I’m still in love with good sci-fi and fantasy after 30 years, but folk can get most terribly sniffy about it: ‘Lack of character’, ‘leaden exposition’, the list of accusations rolls on (sadly, a chunk of today’s SFF earns it). But. Every so often a work pops up that looks to the unwary book clubber like a ‘proper novel’; beneath its sexy but abstract cover and pared-back blurb lies a world of adventure that’s like LSD in an innocent mug of tea. Some writers just refuse to accept that speculation (about time and/ or space) needs to sacrifice truth. I’ve picked a few books that stand out to me for this reason – debate their merits with gusto, preferably over a good Martini at 2am.
I wrote...
Echo Cycle
By
Patrick Edwards
What is my book about?
Gladiator meets 1984 in this near-future thriller featuring timeslips, ancient magic, and a disturbingly plausible dystopian Britain. 68 CE: Fleeing disaster, young Winston Monk wakes to find himself trapped in the past, imprisoned by the mad Emperor Nero. The Roman civilization he idolized is anything but civilized, and his escape from a barbaric home has led him somewhere far more dangerous.
2070 CE: As the European Union crumbled, Britain closed its borders, believing they were stronger alone. After decades of hardship, British envoy Lindon Banks joins a diplomatic team to rebuild bridges with the hypermodern European Confederacy. But in Rome, Banks discovers his childhood friend who disappeared without a trace. Monk tells a different story: a tale of Caesars, slavery, and something altogether more sinister. Monk's mysterious emergence sparks the tinderbox of diplomatic relations between Britain and the Confederacy, controlled by shadowy players with links back to the ancient world itself.
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The Books I Picked & Why
Kafka on the Shore
By
Haruki Murakami
Why this book?
Murakami does textbook-grade, serious literature on the face of it but (and this is important) he is also endless fun. Not so much sci-fi – see Hard-Boiled Wonderland for him to commit to that – as metaphysics on Speed, his disregard for any kind of convention in Kafka on the Shore is joyful in its playfulness. It has talking cats and the living embodiment of a famous whiskey brand all while being a profound study of teenage angst, solitude, and sex, resting in a hammock of breezy prose. This book (frankly, any of his books) hits you square in the feelings and draws you into its utterly convincing but topsy-turvy world. You will never have this much fun chasing elusive literary truth.
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Gnomon
By
Nick Harkaway
Why this book?
Harkaway has serious literary pedigree but is determined to put exactly what he damn well likes in his books. Gnomon is labyrinthine, its characters sizzle with personality and it is set in researched, vibrant worlds that reek of authenticity, from antiquity to modern-day Greece. It’s also, partly, set in a dystopian, ultra-surveillance future (an arch glance at the political developments of recent years) and shamelessly combines mysticism, time-bending, and no shortage of sharks. Its rejection of convention but adherence to good, thoughtful writing is one hell of a ride.
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The Business
By
Iain M. Banks
Why this book?
Banks is a freak of nature: he wrote sci-fi of the pinkest blood as well as prize-winning literary fare; all it took to indulge this duality was the use of a spare initial. The Business is one of the subtler interlopers: a minimalist, monochrome cover and a tale of corporate greed. Banks dials what could have been a staid techno-thriller up to 11 with killer prose, a razor-sharp protagonist, and outrageous flirting with the edges of possibility: magnates who get their jollies beaching cruise liners, hollowed-out mountain lairs, revving supercars to the destruction around the Swiss mountains. This is a novel that pops with the wit and flair of a writer at the height of his powers and determined to have a blast.
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Cloud Atlas
By
David Mitchell
Why this book?
I almost never read this (people were just going on about it) but relenting left me with a lifelong addiction to this man’s books. It ticks big, literary boxes: clever structural gubbins (nested, found books), well-researched historical scenes (an amanuensis in 1930s Belgium), luscious prose; it’s then that Mitchell brandishes the salmon of Sci-fi and whops you athwart the face with it. Robot constructs in dystopian future Seoul? Post-apocalyptic barbarism, complete with dialects? Full-bore future fiction, it is, losing nothing of its heart or power for its flights of fantasy.
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Dune
By
Frank Herbert
Why this book?
This one is the wrong way round, but bah to rules: this is explicit sci-fi with literary chops. It has spaceships (a bit) and lasers (plenty), not to mention mysticism, magic, and martial arts. It’s also the story of a young man ripped from his ordinary life and burdened with the dread responsibility of his forebears; expect grief, disillusion, betrayals within betrayals within betrayals. And if that doesn’t tickle your spice mélange, how about riding 300m carnivorous worms across the wind-scraped dunes? It arrests me at 40 as much as it did at 13: not even the weightiest of literaries can outdo Arrakis for sheer sense of place in all its raw, dry-boned beauty. From pole to erg, graben to sink, Dune is an ode to un-caring nature and of mindful solitude.
