Lauren Beukes - Moxyland (2008)

"'What, like the kids' games? That Moxyland shit? Murder and mayhem. Training them to be savage, don't you think? It's not about making friends with kids all over the world, it's about getting ahead, getting one over.'
"'But don't you think it's appropriate? Considering.'"

'Moxyland' is a brutally cynical yet frighteningly believable look at state surveillance and viral marketing, and how digital technology's utopian potential can be co-opted by forces of social control. Set in a vividly realised near future Cape Town, and shot through with future slang, it follows its four young, frequently unsympathetic protagonists as they struggle to express their individuality in an increasingly corporate-sponsored world, and find out, in no certain terms, who really holds all the power. Lauren Beukes deftly evokes a dystopian near future, a divided society living in fear, still suffering from the after effects of apartheid. She uses her characters' differing backgrounds to explore the diversity of different peoples living in the city. Through the ambitions, fears, prejudices and viewpoints of her characters, Beukes expertly dissects the attitudes, disparities and jealously-guarded privileges that have shaped their society.
   The plot is kicked off when Kendra, an up and coming photographer, is injected with a nanobot tattoo by the makers of the soft drink Ghost as part of an underground marketing campaign. She soon finds herself caught up in the schemes of Toby, a smug, arrogant trust-funded blogger, Tendeka, a homosexual would-be revolutionary trying to balance his anti-corporate ethics with the need to secure funding for his programmes to improve the lives of Cape Town's streetkids, and Lerato, an AIDS orphan who has been put through education by corporate funding and now works for Communique in a high powered corporate position that she hopes to advance from by selling company secrets. As all four of them fight for their own autonomy against the government and corporate forces that control their lives, the full nature of that control is revealed, along with the awful trade-off that both the characters and their society has made of their rights for the illusion of comfort and safety.
   'Moxyland' presents a chilling portrait of a government which, hand in glove with the corporations that prop it up, has gone to war with its citizens in the name of protecting them. This is a government that uses the threat of terrorism to justify releasing bio-engineered Marburg virus on a subway full of people, that uses fake identities over the internet to lure would-be dissidents out of the woodwork, then uses those dissidents to justify greater power for itself. Beukes draws out the similarities between the totalitarian government and the corporations that prop it up; both are self-serving institutions that are nominally meant to have the interests of the people at heart, but both place their own bottom lines above human rights, and even human lives. The book is darkly cynical about the idea of any person maintaining their own agency in such an atmosphere. All of the characters believe they are acting in their own interests and to further their own agendas, but in the end all of them are revealed to have been manipulated by government and corporate forces to serve ends other than their own.
   Beukes asks some very interesting and pertinent questions about digital technology and internet culture, especially about their utopian intent verses their use as tools for government surveillance, corporate spying, and even the petty and vindictive use that people frequently put them to. The book takes its name from a children's game in the novel, a massive multiplayer online role playing game in which the rules are enforced by a cute monster character called Moxy. Tony plays it in order to earn some quick cash, and observes that the game doesn't encourage children from all over the world to play and interact with each other, but rewards those who form gangs and bully those weaker than them, which is cynically pointed out as being good practice for the real world. It's also echoed in what the government in the book is doing in its plan to entrap terrorists, hiding behind fake identities and sock puppets, the standard operating procedures of your standard internet troll, and it foreshadows Lerato's ultimate recruitment into the government's secret internet security force, after training in the playgrounds of petty corporate theft.
   It also goes some way to explaining the selfish, narcissistic outlook of the characters, who are very much products of their society. The characters are all compelling and well developed, and the book explores how their various flaws stem from the intersection of their personalities and their social positions. Lerato's ruthless ambition partially arises from her upbringing as an AIDS orphan with very little in the way of future prospects if she didn't get a very comparative corporate sponsorship. Tony is intelligent, witty and charming, but because he is a pampered, spoiled rich kid who has never had to do a day's work in his life, he is sickeningly self-obsessed and self-absorbed, with almost a sociopathic lack of empathy. His obsession with digital technology and live-blogging everything through the cameras in his jacket contrast him with the more down-to-earth Kendra, who has an abiding interest in analogue technology, reflecting her more grounded perspective before she is corrupted by selling her soul to a corporation. At the beginning, Tendeka does genuinely seem to care for the streetkids that he looks after, however his preciousness over his ideals, which lead to him not accepting corporate sponsorship for his streetkids project, winds up stopping him from helping them, unlike his lover Ashraf who is just as idealistic but a lot more practical. Tendeka has his family's money to fall back on, which allows him to be picky about where he gets his money from, but Ashfar, who comes from a poorer working class background, doesn't have that luxury, and realises the importance in actually getting the work done. Tendeka's own high ideals and his desperation ultimately make him an easy pawn for the government, and he winds up causing much more damage than he does helping people, despite his good intentions.
   'Moxyland' shows science fiction at its best, examining in unflinching detail our interface with technology and how this is changing both our society and ourselves. It does so with a diverse range of well-developed and believable characters, and with powerful, succinct prose. It ranks as one of the most disturbing and haunting dystopias in recent history. The end result is a stark warning that has only become more pertinent in the years since it was published.
 

Genevieve Cogman - The Invisible Library (2015)

"That was the whole point of the Library: as far as she'd been taught, anyway. It wasn't about a higher mission to save worlds. It was about finding unique works of fiction and saving them in a place out of time and space. Perhaps some people might think that was a petty way to spend eternity, but Irene was happy with her choice. Anyone who really loved a good story would understand."

'The Invisible Library' by Genevieve Cogman is a thoroughly enjoyable Fantasy adventure featuring alternate worlds, a steampunkish setting, great detectives, fairies, dragons, strong female characters and books, not to mention a compelling central concept. In its inventive use of alternate realities as a series of settings for the ongoing conflict between rival forces of order and chaos, it harks back to classic Fantasy works such as 'Three Hearts And Three Lions' by Poul Anderson or Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion books. It is held together by its overarching love of fiction, and its steadfast belief in the value and importance of books; that stories are worth preserving because they tell us something important about the culture that produced them, and simply for the joy a good story brings.
   At the centre of 'The Invisible Library' is the Library itself, a vast, interdimensional space that a secret society of immortal dimension-hopping Librarians use to store fiction from alternate realities. It's an inspired creation, drawing on both Borges' infinite library and Edgewood, the house that acts as a portal between the worlds of humans and fairies from John Crowley's 'Little Big'. The Librarians themselves are a classic manipulative secret society, a force on the side of order but filled with dark secrets and arcane power games. Appropriately for a book about libraries, 'The Invisible Library' treats fiction as its playground, cheerfully mixing up Moorcockian Fantasy in its use of alternate dimensions and sinister, chaos-worshiping Fae, the Sherlock Holmes stories beloved of protagonist Irene in the form of the great detective Vale, and the scientific romances of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne in its steam-powered, Victorian-esque London. There are even elements of Lovecraftian cosmic horror in the villain Alberic, a rogue Librarian who has turned to the side of chaos to sustain his immortality. Cogman meshes all these disparate elements together seamlessly, and the book has gonzo invention to spare with its giant mechanical insects and clans of warring werewolves, vampires and fairies. It recalls the mad alchemy of the original steampunk novels by Tim Powers, James Blaylock and K. W. Jeter, rather than the more tired and cynical trappings of the genre that have been overused since.
   In keeping with the book's faith in the power of language, the Librarian's magical powers stem from language itself. The Librarians can speak the Language and force the physical components of reality around them to do their bidding, a literalised form of reification, which links thematically back to Borges. Cogman makes good use of the concept, exploring both the limitations of the technique - you have to phrase your requests very specifically for it to be useful, thus limiting its use as a 'get out of jail free' card for the heroes - and the extent to which it could be abused, in a troubling scene in which Irene uses the Language on a person to hijack an airship.
   As well as an intriguing set-up, 'The Invisible Library' also has well drawn and memorable characters. Vale, the Holmes-esque detective and Kai, Irene's assistant, trainee and secret dragon in human form, are compelling characters, all the more so for having the ability to act against Irene's and each other's interests when appropriate. Much of the philosophical weight of the book comes from Irene's attempts to keep Vale on her side. Vale is a rational and caring person who believes that the Library should use its powers to help people rather than just preserving books. One of the good things about 'The Invisible Library' is that, while the Librarians are unquestionably on the side of order, this does not necessarily mean that they are all good or nice; some of the Librarians will use any means necessary to acquire the books they are after, no matter how damaging the consequences to bystanders. We see this personified in the most interesting relationship in the book, between Irene and her ex-mentor Bradamant. Bradamant cares about completing her mission at any cost, and has thrown Irene under the train in the past to achieve this; as a result, Irene is especially conscious of how her actions affect other people, and wants to do her job without causing harm and to help people on the way if she can. Irene has to prove that she can get results whilst showing Vale that she is ultimately a moral person, unlike Bradamant. Cogman handles Bradamant and Irene's relationship very well; there's no denying that Bradamant is incredibly selfish, manipulative and unpleasant, even going so far as to drug Irene at the climax so that she can finish the job her way without Irene's interference, but she isn't the main villain, and by the end of the book there's a sense that she has learned to respect Irene, whilst Irene, by showing that she is both moral and competent is able to leave behind her hangups about being in Bradamant's shadow.

Barry N. Malzberg - Galaxies (1975)

"The novel itself cannot be written, at least by this writer, nor can it be encompassed by any techniques currently available, because it partakes of its time and that time is of the fortieth century, a time unimaginably distant... and it could be perceived only through the idiom and devices of that era which, to be sure, will not exist for more than eighteen hundred years.
   "Nor - continuing to be straightforward - will that idiom or those devices ever exist because science fiction is not a series of working models for the future but merely a sub-genre of romantic fiction which employs the future as historicals would use the past, as Westerns would use the West, as pornography would use fornication - in short as a convention, which is the focus of their appeal. By virtue of these reasons then, not to say others which are more personal - but which will be revealed - these fifty-five thousand words are little more than a set of constructions toward a construction even less substantial. It, as the writer himself, will not be finished in this world."

'Galaxies' is a bold, post modernist science fiction novel that deals explicitly with the nature of science fiction itself. Set out as the notes for the author's unwritten novel, also entitled 'Galaxies', Barry N. Malzberg uses the book's meta-narrative to unravel the impossibilities of writing science fiction and to comment on the many failings of the genre. However along the way the story the author is trying to write, about a space pilot trying to escape from a black galaxy caused by a collapsing neutron star, and his struggle to write it, wind up echoing each other and highlighting the metaphysical concepts and questions the author is intending to explore in the finished novel. The end result is both a compelling story in its own right and some of the sharpest criticism I've ever read of the SF genre. 

   In his earlier work, 'Herovit's World', Malzberg had satirised the poor writing found in much golden age SF using meta techniques and a narrative about a pathetic, struggling SF writer who understands human nature almost as poorly as his badly written space opera protagonist. However the structure of 'Herovit's World' was still that of a straightforward novel. The meta techniques in 'Galaxies' are much more sophisticated, with the framing device being that the text is the author's notes describing a science fiction novel which he has intentionally not completed. Thus the author becomes the main character as much as Lena Thomas, the captain of the Skipstone in the unfinished story 'Galaxies'. The story is ultimately recursive. The author's struggle to write 'Galaxies', as he engages with and attempts to subvert the expectations and demands of what is essentially a commercial genre in order to make a profound piece of art, as he writes himself into a hole he can't get out of, as he attempts techniques and reaches for affects that are beyond his skills as a writer, are metaphorically echoed in Lena's impossible attempt to escape from the gravitational field of the collapsing neutron star, and ultimately the author's preferred ending to the story has these two struggles converge, with Lena perhaps becoming the author and the writing of 'Galaxies' becoming the metaphor for her trials in the black galaxy.
   'Galaxies' is left as a series of notes in deference to the fact that if science fiction really were the medium of the future, it would need to be expressed in the idiom of the future, which of course does not exists yet. From this initial confession, and the observation that science fiction frequently simply uses its futuristic setting as an exotic backdrop rather than even attempting to engage with current modes of expression such as post-modernism, let a lone future modes of expression, or to engage with genuine scientific premises, the book engages with many of the genre's failings. Malzberg's criticism from the genre comes from both a genuine fascination with science fiction - its unique potential to engage with interesting scientific theories, its ability to tackle deep metaphysical ideas, its unparalleled scope - and his disappointment with a genre that he sees as frequently formulaic and subject to the conformity of market specifications as dull and all-encompassing as the manipulative Bureau which controls space travel in Lena's future. Much of the black humour in 'Galaxies' comes from Malzberg's cynical understanding of the demands of the science fiction market, which manifests in the author's notes as he talks about where he could pad out the story into a series of novels in order to make money, or about where he might add gratuitous sex scenes to keep the reader's interest.
   Throughout, Malzberg deftly uses the author's voice to betray the author's personality; the writer of 'Galaxies' is prolix, self-important and self-pitying, frequently going off on amusing tangents to complain about the difficulty of his life as a writer or to bitch about his professional rivals. However it is these failings that make the author ring true as a character in his own right, and it is clearly meant to be part of the joke. There are sections where the author criticizes Lena for having many of the characteristics that he has, utterly unaware that he is doing this. This also helps to foreshadow the ending. Making sure the reader is aware of the humanity, the failings of the book's two central characters helps the book sell its metaphysical aspects, as the author himself points out. And 'Galaxies' does succeed on a philosophical level, as well as a biting piece of satire. The author underlines the religious imagery involved in the central concept of the story 'Galaxies', with Lena as Job being tested by the author, and the cyborg advisers playing the role of the consolers. Lena's journey to achieving her own agency in defiance of the rigid control of the Bureau, even at the possible price of destroying the entire universe and all of existence, and hence the author's decision to write, or not write, 'Galaxies' as he sees artistically fit, is genuinely powerful and moving. It is in this integration of story and ambitious meta-narrative construction that 'Galaxies' is such a success.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Hard To Be A God (1973)

"How I'd like to let out some of the hatred that's accumulated over the past twenty-four hours, but it looks like I'll have no luck. Let us remain humane, forgive everyone, and be calm like the gods. Let them slaughter and desecrate, we'll be calm like the gods. The gods need not hurry, they have eternity ahead."

In 'Hard To Be A God', Arkady and Boris Strugatsky explore the rise of totalitarianism, and the inadequacies of theories of history to deal with actual history unfolding. The story is set on a planet with medieval level technology, where the kingdom of Arkanar is undergoing a power shift as the king's minister, in a flurry of anti-intellectual paranoia, is creating a pervasive and controlling state based on fear and oppression. The main character, Anton, is a historian from a utopian Earth of the future, sent to study the unfolding of history on an alien planet, is bound by a rule of non-interference similar to the Prime Directive in Star Trek; he does what he can to save the lives of the intellectuals hounded by Don Reba's storm troopers, but he is not allowed to interfere with the natural unfolding of history. As the situation in Arkanar grows more and more violent and out of control, Anton finds himself increasingly at odds with his superiors, who insist that, as their theory of history does not allow for the development of totalitarianism out of a medieval society, the situation cannot be as desperate as he paints it.
   'Hard To Be A God' deals with the key theme that runs through much of the Strugatsky's work, censorship and the artist's struggle against it. As in 'Definitely Maybe', the novel features artists who come up against powerful forces wishing to silence them, in this case Don Reba's storm troopers, and, as they would in that later novel, the Strugatsky brothers explore the different ways in which different people respond to censorship and state-sponsored oppression. The Strugatskys quite rightly identify censorship of ideas as a key sign that something has gone deeply wrong with a society. Arkanar is being manipulated by Don Reba into fearing and distrusting new ideas and perspectives, vilifying and persecuting the very people who are capable of dragging them out of the middle ages, something that can only lead to its stagnation. Anton tries desparately to save the artists and scientists of Arkanar, some of whom are stripped of honour and property and beaten, imprisoned, executed, or else compromise their art and integrity by pandering to the strictures set out by the state.
   The book's setting allows it to mingle the tropes of science fiction and Fantasy, and to subvert the standard middle ages setting of much Fantasy in interesting ways. Because we experience the world through the eyes of Anton, in the guise of Don Rumata, the well-connected noble he pretends to be in  Arkanar, we see it through a perspective closer to our own than those who live in it. Anton is disgusted by both the social injustices of the rigidly feudal system and the technological backwardness of the people who live in it. By pointing out how bad the people smell because of the lack of modern hygiene makes the medieval setting, which could be overly familiar to readers of genre fiction, especially vivid and resonant for the reader. This allows the Strugatskys to humourously satirise the upper classes, who strut around assuming their natural superiority whilst appearing to Anton and the reader as drunken buffoons. It's also part of how the Strugatskys subvert the general tropes and expectations of the book's medieval, Fantasy-esque setting. 'Hard To Be A God' deconstructs the idea of chivalrous noblemen as brutally as George R. R. Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire, with the Strugatskys portraying them as self-interested, aggressive, drunken boors. Similarly, the book plays with Fantasy mythology. There's an excellent passage where the authors describe the legends and myths that have built up around the Hiccup Forest, before revealing that they have been put in place there and exaggerated to hide the Earth people's secret base.
   'Hard To Be A God' is thoroughly cynical about human nature. While it features, on its periphery, a utopian society on Earth, it is fully aware of the horrors of history that humanity has had to go through to get to its current state of enlightenment. Don Reba's name is derived from Lavrenty Beria, Stalin's brutal secret police chief, and his horrific methods and brutality echo those of his real life basis. His betrayal and destruction of his own storm troopers when they get too powerful echoes Hitler and Himmler's destruction of Ernst Rohm and the SA, and his torture chambers are reminiscent of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. The Strugatskys acknowledge the violence and suffering which have shaped human history, but also the pettiness of human nature that drives much of history. The noblemen make ludicrous decisions because they're permanently drunk, which makes them particularly easy for Reba to manipulate. The feudal rights of the Barons Pampa wind up having to be fought for each generation in a wasteful, expensive and unnecessary war which always has the same outcome, all for silver mines which cost less than the war does and laughably trivial privileges for the Barons. The Stugatskys have a hope for what humanity can become, but despair at its violence, cruelty and idiocy. This despair ultimately overtakes poor Anton, as circumstances get to the stage where he is no longer able to stand by dispassionately. He reaches the point where whatever he does he winds up with blood on his hands, but his decisive action only causes more death and destruction.

Nnedi Okorafor - Lagoon (2014)

"We are change."

"Human beings have a hard time relating to that which does not resemble them. It's your greatest flaw."

Nnedi Okorafor's 'Lagoon' is a first contact novel, in which the aliens land in Lagos. It is a fresh and original take on the subject, not least for its setting, which is vividly and powerfully evoked by Okorafor. However as well as providing a welcome antidote to all the British and American-centred stories in which the aliens land in New York or London, the aliens in 'Lagoon' have not just come for the President and the protagonists; their arrival is a cataclysmic event with enormous implications for everyone living on Earth. 'Lagoon' portrays the reactions of a diverse cross-section of all the various walks of life and perspectives in Lagos, as well as the effects it has on fish and animals - human beings aren't Earth's only inhabitants after all. The end result is an ambitious, powerful and complex story, in which the city of Lagos plays as central a role as Okorafor's characters.
   Okorafor portrays Lagos with passion and in great depth. She clearly has a great love for and fascination with the place, its energy and bustling vitality, but also has a canny understanding of its many and complex problems, the poverty, corruption and religious tensions. This allows her to portray the good and the bad about Lagos as it reacts to alien visitors, with considerable nuance. This is aided by the fact that Okorafor is interested in everybody's response. Her narrative takes in not just her main characters, but expands to follow 419 scammers, the students' LGBT society, the military, gangs, prostitutes, manipulative religious leaders and differently abled street kids. So many depictions of anywhere in Africa by Western media portray the entire continent as one homogenized culture, so it is both refreshing and necessary as a British SF reader to engage with a work that portrays Lagos in all its complexity. Okorafor understands the value and importance of giving all of these different, and frequently marginalised characters, a voice. Everyone reacts to the news differently, coming as they do from different backgrounds and with different perspectives, and the cumulative effect of this is that it allows Okorafor to portray first contact as the cataclysmic, perspective altering event it would not doubt be.
   'Lagoon' also subverts the standard human arrogance which assumes that we would be the only species on Earth that the aliens would be interested in interacting with. Okorafor's aliens land in the sea, and their first interaction is with fish. Throughout the book they are just as interested in interacting with animals as they are humans, offering them the same help. The uplifted animals provide us with the first hint of what the aliens are doing; they don't see their job as being to add anything, but to act as a catalyst for the animal or person's desire. In this way they act as instigators of social change. One of the results of the aliens landing is that the sea life now has the weapons to fight off humans polluting their environment. The new world that the aliens will create will have to be fairer not just for people but for animals as well.
   As well as interacting with Lagos' people and wildlife, the aliens also interact with the spiritual forces that have been living in Nigeria along with the humans. Ijele, the Igbo Chief of Masquerades, Legba, the spirit of the crossroads, and the Bone Collector, a road monster that consumes human victims of road accidents, all manifest and interact with the aliens, and it is revealed at the end that the entire story has been spun by Udide Okwanka, a giant story weaving spider who lives in a cave underneath the city, and who has been inspired by the aliens to stop weaving and take part in the story. These are all forces that have been in Nigeria before the arrival of the aliens, forces which give the country the strength of character and history to react to something as big as alien visitors. This is also shown in the supernatural powers of the three main characters, who were specially selected to be ambassadors. Adaora, a marine biologist, was born with webbed hands and feet, and has a natural affinity with the water. Anthony, a famous rapper, is able to tap into the cosmic rhythm and use its power. Agu, a soldier, has super strength. These characteristics have put them on the edge of human society and the spiritual world, and allows them to interact with the aliens on more equal footing and as ambassadors of both.
   Part of what gives the book its unique flavour is its dialogue, much of which is written in Nigerian Pidgin English. Okorafor has a great ear for dialogue, and the different registers, how much slang the characters pepper their speech with, gives the reader more information about their background and their personality, as well as greatly contributing to the sense of place. The book's structure is interesting as well, moving from the third person present for much of the book to sections related by minor characters in the first person when the aliens are mingling with the humans and chaos has broken out. These sections help to deliberately disorientate the reader in the midst of all this chaos, creating a sense of disorder and speed as the reader is rushed around different places and viewpoints. There are also more poetic sections, as rendered directly by Udide Okwanka the spider, harking back to the oral tradition and linking this thoroughly modern work of SF to the traditional. The book ends on an appropriately ambiguous note; the aliens have arrived, Ayodele's sacrifice has made humanity open to interacting and sharing with their alien visitors, all possibilities are open for a new dawn for Lagos. What happens next is left to the characters, and to the reader's imagination.
 
 

Nalo Hopkinson - Brown Girl In The Ring (1998)

"'But doux-doux,' Prince of Cemetery said, 'Your granddaughter head full of spirits already; she ain't tell you? All kind of duppy and thing. When she close she eyes, she does see death. She belong to me. She is my daughter. You should 'fraid of she.'"

'Brown Girl In The Ring' is an innovative re-imagining of the post apocalypse tale, in which vividly realised urban decay is juxtaposed with Afro-Caribbean folklore and mythology. The novel convincingly portrays the inner city of Toronto after economic collapse has lead all the wealthy corporations and businesses to withdraw from the centre, leaving behind poverty and violence. However, whilst post apocalyptic stories like 'The Drowned World' by J. G. Ballard show their protagonists going through a sort of psychological metamorphosis to come to terms with their new surroundings, in 'Brown Girl In The Ring', the characters make use of their traditional skills and knowledge to better cope with the transfigured world around them. Hopkinson's characters react to the situation around them, rather than letting themselves be passively shaped by it. This aspect is present in Hopkinson's feminist approach; her characters Ti-Jeanne and Gros-Jeanne, her grandmother, are powerful women with agency who can summon and channel spirits, and who don't need men to support them.
  Nalo Hopkinson presents a vivid yet nuanced depiction of a post-apocalyptic situation. With the businesses and law enforcement agencies terrified to set foot in the centre, everything is run by Rudy and his gang, who maintain their power through crime rings, fear and coercion. Hopkinson doesn't shy away from portraying the violence and poverty that have become a part of the characters' every day lives, from Ti-Jeanne's dangerous walk home to the gangs of street kids living in the sewers and looking out for themselves. However, rather than succumbing to despair, the communities in Hopkinson's Toronto work hard to survive, forging a new life from a mixture of street savvy and traditional knowledge and practices. Ti-Jeanne's community is made up of racially and culturally diverse survivors who have been forced to become self-sufficient, from the East Indian restaurant owner Roopsingh who makes Canadian and Carribean food to herb growers and urban farmers like Gros-Jeanne who sell him ingredients. Gros-Jeanne herself epitomizes the book's synthesis of modern knowledge and traditional practices. She is an ex-nurse who acts as the community's healer, augmenting her medical knowledge with her traditional herbal remedies and her ability to channel the spirit world. Hopkinson's aesthetic is reflected in the characters' dialogue, a rich blend of Afro-Caribean dialect that gives the book its distinct flavour.
   'Brown Girl In The Ring' is also notable for its explicit feminism. The book revolves around its three central female characters, Ti-Jeanne, her mother Mi-Jeanne and her grandmother Gros-Jeanne. All three are distinct characters with strong personalities, and the book explores how Rudy, in his masculine arrogance, woefully underestimates all three women, leading to his downfall. Hopkinson is particularly good at exploring the characters' different aspects of womanhood, allowing them to take on traditional roles and aspects of femininity that male writers typically use as excuses to exclude female characters from taking part in an action-packed, post-apocalyptic science fiction adventure/horror story. Ti-Jeanne is a young mother who is still breast-feeding her baby. She carries her baby with her practically everywhere throughout the book. For many male writers, this would be grounds for writing her out of her own story, her role as a mother with a baby taking precedence over her role as the protagonist of her own story. Hopkinson allows her to remain the protagonist; having a baby doesn't make Ti-Jeanne any less a person with agency, with obstacles to overcome and issues to solve, and she doesn't let it stop her. Equally, however, Hopkinson fully explores Ti-Jeanne's nurturing and caring feelings for her baby, showing how Ti-Jeanne can be both a good mother and a fully realised character at the centre of a book. Similarly, Gros-Jeanne is an old woman whose role is defined as a healer and a dispenser of wisdom; Hopkinson allows her to fully embody this female archetype whilst still having a character of her own, a powerful, headstrong woman who cares for her family but makes some terrible mistakes. Mi-Jeanne is a particularly interesting character; as a homeless woman struggling with mental health issues and a mother who abandoned her child she is thoroughly Othered by society, and as the duppy in Rudy's bowl she has been forced to commit horrific murders for him, yet Hopkinson still manages to connect to the human core of the character and to pave the way for the process of reconciliation between her and her estranged daughter to
begin.
   As well as exploring the strength inherent in femininity, Hopkinson also explores masculine weakness. Rudy, a truly monstrous character, ultimately became a bully himself in response to all the bullying he suffered throughout his life, the only way his rigidly masculine perspective sees to avoid receiving pain being to inflict it on others. Similarly, Tony, Ti-Jeanne's boyfriend and the father of her child, is revealed to be a very weak man, unable to stand up to Rudy despite knowing full well that the things Rudy asks him to do are wrong. His lack of moral fibre scupper any chance he has of making up with Ti-Jeanne.
   'Brown Girl In The Ring' also explores issues of social justice. Its central plot is set in motion because Premier Uttley, the governor of Toronto, needs a new heart, so the director of the hospital contracts Rudy to arrange to have a fresh human heart provided for her, knowing full well that Rudy provides him organs by harvesting them from poor people living in the centre that no one with any power will notice has disappeared. As a metaphor for the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy it's not subtle, but it is viscerally powerful and the implications are well thought out and deftly handled.
   However, perhaps the most striking aspect of the book is the elegant way it incorporates Afro-Caribbean mythology into its urban post-apocalyptic setting. Gros-Jeanne, Mi-Jeanne and Ti-Jeanne share the ability to channel the Orisha spirits. These give Gros-Jeanne her healing powers, and Ti-Jeanne her powers to see how people will die. In 'Brown Girl In The Ring', the spirit world encroaches on our own world with hallucinogenic intensity, from Ti-Jeanne's vision of the Jab-Jab to Ti-Jeanne's eerie possession by Prince of Cemetery when Gros-Jeanne calls on the spirits, to the nightmarish final sequence in which the spirits take their vengeance on Rudy for abusing magic. Hopkinson manages to seamlessly integrate these spiritual beliefs into her realistically conceived SF world, creating something both powerfully memorable and unique.
 

Emily St. John Mandel - Station Eleven (2014)

"What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty."

'Station Eleven' is a post-apocalypse novel about the importance of art, the fallibility of memory and the fragility of our existence. It tells the story of the Travelling Symphony, a nomadic Shakespeare company that tours the area around the Great Lakes twenty years after humanity has been decimated by an aggressive flu pandemic, performing plays and classical music to the surviving communities. However, due to its inventive nonlinear narrative structure, the book also spends a significant amount of time exploring its characters lives before the collapse of society. The book achieves a powerful sense of pathos and an appreciation for the wonders of the modern world by exploring what it would be like to lose all that. By exploring the way its characters' lives have woven around each other and interacted both before and after the collapse, it makes profound observations about individual perspective and the subjective nature of memory. At a time when the age-old conflict between genre and literary fiction has been rekindled, 'Station Eleven' is a triumphant example of how a writer outside of SF can combine SFnal tropes and ideas with literary techniques to enrich both forms.
   One of the charges frequently leveled at literary fiction that plays with SF tropes is that non-genre writers are dilettantes who don't fully understand the ideas they're using or their history in the genre. One of the things I really liked about 'Station Eleven' was how Emily St. John Mandel has written a book that is tonally different from your standard post-apocalyptic SF, yet her appreciation of genre shines through. The Travelling Symphony's motto, written on their lead caravan and tattooed on Kirsten's arm, is "Survival is inefficient," which is taken from an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. I like that a Shakespeare company can have a motto lifted from Star Trek, and it fits in with one of the themes of the book, which is that ultimately we decide what things hold significance for us, from the paperweight that different characters place different emotional weight on as it passes through their hands, to Clark's museum of iPhones and credit cards, a tribute to the lost technology of the old world.
   Genre fiction raises its head as well in Station Eleven, the comic series being written by Miranda that gives the novel its name. In the comics, Station Eleven is a space station the size of a moon designed to look like a planet, on which a handful of escapees from the alien conquest of Earth live in a flooded twilight world. Miranda is a central character in the book, though she dies in the early stages of the flu pandemic. She ties together most of the other characters, from her relationship with Arthur Leander, the actor whose heart attack on the night of the flu outbreak kicks off the book, to Kirsten, an actor with the Travelling Symphony whose copy of Station Eleven is one of her few prized possessions. Station Eleven itself, with its eerie, deserted twilight world and its oppressed citizens longing to return to a world they can never get back, becomes a central metaphor for the characters' situation in the book. This is despite the fact that Miranda created Station Eleven purely as a passion project distinct from her job, and only ever vanity published it in a small print run. The point is that all art, as a form of human expression, is worthwhile, and that by its nature it resonates with people. From Station Eleven to Star Trek to 'King Lear', they were all created out of love and speak to the people who experience them; they are a coping mechanism for both the creator and the audience, and this is what makes them important.
   'Station Eleven' has a nonlinear structure, its narrative split between the post apocalypse, the time immediately leading up to the collapse, and times in the characters' lives many years before. It also makes use of multiple viewpoint characters. The advantage of this approach is in the accumulation of detail from different perspectives; the characters interact before and after the end of the world, and we see different scenes through different eyes, fragments of old letter or articles revealed and completed in other characters' stories. In an SF novel, it would be unusual to spend so much time in a post-apocalypse novel before the actual apocalypse; we know what our world is like today, and that's not what we're interested in. With 'Station Eleven', the accumulation of detail and context serves to help us understand the characters better, giving more insight into their actions and decisions, why they choose to hold onto what they do. It also allows Mandel to illustrate the importance of perspective and the subjectivity of experience. As a novel of the apocalypse, it is necessarily about loss and regret, all the things that we take for granted in the world today gone forever. However in order to tease out what loss and regret really mean, it is necessary to turn to the context of individual experience. Arthur Leander's journey, from struggling small town actor to reluctantly famous star, forces him, like Lear, to think about the things he regrets - his numerous failed marriages, his inability to spend time with his son - and take stock of what's important. Similarly, the collapse of civilisation coincides with Clark's own soul searching, and provides Jeevan with a chance to start a more meaningful life. Ultimately, all of the characters' emotional journeys converge on the same thing that the apocalypse forces everyone to confront: with the loss of the life you know, what would you miss, what is important to you that you would keep, and what would you change?
   A shallow reading of 'Station Eleven', with its troupe of actors and musicians performing Shakespeare in the ruins of civilisation, might accuse it of softness, a hopelessly naive vision of humanity. In most post apocalypse novels, culture is the first thing to go to the wall in the rush to bludgeon your neighbour with their own femur. 'Station Eleven' is an undeniably optimistic book, which one doesn't normally say about post-apocalypse fiction. Not only to people maintain their humanity in the face of total societal collapse, at the end, it's implied that one of the settlements has rediscovered electricity. It's hard to imagine an apocalypse more different than Ballard's stories of people's mental states regressing to reflect the ruined landscapes, or the string of awful yet totally rational decisions the protagonist takes on the road to hell to protect his family in John Christopher's 'The Death Of Grass'. However, while 'Station Eleven' doesn't dwell on the violence, it is most definitely still there. Mandel hasn't let her characters off the hook or taken the easy way out. Kirsten, August and the rest of the Travelling Symphony are people who have had to do horrible, violent things in order to survive, and suffered horrific violence in the process. They have come out the other side, and they still think that Shakespeare and classical music are worth preserving. There's something wonderfully inspiring and moving in that.