Richard Cowper (2)Reviews

Gabi says, of title story:
"The short story that affected me when I was 13 or 14 was "Out there where the big ships go" by Richard Cowper. There was a sentence there that - as simple as it was - changed how I looked at things."
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I can tell which sentence she means. Cowper is philosophical. Well-read, well-educated, and with a large vocabulary, too. This are not typical SF stories. Reduced to summaries, they're not amazing, but dressed up in Cowper's ethereal & surreal stylings, they are worth reading. As the back blurb says, this is "science fantasy." Well, tbh, I'm not sure about the last one, as it's not my thing,* and so I dnf'd that 64 p. novella.

Mostly they show potential. I will consider more by Cowper.

*If you must know, it was some weird mishmash of Celestine Prophecy, Burroughs, Lovecraft, and Shangri-La. I read the last page and it really seemed as if I missed nothing by not slogging through the middle. Again, that's just me... I know some of you are fans of those kinds of stories.

Readable post-apocalypse (sort-of) novel of humans living underground, but not up to Cowper's other work. The first half is admirably disorienting as it throws the reader directly into this curious culture of Roamers (humans), Partners (dogs most likely), Factors (robots), and Plants (crucial but only explained peripherally very late in the book). There's a surprising level of focus on sex for an SF book of the 1970s, but that's about the only novelty. Otherwise the story is the usual "no one goes there, no one must go there, oh there our hero goes." The big letdown in he second half, where instead of "you figure it out" everything is explained in detail. There's even a point where one character unnecessarily explains the title.

OK but no need to seek out.½

Richard Cowper is a British writer of science fantasy and science fiction. I read two of his novels from the science fiction book club in the 1970's.

Cowper's books are set in the British Isles. The preface for this post-apocalyptic tale tells me it was published by a researcher from St Malcolm's College, Oxford, June, 3798 (based on works circa 3300 AD). We soon learn that the story itself is set just before the fourth millennium and we approach New Year's 3000 with some trepidation. When 2000 arrived it was the "Drowning". Global warming had melted the icecaps and the world drowned. Here we are a thousand years later. What will happen at the dawn of the new millennium and what does a white bird have to do with it?

My copy of the book contains two stories originally published separately. The book opens with a 60+ page novella prologue titled: "Piper At The Gates of Dawn". How could this possibly not be a good, fun tale? Well, after reading it "fun" is not the right word at all. This is however a fantastic tale that could almost be set in the middle ages, but is instead set in the future after the catastrophic event of the Drowning. Place names still have the same place names as we go on the journey with the tale-teller and the piper. Some editions of the book apparently don't include the prologue, which would be a shame. Piper was first published in the March 1976 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It should have won all kinds of awards it was nominated in but only just had the nominations.

The short novel "The Road to Corlay" was published two years later. It can be read by itself but is much richer having read Piper. Without the introductory story I think I would not have been able to appreciate 'The Road to Corlay' nearly as much. The second story begins April 12, 3018. This story builds on the climactic events from the year 3000 in the first book. However, in the second chapter of the book we suddenly are in the past in 1986, before the Drowning, and we quickly can see how these two parts of the story are linked. I won't spoil the story but I'll leave a clue that is revealed early on. William Hurt in the film "Altered States". The part of the story set in the year 1986 is the weaker of the two by far and the characters in this time are much less interesting than the ones in the future.

I was caught up in both stories and enjoyed them quite a bit.

There are two additional books in the series which I plan to read.

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3658188.html

A short sf novel from 1974 about a middle-aged lecturer in an unsatisfactory marriage who distarcts himself by science fiction and flirting with a student. You can get it here. Both activities suddenly get more serious as the world that he is writing about turns out to be real and distant, and intruding on Earth, and the student starts to flirt back. The story ends with restoration of the status quo rather than any change to the frame of reference. It's about halfway between Kingsley Amis and Douglas Adams, and I was so struck by a certain similarity of tone with Hitch-hiker that I wrote and asked Christopher Priest, who knew both Cowper (John Middleton Murry Jr) and Adams personally, if he thought that one had partly inspired the other. (He said no.)

This is heaps of fun!

An extra half-star for being one of the few trilogies that sticks the landing.

It's not more stars because of two thematic contradictions over the entire trilogy. The first is parochialism. For a series about a possible transcendence for mankind, we never see anything other than England and a touch of Western Europe. The other is social stagnation. For a series about change, there is never any serious explanation for why society remains in a cozy pre-industrial setting for almost 2000 years.

That said, there is so much that I admire in Tapestry. It is challenging to say what without spoilers for the series as a whole.

Table stakes for any series of course is to resolve the main arc. In this case, that arc is about the dream of Kinship for mankind, and Tapestry most definitely resolves that arc. It does so in a way that was not close to what I expected, but was true and uncontrived. Like the other two books, normal narrative structure for a genre novel was violated, but this time it worked, unlike the electronic out of body experience storyline that ran through the first book, or the long info-dump essay on social change that interrupted the middle of the second book.

Many series with large cosmic themes try to evoke the unimaginable final paradigm shift with incomprehensible fireworks, like the climax to one of those superhero movies -- a lot of action and speeches but not much sense. Tapestry does exactly the opposite.

Many series become hagiographies of their fictional central figures, or, in a few cases, resort to some violent turnabout in their development. This trilogy constantly surprises in how it avoids both pitfalls in dealing with the simple human nature of its protagonists.

Highly recommended. As the author notes in a preface, you must start from an edition of The Road to Corlay with Piper at the Gates of Dawn included.

The second book in the Kinship sequence is stronger than most second books in trilogies, but with an oddly sagging middle. There's three fairly distinct parts. The first is focused on the Magpie and Jane, and a fairly desperate adventure to save her and her child, Thomas. While Thomas' central role to the dream of Kinship is obvious to the reader, it's less clear to the characters. The shorter middle section is almost all politics, following some of the lords of this future Britain and their on-again, off-again relationships with the militant Church and the heretical Kinsman. There's a lot of info-dumping and analysis of how the Church's own actions are its undoing. It's interesting to see the primary villain of the sequence dispatched so cavalierly in such a way in the very middle of the saga, but it's neither engrossing reading, nor in keeping with the other two parts of the book. The final section returns to form as it tells how Thomas comes into his powers. He himself is not at all convinced that this will turn out well. The time-traveling out of body experience theme of the first book is briefly mentioned but not repeated, which is all to the good, in my opinion.

Recommended, but read The Road to Corlay first.½

The first in the White Bird of Kinship trilogy. Note: the original Pan edition does not include "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", the key story that sets up the trilogy. The author laments this in a note at the start. He doesn't say why but presumably it was because it was in the collection The Custodians. The Pocket edition does include this story.

Piper takes place in the year 3000 in a dis-United Kingdom. Climate change raised sea levels (this in a book from the 1970s) in the Drowning of 2000, and now there are seven kingdoms, separated by the sea, and civilization has returned to a completely rural status. The past is not completely forgotten but very dim. There is an underground movement that believes that the White Bird of Kinship will usher in a time when humanity unites, but they live in fear of the Church Militant. Piper tells the story of one boy with a magic flute who might be the key to the dream of Kinship. What happens is no surprise, but the telling is rich in detail and sympathetic characters.

Then the main novel begins. It does one very odd thing that cost it a half star for me. It sets up two story lines. The primary line follows what happened 18 years after Piper. The same detail and attention to character continues. The second story line is set in the present, i.e., the 1980s, when the rains have begun, but the sea level has not risen yet. The focus is on a small group of scientists doing a poorly-described brain reading experiment that has led to one of them functionally alive but apparently brain dead. Except there are these mysterious readings that suggest some out of body experience. This story line had no interesting characters for me, not even the fiance of the brain-dead victim who is the primary POV, The scientists were unbelievably quick to accept an out of body experience into the future. The SFnal element was 1930's -- an "Encephalo-Visual Converter" that is basically a television set that shows brain images so clearly a lip reader can tell what people are saying. I can't imagine why Cowper thought this second story line was necessary.

Still, this is highly recommended.½

Rarely have I loved so much an author's prose and hated so much all of his ideas.

An excellent collection by an under-recognized author. The ordering of stories in this collection moves from science fiction of the future variety to eventually more historical science fiction a la Wells and eventually Haggard. The title story is reminiscent of Hesse's Glass Bead Game. A young boy meets an aging star pilot who brought back a chess-like game that sweeps the world, but may be something more than just a game. I didn't buy the premise but I did enjoy the story. The Custodians takes place at a remote monastery where the past and future are strongly linked. Paradise Beach recalls Bradbury's The Veldt but is set as more a mystery. The Hertford Manuscript uses a modern story frame to eventually tell what happened next to the hero of the Time Machine, very much in the writing style of Wells. Finally The Web of the Magi forgoes modern framing to tell a story in straight H Rider Haggard mode.

Strong solid stories throughout in a mix of narrative styles. Highly recommended.½

For fans of Cowper I'm sure this is a good book. It's my third attempt to like a one of his SF novels and It's just not going to happen. Some of English novelist from the Golden Age of SF do not work well for me. Cowper seems to be one of them. I like many 1950-70 UK authors but Cowper's themes are depressing.

Cowper is a very good English writer. He frequently sticks to the theme of a dystopia future in the British Isles, which often moves society to the dark ages. "Twilight of Briareus" is in that vane.

Well written but not my cup of tea. I just don't enjoy his stories. I have not given up on him. I will try "Kuldesak".

Contains The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which I enjoyed and remember 35 years on.

Was I not included on the memo that mentioned this guy? How have I never heard of him? Whatever the case may be, Richard Cowper (aka John Middleton Murry, Jr.) is a fine writer. My edition of this book includes both the title novel and the novella "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" which introduces us to the world and specific circumstances that will drive the conflict of the novel.

This is a story in the post-apocalyptic pastoral vein, a sub-set of the genre that I am finding is a lot more common than I had a first realized. It includes such works as Crowley's _Engine Summer_, Pangborn's _Davy_, Jefferies' _After London_ and others. In essence we see the world long after a disaster of some kind has laid waste to our society, but while the horror of that event is not diminished, the resulting world is often seen as the chance to start again and perhaps correct the mistakes of the past (or alternately relive them if the tragic mode is adopted). The apocalypse has, in effect, allowed us to start again with a more or less blank slate and thus there is a pervading optimism underneath the implied pessimism of the genre.

This story is a lyrically told one whose major themes are religious. The Church has remained as one of (if not the only) power centres of the old world left to fill the vacuum as it did in the days of Rome's fall. The world itself shares close ties with an idealized medieval one and in the introductory novella we meet the young piper Thomas and his Uncle Peter, an itinerant storyteller taking his nephew to be schooled in the Church. On the way he discovers his nephew's almost magical talent with the pipes and decides to use their journey as a chance to make some quick coin...his stories accompanied by the boy's music. They soon become a sensation, but the boy's piping proves to be more than it seems and it soon awakens a religious fervor in those who hear it and are awaiting the arrival of the enigmatic "White Bird". The boy ultimately becomes a martyred saviour figure and his uncle the first of his apostles, carrying his gospel to the world.

The novel itself opens with the fledgling religion in open opposition to the established church and one of its adherents (a Kinsman) attempting to evade the authorities in a quest to reach the last surviving founder of his sect as he carries a relic to be safeguarded. We follow his journey and also see the lives of the people he meets, both good and bad, as they become a part of his tale. Despite the religious nature and themes of the story it is never proselytizing or glibly allegorical. Cowper is simply telling a story of the numinous as it interacts with people and comes into contention with established authority.

I found the tale to be a compelling one, well told in a lyrical style that was a joy to read. The introduction of a past/future time travel element, as people from our time (just before the great flood that drowns the world) interact with those in the future in a mix of implied re-births and paranormal experimentation, was probably not necessary, but still not overly intrusive. I'd recommend this book and look forward to finding others in this series (called the "White Bird of Kinship" trilogy) as well as other unrelated books by the same author.

The Custodians: novella about a monastery where a strange "observatory" has been created that allows users to see into the future. This is a tragic tale that seems to play with Cowper's interest in the linkages between past, present, and future and the interplay of predestination with free will. Well written and intriguing.

Piper at the Gates of Dawn: novella that sets up the world Cowper created for his "White Bird of Kinship" trilogy. Already reviewed as part of _The Road to Corlay_.

A book I have always admired, because of its central conceit. Everyone has wondered this at some time or another; only Cowper, as far as I know, has actually made a novel out of it.

George Cringe is a middle-aged school teacher, with a less than satisfactory marriage. He is attracted to a younger colleague at the school where he works. As light relief from this stressful life, he is writing a science fiction novel about the planet Agenor, where his hero, the teacher Zil Bryn and his partner, Orgypp, are having problems with an outbreak of giant psychedelic mushrooms.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, on the perfect planet Chnas, the teacher Zil Bryn has a happy life with his partner Orgypp, apart from problems centred upon an outbreak of giant psychedelic mushrooms. But Bryn is finding relief from this by composing a strange narrative, set on a mythical planet called Urth, about the deeply troubled teacher Shorge Gringe...

I've not read this recently, but I recollect it being a fun piece of satire.½

A fairly light but still toothy SF satire, with mad captains, toadying underlings, a sentient AI, dolphins, social commentary and a hapless innocent bumbling around in the midst of it. A good reminder that Richard Cowper is very much worth reading.½

Cowper brings this series to a close with more society-building that the publishers insist on making look like fantasy. In fact, half the book is an examination of the whole story from the point of view of an academic in the story's future reconstructing the tale from old documents, in a society rebuilding itself to early-19th century levels (some of the characters marvel at the new gas street lighting).

A sequel to the novella 'Piper at the gates of dawn', establishing the 'White bird of Kinship' series.

The Timescape (US paperback) edition of this book only hints that this is part of a series and makes it look more like a fantasy novel than a romance of a changed, post-apocalyptic future. It is actually a direct sequel to 'The road to Corlay'. If I had not known this series from its start (having read the original short story, 'Piper at the gates of dawn' in F&SF in the late 1970s), I would not otherwise have picked this book up.

What do you get when you reinterpret a messianic tale, and blur the lines between fantasy and science fiction?

Well, I'm sure you can guess that since you're reading a book review for The Road to Corlay, what my answer will be.

Cowper has written a story based some 1000 years in the future. A flood wiped out most of the world, and the religious force rules all with an iron fist. Along comes a boy who can play the pipes well enough to enchant men's minds. He talks of things like Kinship and the White Bird, and the church sees this as heresy.

The boy dies from a wayward crossbow bolt, and is buried in a tomb. The man who killed him and the talespinner under whom the boy piped set off and established a new religion. The Boy, now capitalized, was revered as a messiah.

Years later, a man is found in the sea. His is Kin, a follower of the Kinship, which one can tell readily from his cloven tongue, in memory of the Boy.

Though, something sets him apart from the other Kin. Well, a few things do, actually.

First, there's the theory that this man, Thomas of Norwich, is in fact the Boy (named Tom, from Norwich), somehow resurrected. Second, there's this Michael Carver entity somewhere in the back of Thomas' mind. Michael, it is revealed, is a present-day doctor conducting OBE experiments, and somehow got trapped in Thomas' mind. Thirdly, he too can play the pipes to ensorcel men's minds.

While Thomas hides from the Falcons, the storm troopers of the church, he is assisted in his travels by Jane, a woman with whom he falls in love. Brother Francis, the Cardinal's right hand man, investigates the happenings around the day the Boy died. He discovers proof of miracles: blind getting sight and so forth, and has a Saul-like conversion. It is now his mission to deliver the original pipes to this Thomas, and hope that the Cardinal and his men do not find him and kill him first.

Cowper paints a tapestry here that has two sides. On one, we have a future that looks like the past, and on the other, we have a preset. Both have their own unique voices and unique colors, and it is amazing to see how Cowper shifts between the two seamlessly.

Recommended for fans of 70s fantasy. Not recommended for people expecting a redux of the life of Christ; you'll probably get offended if you look at it that way.

Set in the distant future, Cowper resumes his series following Road to Corlay. In ADoK, we first meet The Magpie in his search to find the future mother of Tom, a boy destined for greatness, in part due to his parentage, particularly that of his authority-challenging father.

Given the gift of a pipe from The Magpie and the gift of prophecy (heush) from his mother, he trains himself to be an expert piper, even able to control men's minds with his music. He uses this power to fight the authoritarians and defend the innocent.

However, Tom must come to grips between who he is and what he's expected to be, and he struggles with this dichotomy. He fears the darkness he sees within him as it is the same darkness he sees within evil men, and Tom must learn self-control unless he too ends up like them.

This was a good book and ended on a hopeful note. However, The Road to Corlay is still my favourite volume in this trilogy.

Reserved for Challenges.

This is a very compelling fantasy novel which had a profound impact on my psyche. Though it has an average writing style, I have been unable to get this book out of my head in all the years since I first read it!

Highly Recommended.

Reserved for Challenges.