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vN by Madeline Ashby
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vN by Madeline Ashby (Angry Robot, 2012) The First Machine Dynasty is a modern take on The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, filtered through A.I. Artificial Intelligence, this time dealing with a gynoid rather than an android. It’s a case of “have mind, will travel in search of a soul”, of having to grapple with the problems of self and identity. Initially, her parents slow her physical development so that she grows at approximately the same speed as a human child. Some paedophiles use this system to eroticise young gynoids and so satisfy their own sexual drives, cf Shadow of a Dead Star by Michael Shean (Curiosity Quills Press, 2012). So we start off in the same territory as When Harlie Was One by David Gerrold which is a coming-of-age story about a brain in a box having to learn how to be a “boy” when he has no body. Our heroine has been “born” into a mixed marriage of android woman and human man. Her reduced diet enables her to go to a kindergarten with human children of the same size. Her parents want to give her the chance to experience development over time and to socialise with equally “young” human children. Unfortunately, although the body may be comparable to that of a child, the mind is not. This dissonance is disturbing to those around her. Fortunately, like the Azimovian robots, all these androids also have a built-in safety circuit to prevent them from injuring humans. As a general rule, the failsafe causes them to freeze at the sight of an injured human.
In this book, vN stands for a von Neumann self-replicating humanoid, i.e. all fully-grown androids, regardless of gender, can asexually reproduce. This deliberately undermines the usual female stereotype which is of a body designed to produce children and then take responsibility for their upbringing and homemaking while still playing the role of sex object when the man requires satisfaction. The interesting issue is whether these parthenogenic androids are genuinely gendered or more equal despite being given bodies with the physical characteristics appropriate to their apparent biological sex.
Madelaine Ashby — relieved to be human and not vN
Matching other books and films, these androids are designed in clades for specific functions and so have unique sets of physical and psychological attributes to suit them to their designated roles. Interestingly, the clade to which our heroine belongs was programmed as nurses. This has given her empathy and so, by virtue of her machine-code, she believes in bourgeois happiness for those with whom she interacts, wants to mother a newly “born” android, and seems predisposed to find a male who will love her for herself. Initially, all these androids were created to help and support the few remaining humans expected to be left on Earth after the Last Trump. When this End-of-Days failed to occur, the androids were repurposed as the servants of all humanity. So they are like humans, but now used as slaves without any rights. This book therefore pitches the growing gynoid with her emerging new powers and resident granny against the government and law enforcement agencies that would recall all her clade and trash them to prevent the leakage of any trait that might enable the machines to become more “human”. As an exception to the general Asimovian rule, nurses have a reduced protection circuit. It’s sometimes necessary to cut into humans by way of surgery and other forms of treatment. It would be inappropriate if nurses were to freeze up every time they saw humans being “injured”. It all depends on the context. More importantly, it gives these androids a lower threshold to cross in the decision whether to attack a human.
The problem with this kind of book is that the author delivers escapism. We’re allowed to see all the defects in the given society and then watch the heroine not only survive but beat the system. As in fairy stories, the big bad wolf meets the axe head on and the giant in search of bones to grind for flour is brought down to Earth with a bang. In the real world, humans who occupy the fictional android role are beaten into submission and have no chance of changing anything in our technological world. The only effect when we read books like this is a few hours of satisfaction that one of the downtrodden can fight off oppression. When we put the book down, we return to the real world where we remain powerless. Instead of merely describing dystopias, it would be better if people could be motivated to engage in positive action to change the world. For books to be subversive, to act as a call to action. Except no large corporation as a publisher is ever going to allow revolutionary books on to the mass market. Capitalists guard their hold over the people.
So how does vN: The First Machine Dynasty shape up overall? It actually starts rather well in what we might call action mode. After the initial set-up, she’s off and running, meets up with a serial reproducer and begins an increasingly close relationship with him. But, to my mind, the book loses its way when she allows herself to be captured in the hope she can rescue her parents. The book gets into a more political mode. The issue can be simply put. If the trait now empowering one section of her clade can be reproduced, androids can rise up against their human oppressors and take their freedom. If the humans can eradicate all her clade before this happens, they will remain the “master race”. So there’s an inevitable disagreement between factions both in the human and the android communities. While everyone is squabbling, our heroine and consort, plus his extended family, are offered the possibility of “getting away from it all”. I read through to the end to see how it turned out, but I was less than engaged. Although it’s interesting to see how Madeline Ashby parallels the idea of parents socialising their children with the androids doing the same with their coding of the young, of individuals learning to love each other by overcoming the inbuilt tendency to selfish individualism through trust and “love”, this all becomes less of a dystopian thriller and more of a romance. We’re all supposed to find our heroine’s protectiveness of the little baby ‘droid endearing and go all gooey as he crawls into her lap with adoring eyes. Well, sorry. This is not quite what I signed up for in the android wars to establish independence for AI-kind. So you should only pick this up if you want the mushy side of the rebellion to slaughter all-comers.
For a review of the second in the series by Madeline Ashby, see iD.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
This novel has been shortlisted for the 2013 Locus Award.
Omega Point by Guy Haley
Ever since the first man picked up a rock and threw it, or used a stick to knock eggs out of a nest high in a tree, we’ve been dependent on tools of one sort or another. No matter how desirable it might seem, it’s too late to return the gift of fire to Prometheus. Fortunately, our present world is still managing to survive without intelligent machines to tell us where we’re going wrong. It will be worse when artificial intelligence becomes a practical proposition. We’ve always been lazy as a species and many will want to surrender what seem to be the routine tasks to the machines. Yet even in the routine there are dangers. The irony is that, basing their decisions on logic rather than emotions, machines could probably deliver a better world. Assuming they have no survival imperative, they are less selfish and would force us to work together — we’ve not proved very good at that over the centuries. But allowing them into a position where they rule us. . . Ah, now that would be a real game-changer and something to be resisted. For better or worse, humanity should always be in control of its own destiny.
Omega Point by Guy Haley (Angry Robot, 2012) takes us into a future world where AIs have become very powerful and some humans have gone through varying degrees of augmentation. In the best cyborg sense, some enhancements have been purely physical. But others have introduced a more complete integration, blurring the line between machine and human intelligence. In its full form, the so-called mentaug produces a personality blend. Obviously, at a conscious level, the “person” understands that there have been changes, but what of the subconscious? Does one side of the mind actually know or understand what the other half wants or can achieve? It’s problematic and, to ensure there’s a reasonable balance, each individual with a mentaug should have regular counselling. It will help to keep both sides working together and the whole mind more sane. For example, it can get strange when the machine side of the brain dreams. Confusingly, human memory changes selectively over time but the machine’s memory is permanent, confirming organic as subjective, machine objective. Is either better than the other? There has to be a way of reconciling meat and machine, yet there’s no guarantee the human can survive.
Guy Haley waiting for the rest of the lighting to be brought to bear
Of course, from the other side of the fence, there are some pure machine intelligences that are curious about the world and so equip themselves with bodies. They move around and get a better sense of how the world works. Except, of course, these minds always know this embodiment is purely temporary. At any time, whether they tire of the experience or are somehow at risk, they can instantly transfer back into their own virtual reality. They need never feel the real insecurity of being a unique mind in a vulnerable physical body. They can play at being independent. But what would it be like for one of these AIs to be trapped in a fragile body? It might be a bit of an eye-opener what with suddenly feeling hungry and getting an itch in one of those hard-to-reach places.
So we have a twin narrative structure with Otto and others running around the real world (whatever that is) in a kind of spy mode to track down relevant bodies who are messing with the structure of virtual reality. Richards has the indignity of being stuck in a body in a series of semi-surreal episodes in Reality 36 which is made up of remnants from four other virtual realities. Initially k52, their common enemy, had intended to dismantle this Reality and use the servers to accelerate through time to the Omega Point when he would carry out his big reality-warping plan. Except it turned out he couldn’t break through the coding of this Reality. It’s been acting as a kind of drag on his progress through time. So Richards and an unlikely group of toys have been surviving a number of silly encounters with different forms of threat. It’s all going on far too long without saying anything interesting about anything. All we can say is both threads are a quest (not the most original form whether for a book or game) and, inevitably, they eventually intersect (and not before time).
Frankly, Omega Point is a disappointment. Whereas the first Otto and Richards outing in Reality 36 was lively and interesting, this has emerged from the creative process half-baked (avoiding any of the puns that might assault our senses if aerial pirates were suddenly to be attacked by a pastry chef). The thread describing Otto’s part of the quest has the same high-adrenaline pace as the first book. But Richard’s voyage through the disintegrating Reality 36 is almost unreadable in parts and, as a result, I struggled to finish. I don’t mind short books which exploit allegory, surrealism or absurdism. The best efforts cut through the potential pretentiousness by introducing self-deprecating wit. Unfortunately, this is infected with plain silliness. Why is this? I fear the answer lies in the plot and the underlying nature of Reality 36. To avoid spoilers, I need to drop into my own brand of analogy. Those of you who are brave enough to read these reviews will understand that my head is stuffed with a multitude of eclectic facts and out-of-kilter attitudes. Suppose I was connected up to a virtual reality gaming platform and, linked with an AI, created a scenario for people to play. That might all work well so long as I was around to keep explaining the symbolism. But if I should drop out, the rationality of the gaming might go into steep decline as the AI could not replicate my idiosyncrasies. Remember, the theme of this book is the relationship between the human and the machine mind. I get tired of hearing the stuff in my own head without wanting to read endless stuff about what’s in someone else’s. This is not to say this theme is badly treated. In fact, when transferred to Otto’s thread, there’s a tragic backstory unwinding that beautifully captures the debate over what can go wrong and what to do if it does go wrong. So Omega Point is a nicely constructed plot spanning two books but, to my mind, flawed by spending so much time on Richard’s quest in the second.
For reviews of other books by Guy Haley, see:
Crash
Reality 36.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
This is a wonderful piece of work (in all senses of the idiom). It’s a straight up-n-at-em style that hits where it hurts and takes no prisoners. From this you will gather two fundamental truths. I found Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig (Angry Robot, 2012) vastly enjoyable and I’m attempting to break the page speed record for the most clichés in a column inch. Welcome to the world of Miriam Black. She’s developed an unfortunate ability: precognition. With her first touch, skin to skin, she can tell exactly when and how a person will die. This is not a little distressing so, for a while, she harbours the hope she can be an angel of mercy and avert these foreseen personal disasters. Unfortunately, she runs into three problems. The first is that Fate is inflexible. Second, that she has no idea where the deaths will occur. Third, if she tries to intervene or is merely present, she can often be the cause of the effect. Take death as a result of epilepsy as an example. She foresees a man will die in a motel room. Later, she finds herself in that room with the man and they have an intense argument. This precipitates the fit and he dies — not that he doesn’t deserve to die, of course, but the fact she stayed in the room, knowing what was going to happen. . . Morally, she also crosses the line because she takes money and credit cards from those who’ve died. It helps pay her bills as she runs from herself across a grim and unromantic America as seen from highways, truck stops and motel rooms.
She endures, fighting off unwanted attention when it arises, but her lonely journey suddenly becomes hazardous. There’s an evolving situation in which some distinctly unhappy drug dealers are trying to recover their stolen product. They don’t care how many they have to torture or kill to get their drugs back. It’s the principle of the thing. No-one steals from them and lives! And Miriam? Well, Fate throws her together with the man who stole it. Ah, now the widening pool of victims could include her and a “white knight” who’s briefly by her side. Ironically, her ability tells her the thief will die of old age. . .
Chuck Wendig being a Klingon with the aid of a mask
In some author’s hands, determinism can be a bit plodding. Characters have given up. Their precognitive ability tells them what will happen and all they can do is watch as it happens. Consider the four Final Destination films in which a small group of people are saved only to realise you can’t cheat death. Except, of course, the scriptwriter usually allows one or two to survive. Well, Miriam is stuck in a comparable situation. From her point of view, it’s hopeless and all she can do to stay sane is avoid touching other people. Yet we readers have one thing going for us. Chuck Wendig has a sense of humour about all this. Here’s a really neat way of summing up the complexities of determinism as applied to a nine-year old boy called Austin. “You realize, all of life is written in a book, and we all get one book, and when that book is over, so are we. Worse, some of us get shorter books than others. Austen’s book was a pamphlet.” This captures a flavour of the prose which is electric. It’s stripped down to the wire. One touch and it carries the current directly to the brain. Although it’s good to read dense prose every now and again. Indeed, sometimes, the complexity can have its own beauty. There’s nothing better than the bare minimum where every letter is pulling its weight. Many people try to write this way and most fail miserably. Chuck Wendig has it down to a fine art. It’s tough, mean and, at times, firing enough four-letter words for the film rating agencies to insist on an R rating. He’s also got the knack of thought-transference as the images he had in his mind when writing come whiplashing into yours. Indeed, however I look back at this reading experience, it was so good, I want it again.
The best way to sum this book up is simple. Objectively, with one exception, people do terrible things to each other, but the way it’s all described is so exuberant, you get carried along and, at times, actually smile. This makes me think of those ads for chocolates, “So good, it’s sinful!” Except, from what I’ve written, you should realise this book is not for everyone. You have to be able to accept very graphic violence both in descriptions of death and in torture scenes. If this is going to be a problem, walk away. For everyone else who enjoys violent horror, this is the best so far this year. Better still Blackbirds is actually set up so there could be a sequel. Now, if that’s what Fate decrees, I say, “Bring it on!”
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
For reviews of other books by Chuck Wendig, see:
The Cormorant
Mockingbird
Unclean Spirits.
Carpathia by Matt Forbeck
Carpathia by Matt Forbeck (Angry Robot, 2012) is an historical horror novel without any steampunk elements, Jane Austen lookalikes or zombies. There, I’ve let the cat out of the bag — shot the book down in flames before it’s had a chance. At this point, you may be shaking your head, thinking I’ve lost it. Reviewers are not supposed to follow such a destructive path when a new book is launched. But, for once, I’m trying to applaud both author and publisher. These brave souls have elected to avoid the bandwagon effect supposedly generated by these three popular tropes and offer something ripped from the pages of books about the real world. So, look again at the title.
I’m striking a blow for RMS Carpathia (RMS means the ship was allowed to carry the Royal Mail). She was built in the yards just a few miles and a few years away from where I spent my childhood. I never got to see her. She sank in 1918 and I’m not that old, but I know the type of ship she was. Magnificent for her time, although not as magnificent as the Titanic to whose rescue she sailed in 1912. It was perhaps appropriate that one great lady of the sea should be the first on the scene to rescue the passengers from the other on her maiden voyage when the iceberg got in the way. Like the Carpathia, we should note the timely arrival of this book — just in time for the centenary of the sinking. I’ll pause a moment for you to replay, “My Heart Will Go On” in celebration of the publisher’s marketing nous.
Matt Forbeck pleased after being fished out of the sea
It’s interesting to see who and what Matt Forbeck pulls out of history. My favourite is Jacques Futrelle who was a very good writer of mysteries for his day. The others are mostly key members of the crews of both ships. This signals a preference for people rather than the features of the ships which are described in a slightly generic way. This is a book that tells you only what it needs to push on with the story. There are anachronisms every now and then like the first class dining room serving a merlot — in those days, wines were always named after the vineyards: only the best chateau-bottled for the Titanic — but they match the expectations of modern readers and do not detract from the general sense of realism.
Lucy Seward, Quin Harker and Abe Holmwood come courtesy of Uncle Bram and signal the presence of vampires. This triggers more confusion. How can these creatures be out on the high seas. It’s not like they ever hoisted the Jolly Roger and raided ships passing in the night for their next meals. As it happens, the Carpathia was on the usual run from New York to Fiume when it got the call from the Titanic. For those of you not into geography, Fiume is now known as Rijeka, a major port in Croatia. Finding New York a little too hot, a major group of vampires is on its way to the Old Country for a little peace and a greater sense of security. Unfortunately, the prospect of human sushi on ice just a few miles away is enough to bring vampire factionalism to the fore. Whereas their leader wants a low profile until they disembark, the younger ones who have caused so much trouble in America, are not prepared to accept hunger as the price of safety. They transform into bats and wing across the night sky to gorge themselves.
This brings the two strands of the story neatly together. Our trio of friends are variously pitched into the Atlantic some 370 miles off Mistaken Point, Newfoundland. With the Carpathia on the way, some of the vampires arrive. From this point on, the tension steadily ratchets up as all the humans, rescuers and survivors, end up on the Carpathia. Unfortunately, there’s nowhere to run once on board. Matt Forbeck imparts a pleasingly relentless quality to the narrative as the humans slowly realise they may just have been demoted in the food chain. Naturally, no-one wants to believe in the reality of vampires so it takes more obvious loss of life before the threat is accepted as real. Then, like Custer, they prepare for their last stand.
This is not a book you read for the history. Unlike others more often found on the detective/mystery shelves, where the detail is woven into the narrative to offer colour and depth, this only gives you the bare bones of life on the Titanic and Carpathia. Everything is focused on the characters and their predicament. In this, the vampires are not forgotten. Indeed, if anything, they emerge as rather tragic figures with the majority trying to work through an intergenerational problem. The older members of the group want a quiet life, but their rebellious younger recruits forget the old rule, “The fox preys far from home” or, if you prefer the more direct version, “Never shit in your own backyard.” Such is life in big undead families.
So, overall, Carpathia is a stripped-down thrill ride as humans and vampires are set on a collision course thanks to the accident of an iceberg. It’s well worth picking up.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
Debris by Jo Anderton
Debris by Jo Anderton, The Veiled Worlds I (Angry Robot, 2011) starts off like a rocket. Albeit we’re in familiar territory with a strong female protagonist experiencing a disaster and then recovering, there’s something really pleasing about the initial set-up. We’re pitched into a dystopian world with a powerful and unaccountable elite in control of Varsnia. These people will casually blight a career or kill without compunction if it’s felt expedient. Although there are faint trappings of a judicial system, access is strictly controlled and the results of adjudications only released in redacted form. The justification for this oppression is the usual excuse of an external enemy. While there may not be Orwellian counterespionage policing with fifth-columnists publicly rounded up for interrogation, you have the sense there’s a pervasive atmosphere of repression and fear. Continuing in familiar territory, this powerful elite has accumulated vast wealth and lives in accommodation matching their status while those at the bottom of the heap live in old, unmodernised buildings in slum quarters.
The ability that makes this society work is a variation on bending as in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Most humans in this world have developed a power to manipulate matter. At the bottom end of the ability scale, people see something of the atomic structure of the world and can perform simple tasks equivalent to turning an on/off switch. At the top end of the scale, we have people who approach reality warping powers, able to pull matter apart and rebuild it into new permanent forms. These forms may be static like a major civic building or piece of artwork, or it can be a machine of some kind. This ability has transformed the world at a superficial level. There’s no clear timeline given so this was either a pre-technological society, exploiting steam and gas for power, or more likely given the other technology that shows up later, it’s one of these post-apocalypse scenarios in which a world more advanced than ours has fallen into a chaos during which most of the old technology was lost. It’s interesting to compare this set-up with The Light Ages by Ian R MacLeod which has conventional technological development stall when Victorian miners discover deposits of aether, a magical form of energy. Jo Anderton also has Dickensian overtones in her descriptions of crumbling infrastructures and decrepit factories. Her society has also stalled in a pre-democratic, semi-feudal model where the elite has taken command of the key bending resources and largely diverts this work to improving the quality of life for the wealthy with a few sops for the middle classes.
We start off with our heroine, Tanyana, who’s in the process of constructing the ironically named statue Grandeur. This is intended as an enduring symbol of Varsnia’s contribution to the world. This massive structure is, of course, an exercise in hubris both national and personal. Sadly, Tanyana finds her work sabotaged. She and her unfinished statue are literally cast down. This makes Vansia look bad and justifies Tanyana’s fall from grace. When she recovers consciousness, she finds herself being fitted with an unfamiliar “machine”. Passing quickly on, she’s then despatched into the outer suburbs to join a crew of debris collectors. We now learn bending is a technology or applied magic that seeks its own equilibrium. Think yin and yang. For all the positive use of the bending, there’s a byproduct. Leave too much of this debris lying around and you push the overall system out of balance. Surprisingly, the technology created with the bending starts to malfunction. It was at this point I began to feel the initial rocket start falter.
Jo Anderton showing the latest human/machine interface around her neck
The need for refuse collectors would have been obvious from the start yet only a tiny minority of the citizens can see this debris, let alone pick it up and carry it away. You cannot imagine a society setting off to build a future on bending without taking every possible precaution on the rubbish front. Frankly, with the numbers of those with the necessary skills in such short supply, why do they not command higher status and pay to match? At the very least, this is like the fire brigade which must monitor the suburbs to remove accumulations before they can become a danger. Should there be a sudden imbalance, these dedicated people must rush to the scene and literally save the community from a fate worse than death given all their technology would cease to work. It makes absolutely no sense these indispensable workers would be the equivalent of dalits who are considered untouchable because their traditional work is cleaning out the latrines and sewers.
Then we slowly realise all the characters in this book come without any sense of history. Being old, an oral history was passed down to me by my parents and grandparents. Through this, I literally remember what it was like during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods before I was born. I have a sense of how we came to be what we are today. Yet there’s nothing in this first-person narrative to really explain how this magical technology got started, nor who all the different groups are in this society. Everyone would know how the world works. Yet our heroine seems to have no understanding of how to navigate through the bureaucracy, nor how power is deployed. No-one around her seems to understand how the tribunal system works nor how people can suddenly find themselves demoted from a good job to the equivalent of a goatherd in the Siberian wastes. We are left to feel everyone’s surprise as the dystopian regime rolls out each new predictable oppressive mechanism.
Then we come to the technology of the suit with which the collectors are fitted. There’s nothing else even remotely comparable seen in this city. If this is a stalled Victorian society, how did scientists come to develop something this sophisticated? If this is a survivor technology from a previous age, why is there nothing else that seems to match this level of cyborg transformation? Even though this level of integration seems only possible with those who have the genes for high-powered atomic manipulation, there are enough of these people to benefit from the obvious advantages — perhaps this is all a military secret. Then there are the human/machine interfaces, wireless communication systems and computerised display units associated with suit operation. In this, I’m not counting what may appear to be an electronic money system — pun intended. That appears to be one of the magic machines, only accessible to the atomic-blind through an overlaid display. It’s the uniqueness of the suit’s apparently conventional technology that’s so hard to accept in this context. I have the same problems with the survival of strange books and the completely unexplained nature of the underground movement that rears its head. When we get into the final section of this novel and come to a slight better understanding of how modified and unmodified humans may be able to interface with other realities, the construction of the immediate world gets even less coherent. Indeed, it may be better to stop thinking of this as a science fiction novel and to label it fantasy.
From all this, you will understand a degree of frustration on my part. What began so well almost completely falls to pieces as we go through the middle section. The ending is decidedly weak and not a little incomprehensible given what has gone before. Normally, I would not care and simply throw this away. But whatever the faults in the plotting, Jo Anderton writes very well. She has a strong sense of character and the descriptions of the cityscape are impressive. So rather than rush to a definitive conclusion, I will wait for the sequel. It’s possible she has some overarching explanation that will make sense of this first volume. If so, I will rate this as a duology and give it a more positive recommendation. For those who want to buy Debris and then travel in hope, the sequel is called Suited.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
For the record, Debris has been nominated in the 2012 Ditmar ballot for Best Novel.
Dead Bad Things by Gary McMahon
When I was growing up, running around the streets of my seaside suburb with the “gang” that was made up of the children living in our road, we used slang terms like “dead good” and “dead bad” to mean really good or bad. I suppose the nearest current equivalent is the use of “wicked” in the same rather perverse spirit. This came to mind as I picked up Dead Bad Things by Gary McMahon (Angry Robot, 2011). It’s a sequel to Pretty Little Dead Things which introduced us to Thomas Usher, a man who considers himself cursed. But my first impression from the title was strangely appropriate. It’s almost a dead good book.
This is what may loosely be labelled violent or, even, brutal horror. It’s always been around in one form or another. In earlier times, it was hived off into a grey area where it might be considered slightly pornographic. But following on the increasing willingness of the film-censors to allow graphically violent films to be shown as mainstream entertainment — as in Martyrs, The Hills Have Eyes, the Saw franchise, Hostel, and so on — where the boundaries of taste have been tested with the depiction of both physical and psychological torture becoming increasingly acceptable, the written form has slowly moved out of the shadows. It’s not really my thing, but I read through this to discover whether the graphic bits and what goes in between add up to a good story. I can forgive a lot if there are interesting ideas and a strong narrative.
Gary McMahon out of context in America
The cosmology of this universe and its associated realities is rigorously deterministic. A group whom we shall call the Architects writes scripts for us, mapping out the highs and lows of life, and time and manner of death. This is a modern version of the Moirae where Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis measures it and allots an amount of time to each individual, and Atropos choses the way in which we shall die. Gary McMahon tweaks the classical model by having his hero, Thomas Usher born with a nonstandard script giving him a role not unlike the psychopomps whose task it is to guide the spirits of the newly dead to whichever version of their afterlife seems appropriate given their behaviour during life. This is not supposed to happen on our Earth and there’s some degree of conflict between the Architects as to how to respond to this unique event. One faction wants to leave well alone. The other wants to exploit this power.
While these factions manipulate the world to get into the right position to intervene, our Earth continues to spin. During his life, Emerson Doherty was a top Yorkshire detective. He caught a lot of bad people. Most he handed over for trial and punishment. When the evidence was thin, he had other solutions. He led a small group with vigilante options. They had a guide who may be an angel. Surprisingly, this angel gives Doherty a baby girl to look after. He names her Sarah. Her life is difficult but she grows up tough. She follows him into the police force and then he dies of a heart attack. Slowly, she will go through all his papers. He was a collector, hoarding the minutiae of every case, both official and unofficial. She will come to understand what kind of man her foster father was. This knowledge will put her in danger.
After the events of the first book, Thomas Usher has fled to London but there are forces working to pull him back to Yorkshire. As he is more than aware, nothing is as it seems. He’s deeply suspicious of the circumstances conspiring to move him back up North but, in the end, he goes. Later he will meet up with Sarah and, between them, they will reach an understanding with the forces trying to manipulate them.
Having arrived at the end, the question I asked myself was whether the story would have been better or worse told straight. What, if anything, did the brutality add? The basis on which people gained some sensitivity to different realities including the ability to see and interact with ghosts was personal tragedy. So, for example, if you were a woman and a group of men raped you, cut off your arms and left you to die, you would speak with the dead. Hence, there has to be some level of description to establish the credibility of this mechanism. But there’s also some violence that I feel is somewhat gratuitous. I’m not saying Dead Bad Things would be improved with the violence restricted to passages that would shock simply because they were unexpected, but there’s a slight numbing effect as you read through the book. I can’t say I was shocked. I’ve read and seen worse. But some of the dramatic edge is lost if a device is overused.
So there you have it. Dead Bad Things by Gary McMahon can be read as a stand-alone although, as always, you gain depth if you know what happened in the first book. I think it’s a good story but it will not be to everyone’s taste. So, having read this review, it comes down to a personal decision on whether you are sufficiently interested in violence to want to read a somewhat gratuitously violent take on determinism, with a detour through Revelations as an early interpretation of what sensitive people might see if there’s a personal tragedy in their lives.
For reviews of other books by Gary McMahon, see:
Beyond Here Lies Nothing
The Concrete Grove
Reaping the Dark and
Silent Voices.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
Reality 36 by Guy Haley
I suppose, when you want to construct a new universe, you’re forced to start with people. It’s only fair some humans should get a look in. Then you think about augmenting some of them. This could be genetic — parents designing their offspring to be in whoever’s image they thought most desirable. Or, perhaps, just designing for effect, regardless of appearance. Then we could have various degrees of cloning so that our humans could avoid problems of defective organs by being able to whip one up in a petrie dish. Or you could go the whole hog (metaphorically speaking, of course, even though pigs are supposedly genetically close to humanity) and clone more or less a whole body. Yet this is not necessarily good enough. At the end of the day, humans are all soft tissue and relatively fragile bones. How much more secure you might feel if you became a cyborg. All this improvement is going to depend on a lot of high-powered computer technology, so let’s create different levels of AI from the barely sentient to the clever ones. This is, of course, the tried and tested trope of the singularity where we potentially get what, to mere humans, would appear superintelligence in all parts of this system — that’s not counting the possibility of uplifting animals to some level of awareness. There will also be political strains as different groups may view the others as threats to their continued existence if not prosperity. If there’s actual conflict, the original humans are merely cannon-fodder and unlikely to survive in numbers.
As a final touch, we have a mirror to Iain M Bank’s Surface Detail in which real-world societies have created virtual realities. In the Bank’s use of this possibility, there are virtual Heavens and Hells. Guy Haley has us take an interest in Reality 36 (Angry Robot, 2011), one of the many worlds created for use by virtual gamers, but later given protected status. Morally, it doesn’t do to create “people” whose only function is to be victims for human game-players intent on exterminating them. So real humans have been barred from the virtual worlds, each of which is allowed to develop along the lines laid down in the original specifications. There’s supposedly an academic team (including AIs) monitoring what goes on in the servers and on the virtual worlds, with a policing agency charged with enforcing the rules of human non-interference.
Guy Haley seen in a good light
Against this background, it would be possible to produce many different types of drama from relatively small scale to major action across both real and virtual worlds but, intrinsically, they would all be the same story exploring what this “world” considers a person, what level of rights each type of person will enjoy, and how the different types interact. Guiding us through this terrain are two different types of person. Richards is a class 5 AI who’s fascinated by the use of his powers as a detective. When he manifests, it’s as a 1930‘s PI and he has honed his skills to maximise his investigative abilities. He has also made a friend of Otto Klein, a military cyborg who, when not working as a stalking horse for Richards, freelances as “muscle” although he’s rather more than that. We start off with Richards doing his best to capture a particularly elusive criminal only to find this is a feint to lure Klein into a trap. In a separate narrative thread, Veronique Valdaire finds her relatively quiet academic world disturbed when her boss disappears.
The common denominator proves to be the events occurring in the titular Reality 36 and the adjacent areas of the servers. This means we switch up the scale fairly dramatically when the two major narrative threads converge and pitch our warriors into battle both on the real Earth and in the aforementioned reality. As we might predict, this is all a preliminary skirmish to what could prove to be a major war between the persons who believe they are the most superior and the rest.
I get the idea of an AI. Back in the 1970s and 80s, I spent a considerable amount of time working on expert systems so I understand the problems in what would need to be done to create an autonomous machine. I’ve also read a significant number of SF books about making them and fighting them. But I don’t get where all the code comes from to make each person in a virtual reality autonomous. In other books, people upload digital versions of themselves into these gaming or other realities. Assuming enough bandwidth and online memory capacity, large numbers of “people” can therefore exist in these machine-supported environments. But Guy Haley assumes humans have been prevented from jacking into these worlds, leaving only the machine-generated people behind. So are we supposed to assume the AIs replicate smaller versions of themselves to populate these worlds? Or does each “individual” somehow evolve from a non-sentient piece of code? Take Ulgan the merchant in Reality 36 as an example of this problem. He certainly seems to act and react as an archetypal lazy but greedy person. It would be not unreasonable for such a being to be given protected legal status. But what about an orc or some other mythological creature with a language and culture? What would the criteria be for deciding whether such a being should be protected?
You may wonder why I’m focussing on these issues. The answer lies in two of the important characters. Zhang Qifang was the leading light in establishing a legal framework of machine-intelligence rights, and Hughie at Eupol Central is a stickler for enforcing the rules. A little more work explaining the relationship between the different levels of internet, how the interfaces work, and how the laws define the different classes of person would be appreciated. I also note that an atomic bomb is dropped on a part of London during this book and there’s hardly a second thought about it. While I personally would not mind seeing London removed from the map in current reality, a few words referring to the consequences would give the fictional event a little more substance and credibility.
This is not to say there are major flaws in this book. But I prefer things to be neat and tidy and, although this is an excellent attempt, I feel the creativity is a little superficial. That said, I found reading this book highly enjoyable. There’s a certain restrained exuberance at work and, despite the problems, I was pulled through to the end. I wanted to know how it would be left. Guy Haley is a journalist and editor making the transition into fiction and he gives himself a challenge. It’s always difficult to make a reader care about an AI as a hero, but Richards (aka Lazarus) does manage to come back from wherever AIs might go when existence ceases courtesy of a little back-up storage and the work of some enterprising forensic autopsy experts. I found him likeable. Similarly, Otto Klein has various physical problems and is not invulnerable. We get a sense he could die during some of his escapades. So Reality 36 is a good read, full of incident and building to a not unpredictable cliffhanger. It’s definitely worth picking up. The sequel, for those of you who want to join me in following their adventures, is called Omega Point.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
For a review of the sequel, see Omega Point. There’s also a standalone called Crash.
Darkness Falling, Forever Twilight: Book 1 by Peter Crowther
The initial set-up of Darkness Falling, Forever Twilight: Book 1 (Angry Robot, 2011) by Peter Crowther is not unlike the Seahorse in the Sky by Edmund Cooper where a group of people who start off on an international flight suddenly wake up in coffins on an island. If you think this is as dramatic as you can get, Mr Crowther has a flash of light and then just three people on the plane. Fortunately, one of them can fly although the landing proves more challenging than expected. So, at a stroke, we are presented with a puzzle. Where did all the people go? As the multiple points of view unwind, it seems this is a worldwide phenomenon. No matter what they were doing nor where they were, all but a handful of people have been left surrounded by wreckage. Why wreckage? Because our world is constantly in motion. Planes fly, trains whizz along tracks, and vehicles of all shapes and sizes move across the landscape. If you remove the controlling minds, all you have left is momentum until the inevitable crash.
At this point, I want to remember another book. I suppose I should apologise but, much as Mr Crowther populates his text with all manner of literary and film references, so I need steady points of reference to keep me on track. In Blue Light by Walter Mosley we have a kind of fantasy/horror novel about the transformative effect of a blue light that emanates from outer space. Each person touched by the light gains a special power. They are, if you like, elevated to a higher state of being with interesting abilities. Mr Crowther has a different coloured light and the effect is somewhat more powerful in removing the majority of the world’s population. It’s rather as if Scotty had beamed everyone up except for the valiant crew that would go to infinity (and, if necessary, beyond). But in drawing from some interestingly diverse sources, we have ourselves a rather pleasing, if somewhat old-fashioned, Rod Serling type story in which our survivors must find each other and then band together against adversity.
Peter Crowther — a Brit with American leanings
What makes all this intriguing is that there’s also a physical effect on the world. Whereas we would expect the sun to keep on rising in the East and falling gracefully out of sight into the West, there may be evidence of more tinkering on a cosmic scale. Since gravity seems unaffected, the world probably continues turning on its axis, radio signals initially seem to carry music to nearby radios, but there’s something distinctly wrong about the more usual cycle of day and night. And then, of course, there’s the Dark itself. Instinct is never completely reliable in books like this, but there does seem to be something to feared. . . Not that there appears to be anything particularly supernatural out and about, albeit the world has just experienced something inexplicable in current scientific terms. Then there’s a second light. Ah, now that may be a game-changer.
As to our cast of characters, we have a diverse bunch. With the exception of a serial killer and a woman with multiple personality disorder, they seem a random selection of the great unwashed but, I suppose, there will later prove to be some common factor that caused them to be saved from this mass extinction event (my apologies, I should have mentioned that all life seems to have disappeared from the land and air). For now, the survivors are moving across the landscape, aware of others who may, when they feel the time is right, more actively pursue and destroy them. It’s not a situation in which it’s easy to hope, and the fact one of their number is a killer does add an edge to the proceedings.
Which leaves me with two quite different thoughts with which to end. Peter Crowther is a man much to be admired for all the good work he has done with PS Publishing, the multiple award-winning small press. He also has a good editorial eye and, in this and other works, writes well. Darkness Falling is a substantially expanded version of the two novellas already published under the Forever Twilight shingle. They appeared in 2002 and 2009 respectively. I will refrain from spoilers because the underlying idea is actually an ingenious inversion of an old trope and you should read this first book in the new trilogy without preconceptions to see if you can solve the puzzle. As a piece of writing, it’s also interesting to see how the initial ideas have evolved over the years. Peter Crowther, the author, specialises in something mildly tricky. As a Brit he writes stories set in the US using the American vernacular. He does it rather well. This expanded version focuses on the characters of the survivors with the occasional omniscient authorial contribution. The prose style is slightly dense but there are odd illuminations of wit to ease us along. I feel it has spread itself out a little too much, but the overall result is pleasing and it leaves us set up nicely to investigate exactly what’s going on in the remaining volumes.
For an excellent anthology edited by Peter Crowther, see We Think, Therefore We Are. There’s also an excellent collection Jewels in the Dust.
The Damned Busters by Matthew Hughes
Back in the 1990s, I read a very good book in the style of Jack Vance. Fools Errant and its author Matthew Hughes stuck in my memory and once he began appearing in print more regularly, I ended up with all his Vancean books in my collection. It’s therefore interesting to read him in a style that I take to be closer to his natural voice.
The question with which to start this review is the deceptively simple, “what makes a good book?” For me, the rather complicated answer begins with the quality of the story. It has to have an interesting premise and then explore the implications of that premise in a logical way — or, if not a logical way, then a way that’s credible given the characters and the situation in which they find themselves. As you will understand, this is not necessarily a feature that will guarantee the book bestseller status. Too often books hyped to the top of lists like that run by the New York Times are populist drivel that somehow manage to appeal to a mass market lowest common denominator. When such books are read by their fans, they feel an emotional intensity to keep turning the pages. They feel a minor tragedy has occurred when the final page has turned. They look around in desperation for the next in the series — think Rowling and the schoolboy magic books, Dan Brown and the Robert Langdon books, and so on. The test is being wise after the event. How many books from the nineteen-fifties or earlier are still read today? It takes an outstanding book to transcend the limitations of its own time and appeal to readers who inhabit a new culture. Fad books rarely last more than a year or so.
Matthew Hughes — a man not afraid to show his age
So the book has to be a good plot with universal implications, and it must be well written. This is all highly subjective because the prose styles I may like may be the ones you hate the most. For me, the test is somewhat like sticking litmus paper into the book. If it’s good, a light comes on when I start to read and it illuminates the experience of devouring each page. As someone who writes, I declare a very good book when I smile and wish I could write that well.
With all this hype fresh in our minds, we come to The Damned Busters (Angry Robot, 2011) by the aforesaid Matthew Hughes. This is the first in a new series, appropriately titled To Hell & Back — pleasing we can hope for redemption. Now I’m not going to tell you this is a new classic of literature that awed people will be reading in a hundred years. It’s not going to be ranked as Earth-shattering (more’s the pity). Nevertheless this is very good of its type. Indeed, it almost does everything right. There are only two real problems. The first is that I’m less than convinced by some of the cause and effect, and some of the characterisation is a little on the superficial side. Now you could say that fantasy is never intended to have literary pretensions. Indeed, the fact Matthew Hughes actually serves up characters you can distinguish one from the other is a big improvement over the usual stuff where generic cardboard cut-outs are moved around the plot to suit the convenience of the author.
Anyway, let’s start with the technical stuff. This is a tale with metafiction overtones as various characters debate with themselves (and us) whether they are characters in a story. The point of the discussion is the possibility that, once they recognise their status, they might be able to influence the author into changing the outcomes in their favour. Indeed, they even talk about the possibility of hijacking the story and writing their own endings. This gives us a pleasing vehicle for the discussion of free will and predestination. Some characters start with no real understanding of who they are nor what they think. They are simply the author’s pawns who do his bidding without having to think. Yet, as the story progresses, some of these cyphers accumulate more heft. By the time the book finishes those few have actually begun to think for themselves, albeit only in a rudimentary way. This is not to say they have achieved free will, but their ability to take some control over and responsibility for their actions has improved.
As to the plot: the excellent cover art by Tom Gauld depicts our hero who, through no obvious fault on his part, summons a demon. In the traditional way, Hell’s representative offers the usual terms: your heart’s desires in return for your soul. Except our hero is not tempted and just wants the demon to go away. After some contortions of logic to get the plot underway, a grand compromise is reached. Our hero will get some powers sufficient to enable him to act as a caped crusader of the crime-busting ilk without having to give up his soul. But, as soon as he starts with the rescue of a damsel in distress, he discovers there’s more to this vigilante game than he had imagined. Worse, he soon begins to suspect he’s being manipulated. Perhaps Hell is being less than honest — a not entirely surprising possibility — or is Heaven trying to push him in a direction to suit its agenda? Once you get into the paranoia, it’s easy to see how his altruism might be seduced into prideful excess, how his innocence might be lost to lust, and so on.
Taken as a whole, I found The Damned Busters one of the best fantasy books of the year so far. Matthew Hughes has fun in chasing down all the wrinkles in the plot and then ironing them into creases we can all appreciate for their neatness. I admit to being excessively hard by saying some of the characterisation is a little superficial. Once you accept the metafictional conceit, this is a necessary device. The characters without free will cannot be anything other than two-dimensional. As to the slightly dodgy cause and effect, this is again justified by the metafiction. No matter how perfect the author may hope to be, there’s no guarantee the results will be perfect every time. That’s why we write a draft and then revise it until we are not completely unhappy with the text. In the process, the actions of the characters may have completely changed — a phenomenon that would be completely disorienting to those characters if they were conscious.
The Damned Busters is definitely recommended to all (even those committed Evangelicals who don’t like the name of their God taken in vain — this may not be “the” Good Book but it’s certainly “a” good book).
For reviews of all the book by Matthew Hughes, see
Costume Not Included
The Damned Busters
Hell to Pay
The Other
Song of the Serpent
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Thinking about books 