William Kennedy: Ironweed (1983)

Edition: Penguin, 1984
Review number: 1106

Francis Phelan left Albany in 1916 after he accidentally dropped and killed his baby son while drunk; after twenty two years living as a bum he returns, trying to make his peace with his memories. This simple idea is the basis for Kennedy's short but deep novel about coming to terms with the past; everyone has to live with the mistakes they have made (even if "what if..." is one of humanity's favourite games), and though Francis may have more serious issues to deal with and may have run away from them more literally than most, his experience is one with which everyone can identify.

There are two main sides to Ironweed. On the one hand, there is the mundane world of the alcoholic down and out in thirties America (even if Francis is currently "dry"). The aimlessness of this subculture combines with the Irishness of the characters to create an impression reminiscent of Waiting For Godot. The wastefullness of the lifestyle is also a strong part of the background, both in terms of the talents of those who become alcoholics (Francis was at one point a major league baseball player, and his companion's studies to become a concert pianist were only cut short by her father's suicide) and in the ever present threat of a squalid death.

The other side to the novel is, I suppose, a kind of magic realist touch. As Francis travels round Albany, he meets the ghosts of those whose death he has been involved with, including not just his son but strikebreakers killed in a riot when he was a striking tram driver. This device introduces pathos, through Francis' conversations with these ghosts, as well as providing the background to his life in Albany prior to going on the road. The ghosts are real to Francis, and so are recorded as though really present even though no one else is able to perceive them; the reader can decide for themselves whether they are supposed to be actual manifestations or constructs of Francis' subconscious.

A more minor facet of the novel which is of some interest is the title. As is indicated at the very beginning, tall ironweed is an American wild flower related to the sunflower, which gets its common name because it has a tough stem. It seems at the outset that this is rather inapplicable to the central character of Francis Phelan - running away to become an alcoholic tramp after killing his child is not the action of as strong a character as this implies, particularly as he did much the same after the strike a few years earlier. As you go on, however, you begin to see that this is a hasty judgement (and, after all, he ran because of something pretty serious in both cases). For a start, Francis is clearly extremely strong physically; no one who wasn't could survive over two decades of alcoholism. Then, too, it takes strength to go back, particularly as the barriers against doing so are likely to seem higher as time passes rather than lower (the reaction of Francis' daughter when she sees him is exactly the sort of thing that he will have been brooding about for twenty years).

Marred in places by a certain sentimentality, Ironweed is nonetheless a fascinating portrait of an individual facing up to the actions of his past.

Brian Stableford: The Cassandra Complex (2001)

Edition: Tor, 2001
Review number: 1105

Following his well received trilogy about the search for a way to bring immortality to the human race, Stableford has now written a prequel. The early advances in this endeavour in his future history came from research to counter the bio-engineered diseases released in the Plague Wars which end some decades before Inherit the Earth, the first of the trilogy. The Cassandra Complex is set at around the beginning of these wars, as the nations of the West watch the progress of "hyperflu" across the world towards them.

The Cassandra Complex has a similar form to the first two novels, also concerning the investigation into a crime among those involved with longevity technology. Lisa Frieman is both a police officer (in forensics) and a biological researcher with connections to the distinguished Morgan Miller (bizarrely misnamed on the jacket synopsis as Jordan Miller). The story starts when she is woken by the sound of intruders in her home, part of a concerted set of attacks which include the kidnapping of Miller and the destruction of a huge experiment. Mouseworld consists of hundreds of thousands of mice in a maze of connected cages intended to see if their strategies for survival might suggest ways for human beings to cope with the overpopulation crisis (which makes their destruction seem a strangely motiveless crime as the approaching war seems certain to solve this problem in a much more drastic way).

Lisa Freeman is intensely involved in the investigation, due to her combined roles of policewoman, biology expert and Miller's closest friend (and former lover) as well as being a peripheral victim. She is not entirely believable, but it is nice to see a central character who is rather more elderly than usual in science fiction.
Nanotechnology and biological engineering are hot topics in science fiction at the moment, and most of the stories they have inspired are set far enough in the future that current controversies about genetic manipulation can be ignored. (The trilogy itself is one example of this.) It allows a writer to explore ideas about what might be done with this sort of technology in a way that the moral issues make impossible in a more contemporary setting. Here, though, Stableford is writing about the near future, the main part of The Cassandra Complex being set in around 2040 with flashbacks to as early as 1999. Thus, Stableford has different concerns here; The Cassandra Complex is not about what could be done with the genetic techniques of the future but rather the dramatic potential of today's concerns about overpopulation, animal experimentation, cloning, biological warfare and the potential for accidental or deliberate release of harmful material. Except on the most obvious of these issues, Stableford seems to want to sit on the fence, not offending anyone (there are, of course, few who would argue that the development of biological weapons is a good thing; the most positive reasons anyone can come up with is to claim it is necessary in the world in which we live). The controversies do give the story a currency which is lacking from the more abstract speculations, though I would expect characters actually involved in biological research to have stronger opinions about the issues than Stableford actually gives them. To make them discuss the issues would, however, add more explanation and argument to a novel already rather overburdened with them.

Before the industrial revolution, most of the potential disasters faced by human societies were biological and ecological (plagues and famines). Then technological disasters seemed uppermost in the mind of the public (nuclear war); but now we have a combination of the two. The constant prediction of disaster is what gives the novel its title, the Cassandra complex being what is suffered by those who predict disaster but are ignored, a prime example being those concerned with the problems of overpopulation.

It is the characterisation which means that The Cassandra Complex doesn't quite live up to the standards set by the other three novels; it contains interesting ideas, and a good (and quite difficult) puzzle. It is certainly enough to make me keen to read Stableford's next novel.

Jonathan Carroll: The Marriage of Sticks (1999)

Edition: Gollancz, 1999
Review number: 1104

The basic scenario of The Marriage of Sticks is typical, I believe, of Carroll's novels (I've only read one other, The Land of Laughs, but this is what I gather). It starts off naturalistically, but gradually strange things begin to happen. In this case, central character Miranda Romanac attends a high school reunion which is spoilt when she hears that the childhood sweetheart James Stillman she expected to see again died some years ago. Returning to her life as a bookdealer in New York, she makes the acquaintance of a fascinating elderly woman, who knew everyone intimately (people like Hemingway and the famous artists of the twenties). Leaving this woman's apartment, she sees James across the street, which turns out only to be the first in a series of bizarre encounters and events.

Both in this novel and The Land of Laughs, the strange events which happen are connected to ideas about fate. Carroll's first novel is about how it might feel to be part of a book, and know that the events in your life are written as fiction by another. Here, fate is fixed for most people, but Miranda is able to change things. This is described mainly through the effects it has on the lives of the others with whom she interacts - James Stillman doesn't have a life-changing experience when she refuses to go on a teenage spree that would have led to imprisonment; a later lover leaves his wife for her when they were meant to stay together.

The title comes from an idea suggested to Miranda by this lover. When some significant event occurs, find a stick and write the date on it (presumably these characters always carry a penknife and a pen). Keep the sticks to stimulate memories, but when you are old and have no more need of them, put them together and burn them, a fire Carroll calls the marriage of sticks. This is presumably something that will bring a kind of closure, an idea which becomes important in the second part of the novel. (How can a person find closure at the end of their life if it has been deflected from its intended course?)

The Marriage of Sticks is an intense novel, and I found reading it an intense experience. A lot of it is about death and mourning, and it brought back memories of that kind from my own life. Not then for the recently bereaved, but recommended for anyone else.

Ric Alexander: Cyber-Killers (1997)

Edition: Orion, 1998
Review number: 1103

In terms of plot, most science fiction - at least when of novel length - is some form of thriller or romance. In recent years, there has been something of a vogue for the futuristic whodunit, but there is a much longer history of cross-genre science/crime fiction including short stories as well as Isaac Asimov's pioneering Elijah Baley novels. This is particularly the case with plots involving computers and murder - computers investigating, preventing or committing crime, or being the objects of murderous impulses themselves.

The short story is a major part of science fiction history, which (because of its pulp associations) was the major form of the genre for about forty years, particularly in the U.S.A. So it might well seem that a short story collection would be an ideal way to showcase some of the ideas that science fiction writers have had about computer related crime. However, there is a serious problem for an editor seeking to select stories around the theme: computers have come to play a more important and more realistic role in science fiction as or after the short story went into a steep decline (as a result of changes in principally American reading habits). Budgets for this kind of book are unlikely to pay for wholesale commissioning of new, up to date, stories, and anyway many of today's authors are less keen to write short stories, demanding as they are in altogether different ways to novels.

Alexander as a result has chosen a selection of mainly older stories by well-known authors. (The reader gets a particularly strong impression that they are old because three of the most recent come right at the end of the collection.) There is actually one which uses punched card technology; as the story, Sam Hall by Poul Anderson, was written as long ago as 1953, this is understandable but jogs the modern reader somewhat. (As a story, it is one of the best in the collection.) It is interesting to read some of the visions of the uses of computers which go back fifty years, particularly when they bring up concerns that are now mainstream. (Sam Hall, for example, is about the use of computers by governments to monitor and control the lives of citizens.) For readers who want to see some of the more current ideas about the future of computing crime (which is after all what the cover synopsis of the anthology claims it is about), this is a bit of a disappointment.

This old fashioned feel is not really the fault of the editor (except for the way that the ordering of the stories contributes to it), and he has certainly chosen some really good stories. (The best, and longest, is Zelazny's Home is the Hangman.) There are two faults which are presumably to be laid at Alexander's door, however. The less serious of these is that the stories do not entirely fit within the parameters the collection sets for itself: not all of them can be said to involve killing, and not all involve computers. He has arranged the stories into three sections, and it is also not clear in some cases why particular stories are placed where they are.

A more serious problem, one which has aspects that might really annoy a reader, is that Alexander's introductions to each story are poor. They take a standard form which, apart from a certain irritating typographical cuteness, describes the career of the writer and summarises the story. The potted biographies are impersonal and nothing special - they read like paragraphs taken straight from a reference book like The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction - but the summaries tend to give away important details that I for one would far sooner garner by reading the actual story. (Science fiction short stories often depend on a small detail for their effect, and the attention of the reader is frequently drawn to this in the introductions.) There is no pleasure in discovering something or working it out when you have just been told it, nor do you tend to find unsettling something you have been informed will make you feel this way. The story really ruined by this is Alfred Bester's Fondly Fahrenheit.

Cyber-Killers is a collection of good stories which nevertheless does not add up to delivering what is promised, and which are best read without the editorials.

Iris Murdoch: The Book and the Brotherhood (1987)

Edition: Chatto & Windus, 1987 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1102

The title to this complex novel suggests that it will have a religious theme, like that of The Bell. There is something in this, but it is only indirectly - the narrative reads like it is about religious ideas, but they play only a small part in the story. The book of the title is a political one, which one character, Davide Crimond, has ostensibly been writing for many years. His writing is funded by a group of rich Oxford graduates, described by one of their number as "part of the brotherhood of Western intellectuals". Even though they no longer believe in the ideals that the book was meant to enshrine, the support continues until the year which is described in Murdoch's novel.

What happens in this year, something which shakes up the relationships among the brotherhood and their friends, is that one of them leaves her husband for Crimond. It is the dislocation this causes among the group, their changing relationships, that Murdoch uses to tell us about what each of them is actually like in the first part of The Book and the Brotherhood. In fact, it could be said that all Murdoch's novels are about the way in which relationships evolve, which perhaps accounts for the way that they read as though they have a sea-like ebb and flow to them. Murdoch here also uses the book to create contrast; in between dramatic events come some distinctly intellectual arguments about the politics of the book, defusing tension. It establishes the believability of the characters extremely effectively, and makes it possible for Murdoch to demonstrate the differences between them.

About two thirds of the way through, though, Murdoch springs a surprise. The arguments cease (the book has been completed), and events escalate towards the melodramatic. Because of the way that the first part of the novel has been structured, this section draws in the reader, already committed to the characters, far more easily than would otherwise be the case. It seems far more real because the people who do these things, who have these things done to them, are well established in the mind, as though they are our own friends who have become involved in something out of their depth.

Then, after these hectic pages reach their climax, there is another change in pace. We get to see something of the way in which the dramatic events of the winter lead to changes in the characters themselves and their relationships. Again, the careful structure of the novel (with of course the symbolism of the new life of springtime) serves to heighten its effectiveness.

Perhaps in the end The Book and the Brotherhood is not as gripping nor as thought provoking as Murdoch's very best work (The Bell, say). It is still an excellent novel by anyone's standards, well deserving of its Booker Prize shortlisting.

Thomas S. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)

Edition: University of Chicago Press, 1970 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1101

Of the thousands of books written about science during the twentieth century, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the one which has caused the most controversy. It is a famous account of how (in Kuhn's opinion) science actually works, as opposed to the way in which scientists think that they work, and it acts as a summary of Kuhn's ideas; much of the rest of his writing is basically a series of historical case studies which back up and illustrate this summary.

The general view of science is that it proceeds by accretion, new facts gradually allowing theory to become a closer approximation to reality. Kuhn proposed a different model: a generally accepted paradigm determines not just what questions are investigated but how facts are perceived by scientists. However, anomalies appear and grow in importance, until a period of confusion is ended by a revolution which establishes a new paradigm.

The main reason that this is controversial is basically that it seems to make science a matter of opinion rather than fact, especially because of what Kuhn says about the way that the facts change or appear to change when the current paradigm changes. Summaries of Kuhn's arguments tend to make what he says more alarming than it actually is, and I found The Structure of Scientific Revolutions far more convincing than I expected.

Part of the problem with this kind of analysis of science is that the pattern of scientific communication has changed over time, as private letters and public books gave way to refereed journal articles, which in turn are now giving way to the exchange of pre-prints, electronically or otherwise. This is a factor unconsidered by Kuhn - though he was surely aware of it - and in my opinion makes it difficult to compare scientific practice even across relatively short periods as is necessary for this kind of study.

The major idea that Kuhn has which is difficult to agree with is that there is no such thing as scientific progress, that the paradigms are more or less equivalent as explanations of the universe. He explicitly says that there is no rational reason why, in a time of crisis with a current paradigm, one of the competitors to replace it is chosen rather than the others. (The evidence he gives for this is the frequent inability of a new paradigm to predict even some well known facts accurately, as with the century it took for a correct derivation of the moon's orbit from Newton's theory of gravity.) It is, I suppose, an almost inevitable consequence of Kuhn's feeling that a paradigm embodies its own special world view, as then two paradigms would have concepts far enough apart to make them impossible to compare meaningfully. The standard interpretation of issues like the moon's orbit would be that it can take time for a new theory to be properly understood, especially when, like Newton's, it uses unfamiliar mathematics.

However, it seems to me (and to many who have been involved in the practise of scientific research) that there is one very important property of a paradigm which Kuhn minimises: its explanatory power. By pre-supposing that this is unimportant, he anticipates his own conclusions. A scientist's perception of a paradigm is that it should be a model of the phenomena being investigated, and in particular that it should match with investigations already carried out. Exceptions can be made (as in the case of the moon) but they are just that: exceptions. Kuhn objects to this characterisation on the grounds that problems investigated under one paradigm are quite possibly meaningless under another, but I would expect that many would not be; Einstein's theory of general relativity would be useless as a model of the universe under gravitation if it failed to explain the path of a thrown ball on Earth, or the motion of the moon, as well as the Newtonian theory it replaced. (He specifically objects to the common characterisation of the relationship between these two theories that says that Newton's laws approximate to Einstein's when velocities and energies are low, because they make incompatible underlying assumptions, but to say the predictions of the motions of bodies are approximately correct seems to me to be perfectly valid.) Thus, any paradigm which is a candidate to replace one under crisis should explain almost all the well known facts already explained together with some of the more problematic areas. (Another reason for the word "almost", as well as the difficulties in correctly applying new paradigms is that those pushing them may in their enthusiasm make erroneous measurements, as Galileo seems to have done when he reported that pendulum swings take a uniform time even for large displacements even though this is true only when the angle of swing is small.) This more traditional description has the advantage that it preserves the idea of progress towards the goal of describing the universe (not in the more unfortunate cultural sense in which scientific progress is often taken, and which is probably one of the reasons behind Kuhn's rejection of the concept). Another factor which Kuhn doesn't mention which tends to influence the acceptance of a new paradigm (at least when it is mathematical in nature) is the feeling among researchers that it is elegant and beautiful.

Even after forty years, Kuhn's book is thought provoking - more so than reports of his arguments elsewhere. Most readers are unlikely to agree with all his ideas, but it is definitely better to read them here at firsthand.

E.R. Eddison: A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941)

Edition: Del Rey, 1978
Review number: 1100

The second of Eddison's Zimianvian trilogy is the most difficult of his novels to read, though it is well worth the effort. It has much more to do with the aims of his writing than Mistress of Mistresses, where the hinds about what is being done can easily be ignored, and the unfinished and in many parts skeletal nature of The Mezentian Gate make the underlying ideas far more obvious. The trilogy as a whole has an extremely unusual and rather disconcerting structure, in that it is more or less in reverse chronological order, with much overlap between the events in the second and third novel (the central event which provides the title here also occurs in The Mezentian Gate).

The fact that the opening chapter contains phrases in French, Italian, Greek and Latin might put a fair number of readers off, but more difficult in actuality is not so much Eddison's theme (time and eternity) as what he wants to say about it. (Eternity is also the theme of Eddison's less obviously related and most famous novel, The Worm Ouroboros, as the worm is a symbol for the concept.) The philosophical introduction won't clarify matters for anyone who hasn't read at least one of the novels in the trilogy already. Eddison could have written an allegorical fantasy, which would have been more familiar as a form to many readers of the genre, but he felt that it would be too easy to do this and would diminish his subject; instead of personifying eternity, he wanted to use all his characters to hint at different aspects of his ideas about time, in the same way that he felt that real world individuals did.

Eddison conveys his ideas as well through the parallels he makes between the real world and Zimiamvia, and by making several of his characters incarnations of gods and goddesses (or, perhaps more accurately speaking, of the ideas behind the characteristics of Zeus and Aphrodite). These ideas, present in the other two novels, appear here in more complicated forms which are explained in less detail, as the earthly story is intertwined intimately with the Zimiamvian, as Lessingham's courtship of Lade Mary Scarnside parallels Duke Barganax's of Fioranda. Then there is the "fish supper" itself, where discussion of how the gods create worlds for their own amusement leads to the act itself, as our "real" world is exhibited as a fantasy of a dinner party in Memison.

The structure is a bit confusing, at least on first reading, but A Fish Dinner in Memison contains much which is inventive and still fresh (especially the idea of our world being a temporary diversion, one which has recently been re-used in The Science of the Discworld as a way to explain scientific ideas through Terry Pratchett's popular fantasy series). It is a philosophical and, like all of Eddison's writing, a poetic novel - the language of the chapter "Night Piece: Appassionato" in particular seemed to me to invoke the eternal. Recommended to anyone with an interest in the more philosophical fantasy novel.