Paul Di Filippo Reviews Airside by Christopher Priest

Airside, Christopher Priest (Gollancz 978-1399608831, hardcover, 304pp, £22.00) May 2023

By my rough count, Airside is Christopher Priest’s twentieth novel, all accumulated since 1966, when his first short story “The Run” saw print in Impulse magazine. Incredibly, it appears less than a year after the previous sterling example, Expect Me Tomorrow (which I reviewed in these same pages). More incredibly—but still living up to my expectations—it’s a major work at the top of his form. Such an accomplishment would magnify and honor any writer. But for a fellow on the eve of his eightieth birthday, an anniversary when any sane and normal chap might be considering taking a break from the literary playing field, such a performance is breath-taking.

The book manifests all of Priest’s delicious patented slippery slipstream unease, but in a cultural-commentary fashion more Ballardian than anything he’s previously done. But whereas Ballard always exhibited a clinically cold eye, a kind of superior Martian dispassionate approach to human follies, Priest is fully invested in the tender humanity of his characters as they move through his unsettling twilight zones.

First off, what of the curious title, a word I had never encountered? It apparently refers to that portion of an airport where only the sanctified might roam. And since our tale revolves in large part around airports and air travel, that’s a big deal. As an employee tells our hero at one point:

“This is airside. Passengers are not allowed to cross into this part of the airport without a boarding pass. If a security guard stops you it could cause big problems. You’ll have to get back to the check-in area and be allocated a seat. Strictly speaking I shouldn’t be talking with you.”

This kind of Kafkaesque encounter is not omnipresent in the book, but it defines a certain climax and near-breaking point in our protagonist’s adventures.

The book starts with the account of the mysterious, almost Fortean disappearance of a young Hollywood movie star, Jeanette Marchand, at a UK airport in 1949. This inexplicable enigma forms the kernel of all that is to follow.

We next shift our focus to our main character, one Justin Farmer. We will follow him from youth to middle-age, as Priest delivers a complex and sensitive portrait of the man. Justin’s life will be contoured by two passions: the movies, and airplanes. Growing up in the shadow of a regional British airport, watching planes descend right over his house, Justin fixates on the romance of flight, hanging out at the airport in his spare time.

But then comes a second, more enticing bliss: the movies. Plunging into celluloid fantasies, the youthful Justin exhibits a kind of otaku compulsiveness, taking notes, categorizing, learning all he can about films. But he lacks the spark of creativity to actually helm a flick. So what other career could he be destined for than film critic? Priest never denigrates Justin’s intellectual, somewhat academic concerns, but he does enjoy some wry digs at the kind of fellow who scribbles notes in a darkened theater and even extends his rigorous observational habits to a girlfriend’s particulars, causing romantic grief all around. And in fact, as Justin becomes a professional, Priest treats us to several of his essays, all of which revolve around airplane-themed movies. These reviews are more pieces in the strange, disturbing mosaic and patterning that Priest is laying down, wherein every airport and every airplane trip becomes a kind of portal to an otherworldly realm—mostly on a psychic level, but, as the book’s climax reveals, sometimes quite literally.

We learn that Justin was enraptured, as a child, by the striking screen appearances of Jeanette Marchand. A moment comes in his adult life when this early fixation is reawakened, and Justin impulsively begins a detective-style investigation into the old mystery of her vanishing. He tracks down her lovers and cinematographers and directors. Eventually, an elderly retired actress named Teddy Smythe—reticent and elusive—begins to figure into the mix. And that’s when Justin acquires a partner. “Matilda Linden was the author of the book about Hugo Marshal Turnbull, director of Auvergne, which he had consulted while writing his profile of Teddy.”

Matilida—Matty—and Justin eventually become lovers and a team. Time passes without much progress in the investigation, until one day Matty, Justin, and Teddy all find themselves at a film festival that is subject to a near-fatal disaster. And this precipitates our nebulous but satisfying denouement.

But prior to this comes what might even be the real centerpiece and quintessential defining motif incident of the novel: Justin’s out-of-body, Outer Limits experience in a South Korean airport. Occupying the entirety of a long chapter, Chapter 21, this bravura episode encapsulates the unreality lying beneath our jet-age modes of travel. It resonates with Tom Disch’s great story “Descending”, and could almost be plucked entire from the book and be slotted into some VanderMeer anthology of The Weird.

Priest’s mastery of Hollywood lore and his obvious affection for the history of the cinema is invaluable in establishing the naturalistic believability of the Jeanette Marchand angle. You will accept his inventions as reality, so deftly does he blend them with historical facts. This book will instantly hook any movie buff, while its simmering subtext of surrealism inveigles the lover of fantastika.

Priest leaves it to Matty to utter the defining statement of this whole project: “Everything is circular, people think alike, coincidences don’t exist, only connections.” That sentiment could serve as the banner across Priest’s whole majestic career.

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