The City of Shifting Waters

With my 20-book project complete a couple of weeks before the year's end and some free time before tackling next year's goal, I decided to get a couple of quick ones in while I could. And it turned out I enjoyed writing about books so much that I'm going to keep doing it, so here's my first stand-alone book review.

Every Christmas, I like to give the gift of cinema to my family members. This year I took a gamble on getting my dad a film I hadn't seen: Luc Besson's Valérian and the City of a Thousand Planets. A gamble in that reviews and public reception had been mixed last summer and it was based on source material that none of us were familiar with. We ultimately all found Valérian to be a highly imaginative and enjoyable adventure through the space of the distant future, and while I felt the plot ran out of steam somewhat, the visuals more than made up for it.

It inspired me to seek out the original series of bandes dessinées written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières, spanning a huge 21 albums across five decades. Personally I had never heard of the series, although feature adaptation aside the works have had significant influence on science fiction and the comic book medium, and are among the most successful in their genre. I was pleasantly surprised to find the first volume, 1970's The City of Shifting Waters, available for free on Kindle, and so dived in despite not having tried out any kind of book with images on that device before.

I found it to be something of a paradox. It is at once hugely inventive and also reliant on a range of sci-fi stereotypes - although on reflection, I suppose that its relatively early publication date means that it could well have served as the origination of some of those. The concept of "closing the loop" in its time-travelling story arc is certainly one that has been done many times since, but perhaps not before; and along with being given equal footing in the series' title, agent Laureline is certainly a progressive female character at a time when the likes of Robert Heinlein were dominating the genre.

However, it does also fall into the classic Dr. Who style trap of providing characters with access to unlimited travel across space and time and then sending them to 20th-century Earth with it. Albeit this is a post-nuclear disaster 1986 in which New York has turned into a tropical mangrove swamp and what little population remains is locked in a constant war of organised crime. Likewise, the villain Xombul, with his underground lair and plot to rule the world, is lifted straight from the pages of earlier superhero comics. Yet he is balanced by the charismatic blaxploitation gangster-musician Sun Rae and the endearingly nerdy scientist Dr. Schroeder, both of whom develop nicely as they help Valerian and Laureline in their mission.

So while the book is nowhere near as spectacular in its scope as the film, that can probably be put down to its age and the fact that this is where the series began. My experience of bande dessinée is effectively limited to Tintin and Astérix, both of which took a couple of books to truly hit their stride, and I wouldn't be surprised if Valérian didn't follow the same trend both in terms of writing and art as the years went on. I would certainly like to read more of it, and expand my knowledge of the medium in general.

3.5/5

Dane DeHaan was nowhere near as macho as the book version of Valérian, and Cara Delevigne not as ladylike as Laureline. But again, that could be the direction the characters take further down the line. In contrast, the film was a lot more bombastic than the book, which would be sound-tracked nicely by Air's sublime Moon Safari - French futurism at its best.

20 - The Devil's Ark

It was between the ages of 16 and 18 that I read a sizeable number of the books that anyone wishing to claim an interest in literature has to read. And it was during that same period that I managed to get back into reading in a way that I had been neglecting since my childhood. I came to realise that there was a world of literature out there that was essential to my intellectual development - and while I still have a long way to go in that respect, I am glad to have had the time and inclination to make the attempt.

My motivation can be attributed in large part to one man - Stephen Bywater. Taking charge of the literature side of my AS level in English Literature and Language, he taught the subject in the best possible way, opening my mind to entire new schools of thought and ideas that perpetuated my cultural curiosity through university and beyond. So it was only fair that, when he wrote a book, I should give it a read.

The Devil's Ark is an enjoyable piece of pulp-noir horror set in 1930s Iraq as a team of archaeologists attempt to excavate the ancient city of Nineveh. They are joined by photographer Harry Ward, who has been drifting around the world since his release from a mental institution that had been treating his WWI-induced PTSD, and now finds himself in the same region where he experienced that trauma. However his nightmares soon become the least of his worries as the team finds itself plagued by attacks of an apparently supernatural nature, and begin to clash among themselves as well.

The book is as good as you would expect from a writer who has devoted their career to the study of literature and language. Of course it's well-written, the characters are all well-defined and interact in a convincing manner, and the plot develops in a perfectly metered fashion as the tension builds (although contrary to the classic English teacher epithet, we are given a beginning, a middle and something that doesn't quite serve as an end). But what elevates it above being simply a technical exercise in fiction is the way the imagery interplays with the interior monologue, the exploration of mankind's darkest recesses (not surprising to anyone who has experienced one of his lessons on Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber) and a couple of genuinely hair-raising moments of pure horror. On reflection, it surpassed my expectations.

5/5

When it comes to 30s-inspired noir cool, this song serves as as good a soundtrack as any.

So that was 20 books for 2017. I think I was rash to say in my introductory post that I had ever fallen out of love with reading, because the love of it never went away. But I have certainly found that rearranging my life to make more room for it has been beneficial in a number of ways. With that in mind, my target for 2018 is to read just one book - David Foster Wallace's 1200-page juggernaut The Infinite Jest. I may review that here too if I haven't forgotten about all this by then.

Final ranking of all the books read this year, because I like to do that sort of thing:

1. Catch-22 - still yet to come across anything on its level.

2. Micromegas

3. Station Eleven

4. Hard To Be A God

5. The Devil's Ark

6. Anthem

7. Les Steine de la Castafiore

8. Ubik

9. The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds

10. Stories of Your Life and Others

11. Bricking It 

12. Morning Crafts

13. Wake

14. The Road to Little Dribbling

15. Distraction Pieces

16. The Devil Rides Out

17. A Brief History of Time

18. Rushing to Paradise

19. Make Something Up

20. Meditations

19 - Morning Crafts

When it comes to the arts (specifically music, film and literature), I've often been accused of having a slightly weird taste. As such, I've given some thought over the years to what can actually be classified as "weird" and whether the concept can even be defined in an objective sense. By dictionary definition, the word refers specifically to the supernatural, or in a more archaic manner to ideas of fate and destiny. Yet that doesn't seem to be quite in line with its modern usage, which relates more generally to anything outside of the usual, mainstream or everyday. But again there's another layer - hard to pin down - to the word that lends its usage to situations or ideas that instil a sense in those experiencing them that all is not quite right; so I suppose in that way the original definition has been retained.

With all that in mind, Tito Perdue's Morning Crafts is a truly, objectively weird book. Just as a start, for the purposes of this post I realised I would have to look up the publication date, as I was unable to place it at all, and consequently couldn't really put it in a wider context. The answer turned out to be 2012, much more recent than I would have guessed, and I believe not consistent with the period in which the book is set - although to work that out would be almost impossible, dealing as it does with ideas of a post-consumerist, post-service-industry-driven society that have only emerged since the turn of the millennium, but at the same time appearing to be set in the rural Alabama of a hundred years earlier. And that is far from the only contradiction of its kind. The struggle between old and new seeps into the very prose of the work, Perdue's writing at times lyrical and flowery, at others colloquial and comic, at still others all of the above at once.

The protagonist, Lee, appears in nearly all of Perdue's novels, and is apparently based on the author himself. Kidnapped one day from his farm in the Deep South, he finds himself inducted into a mysterious cult that forces the values of the study of the fine arts and aestheticism on the company of boys it brings in each year. Lee himself is a contradiction, seemingly hating every aspect of his education yet remaining committed to it all the same, attempting to escape on a regular basis yet returning just as soon as he has left the commune's limits without any coercion. It turns out that, despite his humble upbringing, he has something of a talent for classical literature and language, and before long finds himself protected among the cult's elite as his classmates begin to be consigned to working the fields. As a coming-of-age tale it doesn't really work, as Lee's rebellious attitude remains firm, and his successes seem to come as a result of nothing at all. I suspect Perdue's aim was rather to show that if you've got it, you've got it, although as Lee comes to the end of his journey uncertain of where to turn next, Perdue does say that he is too far removed from his origins to return.

The plot's conclusion is just as dichotomous - on the one hand, Perdue seems to be condemning the cult, placing as much emphasis as they do on pure theory rather than perhaps using their intellect to solve the abject poverty of the towns and communities that surround them, as well as highlighting the dangers of wilful isolation. But there is more than a hint of regret at the fact that there may soon no longer be any place for such ideals.

Otherwise, despite all the confusion brought about by the general weirdness of the book, Perdue's writing still made for very entertaining reading. It brought me right into the centre of a part of the world I know very little about and will probably never see, provided the occasional laugh-out-loud moment and left me considering the possibility of reading more of his works to see what happens next in Lee's life.

4/5

This song isn't particularly weird as they go - although the video certainly is - but for some reason this book reminded me of it a lot.

18 - Ubik

One of my principal motivations for setting myself this challenge was assaulting the ever-growing pile of books - physical and electronic - accumulating in my limited living space. This was particularly true in terms of my collection of science fiction: the combination of very reasonable pricing on the Kindle store for the SF Masterworks collection and my desire to get through more of the fundamental works of my favourite genre had led to me amassing quite a collection, most of which was embarrassingly unread.

Philip K. Dick is one author who features prominently. Partly because he seems to have written ten times as many books as pretty much anyone else, and partly because the majority of said books are considered classics in their own right and essential reading for any sci fi fan. But personally I had yet to even graze the surface of his back catalogue, having only got through Time Out of Joint (excellent, a lesson in how to drip-feed the reader with information at the same rate as the characters understand it) and a collection of his short stories (quite hit and miss, but Beyond Lies the Wub is a masterpiece of the genre).

And so to Ubik. This novel is from Dick's golden era spanning the 60s and 70s, and is generally considered one of his very best, lying right in the middle of the likes of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, A Scanner Darkly and Valis. Published in 1969 and set in the distant future of 1992, it is one of a number of Dick's works to deal with themes of psychic powers, potential future divisions in humanity, and wider philosophical and religious themes. I chose it because of its relatively short length and the fact that it predates his mental breakdown and the truly bizarre work that followed - after all, I am getting to the tail end here.

Dick's speciality is to drop the reader right into the world of his novel and then have them catch up with its rules as they go along, and this is no exception. Having established that mind-reading is commonplace in this future, and introducing the characters in a flurry of encounters, the plot then hinges on a group of agents who specialise in negating the powers of psychics being dispatched to investigate a rival organisation, but instead being ambushed by a terrorist bomb. The action proceeds to unfold in an unravelling manner similar to that of Time Out of Joint, as the protagonist Joe Chip tries to make sense of what has actually happened to his team, who begin to find themselves seemingly drifting back in time.

His conclusion - saved until the final pages of the book and then turned on its head again even after that - is a tragic one, and it allows Dick to delve into the concepts of our perception of life, death and the afterlife. I'm not sure I understood all of what he was trying to say, and nor did I expect to on the first read through - this is high concept science fiction, using its action to reflect on human thought and experience in a way that only the very best works of the genre can do.

What I also found interesting, and which ultimately left me appreciating the universal application of Dick's philosophy all the more, was the author's vision of the future. Ubik's world is one where business trips to the moon, personal rocket ships and the ability to preserve the dead at the moment of death and then communicate with their minds are routine. Yet the characters still complete their various transactions with small change - indeed Joe Chip is prevented from leaving his apartment because he can't find a nickel to put in a slot in his door - and their daily news is provided by a mechanical device that reads newspaper articles out loud. Chip's boss tracks his employees by getting their location from a psychic and then sticking pins in a paper map. It's a strange effect that dates the book hugely, and made me realise just how much the planet has changed in less than fifty years.

4.5/5

Dick's influence on other forms of culture has been substantial. I was initially going to claim that no other author I have read this year has had their work turned into an opera, but it actually turns out that Micromegas and one of the Tintin books both were. Anyway, here's some weird avant-garde futurist-minimalist electro-opera about a Philip K. Dick book that isn't this one. I quite like it.

17 - Micromegas

I'm not sure whether it's really possible to feel an affinity with a time before you were alive. People often lament not having been around in the swinging sixties or roaring twenties, but ultimately it's not as if they could truly know what it was like to be alive at that time because, simply put, they weren't.

That being said, I would have to say I feel less affinity with the 18th century than pretty much any other period in history since the Dark Ages. With not much of note occurring in British history compared to the centuries before and after, my basic knowledge of the time is somewhat lacking. And while I am aware that the Age of Enlightenment laid the foundation for the vast majority of Western culture, I've always seen as just that - the foundation. The art and music created at the time, in my humble opinion, just isn't as developed or refined as what came later.

This is also the case for the literature of the time: I have very little knowledge of it, have studied it even less, and the works I have come across didn't make much of an impression. I maintain that Goethe's Faust is the most impenetrable thing I will ever read in any language, and Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is the most impenetrable thing I won't ever read (beyond the agonisingly dense first page).

But as with every rule there is an exception, and it comes in the form of the enfant terrible of the Enlightenment - François-Marie Arouet, better known by his prison nickname (yes, really) Voltaire. In a moment of madness during French A-Level I decided to take on his Candide, ou l'optimisme, and not only managed it but thoroughly enjoyed it. It blew me away how modern the prose was, and the ideas behind it. This coming-of-age tale of disillusionment with the failings of society, of learning that the further one travels, the less one knows, and of the overblown silliness of the romance and adventure novels of the time felt like something from the counter culture movement of the 1960s. It's literally 200 years ahead of its time, and I honestly can't think of any other work in any medium that can make that claim.

And so to Micromegas. I had always thought it was the general belief that science fiction was brought to the mainstream by the likes of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells in the 19th century, but with this wonderfully bizarre little novella Voltaire undercuts the trend by over a century again. And sure, the likes of Gulliver's Travels and Kepler's Somnium may have come even earlier, but as far as I'm concerned this story of giant aliens trekking across the galaxy is the first work to be in line with what we would think of as sci-fi today.

It starts off lightheartedly enough as Voltaire describes the adventures of an alien from Sirius who, by virtue of being hundreds of thousands of feet tall, is able to travel from star to star with ease, gaining all the knowledge the galaxy has to offer as he does so. He eventually reaches our solar system, and alights on Saturn where he meets a scientist who, standing at only 6,000 feet tall, is a dwarf by his standards. After a brief cultural exchange on the differences between their planets, in which the author again lays on the comic hyperbole in spades, the Saturnian's wife (a "pretty, petite brunette" - Voltaire coming across like 1752's Kurt Vonnegut) gets fed up and tells them to go elsewhere.

They arrive at Earth, and this is where the book goes from silly to profound in no time at all. After initially believing the planet to be uninhabited because they can find no forms of life big enough to make an impact on it, they soon come across a ship full of philosophers that has run aground in the Baltic. It is here that Voltaire delivers a stream of brutal social satire that again feels more like it belongs in something by some 60s beat poet. The pointlessness of the distinctions the philosophers draw between their different schools of thought, the futility of wars over lands of no real value in the name of rulers who will never see the lands by soldiers who will never meet their rulers, the belief that Earth is the centre of the universe and the universe was created for it - 250 years on and it seems we still have a lot to learn. And he makes the solution to it all seem so obvious.

Voltaire ends on what is essentially a punchline, and that felt right too. The shortest book I've read this year, and it has produced what I believe is my longest post. I can't recommend it enough.

5/5

And this is what music will sound like 250 years from now.

16 - Wake

I mentioned in a previous post that I once spent a large portion of my free time reading a collection of amateur horror stories gathered together in a mobile app. I imagine that few people who did the same would have avoided being inspired to write a story of their own in that vein, given the general come-and-have-a-go-if-you-think-you're-scary-enough attitude of the internet horror community. And I was no exception as early on in my endeavour the makings of a novel (or possibly a film script) began to come to me.

The setting was minimalist in scope - following a vaguely defined apocalyptic event, a group of survivors gathers in a remote corner of the English countryside and does their best to survive. They soon find themselves being stalked by a mysterious entity but then realise that that is the least of their problems as, in Sartre-esque fashion, their incompatibility as people begins to tear the group apart as they try to escape their predicament. I'm not sure how it would have finished, or indeed how the plot would have progressed, because I have always been better at writing about other people's writing than composing any of my own, and the work remained nothing more than a collection of thoughts. And now it turns out, somewhat creepily, that Elizabeth Knox beat me to it anyway. Having stumbled on Wake by chance in an article where literary critics recommended books they thought no one else would have read, I knew that I had to see how a proper writer would tackle the idea.

There are a few key differences: Knox sets her action in a small town in New Zealand, the supernatural element is given much more significance and, perhaps most importantly, she actually managed to write her story. But otherwise, Wake manages to very effectively put onto paper the concept that I thought would make such a great story.

The novel's opening makes for some of the most hair-raising reading I have ever come across, as a police officer on routine patrol finds herself in the middle of the unfolding action. Knox's writing is absolutely breathless as the town's citizens turn on each other, and the officer, Theresa, does her best to defend herself.

But once this is over with and all but thirteen of the town's residents have killed each other or themselves, Knox really steps up in terms of portraying the tedium of routine that becomes the survivors' reality. And it is here that the characters start to clash - from the brash American William, to the alcoholic Warren and former military man Bub by way of single-minded conservationist Belle and world-weary filmmaker Curtis. While it was initially confusing trying to keep track of such a large central cast, all of the characters are allowed time to settle into their roles, and as we learn more about their backgrounds Knox does not hesitate to dive into the darkest reaches of human nature.

The result is a read that is often uncomfortable and difficult, and that isn't helped by the aforementioned supernatural element which is frustratingly vaguely defined, but not vague enough that it doesn't encroach on the novel's realism. The passage in which Knox reveals the true nature of the apparent dual personality of the Maori girl Sam was certainly the most confusing plot building I have read all year.

But putting these flaws aside, Wake is a compelling and surprisingly emotional book. It is also a very Kiwi one, delving into the nation's past and present issues. And on reading the afterword I learned that the whole thing was inspired by Knox's mother's battle with Motor Neurone Disease, which added another dimension to it all that I hadn't even considered.

4/5

New Zealand is very much on my list of countries to visit, but until I do I shall be forced to assume it's just like this all the time.

15 - Rushing to Paradise

With all of the books I have read this year, I haven't found it particularly hard to find something to say about them. Each time I enter the final third, be it of a novel or a non-fiction work, the direction my following blog post will take is already becoming clear.

J. G. Ballard's Rushing to Paradise has been the first exception - a book so truly bizarre and confusing that I realised the only way I would be able to write about it would be to discuss how I couldn't work out how to write about it.

The premise is simple enough. While attempting a sabotage mission on a French nuclear testing island in the Pacific with environmentalist acquaintance Dr. Barbara Rafferty, a young British chap named Neil is shot in the foot by soldiers. The incident is caught on camera and subsequently becomes a global news story, meaning that the pair are able to return to the island with a team in an attempt to claim it fully from the French. In doing so one of their team is killed - again on camera - and this immortalises their campaign. They decide to turn the island into a wildlife reserve for any and all endangered species on the planet, and donations from around the world start flooding in.

So far, so satirical critique of the flawed idealism of the environmentalist movement and the callousness of national governments in trying to suppress it in favour of profits. But it is after this that the book descends into chaos. Having initially been portrayed as someone who just really cares about the environment, man, Dr. Rafferty quickly develops into a sinister cult leader, transforming her team into a fanatical army willing to die to defend their newly-created sanctuary. Except that they don't need to - the world loses interest in their plight fairly quickly. Nor do they seem to want to, becoming instead more devoted to the menial tasks they first took up upon arrival: repairing the island's radio tower, documenting its many plant species, destroying the endless supply of gifts that have been sent from around the world. And in the end it's not even a sanctuary, as the animals are killed for food and the inhabitants end up at war with each other.

My main issue with all of this was that the book struggles to settle on making any particular point. It starts out well enough as a commentary on environmentalism, but that thread is dropped well before the halfway point. It could be seen as an insight into the formation of cults and the motivations of people who join them, except it doesn't really explain this beyond saying "they just... do". Perhaps Ballard was aiming for a Lord of the Flies style microcosm of society and human nature, but his characters are so bizarre and exaggerated that it's hardly a realistic one. And speaking of characters, we are left questioning the motives of pretty much everyone at the end, meaning it doesn't work as an examination of madness, cultism or anything much else.

But as dissatisfying as the plot was, Ballard still manages to create a wonderfully dark, brooding atmosphere for its many twists and turns. His prose lurches between the whimsical and the grotesque, often within the same sentence, and he ramps up the weirdness and tension to an almost unbearable level as the truth about what is happening on the island is gradually revealed.

Certainly, it has left me wanting to read more of his work. But Rushing to Paradise feels like something of a missed opportunity, somehow both overdeveloped and underdeveloped all at once.

3/5

I've never seen or experienced the Pacific Ocean, and I think I may have been missing out on some commentary on how it can change people. But musically it sounds significantly more relaxing than in this book.