On Basilisk Station

Since this is a choice for my book group, this will be a briefer post, discussing only one facet of the work.

Admittedly, though I referenced it in an earlier post this month, my knowledge of military science fiction is somewhat thin. I've read Starship Troopers (which I think must be the archetype, if not the prototype, of military SF) many times, as well as Forever War. I've read most of the Berserker novels by Saberhagen, and a great deal of the Man-Kzin stuff from Niven and his followers. I've also read William Forstchen's Lost Regiment series. And yet they all strike me as being somewhat different from what David Weber accomplishes with this first novel in his Honor Harrington series in two important ways.

First, in the other novels I mention, there really is not a lot of detail spent in the science fictional aspects of the story-telling. Weber spends a lot of time in On Basilisk Station describing his world-building, from the political set-up of the various "star nations" (his term) surrounding the planets in question to the intricate political maneuvering of the nation whose territory Basilisk Station is. He spends numbers of pages describing the science behind not only the weapons systems but the propulsion systems of the starcraft. The setting he has created is extraordinarily and realistically deep and wide, and he does a fine job of describing it, getting us into those descriptive passages in fairly clichéd ways but breathing a different kind of life into them, perhaps because of their sheer magnitude. While Heinlein's Starship Troopers does similar things with the politics of the Earth, that novel does so because the military part is secondary to the political conjecture that is at the heart of the novel. Weber's work, however, piles up thins information as background to the events and decisions that its characters make. Of course, we know a great deal about the Kzin in Niven's Known Universe, but that is because so much as been written about them while Weber provides all of his depth, and a good deal of action, in a single novel.

But the Kzin and Saberhagen stories rely on their characters to drive most of their action (and in the case of the Kzin, sometimes the main characters are mankind's "enemy"). And Weber really only develops one character in the course of On Basilisk Station, and that would be the heroine's first officer, Alistair MacKeon. The heroine herself, Honor Harrington, remains a mostly flat caricature of a ship's officer throughout the novel. Even though we are allowed to see some of her thought processes, those thoughts often serve as the jumping off point for Weber's description of the setting. Her actions are predictable, and a great deal of the humanity of the novel comes from other characters' reactions to her. Even the opposing captain in the climactic space battle is given emotion that gives his character depth. Harrington, at least in this first novel, never seems to rise above the caricature of the Good Captain.

Nonetheless, On Basilisk Station is a solid read, containing suspense and action that reaches its peak in the final battle scene (which takes up a fifth of the novel). The writing style is workmanlike—nothing ground-breaking here—but enjoyable, as the story is engaging and fast-moving. But it is driven by technology and thus in some ways feels flatter than other "military SF" I know of, which rely on character development to move their stories along.

Transporter 3

Three Jason Statham movies in a year? How can that be? Allow me to introduce you to the lovely Mrs. Speculator, a tremendous Statham fan, who has gotten me to see that he really is quite a fun actor. He stretched his range somewhat in The Bank Job, going beyond the traditional action film starring role, but Transporter 3 is right in his wheelhouse.

I enjoyed this movie a good bit, even if it does follow the same old formula from the first two movies—in fact, isn't that why we go to see it? Statham remains cool as Frank Martin, a man who will drive any package anywhere for a price. There is plenty of stunt-driving, including a couple of jaw-dropping maneuvers involving a train. And there are a few martial arts scenes, in which inexplicably, Statham always ends up without most of his clothes. There is something kind of funny about the way he uses his jacket, shirt, and tie as weapons, but he destroys them along the way and goes back to his trunk to get more clothes. Of course, the female viewers may appreciate this, as my fairly unbiased opinion is that he has gotten even more ripped than from his previous roles.

This time around, Statham is bullied into delivering an unknown package to a destination that is being provided to him via a GPS device. The bullying involves a device attached to a bracelet he is wearing that will blow up if it is more than 75 feet from the car (this is pretty clearly stated, but really only enforced when it needs to be). Accompanying him is a sullen young Ukrainian woman, Valentina (played by newcomer Natalya Rudakova), whose role in all of this is pretty clear to the audience but a mystery to Martin. She too wears the explosive bracelet, and they both know that they are to be killed after Martin delivers his package, so they spend their time driving trying to figure out how to get away from the evil Johnson, played by Robert Knepper (heh, he said "evil Johnson").

It all moves along smartly, working to the denouement we've come to expect, flashy car and fight scenes, the bad guys discovering you just don't mess with Martin in a car or in a suit, and the good guys winning out in the end with a last-second save. A lot of it is over the top (inflating dufflebags with enough air from the tires of a car to float that same car out of a lake? And then driving off in the same water-logged car…with flat tires???), but it's fun and it pulls you along for the ride rather willingly, even if the acting of Rudakova is horribly wooden and her accent nearly requires subtitles…after all she alternates between exceedingly cute and fairly sexy, and if the women can have their eye-candy with Statham, the men deserve a little something other than floating cars.

It's only after the movie ends and you think back along its plot that you realize it's just completely ridiculous. Or instance, if Valentina really understood her life was in peril, wouldn't she have told Martin that she was the package and exactly why she's the package? And if Johnson is the very best at what he does, why does he make so many clumsy mistakes, like giving Martin access to a cell phone so he can call his friends to help bail him out? Or even worse, why does Johnson concoct such a ridiculously complex plan as he does other than if he doesn't, there's no reason for the movie whatsoever?

But as I said, these moments of clarity only come along after the movie is over. During the course of the movie, the distractions really are Valentina's accent and the utterly unbelievable romance that sets up between Valentina and Martin. Everything else is just tons of fun, including references to gags in the earlier Transporter movies. All in all, the movie is at least worth a matinee viewing, if only to see the cool and suave Martin do his thing. I think I really could enjoy a Transporter 4 if they decide to make one. Just remember, if you decide to buy an Audi, make sure you get those extra capacity dufflebags with the extra capacity tires to inflate them. One never knows when one might have to drive off a bridge into a lake.

(yeah, the trailer for The Spirit was before the movie, and even it didn't ruin the fun we had watching T3)

An apology—I can’t do it

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Day the Earth Stood Still. I saw it as a child on a cable channel and I wandered around muttering "klaatu barada nikto" for days, annoying classmates and teachers alike. However, I really didn't get the movie and its message; I was just enamoured of the idea of a flying saucer landing in Washington, guarded by an eight-foot tall robot with the power over life and death. Later, as my reading and experiences broadened my vision, I grew to better understand the message that underlies the movie—humanity is all in this together, and political differences mean nothing in the face of the universe, which is a cold and uncaring adversary. That's a powerful message, and a foundational part of my love for this movie.

And so it was with extreme fear that I learned about the remake of this movie, starring Keanu Reaves and Jennifer Connelly. On the one hand, the original movie is nearly perfect the way it is. It doesn't require huge explosions or extended action sequences to deliver its message—in fact, it has a message. But modern movie-making relies on special effects to titillate the audience and the movies that enlighten are few and far between. I dreaded where mayhem would be introduced into the story, since the power of the original movie relies on the imagined threat a single hour without power holds for the world. And frankly, Michael Rennie would act overlapping circles around Keanu.

As more and more information accrued about the movie, I came to realize that in some ways, the premise behind the new version could make for an interesting science-fiction story: first contact with aliens with a twist. And I became optimistic that I could see this movie, if only I could forget its title and the connections it claims with the original movie. Trailers came out, further supporting this view of the movie. And then the reviews started coming out, and my dread returned. Most reviews describe it as a failure of a movie, not even good science fiction. And I grew angry—attaching the name of a great movie to this failure demeans the original to the vast audience who know nothing about it. And my decision was made: I'm not going to see this movie in theatrical release. I may get it from our DVD service, or I may see it on demand or on a cable channel. But I'm not going to give the moviemakers $10 to desecrate something I hold so dear. When that happens, I'll post a review. Maybe I'll regret not having seen it on a big screen, and perhaps this makes me something less than a real speculative fiction fan in the eyes of other fans. But in order to get more good, important movies made—like Children of Men and The Prestige—I'm speaking up with my money. It would appear after its first weekend that I am in the minority in my stance, but the real test will be in the second weekend.

Which leads me to the second half of this apology. Mrs. Speculator and I went to see a movie last evening (which I'll review in another post) and the trailer for The Spirit was included. I'd like to say I was smart enough to be a Spirit fan as soon as I had heard of him, but I wasn't. I barely knew of him or his creator, Will Eisner, even though I was working in comics stores in New Jersey and North Carolina. But when I was in graduate school, I couldn't afford to find back issues and my focus remained on the big two when I could afford it. But my friend Mark spoke brilliantly of The Spirit and Eisner, and I read a few things, which led to reading a few more things, which led to my purchasing all the Spirit archives from DC. And now I am a big fan.

The Spirit works on so many different levels. I'm sure googling "the spirit" and reading reviews of the comics would provide more and better information, but I'll try to summarize the main strengths of the stories. First, Eisner is such a wonderful storyteller, bringing together words and graphics in ways that were never done before, breaking ground and doing things which are hard to repeat even now. Action and color in the panels are important. And the plots are tight and funny, providing growth of the characters while advancing each weekly plot. And while there is action, there is also humor because at heart Denny Colt laughs at the foibles of his foes, using their all-too-human faults to trip them up. And yet, utterly human, he is sometimes unaware of his own failings, introducing even more humor to the reader.

And from this, Frank Miller has created a motion picture that is in black and white. A motion picture that takes the humor out of the equation. And before last evening, I was worried, but I was going to see this movie. But after I saw the trailer, where the formerly human Spirit does back-flips up a wall, I'm not sure I can do it. After seeing Samuel L. Jackson announce that he is the Octopus because he likes to do things in eights, I put my head in my hands. I don't know if I can do it. Not only does this not look like The Spirit, it doesn't look like a good movie. And this from a man who claims to revere Eisner and the Spirit. Again, I feel like if I could forget that this is supposed to be about The Spirit, I might at least appreciate the movie, but it's even more difficult to sever that tie than it is for the titles of The Day the Earth Stood Still. And unlike The Day the Earth Stood Still, I really want this movie to succeed, to give The Spirit the broader audience it deserves.

We'll have to see. Maybe I can work up the courage to see it as a matinee.

(and for a glimpse of what might have been…http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/12/the-spirit-that.html)

The Blade Itself

The prologue is past.

I've been reading enormous buzz about this novel by Joe Abercrombie, so much so that I decided against waiting for it to come out in mass market paperback and bought it as a trade. Along with The Name of the Wind and The Lies of Locke Lamora, The Blade Itself is often mentioned as groundbreaking fantasy, destined to be remembered as a one of the classics of the 21^st century (no exaggeration). And yet it falls into the one of the most boring clichés of epic fantasy, a first book that is spent entirely on character development, with the last few pages containing the first movement into what the series is supposedly going to be about. In the cliché, this would be the "They gather" stage, with book two being "They travel" and the final one being "They win."

That all said, Abercrombie does a wonderful twist on the fantasy trope with his characterization. The book has chapters alternating in viewpoint between three major characters (and a very few chapters from two other characters). Of those three, Abercrombie has successfully written two such that they are unlikable though thoroughly engrossing. Jezal is a pompous officer in the Union military, training for a sword competition. He is a snob, feeling he is better than those around him because of his royal birth, and his motives for most of his life's work are based on not displeasing the public perception of himself or his family. He comes close to quitting the difficult competition because it is hard work, but eventually continues in order to show up those people who doubted him. He scorns people who are different from him, even mentally belittling people who consider him a friend. But in all of his bias he is immature, playing out the role of an arrogant child. And by the conclusion of this first book, there is very little hope of redemption for him (and it may be Abercrombie's intention that he never be redeemed).

The second unlikable character is Glokta, a torturer so filled with self-loathing that it colors his relationships with everyone he comes into contact with. Clearly an intelligent man and a former winner of the competition that Jezal is taking part in, Glokta learned the craft of torture as a prisoner for two years in a foreign country, watching his body being ravaged by his enemies. The shell that is left is a wry commentator on human nature, being a witness to an unusual aspect of it. He is cynical about the motives of everyone around him, but surprisingly not cynical enough, as he discovers when he realizes is he is a political pawn.

Both Jezal and Glokta are citizens of the Union, a confederation of formerly separate countries brought together into a single entity under a king. The name and history of the Union evokes warm feelings by its very nature (at least to this American), but the results of the grand experiment have become decrepit and tainted in the 500 years since their birth. The Union is ruled by its nobility and an ineffectual king gives free rein to political scheming (there's a metaphor there, I'm sure of it). And the mighty works for which the Union was originally known have begun falling into disrepair, and its people no longer recall what its monuments commemorate. And if this point-of-view is not clear enough from the descriptions given by its inhabitants, we also get to see the Union from an outsider's perspective, Logen, the third character. Logen is immensely sympathetic, a great bear of a man from the North, a good fighter with lots of common sense, who finds himself sucked into circumstances he doesn't have the experience to understand. As he travels to Adua, the capital of the Union, he doesn't see the beauty or nostalgia by which other descriptions are tainted; he sees the ugliness of the city and its people. Logen is also not very happy with himself, but he is a freedom fighter of his own sort, and it is not until the end of this first novel that we discover the secret that drives his unhappiness with himself.

In the background of the daily lives of these characters, the Union is being attacked on the northern border by a self-described King, whom we first dislike only because he opposes the narrative point-of-view of the novel and because Logen doesn't like him. He is a braggart and a ruffian, but we never see him do anything distasteful. His emissaries to the Union are scary and threatening, but again, they do nothing compelling other than attack the land that acts as the point-of-view for the novel. At its southern borders, another kingdom appears to be lining up its forces to attack the Union while it is preoccupied to the north. These people deserve the readers' wrath, as we discover through the course of the novel that they practice the blackest magic in its strategy.

And into this volatile mixture comes Bayaz, the Union's best magician and the originator of the idea of the Union. Recognizing signs and portents as being part of some prophecy that is not made known to the reader, he returns to the Union to help it fight its enemies. Unfortunately for the hapless main characters of the novel, that prophecy somehow includes Jezal and Logen. Bayaz himself is something of an enigma, fitting tightly into the cliché of the inscrutably ancient but wise magician, which contrasts sharply with the cast he has to work with. And as the first book concludes, he and his not-so-merry band of adventurers set off to fulfill their quest.

So this first novel is not so much about action, though there are some action-packed moments. Instead there is a wry humor about the events being described and the politics of point-of-view. Glokta and Jezal are fascinating in their ugliness, and while there is the compulsion to find them redeemed by the end of the series, it is not necessary for an enjoyable story. I have no idea where Abercrombie is going to take this story, which is part of its attraction. While the story is not slow-paced, it will annoy the reader who wants the world-changing events in a hurry. I'll be finishing the series with anticipation of something new and exciting in the fantasy tradition. However, I can't say that The Blade Itself lives up to the hype I see for it, at least not yet. But it is still worth reading, especially when mass market editions come out.

Old Man’s War

And the Heinlein riff keeps moving right along. Except this time, it's a novel that explicitly credits Heinlein in its acknowledgments. John Scalzi's novel of humans at war in space looks back to Starship Troopers as its inspiration, and there are many similarities. But there are enough differences that allow Old Man's War to stand out from its sources with its own identity.

What separates Old Man's War from the prodigious stack of military speculative fiction is the technological conceit it turns on—citizens register to join the armed forces at age 75 with the promise of a revitalization process that will make them feel young again. Of course, what they get is far more radical than y of the signees can imagine, and the novel does a good job of building up the tension to the big reveal. The main character, John Perry, narrates throughout the novel, so our point-of-view is not remotely omniscient. Perry is a fine human narrator with faults all his own (for instance, he isn't nearly so funny as he thinks he is) whose humanity becomes vitally important as the plot moves on. Because Scalzi also creates some wonderful alien races, employing only a few clichés and more noticeably relying on the idea that we may never understand the motivations or actions of an alien race (the lecture that the recruits receive on this very fact is entertaining enough but foreshadows future events very nicely). Too often, aliens in simplistic SF are like the bugs in Heinlein's Starship Troopers, with motivations and processes that are easy for humans to relate to. Scalzi's aliens are like the Skinnies in Troopers, with motivations that we may be able to perceive the edges of but who humans truly never know. While this is most likely what we would find if we travel ever do find aliens, it is a difficult subject to write about, not the least of which because it is difficult to make the unknowable entertaining.

And entertaining is what this book ultimately is, a coming of age story with a 75 year-old protagonist. Perry discovers that the military isn't just revitalizing his body, they are providing him with an entirely new one based on his own DNA profile but modified for military specifications. Scalzi, through Perry, briefly explores what this fundamental change in condition means, and by itself it has been the foundation for longer deeper treatments. But Scalzi also uses these training moments to fully introduce the setting of his story—the universe that humans find themselves in and the method by which they are governed, mirroring the lectures in Starship Troopers. However, Scalzi doesn't lecture so much as have his characters reminisce; after all, the novel doesn't suggest a completely alternative governmental system as does Starship Troopers. But there is the interesting twist that the Colonial Defense Forces, the agency responsible for colonizing and defending those colonies, holds a monopoly on space exploration, and the reader is given a perspective from within that monopoly about why such a set-up is optimal.

After his training, Perry is sent off to battle humanity's foes, and the action is relatively straightforward, though somewhat light on the details of the battles. Scalzi lets the imagination of the reader provide the details as he generally paints battles with a broad stroke. After all, the battles are not really what this novel is about; instead it is about the effect of the new technology on the characters and their relationships with others, including aliens. And along the way, John thinks that he sees his dead wife in service, opening the door to a delightful (for the reader, a lot of other things to the characters) extrapolation of the technology that the story is about. Instead of remaining a war set in space, Scalzi opens wide the narrative opportunities with a supple twist, one which promises many more thought-provoking books down the line.

As a result, Scalzi skillfully dances along a narrative high wire, appealing to the relative simplistic battle fiction with an action yarn about fighting aliens while developing a fascinating technology that, at its core, reflects the very best that science fiction offers. And while the clichés of the former remain (Perry becomes a battle-decorated hero by the end of the novel), the underlying tensions are far greater than the clichés. Old Man's War is a delightful, smart and quick read, a very promising introduction to a new universe for which three other books have already been written.

Red Lightning

I seem to be caught in a mass of books where authors are either explicitly or unintentionally channeling the spirit of Robert Heinlein. I'm not sure if I am seeking them out or if they are coming to me. In the case of Gaiman and Reaves's Interworld, some reviews I had read mentioned the similarities, and that combined with my general enjoyment of Gaiman led me to find the book. But for John Varley's Red Lightning, I have been a fan of his writing for some time, and it seems to me that only recently—and perhaps only in this arc of novels—has he tended towards Heinlein's style and plotting. A big signpost for me is the use of juvenile characters who become integral to world-changing (even universe-changing) events. I suspect that Heinlein's juveniles, with their approach to adolescents and the patterns set up by their plotting, were so well-done and so widely read that they have become the foundation from which all later novels of that type must spring from or work against (much like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for epic fantasy). Or maybe that foundation exists only in my head as a critical framework from which to discuss the novels. But I am not the only person who sees these similarities.

Red Lightning is a sequel to Varley's Red Thunder, in that the same characters are present and the events follow from what happened in the first book. But thematically, even tonally, they are very dissimilar books: Red Thunder (using the Heinlein analogy a bit more) reminds me of Have Spacesuit, Will Travel which is just a huge adventure yarn. Red Lightning, on the other hand, is more like Podkayne of Mars where politics becomes an issue. But those political issues are really what the second half of the novel is about, while the first half sets up the scenario in which those politics become important.

The book begins by introducing Ray Garcia-Strickland, son of the heroes of Red Thunder, and allows him to describe his home, the newly colonized planet Mars. For a few chapters, the book provides thoughtful descriptions of how such a colony might be set up according to extrapolations of current technology alongside the breakthrough that allows such transportation. Mars is a libertarian dream with no government at all beyond the market forces that drive the settlement's expansion. There are a few downsides to the colony—hotels that are built on the cheap that aren't very attractive and somewhat insulting to most "Martians", but this is what happens when the market is the primary driver. Through his descriptions of his surroundings, Ray appears to be an average teenager, not really concerned with issues beyond his immediate needs, and maybe a little smarter than average given his parentage.

The idyllic peace changes when news of a collision between an object moving near light-speed colliding with the Earth reaches Mars. A tsunami one hundred feet tall slams into the Atlantic coastline of North and Central America, wiping out island countries and doing massive damage to the American coastline all the way up to Massachusetts. The infrastructure for the United States (and thus most of the world) collapses; New York, the center of the financial world is destroyed while Washington is severely damaged. Ray's family decides they must return to Florida in order to rescue his grandmother, still a hotelier in Daytona. What follows throughout the first half is an agonizing portrayal of not only life after a catastrophe, but the nearly unthinkable damage and effects such an event would bring to the United States. Ray, his family, and friends, are enormously wealthy after the events of Red Thunder and their discovered technology allows them to travel to Earth fairly quickly, then make their way into the remains of the Florida coast. There they are able to purchase the best equipment and make the best contacts to allow them to find and rescue Ray's grandmother. But given the damage, the work is not easy, and the sheer cussedness of human beings makes the work that much harder. However, this is no post-apocalyptic novel, so Varley does not fall into explicit descriptions of hopelessness. He uses scenes of the aftermath of the devastation to drive home his points, and the encounters the characters have with others are more indicative of how bad things could be than explicit descriptions of the worst case.

But halfway through this section, I began to wonder how the tragedy of such a disaster had any relationship with the character of Ray and his life on Mars. The story I was reading was compelling on its own, but had little relationship to the idyllic Martian descriptions. I suppose if this were some wildly experimental writer, such a diversion would make sense, but Varley has always been fairly straightforward in his writing, relying more on the ideas behind his plots than on craft and style in writing. So it is little surprise that the characters returned to Mars with the rescued matriarch, leading to the thoughtful and political second half of the novel, wherein Earth invades Mars.

The most powerful country on Earth is fractured—there are two presidents. Corporations fill in the power vacuum and assert control multinationally. And then a single event happens behind the scenes, driving those corporations to panic and invade Mars with a single explicit purpose. What follows is still relatively action-filled but is also a meditation on what happens when citizens lose interest or the ability to monitor their own governance. The parallels with the post-9/11 America are clear and sometimes more heavy-handed than Varley intended (more on that in a bit), but their power and their ability to provoke consideration of political issues is intense. Of course, as in most Heinlein novels, things turn out well due to the plucky nature and ridiculous luck of the main characters.

As for the heavy-handedness, Varley includes a fascinating afterword, describing the progress of his writing. I'm comfortable recommending even reading the afterword first, describing as it does his original plans for this novel and then the real world events that mirror the plot he intended. In it, he mentions that the real events show how much he underestimated the power and effect of the events he imagined. So, if anything, Varley didn't intend the heavy-handedness; it's just that the real world events throw those moments into a stark light with unrepentantly angry characters.

Varley's style and characterization make this an easy book to read, but its content, especially in the second half, is challenging. The politics are described without shades of gray, which is far easier than the dealing with the world we live in. But while those comparisons may be facile, they are thoughtful, and yet really never get in the way of a rollicking story. The politics and the actions the characters take go hand in hand and make for a story that is difficult to put down.