From the Neck Up review: Dark, weird and totally captivating

By Sally Adee

From the Neck Up

Aliya Whiteley

Titan Books

IN 1968, the horror film Rosemary’s Child introduced a canny cinematic trick into the world. At a very ominous juncture within the movie, director Roman Polanski wished to border a shot of Minnie Castevet – the more and more suspect neighbour – as she sneaks into Rosemary’s bed room. In what turned out to be a stroke of genius, Polanski shifted the digicam till solely a sliver of Minnie’s again remained within the body, barely seen by the doorway.

Through the take a look at screening, the complete viewers reportedly craned their necks and leaned to the aspect in a useless try and see what she was doing. It is a honest approximation of the way it feels to learn the tales in Aliya Whiteley’s new assortment From the Neck Up.

The primary of those bizarre tales is about in a high-tech, high-security agricultural biodome, the place aged conscripts are rising fruit and greens to promote to wealthy individuals after the Gulf Stream collapsed, unleashing freezing situations. This neat association appears to be going effectively. Then, the poor, needy and indignant break into the dome.

One other story is about refugees from a future warfare who colonise an enormous patch of floating rubbish within the Pacific and achieve the power to eat radioactive plastic detritus.

A 3rd options an alien invasion that’s thus far past human understanding that nobody can articulate what is going on, at the same time as humankind is picked off one after the other.

“Whiteley’s gothic-inflected science fiction is icy and distant and you may’t look away”

Then there’s the story of an rising international sensory phenomenon that nobody can adequately describe, however that persons are inexorably drawn to even because it appears to have horrific medical penalties.

Alien invasions, dystopian climates, future wars: on the floor, these are the bread and butter of science fiction, however the best way Whiteley has written them doesn’t slot simply into the style. She will get placed on lists with Henry James and Shirley Jackson. She was up for an award named for the latter, and for good cause: her gothic-inflected science fiction is icy and distant and you may’t look away. However extra within the fashion of Polanski, it convinces you to persist within the irrational religion that this time, on this quick story, she is going to allow you to peer behind the veil.

What does she need you to see? One clue is within the age of her protagonists – almost all of them previous, close to dying, or watching their lives speed up in direction of an finish. Tales about getting previous fall into unusual territory: one the place we could not really feel snug with the fact that it’ll occur to us.

For many people, ageing is each science fiction (one thing that may occur in a future too distant to care about) and gothic horror (it’s coming, and will probably be terrible).

On this manner, previous age is a little bit like obscenity: inconceivable to outline, however you realize it whenever you see it, and you then need to look away.

Whiteley is writing concerning the unexplored territory that nobody desires to go to, and has grasped that there’s one sure-fire strategy to hook us: by holding again the main points and forcing us to see in.

If this all seems like a tough slog, it’s something however. The opposite overarching feeling I obtained from the e-book is the dread of every story ending. Whiteley’s worlds could also be icy and gothic, however the individuals in them are altogether human, and their humorous and cantankerous internal lives make them good firm. You’ll miss these grumpy previous individuals: they’re getting too previous for this shit, however so, I might wager, are you.