Some Review Comments
Corrupted Science by John Grant - $12.95
FF&F
A little success is a great confidence-builder, but too much really isn't good for people. And if you've had a few centuries of amazing success - as Western scientists have had - maybe it is not surprising more than a few have shown the symptoms of delusions of infallibility, blinkered vision and closed minds.
As John Grant shows in this astonishingly comprehensive book, the results have sometimes been catastrophic - and not only for the quet for knowledge. Over the years, countless innocent people have suffered from the imposition of nonsence masquerading as science. In one of his most shocking examples, Grant describes how a crackpot iological theory called 'vernalisation', touted by the Ukrainian biologist Trofim Lysenko in the 1930's, helped ruin the oviet crop yield and led to the deaths of millions.
Grant could have done what the likes of Richard Dawkins do and focused on the usual suspects, like those claiming to have found ways of communicating with the dead. In stead, he has pulled together a vast array of evidence to show that mainstream scientists are more prone to human failings than some would like us to think. Corrupted Science makes for salutary but gripping reading.
Robert Matthews- BBC Focus, October 2007
Take No Prisoners by John Grant - $13.95
Willowgate Press
Over the years, science fiction and fantasy have developed an undeserved reputation as the ugly stepsisters of so-called "literary fiction". Neglected by critics, disdained by academics, and largely considered little more than juvenile escapism by the majority of mainstream culture, the two genres have existed in a kind of literary limbo, despite the fact that both science fiction and fantasy have produced novels with depth, substance and ingenuity that rival even the greatest works of the western literary canon. And yet, every so often there comes along an author who is able to bridge the gap between literary elitism and the world of speculative fiction. John Grant is one such author; his work filled with an equal measure of substance and imagination. For those unfamiliar with Grant, he has earned an impressive number of accolades over the years, including two Hugos, a World Fantasy Award, a Locus Award, and about a dozen other notable prizes.
Take No Prisoners is the first collection containing many of Grant's shorter works, and is filled with Grant's lavish prose and abundance of creativity. Perhaps the most enjoyable element of Take No Prisoners is that the work contains familiar elements of speculative fiction even as it seems to operate within its own strange continuum. The end result is a weird and entertaining fusion of literature, horror, science fiction and fantasy, similar in tone and nature to the work of China Miéville or Michael Swanwick. It is almost impossible to predict how each of Grant's stories will end, or indeed in some cases to even label the work within the confines of one particular genre. In all cases though, patient and thoughtful readers will be entertained by Grant's ability to play on readers expectations and develop tales with rich characters, vivid settings and innovative style.
Perhaps one of the more entertaining selections is "The Glad Who Sang a Mermaid in from the Probability Sea", a brilliant hybrid of science and magic set in the detailed universe of "the World" (one of Grant's many reoccurring settings). Recounting the story of the Finefolk (a kind of Elven race capable of magic) and their enslavement at the hands of the Ironfolk (presumably humanity), the story is a rich tapestry of complex characters and setting that becomes remarkably clear in only a short period of time. In the hands of a lesser writer, the work would simply devolve into a convoluted and overly confusing tale, but with Grant's keen eye for detail and economy of language the story is a brilliant and beautiful tale of love, loss and redemption.
Similarly, "The Wooden Horse" is yet another entertaining selection; a classic example of an alternate reality tale written with a subtlety and care that is rarely seen in science fiction. Recounting the narrators love of the cinema (and in particular of old World War II movies), the element of the fantastic seems to come out of nowhere and the character and narrative are so well developed it is genuinely surprising when the reader is suddenly confronted with elements of the bizarre and surreal.
Where Grant truly shines however, is in his range and flexibility. He alternates between genres with ease, and it is rare to see an author with the capability to work within multiple areas with such skill and clarity. For example "A Lean and Hungry Look", offers an hilarious look at the world of amateur theatre with a touch of the fantastic, even as "The Dead Monkey Puzzle" tells a horrifying tale of rape and torture with a grizzly supernatural ending. Grant also explores the philosophical nature of humanity itself in "The Machine It Was That Cried," a tale of space exploration and the hidden cost it may have on our entire species.
In all instances however, Grant writes with both subtlety and style. Readers hoping for a quick fix of mindless action or a formulaic narrative would do well to look elsewhere, but those with patience and dedication will be well rewarded by Take No Prisoners. Perhaps the only down side of the book is that Grant does indeed adopt many of the mannerism found in British SF, which can occasionally be unpalatable for North American readers unfamiliar with the style. That being said such a complaint is minor compared to the rich variety of work Take No Prisoners has to offer. There is literally something for everyone here, with a selection from almost every genre; from fantasy to horror, to traditional hard SF and space opera.
Ultimately, Take No Prisoners is well worth picking up. Collections are a difficult prospect at the best of times and tend to be fairly hit or miss, and yet almost every story in the fifteen collected works of Take No Prisoners is an enjoyable, entertaining and enlightening read. Furthermore the work is written with such skill that is can easily be enjoyed by those who normally look down their noses at works filled with starships and sorcery. In this sense, Take No Prisoners is more than just a simple collection of short stories, it is a volume of work that both entertains and challenges its readers, a classic example of an SF collection done well and a brilliant compilation from a master of the field.
Adam Volk- SF Site
PERCEPTUALISTICS by Jael - £20 / $29.95
Paper Tiger, Chrysalis Books, 64 Brewery Rd, London, N7 9NY
First collection of illustrations and paintings by American artist Jael, this hardback has biographical info and interview material by John Grant, and a goodly selection of pieces commissioned for genre book jackets, etc - but the main part of this book showcases 70-odd examples of Jael's vaguely abstract artwork. Her use of rich colours and fluid style of organic textures is breathtaking, like dreamscapes from ancient yearning hindbrain memories of past lifetimes in the oceans. Closer to an active celebration of beauty beyond words than any passive contemplation of visual spaces or inner dimensions, though, and the ambiguity of macro and micro scales in these pictures makes me think of cosmic cobwebs, with hints of vast mysterious nebulae glimmering through an elegant froth of blood cells and veils of strange mist... Cool
Dragon's Breath
DRAGONHENGE by Bob Eggleton & John Grant - £20 / $29.95
Paper Tiger, Chrysalis Books, 64 Brewery Rd, London, N7 9NY
A strange and unusual artbook, Dragonhenge posits a kind of archaeological text about dragon civilisation, a mythology with wings on. Fictional pieces by John Grant are complemented by the many vividly imagined pictures. Bob Eggleton's contributions are rarely just illustrative, often striking and/or moody, sometimes impressionistic. With bright pastels, pencil portraits, boldly colourful paintings presented in a variety of sizes and formats (some with wraparound text), this cleverly designed book is almost a graphic novel... Cool
Dragon's Breath
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
It's unusual to think of a reference book as big and dense as this one being written with gusto, but here the term certainly applies. It not only provides an all-absorbing diversion for fans of fantasy (at least those who don't mind chewing a little while they browse), but also makes some convincing theoretical arguments with vigour and muscle. . . . the EoF represents that rarest of reference books - one written by people who love both the telling of stories and the critical study of them.
Scott Bradfield, The Mail on Sunday
Its size makes it hardly pickupable; if not for that, it would be unputdownable. . . One of the three great achievements of this encyclopedia is the way in which [its] view of fantasy provides a sort of grammar for describing it. The second achievement is a vocabulary with which to describe it. . . . Its third great achievement is the breadth and thoroughness of its reference, thousands of entries on writers and their works which combine authority and detail with insight . . . there is a seemingly inexhaustible wealth of material here.
The Economist
An excellent and highly readable source for fantasy, the first of its kind.
Library Journal
From a centuries-old heritage that encompasses both genius and hack, they manage to extract something of value from even the meanest product of Grub Street, without thereby diminishing the works of genius. . . .short of a 'pact with the devil' that would have given me 'three wishes', I could not have asked for more 'enchantment' than that provided by the 'witches', 'wizards' and 'liminal beings' who have labored so hard to bring us this ambitious 'grimoire'.
Paul Di Filippo, Washington Post Book World
"The first, only, and definitive encyclopedia of fantasy. This is a must-have for every serious fantasy collection. It has over a million words in 4,000 entries. Everything you ever wanted to know about fantasy from the dawn of time to 1995 is included. Not only covering the written word, it also takes on movies, television, art, and live permances that are fantasy based."
Genreflecting: A Guide to Reading Interests in Genre Fiction (5th edn), Diana Tixier Herald
Encyclopedia of Walt Disney's Animated Characters (3rd edition)
The best reference book about Disney animation. Excellent synthesis, excellent photos, fabulous text. A must have.
Disney Books Network News
We call it the Bible!
Heidi Leigh, Animazing Gallery
Ten years after the first edition and six years since the second, Grant has again updated his mammoth illustrated guide to beloved Disney creations. . . . The ratio of information per page is high, particularly in the feature-film section where credits are followed by a history of the production and the critical and popular response, a plot synopsis, and analysis of all significant characters. The organization of the short-films section . . . is more idiosyncratic, though the writing is still a delight and not without occasional criticism of the company. . . . A peerless reference work for those countless film fans and figurine collectors . . .
Library Journal
I own an animation art gallery, and we use this book all the time for information on characters which are obscure, or to look up years of cartoons, etc. A must for Disney collectors.
Debbie Weiss, Wonderful World of Animation
Albion/The World
At a time when fantasy relies heavily on the formulaic and superficial, John Grant's writing comes as an exhilarating antidote to the conventional trappings of the genre. This is typified by his two major fantasy novels, Albion and The World.
Albion opens with the washing ashore of a shipwrecked sailor, Terman. He has landed on the beach of Albion, a land rumoured to exist but impossible to locate. Terman speculates that it exists only sometimes. Incredibly, this proves to be true. The inhabitants of Albion have a span of memory only as long as what they call a 'waking period'. After each 'sleeping period', they retain no memory of their previous existence, the land may have changed entirely, and they exist in a wholly instinctive fashion.
As Terman is to discover, his presence in Albion has an odd effect on those around him. He names people and as he does so they acquire memory and a life based on that memory. But even with Terman's presence, the people can do nothing against the Ellonia, who use the peasants to farm the land and to supply whores. But Terman's son, Lian, will be able to lead the people; he does not have his father's reservations and he has inherited his gift of memory.
If Albion were a conventional fantasy novel, Lian's task would be accomplished with depressing inevitability, and all would live happily ever after, but Grant is not an author who takes the conventional route. Instead, we follow the motley band of peasants through setbacks and victories to apparently final defeat. Although the peasants enjoy a brief freedom, one Despot is replaced by another. And yet, much as our own period clings to the myth of Arthur the Once and Future King, Grant also offers a hope which is fulfilled, in a way, in The World.
The World provides many more clues as to what is going on in Grant's Albion and World. Whereas Albion showed what it was like to live in a world that was constantly reinvented and renewed, with the implication that there was not necessarily one plane of existence, one universe, but maybe more than one overlapping, The World ventures into those overlapping worlds, culminating in an extraordinary chase across the multiplicity of worlds, some close to our own, others far beyond anything we might imagine.
At the same time, The World points up the cyclical nature of existence even more strongly than did Albion. In that novel, the ever-renewing cycle was made concrete in the constant renewal of the land itself but also in the constant vying among the Ellonia for promotion through elaborate and savage ritual contests. In The World we see Anya, daughter of Lian, work her way through another cycle of existence, as she fights the Ellonian repressors, from idealist to savage despot in her own right, corrupted by the power she sought to resist.
Grant further pursues this vision of interlocking worlds through the presence of Alyss, 'a sort of goddess'. Alyss's powers seem limitless but her own capricious nature means that her interventions within the world of Albion aren't always what one might expect or indeed what our heroes and heroines might look for. With Alyss, Grant neatly subverts all genre expectations of omnipotent beings; her unexpectedness catches despots and tyrants off-guard and infuriates those who feel they might reasonably expect her to be on their side. As with much else in these novels, nothing can be guaranteed or relied upon.
In the end, the reader is left with nothing but uncertainty, and a world which constantly shifts. Consequently, we may not have seen what we thought we saw, much as Albion, when Terman first saw it, changed with the blink of an eye. The very stability of the fantasy genre, reliable, predictable, formulaic, is undermined by Grant's quantum approach to fantasy. The status quo must continually be challenged, and this Grant has done very successfully with these remarkable novels.
St James Guide to 20th-Century Fantasy Writers
Albion
Great storytelling.
The Times
Some books feed the imagination; this one takes it to a banquet.
Samhain
A grim, bloody and powerful book . . .recommended.
GMI
A wonderful fable.
South Wales Observer
. . .enough battles to satisfy the most bloodthirsty reader. The heroes in this book, for once, feel real. The first of a series, Albion promises great things; Grant looks set to subvert the entire genre.
City Limits
The World
The World is a brilliantly executed, surreal fantasy which should be regarded as a classic of the genre.
Sunday Times (NZ)
Grant. . . allows his imagination full scope to break the walls of the [fantasy] genre and stray into other fields. It's another great book from a man who to my mind is about as conventional as a young Michael Moorcock and just as thrilling. Great stuff and a truly wonderful follow-up to Albion.
Samhain
A fresh, original approach to fantasy (or possibly science fiction) which hijacks all the genre clichés and flies them to unexpected destinations.
David Langford
An exhilarating tale of magic and music, reality and surreality, The World is an epic novel that shatters the traditional boundaries of fantasy fiction.
Newtownards Chronicle
Fiendishly plotted, devilishly delightful, The World is that rarest of creations - a genuinely adult fantasy, ambitious in scope, inspired in realization. A towering feat of imagination, The World is surely destined to become a classic of fantasy. With it, John Grant has proved himself the true master of modern fantasy.
Stephen Marley
Many science-fiction novels are actually fantasy stories under a thin layer of pseudo-technology. John Grant, never a writer to take the easy option when there's a more interesting course to follow, has done the reverse. The World is a science-fiction novel masquerading as a fantasy. More than that, it's SF of a very high order.
Starburst
Magnificent.
Sam J. Lundwall
Strider's Galaxy
Every so often someone comes along and revitalises a moribund genre. Wes Craven's shot in the arm for horror films, Scream, is a current example. With Strider's Galaxy Paul Barnett does the same for space opera. . . Barnett scores by understanding that what raises action-driven SF above the routine is a liberal application of ideas. . . The important thing is that he discards restraints and lets rip. Unashamedly occupying the pure-entertainment end of the spectrum, this is a primary-colours read - exotic, extravagant, zingy. Pipe-and-slippers science fiction it isn't.
Stan Nicholls, Time Out
This is space opera at its most exuberant, wide-screen science fiction with attitude. Good stuff.
David V. Barrett, Freelance Informer
The Legends of Lone Wolf series
The adventure-game novel come of age. Plenty of swashbuckling fantasy, yes. . . . But closer to the truth than many a 'realistic' war novel. It [The Sword of the Sun] lays bare, not only the pain of losing battles, but the price of winning them. Intelligent, honest, sensitive, but never sentimental. Great entertainment, and something extra that stays in the mind.
Fay Sampson
Far better written than most of their kind. . . Surprisingly good.
Fear
The Lone Wolf novels go from strength to strength. Written with a neat eye for character and comradeship, herein are gritty wonders, deflationary humour, and a very down-to-earth portrayal of both pain and achievement. . . . Colourful, dealing too with territory that Fantasy has always treated with kid gloves - sorrow and sex, adulthood and apotheosis, failure and first love - the saga races along . . . Scene- and book-stealer Alyss, wonder-worker and gamin-goddess, who has been known to lie when it suits her, takes away any chance of comfortable, predictable fantasy for the reader and substitutes dazzlement, excitement and suspense.
Mary Gentle
Masters of Animation
If you're a fan of animation you won't want to miss Masters of Animation by John Grant. This entertaining, detailed, loving look at 40 master animation artists is packed with goodies. ... this book will delight all lovers of cartoons and animation.
Karen Haber, Locus
Guts
On first glance, the cover of 'Guts', with its 'warning: offensive content' disclaimer, caused us at _SFX_ to roll our eyes, tut and wonder what gratuitous gunk lay within. Fortunately Langford and Grant haven't just produced your lowest-common-denominator gore-fest but, instead, have created a genuinely funny, highly enjoyable horror spoof, that also just happens to be a lowest-common-denominator gore-fest. ... wonderfully entertaining stuff that will delight horror fans with a sense of humour.
SFX
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