Review
From Other Worlds
2004
IQ, Inc.
Review by Peter Young in The Thai Literary Supplement #10 (September 2017).
An alien civilisation from another galaxy has arrived on Earth in a fleet of spaceships spread amongst the cities of the world, but why have they chosen to focus their contact with humanity in Bangkok? And what will be the fate of the three children who’ve escaped the clutches of the human-yet-animal-like aliens – are things about to get very unpleasant indeed? Oh yes they are.
The enigmatic ‘Ian Quartermaine’ (you can read my article about him in The White Notebooks #1) employs some sleight of hand in a novel that intentionally blends The Day the Earth Stood Still with Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End and adds a side order inspired by a certain famous Damon Knight short story. Quartermaine quickly settles into an unchallenging yet decent enough y/a groove, and yet at two points in the novel he confounds the reader with some intentionally graphic and non-y/a material (the cover does warn the reader). This creates a dichotomy of which target audience is being addressed: is the novel actually intended as y/a or adult? Surely Quartermaine is self-aware enough that it’s difficult enough to be both in this particular instance, and yet the question lingers.
Quartermaine wants to disturb our ‘civilised’ sensibilities and he breaks some unwritten rules in doing so, but when the true structure of the story is finally revealed it didn’t satisfy this reader quite as much as the writer may have intended. It’s clear that From Other Worlds was intended as a ‘dangerous vision’, and not all such stories can succeed on their shock value alone. This one certainly succeeds in that you will remember it, but it would also have benefited from more effort to better conceal those well-known sources of inspiration.