GARDENS OF EARTH - Book review

 

Book One of The Sundering Chronicles by Mark Iles (2021) is an excellent speculative fiction novel. It begins as if it’s sci-fi but evolves into a cross-genre conflation of fantasy, sci-fi and horror. Most definitely horror.

It begins on the ill-fated planet of Halloween where space troopers are combating the planet’s inhabitants. Steff Philips is with his members of the flight wing enjoying a meal when it all goes wrong, horribly wrong. Steff retreats to his room – but he isn’t safe there. ‘A rotting hand, with ribbons of flesh hanging from exposed bone, reached up from underneath his bed and snatched at his ankle.” The stuff of nightmares. 

However, Steff isn’t the hero of this novel. That’s Seethan Bodell, a space fleet commander. When he’s not on duty and working overtime at the base, he lives in the boarding house of Mrs Maskill, a lady who has become his adoptive mother. Seethan is coping well even though he occasionally suffers from PTSD brought on by previous conflicts where he has lost men. Guilt is never far from the surface. But he employs his coping strategies to defeat the darkness.

Because the humans felt forced to retaliate with devastating effect, Halloween became a wasteland and the indigenous inhabitants – nicknamed the Spooks – escaped to form a massive fleet capable of attacking Earth in dreadful reprisal. And they seem unbeatable. Onboard one of the Earth space carriers is Admiral Woodward – a nod by Iles to Sandy Woodward who was the British task force commander in the Falklands War. 

Yet there is one slim chance for humanity. Seethan is tasked with embarking on the mission that would alter history and even right the wrongs of the past in one fell swoop. He is accompanied by the fetching android Rose who was built in Bradbury City on Mars. ‘Her hair’s like spun gold, and her skin’s… well, porcelain. She has these wonderful deep-green eyes, ones you could drown in…’ (p95) Androids are not particularly liked by many humans; people feel threatened, despite the Asimov Laws of Robotics. Seethan’s is not one of those; he’s in love with Rose.

A rather distasteful suitor of Mrs Maskill is Alan. Seethan doesn’t like him: ‘he smells like Portsmouth Harbour when the tide’s gone out.’ There are plenty of humorous asides, but they’re never there merely for jokey effect. 

Up to this point it is clear that Iles had experience in the armed forces and he clearly evokes the dangers and sheer horror of war, and the psychological damage suffered by many combatants.

Sadly, the event that Seethan triggers is not what had been planned. Instead, the result is the Sundering. ‘The Sundering left Earth’s reality torn.’ (p172) 

Then, Iles really gets inventive. What had been a space military scenario is transformed into a quest for the sake of love, with a colourful environment, fascinating characters and beasts, and an overshadowing threat.

There are a good number of fine descriptions. I particularly liked ‘a shower of brilliant sparks to scatter like panicked fairies.’ (p116) And a saying from Seethan’s mother, which has resonance even today: ‘Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.’ (p137) And: Dragonflies as long as Seethan’s arms buzzed about like military drones as they snatched the butterflies in mid-air.’ (p174) 

Did I mention horror? Yes, I did: ‘The thing … sat into the chair, it creaked as he sat back… one foot slowly tapping against the bare wooden floor. With each tap, small things fell to the floor and squirmed, wriggling their way towards the bed…’ (p125) Iles can do horror, sci-fi wonder, compassion, poignancy and full-blooded action.

No spoilers here, but there is a neat twist or two at the end, which several players did not see coming. While never preachy, the book says something about nature, conservation, aspects of love and hubris, as well as survival. 

Although it’s Book One, Gardens of Earth tells a complete story, so the reader is not left hanging.

Excellent stuff!

MINISTRY OF SPACE - Book review

Way back in 2001 I purchased the first two Image comics in a trilogy with the overarching title of Ministry of Space. For some reason I never managed to get hold of the third concluding part.

Finally, I’ve obtained the graphic novel version (3^rd printing) dated 2004.

Being a reader and fan of the Dan Dare stories from Eagle, I was drawn to this comic because its artwork appeared to be paying homage to the greats Hampson and Bellamy.

The team consists of: Warren Ellis, writer; Chris Weston, artist; Laura Martin, colourist; and Michael Heisler, letterer. And they’ve done a splendid job of it.

The story begins in 2001 in an alternate history, where England had already conquered space, complete with the space station Churchill. Great Britain’s Ministry of Space is headed by Professor Dashwood. He’s being alerted that the Americans are finally going to launch their own spaceships. Then there’s a flashback to Peenemunde, 1945, where the Americans are secretly bombed by the British, denying them the space rocket secrets… The story moves through the 1950s and 1960s to the colonisation of Mars. The dark mystery as to how Britain stole a march on the allies in the race to space is slowly revealed...

Weston’s artwork is excellent. The detail in every page is simply outstanding. There are several splash pages that enhance the story: for example when Dashwood’s experimental rocket crashes into a windmill – you can virtually see every splinter of wood!

Recommended.

Note: Warren Ellis is the author of the graphic novel Red  - a Bruce Willis movie - among countless other comics.

'Impressive collection'

On Goodreads you'll find a review of my first short story collection, Gifts from a Dead Race (2017). Each of the 18 sci-fi/horror/fantasy tales prompts commentary. The last of the stories in this collection is 'A Gigantic Leap' (originally published in 2009).

A Gigantic Leap
Nik Morton ends on the best story in the collection. Yes, it’s alien bacteria premise might seem a little derivative, but the Soviet setting makes a refreshing change – particularly as it’s not railing against the system, just two people getting on with their lives. It’s an incredibly tense piece, but one that leans more to hope than tragedy. And hope is always a good way to end a big, impressive collection like this.

...
and on this Remembrance Day it is as well to foster hope for the future that, sadly, so many would never see.

Book reviews - Dumarest Saga #16 & #17

Reading E.C. Tubb’s long-running science fiction saga, I have reached the halfway point with volumes 16 and 17 in the 33-book series.

While each story is a self-contained adventure, these two books are continuous in theme, characters and environment, so I read them back-to-back.

The Dumarest novels are set in a far future galactic culture that spread to many worlds. Earl Dumarest was born on Earth, but had stowed away on a spaceship when he was a young boy and was discovered. Although a stowaway apprehended on a spaceship was typically ejected into space, the captain took pity on the lad and allowed him to work his passage on the ship. By the time of the first volume, The Winds of Gath, Dumarest has traveled so long and so far that he does not know how to return to his home planet; and in fact nobody has ever heard of it, except as a myth or a legend. It’s clear to him that someone or something has deliberately concealed Earth's location. The Cyclan, an organization of humans (cybers surgically altered to be emotionless, who on occasion can link with the brains of previously living Cyclans, in the manner of a hive mind process, seem determined to prevent him finding Earth. The cybers can call on the ability to calculate the outcome of an event and accurately predict results.

An additional incentive for the Cyclan to capture Dumarest is that he possesses a potent scientific discovery, stolen from them and passed to him by a dying thief, which would inordinately amplify their already considerable power and enable them to dominate the human species. Also appearing in the books is the humanitarian Church of Universal Brotherhood, whose monks roam many worlds, notably every planet where there is war.

All these books reveal imaginative situations, fantastic colourful civilisations and a vast array of characters. 

Haven of Darkness (#16)(1977) introduces us to the planet of Zakym, where the spectres of the dead appear at the time of delusia, when the twin suns attain close proximity in the heavens. On Zakym the beautiful Lavinia is not only haunted by ghosts, she is being courted by an unsavoury power-crazed noble, Gydapen. Into this world arrives Dumarest, cleverly escaping capture by a Cyclan agent. Here, he learns that the human inhabitants stay indoors at night; a curfew is enforced. Anyone caught outside at night falls prey to the Sungari, the original seemingly mythical yet deadly inhabitants of the world.

When Dumarest suffers the kickback traces of an earlier treatment, he is privy to certain knowledge: ‘A man lived every second of every hour since the time of his birth and each of those seconds held all that had happened to and around him. A vastness of experience. An inexhaustible supply of terror and pain and hopeless yearning. An infinity of doubt and indecision, of ignorance known and forcibly accepted, of frustration and hate and cruelty and fear. A morass in which glowed the fitful gleams of transient joy. Each man, within his skull, carried a living hell.’ (p151)

Dumarest earns the love of Lavinia to the chagrin of her suitor and, to avoid a civil war, he has to face Gydapen in a tension-filled showdown.

(At this juncture, the publisher (Arrow) changed the cover artist.]

Prison of Night (#17)(1977) begins with the mysterious death of a monk of the Universal Brotherhood. Meanwhile, the story continues with Dumarest living with Lavinia on Zakym. Dumarest wondered about the delusia effects, a planetary insanity which he now shared. Possibly, ‘wild radiation from the twin suns merging as they closed, blasting space with energies which distorted the microcurrents of the brain and giving rise to hallucinations. Figments of memory made apparently real, words spoken but heard only by the once concerned…’ (p20)

Despite his help in saving Lavinia, her ruling council still considered Dumarest a stranger. ‘Xenophobia, incredible in this age, was not dead.’ (p36)

Time and again, Tubb throws in tantalising glimpses of other worlds, other cultures. ‘There were words, ceremonies deliberately kept devoid of mysticism, the throb of bells. Always there were bells, deep, musical notes captured on recorders, now filling the air with the melody gained on Hope where tremendous castings of bronze, silver and brass throbbed and droned with a solemn pulse, which touched the wells of life itself.’ (p44)

A greater threat to Zakym and Lavinia has emerged, and it is only through Dumarest’s bravery and insight that the danger can be averted. It would also mean confrontation with a powerful manipulative cyber. A tense, fast-paced finale.

After seventeen books, Tubb has remained consistently entertaining. I will surely continue with the saga.

Book review - The Paradise Game

Fourth in the six-book Hooded Swan sequence by Brian Stableford, The Paradise Game (1974) is another intriguing space opera offering an alien planetary puzzle.

Space-pilot Grainger, still lumbered with the mind-parasite or symbiote ‘the wind’ has landed on Pharos, a planet that appears to be paradise. Unpolluted, with no large predators, no disease, indeed no death, it seems truly ideal. That’s why the Caradoc Company wants to take over the planet, to make money, of course; future wealth is in the service industry. The only indigenous natives are quite obliging about the project. However, conservationists in the guise of the Aegis group object strongly, even resorting to explosive sabotage. Charlot, Grainger’s boss, has been tasked with the job of arbitrating and determining if the Caradoc claim can succeed.

Yet again, Stableford has created interesting aliens and a planetary life-system. The natives ‘were humanoid, curious, gullible and all female… Her skin was covered in light gray fur. Her face reminded me of an owl, with huge large-lidded eyes. The eyelids moved slowly up and down, so that one moment the whole of the eyes were exposed, the next only a half or three-quarters. She had a sort of mane of lighter fur or hair descending down her back from the crown of her head, starting off in between her small pointed ears. Her arms were thin and short, and she walked with her legs permanently crooked. She was naked, but thick hair covered her loins.’ (pp9/10)

The natives have ‘no generic name for themselves, and they have no word for death.’ (p42)

Of course, no paradise can be perfect. Eden had its snake. Grainger wondered what lingered in the verdant vegetation of Pharos. ‘It’s always darkest before it gets even darker.’ (p45)

Stableford likes word-play and one of the lawmen on Pharos is Keith Just. He goes further, ‘Four of them. And Just.’(p113)  Four Just Men, no less? Edgar Wallace would smile, I suspect. And his final two words in the story hit the right note, too!

As in earlier adventures, ‘the wind’ is instrumental in resolving the puzzle for Grainger. There’s also a good assessment of his relationship with the symbiote: ‘my relationship with the wind became a matter of vital necessity…’ (p133) ‘In a way, he was more me than I was.’ (p134).

Inventive, as usual, and worth reading for that reason.

Editor’s hat on:

On more than one occasion, characters speak without interruption for over two pages. This is unrealistic (pp 151-153, for instance).

Repetitive use of some words. ‘Back’, for instance, written seven times in 10 lines (p77) And ‘lot’, another one of those echo words: 5 times in 10 lines (p153).

There’s a great visual description of a mother spaceship launching an invasion fleet of smaller craft: ‘the battleship was beginning to shrink as she accelerated and climbed, while the infant fleet grew as it descended, changing appearance momentarily as our prospective adjusted, so that it was first a swarm of bees, then locusts, and then black butterflies. (p94) Pity ‘prospective’ was used instead of ‘perspective’.

Book review - Halcyon Drift

Brian Stableford’s series of six books concerning star-pilot Grainger and his spaceship The Hooded Swan begins with this novel, Halcyon Drift (1972); they’re regarded as classics by the science fiction fraternity. Stableford has written in excess of seventy novels; yes, he’s prolific. I met his mother when she briefly attended a few of my writers’ circle meetings here in Spain. A brief review of his book Young Blood appears here

Stableford is a good writer who presents effective visuals with his prose: ‘Brown clouds move sullenly across the sulky face of the sky, washing the black mountain faces with hazy tears.’ (p7) Other examples from page 128: ‘Alien night is always a bad place to be.’ And ‘The horizon glowed white, surrounding us like a vast silvery ring set with a jewel-like flare at the point where the sun had vanished.’

The story begins with a prologue in the present tense, outlining the fact that Grainger has crashed his spaceship Javelin on an uninhabited rock, killing his partner, Lapthorn. So he’s alone.  The inhospitable place is plagued by winds, always blowing down the grave marker. Through his reminiscences, we get an insight into Grainger’s nomadic life with Lapthorn, trading and dealing from planet to planet, encountering fascinating and intriguing life-forms. Grainger is cynical: ‘A lot of spacemen are like me. Cold, emotionless men who don’t inherit any part of the worlds and the people that they see.’ (p13)  He reminisces about his friend Alachakh, a Khormon trader, whose life he saved once. That’s all he’s got, stranded on this rock for two years, waiting to die.

And then the wind starts to talk to him in his head. He isn’t going nuts: it’s an alien mind-parasite. It’s quite a lengthy prologue, ending with him being rescued by a passing ramrod ship, the Ella Marita. He gets away but he’s stuck with the mind-parasite – for life.

The rest of the tale is told in the usual past historic and it's inventive, in description and the alien life-forms, and in the leaps to a possible future: ‘I dialled through to the Illinois cybernet… a credit card, punched and banded, oozed out of a slot… I tapped out a query on the keyboard, asking how much the card was carrying…’ Bearing in mind this was written in 1972 or earlier: not bad. (I didn’t get my first credit card until 1987, when I was 39!)

There’s also irony and humour, to be enjoyed. Here’s the mind-parasite speaking in Grainger’s head: ‘I’m an expert on you, Grainger, and I’m learning more all the time. I’m right inside you. I’m with you every decision you take. I’m riding your every thought, and feeling everything you feel. This isn’t the most comfortable of minds to live in, my friend. I would appreciate it greatly if you could get it sorted out a little. Come to terms with yourself and the universe.’ (p34)

The nameless mind-parasite isn’t the only great invention in this story. Meet The Hooded Swan, a ship that can fly ‘like a bird. She’s jointed and musculated. She has the most complete and most sensitive nerve-net any mechanical device has ever had.…’ In fact, Grainger the pilot is connected to the nerve-system of the spaceship and feels what the craft feels; his body becomes part of the body of the ship. Grainger literally flies by feel.

One of the several inventions is the quite tragic Khormon race. When these people have filled their memories – nothing is ever forgotten – they have reached their end. As Alachakh says, ‘I wish I could forget a little and create some space, but I cannot. I am stuck in the day before yesterday. There can be no question of a long tomorrow, and I doubt the latter hours of today. Soon even the minute swill become painful to squeeze away into tight corners…” (p89) Another invention is the metamorphic life system Grainger encounters in his quest: ‘Our presence and progress would cause the plants which we touched unbearable pain.’ And: ‘… the feel of the furtive, glutinous chaos through which we moved. Myriads of tiny creatures were accidentally transferred from the plants to me, and I hoped none of them was adapted for chewing tough plastic.’ (p134)  

Grainger is hired to pilot The Hooded Swan and enter the Halcyon Drift in search of a spaceship that was lost in the drift eighty years ago; a distress signal has bleeped since then but due to the awesome peculiarities of the drift it hasn’t been located yet: ‘Drift space casually disobeys principles which are called laws in saner corners of the galaxy.’ (p97)

Perhaps the ending was a little rushed, but he was writing to fit into a specific format. How Grainger resolves his quest is intriguing – and moral, to boot. Needless to say, he survives to fly The Hooded Swan in another novel, and I’ll be reading all of the series.