Liam's write-only LJ

A long time ago, a man decided to take a chance and moved abroad for a new job.

Not me, although I did that too, last year.

No, this was my dad, Ian Proven, in about 1972 or so. He went to Lagos in Nigeria to take over Pilkington Glass (Nigeria) Ltd. It went very well -- he diversified from plate glass into glass fibre, ideal for boat hulls in the tropics, both because it doesn't rot and because it can easily be made and repaired by unskilled people, even illiterate ones, working from purely pictorial instructions. But the stress destroyed his fragile health, and in about 1976 we came back to Britain.

He recovered, and in 1977 or so, we went back, this time to work for a different company, Leventis. This is a Lebanese Cypriot-owned chain of supermarkets in West Africa, who decided to get into glass bottle making. (Soft drinks are a very big seller in the tropics.) My dad was about the 8th general manager they hired. He went out to a large hole in the ground, and when we left in about 1980, Delta Glass' plant was producing a million bottles a week. I still have a few.

But this job was far upcountry, in Bendel State, deep in the Niger Delta. Initially we lived in a small town called Warri-Effurun, at first in the Gardenia Hotel and later in a chalet in Chief Essiso's compound. Then we moved closer to the factory, to the village of Ughelli. I think we were the first white people ever to live there -- we caused a lot of interest and attention.

But it meant that I was something of a lonely child, studying at home by correspondence course, socialising almost entirely with adults. My dad had already got me reading SF, giving me his old Heinleins and Asimovs and Van Vogts. Indeed I already disdained fantasy; one of my set books from Mercer's College was The Hobbit and I remember exclaiming in horror at having to read a book with a dragon on the cover.

But SF, I devoured, in great quantities. An adult novel every couple of days, at least. Anything I could get. Everything SF&F in the Warri Club's tiny library, including lots I really disliked -- Philip K Dick, Barry Malzberg, Brian Stableford (in his enfant terrible years -- the later stuff is wonderful).

But I also bought a lot, or got my mum to. Anything SFnal that appeared in the supermarkets we went to in Warri -- Kingsway and Alex, mainly. And in the book rack in Alex one day, I found something that looked very promising. A slender NEL paperback with a beautiful Tim White cover of a robot fly, resting on a leaf.

It was called The Dark Side of the Sun by a new writer called Terry Pratchett, and it was -- and is -- one of the best books I have ever read. In parts it's an hommage to Larry Niven, but it's so packed full of references to everything from Aristophanes to Heinlein that it's a joy to try to unpack.

I loved it. I still love it.

I had it stolen once, but as it happened, I got it back again.

A couple of years later, the Proven family returned to UK, and shortly afterwards, to the Isle of Man. There, in another book rack in another supermarket, Shoprite on Victoria Road, Douglas, I found another Pratchett: Strata. This is the novel where Pratchett invents his flat alternate Earth, a world the shape of a disc, populated by a vaguely Mediæval culture with magic, demons etc. -- but all powered by technology. Demons fly because they're constantly teleported back to base and then back out again, this time slightly higher in the air, because there's no such thing as antigravity and a humanoid with wings can't fly in 1G.

Again, a wonderful book. Any sufficiently advanced technology can be made to look indistinguishable from magic if you try hard enough. This book also spells out panspermia, has one of the best depictions of large-scale terraforming ever and works in some great conspiracy-theory gags too.

I wrote to NEL and asked if they'd got any more by this fabulous writer (and also if they'd got any stuff for a school project on SF that I was doing). An actual paper letter -- this was the early 1980s. They wrote back. They said, in essence, "sorry, no -- and those two did so badly, we'll never touch him again. But, if you're really keen, he did a kids' book which was not our sort of thing. It never made it out of hardback. We believe his publisher has rather a lot of them left. Here's his address. Ask him."

So I did.

A year or two later, when I was off at university, in my second year and living in digs in Virginia Water, I got a phone call from a chap with an immensely rich, plummy, posh English voice.

"Hullo! Are you Liam Proven? You wrote me a lovely little letter about books by this Terry Pratchett chap! Yes, I have hundreds of the bloody things -- office is full of boxes of 'em. Can't give 'em away! How many d'you want?"

It was Colin Smythe -- a charming chap I met at the launch party for Hogfather, the twentieth Discworld book, a decade or so later.

And that is how I came by my third -- but oldest -- Terry Pratchett novel. This copy here, scanned the day I rediscovered it:



It is now, of course, far and away the most valuable book I own or have ever owned. Rare unsigned copy, too. And I do mean rare.

Before it got to me, The Colour of Magic launched -- from Corgi this time -- and the rest is history. A few years later, I was at ConFiction in the Hague. Pterry was on a panel about clichés. I think Sourcery had just come out in paperback. People in the business were starting to really notice him. He was introduced as "Terry Pratchett, a man who should know all about clichés because that's all he writes!" Pratchett visibily ground his teeth, but as ever, gave a good show.

So, yes, dammit, I was a Pratchett fan, and one long before all these damned kids and their Discworld stuff. (Much as I love the Discworld novels.)  But I wonder how many others of us are there who were Pratchett fans from before the Discworld? Of his original, early SF stuff.

Goodbye, Sir Terry.

It's time for my every-few-years reread of Stan Robinson's masterwork, and lo, there is a Reddit thread about it. It's full of people whining that it's too long and they couldn't finish it.

I may have got a bit carried away in my reply...

- - - - -

Having RTTEOTT, I am *appalled* by the amount of negative comments. As it happens, a few days ago, I started rereading the trilogy. I reread them every few years and have done since they came out. This will be my 5th or 6th time through - I lose count. I downloaded ebooks of them because my original paperbacks are starting to become tattered and frayed from all the rereadings.

Every time, they are fresh and new. Every time, I discover new things in them. Many of the characters feel like personal friends now, from Sax Russel, Nadia Chernyshevski, Arkady Bodganov, Nirgal and Michel Duval; or people that I might not get on with, but know well, such as Anne Clayborne; or people I might dislike but admire for their work, like John Boone and Frank Chalmers; or people I think I would dislike or just couldn't deal with, such as Maya Toitovna or Phyllis Boyle.

I almost feel like I know Underhill and Burroughs and Echus Overlook and Sheffield. It feels like I've been there. It feels like *I've* driven through Noctis Labyrinthus into Marineris, gone down into Hellas and Argyre, driven a rover up Olympus to crater Pt or gazed at the great marching barchan dunes of the vastitas borealis. When I study maps of Mars, I look at it in terms of the places I know - Elysium, Cairo, Vishniac, Low Point. I always come away disappointed that they are not there.

The only stuff I've reread more than R/G/B Mars is Douglas Adams and some early Terry Pratchett (notably the pre-Discworld SF).

R/G/B Mars is possibly *the* defining SF masterpiece of the 1990s - an era which also saw the bulk of Iain M Banks' SF work, saw the début of Ken Macleod, arguably the finest works of Ian McDonald and many other truly great works.

They are perhaps not the most accessible novels. They are long and dense. I wish I could believe that the 3 redditors who called it "dry" were punning on Mars' aridity but I don't think they were.

It's also one of the best-structured trilogies I've ever read. The colours set the themes: the first book is about technology, about learning to live on the red planet, building to a crescendo of suffering, pain and destruction.

The second book is about bringing the planet to life, about the turmoil and torment and damage and disruption that this would inevitably cause, about the revolutions and the struggle for independence.

But then, when you've done that, when you've explored Mars from pole to pole, made it real, filled it with people drawn in such detail that I could pick them out of an identity parade, and then painted it: thawed it, filled it with life, embodied Hiroko Ai's /viriditas/ and performed the great ecopoesis and brought the Red Planet to life, gone through the areophany, then where?

And that is the triumphant conclusion: because whereas Red to Green is the obvious step, it's what a hundred SF writers have done before, Stan Robinson comes up with the astonishing hat trick. When Mars is alive, a living world, when Sax' great dream has come true, then what?

Well, it's a world. It's a whole planet, and even when it has seas and an ocean - and a canal at last, of course, Schiaparelli and more to the point Lowell vindicated at last! - /then/ Robinson comes back and asks: OK. What now? This is not a bit of set-dressing. This is a world, a planet, filled with millions of people. It has factions, it has parties, it has politics. Book 1 has interpersonal dynamics, and what readers still in their 20s might not realise yet, it has the pacing of real life. You look away and suddenly a decade has passed and the whole world has changed around you. People die. People make mistakes, they fuck up, and they get back up and they go on. So /yes/ the story jumps but life jumps like that too once you're not a kid any more.

Book 2 is about growth.

And then comes Blue Mars. OK, so, they did it, it's alive now. So what?

Well, so what is that now, Mars has to mature, like a person: it has to break away from its parent, leave home. It has to shake off the shackles of UNOMA and UNTA and stand alone, be its own place. And that means a government, a constitution, a system of politics.

I hate politics. You know how you can tell when a politician is lying? Their lips move.

But it's a necessary evil. If you have lots of people, you need to have it. It happens, like death. It is part of the group dynamics of being human beings. And Book 3 doesn't shy away from that, it rubs your face in it and it makes you care. The great conference in Dorsa Brevia is the best-written political scene that SF has ever had, and I daresay, that literature has ever had. It is dull, it goes on too long, but that is *real*, that is how it is, it is representational. And it is made real, with Art Randolph running around trying to record it all and Nadia reluctantly taking on the /really/ big construction job of her life, that of making a world into a nation, a state, a land.

And the wonderful conclusion - the round-Mars runners, the swimmers, the sailboats, *sailboats!* On the *ocean* on *Mars*! /Nobody/ has ever had the guts to do that, but Stan Robinson did.

Screw Bradbury and his Chronicles, dull spacey hippy druggie stuff that they were. Bugger Burroughs and his red-skinned big-boobed princesses. I'm sorry, but even the great Ian McDonald and his /Desolation Road/ with its Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar don't compare to this. They are mere vignettes, snapshots. Robinson paints the big picture, the birth of a whole world, the biggest picture it is possible to see, and he paints it warts and all and it's beautiful.

It is, overall, the most astoundingly beautiful book I have ever read, or, I think, that I ever will read. Many have moved me, from /Eon/ to /Ringworld/, or what-might-have-beens such as /The Difference Engine/, or excited me such as /Snow Crash/ or /The Diamond Age, or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer./

But they are all small things indeed next to the sweep, the majesty, the awe, of Mars and the great areophany.

And I understand that many people don't get it. But that's OK. Some people just are poor sad crippled little souls, unable to appreciate beauty and great art. That's how life is. It's OK, there are lots of good books with rayguns and rocket ships in for them.

OK, so, not very popular request... Count 'em on the fingers of one foot, probably. But wotthehell, archie, wotthehell. I have been asked what was worth reading recently, so here are my favourites of the new SF I've read in the two-thousand-and-noughties.

This is just the top 10, and it's from my ever-more-fallible memory. I fear there may well be some stellar stuff I've completely overlooked, and if so, I humbly apologise.

1. The Algebraist – Iain M Banks

What can you say about Banksie? The man actually genuinely is a genius – one of the greatest men of English letters in many decades, I feel. As well as mind-stretching settings and burning originality, beautiful prose and memorable characters, both sympathetic and not, he also has the trick of making it all look effortless. Stunning stuff. I love the earlier Culture books, but feel he has gone somewhat off the boil in more recent years, as if getting bored with the world he build. Thus a departure into a completely fresh, new one is very welcome. It's not a return to form – he's never lost his form – but it's fresher than anything since, or including, Excession.
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Everyone posts "top 10" or "top 5" lists in blogs and things. It's an easy enough bit of filler & it can provoke some discussion, or give people ideas of stuff they might like.

But it's low-hanging fruit. So I thought I'd try something a bit different: a bottom ten.

In no particular order – at least so far – here are ten novels I really wish that I'd never read. A nice trip to the dentist would have been more fun and more rewarding. All of them came highly recommended by someone, as far as I can recall, and some by lots of people.

1. Little, Big – John Crowley. A dreadfully tedious modern fairytale, where every time the author managed to arouse some small degree of interest in a character, he promptly shifted the timeline of the narrative a few decades forward, so they became an old person pottering around in the background. It took me nine months to struggle through this and I read dozens of other, more enjoyable books in between; every few chapters, I couldn't face any more, so went and read something fun instead. Came with about six pages of plaudits in the front: a warning sign. The only one that was accurate was (I think) Katharine Kurtz, who marvelled at it as a tightrope act, never quite tumbling into Twee. It's true, but at least a bit of twee is fun sometimes. Gaiman can warm your heart this way if he pleases, for instance.

2. Light – M John Harrison. I've met Mike Harrison, briefly. He is a charming, witty and very cool chap. His prose, too, is witty and stylish. The trouble is, that is all there is to it; it's hollow, there are no interesting or sympathetic characters, no real story, no interesting settings or scenery or ideas or anything. Nothing to give a damn about. I really disliked the Viriconium stories, way back when, but this was meant to be a triumphant return and proper space opera. It's neither.

3. Appleseed – John Clute. I am not an admirer of Mr Clute's criticism, which I find impenetrable, a morass of obscure verbiage and pretentiousness. The purpose of writing, I feel, is to communicate, and Clute is very very bad at this. But I thought it would be interesting to see what he produced when writing fiction instead. I wish I hadn't. It's dull, uneventful, its meaning as ever hidden behind a chiaroscuro of lexicographical pyrotechnics; I was unable to muster any interest in any part of the story or its cast, and the attempt at an impressive Big (possibly-)Dumb Object wasn't. I should have heeded the warning sign in the front of this one, too: a definition of a couple of the really obscure words. I think "azelujaria" was one. I'd rather Sonnets from the Portuguese than vocabulary from it, thanks.

(Aside: the good Appleseed is the one by Masamune Shirow, which I highly recommend.)

4. Vast – Linda Nagata. Strange semi-mystical saga in a big weird alien spaceship. Feels like waking from an anæsthetic, when you're all groggy, nothing makes sense and you can't quite think straight no matter how hard you try. Nothing in the book ever comes clear – it's all weird and spacey and floaty without managing the leap into the mythical or mystical. Immensely frustrating.

5. The Aleutian Trilogy – Gwyneth Jones (counting as one). I have said terrible things about Ms Jones' books, writing intemperately and badly in a mate's blog. Alas, I got quoted. Misery and infamy and shame. I should have tried much harder to express what I didn't like, but I find it very hard to do so. I dislike the biologically-nonsensical, implausible alien biology; if one can't do this convincingly, don't do it, don't just witter. I disliked the aliens too, a bunch of whiny mopey emo-kid ingenues with the power of gods. Despicable. I was irritated that they appear so human-like for no good reason I could discern other than making them interact better with humans. I found the story and actions and characters all hateful. Settings were well-placed, but the stuff I'd find interesting was off in the background, and in the foreground was hundreds of pages of moping. Gah.

6. Climbing Olympus – Kevin J Anderson. A recommendation from a friend and I shall never forgive him. “Anderson is good when he's writing his own original stuff,” he protested. NO. HE. ISN'T. This book was absolutely unutterable crap from beginning to end with added bad-horror-writer nasty bits thrown in.

7. The Garbage Chronicles – Brian Herbert. Never was a book more aptly titled. Elder son of the sainted Frank of that ilk, Herbert Jr can only have got published because of the family connections. He couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag. Unspeakably dreadful. The only way this guy could write any worse was paired up with some other talentless hack... Oh, wait...

8. White Mars – Roger Penrose & Brian Aldiss. I adore most of Aldiss' work; he was the first big-name writer I ever met at a convention and he - and also his late wife, who introduced me to him – are absolutely lovely, charming people. Penrose is more famous for The Emperor's New Mind, which is waiting in my epic to-be-read pile. (I blame Bookmooch.) I already know I don't agree with its central concept, though. But I got the book new, from and signed for me by Brian himself. So I hated myself for hating it, but I found it trite, implausible, contrived and awkward as hell. A massive disappointment.

9. Artemis Fowl & Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident - Eoin Colfer. When I heard that Mr Colfer had got the contract to write a sequel to the Hitch-hikers' Guide to the Galaxy books, I was deeply concerned, so I decided to sample his earlier stuff. (Even though I dislike juveniles as a rule and did even when I was a kid.) I was right to be afraid. I really really Did Not Get On with these books. Apart from the irritating protagonist and his clichéd accomplices, I found the whole thing stereotypical and dull. But worst of all, Colfer tries to write magic in a sciency, science-fictiony sort of way, and he can't do it. It's as bad as that awful line about “doing the Kessel run in less than six parsecs”, betraying utter illiteracy in the terms or the vocabulary – Colfer does not understand the language of science at all, so he tries to ape it and fails very badly. Hugely irritating, utterly without interest or any redeeming features.

10. Mortal Mask – Steven Marley. A kind gift when in hospital, from a long-ago girlfriend, who said she loved these books and thought I might. I'm afraid not. I found this first one immensely irritating with its not-very-well-done incomprehensible Chinese mythology and its directionless plot centred around an utterly-unsympathetic lead character who I just wanted to meet an end. Preferably nasty and very soon. Tedious and uninspiring.


Honourable mentions

In more recent years, I've largely stopped trying to finish books that I am really seriously disliking, so there are a whole bunch that I just gave up on. As such, I can't really pass judgement. I might go back for another crack at them some day, but for now – meh.

1. The Third Policeman – Flann O'Brien. Started out fun then just became random.

2. City of the Iron Fish – Simon Ings. Started because I'd enjoyed Headlong so much, ironically.

3. The Night Mayor – Jack Yeovil. Like the (real) author, like his short fiction and journalism, but I could not wade through the mass of reference upon reference in this. It's no fun if you can't get them, so it is an error, I feel, to rely upon them totally.

4. Bold as Love – Gwyneth Jones. Its praises were sung at me but I wouldn't buy it so a friend gave it to me. Dear gods, as if there weren't enough tree-huggers and stereotypes in the world already. Ack.

5. The Far Side of the World – Patrick O'Brian. Failed at about page 3, a good half a dozen times. Mind you, it's worse than that sounds – I am not sure I've made it into the second actual sentence yet.

6. Dying of the Light – George R R Martin. I really love a lot of this chap's work, but he is astonishingly diverse and I just could not get into this book.

7. And Another Thing – Eoin Colfer. As a serious Douglas Adams fan, I feared the worst of an authorised sequel. I had been far, far too optimistic.

8. Canal Dreams – Iain Banks. I adore his SF, but his mainstream stuff leaves me cold. This one, on the other hand, left me stricken. Both dull and rather unpleasant, which is a neat trick in an awful sort of way.

9. Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail – Hunter S Thompson. OK, so, not technically a novel, but still. I much enjoyed Hells Angels and his shorter writing, but I neither know nor care about US politics, especially not that occurring before I was 5. Grindingly dull, yet bafflingly fêted; I don't get the book or the response to the book.

10. Illuminatus! - Robert Shea & Robert Anson Wilson. The really weird thing is, I love this book, but every one of the two or three times I read it, by half- to three-quarters of the way through the third volume, I just can't take any more and give up. Very strange. One day I will get there and I am sure it'll all be worth it.

There is, after an interval of far too many years, a new book out by one of my favourite writers, Greg Egan. It's called Incandescence. You can read more about it there - there's even a YouTube trailer, which I'm unable to see here at the office.

Well worth knowing in addition to this is that Egan has put an earlier short story set in the same universe online on his site for free. And it's bloody good, too. (If you like this sort of thing, which I personally do, very much. Egan's written more of my favourite short stories than any other single writer, and his novels are blinding too.)

It is called "Riding the Crocodile" and it is well worth an hour or so of your attention. (I devoured it in rather a lot less, myself.)

As for the book, I don't know yet. I'm waiting for the standard-size paperback; I obscurely resent paying a fiver or so extra for a slightly bigger P/B printed up from the hardback page layouts. Thus I am resisting, with some effort, buying Incandescence just yet.

I'm currently on a Kim Stanley Robinson jag. I've reread RGB Mars more times than I can remember now, including in the last year. I've just finished rereading the whole Three Californias set, for the first time since I got all three, and am currently happily immersed in Escape from Kathmandu, which I've only previously read partially - its four component novellas were published individually in Asimov's (or Analog, I forget) something like 20y ago, before I subscribed, and I enjoyed them immensely back then. Must find a copy of Antarctica and the remaining anthologies now. And I do mean "now".

(I also really must re-subscribe to Analog & Asimov's. They deserve our support. I let them go, with extreme reluctance, during an economy drive a few years ago.)

Well, that was a full weekend. My cat is in hiding, my garage is once more my own and is half way through a massive reorganization, my house is slightly but significantly emptier of stuff I don't want - the last of Kjersti's stuff that I'm not actively using is gone. Oh, and I might just have sold my first book.

But what I thought I'd put here today was a little bit of a message from an email list I'm on, about why I love the writing of Terry Pratchett.

An acquaintance was saying that he rates Guards, Guards as one of the very best of TP's books, along with Carpe Jugulum, The Last Continent, Maskerade, The Truth, Witches Abroad  and Wyrd Sisters - and also Nanny Ogg's Cookbook - and much better than Small Gods. I had to reply...( Read more... )