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Fiction and fact by Phila. author
The Dragons of Babel
By Michael Swanwick Tor Books. 318 pp. $25.95 The Dog Barked Bow-Wow
By Michael Swanwick Tachyon Publications. 295 pp. $14.95 paperback What Can Be Saved
From the Wreckage?
By Michael Swanwick Temporary Culture. 51 pp. $15 paperback
Reviewed by Gregory Feeley
'Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" asked Ursula K. Le Guin in 1973, just ahead (as events proved) of an enormous boom in popular fantasy, dragonish and otherwise. Portrayed as irredeemably wicked in medieval literature and most later fiction that draws (like J.R.R. Tolkien's) on Christian tradition, dragons now appear as much more complex figures, often presented as unknowable, as in Le Guin's own Earthsea novels, or even as figures of redemptive power, as in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. A dragon today is as likely to be lovable - as in Anne McCaffrey's immensely popular Dragonrider novels for young readers, or the even more popular series inaugurated with Christopher Paolini's Eragon - as fearsome. The dragons in Philadelphia author Michael Swanwick's new novel, The Dragons of Babel, are neither benevolent nor mysterious, though one does well to fear them. Constructed of iron and powered by steam turbines, they are living weapon systems, tools of imperial conquest. The novel begins: "The dragons came at dawn, flying low and in formation, their jets so thunderous they shook the ground like the great throbbing heartbeat of the world." On a bombing mission directed at Avalon's industrial base, the dragons of Babylonia pass over the village where Will, orphaned when they had earlier "dropped golden fire" on rail yards at the beginning of the war, now lives. One dragon is shot down, with ruinous consequences for the village and for Will, who soon finds himself an exile and refugee. Will's travels across the land of Fäerie Minor, now convulsed by war and overrun by centaurs, kobolds, imps, and other displaced creatures, takes him through a succession of colorful environments and ultimately to Babel Tower, with its aristocratic elves (a club-hopper's "self-mocking, faux-trashy look" is "too emphatically high-elven to actually be high-elven"), its urban underclass of haints and undines, and a corrupt bureaucracy committed to the war that first uprooted him. Taken up by a suave confidence man, Will moves from the society's lowest depths to its treacherous heights in a series of colorful adventures that Swanwick - never one to waste words - dramatizes with an unvaryingly brisk pace and taut, hard-edged prose. Swanwick's expert craftsmanship gives his fiction a brilliant, highly polished surface - sometimes at the expense of depth. His 1994 novel The Iron Dragon's Daughter (set in the same world) includes a character who wears "acid-wash jeans and a denim jacket with the Wild Hunt's 'Horns of Elfland Tour' logo painted on the back," while the present book gives a brief onstage appearance to an elf-maiden wearing an outrageously cut "Lily St. Dionyseé gown." There is a definite dramatic frisson in such juxtapositions of the mundane and the otherworldly, but Swanwick can invoke it too often, and his ironic reversals can become predictable. Swanwick's best novels (such as the prize-winning Stations of the Tide and his most recent, Bones of the Earth) capitalize on his considerable strengths without engaging in slightly pat twists. The Dragons of Babel may not entirely avoid the pitfalls implicit in Swanwick's flashy, sometimes slick approach, but I was never tempted to put it down. Swanwick's pacing and concision also make him a highly accomplished writer of short fiction, as his recent collection The Dog Barked Bow-Wow shows to good effect. Writers often use short fiction to try out ideas for possible novels, or to play variations on one, and the 16 stories here include tales of Fäerie, the mythical realm of the fairies; dinosaurs; berserk software networks; and other elements familiar to Swanwick's readers. Among the best of the stories are "Urdumheim," which seems to be a creation myth for the world of The Dragons of Babel, and "Triceratops Summer," which (like Bones of the Earth) combines time travel and dinosaurs in a contemporary setting. Juxtaposing a Raymond Carver-like milieu with, well, dinosaur herds, "Triceratops Summer" dramatizes one of Swanwick's abiding themes, the ultimate dissolution of everything, in a manner that is dramatic, understated, and finally moving. Swanwick also has published an essay on the-once famous Virginia author James Branch Cabell, who was notorious in his heyday (the 1920s) for his novel Jurgen, and has enjoyed, if that's the word, a strange posthumous half-life ever since - never experiencing a genuine revival, but never quite slipping into oblivion. Cabell's worldly, coolly ironic manner has an obvious attraction for Swanwick, though he has little patience for the man's sometimes tiresome affectations - modern readers are less likely to notice his once-notorious ribaldry than his patrician and often scornful politics. But Swanwick does have a keen eye for Cabell's wit, inventiveness, and (yes) ribald good humor. What Can Be Saved From the Wreckage? surveys the nearly 50 volumes that Cabell produced in his long life (he died in 1958 at 79) and makes sensible, if unexceptionable, calls regarding what remains memorable today. (Swanwick picks Jurgen and a handful of the novels that Cabell produced immediately afterward.) Like the story collection, Swanwick's monograph-length essay is published as a handsome trade paperback by a small press. Those who don't restrict their reading to novels (as the trade publishers increasingly assume we do) should check them out.
Gregory Feeley's most recent novel is "Arabian Wine."
By Michael Swanwick Tor Books. 318 pp. $25.95 The Dog Barked Bow-Wow
By Michael Swanwick Tachyon Publications. 295 pp. $14.95 paperback What Can Be Saved
From the Wreckage?
By Michael Swanwick Temporary Culture. 51 pp. $15 paperback
Reviewed by Gregory Feeley
'Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" asked Ursula K. Le Guin in 1973, just ahead (as events proved) of an enormous boom in popular fantasy, dragonish and otherwise. Portrayed as irredeemably wicked in medieval literature and most later fiction that draws (like J.R.R. Tolkien's) on Christian tradition, dragons now appear as much more complex figures, often presented as unknowable, as in Le Guin's own Earthsea novels, or even as figures of redemptive power, as in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. A dragon today is as likely to be lovable - as in Anne McCaffrey's immensely popular Dragonrider novels for young readers, or the even more popular series inaugurated with Christopher Paolini's Eragon - as fearsome. The dragons in Philadelphia author Michael Swanwick's new novel, The Dragons of Babel, are neither benevolent nor mysterious, though one does well to fear them. Constructed of iron and powered by steam turbines, they are living weapon systems, tools of imperial conquest. The novel begins: "The dragons came at dawn, flying low and in formation, their jets so thunderous they shook the ground like the great throbbing heartbeat of the world." On a bombing mission directed at Avalon's industrial base, the dragons of Babylonia pass over the village where Will, orphaned when they had earlier "dropped golden fire" on rail yards at the beginning of the war, now lives. One dragon is shot down, with ruinous consequences for the village and for Will, who soon finds himself an exile and refugee. Will's travels across the land of Fäerie Minor, now convulsed by war and overrun by centaurs, kobolds, imps, and other displaced creatures, takes him through a succession of colorful environments and ultimately to Babel Tower, with its aristocratic elves (a club-hopper's "self-mocking, faux-trashy look" is "too emphatically high-elven to actually be high-elven"), its urban underclass of haints and undines, and a corrupt bureaucracy committed to the war that first uprooted him. Taken up by a suave confidence man, Will moves from the society's lowest depths to its treacherous heights in a series of colorful adventures that Swanwick - never one to waste words - dramatizes with an unvaryingly brisk pace and taut, hard-edged prose. Swanwick's expert craftsmanship gives his fiction a brilliant, highly polished surface - sometimes at the expense of depth. His 1994 novel The Iron Dragon's Daughter (set in the same world) includes a character who wears "acid-wash jeans and a denim jacket with the Wild Hunt's 'Horns of Elfland Tour' logo painted on the back," while the present book gives a brief onstage appearance to an elf-maiden wearing an outrageously cut "Lily St. Dionyseé gown." There is a definite dramatic frisson in such juxtapositions of the mundane and the otherworldly, but Swanwick can invoke it too often, and his ironic reversals can become predictable. Swanwick's best novels (such as the prize-winning Stations of the Tide and his most recent, Bones of the Earth) capitalize on his considerable strengths without engaging in slightly pat twists. The Dragons of Babel may not entirely avoid the pitfalls implicit in Swanwick's flashy, sometimes slick approach, but I was never tempted to put it down. Swanwick's pacing and concision also make him a highly accomplished writer of short fiction, as his recent collection The Dog Barked Bow-Wow shows to good effect. Writers often use short fiction to try out ideas for possible novels, or to play variations on one, and the 16 stories here include tales of Fäerie, the mythical realm of the fairies; dinosaurs; berserk software networks; and other elements familiar to Swanwick's readers. Among the best of the stories are "Urdumheim," which seems to be a creation myth for the world of The Dragons of Babel, and "Triceratops Summer," which (like Bones of the Earth) combines time travel and dinosaurs in a contemporary setting. Juxtaposing a Raymond Carver-like milieu with, well, dinosaur herds, "Triceratops Summer" dramatizes one of Swanwick's abiding themes, the ultimate dissolution of everything, in a manner that is dramatic, understated, and finally moving. Swanwick also has published an essay on the-once famous Virginia author James Branch Cabell, who was notorious in his heyday (the 1920s) for his novel Jurgen, and has enjoyed, if that's the word, a strange posthumous half-life ever since - never experiencing a genuine revival, but never quite slipping into oblivion. Cabell's worldly, coolly ironic manner has an obvious attraction for Swanwick, though he has little patience for the man's sometimes tiresome affectations - modern readers are less likely to notice his once-notorious ribaldry than his patrician and often scornful politics. But Swanwick does have a keen eye for Cabell's wit, inventiveness, and (yes) ribald good humor. What Can Be Saved From the Wreckage? surveys the nearly 50 volumes that Cabell produced in his long life (he died in 1958 at 79) and makes sensible, if unexceptionable, calls regarding what remains memorable today. (Swanwick picks Jurgen and a handful of the novels that Cabell produced immediately afterward.) Like the story collection, Swanwick's monograph-length essay is published as a handsome trade paperback by a small press. Those who don't restrict their reading to novels (as the trade publishers increasingly assume we do) should check them out.
Gregory Feeley's most recent novel is "Arabian Wine."
