6 Books with R.J. Barker

R.J. Barker is a critically acclaimed and award-winning author of fantasy fiction. He won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel for his fourth novel, The Bone Ships, and his debut trilogy The Wounded Kingdom was nominated for the David Gemmel Award, the Kitschie Golden Tentacle, the Compton Crook, and the BFS Best Debut and Best Novel awards. R.J. lives in Leeds with his wife, son, and a collection of questionable taxidermy, odd art, scary music, and more books than they have room for.

Today he tells us about his six books:

1. What book are you currently reading?

I am currently reading Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which is the fourth if his ‘Children of…’ books. I am quite a slow reader now so I am not a long way into it but it is just wonderful so far. I think Adrian is probably one of the best writers working in SFF right now. The breadth of his imagination is extraordinary, as is how quickly he manages to work which should probably be illegal (I have tried writing to my local Member of Parliament about this but they were strangely uninterested.) I love the way that he makes everything interlock and how work often calls back on itself and the depth of his creations is just wonderful. You can tell he’s done the work, which is always quite impressive to me as I try to do very little work.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

This was a really hard question for me as I am a very live in the moment person I don’t tend to be thinking about what’s coming or what has gone by much. I’m always too busy enjoying what I am doing now and writing is such a precarious occupation I think it’s often best not to think too much about the future. So I don’t. However, because of this question I found out that James Lee Burke released a new Dave Robicheaux book on the 12^th of February so now I know about that I am looking forward to it immensely. His writing is absolutely beautiful and the way he balances a sense of  impending violence and (often but not always) very subtle supernatural themes with the nature and environment of the deep south is incredible. The book is called The Hadacol Boogie. I have no idea what a Hadacol is but I am looking forward to finding out.

3. Is there a book you’re currently itching to re-read?

Not really. Life is way too short to re-read things (with one exception but we’ll get to that below) and I’m always in search of something new. I don’t really like nostalgia and I think, for me anyway, every type of art I’ve consumed has its enjoyment tied to a place and a situation that I can never go back to. And wouldn’t want to really, so often going back to things I’ve loved is just an exercise in disappointment. I will never reclaim the sense of awe in the new I had when I first read Iain M Banks Culture books. Or find again the joy of C.J. Cherryh’s Morgaine cycle revealing to me what was really going on. So instead I want to find new things that will wow me in new ways.

4. A book that you love and wish that you yourself had written.

There are so many but RECENTLY that is Pagans by James Alastair Henry. It’s a police procedural set in a modern day England where Christianity never happened in the same way it did in ours. (I don’t think it’s ever underlined why but it doesn’t seem the Roman Empire never happened either). It’s an incredible book, not just because I love a crime novel, but the world just works. It’s a great bit of creation and feels entirely possible. The UK is very much a backwater, America never existed, and Africa and the Mughal empire of India are the main superpowers. There’s never a moment in the book where it doesn’t feel real.

But, bit of bad news if you are in the US, I don’t think you can get Pagans yet and you are really missing out. Sorry.

5. What’s one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?

Watership Down. I think some aspect of Watership Down is in everything I write and it remains the only book that I go back to and each time I find something new. Richard Adams was quite dismissive about the book, and thought it was for children but I think that just shows the author never quite knows what they are writing. On one level it is just an adventure with some rabbits for kids. But it’s also a deep and complex political allegory and a book full of lessons on how we treat each other. It’s just a wonderful thing and I love it dearly.

 6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome?

My latest book is Mortedant’s Peril and it comes out in May of this year. It’s always hard as Brit when someone says ‘what makes this thing you did Brilliant.’ As you’re kind of first instinct is to go, 'well, it’s alright' then deflect off as we don’t do self congratulation particularly well. Having said that, I think people will love Irody and his friends. Even though Irody at first approach is not that loveable, I think readers will see past his mask to what’s within. Then there’s the world, I’ve created quite a few worlds and they are often hard to approach, and require a lot of patience in the reader where this isn’t that. The world has all the complexity I enjoy giving a place but you can more or less step straight in to Elbay. It’s a city and we understand cities, even if it is one like no other you’ve ever come across. There’s also no build up, the danger (or peril!), is there right from the start, you’re thrown right in to the murder mystery that puts Irody’s life in danger..

And it’s funny. Not in a jokes way, but in the way people are, when they hide from themselves or don’t see the truth that you, the reader, can see from your lofty position above the page. It’s just all something very enjoyable, I loved writing it, and I hope you will love reading it.

Thank you, R.J!

--

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Silver and Lead, by Seanan McGuire

Silver and Lead is the novel I wanted The Innocent Sleep to be, which is to say that after a book spent in Tybalt’s head in a parallel novel we are pushing forward narratively and back with Toby as the protagonist / viewpoint character. *Now* we can begin to deal with the fallout of Sleep No More and Titania’s world altering spell on that region of Faerie. This is honestly what I’ve been waiting for since Be the Serpent, which seems weird to say because it’s only been two books and three years, but McGuire is so prolific that the wait has felt longer. That’s a “me” problem.

Toby is 8 months pregnant at the start at of the novel, and we can reasonably expect that nothing will go smoothly because this is Toby, Faerie, and well, this is Seanan McGuire telling the story. The Luidaeg wants to be the baby’s fairy godmother (apparently this is a thing) and says there will be other requests for this, but someone should be designated to protect the child if something should happen to Toby and Tybalt given that former Kings of Cats often do not live long, nor do Heroes such as Toby.

Meanwhile, the Royal Vault of the Mists has been raided during the Titania Spell Interregnum and rare / dangerous magical artifacts have been taken, including a Hope Chest (which, if we remember, can change the blood quotient of anyone without their permission). Since then there have been attacks in the Mists suggesting the usage of some of those artifacts.

Toby has been asked, despite her advanced pregnancy and the expected objections of her family, to investigate. She’s a Hero, y’all. We know where this is going.

The sentencing of the False Queen of the Mists (still no name given) takes place, damn near the entire realm is able to speak against her and Arden passes sentence (two consecutive hundred year terms of elf shot, then we’ll see) BUT GASP at the very end the False Queen has disappeared, someone previously attacked was magicked to take her place and that person when freed points the finger at Simon.

We know what comes next: the call comes in to the bullpen, bring in the right hander and Toby’s on the mound to provide some long relief. Actually, I have no idea whether Toby is a rightie or a lefty, I’ve just been watching a lot of baseball lately and since it’s taken me a surprising amount of time to get around to writing about Silver and Lead.

Silver and Lead is the 19th October Daye Novel, which is to say that it’s built on a LOT of history, absolutely does not stand on its own, and will not convince a non-reader that this is a good place to start with the series or with Seanan McGuire. There may be a few entrance points to the series, but this is not it. 

Long term readers, however, will have plenty to appreciate with the lore and continued world building that McGuire employs. One of the more interesting bits is that Titania’s world altering spell wasn’t just a perfect casting, it was just the latest of numerous attempts that was run and rerun and rerun over and over again because even the mighty Titania just couldn’t get it right for what she wanted. That’s *interesting* because it shows a limitation.

What I’m perpetually most interested in is the potential true identity of Marcia, the changeling, and whether she is Maeve. I speculated about this most recently in my re-read of the fourteenth book, A Killing Frost, and it seems even more possible now. There are so many little bits of things to question - Toby not being able to tell Marcia’s heritage, a blood spell being done with Marcia’s blood but weirdly not actually including her blood, Marcia not wanting to be included in the Luidaeg’s protection spell, the once again presence of Maeve’s magic near the end of the novel, not to mention a conversation between Simon and Marcia in the “Seas and Shores” novella about Marcia’s children and lack of discussion about them - it’s all circumstantial and probably speculation better left to a re-read than a first reader but it’s a big deal and we *have* to be close to Maeve’s return. Obviously, we don’t actually have to be that close but it feels like we’re slow walking to an end game.

There’s also a weird moment where I wondered if Toby’s baby is going to be Maeve reborn, but I don’t know what to do with that thought.

The negative is that I didn’t love the pregnant Toby questing - not that a pregnant Toby shouldn’t quest, but something about the storytelling of that and how it was all described didn’t fully jive with me. Of course, I’m a dude who’s approaching 50 years old and even though I have kids with an incredibly capable woman, I haven’t actually carried or birthed those kids so take a vague sense of not loving a more limited Toby storyline with a grain of whichever your preferred type of salt happens to be. Part of that is how Tybalt responds to Toby’s pregnancy and his perception of her being in danger and how out of line he acts on the regular. It’s tiresome.

I expect I’ll have more specific criticisms the time I get to a re-read essay, but I’m also baffled by the choice of Miranda for Toby’s baby name given all of the issues she’s had with Janet / Miranda. 

As a reader who was fairly frustrated with Sleep No More and The Innocent Sleep for, in some ways, pausing the forward motion of the narrative; Silver and Lead is significantly more satisfying. Stuff happens! Toby’s baby is born! There’s questing with action and drama! It’s all generally fun! Silver and Lead is so much of the stuff we look for in an October Daye novel.



PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Film Review: Scarlet

Something is rotten in the state of human hearts

If I had known in advance how the anime film Scarlet would handle its topic of obsessive revenge, I would have made this post a Double Feature with Redux Redux, because both stories use the devices of their respective genres in a visceral manner to demonstrate the self-destructive poison that is revenge.

Scarlet is a gender-flipped retelling of Hamlet that sends the princess of Denmark to an endless limbo when she accidentally drinks a cup of poison sent by her treacherous uncle before she had a chance to avenge the late king. In that barren landscape of sorrow and regret, she learns that her uncle has also died, so she embarks on a quest to walk across the vast land of the dead to find him and make him pay.

If you’ve ever wondered whether Prince Hamlet should have been more decisive in carrying out his revenge plan, Scarlet answers that that was never the issue. Being quicker to punish his uncle would still have played into the narrative conventions of a tragedy, and the thing about tragedies is that the only person you succeed at punishing is yourself. In that intermediate realm between Earth and the Great Beyond, Princess Scarlet fights waves of assassins sent to make her spirit dissolve into nothing. By willingly adopting the role of tragic heroine, by refusing to abandon her one-woman war, Scarlet has built her own hell.

Interestingly, there’s an element of cosmic retribution at play too, a remote, speechless character who takes the form of a celestial dragon and imparts punishment without the distortion of human passions. This addition to Hamlet lore makes Scarlet resemble the Greek Oresteia, where the impartial, impersonal judgment of the state is introduced to put an end to the self-perpetuating cycle of bloodshed that always results from private vendettas. However, in the case of Scarlet, this replacement is not associated with the state but with a more universal sense of justice, with death as the great equalizer.

Learning this lesson takes Scarlet a long, painful journey over beautifully designed scenery that almost steals the spotlight from the story’s heavy themes. We follow Scarlet through deserts and mountains and oceans that take the breath away with their sublime immensity. Even if the plot’s structure sometimes feels too streamlined and easy, the level of visual artistry more than makes up.

Because the other side has a loose relationship with time, Scarlet is joined by a random newcomer: a recently dead paramedic from present-day Japan, who strangely insists on bandaging every lost soul he meets, including Scarlet’s enemies. Even as she slashes and stabs her way through the land of the dead, he follows close behind, providing comfort to those you’d think are beyond hope. His example turns out to be crucial to her choices at the end of the film: the thing at stake is not only the punishment for the usurper king, but the fate of Denmark. Through this paramedic, Scarlet gets a glimpse of a time (which from her standpoint is the future) when people no longer butcher each other in eternal spirals of hatred. This being a Japanese production, it’s easy to perceive a subtextual allusion to the discussion on the remilitarization of the Japanese state. Can we have a future without more bloodshed? Can we escape this interminable journey between corpses and vengeful spirits?

We don’t have to renounce the entire idea of justice. But if death comes for all, it doesn’t need our help. We can face evil, even punish evil, without punishing ourselves.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Thank You

The finalists for the 2026 Hugo Awards have been announced and for an eighth time nerds of a feather, flock together is listed among the shortlisted fanzines.

Friends, we’re not sure that words are adequate to truly convey just how touched and honored we are to be recognized again by our community for the work this team does every day. This is not something we have ever taken for granted because we recognize that we are part of a much larger community of fans who make genre conversation something vital. The shape of that conversation takes place across blogs, zines, podcasts, booktube, social media, or just any time fans get together and talk about what they love. We are forever honored to be recognized for our contributions to that conversation.

Nerds of a Feather exists and is what it is solely because of the work of our flock of editors and writers: Alex Wallace, Ann Michelle Harris, Arturo Serrano, Chris Garcia, Christine D. Baker, Clara Cohen, Dean E.S. Richard, The G, Haley Zapal, Joe DelFranco, Joe Sherry, Phoebe Wagner, Paul Weimer, Roseanna Pendlebury, Stewart Hotston, and Vance Kotrla. Not to mention our newest flock members who joined in 2026: Eddie Clark, Gabrielle Harbowy, and Maya Barbara. This collective has, day in and day out, delivered excellence in genre writing and we could not be prouder of this team. They are Nerds of a Feather.

We would also like to congratulate every one of the other nominees, but in particular our own Roseanna Pendlebury for her second nomination for Fan Writer and Chris Garcia and the team at Journey Planet for what we believe is their fourteenth time as a fanzine finalist. We are honored to share the ballot with both of you. You make the genre better.  

We would also like to give a special thanks to our readers, supporters, and cheerleaders within the community. Without you, we never make it here. Not once, and we would certainly never have been a two time Hugo Award winning fanzine. Thank you. Thank you for nominating nerds of a feather, flock together. It means so much more than we can possibly express. Saying thank you does not seem like it is enough, but since it would be cost prohibitive and deeply inappropriate to send everyone a gift basket of their favorite cheeses, meats, fine confections, or other preferred snacks it will have to be enough.

Thank you.

-Joe, Roseanna, Arturo, Paul, Vance, & The G. 

Interview: S.L. Huang

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award finalist S. L. Huang's next book is The Language of Liars (Tordotcom), a pulse-pounding sci-fi that explores the power of language and identity and how the two intersect! Huang’s worldbuilding and bold, complex characters are brought to life in vivid detail from the first page. The Language of Liars was included in “Most Anticipated” lists from Literary Hub, BookRiot, and Shelf Awareness, and has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. 

S. L. Huang is a Hollywood stunt performer, firearms expert, and Hugo Award winner who has been a finalist for a Nebula, Locus, and BSFA Awards as well as the ALA Carnegie Medal. Huang has a math degree from MIT and credits in productions like Battlestar Galactica and Top Shot. The author of The Water Outlaws, Burning Roses, and the Cas Russell novels, Huang’s short fiction has also appeared in Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Nature, Reactor, and more, including numerous best-of anthologies.

Nerds of a Feather: Congratulations on your forthcoming book,The Language of Liars! What do you think is the heart of the intersection between language, colonization and cultural identity?

S.L. Huang: Thank you! And wow, starting with a doozy of a question...

To be honest, I would say the heart of these issues is "complexity." On one side, building cultural bridges and seeking out intellectual understanding -- and on the other, stealing or overwriting the voices and traditions of living people -- it's a tangle that can turn heartbreakingly tragic even when everyone involved has the best of intentions, even before individual greed or cultural arrogance enters the picture.

It's an exploration that's close to my heart given my own family background, and there's so much there that I wouldn't be able to fit in an interview answer...but I suppose that's why I wrote a book!

NoaF: Is writing a character similar to absorbing another identity, in a way?

S.L. Huang: I've never thought of it that way, but now that you've said it, I sort of love it. It tickles me that as an author I'll become akin to the Borg -- ALL WILL BE ASSIMILATED!

 

NoaF: How does your math degree inform your writing, and your understanding of linguistics?

S.L. Huang: I think the biggest impact of my math background is correlative -- that is, in the same way I enjoy math, I enjoy other types of nitty-gritty riddle-solving, whether that's worldbuilding or linguistics or making a finely-tuned plot fit together precisely. It can be terribly difficult at times, but often results in the satisfaction of a solved problem, which is one of my favorite feelings in the world.

 

NoaF: How about your training as a firearms expert and Hollywood stunt performer? How does that inform your writing?

S.L. Huang: Fight design for movies is remarkably like choreographing action for books. You never want it to be about the individual moves -- instead, you want the emotions and stakes to drive it all. That's what I think needs to push any type of action, from sword fighting to romantic intimacy.

I think that's also the secret to what can make a particular type of action "interesting" even to readers who don't usually like that type of book.

 

NoaF: Who are some of your favorite spies in history and media?

S.L. Huang: Garak from Star Trek: Deep Space 9 is not just a favorite spy, but hands-down one of my favorite characters in media. Sassy bisexual space lizard whose motives keep us constantly guessing -- he might not be the most moral character, but he's by far one of the most interesting!

In The Language of Liars I went with a cinnamon-roll spy, but I aspire to someday write a book starring a protagonist as deliciously complex as "plain, simple Garak."

 

NoaF: What are you reading and enjoying now? Who are some other writers that Nerds of a Feather readers should have on their radar?

S.L. Huang: The 2026 book that I've already read a copy of and want to shout from the rooftops is Yoon Ha Lee's Code and Codex -- if you like linguistics or space opera or math or, well, literally any of the things my own book is about, you'll love Yoon's! It's like nothing else I've ever read.

And I haven't read these two yet, but other books I'm super stoked for this year include The Subtle Art of Folding Space, by John Chu -- out this month as well! -- and The Fist of Memory, by Wole Talabi, whose other works I've loved. Check them out with me!

--

Gabrielle Harbowy is an editor, writer, and literary agent based in Southern California. She can be found at gabrielle-h.bsky.social or gabrielleharbowy.com

Book Review: The Language of Liars by S. L. Huang

Linguistics science fiction that isn't just the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis redux? And that will emotionally devastate you? Hook it to my veins.

The first thing you need to know about The Language of Liars by S. L. Huang is that none of the characters in it are human, and that's great. 

It's not at all surprising that space-faring science fiction tends to focus on situations that at least contain some humans, even when they're a mixed species galaxy. Writing the alien is, I imagine, pretty hard, because aliens that feel properly alien but are still written to be accessible to a reader's emotions surely take some work to get right. It's a tight balance. I don't blame people for not doing it. But when someone does... it's always a little bit exciting. If I'm going to imagine a galaxy that contains a wide array of sentient life, it's nice to get a chance to revel in the unfamiliarity of it, to truly explore what that imagined spectrum of life looks like.

Huang predominantly explores that unfamiliarity via the medium of language, unsurprisingly given the novella's title. The main character, Ro, is a linguist, who has trained hard to become fluent in one specific language but with a lot of facility in a wide array of others. Moreover, Huang has written him as someone gregarious and chatty, whose internal monologue (and external dialogue, sometimes) is peppered with little factoids about this or that language and how it relates to culture and physiology of this or that species.

But Huang also takes care to embed Ro's narrative in his own body, as well as his thoughts about those of other species. While they never provide a full, clear description - the typical look in the mirror scene of the start of many novels - Ro experiences the world in terms of his physiology, and that is deftly conveyed in his internal monologue. We know he is furred, that he has two hearts, we know about his empathic capabilities, the shape of the world he lives in and how that reflects the shape of his own body. It's very well done, and very necessary. If a story is going to explore a perspective outside of the humanoid this way, downplaying it takes away half of the fun. 

Ro is, in mind and body, the perfect balance of strange and accessible, not least because of his own alienation within his society. He feels like an outsider, someone whose behaviour doesn't quite meet the demands of his elders, and in that difference he gives us a window into what that normal looks like, and what the deviation from it feels like for Ro. He is the ideal window into a story that goes on to focus on these kinds of alienations and disconnections.

The second thing you need to know about The Language of Liars is that it spans a whole universe of worlds, and their interlocking needs and differences. In brief, deft strokes, Huang manages to create the sense of a vast, complex and interlocking, galaxy spanning set of polities, not just through Ro's understanding of language, but in a wider, political sense. This is a universe whose function demands the constant mining and utilisation of a specific resource - meridian - to bridge the gaps between worlds. Many of those worlds, including Ro's own, would cease to function without it and lack the means to produce their own basic needs, right down to oxygen. While the story focuses in on Orro - Ro's world - there are constant nods and gestures to the other places within it, their needs, their respective status compared to Orro, their political inclinations and oppositions. Huang has the knack of explaining little but giving just a big enough suggestion of it to let me nod and carry on. Everything has enough sense to fit with intuition, to imply the necessary complexity, without having to get into the weeds of intergalactic trade routes. For which I'm grateful, because that's not really what I'm here for reading (sorry economics nerds). But it's also very difficult to do well, and a skill I think is particularly critical for novella authors.

There's a narrowing of priorities necessary to make a good novella, to cutting all the things that need to be cut to make something substantial fit into the space of 155 pages as this book does. There are a lot of ways to achieve it, but Huang has cut themself off from a lot of them by going for this high stakes - because boy the stakes are indeed high - and wide space narrative. And so, if they can't focus in tight and small, they instead have to skim things, hint things, let the reader do some of the work of embedding this world into plausibility. Luckily, they have done so masterfully.

The third thing you need to know about The Language of Liars is that even if you see the end coming, even if you know what the story is going to tell you about this world before you get there, the revelation is still going to hurt. Ask me how I know. I had an inkling early on that I might know where some of the clues were pointing, but it truly did not matter one bit. The discovery, the way Huang set up and deployed the information the book coalesces around, does not rely on surprise to deliver its value.

Such plot summary as I'm willing to give is this: Ro is a linguist studying to make what's called a "jump", that transports him into the body of an alien race called the Star Eaters. It's a rare talent for linguists on his world, but a necessary and highly honoured one, one that Ro is desperate to achieve as a way to prove his worth to the society he struggles to fit into (despite his great talent for languages). And, despite and because of his doubts about himself, he succeeds. The Language of Liars is the story of what happens when he does so.

It's about language, about relationships between people, about exploitation and the weight of moral decisions, and who gets to make them. And it's about the big impacts of small decisions, not just the sweeping horrors of the universe but the tiny, individual atrocities that can be committed too. It handles all of those things incredibly well, bringing them together to deliver a gut punch at the end that gets into a lot of big ideas about how history and politics work, and what the right choice is in a hard place.

And a last, little, enormous thing you need to know about The Language of Liars is one you'll only learn properly if you read it yourself: that it is an incredibly bold book, because it leaves you in a state of unresolved emotion that is far more productive than any tidy conclusion would be. Huang has made such a good decision in how they close this story, and the sort of thoughts they leave the reader to experience in the aftermath.

That ending, that sucker punch and the refusal to give the reader an easy closure, is the capstone of a bold, interesting, deep book, and a very worthy end indeed to the complexity of the story they've given us up until that point. The Language of Liars is an exquisitely formed novella, a stunning example of what good writing, good ideas and a willingness to do something different can achieve, without the need for sprawl.

And it's a book of science fiction linguistics that isn't just a rehash of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. That's a gold star right there.

--

The Math

Highlights: a story situated well in alien mind and culture, deep and full use of language to great effect, big stakes tackled thoughtfully

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

Reference: S. L. Huang, The Language of Liars, [Tordotcom, 2026].

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Book Review: Look Out for the Little Guy, by Rob Kutner

Ants! Ants! Metafictional narratives!

When I was reading this book, the quote that was bouncing around in my mind, over and over again, was something attributed to Dolly Parton:

“It costs a lot to look this cheap.”

Parton was talking about fashion, but it applies, in a somewhat meandering sense, to literature, and particularly to Look Out for the Little Guy, the alleged autobiography of Scott Lang, alias Ant-Man, the size-changing, ant-commanding hero from the Marvel Cinematic Universe played by Paul Rudd. I will dispense with the mouse-enforced kayfabe on this book and refer to this book by its actual author, Rob Kutner, who wrote two books with Jon Stewart (America: the Book and Earth: the Book) which had amused me greatly when I was younger. There’s something unbecoming about the whole charade of pretending this book was written by a fictional superhero; Kutner’s name is absent from the cover and can only be divined by opening a few pages (admittedly, it does lead to a very funny joke in the acknowledgements section at the end), the kind of elevation of fantasy over reality that companies like Disney impose to both keep the magic alive no matter the cost and obscure the effort of workers who make the magic possible. I don’t know how Kutner felt about this, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Throughout this book, I kept thinking about how people tolerate in fiction what they’d never tolerate in reality. The most striking and obvious example of this is violence, even horrific violence, of the horror movie or war movie variety. In comedies, we tolerate obnoxious people because they are funny, but we’d seldom ever actually want to actually be around such people. This book manages such an effect on a structural level, or a genre level, as it is written in the style of one of those inoffensively droll celebrity memoirs that were concocted by publishers and written under contract, possibly by ghostwriters (as Kutner is acknowledged to be in-universe), and most obnoxiously feel the need to dispense inane, banal life advice as if it were holy writ. But this time, you see, it’s coming from a superhero.

One particular memoir came back to me as I read this book: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. Both books, accepting the conceit of the novel under review for a moment, are about interesting people with interesting experiences recounting them for the benefit and interest of the masses who will never experience such things—let’s be honest, for most people being an astronaut is as fantastical as being a superhero, as we will experience neither over the course of our mundane existences. Each is a capable raconteur of rare anecdotes, with a sense of humor, a sense of place, and a sense of wonder. Each, also, feels the need to end many of those interesting anecdotes with a hackneyed life lesson, like “never give up” or other such platitudes delivered with the weight of gospel at the end of children’s cartoon episodes. Each book succeeds, mostly, as a platter of sweets, each dazzlingly unique, each coalescing into a delicious range of flavors, and then periodically devolves into something very, very bland, the potential of the presentation being squandered for a brief moment. I wanted Hadfield to just be the space nerd he was born to be, and I wanted Scott Lang to be the superhero he had thrust upon him by Hank Pym.

But one of those books is memoir, and one of them is fiction masquerading as memoir. The latter wears the costume well, but the fictionality of the enterprise leads to a markedly different effect. The knowledge that Scott Lang’s experiences are fictional draws the reader’s attention to the psychological realism underpinning Kutner’s writing. Yes, the flashiest parts of the chronological narrative are summaries of Marvel movies with Lang’s characteristic wisecracking, but it is in the parts between the big fights where the writing really shines. Kutner-as-Lang talks a lot about his relationships—with his ex-wife, with his daughter, with his ex-wife’s new boyfriend, with his coworkers in the Avengers. In doing so, the narrative has this profound levelling effect—you see that his daughter Maggie and Steve Rogers are cut from the same human stuff. You are pulled into the Marvel universe because Steve Rogers is treated, ultimately, as some guy in a suit.

Kutner’s writing really shines in segments discussing a time between films, when there were no villains to fight: the period after the battle at the airport in Germany, when he is sentenced to house arrest for a period of years. His experience is almost monastic, a situation where he has no choice but to probe the depths of his own thoughts. He can get deliveries, of course, and that includes a gaming console, but even so he has to confront himself. He gets new hobbies. He finds ever more ways to occupy his time, in a way that has to have been informed by the real-world experience of the COVID pandemic (I had several little twitches as I could see myself and my family in these anecdotes).

What I ultimately think made this book so readable is that it was written by a professional writer interpreting the work of professional writers (among other film professionals, of course) rather than a professional writer interpreting the recollections of a non-writer, or a non-writer trying their hand at creating a narrative out of the chaos and randomness of everyday experience. Everything feels very coherent in this book; stories and opinions and, dare I say, life advice are all selected in such a way that they create a single whole artistic unit. As Mark Twain wrote:

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

As such, the fiction holds together while drawing attention to its own fictionality; you understand that the people Scott talks about are all nonexistent, but they feel consciously and deliberately well drawn in a way most great characters don’t. Most characters don’t need to do that in the first place, as the narrative structure around them is not aping reality so bluntly, and as such they are not “colliding” with reality in your mind, creating sparks of differentiation. If we read a bad celebrity memoir, we roll our eyes because they have not managed to craft a narrative out of reality. In this book, we are engaged because Rob Kutner has assembled a compelling narrative out of unreality, and that is what good fiction does.

I’m afraid I’ve alienated some potential readers because I’ve made it sound like a bizarre postmodern novel that is skeptical towards many metanarratives. The actual experience of reading this book on a purely surface level is breezy, fun, and amusing. Disney’s stunt of presenting this book as the creation of a fictional character obscures the fundamentally created aspect of the narrative, and as such the result of a human creator, Rob Kutner. Mr. Kutner has left you in good hands, and it is good fun for any Marvel fan. It just has some layers, if you’re inclined to peel the onion a bit.

Reference: Kutner, Rob. Look Out for the Little Guy [Hyperion Avenue, 2023].

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.