You, Sir, Are No Terry Pratchett

So, sure, not everyone is Terry Pratchett. And 'comedic fantasy' is a tricksy thing. And Pratchett didn't invent it (see Fletcher Pratt, Gordon R. Dickson, and Poul Anderson for what, I presume, are just three predecessors). But there's this guy Robert Rankin whose books have jokey titles and Pratchett-esque summaries on the back. Sure, let's try to blame the marketeers for this: "Ooo! Pratchett-esque summaries sell Pratchett books! Let's try them out on this other guy who might not be at all similar!" And for all I know, Rankin's been writing for longer, but I have no particular journalistic cred to preserve so I amn't even going to check that.

But, dear god, I struggled through his "The Witches Of Chiswick" this last week, and I'm so glad it's over. I heartily anti-recommend it to fans of well-written and amusing fantasy. With a plot that looks like "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and any steampunk book you've ever heard of were involved in a horrible high-speed car crash, and characters who literally leap back into the page at the slightest effort to understand them, this is awful, awful, awful.

And it reads like a lager lout wrote it. Whenever Rankin can't be bothered to think of something, he basically says so in as many words. Jokes about sloppy authors, footnotes highlighting poor jokes, characters alluding to the running gags being perpetrated in neighbouring paragraphs, attempts to appear unpretentious (or rather, attempts, to undercut any accusations of pretension and education)... Rankin reads like he's afraid his mates down the pub will accuse him of being gay if his books don't hold their attention and trigger their trivial senses of humour if opened to a random page in the split-seconds between mouthfuls of beer. This is probably why there's so many postmodernism-is-fun-for-drunk-people references to "Time Cop".

Actually, rereading that last bit makes it sound like I might be sympathising with Rankin for having to write down to his audience. So I should correct that view; without changing my opinion of his target audience, I think he's writing up to it. This is one of the worst books I've read, and I don't have to compare it to Terry Pratchett to say so. JMS once observed that it was difficult to create the future for "Babylon 5" when fans would retort with "But it's been proven that we'll have transporter beams and handheld communicators, haven't you seen Star Trek?" Sure, the subtext of this post may be to accuse myself of being unable to let go of Pratchett's view of comic fantasy. Except, I also like Jasper Fforde, and Bill Willingham's "Fables". So apparently there is room in my head for other ways to be funny and fantastic. Just not for Rankin's, because he is rubbish. Take that! Panda wins.

I'll probably find Jan loves them and thinks they're harmless unpretentious junk now ;-)

This was probably all because the book I read before this disaster was a Joe Haldeman short story collection, which is going to have prepped me for quality. Less grumpy service will be resumed shortly...

(Olympic Frogwatch: Frog didn't get to see any Olympics today because we were busy or out pretty much all afternoon and evening. Tump. He has silently zotted us both as a warning that this will not be an acceptable excuse twice.)