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fortitudinem · 4 years

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TIMELINE FOR DISNEY’S DESCENDANTS UNIVERSE

under the cut because it is a long post

AU – Ante Unionem ( before union, this takes place before the union of the kingdoms under King Adam and counts backwards in years ) IB – Imperium Bestia ( beast’s reign, this takes place after the union of the kingdoms and counts forwards. )

38 AU – In Olympia, The newborn Hercules is stolen from his parents by Hades’ minions who attempt to remove his power and fail, leaving him to be found and taken in by a human family.

36 AU – Moana is born in Motuni, daughter of the Chief.

33 AU – In Lone Keep, Aladdin is born and orphaned in Agrabah.

32 AU – In Northern Wei, Fa Mulan. In Paris, Quasimodo is born and his mother killed on the steps of the cathedral by Frollo, who is then made to sponsor the boy’s upbringing within the walls of the cathedral.

31 AU – In Camelot, Arthur is born and adopted. In Agrabah, Princess Jasmine is born.

30 AU - Princess Merida is born in the Borderlands.

29 AU – In Solaria, Aurora is born to King Stephen and Queen Leah, at her christening the dark fairy Maleficent curses her to die by pricking her finger on a spindle before her sixteenth birthday as revenge for having not been invited. Aurora is betrothed to Phillip. The curse is rewritten by the Good Fairies. Aurora is taken away by the Three good Fairies to be raised as Briar Rose in the woods. In Prydain, Taran is born. In the Golden Citadel, Future Emperor Kuzco is born.

28 AU – Princess Elsa is born in Arendelle. Pocahontas is born.

27 AU – Princess Eilonwy is born in Prydain.

25 AU – Princess Rapunzel is born in Corona and kidnapped by Gothel. Princess Snow White is born in the Summerlands. Princess Anna is born in Arendelle. Ella is born in Verrelac.

23 AU – Tarzan is born and his parents take him on a ship down the coast, but it is shipwrecked and they are forced to trek into the jungle and make themselves a home in the trees. However, they are killed by a leopard named Sabor. Tarzan is found by the Gorilla Kala and taken in by her.

22 AU – Tiana is born in New Orleans.

20 AU – Hercules is revealed to be the son of Zeus and begins his training. Hades finds out and attempts to kill him and release the Titans to go and kill his brother Zeus. This also fails. Hercules gains his godly powers back but chooses to remain on the mortal plane. Hades escapes the souls and goes back to ruling the underworld. In Arendelle, Anna suffers an injury from Elsa’s powers and the trolls have to erase her memories to fix it. Elsa begins to withdraw and the sisters are kept apart. In Motunui, when a blight strikes her people Moana defies her father’s wishes for no-one to leave the reef, leaves the Kingdom and journeys to deliver the heart of the sea to Te Fiti. She succeeds at fixing the goddess and making the seas safe for all once more.

19 AU – In Camelot, Arthur removes the sword from the stone and is crowned King Arthur. Merlin bests the witch Madam Mim. In the Summerlands, King White dies, leaving his second wife, Queen Grimhilde as regent while his daughter is too young to rule.

18 AU – In Villanueve, ten year old Prince Adam receives an unwanted visitor to his castle and he sends them away, but they are revealed to be an enchantress who turns him into a beast to punish him for his selfish behaviour. He has until the even of his 21st Birthday to fall in love and make someone fall in love with him in return.

16 AU – Northern Wei is invaded by the Hun army, Fa Mulan enlists under the guise of a warrior named Ping. She buries the Hun army in an avalanche but is caught out for being a woman and sent home. Instead, she rescues the emperor.

15 AU – In Agrabah, Princess Jasmine tires of meeting suitors and never being allowed outside of the palace, so she sneaks out and meets Aladdin, who is then arrested for kidnapping her. Jafar searches for someone to get him into the Cave of Wonders to find the genie lamp and ends up using Aladdin for this purpose. Aladdin finds the lamp, but ends up taking control of the genie. He arrives at the palace as a suitor for Jasmine, having fallen in love with her. Jafar gains control of the lamp and takes over Agrabah, but is beaten by Aladdin, Jasmine and the Genie. In Prydian, Taran is put in charge of the psychic pig Hen Wen to stop the Horned King getting his hands on the Black Cauldron. He is captured but frees himself and Princess Eilonwy and eventually they destroy the cauldron. In Verrelac, Ella’s mother passes away.

14 AU – In Sherwood Forest, King Richard is away on crusade and his brother Prince John has usurped the throne and is taxing villagers relentlessly. Robin Hood steals from these taxmen and the rich to pay back the poor people who have nothing left. Prince John fails to capture Robin and his men and Richard returns to Sherwood to take back his throne from his brother. In Faraway, Princess Merida defies custom and propriety and accidentally turns her mother into a bear. This is fixed and the evil bear Mor’du is defeated.

13 AU – Aurora’s sixteenth birthday draws near; the fairies prepare to take her back to her parents once they have outmatched the curse. Aurora meets and falls in love with Phillip, unknowing that he is already her betrothed. She is taken back to the castle and found by Maleficent who spells her into pricking her finger and falling into a deep sleep. Maleficent also captures Phillip. The Good Fairies send everyone else to sleep too and then rescue Phillip, who in turn goes to wake Aurora. He slays Maleficent in her dragon form and wakes Aurora with a kiss. Aurora is returned to her parents. Alice Liddell is born in London. In Verrelac, Ella’s father marries Lady Tremaine.

12 AU – Captain Phoebus is named head of the Paris Guards. Quasimodo leaves the church for the first time ever and is proclaimed King of Fools at the festival, but the people of the city mock him and he returns to the church, disheartened. Judge Claude Frollo falls for Esmerelda and suspecting she has placed him under a spell, seeks to burn her for witchcraft. She takes sanctuary at the church and Quasimodo helps her escape, but is later fooled by Frollo into showing him where her true hiding place, the Court of Miracles is. Frollo orders Esmerelda and her people captured and killed. Phoebus helps set them free instead and Frollo is killed in the ensuing battle. Quasimodo is hailed a hero. In Verrelac, Ella’s father passes away, leaving her in the care of Lady Tremaine.

11 AU – In the Golden Citadel, Emperor Kuzco fires his advisor, Yzma, for attempting to run the country behind his back. In retaliation, she turns him into a llama and attempts to have him killed, but the attempt fails and Yzma is turned into a cat. Kuzco is returned to his human self and put back on the throne. In the Summerlands, Princess Snow White has been being raised by Queen Grimhilde, forced to work in the castle she should own. The queen is reclusive and vain and when she hears that Snow White is now considered prettier than her, she orders the girl taken into the forest and killed. Instead the huntsman simply abandons her and tells her to run. Snow White happens upon the cottage of the dwarves and soon makes friends with them. The Queen, however, is told Snow white is alive by her magic mirror and decides she needs to kill her herself with a poisoned apple. She tricks Snow White into eating the apple while she is alone and the dwarves returns to find her seemingly dead. They chase Queen Grimhilde off a cliff and lay Snow White in a coffin of glass, until Prince Heinrich-Florian arrives to bestow upon her True Love’s Kiss. She awakes and the pair unite their lands.

10 AU – In the future King George Town, Governor Radcliffe’s ship arrives from London with the intent of searching the area for gold, but there is none to be found. John Smith falls in love with Pocahontas, the daughter of the Chief of the area. When one of the Chief’s men is shot dead, John is blamed and sentenced to death. Pocahontas saves him and he, in turn, saves the life of the Chief by taking a bullet intended for him. He is shipped back to London for medical care. King Agnarr and Queen Iduna perish in the Dark Sea, leaving their daughters to rule Arendelle. However, no-one takes the throne and Arendelle is without regent.

8 AU - In Villanueve, a small town in the Kingdom of Auradon, Maurice the inventor is captured by the Beast (actually Crown Prince Adam), Belle gives her freedom to rescue him, Belle and Beast fall in love, breaking the curse and freeing Adam back into his human form.

7 AU – In South Riding, the day before her 18th birthday, Rapunzel is accosted in her tower (where she has been living with her mother, Gothel for 18 years in order to protect her magical hair) by a stranger, a thief by the name of Flynn Ryder. She agrees to exchange his belongings for being walked to the city of Corona to see the lanterns that shine every year on her birthday. They are pursued by guards, Gothel and Flynn’s acquaintances, the Stabbington brothers all across the land until they finally reach Corona. Unfortunately, Rapunzel is returned to the care of her mother and taken back to the tower where a memory is triggered of her childhood. She reveals to Gothel that she knows she was the princess taken as a baby. Gothel attempts to imprison her, but Eugene escapes custody and scales the tower, leading to Gothel stabbing him. Rapunzel promises to go with Gothel if she is allowed to heal Eugene, but as she goes to do it, Eugene cuts her hair off, rendering it no longer magical. Gothel falls from the tower, turning to dust on the way down. Rapunzel is returned home to grateful parents. In Arendelle, Queen Elsa is coronated. A celebration is thrown where the doors to the palace are opened for the first time in three years. Elsa’s powers manifest, throwing Arendelle into a perpetual winter and she flees into the mountains. Anna goes after her and after tracking her down, is wounded and brought back to Arendelle for a cure to stop her turning to ice. Elsa is imprisoned in the castle, but escapes. A battle ensues on the frozen fjord, where Anna sacrifices herself to save Elsa, thus thawing her frozen heart. Elsa fixes the weather and takes over the Kingdom.

6 AU – In Verrelac, Ella is living under the care of her stepmother Lady Tremaine, who treats her like a servant and dubs her ‘Cinderella’. She longs to go to the ball that is being thrown for the Prince, to find him a wife, but is denied the chance. Fairy Godmother appears to her and uses magic to send her to the ball in style. Ella and Prince Christopher fall in love, but Ella has to flee the castle at midnight as the magic won’t last. She loses a glass slipper on the staircase, prompting Christopher to send men all over the kingdom looking for her. Despite interference from Lady Tremaine, the pair are united and married. Ella becomes Princess Ella. In London, Alice Liddell is spending some time outside when she spies a rabbit wearing a waistcoat and follows it into a topsy-turvey world. She almost has her head removed by the Queen of Hearts but manages to flee Wonderland back to her own home. In Corona, Rapunzel’s hair magically grows back after she comes into contact with magic black rocks (other adventures ensue).

5 AU – In Atlantica, King Triton’s youngest daughter Ariel is scheduled to make her debut. However, she misses it, sparking her father’s anger. She saves a human prince, Prince Eric of Tirulia, from drowning when his ship capsizes in a storm. When her father finds out, he destroys her prized possessions, driving Ariel into the arms of the Sea Witch Ursula, who promises to make her a human for the cost of her voice and with the caveat that she has three days to get true love’s kiss from Eric. Now human and mute, Ariel is found on the shore by Eric who takes her in and shows her the human world, but after a near miss he is spelled by Ursula into marrying her instead. Ariel fails the task of getting a kiss and turns back into a mermaid under Ursula’s power. King Triton gives himself up for Ariel, leaving Ursula with his sea-controlling sceptre. Ursula is killed when Eric spears her through the heart with a ship. Ariel and Eric are reunited and married. In the Deep Jungle, Tarzan has been raised by his Gorilla family, but they soon come under threat from a hunter named Clayton. Tarzam meets Jane and her father, interacting with another human for the first time since his parent’s deaths. He accidentally leads Clayton back to the gorilla’s home and has to save them when Clayton attempts to take them away with him. The gorilla leader Kerchak is shot and dies, naming Tarzan his successor. Clayton accidentally hangs himself on vines. Not too far away, in another jungle, Mowgli the man-cub has been raised by wolves but with the return of the man-eating tiger Shere Khan to the region they feel it is time to return him to the man village. Mowgli, not wanting to go the man village, joins instead with a bear named Baloo, but ultimately, after several near misses with snakes, monkeys and Shere Khan himself, Mowgli is returned to the man village. In a small village, a woodworker named Gepetto wishes for a puppet he created to be turned into a real boy. His wish is granted (to a degree) and Pinocchio is born, but still made from wood. After being led astray, being locked up, put on a cursed island and eaten by a whale, Pinocchio is finally turned into a real boy, instead of a wooden puppet. In Corona, after a rocky few months, Rapunzel and Cassandra battle the evil Zhan Tiri and win. Varian invents hot running water. King Adam enters into negotiations with Verrelac, Solaria, The Summerlands, North Riding, Camelot, Westerly and Tirulia, promising a new era of prosperity and safety if they would be willing to unite under his banner.

4 AU – In London, the Darling family are living in their townhouse, which is being frequented at night by Peter Pan. The children of the house, Wendy, Michael and John, are taken away by Peter to a magical cloaked island where no-one grows up called Neverland, where they fight pirates, including Pan’s nemsis, the evil captain Hook. Eventually, they return home to their parents. In Paris, Madame Bonfamille alters her will to leave everything to her cats. In response to this, her butler attempts to have them killed so he can inherit her fortune instead. Luckily, the cats survive and Edgar is sent away. In a small city, Jim Dear and his wife decide to go on vacation, leaving their baby in the care of an aunt, who mistakenly identifies their dog, Lady, as dangerous and purchases her a muzzle, prompting Lady to run away and befriend a local stray. The stray is eventually brought home with her and adopted by Jim Dear and Darling. Atlantis is discovered by Milo Thatch. In Arendelle, Queen Elsa is having strange experiences with a voice calling to her, when a series of disasters drives all the citizens out of the city of Arendelle, Elsa and Anna embark on a quest to fix the problem by journeying to an Enchanted Forest where they meet the Northuldra people and learn more about their own past. Elsa journeys further alone, to Ahtohallan, a glacial river of ice said to hold memories. There she finds out that she is the fifth elemental spirit and that their grandfather damaged the magic of the forest by building a dam and then attacked the Northuldra people, prompting the forest to close itself off. She manages to get this message to Anna before freezing solid. Anna is prompted to action by the message and uses rock giants to bring down the dam, even though it would destroy Arendelle. The spirits all agree to spare Arendelle due to her selfless and brave actions and Elsa and the Nokk turn back the tidal wave before it can destroy the city. Elsa chooses to stay in the Enchanted Forest and Anna is crowned Queen Anna of Arendelle. In Tirulia, Melody is born. The ship is attacked by Ursula’s sister Morgana who swears vengeance on the child, prompting Ariel to shut their castle off from the sea, vowing that she will not return to the mer-folk kingdom until Morgana is found. Negotiations are finalised with King Adam for the Kingdoms of Verrelac, Solaria, The Summerlands, North Riding, Camelot, Westerly and Tirulia to unite under his banner.

3 AU – In New Orleans, Tiana agrees to cater for her friend Charlotte’s party for the money to buy herself a building to turn into the restaurant of her dreams. Prince Naveen, a visiting dignitary from the nearby Maldonia, is turned into a frog by Doctor Facilier. Tiana finds that the money is not enough to buy the building and when Naveen, in frog form, asks her to kiss him to turn him back she reluctantly agrees in exchange for the money she needs. However, because she isn’t a princess, she instead also turns into a frog. Tiana and Naveen trek through the bayou to find a voodoo queen named Mama Odie to help turn them back and following her advice they journey back into the city to get Charlotte to kiss Naveen and break the spell, however they run out of time and the spell sticks until Tiana and Naveen are married as frogs, making Tiana and princess and capable of breaking the curse. Tiana sets up her dream restaurant.. In The Summerlands, Bambi’s mother is killed by a hunter. Adam enters negotiations with East Riding, South riding, Northern Wei, Lone Keep, Winter’s Keep and Apheliotia, pressuring them to join under his banner utilising the strength he has already amassed.

2 AU – In London, Roger and Anita Radcliffe’s dogs Pongo and Perdita, give birth to fifteen puppies. These puppies are dognapped by Anita’s college friend and wealthy heiress Cruella De Vil after Roger refuses to sell them to her. She intends to make a coat out of them. The puppies are saved by their parents and it is revealed Cruella also bought 84 other puppies. Pongo and Perdita take them all home with them to be cared for by Roger and Anita. In the Summerland, in the enchanted wood, the orphaned deer, Bambi, wins a courtship duel, chases hunters from his lands and is forced to outrun a forest fire. He is crowned Great Prince of the Forest by the other animals. News spreads across the kingdoms of a flying elephant named Dumbo. Negotiations are finalised with East Riding, South riding, Northern Wei, Lone Keep, Winter’s Keep and Apheliotia, bringing them all under Adam’s banner.

1 AU – In a big city, a box of kittens is left abandoned when only one remains. Oliver attempt to adjust to life on his own and instead befriends a dog named Dodger and his crew of thieving dogs, headed up by their human, Fagin. Fagin owes a lot of money to Bill Sykes, a mobster, so he encourages the dogs to attempt to steal a car. The plan goes awry and Oliver is found by a little girl, Jenny and taken in. The gang, thinking he has been captured, seek to free him and Fagin attempts to use him to get a ransom from Jenny’s rich family. However, upon seeing Jenny he has a change of heart, but Sykes won’t accept that, he kidnaps Jenny. But Jenny is rescued by the dogs and Fagin and Sykes’ car is hit by a train. Oliver goes to live with Jenny. In the countryside, a hunting dog refuses to hunt a fox, instead choosing to protect it. The Wild Kingdom, Borderlands, Farway, Schwartzvald and Olympia sign an agreement to unite under Adam’s banner, with caveats. Neverland’s cloaking magic is removed and it too is forced into the agreement with Auradon.

0 IB – Beast and Belle marry, Auradon is united under one flag with Beast proclaimed High King through popular vote, though it had already been decided. The Isle of the Lost is created, and the villains are captured or brought back from the dead to be placed in this prison.

1 IB – Auradon Preparatory school is formed, utilising an old castle to turn into a boarding school for future generations. The Recycling Act is passed, sending all the garbage from Auradon to the Isle of the Lost. Fairy Godmother is made headmistress of Auradon Prep.

3 IB – Beast declares that magic will no longer be used in Auradon where possible, that it will be phased out and that it will be replaced with technology. While not an outright ban on magic, he makes it very clear that magic is now considered dangerous and frowned upon.

4 IB – Prince Benjamin, Princess Audrey, Prince Chad are born in Auradon, along with the rest of their future classmates. On the Isle of the Lost, Mal, Jay, Evie, Uma and Harry are born. Adam passes a regulatory law on the powers of his King’s Council, taking power from them and giving himself more control.

5 IB – Jane Fae is born in Auradon. Carlos De Vil is born on the Isle of the Lost. King Adam passes a law to make his line of succession the line of succession and to eliminate the ‘vote’ aspect of becoming High King and to pave the way for Ben to become the next High King.

6 IB – King Hubert passes away. Corona and South Riding merge into one Kingdom under the control of King Frederic.

7 IB – In Tirulia, Melody is turning twelve. She sneaks out into the sea often and she ends up finding out about Atlantica and mer-folk even though Ariel has been hiding it from her. She ventures out into the sea and is taken to Morgana, who offers her a tail in exchange for Triton’s trident. Melody, not knowing who she is, finds the trident and gives it to Morgana, but upon realising her mistake, she manages to take it back and Triton encases Morgana in a block of ice and then banishes her to the Isle of the Lost.

9 IB – The last free villains are imprisoned on the Isle, marking the turning point for Auradon. It is marked with a celebration.

10 IB – On the Isle of the Lost, Queen Grimhilde is banished from society by Maleficent for failing to invite Mal to her daughter’s birthday party.

18 IB – Princess Rapunzel is made Queen of Corona by her retiring father.

19 IB – The Sidekicks Act is developed by Prince Ben, giving the workers access to rest days and adequate pay, as well as pension funds and college plans, He starts a movement towards modernisation in every home, especially ones that have previously had woodland animals to do the chores for them.

20 IB – Ben makes a proclamation giving the children from the Isle of the Lost a second chance. He brings over four such children to prove that this program works. Beast steps down as King, leaving Ben in charge. Maleficent is rendered into the form of a small lizard.

21 IB – Ben puts an embargo on travel in and out of the Isle of the Lost, except by pre-approved means. He declares any barges going into the Isle must be full of real supplies instead of garbage. Mal is named Lady Mal at Cotillion. Uma escapes the Isle and disappears into the sea, becoming a fugitive.

22 IB – The VK Day program is set up. Four new children from the Isle of the Lost are chosen to attend Auradon Prep. King Ben proposes to Lady Mal. Princess Audrey is spelled by Maleficent’s Sceptre and attempts to put all of Auradon under a sleeping curse. She is stopped by Lady Mal. At their engagement party, Lady Mal and King Ben decide to remove the barrier once and for all and pardon all the villains. Work begins on turning the Isle in a liveable habitat.

23 IB – Work is completed on a new school for the Villain Kids and a real prison for villains who fall back into their old ways.

notes: i probably need to add more to the IB sections, that is a later problem.

#disney descendants #descendants #disney's descendants #descendants meta #descendants worldbuilding #4000 words later #HISTORY | AURADON.#ABOUT | AURADON.

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thekitschies · 7 years

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Adam Roberts Phantom Kitschies 2016

Adam Roberts, in typical overachieving fashion, managed to read enough books to populate a full and complete shortlist.

Adam Roberts

No Kitschies were awarded last year. 2016 was a Kitschless year—for one year only it was Nitch on the Kitsch. Which was a shame, since 2016 saw a wealth of (to quote the Kitschies’ remit) ‘progressive, intelligent and entertaining works containing elements of the speculative or fantastic’. So, [*clears throat*] in my capacity a former judge, I thought I’d post some speculative short-lists for the year the prize didn’t happen.

A disclaimer is needful: I didn’t do last year, what I did in my judging year—that is, read a metric tonne of hard-copy and e-books, the better to be able to narrow down our shortlists. But I read a fair few and some of the books I read were really excellent. So here, for the sake of argument (and please: argue with what I list here) are my Phantom Kitschies shortlists for 2016.

Red Tentacle for the best novel

Naomi Alderman’s The Power is a brilliant jolt of a read, a book happy to inhabit blockbuster conventions in order to suborn them to some powerfully subversive ends. Teenage girls across the world suddenly discover they have the ability electrically to shock others—to burn them, cause them intense pain, even to kill them. The narrative rattles through the immediate implications of this: girls taking revenge on violent or raping men, girls simply being mean, girls collectively coming to a sense of their new power. But the strength of the novel is the way it follows-through its premise, into a world in which men are segregated for their own protection and women, for good and ill and with quite an emphasis on the latter, take control. I particularly liked the way this new society retcons its sense of the world—it becomes seen as ‘natural’ and a product of ‘evolutionary psychology’ for women to be aggressive and violent, since they have babies to protect; if men ever ruled the world their patriarchy would be nurturing and gentle. It’s a raw novel, more than a little jagged—though that also suits its theme—but sparky and engaging throughout. A lightning bolt of a read.

Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Winter is the third of his ‘fractured Europe’ novels, set in bivalve European set-up—one a tessellation of myriad tiny statelets and ruritaniae, the other, ‘The Community’ a calm but stifling version of 1950s Britain rolled out across the whole continent. The two versions of European reality are linked via a complex of strange portals. Each of the Europe books has a subtly different emphasis and tone, although all provide the pleasures of alt-spy adventures, a cosmopolitan richness of interlocking storylines and slowly unfurling mystery; but arguably this is the best of the three, from its bang-bang opening act of intercontinental railway terrorism through to its big finale. A modern classic.

Lavie Tidhar’s sprawling masterpiece Central Station, set in a future spaceport Tel Aviv, is easily his best book yet (and that’s saying something). What I particularly loved about this is the way it manages to be both gloriously old-fashioned in its SF—an actual fix-up novel set in a space-port in which a colourful variety of humans robots and aliens intermingle—and a distinctively twenty-first century novel about the complex but sustaining inter-relationship between culture and place and memory and technology and change. Most of all it’s about the centrality of stories to who we are, and about the way those stories are always collective and heterogeneous. It’s a marvel.

Christopher Priest’s The Gradual works a simple-enough sciencefictional version of time-zone differences into a haunting exploration of travel, aging and loss. Set like many of Priest’s best novels in his ‘Dream Archipelago’ of endless islands, it is the first-person narrative of composer Sandro Sussken, a citizen of the Glaund Republic on the Northern mainland (a downbeat, authoritarian society locked in an Orwellian permanent war with the Faianland Alliance). The success of his music means that, unlike most Glaundians, Sussken gets to travel from island to island, but in doing so he discovers the titular ‘gradual’, a kind of complex time-slip, or time-stall, that dislocates him from his origins, his family and in the end from the world as a whole. Priest uses his speculative conceit brilliantly to explore what it means to age. It makes me think how rarely the old figure, and how much more they ought to, in progressive narratives of equality and diversity.

Sofia Samatar’s The Winged Histories is a remarkable epic Fantasy, the follow-up to her debut A Stranger in Olondria (2013) and an even stronger novel. It gives us many of the satisfactions of this over-populated mode, as four women—an aristocrat, a military officer, a priestess and a nomadic poet—are caught up in the events leading to an empire-shaking war. But Samatar has the confidence, and the skill, to downplay the conventional satisfactions of narrative. The result is a gorgeous labyrinth of a text that circles through the permutations of its characters, plot, and the history of her world, richly written and formally involuted.

Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad deploys its fantastical conceit—the literalisation of the celebrated 19th-century US ‘railroad’ along which slaves would try to pass to freedom as a network of actual excavated tunnels, railways and stations—with commendable restraint. He is not interested in the worldbuilding mechanics of his idea so much as in the imaginative freedom it gives him to send his heroine, Cora, on a journey encompassing the different violences slavery has manifested over the centuries. It is a novel that renders slave society as vividly and memorably brutal without, at any point, reverting to the pieties of hindsight or historical cliché. An unforgettable piece of fiction.

Golden Tentacle for best debut novel

Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit recasts Korean legend in a densely rendered high-tech future universe governed by ‘calendars’, sort-of computer programmes that determine the nature of reality itself. It’s a book that boldly drops its reader into its properly futuristic and alien cosmos—an interstellar empire called the Hexarchate in which six factions each with unique skills are competing for power. Though it might put some readers off, the advantage of this approach is that when the book clicks fully into focus it does so with kaleidoscopic brilliance and coherence. The game theory and maths, all the politics and military tactics, neatly offset some nicely written central relationships.

David Means’s Hystopia is a brilliant, baffling and expertly fractured novel set in an alt-1970s America in which Kennedy wasn’t assassinated, and Vietnam veterans are being treated for PTSD with psychedelics. It is steeped in the flavour of its era, and manages to be simultaneously weirdly familiar and intensely strange—quite the combo, that. I have to concede it’s a little distorting describing this as a ‘first novel’ (even though that’s what it is) because Means has been honing his craft writing short stories for decades. The technical skill shows: Means’s multi-viewpoint and deracinated approach could easily have slid into mere messiness; but though the novel is often violent it is also potent and, in its way, coherent.

Wyl Menmuir’s superbly eerie The Many is, though short, a tricky book to summarise. Suffice to say that as an exercise in unnerving the reader, this cryptic, powerful novella is remarkable. Its seemingly simple plot, about a young man coming to a Cornish seaside village to live in an abandoned cottage whose previous owner had drowned, invokes a sort-of ghost story, or perhaps hallucination, or perhaps dreamtime, to render its poisoned near-future world more obliquely vivid that any straightforward account ever could.

Idra Novey’s Ways to Disappear wonderfully resuscitates a form—magic realism—I had thought dead and buried. A famous Brazilian writer, Beatriz Yagoda, up to her neck in gambling debt, goes missing; her American translator Emma flies down to South America to try and make sense of things. The characters she meets are colourful and varied (indeed, perhaps, their colourful variety is a little by rote), and the tone is lightly comic, but as the story goes on it becomes stranger and more beautiful, and Novey’s background as a lyric poet increasingly comes to dominate the telling. A short novel that leaves rich and strange residue in the imagination.

Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning boldly mashes together eighteenth-century manners and 25th-century adventure in a post-scarcity utopia where which gender-distinctions are taboo and large-scale affinity-groups are carefully manipulated and managed by behind-the-scenes forces to maintain broader social balance. Readers are liable to find the richly mannered idiom in which Palmer tells her story either beguiling—as I did—or, perhaps, archly offputting. But it is worth persevering with the narrative: there’s a piercing political intelligence at work here, of the sort that would surely have delighted the Enlightenment philosophes that inspired it. Intricately worked, and, I’m pleased to say, the first of a very promising series.

Nick Wood’s Azanian Bridges is set in a modern day South Africa still under the sway of Apartheid, and expertly uses this alt-historical premise to estrange and refresh the way racism violates social and human contexts, without abandoning the possibility of bridging this chasm. Sibusiso Mchunu, traumatised by seeing his friend killed at a demonstration, is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where White doctor Martin test him on his new invented, an ‘empathy machine’. The potential of this device, and its dangers, power a compact but very effective thriller. A thought-provoking and promising debut.

from http://ift.tt/2rueAmg

#2016 #Shortlist #Ada Palmer #Christopher Priest #Colson Whitehead #Dave Hutchinson #David Means #Idr

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