First Books, Last Books

One of my enduring pleasures as a reader is discovering a new author.
Better yet, finding the first book by a new author.

First novels are interesting.  Sometimes, if you're lucky, they're glimpses behind the curtain.  You can see the author at work, collecting ideas together and building the story as he or she goes.  From time to time, that first novel arrives like the classic Frankenstein's Monster - stitched together from stories that have already appeared elsewhere, given a new form and new purpose.  Other times, the book is more hesitant and a bit more like a first date - neither of you are sure you're all that into one another, but you're both hoping it will turn out well and end in that amazing tingly feeling of a first kiss to carry with you as you go home.

Or back to the book shop.  Whichever.

This is the glory of reading.  Although you might never speak with the author, by writing something like a novel the author shares something amazing with their readers.  Each book is an open door into that writer's mind - Stephen King talks about it like telepathy, for example - and while anyone can pick up and read the book, only you are going to form the relationship with it that you do.  That's why books, even ones we don't like, even ones that are pretty awful, are art.

If you're lucky, the author you've just developed Readership for is relatively prolific and you'll get to spend a fair amount of time with them.  But there are other authors who rarely seem to publish but who leave you absolutely breathless when they do create something.  And there are the one-book-stands where you're secretly glad that they don't do more than one novel every few decades because you're not really sure you could take that sort of experience more than once in a blue moon.  Or because that one time was so good you know there'll never be anything they can do to quite match it.

I'm lucky.  A lot of my favourite authors would have to be physically restrained from writing, so I've been rather spoiled over the years.  Michael Moorcock, Terry Pratchett, Harry Harrison, Charles Stross, Iain M. Banks - and Iain Banks, of course - Jim Butcher...every couple of months there's something new to explore.

Lately, I've discovered the Johannes Cabal books.  Jonathan Howard seemed to spend most of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer not quite sure he was going to get away with it, and then becoming more confident and impressive with each successful chapter.  The second book in the series has revealed itself to have a bit of a swagger, which I like in an author.  He knows what he's doing, he knows his audience have turned up to see him and he's realised that he might be able to take a few more risks.  

Ben Aaronovich has hit a similar stride with the PC Grant novels, which not only have excellent stories and characters I want to spend the next however long with, but they have the best covers ever and I want to own very large copies of them and cover the walls with them.  Ben isn't new to authorship - he wrote two of my favourite Doctor Who New Adventures (I'm re-reading The Also People whenever I get five minutes and plan to move on to Transit, which I know is reading them out of chronological order but they're Doctor Who books.  Wibbly-wobbly-timey-so sue me) and Remembrance of the Daleks.  The PC Grant books are a joy to read.

Paul Cornell did something in a similar vein with London Falling, which if you like coppers beset by the supernatural is pretty much a must read.  And if you don't like coppers vs. the Supernatural, it's still worth your time just for the differences between the way two old Doctor Who alumni handle similar material.  It's another great read for many, many reasons so you should buy it.

So there are things to read.  There are always things to read.  Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw's book Jam is currently occupying my solo reading hours and I might have to go find a copy of his first novel Mogworld to see where he started.

Because you never know how long these things will last.

I'm getting older, and one of the unhappy things about ageing is that sooner or later the people I know and like start to die off.

It's happened to some authors - Arthur C. Clarke, Harry Harrison, John M. Ford - and then a couple of years ago Terry Pratchett announced that he had early onset Alzheimers. All of a sudden, you're looking at last books instead of first books.  And in some cases you're really hoping that the most recent book wasn't the last.

Fans of George RR Martin are worried that he'll die before he completes A Song of Fire and Ice and now so is a TV audience who, like me, are a bit hooked on Game of Thrones.  Fans of Robert Jordan know what happens when the original author doesn't get to finish his story.

It seems mercenary to worry about someone's well being because of a book.

The thing is, if the author doesn't get to finish then you'll never get to the end of the conversation that you're in the middle of.  And there's the sadness, too.

If you like books, the loss of an author before they've had the chance to run out of things to say is like a bright light going out.  There's a peculiarity to it, too, because with an author something of the characters they created dies with them.  All those people you knew well might reappear under the pen of another writer, and they might walk and talk like the characters you knew but would they be quite the same?  Mind you, some characters are authorproof - yes, I'm looking at you Conan - but nevertheless there's never going to be a writer who works with him like Robert E Howard.  

If you've had the chance to really get to know an author, the stilling of their words is a bleak reminder that one day we have to face the abrupt end of our own story; we know the world goes on, we might hope there's another story to be a part of after this one or we might accept the final closing of the cover with equanimity but it's still a hard thing, to lose a friend.  Even a friend you've never met or spoken with.

So today's news, that Iain Banks has cancer and isn't likely to live much longer, is awful.  There are lots of people who knew him far better than I ever will - who actually knew him, for example, and will mourn the passing of a man rather than loss of a source of fiction.  He's announced that his most recent novel will be his last.  

All I can think of is the first time I read The Wasp Factory and the feeling of amazement  - the same one I had when I finally wrapped my head around Waiting for Godot - that people were actually allowed to do things like this with literature.  Encouraged to do it, even.   I was young, the book was amazing, and if other books have been like first dates then The Wasp Factory took me out, got me shamefully drunk and then stood by sniggering while I got myself an ill-advised tattoo, ate a kebab, made a slurred and incomprehensible pass at a random woman and woke up in my own flower bed.

I hope there's some form of afterlife.  I hope that all the authors who have opened their imaginations to us get to be told how well they did, how much they were appreciated.  And I hope it happens every time someone picks up their first novel and starts on the journey to their last book.

As usual, Bill says it best.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little live is rounded with a sleep.