McAllister's Mates Thirty Seven

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This week a creator profile of the fascinating Science Fiction and Fantasy author James Kenwood.

These reviews are part of Reviewstack run by the great writer and pillar of the Substack Community : Thaddeus Thomas

McAllister’s Mates - An ongoing series of reviews of some of the wonderful articles, poems, and stories I’ve discovered on Substack (and other places) and more importantly the beautiful souls behind the works.

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Please take a few moments to read the works of these authors, artists, and creators and if you find their work as life-affirming and life changing as I do, then please let them know. We need to support and cherish these voices.

You can meet some of my other friends in the previous instalments: 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

If you want to keep me in caffeine (and keep the ghostly voices whispering for the poetry side of things) - consider clicking below. For any who do so, you have my deepest gratitude.

James Kenwood

I’m starting the new format McAllister’s mates with James Kenwood, a fascinating science fiction/fantasy author and a good friend. The best place to start is with the science fiction/fantasy moniker. It’s a modern habit to fuse these genres together but their definitions are important and run much deeper than their inherent tropes and symbols (lasers, spacecraft, dragons and wizards). Ursula LeGuin defined science fiction as stories of the imagination made real - i.e. the dreams of intergalactic or time travel realised for better or worse, and fantasy as stories that use fantastical creatures and locations as internal explorations of the psyche. The dragon as symbol of fear and the unknown, the wizard as symbol of solitude and esoteric knowledge. From this perspective James’ work forms a bridge between the visions of science and the creatures haunting our souls. He is primarily a futurologist, envisioning the dawning horizons of intergalactic travel and sentient, oracle-like computer systems. However, his stories also delve into the spiritual and archetypal worlds. As his characters visit extraordinary worlds and construct technological marvels, they meet, even make the Godforms and primordial terrors that eternally haunt our souls.

My first encounter with James’ work was one of his Egyptian themed sci-fi short stories Worthy. The work is thrilling, visually wild and uses the beautiful and daunting imagery of ancient Egypt to magnificent effect. As I was reading, I found myself reflecting on the enduring appeal of Ancient Egypt’s aesthetics and mythos. Those stories and images continue to whisper to us. Do they hold a physical truth that we’ll discover somewhere in the cosmos or (perhaps more inspiring and terrifying) are they so ingrained into our psyches that we are driven to make those Gods and monsters real? James engages deeply with this idea and its many fascinating implications over a vast body of work. These spiritual entities are presented as both a guiding, maybe domineering force, and also as distant echoes or Ancestral memories of physical beings waiting somewhere out there. These dynamics confront the stories’ characters, and we the readers with vital but uncomfortable questions. We see astronauts and scientists wilfully pushing into the great unknown only to be confronted by their disastrous lack of wisdom. James renders his fantastical beings with terrifying power and wonderful beauty, and yes these encounters give us thrilling setpieces and moments of horror and dread. However, the writing always ponders the deeper questions raised by these forces. As we race towards a future of technological marvels we are utterly failing to integrate the wisdom of the past. We dismiss crass superstitions or perhaps pay lip service to their aesthetics, but we fail to integrate their esoteric lessons. Danger stalks every sentence of James’ work. The chief danger is not so much the technology slipping out of our control, or the advanced races we might offend, it is our failure to mine our own psyches for the temperance and vision to rise to our extraordinary new worlds.

Worthy

James may be engaging with metaphysics, futurology, and spirituality but his is a world of raw human experience. Many of his stories take place in the military sphere, of course military orders with their complex ranking systems, oaths, and symbolism dovetail elegantly with the mythological elements of his stories. However, while he certainly brings his mastery of evocative imagery and spectacle to battle scenes and tense command conferences, there is another deeper investigation taking place. The duality of military honour, love, courage and brotherhood contrasted with contempt for the “enemy”, obedience eclipsing morality, and the disposability of soldiers is woven through Impact Nominal. In one story a beleaguered almost fatherly commander wrestles with the prospect of informing his charges of the loss of their family in an attack several weeks ago. Meanwhile said charges revel in the havoc of a killing spree on the planet below. This shows the sort of layered, twisting moral dilemmas that weave through James’ work. Are the monsters really monsters when they’ve been hurt and deceived? Is the commander himself a brave man fighting to reach his natural empathy and affection though a labyrinth of cold, hard discipline and training, or a coward hiding behind duty to escape from painful confrontations? This is a refreshing approach in the world of science fiction where military characters and paraphernalia are used to add superficial flair or to mechanically progress action scenes. James has clearly thought deeply about the daily realities of military life, the politics and machinations of the institution, and how these forces can shape the human soul. The veterans of his stories are by turns petty and heroic, vengeful and compassionate. Always fascinating, never shallow in the face of complex events that raise uncomfortable questions about how we might react in extraordinary circumstances with our own internal contradictions.

As a reader I have a tendency to project my own philosophical dilemmas and imaginings onto books (and I contend that a good book should enable that sort of introspection). That said I feel that James is exploring even more than the themes of societal and military order or the eternal, gravitational pull of the archetypes. We are heading towards a world we can scarcely imagine with a reinvigorated interest in space exploration, rapid advances in information technology and our own planet’s dramatically shifting ecosphere. There is no denying that our current institutions have brought us to this point (for better or worse, and certainly with much staggering and disasters). But how will our social and spiritual frameworks serve or sabotage us in these new eras? These stories are much more than sci-fi yarns, they explore the traditional themes of alien worlds and incredible technology but with a focus on how the castles and temples of the human soul will weather the storm. Our traditions, beliefs, and fantasies can be both a ladder to escape our most base tendencies, or a cage pinning our empathy and higher selves. This is speculative science fiction that goes beyond the questions of how advanced will technology become or when will we meet other intelligent species. James’ work paints a myriad of flawed and beautiful characters thrust into fantastical scenarios and asks how will our guiding and constraining institutions fare in the face of the unimaginable? What will we do when the legends we cling to are proven irrefutably false, or maybe more frightening, inescapably real?

Worthy

I hope you enjoy these beautiful works as much as I enjoyed reading and writing about them.

You can meet some of my other friends in the previous instalments: 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Substack has proven to be a treasure trove and I already have a few more gifted writers lined up for my next review newsletter.

P.S Subscribe for your chance to get your work reviewed here!
You can also claim your FREE book of Poetry and art Hypnos Hermes - an epic poem presented as a medieval manuscript. A fantastical story written in verse enriched by many colourful and vibrant artworks.

If you want to keep me in caffeine (and keep the ghostly voices whispering for the poetry side of things) - consider clicking below. For any who do so, you have my deepest gratitude.