I rather suspect that a few people out there are shaking their heads in despair because with a huge pile of good books to chose from for my next read I have opted for one about rock ‘n’ roll elves and a sexy cyborg. Well, yes I have, but it is also a book by Justina Robson. And you know, while the characters are still who they are, and “serious” literary SF readers are likely to turn their noses up just because of that, the Quantum Gravity series is getting to be more and more like what we’ve always expected from Justina. I’ll have more to say about it when I’ve finished it, but in view of the “current situation” here in California I wanted to share this little quote on the difference between “demons” and “devils”:

A devil has no form outside its host except its ghost trace. They have no lives of their own. They are part of the undead realm, but also part of Zoomenon, a form of elemental negativity. Unlife. Where a mind is struck with self-hatred, where it would rather be moral than gentle, or right than compassionate… there you will find a devil at work.

As you may see, no demon could be possessed by such a creature and function as a demon in any way. Demons are pro-life. Devils enjoy withering life where they may, and most of all they enjoy withering it when they encourage the host to spread the contagion and seed devils in the minds of others. Evangelism is their modus and moralising their watchword. Hell is the making of devils, and escape the work of demons. Elves and humans are frequently infested, and spread the infection to their descendants and associates without attempt to stem the plague. The more devilment in the world, the more miserable it is.

Yay, go Justina! But before you all celebrate too much, bear in mind that evangelism and moralising are often as much the tools of socialists and environmentalists as of the religious.

The new Paul McAuley novel has been getting favorable attention in various places. I found a copy at the Clute’s, read the back cover blurb, and promptly went out to Waterstones to bag my own before heading out to the US. The blurb talks enthusiastically of “gene wizards”, “scientific utopias” and “who decides what it means to be human?” It sounds rather like a marriage of Charlie Stross and Ken MacLeod. Actually, of course, it is a Paul McAuley novel, and while it might address themes of extropianism and politics, it does so in McAuley’s own way.

In particular the novel ends up having quite a lot to say about the “current situation” (to steal a term from the book). I shall be using the herring gull analogy myself on many occasions, I suspect. Furthermore, the book is packed full of interesting ideas about how humans might colonize the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. If ever anyone asks you to provide an example of a “hard biology” SF novel, you can point them at The Quiet War.

One of the things I spent the weekend doing was catching up on my book buying. Whether it is wise to be buying a whole lot of books here in the US when I may have to leave them all behind in a few months is questionable, but they are all books that I want to read and in any case they are all by good authors whose work I’d like to reward. So, currently on the reading pile (some of which are held over from my last visit) are:

• Liberation – Brian Francis Slattery
• An Evil Guest – Gene Wolfe
• All the Windwracked Stars – Elizabeth Bear
• Night Sessions – Ken McLeod
• Going Under – Justina Robson
• Lavinia – Ursula K. Le Guin
• Wit’s End – Karen Joy Fowler
• The Bell at Sealey Head – Patricia McKillip
• An Autumn War – Daniel Abraham
• In a Time of Treason – David Keck
• Anathem – Neal Stephenson

That lot should keep me busy for a while.

I finished the new William Heaney Graham Joyce novel (to be issued as How to Make Friends With Demons by Night Shade next month) on the plane on the way over. As always with Graham, it is great stuff. There’s one small thing I want to have words with him about, but as I won’t be at World Fantasy I shall miss that opportunity and I’ll probably have forgotten about it next time I see him. Basically, however, it is a lovely book. It is very British (including a guided tour of famous London pubs, that Graham must have very much enjoyed researching), but hopefully that won’t deter the sort of people who would normally buy Graham’s books. Reviewing it in Locus, Gary Wolfe said:

It’s the sort of non-fantasy fantasy that Joyce readers will appreciate, the sort of writing that is increasingly coming to make genre irrelevant.

He’s right in that it is not Fantasy, but it does have demons. And given that it is, amongst other things, about dysfunctional family relationships and the first Gulf War, I think it qualifies as horror.

As I noted a while back, I bought Chris Evans’ A Darkness Forged in Fire (first in the Iron Elves) series because of an enthusiastic blurb by Karen Traviss. I have to say that the book has the worst opening chapter that I have read in a long time, but thankfully it soon settles down and turns out not to be a pompous and portentous piece of high fantasy, but rather a fun romp about misfit soldiers – the Iron Elves of the series title. Supposedly they are elves who have forsaken communing with nature and taken up technology such as muskets to fight alongside the humans, but there are very few elves left and most of the regiment is made up of humans and the obligatory comedy dwarf.

The book also tries to have something to say about the current state of our world, but I’m always nervous of attempts to address politics in fantasy. The current US elections are a graphic reminder of what happens when both sides in a political dispute regard the other, not just as the opposition, but as Ultimate Evil Incarnate. The world would be much better off keeping fantasy memes out of politics.

Today I went to Taunton to get my tax refund check into the bank, and I took the opportunity to go shopping. As it turned out, I mostly obeyed Cheryl’s #1 rule of shopping which is, “if nothing catches your eye, you don’t have to buy anything.” I can always get myself a present in the holiday sales when I get back to CA.

But I did buy a book. It is called Memoirs of a Master Forger and it is by a drunken licentious luvvie by the name of William Heaney who blames all of his bad habits on possession by demons. They do that, badly behaved men. Blame everything on demons. It was the demon that made me do it, Your Honour.

Except that Mr Heaney is actually something of a fraud, because in real life he is mild-mannered fantasy writer, Graham Joyce. Quite why Graham has opted for this masquerade, I am not entirely sure. Maybe it is something to do with fighting crime. Or Demons. Or both. But you need to know because otherwise you might miss this book, or get very confused, because sadly Jeremy and Jason have declined to go along with the jolly wheeze and the book that Night Shade will publish next month under the title of How to Make Friends with Demons (by Graham Joyce) is in fact exactly the same book that Gollancz is purporting to be by Mr. Heaney.

Unless of course the Night Shade boys have decided to Americanize the book, but I rather hope not because it is very clearly set in the bureaucratic nightmare that is New Labour Britain, and Americanizing it would be rather like Americanizing Inspector Chen (which Night Shade has wisely not done).

The other issue for Night Shade is what they will do with the cover, because Gollancz have done an absolutely bang-up job of making the book look like it is 100 years old or more. It really is very impressive. Well done whoever did the jacket design.

But look, there’s a new Graham Joyce novel out, I read a few pages on the train on the way home, and it looks like it is going to be a lot of fun. So don’t be fooled by all the Heaney stuff, go out and buy.

I say, that was rather jolly, what? I refer, of course, to The Affinity Bridge by George Mann, the first in an intended series of Calvin Newbury & Hobbes Investigations in which two intrepid Victorian Agents of the Crown solve mysteries involving crashed airships, a zombie plague, a murderous ghostly bobby and clockwork automatons, while all the time managing to behave in a polite and socially acceptable manner save for the occasional bleeding all over the interior fittings of a stream carriage. The world of Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes is decidedly steampunk, as this short extract should show:

The automaton was about the size of a man, skeletal, with a solid torso formed of interlocking breast and back plates. Its eyes were little mirrors that spun constantly on an axis, reflecting back lamplight. Its mouth was nothing but a thin slot and its remaining features were engraved into the otherwise blank mask of its face. In its chest a glass plate revealed, like a tiny porthole, a flickering blue light, dancing like an electric current. Its brass frame shimmered in the light, and it moved like a human being, fully articulated, as it strode across the room towards them. Its joints creaked as it walked and its brass feet clicked on the tiled floor of the workshop.

Nevertheless, there are other influences. I found it hard not to imagine our heroes being portrayed by Patrick McNee and Diana Rigg, and George does a fine line in James Bond style fights. Also Newbury’s fight with the automata was very reminiscent of Doctor Who in places. I shouldn’t need to mention that Newbury has a problem with laudanum, a long-suffering housekeeper and a clueless Chief Inspector for a friend. It is all very fluffy, but good fun and should sell well. It is sad that the book is only available in the US as a limited edition hardcover. Someone needs to get this out as a mass market paperback.

I have now finished Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World and I am so impressed I have actually written a review. You can find it here. I didn’t deliberately set out to violate all of those rules of good reviewing that people are so fond of posting these days, but I suspect I have blown through quite a few of them. After all, I’m not writing for Locus, or even for Emerald City. I wrote the review because I wanted to, and for your entertainment and edification. I make no pretense at objectivity.

I have been a little bit spoilerish, but hopefully most of you are not the sort to be put off by that.

My pal Liam Sharp writes to tell me that Mam Tor Publishing, who have been doing some great comics for some time, are now publishing books too. I don’t know what they are like yet, but this artwork sure looks eye-catching. More details here. Also Liam has an anthology on the way. Because it is fashionable, he has done a trailer for it. I’m assuming that’s mostly his artwork in the background.

By the way, if some of you are confused about publisher names here, please note that Mam Tor is a mountain in Derbyshire. My Celtic ancestors had a habit of naming geographic locations after bits of female anatomy.