Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

First serialized in Russian in 1971; published in tarnslation by Chicago Review Press on May 1, 2012

Soviet science fiction tended to be dark and surreal and ironic, a response to the oppressive environment in which it was born. Roadside Picnic, written by the Strugastky brothers in 1971, is no exception.

When aliens visited Earth, stopping briefly for (some speculate) a roadside picnic, they left their detritus behind in an area now known as the Zone. Surrounded by a wall and guarded by police, the Zone is accessible only to scientists and other employees of the Institute, including the explorers for alien artifacts who have been dubbed stalkers. A stalker who enters the Zone looking for alien treasure -- either as an employee of the Institute or to smuggle out items at night -- is always at risk: pockets of accelerated gravity, hell slime, and death lamps pose a constant threat. Apart from causing mutations in stalkers and their children, contact with the Zone leads to other anomalies, including animated corpses and -- for those who move away -- a tendency to attract accidents and natural disasters.

Red Schuhart is a stalker until, having seen enough friends die, he quits. After fathering a furry daughter, Schuhart returns to his old ways, dodging the police outside the Zone and death inside. He knows that stalkers who continue to push their luck end up dead, but when a final prize is dangled before him -- the mythical Golden Sphere that is said to grant wishes -- Schuhart cannot resist one last journey into the Zone.

Why does Schuhart risk his life as a stalker? Because self-reliance is all that has ever saved him from oblivion. He has always wanted to be his own boss, free from the slavery he associates with reporting to an employer. He considers himself an animal, riffraff, but he has never sold his soul, and that is the source of his strength. Perhaps the Zone represents the black market -- the illegal and dangerous entrepreneurship, full of hidden hazards -- that was often the only path to upward mobility in the Soviet Union. Perhaps the Institute that seeks to control the artifacts removed from the Zone represents the Soviet government and its belief that power should reside in a central authority. Or perhaps this is just a good, apolitical story that happens to have been authored by Soviet writers. The novel's last words are unmistakably political, but they can also be read as a manifesto in support of intellectual freedom.

Roadside Picnic contains some interesting (but far from original) conversations about the nature of intelligence. It ends on a similar note, as Schuhart ponders his own intelligence, his own humanity, almost challenging the departed aliens to understand what it means to be human. Roadside Picnic is a philosophical novel as much as it is an action story, and it therefore isn't surprising that the ending is ambiguous, albeit powerful. This is a seminal work of Soviet science fiction, but it has much to offer sf fans the world over.

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Getaway by Lisa Brackmann

Published by Soho Press on May 1, 2012

On vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Michelle has a few margaritas and takes a good-looking guy named Daniel to bed.  Later that night, two men climb through her window and smack Daniel in the head with the butt of a pistol.  When Michelle later tracks down Daniel, she discovers the head of a pig, covered in flies, on his coffee table.  Things go downhill for Michelle from there.  Someone plants drugs in her purse.  Her passport is missing.  And Gary, the charming American who gets her out of jail, seems to know everything about her -- and wants her to keep an eye on Daniel, a request she is in no position to refuse.

Who is Daniel?  Responding to Gary’s threats and inducements, Michelle tries to find out more about the charming but cagey charter pilot.  But who is Gary?  The most interesting aspect of the novel is Michelle’s confusion.  She learns that dangerous people are looking for Daniel -- the kind of people who leave bodies in their wake -- but she doesn’t know whether that makes Daniel a good guy or a bad guy.  Nor does she know whether Gary is one of the dangerous people.  She wants to trust Daniel because he makes her feel good in bed, but all the evidence suggests he’s a drug smuggler or worse.  The inability to decide whether she should trust Daniel or Gary, or neither of them, leaves Michelle feeling helpless, a pawn in a game she doesn’t understand.  Empathy for Michelle sustains the novel’s dramatic tension, although her helplessness eventually becomes Getaway’s most significant problem.

While Getaway is a reasonably effective thriller, it isn’t as strong as it might have been.  Despite the growing body count that surrounds Michelle, I never felt the sense of apprehension that the best thrillers deliver.  I think the problem lies in Lisa Brackmann’s construction of the main character.  Michelle is timid, dependent, remarkably uninformed about world events, and prone to making bad decisions -- the antithesis of characters like Lisbeth Salander or Vanessa Michael Munroe.  I felt a growing sense of annoyance at her inability to take control of her situation.  The wait for Michelle to show some initiative and exhibit her resourcefulness is a long one.  I was also disappointed by an ending that holds no real surprises.

Brackmann writes punchy sentences and short paragraphs, a technique that contributes to the novel’s quick pace.  Her prose style is plain but effective.  Getaway isn’t a bad reading experience -- it’s the sort of book that would make time pass quickly on an airplane -- but I wouldn’t expect it to make anyone’s list of the year’s best thrillers. 

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Midnight in Peking by Paul French

Published by Penguin on April 24, 2012

The mutilated corpse of a foreigner found at the base of Fox Tower on January 8, 1937 posed a special problem for Peking police. The victim was a free-spirited young woman named Pamela Werner. When Pamela wasn't attending school in Tientsin, she lived in Peking with her adoptive father, Edward Werner, a scholar and former British consul. She had been beaten to death and then dumped at Fox Tower. Multiple wounds were inflicted post-mortem in an apparent attempt to dismember the body. Sections of her skin and some of her organs had been removed.

The task of investigating the crime fell to Han Shih-ching, with the assistance of Detective Chief Inspector Richard Dennis, who headed the police in the British Concession in Tientsin. Dennis delved into Edward Werner's troubled past, learning of the problems he caused in his various diplomatic postings before he got sacked, a history suggestive of mental instability. Gossip -- the favorite sport of the expat community -- suggested that death and tragedy were Werner's constant companions, including the suspicious death of his wife.

A little more than a third of the narrative has passed by before a promising suspect emerges, but if solving the crime were that easy there would be no story to tell -- at least not a story filled with drama and intrigue. Fortunately for the reader (less so for Han and Dennis), the British government increased its efforts to impede Dennis' investigation, suggesting that a cover-up, if not a full-blown conspiracy, was afoot. Brits Behaving Badly becomes a subtext, as does the concept of "saving face," a characteristic often associated with Asians but quite applicable to the British living and working in China. Racial bigotry also played a role in the British government's insistence that the investigation should focus on Chinese rather than foreign residents.

The investigation took place as Peking prepared for invasion by the Japanese. As in any complex investigation, Dennis and Han pursued a number of false leads. The investigation brought them into contact with foreign residents of Peking who indulged in (to put it delicately) unusual recreational activities, suspicious but not necessarily related to Pamela's murder.

A little more than halfway through the narrative, Dennis finally receives information that provides a credible solution to the mystery while pointing to a suspect who is beyond the law's reach. At that point, however, Peking is virtually under siege by the Japanese and Pamela's disappearance is all but forgotten. Dennis is recalled to Tientsin, the official investigation is closed, and it falls to Werner to use his own resources to discover the truth about his daughter's death. He pursues that goal relentlessly over the course of several years.

Midnight in Peking reads like a well-paced murder mystery, but it is ultimately a tale of corruption, not just within the Peking police but, more startlingly, within the British government, whose officials valued the façade of British civility more than the truth. The narrative proceeds at a steady pace and is enlivened by insightful examinations of the principle players. Paul French provides the reader with enough background facts to add flavor but not so many as to bog down the narrative in needless detail. The text is well-documented in a series of endnotes. It seems likely that, for the sake of good story telling, French re-creates some scenes and conversations in greater detail than the historical record allows, but the book suggests no reason to believe that he has plays fast and loose with historical fact. His attempt to tie the "fox spirit" into the story -- representing a woman who beguiles and betrays -- is colorful but a bit weak. Still, Midnight in Peking is a fascinating look at a forgotten moment in a distant land, an unsolved murder that "slipped from history" despite the compelling evidence of guilt that Werner finally assembled, and that French faithfully reproduces.

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Westlake Soul by Rio Youers

Published by ChiZine Publications on April 10, 2012

After a surfing accident, Westlake Soul woke up with "the most powerful mind on the planet, but a body like a wet paper bag." According to his doctor, Wes is in a persistent vegetative state. Wes' parents take him home, resisting his doctor's suggestion that it might be better to let him die. Yet Wes is cognizant, aware of his surroundings; he just can't express his awareness or interact with those around him. At least he can't interact in a conventional sense. West has some new abilities: astral projection, telepathic communication with animals, fluency in all languages, but not the ability to communicate with or control humans (although he can read their thoughts, something he rarely does). He can watch Angelina Jolie take a shower, he can hover in the background while Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello jam at a party, but he can't tell anyone that his brain is still alive. He struggles frequently with death, in the form of Dr. Quietus, while his parents cope with the pain of living with an apparently brain-dead child. You know where this is going, right?

Wes is convinced that he will eventually overcome his disabling condition, that he will speak and surf again, while the reader suspects that Wes is unable to accept his fate, to process the knowledge that his consciousness will always be trapped inside a dysfunctional shell. When things get tough for Wes, he projects himself to a calmer place: a rainforest, a waterfall, the moon. Of course, the reader wonders whether this is a defense mechanism, blissful imagination replacing horrid reality.

There are moments when Westlake Soul strives to be literary but most of the time the prose is active and edgy, conveying the story's emotion rather than the beauty of language. Emotions pervade the story. Love is at its center, but sorrow and loss and anger and fear provide the context. Wes remembers the love of a girlfriend who, understandably, is now gone from his life. He experiences a new love for his second caregiver. He loves his family and, of course, the dog whose mind he can now read. These people (and the dog) love Wes in return, making the decision they must reach all the more difficult. It is a testament to Rio Youers' skill that the emotions he evokes are sometimes so powerful that story becomes difficult to read.

Although the novel is driven by love, it's more fundamentally about life and death, with life at the forefront. Learning to live, according to Wes, means learning to conquer fear. As I was reading Westlake Soul, I had some concern that it would turn into a polemic, fuel for the wrongheaded politicians who condemned Terri Schiavo's husband for discontinuing her life support, who thought they knew more about her cognitive ability than her doctors did. That concern was unwarranted. The novel doesn't advocate for the religious right. Quite the opposite, given Wes' nonjudgmental nature and his realization that as important as it is to fight for life, it is equally important not to fear death.

There are times when Westlake Soul dances on the edge of melodrama. There are times when Wes is so unselfish and forgiving as to strain credulity -- at least until he does something, late in the novel, that reveals a minor but all-too-human flaw. Despite its faults, Westlake Soul did what good literature should do: it moved me. From the beginning to the end, Westlake Soul touched me emotionally in a way that cheesy melodrama never does. I tip my hat to Youers for writing such a powerful and convincing story.

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When the Night by Cristina Comencini

First published in Italian in 2009; published in translation by Other Press on April 24, 2012

When the Night is a dark and oddly beautiful story of two regret-filled souls struggling to break free from their confining personalities.  The novel records two intersecting moments in their lives, fifteen years apart -- in many ways their most vital moments.

Mountain guide Manfred Sane and his brothers were raised by their father after their mother ran off with an American tourist.  Before the novel opens, Manfred’s wife, Luna, has left, taking their children with her.  Manfred has rented an apartment above his to Marina, who has taken her son to the mountains for a month, leaving her husband behind.  Marina is depressed; she hasn’t bonded with her son Marco, she never sleeps, she feels lonely and inadequate.  She is the opposite of the Supermom:  she wasn’t cut out for motherhood and she knows it.  Still, she hopes her stay in the mountains will renew her strength.

Manfred is silent, bitter, and abusive.  He learned from his father that women are not to be trusted.  Manfred’s observation of Marina, and particularly of her coma-like response when Marco is injured, reinforces his belief that children should be taken away from their mother as soon as they are born.  He suspects that Marina has deliberately harmed Marco, a suspicion instilled by his long-standing contempt for women.  He considers it his duty to provoke her confession.

As the novel unfolded I wondered whether it would turn into an unlikely love story or whether Manfred would kill Marina.  Are they two ships passing in the night or two ships colliding?  In its final section, When the Night jumps forward fifteen years.  The change (or lack of fundamental change) in the characters during the gap years makes clear that the month Marina spent in the mountains was pivotal for both of them.  But what does the present hold?

When the Night is told from the alternating points of view of Manfred and Marina.  Sometimes, when the two are together, the point of view changes from sentence to sentence.  The mild confusion that technique occasionally causes is more than offset by the value of seeing the same events almost simultaneously from opposing perspectives.

This isn’t a novel for readers who search for likable characters.  Still, there is understanding to be gained from the rather extreme examples the main characters offer of gender-based personality differences.  Although Marina is far from a prototypical female (given her lack of maternal instinct) and Manfred is a poor example of a male (given the disgust he feels in the company of women), their interaction with each other is quite typical:  Marina probes for a way to connect while Manfred is guarded, unwilling to open himself for her inspection.  Their differing perceptions impair their ability to communicate; they often speak at cross-purposes, fighting to connect in a moment of shared honesty.

It is in their extremes, however, that the characters offer the most insight.  Both characters are filled with self-loathing, although Marina is more honest with herself.  Manfred feels protective of Marco, perhaps with some cause but also because he distrusts the ability of any woman to raise a male child -- a product of his feeling of abandonment by his mother.  More than that, he feels the need to punish Marina for being a bad mother (perhaps born of a desire to punish his own mother).  He believes “you need to be strong to raise children” and Marina is anything but strong.  Manfred is the personification of misogyny yet he finds himself drawn to Marina, seemingly against his will.  Marina both loves and hates her son.  She loves her husband but hates him for not understanding her.  She yearns for romance but doesn’t believe in it; she views husbands as interchangeable, the choice of one man versus another as arbitrary, yet she finds herself drawn to Manfred.

Manfred’s perspective is told in stark language, featuring the sort of abruptly ending sentences that befit a man who doesn’t like to talk.  Marina’s perspective is narrated in a more descriptive style.  In both cases, Cristina Comencini writes penetrating prose that fully reveals two tortured individuals, apparently incapable of becoming the persons they want to be.  This short novel virtually chisels its characters from the mountains that surround them, exposing multiple facets, sharp edges, hidden features and cold facades.  Fans of character-driven fiction are particularly likely to regard When the Night as a memorable novel.

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