{"id":18992,"date":"2011-11-28T16:36:56","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T16:36:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=18992"},"modified":"2012-03-07T10:41:02","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T10:41:02","slug":"fugue-for-a-darkening-island-by-christopher-priest-reader-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/fugue-for-a-darkening-island-by-christopher-priest-reader-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Fugue For A Darkening Island by Christopher Priest reader review"},"content":{"rendered":"

To submit your reader review, just send 300 words as a text document on the last thing you read, new or old, sci-fi, fantasy, comic-book or horror, to\u00a0james.hoare@imagine-publishing.co.uk<\/a>, and it could not only appear here but might make it into the magazine!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Fugue<\/a>Fugue For A Darkening Island<\/strong>
\nAuthor: <\/strong>Christopher Priest\u00a0Publisher:<\/strong> Gollancz
\nRelease Date: <\/strong>9 July 2011\u00a0Price: <\/strong>\u00a37.99<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite The Road<\/em> recently claiming the crown, so-called \u2018catastrophe fiction\u2019 has had a particular appeal in Britain. Wyndham\u2019s Day Of The Triffids<\/em> is a cast-iron classic with similar chills found in John Christopher\u2019s Death Of Grass<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On film there is a direct lineage from Terry Nation\u2019s original Survivors<\/em> to Danny Boyle\u2019s 28 Days Later<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Fugue For A Darkening Island<\/em> is one of Priest\u2019s early novels. Published in 1972 and recently reissued with a number of revisions, it is a chilling look at a Britain gripped by civil war and, in my view, the equal of McCarthy\u2019s more showy vision.<\/p>\n

The novel\u2019s power lies in plausibility, even after so many years. Priest\u2019s catastrophe has no flesh-eating undead, or killer plants. In the near future, Africa has fallen \u2013 war and nuclear attacks leave untold numbers of refugees looking for a place in the world. Many arrive in the UK, leading to civil unrest, the election of a far-right government and, ultimately, civil war.<\/p>\n

Priest\u2019s writing is brave. Our protagonist, Alan Whitman, is not a sympathetic character \u2013 he\u2019s mercurial and amoral, but we empathise with him nonetheless. Nor are there obvious heroes or villains. We learn, through a complex narrative structure, about Whitman\u2019s life from childhood, and see that civil war doesn\u2019t happen overnight, frighteningly it creeps up, a product of political posturing and unwise military interventions. The novel leaves the reader with little hope for the future.<\/p>\n

Priest wrote Fugue in the time of Enoch Powell\u2019s infamous \u2018rivers of blood\u2019 speech. Today\u2019s news is filled with hysterical scaremongering about immigrants \u2018taking\u2019 British jobs and homes. Against this context Fugue For a Darkening Island<\/em> still serves as a warning and could easily have been written in 2011 rather than 39 years ago.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Priest’s 1972 novel Fugue For A Darkening Island reviewed by a reader of the SciFiNow Book Club. Let us know what you’ve been reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":18996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1624,8],"tags":[2247,1981,2083,2283,1111],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/n1044.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}