Warm Words & Otherwise: A Blizzard of Book Reviews (13 page)

Nalda Said

by Stuart David

Turtle Point Press, 152 pages, paperback, 2003; US reissue of a book originally published in the UK in 1999

A young man who keeps his name secret lives in constant fear his identity will be discovered by those intent on cutting him open to steal the jewel he bears inside him. Never daring to stay in any one place long, he flits from anonymous job to anonymous job, finding casual labour most often as a gardener, and staying constantly clear of society's record-keepers. This novel, told in his own disjointed, not-quite-literate words, is a part of his story.

We slowly discover that he lost his parents in infancy, being taken in by an aunt, the Nalda of the book's title. Nalda was his sole source of knowledge as he grew, telling him tales he believed implicitly, because he had no authority other than her to draw upon. One of the tales she told him was that his father was a jewel thief who, on the run from bilked and consequently murderous fellow-thieves, not long before his death fed the most valuable gem he'd stolen to his infant son to hide it. That stone, Nalda claimed, was still there inside him, but one day it would emerge and his life would be transformed.

Unfortunately, Nalda was crazy.

Cast adrift after she has been taken away into care, the narrator entered his current ever-transient mode of existence. Each time he fears his secret to be on the brink of discovery by someone he has allowed to grow too close to him, he flees once more.

But now at last he seems to have found relative security, as gardener to a nursing home whose administrators take a friendly interest in him. The prettiest of all the nurses there, Marie, recognizes the goodness dwelling within this odd man, and becomes first fascinated by and then in love with him. Much of
Nalda Said
is taken up by an account of the faltering, fumbling, unconventional blossoming of love between these two very different dreamers.

This is a curious and affecting work. From the narrator's semi-literacy, Stuart David manages to weave a largely hypnotic web, much in the same way that Daniel Keyes did in his short story "Flowers for Algernon" (1959) and Elizabeth Moon even more so – although deploying more literate devices – in her superb novel
The Speed of Dark
(2003). David doesn't quite have the same control as those two authors, with one of his tricks (the substitution of "although" for "though" throughout) being both irritating and, in the end, implausible.

But to compensate for this he offers us the wild recalled fantasies of the narrator's one-time sole mentor, Nalda; these come to form, together, a sort of cosmogony of the microcosm that is the narrator's small world. Where his Nalda-derived precepts conflict with the facts, he tends to alter his perception of the facts to make them fit the precepts; there is thus a direct analogy with the moulding of children's minds by the religious fallacies drummed into them by the adults of their local culture.

Nalda Said
is a thought-provoking novel and, despite the constant disruption of the reader's concentration caused by the silly although/though tic, an absorbing one. Its subtextual weight is impressive for such a slim piece. I much look forward to seeing more from this writer.

—Blue Ear

The Compleat Enchanter: Fantasy Masterworks 10

by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Millennium, 532 pages, paperback, 2000; reissue of a book originally published in 1988 as
The Intrepid Enchanter
(vt
The Complete Compleat Enchanter
)

The four long novellas and one shortish novel that comprise this volume have a fairly complicated publishing history, into the full bibliographical abysses of which it is probably wisest not to venture. The first three – "The Roaring Trumpet", "The Mathematics of Magic" and the novel
The Castle of Iron
– were first published in
Unknown
in 1940-41; of these the first two were loosely fixed up as a single "novel" called
The Compleat Enchanter
(1975). The other two of the five – "The Wall of Serpents" and "The Green Magician" – originated over a decade later, in 1953 and 1954 respectively, and were likewise released in book form as a fixup,
The Wall of Serpents
(1960; vt
The Enchanter Completed
). Later came another couple of tales by de Camp alone: "Sir Harold and the Gnome King" (1990) and "Sir Harold of Zodanga" (1995), but these are not included in the current volume. The canon has been further added to by other authors, notably Christopher Stasheff.

And that's the simplified version ...

The series hero is Harold Shea, a psychologist one of whose colleagues, Reed Chalmers, has been working on a theory whereby people could hypothetically transport themselves into alternate realities through thoroughly imbibing the Boolean equations that express the logical underpinning of the relevant reality. In "The Roaring Trumpet" Shea tries this out at home and suddenly finds himself in Asgard, where he allies himself with the Aesir as Ragnarok approaches. In "The Mathematics of Magic" Shea more confidently tries the trick again, this time taking Chalmers with him, and the pair have adventures in the reality of Spenser's
The Faerie Queene
; most significantly, Shea hooks up with the spritish forest girl Belphebe, whom at the end of the story he brings back with him to our reality and who is subsequently a series character alongside him. He has married her by the start of the novel
The Castle of Iron
, which is set in the milieu of Ariosto's
Orlando Furioso
. "The Wall of Serpents" takes place in the realm of the
Kalevala
, and "The Green Magician" in the Ireland of Cuchulainn.

The Compleat Enchanter tales are seen as the ancestors of that strain of comic fantasy which has reached its current peak in the works of Terry Pratchett. Novels by expert practitioners in this subgenre – a category which unfortunately excludes almost all of Pratchett's imitators – and inexpert ones alike generally follow the pattern established by de Camp and Pratt: all or a good part of the action takes place in a fantasyland whose skewed logic both fascinates and provides a constant undercurrent of humour.

It was the skewed-logic aspect that appealed to John W. Campbell Jr, the editor of
Unknown
who published the first three tales. Campbell was a man with a highly structured mind (a pretty odd bloody structure, some might maintain, but that's beside the point), and he was eager to see fantasy codified, so that it would have rules in the same way that the laws of science supposedly governed the genre he preferred, science fiction. De Camp's and Pratt's pretence that they were applying just such a set (or series of sets) of rules to magic – the underpinning of almost all genre fantasy – was therefore right up the Campbellian street.

The trouble is that it was, as stated, quite simply a pretence. We are given a few fragments of the Boolean equations that Shea must recite in order to effect his transition from one reality to the next, and really their relevance is no greater than if he'd been saying "Abracadabra!" or "Hocus! Pocus!" Other "rules" are introduced, such as that any gadgetry Shea brings with him into a fantasy reality won't work; but there's no more coherent explanation of why this should be so than there is in the average traditional story about a mortal incursion into Fairyland, where very much the same effect occurs.

This might seem to be irrelevant – after all, you might say, what's important is that the tales work as entertainment – but that would be to ignore the major role that skewed logic plays in works of humorous fantasy (and indeed in almost all humorous fiction). Most of the best jokes rely on a final shock logical leap from a premise that is convincingly quasi-rational and has generally been built up in a quasi-logical progression. Remove that premise and there is no basis for the punchline; almost always, the joke is not funny but just sort of silly and trivial.

And this is an ongoing problem with the Compleat Enchanter tales as entertainment. Events tend just to happen. Those events are enjoyable enough to read about, but, as there's no particular reason why one should follow the other, similarly there's no particular reason to keep turning the pages. It's clear de Camp and Pratt were aware of this, because all five of the tales here don't so much end – in some kind of climax or resolution – as just peter out. At the conclusion of the first tale, for example, we have no idea of how this version of Ragnarok will turn out or even if Shea has really affected it at all; it's just time for him to get the hell out (perhaps, Fanthorpe-fashion, the two authors realized they were fast approaching the permitted word-count), so he does. Story's over; on with the next one.

Which leads to a further difficulty. There's not much new to say in each fresh story, aside from the change of venue. "Formulaic" is a cruel word, but it's hard not to apply it here. Certainly this reader's heart did not soar at the prospect of each new story's beginning. Rather there was the sense that, for a full understanding of the tale, all that had to be established was the new setting; from there the rest of the story could be more or less taken as read.

But one after the other may not be the ideal way to approach the five tales in this volume. Singly, with long intervals between the reading, the four novellas
are
entertaining, and there
are
a few good jokes lurking in the midst of these 532 pages.
The Castle of Iron
, the novel, is less successful, primarily just because it is longer, so that the conceit is wearing a bit thin by its end. The characterization of Belphebe is a delight; it's a pity that none of the other protagonists, Shea included, are much more than names on the page. In sum, then, it can't be denied that these tales justify their recognized status as seminal in the story of comic fantasy; in that sense they are required – and important – reading. There should be a copy of this book on the shelf of every serious student of fantasy.

Presumably to enhance the reader's sense of the historical significance of these stories, Millennium/Gollancz have preserved all the many typographical errors of the previous printing.

—Infinity Plus

Singularity

by Bill DeSmedt

Per Aspera, 502 pages, hardback, 2004

The first book from a new Seattle publisher that aims to compete head-on with the established "big boys", Per Aspera Press,
Singularity
is an effective technothriller that stamps DeSmedt's name on the field in no uncertain manner.

Marianna Bonaventure is an inexperienced agent for CROM, a US covert agency charged with keeping track of the nuclear materials and knowhow left lying around after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and – more to the point – with attempting to make sure none of it falls into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations. (Yes, there's an irony in the "rogue nations" part of this.) She finds there is something suspicious going on around the enigmatic Russian industrialist Arkady Grishin, who makes his base of operations on a vast ocean liner, the
Rusalka
. In order to help her probe this mystery, she ropes in Jonathan Knox, a high-priced civilian business analyst who has a great knack for solving problems through near-instinctive pattern-recognition. At first reluctant about everything to do with the caper except the charms of Ms Bonaventure, Knox soon finds himself an enthusiastic participant in the investigation, as it becomes clearer and clearer that the nature of Grishin's ambitions is world-affectingly grim.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the globe, Texan physicist Jack Adler is bemused by the extent to which his Russian colleagues on an expedition into the wilds of Siberia to examine the region of the Tunguska Event of 1907 are resistant to his theory of its cause. That theory posits that the earth was hit by a mini black hole, a remnant from the Big Bang. It's a perfectly valid real-world hypothesis; Adler's extension of it is that the black hole may very well have taken up a complex spiralling orbit within the body of our planet. He finds what appears to be proof of this, but then all of his records and equipment are destroyed in a murderous attack.

Through many complicated routes, Bonaventure and Knox, placed as spies aboard the
Rusalka
, come close to hitting on Adler's theory independently, and in due course their suspicions are confirmed through a direct electronic contact with Adler himself. Grishin and his scientists have developed a way of capturing the black hole, stripping it temporarily of its event horizon, and using the naked singularity as a time machine whereby they can alter history to their own gain and human civilization's enormous disbenefit.

As in any technothriller, there are two elements to this novel, the techno part – the scientific/technological underpinning – and the thriller part.

It's in the techno part that DeSmedt really shines. He has an astonishing gift for explaining really quite abstruse physical and technological concepts with clarity and immediacy, and in making such explanations both fascinating and – let's be forthright here – enormous fun. Even if you're perfectly
au fait
with current ideas about black holes and their physics, the novel is worth reading just for the flamboyant
joy
of these expository passages. DeSmedt is clearly passionately in love with these areas of physics, and he succeeds completely in conveying that passion to the reader.

Similarly, his extrapolations from present into near-future technology are entirely convincing – at least to this reader. I finished this book with my mind in a total jumble as to which of the communication/surveillance technologies depicted are current in the real world and which are merely products of DeSmedt's controlled imagination; all seemed equally plausible. As for the technologies involved in black-hole capture, they too seemed highly feasible. It's a while since my disbelief has been so convincingly suspended by a technothriller.

DeSmedt is less accomplished in the thriller element of the novel, but luckily he's saved by another of his great skills: the creation of excellently sympathetic characters. Marianna Bonaventure is a wonderful creation; she stands out in a genre where the smart, kickass, yummy female has come to be regarded as little more than a standard part of the toolkit. This is because all of her many strengths as a person are in part a product of the weaknesses she also possesses. At first she completely flummoxes Knox, who simply cannot find a way to relate to her complexities, his reactions to her beauty and her personality all clashing with each other. The reader's reactions are likely to be similar, until at last, probably more than halfway through this long book, it becomes possible to understand, at all levels, this thoroughly three-dimensional – and certainly very engaging – individual.

Knox himself is no mean fictional creation. He's somewhat reminiscent of an Ellery Queen for the twenty-first century in his powers of ratiocination and his veneer of general geekiness, but he's a far more real person than Ellery Queen could ever be. DeSmedt's semi-major characters, too, leap from the page: Sasha, the old friend of Knox's who has compromised his idealism in the pursuit of entrancing technology; Galina, another old acquaintance of Knox, a tragic figure whose love for children is brutally matched by her inability to have a child of her own, and who, unknowing of Grishin's fell motives, is the primary technological brain behind his endeavours; and Mycroft, a.k.a. Dr Finley Laurence, the super-analyst and cybernetics genius to whom Knox turns when even his own analytical powers prove insufficient. Even Bonaventure's boss, the shoot-first-think-later bureaucratic numbskull Pete Aristos, has a delightful sense of realness to him. Only the character intended as our heroes' ultimate focus of dread, Yuri, Grishin's murderous sidekick, is a bit of a cypher; in essence, he's Jaws from the James Bond movies but without any of the redeeming characteristics. Grishin likewise seems to have been drawn from Central Casting.

Perhaps Yuri in particular epitomizes the novel's weakness as a thriller. The thug-dodging and general hijinks are all perfectly competently done, but they lack the marvellous originality of the rest of the novel: you find yourself aching for each "exciting bit" to be over so you can get back to the
really
exciting stories being told – the next link in the scientific chain, or what's happening in the
faux pas
-strewn mutual circling going on between Bonaventure and Knox. As implied above, it's because of the enormous strength of these aspects – the scientific and the emotional – that the novel swings grippingly along at the high pace that it does; the relative weakness of the adventure aspects, their resorting-to-the-default aura, becomes more or less irrelevant.

The back of the book bears a stack of cover quotes from noteworthies: Kevin J. Anderson, David Brin, Kip Thorne, Greg Bear and Anthony Olcott. Unusually, I found that I agreed with just about everything they said; for once the blurbers' enthusiasm isn't hype. With one exception. Anderson says: "
Singularity
juggles Clancy, Crichton, and
The Da Vinci Code
." The comparison with Crichton is justified, although DeSmedt is by far the better novelist of the two. The comparison with Clancy
may
be justified: I've never been able to get beyond about twenty pages into any of Clancy's writings, so rely for my knowledge of them on the rather jolly movies. But
Singularity
has no connection whatsoever with
The Da Vinci Code
; the comment is quite simply absurd – a thoroughly egregious example of the base art of rentaquote. In the ordinary way I'd not bother mentioning this piece of folly, but
Singularity
is something, well, a bit special. Shame on Per Aspera for so cheapening the treasure they've published.

Throughout this review I've been describing
Singularity
as a technothriller. As will be evident, though, it can also be approached as hard sf. In that context, too, it's eminently successful – in fact, it's the most readable piece of hard sf, by a quite significant margin, that I've come across in quite a long while, and, enlivened as it is by its glorious characterization (or, to be waspish, by characters at all), should be recommended reading for most of the authors currently working in the subgenre.

However, matters of categorization are best left to the Dryasdusts and Panglosses: technothriller or hard sf, who really cares? It's purely as a work of imaginative fiction, classification be damned, that
Singularity
should be assessed. Well, put it this way: this is a book you'll want to own in hardback. DeSmedt is a wonderful newcomer to the field, and his debut must surely be of great significance to it. I cannot believe otherwise than that his voice will be given the attention it so emphatically deserves in the years to come.

—Infinity Plus