re:mote voices: literature

Title: Broken Angels
Author: Richard Morgan
Publisher: Gollancz

Broken Angels is the second book by Richard Morgan, a follow up to his debut Altered Carbon. Though in saying that Broken Angels and Altered Carbon are very different novels, even though they both feature the character of Takeshi Kovacs. Broken Angels making a lot more of something that was background detail in Altered Carbon, to the point where it took me a moment to recall the references at all.

Kovacs was introduced to us in Altered Carbon, an ex-envoy, the UN's special force. Highly trained and used to keep the planetary colonies in line with Earth authority as the human race spreads across the universe. After a particularly brutal little struggle, Kovacs quit and has been generally on hire since. With Altered Carbon Kovacs was hired to investigate a murder on Earth. This put us in a firmly noir territory with a hefty dose of SF back drop.

Broken Angels sees Kovacs as an officer in a strike force being used by corporate influences to crush a planetary revolution. However this is a fight Kovacs does not want a part of, but can't find a way out of. That is until he is made an offer that would seem to be the answer to all his problems.

Evidence of an ancient alien race was found on Mars, and although it has become clear that they were actually scattered across space they have been referred to as Martians ever since. It is using the technology that Earth has managed to piece together that has allowed humanity to spread across an increasing number of planets.

As such every discovery of something new is a big deal. Kovacs is being offered a Martian space ship. Something which has never been discovered before. With the team that have approached him the next step is to get corporate backing. But they aren't the only ones to know that there is something out there. Cue backstabbing and cloak and dagger that keeps Kovacs and his crew on their toes.

With a mission rather than a case and with a team behind him we have more of an action thriller than the private investigation. The violence also seems stepped down a little, at least initially, and with the key technology where the name altered carbon came from there is less of a concern about death anyway. In some ways it would have been too easy for Broken Angels to have been more of the same, in the way that so many recurring characters fall into a rut style-wise. For Broken Angels to break the mould to this degree it is a smart move. The fact that it launches off the whole alien culture/technology vibe that was set up in Altered Carbon is something that makes so much sense.

Morgan as a writer is entirely contemporary with his style, even where certain ideas like ancient alien civilisations have been played with for many years in the science fiction genre. Fitting in well with his peers, reflecting the currents of popular culture well. Themes that come to the fore are the role of corporations in government and world finance. Broken Angels was published the same day as America invaded Iraq, and only a few chapters in, Morgan is discussing the idea of the UN and regime engineering. How much more up to the minute and contemporary do you want? Comparisons to Peter F. Hamilton's work seem to be most relevant with Broken Angels, with themes in common with both The Night's Dawn trilogy and Fallen Dragon. Richard Morgan is probably more political in his approach than Hamilton, though not as much as say Ken MacLeod, or at least more subtle than anyway. With Takeshi Kovacs, Morgan offers a character that is smart and quite capable of being brutal above and beyond the call of duty. Kovacs has developed already across only two books, each fleshing out his back history, while demonstrating why he has a tendency to be thoroughly pissed off with his lot on life.

Broken Angels offers the contrasts between the ideas of corporate expansionist culture and a post-Martian universe. With the idea that there must be a further visit to the life of Takeshi Kovacs being an irresistible thought - there are far too many questions about the big picture for there to be any other choice.

RVWR: PTR
April 2003

Title: 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess
Author: Stewart Home
Publisher: Canongate

69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess is the latest book by English writer Stewart Home, published by the Scottish Canongate and set in Aberdeen. 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess is something of an oddity, low brow and high brow in equal measures it would seem. From the start it feels like every chapter contains graphic sex, while at the same time there is a running commentary of literary critique. Both of which become excessive at points.

69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess starts with the accidental meeting of Alan and Anna. Alan is in Aberdeen to clear out the flat of an old, deceased friend - a flat filled with books, all of which Alan is determined to read before he disposes of them. Anna is considerably younger, a 20 year old girl in Aberdeen as a student. Though both are English they find themselves in this Scottish city at the same time, where they meet and from the start have a relationship based on extreme sex and the constant discussion of literature.

The relationship evolves around their explorations of a book called "69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess" - the author K.L. Callahan claims that the Princess Diana was not killed in Paris as reported, rather he was hired as an agent to kill her and dispose of the body. Having killed the princess the author then decided to take the dead princess on a tour of stone circles in Aberdeen. Alan and Anna are trying to recreate this tour and determine whether it is at all possible, and hence whether there is any validity to the claims put forward in 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess. To this end they cart a dummy filled with bricks round Aberdeen, taking photos at each site, have sex at many, and allowing Alan to rant about the books he has read the whole time. Through this Anna, who is narrating the book, describes her dreams and in her dreams she makes a pact with the dummy - where the two will conspire to kill Alan.

69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess, the book by Stewart Home, which is about the book 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess by K.L. Callahan in many ways, is not a big book. About 169 pages, which has its own significance in the narrative, but for all the perceived brevity of the novel it is a dense work. Containing many layers as the threads are woven together, the sheer volume of data having something to do with how the reader can be propelled through the book. It can be considered that this is a very dry novel - the amount of time spent on literature and literary critique is intense, with many of the works covered being unfamiliar to me, and from the sounds of it, of little interest to me. Part of me would suspect that Home's is making much of this up, but there are enough references to authors that I am aware of and publishers that I have heard of that he retains credibility in terms of this all being based on real material.

The tour of Aberdeen is similarly dense, a great deal of concentration being given to the stone sites, their history, their current condition, and reports from various sources of previous visits to these places. With this there is a certain aspect of the travel journal to the novel. Many of the conversations between the two characters occur in restaurants and cafes in the area. For the most part visiting a different establishment each time, with some form of commentary being added about these as well. With this, I feel it is a fine piece of satire when the duo start to include the local supermarket cafes as part of their journey.

The ending of 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess has a certain ambiguity. In some ways one can feel that this ending is something of a cop out, leaving the narrative unresolved. In other ways it does seem to offer a certain degree of comment on the characters and the actions they undertake through the book. One thing I particularly appreciated about the ending though was the author's change of tone. Chapters 1-9 establish the voice of Anna well, but as soon as you turn the page into chapter 10 you pick up changes. The people here are the same, but from the first paragraph we know something has changed. Something which is evident as these last three chapters, 10-12, bring the novel to a close.

I have little doubt that 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess will not be to everyone's taste. Certainly on reflection it is not really to mine, the whole literary aspect could easily lose me as a reader. Yet the concept of the dead princess and the stone circles, of these people trying to recreate this journey and just the sense that there is something odd about this novel as a whole is what I actually did appreciate.

RVWR: PTR
April 2003

Title: Americana
Author: Don Delilo
Publisher: Penguin

Something about Americana strikes me that it is a very American novel, and it is more than just the title. Something about the tone and settings just strikes me so much that this must be what people mean when they talk about "the American novel". With that it strikes me that do not seem to have read a lot of that type, most of the recent literary fiction that I have approached falling into a split between Scottish and Japanese for some reason.

Don Delilo is one of those authors I have been hearing a lot about, particularly with the response to Underworld. Curiosity leads to a certain exploration, Underworld striking as something of a slab, and not a cheap one at that, for initial exploration. Going through his work to date, something about Americana catches my imagination. So this is the starting point I opt for, only later realising that of his 11 novels to date that this is his first. In fact with the realisation that this is Delilo's first novel, comes the realisation that this was also published before I was born.

Published in 1971 Americana is dated to some degree, but is surprisingly contemporary in others. Even some of the commentary which dates the narrative to the largest degree is what ties it to now the most. The main character David Bell works for a television network, and while the technology may have changed one suspects the principles are the same. This also seems to be the case with Bell's father who works for the advertising industry, commentary relating to that being as prominent as that related to television, going hand in hand as they do. Background detail includes references to war, which I assume was the Vietnam war, but contextualising it these references could just as easily be to the preparations for war with Iraq of the moment. There are also comments relating to race, which seem naive in a modern pc culture, and yet telling.

The basic plot is that David Bell is a network executive, rising faster through the ranks than anyone before him. However he is growing bored and restless, slowly going off the rails. When an opportunity comes up to go across the country to make a documentary he decides to turn it into a road trip. Accompanied by a sculptress he is infatuated by and a drunk veteran and failed novelist, he sets out in a motor home travelling across country. As they travel David becomes inspired to make his own film, corralling people in a middle of nowhere town to take part in the increasingly obscure endeavour.

Americana is told in four parts. The first part covers David Bell executive. Introducing us to this man he seems to be a combination of petulance and belligerence. A self confessed liar we watch as he fabricates every conversation he has with anyone he meets. During this section we get an impression of this character, which strikes me as being part Catcher In The Rye part American Psycho. It is with mounting eagerness that Bell approaches the proposed road trip, maximising his meddling in office politics just to get him through the day.

The second part starts as the group have just hit the road. This is the most difficult part of the book, flashing back and forth through the life of David Bell. Covering the period from him being about sixteen to graduating from college. This covers the relations with each member of his family. The key people he met at university, and the growth of his relation with his ex-wife. The narration wanders around, to some degree at random, one passage we have a youngster at home, while the next we have an adult. The topic of a passage seems just as variable, one moment the relationship with his mother is in the spotlight, then we shift to a casual acquaintance in college. For me this becomes tedious, I start to lose interest, and only the hope that some of the detail here will prove to be relevant keeps me from skipping ahead.

The third section sees things get back on track, coming back up to date and dealing with the groups arrival in a small town. The idea that blossomed in David's head at the end of the first part has taken hold. With that David seems almost to behave like a man possessed as he recruits actors. It is clear that the film that he is weaving together is a retelling of his life, trying to find meaning and wilfully rewriting and assigning meaning. This section works well, in keeping with the first section and demonstrating the spark that is present in Americana.

The last section of the book in some ways sees David Bell hit bottom. In the first and third part we saw a descent take place. A melodramatic but also understated break down. This last section deals with that.

In the end the second section makes little difference. Perhaps it reflects to some degree the mood and feel of the film that David is working on. However one gets the impression that anything of worth from the second section could be surmised from the others. Even a little fleshing out here and there as it became relevant would have changed the feel of the novel. With the bottleneck of this section Delilo doesn't make the best first impression. The first and third sections are what do make Americana readable though. The characters that appear in David's life are also a strong point in the work. While there could have been more time spent on a number of these people, contact with these characters is enough to give us at least an impression of their potential.

RVWR: PTR
April 2003