Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones

First published in 2001, Gwyneth Jones’ Bold as Love is an odd mix of prescience and confusion. Whoosh goes the sound of many of the pop-culture references in this novel going over my head; dong ding are the bells that ring.

The counterculture. We know who they are; we might even agree with them on many points; we might even consider ourselves part of the counterculture. Except, it’s never as simple as just one culture, or just one counterculture. The problem with countercultures is that we can often disagree as violently with each other as we do with the Man.

‘But that wouldn’t be a problem for you, would it, Sage? Being a Celt yourself.

‘Yes it would,’ said Sage, cheerfully. ‘I hate ‘em, crystal swinging faggots, neo-fucking Bronze Age dykey matriarchs with their fuckwit psychic powers. Sooner they get wiped out by that mutant-cholera epidemic they are asking for, the better I will be pleased.’

Dong ding, indeed.

Climate campers, road protesters, tree-huggers, war-stoppers, custard-throwers, Tarot fanciers, eco-mentalists, organic organists, Alternatives, herbalopolists, homeo-pacifists, indie rockers, bikers, Islamists, Nationalists, anarchists: all of these and more could lay claim to the countercultural title, and most of them make an appearance in Bold as Love. They’re hardly likely to agree to disagree. A lot of them probably live in Brighton, which is where the author lives, it says here. Brighton seems to be Flake Central at the moment. All the flakes I know live there.

Britain is falling apart, the infrastructure is crumbling, everything is in crisis. The political classes are short termers, incompetent grafters and opportunist chancers. Dissolution festivals are going on all over the place. It’s like August Bank Holiday weekend on designer steroids. One of the political chancers hits upon the idea of inviting some leading counterculturalists to some kind of think tank summit with the aim of healing the rifts of Broken Britain and/or making the government look cool. Some of them treat it as a joke.

Our heroes are Ax, an obscure indie rocker with gifted guitar fingers; Sage (aka Aomoxomoa), some kind of Grateful Dead-worshipping immersive electronic multi-media artist billionaire; amd Fiorinda, a fucked-up teenage singing sensation of no fixed hairstyle (Rutles joke). They find themselves caught up in events (in the case of Ax, as part of a Master Plan), but then fall victim to one who is playing the game more seriously than they. Things take a dark turn.

At times this is inspired; at times you can almost see events like this unfolding for real. Elsewhere, it sometimes feels as if you’re viewing things from too-oblique an angle; you want the camera to turn around a bit and give a clearer view. There are some disturbing elements too. Child abuse, casual drug use; the characters hide behind masks and you wonder whether you like them or not; or care. It’s dense and seems to go on forever, and reaches no real resolution (there are no less than four sequels, and a confusing web site that positively screams www.1996.com).

In the end I’m not sure. I found it interesting, enjoyable at times, boring at others. I wanted it to end, and found myself strangely moved in places. The acid test is whether I’d pick up one of the sequels, to continue living with these characters for another 400 pages or so. The answer is, not right now, maybe later.

I’ve overdosed on SF this summer. Just read a Michael Connelly and it was like a breath of fresh mountain air. I might read another of these, later. I like Gwyneth Jones’ style

Cautiously recommended.

Phase Space by Stephen Baxter

This collection by British Science Fiction writer Stephen Baxter contains stories originally published between 1997 and 2002. They’re loosely linked around a couple of recurring ideas and arranged together in the book within a thematic structure with such catch-all section headings as Dreams, Worlds, Paradox, and so on.

The loose relationship, underlined by recurring names/characters and ideas, doesn’t really hang together as strongly as a novel, but leaves you instead with the impression of a writer worrying at ideas, approaching them from different angles, picking away.

Probably the best entries here are the ones that stand best alone, because in the end the idea of “thematically linked” is hardly strong enough for the collection to have any real punch. Ultimately, any collection of SF (by different writers) published around the same time is going to contain repeated ideas. So the ones I enjoyed here include one of the earliest, “The Fubar Suit” (recurring theme/idea here is nanotech); “Lost Continent” (alternate worlds, reality is a simulation); and “The Twelfth Album” (alternate world, in which The Beatles released one last record), which was the reason I bought this book in the first place.

At his best, Baxter can be thought-provoking and eerie, and can write stories you wish could go on longer; the worst here are the ones that were (to me) wilfully muddled and obscure, with only the loosest relationship to the majority of the others here.

Cautiously recommended: if you like stories about alternate universes, nanotechnology, and ponderings on the Fermi Paradox. It really does make you wonder.

The Beatles: 365 Days – Simon Wells, Robert Whitaker

One of my xmas presents was The Beatles: 365 Days, a doorstep-thick collection of images from the Getty archive, notable for mostly being lesser-known shots, outtakes from sessions that yielded the images we've all seen a million times.

Each image is captioned as to the time and place it was taken, and it's a good way of re-presenting the old story, and astounding me all over again with how fucking hard they were worked in their brief stay on this earth.

The most striking thing, for me, is to see The Beatles standing next to other people, whether they be members of the press (visible through a smoky haze), or their young fans, or the shoulder-rubbing liggers of the 60s scene. Because in many of these shots, what astonishes most is that The Beatles appear god-like, bronzed, healthy, beautiful, even while all around them looked ordinary, spotty, freckled, and crap. Even the other slebs, the so-called beautiful people, look ordinary by today's standards, but the fabs look buffed, shiny, and wondrous. Even Ringo. To unleash their looks on an unsuspecting world was strange enough, but to back it up with obviously superior output was queer indeed.

Anyway, it's a nice book if you like that kind of thing. The format is crap, though, because it's too heavy and the pages are not easy to view, and too many of the pictures are portrait rather than landscape mode, so you're forever twisting this heavy object around to have a look. So, a smack in the mouth for the book designer. Top shot: Ringo in his hospital sick bed either just before or just after a tonsillectomy: smoking a fag. Priceless.

Like A Rolling Stone – by that buffoon Greil Marcus

Review by Roy

i’ve been reading bob dylan’s chronicles ever since santa read my xmas list and put it in my stocking. yes, i’m taking it real slow, because it’s as great as everyone says it is and I want to savour each line, and because i’m pessimistic. even though it’s only volume one, i’m not counting on any other volumes being published. he writes brilliantly, makes it seem effortless, and it reads beautifully.

last week I started like a rolling stone, by that buffoon greil marcus. i didn’t want to get it, because i hate marcus, but on the other hand i love the subject matter, so my hand was forced. i’m trying to read it as quickly as possible because I hate to be in the company of this author, however vicariously. where dylan’s digressions in chronicles always make sense and magically come back to the subject in hand, marcus just irritates as he stretches connections until they snap. when I took acid I had this wonderful revelation that everything in the world was somehow connected to everything else. marcus makes me seriously reconsider this.

this is the man who thought self portrait was shit. context is everything. i suppose people were expecting the next installment of truth when it was released, and when it came along it was the sort of truth they couldn’t deal with. personally, i put it in my top five dylan albums, which might sound like faint praise until you consider that it’s up against blonde on blonde, blood on the tracks, highway 61 revisited, time out of mind, desire, the basement tapes etc. people like marcus had put me off trying self portrait, but eventually curiosity got the better of me, thank god.

dancing about architecture? greil marcus is fred astaire.