Having Plenty - Rereading Favourites, November 2007

It's been a fun exercise rereading a favourite sf novel each month this year, although there have been disappointments. But there have also been pleasant surprises - such as Colin Greenland's Take Back Plenty.

I remember the buzz when the novel was published back in 1990. It "reinvented" space opera. Arguably Iain M Banks had done that three years earlier with Consider Phlebas, but Take Back Plenty was different. Colin Greenland's novel was a reworking of - and homage to - pulp sf tropes. Mars was habitable and had canals. Venus was habitable and had jungles. There were aliens everywhere.

Certainly the book was successful. It won both 1990's BSFA Award and 1991's Arthur C Clarke Award.

In brief, Take Back Plenty is the story of Tabitha Jute, captain and sole crew of the barge Alice Liddell. While on Mars, she inadvertently causes a near-riot, and is subsequently fined by the authorities. She doesn't have the money to pay the fine. Fortunately, she meets up with Marco Metz, leader of the cabaret act Contraband, and he contracts her to take him and his band to Titan. First, they stop off at Plenty, an alien artefact orbiting Earth. It had been built by the alien Frasque, but they'd been booted out of the Solar System by the Capellans - highly advanced aliens who'd bootstrapped humanity into space, and now kept everyone sealed within the orbit of Pluto.

Of course, Contraband isn't really a cabaret act and Tabitha is forced to flee Plenty with the members of the band. They crash-land on Venus, are rescued by pirates, and then delivered to the Capellans. And to say anymore would give away the novel's resolution.

I'd forgotten how good the writing is in Take Back Plenty. Here's part of the description of Venus:

The coral reefs of Erebus rise in great jagged spires from the sticky sea. Etched, eroded ridges spiral and veer, running for ten, twenty kilometres through smoke-black water. Where they meet they throw up frozen, warty explosions of barbed knots and clusters of mineral teeth. On these serrated edges the medusas, globs of muscular mucus as wide as tabletops, hang stranded and expiring, thrown up by tempests that rend the glutinous, tideless waves. The cliffs of the coral are thickly stained with their ichor.

Plot-wise, perhaps, Take Back Plenty is slightly less successful. The setting - the pulp-populated Solar System - is a great deal of fun. But poor Tabitha seems to spend much of the story being chased from A to B. She has very little control over the plot. The ending too reeks of old sf serials. The cavalry arrive, there's a sudden reveal and subsequent explanation, and it's all over. While all the clues have been set, it does feel a little too pat.

However, there is one nice post-modern touch to the novel. Take Back Plenty is clearly a narrated fiction. There are even authorial interventions. But the identity of the narrator is kept secret until the end of the novel - and makes perfect sense within the confines of the plot. It's not hard to figure out, but it does add an extra dimension to the narrative.

As do the conversations between Tabitha and Alice, the Alice Liddell's AI persona. In these, Tabitha tells stories of her past - which serve to entertain, to explain her background, and to help map her character. It's an effective technique.

Unfortunately, in retrospect Take Back Plenty seems a bit of a one-off. Yes, there were a further two books - Seasons of Plenty and Mother of Plenty - forming a trilogy. Colin Greenland also "reinvented" the planetary romance with Harm's Way in 2000. But during the 1990s, it seemed no one else mined pulp sf for tropes. Instead, we had Banks-style widescreen space opera, or Alastair Reynolds' hard sf space opera. No one leapt on Colin Greenland's bandwagon...

... until recently. In the last couple of years, there have been a few books by US authors which are based on and around old pulp sf tropes. A sort of return to the old sf action-adventure paradigm of the early Twentieth Century. Interestingly, while some have put a modern spin on this inasmuch as they provide a contemporary scientific rationale for their tropes, none have put a post-modern spin on it in the same fashion that Colin Greenland did. To my mind, that makes Take Back Plenty more interesting as it's privileging story not setting. It's probably also worth pointing out that Consider Phlebas is still in print, but Take Back Plenty is not. And given the recent interest in re-imagining pulp sf tropes, perhaps it's time for a new edition. Or perhaps it should be included in the SF Masterworks series?

I have my copy, and I'll be reading it again. Take Back Plenty is definitely a book that will remain a favourite.

Buy this Book?

It's not very often I post responses to something I've read on other blogs - in fact, this might well be the first time. But sometimes, it's the only thing to do.

First, here's an excellent piece from the Kenyon Review on book reviews, which makes some interesting points about customer reviews on Amazon. The author is careful not to say, however, that those who struggle to understand novels by Joseph Conrad or Toni Morrison should probably look to themselves and not blame the writer. If they don't like a book, and can articulate why - then, fine. But to not like it because they don't understand it? That's not useful information.

And from the sublime to the ridiculous: Dave Hill (novelist) celebrates the imminent demise of the hardback on the Guardian blog. According to him, "Literary fiction even has its very own format to signal that it's a cut above the vulgar crowd - the hardback edition, which conventionally precedes the paperback by a year." So the loss of the hardback format is good because "the 'literary' demarcation stinks" and, further, "plenty of so-called literary fiction is overrrated".

This is complete rubbish. First, the hardback is not limited to literary fiction. In fact, books of all genres are published in hardback. Even Harry Potter. And second, plenty of fiction from other genres is overrated. Such as Harry Potter...

There is also a certain amount of prestige attached to being published in that format, rather than as a "paperback original". But that's hardly surprising - they're more expensive to produce, and correspondingly priced higher. So publishers will only do that for those authors they expect to sell well. Or perhaps the publishers want to signal to the market that an author is something special. Irrespective of genre.

I have several hundred science fiction hardbacks on my bookshelves, and quite a few of other genres. I like hardbacks. They're more... substantial objects than paperbacks. They last longer, too. Unhappily, British publishers these days tend to use glued bindings, and not stitched - which most US publishers still use - so modern hardbacks are not as hard-wearing as older ones. And because they're longer-lasting, hardbacks are more collectible. I recently read John Jarmain's Priddy Barrows, first published in 1944. Sixty-three years ago. I could find only two copies on the Web. I wonder how many I would have found if it had been published only in paperback? Some of the hardback books I own are now worth substantially more than they were on publication - and they're weren't published more than half a century ago...

Forgotten Classic... or Just Forgotten?

After reading some poems by John Jarmain in Return to Oasis: War Poems and Recollections from the Middle East 1940 - 1946 (see here), I wanted to read more. I hunted down a copy of his book of poems - titled, of course, Poems - on Advanced Book Exchange, and purchased it. I also learnt he had written a novel, Priddy Barrows, published the year before his death. This proved even rarer than Poems, with only two copies available on Advanced Book Exchange... and all the other hits on the Web leading back to one or the other of those two.

Anyway, I bought one of the copies.

And now I've read it.

The title, Priddy Barrows, refers to a school for handicapped boys located on the edge of the Mendips and run by a Napoleonesque headmaster called Captain Nelson Hayes. The novel recounts the events of a year in the lives of the people connected with, or living near, the school. Gerald Trested is one such. He sold his bookshop in London to come and teach at Priddy Barrows. At first, he finds Hayes fearsome - and Hayes' brother, Drimble, weak but well-intentioned - but soon warms to both. The boys are rowdy bullies, but they too he comes to appreciate. He takes a small cottage in the nearby village of Priddy. After Linda Ysaye, sister-in-law of the local squire, shelters there from the rain, believing the cottage still unoccupied, the two drift into a relationship and engagement.

Meanwhile Nelson Hayes is buying up all the surrounding land, for reasons unknown. This includes the house rented by Mrs Maidment, and her son and daughter. And the tied cottage inhabited by old Dunty Vowles, a poacher, and his daughter, a maid at the school. Vowles suffers during the novel. Not entirely right in the head, he has his daughter taken from him, is evicted from his tied cottage, and eventually sectioned. Other characters include the artist Mark Turls and his wife, and the local reverend Luke Francis.

Priddy Barrows is set in the late 1930s - Nelson Hayes fought in the Great War - but there is something about the story which makes it feel as though it were set earlier. The novel is not a typical beginning - middle - end sort of story. Trested's arrival at the school is not the start, nor is his eventual breaking of his engagement with Linda Ysaye the end. Having said that, nearly every character in the novel does undergo some form of story-arc, each of which intersects as the characters' lives intersect. (The exceptions are the Turls, who end the book pretty much as they began it.)

I wanted to read Priddy Barrows after reading Jarmain's poetry. So it was Jarmain's use of language which had attracted me - was his prose as good as his poetry? And the answer is... yes and no. In parts, Priddy Barrows' prose is very good indeed. Unfortunately, the whole book has been presented in a weirdly old-fashioned style, with paragraphs comprising single sentences, punctuated by semicolons and colons rather than full stops. It makes for an odd reading experience. Here's a good example of the prose - it shows both the odd punctuation, and Jarmain's strength as a descriptive writer:

They were the skaters who came up from Wells and the vale to this frozen pond in the old mine working: they played the headlights of their cars on the ice, white upon the black, and waltzed and laughed and cut patterns in their little ring in the saucer of the black frozen abandoned hills. Their lights cross-crossed closely over the circle of ice, and spreading beyond it were swallowed in the huge blackness which they could not penetrate; their cries and their gliding movement were to Luke, looking down on them from the distant barrow, like the brief hectic activity of human life as a god might see it: their fixed swift motion within the little lit compass of the ice was perfectly self-centred; nothing existed for them of the grave-strewn dark immensity of the hills beyond the beam of their lights.

Another aspect of the novel which impresses is the handling of the central relationship between Gerald Trested and Linda Ysaye. Linda dominates the relationship inasmuch as she is certain of what she wants. But the tentativeness Trested initially displays is later revealed to be apathy. He is handled sympathetically, although his story leaves him in an unsympathetic position of his own making. I suspect the journeys taken by the characters in Priddy Barrows may in themselves be classical allusions, but if so they were beyond me. The novel's dénouement, however, throws all that has gone before on its head. Which sort of reminds me of Lawrence Durrell's The Avignon Quintet.

Coincidentally, Durrell is a writer I very much admire for his descriptive prose and use of language. For example, the two images described below I find very striking:

A white sailing boat lay like a breathing butterfly against the white mole.
(from The Dark Labyrinth, Lawrence Durrell)

and

In that clear hard enamel air the human voice carried so far that it was possible to call and wave to her from the top while she walked the Plaka streets below.
(from Tunc, Lawrence Durrell)

So, is Priddy Barrows a forgotten classic? Sadly, no.

Even for its time, it's written in a strangely old-fashioned style. And the plot, comprising as it does a knot of character stories - each of which seems to flit between Brontë, Austen and Dickens - only makes the novel feel more old-fashioned still. Jarmain has a fine eye for landscape, he draws his characters with skill and economy (although rendering Vowles' Somerset accent phonetically is a bit annoying), and at times his prose displays a wonderful turn of phrase. But Priddy Barrows is a debut novel, and it promises more than, sadly, Jarmain ever had the chance to deliver.

Yes, I will read the book again one day. And I wouldn't be surprised to discover that I like and appreciate it more after that reread.

Nuff Said

From the introduction to Galactic Empires 2, edited by Brian Aldiss (1976):

"Science fiction stories often leave strange vapour trails in the skies of our minds."

They went with songs to the battle...

Today is Remembrance Day, so it seems entirely appropriate that I post a poem by John Jarmain.

Tel-el-Eisa
Tel-el-Eisa is Jesus' hill,
Or so they say:
There the bitter guns were never still,
Throwing up yellow plumes of sand by day
And piercing the night across.
There the desert telephone's long lonely line expires,
Ends with a tangle of looping wires
And one last leaning cross.

Jarmain, a World War II poet, was killed by a mortar round in Normandy in 1944. His collection, Poems, was published posthumously in 1945. I now have a copy - bought from a seller on abebooks.com. The collection's back cover blurb describes Jarmain as having "an original vision and a lyric voice", and I'd very much agree with that. There are some wonderful poems in the book and they deserve to be much better known.

Ten Years Later...

Novacon is an annual convention run by the Birmingham SF Group, which takes place over the first weekend of November. The last one I attended was Novacon 27 in 1997. Ten years ago. Back in those days I would go to two or more cons a year - typically the Eastercon and Novacon. When I moved to the Middle East, I could only return to the UK for a single con each year - and chose the Eastercon, on the entirely sensible grounds that more of my friends would be at it. After returning to live in the UK, I didn't bother with any conventions for a couple of years... until the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow. And since then, I've been happy with just one convention a year, the Eastercon.

But, for some reason, I decided this year to also attend Novacon. Which this year took place in Willenhall.

Travel problems soured my visit to Fantasycon, and that was only a 40-mile train journey. This time I was travelling around 100 miles - and I'd have to change trains at Birmingham New Street. Foolishly, I'd thought that earlier screwed-up trip was just a one-off. But it seems the British rail network imploded some time during the past couple of months. My train to Walsall was delayed by thirty minutes - in fact, only local trains were actually running on time. As it was, I still managed to arrive in Walsall at the correct time. Fortuitous connections at Birmingham New Street, I think.

The hotel where Novacon 37 was taking place proved to be one of those low flat modern ones, situated just off a motorway junction. The rooms were laid out along a corridor which mapped out a square. The entrance to this square was at one corner. Naturally, I was given the room furthest away, on the corner diagonally opposite. After dumping my bag, I headed for the bar...

If this year's Eastercon in Chester felt like a two-day convention stretched out over three days, then Novacon felt as though it were exactly the right length. I chatted with various people on the first night - including Guest of Honour Charles Stross - before attending the Opening Ceremony. Later that evening, they brought out the free wine, free books and free food for some book launches and signings. I don't actually recall what was being launched, or who was signing. I do vaguely remember deciding I'd had enough and staggering off to my room around midnight. The next day I was told I'd actually left at ten o'clock.

As usual, I was up early the next morning. Unsurprisingly, I had a bit of a hangover. Breakfast wasn't bad - although the Quality Hotel keeps their plates dangerously hot. You can't hold one unless you wrap a dozen paper napkins around your hand. I spent the day in the bar, but I no longer recall the topics of conversation. At four o'clock, Andy Remic gave a reading from his new novel, War Machine, published by Solaris. He stood with his back to a window, and through the window I could see an expanse of grass and at its far edge some twenty metres way a line of trees. Every now and again, a pair of squirrels would leap across a gap in the trees - and only just make it. One squirrel, in fact, missed completely, and only saved itself from plummetting to the ground by grabbing the other squirrel's tail. It was a little distracting. Andy's book, incidentally, is militaristic sf, and if the excerpt he read is any indication it should be a good read.

Around half past seven, a gang of eleven of us went out for a curry. This entailed a ten-minute drive in two taxis. The food wasn't bad - although a couple of those present disagreed. Back at the hotel, we sat around, drank a bit more and generally complained about how knackered we were. I lasted until midnight before going to bed.

On the Sunday, I attended my second programme item of the con. Which makes Novacon 37 something of a record-breaker for me. I typically spend cons in the bar, only attending book launches, author readings, or awards ceremonies. But this time, I actually sat through a full sixty-minute panel discussion. The topic was 'The New Optimism in British Science Fiction'. The panel comprised Eric Brown, Ian Watson, moderator Catherine Pickersgill, GoH Charles Stross and Andy Remic. An interesting discussion, although I don't recall any real conclusion being reached.

Throughout the weekend, I went for occasional wanders about the dealers' room. Which was surprisingly big for such a small con. Among the 17 books I bought were Outpost Mars by Cyril Judd, and its "spiced up" Beacon Books version, Sin in Space (see here for my comments on the Beacon Books version of AE van Vogt's Undercover Aliens; I plan to do the same for Sin in Space). Most of the others were obscure paperbacks, bought for a couple of quid, by the likes of Colin Kapp, David J Lake, Rudy Rucker, Lin Carter, and Barry N Malzberg. I also picked up copies of Time Pieces and disLocations, short story collections edited by Ian Whates. And Andy Remic's Quake and Warhead, both of which he signed for me.

Since Eric Brown and myself were both heading north, we decided to travel together. Tony Ballantyne dropped us off at Walsall station at 3 o'clock (thanks for the copy of Divergence, Tony). I didn't arrive back home until 7:30. The train from New Street was packed solid, and forced to take two diversions because of work being done on the lines. In the old days, you could blame a single company - British Rail - for screwing up your journey. Now it's the fault of half a dozen. Privatising British Rail was a stupid thing to do.

On the whole, an enjoyable con. I got to meet up with friends, and meet new people. I didn't spend as much in the dealers' room as I'd expected or feared. Which is good. I did spot a couple of first editions I wanted, but I managed to resist temptation. I don't remember every thing that happened during the weekend, but I do recall - chatting with Ian Whates about prog rock (and letting Tony Ballantyne listen to some Tinariwen on my Yeep; he liked it more than the death metal...); discussing the current craze for zombies with Mark Newton and Christian Dunn; watching someone hand Charles Stross all twelve of his novels to sign, and his earlier book on Web architecture; talking about writing with Andy Remic; listening to Ian Watson's many funny anecdotes; being very surprised to see Liam Proven up and about before noon... Anyway, here are a few photos I took during the weekend.

It was a fun convention. I might even go again next year. I'll certainly not wait ten years before my next Novacon...