Guest Post | Eric Brown on Aliens and Optimism in Science Fiction

I wonder if I've written more often about any other author here on The Speculative Scotsman than Eric Brown.

If that's the case, as it may indeed be, there's got to be a reason, right? Well, he publishes more and more often than most authors... but that's not the thing, I think. After all, I care more for quality than I do quantity. Except when it comes to food. Eating is good.

The thing is, you can always count on Eric Brown to have a store of great ideas. These don't necessarily result in awesome novels, but they're food for thought, and I like that a lot. I like a narrative with an argument. I like a story that makes me question my preconceptions. And as I concluded yesterday, "The Serene Invasion is more than merely interesting. As a thought experiment it's unequivocally gripping, and Brown's got the follow-through down too."

Long story short, it gives me immense pleasure to host a few words from the very fellow today.

Without any further ado, here's the estimable author on aliens and optimism in science fiction...

***

First contact with an alien race fascinates writers and readers alike. It’s a fundamental trope of SF, there at the very beginning of the modern incarnation of the genre with Wells’ The War of the Worlds, and still going strong today. It’s almost a given, with few exceptions, that first contact will engender conflict, often martial conflict. It’s a great engine for story-telling, after all – a metaphor for the fears of the time and a way of objectifying the other in non-specific terms: the host of alien invasion films of the fifties were little more than America’s fear of the Soviet Union writ large on the silver screen. We’re still at it more than fifty years later, only this time the enemy – garbed in alien guise – is Islamic fundamentalism and terrorists in general. 

Which is all well and good if you like that kind of thing. It generates story dynamic, after all. All stories are powered by conflict – but it’s only one aspect of the consequence of first contact. To begin with, the idea that aliens will be per se hostile is a convenient assumption arrived at for the sake of penning a gung-ho war story... But the idea is based, lazily, I think, on the anthropocentric idea that all races out there will be motivated by the same imperatives that impel the human race: greed, the need of material gain, resources, territory... The likelihood is that when we do come across aliens they will be as unlike ourselves as it’s possible to be, creatures that have been shaped by the evolutionary dictates of an ecology and environment wholly unlike our own. They idea that they will want the same thing as we do is unlikely. 

I prefer to think – optimistically – that aliens might not come to Earth in order to pillage and annihilate, subjugate us and strip the planet of its resources. Call me naïve, but I think that a race that has existed long enough to develop FTL technology might, just might, have outgrown the baser motives of materialistic gain and the desire to do violence. Call me a hopeless bleeding-heart liberal if you like, but maybe aliens might come to Earth with the idea of making it a better place, of making humanity a better race... 

That was the starting point of the ideas that would coalesce into my seventeenth novel, The Serene Invasion. 

I’d done something similar – though not so ambitious – in the series of linked stories that I fixed-up into the novel Kéthani. Aliens come to Earth, though they remain in the background throughout the book, and grant human beings the chance to become immortal. The choice is ours. We can forego the gift, if we like, and live ‘normal’ lives, dying and remaining dead... Or we can take up the offer of the Kéthani and become immortal – dying and being reborn – with the proviso that we work for them as ambassadors to the stars, bringing the message of the Kéthani to other races out there. There is much argument in the book about whether the gift of the aliens is beneficial, or not – a question that is never resolved. 

I wanted to be more definite in The Serene Invasion, and come down on the side of the aliens. 

In the novel, as in Kéthani, we never see the aliens. We see their representatives, beings called self-aware entities, biological androids if you like, that have been on Earth for more than a hundred years, smoothing the way for the ultimate ‘invasion’. The entities can take on human form, and do, melding into the fabric of society and working their subtle magic... They are the closest we get to the actual S’rene. Now the reason I didn’t want to show the aliens – the same reason I didn’t show them in Kéthani – is that I wanted to retain reader credibility, and I judged there would be a great danger of losing this if I described the aliens physically. One way of portraying the S’rene, and retaining some credibility, would be to show them as in some way humanoid. But I thought it better to maintain the mystery and mystique of these all-powerful beings if I refrained from showing them at all. 

And the gift that the S’rene – or the Serene as they soon become known – bring to Earth? 

They come to Earth and stop us committing violence upon ourselves and upon all life... 

To the majority of the human race, this is a welcome boon – but of course there will be those out there who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, the old ways of violence and conflict. Arms manufacturers an the gun lobby and hunters, and the multi-nationals whose profit depends on people killing each other... 

The novel is about how the world will change, thanks to the Serene. 

It’s SF – it’s also, I admit, wish-fulfilment fantasy written from a standpoint of increasing frustration and desperation with the human race, and our political systems... But it’s also optimistic, in that it shows that, with the right impetus and input, normal everyday people – the disempowered, if you like – can and do embrace the ways of peace. 

I am, if nothing else, a fundamentally optimistic writer. Looking back over all my novels and short stories, I realise that they present an overall positive view of the future, and of humanity. Okay, so in the New York books the world is almost ruined, but there is hope, and the characters portrayed are fundamentally good people, with dreams and aspirations, who win through in the end. The same with Helix; planet Earth might be dying, but there is hope thanks to the alien Builders and the refuge of the ten thousand worlds on the Helix. In the Bengal Station trilogy – Necropath, Xenopath and Cosmopath – I wanted to take a character who at the start of the books is a nihilist but who, though experiencing events through the three books, comes to some understanding of himself, and achieves eventual happiness. I wanted to show that nihilism is too easy a response to the human condition. We live short lives, riven by pain and suffering, physical and psychological, and then we die, face an eternity of oblivion, and we know this... But we are after all creatures with sensibilities limited by the dictates of our environment. We see only what we want to see, what we have been conditioned to see, and therefore – I like to think – we apprehend only a partial truth of the wonder of the universe. 

I can’t prove that, of course: all I can do is write my small, hopeful tales of the future... 

Because there is always hope, I like to think, and in The Serene Invasion I’ve tried to show that for some people – lucky enough to exist on the partial universe of my imagination, and of my readers’ – hope has become a reality.

***

Thank you kindly, Eric. For the thoughtful essay, and indeed, all the great ideas you've had over the years. It's absolutely marvellous to have you here on The Speculative Scotsman again.

The Serene Invasion is out now, and I hardly need note that Eric has another new novel coming soon. Picking up where The Devil's Nebula left off, Satan's Reach is the second book in Weird Space series, and it should be on shelves this August.

Maybe we'll talk again then! :)

Book Review | The Serene Invasion by Eric Brown

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

They are here... and we are not ready.

It's 2025 and the world is riven by war, terrorist attacks, poverty and increasingly desperate demands for water, oil, and natural resources. The West and China confront each other over an inseperable ideological divide, each desperate to sustain their future. Then the Serene arrive, enigmatic aliens from Delta Pavonis V, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The Serene bring peace to an ailing world, an end to poverty and violence—but not everyone supports the seemingly benign invasion. There are forces out there who wish to return to the bad old days, and will stop at nothing to oppose the Serene.

***

It's easy to say violence is everywhere today. Easy to assert that its effects can be felt in the real world and those we lose ourselves in alike. That its prevalence is evidenced in the video games we play as much as the news we watch, by way of the books we read no more or less than the things each of us experience.

We could also talk, for a time, about the climate of fear and the war economy it contributes to. We might additionally consider the stigma attached to sex versus our acceptance of violence in every sphere of society. But let's leave all that for someone smarter than I. I'm here to review a book, in any event... albeit a book which addresses, in a sense, many of the aforementioned questions.

The Serene Invasion's premise is simple yet suggestive, plain yet potentially progressive. In 2025, aliens invade. But strangely, they don't wage war on the world. Instead, the Serene park their ships in the skies and unilaterally impose peace. By manipulating the strings of existence or some such thing, they make it impossible on the quantum level for any human being to hurt another. Every sort of violence imaginable simply ceases.

Lucky for some. At the time of the Serene's arrival, Sally Walsh—an English aid worker volunteering in a clinic in Uganda—was about to be executed by terrorists, live on internet television. In New York, James Morwell, CEO of a Murdoch-esque evil empire, was poised to put his personal assistant in his place with a baseball bat to the face, whilst Howrah station rat Ana Devi was mere moments away from being raped.

But one of the first people to sense the presence of the Serene is Sally's partner Geoff Allen, a freelance photo-journalist. Flying out to Africa to cover a story, time seems to stand still for him. He imagines that he's abducted by aliens—and, par for the course, probed. Initially, he writes the experience off as a plane food-induced hallucination, but when he finally hears what has happened to the world—sees the Serene's monolithic ships with his own eyes—he understands it must have been more than that.

For once, it was. Indeed, Geoff and Ana Devi are soon inducted as representatives of the Serene, meeting with their amicable new overlords each month to help pave the way for the world to change in step with the new order imposed by the invading aliens. Not everyone is over the moon that they're been robbed of their right to wrong, after all. Take the director of Morwell Enterprises, practically all-powerful before the Serene's arrival, now cruelly neutered:

"He genuinely believed that when the Serene had imposed—without consent—their charea on the people of Earth, humanity had been robbed of something fundamental. Not for nothing had mankind evolved, by tooth and claw, over hundreds of thousands of years. We became, he reasoned, the pre-eminent species on the planet through the very means that the Serene were no denying us. It was his opinion, and that of many eminent social thinkers and philosophers, that the human race had reached the peak of its evolution and was now on an effete downward slope, little more than the pack-animals of arrogant alien masters, 

"Violence was a natural state. Violence was good. Violence winnowed the fittest, the strongest, from the weak. The only way forward was through the overthrow of the Serene and the subversion of the unnatural state of charea." (p.179)

Eric Brown spends the larger part of The Serene Invasion illustrating how humanity reacts to the charea via the perspectives aforementioned. A wise decision, I think; there's a touch of tension towards the end—a perfunctory plot against the Serene's secret go-betweens, instigated by the monstrous Mr. Morwell, obviously—but otherwise the author is evidently aware that the conflict animating this standalone narrative must be internal rather than external.

An intimidating task, and alas, the cast of characters who shoulder this bothersome burden above and beyond their usual duties aren't... fantastic. In point of fact, they're rather bland. Geoff Allen and Sally Walsh rarely feel like real people, and instead of developing them, Brown takes to skipping ahead a decade—and another and another—to showcase new and apparently improved versions of his heroes.

His villain is equally underdone: James Morwell is just a bad dude through and through, with no redeeming qualities at all. His counts among his hobbies semi-regular sadomasochism and the systematic abuse of everyone around him in the intervening periods. He takes his frustrations out on a rubber effigy of his father and rules his evil empire with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

That said, Morwell still betrays more of a personality than the previous pair put together. Only Ana Devi is legitimately interesting, especially as regards her relationship with her runaway brother Lal—and she too is short changed by the lacklustre last act, when it all gets a bit Ghandi.

So don't come for the characters. And though the narrative has more to recommend it—the pitch is particularly powerful—The Serene Invasion's story is slow, and brought low by transparent protagonists and an inherent lack of drama. Significant issues, but this isn't a bad book by any stretch. I enjoyed the diversity of its ever-shifting settings, and as ever, the author exhibits an accomplished sense of wonder, describing the more extraordinary moments of the entire affair with flair.

On balance, the best thing about Brown's ambitious new novel is how thoroughly he investigates his premise. The societal changes brought about by the charea are elaborate, and firmly in the fascinating camp. Take drug and drink dependency: "Largely, a class and income linked phenomenon. Cure poverty, joblessness, give people a reason to live, and the need for an opiate is correspondingly reduced." (p.155) I was never especially invested in Geoff and Sally and their quest for a happily ever after, meanwhile Morwell's machinations seemed like so much meaningless reaching from the first, but I read on anyway, because humanity's reaction to the Serene's blanket denial of violence is as strange as it proves true.

Eric Brown has to be one of the hardest working genre authors in the industry, releasing at least two books each year for as long as I can recall. This is certainly not his best effort in recent memory—without question, The Kings of Eternity is—but for all its problems, The Serene Invasion is more than merely interesting. As a thought experiment it's unequivocally gripping, and Brown's got the follow-through down too.

***

The Serene Invasion
by Eric Brown

UK & US Publication: April 2013, Solaris

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Cover Identity | Serene Invasion by Eric Brown

Recently, Solaris unveiled the cover art of Eric Brown's next novel. It's nothing new, but for what it is it's very well done indeed. I'm a fan!

 

 

The evil alien face on the spaceship is a nice touch, too. But it might just be a spoiler, because according to the synopsis, the Serene are supposed to be benign:

It's 2025 and the world is riven by war, terrorist attacks, poverty and increasingly desperate demands for water, oil, and natural resources. The West and China confront each other over an inseperable ideological divide, each desperate to sustain their future. 

And then the Serene arrive, enigmatic aliens form Delta Pavonis V, and nothing will ever be the same again. 

The Serene bring peace to an ailing world, an end to poverty and violence — but not everyone supports the seemingly benign invasion. 

There are forces out there who wish to return to the bad old days, and will stop at nothing to oppose the Serene.

I've had my ups and downs reading Eric Brown's work, all of which I've documented here on The Speculative Scotsman. When he's on, as in Engineman and The Kings of Eternity, hoo boy is he on! But when he's off - see Guardians of the Phoenix and The Devil's Nebula - his prose can be a chore, and that's putting it politely.

 

Still, I soldier ever onward, in the hope of rediscovering the wonder Stephen Baxter speaks of in the quote adorning the cover image above. Serene Invasion could be awful, of course, but it's equally likely to be awesome. I'll be reading it either way... next April.

The Scotsman Abroad | Weird Spaces, Familiar Faces

Another week, another edition of The Scotsman Abroad.

I really do get about these days, don't I? :)

Today, anyway, I'm here to tell you all about The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown — the inaugural installment of Abaddon Books' latest shared world, Weird Space.

And... it's basically okay. Fun, vehemently, but eminently forgettable.

I wish I could be more enthusiastic about The Devil's Nebula - my friend and fellow Eric Brown admirer Mark Chitty certainly seemed to enjoy it, and to a certain extent, I did too - but in the end, I was left feeling largely underwhelmed.

Anyway, my full review went live over at Tor.com late last week. Here's a snippet from it:

Riding high on the contrails of The Kings of Eternity, perhaps his most excellent effort to date, as well as his least conventional, Eric Brown returns to known space in The Devil’s Nebula, to revisit some familiar faces. Ahoy there, evil aliens!

Principally an introduction to Weird Space, which is to say Abaddon Books' latest shared world setting, The Devil’s Nebula is a novel as fun and undemanding as – and not a lot longer than – any episode of Farscape or Firefly... though I fear it goes in want of the wit and the warmth that made those gone but not forgotten science-fiction series so smart and remarkable.

And the width. Because this is not, shall we say, a narrative concerned with fundamental questions of "life, death, existence, non-existence. The arbitrary nature of the universe; the chaos, the order." There’s no harm in that, of course, no inherent foul; after all, not every novel need occupy itself with deep and meaningful experiences. Instead, The Devil’s Nebula’s core focus is on interstellar antics — such as the near miss with which it begins, when deep in enemy territory, the cast-offs who crew The Paradoxical Poettouch down on Vetch-controlled Hesperides.

(continue reading)

Ultimately The Devil's Nebula could have been better, but problems and all, it still makes for a reasonable start to Weird Space. Decent enough that I'll at least read the next in the series, Satan's Reach — though coming off this kinda sorta disappointment, I'm rather more interested in Eric Brown's next next novel, which is to say The Serene Invasion.

But what about you guys? Anyone got a favourite shared setting? Suggestions for which other worlds I might be inclined to walkabout one day?

I've heard good things about Wild Cards over the years, for instance - and George R. R. Martin's involvement does tend to suggest there'll be something special about it - but I've never been sure where to start, or if I should even bother. Thoughts?

Book Review | The Recollection by Gareth L. Powell

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

When his brother disappears into a bizarre gateway on a London Underground escalator, failed artist Ed Rico and his brother's wife Alice have to put aside their feelings for each other to go and find him. Their quest through the 'arches' will send them hurtling through time, to new and terrifying alien worlds.

Four hundred years in the future, Katherine Abdulov must travel to a remote planet in order to regain the trust of her influential family. The only person standing in her way is her former lover, Victor Luciano, the ruthless employee of a rival trading firm.

Hard choices lie ahead as lives and centuries clash and, in the unforgiving depths of space, an ancient evil stirs... 

***

I've often bemoaned a certain lack in contemporary sf: a confusion, as I see it, of the precedence given to each of science fiction's component parts, namely the science, and the fiction. In the genre today, so far removed from the scientific romances with which it began—stories of love and adventure and discovery with just a whiff of tomorrow's world about them—the tech, nine times out of ten, takes top billing; the science overrides, or undermines, the fiction, obscuring character and narrative in favour of worldbuilding, speculation and so on.

The Recollection is the exception that proves the rule. Gareth L. Powell's second novel to see print—not including The Last Reef, his award-winning short story collection—The Recollection is fiction, first and foremost: good, old fashioned, character-driven fiction, with a neat narrative to boot... and yes, some fascinating science.

As it should be, then. As so rarely it is!

On his blog, Powell relates an encounter he had with an agent when this novel was still just a twinkle in his eye; an agent who advised Powell to give up The Recollection's ghost in order to "concentrate instead on writing something that would give him"—and this is the messed-up part—"a 'hard-on.'" This sort of perspective—not at all uncommon today, I'd add—is anecdotally symptomatic of the very problem I've been banging on about: of how the big ideas modern sf orbits have come to repel rather than attract the plight of the little guys that is at the heart of fiction as the masses understand it. The Recollection is in that sense part of the solution... though I doubt it will result in a great many erections.

Which isn't to say it's simple, or dull. In the first of the two timeframes The Recollection concerns itself with, Ed, a struggling artist, is riddled with guilt over the extra-maritals he's been having with his brother Verne's wife. Verne mightn't know the particulars of Alice's affair, but he has his suspicions, and confronts Ed about them in a cafe. The resulting squabble spills out into the street, then the subway... when out of nowhere, a great, glowing gate phases into existence, sucking poor Verne into the beckoning silence beyond.

This gate is only the first to appear of what soon seems a complex network, sprouting up the world over. "China's closed its borders," Ed explains. "Germany's gone for martial law. Everyone's scared. I even saw some troops on the streets of Hackney yesterday." (p.28) But though Ed and Alice are as terrified as anyone else, anywhere else, they're also plagued by an almighty sense of business unfinished, so when a new gate appears in Alice's back yard, practically, the guilt-ridden lovers pack a bag and venture through it... only to find they can never, ever go back. Only forward; in time, and in space.

Speaking of which, several centuries into the future, the gates are the least of anyone's worries. Humanity has long since inherited the galaxy: more people—many more people—now live off Earth than on, and our species has made friends at least one other. The Dho keep themselves to themselves, mostly, except to stress that, from the deepest, darkest reaches of the void, something is coming... something that will change everything. The Recollection is "darkness and hunger. It is a cancer gnawing at the bones of this galaxy," (p.145) which no-one and nothing can stand against.

Among those with pivotal parts to play in the conflict on the cards, Powell proffers Victor Luciano and Katherine Abdulov, star-cross'd former lovers from powerful rival families each with their own reputation to maintain. Embroiled in a bitter race with one another to the planet Djatt, where a valuable plant which only flowers every hundred years is about to bloom, Victor and Katherine are about to discover that they have unfinished business of their own to attend. That, and The Recollection, which seems to take a particular interest in Katherine.

I came to The Recollection primarily on the advice of Eric Brown, The Guardian's genre fiction reviewer and of course a prolific and much-admired author in his own right. And you know what? If I hadn't known any better—though I did and I do—I'd have believed The Recollection was his doing, too. It put me in mind of Engineman in one moment, and The Kings of Eternity—Brown's strongest novel to date—in the next. The best of both worlds, then.

But never mind me. These are—but of course they are—worlds entirely of Powell's devising. And The Recollection really is a terrific romp: fast-paced, laser-focused, and steadfastly accessible when so many of the genre's foremost proponents seem to have plotted a course in exactly the opposite direction. Bravo, Gareth L. Powell, for going against the grain!

That is not to say The Recollection is without a few minor missteps. In particular, the last act is something of an anti-climax, I'm afraid: resolution is arrived at all too conveniently, both in terms of the characters, who simply put aside their differences and pair off, and in terms of the world, which there seems much more to be said about. Come to that, the whole thing is somewhat on the slight side; more novella than novel.

But I can forgive a good book a great deal, and The Recollection is absolutely that, however modest it may be. More a space ballet than a proper opera, Powell's second is fun, energetic and emotionally very relevant... for it is a tale, above all else, of those things we leave behind. And we are always doing that, are we not? In the erstwhile, resolutely unperturbed as it is by the hard line the genre has for all intents and purposes drawn around itself, The Recollection stands as a sort of bastion of classic sf: gone... but not forgotten.

***

The Recollection

by Gareth L. Powell

UK and US Publication: September 2011, Solaris

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Press Release Your Luck | Eric Brown Explores Weird Space

This announcement is only minutes old, so let's get to it before it loses that lovely fresh bread smell!

Best-selling author Eric Brown has created a brand new shared world for Abaddon Books: Weird Space.

This thrilling space-opera series will begin in June 2012 with the release of The Devil's Nebula by the best-selling author of Helix, Engineman and The Kings of Eternity.

In the first book in this epic new series, Brown will introduce readers to the human smugglers,  veterans and ne’erdowells who are part of the Expansion – and their uneasy neighbours, the Vetch Empire.

When an evil race threatens not only the Expansion, but the Vetch too - an evil from another dimension which infests humans and Vetch alike and bends individuals to do their hideous bidding, only cooperation between them means the difference between a chance of survival and no chance at all.

Brown has meticulously created a massive shared world of interstellar potential, which other writers will explore with each new book.

With the launch of this new SF epic, Abaddon is adding to its series of shared worlds which already include the post-apocalyptic The Afterblight Chronicles, the new take on Arthurian legend Malory’s Knights of Albion, the World War One soldiers marooned on an alien world in No Man’s World, steampunk adventure in Pax Britannia, the zombie-infested Tomes of the Dead and the fantasy quests of the Twilight of Kerberos.

Says the author of his involvement in this brave new world:

It's great to be part of the team working for Abaddon on the Weird Space project, and it's a fantastic imaginative opportunity to be developing the background and working on the first novel, The Devil's Nebula. The Weird is vast in scope - borrowing on an age-old tradition of everything that's best is space-opera - and will allow the writers to tell exciting, human stories set against an eerie, thrilling, futuristic back-drop. I'm more than a little excited at being part of the team!

So that's quite exciting.

In the past I've tended to steer clear of the shared worlds projects such as this, largely because the idea of a universe with no unifying authorial vision to tie it all together leaves me rather anxious. But for new Eric Brown?

Well, not exactly anything. But most things, totally. :)

Book Review | The Kings of Eternity by Eric Brown

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

1999. On the threshold of a new millennium, the novelist Daniel Langham lives a reclusive life on an idyllic Greek island, hiding away from humanity and the events of the past. All that changes, however, when he meets artist Caroline Platt and finds himself falling in love. But what is his secret, and what are the horrors that haunt him?

1935. Writers Jonathon Langham and Edward Vaughan are summoned from London by their editor friend Jasper Carnegie to help investigate strange goings on in Hopton Wood. What they discover there – no less than a strange creature from another world – will change their lives forever. What they become, and their link to the novelist of the future, is the subject of Eric Brown’s most ambitious novel to date.

***

The barrier for entry to science fiction must be among the most impenetrable in any genre. Our world is hard enough to understand, after all; others entire - even if they are only our own, advanced through the requisite millennia - demand such intent and dedication to come to terms with in any meaningful sense that I can hardly blame the leagues of readers who turn tail at the merest mention McDonald or McAuley.


And that's not even to speak of bona fide hard SF, a sub sub-species of literature wherein the science is arguably more integral to the fiction than the fiction itself... which seems a little like missing the point, if you ask me.


Behold, however, at the very other end of the spectrum, the antidote to rigour and rote: Eric Brown. With the Bengal Station trilogy, Helix and Engineman, Brown has deftly ascended through the ranks to become an undisputed master of accessible science fiction, and likewise, his latest is a brandy of a book. The Kings of Eternity is easy reading indeed; warm and finely spiced, it goes down smoothly, leaving a pleasant, not-at-all overpowering aftertaste imprinted upon your palette. It is too "an incredibly optimistic piece of work... full of hope for the future," (p.53) which reads as if it's leapt through the decades from the pages of some fondly recalled scientific romance of olde.


The Kings of Eternity is a tale of two tales. The first begins in the 30s, on the eve of the Second World War, when struggling novelist Jonathon Langham is recruited to get to the bottom of certain otherworldly goings-on. Glad of the opportunity to escape London life, Langham stoppers his scepticism, packs a bag and travels to Cranley Grange, where in an impossible clearing in the woods, he glimpses another world.


Meanwhile, in 1999, another author, rather more popular than his Papa: Langham's grandson Daniel has fashioned for himself a home away from home a Greek island so remote that the media aren't likely to trouble him there. On Kallithea Daniel meets a woman - Caroline Platt, an artist unlucky thus far in love - only to fall head over heels for her just as his hard-earned idyll comes suddenly and irrevocably under threat when a journalist arrives... a journalist and something worse.


As a pair, the Langhams are of course rather writerly narrators, fit to put one in mind of a who's-who of Stephen King protagonists. Each has his own routine; each sees the world in beats and scenes; each leads the selfsame life of solitude and quiet contemplation we imagine writers must. I'll admit to worrying at the outset that the myriad similarities between Jonathon and Daniel would leave the dual narratives which run through The Kings of Eternity vague and indistinct from one another, but my fears proved needless: Brown makes a point of the parallels, in fact, lulling one - as if by hypnosis - as these characters and their respective eras whip past before your eyes. So too is the character clash soundly resolved come the last act.


Eric Brown speaks of The Kings of Eternity in no uncertain terms. On his website he proclaims it "the best thing I've written. Period. I feel for the novel as I've felt for nothing else I've done. It's also quite unlike anything else I've written. It's SF, but hard-to-categorise SF." I'd take exception to that last assertion - that The Kings of Eternity is in any sense difficult, come to that - but otherwise, I'm inclined to agree with the author. Brown's latest has been on the drawing board for a decade, and short some decidedly unnatural dialogue (p.63), it shows; in its imagery, its precision, its pace and its ultimate profundity, this narrative shines brightly because of the delicate care and attention Brown has lavished upon it.


In the great tradition of science-fiction as once it was, before the intellectual prerequisites of an appreciation of the genre grew to include quantum mechanics and the prophesied supernova, The Kings of Eternity is a novel about discovery: about the discovery of other worlds and other species only - I repeat only - insofar as it is about the discovery of love, and one another. There is precious little SF in the foreground of The Kings of Eternity, and removed from such rigour, what unfolds in Eric Brown's best yet is a charmingly timeless tale, lithe, powerful and tremendously affecting.

***

The Kings of Eternity
by Eric Brown

UK Publication: April 2011, Solaris


Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Book Review: Guardians of the Phoenix by Eric Brown

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

Global warming has taken its terrible toll. The seas have dried up and deserts cover much of the Earth's surface. Humankind has been annihilated by drought and the nuclear and biological conflicts following the Great Breakdown. Desperate bands of humans still survive. Some live far underground, away from the searing temperatures and ongoing conflicts on the surface; others scrape a living in the remains of shattered cities above ground. In Paris, Pierre lives like an animal among the sand-drifted ruins of the once great city. Near death, he faces a choice: join the strangers heading south in search of water, or remain in the city and perish.

***

The end of the world again, is it?

Well, at least this time it's not grey.

Saying veteran sci-fi author and erstwhile genre reviewer for The Guardian Eric Brown is prolific just doesn't do the gentleman in question justice. At times, he seems a production house unto himself. Only a few months ago, Solaris reissued a decade-old novel of his, Engineman, in a sumptuous new edition complete with extensive revisions, a lovely new cover and a handful of related short stories. Engineman was this here reader's first experience of Eric Brown's fiction, and if it didn't quite - hyperbole ahoy! - blow me away, I had a great time with it all the same.

With Engineman behind us, there's Kings of Eternity to look forward to come the new year: a epic narrative about some kids who stumble upon a portal to outer space Brown himself describes as "probably the best thing I've done." In the same interview, in fact - over at Mark Chitty's rather fabulous Walker of Worlds - you get the distinct sense Brown is talking up Kings of Eternity in lieu of pimping his next novel proper.

Now you often hear of authors loving their latest babies above all their other literary children, so I wasn't overly concerned that Brown seemed to be giving Guardians of the Phoenix the cold shoulder. And whatever the collective exhaustion at the prospect of such stories, I have a special place in my heart for shindigs set after the apocalypse, which this very much is: a story of a young man eking out an existence in a city of sand who comes across the very best - and the very worst - of humanity in the shape of two bands of survivors come to town.

Sadly, Guardians of the Phoenix is a bit of a mess. It's obvious. It's dull. It's predictable. It's borderline offensive, come to that, with an anti-hero who'll drop her tattered combats at the mere thought of another obscene sex scene and some bad dudes who you know are properly bad because they threaten our hero - such as he is - with homosexual intercourse! Guardians of the Phoenix is a by-the-numbers exercise in a genre so run-to-ground as to demand originality from those who attempt to work within its bounds, and that vital spark just isn't here. There's not an original nor even an interesting character in sight.

It has its moments, of course. When Brown gets his sci-fi on his footing is far surer; when he relates the details of humanity's last, best (not to mention cruelly thwarted) hope - a null-space escape ship the best and brightest built to get away from Earth while the getting was still good - Guardians of the Phoenix threatens to rise like its namesake from the ashes that are the narrative's dreary larger part. Unfortunately, even then, Brown's latest never quite catches a drift, and that the closest thing to a redeeming feature in a post-apocalypse novel such as this is a sprinkling of sci-fi come the endgame speaks volumes as to its overall worthiness.

Which is to say its dire lack in that regard...

You know, Guardians of the Phoenix isn't an awful novel by any stretch, but oddly, it reeks at times of amateurishness, and here I'd thought Eric Brown as professional as pros got. What can I say? I'm disappointed.

But let's not end on such a negative note. Here, a friendly pull-quote I can honestly get behind: whatever its issues, Guardians of the Phoenix is still better than Twilight.

(Which could be just about the most self-evident thing I've ever written.)

***

Guardians of the Phoenix

by Eric Brown


UK Publication: December 2010, Solaris

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository


Recommended and Related Reading

Book Review: Engineman by Eric Brown

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

IndieBound / The Book Depository

"Once they pushed bigships through the cobalt glory of the Nada-Continuum. But faster than light isn’t fast enough anymore. The interfaces of the Keilor-Vincicoff Organisation bring planets light years distant a simple step away. Then a man with half a face offers ex-engineman Ralph Mirren the chance to escape his ruined life and push a ship to an undisclosed destination. The Nada-Continuum holds the key to Ralph’s future. What he cannot anticipate is its universal importance – nor the mystery awaiting him on the distant colony world."

***

Like a lifelong alcoholic in a dry state, former engineman Ralph Mirren lives a life of desires deflected, an existence lamentably lacking the very thing he lusts after above all: the nada-continuum. But the bigships which used to power through the stars like "magnificent leviathans" are fit these days only for vast scrap graveyards; the faster than light craft he and an elite breed of interstellar trucker-types would "push" from galaxy to galaxy are simply not fast enough any longer. The Keilor-Vincicoff Organisation have implemented portals which have made instantaneous travel across unthinkable distances a reality. Ralph wants - no, needs - something he can never again have.

Or can he?

When a mysterious scar of a man approaches Ralph and what remains of his bigship crew of old with a mysterious proposition, the enginemen - for a moment - dare to dream. However, Hirst Hunter wants an oath of allegiance before he'll explicate upon his plans, and it's far likelier he's simply looking to sell Ralph time in a surviving nada-continuum tank than engineer, against all the odds, one last push.

Of course, Ralph can hardly resist. An addict to the bitter end, he joneses after the day on which "he would be able to renew his courtship with the infinite. Until then his conscious life would comprise a series of unfulfilled events; a succession of set-pieces featuring an actor whose thoughts were forever elsewhere. Occasionally he would be allowed intimation of rapture in his dreams, only to have them snatched away upon awakening."

Engineman is an elegy of addiction, at its core, a lyrical and indelibly persuasive fable of one man's hunger for something greater, something more. And it is that rare - not to mention precious - thing in science fiction: a cracking good story over and above an account of awesome future tech. As genre stalwart Eric Brown himself writes in his occasional review column for The Guardian, "One problem facing SF authors is how to balance the effective presentation of a future universe with the smaller-scale depiction of its dramatis personae: the former sometimes overwhelms the latter." In Engineman, he strikes just the right the balance.

A deeply flawed and not immediately likeable sort, a bottomless wallow of self-pity who's isolated himself from a supremely understanding wife and a daughter he's never even met, Ralph is nevertheless a character you can get behind. He's a good man with a haunted soul; a good man who's made some dodgy and decidedly selfish decisions, yes, but a good, determined man brought low by a bad habit. His drug of choice has given him a tantalising glimpse of forever, and having gazed upon the infinite, he has become obsessed by the inherent imperfection - not to speak of its insufficiency, its inconstancy - of the here and the now.

In their ways, many of the other individuals you'll come across in Engineman are similarly misbegotten. Hirst Hunter searches for redemption from the dark deeds he was once a part of; Ella Fernandez let someone down a long time ago, and she's still trying to make it up. These dramatis personae are lively, engaging and shoulder the narrative burden handily when they're required to. They - and Ralph - are as much to do with Engineman, and indeed its soaring success, as any technical writer's account of gadgets we all saw in Star Trek decades ago repurposed. There's a bit of that, no doubt, but this is science fiction after all; wouldn't be what it is without the science any less than the fiction, now would it?

Engineman is a stirring and surprisingly optimistic meditation on addiction and the purgatory of loss, and I'd heartily recommend it if it were that alone. It's not. In fact, it's not even Eric Brown's latest novel: Engineman is 16 years old if it's a day. Why, then, am I going on about it so? After all, reviewers only review new books, don't they? Well, perhaps more truth to that than I'd care to admit, but moving along, in actual fact this isn't an old book by any stretch: Solaris have proffered up a glorious new edition, replete with corrections, gorgeous new Dominic Harman cover art, a wealth of added and edited material... oh, and did I mention it comes complete with eight related short stories?

No?

They're not all knock-outs - point me in the direction of the last collection that didn't have a dud or two! - but by and large, the Engineman shorts both enrich the titular narrative and expand upon an assortment of its least developed themes and ideas. Nor as these mere curiosities: one, "The Time-Lapsed Man," took home an Interzone award, and there are others - namely "The Girl Who Died and Lived For Art" and "The Phoenix Experiment" - which stand as its equal.

Engineman is a treasure trove of stories, big and little alike, of science and - crucially - of fiction. On the basis of this loving reissue alone, Eric Brown well deserves a place alongside the genre's brightest stars.

***

Engineman

by Eric Brown

UK Publication: September 2010, Solaris
US Publication: September 2010, Solaris

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading