The Year Before Yesterday

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-year-before-yesterday-by-brian-aldiss/

It is an intriguing book. The main framing narrative has the title “The Mannerheim Symphony”, and the narrator is a famous Finnish composer, in a Hitler-won-the-war universe, who discovers a dead young woman by the roadside and has to negotiate with his suspicious wife and a police detective who is possessed by a reindeer. So far, so weird.

In the dead woman’s belongings, he finds two short science fiction stories apparently written by her father, Jael Cracken, and reads them. The joke is that the two stories are in fact real Brian Aldiss stories from 1958 and 1965, and one of them was originally published under the pseudonym Jael Cracken.

The first, “The show more Impossible Smile”, has a telepathic protagonist trying to find allies and avoid enemies in a transitional dictatorial regime between England and the Moon. There’s a flavour of Alfred Bester about it, but it also has some very Aldiss twists.

The second, “Equator” (originally published as “Vanguard from Alpha”) has Earth dealing with immigration from humanoid aliens, mainly in a vividly depicted Sumatra. There are more chase scenes and a beautiful alien babe, and a memorable climax in a vast mechanical setting.

A lot of readers think that the whole thing is rubbish. I don’t; it’s a guilty pleasure for me, Aldiss returning to his early work and repurposing it for the needs of two or three decades later. The haunted police detective is a little jarring, but the composer trying to distract himself from his unfaithfulness to his wife by escaping into science fiction… well, let’s just say that Aldiss knew what he was writing about.

And there are some passages that I find very nicely done.

"The solar system progressed toward the unassailable summer star, Vega. The Earth-Moon system danced around the sun, host and parasite eternally hand-in-hand. The planet spun on its unimaginable axis. The oceans swilled forever uneasily in their shallow beds. Tides of multifarious life twitched across the continents. On a small island a man sat and hacked at the casing of a coconut." show less

Friends whose opinion I respect admire Aldiss, but I had never read anything by him, by some strange oversight. So I was delighted to find this at Renaissance Books in New Westminster (one of the few old style used bookstores remaining within reach of me). The cover copy was intriguing, it is set in Finland (a place I have some interest in), and dipping in I found the prose strong and pleasing.

On the whole, though, the book was disappointing. I like the story within a story aspect--a man sits and reads two pulp novels while himself in very worrying straits--and I liked that there was a shift in the writing style between the present time (alternate universe) story and the two novellettes. There were times when it struck me that if Aldiss show more doesn't write poetry, he really should. He has the feel for it. I also liked the fannish feel arising from the inclusion of images from the original pulp publications of the two independent stories.

Unfortunately, all three stories were in general simply unpleasant, despite some interesting ideas and some--but not all--yummy writing. Unpleasant, and the two pulp novels rather headlong with not a lot to glue them together, and overall unsatisfying. None resolved in a way that justified to me the effort consumed in reading them.

Will I try again? Well, the fact that so few people on LT have this book when Aldiss is such a well known writer does suggest this isn't his strongest book, so yes, I will. But though an author's writing may improve, perspective doesn't usually change that much, and the unbroken unpleasantness of these stories suggests he may not be my kind of guy, even at his best. We'll see. show less

Kuin onnistuneen Suomen-vierailunsa muistoksi maailmankuulu tieteiskirjailija Brian Aldiss sijoittaa uuden romaaninsa kehykset maahamme. Hän oli SF-kirjallisuustapahtuman kunniavieraana Helsingissä vuonna 1986.
Mannerheim-sinfonia alkaa dekkarinomaisesti murhalla. Amerikkalaistunut suomalaissäveltäjä on palaamassa sinfoniansa kantaesityksestä Oulusta, kun hän miltei kotioveltaan löytää naisen ruumiin. Mutta ennen kuin suomalainen poliisi ehtii venäläisvalmisteisella helikopterilla paikalle, on fantasia jo kuljettanut lukijan aikaan, jolloin Kuuhun paenneet ihmiset yrittävät saada Maan hallintaansa telepatian avulla. Absurdin kerronnan siivin avautuu myös visio Sumatralle, jonne laskeutuu 200 kilometrin mittainen show more avaruusalus. Ovatko aluksen matkustajat valloittajia vai kosmoksen pakolaisia?
Miten Suomen luonnon puhtautta musiikissaan ylistävä säveltäjä liittyy raakaan murhaan?
Mannerheim-sinfonia on vahva näyttö Brian Aldissin mielikuvituksen voimasta ja kerronnan uudistuvista ulottuvuuksista. (Takakansi) show less