Best of British Science Fiction 2021 edited by Donna Scott
(NewCon Press, 2022)
Reviewed by Dan Hartland
The British SF of the early 2020s begs an implicit question: two decades on from the ‘British Boom’, what has been its legacy? The Boom itself is long over, its last sputterings extinguished. We should not necessarily mourn it: in the space created by the sundering of the insistent poles of Anglo-American SFF, writers of ever greater diversity have wrested the limelight for themselves—and are transforming the genre, rather than merely remixing its increasingly stale twentieth-century verities.
Has the Boom cast any shadow, then, or has it proven less influential now than it appeared destined to be at the time? On the evidence of this edition of NewCon’s annual anthology, the Boom was in some ways an aberration, not a trend. The stories collected here find comfort in forms and styles, and sometimes even settings, that would in general not have been out of place even some decades prior to the 1990s.
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Review from BSFA Review 19 - Download your copy here.
Unreal Sex: An Anthology of Queer Erotic Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror edited by So Mayer & Adam Zmith
(Cipher Press, 2021)
Reviewed by Nick Hubble
‘I’ve always thought of sexual and textual as basically the same word’, confesses So Mayer in the dialogic introduction to this anthology. Some of the most influential approaches to literary criticism over the last thirty to forty years are rooted in this premise and often revolve around a teased-out analysis that enables a playful, extended deferral of meaning. However, when the texts under consideration are not just metaphorically sexual but directly concerned with sex acts, as the stories collected in this anthology are, that rather short-circuits the process. There is no hiding behind academic or any other readerly protocols when holding Unreal Sex in your hands: you either open it, and thereby open yourself to it, or you don’t. Not that there is really any choice because everyone is at least going to want to have a look at the contents page.
Daughter of Redwinter by Ed McDonald
(Gollancz, 2022)
Reviewed by John Dodd
Raine can see dead people, this isn’t a sixth sense, and she’s not the only one that can do it. The book opens on her finding a woman by the side of the road and having to consider if they’ve been dead a while because she can’t see a ghost near the body.
She’s not dead it transpires, but she is on the run, and so Raine helps her because it’s the right thing to do. Or is it? In the first part of the book there’s a fight with an elder god, a death that sets the stage for the true story, and the realisation that the world that Raine thought she knew, is very much not that world. From an encounter with a warrior priest, we learn that some of Raine’s natural talents have been curtailed, supposedly for her own good, and she must find a way to learn what she is truly capable of, and more important, what she wants to be when she finds out.
The Outcast and The Rite by Helen de Guerry Simpson
(Handheld Press, 2022)
Reviewed by Andy Sawyer
Helen Simpson, who died in 1940, was one of a number of extraordinary women in the interwar literary scene. She collaborated with Clemence Dane (later to be editor of the post-war science fiction line from Michael Joseph) on a number of detective novels. She was a member of the Detection Club, a group of fellow writers which also included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and her friend Gladys Mitchell with whom she shared her lifelong interest in witchcraft and demonology.
The Outcast and the Rite, subtitled ‘Stories of Landscape and Fear’, brings together her outstanding supernatural stories mostly published in the 1925 collection The Baseless Fabric. Expertly curated with an informative introduction by Melissa Edmundson, it highlights Simpson as a remarkable writer who approached the task of writing supernatural fiction with a fresh eye and an unsettling imagination.
Priest of Crowns by Peter McLean
(Jo Fletcher Books, 2022)
Medieval Peaky Blinders, that’s how I reviewed the first book. Peter Mclean could have written the same book twice more and I’d have been happy with it. Except he didn’t, Priest of Lies built on the premise, got us more involved, and Priest of Gallows brought it even higher, so it seems incomprehensible that Priest of Crowns could improve on it again.
And yet…
Somehow it does…
All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2022)
Reviewed by Anne F. Wilson
This is one of Kay’s alternate history novels. The author is replicating the Mediterranean civilizations after the fall of Byzantium. I’m not actually sure why the title refers to all the seas of the world as we are stuck firmly in the Mediterranean (or Middle Sea).
Some cultures and cities are easily recognisable, Asharias is Istanbul (Constantinople as was), Esperana is Spain, Seressa is Venice. Major events in the recent past include the sack of Asharias and the expulsion of the Kindath (broadly equivalent to Jews) and the Asharites (≈Moors) from Esperana.
In The Heart of Hidden Things by Kit Whitfield
Reviewed by Dave M. Roberts
Kit Whitfield’s previous novels took an interesting and different approach to very familiar fantasy tropes, dealing with the werewolf and mermaid myths. Some thirteen years since her previous novel, In The Heart of Hidden Things takes on the realm of faerie, or The People as they are referred to. More accurately, it deals with the lives of the ordinary people who have to live on the edges of their realm and cope with the unpredictable behaviour. The story is centred on the Smiths, the Fairy-smiths of the village, much of whose trade is concerned with containing The People in the forests, deterring them from their human interactions. Even when The People take a liking to someone, their behaviour can be disconcerting, such as changing all the milk and butter blue or either messing or tidying up people’s homes, depending on how they find them.
Mindwalker by Kate Dylan
Reviewed by Jamie Mollart
Sil Sarrah is the eponymous Mindwalker for Syntex Corporation, a tech giant thriving in the aftermath of the Annihilation. The Mindwalkers are a specialist division within Syntex, combat experts who help Syntex operatives extract themselves from dangerous espionage situations when they have reached the limit of their own abilities. But Mindwalkers are not standard Special Operative Forces, they instead connect their brains with those of the people they are trying to extract, take control of their bodies, and with the help of powerful AI companions, rescue them while effectively using them as puppets.
Genre Fiction: The Roaring Years by Peter Nicholls
(Ansible Editions, 2022)
Reviewed by Steven Doran
The package I received had 7 stamps stuck onto it: two Queen’s Heads, two miniature landscapes, a strawberry, an orange and a lemon. It was as if sending a package was as important as what it contained. That’s fitting, given Peter Nicholls’ care in bringing Sci-Fi to readers over his 57-year career, at the heart of which is The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction—a book first published in 1979 which is still updated today. This collection of reviews, essays, interviews, listicles and diaries covers publications from the 1970s up to the millennium. He chose them because they were his favourite pieces and because this period was a noisy and exciting time for Genre fiction.
The Roaring Years is a history told by an insider, observed both from the ‘salaried haven’ of academia and the ‘grubby frontline’ of publishing. He’s informed, incisive and honest, making a charming guide through the years when Wolfe, Dick, Aldiss and Herbert were bright young things, with many of their best-loved works yet to be written. There’s plenty more: essays on the state of the industry and the meaning of genre, lists of his 100 favourite writers (and 88 second favourites), and his own telling of The Great Tradition of Proto Science Fiction, covering Gilgamesh, Gawain, Rasselas and ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.
Warning Light Calling by Peter Graarup Westergaard
(Vræyda Literary Press, 2021)
Reviewed by Susan Peak
In reviewing a book, I consider how well it fits in its genre. And how well is it written. Judging whether a poem is well written can be considered objectively. For example, if it is a sonnet, does it actually meet a sonnet’s requirements? But it’s also subjective, very much so when it comes to free verse when the focus is more on the effect of the poetry. And where the effect relies on feelings and images, it can be harder to assess it against a specific genre. Both aspects were a challenge in this review.
Peter Graaup Westergraad’s narrative poem, Warning Light Calling, is described as an SF novella in verse. I found it to be less clear-cut than that, and perhaps more interesting.
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