Lindsay Ellis Noumena

First contact between humans and extraterrestrial intelligence is a natural and perennial playground for science fiction readers and writers.  There’s always room to explore, and in her Noumena Series, Lindsay Ellis provides readers with all the reasons.  Newly-imagined aliens, compelling characters with rich voices, stories and back-stories and fresh new science are deep in the weave of the three (of five projected) novels.  What Ellis does with all this great material is to wrap it in a narrative that manages to be fun and thought provoking. It’s a tough job to make readers laugh out loud while inducing serious speculation about life itself.  Ellis is up to the challenge.  

The first book, Axiom’s End, sets up tone and content.  It’s 2007. Cora Sabino is the cast-off daughter of a Julian Asange-like figure.  Two “meteors” arrive in the hills outside of LA, and Cora sees the occupant of one of them.  It’s a nine-foot high nightmare, a 942 year-old bio-mechanical intelligence that might be unable or unwilling to communicate with humans.  It’s a serious and scary setup as seen by a sarcastic SoCal gal.  Briskly paced, packed with action and fascinating ideas about language and intelligence, Axiom’s End manages to go where you least expect, creating an alternate history of the recent past.

Truth of the Divine follows on directly from Axiom’s End.  The alien character, Ampersand, and Cora are, with the rest of humanity, confronting the reality of intelligent, space-faring life in the universe.  This time around, Ellis dives deep into character.  Cora becomes even more sympathetic, Ampersand remains engagingly un-human, and the relationship between the two offers the readers humor that serves to emphasize the speculation and extrapolation that are the core of science fiction.  The alternate history unfurls in a conversation with actual history.  Pacing here is also excellent on every level; within individual scenes, in the subplots (and new characters) that move the book, and in the novel as an episode of the series.

And this brings us to the brand-new entry, Apostles of Mercy.  Once again, Ellis makes what’s very difficult feel and read very easy.  In a page-turning, action and tension packed narrative, Ellis externalizes difficult internal debates; immigration, right-to-death (the aliens choose the day of their death), culture clash, truth and lies.  We meet more sorts of aliens in scenes that are horrific, heart-rending and humorous.  Ellis knows how readers have fun, and that humor can lead some to very knotty questions that are not easily, if at all, answered.  Her ability to combine readability with thinkability is inspired.  In each novel, she manages to tell a complete story even as readers are left wanting more. Given the breadth and depth of her achievement thus far, Lindsay Ellis is clearly a major new talent for the science fiction genre.  And given the Noumena series thus far, readers can engage in their own enjoyable extrapolation about what’s to follow, and anticipate their own surprise.  These are the good old days.

Since I managed to miss the first two books in this series when they first came out, I indulged in binge reading.  I highly recommend this approach.  In speaking with the author, we took the long view of all three novels.  Here’s the download link for our conversation, or listen below, as the audio assures no eye contact or in person presence.  To quote Firesign Theater on First Contact, “If there are eyes, avoid eye contact.  If there are no eyes, avoid all contact.”

Boyce Upholt The Great River

It’s a cliché to say that a place can act as a character in a novel.  Yet when we want to understand the character of a place, we look to the history genre to get the goods. With The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi, Boyce Upholt effectively upends that tradition. Eschewing timeline chronology and embracing the quirky, ever-shifting nature of his subject, Upholt offers us what one might call a biography of the Mississippi.  It’s a fast, fun reading experience that examines its subject with a seriousness and subjectivity to craft a compelling narrative that brings the river to life.  Unsurprisingly, the Mississippi has a lot to say.

The subtitle of the book, “The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi” is important. This is a story about a character, the Mississippi River, under constant assault from humans who tried to live nearby.  Upholt tells the story of the civilizations that ruled the wild land long before settlers arrived to begin the real assault.  While we’ve been informed of the various “mound builders” who came before settlement, Upholt does a wonderful job describing the bustling cities created alongside the vast floodplains.  But these cities disappeared, as did the people who built them.  

Upholt describes the battle of man versus landscape as America pushed westward with narrative expertise.  What nature had on offer was inconvenient for men.  The serpentine curves and floodplains made travel difficult and economic exploitation more expensive.  Woven onto this story is the story of the Army Corps of Engineers, and the moderately mad men who lead them.  The rise of the steamboat, then the railroad, all play out as the hubris of man pitted against the forces of nature.  Human victories were fleeting and often pyrrhic.  

America’s attempts to tame the Mississippi are intertwined with America’s attempts to tame its own citizens. In the midst of this muddy battle, Upholt crafts scenes that will etch themselves in the readers’ memories; a Spanish expedition obliterated by a native American army, plantations and slaves slogging in the mud, maleficent towers of aging chemical plants dominating an otherwise empty, sodden landscape.

Through all of this, the Mississippi defines itself.  We may build levees that challenge the Great Wall of China, but they’re our own mounds in the swamp.  Our cities bustle so long as the river permits.  The Great River, indeed. Upholt manages to usurp the power of this river, to channel it into his narrative.  We read, and are swept along, as our attempts to control and civilize the river are swept away.

Boyce Upholt has spent serious time on the river.  You cannot befriend it, but he describes in our interview how he captured it, not with bulldozers and explosives, but the power of prose.  You can download our chat here, or watch the sun set on civilization while you listen below.  When the interview is done, when the file has played out, listen to the silence.  The river is still flowing.

Keith Donohue The Boy Who Drew Monsters

Jack Peter is seven years old; old enough to swing his family out of balance.  He’s pretty severely autistic, and since an accident, he’s agoraphobic as well.  His mother Holly has been bringing in a lawyer’s salary since he was a baby.  His father Tim, made the difficult decision to abandon his career and stay home with his son.  Tim thinks that, with effort, he can “fix” Jack Peter.  Holly sees no fix.  Moreover, recently, when she tried to wake up Jack Peter, he attacked her and she realized he had grown big enough to pose a danger.  Jack Peter has one friend, Nick, who dutifully follows Jack’s obsessions.  Jack’s latest obsession is drawing monsters.  

Keith Donohue’s The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a page-turning nightmare.  Tim and Holly are in a heart-rending situation, and Donohue masterfully threads their despair through the narrative with razor-sharp prose and an evocative eye for the details that matter.  As discomfort gives way to the weird, Tim and Holly begin to question the evidence of their senses.  Soon enough, the difference between the real and the supposedly-imagined begins to erode.  Donohue’s unraveling of plot, character and the fragile nature of reality is superb.  How dangerous are feelings, hurt and otherwise?  We can hurt one another in a variety of ways.  Donohue expands the palette.

The pleasures of reading this book are many.  Donohue’s characters are achingly real.  We love them both because of and in spite of their flaws.  His prose is powerful, but restrained, crafting indelible pictures, never drawing attention to itself.  There’s no excess here; we get real people in danger, and we want them survive.  The danger may or may not be “real,” but the pain surely is.  The plot is quite straightforward, so much so that Donohue can terrify and satisfy readers.  

The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a superb examination of the power of family and belief.  It’s very low-key and feels like a slice of life where feeling matter.  How we feel, what we feel, why we feel, it all makes a difference.  Feelings are as real as the restless ocean, just as beautiful, just as powerful and yes, dangerous.

Keith Donohue is a modern master of Weird fiction. Here’s the unedited-for-time version of our conversation, a few moments in time about a book for the ages. Or listen below, with the lights on.