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The Carnival of Destruction

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It is 1918, twenty-five years have passed since Lydyard took part in an oracle constructed by the 'angels' and the time has come for him to undertake a far bolder adventure on their behalf.

It is an adventure that will also involve his arch-rival Jacob Harkender, the werewolves of London and a young French soldier snatched from death on the battlefield into a world where all distinctions between waking and dreaming have been lost.

The subsequent journey to the limits of the human imagination reveals at last the true nature of the angels and the full consequence of their interference in human affairs.

Cover art by Peter Elson

Published in 1994 by Pocket.
ISBN:0-671-85198-5

  Brian Stableford has been hailed as "one of the most inventive and original writers working today" (The Times) and this, his latest novel, may very well be the cornerstone of his career. The Carnival of Destruction is the brilliantly realized apocalyptic climax to the lauded trilogy that began with The Werewolves of London and continued with The Angel of Pain.

It is l9I8, twenty-five years have passed since Lydyard took part in an oracle constructed by the "angels" and the time has come for him to undertake a far bolder adventure on their behalf. It is an adventure that will also involve his arch-rival Jacob Harkender, the werewolves of London, and a young French soldier snatched from death on the battlefield into a world where all his distinctions between working and dreaming have been lost. The subsequent journey to the limits of the human imagination reveals at last the nature of the angels and the full consequence of their interference in human affairs.

Cover design by Tony Greco & Associates.

Published 1st December 1994 by Carroll & Graf.
ISBN:0-7867-0122-6

  Published in 1st May 1996 by Carroll & Graf

Review by Ian Braidwood

Cast of Characters:
Anatole Daumier, Father Ferigny, Asmodeus, David Lydyard, Siri, Cordelia Lydyard, Elinor Lydyard, William de Lancy, Mandorla Soulier, Gabriel Gill, Jacob Harkender, Dr James Austin, Luke Capthorne, Pelorus, Mercy Murrell, Jason Stirling, Hecate, Perris, The Clay Man, Machalalel.

Normally, I go to great lengths to avoid spoilers when writing my reviews. I try to walk a tightrope between piquing your interest and giving the game away, but in this instance that would be a disservice. Things are different, so if you've decided to read this book and don't want the plot spoiled, stop reading now.

There must still be some last vestige of the uncritical sycophant in me, because I've been agonising over what to write about this novel. However, I don't think there's any getting away from it: The Carnival of Destruction fails and on its own terms.

Carnival starts by introducing us to a new character: Anatole Daumier, who is laying in a ditch on the battle fields of France with a bullet through his brain. It is 1918 and he is sharing his hole with a dead british soldier.

As he lies there, he reconstructs the circumstances which brought him to his end; the French and British armies conceding territory to the Bosche time and again, before folding under a devastating assault.

Then Anatole has a vision of the maid of Orléans and being a good atheist, he assumes it's a hallucination and decides to have fun with it. When the saint asks what favour she can bestow upon him, he chooses to take the place of Laplace's Demon: to know the exact position and velocity of every particle in the universe, and by deduction, all eternity.

The werewolves of London have had conflicts of their own. Carnival finds Pelorus struggling to find David Lydyard's east coast cottage, carrying an injured and unconscious Mandorla Soulier. Also on their way are Anatole and David's daughter Nell.

Lydyard meanwhile, has grown into his rheumatism as it has progressed. His knuckles are now so swollen that his hands are reduced to useless claws.

The tone of the novel so far is a continuation of that in The Angel of Pain, which is to say: an evocative literary ecstasy, where the pages disappear to be replaced by the vision.

As with the previous volumes, the climax of Carnival involves Lydyard and Co joining with the angels to experience an oracle, for the angels don't need the humans only for their sight, but for their vision. However, this time there is not one oracle, but three: to the future, to heaven and to glimpse the universe itself.

The future is the domain chosen for Mandorla and Clay Man. They start from the end of World War One with days and nights flickering past as if illuminated by strobe, until London settles once more; its streets are dark and austere. A wailing warning introduces a blitzkrieg and after witnessing destruction, the two time travellers are moved on. Together, they witness the escalation of prosperity and carnage, as people learn to live under more and different threats.

The angels' sense of irony must be acute, for they send Harkender to a succession of heavens, accompanied by Pelorus. Each vision, be it Arcadian or Utopian, is scorned by Harkender, whose understanding has always been restricted by his arrogance. A fact which has always limited his usefulness to the Angels.

Finally, Anatole and Lydyard explore the physical universe; witnessing its ramifying and encapsulating structures, before shrinking down to the levels of quantum indeterminacy. It is what I referred to in my introduction when I used the phrase '… and shows you the limitations of godlike percipience.' I do not commit hyperbole lightly.

The scope of these three visions is difficult to get across, Brian is quite the polymath and his knowledge of myth and fantasy seem as extensive as his knowledge of science. Mate this to his well-established visual imagery and the affect is quite profound as well as - and I have to say it - bleak. It seems that humanity couldn't even imagine a heaven, leave alone live in one and Brian seems to have little confidence that H.sapiens is going to survive its own creativity.

Don't let this get you down though, because in this immense universe, even the suffering of angels counts for little… and humanity's proportionately less.

So is this why The Carnival of Destruction fails? For many people, I would think so. As a genre pitched to adolescents, science fiction usually has happy endings where the protagonist at least makes his way through the ordeal, so that he can re-establish himself. More often, by some clever scheme or just brute force, he secures the prize and the girl. For these people, the denouement of carnival is so crushing that even the battle seems pointless.

However, for me this is not enough. I'm quite happy with what should have been the ending: The entire future of humankind suspended from just one sub-light starship and the characters faced with a new set of formidable problems. I think Sir Edward Tallentyre stated the heart of the Werewolves trilogy when he said that you have to live in the world as it is. A novel exists in its own terms and as long as the author remains true to the spirit of the work it will succeed.

For me, the failure is in the epilogue, but first, here is what Brian told me when I emailed him:

"The ending is a trifle ambiguous, but my interpretation of what happened is that the alien intelligences of the implicate order, having finally (with great difficulty and after much misunderstanding) obtained an accurate idea of their own nature and prospects from the human minds which they were using as "seers" - and having also realised that they had gone through the whole palaver several times already, using seers of other species - retired whence they came. By way of apology and compensation to those they had used, however, they wound back time to undo as much of the harm they had done as they could contrive - although the cynical reader will probably read the last line in such a way as to conclude that troubles and disappointments still lie ahead, for Lydyard at least."

Well I am not a cynical reader, though the idea that the whole story might recapitulate itself did occur, but this is a quibble by comparison with what follows:

It is questionable whether the angels would have ability to turn back time, certainly nothing in the narrative before this indicates they have this ability. You may respond that the angels can do anything and perhaps you'd be right, but introducing this feature right at the end smacks of a deus ex machina and spoils the coherency of the story.

As I said before, I have no problem with the ending being downbeat. If only certain types of ending are allowed, then fiction loses most of its danger and becomes a form of conjuring, where the question isn't so much how it will end, but how the author will pull it off. I guess this is why I don't read many detective stories.

A positive aspect of the starship ending is that at least the angels would have learned enough humility to stop them messing around with people's lives. Okay, it would hardly count as a finale, but I think this is as close to a victory as you can get with such beings.

However, the biggest problem with this series is that nothing is learned. The angels can't learn, because as soon as they return to their implicate state all memory is lost. The human (and quasi-human) characters do lose massively during the story, but at least on the starship they have gained so much wisdom from their experiences. This is lost however, when they are all returned to their starting points and whichever character you sympathised with, there is no avoiding the feeling that you've been robbed.

In summation, I would say that the Werewolves trilogy is the best evocation of what super-natural beings might actually be like - and what that would mean for us all - that you'll ever read. It is stylish, fabulously intelligent and beautifully crafted. However, if you're going to read it, skip the epilogue.

The Brian Stableford Website