Comics Heroes reviews Going To The Moon!

Comics Heroes have recently reviewed Going To The Moon, giving it five stars:

A tender, touching, merciless and heartbreaking book that does an awful lot to your emotions over its 38 exquisitely-rendered pages … it’s not just something to be admired by grown-up comics fans; it’s something that should be given to kids and those touched by Tourette’s, and held tight for its wisdom and clear-headed sentiment … Paul McCaffrey’s art is beyond superlatives; he meshes seamlessly with Tidhar’s words to remind us all what it is to be young and powerless and at the mercy of others, but that at the end, there’s always hope. A triumph.

Copies can be ordered directly from the publisher.

Cold War Paranoia: Ian Sales’ Adrift on the Sea of Rains

Adrift on the Sea of Rains is a novella by British writer Ian Sales, self-published by the author under his new imprint Whippleshield Books.

Sales, active as a reviewer and blogger, has been publishing short stories for some time, mostly in small-press magazines and anthologies. This novella is his most substantial piece to be published to date. I have to admit I had not expected to like – let alone admire – this book.

Which is all the more reason I’m glad I read it: because Adrift on the Sea of Rains is very, very good indeed.

It comes in a minimalist, yet attractive, paperback (as well as a Kindle edition) with, moreover, a host of additional material which in itself adds to the narrative (and of which more later).

In Adrift…, the American moon mission did not end with Apollo 17. By the time the story takes place the United States has a space station in low earth orbit - Freedom – and a small moon base with a handful of men. The story follows Vance Peterson, the commanding officer of the lunar base, in a world where the United States and the Soviet Union are locked in an escalating no-longer-Cold War; and by the time the story opens, in fact, we learn that the long-dreaded nuclear war had finally broken out on Earth. The men on the moon base are trapped, looking at a no-longer-blue marble on the horizon, a dead Earth. They have enough food and air for a couple of years but, after that, they, too, will die.

Sales does a remarkable job maintaining the sense of isolation and alienation the astronauts experience on the moon. Told partly with flashbacks, we follow Peterson’s career path (could he be responsible in part for the start of the war?) as a pilot, and the sense of Cold War paranoia, of 1950s Mutually Assured Destruction, is expertly evoked.

But alongside the 1950s vibe, Sales introduces the central conceit of his novella: the Bell, a Nazi wunderwaffe, or Wonder Weapon, a mysterious device discovered after the Second World War and taken by the Americans to the moon, the better to be studied. The Bell, it turns out, is able to shift into parallel realities; and the men of the lunar base pin all their hopes on finding a world where the Earth was not destroyed in a nuclear war – their only possible escape. But when, in one of the novella’s most superb moments, a blue Earth reappears on the lunar horizon, their problems only just begin…

This is a slow, meticulous novella, lovingly and carefully crafted, combining incredibly realistic depictions of the day-to-day life of astronauts on the moon, their slow disintegration in the face of despair, with the sort of alternative history I’m a sucker for, and with the added bonus of Occult Nazi Science which shows Sales’ love for – and fascination with – the lunar landings, but also a sense of fun, of playfulness, which combine together – Hard SF and Pulp – into a bewitching story. The ending, when it comes, feels inevitable, and the whole thing punches way above its modest (20,000 word) size.

It is not entirely without fault. The numerous technical terms (given their own appendix at the end) could have been more smoothly integrated, perhaps, and the use of italics for the past sections could have been avoided. The appendices are amusing – particularly the time line which begins in our reality but slowly evolves, matter of factly and without comment – into a space programme that never was – yet a part of me wishes the novella would have been allowed to stand on on its own (though the extensive bibliography is certainly fascinating, and will send you to Google, if only to learn more about our world’s real-life fascination with the wunderwaffen).

Having read it, I really can’t rave about this novella enough. It is 1950s science fiction as could only be written by someone in the 21st century, a knowing, smart, ambitious story where hardly a word is out of place. I came to it ready to mock, and came away with admiration instead. This is probably the best piece of science fiction I’ve read so far this year, and would be a more than worthy nominee for a BSFA Award next year. I urge you to read it.

Comic Buzz reviews Going To The Moon

Comic Buzz reviews my picture book about a boy with Tourette’s Syndrome, Going To The Moon:

I’m glad I got one though, because by page one I was hooked. We meet Jimmy as he prepares to walk through the school gates, and the text tells us “Jimmy goes to the fucking school”. And there we have it; the clash between the innocent image of the schoolboy in his pristine uniform, bag on back, and the reality of the terrible disorder Jimmy suffers from.

We learn about how the condition affects Jimmy. He has ticks that make his face and arms move outside of his control. He also uses bad words and has no way of stopping himself from swearing even when he doesn’t want to. Apart from his Tourette’s though, he is just like the other kids. Perhaps that is what really helps to deliver the message in this book; he is just a boy. Jimmy has a dream. He wants to be an astronaut and land on the moon. Just like countless other boys his age.

The story follows Jimmy from his dream to the reality he has to face everyday: bullying because of his Tourette’s. The other kids just don’t understand why Jimmy says the things he says. His words are not intended to hurt but theirs are, and they do. But this does not dissuade Jimmy from his dream and the reader can only admire him for that as he continues with school and deals with his bullying as best he can.

Going to the Moon is alive with themes, and even for people who have no real world experience with Tourette’s syndrome there are elements of loneliness, unjustness, suffering and sadness in here that everyone can relate to. Bullying, friendship, growing up, family life, ambition, and restriction by circumstance are all things that affect Jimmy as the story progresses, and by the end I found myself very connected to the hero and thus moved by the tale.

McCaffrey’s artwork is arresting throughout this story. Facial expressions and body poses have been used to full advantage to contort Jimmy and depict visually just how little control he has over himself and how unnatural he can appear to the ignorant. Aside from that the full-page illustrations are beautifully coloured and stylised perfectly to reflect the prose. Indeed the prose itself has been displayed in a very visual manner with the use of font, emphasis and colour really helping to drive home just how much Jimmy is restricted and hindered in life by his condition.

In a similar vein, Tidhar’s words are just as important here in helping the reader to understand Tourette’s syndrome, and thus to understand Jimmy and empathise with his situation. There are some fantastic lines in this novel, which I would just be spoiling to quote them here without their visual counterpart. The essence of this book is that the words are in the art and the art is in the words; together they are more powerful than any other method I have seen before to both educate a reader and provoke an emotional response at the same time.

I highly recommend Going to the Moon, as I think there is something in here that every reader will take away with them.

Vector reviews Jesus & The Eightfold Path

Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, has recently reviewed Jesus & The Eightfold Path:

Jesus and the Eightfold Path began life as an irreverent brain-nugget: the story of kung-fu Jesus. The final result is less cheeky than you might imagine, fusing classical Chinese novel Journey to the West with the life of Christ as recounted in the New Testament. Plenty of liberties are taken, of course; in Tidhar’s take Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing (“Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy”) do not travel to India to protect the Bodhisattva on his quest to retrieve sacred scrolls but instead voyage to Judea to find the child who is the reincarnation of the Buddha. They are the three wise men who witnessed the newborn Christ, although in this version they eschew excessive wisdom, preferring to indulge vices: food, fighting, women, the usual heroic stuff. The story spans the life of Christ from before birth to shortly after his death, touching upon many of the most memorable Biblical fables – overturning the tables of the moneylenders, now with added kung fu; his love affair with Cleopatra, which was definitely in there somewhere; and ruining the livelihood of local farmers by filling their pigs with demons.

The book is a characteristic example of Tidhar’s writing and storytelling; it repurposes the mythic with a deft touch that retains some degree of familiarity yet introduces enough difference to produce a stark sense of contrast. It also has his characteristic lightness of tone juxtaposed with gravitas and respect for his subject matter. It’s rarely wildly funny but produces plenty of wry smiles. Readers who enjoy laughter lines will find this book does actually crease them up.

However, it inevitably feels episodic; a side-effect of re-telling the life of Christ in under 70 pages. We leap from one set-piece to another and Jesus rarely feels like more than the fulcrum around which the story pivots; even his kung-fu skills provide only intermittent thrills. Still, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy prove to be fun characters, Roman-Judean agent Josephus Flavius helps lend the last act some thematic weight and the conclusion rings true to its Judaic and Buddhist roots. As a story it could have been longer but that may have led the concept to overstay its welcome. As a result we have this enjoyable compromise.

Cheryl Morgan reviews Osama

SF critic Cheryl Morgan reviews Osama, calling it

a phenomenal achievement. I’d have no hesitation recommending it to a wide audience, because it is just the sort of science fiction that a mainstream audience would find easily accessible.

New Osama review

The Weekly Take reviews Osama:

In his new novel, Osama, Lavie Tidhar does something extraordinary: he takes the War on Terror and puts it in a pulp novel. That might sound dangerously insensitive to anyone who has lost someone in terrorist bombings or in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Tidhar treats his subject matter with sensitivity and the weight it deserves. … Osama is a wonderfully crafted alternate noir-ish tale that, despite its subject matter and its meta-flips, actually works. I highly recommend this.

New reviews for Gorel and The Bookman

A couple of new reviews have just appeared. First off, Pornokistch review Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God:

Lavie Tidhar’s Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (2011) is a self-styled “guns and sorcery” novella. Mr. Tidhar, as previously noted, is one of the great masters of the pastiche. In this instance, however, Mr. Tidhar has created something uniquely his own – a delightfully Weird pulp tale that could easily sit on a shelf alongside Leiber, Vance and Moorcock. – continue reading or buy the book.

Second, Red Rook Review reads The Bookman:

The Bookman, a mesmerizing tour-de-force, refreshes Steampunk, while adhering to its basic elements and demonstrating the author’s encyclopedic knowledge of the genre and his endearing love of literature. Its major theme is myth; however, its subsidiary theme is books or, more, precisely literature. – continue reading or buy the book.

Osama reviewed in the Financial Times

James Lovegrove reviews Osama in the Financial Times this week!

Osama is a surreal critique of our terrorism-haunted age. Joe, a Laos-based private eye, is hired to locate the author of a series of lurid pulp novels featuring a terrorist-mastermind hero called Osama Bin Laden. His hunt for the pseudonymous recluse Mike Longshott leads him to Paris, London, New York and finally Kabul.

As the plot unfolds, it becomes clear that Joe’s world is not ours. Oblique hints are subtly stitched into the narrative. There is no Channel Tunnel, the World Trade Center has never existed and the fictional adventures of “Osama Bin Laden, Vigilante” seem to have been beamed in from elsewhere. But where?

Joe’s dreamlike search leads to a truth that the reader may already have begun to suspect, but the final revelation is well orchestrated nonetheless. Lavie Tidhar’s novel bears comparison with the best of Philip K Dick’s paranoid, alternate-history fantasies. It’s beautifully written and undeniably powerful.

T.J. McIntyre Reviews Osama

Over at Skull Salad Reviews, T.J. McIntyre reviews Osama:

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit Lavie’s someone I know and interact with online. I received an electronic review copy straight from the author himself. That said, Tidhar’s new novel, Osama (PS Publishing, 2011), is a difficult novel to review without spoilers. I will do my best here. But let me just say upfront that I loved, loved this book! Sometimes when getting a book from a friend or acquaintance, there’s a hesitance to review it because of the risk of hurting feelings. There was no need to hesitate reviewing this one.

On a superficial level, at least through roughly two-thirds of the novel, the story is pretty simple to explain. It is about a private investigator named Joe living in an alternative present where 9/11 and The War on Terrorism are the stuff of pulp novels. Osama bin Laden is a popular character in a series of cheap paperback thrillers detailing the lives of terrorists by an author named Mike Longshott. When removed from reality, the exploits of the terrorists make for entertaining reads in this alternative history. There are even conventions dedicated to Longshott and his Osama novels. People dress up like Osama and terrorists at these conventions and have roundtable discussions concerning the social relevance of these novels, much like at a Trekkie convention. The fictional acts of terrorism are all entertainment, nothing to fear.

Joe’s story itself reads much like a paperback thriller. He’s a hard-drinking, smoking private investigator searching through the seedy underworlds of Europe. Joe is hired to track down Longshott and travels around the world looking to uncover this author. In the process, he starts to learn a thing or two about himself.

The last third of the book is full of revelations. Our reality and Joe’s alternate reality collide and the text grows increasingly slipstream and surreal. I won’t say anymore about plot because I don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone. The less one knows going into this novel, the more they will enjoy it, I believe.

Ultimately, this is a novel about identity, a novel which reflects a reality of the modern age in which we live. We choose our identities in many aspects of modern life – whether it be through a pen name as a writer, the personas we take on in differing social situations, or through online handles and avatars. As one character states in the novel:

“‘You have to choose what to be. When you’ve been stripped of everything; a
name, a face, a love – you could be anything. You could even choose to be
yourself.’”

A wonderfully entertaining and thought-provoking book – My six pack rating: 6 out of 6 Trader Joe’s Vienna Style Lager

Colin Harvey reviews Osama

Colin Harvey reviews Osama:

Osama is written in an elliptical tone reminiscent of Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius stories; Tidhar describes the minutae of coffee, cigarettes and clothes, but omits exposition, instead creating a narrative tension through the reader’s need to puzzle out the background; as Joe wonders what the World Trade Centre is, Tidhar starts to explain his alternate world, but slowly, slowly, and always by allusion. Rather like the protagonist, the reader is left with the sense that “The…writer was leaving…a trail of crumbs to follow” (p.120).

As the novel progresses, it becomes ever more Dickian, as Joe slips between realities, alongside the refugee ‘ghosts’ that he glimpses from the corner of his eye. In the novel’s clearest homage to The Man in the High Castle, Joe undergoes a reality slip that echoes Mr. Tagomi’s, visiting what appears to be ‘our’ London

. . .

Osama is an unsettling, oddly poignant look at what might have been, a world that is not necessarily better –because human nature precludes that- but simply different; it shows Tidhar’s originality and growing accomplishment in one of the best novels of the year so far. – read the full review!