“Dying is easy. It’s comedy that’s hard” — Willful Child by Steven Erikson
The A.S.F. Willful Child is the pride and joy of the Terran space fleet. It’s a pity, then, for Earth, and the rest of the universe, that Hadrian Sawback has been named as its Captain. For all of his brilliance in passing tests and getting through the academy — and obtaining a captaincy at the age of 27 — Hadrian Sawback is a rather rough sort, the perfect product of his species and his culture. Too bad the rest of the universe — and, for that matter, the rest of his own government — is not prepared for the consequences of giving Captain Sawback a spaceship of his own. Not prepared by half. The Willful Child by Steven Erikson, best known for the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, is his first space opera novel, with an explicitly comedic bent and purpose. Talking about Willful Child, then, requires an interrogation of the idea of comedy — in fiction and, particularly, in genre fiction. Comedy is a many-headed hydra of a literary form, with a plethora of styles, modes and varieties. The physical slapstick of a Jackie Chan film, the comedy of manners of Much Ado About Nothing, the absurdity of the “Romans Go Home” skit of Life of Brian. All of these are forms of comedy, but are extremely different formsof comedy. To determine if Willful Child is successful as a comedy, then, requires determining what sort of a comedy it is and if it is a successful exemplar of that sub-type of comedy.
The Heist is King: Greg Van Eekout’s CALIFORNIA BONES
The influence of Leverage is spreading throughout genre fiction. Leverage (2008-2012) was a drama TV series that centered around a group of con-artists led by a former insurance investigator. Nate brings together a team with diverse skills to stage cons and jobs on behalf of those who cannot find redress by more legal means. With witty banter and dialogue, crackerjack plotting, and a seasoned and well executed formula, the show is enormously entertaining and forms the template for heists and cons for any sort of genre. Story twists, the various defined roles of the team (the Mastermind, the Hitter, the Thief, etc), a strong sense of characters and much more are hallmarks of the series. These tools, perfected in Leverage, have clearly been recognized and scooped up by other writers for their story toolboxes (Scott Lynch comes immediately to mind). I’ve borrowed these ideas for my roleplaying games, myself. And so we come to Greg Van Eekout’s California Bones. Greg has written one prior novel for adults (Norse Code) and several Middle grade novels subsequent to this newest work. California Bones, projected to be the first of a series, takes that aforementioned Leverage-style heist and character banter and makes it the central set-piece of the novel. In between that, we get a fascinating alternate world fantasy set in a familiar, but drastically different, Los Angeles.
Urban Fantasy in World SF: Scale-Bright by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Demons stalking the streets, hidden from ordinary view and prying eyes, living their lives as ordinary people. A pair of goddesses in a long term, loving, and sometimes fraught relationship. A (relatively) ordinary mortal, swept up in events by a chance meeting with one of the aforementioned demons, drawing her deeper into a magical portion of the world. This sounds like the latest urban fantasy, doesn’t it? The city is probably New York City, maybe London, right? The Goddesses are probably Greco-Roman, maybe Norse? The demon is probably of Judeo-Christian origin? Bog standard Urban Fantasy, right? No, no, no, and no. The Goddesses are Chinese, and one of them is a gender-flipped version of a God from Chinese Mythology. And yes, they are married (and oh the scandal in Heaven!). Similarly, the demons are from that same tradition, and the city is Hong Kong. This is urban fantasy, if one will call it that, of a different sort. This is Scale-Bright, by Benjanun Sriduangkaew.
Book Review: Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
This semester, I’m teaching a course on American literature which seeks to challenge what that term actually means and how we can define “American Lit” as something which is multi-national, multi-cultural, and infinitely larger. After all, we live in the Americas; technically speaking, Canadians are Americans in this sense of the term. That’s why I’m here talking about Surfacing by Margaret Atwood and not As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. Though only loosely fantastic, Atwoods Surfacing is a complex, character-driven feminist tale about relationships, patriarchy, nationalism, and the human psyche. It follows an unnamed narrator who returns with her friends to her childhood home to search for her missing father, who she assumes has either died or run off into the woods. As she tries to piece together her father’s last days from the clues left in his cabin, she is confronted with her friends’ abusive marriage, her recent and distant past, and the crippling expectations of post-WW2 society (and the changes brought on by the Quiet Revolution in 1960s Quebec). Though not intended as horror, Surfacing explores its themes with a sense of impending terror, such that the final moments, which I won’t discuss in any detail here, are profoundly fantastic, with the character drama forming the root of an exploding, terror-driven tree.
