Review of Gogmagog by Steve Beard & Jeff Noon

Johnny, where's that soapbox? Get it out. We've got an important message to repeat. Seems it's not getting through. Little to the left... Ok there, good. <umph> Listen up, readers out there. Style matters! Where so much fantastika these days gets filtered through Clarion workshops or MFA writing programs before arriving at our eyeball-tips, we're losing sight of how voice, tone, style, mood, verve and other aspects of technique matter to story. Like a fingerprint, a reader used to be able to pick out a writer by their style. These days it's rice vanilla soup. Style matters! Thank you, that's all. Time to get down now, back to my hearth and quilt...

Speculiction does indeed harp on about the importance of style. As we get closer to AI novels on bookshelves, style is the one thing that humans can cling to as their own. Dear ChapGPT: please write a book in the style of David Mitchell. I'm not sure that (today) it could. But it could 100% write a book in the style of Martha Wells, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and many, many others. I don't discredit these writers' imaginations or success, only that their writing lacks a certain spark, an intimation the writer knows that you know that they know this word is being used because... This is all a long winded way of saying, Jeff Noon and Steve Beard's 2024 novel Gogmagog will likely not show up on bestseller lists, but if mood and style are as important to you as imagination and story, read on.

Gogmagog is the cantankerous tale of cantankerous Cady Mead. A tough old bat, she is an irascible, foul-mouthed, pipe-smoking sloop captain with a mysterious past. Though retired and in her cups, she is one day convinced to help transport two strangers downriver to the city of Ludwich. The river alive with creatures both real and ethereal, Cady knows it's only her knowledge and experience which can get the boat through the toughest spots and avoid the most dangerous hazards. What she doesn't count on, however, is the unexpected appearance of one of her oldest enemies haunting the river.

Review of Land of the Headless by Adam Roberts

I almost didn't read Adam Roberts' novel Land of the Headless (2007). The plot's main conceit was so lacking in subtlety and so ripe with potential for comic book cheese that I was prepared to immediately return it should the first few pages live up to my concerns. The title to be taken literally, it tells the story of a planet where capitol punishment removes the guilty's head but does not take their life. They live on, headless, through the wonders of technology. Something from the pulp era of sf, yes? No...

Land of the Headless is the tale of the poet Jon Cavala. An amorous youth, he forms a tryst with an aristocrat's daughter over the course of a summer. They willingly share a bed outside of marriage, but only to be found out. The daughter and her family betray Cavala, and he is punished for his impatient penis. For in Cavala's draconian society, murder, blasphemy, and in this case “rape”, are cause for capitol punishment. And so the story kicks off with Cavala's beheading. A device attached to the spine prior captures Cavala's mind state—consciousness more or less—so that even after his noggin is lopped off he goes on living. He buys a cheap pair of electronic eyes and ears with what little money he has left and so sets off to live a new life. The headless are shunned and the going is tough. Cavala falls in with a trio of other headless, and together they agree to travel to a nearby city by foot. What Cavala does not tell his comrades is that he goes to meet the daughter who betrayed him.