Coming Attractions | Speculative Fiction 2013

Indulge me a moment, dear readers.

Seeing my work alongside articles by the awesome authors and brilliant bloggers showcased in Speculative Fiction 2012 was a point of proper pride for me last year. Leafing through the contributor's copy I got—or maybe it was one of the ones I bought—I'm no less proud now.

More importantly for me, at least, the anthology legitimised, in others' eyes, what I spend my days and nights doing. No matter how many times I told my Mum what I was up to, it wasn't till she saw my name on a printed page that she realised I might not be the good-for-nothing lump she had imagined. I admit I may be overstating her former fears about me, but it's true, to be sure, that she's crowed about the book pretty much continuously since. Whenever I visit, she calls me her "writer in residence." 

An endlessly embarrassing business. But also... well. A little lovely.

It dawned on me this morning that there'll be no stopping her now. After all, the most estimable editors of the next iteration of the anthology recently revealed the cover of Speculative Fiction 2013, designed—as was the last one—by Sarah Anne Langton.

Our friendly neighborhood Book Smugglers, Ana Grilo and Thea James, who took the baton from last year's terrific team, also unveiled a list of contributors. The lineup this time around includes, but is not limited to:

Abigail Nussbaum, Aidan Moher, Alasdair Czyrnyj, Aliette de Bodard, Alyssa Franke, Amal El-Mohtar, Ana Silva, Ann Leckie, Annalee Newitz, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Carrie Sessarego, Chaila, Cheryl Morgan, Chiusse, Chris Gerwel, Diane Dooley, E.M. Kokie, Emily Asher-Perrin, Erin Hoffman, Foz Meadows, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, Jared Shurin, Jemmy, Jenny Kristine, Jim C. Hines, Joe Abercrombie, Jonathan McCalmont, Justin Landon, Kameron Hurley, Karyn Silverman, Kate Elliott, Leow Hui Min Annabeth, Liz Bourke, Mahvesh Murad, Matt Hilliard, Miguel Rodriguez, N.K. Jemisin, Natalie Luhrs, Niall Alexander, Nina Allan, Orem Chiel, Paul (Sparky), Phoebe North, Renay, Robert Berg, Sam Keeper, Sayantani DasGupta, Shaun Duke, Sophia McDougall, Stefan Raets and Tansy Rayner Roberts.

I was totally going to tell you which article Ana and Thea picked to represent my writing through 2013... before I realised how much more fun it'd be to let you guess.

I'll say that it's a review—which will surprise no-one, of course; by and large, for good or for ill, that's what I do these days—but also that it's a piece I'm particularly proud of. I'm doubly pleased to see a pair of my peers agree.

Time to post this puppy, but before I go, know that Speculative Fiction 2013 will be released in April. The listings aren't live on Amazon as yet, but as and when you're able to place your orders, remember that all the profits will be donated, as they were last year, to Room to Read: an awesome cause on top of the progressive premise this annual anthology evidences in any event.

Book Review | All Your Base Are Belong To Us by Harold Goldberg

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Through the stories of gaming's greatest innovations and most beloved creations, journalist Harold Goldberg captures the creativity, controversy - and passion - behind the video game's meteoric rise to the top of the pop-culture pantheon.

Over the last fifty years, video games have grown from curiosities to fads to trends to one of the world's most popular forms of mass entertainment. But as the gaming industry grows in numerous directions and everyone talks about the advance of the moment, few explore and seek to understand the forces behind this profound evolution. How did we get from Space Invaders to Grand Theft Auto? How exactly did gaming become a $50 billion industry and a dominant pop culture form? What are the stories, the people, the innovations, and the fascinations behind this incredible growth?

Through extensive interviews with gaming's greatest innovators, both its icons and those unfairly forgotten by history, All Your Base Are Belong To Us sets out to answer these questions, exposing the creativity, odd theories - and passion - behind the twenty-first century's fastest-growing medium.

***

I love books, and I love video games, so it was a pretty safe bet that I'd love this book about video games. As luck would have it, however, I'm not a gambling man, because as it happens... not so much.

On the one hand, Harold Goldberg is just about as mainstream as successful critics come: he's written for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Wired, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone. On the other, unlike the vast majority of his contemporaries, he's taken a particular interest in video games, which is to say a medium of entertainment often absent an invite to the party simply because of its newness, and deemed unworthy of the considered column inches that could and should be devoted to its development. Harold Goldberg begs to differ, citing fifteen years of experience reviewing video games for various illustrious publications, and a stint as editor in chief of Sony Online Entertainment during the era of EverQuest.

So you know. If there's an author capable of composing an entertaining and even-handed history of video games, if not an all-encompassing one, Goldberg is as good a candidate as any. His dedication to the ever-evolving form is self-evident; his passion for play is plain. And thankfully, it translates. This is a real relief, because I'm sorry to say there are enough problems with All Your Base Are Belong To Us otherwise that a dismissive or even a disinterested attitude would have been the last scant nail in what is already a bare-bones coffin.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves with such graven imagery. First, of course - before death - comes birth, and Goldberg's short study of the medium's teething years sets the scene for the forthcoming contents perfectly well: we learn of Pong and its immediate predecessors, of the Magnavox Odyssey and the meteoric rise and fall of Atari. The roving spotlight falls on Ralph Baer and Nolan Bushnell, and in its introductory chapters All Your Base Are Belong To Us narrates the tale ably, if somewhat abruptly. Goldberg doesn't so much paint a picture as rough out a sketch of video games' ground zero, but potted histories need not be completely comprehensive, and anyway there have been whole books devoted to just this period; go read those if that's what you're after.

Goldberg has his sights set rather wider, so in All Your Base Are Belong To Us these chapters are merely a means of setting the scene... of establishing a context to place subsequent industry bigwigs and auteurs in. You could say this section is a sort of tutorial.

You could, except the book's later levels are hardly so challenging or complex that they require such instruction. This, I think, is the great failing of All Your Base Are Belong To Us: for all its ambition, ultimately it achieves very little. For the greater part they are well put, but Goldberg's arguments and assertions are pedestrian at best, and sometimes seem so amateurish that it can be hard to reconcile the author of this rather selective record - a man with a veritable wealth of experience in and around the industry, as a gamer, a game-maker and a games journalist - with the highlights of his minibio. Presumably he's had an exceptional editor in the past.

Incredibly, there's a sense, as well, that Goldberg, for all his professions to the contrary, still thinks of video games as the preserve of pimple-ridden children and stunted stoners. Specifically his imagery when attempting to describe the experience of playing the games this book is all about are borderline insulting. Discussing The 7th Guest, one of the earliest attempts at horror in the genre, he asserts that you - the player - will "shiver, thinking your goose bumps will pop like acne." Later, in a chapter ostensibly about the development of Bioshock, Goldberg's penchant for awkward metaphor gets the better of All Your Base Are Belong To Us: "In the early part of the century, the videogame industry was growing as fast as pot under a grow lamp."

Is that so, sir?

Of the book's twenty-odd chapters, a handful - bunched up together in the book's third third, which is when the medium finally comes of age in the author's eyes - stand out. Particularly noteworthy are the two devoted to Sam and Dan Hauser, the camera-shy masterminds behind Grand Theft Auto and the Rockstar seal of quality, whose few words are characteristically canny. In fact these softly-spoken giants of gaming - the Wachowskis of the industry - are so incisive that they cast rather a shadow over Goldberg's equivalent observations. Often the reader feels as if there will be some shining insight around the next corner, but the princess is almost always in another castle, and the final boss is a flash in the pan. That said, "Under the Gun: The Kids in the Sandbox" and "Rockstar Gets Pilloried" make for fairly fascinating reading, and not only because access to infamous visionaries aforementioned is so sporadic.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us is quite an ambitious book, and credit to Goldberg where it's due - first and foremost for attempting such a grand and admirable endeavour. Unfortunately he wholly mishandles it. The bite-sized chapters are appealing until you realise how little depth they allow for, and in lieu of any actual analysis, these practiced anecdotes are all fluff and no substance. All Your Base Are Belong To Us might make a fine primer for someone with no prior knowledge of the industry - though even in that case Goldberg's arbitrary milestones tell an incomplete tale, if not actively misleading then strangely selective - but there's practically nothing of note in here for someone who is interested in video games already, and I ask you: who else would read a book with a title based on a meme based on an Engrish phrase from an obscure Sega sidescroller that barely made it outside of Japan?

Game over, man. 

*** 

All Your Base Are Belong To Us 

by Harold Goldberg

US Publication: April 2011, Three Rivers Press

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Book Review | The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins and Dave McKean

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What are things made of? What is the sun? Why is there night and day, winter and summer? Why do bad things happen? Are we alone? Throughout history people all over the world have invented stories to answer profound questions such as these. Have you heard the tale of how the sun hatched out of an emu's egg? Or what about the great catfish that carries the world on its back? Has anyone ever told you that earthquakes are caused by a sneezing giant?

These fantastical myths are fun - but what is the real answer to such questions? The Magic of Reality, with its explanations of space, time, evolution and more, will inspire and amaze readers of all ages - young adults, adults, children, octogenarians. Teaming up with the renowned illustrator Dave McKean, Richard Dawkins answers all these questions and many more.

In stunning words and pictures this book presents the real story of the world around us, taking us on an enthralling journey through scientific reality, and showing that it has an awe-inspiring beauty and thrilling magic which far exceed those of the ancient myths. We encounter rainbows, our genetic ancestors, tsunamis, shooting stars, plants, animals, and an intriguing cast of characters in this extraordinary scientific voyage of discovery. Richard Dawkins and Dave McKean have created a dazzling celebration of our planet that will entertain and inform for years to come. 

***

I never read The God Delusion. I might well be the only one. But though I agree with the thesis biologist Richard Dawkins sets out therein - that a widely-held belief in some supernatural creator deity does not constitute proof of such an unlikely thing - I didn't feel the need to read a textbook to reinforce my position as regards religion.

Nor, for similar reasons, did I attend The Greatest Show on Earth, Dawkin's sequel of sorts to The God Delusion, in which the professor addressed the question of evolution; again I gather in terms I largely agree with. In truth, I only rarely come to non-fiction, and only then when there's some overriding reason for me to, above and beyond an interesting subject, or a shared opinion; some passion, say, that the work taps into. In the case of The Magic of Reality, Dave McKean was that reason.

There are few better reasons.

You may be familiar with Dave McKean because of his run of covers on Neil Gaiman's seminal Sandman, or else the estimable British illustrator's various other collaborations with Mr. Amanda Palmer: namely The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, The Wolves in the Walls and Crazy Hair. If not these, then perhaps his vast graphic novel Cages, which gained some notice - if not half so much as it deserved - or the film MirrorMask, maybe?

The man is in any event an artistic marvel, and it has been my pleasure to pursue him from comics to books to movies, and back again. Thus The Magic of Reality: a beautiful coffee-table volume of popular science from the pen of the emeritus professor, profusely illustrated and exquisitely designed by Mr. McKean.

Each of The Magic of Reality's twelve chapters begins with a question, from "Who was the first person?" to "Why do bad things happen?" by way of "What is a rainbow?" and "Are we alone?"

My purpose is to answer the question, or at least give the best possible answer, which is the answer of science. But I shall usually begin with some mythical answers because they are colourful and interesting, and real people have believed them. Some people still do. (p.32) 

Invariably Dawkins indulges these feeble but well-meaning answers, allowing that the attempt to explain, even incorrectly, is no ill thing. Then, before the science begins in earnest, the author tends to establish, in terms of certain evidence, how inadequate - dare I say dangerous - these explanations are, in this enlightened day and age.

Dawkins however keeps his skeptical professor in check. What science there is in The Magic of Reality is well pitched, very accessible - even to younger readers, whom I gather this volume is aimed at - and not typically dismissive... though there are a few cheeky implications, such as talk about "the Jewish preacher called Jesus" (p.261) and the lumping-in of Christianity and other major modern belief systems with some shall we say far-fetched legends. As discussed, I don't disagree, but it's all in good fun anyway, and it goes no further than this.

Speaking of fun, The Magic of Reality is absolutely that: between Dawkins' conversational, easy-does-it explanations and the dazzling diversity of the art present on each and every page of this gorgeous (not to mention giftable) short volume, The Magic of Reality is a bona fide delight to peruse, worthy of pride of place on any coffee table. Simply flicking through it, as I assure you all and sundry comers to your sitting room will, more than justifies the price of admission to this exhilarating trip through time and space and faith.

Without Dave McKean's invaluable contributions, I don't know that I'd have looked twice at The Magic of Reality, in truth... but I'm glad I did. Though many of the subjects discussed herein were subjects I needed no new introduction to, many readers will, and they stand to benefit massively from The Magic of Reality, both intellectually and artistically. The value of such a pursuit can hardly be understated.

***

The Magic of Reality

by Richard Dawkins and Dave McKean

UK Publication: September 2011, Bantam Press

US Publication: October 2011, Free Press

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Book Review | No Way Down by Graham Bowley

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The summit of K2, 1 August 2008. An exhausted band of climbers pump their fists into the clear blue sky – joining the elite who have conquered the world’s most lethal mountain. But as they celebrate, far below them an ice shelf collapses and sweeps away their ropes. They don’t know it yet, but they will be forced to descend into the blackness with no lines. Of the thirty who set out, eleven will never make it back.


No Way Down weaves a tale of human courage, folly, survival and devastating loss. The stories are heart-wrenching: the young married couple whose rope was torn apart by an avalanche, sending the husband to his death; the 61-year-old Frenchman who called his family from near the summit to say he wouldn’t make it home. So what drove them to try to conquer this elusive peak? And what went wrong that fateful day?

***

Mountaineering and me: we have a bit of a thing.


We have a bit of a thing because my Dad has a bit of a thing, and I was a Daddy's boy all the way. Before I could even walk he was carting me up munroes like a front rucksack, and when I got a little older - when I came to find my legs were my own - the closest I ever felt to him was when we went climbing together. We'd clamber up gulleys while I poured my heart about about problems at school; between breaths as we ran headlong up scree slopes I'd moan about my exams or dream aloud how this girl or that girl would be my girl if I had my way.


My Dad and I, we bonded up Ben Nevis. And we still do - though on littler hills, admittedly, a little less often. So I've a whole lifetime of hill-climbing behind me, and a special place set aside for the pursuit in my heart.


But climbing Everest, or K2, or the North face of the Eiger... that all's a way beyond me. That kind of extreme sports mountaineering is a whole other ball game from the one I recall so fondly. It's about summitting the unsummittable; it's about testing the limits of human endurance, and going places we as a species have precious little business with, as evidenced by the utter dearth of oxygen in the atmosphere when you're above 26,000 ft.


One fateful day, thirty climbers set out to do just that. An international coalition of mountaineers joined forces, against the better judgement of some among them, to stand shoulder to shoulder with giants on the second-highest point on the planet. It's August 1st, 2008, and on the Traverse beneath the Balcony Serac - a colossal abutment of glacial ice overhanging the primary route to K2's summit - nature waits with baited breath. Of the thirty climbers, only nineteen return.


No Way Down is their story, albeit second-hand. It's an exhilarating, atmospheric, and emotional tale of real human tragedy and incredible endurance. And in the hands of Graham Bowley, it's a tale well told. From interviews with all but a few of the survivors and their families, as well as with the loved ones of those lost that day, the reporter who broke the story for the New York Times has put together as coherent and respectful a picture of the events which led to these eleven deaths as we're likely to see short a first-hand account; and even then, there's enough disagreement about that fateful day on K2 that such a thing would surely be refuted.


Now Bowley, unlike Joe Simpson and Jon Krakauer, who brought to Touching the Void and Into Thin Air such intimacy and experience as to render them amongst the finest real-life survival stories in any literature, is no mountaineer. He's just a journalist. And that's a double-edged sword. On the plus side, Bowley's credentials mean he has an eye accustomed to picking out the essential story: there is a clarity and a balance to the narrative of No Way Down as he presents it, a coherence - if you'll indulge me a moment - in terms of plot and character that is as gold dust in non-fiction from the pen of its own participants.


However Bowley admits to a certain disinterest in the pursuit of the thirty men and women whose stories he aims to tell, as best he can. In the Author's Note he recalls:


"When my editor suggested I write about their ordeal for the newspaper, I balked at the idea - mountaineering had never interested me - although the next morning my story appeared on page one of the paper." (p.xi)


And the line between disinterest and plain Jane disdain is a precious fine one; even with my limited experience of mountaineering, No Way Down left this reader feeling a mite slighted on occasion. Take, for instance, the fact that the author's only actual experience of K2 was a trip to Base Camp - so to the foot of the mountain - during which time his photographer fainted from exhaustion and the pair were forced to turn back. This he wears like a badge of honour in his mini-bio, as if it were a qualification.


In short, Bowley seems rather more invested in the potential audience an account of these climbers' many trials might reap than in presenting a tale particularly empathetic with their determined pursuit of the summit. But at least he's professional about it. Though coldly, he accounts for their respective rationales, and there are moments when the mist lifts and the clouds part and we see an ocean of mountains before us, staggering natural beauty captured just so: the very vistas one imagines the mountaineers in part strive so earnestly to see for themselves. No Way Down is at its finest at such times, and irrespective of its author's feelings for the subject, the devastating tale of ill-fated dreamers chronicled herein is one well worth the telling.

***

No Way Down

by Graham Bowley

UK Publication: July 2010, Penguin
US Publication: August 2010, Harper


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Book Review: The Tiger by John Vaillant

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It’s December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.

As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region.

This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to ten feet long, weigh more than six hundred pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain.

Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.

***

You gotta love a good tiger.

"Like a fist, or a cross, the tiger is a symbol we all understand. [It] functions simultaneously as a posterchild for the conservation movement and as shorthand for power, sex, and danger." (p.297) Add to that, the tiger's "apparent imperviousness to just about anything sets this animal at a godlike remove." (p.257)

As I was saying, a good tiger goes a long way - Richard Parker from the ubiquitous Life of Pi leaps to mind, fully-formed at the thought - but a bad tiger? Surely that's even more fertile territory for a story. As New Yorker and National Geographic contributor John Vaillant asserts, "Ongoing in the debate about out origins and our nature is the question of how we became fascinated by monsters, but only certain kinds. The existence of this book alone is case in point. No one would read it if it were about a pig or a moose (or even a person) who attacked unemployed loggers. Tigers, on the other hand, get our full attention," (p.190) and so too they do.

The tiger at the steaming heart of The Tiger, Vaillant's second non-fiction novel after The Golden Spruce, is a captivating creature, majestic, unimaginably powerful and assiduously intelligent; quite impossible to avert your eyes from as it stalks what the Chinese called the shuhai - literally 'forest sea' - of Russia's easternmost extreme. There, the tiger is symbolic, too, of a way of life, a sense of persistence against the odds - of survival when (not to mention where) life should not be sustainable. For by all rights, "If Russia is what we think it is, then tigers should not be possible there. After all, how could a creature so closely associated with stealth and grace and heat survive in a country so heavy-handed, damaged, and cold." (p.19)

The Tiger hinges on an account of one so-called 'cannibal' tiger's reign of terror over the people of Sobolonye, a small and unimaginably isolated community of former loggers decimated by perestroika. Many of those who remain in Soboloyne can only make ends meet by poaching, and there is no greater prize - nor a prize more illicit - than a tiger. For a single skin, and for the organs' presumed medicinal qualities, the Chinese have been known to pay sums in excess the annual wages of a man in this climate. Thankfully, a sense of respect for the tiger stays the trigger fingers of most such hunters, and if - I should say when - that fails, there's always Yuri Trush: the head of one division of Inspection Tiger, which is to say a charity-funded organisation dedicated to keeping the poachers of Siberia at bay.

The tables, then, are rather turned when Trush is charged with the investigation of Vladimir Markov's death. A logger-come-hunter-come-poacher, Markov has been brutally mauled by a tiger at the site of his tumbledown caravan in the woods, a "sinister" act, akin to "first-degree murder: premeditated, with malice aforethought, and a clear intent to kill." (p.128) And it seems, in short order, that this almost mythical creature has developed a taste for human flesh."

"The horror of a thing is usually derived from its presence, however distorted or fragmentary, but here in the scrub and snow by the Takhalo was a broken frame with no picture in it [...] these clothes were only a few days old, and their owner had ceased to exist. To end a person's life is one thing; to eradicate him from the face of the earth is another. The latter is far more difficult to do, and yet the tiger had done it, had transported this young man beyond death to a kind of carnal oblivion." (p.234)

Vaillant is meticulous in his presentation of the thrilling narrative which begins and ends each chapter of The Tiger, and though his tendency towards extended digression might seem pace-breaking to begin with - particularly in terms of a front-loaded assortment of the potted histories of near every "character" to crop up - one gradually comes to understand that the terror of the tiger is largely a framing device for a story of post-perestroika Russia, rather than the other way around.

In any event, in both senses The Tiger makes for fascinating and deeply rewarding read. Vaillant's prose is precise, yet at a comfortable remove from clinical; his ambition is great and the scope of this text admirably far-reaching, from questions of language and philosophy to considerations of biology and environmentalism; and in his stop/start relaying of the tale of this crazed Amur tiger, he instills in the reader the very question which has made story-telling so great through the ages: what happens next? The tension this narrative evokes in that regard is positively palpable. Perhaps Vaillant's latest will test the patience of some readers in it for a quick fix, but persist with The Tiger and you will surely discover a terrific - and indeed timeless - tale.

***

The Tiger

by John Vaillant

UK Publication: September 2010, Sceptre
US Publication: August 2010, Knopf

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