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    Spin
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    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    Spin

    By Nina Allan

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    SPIN won the 2014 British Science Fiction Association Award. Nina Allan is acclaimed as a short fiction author and 'Spin' brings you an opportunity to try her longer fiction. 'Spin' is a novella which weaves Greek mythology, science fiction and alternate history into Layla Vargas'. journey across an alternate modern Greece.
    In the myth Arachne was the awesomely skilled weaver whose tapestries challenged the gods and eventually resulted in her being transformed into a spider. In Nina's novella Layla is our surrogate for Arachne and her fate and destiny, powers of prophecy and possibly those gods are implicit in her story and the stories of the people she meets.

    Here are some quotes from reviews:

    “Nina Allan’s re-imagining of the Arachne myth, with its receding overlays of the modern and the antique, creates a space all its own. The scene is clean and minimal, the light Mediterranean, the story seems musing and sad: but by the last two pages, Spin has you in a grip that persists long after you put it down” M. John Harrison

    “The writing is precise, the imagery vividly sensual; by re-imagining ancient myth in a stunningly realised alternate Greece, Nina Allan traps you in a web of story” Paul Kincaid

    “Spin blends contemporary, fantastical, futuristic, and contemporary elements in a way that Nina Allan is making her own” David Hebblethwaite

    “Allan expertly weaves SF, fantasy and mythology into a subtle, seamless, dreamlike whole. I loved it” Neil Williamson

    "Journeys mean something in a story like this one. They shouldn’t be rushed. They should be full of places, of encounters: With the young man afflicted with a curse. A fascinating epic poem on which Layla bases her newest work. The masterpieces of ancient sibyls, catching dust in the museum. Spiders weaving in the sunlight, busy at their work. The details so clear, so well-chosen to make a story."
    –RECOMMENDED" Lois Tilton www.locusmag.com/Reviews/#spin

    "Ultimately “Spin” succeeds for me because Allan is not trying to compete or improve upon the Arachne myth, nor is she wilfully offering up a new and jaunty twist. (Meowmorphosis... please.) No, instead what we get is a highly personal piece that was written for and is dedicated to her father. No RPG’s were needed in the arena after all, folks. The fight wasn’t there to begin with."
    In short, I’d heartily recommend “Spin” to fans of literary sci-fi and fantasy, and especially to those already familiar with Nina Allan’s work. If you tick any of those boxes then I doubt you’d be disappointed with this."
    Rating: 5/5" Lucian Poll lucianpoll.com/2013/04/01/review-spin-by-nina-allan/

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTTA Press
    Release dateMay 12, 2013
    ISBN9781301417698
    Spin
    Author

    Nina Allan

    Nina was born in Whitechapel, London, grew up in the Midlands and West Sussex, and studied Russian literature at the University of Exeter and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. "I wrote my first short story at the age of six. Recurring obsessions include old clocks and rare insects, forgotten manuscripts and abandoned houses. Writers who have inspired and continue to inspire me include among many others Vladimir Nabokov, Iris Murdoch, Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Auster, J. G Ballard, Roberto Bolano, M. John Harrison and of course Christopher Priest, my partner and first reader. We live and work in the historic seaside town of Hastings, East Sussex. "My stories have appeared regularly in premier British speculative fiction magazines Interzone, Black Static and Crimewave, and have featured in the anthologies Best Horror of the Year #2, The Year’s Best SF #28 and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2012 and 2013. My story ‘Angelus’ won the Aeon Award in 2007, and short fiction of mine has shown up on BFS and BSFA shortlists on several occasions. "A first collection of my short fiction, A Thread of Truth, was published by Eibonvale Press in 2007, followed by my story cycle The Silver Wind in 2011. My most recent books are Microcosmos (NewCon Press March 2013) and Stardust: The Ruby Castle Stories (PS Publishing April 2013). I have recently completed work on a novel, What Happened to Maree, set in an alternate and near-future version of southeast England. I am about to make a start on something new." (May 2013)

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    Reviews for Spin

    3.5/5

    18 ratings1 review

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    • 4/5
      An extremely well done modern retelling of the myth of Arachne, set in a vaguely alternate version of modern-day Greece. The protagonist is a woman whose gift for weaving may (or may not) be a gift of prophecy from the gods, and the novella follows her attempts to understand her talents and her place.

    Book preview

    Spin - Nina Allan

    SPIN

    BY NINA ALLAN

    * * * * *

    .

    First published 2013 by TTA Press

    TTA Press Print Edition ISBN 978-0-9553683-6-3

    Smashwords Edition ISBN: 9781301417698

    Copyright © Nina Allan 2013

    Cover by Ben Baldwin

    Copyright © Ben Baldwin 2013

    The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

    A CIP catalogue record for the printed version of this book is available from the British Library

    Proofread by Peter Tennant

    Designed and typeset for print by the publisher,

    Ebook v3 RG

    TTA Press

    5 Martins Lane

    Witcham

    Ely, Cambs

    UK, CB6 2LB

    ttapress.com

    * * * * *

    Smashwords Edition License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal use/enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with others please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author and publisher.

    * * * * *

    For my father, Stuart Stephen Allan

    * * * * *

    CONTENTS

    SPIN

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    SOON FROM TTA NOVELLAS

    BACK PAGE

    * * * * *

    SPIN

    Low was her birth, and small her native town,

    She from her art alone obtain’d renown.

    Idmon, her father, made it his employ,

    To give the spungy fleece a purple dye:

    Of vulgar strain her mother, lately dead,

    With her own rank had been content to wed;

    Yet she their daughter, tho’ her time was spent

    In a small hamlet, and of mean descent,

    Thro’ the great towns of Lydia gain’d a name,

    And fill’d the neighb’ring countries with her fame.

    from Metamorphoses, Book the Sixth, The Transformation of Arachne into a Spider by Ovid, translated by John Dryden

    Her father was not there to say goodbye. It was not unusual for him to get up early and take the boat out, but Layla knew that today it was deliberate, that he didn’t want to see her leave. She walked to the bus stop by way of the harbour front, hoping she might still catch a glimpse of him, his body a taut line above the water as he pulled back on the Auster’s sail rope, aiming the sea kite into the sunrise like an arrow into fire. She scanned the horizon expectantly, shading her eyes with both hands, but there was no sign of him. He was too far out by now, probably. It might be several hours before he returned.

    She arrived at the harbour bus stop just after six. Dawn was stepping from the sea on to the sand. When she was a child Layla liked to imagine that her mother would come back to her that way, rising smoothly out of the water she had been drowned in, her sodden dress clinging to the curves of her body like a second skin, her long feet high-arched and pearly white in their pink suede flip-flops.

    The stop was deserted. The seven o’clock shuttle would be much busier, something Layla had wanted to avoid. As it was the bus came late, rattling along the coast road in a trail of diesel fumes and fine white dust. She showed the driver her ticket then sat down on a bench near the front. She disliked the back seats, where the cloth merchants and wool gatherers played out their endlessly rolling whist tournaments and gave one another black eyes when they started to lose. She stowed her rucksack under the seat. This made the space more cramped but she didn’t feel like trusting her luggage to the open rack.

    As the bus drew away from the waterfront and headed inland Layla wondered if it was true, what her nurse Iona had told her, that once you were away from the coast the Mani became another country entirely. She could sense the land’s rough breathing, so different from the sweet-mouthed breezes that stirred the breakers along the shoreline at Kardamyli. The road across the mountains was bumpy and gravel-strewn, still unmade in places, the slopes above steeped thickly in stunted olives and golden saxifrage. For the first time since buying her ticket, Layla felt queasy with doubt and something she supposed was homesickness. If the Taygetus were another country, Atoll City itself was an alien world.

    They came into Kalamata at around midday. This was a scheduled rest stop, an hour to stock up on food or just stretch your legs. Layla walked down to the harbour, where a consignment of mirror glass was being unloaded from a steam freighter and lifted in gleaming stacks on to the open bed of a sky truck. The navvies glistened with sweat, while a tiny bearded man clutching an iPad dashed around yelling instructions. Layla bought a crab sandwich and watched the harbour traffic as it inched slowly towards the exit slipway that led to the ring road. The people in the cars were brightly dressed, their cheap garments a rainbow of synthetics, reductions of the hues her father had taken decades to perfect. Their loud cacophony raised an itching sensation in her nerve endings.

    At five minutes to the hour she began to walk back. She knew more passengers would be boarding at Kalamata, and she didn’t want to risk losing her seat. By the time the rest stop was over the bus was full. The seat beside her, empty until the rest stop, was now occupied by an old woman. She was stick-thin, and frightening to look at, ugly in a way that was almost freakish. On her lap she held a knapsack, a leather drawstring bag that seemed to heave and pulse with a life of its own. Layla dreaded to think what horror might be inside. She stared fixedly out of the window, determined not to meet the crone’s gaze. She yearned to get out her embroidery, but her rucksack had slipped right back under the seat and she didn’t want to draw attention to herself by rummaging for it. It would be another five hours until they stopped for the night in Corinth. The thought of having the old woman wedged up against her for the

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