It Doesn't Have To Be Right…

… it just has to sound plausible


by Leave a comment

What I’ve Been Doing Recently…

… or A Desperate Attempt To Generate Content For This Blog Before People Give Up On It. Well, perhaps not “desperate” – it’s not been that long since I last posted. But my last few posts might have given the erroneous impression that I’ve mostly given up on reading science fiction. I haven’t. And here’s the proof. Sort of.

I have been reading…

The Quincunx of Time, James Blish (1973) – I knew this was an expansion of a short story, but I didn’t know if I’d read the story. So the déjà vu which hit me two pages into the book didn’t come as much of a surprise. I had read the story, ‘Beep’. Unfortunately, as Blish explains in a foreword, he had never intended to expand ‘Beep’, and when he was eventually persuaded to do so he chose to focus on some of the issues raised by the story. He didn’t expand the plot, or the story’s remit. He just deepened the scientific bollocks the various characters explain to each other. It made for a dull and unconvincing – and short – novel. Not one of Blish’s best.

The Facts of Life, Graham Joyce (2002) – I have unjustly neglected Graham in my reading. I thought his first few novels were very good indeed, but sort of stopped buying and reading them for no real reason. I actually interviewed him for a small press magazine when his debut novel, Dreamside, was published. Unfortunately, it was on the last day of a convention, and we’d both been drinking until 4 a.m. the night before and were very hungover. I sent Graham a verbatim transcript of the interview. He replied, “I remember it as quite an insightful interview… so who were those two fucking Martians on the tape?” A carefully edited version, which made both of us appear sane and intelligent, later appeared in the magazine. But, The Facts of Life. I decided to buy this because it’s set in Coventry. I went to university there, so I know the city. The Facts of Life is excellent stuff and I have no excuse now for not reading more of Graham’s books. Incidentally, I was little spooked by one chapter in the novel – because it’s set in Coventry it of course features Lady Godiva. Which couldn’t help but remind me of my own encounter with her (see here). Graham’s done that to me before: I had a lucid dream the morning before starting Dreamside, which opens… with someone having a lucid dream.

The Universe Maker, AE van Vogt (1953) – for some reason, an image from this novel has stayed with me throughout the decades since I last read it: a shadow in the shape of a person, and in which you can see stars, appearing in a park and speaking to someone. But I couldn’t remember the context. So I decided to reread the book to remind me. And it is apparently a Shadow, one of an elite which rules a future Earth and the members of which appear to have special powers. So there you go. This novel is, like most of van Vogt’s, completely bonkers. It’s a headlong charge through a number of sf tropes – chief among them time travel – most of which make little sense if you pause to think. And that’s part of its charm. Before you can even scoff, you’re thrown into something new and even more implausible. Now I want to reread van Vogt’s Mission to the Stars, which has the giant battleship that splits up into hundreds of little ships when it hits a galactic storm…

House of Suns, Alastair Reynolds (2007) – Reynolds is one of those authors whose books I buy in hardback as soon as they’re published. He’s also one of those authors whose work can sometimes disappoint, but only when compared to his other novels. And so it was with House of Suns. I never quite swallowed the novel’s timeline of millions of years, and the characters seemed a little too contemporary for me to willingly suspend disbelief. But, there were – as usual – some real gosh-wow special effects, some jaw-dropping ideas, and even an occasional nod here and there to other sf books and films. Good stuff.

The Ship That Died of Shame & Other Stories, Nicholas Monsarrat (1959) – I have a soft spot for Monsarrat’s fiction – The Cruel Sea is a classic, and his unfinished The Master Mariner is one of my favourite non-sf novels. So I continue to seek out and read his books, even though many of his plots have passed their sell-by date. It’s a bit like watching the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents from the mid-1950s – those twists in the tale have been done so many times you can see them coming a mile off. But they must have been a surprise when they were first used back then. And so it is for some of Monsarrat’s novels and short stories. But I’ll still read him.

I’ve been watching stuff, too. Such as…

The Sacrifice, Andrei Tarkovsky (1986) – Tarkovsky isn’t a science fiction film director, although three of his films were sf. Both Solaris and Stalker were adaptations of sf novels – by Stanisław Lem and the Strugatsky brothers, respectively. The Sacrifice, on the other hand, is from an original screenplay by Tarkovsky himself. A man living on Gotland, a Baltic island off the coast of Sweden, witnesses the end of the world by nuclear war, and in despair vows to God that he will sacrifice everything he loves if the world is returned to normal. He then – at the urging of a friend and neighbour – sleeps with a female servant, who is a witch. The next morning, it’s as if the nuclear holocaust had never happened. And so the man sets about fulfilling his vow, alienating his loved ones, destroying his possessions, and burning down his house. Like all Tarkovsky films, it’s very slow, with very long takes. But parts are disturbingly intense. The reaction of the man’s wife, for example, to the end of the world is difficult to watch. There are also dream sequences which might not be dream sequences, and a use of colour and black & white film which might help unravel the ambiguous story. I think I prefer Mirror more than The Sacrifice, but it’s a more affecting film than some of Tarkovsky’s, and he remains a favourite director.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2 (1993) – I’d read often enough that DS9 was the best of the Trek franchises, but I’d only ever seen a handful of episodes from the first season. From them it was hard to see it as any better than any of the other franchises. But I decided to give the series a go – prompted by a much-reduced price on Amazon. And discovered that not only was the setting interesting – the planet of Bajor after Cardassian occupationary forces have withdrawn – but I liked the characters. Much more so than the Star Trek: The Next Generation ones. Well, except for Quark the Ferengi. He’s just irritating. Anyway, I finished season 1, and then bought season 2. And I have every intention of working my way through to the end of season 7. Especially since I’m told it gets much better when the Federation go to war against the Dominion….

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, dir. Steven Spielberg (2008) – it seems a bit pointless to moan about Hollywood remakes of perfectly good films from earlier decades when they’re just as liable to dig up old franchises and add a new vehicle to it. And what a creaking lumbering vehicle it is. Harrison Ford manages to hold his own, despite his advanced years, but the plot in this thing is a horrible mess. It’s as if they chose to throw as many clichés at it as possible in the hope one or two would stick. Unfortunately, it’s not plot coupons which stuck. This film is just an embarrassingly bad sequence of CGI spectacles and stunts held together by a plot which makes no attempt at plausibility. Best avoided.

Aliens Vs Predator 2: Requiem, dir. the Strause brothers (2007) – sadly, my film-viewing could sink even further than a geriatric Indy chasing after a “magnetic” skull which can bizarrely attract non-ferrous materials. It plummetted to this. The directors clearly felt that making the film as dark as possible would hide a multitude of sins. And I don’t mean “dark” as in mood. I mean, “dark” as in filmed at night, “dark” as in having to sit in a pitch-black room in order to actually see what’s on the bloody screen. Which isn’t much more than the title suggests. There’s this Alien, see; and it crash-lands on Earth. And a Predator gets this signal telling it what’s happened. So off it goes to hunt it down. In Ridley Scott’s excellent Alien, the eponymous creature was an unstoppable killing machine. In AvP2, teenagers with shotguns slaughter hundreds of them. Which is a bit like revealing Sasquatch as a marmoset. But then, what teenager wants to watch a platoon of elite forces get blatted by a single alien? They’d much rather see themselves in the title role, wreaking mayhem and spraying bullets and killing all those nasty cunningly-externalised fears and neuroses… Avoid this film like you would a, well, an alien.

The DEFA Sci-Fi Collection – I mentioned one of these in a previous posts – Der Schweigende Stern / The Silent Star, dir. Kurt Maetzig (1960). See here. The other two in this boxed set are In the Dust of the Stars / Im Staub der Sterne, dir. Gottfried Kolditz (1976), and Eolomea, dir. Herrmann Zschoche (1972). The first is… plenty weird. A mission from one planet arrives on another. There’s something suspicious going on, but they’re welcomed with a big party. Of course, they soon find out what the actual situation is…. But. The strange 1970s GDR aesthetic is one thing. But the gratuitous – tastefully back-lit, so in silhouette only – nude scene just seems completely, well, gratuitous. And then there’s the party scenes. Disco-dancing East Germans in Spaaaacccceee. Sort of. Eolomea is a much more restrained affair. Some ships have gone missing, and a group of scientists are sent to figure out what happened. It seemed to me a bit of the story went missing somewhere as well. The film’s title makes no sense for the first thirty or so minutes, and is only explained in passing. But never mind. It’s all good post-2001: A Space Odyssey 1970s sf – none of that silly Western Imperialist space opera thank you very much. There is a fourth DEFA sf film which isn’t included in this collection, Signal: A Space Adventure (1970). I want a copy.

And I have been listening to…

The “double whammy” – I wanted to see Isis, who were performing locally last Sunday night, but no one else wanted to go. Then Stuart said he’d go, if I went to see Johnny Truant at the same venue the following night. The “double whammy”.

Isis were excellent, as usual. They’re another one of those bands you forget how good they are… and then you see them live. I ended up buying one of their CDs from the merchandise stand, and was tempted to buy more. They were ably supported by Torche, who were good in parts.

And then it was Johnny Truant… Who are a bit too hardcore for my taste. This was a much younger crowd than Isis – I could have passed as just about any audience member’s dad. The sound was also very loud. I don’t mind loud – and I’ve been to plenty of loud gigs. But it seems a bit pointless when everything’s turned up so high you can’t actually hear the guitars. Just the bass and blastbeats. The rest is a wall of noise. Mind you, there was a little more banter between songs than the previous night. The only words spoken by Isis were, “This is our last song.” The lead singer of Johnny Truant, however, was cracking jokes – “Our next two songs are ‘Hotel California’ and ‘Tiny Dancer'” – and moaning about eating too many pies. Not to mention the lead singer from support act Blackhole, who climbed down from the stage and performed most of the set from the middle of the dance-floor…

I’ve been working as well, of course. The big fat space opera sequel, assorted short stories (three sold this year so far; go me), and even another poem or two.


by 8 Comments

A Different Road

November’s book – which I actually managed to read in November – for my 2008 reading challenge was Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I can’t remember why I picked this book – I think it was one on a list of possible titles, and I managed to find a (free) copy on bookmooch.com. It’s certainly not a book I’d ever really planned to read. And, having finished it, I doubt I’ll be reading it again.

I’d always thought On the Road was a 1960s novel*, about someone living rough during that decade, living the hippy dream of LSD, Grateful Dead and giving two fingers to the Man. It’s nothing of the sort. For a start, it’s set in the late 1940s. And it’s about marijuana and jazz and subsistence-level jobs (and poverty). The protagonist, Sal Paradise, spends much of the book driving from one place to the other – so that’s “on the road” as in actual driving on the road in a car, not as in living rough like a vagrant (although he does hitch-hike several times). Most of these travels are with an assorted cast of friends, or in order to meet up with said friends. And chief among these is Dean Moriarty, who is “Beat”.

The book is a novel but it’s actually a thinly-disguised autobiography. The events it describes actually happened to Kerouac, and the various characters Paradise meets are the real people Kerouac met. Moriarty is Neal Cassady, for example; Carlo Marx is Allen Ginsberg; and Old Bull Lee is William Burroughs.

Kerouac wrote On the Road in what he called “spontaneous prose”. It shows. It’s not prose you can savour. Much of it possesses a breathless clumsiness which only works if you read it as fast as he apparently wrote it. Kerouac also has a tin ear for dialogue. Perhaps his intent was to document the spontaneity of his characters’ thought processes, but the result is that they talk mostly unfettered bollocks.

It’s not all bad. Some of the descriptive passages are good, and Kerouac’s documenting of the underbelly of late 1940s USA is never less than interesting. A visit to a jazz club in Chicago, for example, is especially impressive, and works so well because its prose is spontaneous. But On the Road is a “cult” novel – which usually means you either get it or you don’t. And I didn’t. I don’t understand the appeal of Paradise’s adventures, I don’t understand the appeal of a book you have to read at such a headlong pace. I don’t belong to a generation – or nationality – which finds anything all that enticing about its subject. To be fair, Paradise’s attitudes seem more twenty-first century than are typical for 1940s America. Which is admirable. At one point, he stays in “Mill City” in California (actually Marin City), and describes it as the only non-segregated community in the US. He mixes freely with blacks and Mexicans… which seems unusual for a country which practiced overt institutional racism until the 1960s.

On balance, On the Road falls squarely in the middle of those books I’ve read during my reading challenge. I didn’t hate it, but neither did I stick Kerouac’s other titles on my wants list. I enjoyed bits of it, but I can’t say I enjoyed all of it. Perhaps if I’d been alive in the 1950s and read the book at that time, perhaps if I were American, perhaps if I actually liked jazz…

(* if the edition I read had the cover art I’ve used to illustrate this review, then perhaps I wouldn’t have thought it was about the 1960s)


by 1 Comment

Aetheric Mechanics, Warren Ellis & Gianluca Pagliarani

Warren Ellis is no stranger to science fiction. It’s a genre he has explored before in comics format – in works such as Orbiter, Ocean, Switchblade Honey and Ministry of Space, among others. Nor is he unfamiliar with alternate history, as Ministry of Space posited a British space programme following World War II. It could be argued that Aetheric Mechanics is actually steampunk. Certainly, it appears to be, as it’s set in 1907, but with “apergy”-powered flying machines and clunky giant metal robots. But steampunk is a meta-generic construct, a blend of tropes from worlds presented in other genre fictions. It almost never includes its own origin story – to steal a phrase from the other genre in which Ellis works. Steampunk tropes just are. Sometimes, there is some authorial handwaving to “explain” this new Victorian (or Edwardian) England – Stephen Baxter’s anti-ice in Anti-ice, aether in Colin Greenland’s Harm’s Way, for example. But often as not the reader is expected to recognise the origin of the tropes and accept their placement in a steampunk fiction as an expected characteristic of the sub-genre.

And from the opening page of Aetheric Mechanics, there are tropes a-plenty on view: the aforementioned flying machines and giant robots, but also flying ships held aloft by “cavorite”. Ellis, we soon learn, has thrown his net further afield. Dr Robert Watcham has returned from the Front in Britain’s war with Ruritania. His friend, Sax Raker, is London’s greatest detective. And Watcham is back just in time to help with ‘The Case of the Man Who Wasn’t There’.

An engineer specialising in aetherics was murdered outside the Royal Society by a man who flickered in and out of existence. Another body soon turns up, found in the mud of the Thames. Raker identifies some of the mud as belonging to the River Fleet. Present in the crowd watching the sleuth at work is Innana Meyer, Raker’s great rival, and the object of his affections. Raker spots her, and she admits she is now working for Raker’s brother in the British Secret Service.

As a vast force of Ruritanian aeroplanes begins bombing London, Raker, Watcham and Meyer enter the River Fleet’s underground channel to find the man who wasn’t there…

Ellis has played fair in the past, and he plays fair in Aetheric Mechanics. He’s not telling stories in science fiction settings, he’s telling science fiction stories. Which is where this “graphic novella” demonstrates that it is indeed pure-strain science fiction and not steampunk. There is an explanation, a reason why Watcham’s London exists. And why the story of Aetheric Mechanics could not have taken place anywhere, or anywhen, else. It’s a satisfying resolution to a tale which has already enchanted through its borrowings and usages.

Of course, no review of a graphic novella would be complete without mention of the artwork. And in Aetheric Mechanics, Gianluca Pagliarani’s clean black and white art is an excellent complement to Ellis’s script. The setting is recognisably early twentieth-century London, and yet there is plenty of detail clearly demonstrating that this is not the world we know. Pagliarani’s steampunk visual aesthetic is inventive without being derivative or obvious.

Science fiction and graphic novels have never made easy bedfellows – the visual invention never seems to match that of the story; or vice versa. Ellis is probably the leading authority in reconciling the two, and in Aetheric Mechanics he has shown once again why he holds that position.


by Leave a comment

We’re Supposed To Be Looking Forward To This?

In my last post on obscure sf films, I wrote:

In fact, with the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still due for release later this year, and recent news that J Michael Straczynski is working on a “sequel” to Forbidden Planet, you have to wonder when Hollywood will get the message.

According to the LA Times, a remake of When Worlds Collide is due in cinemas next year, as are new additions to the Terminator and Robocop franchises; and, possibly, Ghostbusters. Also due in 2009 is a remake of Creature From The Black Lagoon, and a year later Fahrenheit 451. And plans are afoot to remake Flash Gordon, Logan’s Run, and Westworld.

So there you go. It’s the 21st Century and we’re strip-mining the 20th Century for culture.


by 6 Comments

Top Ten Obscure SF Films

I’ve not written about sf for a while. Or posted a list. People like lists, if only to argue over. So here’s one likely to generate some debate: the best ten obscure science fiction films*. My definition of “obscure” alone is probably open to interpretation – at least three of films below I also included in my list of best sf films since 1991. I also wouldn’t, for example, describe Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris as an obscure film, especially as it’s been remade by Hollywood. The same is true of Open Your Eyes by Alejandro Amenábar. Mind you, I wouldn’t call Tarkovsky’s Stalker obscure either. Or Alphaville by Jean-Luc Godard. All good films, of course. Well, not the Hollywood remakes. They’re not very good, and are best avoided. Stick to the originals.

In fact, with the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still due for release later this year, and recent news that J Michael Straczynski is working on a “sequel” to Forbidden Planet, you have to wonder when Hollywood will get the message.

Anyway, below are ten science fiction films for which I feel the word “obscure” is a reasonably accurate description. One or two might be considered turkeys – certainly you’re only likely to find them in budget sf movie DVD sets, or being broadcast at 2 a.m. on some TV channel no one ever watches. That doesn’t mean they’re not good films, just that you have to dig a little harder to understand why they’re not bad films. Trust me on this.

The list is in chronological order by year of release, not order of merit.

The Silent Star, dir. Kurt Maetzig (1960) – AKA Der Schweigende Stern. Which should clue you in that this film is German. In fact, it’s East German, one of four sf films made by East German studio DEFA. It’s perhaps best known to US audiences by the title of its badly-edited and -dubbed English-language version, First Spaceship on Venus. The story is based on a novel by Polish sf author Stanisław Lem, and concerns a message discovered embedded in a crystal found at the site of the Tunguska Event. The message is partially decoded, and appears to have originated on Venus. An international crew of the best scientific brains is recruited – Soviet, German, Indian, Japanese, “African”, Polish, Chinese – and sent on the rocket Kosmokrator to Venus. En route, they finally decode the message fully… and learn it is a plan to invade Earth. But what they find on Venus is not at all what they expected… The sets of Venus are bizarrely alien, the model work is excellent, and the whole film has a peculiarly Soviet scientific internationalist atmosphere.

Queen of Blood, dir. Curtis Harrington (1966) – this film’s low beginnings are a matter of record. It’s one of many Russian films bought by Roger Corman, edited, dubbed in English, and with additional scenes starring US actors added, which American International Pictures released in the 1960s. Queen of Blood was based on Nebo Zovyot, and it looks weirdly compelling, despite its B-movie story. I reviewed it last year here.

Galaxy Of Terror, dir. Bruce Clark (1981) – it’s plain from the start of this film that Roger Corman’s New World Pictures intended it as a cash-in on the success of Alien. Yet what they managed to produce was something entirely different. A spaceship is sent to a mysterious planet to rescue the crew of a crashed ship, but they crash themselves. And the crew they were sent to rescue are all dead. They determine that the cause of their own crash was a huge alien pyramid just over the horizon. They decide to explore it… and are subsequently killed off one by one. The special effects are a bit rubbish – one of the alien monsters looks like cheap rubber tentacles – and the cast are better known for their roles on television. But the story works really well – and often reminds me of the first third of John Morressy’s novel, Under a Calculating Star (and, I suppose, Alastair Reynolds’ Diamond Dogs). The ending comes as a real surprise. James Cameron, incidentally, was a unit director on this film, and responsible for some of the production design.

Humanoid Woman, dir. Richard & Nikolai Viktorov (1981) – AKA To The Stars By Hard Ways. This is a Russian film and, sadly, the only edition I have is a badly-mangled English-dubbed version released by some cut-price B-movie re-packaging studio in the US. Even so, the film is clearly bonkers. The opening scenes, in which a team of cosmonauts explore a derelict alien ship in space were plainly filmed underwater. But at least it looks like zero gravity. They find one member of the ship’s crew still alive – Niya, played by the weirdly alien Yelena Metyolkina in a strange wig. The film is sort of a love story, and sort of a first contact story, and sort of a cautionary tale of ecological catastrophe. It has to be seen to be believed. It can’t really be described. I’m told the original Russian version is very good indeed, and a new director’s cut was recently released by the late Richard Viktorov’s son. Unfortunately, no edition with English subtitles is available.

Le Dernier Combat, dir. Luc Besson (1983) – an early film by the director of The Fifth Element. There’s something very Moebius about the look and feel of the film, but I don’t believe he was involved. A man tries to survive in a post-apocalyptic city, while being menaced by another (played by Jean Reno). Filmed entirely in black and white,Le Dernier Combat contains no dialogue whatsoever. And yet it works. It’s also very funny in parts.

Delicatessen, dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro (1991) – this has been a favourite of mine since I first saw it back in the early 1990s. It’s another French post-apocalypse film. An ex-circus performer moves into an apartment block owned by a butcher. He’s intended to be the residents’ dinner – food is extremely scarce – but the butcher’s daughter falls in love with him and helps him escape. Sort of. There’s a superb set-piece in which one resident tries to commit suicide. And fails. A wonderfully strange film.

Until The End Of The World, dir. Wim Wenders (1991) – there’s not much more I can about this film that I haven’t already said here. And I still want the 3-disc director’s cut DVD.

Possible Worlds, dir. Robert LePage (2000) – I vaguely recall buying this because it looked quite interesting. It proved to be a cleverly-done and subtle sf film. The film opens with a murder – a man is found dead, his brain missing. He proves to be only the first such victim. The film shows how the murder came about – it’s all to do with alternate realities. Beautifully shot and acted, the ending perhaps lets the film down, but it’s definitely worth seeing. It’s apparently based on a stage play, which was adapted for the cinema by the author.

Avalon, dir. Mamoru Oshii (2003) – Oshii is better known for anime, but this is a live action film. Shot in Poland. With a Polish cast. It’s one of those films which opens with jaw-dropping visuals, and whose story – while not entirely original – doesn’t let the film down. Some time in the near-future, people are addicted to a VR war game. One player, Ash, hears of a secret level and tries to find it. Avalon is filmed in sepia tones and looks gorgeous. Its pacing is perhaps slower than many find acceptable (not to me: I like Tarkovsky’s films…), but the visuals are more than enough to keep your attention.

Natural City, dir. Byung-chun Min (2003) – this is a Korean film and, like Avalon, sort of a live-action anime. Again, the visuals are stunning, even if the plot isn’t all that original. In the near-future, a pair of agents hunt down and kill cyborgs – the “borrowings” from Blade Runner are deliberate and overt. And, like Blade Runner, Natural City creates an entirely plausible future world on-screen.

(* in my own DVD collection, of course)


by 3 Comments

In Which The Author Does His Verse…

This last year, I’ve had an occasional bash at writing poetry. I don’t think I’m any good, despite having read quite a bit of it recently (see here, for example; and here). What I – try to – write is science fiction poetry. Because, well, I like science fiction. And it’s as fit a subject for poetry as anything else.

So here’s one of my meagre efforts.

Observer Effect
As functional and contained as coffins,
ships hang like bats against the void
while captains haggle for air,
for fuel and supplies.
At rest but forever in motion,
they spin about the stars,
painted by the light of other suns.

A beacon flashes,
urgent in the void, as
one ship slips her mooring.
The gentle blown breath of her
manoeuvring thrusters, and she slides
easily and inevitably
from the station’s replenishing fold.

With illusory speed, she flees –
there are no visual cues against
the thrown cloth of black, vaster than empires,
and pierced by pinpoint furnaces which stare
unceasingly from the deep heavens.

Abruptly,
she’s gone –
in pursuit of otherwheres,
otherwhens;
I can see her destination,
a tiny dot of distant brightness.

I know she will be there much sooner
than the spent light of that remote sun
has taken to reach me.

If I could collect the photons from that distant star
and render the images the quanta encode…

I’d see the past as present:
dinosaurs thundering across a fetid Earth.


by 8 Comments

More Catching Up With The Challenge

October’s book for my 2008 Reading Challenge was Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier. Like many of the books I chose for my challenge, I knew almost nothing about it. I knew it existed; I’d probably seen mention of it in various places, not to mention catching sight of it on the “classics” shelves in my local Waterstone’s. But I knew nothing about Ford – who he was, what part he played in English literature, or even what was the general reputation of The Good Soldier. And that’s one reason why I chose it. The other reason is that it’s a slim novel – I’d have liked to try a James Joyce novel, and I have a copy of Ulysses… but it’s huge (I also own Anthony Burgess’ Here Comes Everybody, his study of, although there’s little point in reading about, unless I’ve read Joyce, Joyce, Joyce*).

However, The Good Soldier…

The novel is set just prior to World War I and is narrated by John Dowell, a wealthy American mostly resident in Europe. He and his wife, Florence, spend several months each year at Nauheim, a spa in Germany. While there they’re chiefly in the company of another couple, Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, who are English. Edward is the good soldier of the title. Dowell’s narrative skips about in time, describing incidents in no particular order from the decade or so during which the Dowells and Ashburnhams are friends. What Dowell does not initially reveal – although it’s later clear that he knows it at the time he is recounting the story – is that Edward is a philanderer and having an affair with Florence. And she has also had a succession of lovers – beginning with a blue-collar thing, Jimmy, whom she was sleeping with when she married Dowell.

As The Good Soldier progresses, Dowell reveals more and more of the peculiar dynamics between the two couples. When Florence learns that Edward has fallen in love with Nancy Rufford, the ward of Edward and Leonora, she commits suicide. Edward also commits suicide later, when Leonora sabotages Nancy’s burgeoning love for him.

Ford originally titled the novel The Saddest Story, and Dowell repeatedly describes the story as the saddest he knows. Perhaps too often. I can understand how a chronologically non-linear narrative might have been seen as something new and astonishing in 1915, when the book was first published, but it’s an unremarkable technique nowadays. The same is also true of using an unreliable narrator (if you’ve read anything by Gene Wolfe, you’ll be only too familiar with unreliable narrators). Which means that much of what’s interesting about The Good Soldier is no longer the case. The book does, however, give a good indication of what life was like for wealthy Edwardians – for example, Edward is almost sent to prison for kissing a maid on a train. That “consorting with the lower classes” was a crime then seems completely bizarre.

Ford’s maintenance of Dowell’s voice throughout The Good Soldier is impressive. Not once does he let his character slip. Unfortunately, far too much is told rather than shown. I suppose in part that’s the nature of a recounted narrative. It’s also perhaps the fashion of the time. But it reads somewhat distant to a modern reader.

In all, I find it hard to consider The Good Soldier as good as its reputation. I enjoyed reading it, and it’s a clever evocation of Edwardian England. But its two innovations – a non-linear narrative and an unreliable narrator – are neither as remarkable as they were in 1915. It’s by no means a difficult read, although it is difficult to care about the characters – which is hardly unsurprising, given that they’re hardly pleasant people. “Good people”, perhaps, but not pleasant. Having said that, I think I rate The Good Soldier higher than some of the books I’ve read during my challenge. But The Jewel in the Crown remains the highwater mark, and A Question of Upbringing a distant second.

* to spoof Burgess’ infamous: “He breathed baffingly on him, for no banquet would serve, because of the known redolence of onions, onions, onions” in Enderby Outside.


by Leave a comment

I’d Just Like to Thank…

… the person who threw seafood all over my yard last night.

I left the house this morning to be confronted by a carpet of prawns, cockles, mussles and calamari. I suppose they could have been deposited by a storm, or a tsunami, but I very much doubt either would have shelled the prawns. Or the cockles and mussels. Not to mention cutting the squid into rings.

Um, perhaps there’s a story in there somewhere…