The Scholars of the Night , John M. Ford (Tor 978-1250269171, 256pp, $18.99) September 2021.
While all of us eagerly await the heretofore-unseen final novel by John M. Ford, Aspects, due in April of subsequent 12 months, we must quench our wishes for all issues Fordian with the varied reprints which are tilling the soil for that harvest. We earlier obtained The Dragon Waiting (my evaluation right here) which had gone 18 years between editions. Now comes The Scholars of the Night, which final noticed print 32 years in the past!
We start with a wonderful introduction from Charles Stross (his affinity for this title plainly derives from his personal Laundry File sequence), who lays down the cultural and geopolitical historical past attendant upon the start of the e book, whose motion is all contemporaneous, kind of, with its date of composition, circa the mid-Eighties. Stross highlights the huge variations between our current day and that period from practically 35 years in the past. And whereas his observations are correct, I’d like to emphasise the flipside of the e book. It reads as recent and as mimetically—nearly journalistically—truthful now because it did then. Sadly or not, there’s one thing everlasting about the Machiavellian machinations of the plot. For occasion, when a staff of assassins breaks in upon one of the pivotal characters and kills him, whereas making it appear to be a coronary heart assault, it isn’t too arduous to line up in our minds the covert poisoning of Alexei Navalny from 2020. Similarly, whereas there aren’t any drones of course in the e book, the surveillance tech and techniques that Ford exhibits us are eerie forerunners of 2021.
Attempting to pigeonhole Scholars as a easy political thriller or spy novel would do a disservice to the e book, because it additionally partakes of the paranoid conspiracy style (suppose The Crying of Lot 49), the techno-thriller, and even a bit of alt-hist Elizabethean-punk. I discover it to be firmly embedded in the broad fantastika canon, and imagine that any reader who typically favors extra cleanly delineated echt science fiction will cherish and welcome it.
We open quietly sufficient with one of our principal characters, Nicholas Hansard, part-time professor at the fictitious Valentine College, as he enjoys a board-game night with a number of colleagues. But then the arrival of a mysterious courier, bearing just-recovered paperwork from WWII, sends Hansard’s plans awry. He is aware of his tutorial sleuthing expertise are instantly wanted by his occasional boss, Raphael, who’s head of the covert agency dubbed “The White Group, a analysis and advisory company on issues of intelligence coverage and worldwide affairs.” This bland phrasing conceals a squad of grasp spies and killer bureaucrats with their fingers in 100 sizzling pies.
Before you’ll be able to say “sabbatical,” Hansard is shipped off to England, ostensibly to unravel the mysteries hid in a newly found misplaced play by Christopher Marlowe. Ultimately he turns into entangled in the principal Macguffin, the theft of some top-of-the-line laptop {hardware} and software program that can enable its possessor to futz round with official communications and doubtlessly begin WW III.
Hansard’s principal opponent on this sport—though he hardly is aware of at first that she exists—is the grasp spy code-named WAGNER. WAGNER is the protégé of one Allan Berenson—the fellow whose homicide I outlined above—an educational who can also be pals with Hansard. WAGNER’s mission is to retrieve all the components of the Macguffin from varied different brokers and assemble and take a look at the entire unit.
This narrative engine—sequential encounters with a number of dangerous apples—permits Ford to course of us by way of a spread of venues and personages, when utilizing WAGNER’s POV for about half the time. The drama involving a sociopathic UK killer-for-hire named Cherry might have been a brief story all its personal. Hansard’s thread is extra linear and contiguous, however no much less suspenseful and fascinating, particularly since Hansard is put by way of some deep emotional territory involving recollections of his lifeless spouse. (Hansard’s finish state, superbly resonant with the novel’s begin, is especially affecting, each redeemed and damned, hopeful but resigned, helpful but pitiable. “They had been all students collectively, students of forbidden issues and unspeakable, Scholars of the Night.”)
Every time the murderous and implacable WAGNER comes into contact with a brand new sufferer, Ford takes the time to insert an enormous chunk of that beginner’s backstory, fleshing them out properly and in a non-intrusive approach. Generally talking, whereas Hansard and Wagner get the lion’s share of character growth, each single different particular person, even walk-ons, additionally emerges as a residing and respiration entity.
Ultimately, saving the world is right down to an ultra-climactic confrontation between WAGNER and Hansard—with some assist from the droll and cynical UK intelligence man Gareth Rhys-Gordon (“I’m borrowing [Hansard] to establish our goal. He’s waived his constitutional rights to be saved alive.”)
And of course Hansard’s vivid psychological recreation of Marlowe and his Elizabethan hijinks are additionally built-in superbly.
Featuring a lot black humor, kinetic struggle scenes, a sure cosmopolitan gravitas and savvy about ethics and utilitarianism, this e book alternates tender, somber moments with vicious brawls, with out one wasted phrase.
Anyone who loved Neal Stephenson’s Reamde, which— coincidentally or inspirationally?—options lots of the similar tropes and total vibe will dive into Ford’s fortunately revived novel with pleasure and glee.
Paul Di Filippo has been writing professionally for over 30 years, and has printed nearly that quantity of books. He lives in Providence RI, together with his mate of a good higher quantity of years, Deborah Newton.
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