The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2022, pt. 15: Nisi Shawl

 

Three Things (Four If I Cheat)

By Nisi Shawl

 

The last surgery is complete, and my eyes are as useful now for reading as they’re ever going to get.  That’s just kind of marginally useful, though, so I still reserve much of my reading energy for work assignments.  One of my favorites of these assignments is blurbing Tachyon Publications’ forthcoming two-volume set of Peter S. Beagle’s short stories.

Pleasure is the only coin in which this work pays.  And the pleasure of immersing my mind in Beagle’s prose is formidable: deceptively familiar overall, yet ofttimes sharply new.  Or sharply old, like a well-aged cheddar.

Since I’m already committed to writing a summarization of the book that some of you will probably see elsewhere, I’ll avoid duplicating that here.  For now, all I’ll tell you about The Essential Peter S. Beagle is that the story he likes best is the first story in the first volume, “Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros,” but the story I like best is the eleventh story in the second volume, “The Mantichora.”  Going by the book’s advance mentions all over the interwebs, you’ll have an easy time finding it, reading it, and judging yourself which is the best.

My leisure activity, as differentiated from my work, continues to take the form of watching films and series.  It was with trepidation that I clicked up the first episode of The Peripheral, an eight-part Amazon Prime series based on a novel by William Gibson.  Earlier I’d had a hard time with a couple of other productions based on science fiction by authors I respect: Altered Carbon (drawing on the novels by Richard K. Morgan) had its moments, but those moments didn’t weave themselves together into the sustained ensorcellment I truly need; The Expanse (based on a book series Daniel Abraham co-authored) flat out failed me in all regards, in every way.

The Peripheral rocked me in its beautifully spacious arms.  Watch it.  Lobby for a second season.  From the grubbily comfortable Appalachian trailer where Flynne and Burton Fisher monetize their gaming skills to the bone-paved meadows of a post-apocalyptic England, this is a delicious and hyperreal world. The characters feel their way through complex decision trees: cancer or consensus reality? Vengeance or discovery? Infection or ignorance? All happening against a background of skyscraper-topping statues, half-ruined Olympic gods built to scrub the future’s air of disease and pollution.

 

My cheat is that I also recommend the book. Which, okay, I didn’t read it this year, and okay, its plot varies from the show’s plot.  Quite a bit.  But several ideas make the transition from The Peripheral's original, literary medium to this one: the practice of labeling divergent histories “stubs;” the name for the multivalent collapse of civilization (“the Jackpot”); the androids in which disembodied visitors ride and die....Characters cross over too.  There’s stubborn, caring Flynne, and her little brother Burton, a traumatized veteran; there’s Lev Zubov, crime boss and keeper of de-extinctified Tasmanian tigers. There’s also police detective Ainslee Lowbeer, wonderfully transformed onscreen into a cape-flaunting, swishbuckling force of gender-fluid gendarmerie.

There’s so much to love.

Third--or fourth?--obsession in my collection of this year’s pleasures is the music of the postpunk band Magazine. I revisited them after the death my friend John Hanley, who originally introduced me to their glory.

Four albums. That was their total studio output. Lyricist and lead singer Howard Devoto, formerly of Manchester’s divine Buzzcocks , wheedled, yelped, and crooned his way through songs referencing Rimbaud, Proust, and Right Guard deodorant commercials. Sometimes, genius John McGeoch thrashed out chords that fell from his guitar strings like veils of gold, and sometimes his melodic lines climbed to pristine Alpine summits, and sometimes they tore themselves in two and stole each other’s souls. Keyboardist Dave Formula played several instruments at once, alternating his sound between grand, pianofortic flourishes and spacefaring boops and beeps. The drummers--first Martin Jackson, then John Doyle--managed somehow to keep up.

 

And Barry Adamson, bassist extraordinaire, cradled the band’s heart in his large, hardworking hands. His serene, fretless riffs yearned tragically above the icy anger implicit in Magazine’s nihilistic Permafrost," and throbbed smooth and regular as romance within each snarkily optimistic verse of “Sweetheart Contract.”   The crystal-edged authority with which he beat out his single toned intro to “The Light Pours out of Me” belies his naiveté: the first time Adamson picked up his instrument was the day before he auditioned.

 Magazine died decades ago. Barry Adamson contributed to Devoto’s next project, Luxuria. In 2009 he appeared with Magazine for a reunion tour. But by that point he had performed with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Visage, and had put out several solo albums and Eps. He had written part of the score for David Lynch’s film Lost Highway.

As I watch the precious few recordings of those long ago late-70s-to-early-80s gigs, I zero in on the early moments of Adamson’s emergence, his evolution from an Afro-stylin, gangly-limbed youth awkwardly swinging for the bleachers with his newfound prowess, to a coolly competent, business-suited professional magician. I adore his talent. More than that, though, I am totally crushed out on his relationships: to the songs he played, to his bandmates and his colleagues back then.  To his past, present, and future audiences, all of which include me.  And also, I hope, some of you. 

 

Nisi Shawl (they/them) is the multiple award-winning author, co-author, and editor of over a dozen books of speculative fiction and related nonfiction, including the standard text on diverse representation in literature, the Aqueduct Conversation Pieces volume titled Writing the Other; the Nebula Award finalist novel Everfair; the first two volumes of the New Suns anthology series; and the Aqueduct Press story collection Filter House  (co-winner of the 2009 Otherwise Award). They’ve spoken at Duke University, Spelman College, Stanford University, Sarah Lawrence College, and at many other learning institutions.  Recent titles include a new Aqueduct Press collection, the horror-friendly Our Fruiting Bodies; the Middle Grade historical fantasy novel Speculation (forthcoming in February 2023); and New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color.