I always need a Book Review Round-up of some kind, every year. There are always ones that got away, short books that I didn’t have much to say about, collections that should be treated together. This one started with my reading Prime Meridian, then led on to others from the same Storybundle purchase, and the one two years later. Still working out the theme, but may have been international spec fic.
Prime Meridian
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Love, life, dreams, and a world beyond reach.
Amelia dreams of Mars. The Mars of the movies and the imagination, an endless bastion of opportunities for a colonist with some guts. But she’s trapped in Mexico City, enduring the drudgery of an unkind metropolis, working as a rent-a-friend, selling her blood to old folks with money who hope to rejuvenate themselves with it, enacting a fractured love story. And yet there’s Mars, at the edge of the silver screen, of life. It awaits her. [goodreads]
My Review
I think I got this in a storybundle of world scifi, along with two from series so good I finished the rest. I’ve read others by Moreno-Garcia, and I generally found them off-beat, weird. Maybe I don’t understand because it’s Mexico, so I don’t know what is fact and what is fiction. Is it real, or dystopian? It’s interesting, and well written. And a bit depressing, or uplifting.
A Man Lies Dreaming
by Lavie Tidhar
The next novel from Lavie Tidhar, the award-winning author of THE VIOLENT CENTURY.
Deep in the heart of history’s most infamous concentration camp, a man lies dreaming. His name is Shomer, and before the war he was a pulp fiction author. Now, to escape the brutal reality of life in Auschwitz, Shomer spends his nights imagining another world – a world where a disgraced former dictator now known only as Wolf ekes out a miserable existence as a low-rent PI in London’s grimiest streets.
An extraordinary story of revenge and redemption, A Man Lies Dreaming is the unforgettable testament to the power of imagination. [goodreads]
My Review
I picked this one out to read because he had done an intro to Prime Meridian. Then I notice I have ‘Best Scifi’ Collections edited by him on my kindle. Sounded good, especially with all its award nominations. And it came in the same bundle as the stupendous Paris Adrift.
This is a dark novel, a noir alternative history spec fic where Hitler did not come to power in 1933, and instead is a refugee in London. In the first 17% or so the narrative refers to the main character as Herr Wolf, and I started to guess this was Hitler, confirmed at around 25%. The interesting thing is the way Oswald Mosley is heading to become Prime Minister, in a fascist response to communism in Russia, which has more or less annexed Germany.
This is where something I worked out several decades ago gets translated into first class fiction. What is the difference between extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing? Nothing much, they’ve both gone so far around the block they are just dictators up against each other.
But something else got worked out in this book; violence and dire straits on the level of the film Eastern Promises. If you’ve seen Eastern Promises, you may have closed your eyes at the most sickening bits. Even when Viggo Mortensen is perpetrating them. With A Man Lies Dreaming, you can’t close your eyes and read on regardless. I decided I didn’t need any more sado-masochism, any more refugees being subjected to torture and degradation, and in fact, any more of this book.
And I would not recommend it to any of my friends.
Apex Book of World SF #1
Ed. Lavie Tidhar
The world of speculative fiction is expansive; it covers more than one country, one continent, one culture. Collected here are sixteen stories penned by authors from Thailand, the Philippines, China, Israel, Pakistan, Serbia, Croatia, Malaysia, and other countries across the globe. Each one tells a tale breathtakingly vast and varied, whether caught in the ghosts of the past or entangled in a postmodern age. Among the spirits, technology, and deep recesses of the human mind, stories abound. Kites sail to the stars, technology transcends physics, and wheels cry out in the night. Memories come and go like fading echoes and a train carries its passengers through more than simple space and time. Dark and bright, beautiful and haunting, the stories herein represent speculative fiction from a sampling of the finest authors from around the world. [goodreads]
My Review
I may not have liked Lavie Tidhar’s own book, but he’s collected a brilliant selection together for his first book of World SF. He does however, point out that this ‘world’ seriously misrepresents the full scope of excellent scifi – he hasn’t included much by South American or African authors and looks forward to changing that.
This is an astounding collection, with stories that went in completely different directions from that I have come to expect. Partly there is the inspiration of different cultural mythologies, which create a very different set of circumstances. War has taken its toll in some places, and created entirely new landscapes in once-familiar places. Moral outlooks are different. They make you think.
I recall there are five books in this series. It might do my imagination good to read them, slowly, taking my time over them and absorbing the new concepts.
I definitely recommend this one!
