Author: janewiseman

2026 Philip K. Dick Award Nominee: THE IMMEASURABLE HEAVEN

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasyLeave a comment

Here’s my next post reviewing the seven short-listed nominees for the 2026 Philip K. Dick Award. A reminder–the awards are made by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and will be presented at Norwescon‘s annual conference on April 3, 2026.

The Nominees:

The Immeasurable Heaven by Caspar Geon (Solaris)

Geon’s novel packs a myriad (pun, for those of you who have read the book) of worlds, characters, objects, and situations into 352 pages. I find that page count hard to believe. The publisher’s marketing copy assures me it is correct, but the novel seemed much longer than that as I read it in e-book form.

The novel comes across a bit like Gnumph, one of the novel’s few important characters standing out amid the welter of others. Gnumph is a fuzzy spore with the ability to expand hugely, to serve as a vehicle for travelers among all the many universes that populate the fictional world of the novel, and even to contain within himself a few extra dimensions encasing their own universes. Not like a Russian doll, though. They are speckled around him more haphazardly than that. Reading this novel is like boarding Gnumph and–like Gnumph’s passengers–discovering you can’t get off. Sort of a spherical Hotel California.

The premise behind the world-building is: there’s no single universe but instead the multiverse (by now an SF staple). But in Geon’s conception of the multiverse, the universes are all layered in strata like rock, and another is created every nanosecond. In this novel, I think we visit them all. That’s because characters in the know can escape any predicament in their own universe by Dropping–moving into a lower-strata universe than the one they currently occupy. Unfortunately, in this idea of the multiverse, yes, you can go down, but you can never move back up. Sort of a vertical Hotel California.

Or can you? This is murky. One of the main characters, a shadowy figure who begins the novel with the provocative statement, “They sent me to hell,” is determined to get his revenge on the people who did this to him (it?) by clawing his way back up through a flaw in the universes. But as he had fallen to his seemingly eternal fate, sort of like Satan in Paradise Lost, he had emitted a scream so horrifying that multiple beings in multiple universes pick it up via multiple senses. And it is so horrific that it even kills one of the listeners/smellers/viewers/touchers/tasters.

That’s the set-up. Then several other characters pursue him–one charged with her emperor to find and eliminate him, another a sort of bounty hunter looking to sell the knowledge to the highest bidder, and so on. But these are only a few of the multitudes and multitudes of characters in the multitudes of universes that are given names (as per usual in SF and fantasy, unpronounceable multisyllabic ones), and there are multitudes and multitudes more who are not named. But they are described. Multitudes and multitudes of them.

In most fiction, when the author gives a character a name, the name sends a signal to the reader: here’s a character you should pay attention to. This novel is not most fiction. With few exceptions, when this novel names a character, we never see that character again. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one, over there, or this one, over here, or. . . Do I sound annoyed? I am. But at the same time, I am in awe of the richness of the world the author has built.

The main characters really are interesting. Gnumph, the vehicle who is a spore. The personage of the horrifying yell. The two main characters pursuing that personage: Draebol, a person who has completed the monumental task of mapping the known universes and the pathways among them but then succumbs to despair. Whirra, a person sent out by her emperor to identify and thwart the guy who screams. (Why? Hard to say.) There are a few memorable others. In fact, when I could catch my breath and think about the screamer character, he seemed very Miltonic to me. I think of Satan in Paradise Lost contemplating “the immeasurable abyss.” I think of his vow to get out of hell and punish the creatures in the world above him. So is the title a reversal of this line from Milton? Maybe, maybe not. And why? Well, it’s indeed immeasurable, so there’s that. But we seem to stay in hell the entire way, unless you count a few idyllic episodes rapidly swept away into the sweep of all the other stuff. Above all, I wanted to stay with these major characters, and I wanted to understand their often inexplicable actions better. At the end, there’s a lot of back matter: lists of characters, place names, timelines, and the like. That helps.

Where this book does shine is in its endless descriptions. Each setting in the many, many, many universes is lovingly, intricately described right down to its (usually ) disgusting stench and defacatory and vomitory habits. Each body of each character is lovingly described–because for the most part, the characters never stay in one body. Every time they Drop, they acquire a new one. So not only do we have a bazillion characters to keep track of, but each one seems to have multiple bodies. Each one lovingly, intricately described. As I say, a world-builder’s delight. But I should also mention this book has one trait I prize very highly: the writing is great.

I think the problem and also the glory of the novel is that it’s an Hieronymus Bosch of a book. Think of an Hieronymus Bosch painting and all the wriggling, usually disgusting creatures who occupy every inch of canvas.

Hieronymus Bosch, The Last Judgment, triptych, oils on panel painted around 1482. Source: https://www.pubhist.com/w22008

No, really. Enlarge it and take a good look. This novel is that, in book form. And I love looking at Hieronymus Bosch paintings. So why, I ask myself, don’t I love this book? I think it’s because we encounter a painting in a very different way than we encounter a novel. The painting hits our eye all at once. Our eye roams it, picking out details, always drawn back (in a good painting) to the whole–the pattern, the focal point, whatever the painting tries to accomplish. But a book is by its nature sequential. Page one–one detail. Page two–more. Page three–more. And so on. The task of the author is to unify all these sequential details into a whole by giving us clues all the way through about how they fit in. Page one of this book is a knockout. “They sent me to hell.” I love that first sentence. I want to know more. Who? Why? Who is “they”? What do they have against the speaker? etc. We finally do find out who this person is, but–at least for me–too little, too late. And while this book does give us clues to the overall picture (I think–I’m not sure I ever really got the overall picture, though), the clues are lost in a plethora of details that I found just distracting.

You are a different reader and you may feel very differently about this book. Many readers prize ingenious world-building above all other traits in a work of speculative fiction. You’re this reader? This is your feast. This is your book.

Coming up next: Uncertain Sons and Other Stories by Thomas Ha (Undertow Publications)

2026 Philip K. Dick Award Nominee: CASUAL

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasyLeave a comment

The Nominees

Casual by Koji A. Dae (Tenebrous Press)

book cover of Casual, by Koji Dai
Find out more HERE.

Casual is a compelling novel about trauma and abuse, set in a future Bulgaria, where the Haves live in the crystal-paved luxurious New Sofia deep underground, while the Have-Nots have to make do with crumbling Old Sofia (a city, I discovered, that has been continuously inhabited for around 7000 years). In the far future of this novel, it is still inhabited, but anyone living there wishes they weren’t. Pollution and disaster have made Old Sofia–and much of the world–almost unlivable.

Into this bleak world, the narrator, Valya, is about to bring a child, a girl. Valya will be a single mother. Just before realizing she was pregnant, she had had a bitter break-up with the father. She hasn’t told him about their child and plans to keep it that way. Yet she desperately needs help and support. She is addicted to a device, Casual, implanted in her brain by her psychiatrist to enable her to cope with her crippling anxiety, but her obstetrician wants her to remove it for the baby’s sake. Valya is torn between concern for her baby’s well-being and concern for her own terrible mental health challenges.

Casual is not a drug but it acts like one. It is an implanted gaming device plunging the user into a virtual-reality landscape tailored to that particular user’s needs. The game has settings sensing how much anxiety the patient is experiencing and automatically adjusts the game experience to soothe the anxiety.

As Valya’s pregnancy progresses, the novel reveals more and more of her backstory, helping us understand the roots of her anxiety and how her ill-chosen relationships, especially with the baby’s father, stem from her deep and troubled history.

If not for the setting and the device of the implanted game, this novel would be one among many about traumatized women and how they cope with trauma and come to understand its sources. The marketing labels the book “horror.” I don’t see that. As I understand it, horror exposes the reader to uncanny and disturbing events and atmosphere, especially those arising from the supernatural. However, in the subgenre of psychological horror, this disturbing atmosphere originates in the inner lives of the characters, so I suppose this novel is that sort. As I think I’ve mentioned, I don’t read much horror, although some fantasy and SF vehicles cross over into horror, and many works of horror have strong elements of fantasy and SF. I’m thinking, for example, of the Ridley Scott film Alien, the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, and many others. As for psychological horror, a classic example might be Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

Maybe we shouldn’t quibble over labels here and simply note them as marketing devices. Certainly Valya’s deep-seated trauma and the symptoms arising from it are horrific. The abuse in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is horrific, too. I think of Casual as a novel more in that vein than in a book like, say, Christina Henry’s fantasy/horror crossover, Alice.

The picture Casual draws of a woman tormented by abuse is skillful and compelling. I only wish that the author had further developed the many hints of the nature and depth of Valya’s torment. I was left with a lot of questions: The motivations of the baby’s father. The motivations of the medical device company wanting to capitalize on Valya’s vulnerability–and where does it get the clout it has to avoid accountability? and why does it have that clout? The role of Valya’s new friend vs. her old childhood friend. What the reader is supposed to make of the hints that women in New Sofia have trouble conceiving. Exactly why–because I’m not completely sure–Valya acts as she does at the end. Most of all, I’d like to understand more about the nature of Valya’s trauma. By the end of the novel, we readers come to know the facts of it, but I want to know more about the whys–and how deep it goes, how many people were involved in it. I’d also like to know why, in the technical sense, the novel ends the way it does. Are we to expect a sequel? Or are we meant to go on wondering?

In spite of all these questions I’m left with, I did enjoy reading the book and thought it dealt in a sensitive and deft way with some very troubling topics. These are some of the most urgent of our time: power dynamics between men and women, corporate control of a citizenry, our addiction to screens and other technology, the nature of suppressed trauma and the silence surrounding it, the dynamics of abuse, divisive forces creating a population of the pampered rich and the left-behind poor with no middle ground. And also: climate change and its effects, although as a reader I’m not completely sure climate change is the source of the disaster that has befallen the novel’s bleak world.

Up next: The Immeasurable Heaven by Caspar Geon (Solaris)

2026 Philip K. Dick Award Nominee: OUTLAW PLANET

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasyLeave a comment

Here’s the second of my posts reviewing the nominees for the 2026 Philip K. Dick Award. A reminder–the awards are made by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and will be presented at Norwescon‘s annual conference on April 3, 2026.

The Nominees

Outlaw Planet by M. R. Carey (Orbit)

Find it HERE.

In this New Weird/Neo-Western, sentient animals (the Wise Peoples) have taken over the world. Other animals (understock) are just. . .animals. Kind of like how Goofy is a talking dog but he, a dog, has a dog, Pluto, who is just a dog. (Wait–I promised I wouldn’t talk about Disney. . .) Humans, known as Pugfaces, are outcasts congregating in clans resembling Native American tribes. But the rest of the characters in this far-future vision of the U.S. are right out of Owen Wister’s The Virginian, crossed with the dark and often gothic humor of the Coen brothers’ 2018 film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs–except they’re animals–with a touch of China Mieville’s The Iron Council thrown in. Thronging the pages are wolves, bears, birds, prairie dogs, you name it. Prim dog schoolmarm Elizabeth from the east heads west by stagecoach and then by katy wagon. (Wagon pulled by a katydid. A large one.) Gets held up by murderous bandit (bear). Ends up in a two-horse (er. . katydid) town at the end of the middle of nowhere. During a plot development that parallels the U.S. Civil War pretty directly (but with animals), prim Elizabeth evolves into Dog-Bitch Bess, the fearsome renegade.

Going against the usual grain of talking animal stories, there is no cutesy stuff in this novel. Nothing twee about this one. It’s not all grim and serious, though. There are jokes. For example, the mayor, a wolf, is described as having a smile “three parts avuncular to two parts blow-your-house down.” Mostly, though, the whole thing is told totally straight-faced.

Okay, I’m lying. That’s just what PART of the book is about. Interwoven with with Bess’s story, a series of field reports from a completely different set of characters inhabiting what seems to be a completely different world starts changing the narrative. It’s pretty jarring. This second narrative takes a completely different tone. The characters are completely different kinds of characters. the whole genre is completely different–hard military SF. The world the author builds is completely different. The contrast with the talking-animals-out-west story is shocking.

Yet as the novel moves forward, the reader begins to realize how ingeniously the author weaves these two disparate story lines together. I doubt many writers could bring something like this off, and Carey does it, brilliantly. I am in awe of his skill. I’m going to have to read other books of his to see if he does anything similar–he is a new author for me. That’s what I love about these lists–a regular reader like me, no particular expertise in the genre, finds many new and delightful books and authors to treasure.

In retrospect, I see clues from the very beginning of the animal narrative that point to the emergence and development of the second story line. Bess’s encounter with one of the Pug-faces at one of the mysterious dream-towers that dot the landscape is one. Another is all the chatter about the Precursors and their prized relics, especially a Precursor weapon that appears early in the book.

This was a fun book to read, and quite thought-provoking. In many ways, it is a cautionary tale. But don’t think Orwell and Animal Farm. This animal book is very different. No THIS ANIMAL = THIS KIND OF HUMAN, or not directly. Actually, I’ve always found Animal Farm kind of ham-handed (bad pun) in its satire. Carey’s novel is much subtler and cuts, in my opinion, much deeper.

NEXT UP: Casual by Koji A. Dae (Tenebrous Press)