#malagash

3. What were your top five books of the year?

The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed

I loved this. In it, we follow a woman who is a "camera", a reporter with VR tech in her brain so she can transmit thoughts and senses directly to her viewers, as she uncovers a conspiracy. This book is what cyberpunk should be, IMO -- I find most cyberpunk to be too far into the techbro mindset, all cold and distant and dispassionate, and while I love the sandbox of trans/posthumanism that cyberpunk is known for, I just couldn't deal with the tone of so many of the books that were lauded for their contributions to the genre. The Fortunate Fall is a distinct and surely deliberate deviation from that trend -- it's warm and human and explores how we can form connection, not fall into isolation. If you like posthumanism but find Neuromancer too noir for your tastes, try this out instead.

Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck

A collection of eerie short stories that I adored, ranging from an exploration of the classic changling child storyline to the unsettling life cycle of creatures on an alien world. I still think about this book regularly and I read it back in April.

Malagash by Joey Comeau

This book had been on my list for a while because its title is the name of a teeny tiny village (more like a couple strips of houses on a spit of land) in my province and anything named that locally needs to be read. Plus, the author wrote the A Softer World web comic, which I love. The book itself is a short but sweet exploration of grief as a teenager navigates her father's last few weeks, even while developing her own tech project to keep him alive.

Rocannon's World by Ursula K. Le Guin

I've read Le Guin's more famous books (Left Hand, The Dispossessed, etc.), but I made the decision to tackle her entire list of works, starting at the beginning and going from there. Rocannon's World is definitely more roughly cut than Le Guin is known for -- it's her first novel -- but I enjoyed it far more than I expected to, especially given it was also a lot more medieval fantasy (a genre I don't usually enjoy) than I was expecting it to be as a part of the Hainish Cycle. Even the ""bad"" works from a good author are good, y'know?

Clearing the Plains by James Daschuk

This one was tough to get through, both because of its academic tone (I have little practice reading academic history, so it took time to get into the rhythm of it) and the content itself (heartbreaking, frustrating, infuriating), but it was so good. The author clearly knows this stuff inside out, and he neatly combed through the tangled snarl of events, connections, and decisions to show how disease and famine were used to manage "the Indian problem" in the plains of what is now western Canada.

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

(I'm going to interpret this as "new to me" because I don't tend to read truly new authors -- not intentionally, but just because I'm never on the cutting edge of anything and my TBR list goes back literal decades...)

I came across The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed from a queer spec-fic reclist and in tracking it down, realized it was a lucky time to have tried to find it because it had one printing back when it came out (1996) and nothing again until 2024. Unfortunately for my eagerness to read everything else she's written, The Fortunate Fall is Reed's only novel -- there are a few short stores I plan to track down, but just the one book. However, she posted on Mastodon a couple years ago that she's writing another, so I'll be keeping an eye out for that!

roman von joey comeau

erschienen 2021

im luftschacht verlag

isbn: 978-3-903081-51-2

(von tobias bruns)

sunday begleitet gemeinsam mit ihrem bruder und ihrer mutter den vater am sterbebett. in seiner heimatstadt in der kanadischen provinz liegt er nun im krankenhaus und jederzeit kann er seinem krebs erliegen. nicht nur die drei begleiten ihn, auch geschwister und andere familienmitglieder kommen, um persönlich von ihm abschied zu nehmen, solange es noch geht. sunday möchte es aber nicht akzeptieren, dass ihr vater stirbt. die passivität ihrer familie nervt sie, sie will versuchen, ihren vater am leben zu halten. sie weiß, dass er gehen muss aber sie hat einen plan, wie er dennoch bleibt. sunday nimmt unbemerkt jedes einzelne gespräch mit ihrem vater auf - sogar gespräche ihres vaters mit anderen familienangehörigen. sie hört sie sich hinterher an, dann transkribiert sie diese. sie ist dabei mit seinen worten - einfachen alltäglichen worten - einen computervirus zu programmieren, der sich über millionen computer weltweit verbreiten soll. nichts bösartiges - ihr vater soll einfach auf diese weise für immer präsent bleiben. in der schmerzlichen situation keimt die beziehung zu ihrem kleinen bruder langsam wieder auf, nachdem sie sich lange zeit entfremdet hatten und sunday holt ihn so nach und nach mit ins boot, dem vater das weiterleben zu schenken.

“Your father is going to die. He’s very afraid,’ the doctor says.

And then she says it for another half hour.

This was the point where Malagash really took me by the collar and shook me. The context of the writing is already intriguing-- the author is Joey Comeau (of A Softer World fame), after all. But before Malagash I’d only ever read the A Softer World, We Are Become Pals, and the man’s short stories, so whether or not he could really translate the punchiness and good pace of those stories to a novel. Admittedly, Malagash isn’t transversing too far from that terrain-- there’s no traditional plot with a defined looming goal, and the writing is still in the sort of snapshot style used in his writing (And he writes it well).