/lit/ - Literature

>>23093904
Empty Space: A Haunting, Kefahuchi Tract #3 - M. John Harrison (2012)

This third book is a sequel to both the first and second books. In the past it's either 2023 or 2024 and it follows the sole viewpoint of Anna, who was in the first book. In the future it's 2452 at the very earliest and follows the perspectives of the crew of the Nova Swing, the unnamed assistant, and a few others. Is there a present? It would seem that all time may be.

The opening screams "you're reading weird fiction!" and continues to do so for the remainder of the book. This is definitely the weirdest of the trilogy and I'd go as far as to say it's gratuitously so. I don't know if it was for the sake of shock value, grossness, perversion, transgression, or whatever else. I assume it was intended to be literary regardless. The question I asked myself the most by far was, "What purpose does its inclusion serve?" I wasn't able to find any answers to that.

The characters continued to be in the same fashion as the previous books and in some ways even more so. Two of the viewpoint characters don't have much of a self. Anna is entirely disordered which makes for similar reading and the unnamed is empty. All the other characters have some level of detachment, though its especially pronounced with the aforementioned. Its so weird that it makes for interesting reading at least.

When it comes to the plot, for Anna it's her daily life, which is peculiar due to her thought processes but otherwise relatively mundane. The unnamed continues to investigate stuff. The crew of the Nova Swing does runs from place to place. The others live their lives as they normally do. That's to say there isn't really a plot all that much. There's a galactic war going on the background, but it's irrelevant except for its metaphorical value. What plot there is revolves around an ancient artifact that may have unknowable motives and unlimited power.

As for the graphic content, there's a lot of sexual activity, effluence, and children. There's so much sex, though most of it is casually mentioned in passing rather than being described in detail. Seemingly almost everything comes back to sex or genitalia. Emesis may the second most common activity, as there's a steady flow of its discussion and occurrence throughout the book. In other words, vomit everywhere. There's also multiple scenes of urination and one of defecation. Children, both male and female, have several sexualized descriptions and engage in sexual activity. Again, it's brief moments not much described. There's no denying they're present though. Was all of this in service of profundity and literary excellence? Based on the reviews I looked through, many seem to think so, but that wasn't how I read it.

I'm very conflicted. It has so many problems but its also so fascinating. Reading it is an entrancing experience in both a pleasing and displeasing way. It's a very elegant sort of decadence. I don't know.

Rating: 3/5

>>23083636
Nova Swing, Kefahuchi Tract #2 - M. John Harrison (2006)

Nova Swing is Roadside Picnic reimagined with a Philip K. Dick aesthetic as a New Weird Cyberpunk Noir set in the city of Saudade in 2444. That's reductive because it's also literary, subversive, and much else. There's a lot to say for the beauty of its style, but I'm not one to do so. I found its substance to be a secondary consideration at best. Its literary qualities probably go a long way to explaining its award nominations and wins.

This time it was extremely obvious that I didn't understand the meaning of what I was reading and wasn't able to appreciate what was there. That's not to say that there isn't anything to appreciate. Its greatest strength to me was how much it felt like this was something that had happened. The sense of surreal verisimilitude for something that almost surely could never be, yet was so clearly presented is praiseworthy. Everything else though, not so much.

The characters were too much like people in ways that I don't usually like to read in fiction. Their motives were inscrutable, their impulses irrational, and their behavior inexplicable. The reader never really gets to know any of them and I assume that was intentional. As I wrote of the first book, Harrison seems almost indifferent to entertaining the reader and that's much more so the case this time.

There's only one character that was mentioned in passing from the first book in this one. Other than that they don't seem to have almost anything in common other than the setting and cats. There's Vic Serotonin, who travels into the Saudade Event as a travel guide for tourists and also to smuggle out items to sell. Inside the event zone anything could happen and everything is always changing. Those who go in never return exactly as they were before. This time he's unknowingly brought out something dangerous, which leads to detective Lens Aschemann to investigate his activities. They're the two primary perspectives, though various others have a go at it as well.

There are a few sex scenes, which run more towards the metaphorical than the erotic, some masturbation, and several descriptions of the female breast. After the first sex scene one of the characters says that he's very puzzled by why the sex happened, which I found funny, though it would've had more impact if variations of "puzzled", weren't used 29 times, or 2-5 times per chapter, except for one that only had a single instance, throughout the ~300 or so pages. The characters apparently were as puzzled as I was, though in a different way.

Despite my disinterest more than disappointment, I'll be reading the third as well, if only to see how what I assume will be another disconnected entry finishes out the series. Reading this still gave me a strange feeling, though unfortunately it wasn't also moderately enjoyable.

Rating: 2.5/5 (3)

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>>22706730
Light, Kefahuchi Tract #1 - M. John Harrison (2002)

Reading Light is quite the experience. Oftentimes it feels like Harrison is indifferent to entertaining his reader. The reader is a spectator to what is happening and serves the functional role of having the story become some small part of them, for better or worse. It's not so much contempt for the reader as it is disinterest. That can understandably be off-putting both in attitude and stylistic effect. The narrative doesn't much care whether the reader has any idea of what's going on or why it matters. Some of what it means is stated, but the specific details are mostly left for the reader to speculate upon and attempt to make inferences and associations. That doesn't make it a puzzle, in which its purpose is to be solved, so much as an exercise in apophenia. Maybe it's meaningful, or maybe it isn't. My thought process was all over the place, especially about cats and names. There are many references.

Usually I'd write some sort of synopsis to start with, but I don't believe that's needed this time. You can find that easily enough if it's what you need as a hook. This isn't a character driven book. The characters matter, but they aren't the ones making the decisions, or if they are, their free will isn't meaningful. The "plot" is what determines everything. If you need the characters to be likeable, have a lot of agency, be well-developed, or experience much growth, you won't find it here. There's a considerable amount of philosophy, which I surely didn't understand much of, let alone what relevance it has, aside from that dualities are prominent. The story alternates between three different perspectives and times. Science is present as well, in that extreme technologies are used and that it's advanced to the point where it may as well be magic for some things. Is it ultimately technobabble? I don't know. It does state that everything is possible, even when theories are mutually exclusive.

Light is New Weird Cyberpunk Space Opera. That's being reductive, as it doesn't seem to know any boundaries. There's various elements of horror, mystery, thriller, romance, and other genres. It's absurd and surreal, comedic and tragic. It may try to be too much all at once. There's an abundance of sex and masturbation, which is much more notable for its frequency than its eroticism. The relationships are dysfunctional and tenuous.

As shown by its rating distribution, its readership doesn't know what to think about it. I'm not exempt from that. What I do know is that I'll read the rest of the trilogy. I recommend reading it if you're willing to have an open mind and put in some effort trying to understand it. The ratings are all over the place so why not see how you feel about it? This is difficult to rate, but because it's such a different experience, though I don't how enjoyable of one, I'm giving it the benefit of rounding it up. Reading it definitely affected me.

Rating: 3.5/5