Claire North
Hachette
Annalee Newitz
Hachette UK; Tor Books (US)
This week, I bring before you new聽works by two of the most interesting writers in science fiction. The first is As We Fall Through Time, by the outrageously talented and versatile writer Claire North, which opens on the eve of the French Revolution. 鈥淭he time traveller met Olivier at Madame Pelassier鈥檚 soir茅e,鈥� writes North. 鈥淭he year was 1789鈥︹��
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The time traveller, who doesn鈥檛 have the usual pox marks of the era, and smells very faintly of papaya-scented bubble bath, is our hero Cal. He is drawn to Olivier, a young French soldier. Olivier obviously has no idea that Cal is a hugely experienced time traveller, or that Cal is only at Madame Pelassier鈥檚 in search of an artefact that can heal breaches in reality.
The pair fall in love. North is wonderful at this stuff; everything is fresh and delicious. Things begin to go wrong for the men when Cal will not accept that Olivier is going to die in service to Napoleon. Cal starts to fiddle with time, and then our tender love story evolves into a tightly plotted time-travel thriller, with Cal zipping around in a truly dizzying manner.
If you like your time-travel stories fractured and twisty 鈥� but with love at the heart of them 鈥� then this novel is surely for you.
A Wall Is Also a Road, meanwhile,is the latest novel by author Annalee Newitz, who is also a columnist for New 精东传媒.
鈥淣ewitz clearly put a lot聽of thought into what a highly intelligent single-celled culture would look like鈥�
The chief protagonist in this inventive and playful tale is Gardenpath, a naive biologist studying life in other parts of the galaxy. They are聽also a single-celled organism, more specifically a slime mould. From a human perspective, this is a topsy-turvy part of the universe, where single-celled amoebae are apex creatures and multicellular organisms are pond scum.
Gardenpath attends an elite university, but is able to visit the planet they have chosen to study 鈥� Earth, as it happens 鈥� by donning a 鈥済alaxy suit鈥� and being teleported to their destination. The galaxy suit can also make Gardenpath look like one of Earth鈥檚 dominant multicellular creatures (a human). Amazingly, the local folk show signs of being intelligent.
Another twist is Gardenpath has transported themselves to Pompeii in the years before Vesuvius erupts. Even twistier, Gardenpath ends up聽being taken in by Julia, a woman聽who works in a brothel. The juxtaposition of Gardenpath鈥檚 (initially) utopian life at the alien university with the reality of Julia鈥檚 human life, and the looming threat of the volcano, makes for a聽surprising and entertaining mix.
Newitz clearly put a lot of thought into working out what a highly intelligent, sophisticated single-celled culture would look like, and that also makes for great enjoyment. Gardenpath and their friends 鈥渃luster鈥� at night, sinking into a single clump to recharge. There is talk of them 鈥減uddling鈥� when things get too much. To have sex, they produce any number of probing tendrils to insert into each other and use them to stroke each other鈥檚 nucleuses. (Eeww! Eeew?)
Actually, there is quite a lot of sex in the novel, both alien-with-alien and alien-with-human, and all of it very amusing. Gardenpath鈥檚 failure to tell the human sexes apart 鈥� since aliens readily produce聽sticking-out bits of flesh鈥搃s a good joke among many.
Newitz is a terrific, fantastically imaginative writer with a deep interest in personhood, identity, honour and agency, and this is a wonderful addition to their already substantial body of work.
Emily H. Wilson is the author of the Sumerians series (Inanna, Gilgamesh and Ninshubar, all published by Titan) and she is currently working on her first sci-fi novel. She is a former editor of New 精东传媒 and you can follow her on Instagram @emilyhwilson1
Emily also recommends鈥�
Kaliane Bradley
Hachette UK; Simon & Schuster (US)
The early sections of the new Claire North novel, in which Cal and Olivier fall in love, strongly reminded me of the聽early chapters of The Ministry of Time, both in the recreation of a military officer from the past, but also in how tender and vivid聽the love affair was
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