Book Review | Dark Made Dawn by J. P. Smythe

There was one truth on Australia, the derelict ship on which Chan was born and raised: you fight or you die. Usually both.

But everything on Australia was a lie. Abandoned and alone, Chan was forced to live a terrible existence on the fringes of society, Australia's only survivor after a terrible crash-landing on Earth.

But Chan discovered she was not alone. Together with the unlikeliest of allies, Chan carved out a place for herself on Earth. And now the time has come: she's finally found a reason to keep going. But friends have become enemies, and enemies have become something worse. It's time for Chan to create her own truths, and discover a life beyond fighting and death: a life beyond Australia.

***

The Girl Who Fell to Earth finds her feet in Dark Made Dawn, the vital concluding volume of the Arthur C. Clarke Award nominated Australia Trilogy by J. P. Smythe.

It's been a long road for Chan, who murdered her mother mere moments after we met her, crash-landed the prison ship she'd lived on her whole life a little later, and has had to do a whole host of other awful things simply to survive since—but her hellish journey is almost at an end. She's been reunited with her former frenemy, Rex; they've found employment, of a sort, amongst the automatons of walled-off Washington; and the nearby nomads have offered them a home away from home. In short, Chan's dreamed-of destination—a world in which she can be with Mae, come what may—is finally in sight, and I'll be damned if it doesn't look bright!

Then again, it's always darkest before the dawn, and as liveable as her life has been of late, Chan hasn't forgotten how horrible it was as of the offing. She remembers, especially, losing everything after she gave so much of herself to get off the Australia:

I was scared, living in a hovel, subsisting on whatever I could find or whatever Ziegler gave me. I had nothing. Now I can bury those memories, mostly. Those feelings. I've got something that feels like control over my life these days. I have a place in this city. A job. A role. A purpose. 

And so does Rex. 

It doesn't matter that our job is doing what they don't want others to do, or what the others won't. It's still ours. (pp.28-29)

Through their heavily-augmented handler, Hoyle—who just so happens to be sleeping with Chan—she and Rex have blackmailed and intimidated their way through the worst that Washington has to offer.

The job has hardly been a joy, obviously, but it has been a necessary evil. It's helped our poor pair fit in in a city that values obedience over everything else. Chan, for her part, has needed the leeway that being a good citizen has allowed her in order to find some trace of Mae, who was almost a daughter to her on the Australia. But when she and Rex are asked to outright assassinate their next target, they both know that the time has come to either poop or get off the pot...

Book Review | Long Dark Dusk by J. P. Smythe

The moment she learned the horrible truth about her life on Australia, the derelict ship overrun with violent gangs, Chan Aitch made it her mission to save everyone she could from their fate worse than death. But her efforts were in vain. Now, everyone she cares about is dead or in prison, and Chan is more alone than ever before.

As the only person to have escaped Australia's terrible crash-landing back to Earth, Chan is now living in poverty on the fringes of a huge city. She believes Mae, the little girl she once rescued on the Australia, is still alive—but she has no idea where Mae is, or how to find her. Everything on Earth is strange and new, and Chan has never felt more lost.

But she'll do whatever it takes to find Mae, even if it means going to prison herself. She's broken out of prison before. How hard could it be to do it again?

***

Having horrified and amazed readers in equal measure across the first two volumes of The Anomaly Quartet, and doubled down on darkly character-focused dystopia in The Testament, The Machine and latterly No Harm Can Come to a Good Man, James P. Smythe has gone from strength to strength since his underrated debut in 2010. In so doing, he's demonstrated that he's not just a jack but a master of all the trades he's tried—a mastery that, on the back of last year's Way Down Dark, evidently extends to the young adult market.

Book the first of The Australia Trilogy read, as I said, "like a lesson in how to bring your fiction to a more sensitive sector without sacrificing the parts that made it remarkable." It didn't talk down to its audience. It didn't diminish the darker parts of its narrative. It didn't hold back in any measurable sense.

To discuss Long Dark Dusk, nor can I. I have to hit on what happened in the last act of Way Down Dark. I have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the Australia.

The thousand-some souls aboard the Australia believed it to be a generation ship blazing a trail through space in search of a world where humanity, having bled Earth dead, might put down renewed roots. They were wrong. In actual fact, the Australia was a prison ship in stationary orbit around the very planet its inhabitants thought they'd left so long ago; a planet, ravaged but not ruined by environmental catastrophe, whose people, roughly a hundred years hence, see that positively apocalyptic period as little more than a bump in the road. As an embarrassment, even.

To wit, when Way Down Dark's central character Chan managed to crash-land the ailing Australia just outside of walled-off Washington, she and the scant other survivors of the disaster weren't exactly welcomed:

I was meant to step off the ship, having saved the lives of the people I cared about, the good people who did nothing wrong, who didn't deserve the fate—the curse—that had been put upon them. I was meant to look back at everything I had lost—my mother; my childhood; even Agatha, so recently departed—and still see something resembling the future I had dreamt of. Mae would be there and we would be a family. Family is what you make it; that's something I learned. It's not blood. It runs deeper than that, and stronger.

That's how it was meant to go.

But it didn't. (p.105)

Book Review | The Light That Gets Lost by Natasha Carthew

A small boy hiding in a cupboard witnesses something no child should ever see. He tries not to look but he still hears it. And when he comes out, there's no mistaking. His mum and dad have been killed. And though he's only small, he swears that he'll get revenge one day.

Years later, Trey goes to a strange camp that is meant to save troubled teenagers. It's packed with crazies, god-botherers, devoted felons and broken kids. Trey's been in and out of trouble ever since the day the bad thing happened, but he's not here for saving: this is where he'll find the man who did it. Revenge and healing, salvation and hell are a boiling, dangerous mix, and Trey finds himself drawn to a girl, a dream and the offer of friendship in the dark .

***

When you think about it, the business of living boils down to a string of decisions; seemingly insignificant decisions about little things, largely, like whether to take the left road or the right. Maybe one direction gets you to your destination without delay on this postulated day, and perhaps that matters, but taking the long way could lead, equally, to a chance meeting that leads to laughter that leads, at the last, to love.

What I mean to say is that, in a very real way, we're changed by our choices—made or broken or both. Take Tremain Pearce, the deeply damaged protagonist of Natasha Carthew's languid but ultimately uplifting latest. When a man murders his mother and father, and hurts his big brother Billy so seriously that he'll require round-the-clock care for the remainder of his days, Trey chooses to make the guy who got away with it pay: a decision that determines the lot of his lamentable life from that sickening instant on.

His short life, sketched and drawn wrong since memory began, had been rubbed down to this one moment in time; he was sitting at the brink of a place where there was no turning back and he was ready to jump. For Mum and Dad and Billy he was ready to leap into the unknown and all he knew of that unknown was it had one single solitary name and the name was revenge. (p.5)

In the name of revenge, then, Trey contrives a transfer from his foster family into the care of Camp Kernow, a faith-based prison facility which purports to teach difficult children a trade, where he has reason to believe the man who took his family from him has sought safety "in the cloth of God." (p.6)

Book Review | A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe

It is perhaps a hundred years in the future, our civilization is gone, and another is in place in North America, but it retains many familiar things and structures. Although the population is now small, there is advanced technology, there are robots, and there are clones.

E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person. He is a clone who lives on a third-tier shelf in a public library, and his personality is an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human.

A wealthy patron, Colette Coldbrook, takes him from the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars. A physical copy of that book was in the possession of her murdered father, and it contains an important secret, the key to immense family wealth. It is lost, and Colette is afraid of the police. She borrows Smithe to help her find the book and to find out what the secret is. And then the plot gets complicated.

***

Gene Wolfe continues to play with the nature of narrators in his mostly notional new novel, a middling murder mystery explicated from the perspective of a posthumous author pretending to be a detective.

The story starts with Colette Coldbrook: sweetheart teacher, well-spoken socialite and, in the early parts of the narrative, something of a survivor. A year or so ago, she suddenly lost her mother; a little later, her father suffered a suspicious heart attack; and in the aftermath of that latter's passing, her beloved brother was straight-up strangled. She has no-one to turn to, now, and so many questions—not least about the unassuming book Conrad Coldbrook Junior found in Conrad Coldbrook Senior's safe.

Colette believes—with good reason, even—that Murder on Mars may be the key to understanding what happened to her family, and perhaps why, but beyond that, she doesn't have a clue what to do. The thought of reading this fictional fossil doesn't cross her ultra-modern mind for a minute. Instead, she does the other obvious thing: she rents out a so-called "reclone" of the author of the novel, E. A. Smithe, from her local library, and asks him to do the dirty work.

Now it might be that Smithe comes complete with most of his long-dead predecessor's memories, but he doesn't remember much about Murder on Mars—and to make matters worse, he's a copy of a crime writer rather than anything resembling a detective himself:

I was not the man I thought I was, the one whose name I used—whose name I still use right now, for that matter. I was somebody else, a kid who had been grown from that guy's DNA and loaded up with his memories, phony memories of things that never happened to me and never could happen to me. (p.36)

Thus, the investigation into the curious case of the Coldbrooks proceeds in frustrating fits and stuttering starts, regularly interrupted by Smithe's soul-searching and set back substantially when Colette is (apparently) kidnapped. "The more I thought about it the surer I got that there was something funny going on, but I could not even guess what it was." (p.106)

Book Review | Bats of the Republic by Zachary Thomas Dodson

Bats of the Republic is an illuminated novel of adventure, featuring hand-drawn maps and natural history illustrations, subversive pamphlets and science-fictional diagrams, and even a nineteenth-century novel-within-a-novel—an intrigue wrapped in innovative design.

In 1843, fragile naturalist Zadock Thomas must leave his beloved in Chicago to deliver a secret letter to an infamous general on the front lines of the war over Texas. The fate of the volatile republic, along with Zadock’s future, depends on his mission. When a cloud of bats leads him off the trail, he happens upon something impossible...

Three hundred years later, the world has collapsed and the remnants of humanity cling to a strange society of paranoia. Zeke Thomas has inherited a sealed envelope from his grandfather, an esteemed senator. When that letter goes missing, Zeke engages a fomenting rebellion that could free him—if it doesn’t destroy his relationship, his family legacy, and the entire republic first.

As their stories overlap and history itself begins to unravel, a war in time erupts between a lost civilization, a forgotten future, and the chaos of the wild. Bats of the Republic is a masterful novel of adventure and science fiction, of elliptical history and dystopian struggle, and, at its riveting core, of love.

***

In a world where the Powers That Be have deemed any and all secrets illegal, Zeke Thomas must go against the flow he's always followed when he inherits a sealed envelope containing information which could sink the system that's kept humanity alive since the Collapse.

Meanwhile, in the year 1843, Zeke's time-removed relative, Zadock, has to leave his one true love languishing in her sickbed to deliver a highly sensitive letter to a legendary general embedded deep in the disputed territory of Texas.

An incredibly presented "illuminated novel" which, like last year's S., blends form and function with history and mystery to realise a reading experience that amazes from the first page, Bats of the Republic comes from the co-founder of a small press specialising in "strange and beautiful fiction and nonfiction" with a sideline in detail-oriented design, so the unusual shape Zachary Thomas Dodson's debut takes shouldn't be such a surprise.

And yet, the metatextual elements that make this reflexive narrative remarkable are so utterly abundant that they create a state of fantastic stupefaction. In advance of the actual start of the story, we're treated to an exquisite endpaper mosaic, two discrete family trees, a meticulous map charting Zadock's ill-fated flight, a selection of handwritten letters, the first of a few newspaper clippings, and the title page of a whole other novel, namely The City-State by E. Anderson—all of which is as good as guaranteed to make one go um. 

And Bats of the Republic has hardly even begun!

Book Review | The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of economic and social collapse. Living in their car, surviving on tips from Charmaine's job at a dive bar, they're increasingly vulnerable to roving gangs, and in a rather desperate state. So when they see an advertisement for the Positron Project in the town of Consilience—a "social experiment" offering stable jobs and a home of their own—they sign up immediately. All they have to do in return for this suburban paradise is give up their freedom every second month, swapping their home for a prison cell.

At first, all is well. But slowly, unknown to the other, Stan and Charmaine develop a passionate obsession with their counterparts, the couple that occupy their home when they are in prison. Soon the pressures of conformity, mistrust, guilt and sexual desire take over, and Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled.

***

You can buy a bunch of stuff with money. You can buy board games, boxed sets, hot hatchbacks and huge houses—an assortment of objects and accessories and investments likely to lift your spirits for a few minutes and, if you're lucky, a whole lot longer. But, The Heart Goes Last asks, does that mean you can buy happiness? Its answer: hah!

Stan and Charmaine wouldn't have had any need to, till recently. When they were first married, their futures were bright; their futures were right. "They were so happy then. It was just like an ad." (p.276) The newlyweds were even considering kids when the bottom went out from under the economy and civilised society practically collapsed.

They were so sweet then, so hopeful; so young, not like the way [they are] now. And then it hadn't worked out, because of circumstances. And it was a strain, so many tensions, what with the car and everything, but they'd stayed together because they had each other and they loved each other. (p.153)

At the start of Margaret Atwood's first standalone work of full-length fiction for fifteen years, Stan and Charmaine have almost nothing but their love for one another—and even that bond has been stronger. Then they hear about something called the Positron project, an experimental private enterprise which promises a new way today and, if it works, a new world for the future:

Rather than festering in some deserted condo crawling with black mould or crouching in a stench-filled trailer where you'd spend the nights beating off dead-eyed teenagers armed with broken bottles and ready to murder you for a handful of cigarette butts, you'd have gainful employment, three wholesome meals a day, a lawn to tend, a hedge to trim, the assurance that you were contributing to the general good, and a toilet that flushed. In a word, or rather three words: A MEANINGFUL LIFE. (p.42)

The only trade-off is that participants must spend every other month in a prison—and while they're away, their so-called "alternates" come out to play...

Book Review | The Death House by Sarah Pinborough

Toby's life was perfectly normal... until it was unravelled by something as simple as a blood test.

Taken from his family, Toby now lives in the Death House; an out-of-time existence far from the modern world, where he, and the others who live there, are studied by Matron and her team of nurses. They're looking for any sign of sickness. Any sign of their wards changing. Any sign that it's time to take them to the sanatorium.

And no one returns from the sanatorium.

Withdrawn from his house-mates and living in his memories of the past, Toby spends his days fighting his fear. But then a new arrival in the house shatters the fragile peace, and everything changes.

Because everybody dies. It's how you choose to live that counts.

***

A slim, sorrowful volume that splits the difference between The Fault in Our Stars and The Girl with All the Gifts, The Death House documents the last days of several students in a school full of Defectives: young people who have been taken from their parents and installed in an isolated location because of something bad in their blood. Something that'll kill them all before long.

It's school but not school. Like this whole place is life but not life. At least the teachers, who disappear off to their own wing once lessons are done, will get out of here. Sometimes I'll catch one watching us as we work as if we're animals in a zoo. I can never decide quite what the look is. Fascination or fear, or maybe a bit of both.

Maybe a bit of both is appropriate...

On the back of The Language of Dying, a life-affirming dark fantasy about the passing of a man with lung cancer, Sarah Pinborough opts not to detail the Defective gene here. That isn't to say there aren't certain suggestions—implications that when the time comes, the kids in question will turn into monsters of a sort; monsters some of them have seen in the movies the school screens each week. To wit, we can guess what happens next. We can guess that death is essentially a blessing on the affected.

The kids struggle to see it that way, because of course they do—they're kids. Boys and girls from eight to eighteen bundled into black vans and largely left to their own devices on an island where they make friends and enemies, fight and make light; where they do whatever they can do, in truth, to avoid facing the fate that awaits them.

Book Review | The Chimes by Anna Smaill

A boy stands on the roadside on his way to London, alone in the rain. No memories, beyond what he can hold in his hands at any given moment. No directions, as written words have long since been forbidden. No parents—just a melody that tugs at him, a thread to follow. A song that says if he can just get to the capital, he may find some answers about what happened to them.

The world around Simon sings, each movement a pulse of rhythm, each object weaving its own melody, music ringing in every drop of air.

Welcome to the world of The Chimes. Here, life is orchestrated by a vast musical instrument that renders people unable to form new memories. The past is a mystery, each new day feels the same as the last, and before is blasphony.

But slowly, inexplicably, Simon is beginning to remember. He emerges from sleep each morning with a pricking feeling, and sense there is something he urgently has to do. In the city Simon meets Lucien, who has a gift for hearing, some secrets of his own, and a theory about the danger lurking in Simon's past.

***

London comes alive like never before in Anna Smaill's deeply unique debut: a dystopian love story about a boy who comes to the capital on a quest to find out what happened to his late parents, and why. Along the way unspeakable secrets will be revealed about a world in which "words are not to be trusted" (p.30) and memories are temporary—the unintended consequences of a musical final solution:

At the height of dischord, at Allbreaking, sound became a weapon. In the city, glass shivered out of context, fractured white and peeled away from windows. The buildings rumbled and fell. The mettle was bent and twisted out of tune. The water in the river stood in a single wave that never toppled. What happened to the people? The people were blinded and deafened. The people died. The bridge between Bankside and Paul's shook and stirred, or so they say. The people ran but never fast enough. After Allbreaking, only the pure of heart and hearing were left. They dwelled in the cities. They waited for order; they waited for a new harmony. (p.30)

It never arrived. But now, if you listen closely, you can hear the strains of a beautiful new movement beginning...

Though he doesn't consider himself such, Simon Wythern is one of the lucky ones. Same as any other person, he forgets everything that's happened to him during the day over the course of Chimes each night, yet our orphan is able to impress his most exceptional experiences into objects, and carry them with him in this way. He keeps his objectmemories close, of course, and allows himself to indulge in one each evening:

In the depths of the roughcloth, none of the shapes has any meaning. They're just things I reach for like a strandpicker in thamesmuck. When my hands takes hold of the right one, a picture will flash up true as a bright note, clear as an unmudded stream. I don't know how it works. Maybe the object comes first; then the memory follows. Or maybe I choose the memory and my hand finds the right object to match. I do one each night only. And I can't take it with me into the morning. (p.51)

Book Review | Golden Son by Pierce Brown

As a Red, Darrow grew up working the mines deep beneath the surface of Mars, enduring backbreaking labor while dreaming of the better future he was building for his descendants. But the Society he faithfully served was built on lies. Darrow’s kind have been betrayed and denied by their elitist masters, the Golds—and their only path to liberation is revolution. And so Darrow sacrifices himself in the name of the greater good for which Eo, his true love and inspiration, laid down her own life. He becomes a Gold, infiltrating their privileged realm so that he can destroy it from within.

A lamb among wolves in a cruel world, Darrow finds friendship, respect, and even love—but also the wrath of powerful rivals. To wage and win the war that will change humankind’s destiny, Darrow must confront the treachery arrayed against him, overcome his all-too-human desire for retribution—and strive not for violent revolt but a hopeful rebirth. Though the road ahead is fraught with danger and deceit, Darrow must choose to follow Eo’s principles of love and justice to free his people.

He must live for more.

***

Pierce Brown reached for the stars in Red Rising—a non-stop sprawl of story about striving and surviving as a slave to the lies of society that reminded readers of Katniss Everdeen's plight in Panem—and almost hit that monumental mark. In Golden Son he gorydamn does. It's a far superior sequel, in fact: one of the rare breed of reads that improves upon its predecessor in every conceivable category.

In the first instance, this is a bigger book, with still bigger ambitions, played out across a markedly larger and more elaborate canvas—which is to say we are no longer stuck in the Institute, where the games our carved protagonist Darrow had to play to prove his worth to the masters of Mars took place. Rather, the central Red—a rebel determined to unseat the same Society that hung his young lover for daring to sing a song—has already risen.

But that which rises must also fall.

Golden Son, so forth, starts by taking Darrow down a peg or ten. In the hands of a less accomplished author, I dare say his undoing could come off as a contrivance—a retreat to the reboot button instead of an attempt to solve the underlying problem—but Brown uses this opportunity to meaningfully re-engineer his hero: to introduce conflict in him as opposed to absolving him of the dark deeds Darrow has done in service of the terrorists—yes terrorists—he represents.

He gives every indication that being defeated doesn't bother him; that the true tragedy at the top of the novel is the death of thousands—not by his hand but absolutely because of it. Alas, he can't even convince himself of this:

And there's guilt for caring about that when so many lives should demand all my sorrow. Before today, victory made me full, because with every victory I've come closer to making Eo's dream real. Now defeat has robbed me of that. I failed her today. (p.20)

And before today, in truth. Darrow knows Eo would not have approved of his treacherous tactics in the Institute, but to realise her dream—of freedom for all—he must endear himself to the enemy; to gut the Golds from the inside out, he must behave like the best of them: the strongest and smartest and most merciless.

These are not his words, but they might as well be:

I am not a despot. But a father must cuff the ears of his children if they make attempt to set fire to his house; if I must kill a few thousand for the greater good [...] and for the citizens of this planet to live in a world untorn by war, then so be it. (pp.31-32)

Thus Darrow the suicide bomber is born.

Book Review | Gleam by Tom Fletcher

The gargantuan Factory of Gleam is an ancient, hulking edifice of stone, metal and glass ruled over by chaste alchemists and astronomer priests.

As millennia have passed, the population has decreased, and now only the central district is fully inhabited and operational; the outskirts have been left for the wilderness to reclaim. This decaying, lawless zone is the Discard: the home of Wild Alan.

Clever, arrogant, and perpetually angry, Wild Alan is both loved and loathed by the Discard's misfits. He's convinced that the Gleam authorities were behind the disaster that killed his parents and his ambition is to prove it. But he's about to uncover more than he bargained for.

***

Hot on the heels of three deeply discomfiting horror novels, Gleam marks the starts of a fantasy saga that's never better than when it harks back to Tom Fletcher's first fictions. It's burdened by a bland protagonist and a lacking opening act, but besides that, The Factory Trilogy is off to a tantalising start.

In large part that's due to the darkly wonderful world it introduces us to. Gleam is a devastated landscape equal parts Ambergris and Fallout 3, arranged around a truly hellish edifice:

From the centre rises the one structure that is not tarnished with extraneous growth, or overwhelmed with moss, or just rounded and worn by erosion. It's a vast, black, six-sided pyramid, separated from the rest of the chaos by a ring of ashen wasteland. The wasteland is the top of a hill, which slopes down into a darkness from which all the rest of the chaos emerges. This is the only visible ground in the whole place, and it's grey and dusty and somehow creepy. The pyramid itself, though, looks clean and new, and its edges are all sharp. (p.3)

Alan has lived in this "knot of lies and rituals that referenced only each other and combined to mean less than nothing" (p.211) for twelve tedious years—long enough to meet and marry his wife, Marion, and father a boy by the name of Billy with her—but he doesn't belong here any more now than he did on the devastating day he was made welcome within its walls. "He'd never been a Pyramidder and he never would be. He still dreamed about Modest Mills; being able to run around outside. And not in some courtyard or garden, but the real outside—the Discard." (p.12)

His dreams of freedom come true too soon, in truth. In short order Alan offends an Assistant Alchemical Co-ordinator, who sends heavies to his house to remind our protagonist of his place in the Pyramid. In the aftermath, Marion asks Alan to leave—not because she no longer loves him, but for the sake of their son's safety.

She doesn't have to ask him twice. He packs a bag and skedaddles, to find that though life in the Discard is difficult, it's not as awful as the Pyramidders insist.

Book Review | J by Howard Jacobson

Two people fall in love, not yet knowing where they have come from or where they are going. Kevern doesn't know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a world starting with a J. It wasn't then, and isn't now, the time or place to be asking questions.

Ailinn too has grown up in the dark about who she was or where she came from. On their first date Kevern kisses the bruises under her eyes. He doesn't ask who hurt her. Brutality has grown commonplace. They aren't sure if they have fallen in love of their own accord, or whether they've been pushed into each other's arms. But who would have pushed them, and why?

Hanging over the lives of all the characters in this novel is a momentous catastrophe—a past event shrouded in suspicion, denial and apology, now referred to as What Happened, If It Happened.

J is a novel to be talked about in the same breath as Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, thought-provoking and life-changing. It is like no other novel that Howard Jacobson has written.

***

Alongside Us, The Bone Clocks, and How To Be Both, J by Howard Jacobson was one of a number of novels longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in advance of its publication date. A source of frustration for some, I'm sure—though this has ever been the panel's habit—but for others it represents a reason to update reading radars.

This year, I found myself amongst the others above, because if not for the nod, I doubt I'd have looked twice at this book. When I did, additionally, it was with some scepticism; after all, Jacobson has won the Booker before, for The Finkler Question in 2010—the first comic novel to take the trophy home in 25 years—and pointedly acknowledging former nominees is another of the panel's practices.

Not today. J, I'm pleased to say, is in every sense deserving of its spot on the longlist. It's a literary revelation wrapped in understated dystopian clothing; a wonder of wit and whimsy that takes in the chilling and the ridiculous—the hilarious and the horrific. That said, it's a novel that requires rereading to appreciate completely.

Book Review | The Three by Sarah Lotz

The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage.

Dubbed The Three by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival...

***

Before the Frankfurt Book Fair a few years ago, a partial manuscript of The Three was sent to a selection of editors. A perfect storm of offers followed, and less than a day later, a substantial six figure sum from the Hodder & Stoughton coffers proved sufficient to secure the company Sarah Lotz's phenomenal novel. On the strength of an excerpt alone, this was practically unprecedented, especially for an author absent a track record to trade on.

But that, as a matter of fact, isn't entirely accurate: though The Three is the first book to bear her name in such a prominent place outside of South Africa, Lotz has been around the block and back—in the publishing business, that is. In the past, she's worked with her daughter Savannah on the Deadlands saga; she's one of three writers behind Helena S. Paige's pseudonymous Choose Your Own Erotica novels; The Three, however, has most in common with the scathing urban horror Lotz and Louis Greenberg collaborated on as S. L. Grey: not enjoyable novels, no—the events the Downside descents document being altogether too terrible to take pleasure from—but blerrie good books, to be sure. As, in its way, is Lotz's latest.

A horror novel with a hell of a high-concept, The Three is a nightmarish indictment of contemporary culture in much the same way The Mall and The Ward were. Instead of demonstrating the darker side of capitalism or the health system, however, here, Lotz sets her sights on the religious right—in particular the way some folks use faith to advance their own agendas.

Book Review | Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun

"A black moon had risen, a sphere of sleeplessness that pulled at the tides of blood-and invisible explanation for the madness welling inside."

The world has stopped sleeping. Restless nights have grown into days of panic, delirium and, eventually, desperation. But few and far between, sleepers can still be found—a gift they quickly learn to hide. For those still with the ability to dream are about to enter a waking nightmare.

Matt Biggs is one of the few sleepers. His wife Carolyn however, no stranger to insomnia, is on the very brink of exhaustion. After six restless days and nights, Biggs wakes to find her gone. He stumbles out of the house in search of her to find a world awash with pandemonium, a rapidly collapsing reality. Sleep, it seems, is now the rarest and most precious commodity. Money can't buy it, no drug can touch it, and there are those who would kill to have it.

***

Black Moon is a book which wants to confuse you, and in that sense, it's a soaring success.

The thought behind its apocalypse is appallingly plausible: a plague of infectious insomnia has wounded the world, laying almost the lot of us low in the process. Without sleep, the larger part of the population is losing it. Unable "to distinguish fact from fiction," (p.3) to tell dreams apart from reality, the inflicted become zombies, of a sort. Thankfully they're absent that habitual hankering for brains, but "the murderous rage they feel when seeing others sleep" (p.44) has already led to indescribable violence on a scale that beggars belief.

It falls to the few who remain relatively rational to figure out what in God's name is going on:

Many in the scientific community were focusing on a known disease—fatal familial insomnia—the idea being that this was some kind of mutated strain of the already mutated variation called sporadic familial insomnia. Whereas FFI was believed to be hereditary and limited to less than forty families in the world, and took up to two years to kill the afflicted, this new iteration seemed to be some kind of unstoppable upgrade. Accelerated, resistant, moving through the four stages of demise at three times the speed. 

But this was just the leading theory. No real connection had been made, and the medical community remained confronted by its greatest fear: a mystery. (p.35)

A mystery that is very probably unsolvable, given the worsening condition of those looking into it.

Black Moon isn't a long novel. Nevertheless Kenneth Calhoun proffers three diverse perspectives rather than allowing readers to settle into a single just-so story. Of these, we hear from the easiest to like, namely Lila—a little girl sent her away for "her own safety" (p.78) who feels betrayed by her parents—the least. A shame: hers is certainly a familiar figure in apocalyptic fiction, but she's sweet and real and resonant in a way that the other pair of protagonists can't match.

Book Review | Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson

Rudi is a cook in a Krakow restaurant, but when his boss asks him to help a cousin escape from the country he's trapped in, a new career—part spy, part people-smuggler—begins.

Following multiple economic crises and a devastating flu pandemic, Europe has fractured into countless tiny nations, duchies, polities and republics. Recruited by the shadowy organisation "Les Coureurs des Bois," Rudi is schooled in espionage, but when a training mission to The Line—a sovereign nation consisting of a trans-European railway line—goes wrong, he is arrested, beaten and Coureur Central must attempt a rescue.

With so many nations to work in, and identities to assume, Rudi is kept busy travelling across Europe. But when he is sent to smuggle someone out of Berlin and finds a severed head inside a locker instead, a conspiracy begins to wind itself around him. 

With kidnapping, double-crosses and a map that constantly re-draws, Rudi begins to realise that underneath his daily round of plot and counter plot, behind the conflicting territories, another entirely different reality might be pulling the strings...

***

Maps are a way of rationalising landscapes, but what kind of map can help us come to terms with a country that changes every day? With a world that defies definition?

Dave Hutchinson's vision of Europe in the near future is as plausible as it is novel. In the aftermath of catastrophic economic collapse and a flu pandemic which led to the death of many millions, the Union begins to splinter:

The Union had struggled into the twenty-first century and managed to survive in some style for a few more years of bitching and infighting and cronyism. Then it had spontaneously begun to throw off progressively smaller and crazier nation-states, like a sunburned holidaymaker shedding curls of skin. 

Nobody really understood why this had happened. (p.27)

However unclear the reasons may be, "pocket nations" (p.27) now proliferate across the continent, each with its own borders and orders. Anything goes in some, whilst in others, next to nothing does. With more and more of these micro-countries appearing every year, a gap has opened in the market: there's a dire demand for people prepared to brave Europe's impossible topography in order to transport packages—or perhaps important persons—from state to state in spite of tight guidelines.

Some call the organisation which has sprung up to meet the needs of this new niche a company of "glorified postmen." (p.124) Others don't believe in them, even. But they exist, I insist, and they call themselves Coureurs.

Book Review | Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Darrow is a Red: a member of the lowest caste in the colour-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow — and Reds like him — are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

***

Incredibly, man has been fascinated with Mars for millennia. For more than four thousand years, we've wondered what might be out there, up there. Now we know: some rocks, some regolith, and the occasional frozen lake.

The drab reality of the red planet might pale in comparison to all the otherworldly wonders we've imagined in our science and science fiction, but that hasn't stopped us from dispatching exploratory probes and planning manned missions. More than that: we've considered colonising its canyons—overcoming the challenges of its harsh environment and making Mars a home away from home—though those days are a fair ways away, I'm afraid.

Part the first of an ambitious trilogy by Pierce Brown, Red Rising takes place in a future where these distant dreams have been realised... not that the Golds who live the high life here have elected to tell the Reds whose blood, sweat and tears made man's occupation of Mars viable. Rather, the Reds are perpetually mislead: they labour away in craters and caves under the impression that they will be rewarded for their hard work one day, when others come.

But others are already here. They have been for hundreds of years; hundreds of years during which generations of Reds have dug and danced and died none the wiser, including our protagonist Darrow's dad.

Book Review | Three by Jay Posey

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The world has collapsed, and there are no heroes any more.

But when a lone gunman reluctantly accepts the mantel of protector to a young boy and his dying mother against the forces that pursue them, such a man may yet arise.

File Under: Science Fiction [Three For All | Apocalyptic Wasteland | A Journey Home | Fear the Weir]

***

Imagine a meeting of the minds behind the Fallout franchise and The Dark Tower saga. That's Three: a desperate western about obsession, regret and redemption set in the sandblasted wilderness of a world that's gone to hell in a handbasket. Not that we know when, or why... just that it has.

Nor does the author spend a great deal of time establishing the central character his debut is named after. However heroic, Three, we see, is frustratingly stoic: a bounty-hunter with an unspeakable secret. But in a very real sense, his silence is his strength, while what we don't know about the wasteland serves to make our journey through it that much more thrilling.

Some readers are likely to find this apparent lack of motivation and explanation unsatisfying, but Three isn't actually absent worldbuilding or character development at all; it just happens to happen in the background. Thus, there are few, if any infodumps, and the protagonist does not often monologue on his origins. Instead, we put the pieces of the puzzle together ourselves. We use our own imaginations to fill in the blanks.

Participation, then, is a prerequisite. Best to leave Three be, really, if you aren't prepared to play the game Jay Posey makes of it. But if you are? Then allow me an industry in-joke: it may just blow you away.

Let's back up a bit for a minute.

Three, when we meet, has come to town to cash in a bounty, but the agent who's supposed to pay him doesn't have enough Hard on hand to cover the outstanding amount, so he's made to wait.

Waiting, I'm afraid, isn't one of our man's many strengths:

"It was like this when he didn't have a job; something to find, someone to bring in. The restlessness was setting in, the need to move. To hunt. It was the third day in the same town. Might as well have been a month. There were benefits to being a freelancer, but down time wasn't one of them." (p.20)

That's where Cass and Wren come in: a Quint addict on the run from a special someone and her supernaturally sensitive son. Three doesn't take much interest when he first lays eyes on the pitiable pair, but their paths just keep on crossing. Soon enough he ends up saving them from certain death—all in a day's work, eh?—then, when he realises that they won't last long without his help, he reluctantly accepts the mantle of temporary protector.

And so the ragtag trio take to the wasteland... where there be Weir, I fear: a hive of cyber-zombies, in short, with burning blue orbs for eyes and the uncanny ability to track their targets' digital signatures. This is a particular problem in world where everyone (well, almost everyone) has come to rely on implants which connect them to the cloud.

By the by, there's more to Cass and Wren than meets the eye. Though he has no control over it, the little fella has a unique ability, and between her spiralling habit and her disgruntled former employers—a band of brutal brainhackers—Cass's past is catching up with her fast. Had Three known what a handful they'd be between them, things would have been different, undoubtedly, however "he was responsible for them now. And in a sudden flash he felt, without question, they were the mistake that would cost him his life. [But] he wasn't sure it was a mistake at all." (p.162)

And that's pretty much the plot. Again: not a lot, but enough—just—to get us going. Indeed, Three represents a real roller-coaster if we're willing to play our parts. To engage with the world and the characters and the narrative in the same sort of way we may in a video game.

Tellingly, Jay Posey has been involved in that very industry since 1998. Currently, he's a Senior Narrative Designer at Red Storm Entertainment, the creators of two Tom Clancy-branded franchises—I give you Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six—and if these series haven't been especially progressive in terms of the tales they've told, they've made for great rides regardless. As sandboxes for incredible set-pieces and immersive gameplay experiences rather than solely stories, they've done the trick, I think.

This ethos—of encouraging the player to participate in the construction of each aspect of the entire—also applies to our role as readers of Three. I for one was perfectly pleased to do a little of the heavy lifting, because Posey makes discovery fun, and keeps things interesting in the interim.

Not to lean too heavily on the video game angle, but I delighted in identifying scenes from Three via that vocabulary. There are stealth sections, then, in between all the brawling; minibosses at the end of each act; collectibles and sidequests; moments that reminded me of objective-based multiplayer modes like capture and hold.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that Three is an unmistakable gamey debut. But this is no bad thing—and no surprise considering Jay Posey's professional pedigree. The premise is certainly nothing new, and at the outset, the characters are rather unremarkable, but the author's distinctive approach to storytelling superimposes a firstly fascinating and finally satisfying dimension upon what could very easily have been a bland book.

As is, it isn't. On the contrary, I had all the fun reading Three. Honestly, all of it.

***

Three
by Jay Posey

UK Publication: August 2013, Angry Robot
US Publication: July 2013, Angry Robot

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Book Review | Winter Damage by Natasha Carthew

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The moor in winter is no place for a girl travelling alone. It's cold out there. There's snow, but it's the wind that grabs hold of your heart and freezes it.

Just before Christmas, Ennor Carne sets out on a quest to find her missing mother. The home she leaves is a broken-down trailer, with her sick dad and her little brother, and a few skinny cows that's left of what was once a family farm. She takes warm clothes, what food she can find, a map and a gun — but nothing, nothing can prepare her for what lies ahead.

Ennor is just fourteen years old. She thinks she knows where she's going and what she's looking for. She doesn't know anything.

***

As abhorrent as the thought is—of billions dead and the world wasted, whether by natural disaster or man-made calamity—it's fair to say that folks today take a certain pleasure in positing the apocalypse.

The appeal is apparent if we begin by admitting that the lot of modern life is lacking; that we are all dissatisfied with ourselves in one way or another. The end of everything, then, represents a chance to change. To break with the people we have been in the past, and be... better, I guess. So the world goes to war and we wonder: will we suddenly discover hidden depths, reserves of inner strength? The polar ice caps melt and overnight we could be leaders—heroes, even!

Fantasising about the apocalypse is a peculiar pastime, perhaps, but not pointless. At the very least, it begs an arresting theoretical question: how would we cope with the end of world as we know it?

Winter Damage's protagonist Ennor Carne counts.

A fourteen year-old farmer's daughter whose dad has seen better days, and whose autistic brother Trip requires round-the-clock care, Ennor takes "comfort in the counting of things." (p.239) To count is of course to take control in some small way, to impose order upon chaos, and there's been a lot of that latter in her life lately.

Since the last outbreak of foot-and-mouth things had turned worse from the top of the country to the bottom. Ennor didn't remember it all so well. She was only seven at the time and losing the prize cattle was the least of their problems once they had lost the farmhouse and the land and her dad went half mad with the misery and then the drugs. (p.7)

Squirrelled away in the wilderness, the Carne family have managed to make ends meet in the seven years since, but now the money's run out, and the council are threatening to take the kids into care while the country descends into a modern-day dark age.

Nearing the end of her teenage tether, Ennor remembers her mother. Her mother, who upped sticks and abandoned the family with a defiant glint in her eye long before the collapse, as if in obscene agreement, of civilised society. Against good reason, Ennor imagines her mother might be able to save them, or at least lend a helping hand.

She knows where she went—not that far away from the farm, in fact—so as opposed to waiting for the world to right itself somehow, she packs a bag, leaves her brother with her best friend Butch, and journeys alone into the wintry wilderness.

Her mother waltzed into her dream with her sanity intact and happiness for everyone was a given. [But] the merry flight of fantasy soon turned shocking and unbearable and Ennor sat balled and cold and insignificant to the world, the past hanging like an old damp coat hooked to the back of a door, lifeless and rotten. She pressed her hands over her eyes and dug her fingers in close to popping, pinning what couldn't be explained to the back of her mind to stop herself from crying. (p.55)

Needless to say, things don't go according to plan. Within hours of setting out she's injured her ankle badly, lost her map, and killed another kid—and winter has only just begun. If Ennor doesn't exhaust her scant supplies and starve, she'll surely freeze to death without shelter. But other people are seeking shelter as well... and other people are to be avoided at all costs.

Not because they've turned into zombies or anything along those lines—let's be clear about that from the start. Indeed, excepting the apocalyptic elements of the premise, there's nothing speculative about this novel at all. Its world is our world, albeit broken, and its people, equally, are our people: good and bad but mostly both, though the desperate times Winter Damage mines have demanded they take desperate measures.

On the surface, the situation is not dissimilar to that Cormac McCarthy explored in The Road: an appropriate point of reference for Winter Damage's first third if you can imagine that haunting tale told from the boy's perspective rather than the man's, and substitute its skeletal North American setting for the ghostly Cornish coast.

That said, Winter Damage is a much more optimistic novel than The Road. A surprising assertion, I'm sure, given how unbearably bleakly it begins, not to mention how horrendous Ennor's early hardships are. But overall, her journey charts a positive path. She makes a fabulous friend, Sonny, who shows her that there's still warmth to be had, however scant; a wonderful world to turn, however far it's fallen. Sonny gives Ennor hope again; instils in her a promise more potent than the prospect that her runaway mother will in any way save the day.

They laughed and Ennor remarked on what a ragtag family they had made and her words brought comfort to the others because that was what they had become. No matter what the future held, they would have that for ever and always stitched between them. (p.249)

Even at its most miserable—and oh, there are many low moments—Winter Damage is a truly beautiful book, bolstered in large part by a delicate cast of characters and a sublime sense of setting, but what sets it apart in the end is its impeccable prose. Hard to believe, really, that this is Natasha Carthew's first novel. She's published three volumes of poetry before, though, and it shows. Her words are carefully weighted: her descriptions, her dialogue, and the dialect in which she renders said inform a multitude of moods marvellously, meanwhile the mounting sound and essential sense of her sentences rings out as right in a manner most novelists never even attempt.

Small but perfectly formed, Winter Damage is the sort of book that begs to be read out loud, even if there's no-one else near to hear it. It's a stone-cold stunner with an uncommonly humble heart, and I urge you to take in into yours, too.

***

Winter Damage
by Natasha Carthew

UK Publication: August 2013, Bloomsbury
US Publication: January 2014, Bloomsbury USA

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Book Review | The Machine by James Smythe

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Beth lives alone on a desolate housing estate near the sea. She came here to rebuild her life following her husband’s return from the war. His memories haunted him but a machine promised salvation. It could record memories, preserving a life that existed before the nightmares.

Now the machines are gone. The government declared them too controversial, the side-effects too harmful. But within Beth’s flat is an ever-whirring black box. She knows that memories can be put back, that she can rebuild her husband piece by piece.

A Frankenstein tale for the 21st century, The Machine is a story of the indelibility of memory, the human cost of science and the horrors of love.

***

Accidents... happen. Would that they didn't, but they do, and that's the truth.

Every day, mistakes are made—by every one of us, I warrant. Consequences follow; and often, they're awful, if not absolutely abhorrent. But in time, however hard the hardship, we come to see that what will be will be. After the fact, what torments us is the memory of what was, and is no longer; or the thought of things we would do differently, if only we could go back in time, with the benefit of hindsight on our side.

Of course we can't. That's not how the world works. The past is set in stone, and wishing we could change it won't get us anywhere. Regret, from a logical perspective, is entirely ineffective. That said, there's no getting away from it, is there? And it hurts just the same, even if it's meaningless.

But imagine there was a machine... a machine that could take the pain away, by meddling with your memories. Would you use it? And if you were to, what would you lose?

These questions get to the essence of those that have been playing on Beth's mind at the beginning of James Smythe's devastating new novel:

"She's thought about it, sometimes: as she's tried to get to sleep, lying in bed, thinking about how easy it would be to wear a Crown, to press the buttons and to talk about Vic and herself, and their old life together. To talk her way through everything that she's lost. To press the PURGE button and feel it all drift away. Vic used to say that it felt like when you take painkillers for a wound. He said that they gave him heavy stuff after the IED went off and put its shrapnel in his shoulder and his neck, and once he'd popped them there was a sense that it had once hurt, but that it was like an echo of the pain was all that was left, or the memory of the pain. Like it's been rubbed hard and then left alone. That's what the Machine did." (p.17)

Or rather, that's what the Machine was supposed to do. In practice, it broke its impossible promises. It took people like Vic—men and women who were damaged or disturbed in some way, as Vic was when he came home from the war to his woebegone wife—and extracted from them their most terrible memories; those that certain specialists decided had caused whatever trauma.

Predictably, perhaps, it didn't work. Certainly not like the Technicolor promotions promised. Instead, the Machine left a great many of those souls who used it lost, "like coma patients." Now, there's such a number of them that they've been cruelly christened the vacant, because "there's nothing inside them. They might look the same, they might smell the same, but they're different. The person that they were is gone. [...] So what's left?" (p.65)

Only a signature of sorts:

"The Machine, filling in the gaps with things that didn't stick, stories of its own creation to cover up the cracks. And what makes her think that it will be so different this time? Because the stories are Vic? From his own mouth, 100 per cent pure and unfiltered, every part of his life spilled on to digital tape? She doubts herself. She doubts the Machine." (p.123)

But what else does Beth have left?

These doubts discomfit her, but for better or for worse—what do you think?—Beth has already made her decision. From the very outset of this nightmarish tale, she systematically puts into action the plan she's dreamed of since the day the Machine took her husband away: she's going to evict Vic from the care home he's been wasting away in, and simply rebuild him, memory by individual memory... using a treasure trove of precious audio recordings, untested equipment bought at an exorbitant cost from an anonymous seller, and advice from the internet.

Easy to see where she might have gone wrong, isn't it?

Precise and provocative, The Machine is a powerful parable about memory and regret which grips from the get-go and refuses to let you loose until after its horrendous ending. Like The Explorer before it, it's a spare story—so short and sharp that it cuts into one like a blade through butter—that you'll have a hard time forgetting.

The narrative, for instance, is simple, yet insidious. Smythe divides it into three parts, each of which unfolds from Beth's relentless perspective. Before the treatment, there is hope: we glimpse light at the end of the tunnel, albeit fleetingly. But the path to that point is long and dark; accordingly, things get a tad desperate amidst the middle third, which chronicles the hasty recreation of poor, vacant Vic via the machine. After the treatment, at the last, it all starts to come apart—just as these characters should be coming together—when the walls Beth has built, brick by deliberate brick, are exploded. A terrific trick.

To his credit, Smythe isn't content to mess around, ever. He pursues the dreadful descent that awaits at the end of this novel doggedly, barreling headlong towards unconscionable horror—horror that the reader feels from early on, though we do not know what shape or state it will take until it is upon us, teeth bared and bloody like a beast from the deep.

Yet inevitably, it is no such thing. The horror of The Machine, despite its title, is all too human. Beth has been playing god. Giving life (and taking what remains away) when she has no business interfering with a man's mind—as her only friend takes perverse pleasure reminding her. But we are set against this self-righteous specimen, even as the depths of Beth's complicity are made plain, because our entire experience arises from her perspective. We have found shelter inside her head, as she has herself in a sense. We feel, finally, the same as she: the same terror, the same guilt. Her dreams and her doubts alike are ours, and this gives The Machine great power.

It's a morality play, in a way: a Frankenstein story for the 21st century, as the publicity puts it. But truer words have rarely been printed on a press release. The Machine is a phenomenal novel from the first, and this impression only grows as it goes, gathering gradually in advance of a finale which leaves the reader reeling, as if from a boxer's blow.

I have long thought of Adam Roberts as Britain's most overlooked genre author, but between The Testimony, The Explorer and The Machine—three tremendous texts published in quick succession—James Smythe has almost supplanted said in my estimation. Harrowing as it is, his latest is simply unmissable.

***

The Machine
by James Smythe

UK Publication: April 2013, Blue Door

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Short Story Review | Limited Edition by Tim Maughan

In early August 2011, the world almost ended. Or so it seemed from where I was sitting: at home, glued to the news, watching in horror as thousands of people took to rioting in the streets for no reason I could easily see.

Using social media and mobile devices to organise themselves, these individuals made of London a living hell, and various other British cities went down the toilet as well. The gangs took what they wanted from high street retailers—from TVs to trainers—and burned what they didn’t.

Estimates place the cumulative cost of the resulting property damage at approximately two hundred million pounds. But forget the finances: five people died, many others were injured—and that isn’t counting the countless participants who were uncannily quiet about their so-called war wounds.

The forces of law and order did eventually respond. All the police who had planned leaves of absence were told to hold their horses, whilst parliament was (rather pointlessly) recalled. Our poor pillock of a Prime Minister even had to cut short his holidays!

Ultimately, more than three thousand people were arrested in relation to the riots, and gradually, they did die down. But the image of them—the idea of them—still persists. As ‘Limited Edition’ illustrates.

Tim Maughan’s startling short story begins with an extraordinary advert:

Eugene Sureshot, one mile tall, strides through the wasteland. Where his limited edition trainers hit the ground deserts bloom, city blocks rise and mountains rip themselves from the ground. Vistas erupt from each footfall, spreading like bacteria, mingling, creating landscapes. New places from the dead ground. Civilisations rise, intricate detail evolves around the soles of giant feet. 

Then Sureshot stops, as if something blocks his path. [He] steps back, raises a foot from the ground—leaving behind light-trails of glass skyscrapers and steel domes, and puts one limited edition kick through the screen, so all that Grids can see is the rubber sole, embossed tick logo.

It’s only a commercial for new shoes, but Grids can’t get it out of his head. By hook or by crook, he resolves, he’ll call a pair of these limited edition kicks his own. Alas, “he’s got no cash. Never has. And down here that makes him irrelevant, an outsider. It makes him insignificant.” So when Grids gets wind of a local store with inventory already, weeks before street date, he and his mans meet in an empty epic fantasy MMO to hatch a plan.

“Standard Smash/Grab rules yeah? No casualties, especially no staff or civilians,” he stresses. Thus the game begins: servers are brought online, admins are installed, and other essential information is seeded, secretly, via >>blinks<< on Twitter.

The progress of Grids and his gang will be followed by a flash mob of interested observers; though an ARG overlaid on their spex, they’ll unlock achievements and score multipliers for achieving certain objectives. Their success will essentially earn them significance. Their failure? Infamy. It’s a win-win situation... but of course it gets out of hand quickly.

‘Limited Edition’ is a chilling take on the reign of organised anarchy in the UK discussed above, and as such, its contemporary relevance is second to none—certainly to none of the BSFA’s other nominees for the Best Short Story of 2012. It touches, too, on the potential consequences of targeted marketing; on the place of gaming in our era; and on the immeasurable impact social media has had on society. As an extrapolation of recent events and advances, ‘Limited Edition’ is as astonishing as it is alarming.

But beyond its bearing on tomorrow’s world—nay today’s—Tim Maughan’s cautionary tale of the dispossessed in Britain’s cities also functions on a number of other fronts. In particularly fantastic in terms of character; somehow, despite what they’re doing, Grids and his fam seem sympathetic. On one level I honestly wanted them to get away with their Smash/Grab!

Then I remembered myself...

There is, then, a sense of tension between what is right outside the story, and what is true within its narrow, claustrophobic confines. In addition to this, ‘Limited Edition’ is propelled by an exponentially more desperate momentum, and bolstered by some very fitting imagery, which has nature resembling artifice rather than the other way around:

When Grids and his crew get to Avonmeads, he sees they’re being eyeballed by a fat black crow, perched on top of a CCTV pole. Like the camera it watches them pass. [...] He feels knots in his stomach, that feeling of being out of his comfort zone, of being watched and pointed out as an outsider.

‘Limited Edition’ may be a cutting commentary on any number of contemporary topics, but it’s also a damn fine short story—one of the most potent I've read in recent years—with candid characters, powerful pacing, and a terrific yet terrifying perspective.

To wit, Tim Maughan’s latest tale is well and truly deserving of its spot on the BSFA’s shortlist—as was ‘Havana Augmented’ (now available as one third of Paintwork) when it was nominated two years ago—though I wonder whether or not the same can be said of our next contender.

***

'Limited Edition' by Tim Maughan was published in Arc 1.3: Afterparty Overdrive in September 2012. You can buy a copy of the magazine here.