Blending genres is very in right now, thanks to the recent proliferation of literary mash-ups–Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Little Women and Werewolves, et al. Combining elements of sci-fi and fantasy into a single story has been going on even longer, however, and can be seen in diverse works, such as Star Wars, Tad Williams’ Otherland, and Christopher Stasheff’s Warlock series. Often, however, in tales such as these, the fantasy elements of the universe only seem to be fantastical and are eventually explained by science, whether the magic manifests itself as simply a part of a virtual reality game or as the result of high-powered psionics. In his Henghis Hapthorn series–currently composed of three books, Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Hespira–Matthew Hughes introduces a brand-new twist to the sci-fi/fantasy mash-up, also weaving in influences such as steampunk and Sherlock Holmesian mystery.
The brilliant Henghis Hapthorn is Old Earth’s greatest freelance discriminator. In other words, he is a detective with such an ingenious mind that, like Holmes before him, he can often solve a mystery simply by entering a room, noting obscure and esoteric details that no one else could, and instantly connecting the dots that only seem completely unrelated to those who aren’t as insightful as he, which is basically everyone. Hapthorn is the epitome of the scientific mind that runs on logic and reason. As such, he is perfectly at home in his universe, which also runs on logic and reason. Science and technology have become incredibly advanced, particularly in regards to space travel, and everything can be explained by rational means.
The world in which Henghis Hapthorn lives, however, hasn’t always been like this. In the far distant past, the universe was run on magic. Great wizards proliferated across the planets, as did witches and dragons and spells. There was no logical explanation for how or why anything occurred, because everything could simply be explained as being magical in origin, and no further inquiries were required. And this is where the really interesting twist occurs: Henghis Hapthorn’s world is cyclical–it goes through cycles where for thousands of years, it will run on science, and then it will switch over to magic for thousands of years. And Hapthorn, to the great man’s horror and dismay, happens to be living on the cusp of another changeover to magic. Basically, everything he holds dear–science, logic, reason–are going to go the way of the dodo bird in the very near future.
What might be most interesting about the construction of Matthew Hughes’ series is that the first calamitous event in Hapthorn’s life occurs before the first book begins. Not long into Majestrum, we learn that Hapthorn, while investigating magic, had found himself caught up in some multidimensional magical event that causes his integrator–a sort-of computer that can talk and bring up whatever data he needs–to be transformed into an long-extinct mythical creature, a grinnet, that resembles a cross between a cat and a monkey, and for him, Hapthorn, to be split into two separate entities, both occupying his single body. Although Henghis Hapthorn mostly runs on pure reason alone, there has always been a small aspect of him that is not about logic but human feelings, his intuition, a tiny but necessary ingredient to making him the greatest living discriminator. After this magical event occurs, however, Hapthorn’ reason has separated itself from his intuition, which now exists as its own mind, a version of Hapthorn that only understands how things feel. In other words, he can’t explain why something might be true, but he can sense it, because it feels right. Naturally, this sort of thinking infuriates Hapthorn to no end, even as he discovers that, when he can’t contact his intuition, such as when it is asleep, he is not as perfect a discriminator as he once was. He needs that little spark of insight to help him determine things that pure reason cannot–such as whether something seems fishy or shady. Science cannot tell him that.
The series unfolds, in part, as an exploration of what it is like for something that had not been alive before to suddenly find itself alive. Hughes does a marvelous job of paralleling the grinnet’s journey with that of Hapthorn’s intuition, who eventually takes on the name of Osk Rievor, to distinguish himself. The grinnet is a perfect encapsulation of how Hapthorn’s world is about to change, being a computer that suddenly finds itself with a body, emotions, and an enormous appetite. Meanwhile, Rievor is a fascinating glimpse at what he, Hapthorn, would be in a world where sympathetic association rules all. Over the course of the three books in the series, Hapthorn’s tenuous grip on the world he knows and loves is investigated in a number of fascinating ways, particularly in The Spiral Labyrinth, in which he is transported into the future and discovers just what a magical universe is truly like.
In addition to being extremely interesting from a philosophical perspective, grappling with questions such as “What makes a being sentient?,” “Can reason truly explain everything?” and “Can magic be logical?,” Hughes’ novels are also delightfully funny. He has an extremely dry wit, which manifests itself in numerous areas. The novels are filled with asides about Hapthorn’s world, including information about its literature, history, and theatre, much of which are subtle parodies and twists on our own culture. Additionally, it contains some sharp satire, in the form of the aristocracy, who are so myopically status-obsessed that they are literally unable to see someone who is not wearing an outfit that directly indicates his or her social rank. The endlessly amusing mysteries also often hinge on some hilariously odd macguffins. For example, one ultimately revolves around a rare type of cream so extravagant and addictive that one can only have three bites of it in a sitting, while another revolves around how a particular word is pronounced, while another revolves around the investigation of an obscure song and a secret society that enacts its revenge on the upper classes by filming them doing humiliating things.
The novels are also filled with all sorts of brilliant punnery, such as the family at the heart of one mystery, namely the Magguffynne clan. As Henghis explains, “Once one identifies the presence of a Magguffynne, the elements of a plot fall easily into their true arrangement.” This is the sort of thing that makes the Henghis Hapthorn novels such wonderful hybrids. Funny, mysterious, complexly layered, and often ingeniously melded, science-fantasy rarely gets better than this.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Love the Pippin reference!
Thanks for a very good summary and appreciation of the three novels.
The events preceding Majestrum were set down in a series of six stories that ran in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and were collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories (Night Shade Books, 2005) .