A River Called Time by Courttia Newland
This book by Courttia Newland caught our interest as we read a review in the Guardian.
“A River Called Time is set in Dinium, a version of London where most live among squalor, disease and violence, although a wealthy few occupy “the Ark”, an elite enclosure in the centre of the city. Our protagonist, Markriss Denny, grows up poor in the suburbs but has special powers: he can astrally project himself. “
“Newland gives his dystopia an extra spin by making it an alternate history. In this world European interactions with Africa, stretching back to Ancient Egypt, were treated as opportunities to learn and mingle, not to exploit and enslave. As a result, magical African abilities (squashed in our timeline, the implication is, by the horrors of colonialism) have flourished, becoming a kind of world religion. Not that the global garden is rosy. A mega-corporation called E-Lul dominates, using Matrix-like pods to sedate the populace via “crystal energy” that fills people’s nights with “dreams of tranquil places”. As for Dinium, it was wrecked by a mysterious “War of Light” in 1814-18 and has never really recovered.”
“Alt-history is a venerable science-fictional mode, but usually the moment where the story’s timeline diverges from “real” history is relatively recent: the South wins the US civil war, Hitler prevails, that kind of thing. The problem with setting that hinge point thousands of years into pre-history is that the subsequent divergence must perforce be so huge as to lead to an utterly different, unrecognisable “now”.
But beware – some of the language is a bit juvenile: “Nesta’s tears obeying gravity’s rules, not those of teenage boys, falling to the concrete regardless of his wish” is an over-fancy way of saying “he wished she wasn’t crying”. “The woman’s legs stretched gantry high” isn’t as sexy as it thinks it is. Such moments are symptomatic of a writer straining for effect – aiming, perhaps, for a televisual vividness rather than resting content in more literary restraint.”
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