Amberlough

Lara Elena Donnelly, 2017

(March 2018)

A spy and a love story in three acts, of which the middle one is excellent, the first is an excessively detailed infodump, and the third is a little too bleak for its own good. All this adds up to a good book that needs, but repays (but then reclaims), quite a bit of patience.

Amberlough City is the capital of the self-named region that surrounds it, one of the four semi-autonomous states of the federation of Gedda. It’s a playground for what, in our world at least, we might label Jazz Age hedonism, and we explore it through the eyes of Cordelia Lehane, a burlesque dancer, Aristide Makricosta, her part-time MC and a full-time smuggler, and Cyril DePaul, his lover and a spy. Over the course of the first act it’s revealed that the far-right Ospie party is rising to power in one of Amberlough’s sister-states, and Cyril is dispatched in order to subvert their planned theft of the election. It goes wrong in a way I’m still not entirely sure about. In fact I’m not entirely sure about a lot of things, exactly, but it all (eventually) clicks into place when you realize that the Ospies are the Nazis and Gedda is a simplified version of 1920s Europe. The middle section of the book takes us on a rollicking gallop through a city in the throes of occupation, and it closes in a frankly distressing manner as the noose tightens around our three leads and all that they love.

Raven Stratagem

Yoon Ha Lee, 2017

(February 2018)

Less “Wow!” shock-of-the-old than its predecessor, but a better story. Somehow manages to avoid Middle Volume Syndrome, giving a whole, self-contained narrative while still holding back enough juice for the final installment. Lee’s only getting better as a writer, and the best news is that Revenant Gun comes out very soon indeed.

Dark Tales

Shirley Jackson, 2016

(April 2017)

  

A new collection of short stories from Shirley Jackson, most of which have previously been printed in other collections, and I think all of them first appeared in various periodicals during the 1950’s. Annoyingly, I think the latter form of publishing does more for them than anthologizing them together like this, as en mass it becomes clear that the writing, or more specifically the plotting, can be fairly formulaic. In many ways the biggest weakness of this collection is the collection.

United States of Japan

& The Man in the High Castle
Peter Tieryas, 2016

Philip K. Dick, 1962

(August 2016)

The first time I read The Man in the High Castle was way back, before I ever imagined I might end up living in Japan. Reading it a second time, it became apparent that there was a hell of a lot I missed, in terms of both the Japan-related stuff and just as a side-effect of being younger and dumber. The plan, however, was merely to refresh my memory before moving on to United States of Japan, which is something of a tribute/homage/reimagining of Dick’s seminal work. I wasn’t really going to talk much about the latter, except to the degree it informs USJ.

All Men Must Die

With the turning of the year, as with the turning of the tide, one’s thoughts are inevitably drawn towards the cyclical nature of life. This arbitrarily designated point on our terrestrial orb’s procession around the solar sphere fittingly provokes consideration of where one has come from and where one is heading; while we may appear as if we are endlessly retreading the same repeating path around our own personal orreries there are nonetheless perturbations; the precession of our equinoxes are far from regular as we pirouette about whatever attractor is placed at the centre of our worldly existence. This time, then, as we literally turn the page on the ledger of our years, allows us a pause, a moment, in which to take stock to consider, to reconsider, what we have come to understand; to wonder what it is we have learned and what it may befit us to unlearn.

  

The Last Lingua Franca

The Rise and Fall of World Languages

Nicholas Ostler, 2010

(July 2012)

Language – languages – are messy things. There are no really clear-cut boundaries between the various levels of slang, pidgin, creole, dialect and full blown language. The distinction is often more political than linguistic. The relatively small differences between Scandinavian and Iberian languages are primarily due to specifically identifiable historical decisions; whereas in their ongoing quest to freak out the rest of the world by being as terrifyingly monolithic as possible China insists that there is only one Chinese language, despite spoken Mandarin and Cantonese being mutually unintelligible.

  

Flatland

A. Square (Edwin A. Abbott), 1884

(March 2012)

I love my iphone. I’m not an Apple fan-boy. I mean I’ve got an ipod nano as well, but while a lot of their stuff is very nice to look at, it’s also unfeasibly expensive for what I need it for. Any decent smartphone would do, I reckon, but an iphone is what I’ve got.

Epistemologically Unsound Conclusions Concerning Japan and the Japanese, Based on Japanese Television

Number four in a series of some.

“Japanese beer is the infection vector for an ongoing alien invasion.”

You should turn off the sound for this, and don't watch each clip for more than a few seconds, either. I won't be held responsible for any further spread of the contagion. Besides, you’d have thought we’d all know what to look for by now. It’s not like they’re even trying to hide it. Look at this. And this. Also this. Notice how they often (but not always) cut away to wide shots briefly after the initial infection, in an effort to hide the full horror. The male host organisms are able to continue acting in a vaguely human fashion, but the poor female immediately starts to receive orders direct from the mothership.

While I for one welcome our new alien overlords, I do have one small plea to make. It’s all very well making examples of your successful conversions, but please try to avoid showing us the less successful attempts. The looks of pain and fear as they realise what has just happened to them is almost to much to bear.