aesmael

Now up to beginning of chapter nine. Has mostly been an exercise in getting introduced to the cast of the duke’s household, who are of course nearly all charmingly eccentric.

Especially, persuading our protagonist to be roped into the role of restorative gardener and out of the role of touring vacationer. This, mostly accomplished by an onslaught of British aristocratic charm and an appeal to the authority of the series-regular Pym sisters.

At this point the single most obnoxious guest has been eliminated as a source of unpleasant moments by a grave injury - so presumably the mystery aspects of the story can get going - and the heads of the household have departed to engage in PR damage control.

So we also have the lead and the guy who I’m sure will be her love interest ‘alone’ to work on restoring this isolated old manor. And she can I suppose work on unlocking the tragic mysteries of his past and get to know his precocious, worldly children.

So far it really feels like the protagonist is being fitted up for a romance and mystery narrative whether she is interested in one or not. And that, along with the romanticising of pastoral British aristocracy, is a bit distasteful.

Act 1: Usagi, Sailor Moon

Picked this up from work a few days ago instead of shelving it. I recently watched with ami_angelwings  the first episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal and the original series. The story there was surprisingly disappointing, in contrast to what I’d been hearing about the manga and about the new series compared against the old. In the old show, Usagi’s presentation seemed just enough more already heroic and engaged to be jarring and disappointing against the new. This surprised me because I had formed the impression the manga, and thus the more faithful Crystal series, were comprehensively superior.

Then I was surprised further to see that this chapter is just about beat for beat identical with the first episode of Sailor Moon Crystal. Clearly I’d slipped into thinking it must be an unfaithful adaptation after all.

It’s only a first chapter. I want to see where it goes further before deciding to read or not read further volumes. Mostly, I’m worried I won’t like Usagi; I tend not to like heroes who are disinterested in the world they find themselves in, or who prevail primarily because destiny and not because of any effort or interest they put into their achievements. Usually these characters are boys (like in Ben 10) accompanied by diligent anti-fun girl stereotypes. I’m hoping that isn’t the best comparison I’ll be able to draw here.

Also worried at the romance since so far it seems to just be Usagi getting starry-eyed when she looks at Tuxedo Mask while their ‘civilian’ selves have a growing antagonism and I don’t like that sort of romance as a rule.

On another level, with this and my thoughts on Aunt Dimity and The Duke I’m worried it will seem that I just do not like romance whereas increasingly I have been regarding myself as someone who does often enjoy romance as a non A-plot in stories. There’ve been a few cases where the romantic side has ended being a large part of what held me to mediocre adventure series, mainly superhero-featuring so far.

But, I suppose what appeals in romance is often as individual as what appeals in smut, and if that’s the case then by analogy it may be almost impossible for me to find takes I really like without writing them myself.

Started reading this on Tuesday afternoon before my shift. I borrowed it from my mother’s collection although I’m fairly sure this copy is previously unread, and I’ve no clue by what path it ended up there. I think I would not otherwise have picked this book up to read, but then broadening my horizons is precisely why I am interspersing her books into my reading.

If I wanted to have fun with genre labelling, I might call this a paranormal romance. But I think this book both pre-dates and belongs to a different tradition than most books which currently bear the paranormal romance label. From the buzz I looked up, it seems what I can expect from this book might best be described as an ultra-cosy mystery. With romance. This story is thick with the scent of romance being laid out, and I’m waiting to see if I will love or hate that.

At the moment I’m only at the start of Chapter 3, 34 pages into this 290 page novel.

What I’m dreading: this is a ghost aunt mystery series set in Britain but written by a US author. I’m worried it is going to romanticise imperial England, as for example in the love story told in the prologue.

"In the first gray light of dawn she saw the ship, the great four-master bearing spices and gold and the treasure of her heart.["]

Discomfiting having this act of looting drawn so casually into a tale of romanticism, like it’s just a neutral or good thing that happens. I’m not sure if there was a second specific moment that further aroused my worry, but the overall tone so far seems to be idealising England as embodying a sort of pastoral innocence against the City that is America.

The other thing I dread is how exactly this might pan out as a romance, what tropes will be deployed. That’s likely to have a very strong influence on whether I am happy with the outcome of this book, or angry.

For the beginning there is very much a sense of the story being laid out like cards, or a stage being set. We have Emma Porter, senior in a computing company who is taking bafflingly[1] well being left by her open-relationship partner of 15 years for a younger woman.

[1] Everyone in her life is baffled, and so is she.

We have Derek Harris, widower with a couple of kids who happens to fit the description Emma briefly daydreamed about, and who is set to engage in prophecy-related restoration work at home of the titular duke. AND whose son apparently has been wearing himself out doing the housekeeper’s work for years to protect his father and keep the nagging sister-in-law at bay, who is fixated on the restoration as promising a supernatural salvation that I would say is sure to bring bitter disappointment except the whole series is premised on ghost aunt so maybe it will happen.

And their paths are surely set to intersect, as Emma is redirected to this same location, drawn from the prologue, by elderly twin sisters whose synchronous speech and manner speaks so much of an author giggling to herself that I had to look up online and confirm they are regulars, these Pym sisters.

That’s where I’m up to. Mostly I’m nervous to continue reading rather than excited; there’s so much potential for this to proceed on paths I detest that the anticipation of Aunt Dimity and The Duke failing me dominates my attitude toward the book so far.

26. “The Gate of Ghosts” by Karen Joy Fowler

I approached this story warily. On the one hand, Karen Joy Fowler has a strong reputation among people whose opinions on sf I respect. On the other, the only story of hers I’d read previously, “The Lake Was Full Of Artificial Things” in the third of these anthologies, did nothing for me. And on a third hand - if I may be so bold - the nature of her reputation suggests “The Lake Was Full Of Artificial Things” could be representative of her work, so while she might be an excellent writer, she might also be one who doesn’t suit my taste.

So, reading this was a bit of mental tug-of-war between yes and no as I was a bit distracted by trying to form an opinion of the writer at the same time as the story.

What we have is a young family, white American woman, Chinese American man, and their toddler daughter. It seems like the mother is overprotective, but the daughter says there’s a special place she goes to, which no one else perceives or believes…

You know, I forgot to say this isn’t science fiction. Not something that bothers me, but I like to mention it because the title of the book says these are science fiction stories.

I had to take some time after reading to appreciate what went on here. Possibly it helped having people on IM to whom I could dump my thoughts immediately; the act of doing so prompted re-evaluation.

My immediate reaction was that this story is ambiguous in just the way I don’t like, when not only interpretation of events but even events themselves are unclear. Like with “Chance” earlier in this collection, I tend to feel that if something as basic as ‘what happened’ is indeterminate, the story may as well not be there (I tend to react similarly against stories which end in memory wiping such that for the characters effectively nothing happened).

Thinking about it a bit more I realised there is quite enough here for me to decide what this story is, to decipher it from within itself. Something I still don’t find to be true of “Chance”. “The Gate of Ghosts” as I see it is divided into three parts, three different characters telling their stories of what it is to go to ‘another place’. First Margaret, seeing her life, her relationship with her daughter Jessica, and what it is in her past that brings her to fear and why she sees death. Second Mei, Jessica’s paternal grandmother, telling a story of China that serves as oblique warning to Jessica. Finally, Jessica herself and what happens to her.

I still don’t know if I like this story but I am surely impressed by it.

24. “Down and Out in the Year 2000” by Kim Stanley Robinson

The backdrop makes this science fiction, but I don’t think it needed to be. This is a story of poverty in America as the world falls apart in war, which it feels like I’ve read five times already in this book alone. It could have been a shared world piece with Swanwick’s “Covenant of Souls”, frex.

Normally when I say something like that I mean it as some sort of savage criticism, but I liked this story. And I liked it despite its science fiction elements, not because of them. It could easily have been a work of contemporary non-genre fiction, although maybe I say that because I assume the 1980s were more similar to the 2010s in joblessness, urban decay and unrest than is justified. But I do think it’s so.

The only characters whose ethnicity is marked in this story are white. Something I see too rarely which says to me the great majority of characters in this piece are people of colour (if I had to put money on it, I’d say black, because various contextual clues).

I liked that a lot for selfish reasons - it’s a technique I’ve intended to use myself, so it’s gratifying to see it work for communicating character ethnicity while centring on their own perspective. But of course KSR is himself a white guy so it’s possible this is badly messed up [1] and I’m just failing to see it.

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[1] Such as the one story in this collection centred on black Americans being also the one story that is about falling on hard times and being poor in America. Particularly in that by being so as a science fiction story it immediately stands out and captures interest, whereas as a work of ‘non-genre’ or crime(!!!)[2] fiction it might get lost in the shuffle.

[2] In this context I would count slotting in well amongst crime stories against “Down and Out in the Year 2000”[3], whereas normally I would be all over a good crime / sf hybrid. The problem is that this isn’t one of those, and reading it as crime fiction is clearly the wrong approach. But, that genre is one where it is much more normal to encounter the pattern “black guy hits hard times, takes to selling pot to get cash together for the sake of the sick woman in his life”. The only thing that’s missing is the crisis-crash-object lesson pattern that’s put me off non-detective crime fiction, and is the reason it doesn’t quite fit.

[3] Just realised that as I write this I am equidistant from the year of story setting as the story was in its year of publication.

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What I’m saying, I suppose, is that in isolation I find this a pretty excellent story. Engaging, well-written, well-characterised in ways most I’ve read fall short on. But in broader context the association of blackness-poverty-failed-by-system, while reflecting the reality of the world as it is, stands out among a lack of science fiction positing alternative possibilities.

23. “Surviving” by Judith Moffett

Queer, somewhat erotic tale. The major caveat for this story would be that it revolves around two white women, one of whom was raised by chimpanzees between the ages of 4 and 13, and the other who devoted her professional career to studying the first woman.

The substance of the story revolves more around the bond they build as friends and lovers and their unspoken attempt at cultural exchange. Trying to bring to bring the one more fully into the human (western, academic) world she was supposedly already assimilated while the other perhaps seeks to shed somewhat of her humanity to live out the Tarzan fantasies that drew her to her research (a novel both the women in this story find a strong connection with).

I liked this story enough to develop a list of flaws and maybe-flaws.

1. The psychologist, Jan’s relationship with Sarah (the ‘Chimp Child’) is threaded with her desire to complete Sarah’s healing and bring her fully into human society, an intention she never makes explicit for fear of spooking Sarah and their connection being severed. I don’t know if we are supposed to understand that this is on an unspoken level also what Sarah wants - there are some moments which point to this - or whether this is only the rather creepy using of another person as a means to serve one’s ends. I found it uncomfortably undermining any sense I developed of parity in their relationship.

2. Particularly at the end when Jan’s role has reversed and she is using the ‘chimpanzee living’ skills she has developed to help re-wild formerly captive chimpanzees and she claims there is no difference now between her and Sarah. I feel like she is committing an error particularly prominent in colonial psychology, mistaking the acquisition of physical skills and customs for an assumption of identity. No matter how practised she becomes at arboreal movement, or feeding, etc., she will never have psychologically been a chimpanzee for a decade of her childhood. If this isn’t meant sincerely by the story, I couldn’t tell.

(also, I’m very uncomfortable with how engaging with “Survival” seems to demand approaches normally used for addressing colonialism and race, especially wert the history of ape analogies and racism. but I don’t think I have an alternative while taking it seriously as a story.)

3. Something which commonly irks me about short SF fiction, the story hangs at a comfortable ‘now’ for much of its span, then barrels along to an abrupt conclusion. I tend to feel jarred and rushed by this sort of story-telling, as if the author has finished saying what ey aimed to say and is now grasping for some way to make it stop ASAP. I’m almost certainly guilty of that in my own little efforts, but that does not require me to enjoy it.

In conclusion, if I did not like “Survival” more than most in this collection I would not have gone at such length about its problems. Also, do not read this story if you are not willing to deal with human-chimpanzee sex, or sexual activity involving pubescent teens (that’s an official recommendation, stamp and all).

21. “Sallie C.” by Neal Barrett Jr.

Not science fiction. In an isolated desert hotel the paths of the Wright Brothers, the Rommels, Billy the Kid, someone named Pat Garrett and a Native American stereotype briefly intersect.

Felt like the main appeal was in recognition and revelation, but perhaps someone with a particular interest in those figures might have drawn more from this story.

19. “Fair Game” by Howard Waldrop

These are true facts about the suicide of Earnest Hemingway.

17. “Chance” by Connie Willis

Urgent, disjointed tale in which maybe two periods of the narrator’s life overlap.

This is another story which felt like it could have been placed in a non-genre collection. Actually, this story is so wide open to interpretation I feel almost as if I may as well not have read it - too much freedom to decide ‘what happened’, what it means. Although contrariwise, I would not have imagined that segment of possibilities without having read “Chance”.

Connie Willis has a huge reputation and I’m still looking forward to reading more, but so far of the three I’ve read by her the only one I really liked was “Blued Moon” in the second of these anthologies. “Chance” reminded me a little of “Blued Moon” for its university / college setting and focus on the role chance plays in romance and life paths, but the latter was one of my favourites in the collection where it appeared, being a very welcome light-hearted diversion in a volume of largely dreary apocalyptic tales. “Chance” by contrast feels much of a muchness with the rest of the collection so far.

15. “Night Moves” by Tim Powers

So that’s a Tim Powers story. I look more forward to reading his novels on the strength of this, although I also get the feeling there may be a lot of social nastiness lurking under the surface which extended works may clarify.

Not science fiction. The destitute and regretful who have washed up in a Californian town are swept into a choice between dreams - whatever thing in the past they hold on to - and the world. I frown at the shadow of abortion tragedy which hangs over this tale.

The character Cyclops was intriguing, though one wonders why, knowing the things he knew, he did what he did. Just to warn the hapless, perhaps? Feel like this is one of those stories which does not hold together well if its plot is questioned, but is carried by the strength of its writing and character narrative.

Also example of a thing which tends to bug me in fiction. When a character recalls some memory which at first seems to be a bit of character colour, an incident from the past which is important only as an illustrative example of who ey is and has been, but which soon turns out to have been a (or the) pivotal moment in eir history.

Feels like an example of complaining a lot about something I liked. That happens.