Fool's Run

this is McKillip's only sf work, and the publisher hedges all bets by describing it as "science fantasy". and it does in some odd way belong in a genre category all by itself - though possibly Samuel Delany's early sf works, of which this book reminded me, might scootch in there beside it. the book doesn't entirely work, i think, but it's full of marvellous ideas, and often beautiful language to describe the indescribable. a poet's work, really. or a musician's. and it's worth the ride, to see where it chooses to go, all the way through mystery and dream to an eerie and disquieting last line that could have inaugurated a whole series. her fantasy works are brilliant, but i could wish McKillip had written more to this side of the genre too.

Fool's Run is science-fiction and therefore immediately different from Patricia A. McKillip's other books (since to my knowledge, all her others are fantasy). And unlike some science-fiction which sits in a murky mid-ground between fantasy and sci-fi, Fool's Run undeniably the latter.
But despite being a different genre, just as in the novel 'breakwaters in front of the sea-factories and purifying plants had calmed the tides, but the ocean could still braid a whip of wind and spume', McKillip's way with words, her gorgeous (often lyrical and metaphorical) prose still stands. I was hooked by the opening of chapter one: 'The Magician sat alone on a stage in the Constellation Club, playing Bach to the robots whirling a grave minuet around show more him as they sucked cigarette butts off the floor.'
Then again, I have a thing about Bach.

Fool's Run is set seven years after 21 year old Terra Viridian was sentenced live out her days in the orbital prison, Underworld, for following a vision which prompted her to take her laser rifle and turn fifteen hundred innocents into light. As part of their rehabilitation program, Underworld invites the band Nova to come and give a concert. Nova hope for a subsequent tour which would take them to fame beyond the Constellation Club, but instead find themselves caught up in Terra's visions when she tries to escape.

I loved the Magician, Nova's pianist, who can play Bach in the middle of a riot and read people's silences; The Queen of Hearts, a cubist with a cool alias and deeply personal reasons for hiding behind a mask; and Sidney, the owner of the Constellation Club, who finds obscure instruments in attics when most people would struggle to find an attic.
It is a strange story of music, madness, grief, family, secrets, coincidences and connections between people. It has laugh-out-loud-funny dialogue, an interesting idea about the future of nationalism, a lot of Bach, some twists I expected and some twists I most certainly did not, something evocative and moving about it, and characters I cared about - and it is nearly worth reading on the grounds of its writing alone. The ending is odd - but I don't know that it could have ended more satisfactorily had it been different.

'It's dawn,' Sidney said, and the Magician stopped breathing. He gazed at Sidney expressionlessly over the piano. 'I stayed to listen to you. How often do I get a free Bach concert? I had to stay after hours anyway. One of the bands nearly went Full Primal at closing time.' The Magician made a garbled noise that Sidney took to be a question. 'You were playing, then. You didn't notice the patrollers and the ambulances.'
'What - who - '
Sidney waved a hand vaguely towards a distant stage. 'A new band called Desperate Sun [...] They were planning to electrocute themeslves with their intruments as a gesture of support for the National Regression Coalaition of the Sundown Sector. One of my bouncers cut off their electricity before they hurt themselves too badly. They kept making speeches to the patrollers about the Sundown Sector's right to bear arms, tax itself and call itself Australia again. Though why they wanted to die for Australia in my club eluded me.' show less

A re-read - but I'm fairly sure I read this way back, around when it came out, before I was actually a huge fan of Patricia McKillip specifically. I'd just grab all the sci-fi that turned up at the public library.
I was delighted that I liked it this time around as much as I'd hoped. While, in a way, 'Fool's Run' is quite different from most of McKillip's books, being sci-fi, not fantasy, it shares many of the themes that run though a great deal of her work.

The story enmeshes a convicted mass-murderer with the travails of a group of musicians.
The mass-murder is an insane woman, convicted and held in the highest security in a bleak space-prison.
The futuristic bar band is full of talent - but haven't been going much of anywhere. Suddenly, show more events come together, and they're offered an amazing opportunity for a multi-world tour: the only catch is that they have to give a charity show on board the space prison first.
Meanwhile, the administrator of the prison (who'd rather be elsewhere) is dealing with a psychologist who's got some new ideas about therapy; and wants to conduct mind experiments on the terrorist(?), Terra Viridian.

Like in many of McKillip's novels, a complex plot spins ever tighter, based on the concept that people have secrets and fail to communicate openly with each other, and that people seem to be on opposing 'sides' mainly because of misunderstandings.
There's a mystical element to the sci-fi here; which ends somewhat ambiguously. I can see that some hard sci-fi fans might not love that ambiguity, but I thought it was quite lovely. show less

The Magician sat alone on a stage in the Constellation Club, playing Bach to the robots whirling a grave minuet around him as they sucked cigarette butts off the floor.

Who could resist a first chapter that starts with such a sentence? Not I!

Patricia McKillip wrote Fool’s Run in 1987, at the end of a three-book run of science fiction works, after which she returned to her accustomed genre of medieval fantasy in novels such as The Book of Atrix Wolfe, Winter Rose, and Song for the Basilisk. Those are more my usual cup of tea as well, but when I found the long-out-of-print Fool’s Run at a used bookstore, saw McKillip's name on the spine, and then read that wonderful first chapter, I couldn’t do anything but buy and read it.

The plot show more is quite complicated, and the web of characters that holds it together is even more so, but I’ll do my best to provide a basic run-down. Seven years before the story begins, Terra Viridian killed 1,500 innocent people and was sentenced to lifelong incarceration in a space prison known as the Underworld. Now a research group is requesting Underworld chief Jason Kylos’ permission to monitor Terra’s brain; at the same time, he is also negotiating with scholar and club owner Sidney Halleck to send a band to the Underworld as part of a prisoner rehabilitation program. Back on earth, the Musician, a pianist for Sidney’s house band, Nova, begins having vague premonitions while playing Bach. Meanwhile, his friend Aaron Fischer continues his search for a woman out of the past who he thinks will be able to answer all his questions. When Nova falls upon hard times, another mysterious woman—a former band member, the gold-masked Queen of Hearts—appears to help them.

The characters I have named are the most important to the plot, but even the most trivial members of this extensive cast are well-drawn. The settings are both rich and unfamiliar, awash in McKillip’s luscious, dreamy prose.

There are fewer supernatural happenings here than in most of the author’s fantasy novels, mostly because the only departures from accepted reality occur (or seem to occur) in Terra’s mind. This is fitting, I think, because in typical McKillip the fantastic elements are almost always reflections of her characters’ emotional struggles. Indeed, these books could as easily be termed novels of psychological and relational development as sci-fi/fantasy. Fool’s Run in particular is about the demands of time, the vain pursuits humans chase after in order to bring meaning to their lives, and the danger of shutting other people out.

I love this quote:

We are born surrounded by mysteries, he thought. We make our compromises with terror, with wonder, so that we can go about the business of simply surviving from one day to another … We achieve a balance on the high wire, take one slow step after another, while the wire shakes and the wind blows, and nobody wants the unknown, the unexpected, with wings like some alien insect out of a gaudy, gargantuan jungle to sail by and sweep us off balance …

There are a few things I don’t like about this novel. For one, the content is more mature than in most of the author’s books, comprising strong swearing and one very sensual bedroom scene. Eventually we do learn why Terra killed all those people, but we never learn why she in particular was chosen. And the Magician, despite being fascinating initially, receives almost no character development: things happen to him, but he never changes. The epilogue is generally disappointing, and I couldn’t make any sense of the last line at all.

Regardless, this is a book that I will be thinking about for some time to come. In recent years McKillip has proclaimed that she is not really a sci-fi writer, and I certainly never considered myself a sci-fi reader, but unless I am mistaken, Fool’s Run is a science fiction novel, and in spite of some quibbles, I enjoyed it. show less

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Title: Fool's Run
Series: ----------
Author: Patricia McKillip
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 221
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Seven years ago Terra Viridian turned a laser array on her own location at a military base in the desert, killing 1500 people. Afterwards, she was found alive and babbling about the dark and visions. She was sentenced to life in the Underworld, a high security, solitary confinement prison on the moon.

Aaron Fisher's show more pregnant wife was just about to get out of the military seven years ago. She was one of the victim's of Terra. Aaron has been working on hunting down Terra's twin sister Michele to find out from her why Terra suddenly snapped and destroyed Aaron's world. So far, Aaron has had no luck.

Aaron is friends with Sidney Halleck, the owner of a bar where musicians play. One of these musicians, Roger Restak, known as The Magician, has the disturbing ability to get lost in his music and to ignore literally everything around him while playing. He and Aaron have become unlikely friends. A world weary cop and a genius musician.

A Dr. Fiore wants to study Terra and her “visions” that she has continued to talk about. He brings up a new machine to the Underworld that can visualize what Terra is thinking. What he finds is baffling and incomprehensible. He asks the Warden of the Underworld, Jason Klyos if he can bring up a band to see how music affects Terra. He hopes that by understanding how her visuals change in regards to the music that he can begin unraveling what the images of her “visions” means.

Sidney is contacted and puts The Magician up for nomination. The Magician assembles a band, only to find out that his “cuber” not only can't stand heights, but can't travel off the ground without becoming deathly ill. The Magician is at a loss until a former friend, the Queen of Hearts comes back into his life and she volunteers. Aaron and the Queen of Hearts strike it off immediately. Even though Aaron knows she is going to the Underworld and then a tour of the solar system, he opens his heart to her.

The Band makes it to the Underworld, where The Magician meets Terra and while everyone else is looking at the machine where her “visions” come out, The Magician is given a glimpse directly into her mind. This somehow transfers the vision to him. It is also revealed that the Queen of Hearts is Michele Viridian, Terra's twin sister. The Warden calls up Aaron, as he's suspicious of everything going on.

Terra breaks loose and with help from The Magician, flees the Underworld. The Magician takes his own band hostage, locks down the Underworld and begins seeing visions himself. Aaron and the Warden give chase in the only available ship, only to find that Terra has hidden away and has a laser rifle trained on them. They are in contact with the Magician and he must convince them that he and Terra are not crazy. It turns out that both The Magician and Terra were psychic and picking up the emanations of an alien being born. It is born and Terra dies. The Warden pulls his weight and convinces everyone that The Magician was not a criminal terrorist intent on breaking Terra free. The band goes free, Aaron lets go of his hate and hooks up with The Queen of Hearts.

The book ends with The Magician telling both Aaron and Sidney that the alien is now here and watching them.

My Thoughts:

This has got to be the weirdest book I've ever read. When I read it in '07 I was pretty mesmerized by the use of poetic language that McKillip is so good with, but this time, I was just weirded out the entire time. If my time had been a Smallville episode, Allison Mack would definitely have this on her Wall of Weird.

I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 because every time that The Magician would start to explain what was going on, either Aaron Fisher or Jason Klyos the Warden would interrupt him with exclamations of usually disbelief or anger at the subject, ie, aliens. It was super frustrating to read. Magician was trying to put into words something that he had no words for and these 2 idiots just kept making it harder and harder. Thankfully, they finally did shut up and things moved forward.

My initial reaction when I finished this was to simply read it again to make sure I had read what I thought I had read. If I could have written this review and use the word “weird” and nothing but that, I think that would capture the essence.

Quite enjoyable for the trippy experience but unless you're a hardcore McKillip fan, I wouldn't recommend this.

★★★★☆ show less

This is my second Patricia McKillip book. I loved her prose in this nearly as much as in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. There was also something in this I've not really come across in sci-fi (and science fantasy, which this probably fits better) before: a focus on music and musicians.

However, I spent most of my time reading this book in some state of confusion. I think that comes down partly to there being quite an ensemble of characters running around on these 252 pages, who are all introduced rather quickly without time to really familiarise and pin down who is who. The musicians all using stage names did not help. By the end I had figured most of them out, but still felt a little baffled. Like the story didn't quite wrap up.

Might show more revisit with a reread after I've gone through some more of her fantasy works. show less

This is my second Patricia McKillip book. I loved her prose in this nearly as much as in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. There was also something in this I've not really come across in sci-fi (and science fantasy, which this probably fits better) before: a focus on music and musicians.

However, I spent most of my time reading this book in some state of confusion. I think that comes down partly to there being quite an ensemble of characters running around on these 252 pages, who are all introduced rather quickly without time to really familiarise and pin down who is who. The musicians all using stage names did not help. By the end I had figured most of them out, but still felt a little baffled. Like the story didn't quite wrap up.

Might show more revisit with a reread after I've gone through some more of her fantasy works. show less