Tempo - Steph Swainston

Note: this text is only available in Dutch translation. I am not aware of any plans to publish it in English.

In September 2016, I read Het Rad van Fortuin, the first story written by Steph Swainston of the Splinters series. Splinters are thin paperbacks published by Dutch publisher Quasis one can read in an hour or so. Most of them are written by local talent but some are translations. They are just long enough to give the reader a good impression of an author's style and talent, and evoke a sense of curiosity in the reader about the author's other work. In Swainston's case it worked quite well. Het Rad van Fortuin was the first piece I read by Swainston. Since picking it up, I read four of her novels. When I heard a second Splinter from Swainston was about to be released, I just had to go fishing for a review copy. The publisher kindly provided me with one.

In Het Rad van Fortuin, we are shown a young Jant, one of the main characters in Swainston's Castle series. For this story she chooses a different character. Saker is the immortal Archer, serving emperor San in his fight against the insects. He is scarred by battle, but perhaps even more by his turbulent love life. In this story, he looks back fifteen centuries, on his first major romance, and on the day his jealous older brother tried to put him in his place during a high stakes chariot race.

Games, in some shape or other, are a staple of fantasy. The climax of Raymond E. Feist's first novel Magician is set during elaborate gladiatorial combat, and George R.R. Martin describes jousting tournaments frequently in his ongoing A Song of Ice and Fire series. Chariot races, the subject Swainston tackles here, are also well trodden territory. In The Birthgrave, the novel that would be her breakthrough, Tannish Lee describes a particularly hazardous variety. Guy Gavriel Kay even wrote a duology massively influenced by the culture surrounding the chariot races in Byzantium.

There is a good reason chariot races keep coming back in fantasy. They make for very exciting action scenes. Tempo is no exception to that. The young Saker is a bit of a hothead and he is in love on top of that. It is easy to manipulate him into a situation where he might easily lose his life. Swainston is not just aiming for an exciting scene though. What the story really is about is accepting the consequences of immortality. The love he pursues is one with a huge social taboo attached to it. Do you want to carry that with you for eternity? Is living forever worth losing a lover over?  They are facing hard choices indeed.

Saker as the main character is the perfect choice for this story. In the books we get to see him as a bit of a tragic figure, bent by the burden of his immortality. In this story, he is young, rash, stubborn and a bit cocky. We can already see the outline of his larger than life presence in the Castle though. His tendency to get himself involved in all sorts of dramatic events is clearly present. It fits perfectly with what we know of him from the novels.

Like Het Rad van Fortuin, Tempo can be read on its own, but it clearly invites the reader to dig further into Swainston's work. The dilemma Saker faces is the centre of a nicely contained story. For the reader who is more familiar with Swainston's writing, there are plenty of details that link the story to the wider world of Castle. Given the idea behind the Splinters series, Tempo is a success. It reminded me that I really ought to dig up a copy of Above the Snowline, the only novel Swainston has published I haven't read yet.

Book Details
Title: Tempo
Author: Steph Swainston
Publisher: Quasis
Pages: 42
Year: 2017
Language: Dutch
Translation: Jasper Polane and Pen Stewart
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-94-92099-26-6
First published: 2017

Short Fiction Month: Reiko's Universe Box - Shinji Kajio

Reiko's Universe Box by Shinji Kajio is one of the many translations in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's enormous anthology The Big Book of Science Fiction. The Japanese original was published in 1981 but not until 2007 did it appear in English translation. It is one of very few stories that have been translated. The introduction states that Kajio often writes humorous stories. This one must be atypical for him then. It is a rather sad tale.

A newly married couple receives an odd present. A box containing a miniature universe. The husband is not interested in it and puts it aside. As the months progress and the marriage deteriorates, the wife is more and more drawn to the box. She begins to study astronomy and soon begins to see stars, planets and comets in the interior of the box. Her husband, distracted as he may be by his work and his mistress, does not particularly like the change in his wife.

The marriage described in the story is a very sad one. The story is told from the wife's point of view. She said yes to the proposal more or less because he asked, not because she actually feels she loves him. The husband is occupied by building his career and their future. In doing so, he shamefully neglects his wife's present needs and wants.  It soon spirals into a cycle of indifference from her side and anger from his. They feed each other until a confrontation is inevitable.

The universe in the box holds wonder and fascination so obliviously absent in her marriage. The miniature universe develops as the marriage descends into two people barely acknowledging each other's presence. Then the two collide and one swallows the other in a burst of misunderstanding, anger and resentment. Where once she was a satellite around his star, her universe engulfs them both.

Reiko's Universe Box is full of beautiful but sad imagery.  It is a story that took me a while to process, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. The parallel between the emotional lives of the characters and the main star in the miniature universe, following the evolution of a star heavier than our own sun, is a very nice touch. It's a shame so little of Kajio's work has been translated, the English language world is missing out on some good writing here.

Story Details
Title: Reiko's Universe Box
Author: Shinji Kajio
Language: English
Translation: Toyoda Takashi and Gene van Troyer
Originally published: Japanese: Hayakawa SF Magazine (February 1981), English: Speculative Japan edited by Gene van Troyer and Grania Davis (2007)
Read in: The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (2016)
Story length: Short Story
Awards: None
Available online: Not that I am aware of

Short Fiction Month: The Fish of Lijiang - Chen Qiufan

The Fish of Lijiang by Chen Qiufan is another of the forty or so short stories listed on his website that Ken  Liu has translated from Chinese. It is one of the earlier ones. The English translation first appeared in Clarkesworld in August of 2011. The original is a few years older, it appeared in 2006. Liu included it in his anthology of Chinese science fiction Invisible Worlds, which is where I read it. Only about ten of Chen's stories are available in English at the moment, but Liu states in the author bio that he is working on a translation of one of Chen's novels. It is expected to be released later this year.

Stressed and exhausted from the corporate rat race, a management assistant is sent to rehabilitate in the city of Lijiang in the south-west of China, not too far from the border with Burma. He knows very well that he shows all the signs of an approaching burnout but sees this forced vacation as a failure on his part nonetheless. He has been to Lijiang before and notices how it has changed. The exterior of a commercial tourist trap hides a deeper secret however. When he meets a woman sent to the city to rehabilitate as well, he starts to figure out the real reason why he has been sent there.

This story is told from the first person. The main character is not in the best of moods. Besides feeling he has failed at his job, he is also disappointed in how the city of Lijiang  has changed. There is a series of comments on the way this cultural heritage site is treated as an amusement park. Some people would see this as criticism or a warning (as the story is set in the future) of China's policy in this area. Despite the dim view the main character takes, Lijiang seems like an interesting place to visit.

The situation he is in  is very recognizable to the western reader. Look around at work and you'll probably see a few colleagues who have run into this problem in the past, or are on their way there now. The science fictional element in the story is in the cause of the main character's problems. He is in essence used as a Guinea pig. His employer exposes him to a device that causes him to experience time in a different way. It makes him do more in less time but at a price. The way the main character responds to this revelation is where you can tell you are reading a Chinese story. Most western people would be outraged with being experimented on. This is not quite how the main character in this story responds. He heads back to his job for another round of compressed time.

I thought The Fish of Lijiang was an intriguing story, and one that shows great talent. Chen was in his mid-twenties when it was published in Chinese. I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for that novel Liu is translating. Judging from this story, it should be worth reading.

Story Details
Title: The Fish of Lijiang
Author: Chen Qiufan
Language: English
Translation: Ken Liu
Originally published: Clarkesworld Magazine, #59 August 2011
Read in: Invisible Planets, edited by Ken Liu
Story length: Short Story, approximately 5,000 words
Awards: science fiction and fantasy translation award winner
Available online: Clarkesword

Short Fiction Month: The Day the World Turned Upside Down - Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Thomas Olde Heuvelt is the first Dutch writer to ever win a Hugo. It is a dubious distinction as he most likely owes his award in a large part to the antics of the Sad Puppies. In a category where he was the only nominee not on the Puppy slates, voters ranked his story alone above No Award. I very much doubt it is how he had hoped to win a Hugo, but given the snub it implied to the Puppies, it probably was satisfying nonetheless.

This story appeared as a booklet under the Dutch title De Vis in de Fles (literally: The Fish in the Bottle) in 2013. The first English publication of the story originally appeared in Lightspeed and was translated by Lia Belt. Belt is the translator of various big names in fantasy (Feist, Rothfuss) into Dutch. I read it both in English and Dutch for this review. The English version is slightly edited and omits a few bits and pieces from the Dutch original. The English word count being higher is probably caused by the widespread use of compound words in the Dutch language. Personally I didn't feel the edits improved the story. They are minor, but if you can, read the Dutch edition.

One day, gravity fails and the world turns upside down. Toby is a man suffering through a breakup with his girlfriend Sophie when it happens. While recovering from his landing on the ceiling, he sees she texted him. She left her goldfish Bubble at his place and will swing by later to pick him up. Considering it a sign she is still alive, Toby rescues Bubble and sets out to find her.

The story is essentially a metaphore. In his short fiction, Olde Heuvelt likes to play with images that are physically impossible. To literally portray a figure of speech or a metaphor. He did this in his other Hugo Award nominated story, The Boy Who Cast no Shadow (2013) as well.  Tobi's breakup turns his world upside down (Dutch: zet zijn wereld op z'n kop) and the world reflects his state of mind.

Olde Heuvelt has stated he wrote the story after a breakup so there is probably a bit more of the author in Toby. It is not exactly a flattering portrayal. Toby is hurt and it turns him into a selfish bastard really. While this may not be an unusual reaction there were a few things about Toby that bothered me. We see things entirely from his point of view but at the end of the story, I still had no idea why he loved her. How she hurt him yes, but what the basis for his attraction is, beyond the physical, remains unclear. It is entirely filled with negative emotions, to the point where he completely disregards the life and feelings of others as well.

I suppose one way to interpret it, is to draw the parallel between Sophie and Bubbles. Sophie is caught in Toby's fantasy of their romance like Bubbles is caught in the bottle. Sophie however, has the means to break free. In the end, Toby lets go, again both literally and figuratively, I was again struck by the difference it implied for the fate of Bubbles and Sophie. Toby doesn't consider this. He is entirely too self-centred to do so.

The one aspect I did like about the story is Dawnie (Fiep in the Dutch version), the young girl Toby meets along the way. Olde Heuvelt perfectly captures the way children can ask the most obvious questions an adult might overlook. She is more precious than Toby appreciates.

So is it a good story? Some would say it is. It is well written at some levels. Did I like it? Not one bit to be honest. Olde Heuvelt is right in that letting go is an important part of ending a relationship and moving on. The way Toby goes about it though, is problematic in so many ways that I didn't really enjoy reading it. Olde Heuvelt's novels are generally more to my liking.

Story Details
Title: The Day the World Turned Upside Down
Author: Ian McDonald
Language: English, Dutch
Translation: Lia Belt
Originally published: English: Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014, Dutch: De Vis in de Fles, 2013
Read in: Lightspeed, Hebban
Story length: Novelette, English wordcount 10367, Dutch wordcount approximately 9900
Awards: Hugo Award winner
Available online: English: Lightspeed, Dutch: Hebban

Short Fiction Month: Folding Beijing - Hao Jingfang

The Chinese market for science fiction is reportedly huge, and with a general increase in the interest in works from outside the anglophone sphere, a trickle of the local output has reached a more international audience. One of the people involved in this development is Chinese-American author and translator Ken Liu. He is, among other interesting stories, responsible for the translation of Folding Beijing, which originally appeared in Chinese in 2014. Liu's translation appeared in Uncanny Magazine in 2015. It is one of only a handful available from Hao in English but it had quite an impact. I would have put the Hugo win down to Sad Puppy antics if not for the fact that she was nominated for a Sturgeon Award as well.

Some time into the future the vast metropolis of Beijing is divided into three spaces. Its inhabitants are strictly separated from each other by The Change, a daily event that hand over the city to the next group of inhabitants. Lao Dao is a waste processor in the Third Space. He is middle aged and resigned to the fact that he will never amount to anything more. One day he finds a call for help from a man in Second Space among the rubbish he is sorting through. It is an opportunity to at least give a young girl he knows a chance at a good education. Lao Dao sets out to explore parts of the city he is not allowed to enter.

Folding Beijing is something of a dystopia. The city is stratified along lines of economic success, with the vast majority of the people squashed into Third Space, living of the scraps off those higher up in the hierarchy. The city has been designed this way in response to an economic development that was very much part of the US presidential elections last year. The fall in the number of manufacturing jobs. In the story one of the characters sweeps away Trump's promise to bring them back to the US in a few lines. Robots are cheaper and more reliable, it is no longer possible nor economically viable to employ the entire workforce that way. Unless society changes drastically, that is.

The science fictional concept in the story is how the infrastructure of the city is adapted to society's needs. A visual representation of the structure of society, and the huge economic unfairness (especially considering the socialist ideal of equality and public ownership of the means of production) this system enables. Hao illustrates this in another way as well. We meet characters with vastly different ambitions (or lack thereof) in life. Lao Dao himself is perhaps not satisfied, but resigned to his station, while those at the top try to maintain the status quo. The character in Second Space is looking up and thinks he can make it all the way to the top. The trampled masses, the hopeful middle-class and the wealthy few, each kept in their place by a system that separates them rigorously. In the end we could say that the only one who gains a really new perspective on the situation is Lao Dao. He appears a bit defeated but in the end his deep-seated humanity will endear him to the reader.

I ended up quite liking Folding Beijing. It is a story that grows on you as it progresses, and one that addresses a social and economic problem that needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later, and is certainly not confined to China. Definitely a story worth reading.

Story Details
Title: Folding Beijing
Author: Hao Jingfang
Language: English
Translation: Ken Liu
Originally published: Uncanny Magazine, Issue Two, January-February 2015
Read in: Invisible Planets, edited by Ken Liu
Story length: novelette, approximately 16,000 words
Awards: Hugo Award winner, Sturgeon Award nominated
Available online: Uncanny Magazine

Death's End - Cixin Liu

Death's End is the concluding volume of a science fiction trilogy that started with The Three-Body Problem. These novels have been translated from Chinese, and that alone makes them stand out. Translations into English are rare in science fiction. Translations that win awards - The Three-Body Problem won a Hugo Award - are even rarer. Slowly, more attention for science fiction from outside the anglophone sphere is emerging and this series certainly played a part in that. Death's End takes Liu's vision to extremes. It is a book with a scope grander than we have seen in the previous volumes and as such, a fitting conclusion to the series.

The threat from the Trisolarans has, at least for the moment, been neutralized. By finding a way to expose the position of their home world to the galaxy, Earth now has a powerful weapon of deterrence. It is, in a sense, back to the cold war. The Wallfacer project was not the only one humanity started to deal with the crisis however. In this age of deterrence, a young Chinese aerospace engineer wakes up after many decades of hibernation. Her knowledge of one of these programs upsets the carefully maintained balance between the two species. Soon, Earth plunges into another crisis. This one even more lethal than anything they have encountered before.

The translation is once again in the hands of Ken Liu. As far as I can tell he did a splendid job. Liu translated the first novel, before handing over the reigns to Joel Martinsen for the second book. They obviously compared notes because the English version appears seamless to me. Although many of the characters are Chinese, the story takes place on a global scale or even beyond. Liu only needs eleven footnotes in a 600 page book, to explain a few phrases where the context might escape the western reader.

The main character is the Chinese engineer Cheng Xin. She is born in the twenty-first century and lives pretty much through the entire period of the Trisolaran crisis. Cheng takes a decidedly different approach to dealing with the crisis than Luo Ji, the main character in The Dark Forest. Where he sets humanity on a ruthless path of mutually assured destruction, Cheng doesn't care for the responsibility to condemn whole species to death and decide over the fate of whole solar systems. Her compassion proves to be costly in a universe where everybody is out to destroy everybody else.

I must say the parallel Liu draws between society and his main characters annoyed me a bit in this novel. Society swings from 'masculine' values to 'feminine values' and back again. From bellicose and ruthless, to compassionate and passive, and back again. These qualifications will have feminists all over the world up in arms. The idea that humanity needs an utterly ruthless man to survive the crisis and that by not following the examples of Luo and Wade (another powerful figure in the story, and a man devoid of any sense of morality), our species condemns itself to extinction. Whether or not it is desirable to follow a tyrant in wartime is debatable but surely this theme could have been handled without making it into a gender issue.

In the previous novel, the Trisolarans imposed limits on human technological development. After the start of what Liu calls the deterrence age, these limits disappear and humanity once again progresses in great strides. Liu's cosmology becomes ever more complex. His fondness for playing with dimensions and perspectives is given free reign in the book, leading to a number of memorable scenes. Once again, some parts of the novel reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama and the Fountains of Paradise in particular) but there is also a bit of Poul Anderson in the book. Specifically his novel Tau Zero.

Although we follow Cheng for most of the novel, Liu inserts sweeping passages where he explains global developments. They are none too subtle for the most part. Humanity in Liu's vision moves as a whole. There is little room in the narrative for dissent or debate. When presented with irrefutable evidence (something not many people in the west seem to believe in these days), the Earth as a whole decides to follow the inevitable path. Liu breaks the show-don't-tell rule on a massive scale in this novel. If that bothers you as are a reader, this novel is clearly not for you. Personally it didn't bother me beyond the fact that humanity seems to behave a bit more rational than I would expect them to do.

Liu takes the story to the end of the universe and beyond. It is a dark journey, one that offers little hope for any of the creatures inhabiting it. There is just a glimmer at the very end though. While this universe may be doomed, from its ashes, a new one may arise. Since it is a worst case scenario, the salvation of the universe relies on many parties doing something completely selfish. Given all that has gone before, it is no more than the barest hint of light in the dark forest universe.

Liu's trilogy evolves into space opera on the largest possible canvas. It is a trilogy that will awe the reader with grand vistas of the universe. While not flawless, the series has already shown that it is more than capable of finding a global audience. This novel manages to raise the stakes to dizzying heights, and forms a worthy conclusion of the series. I suspect it will turn out to be a favourite for many readers. If I had to pick a favourite it would probably be the first book. It shows us a bit more of Chinese society and that adds to the story in my opinion. For the pure science fiction fan, Death's End is probably more appealing. I do hope that the success of this series has opened the door a bit further for other translations. If anything, these novels show that there is a wealth of material to discover beyond what is written in English.

Book Details
Title: Death's End
Author: Cixin Liu
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 604
Year: 2016
Language: English
Translation: Ken Liu
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-765-7710-4
First published: 2010

The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu

Last year the first part of this trilogy, The Three-Body Problem, was published by Tor. American publishers see translated works as a risk because of the cost of translations so works like this are unfortunately something of a rarity still. Tor cleverly made use of the reputation of the translator of the first volume, Chinese-American author Ken Liu, to draw attention to it and that worked very well indeed. It won the Hugo Award this summer and has certainly been one of the most discussed novels in science fiction this year.The Hugo vote this year is highly controversial because of the Puppies' attempt to manipulate the shortlist. In fact, it was only added to the shortlist because one of the other candidates withdrew. Personally I feel that in a year with normal voting practices it would have had a shot at the award as well. It is definitely Chinese but also firmly rooted in western science fiction, making it very accessible to western readers. While I doubt that The Dark Forest can repeat its predecessor's feat, I do think it is a worthy sequel. If you liked the The Three-Body Problem, you will want to read this book.

The Trisolarans are coming and their mission is to exterminate humanity. The human race has four centuries to prepare but with the help of the sophons, sub-atomic particles, they can listen in on any kind of human communication. Humanity is completely exposed to the Trisolarans except for one place: the privacy of the human mind. To exploit this one advantage, the Wallfacer project is started. Four people overseen by a UN committee  are granted the freedom to work on a plan to defeat the Trisolarans without having to outline it to anyone. They are granted access to enormous resources and are expected to defeat the enemy through deceit and misdirection. A dangerous and desperate plan but it seems like the only chance at survival.

The translation of this second volume is in the hands of Joel Martinsen of whom, other than what it says on the back flap, I know absolutely nothing. A quick search doesn't turn up any other translations by his hand. He follows Ken Liu's lead closely though. There is no noticeable difference in tone of voice and Martinsen is equally reluctant to add footnotes, only doing so in cases where the English-language reader is very unlikely to understand a reference to Chinese history or literature. The switch in translator will not bother the reader. I understand Liu is translating the final novel in the trilogy so continuity in the translation should not be a problem.

The novel covers about two centuries. Liu introduces a new calendar in the novel, counting the years from the start of the crisis. In a way, a lot of things stay the same during this long timespan. The Trisolarans use the sophons to limit humanity's progress in physics, essentially allowing only improvements in already existing technology. Quantum computers for instance, cannot be developed so after a certain point there is no increase in the computing power of processors any more. The technological explosion, as Liu calls it, stalls. It leaves the author free to speculate on what such a threat will do to human society and economy.

In his Big Idea piece on John Scalzi's blog Liu said he was writing a worst case scenario. No benevolent aliens or a prospect of a harmonious federation of planets of the people in this story. One of the major themes Liu examines is what the prospect of near certain extinction would do to the human psyche. It shows up in several forms but despair seems to take over every time. Liu describes the severe economic effects of creating a war economy when there isn't an enemy to fight yet. Something that will eventually lead to a collapse some time in the twenty-first century followed by a renaissance some decades later. Personally I'm wondering if something that is four centuries in the future will affect the human psyche to that degree -  we can't even be made to pay attention to a number of environmental problems that most of us most definitely will live to see after all -  but it is an interesting scenario.

Like the previous novel the author, and many of his characters, think about large groups of people. He pays attention to the thoughts and feelings of the main characters to illustrate a larger point. In themselves they are not all that interesting. Something that is probably more of an issue than in the previous book. I thought Ye Wenjie was a more interesting character than Luo Ji, the central character in this book. Luo keeps his cards close to his chest, which I suppose makes sense for a Wallfacer, but it doesn't do much for our insight into his motivations.

The Dark Forest contains a number of massive scenes in space. For the hard science fiction fan this is probably the highlight of the novel. Not all readers will like them but, as he has shown in The Three-Body Problem,  Liu is good at writing such scenes. In this novel he is absolutely ruthless in them. He so thoroughly quashes humanity's previously held beliefs  that it has made me wonder what he can come up with for the third installment of the trilogy.

Liu's story is again firmly grounded in western science fiction. He formulates an answer to the Fermi paradox for instance, and refers to some of the genre's great works (Foundation, A Clockwork Orange) and he doesn't hide his admiration of Arthur C. Clarke. As we move into the future and Liu is able to use less of China's actual history and as the story takes on more of a global perspective, it becomes even more accessible for the western reader. The Dark Forest delivers everything that The Three-Body Problem does and a bit more. If I had to choose my favourite it would still be the first book because of the historical background used in much of that story but I suspect many readers will find the second book a step up. It is a very dark story though, it will be interesting to see if the final volume, Death's End, will show us a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. It is scheduled for April next year. I for one can't wait to get my hands on it.

Book Details
Title: The Dark Forest
Author: Cixin Liu
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 512
Year: 2015
Language: English
Translation: Joel Martinsen
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7708-1
First published: 2008

Hard To Be a God - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The Gollancz SF Masterworks list includes only a few translated titles and most of them have been written by the Strugatsky brothers. For some reason people like Jules Verne or Stanislav Lem haven't made the list so far. It is yet another sign of how few titles make it in English translation in the genre. To make matters worse, quite a few of the older translations are not very good. Hard To Be a God (1964) for instance, was until recently only available as a double translation. In this case an English translation of the German translation of the Russian original. The Strugatsky brothers were not especially happy with the English translations of their work. Arkady worked as a translator in English (and Japanese), the double translation must have been an irritation to say the least. It doesn't help that censorship in the USSR meant that quite a few translations were based on texts that were not the version the authors preferred.

I read one other book by the Strugatsky brothers, Roadside Picnic (1972), also part of the SF Masterworks series. That edition was based on a translation considered imperfect. In 2012 an new translation appeared by Olena Bormashenko, a few months before the death of Boris, the last surviving brother. I haven't read that translation but from what I hear, it is superior to the earlier one. Unlike Roadside Picnic, which was reissued before the 2012 translation was available, Gollancz used a new translation for this edition of Hard To Be a God. It is copyrighted in 2014 and again credited to Olena Bormashenko. All of this makes me wonder what the story behind the translation of Monday Begins on Saturday (1965), the third Strugatsky title of the SF Masterworks list, is. But enough on translations, let's look at the novel.

An undercover agent has been positioned on a planted where society has regressed to a feudal system. His job is to observe only but he finds it ever harder to keep from interfering in the face of the brutality he encounters. With his more advanced knowledge of history and society, the injustice he witnesses is almost too much to bear. Interfering is not only strictly forbidden, it is also highly dangerous. Those who give in to the temptation put themselves and others in grave danger. It is, in other words, hard to be a god.

The introduction to this edition is written by Scottish author Ken MacLeod and I very much recommend you read it. MacLeod is no stranger to leftist themes in his own work and he manages to put the novel in a political context that many readers would have missed. The idea behind this novel is that society inevitably moves toward a situation where class, money and even control by a state are things of the past. An utopian vision that is not unlike the one encountered in Star Trek. Unsurprisingly, it goes back to the works of Karl Marx. This inevitability comes back a lot in the doctrines of communist states and parties and most of them don't react too well when political theory doesn't quite hold up in reality. A mismatch between theory and reality is what occurs in this novel though, making it a potentially very explosive work in 1960s Soviet society. The brothers had to cover their critique with an exciting adventure but once you have been made aware of the idea that is the foundation of the story, it is impossible to miss.

The story itself takes place in the Noon universe, a loosely related set of novels named after Noon, 22nd Century (1961), the first in the sequence. The brothers didn't really intend to develop a fictional universe so the book can be read independently. On the surface it is an adventure, which according to the afterword by Boris Strugatsky is what the brothers set out to write. They had something along the lines of The Three Musketeers in mind but drifted a bit from the original idea in the writing. Consequently, it is quite fast paced, with developments moving faster than the characters have time to keep up with.

Where theory predicts that society would move into an era of accelerating scientific and economic development and greater personal freedom, the story is one the increasing influence of a cult that looks at knowledge, cultural refinement and even reading as highly suspicious. Knowledge is dangerous and must be suppressed. The level of fanaticism, brutality, rigidity and sheer ignorance reminds me a bit of some of the more extreme Islamist movements that have been making a name for themselves in recent years. The novel draws a direct parallel with Nazi Germany though, the events of  Night of the Long Knives in particular.

Our observer watches all this and tries to subtly influence events by helping notable scientists and intellectuals to flee the country. A task made ever more hazardous by the increasing influence of the cult. It is a very stark contrast to the life our observer has been positioned in. the nobles of the nation are mostly portrayed as corrupt and decadent. Apart from a few exceptions, they don't seem to see the disaster barreling down on them. There would seem to be a parallel between the story and the Stalinist purging of the 1930s. Then again, something that brazen might not have slipped past the censors. Read it a bit differently and it could also be the Russian revolution or the revolution of 1905. There is no shortage of revolutionary events and uprisings in Russian history.

The main character is essentially torn between his experience and knowledge as an observer and growing attachment to the object of his studies. He finds it hard to keep his personal ethics and integrity in line with the assignment he's been given and becomes increasingly desperate over the course of the novel. The increasing strain on the main characters is very well done. It's almost a prediction of what would happen to the USSR when it couldn't bridge the gap between political and economic theory and reality.

The writing style, especially the vocabulary the translator (or the authors?) employs, takes a bit of getting used to. Part of that seems to be conscious choice by the authors to make the nobles in the story sound pompous. The dialogues between them are almost comical to read. The style is probably not something that would get past an American editor though, so for some readers it will be a bit of a rocky ride especially early on. I've seen a lot of comments questioning the translator but one should keep in mind that this book was written by two men from a different literary tradition. Part of it at least, is clearly the authors intent.

The Strugatsky brothers approach science fiction in a very different way than western authors would and that alone makes it a shame that many of their books are out of print. They make a case for more attention to translations if my opinion. There are many more ways to look at science fiction that what the English-speaking world has to offer. Hard To Be a God is, a book that hides a lot under the fast paced surface of the story. Roadside Picnic remains their best known work but I don't think there is much between that book and Hard To Be a God to be honest. It is a work of science fiction that certainly deserves its place in the Masterworks list.

Book Details
Title: Hard To Be a God
Author: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 246
Year: 2015
Language: English
Translation: Olena Bormashenko
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-473-20829-2
First published: 1964

Ségou II: De verkruimelde aarde - Maryse Condé

Ségou II: De verkruimelde aarde is the second part of the duology Maryse Condé wrote about the city of Ségou in present day Mali. Like the first part, which I reviewed earlier this year, I read it in Dutch translation. The original is in French and appeared under the title Ségou: La Terre en miette. It has been translated in English as well under the title Children of Segu but that edition appears to be long out of print. The second part is generally considered to be the lesser of the two. I tend to agree with that. Although I did enjoy this reread, some repetition works its way into the narrative. That being said, it does a very good job of showing the reader the developments that affect the city.

The second book covers the period from the fall of Ségou to the Toucouleur Empire of El Hadj Omar Tall in 1861 to the arrival of the French in 1890. It again follows the lives of the sons of the Traoré family, who spend lot of time outside the city. The book is essentially divided in four sections. The first deals with the life of Mohammed, who lost a leg in the war against the Toucouleur and desperately tries to reconcile his religious convictions and the goals of El Hadj Omar with his Bamambara heritage. The second section covers the story of Olubunmi, who worked for the French and knows what is in store for the city. The third section deals with the journey of Samuel. Raised by his devoutly Christian father and educated by the English, he decides to seek out his Trelawny ancestors on his mother's side of the family and gets caught up in the Morant Bay Rebellion on Jamaica. The final part of the novel is seen from the point of view of Omar, son of Mohammed, who is trying to understand the father he never knew and end up trying to start a jihad against the French. More than enough material for drama in other words.

There is an element of repetition in these novels. The Traoré men are often idealistic, with grand plans to change the direction of the city of Ségou, the Bambara people or even the continent. They inevitably clash hard with the realities of the world around them and end up disillusioned or dead. Sometimes both. Where in the first novel, fate carried the Traorés all over the world, the characters in this one are more likely to make their own choices. The outcome of these choices are usually not much better than the lives forced upon the four sons of Dousika in the first novel.

The main characters spend relatively little time in the city of Ségou. In fact, most of the main characters are somewhat estranged from their Bambara roots. Mohammed for instance, feels he should be a good Muslim first, and despises his people for the mixture of Islam and traditional beliefs that is practiced in the family. Where the family as a whole, seems to manage a balance, he cannot and it gets him in a lot of trouble. It is a conflict his son Omar will relive to an extent a generation later.

Samuel is even more cut of from Ségou. He has a very poor relationship with his father and that influences his decision to leave for Jamaica. His grandmother was part of the Maroons. Escaped slaves who resisted the British and managed to establish a free community in the 1700s. While the British did not defeat them, they did manage to get them to agree to hunt other escaped slaves for them. Samuel is severely disillusioned when he sees what has become of the people who he considered heroes. It is one of the many examples in the novels of how dealing with white people, one way or another, always ends in disaster for the black characters.

The relationship between Africa and its diaspora is a theme that shows up in many of Condé's novels and it is very prominent in this particular storyline. In the previous novel it was the descendants of Naba who show the problematic relationship between the slaves and their descendants and the Africans who remained on the continent. Samuel shows us another side of this. Because of his education and upbringing, the blacks on Jamaica tease him by wondering how he can be a white man even if he is from Africa. Condé drives how the dramatic consequences of their displacement and the loss of their cultural roots home thoroughly in this book.

Another tragedy that is well represented in this novel is the way in which the colonizing powers manage to control vast stretches of the continent with minimal resources and manpower by exploiting the internal divisions among the local population. Omar's slogan, 'we are one' (against the French) mostly falls on deaf ears or is considered a somewhat controversial interpretation of a sura in the koran. The Bambara try to get rid of Toucouleur rule by enlisting the help of the French, the result of which is the establishment of French rule. While the white men seem to be unable to tell one black person from another, they know how to exploit the differences. The sheer racism and disregard of local culture, traditions and economies and even human life is staggering even to a people who have experienced a jihad a generation before. Condé may well have spared us the worst by ending her tale in 1890.

Once again the women in this book suffer even more than the men. Their men, caught up in wars, religious conflicts and political games do not precisely make life easy for them and neither the Bambara traditions nor Islam treats them kindly. Under the French things would not improve either. Whichever way they turn, they are at the mercy of men who, while not always uncaring, see them as little more than possessions or in some cases distractions from their attempts at living a devoutly religious life. Condé chooses to tell her story almost entirely from male points of view. I can't help but wonder how this novel would have turned out with a bit more sections form a female perspective.

Where we started the tale with a proud, independent nation, over the course of two books we see the city of Ségou decline ever further. Their absorptions into French Sudan seems inescapable. What little hope remains in this book can be found in the roots of the extended Traoré family. It is a family who have weathered all storms for almost a century. Despite religious disputes and all manner of conflict, they have managed to keep that in tact at least. Condé leaves us with a profound sense of loss at the end of the novel, where one of the charters muses on the state of the city and how he is going to lead the family though this. Although the continuing downward spiral in both books suggest an answer, it is up to the reader to decide whether or not to go along with that. Whichever way you choose to look at it, Ségou is a remarkable piece of historical fiction.

Book Details 
Title: Ségou II: De verkruimelde aarde  
Author: Maryse Condé
Publisher: Rainbow Pocket
Pages: 550  
Year: 1990
Language: Dutch
Translation: Edith Klapwijk
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 90-6766-086-8
First published: 1985

Ségou I: De aarden wallen - Maryse Condé

If you read the history of a random country in sub-Saharan Africa, it either begins at the first contact with Europeans or briefly mentions the state of the region right before the colonial powers show up. Before that, Africa appears not to have had a history. At least not one that anybody in the western world is particularly interested in exploring. In the west, Africa might have been an unknown continent until the end of the nineteenth century, but that obviously doesn't make it the start of history. The thing that attracted me to this book many years ago is that Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé explores the history of city of Ségou (or Segu if you prefer the English spelling), located in present-day Mali, before it became part of the French colonial empire. I read it in Dutch translation, the original French title is Ségou: Les murailles de terre. It has been translated into English as well under the rather unimaginative title Segu. It is the first part of a duology, I hope to have a look at the second volume later in the year.

The novel opens in October 1796 when the Bambara state ruled from Ségou is at the height of its power. Its soldiers have subjugated all its neighbours and is growing rich from the trade in slaves. The river Joliba (Niger) keeps its fields fertile and productive and the ruler Mansa Mozon is strong and feared throughout the region. The Bambara are a proud and confident people, but change is about to arrive in Ségou. A white man by the name of Mungo Park presents himself at the gate of the city and from the north the call of Islam is heard ever louder. As the decline of the empire sets in, we follow the members of the Traoré family. Four of its sons will be scattered across the globe, showing us the developments that, unknown to much of the Bambara population of the city, contribute to the downward spiral they find themselves in.

Interestingly, Condé starts where many of the history books would start, with the first white man to show up in the area. She chooses to use him as a herald of change but the change that most directly affects the city in the book doesn't come from the western powers. Ségou would not be taken by the French until 1890. Tiékoro hears the call of Islam early on in the novel. His curiosity about the religion shocks his family. The morals of his new religion clashes with the traditional Bambara views on sexuality, family and religion. He gets sent to Tombouctou to study however, accompanied by his brother Siga. Where Tiékoro's conversion is complete, Siga's is only skin deep. He adopts an Arab name out of necessity and while he is interested in learning to write, he doesn't particularly care for a ban on alcohol or extramarital sex. The conflict in the family between Siga's practicality and Tiékoro's fanaticism is one that will play out throughout the Bambara empire. It's a conflict that rips the city apart in the end, and if you look at current events in Mali, it is a conflict that continues to be relevant to the region.

A third son, Naba, is pulled in another direction. He is taken prisoner and suffers the fate so many Africans taken in raids and wars have had to endure. He is sold as a slave and ends up on the island of Gorée, the departure point of many transports to the new world. He is bought by one of the rich inhabitants of the island but when he falls in love with a slave girl about to depart for Brazil, he sneaks on board and goes with her. From Naba's point of view we get to see the slave trade and its importance to the economy of many of the African empires, but also the cost in human suffering and effects of a loss of their roots and culture. The novel is set in a period in which slavery is challenged from several sides. The ban on the trade  in 1807 by Great Britain is a historically important moment, although in practice the slave trade would go on for decades after.

The fourth member of the Traoré family Condé uses to explore the external pressures on the Bambara empire is Malobali. He makes a run for it after being sent to Djenné to study the Islam and ends up serving in the army of the Ashanti Empire, in what is today part of Ghana. Through his eyes we explore the expanding influence of the British, the introduction of Christianity and the effect the (descendants of) returning slaves have on west-African society. While the Ashanti would not be completely defeated and colonized by the British entirely until after the fourth Anglo-Ashanti War starting in 1895, their influence is still felt throughout the region.

The brilliance of this book is probably in the way Condé manages to describe so many diverse cultures the characters encounter. She manages to step into the Bambara worldview but describes places like Brazil, the Ashanti empire, Morocco, London, Djenné and Tombouctou vividly as well. The author doesn't overwhelm the reader with it, but in most of these places, hints to the history are included. The Bambara Empire for instance, is not the only one to flourish in the region. Ségou was once part of the Songhai Empire, and before that the Mali Empire. It is very interesting to see how the Traoré sons often represent the outsider view to a particular culture, religion or nation, while in the generation of their children it shifts dramatically. There is also a big gap between the characters who stay in Ségou and those who have seen parts of the world. In the entire novel you can feel the hammer coming down on the city that despite all these omens remains proud and self-assured to the point of arrogance.

With the frequent changes in point of view and the large timespan the novel covers, the character development is not very in depth. Characters are chosen to represent a development and Condé spends quite a lot of time telling us exactly what makes them tick. What she is interested in is what they witness and how it will shape the city that is the real main character of the novel. It's a style of writing that is not that unusual in historical novels but not everybody can appreciate it. Personally I like the variety in characters and locales Condé employs just fine.

One other thing that might turn the reader of is the way gender relations are portrayed in the novel. Although there are plenty of female characters in the book, almost the entire novel is written from male points of view. They have opinions on women and sexuality that fit the society and religion they adhere to and usually those ideas are quite sexist. Condé doesn't steer away from it. Forced marriages, abuse of slaves and rape are very much part of the story and we are not spared the consequences of it. Several of the characters struggle with the restrictions their new religion puts on sexual activity in ways that often quite brutally expose the hypocrisy of the characters and their society. Bambara customs are not spared in that department. Their views on sex, while not as restrictive to the men, are not exactly free of sexism and other problems.

I think this was the fourth time I've read this book and I still think it is an amazing read. It is one of the few novels I'm aware of that shows us an African society from the inside and succeeds in making it believable. Condé has obviously put in a lot of research into the history, culture and customs of Ségou and the result is a very good historical novel. It's a book that will make the reader a lot more aware of the fact that slave trade, religious fanaticism and colonialism left their scars on many local cultures and have sown the seeds of many of the post-colonial conflicts that still plague the continent. On the other hand it also shows this part of the world as vibrant, culturally rich and in some ways very resilient. I must admit that I knew very little of Mali before I read this book for the first time many years ago and that may have been the type or reader Condé was aiming for. It is a great introduction to a piece of Africa that does not show up in the history curriculum of the average western highschool student. Since that is not likely to change anytime soon, you should probably just go out and read this book.

Book Details
Title: Ségou. I: De aarden wallen
Author: Maryse Condé
Publisher: Rainbow Pocket
Pages: 609
Year: 1993
Language: Dutch
Translation: Stefaan van den Bremt
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 90-6766-085-X
First published: 1984

The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu

Note on Chinese names: Tor has chosen to put the name of the author in the western order. In (tradition) Chinese the family name would come first. Doubleday, for its edition of The Fat Years, has chosen to leave the Chinese order as it is. The translator of The Three-Body Problem uses the Chinese order in the entire novel, with the cover being the only exception. I always use the title of the novel and author name as they appear on the cover but in the rest of the review I've chosen to use the Chinese order for the author and the characters mentioned. Also note that the translator Ken Liu uses his western name - I don't know what it is but I'm pretty sure he has a Chinese one as well -  so I've followed that in the review.

We tend to think of Science Fiction as a largely Anglo-Saxon affair. Most of the big names are from the US, with a bunch of Brits mixed in. This overemphasis on English-language works is a bit misleading however. Science Fiction is written all over the world and one of the largest markets is currently in China. Only very rarely does something of this vast body of work make it into western bookshops but recently a number of initiatives to sell Chinese Science Fiction to a western audience have appeared. Clarkesworld ran a Kickstarter project to make it possible for them to include translated stories in their magazine, stories have shown up in the three volumes of The Apex Book of World SF and a couple of years ago Doubleday published Chan Koonchung's novel The Fat Years, which I must admit is the only Chinese-language Science Fiction novel I've read to date. Now Tor has spotted the possibilities as well and bought Liu Cixin's Thee-Body trilogy. The Three-Body Problem is the first volume and it has been translated by the Chinese-American author Ken Liu, someone with a keen interest in Chinese Science Fiction. Not surprisingly, this publication has attracted a lot of attention, and after reading the book, I can only add my voice to the chorus of reviewers out there telling you to read it. It really is one of the most exciting books published recently.

Amid the turbulent events of the Cultural revolution, astrophysicists Ye Wenjie's life is turned upside down. She witnesses her father, a once well-respected professor, be killed by the Red Guard, and is branded an enemy of the revolution after being caught reading the subversive novel Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Her knowledge is too valuable to waste away in some reeducation camp however. She is assigned to a military base that serves as a Chinese answer to the SETI project. There, she witnesses what without a doubt is the most important event in human history.

Tor hit the jackpot with this novel. There is of course a large cultural gap between China and the western audience, and that is apparent in the novel. The story and themes clearly reach back to classics of the genre however. Liu's novel is firmly grounded in science. The title refers to a well known mathematical problem in both classical and quantum mechanics. On top of that there is quite a bit of astronomy and references to nanotechnology. I was surprised by the inclusion of ecology in the novel. I must, to my shame, admit to never having read Carson's Silent Spring. A great sin for someone who studied environmental science. It is a very influential novel in the field. Of course the Cultural Revolution and a number of other developments in Communist era China did great damage to the environment so perhaps it is not that surprising.

Chinese novels tend to contain an awful lot of references to the long history of the nation and the literary traditions that go back more than two thousand years. Much of which would be lost on the reader without a little explanation now and then. In fact, when I read Chan's novel I did have the feeling I was missing quite a lot. Translator Ken Liu has tried to help the reader a little bit with a series of footnotes explaining some of the details. In an afterword he also explains some of his choices in translating the novel. There is always a lot of tension in translation between the literal meaning and the intent of the words and I suspect Ken Liu has been a bit more liberal in his translation than Michael S. Duke has been for his translation of The Fat Years. It is a novel that reads very smoothly for the western reader. I did note some things that you don't come across in many western novels, most notably the way the writer conveys the information the reader needs to follow the plot. It borders on infodumping at times and it is something I also noticed in Chan Koonchung's writing. That being said, the differences in this novel are not so obvious that I got the feeling I was missing things.

Liu tells his story out of chronological order. We have sections covering the 1960 to the 1980 that tell the story of Ye Wenjie and her discovery in the military observatory. Her views on humanity and the decision she makes on behalf of the species is the mystery that forms the centre of the plot. The man to unravel it is the nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao. His part of the story is set sometime in the early twenty-first century. Liu doesn't mention a specific year but around now feels right. Near future from the perspective of the novel. The Chinese edition was published in 2007. Wang is caught in a web of mysteries, manipulations of a global movement with, to him, unknown goals and seemingly impossible manipulations of the physical reality at the quantum level. It drives Wang to desperation and many prominent theoretical scientists to suicide. The very foundations of natural science are shaken. This part of the story reminded me of the short story Division by Zero written by Ted Chiang.

The scope of Liu's tale is much larger than that of Chiang of course. Over the course of the novel the meaning of the Three-Body Problem, the mysterious computer game so many of the characters are playing and Ye's discovery and subsequent actions fall into place. Liu has built a story out of these and many other elements that fans of classic science fiction will appreciate. It is also very much a first book in a trilogy.  Ye's view on humanity is not overly positive, shaped as her life has been by violence and political insanity. She feels the human race is not capable of cleaning up the mess it has created and takes drastic action. This novel mostly deals with the motivations for that action and Ye's secrets becoming public knowledge. The full impact, it is to be expected, won't be felt until the next volume of the trilogy.

Ye is definitely the star of this novel. Her character is by far the most well rounded of the bunch, for the most part skilfully navigating the political minefield she finds herself in. Wang is a spectator by comparison. With his actions mostly guided by others he is not a very interesting man to read about. I would have liked to see him break away from the suggestions of others which he unfailingly follows up on. His scientific world view crumbles to the very foundation but he doesn't think this is enough to put a toe out of line. Around him, many of the secondary characters have less problems with rash action. It lends some parts of the novel an almost thriller like level of suspense.  I can't help but wonder what The Three-Body Problem could have been if the uncovering of this enormous secret would have been a bit less orderly.

The Three-Body Problem is not a flawless novel but it is certainly a very good one. So good in fact, that I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up on a few award shortlists. Ken Liu has obviously put his heart into the translation, as well as his impressive knowledge of both the English and Chinese language. As someone writing is a second language, I cannot emphasize enough how hard translating is. The linguistic and cultural differences that find their way into the text and the shades of meanings and connotations that words can carry in one language but not in another make translating an art as much as writing. The novel itself has many elements of classical science fiction to make it familiar to the reader and enough Chinese culture and history to make it different to the reader, but not overwhelmingly so. It was probably a very good choice picking this novel to bring Chinese science fiction to a western audience. I enjoyed reading it a lot. Bring on the second volume!

Book Details
Title: The Three-Body Problem
Author: Cixin Liu
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 399
Year: 2014
Language: English
Translation: Ken Liu
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7706-7
First published: 2007

The Apex Book of World SF 3 - Lavie Tidhar

A lot has changed in genre fiction since the appearance of the first volume of The Apex Book of World SF in 2009. A discussion about a more inclusive genre in terms of culture, gender and sexual orientation has been raging for quite a while now and progress on this front is clearly being made. Where Tidhar probably had to work very hard to get access to enough material to fill the first volume, nowadays more and more material is being published by writers form outside the English speaking world and western culture. It's a development that can't be completely laid at the feet of this series of anthologies of course, but it does offer a platform for such works and shows that there is a market for it. In other words, there is more than enough reason to keep the momentum going and release a third volume.

This third volume again is a mix of stories originally written in English and translated works. Almost all works were previously published in magazines or other collections, only one is original to this anthology. It has stories from all continents, with maybe a slight emphasis on Asia, and it stretches science fiction to include fantasy and horror. Two things are a bit different compared to the previous two editions. The women far outnumber the men in this collection, and it contains fewer stories than the first and second volume did. I don't know if the the abundance of female authors is intentional but Tidhar clearly did opt to include a few longer pieces in this anthology.

As with any collection, I didn't connect with all of the stories the same way. The overall quality is quite high but the variation in style and themes will almost inevitably cause the reader to have a few clear favorites. I'll mention a few of mine but I encourage you to find your own. These anthologies have been an eye-opener for me.

The Anthology opens with Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods by Benjanun Sriduangkaew. She is from Thailand and has been making her presence felt in the short fiction market in the past couple of years. I've read one other story by her that was contained in the anthology We See a Different Frontier (2013). This story is one of the first she published and if I had to classify it, I'd say it is a form of military science fiction. It is not easy on the reader. Where much science fiction prefers plot over form, in this story neither wants to give ground to the other. It is beautifully written and has quite an emotional impact. Some readers will be left with questions about what just happened though. From a literary point of view this may be the strongest story in the collection.

The City of Silence is another of my favourites. It was written by Chinese author Ma Boyong and is one of the two stories that have been translated by Ken Liu. The story is set in a future where the state exercises extreme levels of control over its citizens. They go so far as to create a list of 'healthy words' that are permissible to be used in conversation and on the heavily censored internet. As people find more and more creative ways to get their opinion across, the list grows ever shorter. Language itself is under threat from the state.

The story is clearly inspired by George Orwell's 1984 but takes the control of the state to even more extreme levels. It underlines the interesting relationship between the state, politics and language in a way. I can't help but wonder how much of this story is criticism of the Chinese government. On the other hand, for the western reader there is a clear parallel to such things as privacy on the Internet and net neutrality. The City of Silence offers a lot of food for thought.

Jungle Fever by Zulaikha Nurain Mudzor (Malaysia) is one of the uncut horror pieces in the collection. It deals with a woman who scratches herself on a jungle plant. A wound that starts to change her immediately. The story is told from first person perspective and the main character knows exactly what is going on but doesn't care. It makes the story a bit understated and somehow that adds to the horror of the transformation. 

Two stories in this collection deal with ghosts. Waiting with Mortals by Philippine author Crystal Koo is the one that had the most impact on me. Like many ghost stories it revolves around unfinished business and the deceased not being able to fully experience mortal life. In this story the dead have the means to influence the living however. It is invasive and profoundly unethical but obsession drives some ghosts to do it anyway. The psychological pressure on the  main character builds to the point where he has to face his situation and his own motivations head on. The tension in the story is very well built up although some readers may find the resolution a bit predictable.

Another horrific story, although it leans towards fantasy a bit too, is Three Little Children by the French writers couple Ange. It was translated by Tom Clegg and is based on a children's song. This version is a lot darker than what you'd normally tell children. In the story we change from the point of view of a child to that of an adult and back, giving it alternately the feel of a fairy tale and a murder mystery. In that sense, it is a very clever piece of writing. I liked the fact that the translator retained the French lyrics of the song too.

The anthology ends with Dancing on the Red Planet by the Korean-Norwegian author Berit Ellingsen. It's a frivolous piece about the first manned mission to Mars and how to celebrate this momentous occasion. It almost makes you wish the Americans had pulled something like this in 1969. It leaves a smile on your face when you turn the last page of this anthology. It's an excellent choice for a final story.

Once again Tidhar managed to find a number of high quality and very diverse stories to fill the third volume of The Apex Book of World SF. Readers who have enjoyed the first two volumes will not want to miss it. In terms of quality it may well be the best one of the three. Tidhar admits in his Introduction that he has access to a larger number of stories now than when he started work on the first volume. Let's hope this trend continues because these anthologies have made it abundantly clear that it pays to look beyond the English speaking world. Genre fiction is a world-wide phenomenon, it's past time to start treating it as such.

Book Details
Title: The Apex Book of World SF 3
Editor: Lavie Tidhar
Publisher: Apex Publications
Pages: 266
Year: 2014
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-937009-24-3
First published: 2014

Bound in Darkness - Kim ten Tusscher

Last month I reviewed Kim ten Tusscher's debut novel Hydrhaga, which has recently appeared in English translation. The package the author sent me also contained a copy of her second novel Bound in Darkness. It is the first novel of the Lilith trilogy and a much more ambitious work than Hydrhaga. The Dutch edition first appeared in 2010. As of this year, it is available in English too. I'm not entirely sure if and when the other two volumes will follow. In my review of Hydrhaga I pointed out quite a few things I had problems with. Bound in Darkness shares some flaws with Hydrhaga but overall it is a step up in craftsmanship. Ten Tusscher has developed a much better grip on the plot and the pacing of the story.

The translation of this novel was done by Rianne Stolwijk. I read the Dutch sample provided on the author's website to get a feel for the translation. It looks like a more direct translation to me. The tekst of Hydrhaga deviated a bit more from the literal Ducth original. It's hard to compare the two as Bound in Darkness is better written, but from reading the original Dutch I got the impression Stolwijk is more used to translating technical texts rather than fiction. There is a fine line between literal meaning of the word and the author's intent. I think taking a bit more liberties with the text would have improved it. It's a matter of taste though. Stolwijk clearly has a good grasp of the English language and translating fiction always involves elements that can't be captured in the grammar and vocabulary of a language.

Lilith is on the run. She is desperately trying to escape her master Kasimirh, a magician forcing her into a life of servitude and violence to realize his religious ideals. While trying to steal food, Lilith is caught and in the fight that follows she nearly kills a man. The brother of this man brings her before the king of the nation of Merzia to face his judgment. To pay for her crime she receives a flogging and has to work off her debt to the king after he compensates the brothers for their loss and trouble. Placed in the care of the magician Ferhdessar and the head of the palace household Ghalatea, Lilith is safe from her former master for the moment but once again a prisoner. Kasimirh is not going to let his subject escape though. War is about to engulf Merzia. Another confrontation with her former master seems inevitable.

Once again Ten Tusscher picks a young woman as main character. Where Lumea appears to have had a reasonably happy childhood, Lilith's has been one of abuse. It makes the book a lot darker than Hydrhaga. The title of the novel is clearly fitting in that respect. Despair, guilt and paranoia are always close to the surface. Lilith's behavior follows a pattern seen in many victims of domestic abuse. On the one hand she fears Kasimirh and wants to be free of him, on the other he gives her the attention nobody else seems to be willing to give her. It results in a strange kind of dependance on him, one she spends the entire novel trying to shake.

There is a decidedly violent side to Lilith's personality too. She is a shapeshifter and can change into a powerful dragon. As such, she was very valuable to Kasimirh, whose dreams of world domination in part rely on her strength. She has been forced to wreak havoc on many a village in the past, killing countless innocent people in the process. The guilt of this weights heavily on her. It's one of the aspects of the story I had a problem with. Throughout the novel Lilith is being manipulated, tricked and forced to do certain things which results in the death of many people. At one level it is obvious that she would feel responsible for that but on the other hand the author is careful always to make sure the real blame lies with someone else. Lilith has quite a volatile character, it wouldn't seem that unlikely that she would make a genuine mistake at one point. The tragedy of many people who are forced to fight in a war is that they are both victim and perpetrator. I think Ten Tusscher didn't quite get the most out of her character here. The real tragedy is somehow always one step removed from her.

That being said, she is a much better developed character than Lumea. Ten Tusscher clearly put more thought into this character. More planning is something that is obvious in all aspects of the novel. I'm not sure there are people who can write a trilogy organically but Ten Tusscher clearly didn't intend to. She has a plan, the story has a clear direction and she completes the novel in what is both a natural break in the story and a hook for the next novel.

The worldbuilding takes a bit of a backseat in the novel. Ten Tusscher describes the religious roots of the conflict briefly and shows us how the political structure of Merzia works, but everything else remains in the background. There is an intense focus on the characters and the relationship between Lilith and the two manipulative magicians in her life that doesn't allow Ten Tusscher to get too descriptive. At times it makes the conflict seem a bit simplistic but especially in the scenes seen from the point of view of Ferhdessar hint at much more depth. Ten Tusscher leaves herself a lot of avenues to explore in the next two volumes.

After reading Hydrhaga I had adjusted my expectations for this novel a bit. Bound in Darkness is such a step up in quality however, that the novel turned out to be a pleasant surprise. So much so in fact, that I wonder if Ten Tusscher didn't do herself a disservice by having Hydrhaga translated. She might have been better off by starting with Bound in Darkness. Ten Tusscher seems to have found her stride in this novel. It is a solid start to the trilogy. Pick this one up and you'll be hooked for the entire series.

Book Details
Title: Bound in Darkness
Author: Kim ten Tusscher
Publisher: Alter Ego Press
Pages: 279
Year: 2014
Language: English
Format: Paperbacl
ISBN: 978-94-907-6747-1
First published: 2010

Hydrhaga - Kim ten Tusscher

Like in the English language world, Fantasy is a bit of a niche market in the Netherlands. The Dutch language market, with some 23 million first language speakers, is nowhere near large enough to support full time Fantasy writers. As a result, very few works of Fantasy originally written in Dutch are published in what would be considered a professional fashion in the English language world. The obvious answer for authors with ambitions of making a living as a writer is to get their works translated, with the English language as the big prize. Unfortunately that market isn't very open to translations. With so many native speakers clamouring for attention, shouldering the additional cost of a translation simply isn't worth the effort for a book that is not certain to sell. So what do you do to get a foot in the door? Have the translation done yourself. Thomas Olde Heuvelt has recently tried this approach and it has gotten him two spots on the Hugo Award shortlist. For some, it may be worth trying.

Getting a Fantasy novel in Dutch published is not impossible however. In the area between self publishing and traditional publishing quite a lot is happening in the Netherlands. One of the publishers operating in this area is Uitgeverij Zilverspoor. They have an editorial process, art direction and a nice website but with print runs more likely to be in the hundreds than thousands and a persistent lack of their books showing up in the brick and mortar book stores, it is unlikely any of the people involved are actually making a living this way. That doesn't seem to dampen their ambition though. Recently they launched a new imprint, Alter Ego Press, which publishes English language books. So far the number of titles is limited but I think it is an initiative worth watching.

One of the authors who had her books translated is Kim ten Tusscher. Her Dutch bibliography currently contains five novels, two of which have been translated into English. The author kindly provided me with review copies of the English language editions. The first one is Hydrhaga, a standalone Fantasy first published in Dutch in 2008. The translation was done by Judit Coppens, a name I haven't come across before. To get a feel for the translation I also read the fourteen page sample of the Dutch edition of Hydrhaga provided on the author's website. It looks like this new English edition also included a bit of rewriting. It is not a one on one translation of the text on Ten Tusscher's website. From what I can tell the translation has been done by someone with a knowledge of the English language that far exceeds mine. The prose is not stunning but it does do justice to Ten Tusscher's writing.

The story's main character is a young woman by the name of Lumea (moon symbolism is a motif in this novel) on a journey towards the mysterious city of Hydrhaga. Drawn by the promise of a carefree life, freed of the traditional role her society is trying to force her into, Lumea arrives in the city of Omnesia (which indeed seems to have forgotten part of its history). Nobody is willing to help her get to her final destination however, until she meets the mysterious Elion. Together they manage to find her destination, but things turn out to be quite different from what Lumea imagined. The city hides a secret that will quickly turn Lumea's hopes and dreams sour.

In this novel, Ten Tusscher is looking for the strong female lead that seems to defy so many authors in epic fantasy. In a way she finds her too. Lumea grows throughout the novel. She is barely mature and somewhat naive early on in the novel, but gains confidence and maturity as the story progresses. She is, all things considered, an interesting character. What I did have issues with, is the fact that her motivations mostly revealed to the reader long after her actions. The reason why Lumea left home for instance, doesn't come up until the halfway point of the novel and even then it is only partly explained. How she managed to convince her parents to let their barely adult daughter go on a journey to a far away city that doesn't appear on any map on her own, is almost entirely glossed over.

What bothered me most about Lumea is the apparent contradiction between her adherence to the traditional religious beliefs of her people, her sadness at the disappearance of traditional cultural values,  and resistance to being placed in the traditional role of women in her culture. What her culture deems to be her place in society may not stem from its religion but usually these things are interlinked. On the one hand she is one of the few of her generation who sticks to the bond with the land and the connection to nature, on the other, she is something of a revolutionary. Not that these two things are mutually exclusive but Ten Tusscher doesn't manage to unify them in Lumea. Too often she swings from conservative to liberal views or from a pacifist attitude to determined to swing a sword. At times it made me feel that Lumea's character development was driven by the needs of the plot, rather than an attempt by the author to create a complex character.

The worldbuilding is in Hydrhaga is curious as well. It presents the reader with a strange mix of technological development. On the one hand there are airships and submarines, but riding on horseback is still the way to get around on land. Force fields and robotics have been developed but gunpowder or any other form of explosives are absent and fighting is done with swords. It is as if the novel can't quite decide whether it wants to be pseudo-medieval fantasy, steampunk or something else entirely. A clear sense of what is technically possible or an explanation for some strange omissions is lacking. In terms of worldbuilding, the novel is messy.

After finishing the novel I didn't feel like I had read a book that is going to storm the bestsellers lists. Hydrhaga feels like a very organically written piece. The need to find out what comes next and to get to the end of the story overshadow the structure of the tale and the consistency of the world and its characters. Especially later on in the book there is a sense of urgency in the writing that will make the reader want to keep going until the final page is turned. Readers looking for this kind of tale could do worse than pick up this novel. For the more reflective reader, Hydrhaga is less successful. The more reflective reader will see the cracks in this novel however. There is no doubt about the enthusiasm Ten Tusscher shows for writing and the Fantasy genre in particular, but there is some room for improvement in terms of structure, plotting and characterization. I'll be looking at her second novel, Bound in Darkness, in a few weeks time. It'll be interesting to see how she develops.

Book Details
Title: Hydrhaga
Author: Kim ten Tusscher
Publisher: Alter Ego Press
Pages: 206
Year: 2013
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-94-907-6737-2
First published: 2008