Customer Reviews

Nova Swing

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I think it's obvious that Harrison knows how to write. He's been at it a long time in both literary and journalistic concentrations. I think it's obvious that he's not interested in writing a "standard" novel. He will willingly weaken his work's plotline and continuum to let his art shine through.

That's where the reader has to decide what they're up for.

You want space opera? This isn't it. You want an alien Phillip Marlowe? Not really. Can you deal with ambiguity and page-long descriptions of odd events. This is for you!

Set in the same timeline as Harrison's earlier work, Light, Nova Swing follows an assortment of characters who are displaced. They live in a time where they can hop in a tank and be whoever or wherever they want to be, or go to a gene tailor and really become someone new. But the characters in Nova Swing aren't interested in that. They're interested in making a real connection to the people and places around them. Their quest is made more problematic by the Event Site, a place where part of the Kefahuchi Tract fell to ground and warped the way time and space behave. Several of the characters are drawn to it, some are ambivalent, but the Event Site rules what goes on is this novel. Will the characters go in? Will they ever come out? And what's the deal with the armpit-tattooing serial killer?

There are lots of beautiful passages in this book. There are parts and characters that I found pretty dull. Ultimately I don't want to look back at a novel and have to try and decode what it was I read. Not the meaning, but just the chain of events. And I don't mind working while I'm reading. I like a challenging read. This one just has too many threads that don't get resolved.

Short review: lots of literary sizzle, not enough plot-based steak.

Whereas Light was involved and uplifting, Nova Swing is muddled and depressing. The story takes place in the same universe as Light, about a generation later. An anomaly of space-time has expanded and its edge has `fallen to earth' in the middle of Suadade city. The intersection of city and spatial anomaly has created the Suadade Event site, a zone of `impossible physics,' which attracts adventurous tourists, `artifact' smugglers, and a local police force watching them both. Of the eight main characters in the novel, three are destined to lose themselves in the Event, three are destined to move as far away from it as possible, and two learn to accept it as part of their lives.

As with Light and the Viriconium stories, Harrison's narrative style is extraordinarily immersive. He drops you into the action with the assumption you are familiar with the story's setting, history, culture, and linguistic vagaries. This makes for a bumpy start, but the approach is so thorough and unrelenting that you eventually develop a familiarity with the material. This style is particularly rewarding since he treats you like an insider instead of a child in need of narrative-halting explanation. As always, his writing is elaborately descriptive, densely layered, and technically impressive.

Unfortunately, the story itself does match the power of the prose. The mood moves back and forth from criminal noir to cyberpunk to hallucinatory travelogue to melancholy memoir and back again. Character motives and qualities seem to change rather suddenly midway through the novel. The story's climax occurs about 2/3 of the way in and subsequently yields to what appears to be a metaphysical climax followed by a lengthy coda to tie up loose ends. The final effect appears to be an author who changed his mind but was committed to finishing. I almost stopped reading this book out of frustration, but was likewise committed to finishing.

All in all, Nova Swing is a great disappointment in comparison to its predecessor. If I had to guess, the awards for Nova Swing (??,??,??) were probably make-up calls since they clearly should have been given to Light. This is not Harrison's strongest effort in my opinion.

Every sentence in this book is strangely weighty, and weighted strangely; clauses that loop, hang, and leave you strangely waiting.

It took me a while to find the best way to sum up this book and I think the analogy to "No Country For Old Men" is apt, in that most people either "got it" and appreciated the movie making capability of Coen Brothers, or walked away hating it and wondering what the heck the point of the movie was. This book evokes the same emotions. Sadly, in my opinion, it is the latter impression I was left with for Nova Swing. (Unlike No Country, which despite the ending I still enjoyed). Not only was there really no point to the whole exercise of reading the book, but the plot just dissolves like some bad discarded "code" of dead "Shadow Operators." If you read the book you will understand.

While there is no doubting the literary capabilities of M. John Harrison, it is not enough to sustain a relatively short novel, in comparison to some sci-fi space operas, that fails to resolve any plot lines and creates un-engaging characters with no real discernible motives and incoherent personalities. Without giving away any major plot lines for those willing to venture into this algorithmic mess, if you do end up investing any emotional concern for characters, their fates are rather unfulfillable.

One can enjoy fluent and stylistic writing without a need for a straight forward plot, or even a satisfying resolution. To reference a different genre, some of John LeCarre's novels fall in that category, where the reward of phenomenal writing style makes up for an occasional wandering plot. Unfortunately, Harrison, is not in that category, but more in the category of knowing all too well his literary skills to the detriment of all else. At least in this novel there isn't the prurient and quite frankly boring obsession with clinical sex as there was in "Light".

I will grant the five star reviews, there is a uniqueness and unconventional nature of his style and universe (originally created in Light). If one is looking for an experimental, psuedo-cyber, crime-noir, unresolved novel with shades of Phillip Dick, Neal Stephenson, and a jacked up Arthur c. Clarke, then go for it. But even Phillip Dick got to the point, even in his most drug induced and schizophrenic mind opening novels. Otherwise, take a pass and read the real original inspirations (Valis, Do Androids Dream.., Snow Crash, 2001, etc).

I am a fan of Harrison's work and think his Viriconium series is one of the most underated in the genre. I also found Nova Swing to be a small gem of a book. In newer science fiction, I hope to find one of 3 things: compelling characters, a strong sense of place and/or new concepts. Amazingly, this book has all three.

It is set in a run down future city which gives the reader a pervasive feeling of decay as in the movie Touch of Evil. Through the city, however, and enclosed by shifting boundries runs the Kefahuchi Tract. This zone changes all who enter it as the cost of retreiving biological artifacts, destabalising technologies and unfathomable organisms.

Tour operater Vic Seratonin evades law enforcement authorities who try to limit the importing of strangeness from the zone. The plot moves along quickly and the dialogue between the characters is pitch perfect with few words wasted; coming close to the artistry of Raymond Chandler.

One other point: Harrison is very adept at naming his characters so that they enhance the character without hitting the reader over the head. You will meet Seratonin, Paulie Degraaf, Fat Antoyne, Emil Bonaventure and Vic's foil, Lens Aschemann.

If you like Light and Nova Swing, try the Viriconium books now available in a single volume.

One of my favorite diversions while I'm reading is to guess what's on the author's bookshelf--for a lot of SF, I come up dry, as the authors in that genre seem to prefer scaling the heights of mediocrity unaided, but M. J. Harrison is a welcome exception. When I read "Light", I was fairly sure that "The Skriker' would be found there, and "The Man Who Fell to Earth". "Nova Swing" is harder, showing a clear benefit from other works and various movements, but nothing so vulgar as an obvious clue. What Harrison has accomplished in "Nova Swing" is a salmagundi of Dark Romantic, Expressionist and Noir attitudes and conventions. I wouldn't have thought to connect the climactic gestalt shift that resolves a Noir story to the penultimate Transcendental experience of Melville's or Poe's characters, but the linkage is a typical example of Harrison's ferocious creativity. Nor is there any reason to expect that the highly conventionalized and formulaic characters, settings and situations of Noir would dovetail so nicely with the often nameless types (characters is too specific a word for them) and the episodic nature of Expressionist drama.

How does all this fit together? "Nova Swing" is set on a planet whose main city was partially affected/destroyed by something they call `the event', which in turn creates `the site'. The site is something like a naked singularity--in that it is accessible from our universe, and it makes almost anything possible, among other things it sheds `physics' in little pocket universes, viral code that infects matter and artifacts--the products aren't entirely baneful, the `physics' can lead to new means of spaceflight, for example. What comes out of the site is capable of transforming or destroying the world as we know it, so the forces of law and order try to keep the lid on the bottle and manage anything that escapes or is brought out. Thus, one of the main characters is a Site Crime detective, Aschemann, who is charged with keeping people out and things in. Not surprisingly, there are people who want to go in, at the time of Nova Swing, they are primarily tourists, and in a prior generation , explorers or prospectors (before the law clamped down). So, another main character is a tour guide--Vic, who discreetly takes people into the fringes of the site to get a taste of its weirdness. He works on the margins of the law, going into the site is illegal, but as long as a tour guide doesn't bring stuff out, the police turn a blind eye to the occasional visit. However, when it is discovered that the site is generating people who start popping up in the bathroom of a Jazz bar, Vic becomes one of the suspects. In keeping with the finest Noir traditions, there is a femme fatale, Elizabeth Kielar, a woman who hires Vic to take her into the site. Naturally, Vic has a sleazy friend/partner Paulie a gangster boss, who is willing to take anything that he brings out of the site off his hands. Unfortunately, the last artifact that Paulie bought from Vic turned on him. And that's the basic setup.

Like a lot of Noir or Dark Romance (think Ross Macdonald or Moby Dick), the story has a very claustrophobic feeling, everybody goes to the same generic places, mostly bars and hotel rooms, and everybody is in everyone else's business. Though anything is possible in the site, it seems to function more as a terrifying limit than as something offering freedom or wonder (the wonders of the site are often tawdry, e. g. a cloud of old shoes exhibiting flocking behavior). The main characters, Vic, Aschemann, Paulie and Elizabeth are almost Ahabs in their relentless solipsism. They talk to each other and others, they show up at the same places, but they scarcely let anything impinge on their narrative. The words and actions of those they come in contact with are incorporated into their own soliliquoy, but they don't lead anywhere or fundamentally change it. Most scenes, interactions, or dialogues stand on their own and peter out without reaching a conclusion or pushing subsequent developments. The characters often act like they are performers who just walked into a room and need to improvise a scene with whatever clues and props they can find, there's no sense of history or future. There's a curious sense in which the audience can see that the characters are experiencing their lives as if they were in a movie, play or book. So Vic and the femme fatale seemingly become romantically involved for no reason other than the demands of the form. Aschemann's assistant is referred as `his assistant' throughout the book, and towards the end the reader discovers the detective doesn't know her name. That's the kind of ignorance encountered in works of fiction, understood as a device of the author, not a depiction of reality. The plot hangs together by the presentation of familiar formal elements, rather than any internal cohesion or motive force, the plot is a result of montage rather than growth. These aspects of "Nova Swing" tie it to the works of writers like Brecht and Genet.

So what kind of people are these? Let's consider this quote from Moby Dick: "But in each event--in the living act, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask." We know the site can create people, we know that it can transform them, for its own inscrutable ends, that it dominates everything around it, undermining commonplace notions of causality and identity. The thing that unites Aschemann, Vic and Elizabeth is their knowledge of this and their need to get through the mask, even if it's their own personae and discover the thing behind it. One of the interesting aspects of the story is that after the plot is resolved for the main characters, Harrison spends a fair amount of time taking care of several secondary characters and the contrast between the ends they fashion for themselves, and the fate of the major players highlights the fact that there is some fundamental difference between them.

I can't believe that this book pretends to follow the story that was presented on Harrison's book, Light. The story has no depth and just uses the elements presented on the previous book to set a story with no real importance.

Though Harrison himself admits that 'Nova Swing' can stand on it's own, it's best enjoyed if you've read his previous book 'Light', which introduces the legendary pilot Ed Chianese and the strange phenomenon known as 'The Kefahuchi Tract' - an area in space of alternate reality and strange physics. 'Nova Swing' uses this base with a new twist ... The Kefahuchi Tract has shifted, and part of it has fallen to earth in what is known as the Saudade Event Site.

'Nova Swing' is a complex novel, a generous novel; a character driven novel though it's still centered around an event that is slowly expanding. The characters are not only unique in their formation but also in the very naming of them - Harrison affectedly creating character in the very names of his protagonists.

Vic Serotonin is a travel agent; but not the sort you'd expect to run into booking a tour with one of the great space-cruise ships docked in the non-corporate port of Saudade. For the right price, Vic will take you into the Event Site. On his heels though, is police investigator Lens Aschemann who bears a striking resemblance to the elder Albert Einstein. With Lens is an "enhanced" assistant, data streams running down the inside of her arm, who transferred over from Sports Crime.

Vic can be seen at anytime in Liv Hula's bar called Black Cat White Cat, dangerously close to the Event Site, and named so after the streams of black and white cats that flow from the Event Site every morning. It's in Liv Hula's bar that Mrs. Elizabeth Kielar contracts Vic to take her into the site. Not only Vic but Liv is suspicious, due to the fact that Kielar - in her glamorous clothing and real fur coat - don't fit the stereotypical "traveler". She's an enigma, and why she insists on entering the site is a mystery.

Vic's ever-present sidekick, Fat Antoyne Messner, deserts him after Irene The Mona begins to pay attention to him. (A Mona is a woman who's undergone body redesign to become Barbie-like with peppermint smelling hair).

After Vic, in other ways, are Paulie DeRaad, a smuggler who paid good money for an artifact from the Event Site that is now changing him into something unthinkable. Emil Bonadventure, suffering his own side effects from years as a renegade pilot and expeditions into the Event Site, tries and fails to warn Vic, just as Emil's "daughter" (read to fully understand this) eventually writes off Vic and refuses to give him Emil's secret journal.

In a world of "smart tattoos", body redesign and re-engineering, space cruises along the Beach and Radio Bay - Vic continues his tours and Paulie continues to decay, Aschermann cruises Saudade's streets in his vintage pink Cadillac and Liv Hula runs her bar night and day - the Event Site continues to expand and pour forth ruinous people and things from the most unlikely locations. Does an ending really come to all things, or is an ending a beginning to some?

Despite its multifaceted and intricate plot, 'Nova Swing' is a very enjoyable read, though one you will have to pay attention to. This is not a light space opera to enjoy in brief spurts, this is a melding of SciFi and Fantasy that requires usage of your gray matter inside your skull. Not quite as fulfilling as Harrison's previous 'Viriconium', your palate will nonetheless be satisfied with it's characterizations and brief but puzzling forays into the Saudade Event Site. A solid five stars for lovers of a "thinking" SciFi/Space Fantasy. Enjoy!

The book is engagingly, if confusingly, written. The premise is a mash-up of "Roadside Picnic"* and standard 21st-century cyberpunk; I felt like I'd read it all before, except this time, I can't figure out what's happening. It's like the whole book is filled with fog. And I realize this is intentional, which shows that the author is a good one, but nevertheless I find it incredibly irritating. I like my plots to have resolutions, my characters to have motivations, and my phenomena to have explanations - I really enjoyed the book right up until the end, at which point I became completely unsatisfied. But hey, maybe ambiguity's your thing.

*One of the really great works of SF out there, which you should really read if you haven't already.

Set in the same universe as Mr. Harrison's "Light," but centuries later, a portion of the Kefahuchi Tract, featured in the former book, has fallen to earth (the author does not capitalize the term), creating a discontinuity known as the Saudade Event site.

This tale deals with the goings-on near the site, and with the Runyonesque characters who dwell there. You'll meet Vic Serotonin, illegal site guide; the Mysterious Woman Client of a thousand hardboiled detective novels; the detective Lens Aschemann, who looks like Einstein, as well as his crazed assistant.

There are entities who come in through the bathroom door, hordes of monochrome cats, pink Caddys, rickshaw Annies, and music called the old New Nueva Tango. And, oh yes, there's a starship named the Jayne Anne Phillips.

The prose is crisp and dazzling; occasionally it's moving. You'll care what happens to the characters. The story is convoluted, and not everything is explained; but that hardly matters--the journey's way more fun than the destination. Mr. Harrison proves yet again that there's nobody quite like him writing science fiction these days.