Books

Review by Francis Sheppard

Davis’ most recent novel, Greater than Human, is part of a series that takes the idea of ‘shape-shifting’ to the point where there are those living amongst us – termed ‘weres’ – alike us in most physical ways, but differing somewhat in the intensity of their desire for one another.

The writing is arousing, but the ever-presence of punitive violence is a kind of backstop from it becoming full-blown erotic fantasy. Rightly, the author terms it Speculative Fiction. Part of the speculation is on ourselves. The story calls forth the ‘othering’ process, indeed our frequently uncertain relationship with our own kind, let alone its unfamiliar variants.

Shadow Liptrot’s new novel Between Venus and Mars has taken the Outsider theme into specifics. Two lovers, Robyn and Shadow, come together in a universe where gender is used to send men and women in different directions over space, so that the planets’ workforces are single-gender. It is on a planet colonised by female workers they meet.

There are indications in later sections of the book that the pair are lovers from the past. Perhaps they are lovers for all of time. Their relationship is doubly illegal because Shadow presents as a woman but is in fact a trans man. Chapter Six, ‘The Reveal’, shows the quick development of a sexual relationship, one where Robyn accepts Shadow’s chosen identity. The moment, in a society where to be discovered trans means certain death, has to be in secret but for the duration of that moment they have established a liberal culture.

Robyn and Shadow reappear in the stories that follow this opening, guiding forerunner. They are there in Chapter Thirty where there is a sense of liberation from tyranny. And the tyranny pervading the book is one very relevant to us now.

It is a collection of diverse writing. Liptrot opens with an essay that projects an AI-controlled future, present is what is already signposted in our world, in the grip of a ‘convenience culture’ as we are, that allows our insidious take-over by automation. An eloquent and timely warning from a writer for whom the acceptance, indeed the merging, of gender-identities is the beginning of our human resistance.