Recently a friend of mine went to Pure Speculation III, and whilst there connected and reconnected with friends and comrades in the Canadian speculative fiction field. When she came back she brought back for me a book called The Claus Effect (1997), by David Nickle and Karl Schroeder. Put out by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, a small press Canadian publisher that has begun to expand (recently merging with Tesseract Books and Dragon Moon Press), The Claus Effect is a two part story based on an Aurora-Award winning short story, The Toy Mill (1993), about a young girl who brings down a sociopathic Santa Claus.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I like Christmas. I like traditional Christmas with the creche and I like commercial Christmas with the Santa Claus. I like any festival of light celebrated in the midst of darkness and death. I especially like, however, stories and traditions and things that take Christmas mythology and turn it on its head (as long as it’s done well). Just look on my bookshelf (and on my CD shelf and DVD shelf) and you’ll see collections of Christmas murder mysteries, romances, speculative fiction, and twisted tales. So, if it’s about Christmas, I’m already going to be excited about it. That being said, if it’s done badly, then I’m going to be REALLY disappointed in it.
I wasn’t disappointed in The Claus Effect.
As I stated before, The Claus Effect grew out of a short story, The Toy Mill, about a little girl, Emily, who waits up late one Christmas Eve so that she can ask Santa Claus to make her an elf. She thinks it would be the coolest thing ever to help bring Christmas to the rest of the world. Noble desire, wouldn’t you say? Well, only if the Santa Claus you think exists really does exist. Only he doesn’t. In real life he’s a larger than life sociopath who HATES what he does and HATES children. “Larger than life” means, basically, that’s he’s a huge cigar chomping, rough-talking factory boss who could care less what children want. Fantastic set up! This was an Aurora-Award winning short story, the Canadian equivalent of the Hugo.
What the authors then did was take this story, put a Prologue in front of it, and then follow it up with the novella, The Claus Effect, which goes forward, eight years later, from the events that took place in the Toy Mill. What is important to note about the timing of these tales is that The Toy Mill takes place in 1983, while The Claus Effect takes place in 1991, after the downfall of the United Soviet Socialist Republic. This is a very important plot point. As is the point that Emily is a Canadian girl, and the other protagonist, Neil, is an American boy. Between the two of them, they become involved with MI6, Cossacks, old KGB, CIA, and the most obnoxious elves seen anywhere. Needless to say, it also includes Uzis, AKMs, nuclear warheads, global satellites, and all sorts of James Bond-like double crossing and fire fights. In the meantime, Emily and Neil, of course, develop a friendship, mature, and learn and use very important life skills (such as how to dodge bullets, escape a cell, and survive arctic temperatures). In addition, several tongue-in-cheek jabs are made at the expense of America, but other jabs are made towards Russians, Canadians, Germans and whoever else is mentioned in the story.
The plot twists around like pretzel in a maze, but that really doesn’t matter, cuz you have so much fun just reading the language (there’s some fun word usage and cool metaphor - though one metaphor is repeated more than it should be) that you don’t really care where the ride is taking you, since it’s still a good ride. And while the end has a good resolution, it does leave it open for further development. Not sure Nickle and Schroeder ever did more stories about Emily and Neil, but the possibility was definitely there, and I’d be interested to know what they did and how they did it.
I loved reading The Claus Effect. I really, really enjoyed this story. If you’re feeling cynical about the holiday season then reading this will give you a sense of glee as you’ve never felt before. Seriously. Once I was pulled into the story, I was rarely ever kicked out of it. It was engrossing. There were, however, a few hiccups that gave me pause. But, since I liked the story so much, I was able to shrug them off and move on.
One hiccup was the proofreading. Small presses don’t necessarily have the proofreading or copyediting people who are paid to go through a manuscript extensively to check for missed words, grammar, syntax, doubled words, continuity, etc. Many times authors have to depend on the keen, observant eyes of friends and family. So, sometimes books from small presses have a few foibles. The latter half of the novella (part 2), The Claus Effect, felt like it hadn’t been proofed as many times as the rest of the novella. Words had been left out, or repeated, or phrases transposed. But again, I liked the story enough so that I was able to shrug the rough bits off and move on through the story.
Another hiccup has to do with culture. When this was first written, it was for, primarily, a Canadian audience, not an American audience. But, in one scene, Neil (American) and Emily (Canadian) are sneaking around the old military installation and looking for a place to hide when Neil says in frustration that a place like that has GOT to have washrooms.
Yeah.
Americans don’t say “washroom.” Americans say “bathroom.” If EMILY had been speaking in that scene then “washroom” would have been correct. But Neil was the one speaking in that scene and he would have, realistically, used the term “bathroom.”
That hiccup just made me chuckle a bit, though, more than anything else. Kind of added charm to this obviously Canadian Christmas twisted fairy tale.
On the whole, I truly enjoyed this story. It was a fast read. It was imaginative. It was fun. I highly recommend it. If you decide to order it through Amazon and it says it’s going to be a long while before you receive it, then try ordering it direct from Edge, here. It may cut down on the time it takes to receive it.
