"Rollback" Is Forward-Thinking When It Comes To Rejuvenation

Interesting SF timing over the past couple of days… I finished Robert J. Sawyer’s new novel “Rollback” on Sunday, and was able to take in Sawyer’s reading/book signing Monday night at Vancouver’s speculative fiction bookstore, White Dwarf Books. I hadn’t planned it that way, just one of those nice coincidences where what you’re currently reading syncs-up nicely with a related an event.

The reading was an enjoyable evening. The folks at White Dwarf cleared an open space between the shelves and crammed in enough chairs for about two dozen of us and provided wine, juice and some tasty cookies, all under the watchful eye of the store’s resident basset hound. For his part, Sawyer was intelligent, warm and funny and seems like the kind of guy it’d be cool to sit down and have coffee with and talk about, well, pretty much anything. He gave a spirited reading of an excerpt from “Rollback”. Sawyer took questions from the audience, deftly managing a spirited discussion about the apparent halt of Darwinian forces in modern human evolution. He was also kind enough to share his thoughts about his approach to character writing in answer to my question about how he was able to put himself, as a middle-aged person, into the mindset of a senior citizen. Sawyer responded that he combined the writer’s ability to imagine himself as thoroughly as possible in his character’s shoes, with a good deal of observation of old people around him, as well as feedback on his drafts from friends who are seniors. He pointed out he’d previously had to make the same imaginative leaps into lives he’d never experienced when creating characters who were Neanderthals or evolved dinosaurs. Sawyer went on to note that his next task along these lines would be to include a 15-year-old blind girl as a character in an upcoming novel. Great to see he’s always looking to tackle new challenges as a writer. It’s one thing to invent an alien personality from scratch where you get to make the rules, it’s quite another to create human characters who readers can believe they’d actually meet out and about on the streets – something that Sawyer continues to do with success.

As for the novel, “Rollback” is a clever, warm and honest exploration of the challenges of being old, and the pitfalls that would open up if the elderly could become young again.
The story focuses on Don Halifax, an 87-year-old retired CBC (Canada’s public broadcaster) Radio producer and sound technician, married to Sarah, a retied SETI astronomer who, decades earlier, decoded an alien transmission and spear-headed Earth’s response signal. Now the aliens have sent another signal, scrambled with a different key, and a corporate tycoon wants Sarah to again take the lead in figuring out what the extraterrestrials want. Problem is, Sarah’s so old, she’ll never live to see if the aliens continue the conversation, never mind that she might not be around long enough to crack this code. That’s where the rollback procedure comes into play: it’s a rejuvenation process so insanely expensive only the ultra-rich can afford it. A series of medical treatments that reverses the aging process and returns the patient to a physical state of about 25-years-old. Sarah agrees to undergo the treatment and work on the new signal project, but only if Don gets the rollback to. Tragically, while the process is a resounding success with Don, it fails with Sarah, leaving her withered and old, and somewhat alienated from her husband. Don must now struggle to maintain his relationship with his wife and family even as he faces the challenges of reintegrating into a world that hasn’t had much use for him in a long time.
In a recent review on Sci Fi Weekly’s books section, Paul Di Filippo likens “Rollback” to a concoction made from the movies “Cocoon”, “Contact” and “On Golden Pond”. I don’t think that’s an entirely fair comparison.
“Rollback” is nowhere near as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about communicating with alien civilizations as “Contact” is – Sawyer’s book is far too practical in its philosophy about the impact of an interstellar meeting of the minds.
I’m not even going to get into the differences with “On Golden Pond”, aside from the fact that “Rollback” didn’t bore the hell out of me like the former did.
As for “Cocoon”, while one may be tempted to say there’s a similarity in the sympathetic treatment of the lives and challenges of the elderly in today’s society, I think there’s only a surface resemblance. “Cocoon” shows us a troop of seniors having, for the most part, a jolly good time once their rejuvenation kicks in. It’s like a long-form version of Spielberg’s Twilight Zone remake of “Kick the Can”. Sure, Hume Cronyn’s character runs around on his wife, but we’re given to believe that he was pretty much always that way until age slowed him down.
“Rollback”, on the other hand, presents relationships, choices and circumstances that are far more complex because of the multi-layered nature of the age disparities within it. Don is the same mental/emotional age as Sarah, but physically he becomes much younger, creating a world of difference in terms of physical capabilities, sex drive, appetites for food, need for sleep, even tolerance for the pace of conversation. He still loves Sarah deeply, and yet these differences drive him into the arms of grad student Lenore. Not in a happy-go-lucky way like Cronyn’s cheating husband in “Cocoon” but in a set of circumstances fraught with guilt that stains his new relationship.
Don must also struggle with the angst accompanying the fact that he will now outlive his wife – not by a few months or years, but now having to endure decades of mourning. And Sarah can only watch as he tries to cope with this. On top of this burden, Don begins to question his own value, pondering how many people more worthy than he have not had access to this procedure which would allow them to continue to make valuable contributions to society. We see overall that Don is suffering from a strange new kind of survivor’s guilt.
And yet Don’s not truly at home the young either – he may look like one of them, but he doesn’t think like them at all. Don has 87 years worth of life experience to shape his beliefs and affect his judgment, and this occasionally causes problems when Lenore has to upbraid him for being patronizing, or when he simply feels isolated among the young whipper-snappers at the pub. But this alienation doesn’t drive him away from his second love interest, in fact, it drags the two of them closer together, creating a love triangle not in the soap-opera sense, but in a deep, pained, needing and fragile way that is so human that as much as we can’t say we approve of cheating on one’s spouse, we can’t say what’s happening is entirely wrong either.
Don’s got other hurdles to clear beyond sorting out his love-life. His family is forced to readjust to him while Don himself has to come to grips with the fact that he might outlive his own children if the price of the rollback procedure doesn’t come down enough before it’s too late for them.
The jealousy of those around him is another obstacle. Humans have been obsessed with youth for a long time, stretching back into legends of Conquistadores hunting through the jungles of South America for the fountain of youth, Knights questing for the holy grail, or the first Chinese Emperor desperately trying any quack treatment or potion in a bid to live forever. Products and services aimed at returning youth and vitality are a huge part of the modern commercial market. With the premise in “Rollback” that the procedure is ultra exclusive because of its enormous expense, Don finds many around him want what he has and are quite upset when they can’t have it. He finds himself confronted by old friends who want him to get his rich benefactor to foot the bill for treatments for them. Relatives look on Don with jealousy and ask why he gets to go on living when their loved ones have had to die.
And life outside his personal relationships isn’t easy for Don either. With his newly regained youth, Don finds himself confronted with the question of how he will make his new lease on life productive. The answer seems simple enough: go back to work. But what if you’ve been out of the workforce so long your skills are irrelevant? Many out-of-work executives today are finding out that a lifetime of experience is nearly worthless if the nature of the job, the market, the corporate culture, the political/demographic necessities, or the dependent technologies have changed sufficiently.
It’s this tension between deeply complex and human relationships and alienation brought on by radial life and lifestyle change that makes “Rollback” such an interesting story.
Other points of interest in “Rollback” include a sudden change in character point of view about mid-way through the book (after a birthday party, I think), where we suddenly jump from Don to Sarah, then Lenore (possibly one or two others after this) and then back to Don for nearly the rest of the book. I still haven’t figured out why these sudden, temporary POV changes come into play. Certainly they make for an interesting shake-up in pacing and characterization, but why only for such brief portions of the novel? This may bear some more thought.
I also got a kick out of Sawyer referencing his fictional “Old Sully’s” beer – re-using the brand he invented for “Mindscan”. Curious bridge between a story about a man who’s life is extended through medical rejuvenation, and a tale about a man who’s life is extended by downloading his consciousness into an android. The two stories are in some rough way negatives of one-another.
The possibility of life-extending options was actually brought up at one point during the reading/signing discussion where one member of the audience asked Sawyer if he’d consider a robotic upload or a rejuvenation treatment. I seem to recall Sawyer saying he liked flesh too much to go for the android option, but he might be amenable to a rollback.
In any case, Sawyer has shown us with “Rollback” that it’s never too late to breathe new life into the old SF trope of the fountain of youth. And I’m willing to bet this is a yarn that will age well.

Space Opera

A couple of coworkers tried to recruit me into their opera club the other day.
A bunch of the staff and volunteers at the office get together every time a new opera comes to town and have a potluck supper followed by a discussion about the particular feature they’re about to head out to see. The idea is to revel in their specific cultural passion and to try to “enlighten” non-opera fans (and thus swell their ranks).
I declined the invitation.
While I have the highest respect for this form of music, it’s just not something I enjoy much. Certainly I do enjoy the instrumentals of operas, but the singing doesn’t do anything for me. I think it’s an acquired taste – and one that’s still fairly bitter to me.
The fact that the office types haven’t given up in their attempts to convert me (this recent “invitation” was, in fact, their fourth attempt – and it should be noted this recent invitation was actually repeated about three times over the course of two days) has caused me to begin to view them (affectionately though) as a type of cultural Borg – attempting to assimilate all consciousnesses in the office into their collective in an attempt to achieve perfection in musical appreciation and potluck supper variety. They differ significantly in that they haven’t arrived at the office in a huge cube or sphere – yet.
That’s got me to thinking about instances where opera has popped up in sci-fi/fantasy/horror TV and movies. This is not to be confused with operas that have used speculative fiction as their inspiration (such as “Dracula” or “1984” – Wikipedia’s got a whole list of them, and one that’s by no means complete – hasn’t “the Lord of the Rings” been turned into an opera?) – I’m talking about television shows or film in the genre(s) which have made effective use of opera as part of their soundtracks or the focal point of scenes. Even though I don’t enjoy the singing component, I can appreciate how its use can enhance a scene.
Non-genre examples come to mind easily: “Philadelphia”, “Glory” and “The Untouchables” to name but a few.
But speculative fiction TV/film examples are a little harder to find (references to opera in written sci-fi, fantasy & horror are legion).
It goes without saying that the various incarnations of “The Phantom of the Opera” feature this particular art form at some point.
There’s the scene near the beginning of “Star Trek: First Contact” where opera rattles the portholes as Picard broods over his recent visions of the afore-mentioned Borg just before Riker enters.
“Deep Space Nine” in its final years featured regular references to, and examples of, opera – though the decidedly unpleasant Klingon variety. And I think it was mentioned on “Voyager” from time to time.
There were a couple of points in “Conan the Barbarian” where opera is employed quite powerfully.
We hear references to and see the ruins of (and full-blown hallucinations of an intact version of) the opera house in the capital city of Kobol on the new Battlestar Galactica (though opera itself is not used in the show’s score to my recollection).
Don’t the new brides belt out a bar or two at the end of “Young Frankenstein”?
Can we classify that weird singing/spherical swimming performance in “Star Wars – Episode III Revenge of the Sith” in the scene where Chancellor Palpatine dangles the possibility of discovering the secret of preventing death in front of Anakin Skywalker as a type of opera?
Was opera featured as background music in a scene or two of “Serenity” or “Children of Men”? I can’t quite remember.
Beyond that, nothing much comes to mind in film or TV.
That being said, the disturbing thought has begun to take root that if I can appreciate – and even enjoy – the use of opera to enhance a scene in sci-fi/fantasy/horror TV and film, then perhaps, just perhaps, there is a tiny, deliberately unrecognized, part of me that does, in fact, enjoy it. (shudder) I won’t be buying tickets to see the Tenors anytime soon, but maybe this means there’s the possibility I might join the office opera club for supper one night sometime down the road.
Resistance is futile.

Science Fiction Slapshots

Finally coming to rest on the couch Monday night after hopping around the living room in the hometeam-just-got-a-big-win-in-the-playoffs-ecstacy, I got to thinking about science fiction stories.
Strange, I know. There’s little apparent connection between the Vancouver Canucks’ 4-1 victory over the Dallas Stars in game 7 of their first round Stanley Cup playoff series (my hats off to fans in Texas, though – as much as I want Trevor Lindon and what’s affectionately been called in some quarters of the Lower Mainland “half of Finland’s Olympic hockey team” to take the cup, the Stars played one hell of a series and in some games deserved to win a lot more than our inconsistent Canucks did) and speculative fiction. I admit, it’s quite a leap. But for someone who’s passion is first and foremost sci-fi, and the national pastime of the True North a distant third (after good food), that leap is natural.
Flushed with a hockey-high, I got to thinking about how many Canadian SF authors practice their stickhandling with The Game, and while it’s not a theme you see in every story in every magazine or anthology, hockey does get mentioned once in a while.
The one that comes most readily to mind is Phil “The Mallet” Voyd’s heartfelt, funny and intense “Jonny B” (from On Spec’s Winter 2000 edition). It’s a first-person yarn of a regular guy who excels at one thing: Shinny – pick-up games on local outdoor rinks, Armed with his Edmonton Oilers Gretzky jersey, our hero finds himself facing-off against more than just the neighbours out for a little winter fun or an ex-minor-leaguer or NHLer remembering his glory days. No, this time it’s the devil himself, and it’ll be a frosty day in hell before he lets a weekend warrior get the best of him, unless our hero can make him lose his cool.
Another story worth checking out, also concerning the fascination denizens of other planes might have with a sheet of ice, a stick and a puck, is Marissa K. Lingen’s “Carter Hull Recovers the Puck” from On Spec’s Spring 2006 edition.
I could probably rattle a few more off the roster, but it’s getting late and tomorrow’s Game 1 of the Canucks second round series against the Anaheim Ducks. Who knows, if you listen really hard, you might hear, over the roar of the crowd, over the crunch of players against the boards, over the slap of a stick against the puck, the sound of a writer out there putting pen to paper as the game gives rise to new legends.

Pizza Con?

Who’d have thought dinner at a pizza parlour on a Saturday night would be like attending a science fiction convention? I certainly never did – at least, I never thought it was something that could happen by chance. But it did this past weekend.
My wife had come out to meet me at an event in Burnaby early in the evening as I was packing up a display table I’d been manning for the non-profit agency I work for. We decided to amble over to Me-n-Ed’s Pizza for a late dinner. The evening proceeded normally enough: we took a booth over by the windows, we shared a Caesar salad, my wife ordered her usual - a small roast garlic & smoked salmon pizza, I bellied up to a large gangster pizza (I know what you’re thinking and you might as well stop now – I may be portly, but I sure can’t finish a large pie by myself in one sitting – I’m not quite that much of a glutton – yet – I’ve gotta have leftovers for lunch the next day!) accompanied by a frosty bottle of rootbeer (ever since I was a kid, I’ve always felt a quality pizza needs a good rootbeer to truly get down into your soul and make you feel happy).
That’s when it happened.
We were talking about which of this summer’s roster of popcorn sci-fi and fantasy flicks we wanted to see when something a few tables over, I can’t remember what, caught our attention. Just as we were chuckling over some of the latest internet gossip about the movie “Fanboys”, something made us look over at a table of guys who looked, well, just like the characters from the “Fanboys” promo. And, true to appearances, they were talking about sci-fi movies and comics. The topic, if I remember correctly, was their collective opinion about what they perceived as an unwritten rule that “the main character can’t die”. Sure, it’s an assertion that I’d probably disagree with (I can think of at least half a dozen sci-fi films off the top of my head where the protagonist does, in fact, shuffle off his/her mortal coil by the time the curtain falls), but it’s the fact that our fellow geeks were chatting about SF movies, not four metres away from us, at the same time we were that was a bit of an odd coincidence.
Reaching for the hot chili flakes, we changed the conversation to books – a review of Cory Doctorow’s “Overclocked”.
But that wasn’t all.
Oh no, a one-off like that, in and of itself, would be a bit weird, but not entirely surprising. I can remember moseying down Broadway one night into Memphis Blues for some ribs, chatting about an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica, when, as we waited by the door for a seat, we overheard a nearby table of eight discussing the misadventures of Admiral Adama & co.
No, this night at the old pizza parlour was a threefer… About 15 minutes later, two big guys came in the front door - one of them a dead-ringer for Blues Traveler lead singer/harmonica player Jon Popper (minus the sideburns and the ammo bandolier loaded with harmonicas) – and grabbed a table about five metres away, pulling out a couple of Magic decks for a quiet game as they waited to order their dinner.
What was it that, without apparent rhyme or reason, attracted three groups of sci-fi fans to the same pizza parlour and caused us all to sit in the same section within a couple of tables of each other? It was like some weird version of Highlander, except with pizzas and fanboy talk instead of swords and Sean Connery and headhunting, where something inexplicable drew us to the same spot. It was like going to a con, where each table was a different room with a different discussion or activity. It was fun, in its weirdly unexpected way. Probably worth dining-in at the pizza parlour more often instead of just getting take-out.

Bradbury Garners Pulitzer Citation

The Pulitzer Board has awarded a special citation to Ray Bradbury.
The boys at SF Signal posted the news on today’s SF Tidbits list.
For its part, the Pulitzer site says the recognition is:

“…for his distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.”

At the time of this posting, there’s been no comment yet from the venerable master on his official site.

Bradbury certainly deserves this honour. I’ve enthused about his imagination, his heart and his style many times before on this blog, so I won’t go into it again except to say that Ray Bradbury is one of the greatest storytellers in the English language of our time and it’s a treat to crack open each new book he offers.
This announcement couldn’t have come at a better time for Bradbury either. Michael McCarty’s interview with the author for Sci Fi Weekly’s interviews page notes there are two new books coming out this year. Gauntlet Press is releasing “Match To Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451” and “Somewhere a Band is Playing”. Definitely looking forward to those.
So let’s look back on this “deeply influential career”…
As I’ve said before, my favourite Bradbury novel is “The Halloween Tree”. Best short story collection I think would have to be a three-way tie between “The Martian Chronicles” (pretty much a given), “From the Dust Returned” and “Quicker than the Eye”. Favourite short story: probably the one from “Quicker than the Eye” about the time traveler who visits the giants of English language literature on their deathbeds to reassure them that their lives and works have meaning and lasting value. Unfortunately I can’t recall the story’s name off the top of my head and I just happen to have loaned the book to a friend. I guess the old word of advice about never loaning books is really true, ‘cause now I don’t have it when I need a quote/fact check!
And now it’s your turn.
What’s your favourite Ray Bradbury novel, collection or short story? Which chunky, delicious Bradburian turn of phrase captured the exactness of a moment or feeling or thing to you? Which one of his tales made you weep or laugh or shake in horror or sit back and wonder? Send me a note and share with the rest of us how this great magician of the language has left his mark on you.

Someone Should Have Yelled "Cut!" On "The Reaping"

Sometimes you go to see a movie as a favour to someone else because they want some company. And when it’s a favour, it’s very often because your gut’s telling you ahead of time (based on previews and whatever buzz you’ve soaked up) that for whatever reason, this flick is gonna be a disappointment. To be sure, you can be surprised and enjoy your cinematic experience. But even if you’re instincts are right and the movie is a stinker, there’s no joy in telling the other person “I told ya so” because you’ve voluntarily wasted an hour-and-a-half to two hours of your life (and possibly some cash for the ticket and snacks) by going along. Last weekend was just such an occasion. My wife asked me to see the new Hillary Swank movie “The Reaping” with her, and sure enough, my gut was right: the best part of that show was the stale popcorn I sucked back waiting for the flick to end.
“The Reaping” is so unoriginal it’s not even worth talking about all of its flaws in detail because you’ve already seen all of its elements at some point or other. Combine your favourite (or at least the first that comes to mind ‘cause it’s hard to find one good enough to call a “favourite”) one of each of the following cliché suspense/horror movie categories: satanic cult, demon-child, pleasantly-bumpkinish-on-the-surface-but-in-fact-somewhat-creepy backwoods village, or world’s about to come to an end in a wash of hellish or vengeful heavenly fire – you’ll end up with “The Reaping”. If there’s a suspense/horror trope that’s been overused to the point of near irrelevance, this film will flog it a little more.
(And now for the totally unapologetic spoilers:) This is a movie so clichéd they even killed the sidekick black guy! You would have thought that being an intelligent scientist/investigator, this fellow would have said: “Hmmm. I’m knee-deep in a river of blood outside a town beset by biblical curses, with a reportedly evil child skipping through the bog somewhere just behind the next bush on her way back to her mom’s biker flop-house, the food’s rotten and maggoty, the cows are psychotic, later on I’ll be crawling around a ruined church and a mausoleum, and they’re asking me, a black guy, to spend the night in a dilapidated old Southern plantation house – on the uncomfortable hide-a-bed couch in the den no less! Something bad may just happen on this trip, and I think it may just happen to me. If you’ll excuse me, I’m taking the truck and going home. Best of luck, Hillary, and I’ll see you next semester (hopefully).” But, of course, that doesn’t happen.
Really though, I think the scariest thing about “The Reaping” isn’t all the hoary old tricks they use to try to make you jump in your seat, it’s the fact that the hereditary leader of the satanic cult that’s brought the wrath of god down on that forgotten hunk of bog is the town school’s science teacher. In an era where science seems to be held in suspicion by a frighteningly large number of Americans, I would worry that this turning away from rationality does not need to be reinforced by the movies – especially by one as bad as this. You might argue that the filmmakers did this on purpose to in some way satirize this apparent growing distrust of science, but I would caution that even if this is the case (and I’m not sure that it is) that too many people in the audience would have that distrust reinforced by the choice of the bad guy’s occupation, rather than see it for the intended satire. Will this film cause Americans to run into the street demanding that men of science be burned at the stake or that Galileo be re-excommunicated? No. But sociologists and psychologists have long warned that pop culture does have an effect on people’s perceptions, and this movie’s depiction of the town’s only scientifically educated person (someone who possesses what to the “simple” townsfolk must be arcane knowledge beyond their reach, and one who is a teacher and thus more powerful shaping the minds of the young) as someone with malicious intent, might at least subtly bolster the subconscious fears of some members of the audience.
Moreover, it isn’t Swank’s rationality or scientific knowledge that saves the day, it’s a leap of faith and trust in the ability of the almighty to shoot straight and hit the right target. Certainly not an original ending, nor one that will help turn the tide of suspicion of science that seems to be growing.
Why can’t science help the good guys win? I remember the climax of the 80’s animated movie “The Flight of Dragons”, where the hero counters the evil wizard’s summoning of various fell monsters with a roll-call of the sciences. What about the “Ghostbusters”, who used their “unlicensed nuclear accelerators” to blast a surly demi-god/100-foot-marshmallow-man back into “the nearest convenient parallel dimension”? What about “The X-Files”? Even though Mulder often followed his hunches and held a great store of faith in the existence of various critters of the unknown, it was always his cooperation with Scully, the doctor (read scientist), and their use of rationality and science that allowed them to uncover the truth, survive and, on occasion, triumph.
“The Reaping” could have shown some smarts and learned a lesson from “The X-Files” and maybe turned into a success. Instead, it put its faith in Hollywood horror clichés and failed utterly. If you really want to waste your time on this movie, be smart about it and wait until they show it on TV – at least then you won’t waste your money.

"The Host" With The Most

Right from the beginning, when the buzz first started to come out of the film festival circuit and filter through the internet, there was something about the Korean horror movie “The Host” that intrigued me. In an era of flicks with armies of zombies, honked-off ghosts, demon-seed kids, and worse, the endless series of deplorable “Saw”-like productions obsessed with sadism for its own sake, here was a good old-fashioned mega monster movie.
How long has it been since a new version of the I-can’t-believe-you-didn’t-see-it-comin-it’s-so-friggen-huge, citizen-stompin’, military-mashin’, one-monster tornado movie? The last new one I can recall Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” remake in 2005. Bfore that, probably the ‘98 “Godzilla” remake starring Matthew Broderick but where Jean Reno stole the show complaining about the lack of croissants. If there’s been anything since then, I can’t remember it. Help me out here, folks, have there been any other building-bashin’-sized monster movies lately?
It’s as though movie industries around the world decided that this genre of film just wasn’t cool any more – that audiences wouldn’t appreciate it ‘cause it wasn’t scary and the potential to be lame was too high. It’s as though “King Kong” was a one-off allowed in deference to Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” clout more than an appreciation of cinematic history. It’s as though the genre almost died.
And then along came director Joon-ho Bong with “The Host”.
Just like those famous beasts that stomped across the silver screens of yesteryear, the mega monster genre has risen again (if only for now) with this Korean gem.
The film centres on a Seoul family that’s pretty much like gum stuck to the bottom of society’s shoe: The grandfather at the head of the clan is a former carouser now eking an existence out of his snack shack in the park with his stupid and sleepy oldest son. His daughter ought to be a gold-medal archer but lacks the confidence to fully realize her potential. The younger son is an unemployed university graduate. The sole redeeming member of the family is number-one son’s 12-year-old daughter, Hyun-seo, who alternates between the roles of parent and child. The family is thrown into turmoil when a gigantic creature leaps out of the near-by Han River and begins its rampage, mashing some victims underfoot and swallowing others. One of those who winds-up in the belly of the beast is young Hyun-seo. The catch is that this critter seems to have a fairly slow digestive process, and if a person isn’t killed in the initial gulp, there’s a chance they may still be alive when the monster decides it’s eaten too much and regurgitates some of the bodies later. The girl, vomited up with a couple of corpses in a pit in a sewer, does what any smart 21st century kid does and scavenges a cell phone to call for help. But while her family members attempt to pull themselves together for a rescue, they’re hampered by government officials who refuse to believe the girl is alive, and who claim that anyone who’s been near the creature is now infected with a mysterious illness that makes SARS look like a summer cold.
“The Host” has it all: “gotcha” moments of thrills that make you jump in your seat, brooding atmospheres, well-rounded and realistic characters that you can believe in and cheer and worry about, social and political commentary (and while plenty of this is overt, some is couched in image and metaphor and requires some thought – something that helps give this creature feature a bite), a nod to monster movies of the past (there’s a clear connection of tradition between the original “Gojira”/”Godzilla”, awakened by nuclear testing and sent on a path of destruction through Japan, and the pollution-spawned creature of ‘The Host” which savages Seoul’s riverfront – it’s merely an update of the zeitgeist fears – what horrors will man’s irresponsible tinkering unleash), and best of all, it’s absolutely hilarious. And that’s not because the movie mocks itself. Far from it, the plot stays in character the whole time. The humour comes from the humanity… from the bickering, the bitterness, the misunderstandings and the natural stupidity of people, even those in tense situations.
A lot of the gags come from the main characters, but it’s a treat to see what’s happening with the supporting cast. I certainly wouldn’t want to spoil any of the laughs, but some of the funniest moments involve what’s happening in the background. In fact, it’s this layering of activity that shows just how smart this movie is. You’ve gotta have a huge amount of respect for a director who deliberately gives scene-stealers (whether they’re laughs or moments of terror or sadness) to the tertiary actors and extras, and who, by extension, gives the audience quick insights into a larger world involving more than the protagonists who we’re with for the ride. This is a crucial part of the success of this movie.
So let “The Host” invite you into its world for a while. It’s certainly worth the full price of admission.

The Shape Of A Few Good Yarns - "Tesseracts Ten"

It doesn’t take much arm-twisting to get me to take a break from novels for a little while and dive into a short story collection or two. They’re a great way to get a quick fix of favourite authors, to sample up-and-comers and to detect the occasional poseur who’s made it through so you can avoid him/her if they somehow pull off a novel. And best of all, you get to see writers rising to a different set of challenges to their craft than novels pose: how to cobble together an intriguing plot, how to develop multi-dimensional characters we actually care about (flying in the face of the nonsense regularly spouted by high school English teachers that short stories are all about plot with lean to non-existent characterization), and how to pull this off in the confines of an editor’s word limit. It’s the mark of a successful anthology when most of the stories within it can pull this off. “Tesseracts Ten”, edited by Robert Charles Wilson and Edo van Belkom and published by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy, rises to this challenge.
Veteran authors Wilson and van Belkom have assembled a group of 19 new Canadian writers offering various shadows of unsettling futures cast by the uncertainties of today. Wilson says it best in the opening segment of his introduction to the collection: “The going gets tough, and the thoughtful get nervous.”
The anthology gets off to a strong start with Scott Mackay’s “Threshold of Perception”, a cometary armageddon tale of faith amid ruin. And it’s the human focus to the story that makes it so great… where others might be tempted to go the disaster movie route and centre simply on the damage caused by the comet, Mackay makes his tale one of human beings challenging each other and themselves to look at reality in new ways. He skillfully paints us a picture of people dealing with these challenges in shades of Asimov’s famous “Nightfall” (both the short story and the collaborative novel with Robert Silverberg). I’ll also admit I really liked this as a kick-off story because I’m a sucker for a well-written alternate history.
The poem “Frankenstein’s Monster’s Wife’s Therapist”, second in the lineup, packs a solid punch that sent me reeling. Here’s an example of how effective and sharp a really short contribution can be to an anthology like this. This kind of selection is like an onomatopoeia in a comic book – if it doesn’t get your attention, then you weren’t really paying attention to begin with.
I also liked “Buttons” by Victoria Fisher (did Dickens’ Sydney Carton have a collection like this after his appointment with the guillotine in “A Tale of Two Cities”?), Mark Dachuk’s “Permission”, and Rhea Rose’ creepy take on how Spiderman could have turned out (if Peter Parker was a farm wife) in “Summer Silk”.
But every anthology has its weak links. In the ho-hum category were Allen Moore’s “Donovan’s Brain” and Jason Christie’s “Ideo Radio Poem”. And Scott Mackay, while scoring with a great opener, falls a bit short the second time around with “The Girl From Ipanema”, which should have ended sooner.
On the balance though, Robert Charles Wilson and Edo van Belkom’s “Tesseracts Ten” (really the 11th in the family – though I try to forget about “Tesseracts Q” with its tedious separatist sentiments) is an enjoyable and intelligent collection. It’s a worthy addition to the line begun 22 years ago under the careful hand of the late Judith Merril and mentored through its successive incarnations by powerhouses like Phyllis Gotlieb, Robert J. Sawyer and Nalo Hopkinson. For all the dark omens threatening to seep out of the pages of this book, van Belkom is correct when he points out at the close of his afterword essay that the remarkable variety of these tales shows a bright future for Canadian speculative fiction (and I would add, especially the tradition of writing fine short stories) with new authors such as these to nurture it. “…that child is coming of age and entering adulthood with its best and most fruitful years lying ahead with only the sky serving as the limit to their creativity and ambition.”

An Empty Monkey House

Just got the word from Sci Fi Wire and SF Signal that author Kurt Vonnegut has died.
First impressions count for a lot, and that’s certainly been my experience with Vonnegut. The first tale of his that I ever read, and the one that sticks out the most in my mind for some reason, was his short story on an egalitarian nightmare “Harrison Bergeron”, from the collection “Welcome to the Monkey House” (originally published in “The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction” in October 1961). The story revolves around the life of the title character, a physical and intellectual superman in shackles to keep him at humanity’s common denominator (which in this story happens to be the lowest leveling of the playing field) and his eventual slipping of his bonds, obtaining his perfect mate and rising above the rabble. More than the caution of the perils of insuring that all people are equal, I think the theme in this story that stuck out most in my mind was that humanity’s own worst enemy can easily be itself, and in unexpected ways. In order to prevent individuals from dominating their peers or their country, the society depicted opts for stagnation. In trying to keep balance and prevent a fall in one direction, the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
Some of Vonnegut’s other well-known works include “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Cat’s Cradle”.
Sci Fi Wire quotes the New York Times as reporting Vonnegut had suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall a few weeks ago. Kurt Vonnegut died in New York on April 10th at the age of 84.

Speculative Fiction At Work

You know it’s been a good day at the office when you’ve been able to have in-depth, intelligent discussions with coworkers about speculative fiction. Today was just such a day for me.
The lunchroom conversation ranged from literature to film, stuff with pop culture status as well as selections quite a bit more obscure. We browsed on Tolkien, David J. Lake’s short story “The Truth About Weena” (which I first encountered in the Australian SF anthology “Dreaming Down Under”) and its different take on the tale of H.G. Wells’ Time Traveler, “The Matrix”, Bradbury and “V for Vendetta”, to name just a few.
And what made the chat great was that it wasn’t just a tete-a-tete between myself and the other SF nut on staff – everyone had something to say. Some wanted to hear more about authors or films they hadn’t encountered before, and I picked up a few titles that I’m eager to look into. A very refreshing change from other workplaces where the cattle merely graze in silence, or where legitimate points made using speculative fiction examples are met with snobbery from literati poseurs. It’s been said many times before that you can learn a lot about your peers from what they read and what they watch, and I must say I learned quite a bit today.
A good day at the office, indeed. Somebody cue Bachman’s “Takin’ Care of Business”!

Choosing Among Favourites

Here’s a note I added to SF Signal’s discussion about a recent poll in SFX (a UK science fiction magazine) on the best science fiction film ever. The top three on the poll were Star Wars, Serenity, and Blade Runner, respectively. 2001 came in down in 8th place. It’s hard having to choose from among your favourites – especially when the list provided is by no means complete!

“In some ways, I think Star Wars vs Serenity is one of those apples vs oranges questions: they're very much different kinds of movies and shouldn't necessarily be on the same set of scales. The appeal of Star Wars (when it first came out) was very visceral - it dragged you onto the rollcoaster for an unapologetic popcorn romp and any subsequant metaphorical/intellectual dimensions are just that - afterthought. Serenity, on the other hand, despite the action and humour, is right from the get-go more of an intellectual picture. The characters are full-flushed (especially with the series' background) and the issues raised demand some thought. In any case, I think Star Wars and Serenity are really duking it out for third place. If we're talking about the best SF flicks ever, 2001 and Blade Runner have first and second place, respectively, in my books.”

Working The Bugs Out Of "Eifelheim"

First of all, I’d like to apologize, folks, for the long gap since my last posting. I try to find something to babble about at least once a week, but things have been hectic for the past little while. My grandmother had a massive stroke two weeks ago and my wife and I, out here on the Wet Coast, had to grab a flight back to my hometown of Cambridge, Ontario to visit her in the hospital and to say goodbye. She’s still holding on and fighting to improve (the family doesn’t affectionately call her The Velvet Sledgehammer for nothing) and is fully aware, but the stroke has left her partially paralyzed and at 93 years old, you just never know. If I hadn’t gone back, I probably would’ve regretted it. Add to that a heavy workload at the office when I returned, and I haven’t had any time lately to indulge in the pleasure of logging on and spouting off.

But I’m back now, so let’s get to it.

A while ago I finished Michael Flynn’s “Eifelheim”. I know, I know, some of you are probably pointing out that this book’s been out for a few months, but I’ve got a ton of new books to plough through, and when there’s fresh servings of Dan Simmons and Minister Faust to be had, other stuff from author’s I haven’t read yet gets pushed to the side of the plate.
At any rate, when I did finally get around to it, “Eifelheim” wasn’t bad. Not great, mind you, but not bad.
Flynn’s story alternates between the events in a Medieval Black Forest village when an alien ship is wrecked nearby shortly before the onset of the plague, and the lives of an academic couple: he trying to unearth the history of the German hamlet, she wrestling with quantum mechanics. While intertwining the plot lines, the book also deals with how we form impressions of people based on limited information (whether it’s the personalities and motivations of individuals who lived in a town in another part of the world hundreds of years ago or the relationship a modern historian has with his research assistant), tolerance for that which is alien (be it an extraterrestrial, someone from a neighbouring village, a new and contradictory philosophy, or a different religion), and the way in which people face crisis and possible death.
Flynn does an excellent job of bringing to life the various characters in his village of Oberhochwald/Eifelheim. Normally, when one thinks of the peasantry of Europe in the Middle Ages, faceless, dirty, rude, dumb, drudgery comes to mind – probably because the education system spends more time on the exploits of nobles, conquerors, inventors and explorers or philosophers within or against the Catholic Church. And yet by flushing out the personalities of his various secondary characters, Flynn points out to those of us in modern times (who fancy ourselves as somehow unique and memorable when future generations will likely pass us over as we do the serfs and freeholders of 800 years ago) that these villages were populated with people who were as complex (or simple) as we: some that were intelligent (if uneducated), some who were narrow-minded, some who questioned the order of things, some committed to duty, the scoundrels, the dedicated workers, the healthy and the sick – all of whom had unique reactions to whatever life had to throw at them: from the joys of festivals to the horror of pestilence. What’s more, the author tries to make as many of the characters as multi-faceted as possible in order to make them believable. A prime example is Pastor Dietrich’s ward Theresia, who has a sweet personality and loves to hear stories and practice herb lore until the arrival of the alien Krenk, when her religious narrow-mindedness makes her quite hostile to them and the priest himself, but not to the other villagers who see things the way she does.
As for the insectoid Krenk themselves, Flynn falls a little short in trying to flush them out to the same degree as his human characters. To be fair, our experience of the Krenk is through the eyes of Dietrich (and thus limited by his Medieval mind’s education and perception of the universe), and is centred on the Krenk’s attempts to survive on Earth and interact with and understand their human neighbours. And yet I was left feeling that the author could have done more to give us a better sense of Krenk culture and what it is they miss about their home (except for vital nutrients to keep them alive or perhaps rarely-mentioned loved ones).
And while the present day plot lines were necessary to reflect some of the issues raised by the Medieval story, I thought this part of the story needed some more work. Sharon’s explorations of quantum mechanics added a hard SF flavour to the story, but one that was ultimately unnecessary (don’t get me wrong, I love a well-done hard SF yarn a-la Clarke or Sawyer – there was just no need for it in this book). I’d be tempted to call this hard SF afterthought a kind of mathsterbation. The novel would have lost nothing without it.
Also, the relationship issues raised between Sharon and Tom (and to some extent Judy) throughout the book are suddenly dropped at the end, leaving their portion of the story feeling somewhat flat and unsatisfying. It’s as though Flynn was suddenly rushed to finish his book and thought “Oh, if I deal with the spousal issues and love triangle possibility that I got into in the previous 290-odd pages, this book will get too long – I’d better just slam the door on it and concentrate on the Krenk stuff – then I can cap this sucker at 313 pages!” Or like the author suddenly got worried about having spousal relationship tale cooties infecting his alternate history tale and worried that if he didn’t drop that end of the story then it might supplant the alien focus of the book. Then again, maybe that was the editor’s call. I don’t know. But it seems fairly obvious that if you’re going to get into character subplots that detailed, even if you don’t tie-up their loose ends at the close of the book (because a pat ending would be equally unsatisfying), an author should make some effort to show that these concerns are still in some way weighing on his characters minds – that they’ve had some impact on the characters. Instead, Sharon seems to disappear once she’s had her scientific revelation while Tom happily goes cavorting around the Black Forest with the other woman giving us no sign as to whether this is going to be trouble.
That being said, don’t let the weaknesses of the modern plotline prevent you from enjoying “Eifelheim”. Overall, it’s certainly worth the read.

Passage Through "The Terror"

How do you create suspense in a novel based on a real tragedy? Dan Simmons does an admirable job of showing us in “The Terror”, a fictional take on the events of the ill-fated 19th century Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage.
History tells us the British Empire dispatched H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror in 1845, under the command of Sir John Franklin, to find the fabled Northwest Passage – a coveted hypothetical route through the labyrinth of islands, pack ice and ice bergs choking Canada’s arctic waters. The brutal arctic had hurled back many previous attempts (including one by the legendary Captain James Cook via the Bering Strait) and would block many others to come. Franklin’s voyage was beset with bad omens; serious command errors were made; the ships became ice-locked; coal supplies ran low; food poisoning, scurvy and the elements ravaged the crew; the vessels had to be abandoned; and eventually, those desperate men left turned on each other in cannibalism. None of them made it out of the arctic. Many questions about the tragedy still remain unanswered.
As if the hardships suffered by the crew weren’t enough, Simmons, while sticking close to the facts, seasons his tale with a supernatural element of suspense: some thing is also out there in the snowy wastes… not a polar bear (as if they weren’t deadly enough), but something larger, ancient, and full of malice and cunning. Some thing that is deliberately stalking the crew, and not merely for a single, bloody wipe-out, but rather in a seemingly careful strategy designed to deprive the men of the most skilled and stabilizing of their number and of their morale.
On one level, Simmons is masterfully indulging in his love of the tale of Beowulf and Grendel. And yet there are other ways to interpret the nature of the Terror. John Clute has done an excellent job of shedding light on the beast in his Excessive Candour column on the SciFi channel site entitled “In the Belly of the Thing”, so there’s no need for me to repeat him.
Rather, I’d like to explore some of the ways in which the metaphor of passage opens up in the story. For passage in “The Terror” refers to far more than just a route through a geographical obstacle course. To be sure, there are plenty of passages over water (of the usually frozen, but on rare occasions liquid, variety) – that of Erebus and Terror across the Atlantic to the Arctic Ocean and their eventual passage to the bottom There’s the treacherous weather and Terror-plagued run between the two ships once they’ve become ice-bound. There’s the trek from the abandoned ships to King William Land. Then there are the many other voyages across the island and finally away from it as the survivors go their separate ways. It’s been noted untold times that a water journey is metaphorically a trip into the self and that certainly holds true in “The Terror” – these ordeals across the ice are merely backdrops for the real passages throughout the novel.
The entrance tunnels into the igloos of Lady Silence, the mysterious Inuit who haunts the expedition, serve as a literal passage from the world of the British crew into that of the native people able to live off the land. They also serve as bridges for understanding between two of the explorers and the woman.
The coloured maze of Carnivale tents inspired by Edgar Allan Poe reflects the crew’s descent into hopelessness and terror amidst the dark of their winter prison where time passes but the outside never changes and death strikes with sudden, shocking violence.
There are passages from books. Doomed Franklin aboard the flagship Erebus is fond of sermonizing and bores or downright loses his crew with excerpts from the Bible about the road to salvation. Captain Francis Crozier of the Terror, on the other hand, has little use for religion and rouses great interest from his largely uneducated men with quotes from Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan” about life being “solitary, nasty, brutish and short”. While Crozier’s choice may be more obviously appropriate in the context of the story, in a strange and unexpected way, Franklin’s sermon about Jonah isn’t necessarily off either.
There are numerous points with a number of characters where we focus on the passage of air/breath and thus soul into and out of bodies: from the nearly-decapitated young seaman whose body refuses to quit breathing, to the frightening music of the Terror with its special “instrument” on the ice, to the Terror’s encounter with the vicious Mr. Hickey.
And there are rites of passage. Hickey uses manipulation and worse to rise in status. Dr. Goodsir, who begins the novel as somewhat effete, volunteers to engage in physical toil with the other men and over the course of his journey proves his mettle and earns respect.
Given our foreknowledge of the fatal outcome of the voyage, we also know that in signing on to the expedition, the men have booked passage not on Erebus or Terror, but rather with Anubis.
Captain Crozier himself navigates many passages throughout the course of “The Terror”. Among them is that of his final days drunkenness, through detox delirium (plunging into memory and drifting into prescience) and into cold sobriety. His greatest journey though is into understanding of and resignation to the frightening and alien road necessary for survival.
And these passages through terror are but the tip of the iceberg.

Lucas' Galactic Empire Conquers Real History

It seems neither history’s greatest conquerors nor even the generally subdued shores of present-day Nova Scotia are safe from the scourge of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader.
Canadian sketch comedy “This Hour has 22 Minutes” ran a segment in tonight’s new episode highlighting the failed Halifax bid for the Commonwealth Games. The gag also concerned, strangely enough, fallen empires.
Viewers are now being encouraged to take part in an online poll to rank dead empires, including those of the Romans, Ottomans and Mongols. Squeezed in at the bottom of human history’s most ambitious conquerors is a fictional option: the evil Galactic Empire from Star Wars.
And it hasn’t taken long for the geeks of the internet (yours truly included) to come swimming up to take a nibble at the bait. In just a couple of hours, the Galactic Empire has taken a huge lead over the competition with (at the time of this posting) 62% of the vote. The nearest competitor is Rome, coming in at just 11%.
They can build all the walls they want, but the Caesars just ain’t no match for the power of the Dark Side.

BSG Enters The "Maelstrom" Of Suicide

(warning: spoilers)


Here’s a note I posted to the SF Signal site recently in response to a thread about the March 4th episode of Battlestar Galactica, entitled “Maelstrom”.



I think Moore and his writers have put a lot of thought into the presentation of Starbuck's suicide. Putting aside speculations about her supposed "destiny", the writers have deliberately tackled the very human tragedy of suicide head-on with this episode as part of their efforts to create and develope realistic characters and a believable story line.

Starbuck's decision to kill herself came as no surprise. The story lines have been building her death by suicide as a real possibility since the beginning. Starbuck has displayed many signs of someone who is at risk of suicide including erratic behaviour and mood swings, increased use of alcohol, depression, sense of worthlessness (the "screwup"), agression, giving things away (the statue of Athena given to Adama shortly before her death), isolation from loved ones, and previous attempts (the dual with "Scar" was clearly more than just an enemy threat elimination or a competition with Kat to be the top gun). Let's not forget also that we've been told she has a history of childhood physical and emotional abuse (Leoben's cross examination in the interrogation room and the doctor Cylon's medical analysis on the Caprica "farm") which she constantly surpresses. And then there's the added stress of the annihilation of the Colonies and possible accompanying survivors' guilt, imprisonment and personal violation on the "farm", imprisonment and psychological torture on New Caprica, the loss of Apollo as a potential lover (during the conversation in the hanger where Lee says things with Dee are great, Kara looks like she's trying to hide the fact that she feels like she's been kicked in the gut), and of course, frequent, intense battle with the enemy. The manipulations of the apparent Leoben who appeared to her in the cockpit were just the last straw. The writers have been showing us a very fragile, much pained Kara Thrace for a long time.

Given this long history of building stressors, the pacing of the episode was entirely appropriate. Once Starbuck began moving in the direction of suicide, things proceeded very quickly. The pacing also puts the audience in the position of many of her friends who may not have seen the suicide coming, or who may not have suspected that she was hurting that much and who are thus all the more shocked at the apparent suddeness of the death.

As to comments to the effect that Starbuck's actions are "selfish and ignoble" or that she is a "quitter", while these are commonly-held opinions about suicide, it's important to understand that suicide is not about death, it's about finding a way out of pain. People who attempt or complete suicide are in so much emotional pain that they're desperate to rid themselves of it and they can't see any other way out. This is why most people who die by suicide send some kind of warning first - at some level they're looking for another option that they can't see. The problem is whether others understand the warning in time, whether they can get the person to help, or whether they see the warning at all. In Starbuck's case, Helo seemed to have some sense that she needed help (he suggests she see the psychiatrist he's taking Hera to) though he didn't see the imminence of the danger. When Kara gives the Athena statue to Adama, that's a warning too, Adama just doesn't see it, especially given Starbuck's quick shift from being downcast to buoyant. In this sense, Starbuck was trying, on some level, right up until she got in the cockpit, to get help. In real life, of those who die by suicide, some are people who we call heroes - police officers, members of the military, firefighters - people under increadible stress, usually on a daily basis. While we, as survivors, are upset when a person kills him/her self, it's important to remember that everyone, including our heroes, has different tolerances for stresses and different degrees of support to overcome those stresses. Moore and his writers have realized this, and in presenting Starbuck as someone in a highly stressful job who dies by suicide, they have created a painfully human character who has reached her limit, doesn't feel she can talk about it, and can't see another way out.

In the end, I think Moore and his writers are to be praised for tackling the issue of suicide in "Maelstrom". They presented Starbuck as a real human being struggling with, and ultimately overwhelmed by, real problems. In dealing with the subject, they have not glorified her death - the crew (even Tye, who's come to blows with Kara) are visibly shaken and grieving, and whatever this "destiny" alluded to is, the fact that it's pushed on Starbuck by Leoben in a time of emotional fragility should make us highly suspicious. We may ask, what is this supposed "destiny", but ultimately, does that make any difference to grieving shipmates who have just lost a friend? In dealing with suicide on BSG, Moore is helping to remove the stigma our culture has placed on its discussion. By talking about the causes and effects of suicide, we become more aware of the problem and are in a better position to stop it. We can reach out to others and offer to help them help themselves overcome these feelings. To that end, SF Signal is to be credited too for bringing this discussion into the open.

If anyone reading this thread is considering suicide, remember that you can get help to overcome these feelings; there are people out there who will listen to you and who will support you and help you explore other options. If you need help, call your local distress line/crisis centre, speak with your doctor, a counsellor or someone you can trust to help you get to safety. If you are a person who is worried a friend or relative may be suicidal, talk with them, ask them if they are thinking of killing themselves, listen to them without judging them, get them to help (such as a doctor or counsellor) who can help them overcome these feelings, do not leave them alone without making sure they have help, and you can also call a distress line/crisis centre for assistance.

A Wild Night At Thermopylae

The steady march of the cinema popcorn season continues like the tramp of an army of sandled feet towards the sea with yesterday’s release of “300”. Based on a Frank Miller graphic novel retelling the ancient Greek tale of the Spartans’ battle against the invading Persian army at Thermopylae, Zack Snyder’s film is so uproariously gory that you almost need a splash guard in front of the screen and garbage bags for everyone in the first ten rows to keep the blood off.
The story is a simple one: the Persians come to town looking to leverage a controlling interest. For Sparta’s King Leonidas (played by Gerard Butler), the choice appears simple: kneel and be given a place at Emperor Xerxes’ (Rodrigo Santoro) right hand, or fight and be annihilated. What the overconfident Persians don’t quite understand, is that the Spartans get off on facing insurmountable odds and certain death. For them, it’s the path to glory and immortality. But Leonidas has to contend with traitors among his senate who use customs and the laws to block him from taking the full might of his army to battle. So, with a gaggle of his 300 best, the king heads off to Thermopylae, where he thinks he can hold the invaders at a natural bottleneck long enough for the rest of the Spartans to shake off the distractions of the traitors, mobilize themselves and rouse the rest of the Greek city-states into joining the party. The question is, will Leonidas’ 300 last long enough to give the others a chance to get their act together?
There’s a lot to like about “300”. Relentless action from start to finish creates a good pace and keeps the movie honest – it’s a slugfest and doesn’t try (much) to be anything else. The fight sequences are choreographed nicely, although it would have been better if the Persian forces had been allowed to display a little more skill. The special effects were also pretty cool: from the epic grandeur of the landscape to the chaos of a sea storm, the swarming of arrows that blot out the sun to the menagerie of grotesque minions that Xerxes hurls at the sweaty Greeks. And, as with Miller and Robert Rodriguez’ take on Miller’s “Sin City”, “300” has some very slick shots and sequences pulled right out of the comic book. This movie is an impressive thing to look at. Let’s also give credit to the voice-overs of the soldier/narrator Dilios (David Wenham) that add the feel of the classic oral storytelling tradition to the images unfolding before us.
But while the story succeeds as a pure action flick, it lacks depth. Leonidas does a lot of talking about living free and refusing to tolerate tyrants. But aside from its effects on the king himself, you never really get any concrete sense that life for his people would be much different under Xerxes if the king surrendered. Because we don’t really get to see what makes the Spartans’ lives worth living, “300” lacks the emotional punch of “Braveheart” or “Spartacus”. It never really tells us how is one warrior king different than another. Sure, a lot of Xerxes’ people have enough body piercing to keep a whole block of tattoo and piercing parlours busy for a year (at least they have the sense to wear armor – it’s a miracle the Greeks, as portrayed in the film, weren’t dead within days of all the infections they’d pick up in all the many, many wounds they’d receive running near-nude into battle), and yeah, he does keep quite the freak-show of monstrous warriors in the elite units of his army, and to be fair, he does push his pawns carelessly into the face of death, but how is that really more menacing than the psychotic bloodthirstiness of Leonidas and his Spartans? Does Leonidas pride allow him to think for a minute about the slaughter of his people that would ensue if his men lose? We didn’t see any real portrayal of day-to-day Spartan life that would make us feel there was any great value to their way of life, or that life under Xerxes would have been significantly different – especially when part of the Persians terms were the offer that Leonidas would be allowed to continue to rule his people, and, in fact, all of Greece. How precisely, then, do the Spartans stand to lose their way of life? In fact, given what we are shown – a corrupt senate that’s unwilling to defend its people, the heartless disposal of “unfit” infants and the brutal training of the young – it would seem the Spartans are equally savage as the Persian opponents. Xerxes may be a cruel, manipulative megalomaniac, but Leonidas is no prize either: he strongly defends a culture which, as mentioned above, readily practices infanticide, he relishes in unnecessary bloodshed (killing the rude Persian messenger and all his attendants when he could have simply sent him packing) and clearly enjoys the slaughter of battle, and he refuses to allow the hunchback (a human resource with as much potential as the untrained ally Greeks who show up to help – potential that Xerxes was smart enough to see) to fight in the battle, using the formation-fighting techniques as an excuse when let’s face it, most of those engagements degenerated quickly into one-on-one melees where an extra spear-thrust would have been useful to the Spartans, and let’s not forget that by turning the hunchback away, the king insulted a man who knew the tactical weakness of his position! Xerxes and Leonidas are both brutal men living in brutal times. Don’t get me wrong, folks, I’m in no way advocating that people facing invasion should capitulate – far from it. I’m only saying that if a story hinges on the audience siding with one group over another, it is absolutely necessary to convince the audience that one way of life is superior to another. This movie wants us to be sympathetic to the Spartans, but it doesn’t really convince us that we should be.
Is “300” a bad movie? No. As an action movie, it’s an entertaining way to spend nearly two hours. Is it memorable? Not really. Given that special effects and big battle sequences like these are best seen on the big screen, “300” is certainly worth going to a theatre to see, but I think if I had to do it again I’d wait for a matinee or cheap Tuesday.

"Ghost Rider" Ignites The Popcorn Movie Season

Do you hear that revving, low and loud enough to shake your bones out of your skin? Is it the sound of the hell cycle lashing the pavement in the distance, or the start of the big budget, big action, popcorn movie season?
My wife and I took my parents’ teenaged godchildren to see “Ghost Rider” on Friday, and while it flickered for the first 30-45 minutes, once it caught, it was smokin’.
Admittedly, I’ve got a bit of a bias. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, back when I was collecting comics in the late 80’s and early 90’s, the revamped “Ghost Rider” was my favourite in the superhero genre. It even led me to a grudging appreciation of the original 70’s series. To be sure, the original was pretty cheesy at times, what with the bone-headed biker demon slugging it out with evil clowns and other third-rate bad guys, but it had its moments. But the second series had a tougher look and an edgier plot that left the original eating its dust.
So it was with cautious optimism that I went to the screening last week.
The story combines elements of both series, with the look of the 90’s version – definitely a good call. I did think the hell cycle, with its skeletal face on the front end, looked a little more like its interstellar incarnation presented in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” issue where the Ghost Rider of the future makes a guest appearance (ah, there’s nothing like a crossover with a hot title to try to boost the sales of an obscure ‘book!).
To some extent, my caution was justified. The movie suffers from backstory tedium right off the top, liberally spiced with corny “young lovers” dialogue and shots. Scenes like the heart-broken, rain-soaked girl staring wistfully at her troubled lover fleeing into the distance leave you wondering whether you should wince in disgust or laugh. Then there’s the gaggle of demons, who we’re told can’t tread on hallowed ground, but who don’t seem to have a problem waltzing into a church to light a votive candle or two and push a priest around (unless, of course, this is a deliberate potshot at the Vatican from the writer/director and producers). Then there’s Eva Mendes, who does an admirable job of showing her… journalistic integrity? No. Depth of emotion and intellectual turmoil as she struggles to make sense of a suddenly re-appeared love interest and the supernatural terror that follows? Nope. How about her ability to adapt to unprecedented demands on her courage? Still cold. What about showing off her… attributes? Yep. That’s it. There’s no relationship angst or physical danger that can’t be dealt with by pushing her breasts as close to the camera as possible (although I’m not sure if that was her decision or writer/director Mark Steven Johnson’s call). Not that I’m complaining or anything… I just wanted to see a little more. Of the acting, people! Sheesh! And naming the devil’s son “Blackheart” was pretty unoriginal. Then there’s the ongoing debate about Nick Cage’s hairpiece.
But none of this is out of line. It’s all perfectly reasonable for a comic book movie because it’s standard comic book fare (except for the hairpiece). Sure, the film could’ve been great instead of merely good if they would have corrected these and other problems with better writing, editing and acting/directing, but keeping these little flaws keeps the movie true to the original source.
And there’s lots that make the story a real blast. Great special effects for starters. The Ghost Rider looked amazing (in transformation, as well as final presentation), as did the hell cycle. Okay, the quick demon-face shots on Mephistopheles and Blackheart looked like they could have been cut-and-pasted from the Dracula face shots in “Van Helsing”, but at least they were CG’d well. I was quite impressed with the way in which the infamous penance stare was presented; that was about the best way to illustrate a criminal’s mind being crushed by the pain he’d inflicted on others without the filmmakers losing their PG-13 rating or swinging too far the other way and making it dumb.
Sam Elliot was perfect as “the caretaker”. You just can’t find another actor with that voice, look, and all-around aura of tough old cowpoke.
The fight sequences were great eye candy. And, like any popcorn blockbuster, there were a lot of laughs amid the action. Despite being an integral part of the film’s trailer, the line with the goth girl mumbling about how her flame-headed benefactor managed to pull off his “real edge look” is still a hoot. Much like Bill Murray’s famous “he slimed me” line from “Ghostbusters”, if a joke can still be funny after the audience has seen it a million times in commercials ahead of time, you know the writers are on the ball.
Let’s not forget Nick Cage’s tribute to Johnny Blaze and pretty much every lone-wolf-style superhero. Cage plays the trope with respect, but never takes himself too seriously, mugging for the camera in all the right places. And how could you not love the decision to make Blaze a militant fan of “The Carpenters”? Not only is it a perfect counterpoint to the fearless stuntman/bountyhunter-of-hell image, but it shows a real courage in the character to openly insist on being allowed to listen to the 70’s crooners, where pretty much anyone else would quietly regulate this fetish to their secret guilty pleasures files (I still remember times during my early childhood in the 70’s when “The Carpenters” were played around the house, and I have to admit, while I’m not a fan, Karen did have quite a beautiful voice).
Last but not least: a soundtrack capped-off by a rip-roarin’ version of “Riders in the Sky”. A very worthy rendition of the old Stan Jones tune indeed - second, of course, to the masterful performance of the late Johnny Cash (and maybe that nice tribute done a few years ago by The Blues Brothers in “Blues Brothers 2000”).
Ultimately, the sign that “Ghost Rider” is entertaining is that it passed muster with the uninitiated. My wife and the 14-year-old boy (who admitted with a little embarrassment that he’d never heard of Ghost Rider until the trailers hit the airwaves) and 12-year-old girl (who knows even less about comics) all said they’d had a lot of fun.
“Ghost Rider” is certainly worth seeing on the big screen, but I’d suggest going to a matinee or a cheap night.
Is “Ghost Rider” an intelligent and deeply moving film that will resonate through the ages? No. But as a solid comic book movie, it’s done a worthy job of starting us down the road of big SFX popcorn flicks through the spring and summer. Pass the butter, would ya?

Self-Help Superhero Style - "From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain"

Minister Faust is at it again.
Three years ago the Edmonton, Alberta author unleashed his hilarious, frightening and poignant “The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad” upon the speculative fiction scene. It was an epic tale of two regular guys with big dreams trying to understand their lives and come to grips with their relationships with each other and those around them, and who, along the way, just happen to stumble into the roles of superheroes as they’re thrust into an adventure that would make Jack Burton or Indiana Jones think about throwing in the towel.
Now Faust spins us a different yarn: that of superheroes cast into the relatively normal realm of people in need of counseling… with a civil war thrown in for good measure. And it’s all taken “From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain”.
I’ll whole-heartedly admit that I couldn’t get into Faust’s latest book fast enough when it hit the shelves last month. And it didn’t disappoint. “From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain” tickles the funnybone even as it “punches you in the soul” (to borrow from Faust – and his sister). True, the city of Los Ditkos and its alternate version of Earth are populated with “hyperhominids” who, on the face of it, are often so silly in their names, costumes and powers that they should be rubbing shoulders with The Tick, the Mystery Men or the denizens of the old Normal Man comic. But this book isn’t just a 387 page comic. Rather, in true comic fashion, it’s a crossover. It’s a collision of the comic with popular, flavour-of-the-week self-help books (or “self-hurt books” as an old friend of mine once wryly observed), and more subtly, it’s very much a Shakespearean tragedy.
Presented as a self-help book written by Dr. Eva Brain-Silverman (foremost psychiatrist for the extraordinarily abled, headquartered at her Hyper Potentiality Clinic) for superheroes battling psychological and existential issues, the story introduces us to a group of ubermensch tossed into group therapy by their organization, the FOOJ (Fantastic Order of Justice), in a last-ditch effort to exorcise their disruptive behavioral traits. To make matters worse, one of their most respected allies has been murdered, they’re at the centre of a criminal and political plot whirling towards a civil war among superhumans, and one of them is the arch-villain behind it all.
There are a lot of reasons why this novel excels with all the force of a spandex-clad, genetically-enhanced vigilante.
The heroes themselves are brilliant caricatures of classic pop culture stereotypes: the Super Man, the angry black man, the cut-throat industrialist, the frosty goddess, the jive-talking hipster and the pop-star airhead. But while it’s fun to laugh at their flaws, there is something sympathetic about their suffering. Despite the psychobabble labels slapped on them and the supernatural means that they came about, these people’s problems (like substance abuse, relationship issues, coming to grips with sexuality) are very real and very common.
And yet that’s not enough to propel these people (and the story) beyond the comic book level. What’s more interesting than the details of their alleged conditions or the roots of their personal pains, is the decisions they make outside of the therapy sessions that result from the fundamental natures of their personalities, rather than from their mental illnesses or social defects. It may seem clumsily obvious to state that the book would not have ended the way it does if the heroes’ personalities were not fundamentally predisposed to make the decisions they do. If some would have been less narcissistic or distracted or petty the balance of power might have shifted, if personal ambitions and grudges had not led to brinksmanship and scheming, and most tragically, if the person cast as the canary-in-the-coal-mine was less of a boy-who-cried-wolf, more would have paid attention to the warnings and evidence and the slaughter of the civil war might not have happened. But as much as these people live in a fantasy world of super powers, these are the very flaws that make their actions inevitable despite the tantalizing hope of something better, making them three-dimensional humans and making the novel a work of substance.
But of all the characters in Faust’s novel, it is the narrator herself, the “author” of the “notebooks”, Dr. Brain, who really gets inside the reader’s head. She is more worthy of study than her self-help book.
Faust takes us down a winding, contradictory track over the course of this novel in his portrayal of Dr. Brain. The reader is at times suspicious of her, in agreement, forgiving, dismissive and unsettled. And it is this difficulty in pinning her down, in labeling her the way she labels others, that makes the doctor human and dangerous.
Right off the bat, this character is overtly sinister because of her name: Eva Brain-Silverman, generally shortened to either Dr. Brain or Eva Brain. Eva Brain being disturbingly (and deliberately) close to the monicker of Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun. The Silverman part of the last name may initially take the edge off, but the sourness of the Nazi connotation never goes away. Dr. Brain sounding like the tag of some mad scientist from an over-the-top 50’s sci-fi flick about giant beerbugs manufactured in a lab to corner the market on pilsner; reminiscent also of “The Brain”, an intellectually-enhanced lab mouse bent on world domination (from “Pinky & The Brain” by Spielberg’s crew – one of the best cartoons ever). “Dr. Brain”, as a title, also has an elitist ring to it, as though the person possessing the name were trying to put herself in a superior, judgmental position above others – which Eva Brain does as she probes and evaluates her subjects.
Dr. Brain’s job also imbues her with a fair share of untrustworthiness. In general, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, therapists and others in the mental health field are, in fact, trustworthy and do an admirably job assisting people in overcoming their emotional challenges. But Dr. Brain isn’t some clinician in a hospital psychiatric ward or a dedicated school counselor. No, she’s a mover and shaker and outright promoter of psychological quick-fixes in the cult of therapy that’s latched itself onto western culture in recent decades, a fad-book-of-the-week and live-analysis-on-TV movement that’s cheapened the image of legitimate practitioners.
More to the point, Brain’s professionalism is questionable at best. She is all cold intellectual dissection and no empathy as she badgers her clients, drops them into potentially emotionally dangerous confrontations which she fails to resolve or include support or final safety check, and, horrifically, she ignores clients when they reveal serious trauma (such as sexual abuse) which is not part of her therapeutic agenda. This often leads her to completely misinterpret why one of her clients has made a comment or done something, and by extension, she doesn’t place appropriate value on that comment or action. One gets the sense that “healing” to Dr. Brain is a mechanical function leading towards validation of her own “expertise” and allowing her greater self-promotion.
And in the end, it is Dr. Brain’s single-minded drive to demonstrate her expertise to the world that is most chilling. She closes her book by explicitly choosing self-promotion over what’s right. Dr. Brain does not call attention to the facts of the final battle, they are stated and left behind, much like the afore-mentioned sexual assault revealed by one of the heroes during a therapy session. She does not emulate what are supposed to be the finest qualities of her patients – she does not make a call for truth to come out and justice to be done. She fails to do what she has constantly pontificated about throughout her narrative – she has not exposed the ugly truth in order to bring it into the light to study and overcome it so that it will cease to be a problem. No, the truth behind the civil war is not as important to Dr. Brain as her closing claims of how much she’s helped her patients overcome their emotional obstacles. By allowing the politically convenient story of the winning side to go unchallenged, Dr. Brain is complicit in a murder and its cover-up, and a lie to the public and the damage it will do to society by allowing the wrong people to run the show.
In this, “From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain” is Faust’s timely warning to the reader about the responsibilities of citizens (whether they be heroes or normal people) to care about what happens to each other, to make sure the truth is known, and to question those in authority and hold them to account.

How Cell Phones Are Preparing Us For Virtual Reality

It seems there has been a lot of discussion these days about the ramifications of virtual reality. George Dvorsky’s been heralding possible “perils of a digital life” on his Sentient Developments blog. Over at SciFi.com’s “Sci Fi Weekly” page, Michael Cassutt worries that massive multiplayer online games (MMOs) like “World of Warcraft”, “Second Life” and others will cause people to start turning their backs on books and film, (which present a finished story), in favour of these other existences online where they can create idealized versions of themselves and not only seek out their traditionally favourite types of stories (be they high adventure or complex personal relationships), but actually take part in them and affect their outcome. Even SouthPark has recently taken a crack at the virtual reality phenomenon and its effects on relationships, personal priorities, the issue of whether the “real world” has primacy, and hygiene with an episode where Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny and their pals have to save the world of “World of Warcraft” from a seemingly unstoppable delinquent player.
In fact, while the issues surrounding alternate/virtual reality, of which the current MMOs are the first significant step (the equivalent of homo erectus on the long evolution towards modern homo sapiens sapiens, which might be technologically analogous to a fully sensory-immersive and interactive artificial reality where the user can create complex features and companions without the necessity of outside programming), gained popularity with the general public in the 90’s with movies like “The Matrix” and widely-publicized predictions by high-tech firms looking to make names for themselves, the phenomenon is well-worn territory in the world of speculative fiction. Take your pick of the cybernetic torture chamber of Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, the datumplane of “Neuromancer” and William Gibson’s other books, movies like “Tron” or “The 13th Floor”, the Disney-like holodeck of the recent Star Trek series, or any of a hundred others.
But in all the explorations of the dangers and delights of these optional parallel worlds, it seems that there isn’t a lot of exploration of how human beings will prepare for the experience. Most stories generally either present a situation where a character is literally dumped into the new reality (“Tron”) or knowledge of its existence (“The Matrix”) and has to adapt like Alice in Wonderland to an alien environment. Or we’re offered a character living in a world where virtual reality and its issues have been around for some time – a person who’s adapted to his environment (or fighting against it) naturally since he/she has always been a part of it (take your pick of the Gibson books). I haven’t seen any evolutionary-style alternative to the “surprise, you’re in a different world” trope - nothing that tells us how people initially adapted to the long-established alternate consensual reality. I’d be interested to see if there are stories, shows or movies dealing with the possibility of gradual, subtle cultural adaptation to the new optional life. If there’s something out there, let me know.
That being said, I think there’s something that’s already preparing our culture in some ways for the virtual-versus-real/virtual-interfacing-with-real experience, though inadvertently. That’s the cell phone.

(Sorry, folks. I know it took me a long time to get to the point. As a former radio news dog, I’m kicking myself for burying the lead, but I thought the set-up was necessary this time.)

More to the point, it’s the evolution in conversational etiquette driven by the cell phone, and most obviously in the young.
It doesn’t take the greatest observer of detail to look around and see that, in the industrial nations of the world at least, most young people (teens, people in their early 20’s, and even some kids younger than 10) have got cell phones and are more than willing to use them. In fact, it’s highly likely that Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter are right on target in their prediction in the “A Time Odyssey” books that it won’t be long before every kid in the world has a cell phone.
And it’s this complete willingness of the young (and even some middle-aged business and information junkies) to answer the cell phone call or text message right away, regardless of the task or person in front of them, that’s been infuriating older folks for the past few years (in fact, ever since production of the devices got to the point where they could be sold cheaply and in many cases given away free with a connection agreement, prompting wide-spread use – this in combination with the increasing emotional need of parents to be able to reach increasingly independent kids anywhere, any time). There are many people who get intensely annoyed when talking to a younger person who hears the ringtone/feels the vibration, reaches for the cell faster than a gunfighter drawing his piece on a dusty, tumbleweed-strewn street at high noon, and instantly diverts his/her attention to the call display, putting the conversation completely on hold until they’ve dealt with the call/text message/email. To the older person forced to wait, this is a highly insulting and invalidating experience.
And yet it’s one done, for the most part, in total innocence by the young person.
To be sure, in some cases, there is some degree of insult (or at least indifference) intended in giving the phone a higher priority than the person/task physically in front of them. It’s also equally reasonable to say the young person’s reaction can also be an inability to focus on one thing at a time and ignore distracting stimulus.
But I think for the most part, it’s something entirely different: it’s really a modified version of party socialization. Think of it this way: when you’re at a party, you may, in addition to all the other typical activities, engage in group discussions. But you’ll also have several one-on-one interactions with other guests. Now, at some point during one of these tête-à-têtes, it’s a given that some other partygoer will mosey up to the both of you and attempt to horn-in on the conversation. Like him or hate him, you can’t ignore this third wheel. Your interaction with your initial conversational partner must be either suspended while you deal with the interloper, or adapted to include him. I’m convinced that’s what happening with youth and cell phone calls/text messages/emails: they’re not differentiating the physical communication in front of them from the electronic, these are assigned (at least initially) the same value and the new communicator (the cell) is seen as something that must be acknowledged as much as another physical person would have to be.
In all the years since the popularization of the cell phone among the young, this behaviour has not fizzled out. It has become the norm and there is no reason to expect that it will change. In fact, as today’s youth become older, it will be a culture-wide standard for conversational etiquette. Conversational etiquette is evolving.
And herein lies the key to how the cell phone will lay the foundations for society’s ability to handle the coming reality-artificial reality interface.
I suspect this change in behaviour that puts electronic communication on an equal footing with physical communication will allow people in future years to interchange the physical world with its custom-made, electronic parallel dimensions without much anxiety. Going from interactions and sensations in the physical world to interfacing with one of the many man-made consensual realities at the flick of whatever proverbial “switch” used will be to them the same as saying “Just a sec.” in a conversation and picking up the cell, or turning to the third partygoer and acknowledging him.
To bring the evolution metaphor back for a second, if today’s MMOs are the homo erectus of virtual reality and total sense-immersion electronics/software the equivalent of modern man, then the cell phone would be the ape coming down from the trees considering whether to shamble across the savannah.
Because it is a consumer product that’s affected this change in personal interaction, one might wonder whether this points to some sinister global social-engineering program run by high-tech manufacturers aimed at smoothing the transition, acceptance and acquisition of new consumer goods. I would say definitely no. That kind of conspiracy theory doesn’t wash because it wasn’t a given at the advent of the popularization of the cell that young people would behave this way. Certainly they would have been tempted to, but any number of factors, such as role-models showing a disdain for the quick-fix of the cell phone’s demand, or direct education by elders, the annoyance of distracting ring-tones or vibrations, detrimental effects of increased communication on school grades or job performance, or a desire for more private time, could have spurred youth to view the cell phone as an inconvenience rather than an essential extension of natural communication abilities. However probable, it was never a given that this change would happen.
In the end, as alternative realities become more pervasive, and perhaps even necessary in some circumstances, and the march towards fully immersive custom-made options continues, there will be many opportunities and dangers that individuals and society will forced to stop and consider. But the societal changes already wrought by the cell phone mean that, for the most part, the up-and-coming generation probably won’t be too concerned about the journey itself.

When To Throw In The Towel - A "Gormenghast" Groan

It’s been eating at me for a while now, this great shame of mine. I thought I was tough – one of the toughest, but I’ve been confronted with an adversary I just can’t overcome. I’m not normally a quitter, but this is just too much. It’s time to throw in the towel. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Mervyn Peake’s “Gormenghast” novels have gotten the best of me.
Now, I don’t admit defeat easily. In fact, up until now, I’ve never failed to finish a book. Oh sure, I’ve been known to take breaks in the middle of books sometimes when they were bogging me down: half-way through Homer’s “Iliad”, after what seemed like the hundredth roll call of the names of each of the six hundred zillion warriors trudging out to the field of battle for another day’s slaughter, I grew a little weary and put the epic down for a month or so. Not that I’m saying that it was a bad story, far from it, rather that the endless name-dropping interfered with the pacing a bit. But I picked it back up and finished it with relish. When I was a teen and blown away by Herbert’s “Dune” after reading it for the first time, I was so enthralled that I went out and bought all the other books in the series and tried to go through them all back-to-back. Bad idea. “Dune” was great. “Dune Messiah” and “Children of Dune” were good. The back three, though, were an exercise in suffering. So much so that I halted in the middle of “God Emperor of Dune” for several months and went on to other things before resuming. But I picked it back up and finished the series eventually. And those are the good ones. As an English major back in university, I had to slog through a fair amount of insufferably dull stuff as a rite of passage. I mean, if you’re ever looking for a cure for insomnia, having to plod through Mary Anne Evans’ “Middlemarch” is a pretty good start. I did manage to get through it though.
But “Gormenghast”, oh “Gormenghast”, that’s a whole other kind of beast. The first installment, “Titus Groan”, drags on for endless pages about the utter dank entropy of the great slouching hulk of a castle/fortress/uber-basement and the mouldering grotesques within. It drags us on an unending tour to meet this cast of wretches (like a carnival boat-ride tunnel of terror that you can’t climb out of) as they find out about the birth of a new baby and react to the news and the intrusion of other characters into their routines.
Sixty pages in, I’d had enough. I could take no more of this immense ode to decrepitude. I threw the book down in disgust and grabbed something, anything else off the shelf.
That was about eight months ago.
Since then, I’ve tried to pick the sucker up again a couple of times, but with no success. I’ve tried to keep an open mind (“Maybe it’ll get better in a couple of paragraphs. All I have to do is keep on plugging!” ) – I mean, after all, I like all kinds of SF and other types of literature, and a wide variety of narrative styles; I should be able to adapt to this presentation. But it only takes a page or two before I start to feel like I’m being mummified at the bottom of a peat bog.
I don’t think I can do it again. I fear I have met my match.
There are some who would say on a purely mechanical basis of reading that this is enough justification to put the book down. Some have a “100 pages rule” where if they’re not interested in the story by the time they hit that benchmark, it gets put down. Some have a similar 1/3 rule. Others are even more mercenary, pointing out that if a person has a backlog of other reading material which could in all likelihood be better, it’s okay to turn one’s back on a book at any point where one feels unreasonably overwhelmed with boredom. All of these approaches agree on a central premise: why waste time with something you don’t appreciate it, like it and are not getting anything out of it.
Nonetheless, the idea of retreat still annoys me to no end. Part of it is ego – I don’t like to admit failure when it comes to a book. Part of it is fear – I worry my literary spider-senses are getting near-sighted and that I’m missing something terribly profound that would be the key to understanding and enjoying this sprawling tome. And part of it is respect for the canon – how many respected elders have called this book brilliant? How many have raved on and on about the detail of Peake’s world-building or characterization? And what does that say about me as an SF critic if I am found wanting in my ability to wrestle my way through a classic of the genre, no matter how big and boring?
But the obeisance to canon argument is fraught with peril, because a person’s opinion isn’t worth much if they’re always following the pack, especially if the commonly-held opinion is flawed or flat-out wrong. It also demands that an individual’s literary preferences (no matter how heartfelt or rationally justified) kowtow to the dictates of some elite that were themselves based upon an individual preference. I’m not saying that a canon doesn’t have a purpose as a starting point for discussion, but to give it status as an absolute authority on quality is unwarranted hubris. We have to be wary of the canon, because it’s this kind of establishment snobbery that’s unjustly relegated SF to the literary ghetto for decades.
Which brings me back to my original position, which is that in my opinion, “Titus Groan” is so insufferably boring that it’s not worth finishing.
But my guilt still makes me reluctant to toss this omnibus onto the donation pile.
Help me out here folks. Please.
Tell me if I should be giving the “Gormenghast” novels a reprieve. Tell me what I’m missing. Tell me if it’s worthwhile to persevere. Tell me if there’s a wondrous new land waiting to be discovered beyond this ghastly mountain range of literary drudgery that’s reared out of the opening chapters. Or am I right to pass this pulp wad on to someone else who might enjoy it?