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Book Review: Geoff Nelder's `Exit Pursued by a Bee'
Kallandra with a predeliction for ale is at the Gladstenbury rock festival. She is the-youngest trainee astronaut for the first manned Mars mission. Along with her lover Derek an aeornautical engineer for Europsace they witness an amazing event near the ancient Tor . Astounded Kallandra sums it up in just two words: “It’s impossible.”
Here we have what must be one of the most orginal of introductions in the genre of science fiction. And so `Exit, Pursued by a Bee’ furnishes us with an unfolding mystery.
`Several odd things happened at once. Either her vision blurred, or the top of the tower developed fuzziness. Maybe it had become bored with its sharp lines after eight hundred years. Her legs became blurry too,
as if the footpath couldn’t wait for her and decided to slither downhill and make its own way home. Staggering, Kallandra put her hand on a large boulder to prevent herself falling; a temporary respite as the rock vibrated.
The tiny pink flowers of a miniature thyme plant clung to the top of the boulder. The dark green petite leaves trembled, exposing a timorous millipede that scuttled across the top.’
What is happening defies our understanding of not just the known laws of physics but of time as well. `Decoherence’ the author informs us in a recent radio interview. Geoff Nelder admits to being fascinated by the perceived nature of time itself. For what extrudes itself from beneath the ancient tor is a mystifying orb, rising slowly, marking its own time.
`The ground vibrated less here but, in addition to the crashing of tumbling masonry, shrieks from scared humans, and a cacophony of terrified animals, a deep rumble worried their ears.’
Manfest strangeness. The incrementally rising orb is taking its own sweet time, attuned to its own strange parameters. Whilst the event astonishes, frightens and stunns those who witness this fantastic event it soon turns out in the jargon of any authority dealing with catastophies as an `incident’. It is simulatenously occuring at sacred sites on each of Earth’s continents.
Naturally the military enter the scene of this terrifying event as commander Berringer MOD takes control of the situation. Though it’s the situation that is in control.
Days later those who are dealing with something way beyond anybodies comprehension can only despair at observing it passively. The slow ascent of the orb creates its own enveloping distortion fields for:
`The air seems to be quivering above it. See how the clouds behind are distorted, and the whole thing vibrates, making it appear unclear like yesterday.’ Not only is the mystery puzzling but `all of us are in the dark, so to speak.’ Geoff Nelder is not about to explain the, what is now almost an impertinence of global proportions and an unanalyseable phenomena to frustrate the greatest minds that are duly called in to make sense of it all.
`The Chinese have already broken off a trade mission. They seem to think a bomb is responsible for the massive landslides and cracking of the mountain. Huashan is one of their most sacred mountains.’ South America is thrown into turmoil as events manifest themselves through their own volition.
Sceptics consider the visuals to be an illusion as if wishing them to be unreal will make it so. No such luck. Everybody on Earth is stumped.
With amazing hindsigh some military boffin finally comes to the conclusion that these orbs must be alien.
“Maybe, but aren’t they supposed to invade, not go away?”
“They write their own rules…”
As indeed they do. These localised events have far reaching effects. Enter Oqmar several thousand years ago. Used to preternatural visions, `he’d see dreams even though he was awake-scared. He’d witnessed flying shiny pots, great fire, floating moons and sensed the silent screams of the not-yet-living.’
Now in a nearby cave, `…the cleared circle was like the round base of a shiny grey pot. So it wasn’t part of the rock. Grains of sand vibrated off the top of the upside down pot, which appeared blurred. Oqmar rubbed his eyes but it remained indistinct. The air immediately over the apparition seemed to be quivering like boiling water. Yet no heat reached him, so, squatting, he ventured his hand into the turbulence.”
`…he’d discovered the spherical shape of the object, and sat back in amazement. Hovering a hand’s width above the base of the shallow crater he’d dug in the sand, the sphere shimmered as it continued to slowly rise.’
The mind set of our ancient predecors is revealed in realistic prose. Here Nelder pays attention to details which are often overlooked by other writers. Cheese is not that fresh, nor is their bread. Mould is part of the diet even if Oqmar does feed it to his dog. The emerging sphere could be witchcraft, the stranger who appears as mysteriously as the sphere a jinn, though later Oqmar realized this is not the case. Except to be bamboozled when this strange white skinned being with equally strange clothing vanishes as abruptly as his insertion.
Oqmar’s mind turns quickly to wishfull thinking wanting to impress the women, salivating at the thought of getting the choicest of food. Alas fate and destiny will not fulfill his dream. The cave where this strange, though not so terrifyng to him event occurs has `The sphere headed for the stars, but it had left its impression, and Oqmar, with Kur [his dog], still possessed their cave, albeit with added ventilation.’
There are plenty of other witicisms strewn with gleeful abandon throughout this fast paced novel. Alas for Oqmar its back to mouldy cheese and sour wine. The attention to such details, right down to cracked fingernails, dusty clothes, mudcacked skin reminds us of the difference between our daily reality and that of our ancestors.
Meanwhile back in the present, `the Chinese had been investigating theirs, but weren’t releasing their findings. The Australians had cordoned theirs, as had the others but the Aboriginals had raised objections to their Uluru being violated, so hardly any investigation had been accomplished. Locals had shot at the South African sphere to no effect.’
Geoff Nelder deepens the mystery without convoluting the overall plot. The essence here, the unifying idea underlying this delightful well written novel is of the nature of time. Challenging our assumptions by the plot itself rather than hyspostasizing the strange occurrence. The novel is fast paced, dialogue is sprinkled with delightul and amusing bon-mots.
The alien event pushes, and in Nelder’s case also pulls the proverbial envelope in many directions. The observations of course defy our own somewhat limited understanding of what we, as scientists thought we knew. As Nelder says: “What if gravity went sideways?”
He sees science fiction as “so many things to play around with.”
Which continues ceaselessly in this highly entertaining well crafted story. Our assumptions regarding time and the concomitant laws of physics display a different set of plausible manifest incidents. Undenialbe, yet almost gleefully presented to disrupt our logical assumptions of what is possible and what is not.
Yet there they are: the spheres are using the laws of the cosmos to their own predermined agenda. And with cataclysmic consequences as the laws are warped into overwhelming entropic catastrophies.
With a twist. The story is not just speculation regarding this rending of time into its own inner extrapolated surrounding environment of our world. Time is certainly not sequential, more of a duality of localized and non-localized a-logical revelations.
`…it’s ironic that humans might be one of the few species of
animals that cannot hear the very low and very high sounds being sung by the spheres.” Just a hint of a romantic view of the universe going back to Pythagoras.
Geoff Nelder pushes the limits of our knowledge beyond the expected norms. For what is happening on this planet ought not to. It is indeed more than impossible. Time after all is a sequence of events set within collapsing quantum generated probability waves. Yet the probable has indeed become in this story the actual, no matter what our self determining assumptions wouldl have us believe.
That the impossible is indeed possible. And that dear reader is just the beginning. Strange perturbing events unfold, interspersed with witty observations, delightfull absurdieties as the characters populating this novel try to make sense of it all. Nelder is not short on ideas as those dealing with this alien manifestation has the Pope pontificating, the Mullahs mentally masticating and the journalists salivating, all postulating their take from their own relative perspective. Right to the end.
Even then, where too many writers merely cease their story Nelder leaves our minds imbued with the mystery firmly in place. Not through some prosaic disclosure but an even deeper, tempting, imaginative and almost mind warping logic as he brings the story to a satisfying finale that the impossible is indeed possible.
Lutz Barz
Here we have what must be one of the most orginal of introductions in the genre of science fiction. And so `Exit, Pursued by a Bee’ furnishes us with an unfolding mystery.
`Several odd things happened at once. Either her vision blurred, or the top of the tower developed fuzziness. Maybe it had become bored with its sharp lines after eight hundred years. Her legs became blurry too,
as if the footpath couldn’t wait for her and decided to slither downhill and make its own way home. Staggering, Kallandra put her hand on a large boulder to prevent herself falling; a temporary respite as the rock vibrated.
The tiny pink flowers of a miniature thyme plant clung to the top of the boulder. The dark green petite leaves trembled, exposing a timorous millipede that scuttled across the top.’
What is happening defies our understanding of not just the known laws of physics but of time as well. `Decoherence’ the author informs us in a recent radio interview. Geoff Nelder admits to being fascinated by the perceived nature of time itself. For what extrudes itself from beneath the ancient tor is a mystifying orb, rising slowly, marking its own time.
`The ground vibrated less here but, in addition to the crashing of tumbling masonry, shrieks from scared humans, and a cacophony of terrified animals, a deep rumble worried their ears.’
Manfest strangeness. The incrementally rising orb is taking its own sweet time, attuned to its own strange parameters. Whilst the event astonishes, frightens and stunns those who witness this fantastic event it soon turns out in the jargon of any authority dealing with catastophies as an `incident’. It is simulatenously occuring at sacred sites on each of Earth’s continents.
Naturally the military enter the scene of this terrifying event as commander Berringer MOD takes control of the situation. Though it’s the situation that is in control.
Days later those who are dealing with something way beyond anybodies comprehension can only despair at observing it passively. The slow ascent of the orb creates its own enveloping distortion fields for:
`The air seems to be quivering above it. See how the clouds behind are distorted, and the whole thing vibrates, making it appear unclear like yesterday.’ Not only is the mystery puzzling but `all of us are in the dark, so to speak.’ Geoff Nelder is not about to explain the, what is now almost an impertinence of global proportions and an unanalyseable phenomena to frustrate the greatest minds that are duly called in to make sense of it all.
`The Chinese have already broken off a trade mission. They seem to think a bomb is responsible for the massive landslides and cracking of the mountain. Huashan is one of their most sacred mountains.’ South America is thrown into turmoil as events manifest themselves through their own volition.
Sceptics consider the visuals to be an illusion as if wishing them to be unreal will make it so. No such luck. Everybody on Earth is stumped.
With amazing hindsigh some military boffin finally comes to the conclusion that these orbs must be alien.
“Maybe, but aren’t they supposed to invade, not go away?”
“They write their own rules…”
As indeed they do. These localised events have far reaching effects. Enter Oqmar several thousand years ago. Used to preternatural visions, `he’d see dreams even though he was awake-scared. He’d witnessed flying shiny pots, great fire, floating moons and sensed the silent screams of the not-yet-living.’
Now in a nearby cave, `…the cleared circle was like the round base of a shiny grey pot. So it wasn’t part of the rock. Grains of sand vibrated off the top of the upside down pot, which appeared blurred. Oqmar rubbed his eyes but it remained indistinct. The air immediately over the apparition seemed to be quivering like boiling water. Yet no heat reached him, so, squatting, he ventured his hand into the turbulence.”
`…he’d discovered the spherical shape of the object, and sat back in amazement. Hovering a hand’s width above the base of the shallow crater he’d dug in the sand, the sphere shimmered as it continued to slowly rise.’
The mind set of our ancient predecors is revealed in realistic prose. Here Nelder pays attention to details which are often overlooked by other writers. Cheese is not that fresh, nor is their bread. Mould is part of the diet even if Oqmar does feed it to his dog. The emerging sphere could be witchcraft, the stranger who appears as mysteriously as the sphere a jinn, though later Oqmar realized this is not the case. Except to be bamboozled when this strange white skinned being with equally strange clothing vanishes as abruptly as his insertion.
Oqmar’s mind turns quickly to wishfull thinking wanting to impress the women, salivating at the thought of getting the choicest of food. Alas fate and destiny will not fulfill his dream. The cave where this strange, though not so terrifyng to him event occurs has `The sphere headed for the stars, but it had left its impression, and Oqmar, with Kur [his dog], still possessed their cave, albeit with added ventilation.’
There are plenty of other witicisms strewn with gleeful abandon throughout this fast paced novel. Alas for Oqmar its back to mouldy cheese and sour wine. The attention to such details, right down to cracked fingernails, dusty clothes, mudcacked skin reminds us of the difference between our daily reality and that of our ancestors.
Meanwhile back in the present, `the Chinese had been investigating theirs, but weren’t releasing their findings. The Australians had cordoned theirs, as had the others but the Aboriginals had raised objections to their Uluru being violated, so hardly any investigation had been accomplished. Locals had shot at the South African sphere to no effect.’
Geoff Nelder deepens the mystery without convoluting the overall plot. The essence here, the unifying idea underlying this delightful well written novel is of the nature of time. Challenging our assumptions by the plot itself rather than hyspostasizing the strange occurrence. The novel is fast paced, dialogue is sprinkled with delightul and amusing bon-mots.
The alien event pushes, and in Nelder’s case also pulls the proverbial envelope in many directions. The observations of course defy our own somewhat limited understanding of what we, as scientists thought we knew. As Nelder says: “What if gravity went sideways?”
He sees science fiction as “so many things to play around with.”
Which continues ceaselessly in this highly entertaining well crafted story. Our assumptions regarding time and the concomitant laws of physics display a different set of plausible manifest incidents. Undenialbe, yet almost gleefully presented to disrupt our logical assumptions of what is possible and what is not.
Yet there they are: the spheres are using the laws of the cosmos to their own predermined agenda. And with cataclysmic consequences as the laws are warped into overwhelming entropic catastrophies.
With a twist. The story is not just speculation regarding this rending of time into its own inner extrapolated surrounding environment of our world. Time is certainly not sequential, more of a duality of localized and non-localized a-logical revelations.
`…it’s ironic that humans might be one of the few species of
animals that cannot hear the very low and very high sounds being sung by the spheres.” Just a hint of a romantic view of the universe going back to Pythagoras.
Geoff Nelder pushes the limits of our knowledge beyond the expected norms. For what is happening on this planet ought not to. It is indeed more than impossible. Time after all is a sequence of events set within collapsing quantum generated probability waves. Yet the probable has indeed become in this story the actual, no matter what our self determining assumptions wouldl have us believe.
That the impossible is indeed possible. And that dear reader is just the beginning. Strange perturbing events unfold, interspersed with witty observations, delightfull absurdieties as the characters populating this novel try to make sense of it all. Nelder is not short on ideas as those dealing with this alien manifestation has the Pope pontificating, the Mullahs mentally masticating and the journalists salivating, all postulating their take from their own relative perspective. Right to the end.
Even then, where too many writers merely cease their story Nelder leaves our minds imbued with the mystery firmly in place. Not through some prosaic disclosure but an even deeper, tempting, imaginative and almost mind warping logic as he brings the story to a satisfying finale that the impossible is indeed possible.
Lutz Barz
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