Fantastic Metropolis

I debated for a while if I should include titles by people who work with me on this site, and in the end decided that suspicions be damned, these are really fine books that must be mentioned. Feel free to skip ahead and disregard the following three recommendations, although I sincerely think it’s your loss if you do.

First, the strangest book I had the pleasure to read in my life: The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases (Night Shade Books, 2003), a compendium of false medical conditions edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts, with contributions by some of the hottest writers to be found out there. While not everything is up to scratch, the material by Stepan Chapman, Jeffrey Ford, Shelley Jackson, Alan Moore and Michael Cisco more than makes up for the few uneven spots the book has. The design by John Coulthart is nothing short of breathtaking, and I don’t think the Guide could possibly be the same without it.

Steps Through the Mist (Polaris, 2003) marks Zoran Zivkovic’s return to the exploration of time and causality after Time-gifts. The structure is the same as in other collections or mosaic novels by the author, being a set of seemingly unrelated stories brought together by another one, but with a twist, in that the stories here are linked by the first and not the final piece, thus securing the theme for the rest of the book and subverting the reader’s expectations in a single deft stroke.

Finally, Veniss Underground (Prime Books, 2003) by Jeff VanderMeer, a science fictional version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice set in an apathetic consumerist metropolis that conceals in its bowels a nightmare “Wonderland” where the gradual obsolescence of mankind is being plotted. Not as accomplished as VanderMeer’s previous City of Saints and Madmen (actually written later), but equally memorable and fraught with images that I won’t be able to shake from my mind any time soon.

I can’t possibly neglect mentioning K.J. Bishop’s confident first novel The Etched City (Prime Books, 2003), a Decadent fantasy of immense elegance that follows the flight from law of two mercenary friends, the world-weary Raule and the noble but cruel Gwynn. I liked how Bishop’s writing style closely adheres to the setting, from the minimalist descriptions of the Copper Country deserts to the exuberant prose steeped in the nightmare beauty of tropical Ashamoil.

Equally noteworthy is Kalpa Imperial (Small Beer Press, 2003), a mosaic novel about power and history that mixes Borges, Calvino, Dunsany, Peake and Tolkien in a delightful stew served by Argentinian writer Angélica Gorodischer, and superbly translated into English by Ursula K. Le Guin. Although my favourite parts of the book were read in 2004, I feel like I should mention it now, and hope that Small Beer Press keeps investing in non-Anglophone writers. For further thoughts on this book, allow me to point you to the mini-review posted at my personal site.

I also had a lot of fun reading Frenzetta (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002) by Richard Calder, the love story between a sensuous ratgirl princess, Frenzetta, and her brain-eating zombie bodyguard as they elope around the globe in a gloriously over-the-top fusion of language, eroticism and cartoon violence. Richard Calder’s blog, by the way, contains precious insights into his work; try not to miss it if you’re curious where his fiction comes from and where he intends for it to go.

As ever, SciFiction continues to be an excellent source for original and reprint fiction online. This year, I derived eyefuls of pleasure from the writings of Jeffrey Ford, Lucius Shepard, Avram Davidson, Maureen F. McHugh, R.A. Lafferty, Glen Hirshberg, Samuel R. Delany and Carol Emshwiller, not to mention the conclusion of Michael Swanwick’s impressive Periodic Table of Science Fiction.