Happy Memorial Day!

Swamp by Johann G. Louis

First published in France in 2023; published in translation by Europe Comics on May 24, 2023

Swamp is a graphic novel. It tells the story of three kids during a summer in the Bayou in 1930. An afterword explains that it is a tribute to Southern gothic literature. Johann G. Lewis underplays the grotesque themes that characterize Southern gothic, although racism provides a grotesque undercurrent to the story. The setting includes an abandoned steamboat that is said to be haunted, but the story has no significant elements of the supernatural. To me, the story echoes Huckleberry Finn in its creation of an interracial friendship that defies cultural expectations.

Otis and Red are eleven. They live in the bayou. Neither child’s parents believe white and black kids should mix — not because they are racists, but because it isn’t safe. Yet the kids bond over their shared interests:  skipping school, playing pranks, swimming and fishing.

Otis and Red take an interest in a family that’s occupying a local mansion for the summer. The family consists of a 12-year-old Shelley, her governess, and her mother. Shelley has a heart condition and is not supposed to go outside, but hanging with Otis and Red proves to be more entertaining than sitting in the house all day. Shelley befriends them platonically and equally. This is a simpler time when kids aren’t distracted by gadgets or the pressure of becoming a sexual person.

Black adults are searching for a man who went missing but they won’t talk about his disappearance with Otis. Red’s mother does what she needs to do to pay the rent but Red doesn’t understand why strange men visit the house. A gang of men, protected by the Klansman Sheriff, are killing blacks and causing problems for everyone they dislike. Thugs are smashing the windows of the general store owner.

Red has a vague sense that things aren’t as they should be, but he is the embodiment of innocence. He thinks life is good. Soon enough, he’ll realize that life can be ugly. The reader won’t want Red to grow up, but the best to be hoped for is that he grows up to be a decent person.

The story’s ending is equally sad and hopeful. Nothing good lasts forever but change does not mean the world is ending. Red and Otis are on the verge of transitioning to an adulthood that will probably be difficult for them both, but they’re in no hurry to enter a world that they regard as needlessly complex.

The story makes a simple point, but its simplicity reflects its honesty.  There is nothing natural about racism. Kids don’t care about skin color. They care about being kids. They learn to hate from adults who sabotage the possibility of interracial friendships.

The art is also simple. Most daylight panels are a wash of pale green, reflecting the life of the swamp where much of the action unfolds. The art conveys the swamp’s spookiness with burls and knots that make trees seem human. The story’s sweetness is captured in both the art and the innocence of its child characters.

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Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Orbit on May 2, 2023

Lords of Uncreation brings The Final Architecture trilogy to a fitting end. It just takes an awfully long time to get there.

In Shards of Earth and Eyes of the Void, readers met the Architects, aliens who (perhaps for aesthetic reasons) reshaped planets, rendering them uninhabitable. Earth was one of their victims. Many humans died but many others scattered to the stars, using throughways that pass through “unspace” to shortcut travel times. Those humans formed colonies that are governed by the Hugh.

Outside the throughways, travel in unspace is precarious. Apart from navigational difficulties, unspace causes a sense of dread, a certainty that a monster is preparing to turn the traveler into a snack. Surviving a journey through unspace usually means going to sleep, but certain navigators called “ints” have had their brains rewired so they can stay awake in unspace without going mad.

The first two novels developed the plucky crew of the Vulture God, a ship that eventually takes on the task of saving humanity from the Architects and their evil masters. The crew interacts with a sect of human female warriors (the Partheni) who initially organized to protect humans, although a faction in the third novel wants nothing to do with other humans. The crew also deals with a spy from Hugh who returns in the final novel. Whether he will help them or kill them is a question about which the spy is of two minds.

Aliens who are also threatened by the Architects include insects that operate machines through collective effort, a race of shipbound aliens who avoid the risk of planetary destruction by living in space, traders that look like crabs, and a few species collectively known as the Hegemony who serve the Essiel, an alien race that likes to be worshipped.

The primary mysteries developed in the first two novels are (1) why are the Architects destroying worlds, (2) who do the Architects serve, (3) why are Architects unwilling to harm artifacts created by the Originators, (4) who were the Originators and what happened to them, (5) what is the scary presence that everyone senses in unspace, and (6) what lives at the core of unspace? Lords of Uncreation eventually answers those questions. The answers make sense within the context of the impressive worldbuilding (or universe building) that Adrian Tchaikovsky undertook.

The trilogy is a strong contribution to the subgenre of far future space opera involving humans (with some alien help, in this case) overcoming an alien menace. The future is created in so much detail that the background is at least as absorbing as the plot. Conflicts between factions of the human race and occasionally between humans and aliens all follow their own logic, the kind of logic that is recognizable throughout human history. The story is, in a word, smart.

In the grand space opera tradition, characters engage in acts of heroism, sometimes valiantly (including a Partheni who joins the Vulture God’s crew), sometimes reluctantly (including the int who is often part of the Vulture God’s crew and who holds the key to solving the mysteries described above). Even characters who are very different from 21st century humans are relatable in their emotions and desires. Characters evolve over the series; the spy, for example, turns into a better guy than his nature initially seems to permit.

The mysteries are answered with a creative (albeit incomplete) reinterpretation of what the universe is and, to some extent, how it was created and shaped. Suffice it to say that humans and aliens think too much and that all that thinking is troublesome to the shapers of the universe. There is a man-behind-the-curtain component to the mystery that will be satisfying to readers who agree that might doesn’t make right, particularly when the might is wielded by the weak to create the illusion of strength.

My knock on the last novel in this trilogy is its unnecessary length. Modern sf writers seem to feel the need to cram six or seven novels into three fat books. The worldbuilding and action in the first two novels is sufficiently interesting to overcome their length. This one seems wordy for no purpose other than to grow the word count. The first half not only struck me as padded but rushed. Tchaikovsky can be a skilled wordsmith, but the early prose in Lords of Creation is sometimes awkward or clichéd. Fortunately, his prose in the last 200 pages is sharper and the story comes to a satisfying finish that makes it worth wading through the unnecessary verbiage.

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The Last Songbird by Daniel Weizmann

Published by Melville House on May 23, 2023

The Last Songbird has the feel of a classic mystery in a modern setting. Adam Zantz is pushing 40. He drives for Lyft on the web of LA highways. He’s also Annie Linden’s personal driver; that is, she books him off app. Adam arrives a bit late in response to her most recent call, only to find that she’s missing. The police question Adam because her security guy, Troy Banks, is dead. So is Annie, as Adam soon learns when a jogger finds her body on a beach.

Annie was a popular singer-songwriter who was nominated for a Grammy in 1974. She was 73 when she died. Adam began driving for her after his mother “went batshit” and his girlfriend and songwriting partner dumped him. He feels Annie’s loss profoundly, in part because she praised his songs. She was the last person on Earth who believed in him.

Adam was once licensed as a private detective. He spent three weeks doing Google searches for a real detective before he quit. Annie wanted him to find someone and help her piece something together, but she didn’t give him any details before she was killed.

Annie had recently fired her personal assistant. Bix Gelden had known Annie since childhood and had been fired regularly, but the police think he had a motive to murder Annie so they arrest him because he’s convenient. Adam decides to use his meager detective skills to investigate his guilt.

Adam’s search leads him to Haywood Kronski, Annie’s not-quite-ex-husband and former producer; Eva Silber-Alvarez, Annie’s spiritual mentor; her fan club president; two young people who might be Annie’s drug dealer; the man who taught Annie to play the guitar; a jacuzzi salesman; a massage therapist/yoga practitioner; and a dead urologist. Playing detective also gets him arrested. He’s repeatedly threatened, his tires are slashed, he’s on the wrong end of a car chase. The Last Songbird isn’t a particularly violent novel, but what’s a detective story without an occasional fistfight?

Every lead Adam follows turns out to be productive, usually in improbable ways. That’s common to modern crime novels. I suppose writers fear that readers will be bored if detectives chase leads to dead ends, but it’s hard to believe that a random bookmark taken from hundreds of books in a storage shed, or a bootleg concert tape purchased on impulse from a hippy, would help Adam find Annie’s killer. Chalk it up to karma? It’s LA, after all.

With a little help from the guitar teacher, Adam muses about the nature of songs and songwriting. Older readers (and younger ones who know their pop music history) will appreciate the references to songs of Annie’s era. The story also features an interesting aside about the rise of the red pill movement, a collection of misogynistic incels who blame feminists, Jews, and people with dark skin for their inability to get laid.

Adam’s encounters with people in Annie’s life leave him with conflicting impressions of Annie. Some saw her as a totem, others as a user. Adam’s view of Annie evolves as he learns her secrets. The story suggests that artistic icons are never who we expect them to be. They’re just people, with all the complexity that defines human existence. Maybe we have no right to expect them to be anything other than creators of work we admire.

The novel’s intrigue comes from being an unconventional family drama, a story of family members who worship or detest each other. Adam’s own family gives Adam a bit of drama when he enlists their support for his investigation. His sister thinks he’s a loser. As a Lyft driver pushing 40, his circumstances suggest that the perception is valid if uncharitable. Whether Adam will use the investigation as a springboard to self-improvement adds to the intrigue that drives the story.

Daniel Weizmann invokes a classic confusion of identities to bring the novel to a close. Adam’s ability to piece together vague clues to catch the killer is improbable but the story follows a thread of logic that never breaks. Adam attains an awareness of the demons that have driven his own life as he solves the murder, bringing the story to a satisfying resolution. The Last Songbird is a good choice for fans of classic mysteries.

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Halcyon by Elliot Ackerman

Published by Knopf on May 23, 2023

Halcyon is a novel of profound questions. When does the damage of compromise outweigh the benefit of national unity? When is sacrifice a better choice than life? Can the past be corrected? Is it forgotten if we choose not to remember details we can’t accept? When life extends beyond its logic, is there any reason for it to continue? What is it that we inherit from the dead?

Halcyon is an alternate history that begins with a contemplation of alternate histories. Martin Neumann is an historian who specializes in the Civil War. He wonders what would have happened if Stonewall Jackson hadn’t been killed and the South had prevailed at Gettysburg. Yet Martin lives in a history that differs from our own. Bill Clinton was convicted of perjury for lying about Monica Lewinsky. Al Gore became the next president because the Supreme Court didn’t hand Florida to Bush. Gore didn’t lead the country into war with Iraq but, freed from distraction, tracked down and killed bin Laden. Gore pardoned Clinton and is in danger of losing the next election, a rematch with Bush.

The alternate history comes across as a thought experiment rather than a background that is integral to the plot. The point seems to be that changing a fact here and there will change history, while the forces that shape history aren’t so easily changed. Bush will eventually invade Iraq and destroy the economy, leading to Obama’s election.

Another science fiction theme is also a background element. Scientists have learned to revive “Lazarus mice” after they die, giving them a second life. Martin is renting a guest house as he writes a book about the Civil War. The guest house is owned by Robert Abelson, a retired civil rights lawyer. Although it has been kept secret from the public and even from Robert’s children, Abelson participated in a study to revive the dead. He’s a success story, a 90-year-old man who looks 50 after his resurrection.

When the news of successful resurrections breaks, Gore bases his reelection campaign on a promise to fund resurrections for people who can’t afford them. Bush questions whether the science is real and vows to ban resurrection research, echoing (in our history) his ban of federal funds for stem cell research.

Robert and Martin have long talks in the evenings before Martin learns of Robert’s resurrection. Some of their talks are about the Civil War. Martin’s book addresses Shelby Foote’s notion that America made a compromise after the war ended. In a new spirit of unity, residents of former Confederate states would pretend not to be traitors while the rest of the country would praise them for fighting with passion about a cause in which they believed. That the cause was slavery cannot be mentioned; that’s fundamental to the compromise. Martin believes the compromise was essential to reuniting the nation, a point of view that has fallen out of favor as historians have become less willing to support the celebration of the Confederacy.

To the extent that Halcyon has a plot, it begins with a movement to remove a statute of Lee at Gettysburg. Thousands of people have signed petitions. When they are delivered during a massive protest, Robert points out their legal flaws and they are rejected. The person who spearheaded the petition drive wants revenge on Robert. She sues him on dubious grounds and wants his will to be nullified so that assets distributed to his wife and children will be available to pay the judgment. The legal theory underlying the lawsuit is shaky but so is the idea of resurrection, so it’s best to let the details slide.

Martin’s long friendship with another historian — a man from Mississippi who feels the Confederacy in his bones — is jeopardized when, during a visit to Gettysburg, Martin learns that his friend agrees with removing Lee’s monument. They have a long discussion about change that forms the novel’s intellectual core. Martin eventually realizes that history is personal to his friend, that it’s part of his family history, and that removing the monument might cleanse a troubling stain.

Martin’s initial sense is that the monument is part of history and history doesn’t change. He views the monument as a natural outgrowth of Shelby’s view of post-war compromise; a means of letting the South replace the shame of insurrection with the glory of having fought the good fight. Martin comes to understand that removing the monument isn’t about change. It’s about letting go of the past. Making a fresh start might be what the nation needs. It might be what Martin needs as he struggles to write a book that is founded on a premise he begins to question.

There is, of course, more to Martin’s life. His ex-wife is a lawyer who plays a role in one of the novel’s legal battles. The book ends with another contemplation of alternate histories, a collection of “what ifs.” Martin makes decisions about where his life should go, turning a “what if” into a “why not.”

Halcyon is a collection of interesting concepts, any of which could be the foundation for a novel. A character prefers to live a life of grievance rather than forgiving a perceived transgression. A character who could choose resurrection instead chooses death to resolve a family problem. The morality of resurrection has been explored in other novels. Elliot Ackerman addresses it as a political issue that divides Bush and Gore without weighing its philosophical implications.

The strongest concept and the one most central to the story questions the immutability of the past. Historical facts don’t change but some are forgotten and the importance assigned to others fluctuates with time. Perhaps all histories are alternate histories, different versions of the past that depend on how we interpret them.

The novel ends with a surprise that really isn’t. The plot never quite takes off, but Halcyon is more a novel of ideas than a story that depends on plot development. I’m not sure most book clubs are interested in books that lack a strong plot, but Ackerman probes so many ideas that book clubs with an intellectual bent might want to put Halcyon high on their reading list.

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