tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76125272965152808402024-03-13T22:31:48.394-05:00Pandora's LongboxAn attempt to collect my thoughts and opinions about speculative fiction, comics, and movies (and rarely, music).Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.comBlogger361125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-59772248088198921042017-04-03T15:10:00.000-05:002017-04-03T15:16:40.110-05:00Ghost in the Shell<div class="MsoNormal">
Mrs. Speculator and I are pretty big fans of the anime movie
and series, <i>Ghost in the Shell</i>. Sure,
there are probably people who know far more about the franchise than we do, but
compared to the average American movie goer, we are probably in the top ten
percent of folks with knowledge about the plot and characters. But like most
franchises with which we are familiar, the new <i>Ghost in the Shell</i> is not for us. That should not preclude any fan
of science fiction, especially fans of cyberpunk, to see it. It is absolutely
gorgeous to look at—the cityscapes are spectacular. The soundtrack is
delightful—I have fantasies of putting it and Daft Punk’s soundtrack for <i>Tron: Legacy</i> in infinite loop. But the
only similarities between the movie and the <i>GitS</i>
franchise are in pieces of the backstory, the characters’ names, and their
general appearance. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve discussed in the past how being fans of a piece burdens
the viewer as they take on an interpretation of that piece in another medium.
David Lynch’s <i>Dune</i> was probably my
first exposure to this; I walked out of the theater before the movie had ended
on opening night, because the film ends with a thunderstorm. As I’ve grown
older and more experienced in studying narrative, I can figure out why some narrative
changes are made: sometimes to save time, sometimes to placate a less nuanced
audience, and sometimes …I just can’t explain why. But no matter the reasons
for the changes, the onus is on the viewer to set aside any preconceived ideas
about the piece and to accept that what is being viewed is just a different
thing. Then the critic’s job (or the viewer’s responsibility as they think
about what they have seen) becomes split: does the new piece do justice to the
spirit of the original and how good is the new piece independent of the ties
that bind it to the original piece.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The creative staff thinking about a movie adaptation of <i>Ghost in the Shell</i> were faced with a
couple of daunting tasks. First, the setting of the franchise is well-defined
over a loved comic series, a gorgeous couple of animated movies, and several
well-received TV series. How can a movie with an estimated two-hour run time
hope to capture all of that? I imagine the creative conversations become a
matter of choosing which elements to keep and which to not deal with and also
which to modify and how to modify them. And then with a property as dense and
complex as <i>GitS</i> thematically and
philosophically, the same questions have to be asked for mainstream audiences
who notoriously reject movies that require deep thought. For instance, <i>Ghost in the Shell</i> makes a pretense of
pondering the individual’s role in an increasingly technological society—the
driving question of the franchise. During the first half of the movie, Major
(Scarlett Johansson) has her brain inserted into a “shell”, an advanced
cybernetic body capable of some really cool tricks, but she spends a lot of her
alone time staring into mirrors and looking at her appendages as if they are
not a part of her. Her coworkers in Section 9 assure her that she is human, but
she is not so sure, especially since her savior/constructor, Dr. Ouelet
(Juliette Binoche), can erase her memories and personality with a few
keystrokes. But cyberpunk navel-gazing is not going to make most American
viewers want to see your movie, let alone love it, so action sequences must be
inserted. Instantly, the mood of the movie goes from contemplative to
free-for-all, and any strong ties the movie might have had to the original
franchise are forgotten in the big budget SF aspects. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The other characters in the movie are not even
two-dimensional, which is also a departure from the rest of the franchise. A
little effort is given to making Batou (Pilou Asbæk) more rounded, but it is cliched,
so blunt and trite all at once. Togusa (Chin Han), the character from the
franchise who remains cybernetically unenhanced, offers the movie a foil for
Major’s meditations. Sadly, he is dramatically underused, having a speaking
role in perhaps two scenes in the movie, and so the opportunity goes untaken
and the movie devolves into standard SF special effects slugfest.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So the first part of the question about remakes (or re-imaginings,
the term marketing folks use to give themselves wiggle room when the complaints
come rolling in about the differences from the source material) is a definite
no—this movie is not a good adaptation of source material. And yet, <i>and yet</i>, it is still a decent SF movie
if you can get past its ties to the original. Its setting and atmosphere are
perfect for a cyberpunk story; the music is alternatively brooding and
ethereal. The city that is the setting for the story owes more to <i>Blade Runner</i> than its own source
material; nevertheless, it is gorgeous to look at. And truly, the make-up and
CGI work that went into the cybernetic enhancements of the characters is just
stunning. This has the feel of what real people would do with the ability to modify
and adapt their parts both for esthetic reasons and functional. The viewer is
simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by the peripheral characters and extras.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Unfortunately, the plot is not very deep either. If you’ve
seen two or three big-screen science fiction epics, you should be able to solve
the “mystery” pretty quickly. And if you can’t figure it out, the plot doesn’t
hesitate to beat the viewer over the head with obvious clues and even
revelations. It’s typical fare (so far away from the depths and power of the
source material) and okay for escapism. But if you want more from your science
fiction, save your money for a matinee or until you can see this on demand.
While the cinematography and effects are gorgeous, they do not give enough
reason to pay full price for this movie, unless you have more money than you
know what to do with. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The jarring dislocation between the source material and this
latest incarnation just lead me to wonder “why?” It’s a decent science fiction
movie. But if it is going to be so removed from its source, why bother to use
the source at all? Why not make a truly independent thing, with its own characters
and plot? I suspect the answer has to do with money and the inability of the “real
fan” to not see the adaptation. “Real fans” just can’t stay away, so it’s
guaranteed income for the movie. And if the non-fans can be sold on the
worthiness of the movie, those people will come also. And that explanation saddens
me because of just how cynical it is. The love a viewer has for the source
becomes merely a tool for those trying to profit from it.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><o:p></o:p></div>
Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-60361304715326341032014-02-05T09:39:00.000-05:002014-02-05T09:39:27.326-05:00Subgenres in Gravity<div class="MsoNormal">
Recently I ran across a review of the excellent movie <i>Gravity</i> in which the reviewer announced
that the movie was not actually science fiction. In his own words:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Gravity features no aliens, no interstellar space travel, no
time travel, and it doesn’t take place in the future. In fact, given that it
involves a space shuttle as its method of travel into space, it would seem to
be set in a past. (<a href="http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/opinions/gravity-is-not-sci-fi.php">http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/opinions/gravity-is-not-sci-fi.php</a>)
</blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another similar review goes like this:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Gravity is not a science fiction film. […]There is no great
speculation about future technologies. No aliens arrive to inconvenience Ms
Bullock. Yes, it takes place in space. But so did Apollo 13. Was that science
fiction? (<a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/screenwriter/2013/10/09/gravity-is-not-a-science-fiction-film/">http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/screenwriter/2013/10/09/gravity-is-not-a-science-fiction-film/</a>)</blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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My first impulse is to nitpick the rationale that each
critic bases their decision on, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the
reader even though I find it particularly galling that for some reason both
writers seem to believe that science fiction can only exist if there are aliens
involved (<i>Gattaca</i>? <i>The Truman Show</i>?). Instead, I’d like to
introduce a subgenre of science fiction to these critics.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Gravity</i> uses today’s
science and technology as the core to its plot, which may be what is throwing
off these reviewers, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t science fiction. Science
fiction can generally be divided into two general spheres, “hard science
fiction” and “soft”. Allen Steele describes hard science fiction as “the form
of imaginative literature that uses either established or carefully extrapolated
science as its backbone”; science fiction that doesn’t have this foundation is
generally termed “soft”. Unfortunately, 99% of science fiction film is soft,
with barely a glance at the fundaments of physics as they strive for better and
greater special effects and costumes and make-up. As a result, in the popular
imagination, science fiction is identified by those elements—big-ass spaceships
firing on things, weird aliens, impressive technology with lots of lights. But in
the history of written science fiction, hard stories are a healthy minority with
a long rich history, and writing it requires something of a specialist’s touch.
Writing hard science fiction requires two difficult skills—an understanding of scientific
principles and their applications in reality and the ability to communicate
those principles and applications in an entertaining way (Arthur C. Clarke is
considered one of the masters of hard science fiction). Unfortunately, neither
attribute is very applicable to cinema, where the audience generally has a
short attention span and wants to be wowed rather than lectured to. Part of the
power of <i>Gravity</i> is that it succeeds
despite the potential pitfalls of its choice of genre.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Gravity</i> also taps
into a smaller subgenre of science fiction storytelling that is not often used
in cinema, that of the “problem story”. In a problem story, the protagonist or
protagonists are faced with some sort of crisis in exotic circumstances that
can only come from the science fiction genre—an astronaut crashes into the
lunar surface and has to figure out a way to communicate with his base, for
example. The roots of this kind of story are clearly related to science fiction’s
own roots in the adventure story: similar stories have been written in the
western and action genres where cowboys run out of water crossing a desert or
an expedition member gets cut off from his party in the deep Amazon. It could
be argued that because other genres have similar kinds of stories, perhaps the
problem story belongs in its own classification outside of genre silos. That
isn’t an unreasonable idea, but the individual stories differ by the problems
that are being solved, which in turn are based almost solely on the setting of
the story. And if we presume that the setting is a good bit of what determines
the genre, then we have to take genre into account. In <i>Gravity</i>, Sandra Bullock’s Ryan Stone faces the problem she faces exactly
because she is travelling in space. And in turn, those problems are directly
related to established science. <o:p></o:p></div>
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One of the most widely beloved science fiction short stories
of the pulp era is Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations”, a problem story of the
first rank (I have actually found it online at <a href="http://www.spacewesterns.com/articles/105/">http://www.spacewesterns.com/articles/105/</a>).
In the story, Godwin establishes a very
precise set of circumstances: a colony is suffering from a deadly plague and a
messenger ship races to it with the cure. The ship itself is stripped to the
bare essentials in order to maximize its speed, and every bit of weight has
been calculated to ensure that only the exact amount of fuel needed to land on
the planet is onboard. The cold equation is that acceleration is dependent on
mass, one that we have yet to figure out how to work around. But after the
situation has been laid out to the reader, Godwin throws a wrench into the
works—the pilot discovers a stowaway, a young girl who thought it would be a
simple way to visit her brother on the planet, unaware of the crisis the ship
and its pilot are trying to avert. With the girl’s extra weight, the pilot is
faced with either a doomed attempt to land or perpetual orbits around the
planet, never able to get down safely. What will the protagonist do—how will he
deal with the hard science of physics and its remorseless effects on his
mission? The solution is what sets “The Cold Equations” above most of its
peers. At the time of its release, in <i>Astounding
Science Fiction</i> in August 1954, I don’t think anyone solved the problem
nearly the way that Godwin chose to.<o:p></o:p></div>
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No, <i>Gravity</i> doesn’t
have aliens or time travel. What it does have, however, is a solid foundation
in the traditions of science fiction. And as I watched <i>Gravity</i>, the knowledge that a much-beloved area of science fiction
that doesn’t get much attention was getting a spotlight made it that much more
enjoyable.<o:p></o:p></div>
Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-67174633168468005992013-12-12T09:37:00.000-05:002013-12-12T09:37:20.257-05:00A Writer’s Dilemma: Superman Syndrome and Almost HumanMrs. Speculator and I have been enjoying the new Fox series, <i>Almost Human</i>. On the one hand, there is the really strong chemistry between the lead actors, Karl Urban and Michael Ealy. In addition, the writers have given some fairly serious thought to potential future technologies and their use (and abuse in the case of the criminals our heroes pursue every week). They have even managed some little things, like carrying minor plot points over into consecutive episodes, rather than make each episode act like a silo with only the macro story arc (the “mythology” in <i>X-Files</i> terms) connecting them. In fact, if there’s much of a weakness right now, it’s in <i>Almost Human</i>’s lack of a mythology. But the series is just starting out—it has to be given time to establish its rhythms and characters. Even massively mythology-driven shows, like<i> Buffy the Vampire Slayer</i>, had to take a while to introduce and frame the characters and standardize their interactions. Mrs. Speculator and I generally give new shows that we are interested in three episodes to sell us. In most cases, when we have that third-episode discussion, rarely do we talk about the over-riding story arc at that point. (In fact, here’s a corollary—if a series is pounding on its mythology that early in its run, it often will not make it past the first season, if it in fact makes it that far.) Unfortunately, <i>Almost Human</i> seems to have written itself into an unfortunate plot loop with its latest episode, “Blood Brothers”, and I’m curious to see if they did it on purpose to delight the viewers or if they are aware of what they did.<br />
<br />
You may be familiar with the popular phrase that has been long associated with Superman: “Faster than a bullet, stronger than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…”. If you’re not familiar with the history of Superman, you may not be aware that this was originally a description of the upper limits of his powers. Superman could jump real high or real far, but flight was not one of his abilities. He could race a bullet and catch it in mid-flight, but he couldn’t travel at the speed of sound. So how did he get to the power levels he has in the popular imagination now? Think about it from a writer’s point of view: what kind of story can I tell about Superman that doesn’t seem exactly like every other Superman story? When Superman started out, he fought thugs and government corruption. But eventually, the readers are going to want something more, so the writers introduce villains that challenge Superman. What if Superman had to fight a villain who could also jump over buildings? There are two ways to overcome this—the hard way, which involves imaginative story-telling and creative use of the power set, or the easy way, by increasing Superman’s powers. Generally, the easy way wins out, so Superman strains a bit and then discovers that instead of being able to jump, say, a quarter mile, he can now jump a mile. And then a little while later, it’s five miles, then 20, and it grows and grows until eventually someone comes up with the idea of flight. During the late 50s and early 60s, the writers of the various Superman stories played with this idea by giving him ridiculous powers, like Super-ventriloquism. I’d like to believe that the writers were mocking themselves as they did this, and the stories are often a great deal of fun. But it may well be that this period was just a long detour down the easy path.<br />
<br />
It’s this kind of power creep that I refer to as “Superman syndrome”, because eventually the problem circles back on itself—now that Superman can fly through space near the speed of light and can withstand having mountains dropped on his head, what kind of villain poses a challenge to him? The writer either has to keep amping up Superman’s powers or really buckle down and tell the story in a different kind of way or perhaps tell a different kind of story. It’s at this crux that the really good writing shines through, as the writers begin to move off into different kinds of story-telling. Alan Moore’s great “For the Man Who Has Everything” is a sly wink at the Superman syndrome—how do you challenge the man who has all those powers? Moore’s solution was ingenious, and the story-telling was well-conceived and implemented.<br />
<br />
The point of all this? The writers of <i>Almost Human</i>, and especially the 9 December episode, “Blood Brothers” put themselves into a Superman syndrome loop, less than ten episodes into their first season. And, again, I’m curious to see if they attempt to resolve it. I want to believe that they have plans to address it—because again, that’s an impetus for really strong writing. But I’m also dubious.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>==SPOILERS FOLLOW==</b><br />
<br />
The show introduced a minor character who acted somewhat as a plot advancement tool in the episode. Maya Vaughn (Megan Ferguson) is a witness to a murder and is scheduled to appear in a trial. She also has had an operation that increases her use of her brain’s capacity, but it has had an interesting side effect—she can talk to dead people when she touches an object that they have touched. (You could do some really interesting story things with this—what happens when she goes to the store and grabs a shopping cart?) The other witness to the murder is herself murdered, and Maya touches her scarf and begins communing with her. The android, Dorian (Michael Ealy) appears to believe that she now possesses what is usually termed a supernatural power, while the human, John Kennex (Karl Urban) does not believe her (that’s heavy-handed irony…). But by the end of the episode, and because of a few other interactions with her that have no real bearing on solving the murder case(s), we are made to believe that Maya really can talk to the dead.<br />
<br />
So what’s the problem?<br />
<br />
Given that the show is really a police procedural set in the future and that the show’s stars are a police detective and his android assistant, the writers have now made it possible for the police to get substantial help for every murder they investigate and every crime in which someone is killed. The police have been handed a tool, and since part of the premise of the show is that the police are falling behind in the technology race with organized criminals, they should use it at every opportunity. If there’s ever an episode where they spend the whole time trying to figure out a murder without consulting Maya, then the writing is questionable.<br />
While the introduction of Maya closes off some obvious storytelling paths, it also opens up some really cool ones. Consulting an actual medium is not exactly the kind of logical progression of evidence that most courts would allow in a trial, so if Kennex ever does go to Maya to discover the identity of a criminal, part of the plot has to be about coming up with sufficient evidence to convict outside of Maya. Such a plot could lead to some interesting turns and twists. Or what if a connected criminal finds out that Kennex consulted Maya and tries to use that conversation in court to throw out a trial—tainted evidence, hearsay evidence? And Maya’s witnesses are dead—exactly how reliable are they after time spent in whatever happens to people after they die?<br />
<br />
So now, in addition to the things I already like about <i>Almost Human</i>, I’m also going to be watching to see what they do with this development. I’ll try to remember to update the blog if anything comes of it.
Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-28038835708428790322012-11-08T12:59:00.004-05:002012-11-08T12:59:53.647-05:00The Great Science Fiction Stories 9 (1947)<div class="MsoNormal">
The ninth in this anthology series, this volume contains
stories that were being written and revised soon after the close of World War
II. It’s obvious that the shadow of that war and its ending hangs over the
stories, as more than the usual number are concerned with the after-effects of atomic
warfare. It’s a stereotype that science fiction is inherently optimistic, and a
number of stories show the reality opposing the stereotype.<o:p></o:p></div><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>“Little Lost Robot”
by Isaac Asimov (<i>Astounding</i>)</b> – I
admit to not being very fond of Asimov’s famous Robot series. It’s not that I
don’t like them; it’s just that I don’t think they are as amazing as is
generally held. For me, this story is a great example of their weakness. There
is no denying the impact of Asimov’s robotic laws both on fiction and in
developing technology, but that doesn’t mean that all the stories that used
those laws are necessarily good. While a lot of science fiction uses aliens as
the gimmick on which to write other genres of fiction, Asimov instead used robots.
<o:p></o:p></div><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Little Lost Robot” is, really, a mystery, a tidy little
logic problem based on the premise of the robotic laws. The characterization,
often a problem with Asimov, is decidedly flat. Asimov actively makes the
characters share animosity towards one another for no reason that is apparent
in the story itself, while the story implies that they should get along, not
just for a common purpose, but because they are smart and thoughtful people.
The story ends up being ingenious, but not really “great”. It makes a terrific
example of what was good about the writing of that time, but I have a lot of
trouble making it signpost of the best science fiction has to offer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>“Tomorrow's Children”
Poul Anderson (<i>Astounding</i>)</b> –
Given the current interest in post-apocalyptic stories, Anderson’s first story
in this anthology series might be interesting to modern readers. I find it
interesting that the story comes out of <i>Astounding</i>,
whose editor John Campbell believed in human exceptionalism and the ability to
rise above any obstacle. Then again, the story does go to an interesting place
if only because it is far more realistic than most of the current
post-apocalyptic stories. Still, it’s a bit over-long and flat in its delivery,
making it a little difficult to read. However, given that it was Anderson’s
first published work, it serves as a sign of what was to follow in a long and
brilliant career.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>“Child's Play” by
William Tenn (<i>Astounding</i>)</b> – There
seems to be a running motif, usually found in stories by Kuttner and Moore, of
toys from the future coming back to wreak havoc on contemporary characters.
This is another of those stories by a mostly forgotten writer, William Tenn.
The motif allows the story to dance along the edge of whimsy and dread, but
they usually end up strongly on the side of dread. This one cuts a little
harder, since it involves biogenetics, and the narrator may not be entirely
sane as he plays with a child’s science kit from the future. While the ending
is telegraphed pretty early on, it is still an evocative piece.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>“Time and Time Again”
by H. Beam Piper (<i>Astounding</i>)</b> –
Piper is probably best known for his Fuzzy novels, which are enjoying a
resurrection among modern readers. “Time and Time Again” is an interesting
twist on a time travel story, probably fairly ground-breaking in its day but a
little clichéd now. If you could travel back into your own past, how would you
change things? Piper chooses to use an altruist as his protagonist, so his
interest is in changing rotten history rather than just making his life easier.
It’s a departure from the Piper I know and so valuable for that alone. The
story also makes an interesting introduction into the possibility of time
travel, forming an interesting resonance with the recent move <i>Looper</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>“Tiny and the
Monster” by Theodore Sturgeon (<i>Astounding</i>)</b>
– Science fiction of this time is stereotypically known for its alien invasion
story, but Sturgeon turns that trope around a bit. The gimmick ends up being a
little bit hokey, but Sturgeon’s writing is fun and breezy. Sturgeon shows off
his ability to build characters in this story as well, adding straightforward
humor to a story that otherwise could be considered twee.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>“E for Effort” by T.
L. Sherred (<i>Astounding</i>)</b> - This is
a fairly well-known piece, reprinted in <i>The
Science Fiction Hall of Fame</i>. It’s an interesting take on time travel,
imagining that instead of physically moving backwards in time, the characters
can merely see into the past. They decide to use this technology to make
movies, and the story becomes an interesting view into mid-century moviemaking
with a slow progression to something bigger. The writing is very much like
Robert Heinlein’s short stories, with a mildly cynical take on culture and
human nature. Its climax comes fast and requires a few re-readings to fully
understand, but it’s powerful in its delivery. I’ve thought about this story
often recently and was delighted to uncover it again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>“Letter to Ellen” by
Chan Davis (<i>Astounding</i>)</b> – One of
the characteristics of some of the best short stories from this general time
period is the attempt to put a human emotional face on technological changes. Science
and invention were blossoming at the end of World War II, and the best science
fiction stories attempted to put an emotional element on those advances,
weighing if they were perhaps not worth their cost. “Letter to Ellen” is an
interesting story about technology that we’ve really only begun to explore to
its full potential in the past decade, so there is a predictive element to
Davis’s writing. However, he points out a bias that grows because of the use of
the technology, a bias that doesn’t feel logical but I’m sure would happen if
our science reaches the state described in the novel. Interestingly enough, it’s
a similar question raised by the novel <i>Frankenstein</i>,
but from a different point of view.<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<b>“The Figure” by
Edward Grendon (<i>Astounding</i>)</b> –
This story is very much like an episode of <i>Twilight
Zone</i>: short with a twist ending that leaves the audience dangling to find
out what happens next. While it is fun, the twist is unfortunately telegraphed
early and often. It may well be that decades of watching <i>Twilight Zone</i> and similarly themed and paced TV shows has made it
easy to spot the twists of such things.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>“With Folded Hands .
. .” by Jack Williamson (<i>Astounding</i>)</b>
– This is perhaps the most well-known story in this collection. I’ve also come
across it in <i>The Science Fiction Hall of
Fame</i>, so it is fairly well regarded by readers and critics.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br><div class="MsoNormal">
I think this story is a nice counterpoint to the Robot
stories by Asimov, wherein the three laws of robotics generally force the
robots to be relatively docile and benign. But Williamson extrapolates the idea
of telling a near-perfect machine to help man to ironic but plausible extremes.
Given the near-universal understanding that the greatest threat to man is man
itself, it’s fairly amazing that no one attempted to write this story before.
In addition, the story has Williamson’s knack for placing a contemporary man of
the 40s into a future that is easily recognizable, but different enough to
allow there to be space for the story. While a lot of science fiction projects
a future where the world is far less complicated, Williamson also recognizes
that no matter how automated the world might become, the nature of people is
less likely to change quickly. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br><div class="MsoNormal">
<b>“The Fires Within” by
Arthur C. Clarke (<i>Fantasy</i>)</b> – This
is a strong example of Clarke’s own puzzle stories, involving characters trying
to solve a mystery. To me, Clarke does this much better than Asimov, especially
because his characters are far more believable. Clarke also doesn’t fall back
on the clichés as models for what he writes. The framing device for this story
is fairly unique, definitely unpredictable, and a delight when fully revealed.
The final few paragraphs may seem trite, especially to an audience familiar with
the twists and turns of <i>The Twilight Zone</i>,
but that ending is merely Clarke’s nifty way of closing out his story, rather
than the shocking purpose for the story in the first place. It’s not a weighty
story and not Clarke’s best, but it is a good example of what he does when he
truly excels (see “The Star” and “Nine Billion Names of God”). <o:p></o:p></div>
<br><div class="MsoNormal">
<b>“Zero Hour” by Ray
Bradbury (<i>Planet Stories</i>) – </b>“Zero
Hour” is a great example of Ray Bradbury’s ability to take the mundane and turn
it into something terrifying. The story focuses on fairly generic children’s
games based on imagination, but as it proceeds, the sense of lurking dread
grows and grows. The story begins with the adults laughing on the childish
games until coincidences begin piling up. Bradbury pulls off a neat trick,
allowing the reader to know exactly what is going on, so the horror comes not
from our discovery of the truth but of the slow realization by the adult
characters about what is going to happen. I’m reminded of the lengthier “Something
Wicked This Way Comes” in the story’s basis on the usually innocent, but the
the brevity of “Zero Hour” compacts and condenses the chill.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br><div class="MsoNormal">
<b>“Hobbyist” by Eric
Frank Russell (<i>Astounding</i>)</b> – Eric
Frank Russell is a mostly forgotten writer from the 40s and 50s, but whose
admirers think he deserves a revival. “Hobbyist” concerns an explorer who ends
up far from human culture with no fuel. His lone companion on the planet he
finds himself on is a macaw named Laura. Russell spends some time justifying
choosing a macaw, but I’ve never been a fan of pet birds, so the explanations
ring hollow. But it does give the lead character someone to talk to and to
provide a second reaction to the story’s events for the reader. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br><div class="MsoNormal">
The planet the explorer finds himself on is lush and lively,
but something about it unsettles him. It was pretty clear to me what that
something was, but it takes the trained explorer a while to figure it out. And
just as he struggles to understand the cause of his concern, the action
accelerates and gives the explorer an extremely <i>deus ex machina</i> way home.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br><div class="MsoNormal">
Russell’s writing has a fine style and subtle humor, more
subtle than the story that follows it, for example. Russell also raises some
huge questions, especially in the last few paragraphs, but his handling of those
large questions feels a little trite. Nonetheless, the story is engrossing
despite the macaw and the “sense of humor” she displays.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br><div class="MsoNormal">
<b>“Exit the Professor”
by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (<i>Thrilling
Wonder Stories</i>)</b> – It’s astonishing how small a role humor plays in
longer fiction. “Exit the Professor” is another of Kuttner and Moore’s
outrageously charming stories where the science fiction takes a backseat to
making the reader laugh. The story is based on a fairly common premise—a few
individuals have taken the next step evolutionary step, but the story imagines
them being brought up as, for lack of a better word, rednecks. And when their
difference is uncovered by a visiting professor, all sorts of mayhem ensues as
they race to keep their secret from the world at large.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br><div class="MsoNormal">
<b>“Thunder and Roses”
by Theodore Sturgeon (<i>Astounding</i>)</b>
– Asimov makes the point that atomic destruction certainly seemed to be on
everyone’s minds as reflected in the stories of 1947. With the dramatic end of
World War II and the revelation of the resources available via atomic power,
there was perhaps reason to be fearful. Sturgeon’s story is a powerful piece
set after the United States has been devastated by a surprise attack. The
narrator stumbles across an important secret and must weigh whether to use it,
balancing his instinct against the request of an unexpected companion. The
writing is contemplative and compelling, and it’s difficult to not feel for the
narrator as he puzzles through his final days in a city dying from fallout.<o:p></o:p></div>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-4805049234738836722012-10-30T08:54:00.001-05:002012-10-30T08:54:52.789-05:00Leviathan Wakes<div class="MsoNormal">
It strikes me that space opera is the epic fantasy of
science fiction. That is, you expect vast settings and a large cast of characters,
all moving about their little narratives that eventually get tied up by the end
of the book/series and somehow weave together to overcome the threat that imperils
the solar system/galaxy/universe. Even if you are fairly unfamiliar with either
subgenre, you can most likely do a quick comparison of the <i>Star Wars</i> (I’m thinking of the original trilogy mostly) and <i>Lord of the Rings</i> movies in your mind. They
both have their avatars of oppressive evil—Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine versus Saruman and Sauron.
They are both far-flung, moving through planetary systems quickly and several
countries in Middle Earth respectively. They both have a number of characters
whose stories have to be maintained and which come together at the climax to
thwart the evil avatars and their attempt to dominate everything and everyone. Therefore
it is something of a delight to find a novel that is clearly space opera, but
succeeds in escaping these tropes to do something innovative. <i>Leviathan Wakes</i>, by James S. A. Corey
(the pseudonym of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) is that novel, finding a
crevice in the stalwart tradition of space opera and exploiting it with a
compelling story.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While the scope of <i>Leviathan
Wakes</i> is the entire solar system and while the threat does involve
something extra-solar “invading”, the scope is smaller by magnitudes than the
galactic milieu of most space opera and especially smaller than the
universe-sized setting of the earliest space opera. The novel still makes it
clear that we are talking about vast stretches of distance and time, larger
than most people truly comprehend, but it also is satisfied to only deal with
the solar system from the asteroid belt in. The novel also doesn’t posit a
far-distant future where the science allows people to move freely around spacecraft
that exceed the speed of light; rather, the science of <i>Leviathan Wakes</i> is not that far advanced from what we currently
have now. This also results in delayed communication as participants in the
conversation wait for their parts in a conversation to travel at light speed.
Thus the setting that the novel inhabits is grand, but doesn’t require the
suspension of disbelief of most space operas.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This realistic approach is enhanced by the novel’s focus on
really just two characters, James Holden and Joe Miller. Holden is the
executive officer on the <i>Canterbury</i>,
an ice miner plying the asteroid belt. Holden is sent with a small crew to
discover the source of a distress signal, but he ends up witnessing the
destruction of the <i>Canterbury</i> by
unknown forces. Joe Miller is a nourish private police officer on the asteroid
Ceres, who notices strange goings-on among the criminal elements before being
given a scut assignment to track down the missing heiress of an Earth
industrial mogul. Both characters pull on the threads that are left to them as
disaster after disaster strikes—a war breaks out between Earth, Mars, and the
largely independent asteroid belt—and both characters try to minimize not only
the damage around them but their own unexpected responsibility for the events
shaping the war. While there are a few other minor characters that play parts
in the ongoing story, Holden and Miller alternate the story’s point-of-view, even
as they end up together on the same ship. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The two main characters are pretty deeply flawed, which is a
twist on space opera’s general insistence on paragons, or characters who
overcome their flaws to become paragons. This is not to say that Holden and
Miller are not good people, because they are. But they are fully rounded
characters, existing on a continuum rather than a binary. Holden is something
of an idealist, expecting that people will do the right thing especially in the
cold light of truth. Miller on the other hand is a cynic, expecting people to
only act in their self-interest unless forced to do otherwise. This dichotomy
causes real friction between them; even though they have the same goals, their respective
methodologies disturb each other. And this lies at the heart of space opera—as humans
explore the vast expanse of space, the very enormity of their endeavor
highlights and intensifies the humanity of the characters. Paradoxically, it is
against the largest setting, when individuals appear the smallest, do the
characters excel the most.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The large backdrop also exacerbates the worst qualities as
well. Given such a large arena in which to succeed, when failures happen, they
are often spectacular. In <i>Leviathan Wakes</i>,
it is human folly which enables the circumstances that drive the story: the war
between the planets is a façade, a ploy setting ignorant militaries at each
other’s’ throats in order to hide a corporate power grab, which in turn
potentially endangers the entirety of the human race. This is the crux on which
Miller and Holden’s differences lie. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite its differences from the stereotypes of the genre, <i>Leviathan Wakes</i> remains clearly a space
opera. The action is relentless and on a large scale. The questions are big and
the answers that Holden and Miller uncover in their search are bigger. And like
well-written space opera, <i>Leviathan Wakes</i>
is engaging and fun, difficult to put down once started. I’m pleased that there
is a sequel and potentially a series.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-58924983967897629872012-10-24T07:58:00.000-05:002012-10-24T07:58:20.461-05:00Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1<div class="MsoNormal">
In 1986, DC Comics unleashed two of the most important
series in comics history, broaching the possibility of mainstream superhero
comics as literature. The stories are packed with all the accoutrements of what
supposedly makes for good books: symbolism, philosophy, thought-provoking
commentary on the human condition. One of those two series, <i>Watchmen</i>, has recently been made into a
movie, attempting to take 12 issues and condense the images and words into
something like a feature length movie. Audiences who didn’t know the story were
put off by the storytelling, in part because of the denseness that faithfulness
to the original required. They were also put off by its darkness: people with
power are not any better than those without, they just have more ability to do the
things they want to do. This is not the stereotypical view of superheroes,
supposed paragons of virtue.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While <i>Watchmen</i> has
garnered acclaim from mainstream audiences, it actually was the second of the
seminal series to come out in 1986. The first, Frank Miller’s <i>Batman: The Dark Knight Returns</i>, was
also groundbreaking and arguably had more impact on the comic industry than
even <i>Watchmen</i>. I’m not aware that
there has ever been any conversation about making a live action movie out the
series, but DC has been quietly animating their best storylines of the past 30
years or so, and their latest project is an adaptation of this story of a
retired Batman coming back to the service of his city.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Part of what makes <i>The
Dark Knight Returns</i> so innovative is its setting; superheroes generally seem
to live in the eternal now, always youthful and in fighting trim. But Frank
Miller and this adaptation posits a time when Batman has been retired for a
decade and the effect this has both on Gotham City and the people who
interacted with him. Commissioner Gordon is on the verge of retirement, Harvey
Dent (Two Face) has been rehabilitated and is returning to society, and the
Joker sits wordlessly and catatonically in a ward in Arkham Asylum, destitute
with no Batman to fight. But Gotham City is not at peace—a new gang called the
Mutants has risen, and their only interests seem to be anarchy and mayhem.
Batman himself is merely a legend, and the criminals in Gotham City have very
few fears. Bruce Wayne really is the idle rich now, a powerful figure in the community,
gray-haired but still possessing a presence, racing cars for sport in his
leisure time. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After the Mutants murder the parents of a young boy in the
streets and their leader openly targets Gordon for assassination before his
retirement, Wayne feels the urge to put on the Batman costume again, to return
to his city and fulfill the promise he made when he first put it on, “Never
again.” The narrative dances along a tenuously thin line here: does Batman
exist because of some altruistic desire to serve his city or is he ill,
emotionally crippled when not in the costume and compelled by delusions into
taking on the role of a messiah? The story also does not answer the question;
instead it hangs there as a backdrop as a ruthless Batman sets about saving the
things he cares about. The story also plays with the question of the violence
that Batman uses to fight crime; while he doesn’t kill, he is not beyond a
little torture or temporary maiming to get what he wants.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To fully bring these questions into the foreground, the
story uses the device of interspersing news reports from television as segues
into scenes. Those reports tend to focus on the average citizens’ response to
what is taking place in the city with some people calling Batman a hero for his
actions while others think he exacerbates and perhaps causes any problems that
may occur. The TV segments come to a sharp focus with an ongoing debate between
Bartholomew Wolper, a psychologist who believes that anyone can be
rehabilitated but that the Batman is sick and provokes sick responses from his
villains, and Lana Lang, a reporter who praises Batman’s efforts to clean up
the city, arguing that the hero is a symbol to the people, that anyone can rise
up against those who oppress them. It’s important to note that Miller’s
original story is decidedly a product of its time, an exploration of the
attitudes of the Reagan years in American history and of the idea that certain
moral positions demand to be acted upon no matter the cost, and its corollary
that might makes right. But these topics do not feel dated at all and have just
as much potency as they did when Miller first brought them up.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Peter Weller’s voice jars in Batman’s mouth, especially for
animated fans who have had years of Kevin Conroy playing the Dark Knight. But
Weller is able to add a tone of weariness to Wayne and Batman, a note that is
generally missing from Conroy’s portrayal. To be honest, the other voice actors
are okay (even though the talent used is generally of the highest quality), but
they are meant to be more complementary to Weller’s Batman and they serve that
role well. The animation is a fine dance between the highly stylized artwork of
Frank Miller’s original, and the more mainstream animation style that DC
Entertainment has developed over the years, based on a mixture of anime
sensibilities with Western lines. So, while there is nothing so dramatic as
Miller’s figures, there are echoes of his lines in everything. And of course, the
animators know their source material, so famous panels are used to send chills
up the spines of longtime fans. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of particular note is the soundtrack by Christopher Drake.
The work is at least as compelling as Hans Zimmer’s work on Christopher Nolan’s
Batman trilogy, and I pine for the soundtrack much as I do for those of Hans
Zimmer. Even after the movie is over and your mind works over the implications
and questions raised by the movie, the soundtrack remains in the background, an
integral part of the story that this movie tells.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Quite frankly, this is the best Batman movie of the year,
multi-layered and complex, with ideas that are impactful after the movie is
over. It is much closer to the power of the brilliant <i>The Dark Knight</i> than the actual sequel from this summer, <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i>. It is also the
best of DC Entertainment’s animated movies, which is also saying a great deal
since the quality of those has generally been excellent. Unfortunately, the
storytelling is so lush and dense that the full adaptation has been broken in
two, and fans will have to wait a few months to get Part 2. I don’t know if
there are any plans to eventually make it into a single package, but if so I
don’t know if I can recommend waiting that long to see the brilliant work that
DC has done.<o:p></o:p></div>
Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-79042814774880459292012-10-15T09:02:00.000-05:002012-10-15T09:02:35.525-05:00Empire StateI keep a list of books that I want to read, mostly gathering it from reviews from all over, including the Internet and magazines. I also look at forthcoming book lists to see what my favorite authors are doing, usually putting their next offerings on my to-read list. The list is fairly large, so it sometimes takes me a while to get to things on it, and when I come to a first book by a new author, I’m generally hard-pressed to remember what it is that attracted me to the book in the first place. Was it a review, an advertisement? Did I like the cover art? Such was not the case with Adam Christopher’s <i>Empire State</i>. Just looking at the blurbs, I had no difficulty remembering what had grabbed my attention about this book. Alternate history 1930s New York City with superheroes? I’m there!<br />
<br />
It starts out promising enough, a small-time gangster named Rex, on the run from a rival mob, crashes his car and escapes into a crowd watching New York’s two superheroes, the Skyguard and the Science Pirate duking it out against the backdrop of an uncompleted Empire State Building. Both heroes use rocket suits (a la The Rocketeer) and their battle lights up the sky. One hero wins decidedly and the crowd’s mixed reaction allows Rex to slip away unnoticed. But the events have consequences that nobody on the scene could have imagined. The story jumps to detective Rad Bradbury, a fairly stereotypical private eye from the period—living out of the back room of his office and avoiding divorce papers from his wife—who takes on an attractive female client, looking for her missing partner.<br />
<br />
The novel becomes even more noir, as Rad’s narrative reveals that his city, which he refers to as the Empire State, is in perpetual Wartime with an unseen enemy, forcing rationing and prohibition laws. It’s always raining in the Empire State, and fog and clouds restrict sight of anything more than a few miles away from the island city. And for some reason, it’s almost always night. The phone in Rad’s office rings often but he is never able to get to it before it stops. Christopher evokes the same suspenseful texturing as the underrated movie <i>Dark City</i>, with something just as disturbing at its core. However, Christopher begins to lose control of that texturing, building convoluted level after level that eventually confuses even his characters, so that while the action is thrilling and the ideas interesting, the reader really has no idea what’s going on. We just have to trust that the private dick with the heart of gold is going to work it out.<br />
<br />
In some ways this is no different from the best noir stories, which seem to involve a number of characters whose real goals and purposes remain obscure to the reader. And somehow the detective can piece them all together due to his innate, nearly supernatural, ability to read character and motivation in the people he meets. But <i>Empire State</i> suffers because the characters and their motivations are complicated by the revelation of an alternate dimension with doppelgangers of dubious motivation who apparently move back and forth across the dimensional divide with less difficulty than what might be imagined. And every time the characters provide a rule set for how something works, whether it be the culture of the Empire State or the physics of the dimensions, that rule set ends up being broken. And of course, like the best noir stories, characters perform double- and triple-crosses, again made more complicated by the doppelgangery as well as the supposed motivation not being clear in the first place.<br />
<br />
Some characters want the dimensional rift closed for reasons that are never made completely clear. Other characters want to keep the rift open because they feel that destroying it will destroy the cities on both sides of the rift. And then some characters do contradictory things, working at their own purposes and which only seem somewhat tangential to the existence of the rift in the first place. Of course, there are allusions to the world that we know as well, further clouding the circumstances as the import of those allusions is never played out—there’s a cult based on a book entitled Seduction of the Innocent, but why that book and its hysteria regarding comic books is never made clear (let alone why people would follow it).<br />
<br />
One of the most defining traits of noir fiction is that the detective doesn’t move from clue to clue as in true detective fiction, like Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot. Instead, the detective is led around by the nose, getting kidnapped or beat up and following leads down blind alleys, somehow gleaning scraps of important information from the people he interacts with. I’ve always felt that the detective is a surrogate from the reader, making manifest the reader’s role in most detective fiction—being led from place to place without any real control over direction and picking up what clues they can through observation. But with <i>Empire State</i>, the framework is precarious and the reader is especially aware that they are being led about without much real hope of figuring out what is going on. None of the characters are given very much depth, usually another hallmark of noir fiction, so after a while I felt like I was being batted back and forth by characters I didn’t care much about one way or another. This ended up making a book that began with potential and strong ideas become a trudge, a tedious quest to find out how it all gets resolved, in the hopes of it getting better.<br />
<br />
What <i>Empire State</i> needed more than anything else was a good edit, a tightening up. Noir stories generally move fast, but this one gets bogged down in its own complexity. The potential for a strong story was there but was never met. Adam Christopher shows promise—and has several more books on the way, including a sequel to <i>Empire State</i>—and he clearly knows comics and science fiction tradition. I look forward to the growth from this flawed start.
Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-85918342539835284832012-10-02T09:20:00.001-05:002012-10-02T09:26:16.342-05:00The Quantum Thief<span xmlns="">I'm not sure there is such a thing as bibliographic karma, but there are moments when the right book appears at exactly the right time. I've long been a fan of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series, and I was saddened by Harrison's death this last 15 August. That series details the antics of Slippery Jim DiGriz, the eponymous Stainless Steel Rat and the galaxy's best thief. <em>The Quantum Thief</em> is a proud follower on the trail that Harrison blazed; Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean de Flambeur is a worthy successor to Slippery Jim now that his stories have ended.</span><br />
<span xmlns=""><br /></span>
<span xmlns="">This first novel by Hannu Rajaniemi, a Finn living in Scotland, is both a challenge and a delight. The delight comes from following the exploits of a thief just rescued from prison and obliged to help his benefactress, Mieli, on a mission/quest of a dubious nature: one does not break a thief out of prison without usually desiring his talents. Unfortunately, de Flambeur's memories of his felonious ways have been carefully locked up in a Martian city called the Oubliette, so he has to steal his own memories back from a city that is walking across the Martian desert. The challenge comes from the far future setting that Rajaniemi creates; his world-building is elaborate and immersive, and his narrative throws the reader into the action without any guidance whatsoever. Much as in Steven Erikson's Malazan books, exotic names and ideas are bandied about without explanation, forcing the reader to glean meaning from context and repetition. </span><br />
<span xmlns=""><br /></span>
<span xmlns="">The world Rajaniemi has created is chock full of the big ideas that are the stereotype of speculative fiction. Especially fascinating is the culture of the Oubliette, hinging as it does on dual axes of time and privacy. On the one hand, the citizens of the Oubliette use a currency of time, paying for items with seconds counted out from their personal Watches. Anyone who has seen the movie <em>In Time</em> (<a href="http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-time.html">http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-time.html</a>) or read Harlan Ellison's "Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman" will recognize this conceit, but Rajaniemi changes it somewhat so that when a citizen's time runs out, instead of dying he serves a stint as a Quiet, a cyborg unit doing menial labor for the city. The citizen retains all his memories but performs service for a period of time before being allowed to be reborn into a new body with all his memories intact. The process takes for granted the ability to communicate consciousness and thought from body to body, and sometimes to machine. </span><br />
<span xmlns=""><br /></span>
<span xmlns="">The second fundamental concept of the Oubliette also takes advantage of this capability: privacy is paramount to all the Oubliette's citizens, and every interaction includes a contract that details the extent of how much can be revealed or even remembered by the participants. Imagine a night on the town with the contract that stipulates that you could only remember that you had a good time but can remember no details of what you did or who you did it with. Such manipulation requires a monstrous computer that works on a quantum scale with interfaces to each and every citizen and a security protocol that guides how much can and cannot be remembered. People also share messages via co-memories—you receive a message from a friend that is actually a memory; you remember a conversation that you never had, because you have agreed that messages from the sender will allow the security program to shape your memory that you had it all along. The concept raises all sorts of fascinating philosophical questions, but Rajaniemi only touches on them in passing, allowing the reader to wander into that labyrinth on their own. Instead, <em>The Quantum Thief</em> focuses on how such a system could be manipulated by artists and thieves, both of which describe Jean de Flambeur. As is the tradition with the great literary thieves, de Flambeur is also something of a trickster, and so recovering his own memories is a task made more complicated by a sense of humor he doesn't entirely remember having. </span><br />
<span xmlns=""><br /></span>
<span xmlns="">Rajaniemi deftly interweaves de Flambeur's story with that of Isidore, a young Martian architectural student whose daily life provides a great deal of the explanation of how the Oubliette culture works. The story follows him as he tries to work out his relationship with Pixil, a member of a culture based on 20<sup>th</sup> and 21<sup>st</sup> century gaming culture. Pixil's people are supreme crafters and technicians who are the most adept at the quantum computing required by the Oubliette, but they are just barely trusted, treated much like gypsies. Isidore is also getting something of a reputation as an amateur detective which is the source of his conflict with Pixil, who wants him to devote more time to her. But Isidore suspects he is being groomed by the Oubliette's tzaddikim, superheroes who act as voluntary police for the city and beloved by its citizens. And of course, if Isidore is a detective, then his path must somehow eventually cross de Flambeur's. But instead of being clichéd, Rajaniemi surprises the reader by letting their stories run parallel for a good bit before winding them together in unexpected ways. There are also outside forces that appear to be guiding the lives of the characters in the story; Rajaniemi fortunately only mentions them, letting them appear only very briefly—just hinting that their roles will be much bigger in future books before assuring it in the final chapter. </span><br />
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<span xmlns="">All the pieces come together in a whirlwind of storytelling, pushing the reader pell-mell across exotic locales and big ideas. Rajaniemi is an exciting new voice in speculative fiction, and <em>The Quantum Thief</em> promises more excitement and big ideas in future installments.</span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-9792161185335183152012-09-26T08:58:00.001-05:002012-09-26T08:58:53.602-05:00Zoo CityOne of the most tried and true forms of modern narrative is the detective story. It’s been used so often that audiences interested in the art of storytelling can often determine who the criminal is based on plot lines and character appearances rather than using the evidence provided by the story. Two of the guilty pleasures of the Speculator household are <i>Castle </i>and <i>Bones</i>, television programs that follow the basic premise and structure of most mystery stories. And generally, we’ve solved the crime (usually murder) of the week after about ten minutes of viewing, based totally on metafiction. We eliminate suspects based on their being too prominent in the storyline (“that would be too obvious”) or because it’s too soon in the hour time slot for the criminal to be revealed. There are rules to these stories, you see, and if those rules are broken, you lose the audience’s trust and eventually patience. For instance, it’s not fair to have the villain be someone that has never been introduced in the story; if that happens, the audience has no chance to solve the crime. Disguising the villain, putting them on the fringe of the action but not so far on the fringe that they are not relevant is an art—see the recent movie <i>Poe </i>for a master class in disguising the villain (the movie <i>Seven </i>comes to mind also, but it’s not really about solving the crimes after all). But Mrs. Speculator and I are not really watching these specific shows because of the mysteries the characters are solving; in fact, we watch despite those crimes. Instead, we watch <i>Castle </i>and <i>Bones </i>for the character interaction and development, including season- and series-long arcs for the characters. Characters are one of the methods by which storytellers push mundane and often-used plots into a new place. And if the characters and their stories are really good (or really consuming), then the mystery part gets a pass.<br />
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Another method of disguising timeworn narrative is setting. In the past I’ve reviewed some of Alex Bledsoe’s Eddie Lacrosse books; while Bledsoe is also interested in developing good characters (with some success, I should add), his bigger twist is on the detective format since his books are set in a medieval world. Part of the success of the Dresden series by Jim Butcher is the ongoing development of his characters, but on a novel-by-novel basis, especially as the series started, a lot of the strength lay in the exotic setting of a modern Chicago where magic works. Exotic setting also allows the writer to add wrinkles to the mystery that make it somewhat more difficult for the reader to solve.<br />
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Lauren Beukes’s <i>Zoo City</i> follows the traditional mystery plotline using a number of the tropes associated with noir, but it succeeds despite the relatively obvious mystery component because of the strength of its characters and setting. The novel is set in a contemporary Johannesburg that I suspect most South Africans would recognize but which is somewhat exotic to Western readers. Beyond the unfamiliar setting, Beukes has added a twist that goes beyond the kinds of bumps that are traditionally used to enliven detective stories: the main character, Zinzi December is a “zoo”, that is she has a sloth that is emotionally and mentally attuned to her and provides her with a psychic ability to find lost things. Oh, and if the sloth dies, December dies a horrible death within a mysterious black cloud called the Undertow. She has been “animalled”, mystically attached to a suddenly appearing creature that seems to be called by a tremendous amount of guilt. In December’s case, she did something that led to her brother’s death and is a recovering drug addict. Beukes does a tremendous job of explaining being animalled by example and by the technique of interspersing the early chapters of <i>Zoo City</i> with reports and accounts of others who have been animalled and the history of the plague. Zoos suffer nearly instant prejudice upon the arrival of their animals and are often treated as secondary citizens despite having perhaps lived exemplary lives. They live in slums and tenements and have to rely on their own underground community to survive on the fringes of a society that does not understand the source of their plague and thus shuns them.<br />
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December was a journalist before her brother’s death and the arrival of Sloth, as she calls her animal, and her psychic ability seems tied to her former life. But other zoos have animals and abilities that are nearly random, and while the journalistic chapters of the book offer scientific analysis, the condition defies logical study. In the course of her job, finding lost items for people who see her fliers in stores and on public bulletin boards, she is approached by a couple of unsavory characters with animals of their own. The Marabou and the Maltese as she calls them (perhaps another allusion to classic noir) invite her to take a job for a reclusive music mogul. Despite her suspicions, December meets with Odi Huron and takes his job, to find one of his stars who has gone missing. The mystery plot generally goes as you would expect, including false leads and fake endings, but it is also interwoven with the zoos, evolving them and highlighting them in exciting ways.<br />
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As we’ve come to expect with most noir, there is as much attention, if not more, paid to the development of the main character and her supporting cast. December has the checkered past of all noir detectives and continues to feel the effects of her past transgressions. She also has street smarts and has friends who are willing to use their resources on her behalf. It’s these interactions that help to expand the concept of the zoos, and we grow to be fond of December despite her wisecracks, just for her sheer pluck. Underneath all that dross, as is always the case in these kinds of novels, is a Good Person.<br />
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When we discover that the plague has been around since the 80s, it seems obvious that it is a metaphor for AIDS. But if that was the intent, it is never explored. I think such a reading puts too fine a granularity on the device—it seems to represent just the next in the list of reasons society has used to repress those that are different. <i>Zoo City</i> could be cynical in this observation, but it’s more ironic since becoming animalled gives the zoo abilities that normal people don’t have. And of course, having special abilities further ghettoizes the recipients. Beukes also avoids the trap of explaining away the plague, describing the selection process that causes individuals to get which animals and which abilities. And while it could almost be taken as comedic to have to carry around a stork or an anteater, Beukes makes it clear that there is a cost as well when we watch a gang fight that targets members's animals and evokes the malignant Undertow, sweeping away the zoos that survive. The plague and the Undertow cry out to be metaphors but resist simple categorization.<br />
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<i>Zoo City</i> is grim and gritty, a real throwback to noir. Beukes has created a strong female lead in December, and her supporting cast and setting are fascinating. If there is any complaint about the story, it’s that it ends too soon—just as the reader begins to get a grasp on all that is going on, the mystery is resolved and the denouement closes out the novel. I hope that there is more story to tell, but even if there is not, Beukes is an engaging and thoughtful writer to look out for down the road.<br />
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===<br />
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(I have to add one note, not about the story but about the ebook experience. The publisher, Angry Robot, is a relatively new undertaking and is aggressively pursuing strong new voices, which I applaud. However, the formatting of the ebook was error-prone and often got in the way of enjoying the story, confounding attempts even to parse the paragraphs. I look forward to more books from Angry Robot and hope that they can overcome these issues in the future.)Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-12549840906937310912012-09-24T11:32:00.000-05:002012-09-24T11:32:06.027-05:00The Windup Girl and the TransporterOn the one hand, I lately finished reading Paolo Bacigalupi’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel. And on the other, I read it on my new tablet, bought in part to ease the growing shortage of book space in my life.
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First, the tablet, an ASUS Transporter Infinity. I can’t figure out a way to take a picture of it with its own built-in camera, but here’s a nice picture of one like it, along with the separate and way cool docking station: <a href="http://eee.asus.com/html/eeepad/img/tf700/common/visual-model.png">http://eee.asus.com/html/eeepad/img/tf700/common/visual-model.png</a>. I found it interesting that there is an assumption on the part of ASUS that anyone who buys such a thing would automatically know how the interface worked. As a technical writer and editor, I was astonished that neither the tablet nor its separate docking station came with any kind of documentation, including something like a QuickStart Guide. Fortunately, I’ve watched enough other people use Android devices and seen enough commercials that I could muddle my way through my first attempts to use it. Though there were interesting paradigm-shift moments such as when I saw that I had a number of applications open and running but could not formulate a plan to close them. It was a good thing that Mrs. Speculator is more conversant with Android than me. There was also the humorous first few attempts to unlock the pad by sliding the lock icon; I discovered that 1) if you slide the lock to the left, you put the tablet in camera mode and 2) if you’re a little patient, the tablet will actually tell you the direction you really want to slide it in to use the tablet without going through camera mode first.
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I decided to use a Kindle app on the tablet for ebooks. I’m not really sure I appreciate all of Amazon’s practices when it comes to publishing, but I already have an Amazon Prime account, which facilitated continuing to use their services. Again, there is an assumption that using the app is intuitive. I figured out how to go to the Kindle store and buy my book, and was told it would be delivered to my tablet via WhisperSynch. Eventually, I got an email telling me that it had been delivered…but now how to access it. I would open the Kindle app hoping to see the cover of my newly purchased book on the home screen, only to find nothing. A bit of poking around led me to determine that I had to go to another menu and tell the Kindle to synch itself up with the downloads. And then! I had the cover on the front page.
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Reading my first ebook was not the experience I expected. I have not thought so deeply about the reading process since I was taking a class in literary criticism and we were covering the post-Modernists. For example, by default, the Kindle app gives you black text on a white background, simulating the experience of reading a book. But even though there’s a brightness control, the white that the app delivers is far brighter than the white of the paper in a book. So in the case of the first ten pages or so, I spent as much time reading and getting the beginning of a headache with the intensity of the images on the screen as I did fiddling with the controls to get the settings right. Fortunately, I have lately read a couple of books from the 70s with paper slowly turning brown, so I was reminded that sepia might be a better choice than pure white and eventually ended up with black print on sepia with the brightness turned down. Then I went back and forth between horizontal and vertical orientations for a few pages to decide which I liked better, eventually deciding to go horizontal and two columns. I spent some time trying to use the dictionary, only to discover that I had to download the dictionary and then discovering that a lot of the words in my novel based in Thailand weren’t in the dictionary. I guess the built-in dictionary is put on the tablet to accommodate folks who are reading outside of a network, but why take up space on an Internet tool to pack a dictionary when a Web search direct from the page makes so much more sense? Especially when that’s what I had to do anyway to find the meaning of a number of the words in the novel?
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I was delighted to discover that the layout of the pages pretty solidly matched the format of a printed book. Having worked in companies where the electronic version of a text was an afterthought to the printed version, I was concerned I would be spending as much for a paperback book for less readability. And because of the intense graphics of the Transporter Infinity, the cover of the book is vibrant and gorgeous, though I really would like to magnify sections of it for detail, mimicking holding the book really close to my face to find a plot point nicely portrayed in the cover art. I know that comic book readers support the magnification of their images, so I’m not concerned about the art for when I start looking at comics with the tablet. It makes me wonder if the combination of a tablet and music might bring about the return of awesome liner notes included with albums.
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The tablet is also very convenient: Mrs. Speculator did not wake up at all when I found myself unable to sleep one night and read for about a half hour. No bright lights from the nightstand and perfect readability in the dark. I understand that with the Kindle app, my books will be automatically archived after a certain amount of time passes without them being opened. In the archive, I will have access to them again as will anyone who uses my Amazon account, like Mrs. Speculator. I emphasize being told this because, again, there was no documentation anywhere and I had to search for information, finding forum responses mired with all the dross that goes with them and the report of a friend who also uses the Kindle app. I’m hoping for the best.
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In short, I’m becoming hooked; at last I am the 21st century schizoid man that King Crimson used to sing about—I want to read books and hold and smell them but am satisfying myself with getting the latest releases via ebook (outside of a few exceptions like Mieville, Brust, Kay, and Banks).
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===
<p>
As for the book itself, Paolo Bacigalupi’s <i>The Windup Girl</i> is a real delight. It is set in a not-too-distant future where the combination of the effects of global warming and genetic engineering has visited a catastrophe to the world. Thailand hides behind massive sea walls as it slowly sinks below the world’s new sea level. Genetically modified grains spawn genetically modified diseases, killing grains and people alike. Use of fossil fuels is severely limited and infractions severely punished in attempts to halt the continued rise of sea level and perhaps to reverse it. Symbolic of these ills are the cheshires, domestic housecats originally modified so that they blend in with their surroundings, chameleonlike, as a marketing ploy to sell cats. However, the modification bred true, and the cheshires have replaced the domestic housecats and the feral ones around the world, a vastly improved predator.
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Bacigalupi introduces a handful of characters to this setting—Anderson Lake, an American entrepreneur who acts as an agent for a multinational in a country where foreigners, especially Americans, are reviled for the havoc they have brought to the world; Hock Seng, a Chinese immigrant who has come to Thailand in order to escape Muslim fundamentalists and works for Lake as he plots to recoup the shipping corporation he lost in his flight; Emiko, a Japanese “New Person”, a genetically modified human, molded to be the perfect servant and unable to reproduce; and Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, the Tiger of Bangkok, a native captain in the Environment Ministry, tasked with ensuring there are no further incursions of non-native life in Thailand. Bacigalupi’s plot follows them each in their individual machinations to merely survive in this hostile new world that experimentation has created. The characters’ movement throught Bangkok and its environs allows Bacigalupi to build up a picture of a horribly broken world, and as one might expect, the more the reader interacts with the characters, the more broken they appear to be as well.
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Emiko is explicitly the windup girl in the title of the novel, and her actions do set off the biggest crisis, a battle for superiority between the Trade Ministry and the Environment Ministry, with all of the expatriates caught between the warring factions and neither side offering them very much support. Emiko struggles against her very nature, having been bred to need to serve even when it goes against her strongest instincts. She constantly fights her own body’s responses to stimuli with varying and ultimately surprising results. Her story is an example of the tried and true plot device, nature versus nurture with the added quibble that her nature has been modified by corporations.
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But there is a second windup girl in the novel also—Kanya, the Tiger of Bangkok’s trusted lieutenant and protégé. Slowly, the reader learns Kanya’s back-story and discovers she is not all she seems to be either, fighting her own battle between two masters. While Emiko’s development and conflict drive the opening narrative of the novel, Kanya takes it over in its crisis and drives it to its unexpected and harrowing conclusion.
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There is no room for optimism in <i>The Windup Girl</i>. In an analogy of our world today, the problems of Bacigalupi’s world are manmade, and rather than working at solving the issues, the smartest and most powerful people struggle to find ways to profit, to make their own lives that much easier. There are several scenes where foreign entrepreneurs sit on the balcony of a local bar during the hottest part of the day in order to better catch what breezes there may be and completely about their hard lives while the people in the street below suffer and struggle. It would be very easy to strip <i>The Windup Girl</i> of its power and suggest it is an anti-Western novel, but it doesn’t take much close reading to see that the Thais are just as complicit in their troubles as everyone else, despite their blame for the rest of the world.
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In a number of ways, <i>The Windup Girl</i> reminds me of <i>Brave New World</i>, with its interest in genetic manipulation and unrelenting cynicism. While the endings are somewhat different, there remains a sympathetic character in both novels who is not in the world of the novel by their own choice. Bacigalupi’s writing is perhaps more accessible than Huxley’s while Huxley’s characters are more fully realized. This is not to say that Bacigalupi’s characters are not fully formed; Huxley’s are just more memorable.
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<i>The Windup Girl</i> is a powerful novel, deserving of the Hugo and Nebula awards it has won. It’s one of those novels that we may look back on in a decade or so and recognize as being incredibly important not only for its writing but for its message. It likely should transcend its genre to become something of interest to mainstream readers as well.
Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-35740549377612909342012-08-07T07:03:00.001-05:002012-08-07T07:04:08.642-05:00The Dark Knight Rises<span xmlns=''><p>The last film in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy leaves me terribly conflicted. On the one hand, I recognize that it intends to be a thoughtful provocative movie that rises above the genre it is a part of, but I still come away from it feeling that it is somewhat flawed. Similarly, I have tried with all of my critical faculties to think of <em>The Dark Knight Rises</em> as its own film, but I continue to be unable to separate from its predecessors in the trilogy, especially <em>The Dark Knight</em> but also at crucial moments, <em>Batman Begins</em>.<br /></p><p>The overall subject of the movie is redemption, which should not come as much of a surprise since that is generally the subject of the third segment of most trilogies. Given the way that <em>The Dark Knight</em> ends, it should be obvious that one of the characters most in need of redemption is Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale). While the audience and some of the primary characters in the movie know that Batman is not the villain whose role he was forced to take on, some years of silence have made Wayne a hermit I his own huge estate and Batman something of an urban legend, used to threaten misbehaving children. But the movie's opening scenes also make it clear that Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is also suffering from the decision to demonize Batman. Despite prosperity for Gotham City in the wake of Harvey Dent's "sacrifice", Gordon suspects that it is all a sham since it is based on a lie. The logic surrounding this is not clear: while Dent's name and the laws that were enacted at his death have led to the renaissance of Gotham City, there is no indication that in and of themselves, those laws are unconstitutional or immoral. Smart people can recognize that good can come from a tragedy, and not enough attention is paid to why these laws are necessarily a bad thing. But this plays an important part in where the movie goes.<br /></p><p>A new character is introduced, Catwoman/Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) who is consistently portrayed as a good woman forced to do bad things for reasons that are not altogether clear. Catwoman is regularly called upon to rise above her criminal background, to strive for something better…to redeem the belief that Batman has in her. And then there's the villain of the movie, Bane (Tom Hardy), whose motives are slowly revealed over the length of the picture, a woeful story of redemption as he tries to rise above his terrible and ignominious birth.<br /></p><p>As Bane enacts his convoluted plot to separate Gotham City from the rest of the world, we are often subject to his tirades about the inequality of society, about how the wealthy spurn the needs of those who are not so fortunate. It's an interesting motivation, garnering the attention of the press and politicians alike. These jeremiads mirror the best speeches of Heath Ledger's Joker in <em>The Dark </em>Knight, but what political commentaries seem to overlook is that it's all a lie. Bane makes it clear to Batman that his motivation is to hurt Batman for his destruction of the League of Assassins in <em>Batman Begins</em>, and the best way to do that is to incapacitate him and make him watch as his beloved Gotham City is slowly destroyed. The result is that the powerful and chilling speeches by the Joker are blunted when Bane speaks them, not only because they are not what he really thinks but also because of the gimmick of his talking through a breathing mask (for some barely explained reason necessary for his continued survival), which makes it extremely difficult to understand his words at some points in the film. This is particularly frustrating because Bane actually speechifies a lot, and I can't help but feel that we are supposed to be as chilled by the truths he speaks as we were when the Joker ranted in the previous movie. The power of what he says is blunted by how obviously he does not believe what he says, and so we get long portions of movie where he talks with difficulty about things that aren't really crucial to the movement of the film.<br /></p><p>There's also the somewhat unbelievable method by which Bruce Wayne recovers from the horrendous injury that Bane puts upon him. I'm trying very hard here not to give any spoilers away, but if you keep up with cultural events, you may remember the press when Bane did the same thing to Batman in the comic books in the 90s. At any rate, Batman's recovery is nothing short of miraculous, even blowing away how quickly he recovered in the comics.<br /></p><p>Thus far, it appears that I am disappointed by <em>The Dark Knight Rises</em>, but it really is only in comparison with what its predecessors did. A lot of the ground covered in this movie feels like it has been done before and better, though some of the effects are spectacular. Even the huge plot twist in the last act is foreshadowed by the exact same trick in a previous movie. But standing by itself, <em>The Dark Knight Rises</em> is better than most superhero films outside its own series. I've been asked by a number of folks to compare it to <em>The Avengers</em>, but to me that's like comparing a summer action movie to a drama vying for Oscar consideration—they both have their strong points and do what they set out to do well, but one is intended purely to entertain while the other has depth and thoughtfulness. Honestly, most of the action sequences in <em>The Dark Knight Rises</em> are just sidenotes, the working out of issues that have been explored by other methods throughout the movie. They verge on spectacular but could have been given shorter shrift since the focus is never on the cool toys (and there are some cool toys). That Nolan decided to not treat them as incidental is a testament to his storytelling—giving all the parts of his story the same masterful treatment.<br /></p><p>One of the strengths <em>The Dark Knight Rises</em> shares with the earlier films is a stunning score by Hans Zimmer. Zimmer's collaboration with director Christopher Nolan has been powerful; Zimmer has never been a slouch, but his work on the Batman trilogy and <em>Inception</em> are models of how movie scores should be used to inform the story on the screen. While it will always be difficult to not think of Danny Elfman as <em>the</em> creator of the Batman soundtrack, I have to recognize that it's mostly out of repetition I know it so well. Zimmer's soundtrack, while not as iconic, is I think much more powerful than the sum of Elfman's work.<br /></p><p><em>The Dark Knight Rises</em> also excels in its minor parts—Michael Caine continues to establish himself as the archetypal Alfred, Morgan Freeman is strong as Lucius Fox, and Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt exude charisma in their underspoken roles.<br /></p><p><em>The Dark Knight Rises</em> is a good film, an important milestone in the history of the superhero genre in the movies. It just suffers from "younger brother syndrome": it has to work hard to get out from under the shadow of members of its own family who have gone before, and it never does quite enough to succeed in standing alone. <br /></p></span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-45540755890545400452012-07-09T09:43:00.001-05:002012-07-09T09:44:19.409-05:00The Crippled God<span xmlns="">You might imagine that it's difficult to write about the tenth and final book in a series without taking a step back and viewing the entire series as a unit. The inertia of over 3 million words and close to 11,000 pages just does not allow for no retrospection at all. </span><br />
<span xmlns=""><em>The Crippled God</em> alone is a difficult book to read since it bears the weight of all the unfinished narratives in the previous nine volumes. In some ways, the nearly 1200 pages feel rushed, moving often from viewpoint to viewpoint sometimes after only a few paragraphs. Needless to say, I cannot with any conscience recommend that someone unfamiliar with the other books even look at <em>The Crippled God</em>; it would simply be opaque to all attempts to understand what is going on.</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Nonetheless, <em>The Crippled God</em> typifies what has made the <em>Malazan Book of the Fallen</em> such an entertaining and thoughtful series. Despite the cast of hundreds (if not thousands), each character has a unique voice and backstory that is brought to the fore upon their appearance. And although most of the characters are soldiers fighting for causes they sometimes barely understand, the book steadfastly refuses to become cynical. It's too easy for world-weary fighters to think the worst of people, and Erikson refuses to take that path. Instead, his writing emphasizes the individual humanity of the characters, ticking through their foibles (sometimes with tremendous humor) and ultimately the family-like nature of their companionship as they work and fight for a common cause. The resulting emotion is the opposite of cynicism—it's one of tremendous hope, especially as the human armies gather more and more unlikely allies in their struggle. These allies recognize the strengths of being human—that same hope, but also perseverance and sacrifice—and it causes them to join when otherwise they might not.</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Erikson accomplishes this by actually concentrating the narrative more on the individuals in the midst of the struggle than on the global effects of the struggle. Anywhere from a third to half of the novel is interior dialogue, characters thinking to themselves about their circumstances, their histories, and their future. This also has the effect of slowing down the reading, forcing the reader to follow the trains of through that are often more twisty than the action taking place in the physical sphere. It's powerful writing, much the same that endeared the reader to these characters and their stories volumes ago. It's just more than what we usually get.</span><br />
<span xmlns=""><em>The Crippled God</em> is a fine capstone to a magnificent series, one that will influence fantasy writing for years to come. My first two reactions upon finishing the series are indicative of its power: for the last 25 pages or so I held back tears until I could do so no longer. These are characters that I have come to know and appreciate, fully realized and brimming with personality. To read the conclusions to their paths was emotional, and to recognize the appropriateness of each was even more so. I wept not just for the loss of the characters as the last book concluded, but for the mastery Erikson used to create and portray them. My second reaction was to go back and start over, to recapture the joys of discovery and to discover more as threads I had lost over the last decade of reading were brought back together. And I am confident that I will reread them all someday, perhaps not soon as my book stack has grown large over the past few weeks. But I'm sure thoughts of the story and the characters will return again and again until I pick the books up for another reading.</span><br />Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-63019368194950545102012-06-29T07:15:00.001-05:002012-06-29T07:16:29.830-05:00Brave<span xmlns=''><p>It's something of a back-handed compliment to Pixar that their latest offering, <em>Brave</em>, is not being lauded so lavishly as most of their other films. The worst thing I can say about it is that it's no worse than the best computer animated films coming out of other studios currently and a good deal better than the average. It just doesn't quite live up to Pixar's standards for reasons that, I fear, could easily have been fixed. <br /></p><p>The plot is relatively straightforward—Merrida (Kelly Macdonald) is princess and heir to the throne of an unnamed kingdom that is maintained with a sometimes fragile truce between four clans. Her life is made up about six parts of royal training applied by her mother, Elinor (Emma Thompson) to one part letting her roguish side out—her father, Fergus (Billy Connolly) has passed on his love for fighting and the hunt to his daughter, and she is quite an archer and fighter for a teenaged girl. But these activities go against her mother's plan for her, to become the doting queen to the scions of one of the clans, thus keeping their kingdom together for another generation. But all of this is just high-falutin' political talk: Merrida wants to ride her trusty horse Angus over the countryside and her mother wants her to stay home to be a lady. And wouldn't you know it?—they bump heads. And after one final argument, Merrida rides off into the night, accidentally discovering a witch's cottage, where she asks for a spell to change her mother so that she'll understand. And you know witches, literal as the dickens when it suits them, so Elinor is changed but in a way that Merrida could never have expected. So of course it comes down to Merrida to save her mother.<br /></p><p>There is a tremendous amount of joy in this movie—it's pretty clear to any viewer that this family is brilliantly balanced and that Merrida is an exceptional child. And the denouement of the movie is probably as you would expect; with the help of her three little brothers, Merrida learns what it means to be a member of the family and to appreciate what her mother is doing for her. And of course, Elinor learns that her daughter is her own person, in need of guidance, not domination. In many ways, if you imagine <em>Uncle Buck</em> set in the Scottish highlands, you'd have much the same film.<br /></p><p>And therein lays the problem. Pixar's movies are generally very smart, rising above the clichés that dominate movies for kids and young adults, especially animated ones. But <em>Brave</em> doesn't do that. It has the saving grace of just being lovely animation, but the other studios are catching up to the work of Pixar pretty quickly; they just can't rely on superior animation to sell their movies any longer. And doing so would be a mistake—viewers can be indifferent about shades of animation talent when what they really want is great story-telling that relies on the unusual: <em>Finding Nemo</em> imagines that fish have their own culture and spends as much time exploring that culture as it does looking for the lost one, <em>Monsters Inc</em> has the ludicrous set-up of a monster culture run on the energy expended on children's fear, and <em>Up</em> is about a man who lifts his house up with thousands of balloons and sails off to find adventure with an unexpected stowaway. And Ratatouille—a rat that wants to become a master chef! The territory that <em>Brave</em> covers has been visited many times, especially by Pixar's new owners, Disney. (I am not going to blame Disney here—I think they are smart enough to give Pixar a lot of autonomy; they just cover similar territory here.) And really, unlike any other Pixar movie I can think of, <em>Brave</em> acts preachy for goodness sake, beating the viewer over the head with its morality. Part of this preachiness is delivered by the voiceover of Merrida hinting at and eventually delivering the smarmy moral at the end of the movie, as though anyone watching it would be dull enough not to have figured it out. <br /></p><p>But when the crew lets <em>Brave</em> get away from the moral and just romp, it is a tremendous amount of fun. The set pieces not given away in commercials and trailers are wild and border on the ludicrous, but always extremely vibrant. And the characterization, another hallmark of Pixar productions, is deep and full. Merrida's three brothers steal every scene they are in, though they never say a word. The clan leaders and their sons are hysterical, their anger with one another as shallow as their camaraderie is deep, even though they tend to forget it. And the fantastic elements laid lightly over the whole plot are gentle, in some ways reminiscent of a novel by Guy Gavriel Kay in their power and seclusion.<br /></p><p>And of course, the animation is just gorgeous, especially the long shots of the various areas of the kingdom, from the moors to the mountains, and the forests in between.<br /></p><p>There is a great deal to like about <em>Brave</em>; it's just a shame that the creators had a lapse of memory causing them to use elements that pull it away from being the prototypical Pixar movie it could have been.</p></span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-9059239848620431422012-06-26T07:33:00.001-05:002012-06-26T07:35:07.456-05:00Snow White and the Huntsman<span xmlns="">Science fiction and fantasy media are often scathingly described as "escapist", meaning they are intended to take you away from your world, and by extension are generally lacking any "depth." I've argued before that painting the entire speculative fiction genre with such a broad stroke is inherently unfair, ignoring as it does the pieces in the genre that do have depth and complexity. I've also admitted that there is a lot of the genre that fits the classification of "escapist", but I don't think I've argued, at least in this blog, that there's anything wrong with the occasional escape. And I'd hasten to point out that calling something escapist doesn't necessarily mean that no art has been put into its creation. The movie <em>Snow White and the Huntsman</em> is a vibrant example of the amount of art that can go into something that is fobbed off as trivial, as escapist. <em>Snow White</em> is a stunningly beautiful movie, lovingly crafted and filled with technical expertise that transport the viewer with a sense of wonder not often encountered onscreen.</span><br /><br />
<span xmlns="">At first glance, <em>Snow White</em> would appear to be another in the ongoing process of modernizing fantasy, making it more realistic (read "dark"). But most Western fairy tales have roots in the Brothers Grimm, which as anyone who has actually read the source material can tell you were dark all on their own. Most of what we read and see today are sanitized versions of the original stories, and while I can't claim that <em>Snow White</em> goes back to the original story, it's obvious that the film's crew were aware of the darker elements of its origin.</span><br />
<span xmlns="">And while this latest movie is darker than most film versions of the story, nonetheless it still provokes a sense of wonder form its viewer. The causes are many; take for example the arresting cinematography. Even though the kingdom is in disarray, it is a feast for the eyes, especially when Snow White visits the lands of fairy. When the White Hart appears before Snow White and her companions, my breath was literally taken away by its majesty and beauty. The score also plays a part in the how <em>Snow White</em> transports the viewer from our mundane world, evocative and beguiling all at once.</span><br /><br />
<span xmlns="">A lot of credit for the wonder of <em>Snow White and the Huntsman</em> should go to the costuming and makeup departments. The wardrobes are fairly typical except for those of Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), whose clothes change with nearly every scene. Even when the evil Queen is pretending to be good, there are hints of her evil in the tiny details of her clothes, hinting at what lies beneath the veneer of civilization she shows to those she attempts to beguile. And when she is in full-blown evil mode, her costumes are intoxicating in their maleficence. And since Ravenna's power depends on taking the life force—the youth if you will—from young maidens, her age in the movie careens wildly between around 25 to the 70s, often in a single scene. Of course, given the subject matter, that same make-up department had to create seven dwarves, probably building on the groundbreaking work of <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>, but perfecting it. I will be amazed if <em>Snow White</em> is not nominated for awards for its costuming and make-up.</span><br /><br />
<span xmlns="">Then, of course, there is the acting. It's ironic that the two title characters actually do not carry the emotional load of the movie, but I'm not sure that it's really asked of them by the script. Kristen Stewart, as Snow White, is stalwart and dependable, but her acting range is not huge. Nor does it really need to be—she is as often acted upon by the forces that drive the movie as she is the actor. Chris Hemsworth as the huntsman is also adequate, rarely asked to give any other emotion than grief and anger at the loss of his family. The movie seems to expect there to be chemistry between the two of them, but it really doesn't happen. In one of the climaxes of the movie, as Snow White lays dead waiting for a kiss from her prince, Hemsworth does show some more range, but it is an exception rather than the rule.</span><br /><br />
<span xmlns="">No, acting kudos go to the "side" characters in this movie. First and foremost, Theron's Ravenna is malicious intention incarnate. Ravishingly beautiful and seductive when it suits her but torn by a tragic childhood into a stupefyingly corrupt and revenge-filled malefactor. Even when she plays the "good" queen, the evil flickers in Theron's eyes, hinting at what's to come. And when she goes bad, her rage is tremendous to behold. The oly perso she loves is her brother Finn (Sam Spruell), who is not as twisted as his sister, but fairly repugnant as well. They have the chemistry in the movie, even if it is a tortured one and generally one-sided. And of course, there are the dwarves, who are not allowed to dominate the film, as these name actors easily could—Ian McShane, Ray Winstoe, Bob Hoskins, and Nick Frost to name just half of them. When they are introduced they are delightful, not descending to comic relief but still with humor around them. They even have a back story that makes them somewhat tragic as well.</span><br /><br />
<span xmlns=""><em>Snow White and the Huntsman</em> follows the story that everyone knows fairly well, adding depth by adding details. Snow White is not just fighting for her own life in this version; instead Ravenna's magic and evil are corrupting the very kingdom, and Snow White must overcome her in order to restore it to its glory—that's part of the grimmer aspect of this modernization. Characters die, one particularly in overly telegraphed tug at the heart—but it's nothing graphic. And the movie clearly knows its own cinematic roots as well—it draws on a number of the best fantasy movies: <em>Ladyhawke</em>, <em>Legend</em>, and <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. But despite its flaws, which can be overlooked fairly easily, <em>Snow White</em> does what those other movies do as well, help the viewer to escape into a world of magical possibility. And it does so convincingly and appealingly. I feel confident this is going to become one of those cult films that picks up a larger and larger audience as it is replayed on cable and as people rent and buy the movie. And while it is not great, it is quite good, worthy of repeated viewing and praise.</span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-44438296898317196152012-06-22T09:07:00.001-05:002012-06-22T09:08:28.262-05:00Railsea<span xmlns=''><p>If you were to think of the works of China Mieville as a multicourse meal, <em>Railsea</em> would act as something like a palate cleanser between heavier, more consuming courses (that's right, I just called it Mieville's lemon sherbet). Following such weighty tomes as <em>The City and the City</em>, <em>Embassytown</em>, and <em>Kraken</em>, Mieville's latest work is still filled with ideas but is not philosophically complex. This is not to say that there aren't fresh ideas in <em>Railsea</em>—on the contrary, <em>Railsea</em> is packed with ideas that would give a lot of other writers an entire career to explore; <em>Railsea</em> instead tosses out ideas and moves on, not exploring every nook and cranny of them in the detail of Mieville's previous three novels. In fact, this novel acts more as a playground for Mieville as he experiments with narrative technique and voice, delighting the audience with light fare rather than delighting them with deep ideas.<br /></p><p>The story follows Shamus ap Soorap as he attempts to discover a career for himself in a world where trains move between communities like sailing vessels of old (hence the title of the book). Sham, as he is known, finds himself the doctor's assistant on a train dedicated to hunting the prodigious subterranean creatures of this world—mole rats, burrowinging turtles, and digger bees (oh my!)—when all he really wants to be is a scavenger, dedicating his life to salvage the strange treasures that lie just underground and sometimes above it. The reader is immediately thrown into a hunt for a giant mole, establishing the explosiveness and momentum <em>Railsea</em> maintains throughout. The pace is often frenetic and when, about halfway through the novel, the narration divides into three parts, it only grows more frantic. And through it all Mieville uses a narrative voice that is not only omniscient but deliberate—the narrator discusses where to go next in the story, teasing the reader about when the story will return to the thread that the narrator imagines the reader finds most important (and by doing so making that thread the most important).<br /></p><p>Described everywhere as a "young adult" novel (a term I have grown to despise—fodder for another blog entry perhaps), <em>Railsea</em> incorporates the balancing act that such fare must have. Consider the best "all ages" media (a MUCH better term): the story has to both entertain the younger audience and yet remain appealing to the adult audience. This is the great success of Pixar movies and the best animation, like Warner Brothers cartoons—children are enthralled by the escapades and adults appreciate the depth and humor that is often outside the younger audience's experience. What fertile ground for Mieville, whose career is made of playing with the borders of genre and trope! And he revels in the dance, appropriating the narrative techniques used for younger audiences and still writing a story that adults can return to. Children don't really care about the background of how this fantastic world was created, but adults will appreciate that the Earth has lost all of its seas to a global multinational war, and in fact that the railseas that the trains ride on are the actual beds of our oceans.<br /></p><p>Similarly, younger readers will revel in Sham's captain, Naphi, and her quest for the great albino mole rat, Mocker Jack. Adults will recognize the parallels to <em>Moby Dick</em>, and appreciate the idea that each hunting captain pursues a great beast of their own across the wastes, a quest the captains term their <em>philosophy</em>. Melville plays with this idea giddily, pondering what happens when a captain achieves his or her philosophy—even going so far as to imagine a museum of completed philosophies, where the great captains enshrine their epic quests' souvenirs—and what happens if captains unintentionally share a philosophy. And adult readers read this and ponder life's obsessions, while younger readers can just be amazed at the tales of hunting giant burrowing locusts.<br /></p><p>As always, Mieville's language is astounding. The sentences rattle with the life that Mieville gives them, fairly leaping off the page despite the neologisms that this new world forces into them. The setting and the plot spark allusions to such disparate stories as <em>Mad Max</em> and <em>Dune</em>, the effect of Mieville's conglomerative passion for pulling together wildly different influences in order to poke at their similarities.<br /></p><p>The sum total of all the parts is fun—<em>Railsea</em> is a romp on many levels, moving quickly from idea to idea in a delight of creative excess. It continues Mieville's pattern of weird, and the weird made more weird by its similarity to what passes as normal. And while it invites more thought, unlike his more recent work, <em>Railsea</em> doesn't <em>require</em> a large commitment of thinking time. <em>Railsea</em> is thus a great summertime read for all ages and a tremendous introduction to the works of China Mieville and the potentials of the newer voices in speculative fiction.</p></span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-48660285140028839342012-06-14T09:28:00.001-05:002012-06-14T09:29:46.852-05:00Prometheus<span xmlns=''><p>Oh, I wanted to like this movie so much more than I did.<br /></p><p>Between the trailers for the movie, the viral videos, and interviews during its filming, it seemed <em>Prometheus</em> had the potential to be one of the best and perhaps most important science fiction films in a long while. The viral videos and interviews indicated that this was going to be so much more than the usual action fare that has become associated with science fiction movies: it would ask and probe some of the big questions that drive science fiction as a genre. And yet there would still be suspense and action, enough to make summer moviegoers relatively happy. And yet <em>Prometheus</em> really falls short on delivering either of those, making it a curious mishmash that while entertaining didn't shake my world in the way of, say, <em>Children of Men</em>.<br /></p><p>It starts promisingly enough, with gorgeous panoramic vistas of remote settings on Earth, fully making use of the 3D technology in breathtaking fashion. The scenes demonstrate loneliness and remoteness coupled with beauty and act as metaphors for the human condition as we currently understand it. The scenes of the ship Prometheus in flight are also beautiful work, but eventually the movie moves to interiors, visually representing the change in attitude on this voyage of discovery. For mankind has received an invitation to the stars, to perhaps discover its origins, and it all goes so bad so quickly.<br /></p><p>Noomi Rapace plays Elizabeth Shaw, one of the co-discoverers of the invitation, a specialist on this mission. She is vibrant in her hope and determined in every decision she makes. Accompanying her is her boyfriend, Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), the other discoverer, who is fated to an ancillary role in the film, more of a walking plot point than an active participant in the thrust of the movie. Michael Fassbender plays David, the Weyland android accompanying the crew of the Prometheus, and plays it admirably, making the character believable in the midst of actions that the plot forces him to perform, actions that sometimes stretch credulity.<br /></p><p>And there is the heart of what ails this story—characters regularly do things that make no sense at all, things that are used to move the story forward. Captain Janek (Idris Elba) tries to assert authority once the <em>Prometheus</em> lands, but his imminently practical suggestions are ignored and overturned by Holloway. David performs sabotage that has interesting and plot-advancing repercussions, but within the plot itself, there is absolutely no reason for him to do it. And sure, I suppose that the movie could be making the point that it's ironic that in our attempt to understand aliens, we don't really understand our own race, but that seems an awful minor point in the grand scheme of rooting out our ancestry to take up so much space in the movie. It's an ugly comparison, but when <em>Prometheus</em> moves into its action/horror sequences, it becomes nothing more than a big-budget slasher film with its limited morality—if you do something stupid you die, usually in horrible fashion. You go in the darkened basement alone, the serial killer gets you; you wander away from the main group inside an alien edifice, you're not going to make it to the end of the film. And just like audiences in those movies, you eventually have to wonder why people in the story keep doing stupid things. As the movie was winding down, I actually started sniggering at the foolishness the plot made the characters go through (protip: if you are being pursued down a hillside by a colossal rolling thing, move at a 90-degree angle to the path of the rolling thing rather than DIRECTLY IN ITS PATH).<br /></p><p>All of these miscues distract from the philosophical question of where we came from and our apparent aloneness in the universe. Fans of the genre will recognize that the movie goes through the stages that science fiction has gone through regarding the same question—man is alone; man is not alone but dominant; man isn't dominant at all. I actually like that <em>Prometheus</em> takes another step in that progression, similar to where other stories have gone but not entirely the same. But it's not at all clear why the progression has moved where <em>Prometheus</em> takes it, though I can be satisfied with not being able to understand why aliens do the things they do.<br /></p><p>There are a few surprises along the way, which liven up the mediocrity of the plot, but the revelation of which would act as spoilers. There is strong acting, even though the plot makes their actions unfathomable. Idris Elba is actually very strong as the captain though he is a cipher; I'll just assume that his random Southern accent is an affectation of the character similar to his owning an accordion that once belonged to Stephen Stills. And honestly, the exterior shots are stunning, reminding me of the cinematography of BBC's landmark series <em>Planet Earth</em>, but on a much more massive scale. The end result is an entertaining film, just one that doesn't live up to the expectations that were set upon it by all the hype. Fans of the <em>Alien</em> franchise should appreciate this origin story of sorts; it's not exactly a prequel, but it does go a long way towards explaining the background of those movies. And as gorgeous as the 3D is, so much of the movie is shot with interiors that the extra cost may not be worth it. <br /></p></span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-65394809022354923282012-05-27T15:10:00.001-05:002012-05-27T15:22:33.183-05:00The Standards<span xmlns=""></span><br />
<span xmlns="">A little while ago, I ran across a Web site that purported to list the 50 "must read" SF novels (<a href="http://forbiddenplanet.com/picks/50-sf-books-you-must-read/">http://forbiddenplanet.com/picks/50-sf-books-you-must-read/</a>). I read through the list and at first was pleased to find I made it to #25 before encountering a book I had not read, but some of the choices were decidedly odd to me. <em>Forever Peace</em> at #2? No Heinlein in the list at all? And then I had the general reaction I have to these kinds of lists—what were the criteria that were used to select the books? There was no indication. </span><br />
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<span xmlns="">I posted the list to my Facebook page, which in turn garnered an interesting response; someone wanted to know why I didn't create my own list. At first, I declined, because it seemed like it would be a lot of work (it turns out that it was indeed a lot of work). But my subconscious kept processing through books until I had to write some of them down, and once I started writing them down, there was no way to stop the tide that would sweep me to just such a post.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">So, here is my list of the 50 speculative fiction books everyone reads, the so-called "standards." These are the touchstone books, the ones that all speculative fiction fans know about…not the ones everyone SHOULD know about (in literary terms, it appears I am trying to write down the canon, always a dubious task). There may be some intersection between "should know" and "does know" but I'm trying very hard to take my personal taste out of the list (which is excruciatingly painful, let me say). I'm looking for the books that are generally accepted as the classics of speculative fiction by the readers of science fiction. And unlike other lists of this nature, I am actually going to provide my criteria:</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span xmlns="">An author may only appear on the list once. This was a major part of the excruciation I mentioned above.</span></li>
<li><span xmlns="">I will only list books that I have read. I refuse to have an opinion about something I haven't read, so there are probably some big names and some big titles I don't mention. It's not because I don't believe them to be one of the foundation books of the genre; I just haven't read them.</span></li>
<li><span xmlns="">I'm listing speculative fiction, so there is science fiction, fantasy, and horror in this list. </span></li>
<li><span xmlns="">I am not listing comics, so as tempting as it was to include them, <em>Watchmen</em> and <em>Sandman</em> do not appear here.</span></li>
<li><span xmlns="">I tried very hard to list just a book rather than a series. But in a couple of cases, that was just impossible, as you'll see.</span></li>
</ol>
<span xmlns="">If readers appreciate what I've come up with, I might go back and create my list of 50 that <em>should</em> be read, bearing in mind that such a list is by definition colored by my taste and opinion.</span><br />
<br />
<span xmlns="">So without further ado, my own version of the speculative fiction must read list:</span><br />
<span xmlns=""><br /></span>
<span xmlns=""><em>Frankenstein</em>—Mary Shelley (1818)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">While there are arguably other books that are the forefathers of fantasy (<em>The Faerie Queen</em> and <em>Gulliver's Travels</em> comes to mind), Shelley's classic is the understood beginning point for science fiction.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Tales of Mystery and Imagination</em>—Edgar Allan Poe (1839—the publication date of the first short story in the collection, the book itself was published in 1968)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Poe was able to modernize the features of the gothic novels and provide a blueprint for horror for the next century, influencing future writers who went on to influence others. His short stories are masterworks in writing of any kind, let alone horror.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</em>—Jules Verne (1869)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">A book that is in the mainstream because of the Walt Disney film of the 1950s, it also represents the prototype of Vernian science fiction. Verne extrapolates the science of his day into the future and then spends the novel describing its wonders. I also considered <em>Around the World in 80 Days</em>, but <em>20,000 Leagues</em> is classic science fiction, even if it becomes awfully dry in its long descriptions.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Dracula</em>—Bram Stoker (1897)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">While there were vampires before Stoker's novel, none of them has captured the popular imagination like the count from Transylvania. It is also a brilliant exercise in the epistle, being made up of letters from one character to another. Sadly, Stoker tried to write other speculative fiction with nowhere near as much success, but everyone who thinks about vampires reads this novel.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>War of the Worlds</em>—H. G. Wells (1897)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Wells's science fiction had a different purpose than Verne's and they had something of a rivalry; Wells writes science fiction to establish a setting to discuss contemporary thinking and philosophy. <em>War of the Worlds</em> puts man—especially white men—in the uncomfortable position of being the colonized rather than the colonizer. And it's a terrific alien invasion story as well. I also considered <em>The Invisible Man</em> and <em>The Time Machine</em>, but when it comes down to the one that I think most people read, it is this one.</span><br />
<span xmlns=""><br /></span>
<span xmlns=""><em>A Princess of Mars</em>—Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">A much beloved book among science fiction fans, <em>A Princess of Mars</em> initiated a long career for Burroughs. John Carter, the hero of <em>Princess, </em>and Tarzan are Burroughs's best known heroes, but I would argue that the Tarzan books are more adventure story than science fiction. This is a tiny wedge, since the Barsoom books are primarily action stories as well, just set in a different kind of bizarre locale, but <em>Princess</em> does codify the planetary romance subgenre, the one that dominates "science fiction" films to this day.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Brave New World</em>—Aldous Huxley (1932)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Just a classic book of a dystopic future and the rebel who tries to break free of it. Millions of students have had to read this for high school, which in no way diminishes its power and effect.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Conan of Cimmeria</em>—Robert E. Howard (1932—the publication date of the first short story in the collection, the book itself was published in 2002)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Thanks to Scwarzenegger, everyone thinks they know Conan. The sad thing is that all the movies are very different from the character that Howard writes about; in fact, the movies dumb him down tremendously. Unfortunately, all of Conan is in short form—short stories and novellas—so we have to rely on this brilliant collection of short stories, edited to remove later writers' additions to the original text. Anyone who is a fan of heroic fantasy has read something of Conan.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>At the Mountains of Madness</em>—H. P. Lovecraft (1936)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Lovecraft is nearly a deity for speculative fiction, a forgotten master who has suddenly regained popularity as later readers have come to discover how many writers have been influenced by him. Lovecraft distilled a lot of thought about fantasy from his 20s and 30s and helped to create a new sub-genre, the weird, which is undergoing another huge revival. <em>Mountains</em> is his best known piece, a delight of terror and atmosphere, wherein the monsters are never actually seen, but their presence felt throughout the novel.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Triplanetary</em>—E. E. Smith (1948)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">For a lot of the 30s and 40s, science fiction took on the structure of the inventor story—a brilliant young man discovers or invents something that leads mankind to galactic conquest. While not the father of this mode of writing, Smith was very clearly its best practitioner. <em>Triplanetary</em> is the first novel in the Lensman series, a much beloved series that describes man's expansion from our own planet to eventually our galactic cluster. The writing is momentous and swashbuckling, pulling its readers right along. Personally, I like the Skylark series better—the Lensman storyline gets repetitive over the six books—and I like that for of the Skylark books, Smith reverses everything and makes his antagonist the protagonist.</span><br />
<span xmlns=""><br /></span>
<span xmlns=""><em>1984</em>—George Orwell (1949)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Another classic, another bane of high school readers. <em>1984</em> and its ideas have so worked their way through Western culture that it is truly one of the defining books of the last 200 years.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</em>—C. S. Lewis (1950)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">This is in the list for obvious reasons. For a few decades, I would not be surprised if nearly 80% of all children in the US read this book and some of its series. It has long captured children's imagination, and except for the last couple of books, Lewis was able to keep his allegory fairly minimal, making it a beloved memory for adults who pass it on to their children. In many ways, this book is the godfather of the glut of young adult novels in the marketplace today.</span><br />
<span xmlns=""><br /></span>
<span xmlns=""><em>Foundation</em>—Isaac Asimov (1951)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">It's very hard to pick just one Asimov book. But remembering that my questions concerns the book most read by fans, I think it has to be <em>Foundation</em>. Asimov's strengths are on display here—characterization and plot dominate the stories. <em>Foundation</em> has to be one of the touchstone books in the history of science fiction. (I also considered <em>The Caves of Steel</em> and <em>The End of Eternity</em> for this slot.)</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Fahrenheit 451</em>—Ray Bradbury (1953)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Another seminal book in American history, <em>451</em> is much beloved by science fiction and mainstream audiences alike, primarily for its warnings about censorship. Bradbury is a brilliant stylist, but not a lot of that is on display in <em>451</em>, or it goes astray. And yet there is enough in the novel for it to capture the Western imagination. (I also considered <em>The Martian Chronicles</em> and <em>Something Wicked This Way Comes</em> for this slot.)</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>I Am Legend</em>—Richard Matheson (1954)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Matheson is one of America's great writers of the short form, even if most Americans don't realize who he is. Matheson wrote some of the most beloved episodes of <em>The Twilight Zone</em> and other horror and science fiction anthologies. <em>I Am Legend</em> is a thoughtful provocative take on the classic vampire story, providing an ironic twist on the general path such stories take. The novel has been filmed three times and, as you might expect, the best was the one starring Vincent Price (not Charlton Heston!). In many ways, this novel represents speculative fiction's turning its eyes on itself starting in the 50s, recognizing that it had a history as a genre and what seemed familiar territory could be mined for deeper ore.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Lord of the Rings</em>—J. R. R. Tolkien (1954)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">This is one that instance that I had to include a series rather than a single book. Tolkien's story of the dawning of man in a world where elder races have begun to fade is a touchstone for every fantasy novel that follows it. And just as its popularity started to wane, Peter Jackson directed a brilliant series of films based on the books, lofting the novels back into the mainstream consciousness again.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>The Stars My Destination</em>—Alfred Bester (1956)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">In many ways, Bester represents the first modern writer of science fiction, interested as much in style and narrative as in character and plot. <em>The Stars My Destination</em> feels like a beat writer's attempt to write science fiction with tremendous results that acted as a touchstone for young science fiction writers for decades to follow. Bester also had big ideas that carry on in science fiction today. It was tough to choose between this and Bester's other classic, <em>The Demolished Man</em>, but when it comes down to it, I think more people have read <em>Destination.</em></span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>A Canticle for Leibowitz</em>—Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1959)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">It would be easy to shrug off <em>Canticle</em> as just another post-apocalyptic novel, but doing so would be a tremendous mistake. <em>Canticle</em> should have a lot more mainstream appreciation than it does, speaking as it does of what it means to be human, to constantly rise up against horrible odds, even when those odds are put upon man by man himself. There is humor and wit and loads of charm in <em>Canticle</em> and it is either astonishing or tremendously apropos that it is the only novel by Miller published in his lifetime. When I am asked by someone who is interested in trying out some science fiction for a suggestion, this is the one I always say. To my mind, it may be one of the best books, for all genres, of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, and science fiction fans have long known and appreciated its genius.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Starship Troopers</em>—Robert Heinlein (1959)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">You can't have a list like this without Heinlein. Heinlein may be the most important figure in science fiction in the 20<sup>th</sup> century, and he is a brilliant and cunning writer besides. Everybody that came after Heinlein (and bear in mind he started publishing short stories in the 30s, this is only the ONE book of his everyone reads) used him as a touchstone for what makes good science fiction and what makes good writing. And, if you are thinking to yourself that you saw the movie and so don't need to read the book, know that the movie is a horrible adaptation of the novel, antagonizing and polarizing fans to this day. Heinlein has a huge catalog, but the only other two books I really considered for this list were <em>Stranger in a Strange Land</em> and <em>The Moon is a Harsh Mistress</em>.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>A Wrinkle in Time</em>—Madeleine L'Engle (1962)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Long known as a children's novel, it is nonetheless been a delightful introduction to science fiction for generations of readers. It is also well worth rereading as an adult</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>The Man in the High Castle</em>—Philip K. Dick (1962)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">There simply can be no list of this sort without reference to Dick. Another master whose writing inspired generations of writers, Dick is an icon in speculative fiction circles and gaining more and more notoriety in the mainstream as his stories are being made into movies. But the straightforward action fare of movies like <em>Total Recall</em> and <em>Minority Report</em> belies the plots of their stories: Dick was much more interested in the way the mind worked and how it would be affected by future changes than such movies indicate. Picking a single novel is hard, but I think more people have read <em>The Man in the High Castle</em>, an alternative history story where the US is divided between Germany and Japan after World War II, than the more surreal and paranoid novels of Dick. I also considered <em>DO Androids Dream of Electric Sheep</em>, the story that the movie <em>Blade Runner </em> is based on, but I'm pretty sure most readers are satisfied with seeing the movie and have not attempted the novel.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Dune</em>—Frank Herbert (1965)</span><br />
<span xmlns=""><em>Dune</em> carries enormous gravitas in the speculative fiction community. It has its flaws to be sure, but it is epic in its scope, the first science fiction novel I can think of to do such massive world-building. It is not hyperbole to say that pretty much everyone who reads science fiction reads <em>Dune.</em></span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Dragonflight</em>—Anne McCaffrey (1968)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">McCaffrey is a beloved author in science fiction circles for her Pern stories, about a planet colonized by humans but with a bizarre ecology that includes dragon. Those dragons are genetically manipulated by the colonists to help them fight a recurring natural disaster from space. But the first few novels don't really go into that much science fiction detail and follow a fairly typical young adult novel narrative. <em>Dragonflight</em> is the first Pern novel and can be read alone without reading any further, But I honestly don't know of anyone who has read just one Pern novel.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Stand on Zanzibar</em>—John Brunner (1968)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Not many folks know of Brunner outside of science fiction circles, which is a shame. He started out as a middling fantasy writer, somewhat interested in pushing that genre along the New Wave of science fiction, challenging narrative style and language much like Bester did in his novels. But somewhere along the way, he started writing science fiction. The best of them is <em>Stand on Zanzibar</em>, a "literary" genre novel if ever there were one. Style and narration are experimental and complex but well worth the effort to read. The plot feels very much like it was taken out of the headlines of today. Those writers who eventually create the genre of cyberpunk read and were indebted to Brunner.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Slaughterhouse-Five</em>—Kurt Vonnegut (1969)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">It may not be the case any longer, but when I was a teenager, if I told someone that I read science fiction, they would almost always ask me my opinion of Vonnegut. Vonnegut is also required reading a lot of high school careers, so there is some familiarity with him. Vonnegut is a member of a very small club, someone who admits to writing science fiction and yet garners huge mainstream appeal as well (Bradbury would also be a member of this group). The choices were legion—<em>Sirens of Titan</em>, <em>Breakfast of Champions</em>—but when you think Vonnegut, the first title you usually think of is <em>Slaughterhouse-Five</em>.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>The Left Hand of Darkness</em>—Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Le Guin is another speculative fiction writer who should be more appreciated in the mainstream than she is. If science fiction is about man's relationship to science and technology, Le Guin often uses the so-called soft sciences—anthropology and sociology—as the basis for her stories. <em>The Left Hand of Darkness</em> is a brilliant treatise on an alien near-human race and human interactions with them. The story forces the reader to reconsider long-held ideas of gender and gender roles, while also telling a bang-up story. Le Guin also has an extensive catalog of fantasy novels as well, such as <em>The Wizard of Earthsea</em>, but I think <em>Left Hand</em> noses it out for a place in the canon.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Nine Princes in Amber</em>—Roger Zelazny (1970)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Zelazny was part of the New Wave, where experimentation in language and narrative were the vogue and interest in the soft sciences formed the background of his novels. Zelazny is often cited as an inspiration by more modern writers, both for his language and for his plots. But if you were to ask speculative fiction fans what their favorite Zelazny novel is, it would be something from his Amber series, a fantasy set in a parallel dimension. Zelazny does use some of the New Wave techniques in the books, but not nearly so much as he does in his science fiction. <em>Nine Princes in Amber</em> is the first of the Amber novels and terrific fun to read, so much so that the experiments Zelazny is performing generally go unremarked.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Ringworld</em>—Larry Niven (1970)</span><br />
<span xmlns=""><em>Ringworld</em> is probably the best known "hard science" science fiction novel, where the author works out with formulaic rigidity the technology at the core of his writing. In this case, Niven has created a giant ribbon that surround a star, with the side facing the sun of the system terraformed and habitable. The story follows an ill-fated exploration of the eponymous Ringworld as they try to determine who created the artifact and then escape from it themselves.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Swords and Deviltry</em>—Fritz Leiber (1970)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">In opposition to the epic fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien is the tradition of sword and sorcery. Generally, the plotlines follow a rogue or group of rogues as they try to earn as much money as they can by taking up distasteful tasks that generally involve magicians. There is a little room for ethics and philosophy as sometimes the protagonists wonder why they do what they do, and there is often a great deal of humor, as the narratives are strongly character driven. Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are the most beloved rogues in speculative fiction, and their origins and first meeting are chronicled in <em>Swords and Deviltry.</em> Leiber had actually been writing Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories for decades, but their origins were not chronicled until 1970. <em>Swords and Deviltry</em> is the first in a series of books that collects their adventures.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>To Your Scattered Bodies Go</em>—Philip Jose Farmer (1971)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Farmer began writing ground-breaking science fiction novels in the 60s, taking on some characteristics of the New Wave—experimentation in story-telling and some vaguely psychedelic language. He also didn't seem to give a damn about taboo, seeing it as his responsibility to break through it. Ironically, his best known novel doesn't care so much about taboo as to start a tremendous adventure with enormous storytelling potential. <em>To Your Scattered Bodies Go</em> marks the first novel about Riverworld, a vast planet dominated by a single river that flows all over it like a labyrinth, and upon which every human being that ever lived on Earth has been reincarnated. Farmer jovially mixes up the nations and cultures of the resurrected, pairing up Samuel Clemens with Richard Burton (the explorer of the Nile rather than the actor) as our protagonists as they try to figure out the causes of the rebirth.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Rendezvous with Rama</em>—Arthur C. Clarke (1973)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Clarke has written so many wonderful novels that I have gone back and forth many times about which one to pick for the list. This is symptomatic of Clarke's beloved status in the science fiction community, eventually acting as a spokesman to the mainstream audience when events right out of science fiction took place, such as Apollo 11's landing on the moon. His works are beloved in the community, both the hard science fiction ones and the ones where he moves into "softer" fare. Unfortunately his best-known work, "The Sentinel", the story on which <em>2001: A Space Odyssey</em> is based, is a short story (to be honest, I'm not sure a lot of people read that story, preferring to see the movie). I've chosen one of his hard science fiction novels, <em>Rendezvous with Rama</em>, in which a giant artifact from another civilization wanders through our solar system. Of course humans launch an expedition to determine its nature, and the story of that journey is recorded in the novel. I also considered <em>Childhood's End</em>, <em>The City and the Stars</em>, and a collection of his short stories.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Gateway</em>—Frederik Pohl (1977)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Pohl began publishing fiction in the 50s, but I'm not sure if much of his earlier work is read very often any longer. But everyone knows <em>Gateway</em>, the story of humans discovering another alien artifact and trying to reverse engineer it to advance our own technological capability. One group, trying to manage the spaceships they find in the artifact, ends up travelling through a black hole.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Lord Foul's Bane</em>—Stephen R. Donaldson (1977)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Donaldson was sort the rock star of fantasy in the late 70s, at one point earning an article in <em>People</em> magazine. <em>Lord Foul's Bane</em> is the first of the Thomas Covenant series, worthy of critical appreciation for the new path he set fantasy upon. Taking the trapping of epic fantasy, in the mold of J. R. R. Tolkien, but giving it an utterly unlikable protagonist, Donaldson was able to play with the tropes and clichés of perhaps the most clichéd subgenre in speculative fiction, and make it exciting. If there is any issue with Thomas Covenant, it is that he is so miserably unlikable that sometimes reading his story is a slog. But everyone read at least the first book and much of what is happening today in fantasy owes its origin on the trail that Donaldson first blazed.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>The Stand</em>—Stephen King (1978)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">King stands as something of a living god for the horror genre and is so popular that mainstream readers adore him and would simultaneously be appalled if they were told they were reading speculative fiction. <em>The Stand</em> may be one of the most read books in America, and this is also true of readers of speculative fiction. And everyone has an opinion about it, especially King's immense talent, except when it comes to writing conclusions to his novels.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</em>—Douglas Adams (1979)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">This first book in a four-part trilogy is one of the most beloved books in speculative fiction, I think in good part because it is a comedy, poking at human frailty with absurd and blatant allegory. Not many readers go beyond the first novel or even pick up other series by Adams, but everyone reads <em>Hitchhiker</em>, as it is often referred to.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Book of the New Sun</em>—Gene Wolfe (1980)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">This is the second series I had to use a single selection on, and is made up of four books: <em>The Shadow of the Torturer</em>, <em>The Claw of the Conciliator</em>, <em>The Sword of the Lictor</em>, and <em>The Citadel of the Autarch</em>. It is impossible to just read one book of this series, not only because of the narrative threads that carry on between the books but also because of Wolfe's brilliance. A lot of books in this list are one that muct be read because that is what is done, but everyone likes the <em>Book of the New Sun</em>, especially because it is a challenge. Wolfe is another writer who should receive more mainstream acclaim than he does.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Lord Valentine's Castle</em>—Robert Silverberg (1980)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Another much beloved book that follows the newly crowned Coronal, head of the planetary government of the planet Majipoor. Majipoor has a strange philosophy for rule, in that it governs by dream control. There is some political maneuvering in <em>Lord Valentine's Castle</em> but mostly it serves as a wondrous introduction to the huge planet and its many alien races.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Pawn of Prophecy</em>—David Eddings (1982)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Eddings started down the path of becoming a staple of fantasy with the publication of this novel, the first of five in a series named The Belgariad. In a lot of ways, <em>Pawn of Prophecy</em> just follows the tropes of epic fantasy first codified by Tolkien. But the real strength of this series of books lies in the characterization—each character is fully rounded and has many many dimensions. And while the plot is somewhat typical, it also serves as the basis for the characters to work in different combination, further broadening and actuating them, shining light into the quirks of their personalities. Unfortunately, after the first five books, Eddings appears to get lazy and basically recycles the plot for three other series. But that first series, and especially <em>Pawn of Prophecy</em> was eye-opening and engaging, delighting legions of readers.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>The Anubis Gates</em>—Tim Powers (1983)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">People don't often read a lot of Tim powers, though he is critically appreciated. His novels are generally set on an Earth that is slightly different in some way, and the stories exploit those differences. <em>The Anubis Gates</em> imagines time travel to be a possibility, allowing scholars to travel into the past to see a lecture by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But something goes hideously wrong, and the time travelers discover a secret world in early nineteenth century London, and the ensuing battle is what opens the time gates that allow for time travel in the first place. <em>The Anubis Gate</em> is a rollicking adventure, gleefully mixing science fiction and fantasy and throwing in a taste of the American version of magical realism. If ever a novel cried out to be given the movie treatment, this is the one, and science fiction fans know it well.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Neuromancer</em>—William Gibson (1984)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">While there were elements of cyberpunk as far back as John Brunner, William Gibson set the world on fire with the first words in <em>Neuromancer</em>: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." In Gibson's hands, cyberpunk was a genre that dealt with the harsh economic realities of the Reagan years while exploiting the hot new technology, computers. The PC was relatively new and writers like Gibson saw its potential for change. It also didn't hurt that Gibson is capable of some dramatic turn of phrase. Everyone read <em>Neuromancer</em> and cyberpunk took off, predicting and influencing a number of the changes that make our life in the 2010s so different from what it was in the 1980s.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Ender's Game</em>—Orson Scott Card (1985)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Card's book about young Ender Wiggins learning to become an officer in Earth's war against an alien insect-like race excites strong reactions among science fiction fans. It generally has a positive reception though there are some legitimate complaints about the subject matter. It also has a "gotcha" near its end, which pulled numerous readers in also. Love it or hate it, the generation of fans that were reading in the 80s read <em>Ender's Game</em>.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>The Player of Games</em>—Iain M. Banks (1988)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Essentially a national treasure in the UK, Banks's popularity causes readers to pick up at least one book to try out. That book is usually <em>The Player of Games</em>, perhaps the most acclaimed of his novels.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Tigana</em>—Guy Gavriel Kay (1990)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Kay plays with the tropes of epic fantasy, evolving deeper and richer stories than the genre usually allows. Kay also bases each story in a setting that is an analog to a human culture and time period. <em>Tigana</em> is set in a country that is much like Italy between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. One of Kay's most distinctive qualities is the subtlety of the magic in his stories—there are not evil warlords leading hordes of hideous orcs into battle. Instead magic is pervasive and thus more powerful, and Kay is very concerned with its effects on people. <em>Tigana</em> is a powerful story about rage and redemption, sacrifice and sorrow. Like Banks, Kay is extremely popular the world over, and <em>Tigana</em> is simply his best work.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>A Fire Upon the Deep</em>—Vernor Vinge (1992)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">In some ways, <em>A Fire Upon the Deep</em> is nothing more than a giant space opera, a descendant of E. E. Smith's work. But Vinge is not content with galactic empires, and the novel is a delight of interaction with truly alien races and big ideas. Vinge is another well-beloved writer in science fiction cricles, and <em>Fire</em> is generally acclaimed to be his best work.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Red Mars</em>—Kim Stanley Robinson (1992)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">A novel of the colonization and terraforming of Mars, <em>Red Mars</em> is generally accepted as the best hard science fiction novel in the last few decades. Actually, it is the first book of a trilogy, and that series is widely appreciated, having won numerous awards. Robinson's descriptions are Verne-like in their capacity and detail, but Robinson is interested in not only how humans can affect Mars but also how Mars would affect its colonists.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Snow Crash</em>—Neal Stephenson (1992)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">This novel was the next step in cyberpunk, after the initial genre boundaries were established by Gibson and his contemporaries. It is a tour de force, a rollicking adventure with fascinating characters and loads of wit. If I taught creative writing, the first four chapters of this novel would be required reading in my class, introducing one of the great names in speculative fiction history, Hiro Protagonist, the Deliverator—or as we find out, a pizza delivery man for the mob. But the novel goes beyond irony to imagine a computer virus that infects users, the eponymous snow crash, interpolating and extrapolating the relationship between human and computer languages and imagining a time where they begin to intersect.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone</em>—J. K. Rowling (1997)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">This one is kind of a no-brainer. The Harry Potter phenomenon swept the world, including the speculative fiction community. While there has always been a young adult market for speculative fiction, Harry Potter brought a monstrous boom as everyone tried to get into the apparently newly opened market space. I have intentionally chosen the British version of the book, primarily because I have never read the American version (…<em>Sorcerer's Stone</em>), and because whenever possible, I like to read my books in their original language.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>American Gods</em>—Neil Gaiman (2000)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Neil Gaiman is the rock star of current speculative fiction. I've seen him at conventions twice and each time he walked on stage, you'd've thought it was the Beatles in Shea Stadium—legions of screaming women calling out his name. He is charming, witty, and urbane, and he even dresses the part of rock star, rarely seen without his black leather jacket. He's also an exciting voice in modern fantasy, interested in the crafting of new mythologies and their place in Western culture. <em>American Gods</em> is probably his most beloved book, becoming a touchstone for the current generation of readers of fantasy, but his young adult novels are surely not far behind in popularity. <em>Coraline</em> has already been made into a movie, and I understand the award-winning <em>Graveyard Book</em> is about to be as well. But for now, I'll stick with <em>American Gods</em> as Gaiman's contribution to this list.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell</em>—Susanna Clarke (2004)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">Another exciting voice without as long as resume as Gaiman's, Clarke rocked the fantasy world with her first novel. <em>Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell</em> was a soaring success upon its release, inventing a history of magic and delivering it in Victorian style. It is a sweeping epic with delightful characters and twisty subplots, and fans simply had to read the novel to find out what the fuss was about. The work has influenced what's going on in the genre today, relying as it does on Victorian style and narrative and giving the current steampunk explosion a guiding star.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>The Name of the Wind</em>—Patrick Rothfuss (2007)</span><br />
<span xmlns="">I'm taking a risk with this pick; it might be hubris to select a book that has been out for five years as one of the "Standards." It is something of a prediction on my part, but fantasy fans devoured Rothfuss's first novel and clamored for more. Rothfuss gave <em>The Name of the Wind</em> the explicit narrative structure of most epic fantasy and then set about with a scythe as he injected reality into the conventions. He was not the first to do this by any means, but he did it the best, so that his work has become a touchstone for current writers of fantasy on how to become subversive. Other authors I considered for this slot, for much the same reason, were Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch.</span><br /><br />
<span xmlns="">There you have it, my speculative fiction canon. Who did I leave out? Let me know in the comments section.</span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-43718900832468750702012-05-16T07:57:00.001-05:002012-05-16T08:01:51.071-05:00The Avengers<span xmlns="">As much as I generally loathe Marvel comics, I have to admit that when it comes to movie-making, they have the formula down pat. Under director Joss Whedon's hand, <em>The Avengers</em> is an exemplum of the superhero movie, and even action movies in general, following the success of the Spider-man, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America franchises.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Choosing Whedon as a director and screenwriter was a brilliant move not only because of his stated love for the characters, but because he also knows how to tell a story that gives adequate time to each character, including putting them in combination. Whedon's dialogue feels natural, exemplifying the traits that dominate each character, while allowing space for conflict. Of course Captain America (Chris Evans) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) would dislike each other from the start, with Captain America questioning Stark's heroism. And while Whedon falls back on some comic book clichés, potentially invisible to viewers who do not read comics, he also avoids the worst tropes. For example, it's something of a ritual that when two heroes meet one another for the first time, there is some kind of misunderstanding and they start fighting without thought, until one of them is able to pause and wonder why they are fighting. When Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Iron Man meet, they actually do have reason to immediately start fighting, smashing at each other and destroying the landscape until cooler heads prevail.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">But Whedon also knows comics well enough to adapt the things that work best as well. The overall arc of the movie is pretty standard comic book fare—a calamity occurs, a group of disparate individuals are called together, they fail in their first battles because they remain individuals, something happens to bring them together, and they win as a team. The fun of <em>The Avengers</em> in great part comes in how the story fills these standard slots, and also by how much life the individual actors give (and are allowed to give) their characters. Despite a primary cast of six Avengers, Nick Fury, and his two immediate aides, only two of these characters remain somewhat flat.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Another real strength of <em>The Avengers</em> is that it went away from what has become the mode by which nearly every action sequence is shot recently; instead of what I like to call shaky cam and ridiculous close-ups that do not allow the viewer to put what they are seeing in context, the action sequences remain tightly choreographed but shot with a steady camera and with enough distance to provide a perspective. Instead of seeing two Transformers' fists pummeling randomly at some part of each others' anatomy, the audience can see the entire posture and facial expressions as Iron Man and Thor duke it out, allowing the scene to advance the story rather than exist solely as a special effects spectacle. And because of this, the viewer is more intimately drawn in to the story than they would be otherwise.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Whedon also allows space for humor, also using it as a tool to draw the viewers in more intimately to the story. Because of the nature of the story being told, sometimes the humor is not very sophisticated, but Whedon also recognizes that he can't sustain tension for more than two hours without something being used as a release valve. A lot of the humor belongs to the wise-cracking Stark as in the <em>Iron Man</em> movies, and I suspect that Whedon sometimes just set the scene and let Downey go until he had to stop. But Whedon has also demonstrated his ability for the snappy comeback in his movies and TV shows, so I would not be at all surprised to find that some of those one-liners are actually scripted. Whedon also derives humor from ongoing jokes—Captain America being 70 years out of date is the source for jab after jab, for instance, until the thread is closed off by Captain America actually getting a reference made by the people around him. Not quite as funny but equally compelling, Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) makes references to the secret of how he has been able to maintain his composure such that the Hulk has not erupted in over a year. And when the secret is finally revealed, there is a nice pay-off for the character development.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Between the witty script, the smart action sequences and the general motion of the overall narrative, <em>The Avengers</em> creates a huge momentum in its viewing time. There are very few pauses for breath once the action starts rolling, and little space to notice small flaws. For instance, it's never really clear what Banner has learned to control the Hulk once he is free, but it also isn't crucial to the plot. The movie just rolls along, getting bigger and bigger until finally an alien army invades New York City, wreaking mass destruction. And even the face of this calamity, the movie still allows the characters to have personal moments. My favorite is Iron Man rallying the team when things look their most bleak by suggesting they all go out for some Middle Eastern food when the alien horde is defeated (this scene pays off beautifully for those viewers who stay for the entire credits, providing what I can only see as a Whedon signature moment).</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">The word I have heard most often from people who have seen <em>The Avengers</em> is "awesome." It really is huge and breath-taking and yet intimate and character-driven all at once. It sweeps its viewers up and rushes them to what had to be the conclusion, leaving them breathless and anticipating more at its end. It really is a masterpiece of the action genre, leaving me with aftershocks and desire for more much as initial viewings of <em>Back to the Future</em> and <em>Die Hard</em> did. That's some heady company, and <em>The Avengers</em> well deserves to be in it.</span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-29985378449017387582012-05-01T12:06:00.001-05:002012-05-02T13:36:01.427-05:00The Raven<span xmlns="">It's the fall of 1849, and Edgar Allan Poe has returned to Baltimore. In the opening scenes of <em>The Raven</em>, we see Poe, portrayed by John Cusack, at his intellectual and condescending worst. Clearly an alcoholic with raging financial troubles, he offends everyone he tries to cadge money or a drink from by alternately mocking their intellect and boasting of his own. He is tossed from a bar when only a visiting Frenchman recognizes his best-known poem, "The Raven." At the same time, a horrible murder takes place in Baltimore, the killing of a mother and her young daughter with the daughter's corpse ending up stuffed in the chimney. The detective summoned to solve the ghastly crime recognizes something familiar, and with a little research, discovers that the murder mirrors that of Poe's great short story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."</span><br />
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If you've seen a commercial or a trailer for <em>The Raven</em>, it's pretty obvious what the movie is about and the general direction it's going to take. Of course Poe is at first a suspect in the murder of the mother and child, but it becomes clear to the police that Poe is in many ways as much a victim of the crime spree that has started as those who are left mangled by the killer. So, at its shallowest level, <em>The Raven</em> is a decent enough period murder mystery to keep the viewers' attention. At the same time, however, there are moments that require more suspension of disbelief than I could muster, especially when it comes to the particulars of the various crimes that are uncovered. Taken literally, the crimes indicate that the murderer is not only brilliant but also nearly superhumanly strong and adept. The supporting characters are nominally interesting, if a little flat, and although one wonders how the beautiful Emily Hamilton (Alice Eve) could possibly fall in love with Poe, a man much her elder and far more dour, it's clear how much Poe loves her such that she is swept off her feet by both his ardor and his brilliance. Similarly, stalwart Detective Fields (Luke Evans) is clearly a man out of his own time, using forensic and detective methodologies that Poe's own Dupin and the later Sherlock Holmes would make famous. And though they are at first repulsed by Poe and his bluster, Fields and the audience are eventually permitted to see beneath to the tortured and brilliant man that hides beneath the pedantic and annoying exterior.<br />
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It's this journey that makes the movie so strong—it's a study of Poe in his final days, a tortured soul striving to break free of the darkness that has repressed him all his life and now taken the form of a murderer using his own words against him. It is the humanization of a figure at first presented as unconscionably arrogant into a passionate loving man fighting to prevent the terrible crimes he knows are coming. It really isn't the matter of the murderer's identity that gives this movie what power it has, nor is it the delight with which the gruesome crimes are depicted on screen; instead it is what those things represent—the depression that accompanies unrelenting tragedies, depression that cannot be eased either by Poe's writing or drinking. The people that despise Poe in this movie, and there are many, only see what the world has wrought upon him—there are very few to whom he either opens up (Emily and Fields) or who recognize on their own that his greatness comes from the darkness. Ironically, the person who knows this best is the killer.<br />
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The director and Cusack could have played Poe up for schmaltz, but instead they have given him depth and roundedness, providing unexpected emotional content in what could have just been a popcorn movie with a gimmick. Cusack is somewhat restrained by the script but he does a great deal with it anyway, causing Poe to rise above the angry din that weighs him down. The cinematography is also of a piece with Poe's mood—dingy buildings and muted colors resonate with Poe's melancholy; even a formal masquerade ball, usually filmed with pomp and color, is muted and washed out.<br />
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To be sure, <em>The Raven</em> is also a love letter to Poe. Images from a wide range of the works of Poe are played out onscreen, and someone is often quoting some line or another from his works. The depth that Poe's character is given despite the ludicrous rationale for the movie also speaks to a fondness for him. The end result is good, not great: the mystery is fairly obvious once resolved. But <em>The Raven</em> really isn't about solving the crimes, but the journey of the artist and the man instead. It strikes me that <em>The Raven</em> is going to be one of those movies that achieve a little cult status, an underground coterie of people who can get past the surface to see the depths of the creative mind in disarray. I foresee eventually owning this film and revisiting it despite its flaws.</span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-35471540665545994582012-04-08T19:27:00.001-05:002012-04-08T19:28:16.679-05:00The Best of John W. Campbell<span xmlns=''><p>For those unfamiliar with the history of science fiction, the name John W. Campbell means very little. And yet Campbell may be the most important and influential man in the history of the genre. After the bright lights of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells at the end of the nineteenth century, science fiction entered a difficult time—the writing was generally not very good nor very well received; it is at this point, I think, that science fiction became stereotypically attached to juvenile readers. And there had been no leading lights in American science fiction at all, no names that resound to mainstream readers like Wells and Verne. But in 1937, Campbell took over the editor duties for <em>Astounding Stories</em>, with (as Lester del Rey says in the introduction of this collection) "a clear vision of what science fiction should become." And thus began the golden age of science fiction, as Campbell mentored the writers that are now recognized both in the genre and outside as great: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon and many more. For 34 years, Campbell preached his vision and science fiction thrived, at first due to his near single-handed raising of both the potential and the literacy of the genre and then later, inevitably, in reaction to his vision. Campbell saw beyond the bug-eyed monsters and the ripped bodices of the women on the covers of the pulps to a genre that could deal equally with adventure and technology, mingling action and contemplation with style and storytelling craft.<br /></p><p>But most of my generation of science fiction readers are unaware that Campbell also had a career as a writer before he became an editor, that he was extraordinarily popular among fans looking for the best stories that the pulp magazines had to offer in the early 1930s. Part of del Rey's premise in the introduction is that you can find threads of Campbell the editor by examining his writing. Such a premise seems intuitive to the point of obviousness, but unfortunately, the stories collected in the volume don't bear out the premise very well at all. I've spent three weeks struggling through a 350-page collection, struggling to see the beliefs and style that are somewhat characteristic of Campbell's editing (and mentoring—never forget the mentoring), until I closed the book this afternoon with relief.<br /></p><p>What is astonishingly clear from this collection is that, if Campbell ever really was considered a great stylist in his own works, then the stories just have not aged very well at all. I found the general tone of the stories to be dry to the point of dust, and every story felt like a slog through dense and baleful language. There was no joy in the wordcraft, no poetry in his sentences. This is not the storytelling that I imagine kept young boys up reading through the night against the stern warnings of wary parents. And while I recognize that it might just be a matter of taste that causes me not to appreciate what Campbell is trying to do, the dissonance between his perceived greatness and my appreciation is so great, I look for reasons outside of taste to explain it. It may well be that you need to be the right age to be captivated by his work, and once beyond that age, the stories fail to excite. But whatever the reason, this collection was a difficult read.<br /></p><p>Often, poor writing can be balanced by an effective story—the action pulls the reader along despite the drag of the words used to tell it. Sadly, this was not true of the stories in this collection either. And I found it ironic that the most strongly held belief in Campbell's view of science fiction recedes into the background of his writing whereas he used his career as an editor to push it to the forefront. Campbell fully endorsed the idea of human dominion over nature and thus, eventually, over the universe. He believed that there is no problem so great that man will not eventually overcome it, whether it be travelling faster than the speed of light or dealing with races immeasurably superior to our own. It may take time, but man eventually finds a way, usually due to equal parts of his insatiable curiosity and his joy for life. This human exceptionalism is a thread that ties so many of his students' work together throughout the decades, and it is primarily this facet that later writers rebelled against with the free-thinking of the 60s and the cynicism of the 70s.<br /></p><p>Most typical of this attitude is Campbell's most famous work, the novella "Who Goes There?" which has been adapted into movies twice, once as <em>The Thing from Another World</em> and again as John Carpetner's <em>The Thing</em>. Typical (and arguably stereotypical) of the idea of human exceptionalism, man stumbles upon a race of aliens with a biology so alien and so destructive that it is terrifying and potentially cataclysmic. If its discoverers cannot defeat the alien, surely it will go on and singlehandedly take over and/or destroy the world. And after some hesitating starts, man defeats the creature through a combination of pluck and fast thinking. Man emerges from the story wary but triumphant, better prepared to take on the next challenge that Nature can throw at him. "Who Goes There?" is a fine story and worthy of reading for its role as a milestone of the genre, but also to see how far both film presentations go in changing the story as they brought it to the screen.<br /></p><p>But while the rest of the stories in this collection eventually end up with man being triumphant, in those same stories man spends literally generations under the yoke of alien races, emphasizing his being conquered with sheer number of words instead of his triumph at the end of the story. And while man triumphs, often the means of his original fall point out the inherent weakness that balances man's potential when he succeeds. Two of the stories that best typify this narrative path have titles that speak to the weakness of man: "Blindness" and "Forgetfulness". These stories have the common thread of man achieving the heights of technology—creating a paradise run by science—only to lose it all from laziness and idle boredom, making humans easy targets for invading races. The stories include wondering aliens who are amazed at the technology humankind once possessed and lost because life was too easy, because there was nothing to struggle against. Yet those aliens never consider that their very presence is the impetus for the struggle to begin again, the catalyst for man's inevitable rise to superiority. And while that narrative path might be appealing to readers enamoured with the gloss of the stories, more astute readers cannot help but hear the warnings and criticism of humanity, depictions of his inherent weakness rather than his exceptionalism.<br /></p><p>Campbell also seems to feel that traits such as rebellion and curiosity can be worn away by carefully planned eugenics, essentially bred out of the human population over time. Following the theories of evolution, when those traits return, it is a mutant characteristic but one that is seized upon as essential for survival of the individual and eventually the species. This position muddles the idea of the exceptionality of humans—if there is something inherently more valuable about humans, how can it be bred away and then return again? Given that evolution would appear to be a universal constant, how then can he be assured that other intelligent species don't have the same traits? Through Campbell's long career as a writer and editor, I don't believe he ever addressed that possibility, laying the foundation for later generations of writers to rebel against his paradigm.<br /></p></span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-47400454750157915132012-03-31T13:15:00.001-05:002012-03-31T13:16:46.636-05:00The Bards of Bone Plain<span xmlns=''><p>I spend a lot of time reading and reviewing books that I think are on the edge of genres or across genres, because those places are intuitively where the leading edge generally is. I have admitted many times that I like seeing the genres being stretched and sometimes busted. But this is not to say that I don't also like writing that is firmly entrenched in genre tropes and tradition, so long as it is not just a retread of the same old worn stories. I'm delighted then to bring Patricia A. McKillip's <em>The Bards of Bone Plain</em> to the attention of fans of old-style fantasy. While McKillip does some interesting things with the setting of the fantastic genre, at its heart, <em>The Bards of Bone Plain</em> harkens back to the roots of fantasy, to the storyteller and the bard and the sense of something more than natural just outside our sight.<br /></p><p>The narrative structure of <em>The Bards of Bone Plain</em> is delightfully deceiving, appearing to alternate between a fairly modern world where bards are nothing more than singers, and a world in the past where music and magic were intertwined and the more powerful the musician, the better the magician. The bridge between these two storylines is Phelan Cle, a young man about to graduate from the bardic school but for the required thesis. Like many students in that stage of their education, he is unsure what to write about, and the topics that most interest him have been worn out by earlier students. And so half of the story follows him and his friends as he decides on his topic and then works on the paper, while the other half is a mix of the paper he is writing and the actual events in the history his paper tries to recount. And as usually happens in such bifurcated storytelling, the two storylines come together in evocative and unexpected ways. This structure ends up putting the reader in the narrative space of the more modern storyline, as Phelan acts as our representative in this world until the rug is pulled out from under him and the reader. <br /></p><p>Such playfulness makes <em>The Bards of Bone Plain</em> a primer for readers new to the fantastic genre, carefully setting the reader in a safe place in relation to the narrative—learning the ins and outs of the most basic tropes—before using crafty storytelling to open the readers' and characters' eyes to the beauty of the magic and music in her world. The fullness of her characters and the obvious joy in her wordsmithing also serve to display the potential in well-crafted genre writing. And McKillip is able to suffuse the story with an ethereality, a sense of wonder, that serves both to pull the reader in to the story being told and to take away the reader's breath when Things Happen. All of these things happen as McKillip tells the story of many fantasy novels—why the magic went away, again showing of its entrenchedness in the tradition.<br /></p><p>Talking much more about the plot and characters of the novel would spoil them for readers, and this is one book that deserves to remain unspoiled so that its emotional charge in its closing chapters is not blunted. In that way, in its emotion and power, I am reminded of how I felt upon first finishing China Mieville's <em>Perdido Street Station</em>. Despite them being nearly opposite ends of the fantastic continuum, they both have a voice that demands attention and appreciation as they tell powerful stories with precision and skill. And as with Mieville's work, the reader will close <em>The Bards of Bone Plain</em> convinced that the story goes on from there and desperately wanting more of it. I regret that I have not read any of McKillip's work since the mid-70s, but this novel has inspired not only hunting to find some of those other books but also re-reading and proselytizing this one.</p></span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-81729638376347523392012-03-24T15:12:00.001-05:002012-03-24T15:16:18.854-05:00The Heroes<span xmlns="">Often when discussing genre fiction with its nonreaders and detractors, I discover that the aspect that causes the piece to be considered genre in the first place is the thing that causes people to squirm when it is talked about. It would seem that some folks can willingly suspend their disbelief only so far: superheroes (or aliens or elves) just go too far, and the unhappy reader despairs of really immersing themselves in the work. And yet, the fans of those genres not only can accept those things but laugh about it amongst themselves, irate when an author pushes the disbelief too far. </span><br />
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<span xmlns="">And so it was that, in 1986, a brilliant young writer named Frank Miller decided to contemplate what a world full of superheroes would be like if they really could exist. The result was the seminal <em>The Dark Knight Returns</em>, in which actions have consequences and people become superheroes because they have psychological issues. In the series, Miller posits a Batman in his 70s, paranoid and violent after a lifetime of trying to avenge the death of his parents in what is otherwise described as "the never-ending fight". Never-ending, it turns out, has dire consequences. The difference in the story-telling was stark—for those folks who are more familiar with other media might compare the campy 1960s live action <em>Batman</em>, with Adam West, to the most recent Batman movie, <em>The Dark Knight</em>, for an idea of the scope of difference.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Miller's work was groundbreaking, and as usually happens when groundbreaking work takes place, it was fervently copied. The idea of "grim and gritty" heroes as it became known was duplicated across every major comic company and probably helped inspire a few new ones. The issue was, as usual, that the copies failed in two important ways: they copied the effect of the story-telling rather than examined its causes, with the result that the new branch of story-telling just stagnated as no new ideas were attempted beyond the first steps that Miller set out upon.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Fantasy literature, most often thought of as involving elves and magic, has been typified and celebrated most thoroughly in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien has been copied flagrantly, but over the decades since <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>'s publication in paperback, there have been a number of attempts to do something different, to break out of the long shadow of Middle Earth. But no one applied Frank Miller's superhero logic to the fantastic tropes as convincingly and thoroughly as Joe Abercrombie has in his novels. Abercrombie really works through the implications of the fantasy world he sets up, wondering what it would be like to really live in that world on a daily basis. And with <em>The Heroes</em>, Abercrombie sets his sights on that most epic of fantasy tropes—war in a medieval age. The best mainstream analogy for <em>The Heroes</em> is Stephen Crane's <em>The Red Badge of Courage</em>, the Civil War story that rips to shreds any romantic notions of what war is like.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Abercrombie cheats the tropes a little bit in the world he has created: there are no elves and dwarves, usually the first sign that we are in a fantasy world, and while there is magic in his world, it is not pervasive, and practitioners are more likely to be hidden than seen strutting their stuff with large pointy hats and staves. And Abercrombie can also be a little heavy-handed; titling his destruction of the romantic ideas of medieval war <em>The Heroes</em> gives away the irony that its characters and readers feel as the plot progresses. Even though the title refers to a group of ancient menhirs on the battle field between two warring nations, the characters remark on the name of their battlefield with disgust, as they ponder their own role in the war and if there is really any such thing as a hero in their circumstances.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">What Abercrombie achieves in his novel is reinstalling humanity in a cliché that is most often reserved for characters that somehow pass into supernatural on the battlefield. In many ways, <em>The Heroes</em> could have devolved into a historic account of troop movements over three days of battle, so determined is Abercrombie to focus on the human aspect of war. But by causing his novel to rotate through characters on all parts of the battlefield, from the newest recruit to the marshall of one of the opposing armies, we get to see not only the war but also its players, in many different lights, building the characters from many dimensions into superbly full and interesting characters. Abercrombie also recognizes that people, strangely enough, are often contradictory—the most noble can do the most heinous deeds, and the most amateur can rise up—especially under pressure, which nothing brings to bear like warfare.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Especially interesting in this light is a character that has had some minor roles in Abercrombie's earlier works, Bremer dan Gorst. Dan Gorst was once the captain of the King's personal guard, but has fallen into disrepute and is tasked to be the Union King's observer of the war against the North. But dan Gorst's narrative is filled with self-loathing and loathing of everything around him, such that his passages become difficult to read, honest though they may be in their evaluation of the Union's leadership. But to the troops of the King's army, dan Gorst is a hero, personally winning major skirmishes in the first two days of the battle for the Heroes, and to the North, he is an implacable though respectable opponent. And what Abercrombie's narrative causes the reader to understand is that none of these visions is wrong—dan Gorst is all of these things, a seething mass of contradictory impulse and reputation, a real person. And dan Gorst is only one of about ten characters that are given the same treatment through the book, a tactic which further casts war itself into a brighter light—in Abercrombie's hands, war becomes a mass of orders given and not received, or misunderstood, sacrifice for no reason, and tragic crashes of soldiers one upon the other leaving behind nothing so much as a field of human wreckage.</span><br />
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<span xmlns=""><em>The Heroes</em> takes place primarily over the three days of the battle for the Heroes, and each day's narrative includes a different astonishing narrative trick that further informs the tragedy and irony of war. On the first day, for the space of scores of pages, Abercrombie suddenly starts a narrative chain of death—we start with a character from the North and follow him until he is dead, and then the narrative switches immediately to his killer, and so on for perhaps a dozen characters. In this way, Abercrombie shows the sorrow and irony of what one person thinks as he is killed compared to the relief and good fortune of his malefactor, until they too become a victim. Similarly, on the second day, Abercrombie follows a written command given by the marshall of the Union's army, describing how it is perverted not only by circumstance but because of the relationships between deliverer and recipient. And then, in a final twist, the message is lost, leading to horrific action from both parties, making moot the original intent of the message and the effect it might have had if delivered. </span><br />
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<span xmlns="">On the third day, Abercrombie creates a chain similar to the first, but instead of it being caused by death, the links are forged by warriors seeing each other across the battlefield. The action of this chain parallels the primary battle tactic of one of the armies in the field, thus interleaving personal narrative with something broader and fact-based. And again, it shows how the very personal can affect even the biggest movements in a battle, and thus a war.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Abercrombie is also unflinching in his battle narrative. Let's be honest: people fighting with swords, axes, and arrows do not die in pretty ways. Abercrombie does not play this up—he is not interested in a gorefest, but he plays it honestly, allowing the reader to feel something akin to what the witnesses to such horrible deaths also feels and sees.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">All of these factors, and the twisty plot that follows any battle, make <em>The Heroes</em> into a seminal work, pushing fantasy into a place where it can have relevance beyond just the fans of the genre. Abercrombie's writing style changes to fit the characters that are narrating and thus exhibits a versatility and ingeniousness that is remarkable and engrossing. This is the kind of touchstone book that both fans of fantasy and fans of groundbreaking and exciting writing will want to return to again and again.</span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-21748930361599999722012-03-14T05:38:00.001-05:002012-03-14T05:38:13.466-05:00Greg Bear and John CarterAs I have been perusing the reviews for <i>John Carter</i>, one thing continues to stand out to me--a lot of the mainstream critics don't get it. They don't get how important a book this was--and thus how important the movie is to the genre. They don't get the time the movie is set in. They don't get how the characters are a function of that time.<br />
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It could easily be argued that the movie fails if it doesn't convince the viewer of these things. But it's difficult not to wonder if perhaps the critics are harboring some other biases. And given my general impression of how hypocritically speculative fiction is treated in the mainstream, I'm willing to indulge in that doubt a little bit. And now that I have read what Greg Bear has had to say, I'm willing to indulge it still further. You should check out what he has to say: <a href="http://www.gregbear.com/other/johncarter.cfm">http://www.gregbear.com/other/johncarter.cfm</a>.<br />
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<br />Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-31465860960431168692012-03-13T06:11:00.001-05:002012-03-13T06:12:42.061-05:00Locus and John Carter<span xmlns=""></span><br />
<span xmlns="">Locus magazine has put two very good reviews of <em>John Carter</em> on their Web site. The first, by Gary Westfahl, says a lot of things that I have said in my own writings, but more elegantly (<a href="http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2012/03/barsoom-revisited-or-forewarned-four-armed-a-review-of-john-carter/">http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2012/03/barsoom-revisited-or-forewarned-four-armed-a-review-of-john-carter/</a>). I found this paragraph to be particularly striking, where Westfahl describes the plot change to make the Therns provide Carter's method of transportation to Mars:</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">This change is particularly ruinous to the film because the power of Burroughs's original story, after all, lay in the fact that it represented the ultimate in wish fulfillment: you look up at another planet, you transport yourself to that planet, you find that you can beat the crap out of everyone and everything around you, and you marry a beautiful princess and become that planet's Warlord. This is the story that inspired many people to become interested in space travel, like Carl Sagan, who related how he as a child, after reading Burroughs, had similarly looked up at the stars and dreamed that he might be transported to another world. Significantly, he did not dream that he might somebody run into a powerful alien with a magical device that could take him to another world; it simply isn't the same. And this sort of story must end with the complete, transcendent triumph of the hero, something that the film's John Carter is denied: no matter how long he remains on Mars, the film suggests, he will always be gazing suspiciously at every person he encounters, fearful that he or she is a disguised Thern plotting his demise. Perhaps this was justified in story conferences as laying the necessary groundwork for a possible sequel, but one might respond that Burroughs himself, after nervously providing his early novels with cliffhanger endings, began giving his novels complete, satisfactory conclusions, confident that he could always devise some pretext for one more sequel without any obvious hooks; and certainly, Hollywood itself has never failed to find some way to keep a profitable franchise going, even contriving to produce three more sequels to a film, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1969), that ended with the complete destruction of planet Earth. In sum, since Burroughs's novel already offered a sufficient number of dastardly opponents, there was no reason to add the Therns in the first place, and every reason to remove them in the final, chartreuse version of the script.</span></blockquote>
<span xmlns="">The second is a conversation between Howard Waldrop and Lawrence Person (<a href="http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2012/03/howard-waldrop-and-lawrence-person-review-john-carter/">http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2012/03/howard-waldrop-and-lawrence-person-review-john-carter/</a>), both of whom mention some of the same points I've made but with the added benefit of Person claiming no emotional attachment to the source material. I've read a lot of reviews in the past few days, and it's a stroke of luck that perhaps the two best I have read thus far are on the same Web site.</span><br />Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612527296515280840.post-83725355241670933982012-03-11T09:26:00.001-05:002012-03-11T09:29:09.069-05:00The difference between the books and the movie: John Carter<span xmlns="">Yesterday, I wrote what I hoped to be a fairly unbiased review of the new <em>John Carter</em> movie. If you are new to my blog, I should reveal that I am a lifelong fan of the Barsoom novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the source for <em>John Carter</em>. Today, I want to look at the movie again from what I am jokingly referring to as the fanboy perspective, from the point of view of someone intimately familiar with the original story, with an eye towards describing the differences in the two versions of the stories and trying to understand why those changes were made. There may be spoilers in what follows, but I don't imagine they will be so severe as to ruin either the movie-going experience or the joy of reading the novels.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">I should note also that I am not going to talk about every difference between the books and the movie. I expect there to be differences—books can't be adapted verbatim, for reasons of time and storytelling. For instance, in the movie John Carter is given the name Dotar Sojat meaning "my right hand" by Tars Tarkas. In the books, Dotar and Sojat are the names of the first two warriors Carter kills and thus his Barsoomian name. There is not a lot of value explicating this; the writers used a name from the source, which often is enough to get a giddy sigh from the fans of the original work, and they are able to suitably adapt the name to add more meaning to the story they are trying to tell. In this case, we don't have to have pages of Carter and Tars Tarkas fighting together to see that they build up trust and friendship between them, the movie spares the viewer time by having Tars Tarkas announce his dependence on his new comrade, by naming him "my right hand." </span><br />
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<span xmlns="">One detail in the books that make even their fans grimace is the method by which John Carter travels from Earth to Mars. Frankly said, the reader has no idea how it happens and neither does John Carter:</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">As I stood thus meditating, I turned my gaze from the landscape to the heavens where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting canopy for the wonders of the earthly scene. My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination—it was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron.</span></blockquote>
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<span xmlns="">My longing was beyond the power of opposition; I closed my eyes, stretched out my arms toward the god of my vocation and felt myself drawn with the suddenness of though through the trackless immensity of space. There was an instant of extreme cold and utter darkness. (<em>A Princess of Mars)</em></span></blockquote>
<span xmlns="">…and John Carter opens his eyes on the planet Mars. But using this method in the movie would bring hoots of derision and monumental eye-rolling from critics—Carter got to Mars by wishing himself there? Instead, the screenwriters take other elements of the story and expand them to fill their need: the priest class of Barsoom has the ability to travel between the planets and Carter stumbles across one of their way stations in the Arizona desert and is accidentally transported to Mars. This method is more palatable to a mainstream audience and also opens the door to further plot development, allowing this priestly class, the Therns, to become the overarching villains of the story and provide a threat that could support a franchise of movies. Also, by couching the plot change in terms familiar to the audience familiar with the books, the screenwriters placate that same audience somewhat. Thus the story change maximizes the benefit to novice viewers and minimizes the pain for fans of the books, deriving the most advantage overall.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Of course, it could be argued that the movie could have remained true to Edgar Rice Burroughs's original vision, but that would have pushed the movie closer to an independent sort of movie, one suitable for art houses. Filmed that way, <em>John Carter</em> could have become a cult favorite on the art house circuit though the odds on that happening are pretty long and the profits pretty small, especially when compared to a potential movie franchise. Just by choosing to go the blockbuster route, the crew narrowed down the parameters of the kind of story they could tell.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">Another fairly big change which worked pretty well for the movie was in the character of Dejah Thoris. Bearing in mind that the original novel, <em>A Princess of Mars,</em> was published in 1912 and was generally intended for an audience of boys and young men, Dejah Thoris as written is really not more than a plot point. She's beautiful and in need of rescuing, giving John Carter a reason for his subsequent actions. Burroughs makes it clear that she is smart and well-trained in swordplay, making her something more than just an ornament, a model of the strong woman that Carter needs by his side, but she isn't developed very far as a character in that first book. In the movie, however, Dejah Thoris is not only smart but something of an academic (Carter refers to her regularly as "professor") and still also a swordswoman, capable of not only defending herself but engaging in witty banter as she does so. Modern audiences would have been disturbed if Dejah Thoris was as flatly portrayed as she is written, and given that a potential franchise needs support across all demographics, a solid female role model can only help, especially in the young girl and teen girl segments. And frankly, it's pretty hard to read Dejah Thoris without wincing at the stereotypical portrayal of her from the time period. This updated version seems a much better match for John Carter, especially to audiences with experience with relationships, which the intended audience for the books surely never had. I freely admit to being totally messed up into my 20s about how men and women relate in part because my first impression of it came from the Burroughs books.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">But on the other hand, the attempt to make John Carter himself more accessible to mainstream audiences doesn't work so well. In the books, Carter is a stoic warrior, a man of few words and little humor, but generally radiating charisma. He is the greatest swordsman of two worlds, unbeaten and unbeatable. But that sort of uber-competence doesn't work with movie-going audiences; for some reason, we want to see our heroes with flaws. The plot goes out of its way to demonstrate his ability as a fighter and his ability to strategize in its time in the Arizona desert, but then, somehow, Carter seems to forget most of it when he gets to Barsoom. The movie's John Carter is somewhat impatient and selfish, traits that belong nowhere near the character as he is written. The books' John Carter fights on Barsoom because he sees injustice and because he can make a difference, and while the movie's John Carter ultimately arrives at the same determination, it takes a lot of work to get him there. And while it may make his character more accessible, it also makes him weaker and distinctly less heroic.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">One difference that was somewhat mixed in its success was the portrayal of Woola. The novels make it clear that Woola, a beast called a calot and the Barsoomian analog of a dog, is perhaps John Carter's most steadfast companion on Barsoom, the archetype of the doting watchdog. When John Carter shows appreciation, even affection, when Woola originally leaps to his defense, Woola commits himself to Carter's protection, never wanting to leave his side. The movie does a decent job of showing this, but then takes it perhaps a bit too far by making Woola a comic bit. First, Woola is ugly, described in Burroughs's writing as nothing so much as frog the size of a Shetland pony but with ten legs. The movie plays up the ugliness by letting us see often into Woola's hideous mouth, wherein is hidden his huge blue tongue. Being a faithful dog, the movie pulls out the stereotype that dogs apparently are incapable of life without drooling and slobbering over their owners, and it is made that much funnier by the dog using its huge blue tongue to show its affection for John Carter. And while calots are fast animals in the books, in the movie, Woola runs at ridiculous speed, leaving trails of dust behind it as though it were more Barsoomian roadrunner than dog. I understand why this relatively minor change was made—Woola offers some levity and appeal to a younger audience, and cynically, if it succeeds, then perhaps every child will want a stuffed Woola—but the actual carrying out of this change becomes grating to the adult audience. But the vision and conception of the beast feel dead on; the movie just pushes what passes for personality a trifle too far.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">There is one fairly large change that I have no explanation for; I can neither figure it out from a writerly point of view nor from a marketing one. The main conflict of the movie is between the two city-states of Helium and Zodanga. For some reason, the plot of the movie requires that Zodanga be a mobile city, basically a city that walks on tremendous legs all over the planet. While it has a gee whiz factor and is impressive in the idea of it, the fact that Zodanga is a walking city has no bearing on the story of the movie at all, and very little time is spent there, so that there are no long scenes of the city to wow the audience. This one just feels like change for change's sake.</span><br />
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<span xmlns="">So, ultimately, I generally understand why the writers changed what they did to make the movie more accessible. I can accept them though in some cases I don't really like them very much. That's the trouble with the devoted (some might say "obsessed") fan; I really wanted to see the books that Burroughs wrote in cinema. But that movie would have even worse reception than what the one we have has received. And it is the very rare moviemaker who can ignore cost and income in pursuit of a vision.</span>Fred Perryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13258734931911133271noreply@blogger.com10