Dan Abnett’s Shelfie
Redundant to say I have a lot of books, as that must apply to everyone who contributes. But, boy, there’s a lot. They occupy bookcases in almost every room, and I tried to herd them by theme. Not in an anal, alphabetical way, you understand, but more so I know where to look when I’m hunting for something — comic trades (for continuity reference, the shelves outside my office), SF (big bookcase, top room), general fiction (left hand side, first floor), poetry (middle, first floor), esoteric (left hand side, first floor) etc… That mental map, and the intervention of the Library Angel, usually helps me locate what I’m looking for (or what I didn’t know I was looking for but is actually far more pertinent).
The shelf I’ve chosen to show you is perhaps the most engaging, in that it’s the only one in the house not thematically arranged, unless that theme is “triage”. It serves as a kind of “holding cell” (“drunk tank”?) for new acquisitions, books on my “to read” list, books mid-read, or books that I have pulled from other areas of the house to remind myself to re-read. As a result, it is… various. And it changes on a very regular basis, as books get read, consulted, returned to their theme parks, or released into the wild. If a book stays there for too long, it clearly wasn’t the right moment, or the mood has passed, and it goes back where it came from. (I used to have a “reading” pile, but that quickly became A) intimidating, B) a confusion of recreational reading and research, and C) a hazard to light aircraft). Restricting it to one shelf keeps things manageable, forces regular pruning, and prevents the need for a brandy-equipped St Bernard to dig me out from under an avalanche of paperbacks.
So what do we have today? The clutch of “AI” books are a legacy of the fact that I began a slow-burn story in Sinister Dexter for 2000AD some years ago that featured a rogue AI (such a trope, I know, but this was just before AI became such a ubiquitous thing, and also before the term stopped meaning “Artificial Intelligence” and became a marketing term for personal assistant. And slop). Anyway, I try to stay current, as I’m deeply committed to the story, though I now find it depressing that real world “AI” is now capable of worse (yet blander) crimes against culture than anything I’ve imagined. Thus, I’m experiencing the eternal struggle of science fiction to predict things before the world catches up, but in real time. Never mind, SF is never really about the future, is it?
In the middle stack, Rachel Kushner’s startling good Creation Lake awaits placement in “fiction” upstairs (I loved the writing, and the unexpected combination of ingredients), as does M. John Harrison’s The Course of the Heart. Harrison is one of my favourite authors, and I thought I’d read everything, but somehow I had missed this and, man, do I feel stupid now, because I think it’s probably his best. I’m still processing. The new Garry Disher — Mischance Creek — has just arrived, sent to me by my friend Matt Farrer in Canberra. Matt introduced me to Disher’s Australian crime fiction (and, before that, to the late great Peter Temple) and I get completely lost in the slow, spare, “heat-stunned” prose. This, part of the “Hirsch” series, somehow manages to be “Blue Heelers” meets “Wolf Creek” meets “Total Control” as directed by Peter Weir.
Also, a brace of small Bolanos. I think I’m reading Bolano backwards, which I imagine would have amused him. I started with the brilliant, brick-thick 2666 (amazing that the Arthur C. Clarke estate allowed him to continue the series…) and then slid down his cascading prose into the shorter (i.e. normal size) books. I fully expect the next one I read to be a thin novel comprising one, long, inexplicably comprehensible, tumbling sentence.
I’ve always been fascinated by Blake (fascinated by, rather than devoted to), mainly because he’s the paradigm of a creator who unashamedly sublimated their entire output to their vision, no matter the side-eyes it earned him. I’ve spent the best part of my career as a shameless commercial writer, writing what other people have asked me to write, so I guess I pine for those kinda mystical fjords sometimes. Philip Hoare’s William Blake and The Sea Monsters Of Love (undisputed book title of the year, 10/10, no notes) is an exceptional piece of prose in its own right, and flies, undaunted, into Blake’s uncompromising singularity.
Ray Bradbury is Ray Bradbury. He was the first author I ever read who made me aware that the way he was telling the story was as important, if not more important, than the story itself. I dug out that old paperback of The Golden Apples of the Sun a couple of days ago and put it on the shelf because it has been a while since my last fix.
My wife Nik is a potter. The pot on the upper shelf is not one of hers, but the sentiment certainly is.
Dan Abnett has written more than sixty novels, and too many comics to count (though, according to a recent survey, he is the 12th most prolific writer in the American comic industry of all time, so someone counted). He is especially celebrated for his NYT best-selling Warhammer 40,000 novels, which have been translated into dozens of languages.
In comics, he writes for the UK’s 2000AD, where he created popular series such as Sinister Dexter, Lawless, The Out and Brink. He writes for DC Comics, Marvel, Dark Horse, Boom! Studios and many other publishers around the world, and his run on The Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel formed the inspiration for the blockbuster movies. He also writes extensively for the games industry.
Dan lives and works in Maidstone, Kent, in the UK.
Shelfies is edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin.
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