Red Mars, life is peaceful there

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favourite science fiction writers. He's that very rare beast, a writer of hard science fiction who is also a writer of fine prose. He will be a Guest of Honour at Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), in Melbourne in September 2010.

In case you're wondering, hard science fiction is that sub-genre of science fiction which focuses on the science at least as much as the fiction, and which makes every effort to be consistent with known physical laws. It's hard to write, and even harder to write well. Kim Stanley Robinson manages to write works of hard SF that are also full of memorable characters, arresting images, and sophisticated political, economic and social speculation. Some people complain that his narratives stagger at times under the weight of all this material, but that complaint don't impress me much.

KSR's crowning achievement to date is his Mars Trilogy: Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars (and a pendant collection of short stories and alternate takes, The Martians).

Now, via Aussiecon 4's Facebook group, comes the news that Red Mars is to be made into a TV series. Movies about Mars have a poor track record, so I'm glad that some Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer isn't going to try to crunch the book down into two hours of explosions. (There are some explosions, but it helps if you know why they happen.)

A Red Mars TV series sounds promising, but it will need to be something with the psychological complexity and moral depth of (the new) Battlestar Galactica to do the book justice. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing Nadia and Arkady, Maya and Michel, Sax and John - and even Frank Chalmers and the egregious Phyllis - brought to life under the pink Martian sky. And a few explosions as well.

Red Mars, life is peaceful there
Red Mars, in the open air ...

It's 3am. Do You Know Where Your Reviews Are?

Random House New Zealand recently sent me a package outlining the publicity and marketing they’ve done for Transported (which you can buy online from Fishpond, New Zealand Books Abroad or Whitcoulls) to date. It was nice to get this - a continuation of the very good service I’ve enjoyed as an author from Random House - and it was especially good to see all the print reviews that Transported has received collected together. There were even reviews I didn’t know I’d had: Diane McCarthy of the Bay Weekend (Whakatane) said that:

The stories certainly live up to the title with each one transporting the reader to a new reality …. These [stories] will leave you pondering their deeper meaning long after the last sentence has dropped you back in your own particular reality.

In the Timaru Herald, Abby Gillies said:

The stories are diverse, linked only by real, developed characters whose circumstances are challenging them to react. Let these original stories lead you to unexpected places.

To date, Transported has been reviewed in the following New Zealand newspapers:

Bay Weekend
Wanganui Chronicle and Daily Chronicle (Horowhenua)
Nelson Mail
Timaru Herald
Taranaki Daily News
Marlborough Express
Southland Times
Otago Daily Times

and in the magazines Craccum, the New Zealand Listener and Critic. Interviews or articles about the book have appeared in the Southland Times, Dominion Post, and Marlborough Express, and also on Radio New Zealand and Plains FM. (Plus, of course, the online reviews: see the Transported page on my web site for links to these.)

I’m very grateful for all these reviews, but I also notice an interesting pattern: nearly all of them are in provincial papers, with only one in a metropolitan paper. Transported has not been reviewed in Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch or Wellington (though, in the latter case, the feature article is pretty substantial compensation).

Of course, that’s entirely the prerogative of these papers, and they do — sometimes — still review New Zealand books, but am I alone in the impression that they review fewer New Zealand books than they used to, and give those they do review less space? The change has certainly been marked in the Dominion Post, where it’s now quite rare to see a New Zealand book reviewed in its book pages.

I suspect it’s something to do with the fact that books pages have been transferred from the newspaper proper into glossy lifestyle supplements — and the books reviewed are chosen as much for their lifestyle-supplementing qualities as their literary interest. Am I wrong?

More about Transported

• Ten Reasons Why Transported Makes a Great Present
• Where You Can Buy Transported
• Transported Longlisted for 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award
  
• Transported page on my web site, including tale of contents, review quotes and links to online interviews and reviews.
  

Book Review: Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Cazalet Chronicle (The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, Casting Off)

Elizabeth Jane Howard is an English author, born in 1923. I picked up her autobiography Slipstream: A Memoir at the Clyde Quay School Book Fair earlier this year, enjoyed it tremendously, and have subsequently read her best-known books, the four volumes of the Cazalet Chronicle: The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion and Casting Off.

The four books follow the members of the Cazalet family - a large, ramifying upper-middle-class family living in southern England - during the ten years from 1937 to 1947. The Light Years opens with the shadows of war beginning to fall on the family and their servants. By Casting Off, the war is over, and the world into which the characters emerge has changed fundamentally.

The Cazalet household, which sees out the worst years of the Blitz in rural Sussex, consists of matriarch and patriarch the Duchy and the Brig; their three sons, Hugh, Edward and Rupert, their wives Sybil, Villy and Zoe, and their children; their servants; and several outsiders whose lives and fortunes become entwined with those of the family.

Over the four books, Elizabeth Jane Howard gives us the chance to get to know all the family members, and the outsiders; but the central characters are three of the children, Louise, Polly and Clary, who are girls in their early teens at the beginning of The Light Years, and women in their early twenties by the end of Casting Off. Casting Off ends in marriages rather than deaths, and thus the series may be accounted a comedy; but the comedy is often painful, for marriage in these books is just as likely to end in adultery, bitterness and divorce as it is in happily ever after.

The great strengths of The Cazalet Chronicle are its delineation of the characters of these young women and their parents, and of the way in which the social changes wrought by war and its aftermath affect their lives and their post-war prospects. The actual conduct of the war is largely off-stage, and the portrayal of the male characters, especially of the younger males, is less rich — though the three Cazalet brothers, and Rupert’s friend Archie, are distinct and complex characters.

From reading Slipstream, it’s clear that elements of The Cazalet Chronicle are strongly autobiographical. Howard appears to have parcelled out her own experiences between Louise and Clary. Knowing this didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the books, however. There’s something Tolstoyan about the complex cast of inter-related characters and the background of conflict, and though these books lack the philosophical depths of Tolstoy’s masterpiece, Howard’s core characters are no less memorable than those in War and Peace. The Cazalet Chronicle really is that good.

What I'm Writing

I set up this blog to write about and promote the three books I had published between September 2007 and June 2008 - All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens, Anarya's Secret and Transported - plus post about other writers, books, and matters of interest to me. I've been doing all that, and will keep doing it, but I realised a few days back that there was one topic I hadn't tackled: what I'm writing now.

I write short stories, poetry, and novels. Inefficient, maybe, especially for someone who writes part-time, but that mix doesn't seem likely to change in the near future - because I've got all three types of writing on the go. My main focus is my new novel, but short stories and poetry refuse to be entirely set aside.

First, the novel. I'm prone to calling it "my new novel", but that's not strictly accurate. Before I wrote Anarya's Secret, I had written another novel, with the working title "Antarctic Convergence". The jumping off point for "Antarctic Convergence" was a story I wrote in 2000, "The Wadestown Shore", which is included in Transported.

[SPOILER ALERT]

This is the story that begins:

I cut the engine in the shadow of the motorway pillars and let the dinghy drift in to the Wadestown shore. The quiet of late afternoon was broken only by the squawking of parakeets. After locking the boat away in the old garage I now used as a boatshed, I stood for a moment to soak in the view. The setting sun was winking off the windows of drowned office blocks. To the left lay Miramar Island, and beyond it the open sea.

and ends:

The sunken office blocks of the Drowned city were far behind me. The rich waters and virgin shores of Antarctica lay ahead. I made my way forward to greet them.

[/SPOILER ALERT]

"The Wadestown Shore" is (in revised form) also Chapter 1 of the novel.

I finished the initial version of this novel in 2004, but was unable to get it published. I decided to shelve it for a while, write something else (that turned out to be Anarya's Secret), and then revisit the novel and the feedback I'd had on it.

I did that earlier this year, and though there are some valid arguments against rewriting your first completed novel, I felt that the basic idea of "Antarctic Convergence" was still good, but that the novel had major structural problems, especially in its second half. So I'm rewriting it pretty much from scratch, and I'm almost half way through the redraft. More news, I hope, in 2009.

Next, the short stories. I've written three new stories since Transported was put to bed, and am currently working on a fourth which I'm trying to finish in time for an anthology submission deadline. That isn't exactly enough for a collection, and I'm putting completing the novel ahead of writing lots more stories, but I will keep plugging away. When new stories of mine do appear in print or online, I'll let you know.

Last but not least, the poetry. Although All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens was published in 2007, I completed the manuscript (more or less) in 2005, so I have had three years to get some more poetry written. But, whereas I can decide that I'm going to work on my novel for the next two hours, sit down, and get 1000 or so words written, I have found that I can't make myself write poetry: it arrives when it wants, and when it doesn't want, nothing will induce it - yes, it's that old favourite "the muse" again!

All the same, when checking the other day, I found that I had 29 poems which I'd consider putting towards a new collection - and what's more, 29 poems that fit a theme. Will I write more poems that fit this theme and assemble them beautifully into a collection, or will I go off on a complete tangent? Watch this space!

Good Times, Bad Times

I had a good time at the launch of Before the Sirocco, the 2008 New Zealand Poetry Society anthology, which includes the winning poems (in open and two junior categories) from the NZPS 2008 International Poetry Competition. A packed and appreciative audience at Turnbull House heard poets from all over the country read poems included in the anthology. There was a sizeable Christchurch contingent, and I had the pleasure of meeting Joanna Preston for the first time, and Helen Lowe for what turns out to have been the second time.

Then I went home and had a less good time watching the results of the 2006 [err, make that 2008] New Zealand General Election come rolling across the screen. The outcome was a conclusive win for the right, with a National-ACT-United Future coalition government set to be installed within the next few days. My biggest fear about this is that the modest - very modest - gains which have been made in climate change policy under the previous Labour government will be rolled back, and in particular, that King Coal will be enthroned as the "answer" to New Zealand's energy needs. It's going to take a big effort ot prevent that outcome.

To finish on a positive, though, I'm writing this while watching the concluding minutes of a very exciting Fifa Under-17 Women's World Cup football (soccer) quarterfinal between Japan and England - currently locked at 2:2*. Having watched and enjoyed the semi-final and final of the recent senior Women's World Cup, I expected to enjoy these games, but they have even better than I expected: full of skill, commitment, excitement and some wonderful goals, and almost completely free of the cynicism, cheating, time-wasting and boorishness that so often mars the men's game.

New Zealand's Young Football Ferns were very unlucky not to progress from the group stages of the tournament into the quarterfinals. A lack of polish in front of goal meant that they lost their first two matches 0-1 and 1-2, but in their final game, against South American champions Colombia, they more than made up with it with a 3-1 victory. You can see NZ striker Rosie White's hat-trick here, uploaded by an enamoured fan.

The game was played in absolutely atrocious conditions: a howling northerly gale and driving rain. Being there and seeing the game live felt like a badge of honour. I'm delighted I went, and now looking forward to seeing how many of the same players perform in the Under-20 Women's World Cup in Chile in a few weeks' time.

The semi-finals and final of the Under-17 Women's World Cup are still to come (semifinals Thursday 13/11 in Christchurch at QEII Park, final and 3rd/4th playoff Sunday 16th in Auckland at North Harbour Stadium). If you get the chance to go along to these games, do take it!

*England won in a penalty shootout - another thing that doesn't happen in the men's game!

Before the Sirocco

The New Zealand Poetry Society is launching its annual anthology, this year entitled Before the Sirocco and edited by Joanna Preston, in Wellington at 6pm this coming Saturday, New Zealand election day. Here are the details:

Date: Saturday 6 December

Time: 6pm

Venue: Turnbull House, 11 Bowen Street (near the Bowen St/Lambton Quay corner)

What it's all about: Take your mind off elections for a couple of hours! Come along to the launch of the New Zealand Poetry Society's 2008 anthology, Before the Sirocco, and hear poets young and old read their work from the anthology — including winners and runners-up in the Poetry Society's annual International Poetry Competition.

The buzz: The NZPS anthology launch is one of the few occasions on which poets from around the country get together. If you want to take the temperature of the New Zealand poetry scene, this is the place to be - and you'll get to hear some great poetry as well.

Plus, you can buy a copy of Before the Sirocco there. Isn't the cover great?

An Interview with Jeanne Bernhardt

Jeanne Bernhardt was born in 1961 in Christchurch, NZ. After being expelled from school she left Dunedin. She has spent her life travelling and living throughout NZ, Australia, the South Pacific and the United States. She was first published in the early '80's. Her books include baby is this wonderland?', 'The snow poems' and 'The deafmans chorus'. She was the recipient of the Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary in 1997. To support her writing she has had a variety of work including, working on a fishing boat in Alaska, caretaker of cattle ranch in NM, farmer, working with street kids in Australia, librarian, labourer, drug counsellor etc. She attended the University of NSW majoring in art theory and installation.

Fast Down Turk, published by Kilmog Press, is her latest book. Currently based in Dunedin, she plans on returning to America next year.

First of all, congratulations on the publication of Fast Down Turk. What can you tell me about the book, and where can interested readers find more information, and copies to buy?

Thank you. Parsons in Auckland are the main stockists. In Dunedin, there's UBS and Renaissance Books and direct from the publisher which is Kilmog Press also based in Dunedin. We will have it available in Wellington and Christchurch too but these deals are still being negotiated. The book? Well as the blurb says --

The blurb describes FDT as "a harrowing account of scoring drugs in the tenderloin". That’s likely to grab some potential readers right away, others might prefer not to be harrowed. Are the latter readers just going to have to get used to it? What might draw the undecided reader into the story?

Well it's reality, the fact that it reveals a facet of life that isn’t widely experienced, except of course for the people who are living it. Its pace, the writing etc. These are aspects that attract readers but the other side is that it’s a woman’s take which is rare, and the place where she ends up which is one of self darkness deglamourises certain preconceptions. That unsettling factor is good; its keeps you on edge and when you’re on edge other things can happen. So no, it's not a happy book but depending on who you are or where you are that can be reassuring; other people go down too. And going down is part of life it isn’t intrinsically wrong or terrible or something to be rescued from, the great thing about Rachel (the main character is the book) is that despite the negativity of situation surrounding her, it is her responsibility, her choice. And she is discovering what her position on these choices mean. Because every individuals capacity or strength or journey is unique, and for whatever reason - spiritual, psychological, this is where Rachel is, what she’s going through.



I have never been able to boast a real "writers' CV" full of interesting and unusual jobs. But you can; I see that you have worked on a fishing boat in Alaska, worked with street kids in Australia, been the caretaker of a cattle ranch in New Mexico, a farmer, librarian, labourer, drug counsellor etc. Do you think of it all as vital experience or do you think "I wish I’d spent that time writing instead?”

Of course it’s vital, not primarily as a writer but for myself as a human being. Its my life. My curiosity and hunger has always been great. I’m here, planet earth, to grow, to experience and that isn’t predictable and I wouldn’t want it to be. My life hasn’t taken writing time. My life gives me writing time. I always write. My life is it.

I see that John Dolan has described FDT as a ‘remarkable achievement, an amazing story’ - high praise indeed. How did that endorsement come about, and how much has it meant in publicising the book?

Well I sent the rough MS of Fast Down Turk to John and he wrote back his thoughts. We’re friends you know, we’re friends because of who we are.

I see that you've had both poetry and prose published previously. Are you still writing both poetry and prose? Or are you concentrating on prose at the moment?

Well I’m busy doing the final draft of a short story collection (Wood) due out early next year, also with Kilmog Press. It was a two book deal. The stories from Wood and Fast Down Turk were worked on at the same time. But we decided to publish Fast Down Turk first.

What poets have had the most influence on yr work, and which poets do you most enjoy reading?

Celan, Rilke, Rumi, Basho, Whitman, Paz, Neruda, William Carlos Williams, etc etc.

How about prose writers?

Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, Marguerite Duras, Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, DH Lawrence, Henry Miller, Mary McCarthy, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Bernard Malamud, Thoreau, Jean Rhys, Patrick White, Arthur Miller, Paul Bowles, Jane Bowles etc.


I read all the time.