A Jura For Julia by Ken MacLeod illustrated by Fangorn (book review).
A Jura For Julia is a new short story collection from multiple award-winning author Ken MacLeod, with illustrations by Fangorn, including the cover. You might assume that the healthy young lady pictured tackling a fighting machine with a bow and arrow is Julia, but you would be wrong. The book features the best of MacLeod’s stories from the past eighteen years, and the title piece is a new one, written especially for this collection.
Anyone familiar with George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel will get a strong sense of déjà vu when reading Nineteen Eighty-Nine. Winston Smith is back, and so is O’Brien, along with Victory Gin, the Two Minute Hate, and the Ministry of Truth. A few years after the events of the novel, the story of Oceania takes a surprising turn. Perhaps the future will not be a boot forever stamping on a human face. Let’s hope so.
Lighting Out is set in a wonderful future where there’s plenty of everything for everyone and technological wonders abound. Humanity lives in habitats out in space and on other planets, and there is no central government, just a free market where everyone can have fun. Personalities can be copied and downloaded multiple times, so there can be different versions of the same person in a card or a chip. Who knows what wonders will come? There’s a little family story in there, too. Nice.
The beautiful cover art for this book is based on events in Wilson At Woking, in which Prime Minister Harold Wilson confronts a Martian invasion. The explanation for this is given at the end of the tale.
There’s a similar theme in Sidewinders, which was written for The Mammoth Book of Alternative Histories and surpassed the brief by providing more than one. Sidewinders can step across into many different versions of England and are split into two opposing factions. Our hero is with the side that wants to make things better.
The Surface Of Last Scattering is set in a near future at Glasgow Queen Street Station, where Conal goes to meet the father he never knew, just released from prison after committing the crime of the century. An interesting idea about how history affects our lives today, with side notes relevant to those of Scottish or Irish descent. The Fields Of Athenry was one of my father’s favourite songs, but MacLeod makes a good point.
The Vorkuta Event starts with student Cameron investigating the past of his professor, Doctor David Rigley Walker—esteemed now, but once a believer in Lysenkoism, of all things. The first half is a sort of prelude to the Russian adventure in the second, and the whole thing is written in an Edwardian style that suits it well. A solid science fiction idea that might have been handled in modern prose, but I think the author was just having a bit of fun. He does that. I like it.
The next few stories delve into far-out science fiction. The Entire Immense Superstructure: An Installation is about ‘the Wikipedia of Things,’ an application of synthetic biology and genetic engineering to post-disaster emergency shelter that rather got out of hand.
The Last Word is a warning note about the potential of AI, I think. The fat man, Alice, and the Brain find themselves hunting a ticking bomb in Fat Man In The Bardo by Ken MacLeod, which is too mad to summarise but is an enjoyable slice of lunacy.
[citation needed] features an author called Fred Chang lecturing at a restaurant/bookshop called The Lie Dispensary. He writes space operas for money and offbeat speculative short stories for fun, rather like Ken MacLeod.
The Shadow Ministers is about another AI app that may be coming, this one set in a near future after a limited nuclear exchange. MacLeod has worked in IT, so his disturbing notions about the futures that could emerge are more unsettling than those of someone untrained.
The Excommunicates rings true given recent news events. Certain people can be banned completely from the internet for what the authorities deem to be crimes and will have to live life without it. So, printed books paid for with paper cheques, and the same for their children. This is set in another dystopian near future with the hero recalling his childhood in The Church Of The Book. The ending surprised me.
A Jura For Julia ends the book with a follow-up to the first story about Winston Smith. After the counter-revolution, Julia became an academic, studying the trashy computer-generated fiction that the Party used to pump out to soothe the proles—something else that might be coming true. This story takes an odd turn when she visits George Orwell’s old house.
Ken MacLeod has been around for a while. He’s a trained scientist and has written many novels and series of hard science fiction and space opera, which I haven’t read. Perusing this volume, it seems to me that he writes short stories for fun and has fun with them. So does the reader. A Jura For Julia is a thoroughly enjoyable collection enhanced by the old-fashioned inky illustrations of Fangorn. Another winner from NewCon Press.
Eamonn Murphy
August 2024
(pub: Newcon Press. 220 page small enlarged paperback. Price: £13.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-914953-83-5)
check out website: www.newconpress.co.uk
