Great Science-Fiction
& Fantasy Works
science-fiction & fantasy literature:
a critical list with discussions
Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books by Gabriel King
Standard Disclaimer:
This is a brief discussion of Gabriel King
and, of course, of some books by Gabriel King
This discussion and list does not necessarily include every book by King: it includes only those books that I both know and like. Just as with the author list
itself, omission of a particular item may mean I didn't think highly enough of the omitted item, or it may simply mean that I have not yet sufficient familiarity
with it. (In a very few cases, I have listed some books merely on the strength of my opinion of the author: all such books are clearly marked below, as throughout
these lists, with a hash mark (#) before the title so you know what's what.)
I don't pretend that this discussion is a deep analysis. My intent is no more than to give you a rough idea of what kinds of tales King tells, how those
tales are usually told, and what makes them and King worthy; in sum, to help you rank King (and the works by King listed here) on your
personal literary "to do" list.
|
A Few Words About Gabriel King
"Gabriel King" is a pseudonym for the collaborative team of
M. John Harrison and Jane Johnson. The four
books to date under the King byline form two distinct duologies (though I have not yet
segregated those out in the lists). The first pair and the second pair can be read
independent of each other; and though each individual book can also be read satisfactorily
on its own, it's much better to read the duologies in order, and best to read the entire
quartet in order.
The books all fall into the class commonly called "animal tales": that is, the characters
are animals endowed, by the author, with human-like intelligence yet remaining in essence
themselves. The category includes works as diverse in intelligence and design as The
Wind in the Willows and Peter Rabbit. There is an especially strong vein of
the material in British literature, and several excellent representatives of it are on the
lists here.
The focus animals of the King books are cats. In the first duology, which I think clearly
the stronger, the cats--along with a few other animals, from a fox to a crow--dominate the
tales: the humans are background figures to the animals' needs and actions and lives
(though the great enemy challenging them, and the world, is human); in the second pair,
the tales are human tales with the animals as background, and while I think them worthy
reading, they seem to me to have lost the bright flame of sympathy, and above all of
specialness, that illumined the first pair so well.
The difficulty with all animal tales is establishing that extraordinarily nice balance
required between, on the one hand, making the characters too unhuman, so that their
thought processes and emotional lives are distanced from our sympathies, or on the other
hand making them little people in fur coats, which simply makes for a too-twee ordinarily
human story.
I suspect that Kenneth Grahame in The Wind in the
Willows did it about as well as ever it can be done, and all other "animal tales"
must, I think, be measured against that standard. King, while his/her/their books are
quite different in style and tone from Grahame's, comes off well: the animals have
personalities human enough to engage us, while yet having urges and concerns far enough
from our own to establish that necessary critical distancing.
[to be continued]
Notable Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books by Gabriel King ***
"Gabriel King" is a pseudonym for the collaborative team of
M. John Harrison and Jane Johnson. I list and review "King" separately from Harrison because it is my fixed
opinion that when authors adopt pseudonyms, they intend their writings under each name to be evaluated distinctly.
You loaded this page on Friday, 4 July 2008, at 22:37 GMT
it was last modified on Friday, 4 July 2008, at 13:00 GMT
Warning: Division by zero in /usr/www/users/owlcroft/know.php on line 22
What do you know about l lang="?
|
Musings: