Review of The Circle of Reason by Amitav Ghosh

In spite of its global spread, English is a language that has been predominantly used to discuss issues of Anglo-centric concern.  Most often the native tongue of nations of ethnic and cultural variety, books in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and to some extent South Africa remain rooted in British ideology and the innate historical context.  Translations trickle through the publishing industry’s woodwork, but the concerns of non-English speaking countries, particularly the East, remain vacuums of culture to the majority of the English language audience.  Producing an ever greater number of quality writers in the English language, India, however, is an exception.  Among the first to gain critical success across the seas, Amitav Ghosh is one such author, and The Circle of Reason, published in 1986, is his debut novel.

The Circle of Reason is the story of Alu, an orphan living in the small village of Lalpukur in Eastern India.  Possessing an extraordinarily lumpy head, he immediately becomes a point of fascination for his uncle Balram, a self-proclaimed phrenologist with something of Ghandi’s eccentricism in him.  Coming to learn the trade of weaving, the surrounding events and people of Lalakpur move in and out of Alu’s life like the loom shuttle he so expertly wields.  The phlegmatic Shombhu Debnath and more vivacious Toru Debi are integral parts of his everyday life as much as the bicycle repairmen, policeman, and schoolmaster of the village.  Lalakpur turned on its head one day by the mounting ideological differences between Balam and the village’s leader, Bhudep Roy, the story takes a surprising turn when Alu is forced to find a new home.

Review of Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling

Love him or hate him, Bruce Sterling is one of the most intriguing voices in science-fiction.  A successful writer of fiction and non-fiction, as well as being a speaker of the most unique and presumptuous nature, his words carry regarding the future of technology and society.  At base a humanist, Sterling’s work reflects the potential implications of applying the knowledge humanity acquires to economic, ecological, and socio-political environments.  A good example of his aims, Islands in the Net presents all of these facets in a political drama/thriller that continues to touch upon ideas in today’s world despite the 25 years that have passed since its publishing.  

Islands in the Net opens in the year 2023.  The world appears much the same as it does today, but with a few small differences.  Multinational megacorporations wield ever-growing clout in systems which continue to utilize capitalism.  Banks that operate in safe zones today have evolved into the data havens of tomorrow, trading currency and information both on and off the legal radar.  The UN has been usurped by the Vienna convention, a group that acts in above-the-law capacity under the guise of protecting civil liberties in countries which have signed the treaty.  And lastly, the hotbed of African political chaos has worsened.  Foreign commercial and political interests continue to pressure, pillage, and outright seize its governments and people, the result being an unstable continent filled with terrorism and tyranny.

Interview: Rob from Val's Random Comments

I am very happy to say that over the coming weeks Speculiction will feature a handful of interviews I've had with people from around the review world.  I have done my best to avoid the usual drivel (‘What’s your favorite book?’, ‘Who is your favorite author?’ etc, etc.) and tried to focus on asking about what makes these people's perspectives unique, aspirations for their sites, and ultimately the reasons why I might be a regular visitor to their corner of the spec-fic community.

First up is Rob from Val’s Random Comments - a site I really admire for its mix of sub-genres, gender, and international writers.  I hope you enjoy his not-so-random comments on reading challenges, self-awareness, what’s happening in the Netherlands in sci-fi and fantasy (including a link to a novelette translated into English), where science fiction might be headed, and reading in one’s mother tongue vs. a secondary language.  I did.


On your blog there is a short history of what brought Val's Random Comments into being, particularly your breaking away from a previous site.  How would you compare working on a multi-contributor site to one that you are the sole owner/provider of content, and, has the change been positive? 

Yes and no I guess. What I was afraid of when I left the site I reviewed for is that I wouldn't be able to create enough content to really keep the blog alive. I guess I have done well enough with more than 300 reviews since I started it but ideally I would have liked more content. Right now I am writing one review a week, usually on Sunday. I've found that that is all I can manage over the long haul if I want to keep it from becoming a chore. I'm thinking of doing something about that in the near future but no definite plans yet.

Review of Vurt by Jeff Noon

Jeff Noon’s debut novel, 1993’s Vurt, is a wiiiiild ride.  An action packed story filled with psychedelic imagery and punchy language, the most intriguing reason to buy a ticket is, however, its unique premise—an epithet of science fiction increasingly difficult to achieve.  This is not to say that the entirety of the novel is original (the genre influences are readily visible) but that it’s impossible for the reader to walk away—smiling or frowning—without having an indelible mark on their memory.  At turns poetic, entertaining, colorful, sensational, and always speculative, letting a Curious Yellow tickle the back of your throat will take you to a variety of places.

On the surface, or at least one of the surfaces, Vurt is the story of Scribble.  A young junkie, he and his crew, the Stash Riders, spend their days tripping inside vurt and trying to find illegal feathers, feathers that will take them on a vurt trip like they’ve never had before.  Seeking out the dangerous blacks and yellows and tickling a pink when they need a little sensuality, they often run afoul of the law, something their leader, the fun but abusive Beetle, has no trouble dealing with in their crash-tight van.  Drowning in the pleasure to the point of loneliness, Scribble’s biggest trouble in life is still his lost sister, Desdemona.  Haunting his memories, she was lost inside a very dangerous feather called Curious Yellow—a feather Scribble is seeking so that he may try to rescue her.  But finding another Curious Yellow proves difficult, the quest leading him further from his real self.

Review of Planet of Exile by Ursula Le Guin

Daughter to an anthropologist and psychologist, it was perhaps inevitable that once Ursula Le Guin started writing fiction, deep questions surrounding culture and human interaction would eventually trickle into her work.  Virtually right off the bat, however, she confronts readers with the subjects.  A far more mature work than her rather simplistic first effort Rocannon’s World, her second novel Planet of Exile, also published in 1966, possesses all of the rudiments of style and content that would color the majority of her later novels,.  Planet of Exile the story of a community trying to come to terms with the disillusion and enmity of its two member groups in engaging, personal style, Le Guin fully brings to bear the subjects of her parents’ interests in this short but satisfying novel.

Planet of Exile is set on Werel, a planet far distant from other inhabited places in the universe, and one with exceptionally long seasons given its odd solar setup.  Technologically advanced humans having come and gone many, many years prior, the “cultural attaches” (called Farborn) who were left behind hold little hope anyone will return for them and have begun to experience the degradations of living in a foreign environment.  Conception foremost among them, their population is in decline.  Childbirth, however, is no problem for the native Tevarans, a people who have little trust for the dark-skinned invaders.  Holding the telepathic people capable of witchcraft and other evil talents, hostility occasionally breaks out, the Tevarans naturally protective of their women.  But when the Gaals, a primitive, war-like group from the north, are rumored to be gathering en masse for an invasion, the Tevarans may have no choice but to seek refuge with the better protected Farborn.  The events which result leave the sentient fate of Werel hanging in the balance.

Review of Emphyrio by Jack Vance

After establishing himself as a writer of short fiction, Jack Vance began to shift toward novels in the 1960s.  His unique voice rounding into form and imagination given more space (ha!) to create, the decade can be marked as the upswing of his career—particularly given the exclamation point The Tchai (Planet of Adventure) series places on the end.  Tucked neatly in the middle of the publishing of these four novels, however, is a stand-alone novel: Emphyrio.  Interestingly, the title is not taken from the name of a locale or culture, as is usual with Vance, but from a legend innate to the tale.  Singling it out further, the book is one of the author’s more ideological pieces: there are ominous elements of socialism and the value of historical knowledge is expanded.  The capricious storytelling, vivid setting, and resourceful hero remain classic Vance, however.

Emphyrio is the story of Ghyl Tarvoke.  Son of a master artisan, Ghyl grows up on the planet Halma learning to carve elaborate wooden screens from his father, Amiante.  Investing long hours in their work, the father and son duo reap little reward, however.  With business and production on Halma highly regulated, the two receive only a stipend for their skilled creations, while the lords of the city, aristocrats who live in towers, rake in the profits from outlying planets for the handiwork.  Worse yet, no manner of duplication—mechanical or otherwise—is allowed on Halma.  Each wooden screen, silk blouse, item of metalwork, book, etc. is hand crafted, and if methods of duplication are discovered, punishment, up to and including death, are implemented.  Amiante a quiet, phlegmatic man, what he is found doing after hours one evening shocks young Ghyl.  But is it enough to shake him from the doldrums of Halma?

Review of This Immortal by Roger Zelazny

“Żelazo” is Polish for “iron”—the root of Roger Zelazny’s family name.  A hard, unbending substance, the name seems an appropriate metaphor for his persistent choice of protagonists; picking up a Zelazny novel, the reader knows precisely who will occupy the lead role.  Zelazny’s first novel, the 1966 This Immortal (previously serialized as …And Call Me Conrad), presented the first such hero and is the starting place of all the author’s forays into the mythically fantastic.  Featuring the part-man, part-god Conrad, the book sets the benchmark for every novel/protagonist that would come later in the author’s oeuvre.  Multi-layered and featuring some of the strongest writing he would produce, the novel is also amongst Zelazny’s best.

Scarred, diseased, mismatched eyes, and walking with a limp, Conrad Nimikos is a rather atypical hero—larger-than-life nonetheless.  Possessing a past centuries in length and awash with hazy facts, his present, unfortunately, is crystal clear.  Having been decimated in a three-day nuclear war, Earth lies in ravages, its population under the control of an alien group, the Vegans, who took control in the aftermath.  An enlightened race, the Vegans have transported the majority of humans to their home planet to live in peace and safety.  However, roughly 4 million remain on Earth in pockets of land untouched by radiation, many mutated beyond recognition.  His job to oversee the cultural treasures left unaffected by the war, Conrad is the Commissioner of the Earthoffice Department of Arts, Monuments, and Archives.  Asked one day to give an important Vegan a tour of ancient Egypt and Greece, his pride is challenged: give respect to Earth’s controllers or to defend her honor by eliminating the overseer?  In classic Zelazny style, the road Conrad chooses is his own.

Review of Valentine Pontifex by Robert Silverberg

In Lord Valentine’s Castle, Robert Silverberg created an exotic planet filled with peoples and landscapes, all bursting with imagination.  The tale of a man recovering the throne wrongfully swept out from beneath his feet, Silverberg also gave his audience a strong, lovingly crafted main character in Lord Valentine.  The conclusion of the tale, Valentine Pontifex, is the other side of the coin, however.  How does Valentine deal with the weighty exigencies of leadership, all the while getting older?  Not as fresh or original as Lord Valentine’s Castle, Valentine Pontifex is nevertheless a fair read that continues to define Silverberg’s take on science fantasy on the vast planet Majipoor.

Ten years have passed since Lord Valentine retook the throne that was rightfully his, and in the time since Majipoor has prospered.  In his personal life, however, he has been having dizzy spells, as well as rushes of guilt for postponing the duty of descending into the Labyrinth to take his rightful place as Pontifex.  But things are changing quickly.  Quickening the guilt, Pontifex Tyeveras, a shell of a man kept alive by tubes and machines, begins to cry out unconsciously, begging for release into death.  Across the land, strange blights are spreading and destroying crops—the livelihood of Majipoor’s citizenry.  An enigmatic cult is rising and aggressive, mutant animals have also been sighted, the shapeshifters hinted as the cause but never confirmed.  Making matters worse, the sea dragons are behaving erratically.  Moving outside their migration patterns, they appear in great, flitting herds, their presence taken as a bad omen by all.  With trouble in his head and trouble in the land, for Valentine maintaining may prove more difficult than retaking the throne.

Review of Majipoor Chronicles by Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg’s Majipoor series is an important if not underrated addition to the world of science fiction and fantasy literature.  The eponymous planet, an immense sphere settled by a wide variety of alien species, is a world fecund with the possibility of story.  Having published Lord Valentine’s Castle after a four year hiatus from writing, an overflow of creative effort revealed itself in the following year’s publication of Majipoor Chronicles.  Both breaking new ground and filling in gaps left by Lord Valentine’s Castle, Chronicles is an above average collection of shorts that leans more toward the literary than fantastic.

The collection is framed by the idea of the Registry of Souls.  Hissune, now a government administrator, is bored at his position.  Breaking into the Registry one day, he re-lives the life of a young woman named Thesme.  Not caught, he repeats the experience, and eventually re-lives the experiences of ten people in total, including Valentine himself.  But for all of his sneaking, Hissune is ill prepared for the gravity of the lessons contained in the individuals’ tales.  

“Thesme and the Ghayrog” – Somehow both a touching and bizarre story, a young woman who feels cast out of her small village leaves to live in the jungle alone.  The life she finds with a Ghayrog is not what she expected, but goes a long way toward giving her a new perspective on life. 

“The Time of the Burning” – More historical in context, the story describes how humans took control of Majipoor, for better or worse. 

Review of Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg

It’s hard to believe that Robert Silverberg, one of the most prolific writers of science fiction and fantasy the past century, took two significant hiatuses from writing in the heart of his career.  The first roughly between 1965-67, the author paused to transition from the so-called Silver Age into the New Age of science fiction.  Experiencing a creative crisis and needing time away, in 1976 Silverberg took another break, returning in 1980.  Presenting a standard fantasy storyline, placing it in a science fiction setting, and imbuing it with all of the humanism the previous phase of his oeuvre boasts, that return was Lord Valentine’s Castle.  Simultaneously classic, subversive, personal, and sublimely stylish, the novel was a triumphant comeback.  It won the Locus Award, was nominated for other awards, and proved so fertile a premise, six additional books in the Majipoor setting were published, the seventh due this year.  What was Silverberg doing in those four years away, well…

Lord Valentine’s Castle is the story of Valentine, a man who begins matters sitting on the side of the road, overlooking a city and pondering the meaning of life.  Unsure of his direction, a boy invites him to tag along in taking animals to the city’s markets, markets which are flourishing with news the reigning Coronal will soon be in town.  Coming across a group of jugglers in need of a third while in the festive city, Valentine quickly finds his dexterity suitable for the vocation, and joins them.  Heading out on the road to live the life of a traveling performer, it’s in discovering his lost past, however, that the story achieves heights of power and glory.