Given the
current state of market publishing, i.e. its eagerness to flood shelves with
mediocre genre in the hope of making a buck, my willingness to take on
self-published works has grown in parallel. Having had both good luck and bad
(see William Rosencrans’ The Epiphanist
for an example of a book that deserves house recognition, and vice versa, Escape the Bone Yard by R.C. Scott for a
work whose talent doesn't rise to the ambition), it was with indifference I
accepted David Loeff’s request to review his self-published 1,001 Lightyears Entertainment. Falling somewhere in the middle, the
collection will not set the genre afire, however, it remains a respectable
entry which will appeal to readers who enjoy classic storytelling, particularly
in the vein of 1,001 Arabian Nights. The following is a review of the twelve
(depending how you count) stories in the collection.
Lacking a
framing device like Scheherazade, 1,001
Lightyears Entertainment instead opens with two quick, clever parables, “In
the Bag” and “Life Changing Encounters”.
The former is the story of a man who tries to reclaim the handbag stolen
from him after entering a new city, while the latter is the tale of one man’s
encounter with Death on the street early one morning. “The Dog’s Golden Dish”, a story appearing
soon thereafter in the collection, has a very similar, mercurial feel. It is one man’s hurried account to an
expectant king about rises and falls from wealth, oscillating ever faster the
closer it gets to the end.
With “A
Girl of Gloune”, 1,001 Lightyears
Entertainment reveals the first of its interleaved stories. Telling of a poor girl named Elgelt adopted
by her drunken and abusive uncle, she accidentally runs into aliens living
nearby and learns about her environment and cross-cultural relations in the
process. Not the last the reader has
heard of Elgelt, the final story in the collection, “New Direction”,
re-introduces her, and along with revealing what she became in middle-age, also
closes out the stories of the characters in the following set of tales:
Nested
like matryoshka dolls, “The Beauty with Incredible Feet”, “Hafwen’s Tale”, “The
War of Men and Jinn”, and “Hafwen Concludes Her Tale” tell of a variety of
people, including the bumbling bachelor Raheem, the woman with strange feet who
becomes his wife, the shapeshifter Kashwarh who plays such an integral part in
her youth, and how all of them came to be in the situations they are. Story embedded within story embedded within
story, the collection takes on the structure of Arabian Nights.
But the
heart of 1,001 Lightyears Entertainment
is “Nouredan and Nesjella”. A story
of strong fairy tale proportion, the titular star-struck couple must endure a
kingdom of struggle and sacrifice to be together. From drug problems to illicit love, court
intrigue to assassinations, the novella has all the flavor of Arabian Nights, and, based on the
conclusion, is perhaps the most classic tale in the collection.
As a
whole, 1,001 Lighteyars Entertainment feels like a very personal project. Perhaps percolating for many years in Loeff’s
mind, a love affair with 1,001 Arabian
Nights is evident on every page. Caravanserai, arranged marriages, camels,
viziers, djinns, princes, damsels in distress, harems, coffee, opium, and
other stereotypical elements of Arabia are fully represented. But more than just objects, Loeff also imbues
Middle Eastern culture into the stories. “When
the prince found his companions in the morning he greatly desired to tell them
of the woman’s flawless beauty, yet he held his mouth closed rather than expose
a wife’s faithlessness.” is one example, while ““Me? I no longer matter. They killed me when they killed my husband.”
is another which indicates the collection is traditional storytelling from more
than one perspective.
All this
begs the questions: what is sci-fi about the collection. The answer: little. Like Jack Vance’s work, it’s possible to
replace the word ‘spaceship’ with ‘sailboat’ and ‘walifloot’ with ‘foreigner’
and not much about the story changes from a transportation or cultural point of
view. There are occasional intrusions of the ‘yet
impossible’, e.g. the ansible, a spaceship, aliens, a ray gun, etc., but they
are not game changers. Sinbad did not
have a telephone, but he did encounter caravans, foreigners, and weapons, and
in the same fashion, the characters of the collection have adventures, the
things around them occasionally something more otherworldly or techy than feels
natural in the settings described. The
premise of 1,001 Lightyears Entertainment
(i.e. tales told in a distant galactic future) thus feels a bit
superfluous. If the reader replaces the
sci-fi words with bits of Arabian realia, the collection could easily be titled
“More Arabian Nights”. This is not a
slight on Loeff, only a clear statement that readers looking for the latest
Charles Stross or Peter Watts novel boiling over with techy ideahood may be
disappointed. Loeff’s collection is
classic through and through.
In the
end, 1,001 Lightyears Entertainment
is a collection that fully possesses the taste and feel of 1,001 Arabian Nights, its sci-fi elements seeming incidental. Homage, in fact, little is done to enhance
the stories for the modern era (there is a dependence on stereotypes). Focusing on plot throughout by limiting background
and character details to what is necessary, Loeff adheres to classic
storytelling of the parable and adventure variety. Simply but smoothly written, there are
stories nested within stories, and characters that appear and reappear in the
narratives of other characters, loosely binding the stories into a whole, just
like Arabian Nights.
The
following is the table of contents of the collection:
“In the
Bag”
“Life
Changing Encounters”
“A Girl of
Gloune”
“The Dog’s
Golden Dish”
“The
Beauty with Incredible Feet”
“Hafwen’s
Tale”
“The War
of Men and Jinn”
“Hafwen
Concludes her Tale”
“The
Collector”
“Nouredan and
Nesjella”
“Before
the Cock Crows”
“The Bard
Who Kept His Head”
“New
Directions”
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