self-consciousness.

also its consumption. Different
comics history are those of

The anxiety of influence
traditions relate to this baggage

Frank Miller and Alan Moore.

confronted by Miller and
in different ways. For example, SF

Troubled by various aspects of

Moore is the same anxiety that
people tend to speak of it fondly
their cultural history and yet
affects contemporary science
as a form of inter-generational
eager to partake, Miller and
fiction: How to tell a story when

‘conversation’. Comics fans, on

Moore set out to confront these
everything has either been said
the other hand, refer to their
problems by subsuming them
before or said in such a way that
cultural history as ‘continuity’

in a brutal and yet oddly self-
it marginalises everyone who is
and use it as both a barrier to
conscious form of realism that
not a white, male baby boomer?

entry and a means of enforcing
expressed historic problems as

As with the genre writings of
community values. Indeed, if
ugly facts about the world. Clearly

John Scalzi and James S.A.

all iterations of Batman must fit
incensed by the jocular tone and

Corey, some comics writers
with continuity then authors wil
lightweight subject matter of 1960s
have responded to the anxiety
have less freedom to write what

Batman, Miller’s Dark Knight
by simply denying its existence
they want and anyone wanting to
shows us precisely what kind
and yearning for a simpler time
join the conversation will be told
of broken and obsessive person
with simpler politics. A good
to do their homework. Though
would don spandex in an effort
example of an unapologetical y
ostensibly different, these two
to fight crime. Conversely, the
nostalgic comic would be Grant
approaches to cultural history
far more liberal-minded Moore

Morrison’s All-Star Superman, but
are actual y two sides of the same
explores the politics of super-

Alan Moore’s self-penned ABC
coin as non-white, non-male and
heroism by presenting us with
comics including Tom Strong and
non-western writers frequently
first the hideous dystopia and

Promethea see him struggling to

86

BOOK ZOne › fUtUre interrUPteD › HiDe Me aMOnG tHe GraVeS › tHe DiaMOnD DeeP
the anxiety of influence and the
strategy chosen by the New Weird
was to not only embrace the
history of SF but the history of
fantasy, horror and crime too.

Rather than weighing authors
down with yet more expectations,
the decision to treat all genres as
equal y accessible has empowered
authors to come to terms with
their anxieties and move on with
their lives. This mood of free-
wheeling postmodernity may
fuel the work of such New Weird
and post-New Weird writers as

China Miéville, Kathe Koja, Mary

Gentle and Kameron Hurley but
it reaches its logical conclusion
find a way of turning nostalgia
in the muscular Dadaism of such

HiDe Me aMOnG tHe GraVeS
into a creatively fertile sensibility.

Grant Morrison titles as JLA
tim Powers

Another interesting attempt
and Batman and Robin. The most

Corvus pb, 511pp, £7.99
at coping with the anxiety of
striking thing about these series
influence is to produce comics
is that, as with his trippy fantasy

Lawrence Osborn
that are about comics and thereby
thriller series The Invisibles,
transform superheroes into

Morrison clearly does not give a

Tim Powers has returned to
literary critics. While a lot of
fuck about either continuity or
the world of his 1989 novel The
contemporary comics contain
consistency as he blows through

Stress of Her Regard. Hide Me
meta-textual elements, Warren
ideas with little concern about

Among the Graves is largely set in Ellis’s Planetary is an exploration how they might fit together in the

Victorian London between the
of comics history from their pulpy
reader’s head.

years 1862 and 1877 and involves
roots through to the tedium of

Batman and Robin is
two main sets of characters, one
post- Watchmen grimdark. Weird,
particularly interesting in this
fictional and the other histori-
oblique and almost completely
respect as Morrison treats all the
cal. The main fictional characters
inaccessible to anyone without
inconsistencies of Batman’s history
are John Crawford, a veterinary
a decent understanding of
as disparate chapters in a single
surgeon and the son of one of the
comics history, Planetary uses
life: Sure Batman spent a number
protagonists of the earlier novel,
the same creative strategy as
of years living with an under-
and ex-prostitute Adelaide McKee.

authors like Adam Roberts and
aged boy and then grew chest

Their historical counterparts are

M. John Harrison who apply the
hair and got all sexy with femme

Christina Rossetti, her siblings
techniques of genre writing to the
fatales but that doesn’t mean that
and some of their associates.

history of science fiction in an
he has to be either or both of

The book opens with the teen-
effort to ask awkward questions
those people now! Manacled to a
age Christina reawakening the
about both the genre’s past and its
psychologist’s couch and forced
spirit that had possessed her
future.

to accept and move past all the
uncle and now resides in a statu-

It doesn’t take a great critic
inconsistencies of his cultural
ette belonging to her father. She
to look at the current state of
history, Morrison’s Batman exudes
later admits this to her sister and
the field and realise that the
the manic spiritual energy of a
together they attempt unsuccess-
boundaries between genres have
man who, having realised he has
ful y to lay the spirit to rest. Thus
been almost entirely dissolved. As
nothing left to lose, lives every day
the scene is set for a complex plot

Martin Lewis put it in a review
as if it were his last, an explosion
in which the protagonists struggle
at the website Strange Horizons,
of creative energy that cleanses as
to rid London of these beings.

“Quietly, and without any fuss,
it consumes, thereby begging the

Powers has done a masterful
the New Weird has won”. Indeed,
question of how long this fucker
job of reinventing the vampire
like all genre movements, the New
can burn before all that’s left is an
myth with these creatures, which

Weird was an attempt to overcome
oily stain.

he identifies with the biblical

BOOK reVieWS 87

Nephilim. These ‘vampires’ have
from the home system appears
some of the characteristics of the
to attack them with robots. Ruby
classical daimon: they draw on the discovers that the spider-like
vitality of their human victims,
robots are, in fact, post-human
but in return they endow those
beings who are barred from the
victims with remarkable creativity.

home world. Only true biological

As ever, Powers tel s a gripping
humans are allowed there. The
story, weaving the biographies of
home system has a class structure
several historical characters into
that makes the one on board
a romp around the underbel y of

The Creative Fire seem positively

Victorian London. I particularly
egalitarian. The Diamond Deep
like the way he superimposes
of the title, for example, is a
a secret supernatural history
monstrously-complicated space
upon the public history we all
station with a regime that makes
know. The creativity of the Ros-
that of the spiders seem humane.

setti family and their friends

Ruby versus diamond. All of the
and acquaintances as well as the
social advances that Ruby made
tragedies they suffer are explained
in the first book have apparently
in terms of their interaction
tHe DiaMOnD DeeP
been for nothing as she, along
with the Nephilim. Powers has

Brenda cooper
with the rest of the ship’s company,
researched the Rossettis and their

Pyr pb, 450pp, $18.00
are now regarded as primitive
context meticulously and uses that
peasants.

research to bring both Victorian

Jim Steel

Some of the flaws of the first

London and his secret history to
novel are still present. Cooper
life. I am fascinated by the way he

Book two of Cooper’s Ruby’s
isn’t breaking any new ground
takes apparently trivial details (eg

Song diptych pretty much carries
in the setting, and all of her

Gabriel Rossetti’s pet name for his
straight on from The Creative Fire.

characters are terribly earnest. The
wife, Trelawny’s mysterious mis-

It mirrors it plot-wise in some

Creative Fire’s AI seems positively tress Miss B) or careful y selected
respects too, starting off as it does
nonchalant in comparison to its
quotations from Christina and her
with the brutal murder of another
human passengers. They have
circle and uses them to reinforce
one of Ruby’s friends. Ruby is,
none of the dry humour that
his secret history.

of course, now ensconced in the
would be found in the space

One of the great strengths of
upper class of this generation
operas of Lois McMaster Bujold
his writing is the complexity of
starship’s stratified society,
or Iain M. Banks, and this does
his characterisation. Christina is
although her position there is
tend to flatten them somewhat.

torn between guilt over her teen-
one of tolerance rather than that

But Cooper powers through
age indiscretion and genuine love
of power. This, we know, will
these problems. This volume also
for the entity that once possessed
probably change; not least because
benefits from moving outside
her uncle. Similar points could be
the novels are self-consciously
the confines of The Creative Fire.

made about every one of the cen-
modelled on the career of Evita

Ruby still has her destiny, and her
tral characters. And even the sec-

Peron.

relationship with Joel, but there
ondary characters Trelawny and

The characters are also aware
are now more paths that these

Swinburne are lovingly developed.

that the centre cannot hold; the
things can take. And Ruby still

I confess that I attempted
ship The Creative Fire is fast
gets to sing on occasion, although

(unsuccessful y) to pick holes in
approaching its home planet and
the reader might suspect that
his construct. Perhaps a scholar of
change is coming whether they
she inflicts power bal ads on her
the period would have more luck.

like it or not. Ruby, as her name
audience.

His attention to detail and his
suggests, is the jewel at the centre

It feels as if this universe has
ability to manipulate those details
of this story and all the rest of the
been wrung out with these two
to serve the story he is telling are
characters orbit around her in
books and Cooper will be wise if
quite amazing.

epicycles and ellipses. Even when
she moves on to something fresh.

This is intelligent, literate super-
the viewpoint shifts to others, they

However, it hasn’t outstayed its
natural storytelling at its very best,
are never far from her.

welcome and that, in itself, is an
a Gothic novel for the twenty-first

The Creative Fire’s civil war is
achievement in this overstuffed
century.

interrupted when another ship
field.

88

MUtant POPcOrn BY nicK LOWe › tHOr: tHe DarK WOrLD › enDer’S GaMe mutant
popcorn
nick LoWe
tHOr: tHe DarK WOrLD
enDer’S GaMe

HOW i LiVe nOW

JUStin anD tHe

KniGHtS Of VaLOUr
aBOUt tiMe
tHOr: tHe DarK WOrLD
cLOUDY WitH a cHance

Branagh looks like the unlikely

Of MeatBaLLS 2
it’s hard to remember now that
tHOr: tHe DarK WOrLD
saviour of the Universe. Mark
was in quite a lot of trouble at

Protosevich’s drafts for Vaughn
riDDicK
one stage, losing three directors
were mediaeval in setting and
and forcing a reluctant Natalie
eschewed sf elements entirely for
r.i.P.D.

Portman to honour her contract
a literalist reading of the Marvel
after penultimate choice Patty
gods as gods, which would have

Jenkins departed, while the death
been whol y disastrous for the
of original screenwriter Don

Avengers cross-franchise; and

Payne, a key figure in the rescue
it seems to have been Branagh
of the first film from its very
who pushed for a strongly
unhappy pre-Branagh versions,
science-fictional reading with a
saw substitutes hastily bussed in
present-day setting, Jane Foster,
from Marvel’s animation arm and
the Casket of Ancient Winters
the Captain America franchise.

as a terraforming device, and

But Kevin Feige’s increasingly
a Hubble-based imaging of
assured creative management

Yggdrasil. Even so, the first Thor
and the usual uncredited-but-
was an understandably nervous
unmistakable script buffing from
proposition, Marvel’s first high-

Joss Whedon (“You must think
stakes expansion of its cinematic
me a piece of bread that needs
universe into the cosmic realms
to be buttered so heavily”) have
of Jack Kirby’s most grandiose
produced what is not only the
imaginings, and it anxiously
most ravishingly Kirbyesque of all
bal asted its transdimensional

Marvel films to date, but one of
spectacle shenanigans with
the most cognitively adventurous
tiresomely cod-Shakespearean
explorations of comics cinema’s
familial business to stop it floating
potential to mediate between
too far from the familiar.

the discursive longeurs and

But this upbudgeted post-
expodumps of old-media sf and its

Avengers sequel wears its

ADHD-rocking visual cousin.

transdimensional threads with

One day the creative history of
something much more like
the Marvel cinematic universe will
swagger, with a promiscuously
be need to be properly written,
portal-hopping, aeon-spanning,
because the more emerges about
world-juggling plot about a war of
the abandoned Matthew Vaughn
darkness out of Svartalfheim, and
version of Thor, the more Sir Ken
an imaginatively thrilling embrace

fiLM reVieWS 89

›
of the first film’s determinedly
whole fabric of reality is going
from the earthbound routine of
science-fictional interpretation of
to go berserk!” And indeed
supersoldiery and SHIELD ops

Yggdrasil and the Nine Realms as

Thor boards the tube to find
to the wild outer realms of the
a Lakoffian cloak of conceptual
that Greenwich is only three
comics imagination, and confirms
metaphor wrapped around what
stops from Charing Cross. But
the Thor films as the real engine of

Jane Foster correctly parses

Kirbyologists will also enjoy an
the MCU. All Kirby’s daring and
as a hypocosmic tube-map of
early cameo by Thor’s very first
conceptual overreach has been
wormholes. The final act seems to
nemesis from Journey into Mystery
channelled into this node of the
have been stitched together from

83, whose essential feature is even

Marvel cinematic world-tree, to
two unrelated drafts, beginning as
belatedly given a point.

be processed and redistributed to
it does with a journey to Mordor

If there’s any feeling of letdown,
the outlying franchise realms. But
starring Thor and Loki as Frodo
it’s that the ingredients feel a
make no mistake: Asgard rules
and Sam and a weaponised Jane
bit undercooked and the best
over al .

as the Ring, and then somehow
concepts – the assault on Asgard,
turned (by a plot point made
busting Loki out of clink, the

Newly busted out of development
from a Vimto can, assuredly a
who’s-backstabbling-who plot

Helheim is enDer’S GaMe: a
mighty Marvel first-and-last) into
trapdoors, the climactic portal-
risky attempt by South African
an inspired transdimensional
dash punchup around the
director Gavin Hood, who made
fisticuffs unleashing the full mad
enneacosm – wind up serving
his international name as a literary
canvas of Kirby’s mythosphere as
another of those placeholder plots
writer-director of screen versions
all Nine Worlds simultaneously
about excavating a cosmic-WMD
of novels by Sienkewicz and
open dimensional gates to the

MacGuffin (“Bury it deep where

Fugard, to get back into his own

University of Greenwich. Stel an
no-one will ever find it”, unless
master game following an unlikely

Skarsgård, having recovered from

Natalie Portman happens to be
tour of duty in the Foxheim
an early episode at Stonehenge
ambling around the Nine Realms
branch of Marvel’s Yggdrasil with
where he “proceeded to strip
and finds it in plain view) and
the unhappily received X-Men
naked and terrorise tourists with
closing the vil ain’s apocalyptic

Origins: Wolverine. The adaptation scientific equipment”, gives due
holes in the sky before any more
of Orson Scott Card’s iconic novel
warning of apocalyptic levels of
tourist landmarks are digital y
must have looked like something
fun: “increases and decreases in
trashed. But it’s still a game-
of a poisoned chalice, having
gravity, spatial extrusions – the
raiser for Marvel Studios’ escape
been let go by Warners after
enDer’S GaMe

90

MUtant POPcOrn BY nicK LOWe › HOW i LiVe nOW › JUStin anD tHe KniGHtS Of VaLOUr years of developmental tinkering
including a script stint by Card
himself, and re-emerging now
as an independent production.

The most serious attempt before

Hood’s was David Benioff’s 2004
version for Wolfgang Petersen, but
even they were ultimately unable
to crack the novel’s multiple layers
of Hol ywood-proofing in its cast
of six-year-olds, its surrogate
antagonists for an offscreen
nemesis barely glimpsed, its
climax which turns out to have
already happened when you
get there, and its final rug-pull
decisively undercutting all the
preceding narrative simplicities

HOW i LiVe nOW
to propel the character and his
sequels into a different, finer, and
teen novel, and not just because
sibling Peter Wiggin (who simply
very much stranger kind of sf
its point resides precisely in its
drops from sight); but some
altogether.

hero’s not being a teen. Far more
extraordinary things are retained,

Nobody involved seems to want
richly and importantly, it’s an
including Ender’s truly bizarre
to speak warmly for the author,
artful y deconstructed Heinlein
tablet game and the full-on
whose own strident hostility
juvenile in which exhilarating
revelation ending, which has
to buggers (the film goes with
space-cadet games of soldier are
if anything been more heavily
his later substitute “Formics”)

framed and undermined by a

Mormonised than the book
triggered a boycott call to which
dark adult narrative about the
version. Character timelines are
the filmmakers have offered the
real implications of weaponising
tweaked to make Dragon Army
backhanded reassurance that Card
child soldiers into instruments of
mostly agemates and nod gently
was locked out of the building and
species-killing mass destruction,
to sidequel Ender’s Shadow, but
stiffed of a share in the profits.

and which modulates boldly at the
the only major change is the

But those who’ve grown up with
end into the first of Card’s resonant
elimination of the protracted space
the Enderverse have long since
sf palimpsests of Mormon myth,
travel and associated effects of
made their personal peace with
as Ender the xenocide becomes
relativistic ageing which underpin
the fact that Card’s assorted LDS
an interplanetary avatar of Joseph

Mazer Rackham’s presence in this
trippinesses are the source of

Smith, American Moses (apologies

volume and the numerous baroque
his best work’s complexity and
for the earworm) and blasts off
time-dilation effects that enliven
strangeness, and certainly baked
to the stars on his mission of
the sequels as the characters’

far too deep into his fiction to
speaking for the dead.

relative ages desynchronise. The
be merely shrugged away in

For the most part, Hood’s
climax now takes place not on
embarrassment. In recent years
adaptation is an exhilarating

Eros but in the Formic home

Ender’s Game has found itself
swerve-ride of carcrashes narrowly
system, which doesn’t make a
normalised and conceptual y
averted. Ender is aged up to twelve
lot of physical sense but allows
sanitised by being claimed for the
and played by a fifteen-year-old,

Butterfield himself to play the
young-adult canon, a classification
but Asa Butterfield turns out to
ending, and even to tease with
that safely taxonomises away
carry the role quite beautiful y,
the option of further instalments,
most of the things that make
even if everyone else is pretty
which he could equal y well play
it such an extraordinary book.

woeful – particularly Harrison
now or in fifty years’ time if the

While the classification isn’t

Ford, whose Hyrum Graff seems
audience is still there.

entirely unwarranted, given
to have misheard his character’s
that it’s about the core YA
name as a casting note. A few

Another iteration of the YA
genre theme of kids being lied
unworkable elements have been
war-novel adaptation comes in
to by adults, it’s in important
sensibly ditched, particularly

Kevin Macdonald’s HOW i LiVe
respects the very opposite of a
those involving superblogger
nOW, from Meg Rosoff’s feisty

fiLM reVieWS 91

›
fable of a life-bruised American
protagonist, whose sparky teenage
for the fact that her native County
fifteen-year-old transplanted to
wit and newly-tapped capacity for

Carlow lilt, which is every bit

England on the eve of WW3,
love become her keys to survival
as lovely as Chris Hemsworth’s
and her Cold Mountain odyssey
in an adult world that has grimly
golden bass, is an instrument
to reunite her scattered cousins.

lost the plot. Saoirse Ronan is
tuned for comedy. Luckily in

Though presented initial y as a
as fine as you’d expect in her
animation nobody knows you’re a
romance, the story’s real heart is
reconceived version of the role, but
pale blonde waif with a portfolio
the heroine’s relationship with the
without her character’s defining
of solemn dramatic roles, so
eight-year-old girl cousin with
humour and warmth (and without
she’s able here to voice a busty
whom she escapes on her perilous
her companion’s supplementary
warrior barmaid in hot leather
homeward trek. But if Ender’s
powers of superadorability and
britches who more than holds her

Game is an adult story remade
sheepdog-trialling), the narrative
own against the similarly native-
as a YA film, How I Live Now
becomes little more than a
accented Freddie Highmore and
makes daringly few concessions
protracted post-apocalyptic

James Cosmo. The actual plot is
to the novel’s original audience
trudging picture, and stacks up
a bafflingly dense Euro-twist on
and fanbase, to the point where
particularly poorly against 2009’s

The Sword in the Stone in which
one seriously wonders why they
similarly-themed, but little-seen,
knightliness has been forbidden
bothered. It’s not that the actual

Australian invasion fantasy
under bureaucratic legislation,
storyline significantly deviates

Tomorrow, When the War Began.

and ginger wannabe Justin

– though there’s a Troy-style
has to undergo an exhausting
shock when one of the best-loved

The terrifyingly ubiquitous Ronan
programme of training montages
characters, who survives the book
resurfaces yet again (making
to fulfil his dream of donning
largely unscathed, is peremptorily
four films in three issues) in
the iron suit and honouring his
and nastily dispatched for no

Spanish chevalpunk animation
ancestors’ memory in defiance
reason any fan of the book could

JUStin anD tHe KniGHtS
of his father’s legal nannying.

ever endorse, while the book’s

Of VaLOUr, which has put

(“Those rules make all of us equal
enthusiastic underage incest is
a lot of work into its English
and help us to live with each
unavoidably toned down, with the
dub by way of punching up the
other.” – “Wel , maybe justice and
heroine and her cousin aged up to
dialogue and recruiting the cream
the law aren’t always the same
legality and only getting it briefly
of Anglo-Celtic voice talent
thing.”) A convoluted extended-
on after the apocalypse has already
to add international value to a
family Europlot is mapped out
broken out. But the whole tone
fairly unprepossessing Euro-dud
in a bewildering juggle of swords
of the film is so wilful y different
property. Ronan’s secret, which
as tokens of filiation: “You clung
from its source as to miss precisely
so far only Wes Anderson seems
to your grandfather’s sword until
what makes the novel sing: the
to have clocked, is that her accent
the end, but now it has returned
sassy, indomitable voice of its
wizardry is a professional cover
to me and I will use it to kill your

JUStin anD tHe KniGHtS Of VaLOUr

92

MUtant POPcOrn BY nicK LOWe › aBOUt tiMe › cLOUDY WitH a cHance Of MeatBaLLS 2
that all other films do the same.

There’s more unfinished family
business in cLOUDY WitH a
cHance Of MeatBaLLS 2,
which gives the prolific animation
team of Phil Lord and Chris Miller
the unenviable mission of finding
something worth sequelling in
their breakout 2009 feature about
a machine for turning weather
into processed comestibles, but
aBOUt tiMe
sees them rise rather handsomely
to the brief with a sustained and
father!” But audiences schooled to
extend the narrative boundaries
quite mad food-themed homage
the unforgiving narrative beat of
of romcom into its real-life
to Jurassic Park and Avatar. Eight Pixar, DreamWorks, Fox and Sony
multigenerational sequel of
minutes after the first film ends,
animation, who storyboard this
middle age, parenthood, and the
inventor Flint Lockwood and
stuff till it bleeds, are likely to find
mortality of grandparents, but the
his misfit crew are evacuated off
the pace, plot, and gags arhythmic
handling of its premise is offensive
their mid-Atlantic island for a UN
and stumbling.

on multiple levels. Time-travel
cleanup operation under Flint’s
plotting has a deserved reputation
childhood scientist hero, only to

Justin’s familial themes of
among experienced screenwriters
find six months on that the island
extended masculinity are echoed
as the hardest thing to do
has evolved its own complex
in Richard Curtis’s professed
wel , and Curtis seems to have
ecosystem of brightly-coloured
directorial swansong aBOUt
succumbed to a particular kind of
lifeforms based on laboured
tiMe: a muddled sf twist on
magical thinking among very bad
visual and verbal foodimal puns
his master plot of cringeing
screenwriters that audiences can

(shrimpanzees, watermelonphants,

British males wooing adorably
be entertained out of their rational
hippotatoes, susheep, tacodiles,
underwritten American leading
minds and distracted by all the
subwhales… it was evidently a
ladies, as Domhnall Gleeson
fun they’re having from asking
long brainstorming weekend).

learns on his 21st that the familial
the questions anyone would

As Flint and his crew go in on

Y chromosome carries a Time
normal y ask about the basic
a mission to locate his genesis

Traveller’s Wife gene allowing
coherence and consistency of the
device and shut down the system,
males to timeslip backwards
rules. Worse stil , the film seems
they find themselves questioning
along their lifeline by a version of
entirely unaware of the cumulative
their objectives and the agenda
the genteel J.W. Dunne method
effect of its refusal to allow any
of their handlers, leading to a
variously favoured by J.B. Priestley
female characters to don the time
thrilling finale where the island
and Richard Matheson, but with
trousers, which reduces women
unites to stage a gigantic fruit-led
the videogame-era bonus of
to subjectivity-free objects of
parody of the assault on Pandora.

unlimited iterability. So Gleeson
godlike manipulation by feckless

There’s some light interrogation
starts by creepily stalk-courting
narcissistic males. It’s no excuse
of the food industry’s motives

Rachel McAdams (in extreme
romcom mode as a bashful,
cLOUDY WitH a cHance Of MeatBaLLS 2
stumbly version dowded-down
with a dodgy frock and mousy
fringe, yet still completely out of
his league), before the film loses
interest in her and gear-crashes
into a midlife meditation on
generationality, with the focus
shifting to the hero’s relationship
with father, sister, and children,
and Bill Nighy coming to the fore
as the patriarch heading for the
exit. It’s an interesting attempt to

riDDicK › r.i.P.D.

fiLM reVieWS 93

Redeeming features are thin on
the ground in megaflop r.i.P.D. ,
from Peter Lenkov’s comic series
about a cop killed on the job who
finds himself inducted into the
afterlife’s law-enforcement division
to deliver eschatological justice to

“deadoes”: the damnation-dodging
fugitives from the criminal
underworld who hide among us
in mortal disguise and betray their
presence with “broken shit”. It is,
of course, a straight clone of Men
riDDicK
in Black, but then so was the comic

– whose plotline is loosely but not
and commercial y-led denialism
with his worst film (Darren
unrecognisably adapted here with
over ecology and climate science

Aronofsky’s haunted-submarine
a bit more attention to Hol ywood

(“Meteorology: the science of
handmedown Below) and his best
values of moral payback,
smiling and looking pretty while

(2009’s impossible-twist trick
emotional closure, and third-act
pointing at a screen”), but the
thriller A Perfect Getaway), and
spectacle, with the obligatory
random-walk zigzags of plotting

Riddick stands somewhere in the
wormhole-in-the-sky finale here
quickly lose sight of where any of it
middle: by no means a disaster,
rather nicely conceived as a prison
was going, and it quickly becomes
but a significant disappointment
break from Hell seeking to tunnel
a display of cinema eating its own
for those who actual y liked the
into Heaven. But Ryan Reynolds
regurgitate and pooping it straight
direction in which Chronicles
is at his blandest in the Will Smith
back into its own processing
was taking the franchise, and a
role, and Jeff Bridges reminds
tract like an autoerotic human
letdown even as a more-of-the-
us that he was once capable of
centipede with the squitters. But
same followup to Pitch Black
absolutely terrible performances,
by the time you’ve seen James

(which it traces over closely, with
and has never entirely lost the

Caan singing a sea shanty about

Riddick now spacewrecked with
skil . It may be that he’s simply
sardinivorous gherkins and a
two shiploads of bounty-hunters
trying too hard not to be Tommy
kawai-eyed sentient strawberry
on a world of digital nasties that

Lee Jones, which is unfortunately
fighting in a James Cameron
come out in the rain). There’s
how his character is written
exosuit, nothing cinema can ever
some truly nasty sexual banter

(though it’s actual y quite faithful
do again will seem strange.

from the hero, though admittedly
to the comic). Five years ago, it
at Katee Sackhoff, who can rise
might still have seemed quite an

More welcome but less happy
above it better than most; and the
acceptable tentpole formula; but
sequel riDDicK brings David
film is best seen as a placeholder
it has the misfortune to arrive

Twohy and Vin Diesel’s epic
to keep the franchise open for
in a season where the top end of
badass back to the screen nine
more ambitious things to come.

comics cinema is raising the game
years after the audacious but

Let’s hope.

out of reach.

commercial y disastrous attempt
to scale up their franchise into
r.i.P.D.

big-budget space opera in 2004’s

Chronicles of Riddick. Even after

Diesel leveraged the rights to

Riddick with his Fast and Furious
deal, it’s been a haul to get this
back-to-basics relaunch off the
ground, with a greatly reduced
budget that doesn’t play at all
well on the IMAX screens to
which it’s been curiously released.

Twohy himself has marked
the time between instalments

94

LaSer fODDer BY tOnY Lee › iKarie XB-1 › LifefOrce › GriMM SeaSOn tWO

LaSer
foDDer
tony Lee
iKarie XB-1

LifefOrce

GriMM SeaSOn tWO

Dr MaBUSe, tHe GaMBLer

MY aMitYViLLe HOrrOr
tHe niGHt Of tHe

HUnter

Made in 1963, iKarie XB-1
b&w several years after the colour-

(DVD, 23 September) is a Czech
ful Forbidden Planet. Although

Pacific riM
adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s

Ikarie does not possess the time-

Polish novel The Magellanic Cloud
less qualities of Forbidden Planet

UnDer tHe DOMe

(1955). The edited English-dubbed
or 2001, the sense of otherness
version, with a different ending,
that is generated by its European
was released as Voyage to the End
origins mean that, on the occasion
of the Universe, and it’s been a sig-of its 50th anniversary, it remains
nificant influence upon media SF,
a refreshing change of pace in con-
from Star Trek and Dark Star, to trast to the latest essential y deriv-Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

ative nonsense such as Star Trek

I remember that when I first

Into Darkness. Ikarie’s intriguing saw this (in its US cut), I wished
tale is told in flashback. An irradi-
more than ever before that
ated survivor, homesick antihero

Hol ywood had filmed one of my

Michal, succumbs to madness
favourite SF books, A.E. van Vogt’s
during this expeditionary scenario

The Voyage of the Space Beagle where the unknown of deep space

(1950). Although the final destina-
makes for a formidable antagonist.

tion of pioneering starship Ikarie

The comedy relief robot ‘Patrick’

is Alpha Centauri, and its lengthy
is obviously based on Forbidden
voyage is hardly half as eventful

Planet’s iconic utility ‘Robby’, but or cosmical y imaginative as that

Patrick’s frustrating ineffectiveness
of the Space Beagle, the specula-
in crises anticipates humorous
tive plot of Jindřich Polák’s film –
scenes in TV series Lost in Space
apparently inspired by the USSR’s
and Star Wars. The discovery of
early successes in the space race
a derelict habitat (lost in the 20th

– embodied similarly intelligent
century!) strewn with corpses pre-

SF traditions with a classic appeal.

dates the horrors of Event Horizon.

Impressive in its lavish sets and a

An encounter with a mysterious
colonisation-strength mixed crew
and seemingly malevolent ‘dark
instead of just basic star-flight
star’ can be seen as the weird sci-
resources for a quick study and
fi precursor to Disney’s campy
return home, the Ikarie project
delirium in The Black Hole. Swiss
attempts to fulfil all of the grand-
feature Cargo ( Interzone #229) is, est pulp dreams of interstel ar
perhaps, the 21st century’s heir to
travel in a spacious and extrava-

Ikarie’s ambitions as mysterious
gant manner, despite being shot in
and spectacular SF drama.

DVD/BLU-raY
a reVieWS 95

›

If you find this interesting, note
in the head of Halley’s Comet.

ing spectacle of urban melee that
that three other east European

Finding perfect ‘human’ bodies
heralds the widespread violent
productions – Silent Star (aka
sealed in crystallised-energy cap-
destruction of a vaguely spiritual

First Spaceship on Venus, 1960),
sules, the crew forget the Greek
apocalypse centred on London.

Eolomea (1972) and In the Dust myth lessons of the Trojan horse

This two-disc release has the
of Stars (1976), all released in the and the sirens and are doomed.

(preferred) international version
region 1 DVD box set DEFA Sci-Fi

Only one love-struck astronaut

(116 minutes) and the rather more

Collection – are also genuinely

(Steve Railsback) returns to Earth,
clumsily-paced theatrical cut (101
fascinating works in the serious
with a psychic bond to his star
minutes). Cannon Fodder (70 min-
space opera mode, and worth-
goddess (ballerina Mathilda May),
utes) is a worthwhile making-of
while viewing (and good fun!) for
whose constant nudity carries
featurette and this showcase pack-
any keen fans of retro-futurism
more visual impact than most of
age also includes brief but new
in adventure movies that strive to

John Dykstra’s spacecraft/optical
interviews with the director and
overcome the subgenre’s limita-
effects. Peter Firth portrays an
his top stars Railsback and May.

tions of cowboy styled/militaristic

SAS colonel who runs about fran-
heroics in spacesuits.

tical y shooting zombies, before he

Much better TV entertainment
final y helps the spaced-out spacer
than True Blood, where intrigues

“She killed all my friends, and I
hero to save the world from the
frequently give way to soapy
still didn’t want to leave. Leaving
naked space girl and her vampiric
interludes, or Once Upon a Time
her was the hardest thing I ever
invasion force. If nothing else,
which often lapses into sentimen-
did.” Having long since won cult

Lifeforce can be seen as the likely tality, GriMM SeaSOn tWO
status it is not a surprise to see
inspiration a decade later for the

(Blu-ray/DVD, 21 October) is a

LifefOrce (Blu-ray, 14 October)

Species franchise.

police drama with genre themes
get a well-deserved re-mastering

The director is not known for
spanning fantasy, sci-fi and hor-
for this HD presentation. Despite,
subtlety, especial y when explor-
ror. Some reality-blurring gags
or perhaps because of, its hokey
ing the sensationalist approach to

(“Dahmer was a wendigo?”) sug-
dialogue, often rampant sexism,
modern gothic tales, punctuated
gest X-Files riffs, and, when hero underwritten characters and
by Poltergeist-like disturbances

Nick and his detective partner
quite hammy/tongue-in-cheek
and regular explosions as we find
share heirloom-library research
performances, Tobe Hooper’s
here. The epic scale of Lifeforce
duties – and so keep discover-

BritisHol ywood SF horror is one
may not be as very well realised
ing that practical y everyone in
of the most peculiarly dysfunc-
as big screen narrative, but this
their Portland, Oregon crime beat
tional yet still very enjoyable genre
hysterical y toned adaptation of
has a secret/inner animal/spirit
movies of the mid-1980s.

Colin Wilson’s novel comes from
form – Grimm rivals Supernatural.

The NERVA-engined shuttle
the same pulp genre influences as

An international conspiracy that

Churchil launches for a rendez-

Alien and Quatermass, and there began with crusader knights has
vous with a gigantic alien ark
can be no doubt about the appeal-
led to seven royal families all bat-

96

LaSer fODDer BY tOnY Lee › Dr MaBUSe, tHe GaMBLer › MY aMitYViLLe HOrrOr increasingly to vigilantism (“But
at least we know who did it!”)

against crooked or feral Wesen,
so he upsets foreign agendas and
inadvertently provokes diabolical
responses from his most clandes-
tine enemies. The best of breed
episode, Endangered, concerning
glowing blue humanoids, cleverly
blends together UFOlogy in-
jokes with a post-nuclear family
extinction crisis. Although its
policier structure distinguishes

Grimm from Damian Kindler’s
sci-fi Sanctuary, there are obvious similarities with regard to crypto-zoological fabulation, so fans of
that may well enjoy this.

tling to acquire ‘keys’ to global
versions of creepy creature stereo-
domination. When secret know-
types: charmless snake-men, red-

Fritz Lang’s silent classic Dr
ledge changes what people are, not
neck werewolves, wild cat-people

MaBUSe, tHe GaMBLer
just what manner of magic they
or assorted rodentoids. There’s
scores highly with its new trans-
might believe in, then philosophi-
witty satire found in congregations
fer (Blu-ray, 28 October), ful y
cal questions about identity come
of sheep following a ‘reformed’

restored to a well-deserved glory.

under close examination.

wolf-man playing reverend. Other

In a four-hour Berlin story told

A stern-faced guest star, Mary
cynical jibes against the church
formal y in two chapters and

Elizabeth Mastrantonio excels
suggest corruption and persecu-
several acts, this crime spree
playing Nick’s long-lost mother.

tion of Wesen types over centu-
begins with a stolen trade contract

Some inherited traits of the Wesen
ries, if not millennia.

and a stock exchange meltdown
are like superpowers, others may

Grimm depicts various closet
amidst rumblings of economic
be just social y embarrassing.

critters. Some are hairy, often
disaster, before switching lines to

Captain Renard suffers trans-
fanged and dangerous; others are
a psychoanalysis lecture, and an
formation anxiety/agony while
furry, snouty, and less menac-
introduction for Cara, a dancer on
assuming a new princely stalker
ing or borderline docile. Genetic
stage between giant phallic noses.

role. Nick’s poisoned girlfriend
freaks/mutant maniacs include a

Burlesque comedy presents her as

Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch) wakes
non-Brundle fly-guy who blinds
one of the cinema’s earliest femme
from her coma but she’s afflicted
his victims, daylight ghosts, gypsy
fatales, but even she is distraught
with a temporary amnesia result-
witches, a pheromonal hypnotist
at Dr Mabuse’s activities as mad
ing in an uncanny romantic tri-
who needs a lesson in Wesen
genius of the underworld: “You
angle. Suicide, bloody murders,
style rough justice, mortuary re-
gamble with money, with people,
cairn burial, obsessive behaviours,
animations by voodoo barony,
with destinies…and, most har-
solutions to intractable problems

Rumpelstiltskin as a nameless
rowingly, with yourself!”

found in the witchcraft shop, and
gamer, the Roman ‘god’ of fire, the

This concerns nothing less than
a distancing-from-reality affect of
ultimate fetching waif as an irre-
the arrival of the super-vil ain. He
anything-goes endearing weird-
sistible muse-elf, and – perhaps
is one who swindles the rich, to
ness that stems from emergent
almost inevitably, considering
incite paranoia in a poker player
synthetic folklore, means that
this programme’s sophisticated
facing ruin; but Mabuse is far

Grimm is spiced and spliced with
criminality – a truly Machiavellian
more than just a mysterious con-
noirish al usions. It’s a cross-genre
blonde. “Maybe we got lucky this
man at the card tables, he is the
scenario that blurs darker fantasy
time and we’re just dealing with
great conductor of insidious evil
and underworld concerns like a
a normal human psychopath.”

in a contemporary world without

21st century take on Val Lewton’s

Throughout all of this, the hero
saints. As a screen presence, Dr
mystery classics. As a grown-up
is primarily an investigator and

Mabuse frequently implies that
variant of the Scooby gang, Nick
sometimes a judge, but not just
modernity is a threat of conspira-
and his super-friends confront
a slayer. However, Nick resorts
cies, especial y in decadent circles.

tHe niGHt Of tHe HUnter › Pacific riM

DVD/BLU-raY reVieWS 97

›

He’s a kidnapper, a murderer, a
an interrogation by the infamous

Destroy Al Monsters (1968), I
master of disguise in the adven-
dentist named Szel , then don’t
wondered what a blockbuster
tures of a sneaky bastard. He’s a
bother with it. Instead, turn to
version with Hol ywood special
pulp fiction Übermensch with a

Charles Laughton’s horribly dated
effects would look like. I enjoyed
most fragile sanity.

but frequently mesmerising tHe
the US remake of Godzilla

There are many pioneering
niGHt Of tHe HUnter

( Interzone #226), but nowadays it
compositions of acting or dazzling

(Blu-ray, 28 October). Although
only whets the appetite for greater
action scenes against impres-

I think it is hugely overvalued,
creature-feature mayhem. Can
sive background artistry, but the
and possesses little overtly genre
the latest CGI standards generate
plot unfolds at a sluggish pace.

content bar a superfluous ‘magi-
anticipatory excitement for the

Precision is nevertheless vital to
cal’ style, there is little doubt that
ultimate monsterama – like Robot
this meandering storyline, where

The Night of the Hunter is a vague Jox versus Lovecraftian beasts –
details are hacked out by clocks
fairy tale filmed with unforget-
bringing recent 3D anime where
and maps and newspaper cuttings
table images. I am not a fan of star
giant mecha fight big aliens to life?

and handwritten notes. Detective

Robert Mitchum. I don’t actual y

While the different perspectives
work, in this frustrating pursuit
dislike him, but I’ve always felt he
of British picture Monsters and
of an elusive menace to sense and
seems to be held in a far higher
very American game-derivative
society ensures that many themes
esteem by critics and cineastes

Battleship examined (somewhat
of audacious terrorism, originated
than his unsubtle performances
blindly) the big feet and head
in Lang’s taboo-breaking Mabuse
deserve. American crime melo-
of an imagined movie-elephant,
pictures, may be traced through-
drama collides with a kitchen-sink

Pacific riM (Blu-ray/DVD, 11
out decades of ambiguously dys-
family dilemma as vainglorious

November), as directed by genre
topian cinema. See SPECTRE in
ex-convict/‘preacher’ Harry mar-
genius Guillermo del Toro, is a
the 007 series, and in American
ries a widow (Shelley Winters)

valiant attempt to depict the whole
film noir (Lang’s own The Big
and bullies her children, while he
animal in its native cinematic

Heat for example), and also comic
tries to discover where his former
habitat of comic book colour
book crime kingpins (reconsider
prison cellmate (Peter Graves!)

and spectacular action. A win-

Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects
stashed the cash from a robbery.

ningly off-beat combination of
as a kind of Mabuse fan-fic opus), Overbearing religious speeches

Independence Day pulp sci-fi hero-
right up to the present, where
dripping with false sentiment and
ics and weird science, wearing the
the profound influence of this
unconvincing acting by stereo-
fanboy credentials of its 50th anni-
fascinatingly innovative and fran-
typed orphans means this 1955
versary Harryhausen-tribute on
chised saga remains noticeable in

‘cult classic’ (a term misapplied to
its sleeve. With tongue-in-cheek

Hol ywood movies as varied in
this, I’d say) depends too heavily
appeal, Pacific Rim focuses upon
tone or style or genre content as
on its imaginative cinematography

Top Gun styled pilots of the Jaeger Iron Man 3 and Zero Dark Thirty.

by Stanley Cortez.

machines as its warrior elite,

Occasional y, English subtitles

For mad preacher movies, I
unlike Iron Man 3 where the unac-
are hard to read at first glance,
much prefer the urban varie-
knowledged true hero is Jarvis –
when text overlaps that of German
ties of Wise Blood and Crimes of surely the most undervalued AI of
inter-titles. As with sequel The

Passion, while character- and per-
recent years, despite orchestrating

Testament of Dr Mabuse ( Interzone formance-wise it is Daniel Day-battle systems in that busy movie’s

#243), this HD release includes

Lewis as Plainview in There Will
combat scenes.

another exceptional scholarly

Be Blood who wipes the floor with

The various alien behemoths are
commentary by the entertain-

Mitchum’s weaker efforts here. In
amusingly reminiscent of many
ing David Kalat, who champions
the end, watching Laughton’s first
other designs from creature mov-
the novelist Norbert Jacques as
and only directorial work again,
ies. Whether in coastal defence

Mabuse’s (co-)creator.

so many years after I saw in it on
or pre-emptive nuclear strike

TV, reminds me how much of a
mode the smack-down encounters

Eric Walter’s feature MY
struggle it was (and still is) to get
between Jaegers and kaiju are viv-
aMitYViLLe HOrrOr (DVD,
through 90 minutes. Fabulous
idly depicted without a hint of the

28 October) is another pseudocu-
pictures! But it’s a shame about the
crazily edited havoc popularised
mentary, so if like me you are so
story, which feels mediocre.

by Transformers and its sequels.

thoroughly disil usioned with

And yet, del Toro’s epic skates
this exhausted screen format that

For decades after first watching
happily over the highly implau-
watching just one more feels like
my favourite Toho kaiju movie,
sible, and completely ignores the

98

LaSer fODDer BY tOnY Lee › UnDer tHe DOMe physical y impossible (even eight
and it shields a functioning micro-
premature climax (of course), but
huge Chinook helicopters would
climate, but blocks out sound and
then a subsequent dead landscape
be unable to airlift such massive
radio signals. A strange viral out-
beyond their shelter is apocalypse-
robots!). When the action is this
break and a batch of other jeop-
now enough to prompt the killing
much fun, it’s easy to overlook the
ardy twists dramatise a col apse of
of the lead religious nutter (often
bad SF content and accept Pacific
morality in this societal crucible
a cheerful turning point in King’s

Rim as a gloriously irreverent exer-while discovering the fates of MIA
escape-proof hel s, as seen in The
cise in fantasy. Just set aside your
or AWOL folk seems low priority,

Mist). Leon Rippy ( Saving Grace) cynicism for 130 minutes and revel
designed simply to stretch narra-
is great in a support role as bel-
in the harmless nightmare of it all!

tive tension over multiple episodes
ligerent farmer Ollie, who briefly
and prolong the misery of victims
gains a stranglehold on the essen-

Based on a novel by Stephen King,
affected by criminal behaviour
tial supplies in order to counteract

Lost alumni Brian K. Vaughan’s
taking advantage of the crisis, or
the greedy Big Jim’s control-freak

TV series UnDer tHe DOMe
the patients afflicted by symptoms
ambitions. Ollie also gets in the

(DVD, 18 November) concerns
of possession. It’s a risky bet which
way of any chance for a favourable

Chester’s Mill (yes, Grover’s Mil ,
will run out first, the clean water
outcome in the show’s numbingly
natch), a small town so ordinary
or the goodwil .

predictable father-and-son rec-
that each resident is a stereotype,

Brooding stories of new realities
onciliation chapter. When young
and even some travellers just
that arise from inexplicable para-
love blooms and the kids find
passing through are recognis-
digm shifts – such as Lost, Jericho, the faerie/alien egg (yay, Kinder
able strangers. From a clear sky,

The Happening, Torchwood:

surprise!) buried in the woods,
a seemingly impenetrable barrier

Miracle Day, The Day the Earth hal ucinatory messages begin:

drops over the area. One split

Stood Stil remake, Eric Kripke’s

“The monarch will be crowned.”

cow, damaged buildings, wrecked

Revolution, and King’s own

Too many plot twists are of the
vehicles, a light-plane crash, and

Dreamcatcher, etc – can be inter-
usual y boring (a conspiracy
a house-fire later, the pressures
preted as evidence that screen/TV
linked to drugs) or eye-rolling
of isolation begin to dismantle
writers have run out of real y inter-
kind (the dead sheriff kept secrets
what fragile integrity remains in a
esting/fresh ideas. Or are they al
under his hat!), not jaw-dropping.

trapped rural community where

– somewhat clumsily in a ‘disaster

Repeatedly, UTD shows how,
limited-authority figures (council-
soap’ mode – attempts to explore
according to the feel-better fantasy
man, reverend, sheriff) are whol y
the SF concept of a Singularity
aspects of King’s lore, typical y
corrupt or planning to be.

(best depicted on TV, so far, in Joss
immature adults can sometimes be

The mysterious force-field

Whedon’s Dollhouse)? It seems
dangerous without any smart ado-
recal s Alan Bridges’ hospital
most likely that such pseudo-
lescent supervision, more so when
siege Invasion (1966), but there
profound media fictions are also
the eager kids demo latent/blatant
are few signs of humanoid aliens
a means of addressing, if not
psi abilities. The genre material
here. While most of the fright-
often dealing with, some of the
is largely concerned with getting
ened/angry ’millers simply pull
bewildering sociopolitical/cultural
four ‘hands’ together: psycho son,
together, led by ‘Big Jim’ (Dean
fallout of 11th September 2001.

kidnapped girl, nerd boy, and

Norris), a few tackle investigative

“Maybe the dome’s a cocoon” or
the daughter of a lesbian couple.

or adversarial roles. A teenage
perhaps it is heaven-sent damna-

“We’re like the guardians of some
psycho, a crazy gunman and a
tion upon the wicked (like a cer-
secret cosmic mystery. It’s too
redneck manhunt add to vari-
tain biblical city). Common beliefs
much” deadpans lonely Norrie,
ous logic problems falling upon

(including UFOlogy and X-Files
rejecting her Midwich-cousin role
the shoulders of deputy sheriff
style government conspiracies) are
in this possibly unsolvable puzzler.

Linda (Natalie Martinez, Death
being tested here, either way.

She also quotes Edmund Burke on

Race), feisty local reporter Julia Chester’s Mill is certainly not

“the triumph of evil”. Do kids do

(Rachelle Lefevre, The Cal er), and the Vil age, as in The Prisoner or that, like, ever?

war veteran/initial y unsuspected
its remake. It’s nothing much like

As the season finale’s big
murderer ‘Barbie’ (Mike Vogel,
the weird fun of Twin Peaks either.

blackout looms, can the ’millers

Cloverfield). Clues to solving the It is, however, a vague critique of
avoid their path to a wilful self-
mystery include young seizure-
blinkered capitalism and the igno-
destruction, or will the anticipated
sufferers chanting “pink stars are
rant folksy mentalities of heart-
cliff-hanger ending be a bit sil y?

falling in lines”. The dome appears
land America. The WMD prep

Quick, turn on your TV…the
slightly porous to air and water,
for the ’millers final day proves a
world’s about to end!

out now

2011 anD 2012 british fantasy awarD winner: best magazine Long anD short stories by Laura mauro, ray cLuLey, priya sharma, steven j. Dines, raLph robert moore, Deanna knippLing book anD fiLm reviews • comment • art
pubLisheD bimonthLy in the same format, at the same price anD same time as interzone
why not take out a DiscounteD DuaL subscription?

purchase secureLy from ttapress.com/shop

Table of Contents

- book zone
- Book Reviews Editor
- book
- BOOK reVieWS 71
- BOOK reVieWS 73
- BOOK reVieWS 75
- BOOK reVieWS 77
- BOOK reVieWS 79
- BOOK reVieWS 81
- BOOK reVieWS 83
- BOOK reVieWS 85
- BOOK reVieWS 87