The Crossed Keys Chronicle

After the past few months of reading various long lists for the Booker and some other upcoming fiction prizes, which on the whole I haven't super enjoyed, I decided I needed to return to a type of fiction that never lets me down. I'm speaking, of course, of far-future space operas. The best author in that genre, in my opinion, is the criminally overlooked Peter F. Hamilton, but a close second is the sadly departed Iain M. Banks. When it comes to his sci-fi writing, he's best known for a series of ten books that all take place in a shared universe that mostly centers on a civilization named the Culture.

The civilization of the Culture seen in the books is one of the most utopian you'll find in mainstream fiction. Hundreds of billions of humans and other alien races live together in basically a post-scarcity world, spread across million-kilometer-long space habitats or enormous General Systems Vehicles that are over 200 kilometers long and can hold millions of souls on board. The ships themselves have randomly assorted names, like Sleeper Service, Just Read the Instructions, or Reasonable Excuse, and are controlled by incredibly sophisticated AIs of a type they call Minds.

Given the basis of the world being stable, peaceful and incredibly carefree, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that most of the novels set in the Culture-verse look to external factors coming up against the Culture in order to drive the conflict needed for a satisfying novel. In this book of the Culture series, book five of ten, Excession, the external factor is the reappearance of what they term the Excession. It presents itself as a perfect black-body sphere exactly 53.34 kilometers in diameter, with zero apparent mass but directly connected to the underlying energies of the universe in ways that even the Culture can't achieve. This leads to a secret, self-organizing collection of ships, which call themselves the "Interesting Times Gang," attempting to control access to the artifact before anyone else can.

I am only slowly working my way through the ten books of the Culture series, but Excession has by far been my favorite that I've read thus far. While in my literary fiction I enjoy strong characterization and deep emotions, when it comes to my space operas, I like super-advanced technology, descriptions of cool spaceships and universe-spanning mysteries. Let me tell you, this book has all of those in spades. My only criticism of it is that, ironically, there is far too little of the actual Excession featured in the story. It is very much used as a MacGuffin to start and propel all the main actors along in their arcs, but I do wish we could have gotten more scenes and even point of view from it. Some minor spoilers for the end: what is revealed only to the readers, and not actually to anyone in the story, is that the Excession was there to do a bit of recon to see the state of the life around the area it popped into. Due to the events in the book, though, the local volume of the Milky Way doesn't exactly cover itself in glory, and the object decides to leave with all of its far-future secrets intact.

While I love the sort of rarefied techno-speak that only the true greats of sci-fi can spout (true fans know the wonder of monobonded concrete), I would caution people if they choose this as their first novel of the Culture. While none of them are direct sequels or continuations of each other, it doesn't hurt to have a passing familiarity with the universe and concepts. All in all, if you are a hard sci-fi/space opera fan and you haven't checked out the series, you thankfully have a big backlog to look forward to.

Richard Ayoade sits at the convergence of a great number of my interests. The acclaimed UK comedian was an integral part of The IT Crowd, a seminal show to me as a person who works as a software developer and is tech support for all of my family and friends. He directed a number of influential indie rock music videos in the late aughts, including Vampire Weekend’s "Oxford Comma" and "Heads Will Roll" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And more recently he’s also come into the orbit of the Wes Anderson-verse by appearing in a few of Anderson’s most recent short films and his last feature film, and according to reports he is also collaborating with Anderson on the script for a future film. But even with all these accolades, it was only recently that I found out that he has also written some short fiction, one of which I’ll be reviewing today, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes.

Before even getting to a high-level summary of the plot, there is a meta-textual level to the book as well. The conceit of the book is that a fictional version of Richard Ayoade came upon a copy of a book by Harauld Hughes and, after seeing the author’s photo and his uncanny resemblance to him, decided to read the book and became enamored with the author. In this universe, Hughes is a famous playwright who later in life turned to writing screenplays. The fictional Ayoade then embarks on a documentary film to uncover the truth behind the failed filming of Hughes’ final planned film O Bedlam! O Bedlam!. Still with me so far?

The Unfinished Harauld Hughes comes in at a slim 182 pages, and for the US version at least, the book very much looks like a copy of a play script, no doubt an homage to the fictional Hughes and his claim to fame. Once we get into the actual story of the book, we meet Ayoade, alongside the rest of his lean three-person documentary film crew: Dan the director, Tony Camera the camera operator, and Wiggy Sound, their audio man. They start the filming at a greasy spoon diner interviewing Mickie Perch, Hughes’ eccentric and gangland-associated half-brother. From the start, the book sets its wry tone with the exchanges between Ayoade and Mickie in the interview process, with a ton of deadpan responses by Mickie due to his very literal interpretation of their directions to always work the question into his responses to help the filmmaking. Ultimately, they find out a lot about how Mickie was instrumental as the money man behind Hughes’ ambitions, and that Mickie believed that all good movies should feature nunchucks, but unfortunately they learn very little about the filming of their real target O Bedlam! O Bedlam!.

As the story progresses, the set of intrepid filmmakers hit obstacle after obstacle in their quest to find out why the film wasn’t completed and even what the plot actually was. It seemed to involve multiple musical numbers as well as a giant spider tentacle? The book is a lot of fun. If you are a person who enjoys dry British humor like myself, you will certainly encounter numerous laugh-out-loud moments in it. I often found myself comparing it to some of the great Christopher Guest–directed mockumentaries from around the turn of the millennium, like Waiting for Guffman or Best in Show. I also really enjoyed some of the small details in the book that keep up the meta-fiction. After the author details page for the real Ayoade and before the colophon, there is an entire author page dedicated to Harauld Hughes, featuring a full biography as well as a large list of his plays and other printed works. What elevates this endeavor from a funny bit to high art is that Ayoade actually released three other books from the Harauld Hughes oeuvre for real in the UK at least, going as far, I understand, as to even give them fake copyright dates in the 1970s. If I can find any of them in the US for non-insane prices I am definitely going to check them out.

I won’t spoil the ending in detail, but suffice to say that Ayoade’s documentary suffers the same fate as Hughes’ final film, and yet it leads to a rather touching final interview. If you're a fan of just about any of Ayoade's past work, then I wholeheartedly recommend The Unfinished Harauld Hughes. And even if you're new to him, it's a short, funny read that's well worth your time.

Emily St. John Mandel has been consistently one of my favorite writers over the past number of years. The Glass Hotel and especially Sea of Tranquility have been some of my favorite books in the years they were released, so I have been looking forward to her newest book Exit Party since I heard it had a release date, and to cut to the chase, I was not disappointed.

The story, as is often the case with Mandel’s works, involves a number of timelines and in this case even multiple worlds. As we begin, we follow Ari Waker, a recently released ex-con who is going to a house party in Los Angeles in the year 2031. It’s the first spring after the collapse of the United States, the curfew in the city has finally been lifted, and people are in a celebratory mood. Ari is joined at the party by her roommate Gloria, whose friend Kareem is the host. During the party Ari notices a person who looks just like Gloria but is wearing completely different clothes and calls her by a legal name that she never uses. Later, Ari sees Kareem coming back to the apartment, where he insists to her that something is “wrong” with the party. He had also seen duplicate people there, which unnerved him and made him leave for a bit. They both go back into the apartment, and before Ari and Gloria leave for the night they try to say goodbye to Kareem, but he’s nowhere to be found, despite having last entered a kitchen with no other apparent exit. The only thing left behind is a painting on the floor named “Swan Dive.” As we later learn, Kareem is never seen ever again.

From this simple setup the book then unfolds over the course of an additional 40 or so years into the future, as well as across a dimensional barrier into an alternate Earth. Mandel’s books often have big, mind-bending ideas in them, and Exit Party is certainly no exception. Where she really excels, though, is with her characters, and in this book she even gets to give us two versions of some of them. On ostensibly our Earth, Ari is an ex-con who later in life becomes a Parisian philanthropist. In the alternate Earth she’s an operative for the State’s surveillance apparatus who eventually has to investigate the disappearance of her friend Nico (Gloria) during the teleportation experiment. Being able to compare and contrast the characters’ personalities between the two realities was a fascinating exercise.

Mandel also continues a recent thread of the importance of water and water themes in her books. In The Glass Hotel the book opens and closes with a character who is swept into the ocean off a container ship. In her follow-up, Sea of Tranquility, water is implied in the title even though parts of the book take place on that named part of the moon, which is devoid of actual water. In this book one of the central items is a painting named “Swan Dive,” a painting from the 1960s that was a connection point between the two realities, which some of the characters believed might somehow allow passage back and forth. It depicts a pair of feet disappearing into a blue ocean. The painting was also seen in the hotel lobby of The Glass Hotel, further connecting her recent works. The book ultimately ends with a short chapter about the original artist deciding to paint the piece in the first place.

As I led with, I really loved this book. Between the world building and the jumps in the timeline and perspectives, I didn’t know what to expect next from it. If you’ve enjoyed any of her recent books, or are looking for a book that has big ideas and keeps you hooked until the end, I highly recommend it.