The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions (Gollancz, Sept 2010), the new Steampunkish novel written by British humor novelist
Robert Rankin, just received a scathing review by Jonathan McCalmont over at
Strange Horizons.
The pickled Martian's tentacles are fraying at the ends and Professor Coffin's Most Meritorious Unnatural Attraction (the remains of the original alien autopsy, performed by Sir Frederick Treves at the London Hospital) is no longer drawing the crowds. It's 1895, nearly a decade since Mars invaded Earth, chronicled by H.G. Wells in The War of the Worlds.
Wrecked Martian spaceships, back-engineered by Charles Babbage and Nikola Tesla, have carried the Queen's Own Electric Fusiliers to the red planet, and Mars is now part of the ever-expanding British Empire. The less-than-scrupulous sideshow proprietor likes Off-worlders' cash, so he needs a sensational new attraction. Word has reached him of the Japanese Devil Fish Girl; nothing quite like her has ever existed before. But Professor Coffin's quest to possess the ultimate showman's exhibit is about to cause considerable friction amongst the folk of other planets. Sufficient, in fact, to spark off Worlds War Two.
In short, reviewer Jonathan McCalmont concludes that "To read
The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions is to see the most vibrant and culturally important SFnal sub-genre since cyberpunk being broken on the wheels of me-too economics." In other words, "To read
The Japanese Devil Fish Girl is to be beset by the kind of malaise one would normally associate with the onset of Lyme disease." Or, to put it another way,
The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions “is an utterly lamentable piece of writing and Robert Rankin should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.”
Jonathan McCalmont lives in the United Kingdom, where he writes, teaches, and edits
Fruitless Recursion, a journal devoted to discussing works of SF criticism.
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