Somnopolis

I have finally cracked and will be buying a PS3 later in the year so that I can enjoy Tim Schafer’s latest title Brutal Legend. Darn you Mr Schafer!

In the meantime though I have discovered another combination of nerdy matters and heavy metal music. Now bands like Rush and Brock Samson’s favourite band Led Zeppelin have riffed of J.R.R. Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings books a few times in the past -

- would either of them have dared to write an entire album about the Silmarillion?

Blind Guardian did.

In fact they’ve gone one better and are about to release an album based on Robert Jordan’s interminable Wheel of Time series. They have also composed music inspired by Michael Moorcock and George R.R. Martin. I gotta say I’m impressed. Below is a track from the new album. The artwork featured comes from the Dabel Brother’s comic series based on Jordan’s The Eye of the World, with pencils by Chase Conley.

Folks, I’m trying something new. My wife challenged me a short time ago to set up a new site that exclusively reviews books. That catch is that I would have to read a new book each and every day for the duration of my visa application to stay in Australia.

Then I post a review in the evening, with a word count of no more than 500 – 750 words.

Linky -

A Book A Day Til I Can Stay

No fear, I am not abandoning Somnopolis, but it’ll be nice to try something different.

I don’t quite know how you go from This -

to This -

….but George R. R. Martin found a way.

Fevre Dream’s story begins in 1857, in the Southern American states. Slavery abolitionists are viewed with suspicion, the civil war is brewing and trade is conducted by means of travelling along rivers in wood-burning steam boats, with ports dotting the course for passengers and goods to be collected. Our hero is Abner Marsh, whose name speaks to both the puritanical heritage of the colonies and his gross physical appearance. He is described as being corpulent, with a flat nose and a face of warts, given to indulging in large meals and belching loudly. He is also one of the best rivermen there is, though saddled with a bankrupt shipping company.

Into his life comes the handsome and refined Joshua York, whose gentle manners bely the intensity Marsh spies in his gaze. I’m tempted to suspect Martin was thinking of David Bowie during his ‘thin white duke‘ period and indeed later in the book York is described as a ‘white king’, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The stranger with the clipped English accent comes to Marsh with a proposition. He will fund the design and construction of a new vessel, the fastest and grandest on the Mississippi. In return, Marsh will appoint York as ‘co-captain’, obey his every order with regard to the running of the ship, ask no questions as to his employer’s strange proclivities, or indeed the habits of an ever growing number of special guests on the boat. Reluctantly, the riverman agrees to these terms, as York has given him what he desires most in the world. The chance to make a name for himself with the fastest boat on the river. He chooses to name it the Fevre Dream.

Meanwhile, on a remote plantation just outside of New Orleans, a despicable cut-throat known as Sour Billy acts as a ‘Renfield’, for the monstrous Damon Julian and his vampire retinue, purchasing slaves for them to slake the ‘red thirst’, and protecting them during the daylight hours. In Julian, George R. R. Martin has created a truly monstrous addition to the vampire canon, an ancient, brooding evil, whose charming demeanour disguises the savage beast on two legs that is his nature. Sour Billy is even less of a man, begging and cajolling his master to turn him. His cruelty to the slaves on the plantation stems from his own self-hatred and humiliation. He acts as Marsh’s polar opposite, who conversely is not given to self-reflection, as he is consumed by his love of the river and new vessel.

Needless to say Damon Julian and Joshua York are also opposites, but more alike than their seconds, for the cultured captain of the Fevre Dream, with his courtesy, love of Byron and gentle humour, is also a vampire. Marsh’s gruff acceptance of his partner places him in the line of fire between the two sides in this vampire civil conflict. Damon Julian enjoys hunting and killing humans, or cattle as he calls them, for the sheer sport of it. York on the other hand, wants a peace between the two races. Marsh’s dream of owning the fanciest boat on the river has been twisted into a nightmare of blood and vengeance.

Martin fills out the novel with some nice historical notes and a welcome attention to detail when it comes to the boat trade. While not as exhaustive as Melville’s digressions on whaling in Moby Dick, it adds character to a story that could easily have been yet another thinly plotted Ann Rice knock-off. Furthermore, as each book on vampires is want to do, Fevre Dream introduces yet another twist to the canon. Despite poor Sour Billy’s hopes of being changed, vampires and humans are here two seperate races. They just happen to look alike. The vampires see humans as their beasts of burden, a point Martin underlines by having Julian challenge Abner to his own people’s views on using blacks as slaves. It’s an interesting notion, once again evidence of the flexibility of the vampire metaphor in literature.

This is actually quite a personal book for me, as it was first given to me as a gift by my friend Michael shortly before I moved to Edinburgh. I read the book on the plane and couldn’t put it down. So given that I recently decided to move to Australia, I thought it would be a good omen if I repeated the ritual. My copy was signed by the author himself, during his visit to Dublin. On the interior it simply reads ‘Keep Your Steam Up’.

I’m currently reading Christopher Moore’s You Suck. I snapped it up during a wild shopping spree in Sydney (Kinokuniya – best book shop ever!) as I was looking for something to make me laugh. Yes Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski (cool website!) is sure to be a thrilling mind-bending experience and I’m testing the Hilary Mantel waters with Beyond Black before investigating her Booker award-winning novel Wolf Hall.

None of those books are likely to make me choke on my milk with laughter though, are they? Basically I’m looking for another Terry Pratchett. A tall order really, that unique mixture of wit, intelligence and slapstick. As such, this is going to sound incredibly unfair, especially given that I’m only a few chapters into You Suck…but Christopher Moore is no Pratchett. I find myself smirking at quips rather than laughing. Some of the humour seems vulgar to me and the two would-be vampire lovers that we are introduced to are unlikable, obnoxious, not to mention unrelatable.

Remember Rincewind? He was obnoxious, cowardly, a cheat, but you couldn’t help liking him. In the very first book The Colour of Magic when we are introduced to the failed wizard, he is attempting to work an angle with the gullible ‘tourist’ Two-Flower. All the same, he’s easy to like, I suspect because we see the Discworld through his world-weary eyes. He’s a failure in life and Discworld fans continue to hold out for the day when he finally succeeds at something (although we can also enjoys his many disappointments. Seriously. I spat out my milk)

You Suck’s vampire lovers are forced to shave a cat in order to sate their blood-lust. It’s not really funny, although it raised a smile. They’re being hunted by a homeless man who calls himself the Emperor of San Francisco. I guess that’s a winning notion, but I remember Neil Gaiman had a similar character in Sandman, Emperor Norton, who was based on the actual person of the same name. So I guess this is a homage? There was a joke about Tommy sleeping with Jody when she was still asleep. That was just squicky.

See the problem is I raised the bar too high. What are the chances of finding another Pratchett. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried something like this. During my first Pratchett glut, when I was in my teens, I attempted to stave off withdrawal while awaiting the next Discworld novel by reading Tom Holt’s Flying Dutch.

It sounded promising, riffing on the myth of the Flying Dutchman in a similar manner to Douglas Adams’ take on the gods of Asgard in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, or Pratchett’s own mixed up Discworld pantheon. Sadly I also found Holt’s writing a little too dry, clinging to the parody too tightly (the captain of the Flying Dutchman has a huge life insurance cash-in to look forward to…comedy gold!). I gave up on Holt and patiently sat outside Waterstones until the next Discworld hardback went on sale.

For me Pratchett was a refuge during my teenage years. He made me laugh, but he also referenced dozens of interesting ideas in each book. There was something liberating about reading a book that defied genre expectations. How can a fantasy novel indulge in religious critique, or quantum theory, social satire and pastiches of popular movies and still be ‘just’ a fantasy novel. That Pratchett managed to accomplish all of this and give the impression that it was somehow an afterthought for Granny Weatherwax, for example, to be confronted with a myriad of alternate worlds and lives lived during Lords and Ladies. Even if you’d never read a book on physics you could come away from a Pratchett novel with an increased awareness of it and any number of subjects, having been given a taste while reading a Discworld book. When I was twelve I was particularly obnoxious to a first year maths teacher of mine. I used to enjoy the look of confusion on his face when I recited the Pratchett phrase ‘topological M-space equations’.

I mentioned Douglas Adams above and he’s something of an elephant in the room when it comes to Pratchett. For a brief time they were peers and then Adams died. His Hitchhiker’s Guide is one of the funniest book series out there. It’s also very clever. Poor Eoin Colfer was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t as far as writing a successful ’sequel’ to Hitchhiker’s was concerned. As much as I love his Artemis Fowl books (not Pratchett-grade funny, but certainly top of the Irish writers charts…hell the closest contender I can think of is Silas Rat by Dermot O’Donovan!*) he is not a writer of the same calibre as Adams.

Who in turn was not as good a writer as Pratchett. Hear me out….Hitchhiker’s Guide and the Dirk Gently novels (not to mention his Doctor Who episodes) evidence a blistering intelligence, filled with wild, imaginative ideas and a sardonic sense of humour. Self-discipline was always a problem for Adams though, given over to long digressions and ever widening periods of time between projects. The makers of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film were left with an embarrassment of riches to work with when adapting the first book, but it’s telling that the end product was such a mess. I’m not arguing that Hammer and Tongs the directing team would not have been able to make a fantastic Hithhiker’s film even if they pulled up their socks a bit, just that Adams’ endless revisions and unrestrained plots probably didn’t help. Pratchett is no less inspiring in his ability to mix and match story elements that should not work, but not only does he do that, he shows the reader how. He is never too obscure and while immensely clever, not given to talking down to his readership. He is a craftsman, a true writer’s writer and that to me gives him the edge over the charming dilettante Douglas Adams.

Is Pratchett partially responsible for the current literary trend of mash-ups and Austen revamps? Remember ‘We’re on a mission from Glod’ in Soul Music. Or Nanny Ogg’s cat pouncing on a bewildered vampire Count disguised as a bat in Witches Abroad? Well he’s not alone at any rate, for before Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, there was Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. I’m calling it now, if there is any writer out there with the potential to live up to Pratchett’s standard, I’m putting my money on Fforde. His books read like Raymond Chandler writing a Cliffs Notes series on the British classics, with fantastical science fiction colliding with the works of the Bronte sisters. He also passes the ‘make Emmet laugh’ test.

Maybe you’ve read the above and you’re wondering why I am looking for a substitute for Pratchett. Well his announcement that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease affected me very strongly. It’s a horrible fate for such a brilliant man to begin to lose control over his mental faculties. In typical fashion he has promised to eat the ‘arse of a badger’, if there’s a chance of a cure, but in the meantime he has become a figure-head for the right to die movement, calling on the British government to establish a tribunal to allow for a conclusive debate on the issues relating to patients suffering from terminal disease.

And so I have vowed that rather than let Alzheimer’s take me, I would take it. I would live my life as ever to the full and die, before the disease mounted its last attack, in my own home, in a chair on the lawn, with a brandy in my hand to wash down whatever modern version of the Brompton Cocktail some helpful medic could supply. And with Thomas Tallis on my iPod, I would shake hands with Death.

This seems to me quite a reasonable and sensible decision for someone with a serious, incurable and debilitating disease to elect for a medically assisted death by appointment.

[...]

That’s why I and others have suggested some kind of strictly non-aggressive tribunal that would establish the facts of the case well before the assisted death takes place. The members of the tribunal would be acting for the good of society, as well as that of applicants, to ensure they are of sound and informed mind, firm in their purpose, suffering from a life-threatening and incurable disease and not under the influence of a third party. I would suggest there should be a lawyer, one with expertise in dynastic family affairs who has become good at recognising whether there is outside pressure. And a medical practitioner experienced in dealing with the complexities of serious long-term illnesses.

I would also suggest that all those on the tribunal are over 45, by which time they may have acquired the gift of wisdom, because wisdom and compassion should in this tribunal stand side-by-side with the law. The tribunal would also have to be a check on those seeking death for reasons that reasonable people may consider trivial or transient distress. If we are to live in a world where a socially acceptable “early death” can be allowed, it must be allowed as a result of careful consideration.

I support Pratchett’s cause. I hope never to be faced with the same dilemma, but look far enough into the future and we all see something that we don’t like. When my life was hard, when I was going through some bad patches, I could always count on Terry to cheer me up. He was like the friend who always knew the right thing to say. My friend is dying and I wish I could return the favour. I can’t though. I’ve already read all his books (sometimes several times), so all that’s left is for me to talk about how much his writing has meant to me. And that I’ll never find his like again.

Cheers Terry.

*In the interest of full disclosure, Dermot O’Donovan was a former teaching colleague of my father’s, which is how I first encountered his entertaining children’s book series

Midway through Half the Blood of Brooklyn, the third book in Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt series,  I was feeling elated. In addition to mafia vampires, hippy vampires, LGB vampires, religious cultist vampires and biker vampires, a new ‘tribe’ of freakshow vampires had been introduced. This, I thought, was a fun little novel. After the events of No Dominion, Pitt was no longer a rogue agent, as he was now heading security for the would-be radical Terry Bird, leader of The Society. He was still managing to piss off everyone he meets though. Sent to accompany a diplomatic envoy to Coney Island, home of the Brooklyn chapter of vampires who disguise themselves as a circus act, he sits watching two vampire girls enacting the bed of nails routine. Except the object here is to be pierced from head to foot, with the aid of a trusty hammer. The audience claps and applauds, little suspecting that members of the circus are picking off stragglers for dinner after the performance. I am reading this scene and reminded of the first vampire film I ever saw, Vampire Circus -

Then it all goes to hell.

I’m not saying Half the Blood of Brooklyn is a bad book. It’s a great read. I’m just sorry the plot has to give way to sustaining the narrative of the series. There is a tangible tug from the inventive antics in Brooklyn back to Joe’s regular haunts on Manhattan island, just so Huston can establish some changes to the status quo of the book. Unfortunately this felt to me like musical chairs instead of the ante being upped.

A quick recap so. Joe is a vampire for hire, who maintained a reputation as a rogue who did not owe fealty to any of the undead organisations who run Manhattan. Operating as a hired gun for whomever could pay the fee, he was seen as a neutral party, able to have a sit-down with Predo chief enforcer of the Coalition, have a rap with Terry Bird leader of the Society, or drop in to see the Messianic Daniel, who presides over the spiritual Enclave. Each group represents a different philosophy of what vampires should be. Huston introduced his own take on the fanged kind, with a neat inversion of the tropes. For one, they refer to themselves as Vampyres, on account of their condition resulting from a blood disease called the Vyrus. It transforms the host into a vicious predator, driven by the parasitic force within it to drink blood. Deprived of haemoglobin, the host becomes increasingly more animalistic. Conscious of this, each Clan has developed their own ideologies to attempt to sustain themselves. The Coalition wish to remain hidden, whereas Terry Bird’s Society want to engage human society in open dialogue. The Enclave are fixated on the idea of spiritual release from the demands of the Vyrus and its members attempt to starve it out through fasting and meditation.

Huston takes the opportunity through Pitt’s first person narration to disregard much of the received wisdom about vampires. Garlic and mirrors are of little to no use. As for religion, well, seeing as Vampyres are suffering from a blood disease and not eternal damnation (as far as they know – Daniel has some thoughts on this) that’s not going to get you very far. On the other hand, undead immortality is not all it’s cracked up to be. In Half the Blood of Brooklyn Pitt explains that a gunshot to the face will kill a Vampyre just as good. This is Huston grounding the vampire myth in a more recognizable noir setting. The Vampyre clans are merely an overly literal underworld, criminal organisations that steal and exploit straight society. As a crime writer, this is familiar territory for Huston. We are all, Pitt explains, dying together -

We’re all going the same place.

I’m just taking a different road.

I really like Huston’s approach to this sub-genre. Think David Mamet but with fangs. The dialogue comes quick and fast, with genre-aware characters using joking slang to describe vampire hunters (Van Helsings), willing victims (Lucys) and bootlickers (Renfields). The violence has a staccato beat like something out of an Elmore Leonard book and Manhattan’s streets come alive. Pitt is even involved in a chaste romance with Evie, a woman dying of AIDS. He knows that the Vyrus could save her, but fears what the result might be.

Half the Blood of Brooklyn brings to boil a lot of the tensions that have been simmering during the previous two books. Clan war is coming closer. Pitt finally cuts his ties with Terry Bird’s Society. The ironically named Count, a Vampyre med student Pitt thought he had dealt with in No Dominion, returns to shake things up and Daniel sets in motion events that finally force our ‘hero’ out of his comfort zone.

This is all exciting stuff, but I felt it strange that a story that started as a murder mystery of sorts should end with so much political maneuvering, the catalyst of the Candyman’s death long forgotten. Who is the Candyman? Well in another of Huston’s winning notions, he was a sweet-shop owner who sold candy to children in the upstairs store and blood-packs to vampires in the basement. Pitt is called in when his body is discovered dismembered in twelve pieces. Maybe the manner of his death rings a bell with you. Huston goes on to introduce some Old Testament action to the proceedings in Brooklyn, with yet another Clan emerging, only for the story to suddenly rebound to Manhattan. I don’t want to ruin the surprise completely, but once again, I reckon the inspiration may lay with yet another vampire flick.

At any rate I’m looking forward to the next entry in the Joe Pitt Casebooks. I just hope this focus on creating an epic storyline does not obscure Huston’s inventiveness with vampire tropes.

Right I think I have worked out my Lost-Angst, so time to move on.

Ian McDonald’s Brasyl mixes historical fiction, contemporary surveillance culture and quantum theory (oh and ‘futeb0l’) into a heady houdon gumbo – wait don’t go! This is the real deal, not a portentous cock-tease like a certain island-set show.

The Belfast writer does not want for ambition, as this dense novel is set in three time periods, features plenty of visceral action and gender-bending sex, but also throws in a pithy summation of quantum theory that dovetails with aspects of the Christian eschaton. I was surprised to learn he also wrote Desolation Road (1988), which I once tried to read but found too unengaging. Someone must have kicked his ass between then and this fascinating book (or, more probably, I did not give the Bradbury-esque novel Mars-based novel a fair shake).

The novel opens with Marcelina Hoffman, a reality-tv producer living in Rio, attempting to entrap gang-bangers into committing crimes on camera. We quickly come to understand her only goal is to achieve good ratings and she is perfectly happy to ruin lives to achieve that. An amateur caporeirista and substance abuser (from botox to coke) her ‘career bitch’, facade is thrown into disarray once a doppelganger sets about destroying her career.

We then skip forward in time to 2032, Sao Paulo, where streetwise hustler Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas receives a crash-course in quantum physics after meeting the mysterious Fia Kishida. Edson is one of the strongest characters in the book, but I found his thread to be the weakest. He enjoys reinventing himself constantly, engaging in sexual roleplay and transvestism, while also maintaining a cool self-image of a young Paulistano on the make. The Sao Paulo of 2032 makes surveillance culture look sexy, where every person, every object or item of clothing is traceable. Edson’s many selves are a reaction to this constant sense of being seen, but Fia introduces him to the possibility of other worlds existing where he could reinvent himself anew as a traveller between realities.

Then God says, Tonight, Efrim/Edson/everyone else you ever were or might be, I smile down from beyond satellite and balloons and Angels of Perpetual Surveillance on you.’

Luis Quinn is a Jesuit priest who is handy with a fencing sabre and given to exclaiming Gaelic phrases in a moment of crisis. He is sent on yet another trip into Brazil’s Heart of Darkness to admonish the rogue priest Goncalves. Accompanied by the natural philosopher Dr. Robert Falcon, equally comfortable with Parisian salons as he is with running an enemy through with a blade in the jungle, Quinn tracks the disturbing trail of destruction left by his assignment. Angels have been seen raining fire from above the trees. Quinn soon discovers that his skill with the blade will not only be tested, but the limits of his sanity.

Believe it or not McDonald weaves all three threads together successfully by the end. As an exercise in meshing three seemingly distinct genres Brasyl is an interesting experiment. It could be argued that quantum theory is something of a cheat, allowing as it does for all possible worlds to inter-relate, but the author does not merely wave a wand at the close of proceedings. He investigates the possible ramifications of string theory and the multiverse and gives a decent stab at summarising them that does not come off as needless exposition. He even manages to frame it in terms that our 18th century heroes Quinn and Falcon can understand, making use of the ‘City of God‘, teleology that sustains Christian thought.

In short – this novel is something special, a real gem. May have been a mistake for me to read it on a plane, but I remained fascinated until the very end nonetheless.

I imagine Polish readers of Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher series must have been nonplussed at the news that Blood of Elves, the second book by the author, had won the 2009 David Gemmell Legend Award for fantasy fiction.

Only recently published in English, the books themselves have been adapted into a movie and a video game already in Poland. Sapkowski’s won numerous awards and has been credited with introducing a modern, non-anachronistic attitude to the fantasy genre.

Essentially characters discuss science and philosophy in between monster hunting and bedding damsels. In fact, The Last Wish opens with a sex scene.

Politics also features and while this is not unique to fantasy novels, Sapkowski goes beyond the usual palace intrigues of aristocrats to show how racism and propaganda is used to cause civil unrest among ordinary citizens.

It appears the theme of Blood of Elves is whether it is wise to choose a side. Seeing as post-Tolkien fantasy is generally concerned with martial affairs and warring nations, this novel may feel like an overlong digression to experienced readers.

Personally I admire how Geralt the Witcher’s belief in neutrality relates to the plot. The title itself refers to his main concern, that war between humans and Elves will lead to the extinction of the long-lived faerie folk. They breed far less frequently and are more given to passive contemplation than the warlike humans.

If this is sounding familiar, perhaps you have read Michael Moorcock’s Corum sequence. Now in my last Sapkowski review I mentioned that Geralt resembles Elric. The plot of Blood of Elves carries echoes of that other ‘Eternal Hero’, Corum – the last member of an enlightened race of highly evolved beings that were wiped out by the less spiritually inclined species known as ‘Man’.

I don’t mention this in order to stir up controversy between Sapkowski and Moorcock. That ship has sailed:

Bastards. You try to create something original and a bunch of people rip it off and make millions. I’m glad Tolkien never lived to see what HE spawned. I’ve contacted my lawyer, but haven’t heard back yet. It’s a ‘passing off’ situation rather than a copyright one. Trademarks, too, are involved. Copyright infringement is usually to do with text (or clearly copied drawings in the case of comics). (Michael Moorcock – Multiverse.org)

Despite the similarities, Sapkowski’s work I believe speaks for itself. At times yes it is digressive, but it rewards the attentive reader with studied world-building and interesting character beats. While not as subversive as Moorcock, Sapkowski is not happy to pump out just another heroic fantasy.

Geralt it is becoming increasingly clear is doomed to a tragic fate, but there’s an interesting nobility about a character – despite being in effect, a monster exterminator. Unlike The Last Wish. the Witcher is almost a supporting character in his own story here. The story instead follows the child princess Ciri, who was promised to him as a ward during the short story A Question of Price. After evading capture by invading armies from the South, she is discovered by Geralt who takes her to be trained as a witcher, before she is sent to the witch Yennefer for instruction in magic. Meanwhile the countryside is being torn apart by racial unrest between humans, elves and dwarves, and the villainous armies of Nilfgaard plot their revenge on the Northern kingdom.

Geralt’s role in these events is to be a catalyst for a final confrontation. I’m in for the long haul. Unfortunately Blood of Elves ends on a cliffhanger and I will just have to wait until an English translation of the next book is published. Botheration.

Originally published in Poland in 1993, Ostatnie życzenie/The Last Wish was  only recently translated for English speaking readers by Gollancz. More’s the pity really, as Sapkowski’s brings to the fantasy genre a moral skewedness that would be familiar to fans of Moorcock’s Elric.

Our protagonist Geralt the Witcher even resembles the Emperor of Melniboné, a sardonic albino with a mystical sword. Sapkowski enjoys the cut and thrust of swashbuckler adventure and there’s plenty of opportunities for well-realized action scenes. However, there’s also plenty of gray morality on show, with a certain wry touch. High Elven kingdoms engaging in the theft of crops. Father’s selling their daughters into sexual servitude to a monstrous beast. Young women on the run from the law, enjoying questionable liaisons with seven bachelors.

As should be clear, Sapkowski is not above parodying certain fairy tale standards. There were times during The Last Wish when I wondered if I was reading an early Terry Pratchett novel written under a nom de plume. Yet this is not pastiche for its own sake. The book is broken up into a series of short stories, relating previous adventures of Geralt’s as he recovers from a assignment that went awry. As a Witcher, he is employed by those who can afford his services to kill beasts. His profession is not well liked, as the presence of a Witcher implies the proximity of a deadly creature, not to mention the bizarre mutations that Geralt and his kind are privy to. He is in effect non-human. As the book proceeds we learn more about him and his treacherous livelihood. A Grain Of Truth is a version of the Beauty and the Beast story that is more Cocteau than Disney. The Lesser Evil briefly riffs on Snow White, but also concerns itself with the moral certainty of heroic fantasy. A Question of Price reads like a lost chapter from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, filled with political intrigue and badinage.

The Last Wish enjoys certain advantages over latter-day Anglo/American fantasy in that it can draw on both Russian and Eastern European folk tales, as well as the Germano-Celtic fare of the post-Tolkien era. With respect to his broad reach of references though, I wonder was Sapkowski taking the piss when he named a character ‘Eist Tuirseach’, (literally in Gaelic ‘Listen Tired’).

It’s a shame that I came to the books so late and I look forward to reading the next in the series The Blood of Elves. I must confess the first I heard of Sapkowski was Yahtsee’s scathing review of The Witcher video game. Having finished and enjoyed the first book of Geralt’s adventures, I’m almost tempted to go out and pick it up, cheesy in-game sex and all.

Thanks to the auspices of one Dr. Aengus Daly I received a copy of Lanark: A Life in Four Books in the post. I had wanted to read this book for quite a long time. Alasdair Gray’s debut did not disappoint.

I even enjoyed William Boyd’s introduction, which he uses as an opportunity to settle scores over a review he wrote for the novel when it was first published. Seems the bone of contention was whether Lanark is the Scottish Ulysses. There are certain similarities.

Gray’s novel could be seen as a lovesong to Glasgow, much as Joyce eulogised Dublin. It also is a meditation on literary genres and the artificial partitions erected between realism and fantasy.

The four parts of the title are placed out of sequence, the novel opening with section three. We are introduced to a man without any memory of his past, arriving in the city of Unthank. He takes the name Lanark and wanders about the city, encountering a bohemian circle of pretentious artists; life on social welfare; and strange phenomena such as vestigial mouths growing on limbs, or the disease known as ‘dragonhide’. We are firmly placed in the realm of fantasy here, but the city appears to resemble a dreamlike Glasgow, where time passes far more swiftly.

Section three is followed by parts one and two, concerning the character known as Duncan Thaw. A semi-fictionalised autobiography of Gray himself, this bildungsroman is yet another portrait of an artist as a young man. Thaw is shown to grow up as a member of an atheist family, an imaginative child with artistic and literary talents fascinated with religion. He also suffers from crippling asthma attacks and eczema, paralleling the dragonhide that Lanark is infected with. Tortured by sexual frustration and an inability to realize his artistic ambitions, Thaw grows into a lonely, tragic figure. Finally his life falls apart completely and he achieves the apotheosis that transforms him into Lanark.

There are two sequences in the novel that I feel inform the overall project. One is an early attempt by a juvenile Duncan Thaw to write an essay. The teacher returns the paper with the criticism that he has an inability to discern between real life and fiction. Later when we again meet Lanark, he encounters a demiurge figure who reveals he is a fictional character in a book. In a passage which Grant Morrison homaged with Animal Man.

Lanark begs for a happy ending, but the being known as Nastler argues that the readership have no interest in fairy tale endings. What they want is tragedy and suffering.

Despite Gray’s fears as described in the afterword, I don’t find Lanark indulgent for its concerns with autobiography under a fantastical lens. Nastler is infuriated by the suggestion that his ‘creation’, is science fiction and in truth you will not find Lanark in the genre fiction section of Waterstones.

It totally is though. Funny, self-aware and revelatory, Lanark: A Life in Four Parts is a brilliant book.

A short while ago I posted a review of Jeff Noon’s Falling Out of Cars and remarked upon its similarities to the work of Philip K. Dick. Specifically a view of the future where psychological dysfunction has become a social norm. I have since discovered another book working from a similar perspective. Here the PKD influence is very strong, pointing to a possible sub-genre in dystopian science fiction. Call it Psychopocalypse if you wish.  

Jonathan Lethem’s Amnesia Moon is an early work much in the style of Dick’s paranoia infused work. Some unexplained event has transformed America into feudal states ruled over by unconscious impulses. The protagonist Chaos, who spends his time drinking unprocessed alcohol in an abandoned movie theatre, is subjected to nightly invasions of his dreams by local tyrant Kellogg. In these dreams he finds himself cast as a scapegoat, a focus for the frustrations of the starving people who also receive these visions every evening. Kellogg in turn controls all the food routes into the area and lectures on his ideas as to what caused the event. Finally Chaos snaps and escapes the town of Little America, with the proudly hirsute teen Melinda in tow, to try and escape the dreams and maybe find a reason for the madness they are drowning in. Soon, however, they discover that Little America is not the only place ruled by dreamers and that Chaos himself may be more than he appears.

Amnesia Moon is an early Lethem book that predates the success he achieved with Motherless Brooklyn. He wears his influences on his sleeve, referencing PKD as he did in Gun, With Occasional Music and perhaps to a lesser degree the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic (Melinda and Monkey might well be the same character).  I would also compare it to Peter Milligan’s Shade The Changing Man, a comic book series that also explored the idea of America itself being plagued by localised bursts of madness courtesy of a being known as the American Scream.

While it is less accomplished than his more recent books, such as Fortress of Solitude, or As She Climbed Across The Table, Lethem does create a sweetly romantic narrative that ends on a curious note. I’m sure PKD would approve.