Metaliterature

I suspect a running joke. A wry smile and a knowing look. The subversion of science-fiction with the new weird, with literary jazz, China Miéville and William Gibson, the influence of Iain M. Banks (that energetic, bidirectional, peak ‘n’ valley symmetry of the floating initial M again) and Anne McCaffrey (another M!), and a mad obsession with old-fashioned musical instruments and forms.

And I suspect my brain may not have the neuroplasticity to keep up with this sort of thing anymore.

We’re on book two of the Empty Space / Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, a generation after Chinese Ed and Seria Mau Genlicher of Light, and the tract has fallen – part of it anyway – onto one of the ‘beach’ worlds which form the inhabitable border to this inscrutable singularity. The Site now lies across the city of Saudade on this unnamed beach world, and represents a dangerous and incomprehensible tourist attraction. Local entrepreneurs, calling themselves entradistas and travel agents, take cash from ignorant tourists, to get up close for a look-see (and sometimes sneak in), and from local gangsters, to sneak out artifacts. But what goes in often never comes out – it was the ruin of countless civilizations before – and what comes out... well, it’s got a lot of people worried.

It’s hard to describe this book. In part because of cognitive decline, yes, but also because I think the novel is suffused in the untranslatable concept of saudade, which I always thought was spelled sodade after the stunningly powerful Cesária Évora song (which is Cape Verdean, not Portuguese). Everyone in Saudade is yearning after something lost - someone, some thing, themselves, pieces of lives which no longer exist, places they were then but can never be again, and in the case of tourist Elizabeth, memory of anything more recent than the start of this book. The organic artifacts are seeking to understand the world they stumble into; the travel agents yearn to solve the riddle of the Site. Not a single soul in the book shows any happiness or excitement, and the only one that does, Paulie DeRaad, gets turned into glowing white slop by daughter code.

Don’t ask me what that is – I have suspended my disbelief and accept that it is unknowable but conceptually congruent.

To be fair, there are some instances of success – the Mona (GM prostitute) Irene and former pilot and minor felon Fat Antoyene, forge an optimistic jump-off to a future together with the aid of former dipship pilot Liv Hula, but one suspects Antoyene knows it’s doomed from the off. Edith, “daughter” of former travel agent Emil (a big name in Site entradistas in his day) buys Liv’s bar from her and sets it up as a destination venue for musical entertainment, capturing a little of her old magic from her performing days (on the accordion?!); but even the success of Le Chat Du Tango is predicated on the contemporary fad for old music – the new Nuevo Tango, an already old new-ish interpretation of golden oldies, accordions, jazz standards of another age – and it can’t last. However, Edith enjoys it while she can.

And, to start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction, perhaps this sense of nostalgia, of loss – lostalgia?* - makes the writing that less solid and deal-with-able, making it mournful, yearning, nebulous, shifting the narrative sand under one’s feet, much like the sense of perspective for those within the Site where the tectonics of the environment in there are always slipping unseen beneath you. In addition, Harrison seems to think (and write) in spurts, and ideas echo through sections, never to reappear – the detective Lens Ascheman dreams of dogs barking, and then for the next 20 or so pages, dogs are mentioned several times and then never again (or before); he uses the word actinic to describe how the detective’s tailored assistant moves, and repeats it later describing points of light, and then the word is gone again.

It’s hard to say I always understand what’s going on, and that’s fine. It’s magical and confusing, and there are so many cats. It’s a deeply regretful book, but also, I hope I got across, profoundly playful. Yes, very much like a cat toys with a shrew, Harrison is toying with his reader, pulling emotions this way and that, and always with a little grin. This is what science fiction can be**, and it does a disservice to those whose genre snobbery is the barrier to their own potential shift of perspective.

"It's been fun. It's been heartbreak all the way. It's never been less than a trip."

*Borrowed without regret or permission from the Elis and John Show, some episode numbering in the 540s somewhere

**And I am ridiculously excited to understand there is a new novel due out in June 2026!

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Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

2026-05-19T21:40:03.345+00:00

Awaiting review...

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Thirst: Twelve Drinks That Changed My Life by John Robins

2026-05-09T19:44:00.001+00:00

Awaiting review....

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Cibola Burn by James S A Corey

2026-04-29T17:16:00.002+00:00

Awaiting review...

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Psmith In The City by P. G. Wodehouse

2026-04-25T08:25:00.002+00:00

Awaiting review...

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Arborescence by Rhett Davis

2026-04-14T13:47:00.002+00:00

Awaiting review...

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The Peripheral by William Gibson

2026-04-06T00:03:00.002+00:00

Awaiting review...

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Harassment Architecture by Mike Ma

2026-03-30T11:39:00.005+00:00

Not currently reading...

It is a rare and notable event that I, a committed if idle completist, choose to not finish reading a novel, if one would elect to categorise this as such. I chose not to complete this pamphlet (see what I did there?), although to remove all trace of its existence on my shelves, the itch at the back of my woke, lefty-liberal, eco-non-fascist, Guardian-reading mind, would be to also remove the salience of a good cautionary tale.

Let me start with context. Mike Ma was close to Sam Pink (another author of dubious moral merit, perhaps) and on the same screen as one of my literary heroes, Kurt Vonnegut, on the Global Network of Discovery (GNOD)'s literary map, where readers can see what other authors readers were reading, constellated around the author in context. In this case, the author may have been Delicious Tacos after I may or may not have suggested someone on the internet who said some words at me to have a read of his book Finally Some Good News.

Klaxons should have been heeded when spotting Bronze Age Pervert - author of satire (?) Bronze Age Mindset - but for some reason I deduced Ma was the popular Chinese family name and Mike an Anglicization of a difficult to pronounce given name, as is common. I had after all, recently finished novels by Tao Lin, Cixin Liu and Rachel Kuang and was greedy for some other, new lived experiences to absorb and appropriate.

What-ah mistake-ah to make-ah!

He is, of course, a very blond, very white, American (possibly of Irish decent) militant accelerationist and right-wing influencer, with demonstrably close ties to some very nasty pieces of shit (in my opinion) like Milo Yiannopoulos.

Of course he is.

And so you may therefore guess what this self-published toilet paper and its "follow-up" Gothic Violence is all about.

You're wrong. It's worse on all the levels.

It could be an angry joke, of course, but the evidence is against it. It could be a biting commentary on a broken society, but I suspect not. Even Mahoney described it as something like a breakdown of a novel (I paraphrase, but honestly my search history is dirty enough without looking for quotes from this muppet, the shape on him).

And it's bad.

So I binned it off, around page 40, before any of the real (or is it? Yes it is) violence kicks off, and shortly after my brother, for whom I hold no great hopes of sagacity at that time of day, picked it up and flicking through it said, "Hmm, oh, that's nasty."

Of course, you may wish to make up your own minds, as is your right and I applaud your choice, I really do, should you wish to challenge my hastily but solidly formed opinion, but for the record, you don't have to pay for it - a fact I wish I had known in advance - as it's free to download on some pretty sketchy far-right websites, should the urge take you.

No paid links here today, Amazonian overlords.

Hell Of A Book by Jason Mott

2026-03-16T22:59:00.003+00:00

Awaiting review...

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How To Make A Bomb by Rupert Thomson

2026-03-08T15:53:00.004+00:00

Awaiting review...

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The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

2026-02-24T12:31:00.004+00:00

Awaiting review...

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