Book Review - Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D. Simak

Clifford Simak is a name that few people these days have heard, whether they profess to be readers of SF or not. This is sad. I know about Simak because I’ve spent a lot of time studying the history of the genre. Briefly, Simak was an American writer of gentle, pastoral SF (if that sounds confusing, try one of his books - they aren’t confusing at all). Best remembered for two books, “City” and “Way Station,” Simak is mostly out of print these days, as are most but not all of the popular writers of his era (roughly from the forties through the sixties). Sad to say, I hadn’t read a Simak novel before I picked up “Ring Around the Sun,” which has been sitting on my bookshelf for perhaps five years.

Firstly, Simak writes in an appealingly straightforward fashion, both in terms of his sentences and the plot of his novel. This is clear writing, easy to digest. And the plot is straightforward almost to the point of childishness, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. In addition to the transparent writing, Simak’s chapters are very short (51 of them in a 200 page novel), and there’s rarely a difficult or boring passage. This is important, because I tend to get bored easily when reading, especially when the story itself isn’t amazingly interesting as such. But what “Ring Around the Sun” lacks in action, it makes up for in descriptive passages and the general good-naturedness of everything here.

Jay Vickers is a lonely man with a vague sense of dis-ease. He doesn’t have any close friends except for a kindly neighbour by the name of Horton Flanders. And something odd is happening: the market is being flooding with some exceptional and unique items: razors that never need replacing, light bulbs that never go out, a Forever car to replace all normal vehicles. Something is afoot, but Jay doesn’t know what it is. Consequently, the first half of the book is a gentle mystery, in which Vickers tries to find out what is happening around him. The pace is sedate but not slow, and characters are warmly drawn.

Horton Flanders disppears suddenly and Jay is blamed for the murder. A lynch mob forces him to leave town, but not before he gets a note from Flanders telling him to ‘rediscover his roots.’ This note leads Jay back to his hometown, where he discovers that the whole area is laying fallow (I have neglected to mention that super carbohydrates have virtually solved the need to grow crops). He goes back to his old house, where he finds a spinning top in an old barn. I kid you not-this spinning top becomes the pivot around which the novel turns. It’s even featured on the front cover of the edition I bought. And that’s a first for me in years of reading SF: a spinning top as a major plot device.

There isn’t a plot so much as a series of intuitive gropings on Jay Vickers’ part. I say ‘intuitive’ because the concept of intuition becomes extremely important in “Ring Around the Sun.” It turns out that intuition is in fact a kind of higher thinking ability that only a handful of people possess. I found this stimulating as it deals with one of the key questions for secular thinkers such as myself: how to explain intuition, premonitions etc? In response, Simak gives us telepathy, mutants, androids, and alternate Earths. And that’s where “Ring Around the Sun” began to lose its shine, for this reader at least.

I won’t explain too much of the plot of the second half. I did read it, but not with great interest. It transpires that there are perhaps millions of alternate Earths, most of which are apparently devoid of human life. And travelling to these other Earths is as simple as looking at the spinning top and wondering where the colours go…it’s a nice fantasy, to think that there might be enough Earths for us all to live like kings, but it’s a wish fulfillment fantasy par excellence. I am deliberately ignoring much of the plot here, which deals with the shenanigans of a man named Crawford, who represents big government on our own Earth. There is a conflict brewing between the mutant world-hoppers and the Earth-bound government men. All right. It works out in the end.

While “Ring Around the Sun” didn’t exactly hit the spot for me, I was interested enough to keep reading. Simak reminds me a little of Philip K Dick without the paranoia and wild inventiveness. I will read “City” next and see if I like that better.

Book Review - Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch by Simon Haynes

“Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch” is the fourth installment in Simon Haynes’ series, and it’s another strong showing for Hal, Clunk and co. For the uninitiated, Hal Spacejock is an interstellar freight trader running cargo to and fro, but he rarely has enough credits for a nice meal, or a change of clothes for that matter. Clunk is Hal’s robot sidekick, and much of the humour stems from the banter between them. There’s nothing very futuristic about the “Hal Spacejock” series, but what it lacks in gee-whiz it makes up for in laugh out loud.

“No Free Lunch” sees Hal and Clunk arriving on the planet of Dismolle (a pun on dismal perhaps?), which resembles nothing if not a Mandurah retirement village, replete with tea cosies and knitted sweaters and whatever else. There isn’t much crime on Dismolle, so little in fact that the Peace Force consists of a brain-dead robot and a beautiful young recruit by the name of Harriet Walsh. Hal thinks it’s his lucky day, and it is: for once, something goes right for him from the start, and Ms Walsh invites him to dinner.

Unfortunately, dinner is to be served in the presence of Miranda Morgan, a high-profile Dismollean who wants Hal to take a shipment of goods to the planet Forzen for her. Harriet Walsh and Miranda Morgan loathe one another, so it’s only natural that Harriet should end up with an assignment to Forzen herself. Somehow, Clunk has been conned into carving the roast. This is exactly how the “Hal Spacejock” novels work. The plot is cleverly engineered so that the lives of seemingly unrelated characters are thrown together in the most unlikely of circumstances which, on reflection, seem perfectly logical. And, of course, trouble is never far away.

“No Free Lunch” offers us the kind of helter-skelter storyline we’ve come to expect from this series. There’s a familiar-faced stowaway, a lecherous rival for Harriet Walsh’s affections, a mine complete with some very unusual miners, and even a murder mystery to boot. Much of the action takes place on the very cold planet of Forzen (ah…Frozen?). Haynes sketches in just enough detail so that the reader can picture the setting, but not so much as to slow the story down. Settings in Spacejock novels are usually rather generic anyway. Like in Star Wars, where you’ve got the Desert planet, the City planet, the Jungle planet etc., in “No Free Lunch” we have the Dismal planet, the Frozen planet and so on.

Haynes has cranked up the ‘ribald meter’ a notch or two as well, and there are plenty of coy sexual references and double entendres. You could hardly call this racy, however; it’s all good, clean fun. Things tend to go wrong for Hal Spacejock most of the time, and the situation in “No Free Lunch” is often grim indeed. A common theme in these books is for Hal’s ship, the Volante, to be stolen or be otherwise out of action, and for Hal and Clunk to be chased around by gangs of thugs and other shifty characters. “No Free Lunch” follows this pattern, but takes the sense of danger a little further than previous books.

This sense of danger is important, because after four Spacejock novels, the reader cares for Hal and Clunk’s welfare about all else. In addition, “No Free Lunch” develops the character of Harriet Walsh in a way that earlier Spacejock novels didn’t. Another review mentioned the possibility of adding Miss Walsh as a regular character in the series. While it is true that Harriet is the best developed of the secondary characters in the Spacejock series so far, and while I can understand that readers might desire to give Hal a ‘happy ending,’ I think much of the humour comes from Hal’s bachelorhood. But it remains to be seen what role Miss Harriet might play in future Spacejock novels. And this is where the Spacejock series rises above most humorous SF: it manages to be amusing and genuinely warm at the same time.

One of the best things about this series is that each book stands alone as an individual story. Therefore, it is quite possible to start with “Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch” without having read the earlier books. There are references to the earlier books, of course, but nothing essential. However, you might find that upon completing this book, you feel the urge to read books 1, 2 and 3. The Hal Spacejock series is highly amusing and addictive fare, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone.

 

Reading Round-up - 30/4/08

I read a vast quantity of books during April, most of which have been reviewed here. There are a handful, however, that I haven’t reviewed properly. There are varying reasons for this.

The Road - Cormac McCarthy - there are about a thousand reviews of this already, so I didn’t feel the need to add another. This is one of the most gripping books I have read in years. I literally couldn’t stop reading until it was finished, even thought that meant staying up past midnight when I was already tired. If you haven’t heard of this, I suggest you do a google search.

The Day of the Locust - Nathaniel West - I hadn’t read a word of West, but I had heard of him. This is considered to be his masterpiece. It was published shortly before his early death in 1940. This book isn’t ‘dated’ - it’s a scathing, bitter attack on the culture of Hollywood, California. This is a slender tome, but well worth reading. West’s other famous novel is ‘Miss Lonelyhearts,’ which I will get around to reading sometime.

Sky Burial - Xinran - XInran is the author of “The Good Women of China,” which is about the lives of Chinese women in the eighties. This book is about one woman in particular who goes to Tibet in 1958 to look for her presumed dead husband. She doesn’t return to China for 30 years. Is this a novel or a memoir? As a novel, this is perfectly acceptable, if a little hard to believe. As a memoir, I found this impossible to believe. Its almost as if someone has spinned Xinran a tall tale and she’s swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Unfortunately, this book sheds very little light on the history of the conflict over Tibet that has raged since 1949.

The Chelsea Manifesto - Bruce Russell - Russell’s second novel is a curious amalgam of items - an aging hippy-come-crook called Ben Wallymacher, a geodesic dome in Bridgetown, the study of psychodrama (which I hadn’t heard of), and a trip to New York. I was extremely enthusiastic about Russell’s third novel, “Channelling Henry,” but I ration my enthusiasm here. This took a long time to really get going, and when it did, it went in unexpected directions. I didn’t dislike it necessarily, but I am confused. I will need to re-read this carefully before reviewing in detail.

Next on the agenda is Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch, which is the latest in Simon Haynes’ series. Expect to see a review of Hal 4 on this site in the coming days. And then…I’ve run out of things to read! I’ve got plenty of books I’d like to read, but money is a problem. Sob.

Book Review - Hal Spacejock: Just Desserts by Simon Haynes

“Hal Spacejock: Just Desserts” is the third in Simon Haynes’ humorous SF series, and it’s the best yet. Before I get into discussing this book explicitly, I want to give potential readers an idea of what makes this series different to most of the other SF on the market today. The “Hal Spacejock” books are funny, very much in the tradition of “Red Dwarf” and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” but there are plenty of things that make them different, and in some facets superior, to those famous titles.

For a start, there aren’t any aliens in the Spacejock universe. It took me two-and-a-half books to realise this, but it’s worth pointing out. This isn’t a gaudy, exotic, higher-state-of-consciousness type SF future; it’s a run-down, penny-pinching, two-bit swindling kind of future, and Hal Spacejock is often the biggest swindler of them all. In fact, there’s nothing especially futuristic about any of this. Spaceports are rundown and decrepit, empty places where weeds grow through the cracks in the pavement and old robots sell out of date chocolate. There are a number of parallels with early twenty-first century Australian life, and Hal’s frustrations aren’t that dissimilar to our own. Malfunctioning coffee makers, prangs with other vehicles (one with a yellow sticker, no less), internet scams and annoying voice recognition software are some of the perils Hal faces on a day to day basis.

Paradoxically, however, the Spacejock novels can’t really be described as parodies, neither of science fiction nor of modern life in general. The reason for this is that, beneath the veneer of exploding spaceships and burning fuel canisters, there lies a gentle comedy of some distinction. I found that the more of this series I read, the more I enjoyed it, largely due to the interplay between Hal and his robot friend, Clunk. This relationship is love-hate in nature, and both give as good as they get, but there’s a pleasing warmth about all of this. And robots in these novels are often the most human of entities: they make mistakes, get offended and plan alternate careers when they feel unloved. The “Hal Spacejock” novels are wholesome rather than techno-savvy, old-fashioned rather than forward looking. This is a kind of science fiction which hasn’t been written for decades, and I for one welcome its return. Having said that, Hal is a scientific luddite, a kind of ‘Golden Age of SF Anti-hero.’ I severely doubt that John W. Campbell would have approved of his attitude toward the gizmos around him.

“Hal Spacejock: Just Desserts” is set in one solar system, and there’s even a convenient map of the system at the front of the book. As usual, Hal is trying to make ends meet by running cargo shipments across empty space, and as usual there are problems galore. That doesn’t stop Hal from stopping to buying the out of date chocolates I mentioned before, and later a whole lot more confectionary. Hal is amusingly childish, so much so that the balance of power between Clunk and he seems to have shifted in the robot’s favour by this third volume. This book follows the tried and tested formula of things starting off on shaky ground, then deteriorating into a poor state indeed, before decaying still further. And we haven’t even met “Just Desserts’” antagonist yet.

Jasmin Ortiz can’t remember very much about her life at all, until she realises that she is a robot with a secret mission. In the hands of a different writer, this scene could have been genuinely horrific, but there’s nothing approaching gloominess in the Spacejock-o-sphere. Instead, Jasmin plugs herself into a power socket and gets on with the business of undertaking her mission. She will require, of course, the use of Hal’s spaceship, the Volante. And this is where it becomes obvious that Haynes has mastered his art. Specifically, Chapter Six is where Haynes picks up all the threads and weaves them together artfully: Jasmin needs a spaceship to transport her shipment; Hal needs a part for the ship which cannot be obtained locally; Clunk has signed Hal and himself up as crew on the Luna Rose; a pallet of coffee-makers arrives at the Volante, and is later mistaken for Jasmin’s shipment. And the narrative unfolds from there.

Space elevators, anti-gravity wells, and no end of spaceships populate this book, but it can’t be said that they are intrinsically important to the storyline. It’s almost as though Haynes has looked at everyday life and transmuted it into SF-speak. This is not meant as a criticism. “Hal Spacejock: Just Desserts” is a funny book because these are all-too-familiar scenarios, and Hal has all-too-human foibles. Occasionally, I felt the veneer of credibility stretching thin (such as when Hal convinces a whole base full of soldiers to salvage a sunken spaceship for him) but generally speaking Hal’s antics are amusing to say the least. The plot motorS along at a cracking rate, and there is even an unexpected twist in the tail this time around. One feels that Haynes is at the top of his game here.

Happily, readers of the “Hal Spacejock” series will not have to wait long to see if the author can top “Just Desserts.” The fourth book in the series, “Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch” is due for release at the end of May. Call me a Spacejock acolyte-I’ve been won over by the interplanetary shenanigans of Hal and Clunk, and I look forward to the fourth installment with interest.

Book Review - The World Waiting to be Made by Simone Lazaroo

“The World Waiting to be Made” is Simone Lazaroo’s TAG Hungerford Award winning first novel. Of the four Hungerford winners I’ve now read, I contend this to be the best. The book appears to be a bildungsroman tale of Lazaroo’s own life, although there is a note in the front saying that some things have changed. There is nothing especially interesting about the structure of this book, but Lazaroo has had an interesting childhood, and this is an interesting read. One notable thing is that there is an abundance of titles strewn throughout the book. As well as having named chapters (which seems to be less and less common these days), “The World Waiting to be Made” has named sections within chapters.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what is so appealing about this book. I have been reading it attentively, soaking up the details of the writer’s early life experiences (stealing an expensive dress from K-Mart, losing her virginity to a dodgy guru named Max, taking up a teaching post in the Kimberley) and I can’t quite get a handle on how this book works. Born of Singaporean and Australian parents, Lazaroo’s family emigrated to Australia (”the world waiting to be made,” as several Singaporean characters describe it) as an infant. Lazaroo writes in a strong, though not overly literary style. This is good. She provides interesting details. This is good too. And the story never drags. This is the best thing. I would imagine that it would be hard to write the story of one’s life in such a way as to make it uniformly interesting, but Lazaroo appears to have achieved this effect here. The book seems effortless. But it has its own kind of confidence and insistence, too. It is as if it is saying: “This is an important story. You must read me.”

There are a few things here that remind me of my own life: upon coming to this country as a child, being disconcerted and confused by the children around me; working as a teacher in a remote town; parents divorcing and remarrying. But there is a difference. I myself am English, thus there is no real cultural dislocation in coming to Australia. For Lazaroo, this divide must have been a wide gulf indeed. By the time we get to the part where the protagonist (I was going to write ‘Simone,’ but I don’t think that name is ever used in this book) returns to Singapore to visit her family, three quarters of this book has already passed.

The most intriguing meeting in Asia is with the much-famed Uncle Linus, who is (or at least was) some kind of holy man, or bomoh. He says something about how ‘people came to the world waiting to be made because parts of themselves were unrealised.’ And there is the essence of this book. It’s about a person’s identity coming into being, about becoming ‘realised,’ if that makes sense. But there is a sense of ambivalence, of loss of identity, here too. For a fairly sunny book, “The World Waiting to be Made” has a brooding conclusion. Like life, it eludes neat categorisation.

Books on the Agenda 23/4/08

I can’t remember ever reading so many books so rapidly. I’m going at the rate of around a novel a day at the moment, which is due to the fact that I am on school holidays until next Monday. (I’m a teacher in case you’re wondering). I’ve read about 5 books in the past 5 days! In the next few days, before school starts again, I plan to read and review the following:

The World Waiting to be Made - Simone Lazaroo - in fact I am half way through this already. I got sidetracked by the arrival of “Stick Out Your Tongue.” So far, it’s the best of the four Hungerford winners I’ve read.

The Day of the Locust - Nathaniel West - I got this yesterday from Serendipity Books in West Leederville for $1! I’ve always meant to read this. It’s a short book and I’m half-way through it.

Hal Spacejock: Just Desserts - Simon Haynes - book 3 in the Spacejock series. Number 4 is out soon.

The Chelsea Manifesto - Bruce Russell - this is Bruce’s second novel, and the only one I’m yet to read and review.

That will probably be the end of my reading for the holidays. I’m still waiting for the arrival of Xinran’s “Sky Burial” and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” And then “Beijing Coma” will be out soon…Oh, and my plan to read all the Hungerford winners has encountered a small snag: lack of funds. I went to the State Library Bookstore in the Alexandar Library Building yesterday. Turns out they have all 3 of the published Hungerford winners I am missing, but I can’t afford them at the moment. The books are Gail Jones’ “The House of Breathing” ($17), Christopher Murray’s “A Whispering of Fish” ($18 ) and Donna Mazza’s “The Albanian” ($30 for a trade paperback).

One last thing. If you are a writer and want someone to read and review your novel, I will write a 1000-2000 word review of your novel free of charge. The only catch is you’ll have to furnish me with a copy of your book. If that sounds fair, then leave a comment hereabouts.

Book Review - Stick Out Your Tongue by Ma Jian

Ma Jian is my favourite Chinese writer, due to his outstanding travel narrative, “Red Dust.” Ma is a realist; he has said that it is his intention to depict the lives of the people he sees around him as accurately as possible. But realism is very much out of fashion in Communist China, dangerously so. As such, when “Stick Out Your Tongue” was first published in a Chinese journal in 1987, it was not only banned by the Communist authorities, but a blanket ban was placed upon all of Ma’s future work. Soon after this, Ma moved to Hong Kong and later to London, where he now lives.

At first glance, it’s difficult to see what the fuss is about. “Stick Our Your Tongue” is a very short collection of stories about Tibet, so short that they barely justify being published in book form. What we have here is less than 80 pages of actual stories, as well as an interesting Afterword. It gets worse, however, when one realises that the first story in this volume, “The Woman and the Blue Sky,” is actually in “Red Dust.” All that’s changed is that the story has been changed from past to present tense, and a couple of references to other characters have been removed. This is disappointing, because what is left is around 50 pages of new material.

The new material depicts a series of disturbing events: an old Tibetan man who raped his own daughter, a Buddhist acolyte who is sexually degraded (in the name of Buddhism) and then left to die on a frozen river. This is disturbing stuff, partly because the material is presently calmly, without attempt to cushion the reader. This is Ma’s strength: he is able to look at the world around him and describe it carefully, even solemnly. But this is hardly pleasant reading. One finishes reading this volume wondering what, if anything, one has learned, other than a reminder of the infinite cruelty of human nature.

Ma’s Afterword, written 18 years after the initial volume was published, discusses the repression of the Tibetan people by the Chinese government. This is of course very topical at the moment, but there’s a strange dislocation between the actual written text of “Stick Out Your Tongue” and the ills Ma suffered as a consequence of having written it. In short, there is nothing overtly political about these stories, except by inference. Ma must have carefully avoided any direct criticism of the Communist authorities in his original text. As such, the Afterword, with its talk of Communist repression, seems out of whack with the rest of the book.

What I am saying here is that Ma Jian is a major writer, but that this is a minor book. “Red Dust” is vital reading for anyone even remotely interested in what has been happening in China in recent decades. “The Noodle Maker,” a ‘novel’ which is in fact a collection of thematically-linked stories, is well worth reading too. But I wouldn’t go out of your way to find “Stick Out Your Tongue” unless you are a Ma completist (he has only published 3 books so far). The good news is that this situation is soon to be rectified. Ma’s magnum opus (at nearly 600 pages) is his new novel, “Beijing Coma,” which is due to be released in around a month’s time. I am hoping that it will confirm my suspicion that Ma Jian is one of the most important Chinese writers of his generation.

Book Review - Jacob’s Air by Bruce Russell

I liked Russell’s “Channelling Henry” so much that I made a point of hunting down his earlier novels, the TAG Hungerford Award-winning “Jacob’s Air, and his second novel, “The Chelsea Manifesto.” “Jacob’s Air” was the 1995 winner of the Hungerford Award (which is for a writer who hasn’t yet published a novel length work and is based in W.A.) Russell is from Sydney but he’s lived in Perth about as long as I have, I think (since 1990).

“Jacob’s Air” is set in the Glebe, a suburb of Sydney, in 1984. Specifically, most of the action takes place in an old house by the name of Octavia. The novel is told from the point of view of Delmarie Fairbridge (Deli for short), a twenty-something woman whom we discover is a recovering alcoholic. She has just moved into Octavia with two brothers, Henry and Jacob. The story revolves around the often-strained relationship between these three people, and at times it’s a harrowing tale.

Let me say at this point that while I enjoyed reading “Jacob’s Air,” my enjoyment in it was somewhat less than I got from reading Russell’s third novel, “Channelling Henry.” While the latter was quick-witted, sharp and fast-moving, the former seemed a trifle slow and overly burdened with foreshadowing. I realised quite early that Jacob was going to kill himself, and as I read I started to become a trifle impatient with the narrative. It would appear that Russell is writing about a series of events that happened to him or someone he once knew (perhaps in altered form), and as such I don’t think he had the same control over the material that so impressed me in “Channelling Henry.”

Despite this, “Jacob’s Air” is still an accomplished work. The characters are lovingly detailed, Deli’s voice is engaging and compelling (although I occasionally became annoyed with her glib pronouncements about why someone wasn’t up to her standards). I think it’s always a challenge for a male writer to write in a female voice (or vice versa). It is a challenge I myself relish in my own writing, but it’s a challenge nonetheless. But I think Russell succeeds with his narrator here.

The story rolled on; it was interesting enough to maintain my interest, but not so much that I became entranced by the story. Having said that, “Jacob’s Air” was quite an easy read over its 280+ pages, and I got through it in under twenty-four hours. I am going to conclude this review by reiterating something I said before: it feels as though the writer is too close to the material to really shape it into a compelling narrative. And there I felt I could see the development in Russell’s art between his first novel and his third. Onto “The Chelsea Manifesto.” For those who might be interested, Russell’s fourth novel, “Mick’s Museum,” is apparently going to be published in 2009. I look forward to that with great interest.

Book Review - Crush by Brenda Walker

Brenda Walker’s first novel, published in 1991, has the distinction of being the inaugural T.A.G. Hungerford Award winner. Set in Perth in the late eighties, it is a strange and slender novel of two people: a barrister named Tom O’Brien, and a writer called Anna Penn. The story is told in a distinctively dispassionate style that records details of everyday life, but not so often the emotions that everyday life causes people to feel.

I read somewhere that Walker completed her PhD on the work of Samuel Beckett before writing Crush, and I must say that the influence is clear here. Like in Beckett, things happen but it’s seldom certain whether any importance ought to be attributed to them. It’s appropriate that this is a kind of murder-mystery, but fans of that particular genre won’t find a great deal to grit their teeth on here. The mystery ends up being much closer to home for Tom than he had ever anticipated.

This review is sounding ambivalent, at least to my own ears, but there’s plenty to like here. For me, the most interesting aspect of this book was in the depiction of life in inner-city Perth in the late eighties. Like T.A.G. Hungerford did in “Stories from Suburban Road,” Walker has gone to some length to describe the details of the world of the time, and in doing so younger Perth-ites can gain an insight into the city that was. For me, this novel feels nostalgic, probably because I came to Perth in 1990 from England. The world Walker describes is the one I saw as an eight year-old boy, fresh off the plane.

Stylistically, Crush is strong. Despite what I would term an ‘emotional vacuum’ at the heart of this novel, there’s plenty to keep the story chugging along. This is a short read, and it has been padded out over its 128 pages with blank pages and a picture which is repeated several times. The novel ends with Anna having left Tom’s house (not that they were in a relationship). She says, “I have listened, I have been touched, but now I am unmoved.” I might end this review similarly by saying: “I have read, I have understood, but now I am unmoved.”

Book Review - Hal Spacejock by Simon Haynes

This is the first novel in the “Hal Spacejock” series, and I’m reading it second, after “Hal Spacejock: Second Course.” Confused yet? Luckily, I wasn’t. Simon Haynes has constructed his series in such a way that each book is a stand-alone novel; it’s not at all like a fantasy epic where you have to remember endless lists of characters and places. This is a good thing. There was only one major ’spoiler’ as a consequence of reading book #2 before book #1, but more on that later.

“Hal Spacejock” is an effortless, enjoyable read. I remember reading something Douglas Adams had written about his first “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” novel, and it is worth retelling here. Adams said that he was aware that the book was very smooth and easy to read, but that it had taken a LOT of work to create this effect. I suspect that the same is true of Haynes’ novel. The book goes down so easily because it has been crafted. This is what I especially admire about Haynes’ art: you can see that he is a skilled craftsman of words.

In my review of Spacejock #2, I suggested that Haynes had found a good balance between necessary descriptive passages and humorous dialogue. The dialogue in this novel (which focuses, for the most part, on the interplay between Spacejock and the robot Clunk) is light, even breezy. It’s all mildly amusing. What impressed me this time around, however, was the sheer visceral quality of Haynes’ descriptive writing. Especially in regard to Spacejock’s spaceship, the Black Gull, I was impressed by the verisimilitude (how’s that for a wank word?) of the setting. In short, the Black Gull felt like a real spaceship. A dirty, broken-down spaceship, but a real one nonetheless.

Reviewers of the Spacejock novels tend to mention how the series seems to owe much of its heritage to Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and Grant/Naylor’s “Red Dwarf.” While it’s true that there are similarities (there’s one conversation between Hal and a door on the Black Gull that seems to read straight from the pages of “Hitchhikers”), Haynes is no mere imitator. To me,”The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is a philosophical fantasy, while “Red Dwarf” is a bawdier, low-brow romp. “Hal Spacejock” is neither philosophical nor bawdy, but it has a gritty reality that neither of the other series’ possess.

Another interesting thing about this series is that, in its way, this is a low-tech future. Sure, there seem to be lots of spaceships whizzing around the galaxy, but there’s not a lot of virtual reality type stuff. I actually liked this aspect, and it ties in with my point about the ‘reality’ of the Black Gull. In Haynes’ universe, credits are physical tokens, not cyber-money (hmmm, like Netbank?). Robots are clunky, lumbering machines, not amorphous shapeshifters. To paraphrase “Hitchhikers” again: men were real men, robots were real robots, and spaceships really need regular maintenance. This is where I’m trying to avoid going off on a rant about ‘gimmicky future bullshit’ science fiction. Okay, I’ve taken a deep breath.

The main plot of “Hal Spacejock” sees Hal in his run-down ship trying to make ends meet. I’ve read a lot of SF, but I can’t remember too many novels in which the protagonist is acutely, genuinely, hard up. But Hal is skint. The main storyline sees the conniving Farrell Hinchfig trying to con Hal out of a shipment of robot parts intended for the cigar-chomping Walter Jerling. Hinchfig and his blaster-toting sidekick try to dupe Spacejock by creating a simulacrum of Jerling. Hinchfig’s spaceship is called the Volante. This is where I encountered my one and only problem with reading these novels out of order. Readers of this series will know that Hal’s spaceship in book two is the Volante. Therefore I was instantly alerted to the fact that Hal would win the day and end up trading in his rust-bucket for the brand new Volante, probably at Farrell Hinchfig’s expense. But that was a small worry. After all, I shouldn’t know that Clunk would end up as Hal’s sidekick for the rest of the series, but as his face is on the cover of all the Spacejock novels, that’s a pretty big giveaway.

Okay, SPOILER ALERT. If you haven’t read this book, and I’ve whetted your appetite for it, then you can stop now. Still here? Right. Hal ends up with a whole host of nasty problems, in the form of Brutus, the debt-collection robot, and Farrell Hinchfig and his sidekick Terry. And then of course there’s Jerling on Hal’s case as well. There’s a series of shenanigans that takes place in or near an exclusive casino, and slightly before that, a very ‘lucky’ car-crash which reunites Hal and Clunk after they had been separated. Hal gets away with it in the end, of course, and there’s an elegant solution to the two sets of nasties that are on Hal’s tail. It all ends with a bang. And Hal ends up with the Volante, as I realised would happen. Hal, who had spent most of the book showing a blatant disregard for Clunk’s welfare, suddenly develops a kind streak, and buys the robot from Jerling before stealing the now-departed Farrell’s shiny spaceship. So it’s a happy ending.

For a theoretically ‘violent’ book (there’s no end of gun battles and explosions), there seems to be a strain of pacifism at work in “Hal Spacejock.” Hal and Clunk solve their problems through trickery and deception, rarely by brute force. This is a good message for anyone, but especially for teenagers: brains with always triumph over brawn (just ask Barry Hall ) And so “Hal Spacejock” left me with a warm fuzzy feeling. Rarely have I read a book that was simultaneously so amusing and so warm-hearted. Humour usually revolves around laughing at the misfortune of others, but there’s precious little nastiness here. This is an excellent novel, and I would recommend it to anyone.