Yellow Blue Tibia | ||||||||
Adam Roberts | ||||||||
Gollancz, 488 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Seamus Sweeney
One day, without warning, Malenkov tells the writers that their work is finished, that they are to depart and
never to acknowledge, even to themselves, that the event even happened. Such is the force of terror embodied in
Stalin (and, by extension, his underlings) that they do so without demur. Our narrator, Konstantin Andreiovich
Skvorecky, goes on to abandon the world of science fiction and to work as a translator; his real devotion
becoming an exceptionally heavy drinker, even by Russian standards, and a terrible spouse and father. The years
go by and he loses wife and family and, in a drunken act of self-destruction, manages to set fire to himself
and loses much of his facial skin. He finally gives up alcohol, faced with a choice between continuing to
drink and continuing to live, and lives a drab, modest life of solitude. The years up to 1986 are eked out
in this fashion. Living alone, he believes himself to be sole survivor of those weeks in the dacha that
followed the meeting with Stalin, a memory he hardly dares recall.
Konstantin Andreiovich is mistaken, however. Konstantin Andreiovich encounters -- apparently by complete
chance -- Ivan Frenkel, born Jan Frenkel, who back in the dacha was at pains to conceal his Slav origin. Frenkel
is accompanied by muscle-bound giant called Trofim, who at first seems some kind of minder. Frenkel's bizarre
behaviour and eagerness to -- in front but ostentatiously out of earshot of Trofim -- recall the time the two
former writers met Stalin unsettled Konstantin Andreiovich. This is only the beginning of the his unsettling,
as the narrative that follows marries the riotous sense of the absurd of Gary Shytengart's Absurdistan with the
quizzical, maybe-counterfactual-maybe-not tone of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. Konstantin
Andreiovich describes how in 1985 when the Challenger disaster occurred, it was observed in the USSR with a mix
of sorrow and schadenfreude (characteristic of the mix of envious inferiority and boastful superiority with
which Russia views America).
One of his translating jobs is for the Office of Liaison and Overseas Exchange. Called to the Office one day,
he is asked to translate for a roaringly obscene official who just wants these pesky foreigners out of his hair
the words of Dr. James Tilly Coyne and Dora Norman, two pleasant Americans who report that they represent the
Church of Scientology, which is hoping to establish itself in the Russia of Gorbachev, glasnost and
perestroika. An apparently humdrum piece of work, surreal in the way all translation is surreal, is followed
by our narrator's abduction by friendly UFOlogists who believe his denials of the existence of UFOs and his
involvement in the "Stalin affair" are a brilliant piece of misdirection, the mysterious death of Coyne, and
one of the most hilarious set-pieces of the book as Konstantin Andreiovich is interrogated by an ineffectually
angry policeman incapable of anything except threats against testicles. From then on the plot is gloriously
unpredictable and unpredictably glorious. Like a glorious express train, Yellow Blue Tibia is one
of those novels that sweeps the reader along.
Stalin's interest in science-fiction and UFOs is well documented, and the Soviet Union rivalled the United States
for UFO sightings (presumably for similar reasons -- the reader can decide for themselves which reasons based
on their own view of UFOlogy) Adam Roberts uses nuggets of real (so to speak) incidents in Soviet UFOlogy to build
his counterfactual-that-isn't-counterfactual narrative. The ideas come thick and fast, from dialectical
materialism to the nature of tyranny to quantum mechanics. Close attention is rewarded, and is absolutely
necessary for some of the more speculative moments, but this is a book that wears its learning and innovations
lightly, never becoming dry, pedantic or afflicted with the curse of clumsy exposition.
As intelligent and provoking at it is humourous and even touching, the book even acts as an entertaining (and
never pompous or portentous) disquisition on the nature of science fiction. A female doctor, who late in the
novel saves Konstantin Andreiovich's life repeatedly (in one of the many great lines, he observes "to be
clear, by smoking a cigarette, inside a nuclear facility, whilst having my skull blown up by a
radioactive RGD-5 I have extended my life expectancy") observes that "Science fiction is for adolescent boys
and people who make models of aircraft from plastic and glue. I am a mature woman, which is to say, the
opposite of a science fiction fan." This, of course, is the default position of so many general readers, and
it is customary for reviewers of literary fiction, enthusiastic about a book that just maybe could possibly
be described as sci-fi, to deny that it is so, especially if the book is by a Big Literary Name (David
Langford has collected a very entertaining collection of these quotes that can be
viewed at news.ansible.co.uk/others.php)
Elsewhere, we read a more nuanced but even bleaker meditation on the sci-fi writer's craft: "A realist writer
might break his protagonist's leg, or kill his fiancée; but a science fiction writer will immolate whole
planets, and whilst doing so he will be more concerned with the placement of the commas than with the
screams of the dying. He will do this every working day all through his life. How can this not produce
calluses on those tenderer portions of the mind that ordinary human beings use to focus their
empathy?" In a novel in which one of the most entertaining supporting characters suffers from
a "syndrome" characterised by lacking empathy, an inability to detect sarcasm and a compulsion for order
(in the post-Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time world, most readers will know exactly
what this is), a concern with empathy and human connection is central. Yellow Blue Tibia is most fundamentally
a love story, a less than conventional love story to put it mildly, but one of great richness, power and
beauty. If it was written by a Big Literary Name, we'd have reviewers falling over each other to clear
their throats by announcing that it isn't science-fiction, a genre for adolescent boys and people who
make models of aircraft from plastic and glue, after all.
(This review first appeared on nthposition.com.)
Seamus Sweeney is a freelance writer and medical graduate from Ireland. He has written stories and other pieces for the website Nthposition.com and other publications. He is the winner of the 2010 Molly Keane Prize. He has also written academic articles as Seamus Mac Suibhne. |
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