'Rochelle wakes from cryostasis to take up her role on the colony ark, Calypso . But she wakes to find the ship deserted, and the interior taken over by a forest. As she explores and finds the last remaining members of the crew, she discovers a legacy of war conducted whilst she slept.
'The engineers and the botanists have different visions for how to build the world. The engineers would build a new utopia of technology; the botanists would have the planet bloom, untouched by mankind. Both will destroy the other to ensure their vision of paradise prevails. And Rochelle, the last to wake on the Calypso, holds the balance of power in her hands.'
Calypso is a book that I'm going to have to talk about in two parts, the story, and the presentation, because this is not your average book; not by a long shot. A story written in poetry form is unusual enough in itself, and something that I myself have only read a couple of times. However, Calypso goes even further than this, and uses the very structure of the words on the page to add to its story.
The story takes readers into a distant future, where the character of Rochelle wakes up on the colony ship Calypso. Rochelle has been in cryo-sleep for the long journey to the moon of Terra Nova, a place that humanity is hoping to colonise, but does not wake to find the promise of peace that was given to her. Instead of having this new world ready for her and the other passengers of the Calypso, she finds the ship in chaos. It turns out that most of the other passengers have died, and that she is one of a small number of survivors. But, she is the last to wake, and the other survivors are scattered and hiding on a ship that has been transformed.
The ship has been taken over by monstrous tendril of sentient plant life, a forest that has grown inside and throughout the ship. With no idea how things could have become this way whilst she slept, Rochelle begins to piece together the history of Calypso, and the events that happened before she awoke. She learns of conflict amongst those living on the ship, rivalling philosophies that cannot co-exist, and have driven those that believe in them into war. Now Rochelle has to find her place in this new structure and, if she can, bring peace to the Calypso.
The story feels familiar in a number of ways. There have been many science fiction stories of people awaking from long journeys to discover that things have spun out of control whilst they were asleep. From something as simple as waking to find you're not where you're supposed to be, as in Alien, to discovering a ship full of horror and mystery as in Pandorum. It's a popular theme that doesn't get used all that often, as such each time it's told there's a chance to put a new spin on things. And this is something Oliver K. Langmead does in spades.
And this brings me to the second main talking point of Calypso, the structure of the book itself. I've already mentioned that the book isn't written in traditional prose form, and instead uses verse to tell its story. This really comes into its own when we follow different point of view characters, each of which has their own distinct structure on the page. Words will be in different positions on the page, and each character has their own form of rhyme and meter that gives each person their own voice that becomes instantly recognisable.
This structure is also used to convey certain parts of the story, presenting things in unique formatting to enhance moments or deliver a certain feeling. There's a part where two characters are arguing, speaking over each other. Both people are presented on the page, their words sharing the page but split down the middle. You can read each one in turn, or reader them together. Reading them in turn makes them clear, you can understand their points, but if you read them at the same time, working across the page as normal, it becomes confusing, disjointed, and hard to understand; presenting the notion of people yelling over each other in a way that puts you in that moment yourself. There are other parts of the narrative that include illustrations, and broken, almost disjointed words on the page that are some of the more beautifully presented and more interesting moments in the book.
Whilst I am singing the praises of the book that doesn't mean it's the easiest read. If you're unused to this style book it can be hard to get into to begin with, and the structure of the story does become a little confusing, though this is also likely by design as there is a central mystery to unravel across the book. There are many books that people describe as being a 'work of art', and prose novels are certainly art; but it's an artform that many of us are intimately familiar with. It's comfortable, it has rules, and whilst the content of the stories can take risks it often feels like the presentation and structure can't.
But Calypso very much does that. It's not just the story that is important here, but the way that story is presented. It matters where a word is placed on the page, it's important how you read it, and the thought and intention of the structure along with the story comes together in what it very easy to describe as art. Calypso is the kind of book that you're going to want to talk about, it invites discussion and dissection. Very much a one of a kind, Calypso is a stunning piece of work.
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