A Specter is Haunting Texas

Style over substance isn't necessarily a bad thing. I admit it, I liked the first Transformers movie (live action, not animated) though the story was really pretty thin. But the effects were just very good: explosions everywhere, CGI that was stellar, and awesome music (no, wait, this is not a review of Transformers II). To succeed at "style over substance," the style has to be pretty good, or at least interesting.

Which leads me to A Specter is Haunting Texas, a novel from the late 60s by Fritz Leiber. I'm generally a huge fan of Leiber, and I count the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books among my favorites. So when I found this novel in a list of forgotten classics of SF, I set out to find it. Fortunately, I didn't have to pay a lot to get it. The plot feels nothing more than a poor homage to Heinlein; no new ground is broken here: an inhabitant of a station inhabiting the moon comes to Earth to discover how different society has become in the course of the last century. The protagonist, Christopher Crockett La Cruz, has been fed the history of Earth and has expectations of what he is going to find up on his arrival, but things have gone to hell and most of the novel is spent trying to describe how the home planet has ended up where it has: nearly all of North America and most of Central America are states in the great country of Texas. Whites in Texas take a "directional hormone" and so have grown to over eight feet in height, even the women. In the meantime they have made a servant class out of the "browns," Hispanics and African-Americans, who are not allowed to grow much taller than four feet. La Cruz, who is nicknamed Scully by the Texans he falls in with, acts as the readers' eyes as he describes the horribly corrupt political system in Texas, which is made even worse by their ignorance about their own history.

As he tours, Scully finds himself somewhat smitten by a female servant, named La Cucaracha, of his host. Scully and she flirt shamelessly, and he refers to her by a number of rough nicknames, including Cooch. However, when Scully meets his first white Texan woman, Rachel Vachel Lamar, he tosses Cooch aside. Of course, once he is back in Cooch's arms, he tends to forget Rachel as well. Fortunately, both Cooch and Rachel are revolutionaries in Texas, fighting to give the "browns" (as they are called in the book) better living conditions and even something approaching rights. Unfortunately, this means that when Scully is not orating on behalf of the revolution, he is swinging pendulously between the two women for whom he lusts.

Specter feels very much like a "if this goes on…" kind of novel, extrapolating the social conditions Leiber disliked the most some fifty to a hundred years into the future. The story of how Texas ended up as it has is never given, but only alluded to. That story would have held more fascination than Scully's peregrination through North America and his odious misogyny. The novel takes on the feel of a journal for a travelling rock show, with the lead singer Scully becoming perverse when his two groupies realize that they are being played one against another and gang up against him. So any political or social commentary, which is fairly obscure when it is not beating you over the head, is lost in the soap opera-ish love triangle. Scully is a scalawag, but intensely unsympathetic—the opposite of Heinlein's rogues. Those rogues at least generally had an interest in something beyond their own ends. Scully is only intent on his own mission and needs. The culture that Leiber creates is rife for satire, but it is either laid on horribly think or is missing altogether.

What's worse is that there is potential for something much greater here. There is a passage of some pages as Scully contemplates what happened to America, in abstract terms:

It had been an ideal country for men with grand imaginations, for geographical and industrial pioneers, until they turned the grandeur to grandiosity and began to broadcast it over the newly discovered mass media…

We grieved at that robust and shrewd land's fatal weakness for making right, then wrong decisions, and standing by the latter beyond all reason and with puritanic perversity…

A nation nurtured on cowboy tales and the illusion of eternal righteousness, perpetual victory…

A nation that sought to create, simultaneously, in the same people, a glutton's greed for food, comfort, and possessions—and a puritanic morality….

Such language and comparison is compelling, and feels especially relevant given the past decade's history. But other than the passage where this analysis takes place, nothing is done about the issues. Scully is just an observer, from a place that feels as if it has some of the same seeds, and though he is proud of his heritage, Scully has no evidence it will go in a direction different than that described Texas. And then, given the way that Scully resolves choosing between Cooch and Rachel, indications are that his home is no better than Texas; it's just home and thus better than a place where one only must visit.

The final chapter performs a little coda to indicate that Texas won't always remain the way it is, but the damage is done. In the fiction, Texas grows more and more ravaged by its own search for uranium and the fallout of earlier nuclear wars. The revolution succeeds over time, not because of the work of Scully or the innate rightness of the cause, but out of sheer stupidity on the part of the white Texans. And as for the book itself, it is beyond redemption in those final three pages. If I had an opinion of Scully that I really valued, I would begrudge him the ignorant happy ending he is given. As it is, I'm just disappointed that the author of some of my favorite books failed so badly, especially when there were fleeting glimpses of something that could be much better.

Thunderer

I'm not certain if it is a new trend or the peak of a rising and falling trend in genre fiction, but cities are suddenly vogue. Between the New Weird's urban settings—especially those of Mieville—and fantasies like Scott Lynch's Locke Lamora series and Jay Abercrombie's First Rule series, cities are becoming central to the stories currently being told. And the cities that are being written about are described in ways that permit people who talk about the stories to describe the cities as "characters" as I have I a number of recent posts. At the same time, I have felt the need to equivocate a little, because certainly the cities don't act; they are just extremely powerful settings.

And then along comes Felix Gilman's Thunderer.

The city most of the story takes place in, Ararat, has an evocative name, though I can't find a good tie between the name and the role the city plays in Thunderer. Ararat is the largest city in the unnamed world of the novel, and it is huge, apparently eclipsing such modern cities as New York and Tokyo; so large, in fact, that most of the action of Thunderer takes place in a few neighborhoods that appear to approximate the size of more famous fantastical cities like Leiber's Lankhmar. There are constantly hints about other regions of Ararat, including the mountain the springs up out of the center, and about which no one knows very much but many stories are told.

What gives Ararat a personality beyond the sheer size is that Ararat is the city of gods; deities dwell in Ararat and interact regularly with the citizens who live there, whether those citizens are worshippers or not. The opening scene of Thunderer epitomizes this interaction: the protagonist, Arjun, arrives in Ararat just as a god known as The Bird manifests over the city. The Bird is a giant white bird of no named species that flies over the city causing miracles in his wake. Not only is The Bird trailed by more mundane birds of all species as it moves above the city, but people in its wake feel lighter and are able to jump higher. One boy, who eventually earns the name of Jack Silk, escapes from a factory school by leaping off the top of his factory in The Bird's wake and finds himself able to move supernally faster than other humans and also able to fly, even after The Bird disappears from Ararat's sky. In addition, a researcher, Professor Holbach, under the employ of the local ruler, somehow captures some of the essence or power or just magic of The Bird's flight and is able to use it as propulsion for a warship, the Thunderer. The ship lifts itself out of the water and becomes the most powerful weapon in Countess Ilona's arsenal, stoking pride in the inhabitants of her demesnes and fear in the hearts of her rivals.

The rest of the novel intertwines the effects of the passage of The Bird in the lives of Arjun, Jack Silk, and Arlandes, the captain of the Thunderer. And though widely disparate, the stories do come together, in a fashion that would not be possible outside Ararat herself. Arjun himself is from a small town far to the south of Ararat and has been sent by his town's authorities to search for its lost deity, The Voice. Surely, they think, if a deity is to go anywhere, it would go to Ararat to live with others of its kind. Once there, Arjun must first learn how to live in a city of such size, and then I a city where the gods walk the street and play in the everyday lives of Ararat's inhabitants. Arjun, reeling with the loss of his own god, finds it hard to believe in any others, even though he witnesses The Bird in flight. But he interacts with their believers, and so gods like The Spider and The Flame—which he can see far away on the horizon at its home in Ararat—become more real. And then, as his search for The Voice leads him to the mysterious Shay, who claims to be able to capture gods, Arjun angers Typhon, a river god that wallows in filth and disease and begins to hunt Arjun and all those he comes in contact with. Suddenly Arjun believes as he watches the destruction Typhon wreaks across the city even while the broken balance of power that Thunderer represents causes war to break out between rival rulers.

What causes Ararat to become so much more of a character than with other books is that in many ways, the gods that inhabit the city ARE the city, driving its weather and geography. Streets move without warning, creeks become rivers, and neighborhoods disappear. The inhabitants of Ararat accept this as normal, but Arjun, as our proxy, has difficulty handling the paradigm shift especially in the face of the other issues he faces. And eventually, when Arjun catches up to Shay again, he discovers even greater dimensions for Ararat than he could have imagined.

Thunderer is a rich and vibrant work, capturing the imagination of its readers easily and propelling them through the plot much as a traveler visiting Ararat. It took me to unexpected places, and I hated putting the book down for things like food and sleep. Though not as explicitly innovative as Mieville's New Crobuzon (Ararat's mortal inhabitants are human after all), it has similar depths and style. I'm very happy to have found this book and I look forward to proselytizing it nearly as much as I did Perdido Street Station. I also look forward to Gilman's latest, Gears of the City, with the further adventures of Arjun and his new found knowledge and skill.

Dark Gods

Recently, somewhere or another, I found a list of the "forgotten classics" of speculative fiction. One of the entries on the list was The Ceremonies by T.E.D. Klein. Intrigued by the description of Klein as Lovecraft with a modern sensibility and knowing my local comic shop owner is a fan of the horror genre, I asked him what he knew. A week or so later, Dark Gods, a collection of novellas and short stories, showed up at the store for me. I would not consider myself a fan of horror, though I have learned to enjoy Lovecraft, dancing as he does on the line between the genres of speculative fiction. So when critics compare an author so favorably to Lovecraft, I'm willing to give it a try, especially when the book is a gift. As it turns out, I'm grateful to have learned of Klein and getting the book. There is a very Lovecraftian sensibility to the stories in Dark Gods (it helps that one of them, "Black Man with a Horn," is narrated by a fictional companion of Lovecraft's). But something about the stories makes Lovecraft's connections to Edgar Allan Poe that much more clear. And anything that evokes Poe and Lovecraft has to be a good thing.

The stories have a tremendous sense of place about them. Klein himself is a New York City native, and his stories are immersed in the detail of life in the city and its environs. Such detail accentuates the grounding of the narrators; these people are not ones prone to anxiety or terror; they are citizen of the city, well-versed in its ways…or so they think. It's when they discover a race of evil near-men in the sewers, seeking out human women to bear their children and rampaging through the night during The Great Blackout ("Children of the Kingdom") that they realize that there is more to the world than they know. Likewise, an upwardly mobile businessman helps write a prog rock anthem to a nether god, then finds that a fan of the song uses his lyrics as instructions to invoke that god ("Nadelman's God"); Nadelman cannot decide if he is a creator or a dubious pawn of higher powers, nor can he believe that his pathetic rhymes are so potent. It is only when the god attempts to find its maker that he believes in, and then ultimately fears, the powers he may unknowingly wield.

After I finished the book, I realized that I wouldn't really call this collection horror, so much as "weird." Unlike Lovecraft's weird, however, the things that go bump in the night for Klein are not extraterrestrial, which is the facet that made me think of Poe. The stories by Klein feel similar to "The Fall of the House of Usher," the narrator often knows that something is wrong, initiating the feeling of dread that underscores the writing, and it is the revelation of the wrongness that forms the climax. And, like Poe, a good deal of the narrative is spent describing the narrator attempting to disprove what they suspect, all the while gathering evidence to the contrary. However, unlike Poe and Lovecraft, Klein is not Victorian in his prose; this is the writing style of the great short story masters like Cheever. While descriptive and invocative, the sentences are spartan and clean, propelling the reader that much more quickly through the narrative.

Unfortunately, Dark Gods is one of only three fiction books Klein has ever published, suffering as he does from what appears to be terminal writer's block. Given the delight I had in reading these stories and thinking about them, I think the horror genre is somewhat diminished by not having more examples of how works can rise above the clichés and become something that reaches out to fans of good writing. I readily admit, I've not read a lot of King or Koontz, and I know their output is prodigious compared to Klein, but I would stack these stories against theirs pretty quickly. I really recommend this book for pure pleasure of the craft, and if you go looking, I wish you luck in finding it.

Footfall

This will be a shorter post, with less detail, since Niven and Pournelle's Footfall is a selection for my book group.

There was a time when move-goers and readers looked for vast far-flung disaster epics, like The Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno, and Lucifer's Hammer, with a cast of thousands and multiple storylines to offer as many views as possible of the events of the story. Written in 1985, Footfall is a natural extension of that process, marrying up the classic alien invasion story to the disaster epic. The Earth, with the Berlin Wall still standing and US/USSR relations as chilly as they would ever be, finds itself the target of an invasion force. Of course, one of the impediments to resisting the aliens (who call themselves the Fithp) is that Earth is so divided, not only along politico-economic lines, but also along national lines. So at first the aliens find Earth to be an easy target.

But Niven and Pournelle load the dice in favor of humanity: the Fithp did not happen along their technology on their own; it was handed down to them by a predecessor race that has disappeared but whom the Fithp revere as gods. What this means is that, while the Fithp are technically more advanced than Earth, they are not innovative or creative; they are just tool-users with better tools. They are also herd animals, with instincts for the survival of the group is fairly malleable. While they intend for humans to eventually become part of t heir culture, as they invade, some Fithp end up separated from their fellows and when found by humans, they start to bond with them, passing on the "secrets" of the Fithp. The Fithp, as a very young race with little experience and creativity, expect humans to act just like the Fithp; but humans quash their instinct to expect the Fithp to act terrestrial and thus are able to take advantage of any cultural weaknesses. Furthermore, the FIthp came to Earth with no way to retreat should they meet a superior race—they would either conquer or join the race they find. Such a lack of caution doesn't seem like a useful trait for a space-faring race—retreat should always be an option. So when the Fithp are ultimately presented with their infal dilemma, they have very little choice, based in good part on incredibly poor planning.

Footfall is also extremely dated. While tensions between Russia and the US are heating back up (cooling down?) now, they are not nearly as chilly as the mid-80s. Also, one of the primary vehicles in the human resistance fleet is the space shuttle, a way cool toy for the mid-80s but well past its prime today. It's quite jarring to find the Challenger on a suicide mission when it attacks the Fithp mother ship. The first half of the book is filled with allusions and settings that have little to do with the world we know today, but once the Fithp attack, those ideological and temporal differences are not nearly so evident.

All in all, Footfall, though in hindsight perhaps not so deserving of its award nominations. It's a fast-moving adventure with all of humanity at stake. Niven and Pournelle capture the voices of their characters extremely well, bringing the global disaster into a more personal light, which was always the point of the disaster epic anyway. It's appropriate that I was led to this book at this time of year: it makes for perfect beach/airplane reading.

Blazing Combat

Fantagraphics Books has reprinted the four-issue run of Warren Publishing's Blazing Combat, some of the best black and white art from some of the finest artists of the 60s and 70s. I barely knew about the run of magazines—though I remember sneaking peeks at Creepy and Eerie when I was a child; Blazing Combat ran from October of 1965 to June of 1966. Included in the new book is every story published by the magazine and two semi-informative interviews with publisher James Warren and writer Archie Goodwin. The interviews are fairly interesting, describing the birth and rapid death of the magazine in the face of protests from patriotic distribution companies who disliked the magazine's apparent anti-war stance as the Vietnam War was kicking into gear. However, the description of the events of the magazine's demise, while compelling, are terribly one-sided and based on conjecture. It's hard to say how much of the story Warren tells is what was actually going on in the minds of the distributors, and the interviewer never really gets a good answer from Goodwin regarding the rationale for the magazine's end.

But truly, you shouldn't be coming to Blazing Combat for the interesting historical sidelight; this book is about some great story-telling. What first captures the eye are the splendid black-and-white panels by such artists as Reed Crandall, Al Williamson, Gene Colan, Grey Morrow, Alex Toth, and many others. The stories scan a wide range of human history, from the battle at Thermopylae to future combat in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Sometimes the art is not terribly historically accurate, but it is always compelling and worth taking some time to examine every page. The reproduction of the art is so fine that in many ways this book could be used as a primer for artists interesting in learning or refining the skill of black-and-white art. And of course, good reproduction doesn't really matter if the reproduced subject matter is bland, but it seems clear that other than those historical inaccuracies, the artists were near the top of their form in every case.

Balanced with the fine art is impressive writing from one of comic's great writers, Archie Goodwin. Given pretty much free reign by publisher Warren, Goodwin wrote masterful stories about the condition of war and how it affects the human spirit. Goodwin holds very little back, noting that even when the "good" side wins, there is a tremendous cost to battle in both people and emotion. War is indeed hell, no matter the circumstances, and the stories and art emphasize the horror at every turn. This is not to say that the book is a gore-fest; in fact, the art seems delicate in that regard—people obviously die, but it is not horrific. It is the settings and scenarios that Goodwin's writing sets out, which the art fulfills, that carry the tone of the book.

The biggest regret I have about the book is that the tremendous covers by Frank Frazetta are pretty much left out. There is only one picture of each, and they are thumbnail size, not enough to being to explore the detail and intricacy of war art by Frazetta. I get the feeling there was some difficulty about being allowed to reproduce the original covers, because it really is a gaping hole in the collection. Otherwise, this is a fantastic piece of comic history, a must-have for anyone interested in the literary capabilities of comics or who just enjoys fine black and white art.

Up

Pixar has done it again. It's become increasingly obvious that Pixar should be the only studio that draws an audience to its movies by its name alone. Up is a superior movie (let alone animated movie) that anyone who appreciates good cinema should see. It does have flaws, not the least of which is that Pixar still feels it has to entice an audience of children, which leads to false expectations. But it rises above those flaws, speaking to the human condition with whimsy and patience.

The movie opens with young Carl and Ellie sharing their love for adventure, embodied by the great explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer). Together they share the dream of going to the site of one of Muntz's greatest discoveries, Paradise Falls. This common goal becomes the backbone to the love that grows between them and informs every decision the adult Carl (Edward Asner) makes. Carl and Ellie decide to save their pennies to eventually buy a trip to Venezuela, but the ephemera of everyday life get in the way—the car needs new tires, the house needs repairs. Their life together is beautifully rendered in a matter of a few minutes without dialogue, successive scenes showing the major turning points in their life—the wedding, the companionship, the heartbreak and how they overcome it. Finally they grow old together and eventually Ellie dies, leaving Carl alone and with the painful regret that they never accomplished the goal that brought them together in the first place. Heartbroken and on the verge of losing the home they built together, Carl puts together a crazy scheme: inflating enough helium balloons to lift his house off of its foundation and carry him and the memories of Ellie to Paradise Falls.

But just as the real world got in the way of earlier attempts to achieve his dream, it interferes again, this time in the form of Wilderness Explorer Russell. Russell is determined to get his final badge, Assisting the Elderly, in order to achieve Senior Wilderness Explorer status and thus entice an absent father back into his life for the award ceremony. Determined to assist Carl, Russell is accidentally taken up as the house leaves its foundation. Together they nearly reach Paradise Falls and then decide to drag the house the remaining distance. Along the way they pick up a giant bird and a talking dog as companions and end up being sucked into the failed dreams of Charles Muntz.

One of the really fascinating things about this movie is that it doesn't play to the clichés. Carl and Muntz are bitter old men, discouraged at never achieving what they wanted from their lives. Russell is a young kid, not smarter than the old men, and prone to emotional outbursts of excitement, joy, and impatience. The bird is cute, but not saccharine and Dug is not the smartest dog in Muntz's pack. But all of them are determined and the most unlikely of clashes drives the latter half of the film. It becomes astonishingly clear that Pixar knows and loves dogs, hilariously so. The commercials that show Dug being distracted by a squirrel only typify the brilliant caricatures of the dogs.

Unfortunately, that commercial, filled with comedy and hijinks, misrepresents the movie. Folks, let me be clear: most kids under seven will not like this movie. It is sometimes very slow-moving (especially for a child's attention span) and the extended scenes of the joy and sadness in Carl and Ellie's marriage bore and confuse the younger audience (in our theater, several children wanted an explanation as to what was going on and wondered if their parents had brought them to the wrong movie). At its core, Up is about moving on, with accepting the pain and loss of the past and taking those experiences and memories with you as you start a new stage of your life. This is patently not something that young children will understand. True, as Carl learns to move on, with the gentle guidance of Ellie's spirit and love, some funny things happen: a house floats to Venezuela, he meets talking dogs, and he meets his hero. But he is so determined to meet his own goal, to extend the life he wanted to have, he doesn't see the characters around him who care for him getting hurt by his obsession. It's only when he can throw off the collar of his past that he finishes his grief…and more hijinks ensue, along with the promise of a more fulfilling life. Carl now interacts with the characters in his life and cares about them, instead of just living with a memory, no matter how sweet.

This synopsis leaves out subplots and jokes and action sequences, all of which is there in spades and lots of fun ("the cone of shame"!). I suspect that viewed at that level only, Up would be a curiously unsatisfying movie, seeming disjointed and jerky. But Carl is the constant, and while children may be baffled, they have relatively short attention spans and generally seemed pleased with the outcome. But, coming from Pixar, the real emotional punches are for the adults and, being a Pixar movie, it successfully makes its points while being so very entertaining.