New Scientist - USA (2019-09-28)

32 | New Scientist | 28 September 2019

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IMAGINE that in remote Maine,

the personal and literary stomping

ground of Stephen King, one of

horror’s most prolific writers,

there is a state-sanctioned facility

set up to house those rare children

gifted with psychic powers.

Twelve-year-old Luke Ellis is the

latest arrival: a telekinetic who

can’t do much more than rattle

a pizza tray. But what he lacks

in mental brawn he more than

makes up for in intellect. And

as the kids around him endure

increasingly brutal tests designed

to boost their power and break

their will, it is his intelligence –

surplus to requirements in the

eyes of Mrs Sigsby, the institute’s

coldly calculating director – that

offers the only hope of escape.

A sure crowd-pleaser, The

Institute is arguably a throwback

to King’s early novels such as

Carrie, The Shining and Firestarter.

They were novels of the cold war,

ushering the parapsychology of

that time into the mainstream.

After all, Danny Torrance didn’t

just hear ghosts in The Shining’s

Overlook Hotel, he was a low-level

telepath particularly susceptible

to psychic phenomena.

With the success of the

Netflix series Stranger Things,

everything old is new again.

The cult, 1980s-set drama has

reawoken our passion for secret

government bases and clairvoyant

wunderkinds. King could have

simply traded on this mood of

nostalgia, but The Institute is

better than that, a thoroughly

contemporary take on old

anxieties. One of King’s best

novels in years, The Institute

ratchets up the tension from

Ellis’s kidnapping to his

violent confrontation with

the powers that be.

Key to the book’s success is

its emphasis on the necessity

of personal resistance. Just as

small-scale injustice paves the

way for appalling corruption, so

too can a child’s defiance open the

Where there is power, there is resistance Stephen King is among the authors

serving up potent new stories with a revolutionary flavour thanks to characters

and communities that stand up to authority, finds Helen Marshall

“ Sci-fi, with its historical

dependence on tales

of exploration and

civilisation-building,

is ripe for reinvention”

Books

The Institute

Stephen King

Hodder & Stoughton

Terra Nullius

Claire G. Coleman

Hachette

Helen also

recommends...

Books

Women’s Weird:

Strange stories by

women 1890-1940

Melissa Edmundson (editor)

Handheld Press

A spellbinding collection

of early Gothic tales

The Rosewater

Redemption

Tade Thompson

Orbit

Concludes the prize-winning

author’s Wormwood trilogy

door for wider rebellion. At a time

when it takes 16-year-old Greta

Thunberg to hold world leaders

accountable for a lack of action on

climate change, this is a message

that is sure to resonate.

The debut novel of Indigenous

Australian author Claire G.

Coleman touched the same nerve

a couple of years back. Terra

Nullius refers to the legal status

(“nobody’s land”) of Australia at

the time of its original settlement

by Europeans. Deeming the land

to be empty negated the history,

and threatened the lives, of more

than 500 indigenous groups who

did, in fact, inhabit the continent.

Postcolonial science fiction has

surged in recent years, with the

critical success of Nalo Hopkinson,

N. K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor,

Tade Thompson and Jeannette

Ng, to name a few. The genre,

with its dependence on tales

of exploration and civilisation-

building, is clearly ripe for

reinvention. Coleman does exactly

that. With Terra Nullius and her

forthcoming novel The Old Lie, she

weaves together faux-historical

sources and perspectives, pitting

incumbents against newly arrived

settlers. For the first half you may

feel as if you are diving into a gritty

and disquieting piece of historical

fiction, but the blurb for Terra

Nullius lays such thoughts to rest:

“This is not Australia as we know

it.” Coleman implies that those

best-placed to lead the resistance

may be those who have been

resisting for generations.

While the psychopathic

hirelings of both novels may

present as cartoonishly thuggish,

King and Coleman remind us

that those who forget the past

are doomed to repeat it. ❚

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Light at the end of the

tunnel? New sci-fi tackles

institutional oppression

The science-fiction column

Helen Marshall is an editor,

award-winning writer

and senior lecturer at the

University of Queensland,

Australia. Follow her on

Twitter @manuscriptgal