Skip to main content

The Gradual (SF) - Christopher Priest ****

Christopher Priest may not be a prolific writer, but he was writing when I first got interested in science fiction, and he's still producing remarkable novels - most recently The Gradual. It's a remarkable book - mysterious, intriguing and with a main character who really takes the reader along on his sometimes dream-like experience.

But for one problem, it would have a solid five stars - and that's that it shouldn't really be here at all, because it's not science fiction, it's fantasy. (Unless you take the old definition that 'science fiction is what science fiction authors write.') I need to note a few specifics to explain why, but I'll try not to make them spoilers.

What makes it fantasy? Firstly it's set on a world that clearly isn't Earth, yet absolutely everything about the culture and environment (other than the fantasy elements we'll come to) is exactly like Earth, from the alcoholic drinks to the musical instruments and gramophone records. That's a relatively minor aspect. But then we've got a world where traveling from island to island causes shifts in time - you could just about set up an SF explanation for this, but it is not attempted. And most of all, these time shifts are countered by what can only be described as magic.

If we get over the book sneaking in here under false pretences, though, it is marvellous. It's not a book to read if you like everything set out just so from the beginning. Like the great Gene Wolfe, Priest enjoys leaving us confused about what's going on, only gradually revealing what's happening near the end. (Frustratingly so, to an extent, as the main character really doesn't try very hard to get an explanation, other than from people whose job it is not to give it.)

The best parts are those involving the nastiness of living in a dictatorship and anything connected to music. Throughout the book, music is a powerful theme - Priest really puts us in the head of a true musician and it's a wonderful experience.

Just occasionally there seem to be logical gaps. For example, the main character is advised that just moving around on a particular island will cause him big problems - yet everyone else, who should have the same problems, seems to do so just fine. And some of the supporting characters, particularly the female ones, could do with a bit of rounding out. But this doesn't stop this being a remarkable piece of writing.

In the past, I've found that it has been hard work to read some of Priest's novels (Inverted World springs to mind) - and the outcome sometimes didn't reward the effort. The Gradual reads like a dream (both metaphorically and literally in places) - it's excellent just as a highly approachable novel, but is also inspiring. Probably the best book by Priest I've ever read.


Paperback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Free Agents - Kevin Mitchell ****

Free will is one of those subjects that you have to be brave to take on: Kevin Mitchell makes an impressive job of defending a concept that some feel is incompatible with science. We start by taking a look at the common reasoning against free will - that because everything that happens is deterministically based on the interactions of particles (fields if you prefer), then there is no actual ability to 'choose' - everything simply follows on from its previous state in a mechanical fashion. Admittedly when we then add in quantum physics, there is an element of randomness introduced, but that does not appear to provide any room for agents to select what will happen next. So far, so common a view. But Mitchell argues that this is too limited an approach. While there are indubitably structural limitations on our ability to act with agency, whether down to nature or nurture, he still suggests that we (and other organisms) have the opportunity to make choices, in part due to being ca...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future. We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty wo...