The Laundry Files series by Charles Stross has been a running concern since the release of The Atrocity Archives in 2004, it has progressed from its original blueprint of geeky humour mixed with Lovecraftian horror via the horror of Bureaucracies running Occult Secret Services trying to save the world from, err, the end of the world, to the current crop of stories which are rather darker, and are driving towards whatever the (presumably cataclysmic) conclusion of the series is. The series currently runs to 7 novels plus several short story/novella add-ins so far; The Annihilation Score, the topic of this review, is the 6th book (yes, I’m still one behind), and an 8th instalment, titled The Delirium Brief, is hitting the shops in July 2017. I better get reading…
The Annihilation Score is different to its predecessor in two main points - firstly it deals with Superheroes, instead of the usual more horror-based approach (the horror of Bureaucracies is still present, of course, with added politics), but secondly, and even more of a departure, the main protagonist relating the story is not Bob Howard this time, but his estranged wife Mo O’Brien instead. And, in keeping with this change, we get to hear the story not just of the current outbreak of Superhero powers in the UK (related to the the usual scenario of the walls between realities being eroded dangerously), but we also learn much much more about the relationship between Mo, and her magic violin, Lector. The fact that it has a name, a personality (yes, it’s self-aware), its own goals, needs, and drives, and a sex life (by invading Mo’s dreams…) make for a certain amount of uneasy reading - the sex is less pervy and quite a lot more creepy than it could have been; instead we get massive relationship and jealousy issues towards Bob, who now, with his mentor Angleton dead, is the earthly vessel for the Eater of Souls. Who in turn does not really like Mo, it appears.
“...and what must it be like, to be an alien spirit bound into an instrument carved from the agonised bones of dying men and women, immobile and helplessly dependent on a human host, hungry for experience and thirsty for blood…”
Here is an unexpected treat - and no, I don't mean the Eggs!
Behind Click-Bait Headlines like the one above you normally find either yawn-inducing mundanity not worthy of the over-hyped title, or advertising completely unrelated to the topic. If you're lucky...
Still, this here is very much worth reading, because of What Happened.
What do you call a human Empire, spread out across a number of star systems, and set up so each system relies an all or most of the others for survival? With an Emperor (sorry, Emperox, gender neutral term) at its centre, a trade guild/house system ruling it together with a Church, and a society in what amounts to a caste system? Thriving? (well, yes). Wealthy? (yes, albeit much more true for the top layer). Corrupt? (oh, certainly).
But more to the point, this first book in John Scalzi's new Interdependency series, The Collapsing Empire, also adds 'Endangered - due to its reliance on the little-understood Flow links which tie this Empire together' to the list of attributes. Never mind the fact that this could mean the end of humanity as they know it... There's more to be added here, but I really don't want to spoil a book which you should read for yourself! But let's just say that the title alone has at least two meanings.
John Scalzi is an American SF writer, who has been entertaining the readers with his tales since 2005, and has won Hugo, Locus, Campbell, and Seiun awards for his work during that time. He is a former president of the SFWA and was (to some extent still is) an exponent in the last few rounds of politics in the SF community (e.g - google Puppygate if you like non-edifying squabbling). He also writes non-fiction, and regularly blogs on whatever.scalzi.com on a wide variety of topics. The Collapsing Empire, out for a few weeks as I'm writing this (yes, I'm behind. Sorry.) kicked off the new Interdependency series in style: Scalzi summarised it as “Sales records broken, bestseller status achieved, and TV deal gotten”. Way to go...
Charles Stross has been enriching our lives with his (predominantly) SFnal tales for over 15 years now, and is thankfully showing no intention to slow down. His articles on antipope.org are as thought-provoking as his fiction output is entertaining, never mind his scintillating presence when put in front of a microphone, or a few pints (or both…). Empire Games is the first book in a new series of apparently the same name, set in his Merchant Princes universe. Now, I have so far avoided these books (6 novels or 3 omnibus editions, respectively) for reasons of time and inclination due to the original topic, so am coming at this with a ‘clean’ background. So, although Charlie considers this be a viable jumping-on point - any misunderstandings below concerning the setting are obviously mine, and most likely due to this; but feel free to point them out to me! The other books in the series are expected in January 2018 (Dark State), and January 2019 (Invisible Sun) - I shall be looking out for them!
The setting, for those who are like me not familiar with the universe this plays in: There is more than one world - there actually are, most likely, an infinitive number thereof. It’s explained to Rita Douglas, our main protagonist, as follows: “Let’s just say we live in a multiverse - a bundle of parallel universes branching off each other. The vast majority are identical but for some quantum uncertainty, and they keep merging and re-emerging. But there are sheaves of parallels where the differences add up to something we can tell apart. A huge number of such sheaves exist, and we call them time lines.” There are ways to move from one such time line into another - some humans can do it (we learn that this is an engineered ability, and not natural), and the USA have machines that can do this, too, rumoured to use ‘donated’ brain cells from captured world walkers. The book plays across (only) four of these time lines, helpfully labeled Time Line One-Four. Time Line One is the Merchant Princes one, I understand, with the Gruinmarkt as the home to the Clan of world walkers. This was nuked into oblivion by the US in retribution for a world walker blowing up the White House with a nuke.
And here is a little rarity - a story about a society at war, about how societies' structures and norms change in such circumstances, but especially about the price of taking up arms and of killing, and an unusual take on how to end war and bring about peace.
Unusual, maybe, but something I can greatly sympathise with - described and executed with the clarity and simplicity of mind of a child, and an impeccable logic.
The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile by Aliette de Bodard is set in her Xuya Universe, in the future/SF branch, and was originally published by Subterranean Press. A lot of things remain unsaid, unexplained, and you don't need to know them to appreciate the story and its marvelous conclusion. You also don't need to be familiar with the other Xuya works to appreciate this, either (but I would suggest you start reading these should you like this short story!)
The image on the right comes from Pinterest and without original attribution - if anybody knows where it is from then please let me know, so I can add credit where credit it due!
This is a book of two parts - the first half of it is the re-release, but Urbane Publications, of the previously self-published novella Two Dogs at the One Dog Inn; whilst the 2nd half consists of a number of short stories. David John Griffin, the author of the book at hand, has published two novels now, and I would think the publisher’s decision to re-publish this book is both timely, and well deserved from the contents. Griffin describes himself as a “writer, graphic designer and app designer, who lives in a small town by the Thames in Kent, UK with his wife Susan and two dogs called Bullseye and Jimbo.“
Two Dogs at the One Dog Inn is, in first approximation, the story of Audrey Ackermann, an animal welfare volunteer, who investigates a report of interminable barking of dogs at the historic Coaching Inn of the title. Or, rather, it’s the story of what she found, and of her working through the trauma of what she found. The actual story is told, exclusively, as an exchange of email between Audrey (who comes across as rather overwrought at times) and her artificially cheerful supervisor Stella. This is interspersed (and, to quite an extent, enlivened) by diary entries and notes for a novel from a memory stick which Audrey found at the Inn; purportedly belonging to an SF writer named Gideon Hadley. This way of storytelling is, by its very nature, rather repetitive, and so is the personal content in the exchange which frames the telling of the actual story. The attachments from the found memory stick I considered fascinating, not just for their content, but also for the protagonists' utter disregards for any kind of privacy, and lack of any attempt to return something which should have been precious, if not even valuable, to its owner. Of course, having a writer (Griffin) writing about a writer (Audrey) going through the notes of a writer (Hadley) for a novel is every so slightly meta, but writing seems to be a favourite topic of writers, somehow. And to be fair, the language here changes depending of which writer things are purportedly from - especially Hadley is overly descriptive, and flowery. The email based structure is not new, either, and has in my opinion been executed better, or at least more entertaining and less repetitive in Matt Beaumont's novel 'e', for example. We also get overdone local placenames (“Legatemead”??? really?) and unnecessarily obfuscated terms (Cyclowiki? To boogle information?). But despite these weaknesses this is a fascinating, and well executed story, with an ending which surprised me (there had to be a twist, but I didn’t expect it to turn the way it did. neat). This is Magic Realism, mostly, but can read differently, too. A contemporary and kindred spirit to the likes of Claude Lalumière, or Karin Tidbeck