Science in the Capitol Trilogy

Kim Stanley Robinson 
Harper Collins 2004-2007

I heard this was a good bit of cli-fi so I downloaded all three books. The separate titles are "Forty Signs of Rain", "Fifty Degrees Below" and "Sixty Days and Counting" (don't ask me to explain the titles, I really have no idea what they're about). Each book weighs upwards of 100 000 words, so all up it's a decent hefty read. They feature the same characters and the same story so I think it's fair to review them all in one go.

The first book is actually darn good. It focuses on a group of high-powered American scientists engaging with a scenario of abrupt climate-change. In this story the planet is cooking very fast indeed. Huge changes are happening within years rather than decades. Frank judges grant applications at the National Science Foundation. Leo is working in a lab inserting new genes into living organisms. Anne and Charlie are both science advisors or thereabouts, raising two sons in suburban Washington.

The scientific detail here is really well done and the actual "writing" is first class. The choice of words, paragraph structure and so forth is fantastic. Robinson touches on a lot of important contemporary ideas. One repeating theme I found interesting was the "prisoner's dilemma" concept, which Frank uses as an analogy for human inaction on climate change. I also liked the buddist monks and their slowly drowning, completely fictional island.

However, much of the first book is horribly dull. There are some utterly tedious descirptions of average domestic life. Other parts are somewhat interesting but ultimately serve to detract from the story (ie the irrelevant road-rage encounter). Surprisingly, the narrative pulls itself together towards the end of the book and delivers something satisfying - Washington is devastated by an epic flood.

Unfortunately the second book is far worse than the first. There's very little action and not even much science or politics. Instead Robinson seems determined to include each and every mediocre idea he's ever had. Just about everything is off-topic. If Robinson enrolled in a creative writing 101 class the teacher would certainly tell him to "find out what this is really about". It seems like incredible dramas are happening elsewhere in the world, but all we see is the mind of a scientist daydreaming his way around Washington. Furthermore, Frank doesn't even make a very convincing scientist. We are supposed to believe that he is working full-time on nothing less than averting global catastrophe. But all he seems to do is sleep in a park and play frisbee.

The third book is at least as bad as the second. It could even be worse. By this point I was doing a lot of flick reading. In short this is a trilogy worth flick-reading. Scavenge the good ideas and write your own cli-fi.

Arms Race and Other Stories

by Nic Low
Text Publishing 2014

This is a fun bunch of fiction from a refined Melbourne gentleman (well he's been seen around these parts). The writing is fresh, individual and unfashionably speculative. There's a feeling of whimsy and an almost fairy-tale quality to some of the stories. They explore some fertile ideas and territories.  It's quite dense and I get the impression that each story has been reworked many times.

My favourite stories are "Rush" and "Data Furnace". In Rush Aboriginal activists start a mining company. They are granted an exploration licence for what might be considered sacred land - Melbourne's biggest war memorial (the Shrine of Remembrance). Data Furnace is set in a climate disaster future and London has frozen over following the collapse of the Gulf Stream. Most of the city is evacuated but two employees stay on working in a data centre. They become reliant on the servers for warmth, and try to attract more traffic. It seems they need an amazing youtube gimmick in order to survive.

It's worth mentioning that the stories are set all over the place. Each one takes us to a wildy different location - Laos, Rajasthan, Manhattan. Almost feels like you're on a backpacker journey (with a possible preference for New Zealand). 

I was however sometimes disappointed by the endings of these stories. Sometimes the final paragraphs introduced new themes and ideas that weren't particulary complimentary to the preceding work. Other times the story appeared to be cut short before the climax. I wondered if perhaps the stories had been compromised to fit the fairly narrow requirements of literary periodicals.

Highly recommended and hope to see more from this author!

Emergence

by John Birmingham
Pan Macmillan 2014

There must have been a mix up at the Christmas factory because a copy of this landed in my stocking. My first thought was to palm it off as present to somebody else, but the opportunity didn't arise. Like some other folks I know, I was a big fan of the "felafel-era" Birmingham, and disappointed that he subsequently began producing fantasy-action novels. I would have liked to see him take the sharehouse theme worldwide. Or something like that. Anyway, the thought occurred to me that I hadn't actually read any of his fantasy-action novels so I decided to give this one a go.

The story begins with a horde of demons attacking an oil rig off the coast of America. And the plot only gets crazier from there! The protagonist Dave Hooper manages to kill one of the demons with an axe, before he falls unconscious and wakes up in hospital. Soon Dave discovers that he has super powers (yes, really). He can move terribly fast and has incredible strength. He has also inexplicably acquired the knowledge of the demon he killed. With the help of his trusty axe (technically it's a splitting maul), he helps the American military defeat a horrific demon attack on the city of New Orleans.

You would be correct in thinking this book is very silly indeed. The demon horde feels a lot like it escaped from the Warhammer role-playing franchise. Apparently these demons ruled the earth thousands of years ago, treating humans as cattle and fighting amongst themselves. I wondered why none of the scientists in the book mentioned the peculiar absence of any fossil remains of this demon civilization. Possibly I skipped over that page. One thing I did like was that the demons seem to become sexually aroused during the carnage. Call me depraved but I thought it gave these guys an edge over your average fantasy monster.

The story may be ridiculous but Birmingham writes well and the dialogue and descriptions kept me amused. I was chuckling to myself in more than one place as I rediscovered his sense of humour. I also enjoyed the reprobate protagonist. Dave Hooper is the sort of guy who blows his pay check on hookers and cocaine.

A book like this isn't going to change your life. However if you're looking for some hilarious trash this may be the book for you (and I mean that in the best possible way).

No Limit

by Holly Childs
Hologram 2014
 

Wow. This punchy novella totally blew me away. My head's still reeling from it days later. The promo calls it "sugar-rush prose" - which may be a big understatement - each page feels like another line of no-doz. This is dense, fast writing. Every sentence is manicured and processed for maximum impact, but it retains a strong sense of "flow". There's so much here that you could read it several times in succession without getting tired.

The story recounts the farcical adventures of a group of international internet addicts who go to a squat party in Auckland. Flights are grounded due to a volcanic eruption that cleverly parallels the disruptions of 2010 (when ash drifted into Europe from Iceland). The leading character is a girl who is actually named Ash. There's also Haydn, Misty, Dick, Mack, Fidget and Bassy. Narrative highlights include ridiculous sex scenes at the underground party, and two visists to an absurd internet cafe called "Ne Plus Ultra".

The defining feature of No Limit is however the prose. The sentence structure, content and composition are superb. There's a lot of name-dropping, hat-doffing to other artists, self-reflection and elements of postmodernism. There's also a lot of internet culture here, more than I can remember finding in any other novel. Other themes include bisexuality and fashion (as in clothes).  The writing wanders through a lot of esoteric territory but it remains accessible and has a great sense of humour.

My main criticism is that the narrative disintegrates somewhat in the second half. It becomes exhausted like a raver on the morning after and abandons whole characters and plot concepts. What happened to Misty and the green cosmetic? Is the book purposely being left open to a second installment?

I put a link to the bookseller up there to the left. You are doing yourself a disservice if you don't check this out.

Life.exe

by Stephen Moles

Philistine Press 2013 

This novella smacks you in the face with a truly radical literary style. It's strongly reminiscent of dada or surrealism, or maybe "cut and paste". The descriptive sentences are warped and twisted to the point where they feel as though they've been generated randomly by a computer program (and they may well have been). However there's enough narrative to keep you ploughing through the paragraphs of insanity - I'd describe the narrative as contemporary, sexy and existential.

Here's an exemplary sentence if you weren't feeling curious already: "I explained that having no clothes put me in a hot butter tray, but she gripped me by the wrists and became extremely old."

Real amazing writing. And it's free.

PS: I truly have no idea what the cover is supposed to show. It strikes me as a dead Irish famous person from around about a century ago. But that would have nothing to do with the novel so I'm probably incorrect. Maybe it's meant to be quixotic?

PPS: I just discovered the author's blog which resolves some of the enigmas. But I recommend you read it first with the enigmas in place.

Exit Nothing

by Pat King

KUBOA 2012

This is a fun and warm short novel. The first chapter or two are a little deceptive - the vibe is dreamy and gothy. Then the tone changes and things get more rollicking. I was reminded of the honest, straight-up style of "Jesus' Son" (Denis Johnson), and maybe "Praise" (Andrew McGahan).

The narrative is not chronological and consists of short adventures taken arbitrarily from the young narrator's life. He loves two cities - Philadelphia and Balitmore, and two girls - Anne and Kaye. The other recurring character is a guy known only as the "Mad Poet".

My only criticism is that despite a lot of drinking and smoking the story still feels a little light and fluffy. I would have liked to see a bit more grime and craziness. On the other hand it was refreshing to read about a guy who likes to go to poetry readings with his girlfriends.

I found this free on smashwords! 

The Unaustralians is now free online

Yes that's right. You can grab it from smashwords or via that link to your left. I even made up a pdf version for small screens.

The Monkey Wrench Gang

by Edward Abbey

first published 1975

As you may have noticed I'm on a search for fiction to the theme of environmental activism. The Monkey Wrench Gang is something that fits the description well. Wikipedia tells me that this is a widely known book and as of 2012 there's even a film adaptation being planned. I couldn't get through this book however without a lot of flick-reading. It was fun but it didn't really rock my world. 

The story follows a group of four renegades as they systematically destroy things all over the American Southwest (which means the Colorado river, Utah, Arizona, etc). The gang consists of Seldom Seen Smith, George Hayduke, Doc Sarvis and Bonnie Abbzug - all of them talented, exceptional people who remarkably have almost identical opinions about what needs to be done. Basically they want to blow shit up, particularly dams and power plants. They also have an inexplicable love of corny jokes and bad puns.

The first two-thirds of the book passes with just about no conflict or drama whatsoever. It's a gratuitous destructive romp with no sense that the gang is really at risk. The drama improves in the final third when the agents of law and order finally start hunting down the saboteurs. 

The biggest win of this book is the amazing descriptions of the landscape. Clearly the author knows the place intimately and is describing real places that he has watched being built up and over. 

I would have liked to get hold of the Robert Crumb edition but the copy I read was pretty plain actually. Seems like Abbey did a lot of writing so I'm interested in reading some more when I get the chance. (But next up I think I'm going to get back to the mission statement and review something unknown and undervalued).

Thought Crimes

by Tim Richards
Black Inc. 2011

Tim Richards is a rare thing - dark, literary, Australian and published. I've read several of his books before (many years ago now), but the quality of Thought Crimes took me by surprise. These are some heavy-hitting short stories!

There are twenty-one stories here and the dark tone is set early on with "The Enemies of Happiness". A new teacher in a disadvantaged school grapples with the discovery that one of her students has had their ribs surgically removed, only so they can perform fellatio on themselves. "V2" is probably the first really great story that the reader encounters: An autistic man murders the recently released Myra Hindley and the Australian government struggles to cover it up. (I won't spoil any more of these stories for you, promise.) The creme de la creme of this collection are "Dog's Life" and "The Darkest Heart". When you find yourself reading a paragraph several times, just to savour the use of particular words, you know you are looking at some fine writing.

However, if you're looking for satisfying endings, you might not find a lot in Thought Crimes. There's a lot of abrupt, ambiguous, cryptic, and anti-climactic endings here. At first I thought Richards was simply spectacularly bad at finishing his stories, but then I realised that over half of these stories have previously appeared in literary periodicals (ie Meanjin). I now suspect that a lot of these stories have been cut down to fit the narrow specifications of the magazine editors. Maybe Richards needed to make the stories more "literary" and less "speculative" in order to get them published - and hence some of the ambiguity. 

I was in fact disappointed to find Richards doing the standard thing of thanking the various magazines at the end of the book, because it seems that in many ways these magazines are holding Richards back. I'd love to see Richards let loose on the world  beyond the narrow confines of current literary acceptability. I believe he could produce something sprawling, surrealistic and marvellous - a work of true genius. Publishers be damned!

(I'm still giving this five out of five stars though.)

The Lifted Brow No.7

Published 2010

While I'm in a reviewing mood I thought I might mention The Lifted Brow. I'm specifically talking about the Lifted Brow no7. Some of the other TLB publications I've read were less to my taste. However number seven really packs a punch. It's a remarkable collection of wild unregulated fiction from writers you've almost certainly not heard of (at least I haven't). They seem to be mostly young Australian and American authors.

There's no index, no publisher page, no author bios and only a very short editorial. In fact I don't even know how many stories are in here. At a guess I'd say about thirty (not including a few comic strips) and they're mostly fairly long stories. There's also a lot of extra artists who have apparently contributed by drawing small penises and shoes in the little spaces above and below the stories.

The collection starts out with an untitled, uncredited and truly bizarre story about a guy called Ricky. He seems to be losing his mind on some type of dissociative drug (well that's my interpretation). From there we get two super short stories of only a paragraph each and then a long, surreal piece about a vindictive santa claus who transforms the protagonist's father into a reindeer. After that is a story about a dinner date featuring a Liberian warlord in a house where every object and surface is completely covered in carpet. Following this is a comic but apparently factual account of a Bachelor and Spinster ball in rural Queensland. The collection continues on in this way, and there's a lot of it. I'm inclined to think the first half is of somewhat better quality than the second half, but there's certainly nothing bad here.

Thanks TLB for no7! Can we have some more like this one day?

In Arcadia

by JD Shaw

Published 2013

This is a comic novel that depicts a near future Melbourne collapsing at a social level. The woes seem to be economic and agricultural in nature but the precise cause isn't exactly clear. The "climate" does get a few mentions however so it fits quite neatly alongside some of the other books I've been reading lately.

The hero and narrator is a typical Melbourne dad (Tom) living with his family in a place that feels very much like Brunswick. Unfortunately the streets of the inner north are becoming overrun with unemployed vagabonds (even more than usual it would seem). Tom and his family decide to flee to the farthest edge of suburbia - to a walled community called Arcadia. Of course there turns out to be some pretty unpleasant things going on in the community and Tom is soon deeply entangled in most of it.

The thing I thought most important about this book was the portrayal of characters desperately trying to hold on to a vanishing suburban ideal. In the quest for luxury these characters are very quick to dispose of their notions of morality. The other thing I liked a lot were the farcical scenes of misadventure and destruction. There is some wildly unfashionable comic writing going here and I was laughing out loud in quite a few places.

My only criticism is that I wanted a lot more detail about what was going on in the rest of the city. The story ends with a sense of a new journey beginning so perhaps (hopefully) the author will keep writing and produce a sequel one day.

**** four stars!

Fly

by Anne Witherall
published 2012

A copy of this found its way into my hands. It's pretty great. It's a loose memoir/fiction novel set in the Melbourne punk scene of the late 1980s.

Annie (aka Agro) flees Adelaide at the young age of fifteen. She's determined to be a punk and the locals don't understand her, so she takes the train to Melbourne. She slips smoothly into the punk scene, and soon is squatting with two friends, Dee and Mel. The story is a mixture of annecdote and what feels like a lightly sculpted narrative.

Annie makes for an interesting lead character. She's saving up money to have cosmetic surgery, in order to conceal a scar across her torso. Ironically it was this scar that helped steer her into the punk scene, where being a freak is something to be proud of. I thought this apparent contradiction in her character gave the book an edge over similar stories.

In order to make quick money she travels back to Adelaide sporadically in order to buy marijuana by the pound. It seems like a long way to go for marijuana, and one of the characters remarks that weed is harder to score in Melbourne than heroin. This is just one of several concepts in the novel which I found vaguely incongruous. However, a lot can change in twenty-five years... who knows maybe it really was like that in the 80s.

I actually preferred the narrative sections of this book, as opposed to the annecdote sections. The narrative sections have a strong Romper Stomper vibe, and I think this book could be adapted into a good movie. I also liked some of the descriptive passages, which tend to celebrate the punkness. Here's one example: "Little black turds littered every surface and made my room smell like a mouse cage. I felt my earlobe. All my earrings were missing and flakes of dried blood coated my fingers. The sign of a good night."

The narrative could be improved and the loose ends tied up. But then it wouldn't be punk.

Drowning Towers

(aka The Sea And The Summer)
by George Turner 
published by Arbor House 1987

I continued my search for novels on the topic of climate disaster, and I was surprised to find one set in Melbourne Australia. I'd never heard of it before, nor the writer, George Turner, who once upon a time won the Miles Franklin. Apparently he turned to science fiction in his later years, and Drowning Towers was written at the ripe old age of 70. He died in 1997.

The novel is set around the middle of the 21st century. The temperatures continue to rise and Melbourne is getting rather subtropical. The seas are also rising, and parts of the city are flooded at high tide. This sounds bad enough, but it's not the main theme of the novel. The population has exploded and subsequently split into two classes "Sweet" and "Swill". The Sweet are rich and stupid and don't feel terribly different to the average Australian today. Most of the populace are however, Swill - a dirty, smelly bunch who live in gigantic housing estates in segregated neighbourhoods. The Swill speak in crude argot, something like cockney mixed with bogan, and enjoy living conditions considerably worse than a modern-day Mumbai slum.

I really wanted to like this, but I lost interest half-way through. Firstly, the premise simply feels too unlikely. Whatever you can say about Melbournians, they're an egalitarian bunch. Folks would never tolerate a class divide on this scale. Turner writes with a tone of social commentary, but there's nothing familiar about the society he's writing about.

Secondly, there's more than a few inexplicable blind-spots in Turner's vision of the future. Why is there scarcely any mention of the rest of the world? Why is Melbourne suddenly devoid of any interaction with other western cities? Early on Turner mentions that Asian countries have expanded into parts of the Australian desert. Yet throughout the novel we don't hear anything else about it, even though this would surely be an ongoing source of tension and conflict.

The other big problem I had with Drowning Towers, is that the characters are so uninteresting. They're generally an unloveable bunch, either wallowing in gloom or selfishly trying to get themselves into the Sweet class somehow. The novel centres around a "tower boss" by the name of Billy Kovacs. Apparently Kovacs controls one of the Swill housing towers, through the use of violence and police liasons. Something about his character didn't ring true for me however. His personality seemed at odds with his supposed power.

A remarkable novel, but not a great read.

The Griefing

by Huck Walker

published 2013

I was totally unprepared when I began reading this novel. From the title I could guess that it involved some kind of mass destruction but that was about it. It was great to be propelled into such a wildly original book. So if you like being surprised and unprepared then please ignore the rest of this review and get into The Griefing without finding out too much about it. However if you like reviews, read on. (There's some serious spoilers that follow).

The first thing to say is that this is a very hefty tome (696 pages according to amazon). It's long enough to cover some pretty diverse territory. The novel focusses on four characters. The first is Tommy - a young molecular biologist who is a genius in his field. His quest is to unlock the relationship between the human cell and the organelles inside it. At least that seems to be his main objective. There's also a lot of other stuff he gets up to. The effort to explain the science is commendable and it all feels a lot more plausible than the typical horror fantasy. There's mention of reprogrammed retroviruses for example.

Stayshia is the next character we get close to - she's a hardcore science nerd who accidentally discovers something supernatural. She has a very human reaction to something which she considers impossible, but then goes on to become possessed by her discovery. Including a character like Stayshia who has extrasensory powers reminded me vaguely of Stephen King (he often throws a telepathic character or something into the mix to spice things up). 

Mark is a spectacularly rich young man with some dubious morals. He's looking for something dodgy to fund and comes across both Tommy and Stayshia. The fourth character is Graham. He's a likeable fellow who chops down feral trees for a living, but later on mutates into a big red killing machine.

There's a long section near the beginning of the book which obviously pays homage to the Newcastle underground scene of the late 1990s. Combining the "Bloody Fists" with all the weird science going on was seriously fresh and probably my favourite part of the book. The other section that deserves a special mention is the last twenty percent or so of the book. There is a real pay off for horror fans here. Yes there is a plague of zombies but this is about as original as a zombie plague can be. It reminded me vaguely of "the Thing", "Akira" and maybe "the Fly". There's a lot of gore and a couple of scenes especially are about as scary as horror novels get.

I feel reluctant to criticize this book at all since I don't read a lot of genre fiction - what I liked least here is quite typical of genre fiction - and quite probably the very elements that other readers will particularly appreciate. The Griefing is very long for example, and there are some very lavish descriptive passages. There's also a total lack of comedy which I guess is something you don't expect in a horror novel anyway but I felt it might have helped smooth the ride a little. Also sometimes the characters are remarkably deadpan about the sheer impossibility of things happening around them. For example, Julie doesn't show a lot of concern when her patient slowly mutates into a three metre monster. Then again, stuff like this happens in horror all the time.

All up an amazing novel and good head-trashing material. It's great to find Australian fiction with imagination for a change. Highly recommended.

Back To The Garden

by Clara Hume

Moon Willow Press 2012

Being generally concerned by the astonishing dearth of climate disaster sci-fi  I had a search around and came across Back To The Garden. Unfortunately I can't honestly say it's a great novel but I give it points for genuinely tackling climate disaster when so many other novelists apparently haven't realized the potential.

The story centres around Fran, a very nice young lady who lives alone on a mountain in Idaho. She's living self-sufficiently with only a couple on a neighbouring ranch for company. The "resource wars" were a few decades ago and since then there hasn't been anything you'd recognize as civilization. Fran's father has died and she hasn't seen her mother since she left on a trip to the South of America many years previously. It seems the climate apocalypse is ongoing but life is still pretty comfortable up in the mountains. Unsurprisingly Fran's getting pretty desperate for a boyfriend. I could almost see the novel developing into some sort of erotic romance at this point and I have to admit I kind of liked her myself.

Fran meets a man who turns out to have once been a famous Hollywood actor (I had my doubts about this, since it seemed reasonable to expect that Hollywood would have been destroyed during the resource wars). The other ranchers get attacked by a bear. They meet a few other characters and the perspective shifts every chapter to a different character. Unfortunately they soon meet rather a lot of characters and they all seem to speak and think in exactly the same first-person tone. It got pretty hard for me to differentiate the characters. The plot slowly builds momentum until they predictably go on some kind of quest across America. 

America turns out to be a huge wasteland strongly reminiscent of Mad Max. Murdering gangs roam about mindlessly. They continue to meet new people and nothing particularly exciting happens. Eventually they all head off back to Idaho together.

There's more than a few peculiar things in this particular vision of climate doom. I waited for the author to reveal more details about the climate apocalypse but it remained a vague thing that happened sometime in the past. The oceans are apparently polluted so severely that just a visit to the seaside leaves a person permanently scarred, but there's no explanation of how they got that way. Despite there being ostensibly no real shops or companies they still seem to have an endless supply of fresh coffee. They also seem to have functioning photo film and sleeping pills.