Lisa Tuttle. My Death.

I haven't read that much of Lisa Tuttle - 'The Storms of Windhaven', co-written with GRR Martin is one which springs to mind, and you will see elsewhere on these pages that she had several other stories in various year's best anthologies in that decade.

This is a fascinating novella, although difficult to classify as genre. Recently widowed, a writer still very much mourning her husband, happens (it would appear at first by chance) on an interesting subject for a biography, something to get past her writer's block. An ill-fated love affair some 50 years ago, in the western Isles of Scotland, provides a story of which, it would appear, only one side is known. In tracking down the now very elderly woman who can provide the other side of the story, the writer finds that what she hoped to be a fascinating subject for her next book, has a much, much closer role to play in her/their life/death. A very literary piece of work, which will appeal on many levels.

Mary Gentle. Under the Penitence.

Gentle's novel 'Ash' published in two volumes in the USA, but as a singleton in the UK, has rightly garnered a lot of praise. I don't read many novels, but was minded to read this one, and did not regret that decision. I was hugely impressed at the way Gentle played with the idea of Alternate History in a very unique way, where many use Alternate History, to my mind, as an easy way out of world building. The twists in the current-day research in that volume echoed those which Algis Budrys handled so well in 'Who?' many years ago. SM Stirling, in the introduction to this chapbook refers to it as 'allohistory' - the way in which the past as we know it may in fact be mutable and not as permanently as it is/was.

This much shorter tale is set in the world of Ash, under the perpetually darkened skies of Carthage, a particularly strong image from the novel. We are quickly into the story, introduced to another strong lead in the shape of Ilario. That introduction has to be one of the more memorable in recent SF/fantasy - for no sooner has Ilario alighted in Carthage, intent on honing painting skills, than we learn that Ilario's mother has made an attempt on her child's life. But this is trumped in quick time when Ilario reveals (to the reader and to a lascivious local) the s/he is a haemaphrodite, bearing a full complement of male and female genitalia. She immediately demonstrates that they are all in full working order - trumping almost all of the challenging scenes in Ash!

Ilario is enslaved, and is bought by an intellectual book-collector, who welcomes her literacy. He himself is a castrato, and the two strike up a platonic bond.

Barely has she had time to settle in a routine of painting in her spare time than she finds her mother in in Carthage, accompanied by armed guards, determined to finish her murderous task.

As with Ash, Ilario has combat skills to shame any man, and she is able to defend herself until the local law enforcers arrive, and a short legal argument ensues.

Fortunately for Ilario her owner stands by her, and her mother is returned to Carthage. Having found out more about her parentage than was the case before, her owner once again shows his concern for her in reuniting her with her biological father, for whom her gender is not an issue - it is only her own father, and a man without balls who are able to see the person within. Ilario's painting style is to paint that which something is, as opposed to the trend in her time of painting iconic images representing the nature of that which is - underlying the issues of gender roles and identity that appear in Gentle's milieu. Similarly, having her characters not knowing everything, and remaining in the dark (sic) is a touch which works well, although rarely used in fiction (Gene Wolfe being one notable exception).

The story is notable for creating a very vivid character, and driving the narrative through at a pace, giving full value for its relatively short length.

The only problem for me is that those other volumes by Mary Gentle on the bookshelves are now even more appealing.

Stephen Baxter. Mayflower II.

Prolific British SF writer Stephen Baxter has an increasingly impressive body of work to his name, including a variety of singleton novels, and several novel sequences, and a lot of short stories. It is pleasant to see a writer being able to keep such a breadth in their content and format of writing - it seems the trend is to suck successful writers into producing a single interminable series (perhaps more so in fantasy than SF).

In his Xeelee sequence Baxter has produced a substantial clutch of excellent short stories and novels over several years - and long may it continue. I would offer as a counterpoint the fact that a lot of the Xeelee stories are in short story format, which has allowed him to explore vignettes and incidents in a epoch-spanning future history in a way that may not have worked as well if it had been in a number of fat novels.

Baxter's Xeelee stories go back many years, and some early ones were collected in his 'Vacuum Diagrams' collection.

The story sequence features humans set against several very alien races intent on our destruction, humans moving away from their roots (children brought up by the community at large, not knowing parents or parental love), gobsmacking hi-tech deep space warfare, Big Canvas, and in a more recent development, complex characters.

Greenwood creates an alternate England : one in which the sun has not set on our Empire, one in which Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' was a biography, and one in which the attempted invasion by Martians envisaged by HG Wells' did actually happen.

The Jigsaw Men are those created or given life after death through the procedure developed by Herr Frankenstein, a procedure guarded jealously by allies Britain and Prussia, from the likes of upstart little countries like America.

The story is a crime thriller, as far as such genre-isations are possible or desirable. A young woman has gone missing - not a rare occurence in the steampunkish London. However the young woman is the daughter of notable MP, and so it is a top priority.

The detective on the case has some skeletons in his closet - ones belonging in truth to his (biological) father, whom we eventually find out is none other tha Dr David Livingstone, famous explorer, and a most famous recipient of the Frankenstein procedure, still alive long after his three score year and ten.

It transpires that the young woman is not missing, but has deliberately followed her elder sister into a life as a porn starlet, frequently on the recieving end of the services of their co-star Jigsaw Men, who are often surgically enhanced for their parts. Or, rather, whose parts are often surgically enhanced....

Some dastardly doings ensue, featuring an American businessman, one of the few from across the Atlantic on these shores, who is fermenting trouble. A veritable bloodbath of a finale ensues.

The intro to the novella makes mention of the author's love of comics, and indeed, the story comes across at times as almost a novelisation of a movie version of a comic strip. The final shootout reads like a movie ending with people falling balletically down stairs and so forth. But for those who can spot them, the alternate history references, and occasional use of cockney rhyming slang (Barclays = Barclays Bank = w*nk), make up for what would otherwise by a fairly boilerplate story of its type.