FLAMING LONDON by JOE R. LANSDALE
Subterranean Press hardback, 177pp, $40

Lansdale is a writer whose work eludes categorisation, falling into whatever slot the marketing gurus have found for him, be it Crime or Horror, Western or SF, but remaining quintessentially his own man. This latest novel, a sequel to Zeppelins West, gleefully pillages the body of pulp fiction and the cliff-hangers of yesteryear to produce a work in the vein of Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton novels, both parodying and paying loving tribute to its source material, cocking a snook at history and literature as it plays games with the foundations of both.

In a world not unlike our own, filtered through the sensibility of a dime novelist, the Martian war machines arrive and start cutting loose with a Speilbergian delight in destruction. This event is witnessed by the poverty stricken writer Mark Twain and his much more successful friend, the writer and inventor Jules Verne. With Verne’s sidekick Passepartout and new friend Ned the Seal, an intelligent amphibian courtesy of the handiwork of Dr Momo, and a friend of Captain Bemo of the submersible Naughty Lass (both immortalised in fiction under other names), these two set out on their travels, their eventual goal to reach the London residence of another old friend, H.G. Wells. Along the way they have adventures and meet up with other archetypal figures, such as the Flying Dutchman, a giant ape called Rikwalk, Chief Sitting Bull, and two men who control Steam, a giant robot. It appears that the fabric of space-time is collapsing, with various realities crashing into each other, thanks to the activities of a person known only as the Time Traveller, and Wells is the only one who may be able to undo the damage (cue next book in series). But first there are those pesky Martians to be taken care of.

This is unashamedly lightweight and light hearted, the wet dream of any young boy raised on a diet of Verne, Wells, Twain and Saturday morning serials at the local fleapit, a joyful conflation of pirates and lost islands shrouded in mist, of giant apes and mechanical men, of travels by balloon and speedboat, playing SFnal counterpoint to the author’s Drive-In novels. I’d wager Lansdale had a lot of fun writing this book, and that pays dividends for the reader in search of a wild time, a seat of the pants rollercoaster ride to the limits of imagination and back. Flaming London takes no prisoners, subjecting everything that falls under its purview to outrageous liberties and with Lansdale firing on all cylinders to produce a fast paced and delightful narrative. The story is, to be blunt, slightly daft, but that doesn’t matter a jot. The over the top characterisation, no holds barred invention and non-stop action are handled superbly, as you’d expect from such a gonzo storyteller, with echoes throughout of other genre classics, both ancient and modern, and part of the fun putting them all into some overarching pattern. Reading it is an unalloyed pleasure, with wonderful touches of humour, most courtesy of the irrepressible Ned the Seal, permanently fixated on fish and nookie. Flaming London is a marvellous, irreverent concoction, made all the more so by the striking illustrations supplied by artist Timothy Truman. Recommended to the young at heart and those who can still remember the first time they picked up a book by Wells, Twain or Verne, and want to recapture some of the wonder they felt upon encountering those gonzo storytellers of the past, whose torch is being ably carried forward into the future by Lansdale..

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