But the real achievement of the novel lies in its ability to connect the various episodes together to deliver a stark criticism of the system in which we live. Under the Process, ‘No one knows what makes a difference to eviction’, whether it is one’s behaviour, feelings and thoughts, one’s non-optimal functioning, or one’s actions. People understand that under the Process ‘no one is indispensable. No one is necessary’. This statement that the inhabitants of Lewes have internalised applies to their present reality, but is also relevant to the soldiers who die in the re-enacted war and to life before the Process. As James realises he is ‘not nostalgic for the lost age of job’ because ‘it was an arbitrary sorting mechanism for his class’. Just as evictions under the Process appear arbitrary, the job one had before the Seizure, and one’s eviction from the job, seemed arbitrary. As jobs before the Process were increasingly performed by machines and algorithms – notably in the financial sector – ‘people ceased to be a vital component of the economic system’ and were therefore redundant. The novel articulates the ways in which many of us are made to feel in the aftermath of the financial crisis under different types of processes which consider human lives as part of algorithmic calculations.
I really enjoyed this novel for its cynical reflection of our own world and I cannot praise it highly enough: eloquent, intelligent, brilliant.
More reviews are also available on our website at
www.shorelineofinfinity.com/reviews
MultiVerse
Russell Jones
MultiVerse–Shoreline of Infinity’s regular sci-fi poetry section–is now open for public submissions.
Send us your time travelling tanka, scientific sonnet, robotic rondel, high-tech haiku, alien acrostics and futuristic free verse.
Poets featured so far in MultiVerse include Iain M Banks, Ken MacLeod, Marge Simon and Jane Yolen.
We publish two poets per issue. We’re looking for poems that whiz and bang with unique voices and ideas, and quality writing is paramount to us.
Send us your poems via our website at: www.shorelineofinfinity.com/submissions/poetry
Jane Yolen and Marge Simon: The Grandmaster Special
Welcome back to MultiVerse, a space for you to explore sci-fi poetry by contemporary poets from across the globe (and potentially beyond!)
This issue we’re excited to introduce poetry by Jane Yolen and Marge Simon, two Grandmasters of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
Jane Yolen is a frighteningly versatile and prolific writer; in her poems “Back in Time” and “Second Coming” we get a sense of her prismatic interests in form and storytelling. She is a Grandmaster of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, which is a good place to start if you wish to expand your repertoire on SF poetry.
“Back in Time” takes a familiar time-travel scenario, which suits the quick-tale nature of poetry perfectly, zip-lining between a Now, a far Past and a potential Future in just three stanzas. The poem sets a scenario which leaves a seed in the head: what is the warning, and were the time travellers right to take heed of it?
Yolen’s “Second Coming” (first published in Where Rockets Burn Through, Penned in the Margins) proposes that God is a not-to-be-messed-with female alien, and yet her contradictions and nuances show her to be much more complex than the simple binaries we often attach to a god. The poem implies that a female god could be more human (in compassion and ferocity) than we might expect. Structurally, Yolen’s use of repetition mimics that of a sermon and we, the readers, become complicit in its recital.
Marge Simon is also a Grandmaster of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, so this issue of Shoreline of Infinity is something of a Grandmaster Special. As well as sci-fi, she’s a writer and editor of horror, so isn’t to be tangled with (for fear of your impending horrific science fictional demise).
Simon’s first poem, “The Human Guest” follows a female being (we might assume an alien on another planet), who is raped by a human. Think he’ll get away with it? See for yourself! Simon tackles a very real and traumatic issue with great compassion, but sci-fi and horror join forces here to deliver some sense of justice. Simon’s stanzas lengthen as the story gains depth and momentum, cutting short in the last stanza to reflect the conclusive ending.
Our final poem, again from Marge Simon, takes on a distinctly romantic feel which contrasts sharply with “The Human Guest”. In “South”, two lover attempt to survive a long winter with “synthetic skins” and “cryo foods”, but things take a more lonesome turn when the stars call and one of them disappears into the frosty night. Again, Simon uses sci-fi scenarios to discuss very relevant human problems which many of us face and must weather.
Back in Time
“. . . back to a time when only the stones howled.”
- Louise Erdrich (The Master Butcher’s Singing Club)
So we got out of our time machine,
set for the beginning of the world.
The whirr of the fans and dials finally ceasing,
we opened the locks and stepped out
expecting a brand new quiet Earth,
the only sound to be ferns uncurling,
the kind of green voice that whispers,
not like the noise of humans, who are never still.
I placed my foot on the nearest stone,
like any explorer ready to claim the land.
The stone began to howl, as if it knew
the future, could predict pillage, spillage,
the spoils of war; could foresee stones broken,
fracked, fractured, fallen. It gave voice to the silence,
made loud protest to the universe.
