All These Worlds: Reviews & Essays by Niall Harrison

(Briardene Books, 2023)

Reviewed by Steven French

As a former editor of both Vector and Strange Horizons, Niall Harrison knows whereof he speaks when it comes to mapping the landscape of recent science fiction. This collection of 55 reviews, covering novels and short stories as well as entire magazine issues, and spanning the years 2005 to 2014, is bookended by a clutch of typically informative essays. It opens with Harrison’s reflections on the changing state of play over the last twenty-odd years, charting the rise—and fall—of New Weird, Mundane SF, Slipstream… all dismissed as movements that ‘turned out to largely be moments’ (p. 10). Nevertheless, he notes, their cumulative effect was to batter down various walls and the debate over ‘racefail’, the subsequent Sad and Rabid Puppy backlash, and the latter’s fade into pathetic irrelevance are all touched upon. Of course, as Harrison emphasises, there is still more to be done, along a number of axes, including the further internationalisation of the genre.

This is picked up in his concluding essay which originally appeared in Vector two years ago and which offers a kind of ‘Accelerated History’ of Chinese short stories in the 21st century. Here 84 pieces by 27 authors are surveyed, offering a useful contrast with what was happening in English-language SF around the same time and also, as Harrison remarks, encouraging consideration of what was brought to our attention and what was left out.

Harrison does an excellent job in framing these developments just as he does with the preceding thoughtful essay, ‘Unstable Histories in the Space of Dreams’. Here he takes the question all historians must ask, namely ‘what history are we to write?’ and poses it with respect to science fiction itself. Contrasting the ‘narrow’ approach of the likes of Mike Ashley and his history of Anglophone magazines (see https://bsfa.co.uk/news/13151871), with the Vandermeer’s Big Book of Science Fiction and Glenn’s recent MIT reprint series, Radium Age, Harrison notes that inevitably all histories fail, in one way or another, but then what is important, and useful to note, is how they fail. And although his own sympathies lie with the broader stance, given how ‘multifarious and fluxing…[SF]…currently is’ (p. 387) he accepts that perhaps a more granular approach is required.

Sandwiched between these two concluding essays is a set of historical documents in themselves, in the form of his blog posts from 2009 to 2013 examining the shortlists for the Clarke Awards. Appended to these are short and sometimes wryly amusing comments, recording which novel actually won that year.

However, the bulk of the volume is composed of the afore-mentioned assorted reviews, divided into yearly sections. What is immediately notable is how generous Harrison typically is, seeking out something worthwhile even within those stories that don’t quite take off. So, in his 2005 discussion of Holly Phillips’ In the Palace of Repose, which also originally appeared in Vector, he remarks that despite this collection’s ‘rough edges’ there are moments of ‘rare skill, to be treasured’ (p. 29). Having said that, his critical teeth are occasionally bared, as when he argues that Philip Mann’s The Disestablishment of Paradise is betrayed by its rigidity and simplicity and concludes that as an example of environmental SF, ‘[i]t does more harm than good’ (p. 351).

Whatever critical stance he adopts, what is significant is that Harrison uses his reviews to ask important questions. His 2006 analysis of L. Timmel Duchamp’s short story, “The World and Alice”, for example, opens with the key questions, ‘Whose world is being described?’ and ‘Who is being left out?’ In answering these, Harrison suggests, feminist science fiction has clearly been ahead of the curve and in this context he presents Duchamp’s story as ‘a lament for the political consciousness (or lack thereof) of our times: graceful, bleak, familiar.’ (p. 62.)

Similarly, he asks, ‘[t]his late in the day of the science fiction and fantasy genres, has it all been said?’ (p. 244), a question he insists the protagonist of Dexter Palmer’s The Dream of Perpetual Motion, must face, as must the novel itself, mashing up as it does, steampunk with The Tempest in an attempt to ‘create meaning from old cloth’ (p. 248). A deeper question, perhaps, is how close to the truth (however that is understood) should our stories be expected to cleave? This is presented within a 2009 review of Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold which like many of its peers, leverages modern attitudes and language into a fantasy setting. I would maintain that by doing so, the novel is able to speak to contemporary concerns—in this case about vengeance being just another narrative that people latch onto in order to give their lives some semblance of meaning—but Harrison argues that its frenetic plot blunts the impact and leaves him wondering just how close it does steer to the truth in the end.

If this all sounds a bit worthy, I should also say that throughout Harrison offers the kind of nicely turned phrase that makes the reader sit up and take notice. His review of M. Rickert’s Map of Dreams, also from 2006, presents it as a set of tales in which ‘grace is always tempered by sorrow, and sorry always holds the possibility of grace.’ (p. 75.) On the other hand, Adam Robert’s 2008 novel Swiftly, is described as ‘impure, not too clean, not too comfortable’. But then, of course, the same could be said of humanity itself and so, Harrison concludes, ‘as I roll Swiftly around in my memory, I think perhaps I can feel an irritant becoming a pearl.’ (p. 140.)

Whether you agree with these verdicts or not, the point, as Harrison insists, ‘is not to be right, but to encourage others to think about why I might be, or not.’ (p. 429.) As thought-provoking and erudite as this collection is, little such encouragement is needed.

Review from BSFA Review 22 - Download your copy here.