Paper Cities: an anthology of urban fantasy – edited by Ekaterina Sedia

The problem starts when the academics get involved, of course. I should know. The problem with Paper Cities, from Senses Five press is that someone got hold of the definition of “urban fantasy” and extended it, refined it, and rendered it utterly meaningless.

I’m not a keen reader of fantasy fiction, give or take the odd exception. But I do like Tim Powers, who has variously been described as a Steampunk writer (a review of a steam punk anthology is to follow) and an urban fantasist. He’s possibly a bit of both, though there’s very little steam in his so-called Steampunk novels.

I always quite liked the description of him as an urban fantasist. My understanding of the term is that he writes works of fantastic fiction with a recognisably real-world setting. The Anubis Gates, for example, mixes magic with Victorian London. Last Call is set in a recognisably modern Las Vegas, and his most recent novel Three Days to Never is set around LA in the recent past.

Fantasy proper, of the swords-and-sorcery kind, takes place in mythical lands, and often involves invented lore, language etc. Urban Fantasy, for me, should take place in a world much like the one we live in, but with added oddness, a reality that has been manipulated, whether in the form of belief (at least) in magic; or ghosts being real. Powers is a master at this. Creating a mobiüs loop of a belt to ward off psychic interest; following rituals to gain power or avoid trouble. All of it could be ascribed to something grounded in our reality, but in the world of Powers there’s something else at play.

This anthology, then, is a huge disappointment, because it sets out to broaden the definition of urban fantasy beyond any usefulness. Its definition of “urban” includes the kind of “city” and “castle” one might find in the traditional swords-and-sorcery epic. So there are too many stories here I’d just call fantasy. The other problem seems to be that most of these stories don’t really work as stories. They all seem more like excerpts or chapters from novels. The plots don’t go anywhere, nothing resolves itself.

This, in the end, is often the biggest problem with the fantasy genre. There’s too much money involved in creating 500-page epics with multiple sequels. Few exponents of fantasy seem to know how to knock of 10-20,000 words of self-contained short fiction.

Shame. Can’t really recommend this as it doesn’t do what it says on the tin.

Axis by Robert Charles Wilson

They moved in silence through the Hypothetical forest, though it was not entirely a silent place. No wind reached them at street level, but there must have been a wind blowing, Turk guessed, because the iridescent globes that crowned the tubular trunks occasionally bumped against each other and made a gentle sound that suggested a rubber mallet on a wooden xylophone.

Axis is the sequel to Robert Charles Wilson’s superb 2005 novel, Spin, which I reviewed earlier in the year. I’m torn about the necessity for a sequel. On the one hand, sequelitis afflicts the SF market, overloading bookshop and library shelves with the over-rated and over-familiar, or me-too attempts to strike gold with a copycat franchise. On the other hand, Spin was so extremely good that you wanted more of the same, and as soon as it could be provided.

If the title Spin was a slight misnomer (see my earlier review), then I’m afraid this title, Axis, strays even further from the core idea of the book, which is that the universe has been colonised (billions of years before we came along) by an infinitely connected, infinitely self-replicating nanomachine, one that can commit extraordinary god-like acts of engineering, creating an effect that can only be described as the nanotechnological sublime.

This sequel begins approximately 30 years after the events in the previous novel. If Spin ended on a note of optimism, as some humans were able to escape the oppressive conditions of the late late capitalist Earth through an arch constructed by the Hypotheticals (so-called because their existence is surmised by the humans who experience their effects), then Axis begins by dashing that optimism. It becomes clear that the oppressive and fearful regulatory authorities have passed through the Arch themselves, to the New World, the planet linked to Earth through the Arch. Worse than that, human nature being what it is, people have started exploiting the New World like Robber Barons, taking advantage of its frontier nature and trashing the new environment in exactly the same way as they trashed the old.

The New World, in fact, seems to be a bit of a disappointment (a bit like Australia, perhaps). People cling to coastal communities and the interior seems to be dry and inhospitable. Life is hard, a living is hard to make. This is not the new Eden we hoped for at the end of Spin. Still, every summer the skies light up with a spectacular meteor shower.

The only surviving character from Spin enters the narrative some way in, but the novel begins with Lise, a young woman in search of her 12-years-gone father, and Turk, a pilot/drifter she has met along the way. They soon encounter the (illegal) Fourth community (humans who have achieved a longer lifespan – or fourth age – using technology derived from the Hypotheticals), and become embroiled in their attempts to communicate with what they surmise is the intelligence behind the Hypotheticals and their effects. In other words, RCW continues here with his theme of dangerous religious extremists. In this case, the idea of god has been replaced by the Hypotheticals, but the fanatical attempts to know god continue, with the usual human consequences.

Meanwhile, the forces of conservatism are in pursuit of the Fourths, trying to control any alterations of the human genome, and using the kind of oppressive tactics that made sense in Spin, but make less sense here, because the ideas are just not developed enough. These authorities, who don’t allow morality to stall them, are too easy to evade.

Inevitably (and gratifyingly), encounters with the nanotechnological sublime leave the human characters helpless, and there’s a sense that (unlike with the previous novel) the human characters are just too small and insignificant to carry the weight of the ideas contained herein.

Like the New World itself, Axis is a bit of a disappointment. At around 300 pages, it’s short: and the design of the book itself is the only thing that ensures we even get to 300. There’s a lot of white space between chapters. Does this feel like the “holding pattern” novel in the middle of a trilogy? I don’t really know. We certainly learn a good deal more about the Hypotheticals than we knew before, but I don’t think we learn enough about the human characters in the story. We don’t spend enough time with any of them to care about them in the same way that we cared about Tyler Dupree and the twins in Spin. In the end, I wonder why Lise is there at all, unless she’s a central character in a hypothetical third novel.

I enjoyed reading it, but I’ve grown to expect much more from RCW. You’ll certainly not be able to resist reading this if you have read Spin, but there really isn’t a lot of point in recommending this to anyone who has not. Cautiously recommended then, with a reiteration of the strongest possible recommendation for Spin itself, which remains one of the best novels – in any genre – that I have ever read.

Failed Writer, or…?

Cooler King

If you had to fail at anything, what would it be? When I was relatively young, I wanted to be a writer. I can remember writing short stories (usually involving space and rockets) when I was 7, 8 years old, and I “rediscovered” writing in my mid-teens, in a forehead-slapping moment. How could I have forgotten this?

But as well as wanting to be a writer, I was restless and impatient, so when I wasn’t immediately successful (like Françoise Sagan, say), I became somewhat disillusioned. But I kept writing. In my early days of blogging I posted quick summaries of my various unpublished novels (search for the word “unfinished” on that page, there are five!). Ideas were easy to come by, until I was around 30, and now they’re not. But another thing is that I ceased to believe in myself as someone with something to say, if you know what I mean.

In the spirit of putting myself into the skin of a 3rd party, an editor say, I asked myself, if this manuscript arrived on my desk, would I want to read it? And the answer was no. The same thing, more or less, happened with regard to poetry, which was something else I used to do. I realised, in my mid-20s, that I absolutely loathe poetry – especially my own. So I knocked it on the head.

When I was still at school, I had a vague ambition to be some kind of professional writer. I knew early on that the chances of being a Don Delillo, someone who has always made a living from being a novelist and nothing else, were remote, so I knew that “professional writing” would have to involve journalism or reporting or something.

But being feckless and lazy, I didn’t fancy going to journalism school, working for a local paper, or doing any other kind of scut work. I wanted to leap over the dues-paying and become, say, and instant Alistair Cooke, or, more likely Anthony Smith whose series of Radio 4 talks, “A Sideways Look” I admired very much.

Both Cooke and Smith were masters of talking about one thing whilst really talking about another. At the height of the Watergate scandal, Cooke would give one of his weekly talks on the subject of something like saucepans… and only at the end of the 15 minutes would the penny drop, and you would realise he was actually talking about Nixon, and what a crook he was. I exaggerate, but you get the point.

Because just reporting the news wouldn’t interest me; and I wouldn’t want to get trapped into being some kind of specialist in politics or war. No, I’d want to just sit in my gaff and make stuff up. Unfortunately, this career path failed to open up before me.

But blogging is great, isn’t it? Because you don’t have to please anyone but yourself, and you can be your own Anthony Smith and take a sideways look at every bloody thing.

Then there’s the other thing about writers, which is that – on the whole – they’re all so damn ugly. Goodness gracious! Some of them, to quote Quentin Tarantino, look like they fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Ugly, fat, with Coke-bottle lenses in their unflattering glasses. Apart from JK Rowling, who is shaggable because she doesn’t look actually horrific and is as rich as you-know-who, most writers I’ve seen are more Stephen King than Steve McQueen. Most celebrity mugshots show people looking at their absolute DUI worst, but look at Steve! Cool as a cucumber.

Film directors, apart from actor-turned-director types, follow pretty much the same pattern. Peter Jackson, for example. It’s almost like a pattern: ugly, misfit people bring their fantasies to life on the page and on the screen. One of the big problems I had with that whole Lord of the Rings trilogy was the way it pandered to the worst elements of fandom – the shut-ins, the mad people in the cultural attic, the ones who love fantasy and sf and play role playing games, too.

I’m no oil painting, as you know, and I’m generalising a little too much (likely to upset Vulcans and non-Vulcans alike), but in the end, being a writer isn’t the same as being a rock star, and the adoring fans of writers are not the same people, on the whole, as the adoring fans of rock stars. So if I had to choose, I’d rather be a “failed musician” than a “failed writer.” And, frankly, and I wish I’d thought of it when I was younger, I think I’d rather be a “failed actor” than just about anything. I should have been on the stage. You know it.

Interview with Roger Morris

Questions set by Rashbre, who reviewed Roger’s book Taking Comfort here.

Thanks very much to Roger for taking the time to answer.

Q. HOW DID YOU GET STARTED WITH NOVEL WRITING?

A. You know how when you’re at school you’re encouraged to write stories – nobody told me to stop. I started a novel when I was in my twenties. I don’t think I ever finished it, not sure. I was writing it on an old fashioned manual typewriter. It used to drive my flatmates and neighbours mad, I’m sure. I did once get one complaint from a downstairs neighbour, who was very apologetic. She said it wouldn’t be so bad if it was faster and more even – it was because I used to break off and take long pauses while I was thinking what to type next. I was so embarrassed I bought an electric one. Then progressed to an old-style amstrad.

Q. HOW DID YOU DECIDE THE THEME FOR THIS NOVEL?

A. I was walking down the street in Crouch End where I live and I witnessed an armed robbery right in front of me. Pretty much like the one described in the book. There were a number of other bad things that happened too. Shit! Bad things happen even in Crouch End. I witnessed other bad stuff, some of which also found themselves into the book. Some didn’t. It was more spread out than in the book – I sort of thought that logically, or according to the laws of chance or something, it’s just as possible for a cluster of bad things to happen all at once as all spread out. It’s like the same numbers coming up week after week on the lottery. The idea of taking things to protect yourself seems like a very old magical idea, and seems quite natural to me. It’s akin to the thought that lightning doesn’t strike twice. I’ve never done it, I hasten to add but I can imagine the temptation.

Q. ARE THERE ANY PEOPLE THAT INSPIRED THE CHARACTERS OR THEME FOR THE BOOK?

A. I once went on an induction day at an insurance company that doesn’t exist any more. It’s name was very similar to Diamond. See if you can guess. Anyhow, the telephone conversation that takes place at the beginning of the book, between the old lady and the call handler, was pretty much verbatim. Other than that, I don’t know. I suppose a lot of people have fed into it, subconsciously.

Q. WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO OTHERS THINKING OF NOVEL WRITING?

A. Oh this is the hardest. I don’t think I’m in a position to give anyone advice. Read as much as you can, but everybody says that. Time – you’ve got to be fairly ruthless about making time to write. I got up early every morning to write TC. That helped. Generally, you’ve got to be a selfish, self-absorbed, self-motivated bastard.

Q. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE GENRE OF THE BOOK?

A. I’m not very good at pinning down the genre. It was described to me as a literary thriller. Dunno if that does it. I would describe it as contemporary urban angst thriller type thingy.

Q. YOU CHOSE AN UNUSUAL WRITING STYLE – DIFFERENTIATED PUNCTUATION AND EMBEDDED FACTSHEETS. WHAT GAVE YOU THIS IDEA?
AThe style, and punctuation, were deliberate. I wanted to create an overlap of thoughts, speech, action, so that objective and subjective realities were merged. (Sorry, that sounds really pretentious, doesn’t it?) The multiple viewpoint thing is also part of it. As for the embedded factsheets and marketing copy, that was a way of building up texture. I was also trying to use it to access character by concentrating on surface. Again, I win the Private Eye Pseud’s Corner award. But I feel there is something in it.

Q. CAN YOU DESCRIBE ANY OTHER WRITING PROJECTS?

A. I’m always very cagey about works in progress, in case people come along and go, ‘You know that sounds like the biggest load of shit going.’ I would find that discouraging and maybe lose heart. But I am working on a novel at the moment, which is more conventional in some ways. (I put quote marks around direct speech.) It’s historical, crime, set in a country and city I’ve never been to – so that makes it equally mad in its own way, I suppose!

Q. WHAT IS YOUR FEELING ABOUT THE RECEPTION OF THE BOOK?

A. I’ve been blown away by the response from litbloggers and ordinary readers. It’s been amazing. All my colleagues at work are reading it and they keep coming up to me, saying things like, ‘Finished your book last night. Fabulous!’ Of course the ones that hate it keep politely quiet. But to stumble on reviews like Rashbre’s has been wonderful. Not to mention being invited to do this – or rather, to fall into this trap. The reception from the literary establishment has been disappointing, but predictable. I have coined a term for them: ‘the tosserati’. Please feel free to use it. I want to get it into general usage.

Q. HAS THE BOOK’S PUBLICATION AFFECTED YOU IN ANY WAY?

When I got my advance copy of the book, I said to Rachel, my wife, ‘Well, I can give up now.’ It was a joke. Am I buggery going to give up, but there was a sense of publication itself being the end I’d been working to, and now that I had achieved it…. I was somehow released from a ridiculous pressure.

Q. IS THERE AN AMUSING ANECDOTE ABOUT THE BOOK?

A.Shortly before publication, I went into Waterstones near where I work, and said to the guy, ‘I just want to check if you’ll be getting a book. It’s not out yet, but I just wondered if you would be stocking it. It’s called Taking Comfort.’ He checked the system. ‘Taking Comfort by Roger Morris.’ ‘That’s right,’ I said. He looked at me a little strangely and said, ‘Are you Roger Morris?’ I fessed up. ‘You’d be surprised how many authors we get in here asking about their own books.’ Not really.

(Sorry, I put that story on my blog – but it’s the only one I can think of.)

Many thanks, Rob and Rashbre for trapping me so gently!

Buy the book from Amazon UK

Writing Styles

I don’t like a writerly writer, you know the kind. I’ve really gone orf literature and hate to read anything literary. Even with my favourite genres, I really don’t like that stuff some writers try to do with language.

Take science fiction. I like a rollicking good yarn, and I read for the plot, for the ideas, for the fun of it. But I never took to cyberpunk and the like, because I simply can’t stand all the messing around with language, all the “this is how people will talk/think in the future.”

It’s like watching an American film, set in an American city, but dubbed into French. You can follow the plot, and understand quite a lot of what people are saying, but you have to work too hard and don’t enjoy the experience.

Some things have merits beyond their status in a particular genre. They have interesting things to say, and if you pay attention you can find a lot to say about them. But if you come at me from the position that I’ve got to work hard to start with, I start resenting you immediately. I’ll work when I want to work, when I think something is worth the work.

It’s like books that start with several pages of italic text. I never enjoy that.

This is making me sound lazy and stupid, and perhaps I am, but it’s not as if I’m not willing to give things a chance. For example, every year I buy Gardner Dozois’ anthology of the Year’s Best SF. This is sometimes a mixed bag. Dozois has good taste, but he’s not infallible, and some years are just better than others. But often the whole point of short SF is that you don’t know what’s going on until near the end. So it’s not as if I never do any work on a story to get into it. But make me work just for the sake of working, just because you fancy writing in a particular Newspeak style, good-bye.

I know it means I’m missing out on a huge chunk of stuff, but I’m as sure as anything that I’m not missing anything I’d enjoy. Any SF writer who gets featured in the Guardian regularly, for example, I’m sure I’d hate.

Over the years I’ve come upon a number of writers who have become firm favourites, and they always seem to be relatively obscure in this country. I don’t know why this would be. It’s not as if I set out to be a contrarian. Reading, primarily, for the plot, as I do, you’d think my tastes would be kind of mainstream, but examples like Michael Connelly, whose books you will find in W H Smiths/Waterstones are a rarity.

For a long time, one of my favourite writers has been Kate Wilhelm, whose books are always hard to get hold of in the UK. As you can see from her bibliography, not only is she prolific, she’s a genre crosser. I would have first encountered her in the legendary Luton library SF section, but she’s written more thrillers and legal procedurals in recent years. As far as her SF goes, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is a classic of the genre. She’s particularly good at the post-apocalyptic novel, viz that, and Juniper Time among others. And she’s good at combining suspense with SF ideas, as in Huysman’s Pets. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is actually one of those formative novels, and I can’t believe you haven’t read it.

Not by coincidence, Wilhelm was married to Damon Knight, another excellent writer. Won’t make the kind of headlines that Philip K Dick does, but then Dick’s notoriety is more in the line of rock star/drugs than quality of writing. I find most of his famous stuff impenetrable. As for Damon Knight, The Man in the Tree is superb. It’s about one of Knight’s favourite themes, one that is currently quite fashionable: the idea of multiple universes (the multiverse), and having the ability to switch between them. I just read a Crichton (Timeline) based on the idea. But both Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm are always more concerned with the human impact of such ideas. So The Man in the Tree is about the tormented life of a man who discovers that, with a little mental twist, he can switch between universes, so that events which have happened, suddenly did not happen.

Finally, dear reader, I should mention again the great Tim Powers, one-time winner of a Philip K Dick award, but a much better writer. Powers likes to uncannily combine fract and friction, populating fantasy plots with historical personages such as Byron and Shelley (or, more recently, Kim Philby). I have never read a bad Powers novel. It was his most recent, Declare, which set me off on my recent espionage jag. But frankly, Powers makes espionage more interesting by including elements of the supernatural. All the paranoia of the spy game, the wilderness of mirrors, and the vicious game playing of SMERSH and NKVD and OSS and the CIA makes so much more sense if they were also running scared of demons. Final note: if you like Neil Gaman, you will almost certainly like Tim Powers.