I first came across Christopher Evans’s name as the co-editor, with Robert Holdstock, of Other Edens II (1988, UK), the second in a trilogy of original paperback anthologies. I seem to remember meeting him several times at conventions in the early 1990s, but I don’t think I’d read anything by him until I reviewed his novel Aztec Century (1993, UK) for the British Science Fiction Association. (The novel won the BSFA Award for Best Novel that year. My copy of the book is signed, so I definitely met him at least once.)
Evans’s earlier novels were obscure — well-regarded, but copies were hard to find — and he’d written a “how to write science fiction” book in 1988, but the success of Aztec Century raised his profile considerably, although his next novel, Mortal Remains (1995, UK; see my review here) was favourably reviewed but didn’t appear on any award shortlists. He was then silent for thirteen years, until the publication of Omega (2008, UK), published by small press PS Publishing.
Some time between reading Other Edens II and Aztec Century, I picked up a copy of Evans’s debut novel, Capella’s Golden Eyes (1980, UK). I recently reread the book, as I remembered liking it but could not recall any details of plot or setting.
Capella’s Golden Eyes is a good example of a type of science fiction published in the UK during the 1970s and very early 1980s: very well-written (with actual proper prose, in fact; greatly superior to that of US contemporaries), featuring well-drawn characters and settings, studied, reflective, and imbued with a sort of educated English, often expatriate, sensibility. Examples include works by Michael G Coney, Keith Roberts, DG Compton, Richard Cowper, and at a stretch Gwyneth Jones or Tanith Lee. And perhaps even the novels and stories written during that decade by Brian W Aldiss, Ian Watson, Michael Moorcock and Christopher Priest.
Evans’s novel is set on Gaia, a habitable world orbiting Capella, and one of a handful of planets settled by Earth (by explicitly UK/US ventures). The story opens around 120 years after the colony ship arrived. The early years were difficult and the colony only survived because of raw materials provided by the mysterious M’threnni, a highly advanced alien humanoid race who arrived on Gaia shortly after the humans. They now live in a tower in the centre of Helixport, the largest city, and remain aloof from humanity. The novel is narrated by David, who grows up in an uplands kibbutz but proves scholastically gifted enough to be offered a place at university in Helixport. Shortly after he starts his studies, he learns one of his closest friends at Silver Springs has died suddenly of a disease and the other has vanished.
Initially, he thinks his friend was killed by a disease caught from one of the M’threnni. The two of them had encountered one of the aliens and its “Voice” some weeks before. The M’threnni “recruited” humans, although apparently the humans had no choice in the matter, to be their individual liaisons with the human colony, their “Voice”, even though they didn’t actually interact with humans. David’s fascination with the M’threnni leads him to become involved with a rebel organisation which wants to end the human colony’s dependence on the M’threnni and banish them from Gaia.
The authorities subsequently crack down, David is involved in an unsuccessful attempt to free some rebels from a secret government prison, he goes into hiding… only to return to Helixport when it transpires a new ship from Earth is soon to arrive.
The M’threnni leave Gaia, but the ship from Earth was sent by the China-led federation which now governs Earth, and it looks like Gaia has lost one master only to fall into the clutches of another…
The novel is a first-person narrative, and features the sort of educated, questioning, but self-centred, character common to this particular type of 1970s English science fiction. Not all of the authors who wrote this sf were expatriate — Coney certainly was, Compton lived in the US from 1981 until his death last year, Jones lived abroad before becoming a writer, as did Watson; but the others were very much UK-based (Moorcock didn’t move to the US until 1990). Nonetheless, there’s something so English about the characters in these books it feels like an external interrogation of Englishness — and, in some respects, reminds me of both Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet (1966–1975, UK) and Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960, UK), both works I regard extremely highly and which are based around expatriate English characters. Capella’s Golden Eyes can’t, of course, compare to those two quartets, but its presentation of a non-English settlement that still feels resolutely English, as in Michael G Coney’s Brontomek! (1976, UK; see my review here), echoes in tone and atmosphere the main narratives of Scott’s and Durrell’s works.
I’m an expatriate myself, or rather, I was, and I now prefer the term “migrant”, as I spent my formative years in expat communities in the Middle East. So I find these kinds of narratives both fascinating and personally resonant. I recently read a US science fiction novel set firmly in 1950s New York, and while I’ve enjoyed a number of movies set in that time and place, their presentation of the American Dream — and refusal to document the racism, poverty and inequality which enabled it — means they don’t have the same hold over me as narratives which place Englishness in an “Other” setting. Whether or not such characters are explicitly described as English.
Obviously, such views of Englishness are largely a “romantic” ideal — the English are as varied as any other nationality, perhaps more so given their numbers; and my own background (Midlands, working class, grew up outside the UK, first generation to go to university) is very different to those of the writers mentioned above… But I’ve also experienced the “export” version of Englishness, so to speak, as it was the culture I pretty much grew up in, and I often find these sorts of sf novels and stories speak to me in ways that almost all US sf, and even twenty-first century sf, does not. Their prose was also a lot better; and I value well-written prose.
Capella’s Golden Eyes is not a well-known novel (despite being published by Ace in the US), and while better than many novels in the genre which boast extremely high profiles, is probably in a place that fits it best. It’s too thoughtful and considered, and too English, for most sf readers; and Evans went on to write better sf novels with wider, and perhaps even a more timeless, appeal.
I liked Capella’s Golden Eyes a lot. But I suspect I’m in a minority in doing so… because the reasons it resonated with me having nothing to do with its credentials as science fiction.
