A full empty

or, thoughts of ice and picnics

Hello.

I write this under the tidal relief of Friday, the week’s murky waters pulled away to reveal the smooth, pristine rocks of the weekend¹. Today marks my 15th year since I left England and moved to Australia. I find that utterly impossible to comprehend. So much has happened since then. So much change within. I don’t remember who that person was who chose to step onto a plane to the other side of the world, so naïve and carefree. Whoever they were, they had no idea they’d end up spending most of their time thinking about words.

Anyway, there are many things from this week that would make for great stories, but, well… I don’t think I can go there yet. Ask me again sometime. Instead, here are just a few snippets of thoughts before a return to some fiction next week.

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The wonderfully talented

Andrei Atanasov

interviewed me over on his page, which was a right lovely gesture and a lot of fun. Andrei is one of the nicest guys I’ve met through writing on this platform, so if you don’t know him then do him a solid and have a read of his excellent work.

Nathan Slake's Dreamscape

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Last week I finished reading Anna Kavan’s Ice.

L.J. Gearing

pushed the book under my nose, recommending it as A Good Read. The paperback copy he slid my way is part of the Penguin Classics Science Fiction collection, all of which feature rather lovely and minimalist cover artwork. (In the series, I have also read We, The Hair Carpet Weavers, and The Colour out of Space, all of which are *chef kiss*. OK, so technically I read that last one as part of my bingeing of Lovecraft’s oeuvre in my early 20s, but I’m counting it, because it was within one of Penguin’s own Lovecraft collections).

Cover art by Tina Berning. Cover design by Jim Stoddart.

I hadn’t heard of Ice and I hadn’t heard of Anna Kavan, although perhaps I am not so alone. She remains something of a lesser known British author, I believe. Born Helen Emily Woods in 1901, she changed her legal identity to Anna Kavan in 1939 and wrote most of her work under that title. She lived a difficult life, struggling with depression and heroin addiction, and yet despite this she was able to produce a small but significant body of work that has become highly respected.

Ice is difficult to describe. It is a book that I suspect changes each time you read it. Hallucinatory, surreal, haunting and uncomfortable—these are all words I would use to describe it. Through the story, a male protagonist is in constant pursuit of a mysterious “glass girl”, a young woman who seems to elude his clutches. It is bleak, set in a world of climate disaster, with giant sheets of ice (whether literal or metaphorical seems to be up to the reader) encroaching and destroying cities and the land. The prose is sparse, with details often brushed aside as unimportant, aiding the surreal narrative. Themes of Kavan’s own life—of isolation, abuse and addiction—permeate throughout.

I recommend it. It is indeed A Good Read. It is a powerful book, and I am using this opportunity to spread word of Kavan.

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After Ice, I moved on to Roadside Picnic, by Soviet-Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. This is a book that has always been in the “I should really read this” pile².

I read the book on my Kindle, but this is one of the many editions. I especially like this SF Masterworks (Hachette) cover. Unfortunately, my Googling has failed me in trying to attribute the artist.

I’m glad I got to it. I’ve torn through it. It is a strange, magical piece of SciFi about Earth in the aftermath of a brief alien Visit, after which a number of regions around the globe are left as “Zones”—strange, hostile areas, littered with unknown and powerful artefacts. Only the skilled Stalkers³ know how to navigate and survive these Zones in order to seek out and retrieve these pieces of alien technology, selling them on the black market or to scientific institutes who study them and try to work out what they do, for the betterment or detriment of humankind.

It is difficult for me to articulate precisely what it is about the style of the Strugatsky brothers that I love. The book wends through the points of view of several characters—mostly one Redrick “Red” Schuhart—over a chunk of years, but I found myself drawn to the initial first-person viewpoint of Red. There's a casual flare in the writing, a certain wit that pervades the often bleak undertones. The book deals with philosophies of knowledge and the dangers of technology, of curiosity as a human condition and the mystery of the universe, of whether we could ever truly understand anything alien.

The book is at its best when you are within the Zone, the bizarre and tainted land all around, where you, the reader, are never quite sure what that danger is. You rely on Red as your guide, who offers you only glimpses as he navigates his way through.

I will leave you with a quote that captures some of this.

The sun was still low. And at that moment it struck him that the dry grass beneath their feet was no longer rustling but seemed to squeak, like potato starch, and it was no longer stiff and prickly but felt soft and squishy—it fell apart under their boots, like flakes of soot. Then he saw the clear impressions of Arthur’s footprints and threw himself to the ground, calling out, “Get down!”

1. OK so straight up lie. It’s now Saturday. All I managed yesterday was that first line. Can confirm though, the weekend rocks are indeed smooth.

2. Gibson’s Neuromancer is next. I have no idea how I’ve never gotten to it, but I’m excited to begin the sprawl through that world of cyberpunk.

3. I have seen the film Stalker, but have never played the games.