Skip to main content

Trafalgar (SF) - Angélica Gorodischer ***

Penguin has decided to bring back some 'science fiction classics', in a handsome new series (if rather oddly formatted - they're unusually small books, perhaps to make them fatter, as we're less used to the sensible length books of the past). 

 In Trafalgar, we get a series of linked short stories featuring the interstellar trader Trafalgar Medrano. Although taking place in a range of settings, the stories are in the tradition of bar tales: short stories, where the main character bends the ear of friends (or just anyone in earshot) with their exploits. P. G. Wodehouse, for example, wrote a number of these, and they reached their science fiction zenith with Arthur C. Clarke's Tales from the White Hart. In Angélica Gorodischer's book, Trafalgar tells his stories to the female narrator and whoever else is around.

 I'm not sure why, but these stories rather reminded me of Giovanni Guareschi's Don Camillo tales, though they were significantly less nimble than Guareschi's, feeling rather stodgy sometimes as Trafalgar relates each far-fetched story of encounters on alien worlds where the aliens are all human and speak his language, though they are culturally very varied. Most of the interest in the stories comes from the differences in culture, though one, perhaps the best, Of Navigators, finds Trafalgar on a planet that is nearly identical to Earth where he arrives in 1492 at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella and ends up making things a lot easier for Columbus by giving him a lift to the New World. One recurring aspect of the stories that feels a little grating 40+ years on (as is often the case with classic SF) is that they are unashamedly sexist, with Trafalgar seducing his way across the universe.

 This new series is a great move by Penguin, but I am a little concerned that some of their choices don't match up to the 'classic' label - Trafalgar included. To be an SF classic, a book has to be of some age - I'd suggest in science fiction dating back at least to the 70s, it has to from a widely recognised author, a good measure of which would be for the author to appear in Clute and Nicholls' definitive Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction, and (somewhat obviously, surely) to be science fiction. Trafalgar scores two out of three. It dates back to 1979, Gorodischer is in the encyclopaedia... but this is definitely not science fiction.

 The stories could be interpreted two ways. Either it's pure fantasy - because a 1970s character spends his life running an interstellar trading ship to planets where the intelligent lifeforms are human and speak the same language - or it's straightforward fiction in which the main character is a fantasist who makes up impossible stories. I incline to the latter - and just because those stories happen to use science fiction tropes does not make this a science fiction book. 

 Even if there weren't the problem of this not being SF, the whole concept, which was initially entertaining, became very samey after a few stories, making the book decreasingly appealing as I read. It was, frankly, a bit of a let down.
Paperback:    
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Beyond Belief - Helen Pearson *****

Apparently it comes as a surprise to many that medicine was not particularly scientific until the end of the twentieth century (to be honest, it's no surprise to me - we had a GP who used homeopathy in the 90s). Instead it was based on anecdotal guidance - the kind of thing that appeared to work. Evidence-based medicine has since improved the field, trying where possible to base decisions on evidence, ideally based on randomised controlled trials. The first part of Helen Pearson's book covers this well - though I think it's by far the least interesting part of what we discover. Instead what's truly fascinating is the rest of it, looking at a wide range of other fields where evidence was rarely properly used and that are only now starting to dip a toe in the water. These include social policy, policing, conservation, business and education. The main part of the book gives us examples of how bad these areas have been in terms of basing decisions on what's always been ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Infinity Machine - Sebastian Mallaby ****

It's very quickly clear that Sebastian Mallaby is a huge Demis Hassabis fan - writing about the only child prodigy and teen genius ever who was also a nice, rounded personality. After a few chapters, though, things settle down (I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' description of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) and we get a good, solid trip through the journey that gave us DeepMind, their AlphaGo and AlphaFold programs, the sudden explosion of competition on the AI front and thoughts on artificial general intelligence. Although Mallaby does occasionally still go into fan mode - reading this you would think that AlphaFold had successfully perfectly predicted the structure of every protein, where it is usually not sufficiently accurate for its results to have direct practical application - we get a real feel for the way this relatively unusual company was swiftly and successfully developed away from Silicon Valley. It's readable and gives an important understanding of...
Post a Comment
Read more

In Seach of Sea Dragons - Matthew Myerscough ****

It's common advice to would-be authors of narrative non-fiction to open with something dramatic - Matthew Myerscough certainly does this with the story of his being trapped under an avalanche on Snowdon (while his girlfriend, also carried away remains on top of the snow unhurt). It certainly is dramatic, but seemed entirely disconnected from the reason I got the book, which was to read about fossil collecting.  Luckily, though, in the second chapter we get into a more conventional 'how I got interested in fossils as a boy'. Having recently reviewed Patrick Moore's autobiography and noting that astronomy was one of the few sciences where amateurs can still make a contribution, it came to mind that palaeontology is another - Myerscough is a civil engineer by trade, but just as amateur astronomers can find new details in the skies, so amateur fossil hunters have been searching for these relics for centuries. When I give talks in junior schools, the two topics that guarant...
Post a Comment
Read more