LIBERATOR

Many stories reach a satisfactory conclusion. The hero overcomes the odds and defeats the villain. Cinderella is found by her Prince Charming and rescued from a life of drudgery: and they all live happily ever after.

At least that is the impression given by a neat and satisfying conclusion.

Richard Harland’s Worldshaker would fit into that "satisfying conclusion" category, but the follow-up novel, Liberator shows us what happens AFTER the initial euphoria of a “happy” ending. It shows that such endings are only temporary and one problem solved will merely lead to another.

Liberator begins not long after the concluding events of the earlier novel and things have deteriorated very quickly. The Leviathan WorldShaker has been renamed Liberator to reflect the freedom gained by the lower class “Filthies” – but that freedom could now have severe consequences for the “swanks” who choose to stay on after the Liberation, even those who played a significant part in overturning the former oppressive, elitist regime.
It soon comes clear that elitism and oppression are not the exclusive traits of those born into privilege.

This book was just as enjoyable as the first in the series. Again I was compelled to read it at every opportunity I could make. Both are very near to the top of my favourites of recent years.

I liked Worldshaker enough to buy a second copy – the American Hardcover edition. I’ll be doing the same when Liberator is also (hopefully) released in Hardcover.*

Another installment please Richard?

______

*With both books, written by an Australian author and published by an Australian company, I bought the locally available product first. I prefer to support local writing and publishing when possible.

Jasper Fforde

Reading Jasper Ffforde’s Thursday Next series is like jumping into a blender with an armful of books selected from almost every genre. His stories defy narrow categorisation. They combine elements of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Crime and Humour, seasoned with a few pages from literary criticism and grammar text books. If I have overlooked a genre, it’s probably there anyway, like a familiar spice that you recognise in a meal but can’t quite isolate and identify.

My first attempted Jasper Fforde book was The Well of Lost Plots, the third in his Thursday next series. I struggled with it several years ago and eventually gave up. Recently I decided to try again, but this time starting with his first book, The Eyre Affair; and I now realise it is essential that the Thursday Next series be read in order as each volume builds upon what has happened in previous books.

Today Fforde would be my favourite writer (although tomorrow may bring about change). I love his continuing flood of strange ideas and distorted realities. I think his special talent is to bring so much weirdness together into one place and somehow give it a logical credibility.

In Forde’s “Nextian” universe, movement between the “real” world and literary worlds is possible. Some of the action of The Eyre Affair takes place within Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre as Thursday Next follows villain Acheron Hades into the pages of that classic text. Can she save that book from a man whose proven ruthlessness challenges the security and stability of well-loved literature?

Lost in a Good Book follows Thursday’s life after the events of the first book and adds to our knowledge of her world which has similarities to our own but has a significantly different history, technologies and priorities: the national sport seems to be croquet, literary societies are a powerful political force and the power of coincidence can be used as a lethal weapon.

After reading those first two books, I am definitely ready to return to The Well of Lost Plots. And despite my earlier experience I am looking forward to it.

Fforde’s website is worth a visit (there is a link in the side bar, see "links for writers"). I have now bought most of his books, the majority from the author himself. While this did work out a bit more expensive than buying them locally, all the books are autographed and come with a free, randomly selected postcard, some of which are limited editions.

I know this isn't the most enlightening book "review" written. I feel any detailed attempt to describe and critique these novels would be like a regression to my youth when friends and I would quote Monty Python, Goon Show and Fawlty Towers dialogue to each other. Second hand experience is just not the same. You need to go to the source for yourself and enjoy the vibrancy of the original.

From my personal viewpoint, Jasper Fforde's books have been one of the best discoveries I've made for years.

I Am Number Four

Before I start on the content of this book, I need to address some things that affected my expectations prior to reading it.

I bought I Am Number Four without noticing the author’s name. When I got home and saw it was attributed to a fictional character I felt a bit concerned. It seemed like an overly contrived marketing ploy, or that the author had something to hide. Was he/she reluctant to be associated with the book?

A quick piece of research revealed the following about the author Pittacus Lore:


“Pittacus Lore is Lorien's ruling Elder. He has been on Earth for the last twelve years, preparing for the war that will decide Earth's fate. His whereabouts are unknown.”

Other searches reveal that Pittacus Lore is in fact TWO people, James Frey and Jobie Hughes. Frey was earlier the author of a memoir A Million Little Pieces, an Oprah book club best-seller that apparently caused some controversy when parts of the memoir were found to be not as true as many were led to believe.

So, was the pseudonym used to hide the involvement of an author with a controversial writing history? Or was it also the “marketing ploy” I mentioned above?

I suspect marketing played a significant part in the creation of this book. It seems like it is the first in a planned ongoing series, (perhaps hoping to follow the success of the Twilight Series). Also, a film is already in production. How long before the characters are sold as action figures?

But aside from the cynicism arising from the books background, how did I like the story?

Mostly I enjoyed it. I’ve had an interest in aliens, conspiracies and the unknown since childhood and the book covers that ground. I found the characters and situations were portrayed quite plausibly despite the fantastic elements. This perception may have been helped my longstanding interest in such things.

John Smith is “number four”, one of nine children rescued from Lorien, a planet being destroyed by a hostile alien race, the Mogadorians. The children and their guardians have made their way to earth where they each go their own way and try to hide their identity, in case the Mogadorians follow to destroy them.

The children have been partly protected by a “charm”. They can only be killed in a particular order. Attempts to harm or kill one of them out of that order will backfire on the assailant killing or harming him instead of the intended victim. The story starts when John (fourth in the order) receives confirmation that the first three have been killed and he is next in line.

The story has several elements. The most crucial is John’s evasion of the Mogadorians and his need to stay alive. Then he has to fit in with a normal school community life, dealing with teenage friendships, romances and bullying while trying to remain out of the spotlight which could draw unwanted attention. He also has to contend with developing special Loric talents (legacies) as he comes of age.

The book is paced quite well, continually developing new situations to keep the reader’s interest. This also helps to keep the reader from thinking too much about the implausibilities and weaknesses within the story. The “charm” intended to protect the nine is one of the weaker and least credible aspects of the story. The only reason for its existence seems to be to increase the stakes faced by John. He KNOWS he is the next one the Mogadorians will be coming for, making his situation more urgent and threatening.

The story moves on towards a showdown with the Mogadorians and we find out how John’s developing talents can help his struggle to survive. When the inevitable confrontation comes, the scale of it seems overwhelming and melodramatic in comparison to the tone of the rest of the book, and I found it difficult to see these events as part of the “real” world in which the story is supposed to be set.

As the first part of a continuing series, this book introduces some interesting characters and possibilities for the direction the story will take. What started as one teenager’s fight for survival will clearly expand into more widespread struggle for earth’s salvation, not only from the Mogadorians but from ourselves.

If earth survives the Mogadorians, will we take the right actions to ensure our planet’s survival? Will we follow the example of the Loriens, and reverse our exploitative and destructive practices before it’s too late? Or will we end up like the Mogadorians who, on depleting the resources of their own world seek out other worlds to despoil?

Richard Harland’s Worldshaker.

Before I write anything else I have to confess to two areas of apparent “vested interest”. Firstly Richard Harland was one of my lecturers/tutors at University in the early 1990s and he wrote me a very generous reference when I was looking for work afterwards. Secondly, in the mid 90s I worked for Allen & Unwin, the publisher of Worldshaker, for about a year and a half.
(Richard’s website also had a part in inspiring me to create this blog which is why I have a link to it in the sidebar.)

While this may appear to give me reasons for bias, I will also add that for one essay, Richard gave me the lowest mark I ever received for any assignment during my whole time at University (and I still remember after 19 years!!!), and A & U relocated my job to another city so I had to leave them and find work elsewhere in a less stimulating environment. So we can pretend that the positives have been cancelled out and a balance of neutrality has been restored.

Worldshaker was a book I didn’t want to leave. I read it at every opportunity and was disappointed when I reached the end. It’s the kind of book that demonstrates why continuing series of novels can be so successful. It is a book that creates a world and characters so interesting that you want to explore and experience them some more.

Harland has created an alternative history, a world where the industrial innovation and creativity of the Victorian era has taken a huge leap beyond the bridge and shipbuilding wonders of I K Brunel. In this world political necessity has driven steam age technology to achieve far grand goals than was the case in the “real” Victorian age.

Worldshaker is a massive “juggernaut”, part ship, part tank, part earthmoving excavator, which houses and employs citizens of various fixed classes. Perhaps a comparison could be made to futuristic stories of massive star-ships transporting nation sized communities through space – except juggernaut communities are earthbound and restricted to Victorian age technology.

Colbert Porpentine, heir in waiting to Worldshaker’s Supreme Commander, is thrown into contact with a girl who has entered his room to hide from the authorities. She is a member of the lowest of the low, a “filthy. A reflex decision not to expose the girl’s forbidden presence puts Col’s privileged position at risk and leads him to discover the price that others continually pay to maintain the lifestyle of the Juggernaut’s elite classes.

Worldshaker has what I consider to be a novel’s most essential qualities: strongly believable characters that I care about; an exciting storyline with interesting and original ideas and on a more practical level - short chapters.
I have found long chapters can be a stumbling block to successful reading. It is a major reason I’ve always struggled with Lord of the Rings. By the time I finish one long chapter, the task of reading another of similar length can seem too daunting, especially when other things are competing for my time. With shorter chapters it is easy to read “just one more chapter” several times in succession until a significant portion of the book has been read.

Worldshaker would be classed as a Young Adult title and it was a pleasure to read a book untarnished by the presence of graphic sex and foul language. From recent experience, books that don’t resort to such devices are becoming increasingly hard to find.

Last & First

The Time Traveller’s Wife is the kind of book responsible for the dilemma I experience with reading. As previously anticipated I received a copy for Christmas and spent most of the Christmas holidays reading it.

Firstly the positive…
It inspires the desire to read, with its interesting and original story of Henry, a man who is uncontrollably snatched from one time period to another. These shifts in time occasionally bring him into contact with important people from other periods in his life, enabling him to visit his childhood self and other people of personal importance. He is able to spend time with his wife throughout her childhood, preparing her for their eventual meeting and the novel alternates between his and her points of view.

Time travel stories have always appealed to me. There have been TV series like Dr Who and Time Tunnel; films like The Terminator and Back to the Future series, adaptations of HG Well’s The Time Machine (and of course the original book); Connie Willis’s award winning novel The Doomsday Book and so many other examples of time travel being explored.
Unlike all of those, Niffenegger’s book is not likely to be described as “Science Fiction” even though a scientific reason for Henry’s condition is lightly touched (some kind of genetic anomaly). This book’s major focus is on the effects of the time traveller’s condition upon his relationship with his wife Clare; effects that (to me) did not always ring true and left me wondering whether real people would react in the same way as this books characters when faced with the particular realities of their relationship and experiences. For example, would a woman be so accepting of her husband having an extramarital, sexual encounter with a younger woman – even if that woman was herself, many years before, during one of his time travelling episodes?

And next the negative…

This book is also an example of what annoys me about modern writing that makes me think twice about starting a book.
Like so many modern writers, Niffenegger follows the compulsion to soil her craft with the use of explicit sexual encounters and graphic language. What is it about today’s writers that make them think it’s necessary to include at least one obligatory oral sex scene in their novels? It’s a practice so common that it has become a cliché.

Many years ago an English work mate was telling me about his favourite author, a writer of pulp thrillers who, as part of his popular formula, always included “one fook per book”. It seems to me that otherwise talented “literary” writers today see it necessary to fall into the same formulaic trap, spicing up their stories with gratuitously explicit sexual encounters and obscene language. Is it REALLY necessary for a writer to use the crudest terms in the English language to describe genitalia?

Prior to reading this book I had been seriously considering Niffenegger’s next novel, but after reading this one – despite its many good points, I’m not likely to follow it up with any more of her writing.


The Time Traveller’s Wife was the last book I completed in 2009. The first to be finished in 2010 was Susan Hill’s Howards End is on the Landing, a book that I purchased through a series of mistakes and misunderstandings.
I saw it praised on a book blog and immediately assumed it was the same book I had recently left on the shelves of a charity shop’s book section. I was disappointed at missing out on such a highly recommended book that I could have bought for a few dollars, but my disappointment was eased when I found that I could buy an autographed copy direct from the author. Several days after placing my order it arrived and I realised that it had NOT been the book I had previously seen for a bargain price, which will now remain unidentified as the shop is a four hour drive from home.

Hill’s Howards End is a collection of writings that every book-lover should enjoy. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of Hill’s relationship with books, literature and the varied personalities involved with their creation. It is a personal insight into Hill herself, as well as to the many writers she has been privileged to meet. Along with anecdotes about people like Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and Edith Sitwell, Hill writes about the memories stirred up by the different types of books (diaries, pop-up books, literary classics and more) that she rediscovers on her own bookshelves. In particular we are given a glimpse into her love of both Virginia Woolf and Thomas Hardy.
After my conflicting feelings about The Time Traveller’s Wife I was quite pleased to read Hill saying that love is “the most difficult thing to write about successfully. It is the litmus test of greatness in a novelist if a love story moves and convinces and never once makes the reader grimace, smirk or feel embarrassed. Modern novelists are bad at writing about love because they feel that it has to mean writing explicitly about sex.”
I certainly see that comment being applicable to parts of The Time Traveller’s Wife.

Susan Hill concludes her book with a list of her “Final Forty” which could be described as those books she would find as most essential if she had to cull her extensive library. Reading such a list makes it clear how subjective book choice is. Out of the forty I have only six of them in my own library – one of which is Wuthering Heights, a book that would clearly be absent from my own “Final Forty” (Read about my struggle with this book elsewhere on my blog).

Robert Holdstock: 1948-2009

I’ve just found out that Robert Holdstock, author of one of my favourite novels, Mythago Wood, died in hospital on 29th November after contracting an E.coli infection.

I’m not sure what to say beyond that. Only two weeks ago I bought a hard cover copy of Mythago Wood from a local second-hand book shop (I already had it in paperback) and it was a high priority on my reading list. It has been many years since I last read it. I was hoping to write about the book in the near future.
He was only 10 years older than me.


RIP Rob Holdstock

My Fictional Autobiography (part 3): The Alien Years.

I recall writing to Arthur Shuttlewood in the 1980s. He was a one time journalist who became a kind of UFO guru. He had written several books about his home town’s relationship with UFOs, starting with The Warminster Mystery. Over many years Shuttlewood claimed that Warminster in southern England was an important hot spot for UFO activity.
I had been fascinated by UFO stories since the mid 1960s when England became the focus of a UFO “flap”. As an 8 or 9 year old during the time of the space race, the idea of alien visitation inspired a lot of excitement. I read many books from that time onwards including a few of Shuttlewood’s. Since I came across this topic at such an early age I can’t blame myself for maintaining a degree of gullibility for many years after. I lapped up the wildest claims with barely a degree of scepticism and a lot of my reading leaned towards things unexplained.

There was a strange tension in my life from trying to live with contradictory beliefs. In the late 70s I became a Christian, and yet I still tried to hold onto the interest in visiting aliens. To some extent I was able to do this by redefining the UFO phenomenon, moving from aliens visiting earth to an understanding that the whole thing was a demonic delusion. This view was not merely an idea permeating fundamentalist circles; some of the most popular and respected UFO writers were saying the same thing. The most well known that come to mind were John Keel (Operation Trojan Horse) and Jacques Vallee (Passport to Magonia). While these writers did not necessarily hold to the Christian interpretation of “demonic”, they raised the possibility that entities that had once been viewed as “demons” in some cultures were now being interpreted in terms applicable to the space age. Vallee saw the possibility that they were “Inter-dimensional” rather than Extra-terrestrial.

The 1980s was a boom-time for UFO books, aided by some highly questionable TV specials claiming Government collusion with extra terrestrials. I recall one that featured interviews with alleged CIA agents who described interaction with a captive alien (or “gray” as they came to be known). One of the major revelations provided was the flavour of ice-cream the entity preferred.

Books that were part of this trend included Above Top Secret by Tim Good and Communion by horror writer Whitley Strieber. The latter describing Strieber’s claimed abduction by “the visitors” was followed by several sequels such as Transformation and Breakthrough: the next Step. Strieber was another UFO writer who noted the similarities between his “visitors” and the demons of various religious traditions but his later books became more and more esoteric in content, making him seem more like a mystical guru than a serious contributor to UFO literature.

It was in the 90s that I woke up to my gullibility thanks to books by Jim Schnabel. Round in Circles examined the crop circle craze and Dark White looked at alien abductions. Rather than follow the tried and (not so) true path of examining countless witness reports, Schnabel turned the spotlight on the investigators who were presenting their own interpretation of the reports to the public. In my view he well and truly blew these phenomena apart, showing how much the investigators projected THEIR desires and expectations onto the evidence they claimed to have.

While the books and authors mentioned above would be classified as non-fiction, the borders between fact and fiction were clearly blurred by a lot of wishful thinking (both on the writer’s part and more significantly mine).

Hollywood returned to the UFO/Alien visitor arena starting with Spielberg’s Close Encounter’s of the Third Kind (in the 1970s) and later with his more popular ET.
Joe Dante’s Explorers starred very young River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke, while Cocoon directed by Ron Howard made an Oscar winner out of one of its aging stars (Don Ameche).

Starman one of John Carpenter’s less gruesome films was (like ET) part of the “alien as benign but threatened visitor” genre that contrasted significantly with the hostile aliens portrayed in many 50s SF films, when Hollywood had previously exploited an interest in things alien.

Some of the most popular films were converted into “novelisations”, of which I only recall reading Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I also owned the book version of Explorers but I don’t remember reading it.

Away from Hollywood’s exploitative inspiration, John Wyndham’s novels were favourites for a while, some of which had tenuous links to UFOs and/or alien visitors. The most significant being The Midwich Cuckoos, a story about a village that was temporarily cut off from the world by a mysterious force field (an idea that Stephen King has also used in his recent novel Under the Dome). In Wyndham’s book the temporary isolation is lifted and the entire female population of childbearing age are found to be pregnant. The story has been twice filmed under the name Village of the Damned. (Did I say I had moved away from Hollywood’s exploitation of the genre? Clearly that is not possible!)

One of the earlier and most well-known novels about alien visitors cannot be ignored. War of the Worlds has inspired films, radio plays and a musical extravaganza, and it was the latter that most closely followed H G Wells book. I read Wells’ novel many years ago and it’s one that I intend to read again when time and discipline permit. It is one of those science fiction stories that has taken on iconic status. A popular SF writer also wrote a sequel. Christopher Priest’s The Space Machine takes elements of War of the Worlds and another Wells novel The Time Machine and creates a story from a mix of the two ideas.

Perhaps the most cerebral book dealing with UFOs that I’ve read was Ian Watson’s Miracle Visitors, which dealt with the psychological nature of UFO encounters and gave a very ambiguous view of them. The cerebral approach to alien intelligence was also taken in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey created with Arthur C Clarke. I later read Clarke’s novel to see whether it would help me make sense of the film (which it did). In this story an alien presence has been alongside mankind from the very beginning of man’s development, following his progress and leaving clues of their existence that mankind will find at various stages of his technological journey.

Clarke was one of the most well known and admired science fiction writers and created various differing scenarios in which mankind came into contact with alien civilisations. Apart from 2001, the most memorable to me were Childhood’s End – which from memory gave an interesting spin to the alien as demon concept; and Rendezvous With Rama, a story dealing with the exploration and examination of a massive alien craft passing through our solar system. Rama was followed by a series of sequels.

I have only touched the surface of the ways in which human-alien contact has been explored in both fiction and “non fiction”, and all of it refers to aliens visiting US. There is probably far more about man visiting alien worlds stretching from early stories of men visiting the moon, through to Star Trek TV shows and movies and their various spin offs and imitations. The possibilities for stories about alien contact of various types are potentially limitless.

And here, on that cliched note, ends the latest part of my "fictional autobiography".