Has anyone read this book? It came out last fall from ChiZine Publications (of the ezine Chiaroscuro--their first book publication) and sounds intriguing to me. SF with something of a horror edge (or perhaps horror with something of an SF veneer?)--some of the blurbage and such puts me in mind of Veniss Underground, so it seems like something a number of regulars here might go for. Yet I've seen very little discussion of it online. I'm not usually much for straight-up horror (or at least what I think of when I hear Horror as a label), but horror elements in other contexts sometimes work for me.

Anyone familiar with it?

Not familiar with it, but seems interesting: thanks for mentioning it. My local Borders doesn't even know the book exists, looks like maybe in the USA it is only available via Amazon and B&N's websites. The first three chapters are available as a free excerpt from the publisher's website, though; I just downloaded them and will give them a read...

MattD

You're welcome, and I hadn't noticed the sample chapters. Cool, I'll check that out.

Here's the link to the publisher's page on it, for anyone else interested: http://chizine.com/chizinepub/books/filaria.php It includes chapter one as an audio download too.

Hmm, not bad. The first chapter was interesting if rather rough; it felt like the author was trying too hard to write in a certain style (and failing: too many grammatical errors!). But I thought the second chapter worked more cohesively, and the third chapter was pretty good, too (a bit too much "let me spontaneously tell you my life story" as a storytelling device, but it was brief at least).

I'm tasting a blend of Gene Wolfe (and via Wolfe, Paul McAuley) and Jeff VanderMeer, enlivened by notes of Dark City and subtle hints of Borges and Chiang. Well, in the setup offered by these initial chapters at least.

The real question is, is there a story here, beyond showcasing the setting? I'm a little worried because these chapters that introduce the characters and settings have already taken us 50 pages into a book that Amazon reports is 240 pages, and there's still another POV character and setting to introduce. None of the reviews are very enlightening in this respect, <sigh>.

MattD

I'm a sucker for a good setting. I have a tendency to be overly forgiving if I'm intrigued by the setting. (Not entirely--Scar City couldn't hold me despite its interesting setting.) And in an interview he talks about the Oulipo writers, which I'll admit is a draw for me too. I enjoyed what I've read of the sample so far--not in a rush-out-and-buy way (yet) but certainly in a this-has-potential way. Hopefully I'll get to the rest of it soon and decide.

Daniel, just FYI, I ordered it from Amazon today -- I had a couple of other things I needed to get and since the excerpt had lingered in my mind the past week or two, I figured why not. I'll share my impressions once I read the whole thing, probably by mid-March.

MattD

Great. I actually just ordered it myself as well yesterday as part of an Amazon order. So I'll be able to share my impressions also.

Hello folks, thanks for the interest in (& purchases of!!) Filaria. I stumbled across this page and registered... I see that the link to ChiZine Publications has been posted: there's reviews there that might help give an indication as to how the book comes across... Also, there is a forum on Horror Mall discussing Filaria, with some opinions from other readers. I will check in regularly and try to alliviate doubts or answer a few questions. I would say that the book is not horror, for starters, though there are some creepy moments, I'd like to think.
Thanks again,
Brent H.

Welcome

I enjoyed the book, as I mentioned in the Currently Reading thread. A big part of that is, admittedly, the setting. Sucker for intriguing settings, like I said. But also, I enjoyed how the four story-lines slid past each other, how they complemented each other without ever fully touching.

I wasn't fully sure about how it ended. Tran so, to me, seemed primarily to be a vehicle to show the decline of the place rather than a compelling story in his own right. That was fine for his parts in the story individually--I think the entropy of it was fascinating thematic aspect of the story, and it was good to get a broader sense of how everything was falling apart--but it made ending with him feel anti-climatic. I should point out that I've had similar reactions to other books where I felt the ending seemed lacking initially but later changed my mind as I considered it more (or reread it), but that's the sense I have at the moment. Might it have worked to change the order of characters each time, or would that have thrown off the balance? I suspect that adding anything to the end--a coda or an additional chapter from one or several characters--would have pleased a certain type of reader, but would have felt awkward to me.

None of the story-lines really ended conclusively, though some more than others. And I think that might add to your sense, Matt, of it more as a showcase of the setting than a story in its own right. At least if we think of story as primarily character-focused. If we think of story as a playing out of a theme, then I think this holds together nicely. It doesn't resolve, but it's not in that frustrating, merely loose-ends way but rather in the way a challenging work lingers, inviting you to keep its images and themes fresh in your mind after you're done.

There was more I was thinking of saying, but that's probably enough for now. I'm not going to rush out and recommend it to everyone I know, but I do think it's a book that deserves and earns attention and discussion. So for certain readers I'll certainly offer it as a suggestion.

Thanks for the in-depth comments and for (generally) liking the book. Overall, I put your take on Filaria in the 'yeah' pile. I am often questioned about my 'resolution' to the pieces I write... You know, there was once a coda to Filaria, in which I lamely attempted to tie-up stuff in a fairly conventional way. This never made it to print and I am glad for that.
Getting Filaria published was and still is a massive thrill; finding discussions like this one is also pretty thrilling. Thanks again to you all for the interest, and for picking up a copy.
I hope you don't mind me poking my nose in here once in a while. I feel like I might be meddling...

Brent H.

Re-started reading from the beginning today, got to page 104. Liking it so far, the different styles of writing and the different senses of character in each of the four character's sections. Will comment more in a few days after I've finished.


Nah. I will say, personally, that I dislike it when authors explain too much of their work -- it makes the work feel smaller. It is a good level of information to know that you considered a coda but decided against it; since you made that decision, then for me, it would be too much information to know what is in that coda (Daniel may feel differently). But if we start talking about the book and you feel that we're missing anything important, thematically or in terms of how it works, feel free to drop hints to nudge us in the right direction.

MattD

I finished Filaria a few days ago -- a very nice piece of work, Mr. Hayward!


Yes, this was fun -- the thrill of recognition at seeing a name we know (Crystal Max, Ensign Conway, etc.) in an unexpected place. It gave the setting a sense of large and yet managed scale: of a network that can't quite connect; of enormity that, several generations in, had devolved to become a matter of degrees of separation for everyone in the complex. The structure did a very nice job of supporting the book's themes.

It was also fun how the reappearances of characters caused us to reinterpret their character and actions: like how Deidre imagines Ensign Conway as a heroic figure in uniform and hopes people like him will rescue her (careful what you wish for!), or the Orchard Keeper sending away his family, we initially think, because he's worried for their safety.


That's interesting, because I would have said this about Mereziah; I thought Tran so was the most interesting character of the four. Maybe because Tran so seemed to have the most agency, the most willingness to confront his world? This led him to also have what were my favorite scenes in the book: the whole business with the crab; with Simon in the nostalgia suites (just a wonderful scene of two characters talking past each other); and I really liked his ending scene, it was such an absurdly minor and fleeting, yet personally significant, victory amidst all the chaos. This seemed to fit into one of the story's themes, that all of our victories against entropy are temporary ones. (But we're human, so we keep fighting.)

Mereziah on the other hand...well, it was his job as lift attendant to help people get from one place to another, and that's basically what he does in the book.


Agreed.


Agreed again. It worked out better as a story than I had feared it might from reading the sample chapters; the storytelling structures (and larger plot) that helped it work weren't apparent to me from those three initial sections. It's a story of the setting, yes, and of humanity by association to that setting, as its creators, inhabitants, and destroyers. In that sense, the story resolves as much as it needs to for me to be satisfied.


I can definitely imagine many people enjoying it. It reminded me a lot of Wolfe's Long Sun series, although without the same array of thematic depths and references as those books. Probably the best comparison is the one you made originally, with Veniss Underground, because Filaria's strengths also seem to be ones of structure, prose, and setting in conveying atmosphere.

Also,


I can see why people would call it horror, although certainly not in the splatter/torture porn b-movie sense of the word. There's the atmosphere, that (to continue the movie metaphor) puts it in the SF-horror hybrid realm of the first Alien movie, or Pitch Black. There's Cynthia, who seems a vampire-like horror figure. But more than anything, Deidre's segment of the story seems to me to read better as horror than as SF. In a "pure" SF story, we'd expect the coming humans to focus on a logical plan to save people en mass, to maximize the benefit to their gene pool. But with them (and the story) focusing so closely on Deidre, her healing, entrapping her naked in a garden of Eden while ogling her "physical perfection," sexualizing her plight now after her previous story segment with Mingh straw, the reader is forced to concentrate on the horror of her situation as an individual and what her role will be. That moment of recognizing a hostile truth about the universe -- in this case that our species' implacable drive to survive is often destructive to individuals and their wants and hopes, their plans and dreams -- is a signature technique of horror, because it's going for affect rather than rational comprehensiveness.

Which isn't to say that the book is horror, but that I found horror to be one of several useful lenses by which to read it.

MattD

Dear Matt and Daniel,
First of all, thanks. So many of the things said on this page echo what I wanted to put into the book. You guys are ideal readers, and your observations/critiques/insights are, to use a word that has been slaughtered over the past ten or so years, quite awesome for me to read. Filaria has been compared to works that I have loved but not the Long Sun books- so thanks again for this. Excellent company. I'm also very glad you found Filaria fun, and that there was enough meat inside the covers to merit this discussion.
For me, I ended on Tran so because he was the least passive of the four. As you said Matt, we try, in the face of bad odds, to keep on trucking.
Two more things I will add:
1) The prologue of Filaria (a mere 420 words) will be published on ChiZine, as part of a promo for a contest that's just wrapped up. This piece doesn't try to tie anything up, just set a scene that (hopefully) adds another perspective to the book; it was cut with the coda because the 16 chunks worked (for me and the editor) by themselves, when we gave them the chance. Now, I think the opening scene can see the light of day. The coda, however, will stay forever on the cutting room floor. It was part of the scaffolding, not the building.
2) Daniel, I tried to register on Twigs and Brambles but the instructions were all in Polish, so I failed.

Thanks again and take care,
Brent H.

I should add that I wasn't as dismissive of Mereziah's POV in my reading as I may have appeared in my brief comments above. It's just that, comparatively, the functionality of his sections seemed the most naked to me -- of the four POV characters I think we get the least new plot information from his sections, while the connecting characters (Crystal Max, the Orchard Keeper) tended to almost overshadow him. I did like his ending, for all that.

Indeed it is fun, on reflection, to see how each character got what they were searching for in the end, if not what they expected to find. Young Phister was looking for his home, and in a sense he found it. Deidre, who saw herself as a scientist, ended closest of anyone to understanding what had happened and got to see things from the outside perspective of a scientist (while also being herself trapped like a lab animal). Mereziah got to see the fabled top floor, although by the time he got there it was in ruins. And Tran so did find medicine for his wife. There's almost a progression, in the last four chapters, of characters ending closer and closer to what they wanted -- so in that sense, too, in made sense to me to end with Tran so. It's not that ending with any of the others would have been bad, per se, but Tran so's ending is in some ways the least final of the endings, and so forces to reader to continue engaging with the story in exactly the way Daniel wrote about. The more so because of the ending's thematic continuity with the larger story: the drive to continue, regain health, reproduce -- either as a married couple or as a species.

MattD