 Nathan Ballingrud’s sparce version of Mars is a triumph The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud Publisher : Titan Books (21 Mar. 2023) Language : English Paperback : 320 pages ISBN-10 : 1803362693 ISBN-13 : 978-1803362694 A Book Review by Tony Jones The Strange was my fascinating introduction to Nathan Ballingrud, who is particularly well known for his weird, dark fantasy and horror short stories brought together in the two collections North American Lake Monsters (2013) and Wounds (2019). In 2007 his short story ‘The Monsters of Heaven’ won the prestigious Shirley Jackson Award, with him winning a second Jackson gong in 2013 for North American Lake Monsters, in the Best Single-Author Short Story Collection category. Ballingrud’s widely admired fiction has also been nominated for numerous other top prizes, included the Bram Stoker, the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award. Back in 2015 Ballingrud’s novella The Visible Filth (currently out of print) was included in the excellent This is Horror website range of fiction, with The Strange being his longest work to date and his debut as a novelist. The Strange was a very appropriate title for a book which was indeed very strange! I also found it to be a very quiet, poetic, and a rather oddly moving experience. It was as much science fiction as it was horror, even if there was little in the way of ‘science’ or wider explanation in the book of how things ticked. It had an overwhelming feeling of decay, resources were low, technology was breaking down and not being replenished. Lots of other reviews have made comparisons with Ray Bradbury (and quite right too) but it also reminded me of the cult Richard Stanley film Hardware (1990) which is also full of technology scavengers and a battle for the last remaining resources. Although The Strange is undoubtedly being marketed as a horror science fiction crossover novel, it fits into the Weird Western genre just as comfortable as those two more mainstream genres. The plot structure echoes the 1968 western novel True Grit by Charles Portis, made famous by two Hollywood films, the major difference being there is no Rooster Cockburn style character in this book, but feisty teenager Annabelle Crisp would make a fine Mattis Ross. Instead of revenge, Belle is attempting to recover a tube which holds a recording of her mother who recently returned to Earth. The barren and desolate Martian landscapes were beautifully described, with outlying lawless settlements, and it was easy to compare this with the rugged American West of pioneer times. The story opens with Belle working at her father’s diner in New Galveston the main colony on Mars, which nostalgically recreates the feeling of Earth with pictures adorning the walls, when a man comes in just before closing time. He is aggressive and confrontational, after ordering coffee he and his gang rob the diner. In the course of the robbery her most prized possession is also taken, the last connection with her absent mother. And she will do anything to get it back, even if the local sheriff is too fearful to cross the outlaws. Throbbing in the background is this overwhelmingly deep sense of isolation. Since Bella’s mother returned to Earth there has been a breakdown in communication with home and readers will have fun reading between the lines over what might have happened or understanding the force behind it. Is the Mars colony perhaps now being seen as a failed experiment or has there been a catastrophic event on Earth which has caused the deafening silence? Or something closer to home? (home being Mars) The story cleverly balances the idealistic longing to return ‘home’ with what it means to actually be ‘Martian’. Again if you read between the lines most colonists were probably running from something on Earth, with Bella living on the red planet since she was a small child. Along the way The Strange has an array of colourful characters who either help or hinder Bella recover her recording. Add into the mix other fascinating story strands involving ghosts, hallucinations, robots (the kitchen robot ‘Watson’ was very cool) breaking their programming and evolving, throw in kickstarting ancient, busted spacecrafts and there is a lot to savour and enjoy. Threaded throughout is a deep sense of melancholia with Bella telling the story reflectively from some point in the future. This mood was reminiscent of Michel Faber’s science fiction masterpiece The Book of Strange New Things which also concerns trying to contact Earth from millions of miles away. Bizarrely, The Strange is also set in the past with an alternate historical timeline and although this was odd within the constraints of the story it worked perfectly well, some readers might find the lack of detail frustrating, but I loved this retro-futurism style. And what of ‘The Strange’ itself? I’ve kept that to near the end as I’m not entirely certain how to explain this phenomenon and it could also have done with a tad more clarity, a mineral peculiar to Mars which seems to be growing a conscience and changing or evolving people and technology (think robots). Creating genuine Martians perhaps? Bella was a great character, and although she comes across as older than the probably was, carried the book in some style. There was a lot going on in The Strange, which was a clever mashup covering several genres carried by a sense of childhood longing, family ideals and a credible leading character trying to hold onto her identity in a world which was changing in ways nobody could fathom. I found the dustbowl of Mars and the broken-down settlements to be totally captivating and absorbing, but I would not want to live there! Tony Jones The Strange Paperback |
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