RED MARS (Robinson, 1992)

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Robinson hooked me (and many others, it seems) with MINISTRY OF THE FUTURE's near-future (and getting nearer every day) climate apocalypse bureaucracy and doom and solidified it here: RED MARS is sci-fi and worldbuilding at its most intriguing – and prescient.

The closest analogue to MARS I can conjure is Mervyn Peake's GORMENGHAST series, that rare fantasy series which captured my heart and mind (and reminds me I need to procure the other two) with limited characters – as well-drawn and real as flesh and blood – and excruciatingly detailed worlds not my own (indeed, much of my own frustration in my current WIP is that I'm not seeing the world well enough yet, small and tiny though it may be); Robinson made me feel, with each page turn, as though I was there with that first hundred, uncertain of my allegiances, celebrating and mourning and building and destroying with them. Unflinchingly human, all:

"Here they were eating their dinner, talking over the low boom from the north, in a perfect illusion of dining room conviviality; it might have been anywhere anytime, and their tired faces bright with some collective success, or merely with the pleasure of eating together – while just outside their chamber the broken world roared, and rockfall could annihilate them at any instant. And it came to her that the pleasure and stability of dining rooms has always occurred against such a backdrop, against the catastrophic background of universe chaos; such moments of calm were things as fragile and transitory as soap bubbles, destined to burst almost as soon as they blew into existence."

Robinson once said in a City Arts Lecture that you don't write novels as a tool for self-expression but as a way to inhabit the lives of others: RED MARS takes you not just into the minds of deeply drawn and deeply flawed people, but into what feels like each and every dust particle on the red planet; this is a towering achievement. BLUE and GREEN on the docket, but I need to catch my breath first.

My complete reading list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.

MIRACLEMAN OMNIBUS (“The Original Writer” / Leach, Davis, et al, 2022)

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After years, now, of hearing snippets of the legal saga around the character, I'm relieved to find that the actual MIRACLEMAN stories are far more engaging than the behind-the-scenes ones: Anglo's creation proves the old axiom, "necessity is the mother of invention," as he created a world which is, to me at least, more rich and interesting than the Marvel family he was replacing. Moore's 1982 transformation of it into the mythological sci-fi epic he crafted (while haven't read any of Gaiman's run, I will seek them out – though I’m still confused as to how these are collected and released) is nothing short of astonishing, a prime example of the staying power via elasticity inherent in those considered the greatest among our pantheon of four-color gods (and monsters).

Four panels from MIRACLEMAN Prologue, by Garry Leach: closer and closer closeups of Miracleman's eye...

Mentioned it in my PostScript on TITUS GROAN, but I’ll reiterate: was fascinating to read Moore and Peake, one of the former's biggest influences, simultaneously: the influence is apparent – in the Guardian interview quoted there, Moore says that "(Peake's) were probably the first books where I began to understand just what you could do with writing: how he could conjure this entire complex environment and these almost fluorescent characters that stayed in your mind for ever": complexity of environment and fluorescent characters who stay with you: in MIRACLEMAN, check and double check (not sure I've experienced such utter comics heartache as I did in the resolution pages of the Kid Miracleman saga).

Will eventually re-read because, as with all of Moore's work, I can't help feeling like I've missed something, a feeling that it rewards more either in subsequent read-throughs or in monthly, serialized readings (the only series of his I've read in serialized was my beloved and personally influential 1963 as that was when my collecting days overlapped with the majority of his serialized output).

One complaint: more than half of this $100 tome is dedicated to supplmental material and, while the original art and Anglo originals are undeniably great and the history of the character's trials and travails is fascinating, the latter, especially, is nothing I couldn't find online. Unnecessary padding.

My complete reading list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.

TITUS GROAN (Peake, 1946)

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Thanks to his sublime cadence, his intricate and labyrinthine use of limited locations, and deeply-drawn characters, Peake managed the heretofore impossible with the first of his Gormenghast novels: crafted a fantasy series that I'm itching to read every bit of.

As I've also been reading Alan Moore's (or, rather, "The Original Writer") run on MIRACLEMAN, the influence of Peake on Moore is even more apparent – indeed, I think it was this article that pushed me to check out Peake’s work as Moore’s description intrigued me):

The young Moore tore through Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, HP Lovecraft and, especially, Mervyn Peake. The Gormenghast novels, he says, “were probably the first books where I began to understand just what you could do with writing: how he could conjure this entire complex environment and these almost fluorescent characters that stayed in your mind for ever”.

To be certain, Peake's wonderful, "fluorescent," characters will stay with me, friends for life; a delight. My complete reading list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.

Peake / Robinson: synthesis

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Finding my way to something in the MainFictionThing by having a document open on the Infinite Canvas based on the Reveries section of Mervyn Peake's TITUS GROAN (currently reading and loving: Gormenghast will be the first fantasy series I've completed): the internal thoughts of all the characters at Titus's birthday breakfast before the next turn happens. Useful exercise even if it's doubtful that I'll use it in the final thing, find the rhythm of characters' thoughts, etc etc.

Combining with something Kim Stanley Robinson said in a recent City Arts and Lectures episode : that the novel (paraphrasing here) isn't a tool for self-expression but rather a way to get inside the heads of your characters, of other people. Playing that up here – not that I'm writing a novel – at least I don't think I'm writing a novel but who knows: maybe this is the inversion of the seven-year paragraph – or maybe a brief flash of getting somewhere before it all comes to a(nother) halt. Whatever it is, I'm going to run with it until I fall flat on my face.