(Somersault is (c) Richard Cowdry; if you want to reproduce any part of it you should ask him first; you can see the larger version and all of the previous episodes  archived here)

(Somersault is (c) Richard Cowdry; if you want to reproduce any part of it you should ask him first; you can see the larger version and all of the previous episodes  archived here .Part 1 of this strip can be seen here, part 2 here)

(Somersault is (c) Richard Cowdry; if you want to reproduce any part of it you should ask him first; you can see the larger version and all of the previous episodes  archived here)

On a related topic, have a look through some more of Crispian Jago’s site (whence came the splendid Doctor Who tube map), as he has some other very geek-tastic cool stuff on there, including Skeptics Top Trumps cards that made me giggle, a science map which treats great moments and figure in the history of science in the London Underground map style too and a Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense. Brilliant. And as a Who fan Crispian also gets brownie points for the surname Jago and the Talons of Weng-Chiang connotations that name suggests to old school Whovians!

(Somersault is (c) Richard Cowdry; if you want to reproduce any part of it you should ask him first; you can see the larger version and all of the previous episodes  archived here)

And on a personal note, huge congratulations to Richard and his better half on the safe arrival of a brand-new mini cartoonist; welcome to planet Earth, little Edward Leonhard Rieger-Cowdry. We await your first comics expectantly :-)

(Somersault is (c) Richard Cowdry; if you want to reproduce any part of it you should ask him first; you can see the larger version and all of the previous episodes  archived here)

(Somersault is (c) Richard Cowdry; if you want to reproduce any part of it you should ask him first; you can see the larger version and all of the previous episodes  archived here)

(Somersault is (c) Richard Cowdry; if you want to reproduce any part of it you should ask him first; you can see the larger version and all of the previous episodes  archived here)

(Somersault is (c) Richard Cowdry; if you want to reproduce any part of it you should ask him first; you can see the larger version and all of the previous episodes  archived here)

The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and other unnatural attractions.

By Robert Rankin
Gollancz, available hardback (now) or paperback (August 2011)

This is a splendidly fun adventure story set in the aftermath of one of the great science fiction classics, War of the Worlds, and yet it’s thankfully fresh and full of humour, and belies a deeper, more thoughtful message.

Never happy with a clichéd setting, Rankin immediately meddles with literary history by moving the infamous interplanetary conflict so that in his far-fetched world it occurred in 1885, allowing him further flexibility and to draw in more historical characters. Not that this was needed by an author who regularly addresses his readers through his footnotes, creating pseudo-scientific explanations in a jocular fashion to explain away inconsistencies and to allow him latitude for laughter.

Despite being set in the wake of the Wellsian masterpiece, it is in no way a derivative or second rate work, and in actual fact, like most Rankin books, is of its own style and setting, with quite an imaginative and visually satisfying feeling and in this case relying on an interestingly fantastical mixture of alternative history and steampunkedness, while discreetly reflecting on our current situation—most pointedly the current conflict in Afghanistan.

Rankin started entertaining readers with The Antipope, the first of the Brentford Trilogy in seven parts in 1981. His initial series of books were set in suburban west London, a flat cap humour with a neat mix of urban legend, mysticism, pint drinking, rascalling and buckets of laughs. He went on to write more science fictional work, with his Armageddon series, starring Barry a Time Travelling Sprout, and a General Electric Mini-gun toting Elvis, and Earth the Television studio. With thirty two books his style and subject have been variable, from stories set in Toyland with Nursery characters to the Road Trip adventure of friends.

In recent times,  his works seem to have a maturity and sensibility that some people, and dare I say some reviewers,  just wash over as they laugh at the good mix of joviality or critique the style of humour. It’s easy to enjoy the humour and smile at his expert knowledge and ability to create incredibly realistic Victoriana, or whatever subject his characters are engrossed with at the time.

His last two books have in turn dealt with the complexity of the mind, and real friendship. In Da Da De Da Da Code, Rankin,  with consummate writing skill, maintains a fun story while  exploring what is insanity, with the main character thinking that he has a reincarnation of guitarist Robert Johnson in his mind as a monkey, telling him what to do, but the readers never know whether this is madness or part of the absurd fiction that they are used to, and the ending is a grim reflection on the depths our emotional scales can sink to and a reminder that we truly do not understand the human mind.

(cover to Retromancer by and (c) Robert Rankin)

With Retromancer, it was about time travel, puns and jokes in a German-occupied Britain, but it’s also about friendship, and what real friendship, comradeship, back to back looking after one another is about.  Again, the art of the comedian telling the hilarious joke that is in front of something terribly sad comes through here, and that is the sort of entertainer that Rankin is. He has great stories; they are ingenious and unique, although he uses many sources to derive his angle on life.  He engages with his readers, but underneath it all, he has a chilling cynicism and insight into humanity, like many observers, an aspect that needs deeper consideration.

To categorize Rankin for those of you unfamiliar, unfortunately, there is no genre per se for his work, so it gets lumped into the shoebox of Humorous Science Fiction and Fantasy. This is a category to which others, such as Pratchett, Holt and Fforde are also ascribed. Just like the Goons, Monty Python, The Young Ones and Little Britain, all the creators are quintessentially British, and are skilled in making readers smile and laugh, but apart from this, the commonality gets more difficult to identify. Of course if Pratchett is the Mainstream Master of this category, then Rankin is the Cult stand up rebellious comedian.

Rankin has a massive following. Estimated, he has sold around 3 million books, including foreign sales, but he is also a man of the people, engaging in activities, from Open Top Bus Tours of his beloved Brentford to making costumes for his attendance at conventions, performing live gigs playing the ukulele, while designing and creating all his book covers for the last fifteen years now, initially as sculptures, and of late being commissioned to draw the cover artwork.

The black and white artwork on the cover of this The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions is also by Rankin and it illustrates the characters and gives the readers a taste of the slight strangeness of what is in store, although some may think that it looks very detailed  and yet may have been done with a marker, and this may be true and is in itself allegorically the  simple beauty of Rankin.

It’s 1895 and initially we are introduced to our protagonist, young George, in charge of a showman’s grotesque, a pickled and quite rancid Martian, along with George’s employer, the feckless Professor Coffin who runs the Cabinet of Human Curiosities. They are showmen.

Following some interesting ‘precognistations’ that also make one of the aforementioned horrors of state a little clearer and more personal, George and the professor, who seem quite a pair of bounders, are soon both on an adventure as they use credit and aliases, and cheat their way on board the Empress of Mars, a massive trans-oceanic lighter-than-air vessel, with sumptuous trappings as they seek out the Japanese Devil Fish Girl, the ultimate showman’s freak, or is it folly?

(pic of Robert Rankin, borrowed from his Wiki entry)

Rankin conjures up a beautiful vision of Victorian Splendour, laying it on in a manner that sets it slightly apart from reality, but which still feels truly of the age, where solar system trade and travel is a given. Between Babbage and Tesla, and some nifty back engineering, the world is considerably askew from that at the end of the original Wells work and very far from the picture that Edison drew.

The author manages to provide us with Jovians and Venusians to complement the Martians of invading fame, while the callous and most horrid manner in which the war with the Martians is brought to their home planet and to an end is quite inspired in its despicability, but not unimaginable. The British Empire, for all its pomp, was never fair and quite frequently horrifyingly diabolical, something missed by many in a Steampunk costume these days, and Rankin ably reminds us that lying to the masses and using means justified by the ends is as common as ever.

The manipulation and true horror of what powers will do to stay in control, convince people that they have something to fear, and then deal with the matter in such an underhand and despicable manner is insightful.
This occurs on a number of levels, as mind control, both manipulative manoeuvring and chemically induced, are included in the story. There is nothing as horrible as thinking you may have been forced or induced to do something you didn’t want, and this is an important part of the immediate story, or how this is overcome, and how nastiness, greed and self interest can easily make any qualms disappear. Rankin has an inspired understanding of the human consciousness and thought process, yet he makes it feel light and understandable; there is no high level philosophy being shoved down the reader’s throat, but as part of the story, as part of the tale, we get to understand the evil nature of a man who wants to manipulate.
To counter this dark sounding aspect, as soon as George embarks on adventure, he meets Ada Lovelace, who quickly becomes a love interest as well as able adventuress. It is this relationship, full of quirks and George’s doubt, that becomes so important to the story and to a degree the positive aspect that fights against the surrounding dark.

We visit New York and the trip takes quite a few twists and turns, taking us to a massive predicament, for humanity and most importantly for London, leading to a wonderful battle between the various worlds inhabited of the solar system in London’s skies.

There is also an embedded moral message within this book, that goodness and love will overcome. This sounds rather whimsy, but it is George’s intrinsic goodness that allows him to overcome evil. There are other metaphorical references, a recurring anti-war message reflecting Britain’s current state of war and a finger is also pointed at the preposterousness of violence for the sake of beliefs.

I frequently feel that there has been a lack of reflective science fictional work shining a thoughtful light on the current conflicts. I realise that the job that was once science fiction’s, with Heinlein and Starship Troopers calling on his World War 2 experience, and Joe Haldeman and The Forever War  with‘Nam, James White and Tableau with the background of Irish Problems, John Scazi’s books perhaps a reflection of his own issues, but where are the books for the now conflicts? Ken McLeod’s Execution Channel is one I can hold up for sure, but it stands out. Meanwhile reality has caught up with SF, with an RAF squadron based in Nevada, piloting remote control MQ-9 Reaper UAV’s  in Afghanistan.

There have been so many books by combatants, so immediately; our shops shelves are full of them and sometimes it’s as if Iraq’s two wars and Afghanistan’s current ongoing war have all melded into one ‘war, somewhere dusty over there’ in people’s minds. Movies about Iraq and Afghanistan, Green Zone, Hurt Locker,  Jarhead, even Iron Man showing a terrible and gritty war, while these wars are essentially still ongoing. Movies during the Second World War were essentially propaganda, and hard grit with the realities of war took decades to show. If we consider MASH, its proximity to Vietnam meant it was about Korea, and in the eighties, The A-Team were Vietnam vets, in this new century no such gap of time is required for our sensibilities, they were Iraq Vets.

Chris Ryan and Ross Kemp keep us fed with books and television, while authors who have been there as journalists or more often now as combatants, such as Patrick Hennessey’s The Junior Officers’ Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars gives an immediate account of what is really going on. Added to that the blogs and You Tube raw footage, people can see the horror up close quite easily. Is this a job that has been lost by science fiction in the twenty-first century?

In fairness, one media I can say has been open to looking at the conflicts are comics. With Brian Wood’s DMZ, America is torn apart by Civil War, with Manhattan as a DMZ uncontrolled buffer. The media and governments are intrinsically linked and the violence and horror of war is nasty in its intimacy. It’s a fine example of science fiction reflecting on today’s woes, although the SF genre even in comics, doesn’t reflect it as much as I would like. We have Mark Millar’s War Heroes, and Brubakers Captain America, but there has been quite a lot of pure war literature through the medium of comics much of it independent: War Fix, Shooting War, War is Boring, and even in the mainstream of comics with  Combat Zone: True Tales of GIs in Iraq by Marvel Comics.

Robert Rankin is well known for his light, fun humour and easygoing patter, the ability to wink at the reader, and sometimes to break that fourth wall, and in this novel as always, there is much to enjoy and to be fascinated by, but there is a deeper meaning, a deeper reflection, perhaps some sort of subconscious reaction to the modern twentieth first century horrors that we can comfortably laugh at, in a science fiction novel set in 1895.

His ability to give a reader a cheap laugh as they sup on a pint, to impart the fun of adventure and vividly visualise great settings and yet as a by product, somehow, subconsciously even, with the laughter make a reader think just a little bit about what is going on in reality is a reflection of the intelligence of this writer. To laugh and later think about it is indeed unusual.

A splendid story, from an author who seems to be at home in a very far-fetched yet wonderfully realised Victorian Scientific Romance world.