It used to take years to get a book into print. And during the laborious process of re-keyboarding the manuscript, plenty of people had a go at the thing.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s technology has enormously speeded the process of creating a book from the author\u2019s original computer disc. But in an era when young high school graduates will actually argue with me that there was never any \u201cgolden age\u201d in which 16-year-olds knew who commanded the Yankee forces at both Yorktown and Vicksburg — or at least in which years and in which wars those battles were fought — the results can be shocking.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m interested in the Steampunk genre. (Think Gibson & Sterling\u2019s \u201cThe Difference Engine.\u201d Think David Lynch\u2019s film of Frank Herbert\u2019s \u201cDune.\u201d) So I recently picked up \u201cThe Affinity Bridge\u201d (Snowbooks, London, 2008), by George Mann, who bills himself as \u201cthe head of a major SF\/Fantasy publishing imprint.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe that\u2019s the problem. Who will edit the publisher?<\/p>\n
This is not a question of \u201ctypographical errors.\u201d Mr. Mann\u2019s exercise in jaw-dropping literary self-abuse goes far beyond that.<\/p>\n
Is this — the first in a series, my God — a terrible book? There were enough chases and fist fights to keep me turning the pages, for a time. But I\u2019m jealous of wasted hours. And while it may be estimable to overshoot and fail nobly, it\u2019s hard to be patient with those who have nothing new to show us, and won\u2019t even put in the time to try and hone their craft — which happens to also be my craft.<\/p>\n
On page 18, we\u2019re informed by Mr. Mann that our protagonist, Sir Maurice Newbury, is \u201cenamoured by\u201d airships. The word is almost always used in the passive. Shouldn\u2019t someone have asked the author whether he didn\u2019t mean his character is \u201cenamoured of\u201d the vessels?<\/p>\n
On page 68, the clerk\u2019s pale face is described as \u201cbelying his apparent displeasure at receiving customers so close to lunch.\u201d The sentence makes no sense unless the author means the face \u201creveals,\u201d \u201cbetrays,\u201d or even \u201cbetokens\u201d his displeasure — the polar opposite of \u201cbelying.\u201d<\/p>\n
On page 89, the mechanical man\u2019s \u201cbrass fingers … were affixed with little leather pads to prevent them from shattering the tumbler.\u201d No they weren\u2019t. They may have been \u201cequipped\u201d with little leather pads, or the little leather pads may have been \u201caffixed to the brass fingers,\u201d but as little leather pads are unlikely to perform the same function as glue or (alternatively) screws and hex nuts, it\u2019s unclear how they could be used to \u201caffix\u201d the brass fingers to anything, even as mundane as the hands.<\/p>\n
Meantime, we\u2019re assured we need not doubt the Scotland Yard inspector\u2019s discretion. Sir Maurice \u201ctrusts him impeccably.\u201d<\/p>\n
On page 133, Sir Maurice opens his mail and realizes he and his assistant, the anachronistic but still largely useless Miss Veronica Hobbes, have only a brief time to get across town for a proposed meeting with a gentleman who claims to have vital information concerning the fiery crash of a passenger dirigible. \u201cLet us not prevaricate any longer,\u201d Sir Maurice cries as he leaps to his feet, in a moment apparently intended to bring to mind age-old references to the game being afoot.<\/p>\n
Should we pay close attention for some stunning revelation, now that Sir Maurice has asserted he’s finally willing to stop lying and spill the beans? Nope. I’m afraid we must instead conclude our lexicographically challenged author simply meant to write \u201cLet us not procrastinate …\u201d<\/p>\n
On page 214, a character asks \u201cImpressive isn\u2019t it?\u201d as he turns \u201cto encapsulate the room with a gesture of his arms, indicating the various machines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well … no. I don\u2019t think he intended to shrink the room down till it would fit inside a little gelatin pill. Try \u201cencompass.\u201d<\/p>\n
An unlikely brass cane which can be made to emit a disabling jolt of electricity is described as a \u201clightening cane\u201d when the author surely means \u201clightning.\u201d Minor characters speculate whether Miss Hobbes has employed her \u201cfeminine whiles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Was this entire project merely a ploy to get the author\u2019s parents to buy him a decent dictionary?<\/p>\n
Do I ever use one word when I mean another? Of course. In casual conversation, we usually hear our own errors and correct them before we reach the end of the sentence — though I\u2019m sure a few slip through.<\/p>\n
In typing, a homophone — a sound-alike word — will creep in from time to time. They\u2019re evidence that the writer is \u201chearing\u201d what he writes \u201cin his mind\u2019s ear.\u201d Ninety-eight percent will normally be caught and corrected on an author\u2019s first read-through. Doesn\u2019t he owe it to us to take that much trouble?<\/p>\n
I wish I could report there\u2019s some subtle joke-within-a-joke here, a parody of those who attempt to cobble together Sherlock Holmes simulacra, reaching for the kind of \u201cfancy words\u201d Conan Doyle’s Watson sometimes employed, and constantly falling short.<\/p>\n
Richard Sheridan\u2019s Mrs. Malaprop famously said \u201cI would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries.\u201d No one worried that the playwright had \u201cgot that one wrong,\u201d any more than they feared Norman Lear had made a mistake when he had Archie Bunker express his distrust of the feminists in \u201cthe women\u2019s lubrication movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s no sign the joke here is intended.<\/p>\n
There are clubs that gather to watch the worst films ever made, often reserving their highest honors for Ed Wood\u2019s \u201cGlen or Glenda\u201d and \u201cPlan 9 From Outer Space.\u201d I\u2019m not sure \u201cThe Affinity Bridge\u201d rises to a high enough level of goofiness to merit inclusion in such a pantheon, but this literary equivalent of a lurching creature sewn together out of other people\u2019s cast-off plot points does share with Wood\u2019s masterpieces that odd characteristic — the author seems so earnest yet unaware, so totally lacking in wit (self-deprecating or otherwise), that it\u2019s clear none of the humor is intentional.<\/p>\n
Finally, why do so many reviewers seem to have let this one slip past with a modest pat on the rump, a \u201cripping good yarn\u201d and all that? I haven\u2019t located the full review, but the usually reliable Guardian is cited saying: \u201cSteampunk is making a comeback, and with this novel Mann is leading the charge. … An engaging melodrama that rattles along at a breakneck pace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Members of the younger generation will likely respond by shouting (they so often do) \u201cOh, you know what the author meant!\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, all too often we DO know \u201cwhat the author meant,\u201d here, as he piles one scientific absurdity on another (disembodied human brains that survive and function for months, absent any bloodflow? Mrs. Shelley knew better than that), not to mention the predictable parade of perfectly able-bodied police officers and others who seem preturnaturally unable to outrun the omnipresent undead. (Why, oh why, must zombies always crave human flesh? Why can\u2019t they, just this once, show an irresistible appetite for crispy chips with sea salt and vinegar?)<\/p>\n
I wish there were some ironic social commentary intended in Mr. Mann\u2019s decision to fill Whitechapel with sponge-brained zombies, working-class creatures inescapable by their able-bodied betters despite the fact they seem to be endlessly shuffling, shambling, stumbling, and lurching.<\/p>\n
But there ain\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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