Author: M. John Harrison
Publisher: Bantam Spectra Books
Cover Artist: Stephen Youll
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: Dec. 30, 2008
One expects a lot from a science fiction novel that’s won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2007 (the hardcover edition came out then), the Philip K. Dick Award, and was a finalist to win the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. That’s why I was excited to read Nova Swing, by author M. John Harrison. Though it was kind of confusing to me at first – it would have helped, I’m sure, if I’d read the first book of the series, Light – once I got around 50 pages into it, the strange space noir-ish plot started to make sense to me. The tale of the “travel agent,” (and smuggler of artifacts from the Saudade Event Site that defy the laws of physics) Vic Serotonin, and the attempts of an Einstein look-alike Site Crimes detective, Lens Aschemann, to stop him and others from smuggling artifacts, grew on me more and more as I read further.
The action takes place on the planet of Saudade, largely in bars with names like Black Cat White Cat, owned by Liv Hula, and Paulie DeRaad’s Long Bar at Cafe Surf. The stars in the skies at night, being a part of the Kefahuche Tract, are themselves oddities which shouldn’t exist, at least not in the form they’re in. Aschemann relates to Vic his feelings about the Tract over some Black Heart rum, as he is also trying to get information out of him:
He used the stem of his pipe to indicate the Kefahuche Tract, which lay draped across the night sky of Saudade like a string of bad jewels. “I used to dream of that,” he said with a shudder. “Night after night, when I was young. You can’t get change less ordered. Look at it, so raw and meaningless! The wrong physics, they say, loose in the universe. Do you understand that? I don’t. He tapped Vicc’s forearm , as if he thought Vic hadn’t got the point, or as if he wasn’t entirely sure he had Vic’s attention. “Now it’s loose down here, too. We have no idea what goes on in the event site. But whatever comes out,” he said, I have to deal with the consequences.”
What, exactly, is the Saudade Event site? M. John Harrison refers to it also as an event aureole, because that more accurately describes the shape of the dimensional disturbance (this is my interpretation of what it is) on Saudade. It contacts different establishments, and incorporates parts of them, like the two bars I mentioned. Travel agents or tour guides sometimes take tourists into the event site, where time is not the same as that on Saudade. A day inside it can be a year on Saudade, or a week can be an hour – there’s no way to be sure, because time is a constantly fluctuating concept within the site.
Enterprising and daring souls, like Vic Serotonin, sometimes do more than give tours. Giving tours to a place where what you see is different every time you go into it, and where you can’t be positve you’ll make it out alive, isn’t worth the risk. Smuggling artifacts is what pays the bills. But, what if the artifacts are living ones, like cats, dogs, or things that resemble humans, and may be human?
Black and white cats wander down Straint Street, where the Black Cat White Cat bar is located and meets a part of the event site, not far from Moneytown. Dogs come out of the site where it touches the part of town called Suicide Point. Dazed and confused-looking people exit from the bathroom of Cafe Surf. These are some of the living artifacts that pour from the Saudade Event Site nightly. Lens Aschemann tries to follow and track the “people” down, but after a few hours and fun time spent having sex and doing drugs, most of them disappear.
There are also artifacts like the one that Vic sees one day in the site, with big, almost human eyes and four legs, that he brings out with him and sells to Paulie DeRaad. DeRaad, besides owning the Long Bar and Cafe Surf, is both a hero – being one of the only survivors of a spaceship collision (in which he was exposed to massive radiation) – and a criminal with a gang composed of kids (or adults who chose the shape of kids and got tailored at chopshops – I’m not entirely positive about this). This artifact, or creature, once outside, doesn’t look the same as it did inside the site. It more resembles a metal rod, but it ends up causing an enormous amount of trouble for both Vic and Paulie, as it contains a virulent virus or “daughter code,” that is intent on replicating itself and spreading.
Aschemann attempts to bust Vic through the use of surveillance conducted by his chopshop engineered assistant who had code literally flowing through her body and displayed on her arm, and by shadow operators or Shadow Boys (everyone seems to have access to these mysterious entities that hide in corners and crawl on the ceiling) who seem to be able to record whatever they’re asked to, and then play it back on the walls.
Besides smuggling, Aschemann investigates any violation of Site Crimes, like murders. A serial killer is on the loose, one who murders women (his wife was the first victim), shaves one of their armpits, and tattoos a line from a poem there. They are called the Neon Heart murders.
The chopshops are businesses where people can go to purchase other identities for themselves. Tailors work at the chopshops to alter people’s looks medically, genetically, whatever it takes to change their identities. For instance, some women become Monas, or Marilyn Monroe-looking streetwalkers. Annies are women who are transformed into rickshaw girls, with larger-muscled legs, becoming sort of a cross between females and horses. Some men, like Lens Aschemann, choose to resemble Albert Einstein. Then, there are some men, like the character Joe Leone, who want to be fighters involved in the nightly fights that draw huge audiences, where lots of money is gambled. They have there appearances altered by tailors at the chopshops to look like animals, often roosters.
Fat Antoyne is a man who sometimes does jobs for Vic, but he’s lured away by Paulie and changes his allegiances to him. His character seems to be a nod to the one Sydney Greenstreet played in the movie the Maltese Falcon. Though Vic is far from being Christ-like, Aschemann notes ironically that Vic is betrayed three times in one night by those who either are close or had been close to him, and one of those who betray him is Fat Antoyne.
One aspect I thought could have been approached less sexually graphically are the fights that Vic and another character, Elizabeth Kiesler, go to and bet on. Kiesler wants Vic to take her into the event site, and acts as if it’s necessary to her emotional and psychological well-being to be taken inside the site. The human/rooster chopshop creations have enormous erect phalluses, and razor-sharp spurs on their hands like secondary thumbs. They use their spurs, like roosters do, to disembowel their victims in the ring. The fights rarely result in actual death, though, as tailors patch them up so they can live to fight another day.
One of the categories with which great science fiction is judged is how well the author handles world-building in his/her books. Nova Swing doesn’t really go into much detail about the entirety of Saudade, but the cities it does mention, like Moneytown, and the life some of its inhabitants and the bar scene there, are all described in lots of detail. Also, the descriptions of what people see and experience inside the Saudade Event Site, though being very surreallistic, are described in fascinating detail.
Nova Swing is a novel unlike any I’ve read before. Reading on the cover that it’d won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, I was expecting it to be written in the style of Clarke, or be similar to his style of writing, but it was about as far away from that as I could have imagined. Like I hinted at previously, it took me a while to interpret much of what Harrison was writing about, and to get into the story.
I suppose that the initial puzzlement that I felt in trying to figure out who was who and what the various terms -some of which I’ve briefly mentioned here – that are used in the novel meant. The entire novel is very surreallistic, almost like an extremely twisted version of Alice in Wonderland. Even after having read it, I am unclear about several things in the book. But, on the other hand, writing in this particular style shows that Harrison trusts in the intelligence of his readers, and believes that they don’t need things to be spoon-fed to them.
And, despite my initial feelings about the novel, Nova Swing is a book I feel like I can heartily recommend. It does require a degree of patience from its readers; but, once one reads into the book enough, the mists start to clear, and one finds that the characters are some of the most inventive and memorable ones in recent fiction. Be prepared for a bumpy ride and a definitely twisted (but in a good way) reading experience when you purchase this book. It’s one that will intrigue you and stay with you for years to come.
