Lightbringers and Rainmakers by Felix Gilman
Lightbringers and Rainmakers is a good novelette with some neat hooks tying it to the larger tale of The Half-Made World. We follow, as his business cards state, “Professor” Harry Ransom, Lightbringer &c, &c (who made a small walk-on cameo in The Half-Made World), one part charlatan and two parts idealistic scientist, as he is pulled into the midst of the inescapable war between the Line and the Gun. Not only has his “apparatus” once again been destroyed leaving him on the edge of poverty, but now he must deal with the machinations of a rival “scientist” (the rainmaker of the title) and the intrusion of the Line into the small western town he has found himself in as they cast their net in search of some characters we may be more familiar with from Felix Gilman‘s larger tale.
Ransom tells us his story, with varying levels of candor, through letters penned to various people, and he proves to be an endearing character. He is an idealist making the best of a bad world in the belief that it can only be made better. I definitely felt that Lightbringers and Rainmakers got better as it progressed, but it still pales in comparison to Gilman’s novel set in the same world… understandable given the short length of this novelette. I think I was hoping for a bit more from this story, either an unexpected twist or perhaps a wider range of characters/situations to give a broader overview of the people of the unmade West, but it was still an enjoyable excursion back to the Half-Made world.
The Half-Made World — (2010-2011) Publisher: A fantastical reimagining of the American West which draws its influence from steampunk, the American western tradition, and magical realism. he world is only half made. What exists has been carved out amidst a war between two rival factions: the Line, paving the world with industry and claiming its residents as slaves; and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence that cripples the population with fear. The only hope at stopping them has seemingly disappeared — the Red Republic that once battled the Gun and the Line, and almost won. Now they’re just a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children, of hope. To the west lies a vast, uncharted world, inhabited only by the legends of the immortal and powerful Hill People, who live at one with the earth and its elements. Liv Alverhyusen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels to the edge of the made world to a spiritually protected mental institution in order to study the minds of those broken by the Gun and the Line. In its rooms lies an old general of the Red Republic, a man whose shattered mind just may hold the secret to stopping the Gun and the Line. And either side will do anything to understand how.
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TERRY LAGO, one of our regular guest reviewers, is a Torontonian who, like all arts students, now works in the IT field. He has been a fan of fantasy ever since being introduced to Tolkien by his older brother when he was only a wee lad, though he has since branched out to enjoy all spectrums of the Fantasy genre and quite a few of the science fiction one as well. Literary prose linked with well-drawn characters are the things he most looks for in a book. You can see what he's currently reading at his Goodreads page.
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I have not read any Felix Gilman yet, but I look forward to fixing that.
I definitely recommend reading -The Half-Made World- first.