Science Fiction in general has repeatedly represented time as a spatial expanse, which
can be explored backwards into the past, into the future, or laterally into alternate histories.
Alternate Histories came into its own as a genre after World War Two, and that war, together
with the persistence of Byzantine or Roman Empires and the USA Civil War have persisted
as the most frequent subjects of this fiction. Liz Williams ' The Poison Master ' is for me a
classic in this field. The novel had its genesis in the short story ' The Banquet of the Lords
of Night', which first appeared in the June 2002 edition of Azimov's and was republished
in her first collection of stories entitled ' The Banquet of the Lords of Night & Other Stories'.
It is exquisite. Liz Williams is a craftswoman par excellence when it comes to character and
to plot, but there are layers upon layers in this novel that draw the reader back to re-readings.
The book opens in 1547 with John Dee's staging of Aristophanes ' Peace', which necessitates
the construction of a flying dung-beetle, on the back of which the hero of the play reaches
Olympus. This mechanical contraption brought into being with the aid of ropes and pulleys
coupled with the rage of Arabic arithmetic and the publication of De Revolutionibus with its
intriguing notion that the earth journeyed around the sun prompts Dee to achieve his real
work-that of a working flying machine. Alivet Dee is an alchemical apothecary who lives in
Latent Emanation, a cruel world where the mysterious Night Lords rule the Nine Families, the
Nine Families govern the Unpriests, and the Unpriests govern the rest of the people. Hundreds
of years ago, the Night Lords had spiralled down above the World River delta in a drift-boat
with a hold of human captives. It is the duty of every ordinary citizen to partake in the Search.
Dreaming menifew combined with opium is the drug of choice in the barn Alivet goes too in
the opening Section of the novel to see if she can find out where the humans on Latent have
come from. Each dream or vision is recorded, but Alivet chooses not to record the vision she
has of her twin sister Inkrietta, who has been enbonded to the Night Lords. She is devoting her
life to making enough money to buy Inki back. To that end she lives in a rookery and sends all
of her saved monies back to her aunt Elitta. She works for Genever Thant and when a client, a
certain Madimi Garland dies in the fume room after experiencing the drug sozoma, Alivet has
to flee. Pursued by the Night Lords, the Unpriests and a dark force that haunts her dreams,
she is rescued by Ghairen, a Poison Master from another world who offers her a chance to
save her sister-and humanity as well. How can she trust a professional assassin? The novel
is divided into eleven sections, mirroring in many ways the alchemical process itself. All
Science Fiction writers must world build, but it is the attention to detail here that marks it
above many other lesser writers. There are the anube with their ' brass cogs whirring in the
implants in its throat, below the bold jackal's jaws'. They are not interested in money, and
exemplify the dignity of work. There is the food served at the Night Lords banquet :-
.." She prepared fondants of gloom, sorbets of shadows, and sherbets of dusk, each one
gathered from the unseen corners of Latent Emanation.."
There are the dangerous water-children and liches, the monsters of the marshes. There are
the Unpriests scarab fliers. Against this world, there is the past of John Dee, his escape
from the clutches of Bishop Bonner's desire to burn him as a sorcerer, and quite simply the
best description of rescue by an angel in literature today:
...." Its face was blank and cold as marble, and as Dee stared, it turned slowly on its own
axis so that he could see that it had not one face, but four. Two of the faces were female,
the lips set in an awful fixed smile. The other two faces were male. It wore robes and it
was transparent, as if made of some vitreous substance. Its mouths stayed closed and it
continued to revolve slowly, like a planetary orb..."
The Elizabethans took from the Middle Ages the modified view of the universe, which
Platonic and Biblical in origin, radically differed from our own. For them all creation
was ranged in an unalterable order from the angels down to man-for whom the world
existed-and thence to the beasts and plants.Dee's search for meaning in the fields of
mathematics and devotion had ramifications for Latent Emanation and its citizens quest
for their origins. Liz Williams has called this her kabbalistic novel, and there are echoes
of the most ancient book of the Kabbalah- ' The Book of Creation ' in her novel. There
is an assertion made by many Science Fiction writers that they are not writing about the
future, but that history in this fiction is actually giving ' distortions of the present'. This
is certainly true of ' The Poison Master', but it transcends this distortion too by offering
its readers an alchemical experience of their own, reflected in the structuring of each of
the eleven sections of the novel, named after the alchemical processes themselves. I am
stunned that this book did not garner every available award at the time of publication. It
certainly deserves wider readership, and will I think remain as one of my favourite reads
of all time. A classic on every level.
From the mid nineties until 2000, Liz Williams lived and worked in Kazakhstan. ' Nine Layers
of Sky' reflects upon her experiences there. Elena Irinova now cleans office buildings, but she
was once a Soviet rocket scientist. She crosses paths with Ilya Muromyets, an eight-hundred
year old bogatyr. Bogatyrs are stock characters in medieval East Slavic legends, akin to a
Western knight-errant. Ilya is now a heroin addict dreaming of a death that will never come.
The rusalki prevent him dying.. Rusalka are female entities in Slavic folklore, resembling our
mermaids.All Science Fiction texts are intertexts in that they generate their meaning with
reference to other texts. The intertextual dimension is particularly strong here. The Epic of
Manas is a traditional epic poem dating back to the 18th century, but claimed by the Kyrgyz
people to be much older. Manas is not quite as heroic in this updated version of him. Ilya and
Elena are brought together by a mysterious artefact, a piece of technology, which offers a
glimpse into another dimension-creating a dangerous breach in a world Elena thought she
knew. One of the most recurrent themes in Science Fiction is its handling of new if not
bizarre tecnhologies, allowing us to confront our fears of displacement and on a more prosaic
level our simple technophobia. The standard tropes of stepping into a parallel world, and
immortals living among us belong very much in the field of fantasy but Williams wields a
powerful sleight of hand with her pen, and we believe the conceit. As in all of her novels,
there is an acknowledgement towards the power of the poet and poetry in general. This can
only improve interstellar relations in all our uncertain futures. The imagery in her writing is
strong enough to transcend the page and be presented in film form in I hope the not too
distant future.
....Dreams of technology and the future are as powerful as any fairy story ever was.."
Mars has been imagined over the years by writers as well known as Edgar Rice Burroughs,
Arthur C Clarke, Alexander Bogdanov and more recently by Kim Stanley Robinson. The
subject of Mars continues to attract Science Fiction interest due in part to the wealth of
information sent back from the landers tantalizing writers with the possibility of life on that
planet. ' Banner of Souls' is one of these imaginings of Mars, and is a worthy member of
the field. In the far distant future a flooded and shattered Earth is governed by the iron hand
of the Martian Matriarchy. A Martian warrior, Dreams-of-War is despatched to Earth to
guard a young girl called Lunae form an unknown threat. Lunae ages with unnatural speed
and has the special talent of being able to bend time. At the half-ruined city of Fragrant
Harbour, where Lunae resides with her malignant grandmothers and a kappa ( kappa are
genetically modified) Dreams-of-War encounters a host of intrigues centring on the very
sinister presence of an alien mission nearby. When her protégé is nearly assassinated, the
Martian warrior is forced to flee with Lunae to the flooded norther waters of what was once
Japan. When the child and the kappa go missing en route Dreams-of-War is determined to
return to the plains of Mars to discover the truth about Martian rule over Earth, and the
nature of all the secrets behind it. There are a host of fascinating characters. I loved the
animus that was attached to the assassin Yskatarina Lye, and the malevolent Aunt Elaki
from Nightshade.Haunt ships and excissieres, Dragon Kings and gaezelles-women with
speckled skin and tails...It would ruin your entry into this female dominated planet if I
were to reveal too much more. The way in which Williams plays with our received truths
and forces us to look at things from a slanted angle is essentially the poet's skill. I think
that is one of the main reasons I am attracted to her work so much. Take this passage for
instance:
.." What would you say if I told you that there is a legend that it was not you Martians
who colonized this world, nut the other way around? Men and women of Earth who
travelled to Mars in distant antiquity, before the Drowning, and set up settlements? Who,
over the course of a millenium, created an atmosphere and terraformed the planet until
what had been barren, freezing desert became the lands of seas and plains and cities that
you know today? That there were no great canals, only ancient stories, which were later
held up as truth?"......
To be continued.................
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