BUILD HIGH FOR HAPPINESS

Lovely review from Finn Clark of the Obverse short story collection:

It's not available on his review site yet, because he's on holiday, Finn Clark sent us a sneak preview of his review of BUILD HIGH FOR HAPPINESS, and since getting anyone to review fiction books is always hard, I thought I'd share it here

****

Build High for Happiness (2021)

Writers: Simon Bucher-Jones, Kara Dennison, Stuart Douglas, Niki Haringsma, Sean Mason, Paul Magrs, Philip Marsh, Iain McLaughlin, Courtney Milnestein, John Peel, Ian Potter, Rachel Redhead, Jenny Shirt, Dale Smith, James Cooray Smith, Alasdair Stuart, Stephen Wyatt

Cover Design by Cody Schell

243 pages

INTRODUCTION (Stephen Wyatt, non-fiction)

A Paradise Towers anthology! With an introduction by Stephen Wyatt! He hasn't forgotten about the people who hated the original TV story, but I want to him to know they're wrong. It's magnificent. Wyatt wrote my two favourite TV stories and I'm desperate to see him write for the 21st century series. Is there someone I could kidnap to make this happen?

TERRITORY (Courtney Milnestein)

That was harsh. It's thinking unpleasantly about having an entire generation for whom life is gang warfare. Girls have no choice in becoming Kangs. That wasn't always true, but it is now. Astra was an intelligent, normal girl when this story began, when they'd only just moved in and the caretakers were still kind. Gang culture takes Astra's sister, though, then her too. It's likened (not unreasonably) to the in-betweens' war. We watch Astra sinking into the language, the violence and ultimately the death.

Kang life here is bloodier than I'd expected. Kangs on TV never killed each other. ("To make unalive is not part of the Kang way. No ball games, no fly posts, no wipeouts.") There are definitely wipeouts here, but I can accept that for a story. Times change, after all. Presumably the Kangs got less brutal after this, or perhaps the most extreme of them didn't survive.

"There were scarce few Yellow Kangs now, most of them made unalive, taken to the cleaners, or beaten to death by other colours, or eaten by oldsters."

C5 (Iain McLaughlin)

Minor Domestic Cleaner C5 Alpha Alpha One is a cleaning robot that I started (incorrectly) imagining as K9. The names aren't dissimilar, although C5's stupid and not very useful. Stranded on Level 27 by san elevator malfunction, it goes looking for work and greater understanding of its environment.

This story's enjoyable and quite nice. C5 accidentally develops self-awareness and makes friends. We even hear about a new social stratum. Vermin are "the unfortunates who lived in Paradise Towers but didn't have an actual home or membership of a Kang". The ending perhaps falls a little flat, since C5's obviously worrying about nothing and it can trust its friends, but this is a good-natured, sweet story.

A CUP OF SUGAR (Paul Magrs)

Paul Magrs! All anthologies need Magrs. He's writing here about the ageing and occasionally cannibalistic inmates of a tower block that might as well be a prison... but no! Don't let that get you down! Our hero remains cheerful and extremely fond of himself! He's Edmund G. Swain, a gentleman of a certain age who makes himself available for a fee to ladies.

The story doesn't really have an ending, but that's fine. It has some lovely phrases ("he trundled like a wardrobe with epaulettes") and it threads a delicate line between our hero's optimism and the dead-end dystopian nightmare of his world.

Also, Morag's request is both horrific and funny.

"I'm a very valued guest in the warm, chintzy sitting rooms up and down the many levels of Paradise Towers. Each visit I dress up in all my finery. I know I look splendid in my silver and lilac waistcoat, my flowing cloak, my feathered hat. My thigh high boots. Oh, I can wear anything. And my ladies always go wild for me. I'm like catnip.

TRANK TANK (John Peel)

Jax is an architect on Paradise Towers's design committee, but he's powerless and Kroagnon and the chairman make all the decisions. No one had been paying him any attention even before the arrival of a mildly sinister gentleman who won't say his name. This story's okay. It's a bit thudding and one of the collection's weaker stories, but it has a good ending that surprised me.

"Are you disagreeing with the Government?" Liaison stared icily at him. "In a war situation, that is treason."

THE QUEEN IN YELLOW (Ian Potter)

It's juicy. Its Kangspeak is so rich that it's even exploring the language differences between groups, including both caretakers and different Kang tribes. "She'd grown up on one of the upper floors on the other side of the Towers, and spoke in a high North Two Hundreds accent."

Admittedly, the plot's mostly just Kangs doing Kang stuff. I wasn't particularly interested in the cast or what they were up to, but the ending's memorably nasty.

HAPPINESS (Dale Smith)

Yow. It's really well written and the collection's classiest story, but it's also deliberately ugly and disturbing. Phil and Maisie are a married couple who live in Paradise Towers, which Maisie helped design.

"Phil lay asleep on the sofa in the lounge, his head flopping back so that his neck lay over the arm, pulled taut and exposed. He was snoring loudly. Maisie stood over him, the knife in her hand. It would be easy. Just one quick slice."

THE SECRET LIFE OF CARETAKER NUMBER 112 STROKE 9 SUBSECTION 7 (Stephen Wyatt)

Stephen Wyatt again! I was delighted, obviously.

This one's simple and has an anti-climactic ending, but it's also good fun. We're seeing the world through the eyes of a caretaker! Wyatt characterises him and indeed the entire world very well. These caretakers are a miserable bunch of buggers, but our hero is very slightly better than his colleagues. He's a bit younger and not yet a bread-dead lump, at least.

WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME (Simon Bucher-Jones)

This one's fascinating and I enjoyed it a good deal. It's also unusual in this anthology in being set after the TV story, letting it explore new things in a less oppressive world.

Here, our boys have returned home from the war. Well, five of them, anyway, and they've never seen these scary Towers before in their lives. But it's their new home anyway. Does this mean we're about to learn about the mysterious war?

Surprisingly, no, because there's amnesia about. One of the soldiers (Johnny) is trying to find out what happened to him, but no one knows for sure (including us). The good news, though, is that some intelligent Lie-burians have been thinking about it for a long time and have had interesting ideas. What results is a story that's half a narrative and half an exploration of fan theories. It's pretty cool. Also, I admire the story's effort in maintaining the TV story's ambiguity.

Pax's backstory feels incompatible with the Cutaway Comics prequel to Paradise Towers, but that's okay. I prefer the Bucher-Jones version. The omni-amnesia fits other Paradise Towers stories and would be an interesting stepping stone for future development.

I also loved the clever Kangspeak.

RECLAIMING KROAGNON (James Cooray-Smith)

This one made me laugh. It's a lovely bit of fun, being the transcript of a speech by a pompous bigot who wants to disprove all those slurs against the great Kroagnon. (I also quite liked the continuity references to spin-offs.)

PEX STRIKES! (Voga Keplis)

...and this made me laugh too. It's an entertaining ending for the collection. Perhaps a bit overlong, but it zooms along so fast that that doesn't matter at all. It's a hack writer's script for a trash action movie about Pex, with dialogue like this:

PEX

No need Chief. I don't play by the rules.

I know what's right.

PEX

Drugs aren't the solution. They're the

problem! Say no to drugs and yes to life.

That's the greatest adventure of them all.

...and the anthology also has lots of single-page micro-stories between the longer ones. These tend to be dark. Sometimes dark as hell. So there you have it. Lots more Paradise Towers! There's interesting stuff in here and I'm looking forward to the next one.