Fantastic Metropolis

With Salvage Rites (1989), his fifth story collection, and The Flies of Memory (1990), his umpteenth novel, Watson broke out of the cynical ’80s into the neo-New-Age of the Millennium’s death rattle. It was a good time for review. Both the stories of Salvage Rites and the core of The Flies of Memory bounce all over the themes raised in his previous books. In the latter, an expedition to Mars uncovers bizarre truths about insectoid aliens who have been “remembering” the cities of Earth—a subtle euphemism for stealing them. Some amusing observations about tourists are made—this is not a book to take on holiday. Watson somehow contrives to sound like a cross between Ray Bradbury and Rudy Rucker. Another love-child exposé?

A strong candidate for his best short-story collection is Stalin’s Teardrops (1991). What makes this one special is the cold anger that bubbles through some of the pieces. ‘The Eye of the Ayatollah’ is an odd and disturbing development on the Rushdie affair. The superlative ‘The Pharaoh and the Mademoiselle’ is a delectable experiment, written with great care and irony. Some of the brash verve of early stories like ‘Our Loves So Truly Meridional’ has returned, varnished with finer feeling. Torn from his head during his funeral procession, the Koran-thumper’s eye (pickled, but not in alcohol) will continue to serve a holy purpose fixed to a satellite in space, sweeping the planet for heretics. In fact it ends up in the socket of an assassin. Though years erode it, Watson’s message is always admirable: My Stories So Truly Topical.

1993 saw the first part of a projected two-volume saga. Lucky’s Harvest, the first book of Mana, is vast and worthwhile, a fantasy based on the great Finnish epic, The Kalevala. With Celtic, Saxon and Norse myth exhausted, Suomi is the last northern refuge. Lucky is the main character and an apt description of the book—Watson holds it in one coherent piece, an unenviable task when dealing with most myth-cycles. But he has written better novels. Buy Alien Embassy, Chekhov’s Journey and The Fire Worm; borrow Lucky’s Harvest from a library.

It is probably not even worth opening the Warhammer 40,000 series of books, despite the many passages of typical Watson they contain. Too rushed to be successful, they leave few impressions. Harlequin (1994) is superior to Inquisitor (1993); the far-future setting is unconvincing. His collection, The Coming of Vertumnus (1994), swept these mistakes away. The title story, one of the best published by Interzone, relates the florid account of a global Art attack. ‘Swimming With the Salmon’, ‘The Bible in Blood’, ‘Happy Hour’ and ‘Virtually Lucid Lucy’ are the other succulent fruits. It is time a thoughtful publisher brought out a Best of anthology before such a project becomes unwieldy. One of the finest SF short-story collections ever is still possible.

It remains to be seen what other delights Watson is planting. It is a safe bet there will be many, and that most of them will be among the best examples of SF in this age. Brief treatments such as this one are destined to be outdated even as they are written, requiring additional passages dealing with additional books. An author who can dash off novels faster than most of his colleagues can complete short-stories is always going to be a headache for the reviewer, critic and biographer. But it is a headache that few of them should want to complain about.

This profile was first published in The Zone magazine (Issue #3, Autumn 1995).