Book Review | The Gradual by Christopher Priest

In the latest novel from one of the UK's greatest writers we return to the Dream Archipelago, a string of islands that no one can map or explain.

Alesandro Sussken is a composer, and we see his life as he grows up in a fascist state constantly at war with another equally faceless opponent. His brother is sent off to fight; his family is destroyed by grief. Occasionally Alesandro catches glimpses of islands in the far distance from the shore, and they feed into his music—music for which he is feted.

But all knowledge of the other islands is forbidden by the junta, until he is unexpectedly sent on a cultural tour. And what he discovers on his journey will change his perceptions of his country, his music and the ways of the islands themselves.

Playing with the lot of the creative mind, the rigours of living under war and the nature of time itself, this is Christopher Priest at his absolute best.

***

Pro tip, folks: never, ever, ever ask artists where they get their ideas from. It's not a trade secret or anything so sensational—it's just a silly question in the eyes of the aforementioned, and at best, silly questions beget silly answers, such as the bit about the Bognor Regis-based ideas dealer Neil Gaiman used to use. The fact of the matter is that art is inherently personal, and people, whatever their superficial similarities, are completely unique, so what inspires one person in one way isn't likely to inspire another, and if it does, it'll be differently.

That's just one of the lessons the eventually-fêted composer Alesandro Sussken learns in The Gradual: a dreamlike diatribe on the source of song and scene and story and so on, arranged, somewhat like a literary symphony, around one man's lifelong journey through the tides of time.

Like The Islanders and The Adjacent and a bunch of other Christopher Priest books before it, The Gradual takes place in the Dream Archipelago, which is to say "the largest geographical feature in the world, comprising literally millions of islands." The Susskens—a family of musicians, mostly—live on Glaund, which is at war with Faiandland, and has been for as long as anyone can remember, for reasons no one can rightly recall. This sort of thing is not uncommon in the Dream Archipelago, so Alesandro doesn't take it too personally... that is, until his older brother Jacj is enlisted.

Years pass. Indeed, decades do:

Jacj's absence was eternally in the background of everything I did. Whatever had happened to him gave me feelings of dread, misery, horror, helplessness, but you cannot work up these emotions every day, every hour. I feared for him, was terrified of the news that I felt would come inevitably: he was dead, he had gone missing in action, he was horrifically wounded, he had deserted and been shot by officers. All these I pondered.

Yet the time went by... 

As time tends to. Inevitably, Alesandro has to direct his energies elsewhere, and perhaps it's the fact that Jacj may yet be out there somewhere that leads to our hero's first fascination with the world outwith his.

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 | Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%. Civilisation crumbles.

Twenty years later, a band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and it threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild.

Moving backwards and forwards in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: famous actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan, a bystander warned about the flu just in time; Arthur's first wife, Miranda; Arthur's oldest friend, Clark; Kirsten, an actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed prophet.

Thrilling, unique and deeply moving, this is a beautiful novel that asks questions about art and fame and about the relationships that sustain us through anything—even the end of the world.

***

Station Eleven's "lost world"—our world—is not recovered but remembered in Emily St. John Mandel's aching account of the apocalypse: a tale of two times which takes as its basis the affairs of the folks affected, both before and after the fact, by the actor and philanderer Arthur Leander.

The man himself dies of a massive heart attack in the first chapter, passing away onstage during the climactic fourth act of a performance of Shakespeare's King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, an apprentice paramedic in the audience that evening, does his level best to save the day, but Arthur Leander is already lost: the last celebrity to fall before the Georgia Flu takes them all.

Child actress Kirsten Raymonde also witnesses this, but remembers precious little of it twenty years later, when the second phase of Station Eleven takes place. Some might think her disconnect a blessing—"the more you remember, the more you've lost," after all—yet Kirsten has searched ever since for ephemera of everyday existence before the fall; especially for ephemera connected to Arthur Leander, and to the kindly stranger—the same soul who attempted CPR on the aforementioned actor—who was there for her that night.

To that end, then—to find proof of the past—Kirsten has become a member of the Traveling Symphony, a band of roaming revellers:

The Traveling Symphony performed music—classical, jazz, orchestral arrangements of pre-collapse pop songs—and Shakespeare. They'd performed more modern plays sometimes in the first few years, but what was startling, what no one would have anticipated, was that audiences seemed to prefer Shakespeare to their other theatrical offerings.

As the man learning the lead role in the ragtag troupe's rendition of King Lear puts it, "people want what was best about the world." The world that was, that is; another has risen in its stead, however:

Civilisation in Year Twenty was an archipelago of small towns. These towns had fought off ferals, buried their neighbours, lived and died and suffered together in the blood-drenched years just after the collapse, survived against unspeakable odds and then only by holding together into the calm, and these places didn't go out of their way to welcome outsiders.

But sometimes—in the mode of the motto taken from Star Trek: Voyager and scrawled on the Traveling Symphony's lead caravan—sometimes, as Seven of Nine said so memorably, "survival is insufficient": a lesson Kirsten and company would do well to remember when they cross swords with a self-styled prophet in St. Deborah by the Water. "We are the pure," he preaches, and "that flu was our flood."

Unwilling to make waves, they leave said settlement just as soon as they see its sinister side. What they don't know then, though, what they don't discover until the damage is done, is that a twelve-year-old has stowed away with them—a child bride the perverted prophet badly wants back.

All this is but a small part of the plot of Station Eleven, presented linearly, as if it were a thriller. It isn't. It certainly has elements of the several such novels the author has composed in the past, but rather than twisting her narrative into torturous knots for the sake of some tension, Mandel slowly explores the magic of the mundane. In a lamp-lit room in the aftermath of a heart-breaking party, two of Arthur Leader's ex-wives share a silence that is as moving as anything in this tremendously affecting text:

Miranda sits on the floor beside Elizabeth, whose breath is heavy with wine, and she leans back until she feels the reassuring solidity of the door frame against her spine. Elizabeth, who is crying a little, bites her lip and together they look at the sketches and paintings pinned to every wall. The dog stands at attention and stares at the window, where just now a moth brushed up against the glass, and for a moment everything is still. Station Eleven is all around them.

Station Eleven—which takes its title from a comic book-to-be poor misbegotten Miranda pours her whole heart and soul into; the same comic book the so-called prophet holds dear decades later—Station Eleven finds such meaning in these moments of minutiae, such incredible intimacy, that the reader rarely recalls the apocalypse of its premise. The author takes pains to keep it off the page in any case. 

The moments Mandel is more interested in—to the text's benefit, to be sure—do not exist in isolation either, though they frequently appear to. Eventually, connections are sketched between them—connections that draw one character into the orbit of another and conjoin this civilisation to that—but even these don't come easily.

Station Eleven features a great many moving pieces, and its pace is... not plodding, precisely, but rarely rushed. Indeed, there abounds "a feeling of moving in slow motion, like walking underwater or in a dream" such that it is "necessary to concentrate carefully on each step." But patience, please, because what takes shape, in time, is a truly transcendent Iñárritu-esque epic about remembering and forgetting, complete with impeccably crafted characters and an abundance of love for the little things that make life worth living. 

Little things like this book, in truth.

***

Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel

UK Publication: September 2014, Picador
US Publication: September 2014, Knopf

Buy this book from
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Recommended and Related Reading

Guest Post | "Dreaming Up Dream London" by Tony Ballantyne

"Smart, stylish, and as alarming as it is indubitably alluring, Dream London deftly demonstrates that the weird still has a thing or two to prove," I concluded in my review of Tony Ballantyne's new novel — out now from the fine folks at Solaris.

If there was one thing that captivated me about the book — and there wasn't; there were many — it was its setting: an ever-shifting city populated by people who wake up a little different every day. To wit, today on The Speculative Scotsman, the author kindly took some time to explain how he dreamed up Dream London.

***

In Dream London the city changes a little every night and the people change a little every day.

Much of the book was inspired by my years living in London. During that time I filled notebooks with scenes and ideas for a novel based there, but somehow it never seemed to gel. Then one day a friend recounted an experience in India (the scene on the first page of the book, in fact) and the story fell into place, just like that.

I had the scenes, I had the story, London's narrow streets and eclectic range of styles provided the backdrop, all that was missing now was the atmosphere. I knew the feeling I was trying to convey, so I sat down and tried to put down on paper some of the things that had inspired that feeling within me.  

There were many things on the list: a furniture shop in Clitheroe, a children's theme park in North Yorkshire, Belle-Île, off the coast of Brittany, Judith II by Klimt...

Three things, however, stood out — one book, and two pieces of music.

The book first: The Enchanted Wood, by Enid Blyton. Partly because I read it when I was so young and everything is so magical then, but particularly because there is no logic to it. Magic there is magic, it's never explained, it's never consistent, it's always enchanting. I can half remember other stories; the Wishing Chair, green smoke coming from witches cauldrons... 

Then there's the music.

  

Despite featuring his 8th symphony in Capacity, I'm not actually that great a Mahler fan, but there is something very emotive about parts of his music, something that sends my mind wandering into other worlds. The second and third movements of Mahler's Seventh Symphony sound spooky and magical, but magical in an overperfumed, degenerate manner, I played these especially when I was writing the night scenes.  

And lastly there is Kate Bush. Years ago I taught sword fencing on a children's camp in America. I remember listening to Lionheart and Never Forever in the middle of forest in Connecticut whilst waiting for groups to arrive. Time seemed to extend there, the rest of the world seemed to recede, and I was left with the impression that the paths back to camp were lengthening and twisting all the while...

Those lengthening paths led me down to Dream London.

***

Thank you so much, Tony, for stopping by to describe how you came to create such an incredible place.

For more about the author, here's his blog — and I do believe he tweets, too.

The Best Things In Life Are Free | Songs To Test By

Well it seems GladOS is back in the big chair - where she should be! - because yesterday, someone finally tested some sense into the great and glorious cabal that is Valve, insisting that they release some of the awesome music from Portal 2.

And when I say "awesome," I mean awesome.

I confess, when I first heard that there'd be a sequel to Portal, I had my doubts. But from the moment that first trailer was released on out, I was all in - and in no small part thanks to the exhilarating electro the resurrection of GladOS was set to.

Nor did the game disappoint in that respect... in any respect, truth be told. The soundtrack was but one of Portal 2's innumerable high points - the perfect music to read or perhaps even write some bonkers sci-fi by - so it was cause for something of a sad face when I realised there was no way I could buy it.

Apparently that was only so Valve could give us the thing, piece by piece. Strike my complaints from the transcript, please! Composed and arranged by the Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory, Songs to Test By Volume One is the first of three free CDs' worth of songs from the stupendous Portal 2.

And it is, as I may have mentioned, somewhat awesome. I'm only on my first listen and already I've heard a wealth of music that wasn't in the game proper - or else was, and I missed, because I'm such an obedient little test subject. I hear I missed a wealth of dialogue too, by solving puzzles before Wheatley or some such could complain I wasn't testing fast enough.

...oh well. Replay! :)

In the meantime, you'd be well advised to hit up this link forthwith, and getcher gosh-darned download on.

Not only, but also: please, consider the comments of this post a Portal 2 spoiler section. I'd say the time to be respectful of those folks who haven't had the time or the inclination to beat Valve's latest masterpiece is officially at an end. Besides, I'm practically dying to discuss some of the late-game events of what has to be the best game of the year to date with you all.

In fact, I'll get the cube ball rolling and everything...

How to Destroy Angels

Now I haven't covered music here on TSS at all to date, and I certainly don't mean to make a habit of it - is there such a thing as speculative sound, I wonder? - but between a bit of idle chatter on the great Twitter and a now-defunct poll on the excellent Genre Reader blog, it seems there's substantially more crossover between fans of speculative fiction and metal (classic, nu and alt) music than I'd initially thought. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool metalhead, I'll admit it gladly - I'd have mentioned it sooner except that I harboured some suspicion I was the black sheep of the family - and so it came as something of a surprise to me that so many of my blogging colleagues have similar taste in music.

If you listen closely, our own Amanda Rutter of Floor to Ceiling Books can often be heard singing the praises of one Biffy Clyro, while James Long of Speculative Horizons is an old-school Deftones fan; Werthead, meanwhile, will express an affinity to Nerf Herder given half a chance, Mark Chitty (what is the Walker of Worlds) balances out his Ice T appreciation with some Dragonforce on his iPod, and Adam Christopher, who mantains Stephen's Lot, likes him a bit of And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead. Hope you guys and gal don't mind me outing you here!

All of which raises an interesting question... that I'll answer another time, perhaps. Because for the moment, now that my hands are untied, I simply have to share something I came across the other day entirely by chance:

That's right. It seems that reports of the death of Nine Inch Nails - one of my all-time favourite bands, without question - have been greatly exaggerated. Of course the powerhouse track embedded above isn't quite the NIN we all know and love, but make no mistake, that's Trent Reznor music right there, and Reznor has been the band's only mainstay in all the decades it's existed.

I'm pumped.

How to Destroy Angels are, apparently, a collaboration between Reznor himself, his wife - onetime West Indian Girl front-woman Mariqueen Maandig - and frequent team-mate Atticus Ross. "A Drowning" is their first song. An EP is on the books for release sometime this Summer, with a full-length album to follow in early 2011. Tentatively speaking of course.

I can hardly bloody wait.

Instrumentally, "A Drowning" sounds very similar to Reznor's efforts on The Fragile, a double-album that I love, despite most of the world despising, and though I've never had the pleasure of Maandig's vocals before, her lilting refrain makes for a perfect counterpoint to the swelling industrial underpinnings of this fantastic song. Currently, you can buy the song on Amazon or via iTunes; do so.

How in Hell this got by me, I don't know... but now that I know about it, so do you. Thus, my work here is done.