Top Reads for 2020!

I had a lot of time to read this year. It was the thing I filled the 'gaps' with, and something that kept me motivated. I can safely say that I read more in 2020 then I have in any other year. Of the 127 books and graphic novels that I read, the following 12 are my favourites; the ones that stood out most...

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx: One of my favourite reads of the last 5 years - such a great novel, funny and richly quirky and tragic and just beautifully constructed and written. I read it back in Autumn while walking by the sea, with the cold wind whipping up around me, and the weather felt perfectly attuned to the content of the novel. More than six months later I'm still thinking back on it and hoping to read something else like it. 

My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf: A perfect intersection of meticulous, exhaustive research and one person's unique insight into the formative years of one of America's most notorious serial killers. Derf Backderf deals with the material with sensitivity and integrity, and works incredibly hard to avoid veering into speculation. Intensely magnetic.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: A wonderful, scary, hopeful, metatextual English teacher's dream of a post-apocalyptic novel. The author imagines a world struck down by a devastating pandemic (fancy that!) and adds layers of interlinked characters, multiple narratives that span decades, King Lear, and a fictional graphic novel-within-a-novel. Station Eleven took me four walks to read, and I would gladly read it again.

Lost Transmissions by Desirina Boskovich: This is a brilliant piece of counter-'canon' work that shines a light on an influential secret history of speculative fiction - the forgotten voices, the unsung artistic legends, the might-have-beens. Boskovich investigates the influence of science fiction on every aspect of pop culture - books, film, art, architecture, music, fashion - and presents the texts that slipped through the gaps or deserved more attention. It prompted me to seek out a bunch of new texts.

Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco: I was a teen when the Yugoslav Wars tore the Balkans apart. It was confusing, partly because '90s Australian media didn't know what to make of a war where Muslims were very clearly the victims. This non-fiction graphic novel makes an incredibly challenging and complex piece of recent history quite terrifyingly clear. 

The Voyage of QV66 by Penelope Lively: You may have noticed a few post-apocalyptic titles in this list. I read 15 such novels this year, and the ones that made it onto this list are the true stand-outs. The Voyage of QV66 takes a different angle in that it presents a post-apocalyptic vision of Britain where the animals have inherited a world mysteriously void of humans. It's a fascinating parable that also happens to be very entertaining, and is suitable for adults and children alike. 

The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera: A hardboiled, neo-noir, dirty-as-malaria, Mexican crime novella with shades of intense social decay. Imagine Romeo & Juliet mixed with Dashiell Hammett in a favela. It's a really quick, gripping read too, and I ordered Herrera's previous novel straightaway after reading. 

Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido: If you love detective fiction, film noir, intelligently-captured caricatures of incisive crime genre archetypes, or evocative artwork that conveys so much so perfectly, then you must read the graphic novel Blacksad. A great find for me this year :)

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin: I loved this. Ursula Le Guin demonstrates in this novel why she is widely considered one of the greatest sci-fi authors of all time. This carefully-written narrative offers an insightful, compelling, feminist vision of an androgynous society. Paradoxically of its time (the late '60s) and way ahead of its time. A+ effort.

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton: I got completely hooked once I got past the disorientating opening and adjusted to the rhythm of the writing. Dalton knocks it completely out of the park with this epic and finely-observed Aussie bildungsroman. Great characters and writing - lives up to the hype!

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald: An astoundingly heartfelt interweaving of falconry, personal grief, and an investigation of the pained, repressed life of the great English author T. H. White. Helen McDonald's prose is as sharp as the hawk's beak. This is great memoir writing.

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan: An eerie, strange, beautiful, enigmatic, post-apocalyptic classic of the 1960s. Possibly the best book I've read this year and one of the most unexpected. I was so inspired I created the artwork below, and I'm about to read it again!

And that's it!

Here are some other honourable mentions that would round out a 'Top 25' from 2020:

The 1950s counter-culture graphic novel memoir Cruisin' with the Hound by Spain Rodriguez, influential island-set graphic novel Streak of Chalk by Miguelanxo Prado, Kurt Vonnegut's political satire Mother Night, Afro-futurist Romeo & Juliet remake Prince of Cats by Ronald Wimberly, American gothic classic The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, Korean memoir Banned Book Club, Jules Verne's 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, Italo Calvino's On a Winter's Night a Traveler..., Steinbeckesque graphic novel Kings in Disguise by Jim Vance and Dan Burr, the haunting Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, Flea's memoir Acid for the Children, the challenging epic A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, and Waubgeshig Rice's First Nations-perspective on the end of the world, Moon of the Crusted Snow.

Book Journeys: Greybeard

I'm reading a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction at the moment. I've always been drawn to this genre but recent times have pushed me into its arms even further, for better or for worse. As far as the genre goes, I tend to find that the end of the world presented in each of these possible futures falls in one of the five general scenarios:

1. A virus eradicates most of humanity (The Earth Abides, The Last Man on Earth, Station Eleven)
2. Nuclear war or some other technology reduces the Earth to a wasteland (A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Last American, The Quiet Earth)
   
3. Resource shortages (Dry, Mad Max, Soylent Green)
4. Natural disaster (The Voyage of QV66, Waterworld, The Drowned Earth)
5. Alien invasion (A Quiet Place, War of the Worlds)

The novel Greybeard by Brian Aldiss falls into the category of nuclear destruction, which is probably to be expected from a text written during the Cold War. In this vision of the future humanity doomed itself in the early 1980s after exploding experimental nuclear weapons in orbit around the Earth. The dispersion of radiation renders the entire human race and many larger mammals sterile. 

Aldiss has twin narratives running alongside each other. One is set in the 2030s and follows 'Greybeard', a 'young' fifty year old who takes a boat down the Thames to escape the exponentially growing packs of stoats that attack and consume all animals in their path. The other thread moves back through the past in segments to show how the world has changed in the 50 years since 'the Accident'.

It's a very British story with a strong sense of pathos... this is a world where humanity is moving closer and closer to extinction as the last survivors become increasingly geriatric. On every step of his journey Greybeard seeks out hope in the various rumours and folk tales of humanity's potential survival. This is a world, however, where there is no second generation waiting in the wings... a world without children, without a future. 

It's an affecting sci-fi classic.

But now, let's look at the various covers it's had, which have stories of their own to tell...

I like this cover as it has a sort of ethereal quality to it. As a cover for this novel though? The figure on the front does not resemble the main character in any way - the main character is a healthy 50 year old who just happens to have a long grey beard, whereas the guy on the cover looks decrepit. Don't even get me started on what appears to be his wife wandering listlessly in the background... The desert-like environment is also not related to the novel at all either.

A more abstract cover that's suggestive of the theme if not actually that reflective of the novel's content.

I actually don't mind this cover - the dark, evocative illustration feels 'right' in terms of some of the novel's more grotesque elements.

A more straightforward approach. It's not inaccurate but the cartoonish style, while reflective of trends in 1970s science fiction illustration, is just a bit too goofy for my tastes.

The more serious literary approach. Boring.

This one makes it look like a fantasy novel in the style of J.R.R. Tolkien.

A Scandinavian edition - actually a mostly accurate depiction of the character, theme, and tone.

Another Scandinavian edition... this is an appalling idea for a cover because it depicts the final scene in the novel. Why would you give away the book's ending ON THE FRONT COVER?!

I like this one. There's nothing in the novel like this but it kind of works in terms of being suggestive of the novel's theme of nature taking back over the Earth.

I'm struggling with this one. What is even going on here? This has little to do with what happens in the novel.

This one looks like Charles Dickens meets Charles Bronson. Actually, in some ways that's a good description of the book itself...

Does the main character swagger around with a big gun? I'm starting to second-guess myself. I only finished reading this book yesterday but all these covers are gaslighting me into thinking that maybe Greybeard does walk around with a big gun. Even if he does, it isn't the point of the book and he doesn't really shoot it that much.

Every other cover, no matter how ridiculous, is better than this one. Boring.

This very 1980s looking cover is from a German edition. Another 'thematic' approach.

The woman on the front (presumably Greybeard's wife Martha) isn't even remotely close in appearance to any characters in the novel. That aside, this is a pretty accurate depiction... it's how I imagined Greybeard to look and the background seems suggestive of a post-apocalyptic Oxford, which is one of the novel's settings.

Okay. My Dad has this edition and I used to look at it all the time when I was a kid. I would look at it and I would be freaked out by every single element... the weird plants, the mismatched eyes, the random tusks growing out of his cheek and shoulder, the stringy beard, the brick in his throat, the black bird with human hands and a weird human mouth underneath its beak, the lack of sleeves on the guy's shirt. It fired my imagination... what on Earth is going on here? But now that I've read it, 30 years later, I can look at this cover and confidently say that this illustration is absolute bullshit. There is NOTHING in this book that connects to this image. Greybeard has no strange mutations, and there is no half-human half-bird character... in fact, there isn't even a bird in the book! Amazing.

This Is How It Starts...

I wrote this journal entry at the beginning of April after a brief trip to do some groceries. 

A time ago I wrote many songs and zines about life in Western Sydney. They were pieces of hyperbole, filled with cynicism and invective, and presented a world on the precipice of armageddon. Now, in light of the exponential spread of COVID-19 and the impact this is having on society, those days seem unexpectedly idyllic by contrast.

Like the steadily-climbing whine of a bomb dropping from far above, the past few days have inched by for me with accumulating anxiety. I've been home with the flu, and the realisation that we lacked defrosted meat for tonight's dinner led me out to Coles to do a quick shop.

The car park was fine. The store looked fine.

But inside is a different story. The penny drops when I walk into the chicken aisle and the freezers are nearly completely empty. People come rushing after the staffmember as he unloads precisely eight lots of chicken breast onto the shelf, the only ones available, and there is a quick and silent scramble. As I move through further aisles I note further absences... no rice, no pasta, no noodles, no eggs, no long-life milk, no toilet paper, no tissues, no chips, no pies.

I stop to listen to the cursing opposite me.

"There's no fucking pasta."

Another voice, louder, "Mate, watch your mouth. There's kids around."

The first man, tall and of scowling angular head, raises his own voice, "I don't fucking care. There's no bloody pasta."

Louder still, the smaller bloke, "Watch your mouth, there's kids around!"

"You want a piece of me?"

The two are suddenly standing staunchly against one another. Everyone in the aisle freezes where they are, necks twisted, faces bemused. The loudspeaker issues a request for security to Aisle 6.

As I move through the rest of the increasingly spartan store I notice that everyone is warily watching each other. A woman at the self-serve checkout pushes her jaw unnervingly close to the cashier who's come to see why she is making a commotion, "What are you gonna do? C'mon then!" And outside, a man leans into the window of a car and jabs his finger at the driver while yelling something unintelligible.

During my journey across the store, I see an older guy in a Guns 'n' Roses T-shirt lecture at least three different staff members (in different parts of the store), telling them that everyone is inevitably going to catch the Coronavirus and we should all stop worrying. He tracks his way back and forth across the store, seemingly not there to actually buy anything, like a New York sidewalk preacher-bum with an 'End is Nigh' sign strapped to his chest.

I clutch my bags close and make a straight line to my car.

The Obscure and Forgotten - Speculative TV Fiction

Our TV in the 1980s didn't quite look like this but was similar in several ways - it had push-buttons for each channel, stood on four legs, and had a brown faux-wood finish. Up until the late '90s TVs and other entertainment appliances were often referred to in the retail sector as 'browngoods' due to this plastic-wood trend.

I love television. You probably love it too, right? I have a longstanding committed relationship with the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, which originates with a childhood obsession with Doctor Who that was facilitated by the television. My love for Doctor Who will never die but over the years it has also broadened to encompass a lot of other stuff.

In the 21st century Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans are pretty much spoilt for choice. Star Trek and Star Wars have become huge franchises. Doctor Who has been rebooted to become a BBC flagship series. And then there's the Marvel and DC universes, which are this whole other thing. There are second tier telefantasies as well (remember the term 'telefantasy'? No? Just me?) - The X Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, and all the stuff that's found on the SyFy network.

What I find endlessly fascinating though are the 20th century diversions that explored the genre for relatively brief spans of time. The TV series that were weird and wonderful, that failed because the market they were tapping into weren't interested in another X Files ripoff, or the shows that continue to command a cult following. How many of these do you remember?

British Telefantasy

The Prisoner

Did you ever see The Simpsons episode where Homer starts a website under the name 'Mr. X' and begins exposing Springfield conspiracies? He ends up on an island with a guy called Number 6, and gets chased by a giant sentient ball when he escapes by sea. This whole bit is lifted straight from The Prisoner, with the actor Patrick McGoohan (perhaps best known to more modern audiences as the evil English king from Braveheart) basically reprising his role as Number 6 from the original TV series.  

The Prisoner went for just 17 episodes and dealt with a British secret agent who wakes up in a mysterious village by the sea after he attempts to retire from the business. Each episode 'Number 6' would attempt to escape from the Village and enter a duel of wits with Number 2 (a rotating roster of characters who work as administrators of the bizarre prison). It was kept ambiguous as to whether the Village was controlled by the Russians or the British, and Number 6 would contend with all manner of Cold War Sci-Fi delights - hallucinatory drugs, identity theft, mind control, and Rover (the surreal giant ball that prevented escape via sea). A true one-of-a-kind series.

The Tripods

I only caught The Tripods occasionally. This was a 1980s British TV series that ran for two years and was based on a trilogy of books by John Christopher (he later wrote a fourth and final prequel book in 1987 after the TV series finished). In this series the human race has been enslaved by aliens who pilot giant three-legged machines (the Tripods of the title), society has regressed to a medieval state, and a human resistance force secretly plots the destruction of their alien masters. Primarily marketed towards a kids' audience and featuring teenage protagonists, The Tripods is something I've been meaning to revisit because I've been on a bit of a post-apocalyptic kick at the moment.

Survivors

There's this writer called Terry Nation who wrote the second ever Doctor Who story and due to this he's officially credited as creating the series' most famous monster, the Daleks. The rights to the Daleks have remained with Nation's family ever since and the writer even briefly took them away from Doctor Who for a few years in the late 1960s so that he could use them in their own spinoff series. This never eventuated but Nation would use his Dalek-profile to create other science fiction TV series for the BBC in the 1970s. One of these was Survivors, a post-apocalyptic series about a Cold War bio-engineered virus escaping from its lab and wiping out the majority of humanity. For three years, Survivors tracked the ongoing efforts of a small group of surviving Britons as they navigated their way through a lawless post-virus landscape. I watched this on and off when I was a teenager and there was always something about it that was both unsettling and compelling.

Blake's 7

After Survivors wound down, Terry Nation went on to create a more popular series, Blakes 7, which he pitched as 'the Dirty Dozen in Space'. In this show a political subversive named Roj Blake is arrested by the totalitarian Terran Federation and deported to an offworld penal colony. Blake manages to escape with his own ship, assembling a motley crew of seven, and begins a campaign of interplanetary harassment against Earth's authoritarian government. What sets Blakes 7 apart from its most similar contemporary, Star Trek, is its gloomy dystopian themes and cast of roguish antiheroes. Whereas Star Trek presented a utopian view of a future human civilisation focused on exploring the stars, Blakes 7 depicts a brutal and exploitative regime that must be fought against by its own oppressed citizens. And whereas Star Trek's characters were idealistic and of generally sound morals, Blake's crew of criminals are often outright immoral or - at the least - incredibly bitchy towards each other. If you can get past the very British 1970s production values this is a great antithesis to Star Trek with some fun, memorable, and highly quotable characters.

Ultraviolet

Back in 1998 there was a single series UK television show in 1998 called Ultraviolet, a show about vampires that quietly came and went before the market became completely oversaturated with vampire fiction in the 2000s. This six episode police procedural took a sleek, technological view of vampires - never once referring to the undead by the 'v' word but instead calling them 'Code Fives'. It's a creepy, well put-together time capsule of 1990s genre television, hybridising the crime and horror genres and featuring early turns from Idris Elba and Jack Davenport as the stressed out detectives who find themselves increasingly out of their element. Ultraviolet is a welcome and stylish diversion in an age when original takes on vampires have become increasingly hard to come by.

American Telefantasy

Alien Nation

Starting as a 1988 movie set in the 'future' of 1991, Alien Nation was a buddy cop/science fiction film that paired up a veteran police officer with a rookie 'Newcomer' cop. The Newcomers are a race of alien refugees who have integrated into American society, and the film generated enough interest to be spun off into a TV series - albeit one that lasted for only one season and a couple of TV movies. It's basically a police procedural show with an added sci-fi element used to explore themes related to xenophobia, migrant narratives, multiculturalism, etc. It's a decent concept and the culture and biology of the Newcomers is explored enough to warrant the sci-fi tag, even if the rest of the framework remains firmly rooted in the lighthearted tone of an early 1990s buddy cop show.

Quantum Leap

Unlike most of the other series in this list Quantum Leap is one that mum, dad, and the grandparents can enjoy due to the lack of obvious science fiction elements like aliens, spaceships, or lasers. For five seasons Scott Bakula played physicist Sam Beckett, a man who becomes unstuck in time and 'leaps' into the bodies of different people throughout the 20th century. In order to move on from each time zone Sam must 'correct' something that went wrong in this period of history. It's a great show and, as mentioned, it tends to have wider appeal than most sci-fi due to its focus on social commentary and drama rather than predominantly science fiction conceits.

Earth 2

Earth 2 was a one-series wonder that aired in 1995. Ambitious in scope, Earth 2 is set in the 22nd century when Earth has become uninhabitable and humans live mostly on space stations. A small group of colonists escape their space station to start the colony of New Pacifica on a planet with Earth-like conditions and, after becoming marooned and scattered across the new world's surface, they begin to pioneer a new beginning. There are a lot of good ideas in Earth 2 and enough angles to build a solid mythology that could have given the series longevity and depth - the colonists find themselves contending with two indigenous races, an Earth government resistant to the idea of the colony, shifting dynamics within the colonist group, and the planet's legacy as a secret penal settlement. At times the series could be a bit hokey and a little too American but I have to admit that I was quite bummed out when it was prematurely cancelled as it promised to explore some pretty interesting territory.

Dark Skies and American Gothic

Remember the mid-'90s when The X Files was a huge hit and the world seemed gripped by Muldermania? There was an X Files soundtrack with a secret track hidden at the start of the CD, a movie released at the show's height of popularity, and two spinoff series (Millennium, The Lone Gunmen). But perhaps the most interesting impact of the show was how it shaped a new wave of American television series. The X Files dealt with two completely separate strands of speculative fiction loosely aligned under the catch-all term 'paranormal': one being aliens and the other being supernatural events. Few shows seem able to explore both the fantasy and science fiction genres with as much balance and success so it was inevitable that the various imitation shows would opt to choose one or the other.  

Dark Skies was a science fiction series developed by a rival network as a direct competitor to the The X Files. Set during the 1960s, Dark Skies explored the idea that an alien race known as the Hive had infiltrated the American government and were manipulating human history in order to pave the way for invasion. It was basically like all the story arc episodes of The X Files but tied into real life events from the recent past, and it only lasted one season.

American Gothic was another series developed by a rival network in the mid-'90s, also only ran for one season, and leaned into the Americana-based horror aspects of The X Files. It focused on the evil machinations of Lucas Buck, a small-town sheriff with supernatural powers whose hobbies included rape and murder. I remember watching a few episodes of this show when I was 15 and felt very creeped out by it.

Space: Above and Beyond

Another mid-'90s one season effort, Space: Above and Beyond was created by two regular writers from The X Files but has more in common with Star Trek and Starship Troopers than the paranormal. Set about 70 years into the future, this series presented an early Earth Empire coming into conflict with a more experienced space-faring alien race called the Chigs. The writers had a plan to unfold their narrative over five seasons, with various subplots put into motion throughout these first 23 episodes. Fans were understandably frustrated when the show was cancelled before it had a proper chance to get going, however, I can't say I was ever particular enamoured with this one. Being a '90s show created by the same production team as The X Files, the lighting was incredibly dark and shadowy, and the militaristic aspect of the storyline gets kind of old when it takes 21 episodes to get around to even showing the audience what the aliens look like.

seaQuest DSV

Marketed as 'Steven Spielberg's seaQuest DSV' (though he had little to do with it other than chucking some money at it), this series basically became an underwater version of Star Trek despite initial intentions to do something a bit different. 

I don't know what it was about the 1990s but there was this brief moment when everyone in Hollywood seemed to forget how expensive it is to film on water. Waterworld and Cutthroat Island were two films from 1995 that blew out their budgets due to the difficulties involved with water-filming and seaQuest was reported to be quite expensive for a television series too. That said, it managed to stay afloat (sorry) for three seasons. Roy Scheider signed on as the lead but became angry when the focus of the show shifted from realistic near-future science fiction in Season 1 to things like aliens, water monsters, and psychic powers in Season 2. The third season limped along with new cast members and further efforts to 'retool' things with a new lead actor, Michael Ironside, who stipulated in his contract that his character would never be seen talking to Darwin, the ships' talking dolphin. I watched seaQuest on and off when I was a teenager and even back then I could see that the show was a mess; unable to settle on a consistent tone or purpose.

Sliders

Finally a TV series about tiny burgers. The impact of Sliders on fast food cuisine shouldn't be underestimated.

As usual with these sort of things the above list is by no means complete. Other shows I've heard of but never had a chance to watch include: The Last Train, Space: 1999. Star Cops, Tomorrow People, Doomwatch, Sapphire & Steel, V, UFO... at one point these shows felt like points of interest and were just a little bit lesser known than the more popular ones but, as time marches on, some of them seem to be becoming increasingly obscure and less spoken about.

Which is inevitable. But also sad.

Book Journeys: A Canticle for Leibowitz

A Canticle of Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic novel, albeit one with very little in common with other books I've read in the genre. Starting in the 26th century and ending about 1200 years later, Walter M. Miller Jr. depicts the gradual return to civilisation that takes place after world wide nuclear war has reduced America to a medieval state. This fascinating reconstruction of society in the blasted feudal deserts of the American Southwest takes place from the perspective of an order of Catholic monks who seek to canonize a 'Saint Leibowitz', a Jewish electrical engineer from the U.S. Army who hid with said monks and preserved 20th century knowledge through the clandestine art of 'booklegging'. 

Walter M. Miller Jr. was predominantly known for writing science fiction short stories. A Canticle for Leibowitz is a fixup of three such interrelated short stories into one narrative, and also the only novel that Miller Jr. had published in his lifetime. In some circles, A Canticle for Leibowitz is considered 'Christian Science Fiction', being that it presents a sympathetic view of the Church as a preserver of knowledge in a world gone mad. Another common perspective is that the novel is a crossover text of sorts, being that its message extends far into the realm of secular interests, and that the role of the Church in this future 'Dark Age' is a echo of the role that various orders of monks played throughout the original Middle Ages in preserving knowledge and pioneering innovations. The novel is deep in scope but never becomes esoteric or lofty, with Miller Jr. keeping his story firmly grounded in relatable human characters.

I was attracted to this novel because I love the American Southwest, and I love post-apocalyptic novels. The post-apocalyptic genre portrays possible scenarios that might arise from our overriding need to survive, which is a theme that will always resonate with readers. A Canticle for Leibowitz is also a good example of the little-discussed 'feudalpunk' subgenre, where science fiction and medieval technology intertwine, which also provides fertile ground for discussing the patterns of history as we know it.

I'm also found myself drawn to this novel because of its tragic backstory. On one level A Canticle for Leibowitz, published in 1959 and projecting a future created from the ashes of nuclear armageddon, is very much reflective of a Cold War context. On a more personal level, however, it's a novel that grew out of the author's own trauma. Walter M. Miller Jr. served as part of the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II and was involved in the aerial bombing of an ancient Benedictine Monastery in Italy, which would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life. He came to idolise the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War and, by the 1990s, he was a recluse suffering from debilitating depression, disallowing even his own literary agent to ever meet him. 

Sadly, the author committed suicide in 1996, two years after the death of his wife. He had been working on a sequel to his novel for at least 15 years but ultimately decided that he was unable to finish it for psychological reasons. A deal was made for another writer, Terry Bisson, to complete the book. The presumption at the time was that Miller Jr. hadn't managed to make it work and that this was why he abandoned it, but surprisingly, Bisson found that Miller Jr. had written nearly 600 pages and had a very clear outline of how the novel should end. I haven't read Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman and, to be honest, I'm not sure that I ever will. I enjoyed A Canticle for Leibowitz so much that I wouldn't want to besmirch its memory in any way.

Book Journeys: Station Eleven

I don't often read new releases and, yes, I count a book printed in 2014 as a relatively new release. I tend to instead spend my time catching up on classics, favourite authors, graphic novels, and the NSW HSC Prescriptions List (No, no, I've never actually claimed to be fun at parties).

Last year I returned to a much-loved hobby, reading while walking. This has led to a strange series of synchronous coincidences in which the weather coincided with my reading experience. In the last four months:

• I read The Shipping News, about life on an island, while walking the coastline of Stanwell Park. 
• Journey to the Stone Country, about the sparse rocky inland of Northern Queensland, read while sweltering in the dry heat of our recent and devastating Australian summer. 
• And then there was Island Home, Tim Winton's nature-inspired memoir of growing up alongside fragile and unsung ecosystems such as the heath-lands of south-west Australia, which I read while walking the semi-developed swamps of Werrington.

Okay, that last one is a stretch, but spare a thought for the romantic in me. 

Less romantic is the COVID-19 pandemic that currently casts a pallid silence over the world. I picked up Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel for no reason other than the fact that I liked the minimalist design of the cover, and metaphorically gasped as I walked my quietening neighbourhood a month ago and came to the realisation that I was reading a post-apocalyptic story that described in scarily accurate detail what the world might look like after a devastating pandemic wipes out the majority of humanity. 

It took me four walks to read Station Eleven from start to finish, and it's the sort of book that made me want to keep on walking. It's a compelling read, with easily-read prose that belies certain complexities. For a start, St. John Mandel (is that the whole last name? I'm never sure) utilises a non-linear structure to encapsulate fifty years of events, four or five protagonists, and layers of meaning that keep you thinking long after the novel has ended. 

In a way this is a book about the importance of art in the face of tragedy and cataclysm. Relevant, huh? In Station Eleven, a single piece of amateur art is used to form the thematic core of the entire narrative; a suggestion that art's relevance is entirely dependent on its significance to the reader. This is further exemplified by the text's equal use of examples from both high culture (Shakespeare, Beethoven) and low culture (the remnants of pop culture that still persist, with the Star Trek: Voyager quote "Survival is insufficient" taking centrestage). The text circles around these ideas and doubles-back in multiple ways, employing dramatic irony ("one day she'll show it to the world and we'll all say we knew her when"), symbolism (the eponymous comic that holds the various threads of the different time periods together), and metatextuality ("You don't have to understand it, it's mine").

It's a beautiful and breathtaking piece of accessible science fiction that asks big questions about religion, survival, art, and humanity. How could anyone say no to that?