A For Andromeda - Fred Hoyle and John Elliot

 ET doesn't always have to come on a ship...  A For Andromeda is the classic of British science fiction in which First Contact is via a complex message from the stars.    The remote aliens send a blueprint and the gullible and hawkish military-industrial complex of which Eisenhower warned only a year before Andromeda was published can't wait to build it.

That, of course, leads to further challenges and problems which the combination of super-scientist Hoyle and scriptwriter Elliot handle very well.   The book is of its time but the questions it asks and poses its characters are timeless.   The science, thanks to Hoyle, is as it stood in 1962.   So is the fiction, with British women just starting to emerge from the home into science.   Interestingly, the stable characters here - Judy Adamson the security specialist, Madeleine Dawnay the super-scientist, and Andromeda herself - are all women.   The computer-whiz John Fleming is unmistakably Hoyle, the truculent big brain who most times turned out to be right in the end.   The two research bases, Bouldershaw and Thorness are almost certainly Jodrell Bank and Windscale-Sellafield.

Yes, there's an element of the formulaic about A For Andromeda, but the ending caught me by surprise.

The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu - Paula Guran (ed)

 The subtitle, 'New Lovecraftian Fiction', is an exact description of the concept.   Virtually all the contributions are original to this collection.  By and large they bring Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos into the twenty-first century.   A majority are by women, which in itself casts a fresh light on Lovecraft's originals in which there are few if any women.   Lovecraft's personal attitude to women was to say the least unusual (see Houellebecq on Lovecraft, reviewed here earlier this month).   On that subject, and on Lovecraft's racism, the final item in the collection is a bracing non-fiction piece by Veronica Schanoes called 'Variations on Lovecraftian Themes.' 

There were no stories I didn't enjoy reading.   I thought the standard overall was high.   Naturally, some appealed more to me than others, a personal preference reflecting my own perception of Lovecraft rather than anything in the work itself.   I liked 'A Clutch' by Laird Barron, 'It's All the Same Road in the End' by Brian Hodge, 'I Believe That We Will Win' by Nadia Bulkin and (probably my favourite) 'In the Ruins of Mohenjo-Daro' by Usman T Malik.

Regular visitors to this blog will notice that I get through a fair few anthologies, particularly in speculative fiction.   Through that I am beginning to notice anthologists to look out for and who to avoid.   Paula Guran is definitely one of the former.

Absolution - Jeff VanderMeer

 Absolution is the fourth and final part of the Southern Reach Series, written ten years after the first trilogy came out - in one triple release - in 2014.

Southern Reach is the agency tasked with reclaiming the Forgotten Coast.   The problem is Area X, a space that has been sealed off beyond the Border, where bizarre things occur.   The first section of Absolution is the story of an early expedition in which biologists go to the Forgotten Coast to research alligators, some specimens of which they take with them.   In Area X they are plagued with carnivorous rabbits, each of which carries a camera.   The biologists cope with the rabbits, wiping them out the American Way, only for more rabbits to arrive with more cameras to munch up the dead rabbits.   Some of the cameras are captured.  They show videos of the the expedition members doing things they would never dream of doing.   Then one of their number goes rogue, morphing into something more than human, rampaging through the camp with one of the alligators as a sort of pet sidekick.

All this is gleaned by a longstanding agent known only as Old Jim, who is plucked off skid row and rehabilitated by the Central command of Southern Reach.   Part of his rehab involves puttting together the story of the expedition.   He becomes obsessed with the enigma "Rogue".

Next up, Old Jim is sent to the Forgotten Coast.  His cover is as the new owner of the local bar where expedition members drank twenty years before.   He is joined by his daughter Cass - only she isn't reeally Cass but another agent sent to spy on Old Jim.   They establish a real relationship and together get a long way into the central mystery of Rogue.   But at the last minute, after things have been getting increasingly weird for some time, the Border comes down.   How and where from are questions never answered.   All we know is that, one year later, another team is sent in to Area X to find out what happened and, perhaps, to recover Old Jim.

With this second team things start extremely weird.   We experience it all through the eyes of James Lowry, a foul-mouthed gung-ho action man, whose response is to shoot before thinking.  And with Lowry the last man standing - standing on the edge of the intestinal link with reality, discussing matters with his bio-hazard skin-suit - the tetralogy ends.

It is a powerful piece of work, perhaps best approached by reading the four novels in the intended order.  Nevertheless, VanderMeer dragged me in.   I genuinely couldn't stop reading, albeit I wasn't always enjoying myself.   Old Jim is a compelling character, Cass an effective mirror for him.   Lowry (Young Jim, ppssibly?) is less so and I didn't care much about his fate.   VanderMeer's writing is dense and sparky and I am definitely on the lookout for more.

H P Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life - Michel Houellebecq

 As stated in my last post, I had to buy this book as soon as I saw it listed in the front of Serotonin.   It arrived whilst I was reading Serotonin and I wolfed my way through it, finishing before I finished reading Serotonin.   Usually I try and space out my reading of authors I have suddenly discovered (no real reason for that, other than a general concept of neatness and variety).   In this case, however, the two really became one.

Lovecraft was Houellebecq's first publication, Serotonin his most recent translated into English.   Almost thirty years between them - and yet the tone, outlook and style is identical.   Short, snappy passages of intense writing marked by a profound pessimism.   The latter is very like Lovecraft, the former very much not.   Houellebecq's main preoccupation is Lovecraft's literary style and, though I have read most Lovecraft and not so very long ago, I hadn't really realised how odd that style is - so prolix, so arcane, archaic and artificial.   It is in fact a wall Lovecraft is building, not so much between author and reader as between reality and midnight black fantasy.   The same applies to Houellebecq's thesis as expressed in the subtitle, Against the World, Against Life.   Lovecraft's fiction is exclusively unreal, unworldly and not about life as we know it.  Like his style, his vision is absolutely unique.   There are no models he can have followed; those who follow him signally fail to achieve the overall mordancy.

Traditionally Lovecraft is seen as being reclusive and remote.   Houellebecq is at pains to point out this is not entirely true.   Lovecraft had friends.   He even had a wife (which I had not realised) and remained on good terms with her even after retreating back to his old home.   He was (and I did know this) enormously supportive of younger writers who wrote to him.   He won their affection and Houellebecq is much kinder than other critics to those like August Derleth who maintained Lovecraft's reputation after his death and, indeed, brought him into the literary mainstream.

This is a marvellous book, beautifully written, inscisive and empathic.   The inclusion of two of the 'master texts', The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness is a wonderful bonus.

Serotonin - Michel Houellebecq

 For me, Serotonin was an extraordinary introduction to the work of one of France's most controversial contemporary writers.   Not only is Michel Houellebecq contemporary, he is also virtually my contemporary (he is a year younger).   Is that why we seem to have similar mindsets?

Houellebecq's protagonist, Florent, is solitary, reclusive and taking anti-depressants.   Yes, sounds familiar to me.   He is forty-six and undergoing a midlife crisis.   I was forty-seven when I had mine.   He is a successful bureaucrat with the European Agriculture Agency.   I was a successful local bureaucrat.   He hates the free market economy.  Yup.

His lovelife is complex and not very successful.   His Japanese girlfriend is extremely liberated sexually, but Florent hankers after Camille, who he now realises was The One.   Not that he will be much use to her.   His anti-depressant, Captorix, is now the most important thing in his life, and it has rendered him impotent.  (Captorix is fictional, but Houellebecq has done his research on anti-d's.)

Anyway, Florent resolves to quit his job and withdraw from life.   He sells his apartment in Paris, dumps his girlfriend, quits his job and moves into a hotel in a different part of the city.   He goes for a walk every day, eats out, but otherwise stays in his room, watching TV and reflecting on his past.

After a couple of months he decides to explore his past, revisit the key places and, if possible, contact those who matter.   He has a brief affair with one old girlfriend, which doesn't work.   He moves on to Normandy where he meets up with his college friend Aymeric, who lives in the family chateau and tries hard to make a living by farming in the traditional way.   Florent ends up living on the estate, where Aymeric teaches him how to shoot.   While Florent vegetates, Aymeric's life and business collapse.   He becomes involved with the yellow vest movement, with consequences.   Florent witnesses all this, wondering if he should get involved.   In the end he moves on, and tracks down Camille...

Serotonin is a complex and troubling read.   You don't always know where or when you are as you read, which is absolutely intentional.   Houellebecq favours short, punchy passages in short chapters.   I was fascinated, and whilst reading Serotonin, which was written in 2019, the year Houellebecq won his Legion d'Honneur  and seems to be his most recent book to appear in English, I bought and read his first book, a non-fiction study of H P Lovecraft's writing from 1989 - and the style and attitudes are absolutely the same.

His opinions are not necessarily mine.   Some I found offensive (but then I have had years of therapy as well as years of anti-depressants).   Nevertheless I am absolutely hooked on Houellebecq.

Bust - Ken Bruen & Jason Starr

 Ken Bruen, who died in March 2025, was known this side of the Atlantic for his Jack Taylor series, which was dramatised for TV with Iain Glen and not adequately promoted.   Bruen later moved in New York literary circles and as such collaborated with Jason Starr on the Max and Angela trilogy (actually a tetralogy - there is a fourth) for the magnificent Hard Case Crime brand.   The first three are now collected in one volume as Supermax.  Bust is the series opener.

Max Fisher is a selfmade tech millionaire with failing health and a wife he has come to dislike.   He begrudges Dierdre the half of his fortune he would lose in a divorce.   Meanwhile he is very much enjoying the affair he is having with his PA, an Irish-Greek redhead called Angela who makes the most of what nature gave her, plus a little enhancement up front.   If only Dierdre was out of the way, Max would marry Angela in a heartbeat.   Luckily, Angela knows someone who can help with that.

Enter Dillon an expat Irish psycho-killer with a ruined mouth and a yen to become a poet.   Dierdre is duly disposed of.   Then a former US sniper and smash-and-grab merchant called Bobby Rosa, now confined to a wheelchair, looks up his old friend Victor Gianetti, now working as a glorified bellhop in a New York hotel.   Bobby's big idea is to use Victor's pass key to grab photos of couples booking a room for the afternoon and blackmail them.   His first attempt catches Max and Angela hard at it.   Bobby recognises Max from the news.  Bobby's boat has come in big time.

Unfortunately both Bobby and Dillon share Max's entusiasm for Angela (not that either of them would ever contemplate marrying her).   That's inevitably going to lead to complications.

I very much enjoyed Bust.   The collaboration between Bruen and Starr is seamless.   The dialogue is snappy, the characters well-drawn.   A morant humour runs throughout.   I particularly enjoyed the chapter epigraphs, which are quotes from other contemporary crime noir writers (including one from Bruen himself).

Typhoon - Joseph Conrad

 I got interested in Conrad a few years ago.   Heart of Darkness and Nostromo are both reviewed somewhere on this blog.   Then I kind of ran out; I didn't come across any of his work in the library or the pre-loved bookshops I frequent locally or in London.   I remembered Typhoon in connection with a novella/short story I'm currently working on and bought the Penguin Classics edition online and also pre-loved.

I'm glad I did.   It gave me the background information I was looking for but Typhoon itself is a fantastic read.   Of the three other stories in the collection (which, it should be noted, is the collection Conrad personally put together, insisting that the stories complimented one another), two are sea-based, two about seafarers ashore.   The other sea-based story, 'Falk', is a 'reminiscence' in the same form as Heart of Darkness - a bunch of retired seamen chatting in a Thames-side pub.   The twist, when it is revealed, is truly jaw-dropping.   The other stories, 'Amy Foster' and 'To-Morrow', are traditional short stories, character studies rather than twisted tales.   In both cases the main characters have mental shortcomings.   Amy has what we would today call learning difficulties and cannot fully understand the good-looking immigrant the sea has deposited in her village.   She remains enigmatic for us because Conrad uses the distancing device of the local doctor telling her story to his friend.   This works extremely well.  In 'To-Morrow' a retired seaman is convinced the son he drove out of his house and who has been seeking for years will turn up 'to-morrow'.   It has become a mania with Captain Hagberd, so much so that when son Harry does turn up he refuses to believe it is him.   This edition also includes Conrad's dramatisation of 'To-Morrow' (which he had to call One Day More because there was a play called Tomorrow already on tour).   This is interesting as an example of turn-of-the-century art theatre of the sort that attracted Yeats and Shaw, Masefield and Somerset Maugham, but adds little to the story.

The introduction by Paul Kirschner did not capture my attention.   I'm not sure anyone needs the notes, the glossary could, I daresay, be more useful.

A Death in Tokyo - Keigo Higashino

 The best known novelist in Japan, says Abacus Books, the Japanese Srieg Larsson according to The Times.   I can see where they're coming from.   A Death in Tokyo is the third of the Detective Kaga Mysteries.   It is not my first acquaintance with the work of Keigo Higashino.   I read and reviewed The Devotion of Suspect X back in February 2017 but had completely forgotten about it.   Here, the 'mysteries' bit put me off - a tad cosy for my taste - but Higashino soon sucked me in.

A non-descript middleaged businessman is seen reeling through the nighttime streets.   The cop who sees him assumes he is drunk.   The man reaches the Nihonbashi Bridge and collapses below the statue of a mythical kirin.   At this point, the bear cop spots the knife sticking out of the man's chest.   Soon after, and not very far away, a young man dashes out into traffic and is run down by a truck.   Among his scanty possessions are the businessman's wallet and briefcase.   It's an open and shut case, surely.   The young man, Fuyuki Yashimo, killed the businessman, Takeaki Ayoagi.   The motive is obvious: Ayoagi sacked Yashimo after the young agency worker suffered an accident due to poor workplace safety and Yashimo needs money because his girlfriend is pregnant.   Ayoagi is DOA ar the hospital; Yashimo undergoes surgery and is left in a coma.   Confident of a confession if he recovers, happy to close the case if he doesn't, Tokyo police start the necessary inquiries.

Detective Kyochiro Kaga is paired up with his cousin Detective Shuhei Matsumiya.   Kaga is the older of the two but Matsumiya holds superior rank.   He is with Homicide whereas Kaga is a generalist at precinct level.   This creates an interesting dynamic, which Higashino handles beautifully.   The cousins are not rivals but it is Marsumiya who has to deal with superiors whilst Kaga has the freedom to wander off, physically and mentally.   They start off assuming that the employers of Ayoagi and former employers of Yashimo undertook some sort of cover-up over the accident; that Ayoagi felt guilty about it and contacted Yashimo to make peace.   But Kaga disovers that Ayoagi, not known as a religious man, was so far from home because he was undertaking a tour of famous shrines.   Does the mythical kirin on the bridge have significance.   Is that why Ayoagi fought to get there - to leave a last message?

Kaga and Matsumiya primarily deal with those left behind: Ayoagi's wife and teenaged children, and Yashimo's girlfriend Kaori Nakahara, who they support after Fuyuki, her childhood sweetheart, succumbs to his injuries.   The revelation, when it comes, is satisfactory, surprising, and handled with consummate elegance.   Higashino's tone is empathetic throughout.   There are no deep-dyed villains only victims keen to deal with their shortcomings.   Although I'm not going to take up cosy crime I am very much open to more Higashino.   Bearing in mind my previous experience, I shall stick to the Kaga strand for now.

The Girl with the Golden Eyes - Honore de Balzac

 The Girl with the Golden Eyes is the third of three novellas which Balzac grouped together as History of the Thirteen (1835).   Being part of the 'Scenes of Parisian Life' series, rather than the Comedie Humaine, there is a lot more descriptive material, part-opinionated, part-ironical.   I suspect a lot of modern readers skip that and plunge straight into the narrative.   I certainly did on first reading; on a more leisurely second reading, though, I rather enjoyed the discussion of the strata of Parisian life, in itself an ironical take on Dante's Inferno.

On to the story...   Henri de Marsay is a rich young philanderer, one of many illegitimate offspring of the English Lord Dudley.   Like all his fellows he is much taken with the mysterious and beautiful Paquita Valdes, the girl with the titular eyes.   Like his father, Henri is incredibly good-looking and completely devoid of moral scruples.   So he absolutely must add Paquita to his tally of conquests.   There is no question of love or marriage; this, after all, is the aristocratic upper teir of Parisian life.

The Thirteen is a secret society of self-serving adventurers, a cracking idea which Balzac utterly fails to deliver.   It runs through all three of the History novellas but is only central to the first.   Henri is obviously a member and his colleagues help him breach the defenses of the Maison Valdes.   He seduces Paquita, he deflowers her.   Then comes the breathtaking twist.   It's a corker.   Here, Balzac absolutely delivers.

I bought this New York Review of Books single novella version before I knew about The Thirteen.   Having read the very useful introduction by Robert Alter, I had to get the History.   Carol Cosman's translation seems fresher than Herbert J Hunt's for Penguin Classics.   So it should, it's twenty-five years younger.

The Shame Archive - Oliver Harris

 I've read and reviewed quite a few of Oliver Harris's bang-up-to-date spy thrillers.   The Shame Archive is another quality addition to the brand.   Elliot Kane, now out of MI6 and in the private sector, is called in when two of his Russian sources are brutally murdered.   Meanwhile someone calling themselves Eclipse is trying to blackmail MP's wife Rebecca Sinclair.   This is tricky because Rebecca is a former escort and her husband is a potential PM.   It all dates back to New Year's Eve 2008 when Rebecca was one of many girls hired to entertain guests of Opula, a Russian concierge business.   She doesn't remember much about the night but knows she was raped and found wandering the streets covered in blood and claiming to have murdered someone.   Nothing came of it, which she doesn't really understand, other than a man called Elliot Kane was involved and gave her his private phone number in case she needed him.

She needs him now, obviously, but that phone number is long out of date.   Meanwhile Elliot also becomes a target of Eclipse, as do many people far more important.   The thing is, Eclipse seems to have got his hands on a large trove of MI6's kompromat materials and is threatening to release it bit by bit. 

Elliot and Rebecca pursue their separate inquiries for most of the book.   I have to admit - my one reservation about The Shame Archive - Harris took the alternate chapter too far for my liking.   That said, when Rebecca and Elliot finally come together the sparks really fly.   The ending was a complete, thrill=packed stunner.   I guessed right about Eclipse but had absolutely no idea how it all tied in with Elliot.   Highly recommended, and I look forward to Harris's next.