I have only a dim recollection of reading Solaris by Stanislaw Lem decades ago and have never seen the 1972 Russian film, so watched the 2002 film without preconceptions.
Psychologist Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) answers a call for help from an old friend, Gibarian, currently based on a space station studying the planet Solaris. On arrival, Kelvin discovers that Gibarian has committed suicide and two surviving scientists are the only people on board. However, he catches a glimpse of a young boy who appears to be Gibarian's son and then meets a reincarnation of his own wife, Rheya (a compelling performance by Natascha McElhone) who had previously died on Earth. He realises that a powerful intelligence on the planet was examining the thoughts and dreams of the humans and bringing to life that which they most yearned for or felt guilty about. Eventually, he is left with a series of difficult choices.
The film focuses on the relationship between Kelvin and Rheya - or rather the version of Rheya created from his memories - and is a strong on atmosphere and psychology. Those who expect an SF film to be packed with action and special effects will be very disappointed with Solaris. Furthermore, I gather from the Wiki summary that Lem wasn't much impressed with either film (the 2002 version being quite similar in theme to the 1972 one), as his focus was not on the relationships between the couple but rather on the sheer alienness of the intelligence on the planet and the impossibility of achieving any meaningful communication with it. However, I was gripped by the film from start to finish and really enjoyed it. One of the better SF films I've seen.
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In complete contrast was the first of the current Spiderman series, featuring Tobey Maguire. While this has its darker moments, it lacks the grim, adult feel of the most recent Batman films. However, it makes for painless and undemanding entertainment - if you can swallow the preposterous proposition that someone infected by the bite of a genetically-modified spider can acquire superpowers. The transformation of a weakling nerd student into a powerful hero has huge adolescent wish-fulfilment appeal, while the moral message that "with great power comes great responsibility" is hammered home in word and deed. A worthy effort, with some spectacular swooping flights over the cityscape.
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Evolution is yet another contrast, being a cheerful comedy. It follows the fortunes of a disgraced scientist (played by David Duchovny) who discovers alien life on a meteorite; life which proceeds to evolve at a phenomenal rate, from single-celled to large animals in a matter of weeks. It becomes clear that the future of humanity is at risk, and it is down to the hero and his sidekicks to prevent catastrophe. It rather reminded me of the brilliant Tremors (1990) and, while not quite up to that, is nonetheless a good popcorn movie.
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The next post on this blog will be in a couple of weeks.
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Friday, 20 August 2010
Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss was one of the "New Wave" of British SF authors in the 1960s, signalling a break from traditional SF themes towards more experimental fiction. Aldiss himself alternated between mainstream and genre fiction and is regarded as a "literary" author, with a high critical reputation. Hothouse (initially published in the USA in abridged form as The Long Afternoon of Earth) is an early and more conventional work, fitting within the SFF mainstream. Despite being described as SF, this story is more of a fantasy in my view, as I will explain.
The setting is the very far future, close to the end of the Sun's life, when Earth has settled into an orbit which keeps one side turned permanently to the Sun, and the Moon has become a twin planet, also remaining in the same place relative to the Earth and now supporting life. The habitable part of the Earth is entirely covered by one vast, interconnected banyan tree, and inhabited by various (and usually ferocious) vegetables and insects. Humans - in a considerably shrunken form - are almost the only animals left, and exist in small groups at pre-stone age survival level in the middle layers of the forest, constantly threatened by predators.
I should warn you that the rest of this review contains spoilers, as it's difficult to comment on the story without them, so I will just sum this up as an interesting period piece, highly regarded when it first appeared, but not standing up too well today.
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The protagonist is Gren, a rebellious near-mature male child in a society run by women. He and the other children are abandoned by the adults of their group who head off into the sky in a strange ritual, eventually arriving (much changed) on the Moon.
Gren and the other children are almost immediately in one set of trouble after another, and Gren's disruptive behaviour eventually causes him to be exiled. He falls prey to a morel, an intelligent fungus which invades and takes over his nervous system and is able to ransack his race memories to learn the history of humanity. With the morel's somewhat unreliable guidance Gren is able to survive, meeting various people and weird life forms and experiencing one adventure after another. He meets Sodal Ye, an intelligent dolphin who is aware of the history of the world and of its imminent destruction as the Sun goes nova. Finally, the transformed adults of Gren's group return from the Moon, and Gren is faced with a choice of futures.
I said at the start that I regarded this story as a fantasy despite an attempt by the author to establish it as set in a possible future. This is because some of the aspects of it - especially the space-travelling traversers and the bizarre tummy-belly men - are just too fantastic to be credible, at least as far as I'm concerned. Which does, of course, open the door to the age-old debate about where the boundaries between the two genres lie, but I'll save that for another time.
I enjoyed this re-read rather less than I expected. Partly this is because the principal character is so unsympathetic - the kind of brash and self-centred youth I would dislike in real life - partly because the procession of one fantastic creature after another becomes a bit wearing. The story reads as if the author was packing in as many bizarre ideas as he could, just for the sake of it.
I was also not entirely comfortable with one aspect of the writing; the narrator, who kept throwing in additional pieces of information to explain the background. Some of it made no sense: for example, the entertainingly-named killerwillow, bellyelm and sand octopus, which only lived in Nomansland where no human ever went - so how did they acquire such names, if no-one knew they existed?
A few more general comments:
There are various possible ways of making the reader understand unusual settings. One (popular these days) is to explain nothing, leaving the reader to piece together what the story is all about from scraps of information scattered through it, and possibly even remain a bit puzzled at the end. A second is to build in occasional infodumps in the form of the notorious "As you know, Bob" type of conversations; however, this isn't possible in a story like Hothouse, in which none of the characters understands the background until the morel and Sodal Ye appear. Another might be for the characters to stumble upon some ancient document which explains it all (also not applicable to Hothouse, where no-one can read). Or there could be a prologue which gives a summary of the back-history, but that could spoil the surprise element. A further approach is explicitly to establish the narrator as being in the future, looking back and describing what happened; a variation on this is to supplement the narrator's role with extracts from a history written in some future time, inserted before the start of each chapter (a technique used effectively by Frank Herbert in Dune); but again, neither is applicable to Hothouse, where there is no prospect of any future historian.
As a general rule I prefer the narrator to be unobtrusive, simply describing what is happening and what the main viewpoint character is thinking. Aldiss' approach left me uncertain about who the narrator was meant to be; seemingly, some all-knowing commentator rather than an observer of current events. On balance, I would have preferred a brief prologue for this novel, probably only a paragraph, explaining about the changes in the orbital behaviour of the Earth and the Moon and their consequences for life, because these are explained by the narrator early on anyway. The rest of the explanations could have been handled by the morel and Sodal Ye.
The setting is the very far future, close to the end of the Sun's life, when Earth has settled into an orbit which keeps one side turned permanently to the Sun, and the Moon has become a twin planet, also remaining in the same place relative to the Earth and now supporting life. The habitable part of the Earth is entirely covered by one vast, interconnected banyan tree, and inhabited by various (and usually ferocious) vegetables and insects. Humans - in a considerably shrunken form - are almost the only animals left, and exist in small groups at pre-stone age survival level in the middle layers of the forest, constantly threatened by predators.
I should warn you that the rest of this review contains spoilers, as it's difficult to comment on the story without them, so I will just sum this up as an interesting period piece, highly regarded when it first appeared, but not standing up too well today.
**************************
The protagonist is Gren, a rebellious near-mature male child in a society run by women. He and the other children are abandoned by the adults of their group who head off into the sky in a strange ritual, eventually arriving (much changed) on the Moon.
Gren and the other children are almost immediately in one set of trouble after another, and Gren's disruptive behaviour eventually causes him to be exiled. He falls prey to a morel, an intelligent fungus which invades and takes over his nervous system and is able to ransack his race memories to learn the history of humanity. With the morel's somewhat unreliable guidance Gren is able to survive, meeting various people and weird life forms and experiencing one adventure after another. He meets Sodal Ye, an intelligent dolphin who is aware of the history of the world and of its imminent destruction as the Sun goes nova. Finally, the transformed adults of Gren's group return from the Moon, and Gren is faced with a choice of futures.
I said at the start that I regarded this story as a fantasy despite an attempt by the author to establish it as set in a possible future. This is because some of the aspects of it - especially the space-travelling traversers and the bizarre tummy-belly men - are just too fantastic to be credible, at least as far as I'm concerned. Which does, of course, open the door to the age-old debate about where the boundaries between the two genres lie, but I'll save that for another time.
I enjoyed this re-read rather less than I expected. Partly this is because the principal character is so unsympathetic - the kind of brash and self-centred youth I would dislike in real life - partly because the procession of one fantastic creature after another becomes a bit wearing. The story reads as if the author was packing in as many bizarre ideas as he could, just for the sake of it.
I was also not entirely comfortable with one aspect of the writing; the narrator, who kept throwing in additional pieces of information to explain the background. Some of it made no sense: for example, the entertainingly-named killerwillow, bellyelm and sand octopus, which only lived in Nomansland where no human ever went - so how did they acquire such names, if no-one knew they existed?
A few more general comments:
There are various possible ways of making the reader understand unusual settings. One (popular these days) is to explain nothing, leaving the reader to piece together what the story is all about from scraps of information scattered through it, and possibly even remain a bit puzzled at the end. A second is to build in occasional infodumps in the form of the notorious "As you know, Bob" type of conversations; however, this isn't possible in a story like Hothouse, in which none of the characters understands the background until the morel and Sodal Ye appear. Another might be for the characters to stumble upon some ancient document which explains it all (also not applicable to Hothouse, where no-one can read). Or there could be a prologue which gives a summary of the back-history, but that could spoil the surprise element. A further approach is explicitly to establish the narrator as being in the future, looking back and describing what happened; a variation on this is to supplement the narrator's role with extracts from a history written in some future time, inserted before the start of each chapter (a technique used effectively by Frank Herbert in Dune); but again, neither is applicable to Hothouse, where there is no prospect of any future historian.
As a general rule I prefer the narrator to be unobtrusive, simply describing what is happening and what the main viewpoint character is thinking. Aldiss' approach left me uncertain about who the narrator was meant to be; seemingly, some all-knowing commentator rather than an observer of current events. On balance, I would have preferred a brief prologue for this novel, probably only a paragraph, explaining about the changes in the orbital behaviour of the Earth and the Moon and their consequences for life, because these are explained by the narrator early on anyway. The rest of the explanations could have been handled by the morel and Sodal Ye.
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Grass by Sheri S. Tepper
Sheri Tepper is an author to give hope to all aspiring writers of mature years, because her first published novel didn't appear until she was in her mid-fifties. However, she hit the ground running and has since authored some thirty SFF novels under her own name plus more than a dozen thrillers under pseudonyms, not to mention shorter works. Nine of her novels have been nominated for awards, one of them (Beauty) winning the Locus Award in 1992. She has become associated with ecological and feminist themes, although this is only obvious in some of her work. She wins my award as the author of my favourite contemporary fantasy series, The Marianne Trilogy (reviewed on this blog on 4 July 2007), a unique and surreal vision of parallel fantastical worlds.
Grass is the first of her Arbai trilogy (somehow I've missed the other two and must get hold of them) and I first read it when it was published in the 1980s. I remember being very impressed at the time, but since I had forgotten the plot I was able to enjoy it all over again.
The story displays her ability to create strange but compelling worlds. It is set in a distant future in which humanity has spread across a large number of star systems, so far finding no signs of other intelligent life except the widespread ruins of the Arbai civilisation, created by an extinct race of humanoid reptiles. The controlling force across human civilisation is a religion, Sanctity, whose unique selling point is to collect genetic data from its followers ready for machines to restore them to a purer life after the expected death of humanity. At the start of the story this appears to be imminent as humanity is suffering a deadly and incurable plague, to which the inhabitants of only one of the settled planets seem to be immune; the world of Grass.
Grass is unique for several reasons. The first is what gave the planet its name; the land surface is almost entirely covered by grasses, in a vast range of different types varying greatly in colour and size depending on the soils and microclimate. The only exceptions are marshy areas, where giant trees grow. Another is that the controlling settlers, a group of aristocrats, have divided the land into vast estancias and forbidden any settlement other than their own mansions and the villages of their servants, with the principal exception of the Commons, a hundred-square-mile upland area cut off from the grasslands by marshy forest. In this crowded space is the interstellar port and all commercial and scientific activities, a culture quite separate from that of the aristocrats. Elsewhere there is also a small settlement of recalcitrant monks despatched to the planet as a punishment, who spend their time excavating the most complete Arbai city ever found.
The story is first seen through the eyes of the aristocrats, collectively called the "bons" because of their practice of indicating their aristocracy by adding this to their names, as in Rowena bon Damfels. They are obsessed with hunting and do little else during the hunting season, which takes place during the summer; winters are so harsh that they are spent in underground warrens. The hunting style is modelled after the ancient British sport of fox hunting, with the hunters on mounts and accompanied by hounds as they ride in pursuit of their prey, which are even known as "foxen". However, their mounts - Hippae - are not horses, their hounds are not dogs and the foxen are not remotely like foxes, and there is something very strange about the entire custom.
Into this world comes the Yrarier family, Rodrigo together with his long-suffering wife Marjorie and reluctant teenage children, covertly sent by Sanctity to discover why the inhabitants seem to be immune to the plague. They have great difficulty in being accepted by the suspicious and xenophobic bons, and find that they need to participate in the hunting to be taken seriously; but this hunting is, literally, like nothing on Earth. Another plot thread concerns some of the monks on Grass, who are making interesting discoveries about the Arbai and why they died out. The various threads are gradually woven together into the climactic conclusion, in which the true nature and history of the native Hippae, hounds and foxen are central.
The author is a great story-teller and has a marvellous ability to take the reader inside the worlds of her imagination. The culture of the bons, the rope-climbing sub-culture of the younger monks (which reminded me of Peake's Gormenghast), and the intense internal struggles within the Yrarier family, are all memorable.
Grass is the first of her Arbai trilogy (somehow I've missed the other two and must get hold of them) and I first read it when it was published in the 1980s. I remember being very impressed at the time, but since I had forgotten the plot I was able to enjoy it all over again.
The story displays her ability to create strange but compelling worlds. It is set in a distant future in which humanity has spread across a large number of star systems, so far finding no signs of other intelligent life except the widespread ruins of the Arbai civilisation, created by an extinct race of humanoid reptiles. The controlling force across human civilisation is a religion, Sanctity, whose unique selling point is to collect genetic data from its followers ready for machines to restore them to a purer life after the expected death of humanity. At the start of the story this appears to be imminent as humanity is suffering a deadly and incurable plague, to which the inhabitants of only one of the settled planets seem to be immune; the world of Grass.
Grass is unique for several reasons. The first is what gave the planet its name; the land surface is almost entirely covered by grasses, in a vast range of different types varying greatly in colour and size depending on the soils and microclimate. The only exceptions are marshy areas, where giant trees grow. Another is that the controlling settlers, a group of aristocrats, have divided the land into vast estancias and forbidden any settlement other than their own mansions and the villages of their servants, with the principal exception of the Commons, a hundred-square-mile upland area cut off from the grasslands by marshy forest. In this crowded space is the interstellar port and all commercial and scientific activities, a culture quite separate from that of the aristocrats. Elsewhere there is also a small settlement of recalcitrant monks despatched to the planet as a punishment, who spend their time excavating the most complete Arbai city ever found.
The story is first seen through the eyes of the aristocrats, collectively called the "bons" because of their practice of indicating their aristocracy by adding this to their names, as in Rowena bon Damfels. They are obsessed with hunting and do little else during the hunting season, which takes place during the summer; winters are so harsh that they are spent in underground warrens. The hunting style is modelled after the ancient British sport of fox hunting, with the hunters on mounts and accompanied by hounds as they ride in pursuit of their prey, which are even known as "foxen". However, their mounts - Hippae - are not horses, their hounds are not dogs and the foxen are not remotely like foxes, and there is something very strange about the entire custom.
Into this world comes the Yrarier family, Rodrigo together with his long-suffering wife Marjorie and reluctant teenage children, covertly sent by Sanctity to discover why the inhabitants seem to be immune to the plague. They have great difficulty in being accepted by the suspicious and xenophobic bons, and find that they need to participate in the hunting to be taken seriously; but this hunting is, literally, like nothing on Earth. Another plot thread concerns some of the monks on Grass, who are making interesting discoveries about the Arbai and why they died out. The various threads are gradually woven together into the climactic conclusion, in which the true nature and history of the native Hippae, hounds and foxen are central.
The author is a great story-teller and has a marvellous ability to take the reader inside the worlds of her imagination. The culture of the bons, the rope-climbing sub-culture of the younger monks (which reminded me of Peake's Gormenghast), and the intense internal struggles within the Yrarier family, are all memorable.
Friday, 6 August 2010
Un Lun Dun by China Miéville
China Miéville is a highly regarded new British SFF author but I'd never read any of his work, so I decided to pick up a copy of Un Lun Dun, which has received good reviews. I was initially somewhat disconcerted to read in the introduction that it was his first novel for "younger readers"; something I hadn't been aware of when I bought it. However, I am aware that this category includes some of the best fiction past and present, so after a few mental and physical warm-up exercises (the book has over 500 pages) I got stuck in.
The location is London, the time is the present, the focus on a pair of schoolgirl friends to whom unusual things seem to be happening. There are signs and portents that one of them - Zanna - is the subject of intense interest not just from strangers but from animals too. Together with her friend, the reluctant Deeba, she follows her instincts and the pair find themselves in a strange, distorted and magical version of the city: Un Lun Dun. It is filled with all of the rubbish which has been discarded by London, with houses built of old washing machines or gramophone records, and populated by an extraordinary mixture of fantastic individuals including ghosts and ferocious carnivorous giraffes. Red double-decker buses drift across the sky supported by balloons, while the London Eye (the UnLondon-I) is a giant water-wheel generating electricity.
This fantastical world is under threat - from the deadly Smog, which has grown so thick that it has developed a malign intelligence and aims to take over all of Un Lun Dun. Zanna turns out to be the Chosen One, long prophesied in a revered and rather talkative Book to be the agent of the Smog's destruction. She collects a disparate group of allies and begins to fulfil the prophecies.
So far, just a different take on a predictable plot. But the story doesn't stay predictable for long, with twist after twist throughout the novel, right to the end. To say any more would spoil the surprises, but suffice it to say that I read the book in only three sessions and finished with a smile on my face. It has likeable heroes and is packed full of original ideas; I particularly enjoyed the UnGun!
Stories like this make a stark contrast with most modern fantasy, which has become very derivative if not hackneyed. I will be reading more from this author.
The location is London, the time is the present, the focus on a pair of schoolgirl friends to whom unusual things seem to be happening. There are signs and portents that one of them - Zanna - is the subject of intense interest not just from strangers but from animals too. Together with her friend, the reluctant Deeba, she follows her instincts and the pair find themselves in a strange, distorted and magical version of the city: Un Lun Dun. It is filled with all of the rubbish which has been discarded by London, with houses built of old washing machines or gramophone records, and populated by an extraordinary mixture of fantastic individuals including ghosts and ferocious carnivorous giraffes. Red double-decker buses drift across the sky supported by balloons, while the London Eye (the UnLondon-I) is a giant water-wheel generating electricity.
This fantastical world is under threat - from the deadly Smog, which has grown so thick that it has developed a malign intelligence and aims to take over all of Un Lun Dun. Zanna turns out to be the Chosen One, long prophesied in a revered and rather talkative Book to be the agent of the Smog's destruction. She collects a disparate group of allies and begins to fulfil the prophecies.
So far, just a different take on a predictable plot. But the story doesn't stay predictable for long, with twist after twist throughout the novel, right to the end. To say any more would spoil the surprises, but suffice it to say that I read the book in only three sessions and finished with a smile on my face. It has likeable heroes and is packed full of original ideas; I particularly enjoyed the UnGun!
Stories like this make a stark contrast with most modern fantasy, which has become very derivative if not hackneyed. I will be reading more from this author.
Friday, 30 July 2010
More on immortality, and The Dark Knight film
I posted on the subject of the potential problems with the enthusiasm for immortality some months ago, and have stored this as an article on my website HERE. I was reminded of this when reading reviews in the New Scientist (10 July) of a couple of US-published books on this subject: Long For This World: The strange science of immortality by Jonathan Weiner, and The Youth Pill: Scientists at the brink of an anti-aging revolution by David Stipp.
The reviewer of both books, S. Jay Olshansky, says of Weiner's book that it is "a brilliant exposé of the fascinating science that has emerged in the search for everlasting life, and the quacks, drunks and geniuses participating in one of the greatest shows on Earth". Weiner focuses on the more extreme wing of the anti-aging enthusiasts, the ones who wish to extend the lives of individual humans indefinitely. I had quite a lot to say about this in my article, and it is telling that Olshansky says of one of its most prominent proponents that "having no children himself, he sees no need for future immortals to have them either". As if…
Stipp's book concentrates on the less ambitious goal of producing a longevity pill which will extend the human lifespan by a limited but measurable amount. This is the realm of serious scientists conducting careful, evidence-based research. Success would still not be without problems, though, as I have mentioned; the impact on employment and retirement being among the obvious ones.
Other recent articles in the New Scientist (one in the same 10 July issue) have discussed progress with identifying genetic differences between those who live to be 100 and those who don't. Scientists at Boston University have identified 150 elements in the genome which are far more common in centenarians than in those who die earlier, but their work only looked at people of white European descent and needs corroborating anyway. Even if this results in a useful outcome, such genetic indicators would clearly be only part of the story, since lifespan is also affected by environmental factors such as accident, disease, poverty and the abuse of drugs, alcohol and food.
All considered, it seems likely that science will begin to come up with some answers to life extension in the foreseeable future. All the more reason for society to start debating the kind of issues which I raise in my article, rather than be taken by surprise by them.
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I recently saw The Dark Knight, the second of Christopher Nolan's reinventions of Batman, once more featuring Christian Bale as the millionaire crime-fighter. This time his enemy is The Joker; an unnervingly convincing depiction of insanity by the late Heath Ledger. The plotting is dense and it's necessary to concentrate to keep up with all of the developments - this is one film which merits a second watching.
I am more and more impressed by this director's output, he really is good. He has taken Batman from a simplistic comic-strip to a grim adult morality tale which is gripping from start to finish. These two Batman films highlight just how weak and pointless Superman Returns (reviewed a few weeks ago) is in comparison. I have read good reviews of Nolan's latest film, Inception, which has an SF plot which sounds fascinating. That's one I must see.
The reviewer of both books, S. Jay Olshansky, says of Weiner's book that it is "a brilliant exposé of the fascinating science that has emerged in the search for everlasting life, and the quacks, drunks and geniuses participating in one of the greatest shows on Earth". Weiner focuses on the more extreme wing of the anti-aging enthusiasts, the ones who wish to extend the lives of individual humans indefinitely. I had quite a lot to say about this in my article, and it is telling that Olshansky says of one of its most prominent proponents that "having no children himself, he sees no need for future immortals to have them either". As if…
Stipp's book concentrates on the less ambitious goal of producing a longevity pill which will extend the human lifespan by a limited but measurable amount. This is the realm of serious scientists conducting careful, evidence-based research. Success would still not be without problems, though, as I have mentioned; the impact on employment and retirement being among the obvious ones.
Other recent articles in the New Scientist (one in the same 10 July issue) have discussed progress with identifying genetic differences between those who live to be 100 and those who don't. Scientists at Boston University have identified 150 elements in the genome which are far more common in centenarians than in those who die earlier, but their work only looked at people of white European descent and needs corroborating anyway. Even if this results in a useful outcome, such genetic indicators would clearly be only part of the story, since lifespan is also affected by environmental factors such as accident, disease, poverty and the abuse of drugs, alcohol and food.
All considered, it seems likely that science will begin to come up with some answers to life extension in the foreseeable future. All the more reason for society to start debating the kind of issues which I raise in my article, rather than be taken by surprise by them.
-----------------------------------------
I recently saw The Dark Knight, the second of Christopher Nolan's reinventions of Batman, once more featuring Christian Bale as the millionaire crime-fighter. This time his enemy is The Joker; an unnervingly convincing depiction of insanity by the late Heath Ledger. The plotting is dense and it's necessary to concentrate to keep up with all of the developments - this is one film which merits a second watching.
I am more and more impressed by this director's output, he really is good. He has taken Batman from a simplistic comic-strip to a grim adult morality tale which is gripping from start to finish. These two Batman films highlight just how weak and pointless Superman Returns (reviewed a few weeks ago) is in comparison. I have read good reviews of Nolan's latest film, Inception, which has an SF plot which sounds fascinating. That's one I must see.
Friday, 23 July 2010
The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
Four weeks ago I reviewed A Rebel in Time by Harry Harrison, concerning an attempt by a racist American to travel back in time to give the plans for the Sten sub-machine gun to the Confederate side of the American Civil War in the hope of changing the outcome. The Guns of the South has the same basic idea but the way it is handled is entirely different.
The first half of Harrison's book is a mystery story set in the present day, with almost all of the rest in the 1850s before the war starts; only the final wrapping-up chapter is set late in the war. In contrast, Turtledove starts his story in 1864 when the war is going badly for the Confederates and the timeline continues from that point. There are other important differences, the most obvious being that Turtledove's time-travellers are an organised group of Afrikaner racial supremacists, and that they do not bother with 1860s production of modern guns and ammunition (with the attendant difficulties I pointed out in my review of Harrison's book) but simply transport large quantities of both back in time.
The action commences with the arrival in the weary Confederate camp of a mysterious soldier carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle, which he proceeds to demonstrate to the considerable astonishment of the soldiers. He promises delivery of a hundred thousand such weapons and ammunition to match, and begins to supply them. The effect on the next few battles is predictably dramatic, and the Confederates storm Washington and capture Abraham Lincoln, winning the war. This happens well before the half-way point of the novel; the rest of the story is concerned with the aftermath, particularly the political debates over the nature of the Confederacy and the influence of the Afrikaners.
Throughout the story, the viewpoint alternates between two principal characters; a sergeant in the Confederate Army, Nate Caudell, and the Confederate General Robert E Lee. This works well, as it enables the author to portray the grand strategy and political infighting plus the effects of this on the lives of ordinary people. However, the Afrikaners are little more than caricatures and we are told nothing about the circumstances which led to their intervention, other than that they stole a time machine in 2014.
The depth of the research into the Civil War period is impressive, with a lot of detail not just about the war but about the way people lived. The institution of slavery and its effects are thoroughly portrayed. I understand that many Civil War enthusiasts love this book, and I can see why. However, I sometimes had the impression that the author was more concerned with displaying his knowledge than with getting on with the story. There are frequent long conversations which do nothing to advance the plot, but just round out the characters and fill in more and more details about life in that period. With the exception of the battle scenes this is a slow read, although it does speed up towards the end.
Turtledove is much more of a military history and technology buff than Harrison and it shows. He goes into great detail about the handling and maintenance of the AK rifle and also discusses in depth the problem of manufacturing ammunition for it in the 1860s, specifically the formation of the cartridge cases and the chemistry of the propellant. I do have one small quibble in that he refers to the "proper name" of the time-travelling gun being the AK-47. It should actually be AK or AKM, depending on the model, but for some reason the West commonly refers to both by the designation which the Russians only used for the prototypes.
I have previously read only one Turtledove work, the Worldwar tetrology, about WW2 being interrupted by invading aliens. I thought this was OK but not good enough for me to keep the books for a re-read, probably because the story became bogged down in detail and was too repetitive; it dragged on for far too long. I can see some of the same characteristics in The Guns of the South, although to a lesser extent.
The contrast with Harrison's A Rebel in Time could hardly be more striking considering how similar are the basic premises. Harrison's story is a fast-moving adventure mystery, focused primarily on one present-day individual, with only a brief account of the beginning of the war and virtually nothing about the rest. It's a much faster read, in both senses (it's only about half the length), and much more likely to appeal to the average, non-specialist reader.
To sum up, The Guns of the South is an interestingly different book, very thoroughly researched and worth reading, but probably not worth re-reading unless you're a student of the period.
The first half of Harrison's book is a mystery story set in the present day, with almost all of the rest in the 1850s before the war starts; only the final wrapping-up chapter is set late in the war. In contrast, Turtledove starts his story in 1864 when the war is going badly for the Confederates and the timeline continues from that point. There are other important differences, the most obvious being that Turtledove's time-travellers are an organised group of Afrikaner racial supremacists, and that they do not bother with 1860s production of modern guns and ammunition (with the attendant difficulties I pointed out in my review of Harrison's book) but simply transport large quantities of both back in time.
The action commences with the arrival in the weary Confederate camp of a mysterious soldier carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle, which he proceeds to demonstrate to the considerable astonishment of the soldiers. He promises delivery of a hundred thousand such weapons and ammunition to match, and begins to supply them. The effect on the next few battles is predictably dramatic, and the Confederates storm Washington and capture Abraham Lincoln, winning the war. This happens well before the half-way point of the novel; the rest of the story is concerned with the aftermath, particularly the political debates over the nature of the Confederacy and the influence of the Afrikaners.
Throughout the story, the viewpoint alternates between two principal characters; a sergeant in the Confederate Army, Nate Caudell, and the Confederate General Robert E Lee. This works well, as it enables the author to portray the grand strategy and political infighting plus the effects of this on the lives of ordinary people. However, the Afrikaners are little more than caricatures and we are told nothing about the circumstances which led to their intervention, other than that they stole a time machine in 2014.
The depth of the research into the Civil War period is impressive, with a lot of detail not just about the war but about the way people lived. The institution of slavery and its effects are thoroughly portrayed. I understand that many Civil War enthusiasts love this book, and I can see why. However, I sometimes had the impression that the author was more concerned with displaying his knowledge than with getting on with the story. There are frequent long conversations which do nothing to advance the plot, but just round out the characters and fill in more and more details about life in that period. With the exception of the battle scenes this is a slow read, although it does speed up towards the end.
Turtledove is much more of a military history and technology buff than Harrison and it shows. He goes into great detail about the handling and maintenance of the AK rifle and also discusses in depth the problem of manufacturing ammunition for it in the 1860s, specifically the formation of the cartridge cases and the chemistry of the propellant. I do have one small quibble in that he refers to the "proper name" of the time-travelling gun being the AK-47. It should actually be AK or AKM, depending on the model, but for some reason the West commonly refers to both by the designation which the Russians only used for the prototypes.
I have previously read only one Turtledove work, the Worldwar tetrology, about WW2 being interrupted by invading aliens. I thought this was OK but not good enough for me to keep the books for a re-read, probably because the story became bogged down in detail and was too repetitive; it dragged on for far too long. I can see some of the same characteristics in The Guns of the South, although to a lesser extent.
The contrast with Harrison's A Rebel in Time could hardly be more striking considering how similar are the basic premises. Harrison's story is a fast-moving adventure mystery, focused primarily on one present-day individual, with only a brief account of the beginning of the war and virtually nothing about the rest. It's a much faster read, in both senses (it's only about half the length), and much more likely to appeal to the average, non-specialist reader.
To sum up, The Guns of the South is an interestingly different book, very thoroughly researched and worth reading, but probably not worth re-reading unless you're a student of the period.
Friday, 16 July 2010
Interzone 229, and Colleen Morse
Featured author in the July-August issue of this British SFF magazine is Jeff VanderMeer, with both an interview and a review of his book Finch. I've only read one of his books - Veniss Underground, reviewed on this blog in December 2007 - and was quite impressed by it, but I did skip over the more gruesome bits. I probably won't read Finch, since it seems to be a similar blend of horror set in a dystopian future and therefore not really to my taste, but VanderMeer's story-telling skills are such that I suspect I would enjoy it if I read it. However, I have too many books to read already, and not enough time.
The usual book, film, TV and DVD reviews included the final series of BBC TV's Ashes to Ashes. I was pleased to see that the reviewer liked it too. There are five short stories this time:
Mannikin by Paul Evanby, illustrated by Ben Baldwin. During an alternative American War of Independence, a scientist on the Dutch West Indian island of Saint Eustatius works to replace slaves by developing artificial humanoids. A bizarre plot and a story strong on atmosphere.
Candy Moments by Antony Mann, illustrated by Richard Wagner. Some time in the future, a mysterious organisation begins offering a unique service to unhappy people; a process which removes the pain of such memories. The after-care treatment consists of a particularly enticing brand of chocolate. One man is tempted to participate because of the guilt and grief he feels over his wife's death, but is there more to this than meets the eye?
The Melancholy by Toby Litt, illustrated by Paul Drummond. Even an intelligent computer programme, switched from machine to machine as different tasks require, feels a need for a home.
Alternate Girl's Expatriate Life by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, illustrated by David Senecal. An artificially constructed girl from a land of robots tries to settle in a human area. A surreal take on identity and belonging.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Matter by Jim Hawkins, illustrated by Richard Wagner. A more conventional SF tale of an orchestra of expert killers which tours rebellious worlds, wooing them with music; but if that doesn't work….
Being something of a traditionalist I enjoyed Hawkins' story the most, although Mannikin was also memorable.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Sad news this week, of the death of Colleen Morse at the age of 60. Often using the name Ms TigerHawk, she was the founder of both the Classic Science Fiction and Modern Science Fiction Yahoo discussion groups, plus several others. Despite her poor health in recent years, she seemed to have boundless energy, reading a phenomenal number of books, writing a couple of novels of which one has been published to date (using the name April Knight) and also taking part in a variety of social and political activities. She will be missed.
The usual book, film, TV and DVD reviews included the final series of BBC TV's Ashes to Ashes. I was pleased to see that the reviewer liked it too. There are five short stories this time:
Mannikin by Paul Evanby, illustrated by Ben Baldwin. During an alternative American War of Independence, a scientist on the Dutch West Indian island of Saint Eustatius works to replace slaves by developing artificial humanoids. A bizarre plot and a story strong on atmosphere.
Candy Moments by Antony Mann, illustrated by Richard Wagner. Some time in the future, a mysterious organisation begins offering a unique service to unhappy people; a process which removes the pain of such memories. The after-care treatment consists of a particularly enticing brand of chocolate. One man is tempted to participate because of the guilt and grief he feels over his wife's death, but is there more to this than meets the eye?
The Melancholy by Toby Litt, illustrated by Paul Drummond. Even an intelligent computer programme, switched from machine to machine as different tasks require, feels a need for a home.
Alternate Girl's Expatriate Life by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, illustrated by David Senecal. An artificially constructed girl from a land of robots tries to settle in a human area. A surreal take on identity and belonging.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Matter by Jim Hawkins, illustrated by Richard Wagner. A more conventional SF tale of an orchestra of expert killers which tours rebellious worlds, wooing them with music; but if that doesn't work….
Being something of a traditionalist I enjoyed Hawkins' story the most, although Mannikin was also memorable.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Sad news this week, of the death of Colleen Morse at the age of 60. Often using the name Ms TigerHawk, she was the founder of both the Classic Science Fiction and Modern Science Fiction Yahoo discussion groups, plus several others. Despite her poor health in recent years, she seemed to have boundless energy, reading a phenomenal number of books, writing a couple of novels of which one has been published to date (using the name April Knight) and also taking part in a variety of social and political activities. She will be missed.
Friday, 9 July 2010
Proxies of Fate by Matthew Moses
A warlord of a predatory race, the reptilian Krush, leads his fleet towards his next juicy, undefended target: the Earth of the 1930s. In his way stands a representative of an ancient race of legendary powers, the Theria. To resolve the stalemate, they agree that they should each select one member of the human race to act as a proxy to decide the fate of the planet in single combat. The two proxies would each receive the essence of their alien sponsors, giving them different ranges of special abilities.
The proxies are selected and transformed on opposite sides of the world. The Krush select Li Chen, a Chinese teenager in a Manchuria under the iron grip of Japanese occupation. The Therian chooses Chris Donner, a penniless farmer in the dustbowl of the central USA during the Great Depression. Both develop their strange abilities; Li Chen becomes a huge being with almost invulnerable skin, great speed and appalling strength, who can defeat entire armies single-handedly. Donner becomes a slight, ghostly figure with a range of paranormal powers, including healing, telekinesis and levitation. Both focus on their tragic local circumstances, trying to help their fellow men, with mixed results. Only at the end of the book do they discover each other's existence and come together in a climactic battle.
This novel is a rather puzzling mixture of comic-strip plot and action with what is clearly a great deal of background research into the two different environments. I don't claim to be knowledgeable about either historical setting, but what I do have some knowledge of (the weapons of the Japanese army) appears accurate and the settings are carefully drawn, detailed and convincing. This is the major strength of the book. The time taken over the stories of the two proxies also helps to develop their characters and enlist the sympathy of the reader for both of them. These two plus points were enough to keep me reading to the end, despite some flaws in the writing.
The first problem to become obvious is the florid and overwritten style of many descriptive passages, sometimes using words which had me reaching for a dictionary. For example (page 166):
"Crimson dawn colored the heavens over Hsinking. Across the horizon, purple clouds obscured the stirring sun while the stars of twilight sank into the empyrean sea. The cool breath of Pangu blew from the scarlet east, setting myriad wind chimes ringing throughout the capital, signalling approaching morn."
And (page 319 - describing a bombing raid);
"Like fatalistic einherjar returned from Valhalla on that final drive to Vigrior, umbral craft sailed through the ether, laden with weapons callously loosed upon the district."
The other issue I have with the writing is the author's weak grasp of sentence construction. A couple of examples, the first from page 318:
"Unable to contain the beast, permission was granted to firebomb the ward."
This makes no sense. Who was unable to contain the beast? Who asked for permission? What the author meant was "Unable to contain the beast, the Army commander obtained permission to firebomb the ward." Yet this key individual was never mentioned. Another example, on page 343:
"Corrupted by the laelap, twisted into the beast, Donner witnessed Li Chen take up the mantle of champion…"
This reads as if Donner had been corrupted and twisted, but the author actually meant Li Chen. This kind of error frequently occurs.
My final gripe is a lack of consistency in the characteristics of the two proxies, especially Donner. In their final battle he engages in fisticuffs with Li Chen, which seems absurd in the context of their respective abilities.
The author's writing shows some promise, but he would benefit from a much stricter editor.
The proxies are selected and transformed on opposite sides of the world. The Krush select Li Chen, a Chinese teenager in a Manchuria under the iron grip of Japanese occupation. The Therian chooses Chris Donner, a penniless farmer in the dustbowl of the central USA during the Great Depression. Both develop their strange abilities; Li Chen becomes a huge being with almost invulnerable skin, great speed and appalling strength, who can defeat entire armies single-handedly. Donner becomes a slight, ghostly figure with a range of paranormal powers, including healing, telekinesis and levitation. Both focus on their tragic local circumstances, trying to help their fellow men, with mixed results. Only at the end of the book do they discover each other's existence and come together in a climactic battle.
This novel is a rather puzzling mixture of comic-strip plot and action with what is clearly a great deal of background research into the two different environments. I don't claim to be knowledgeable about either historical setting, but what I do have some knowledge of (the weapons of the Japanese army) appears accurate and the settings are carefully drawn, detailed and convincing. This is the major strength of the book. The time taken over the stories of the two proxies also helps to develop their characters and enlist the sympathy of the reader for both of them. These two plus points were enough to keep me reading to the end, despite some flaws in the writing.
The first problem to become obvious is the florid and overwritten style of many descriptive passages, sometimes using words which had me reaching for a dictionary. For example (page 166):
"Crimson dawn colored the heavens over Hsinking. Across the horizon, purple clouds obscured the stirring sun while the stars of twilight sank into the empyrean sea. The cool breath of Pangu blew from the scarlet east, setting myriad wind chimes ringing throughout the capital, signalling approaching morn."
And (page 319 - describing a bombing raid);
"Like fatalistic einherjar returned from Valhalla on that final drive to Vigrior, umbral craft sailed through the ether, laden with weapons callously loosed upon the district."
The other issue I have with the writing is the author's weak grasp of sentence construction. A couple of examples, the first from page 318:
"Unable to contain the beast, permission was granted to firebomb the ward."
This makes no sense. Who was unable to contain the beast? Who asked for permission? What the author meant was "Unable to contain the beast, the Army commander obtained permission to firebomb the ward." Yet this key individual was never mentioned. Another example, on page 343:
"Corrupted by the laelap, twisted into the beast, Donner witnessed Li Chen take up the mantle of champion…"
This reads as if Donner had been corrupted and twisted, but the author actually meant Li Chen. This kind of error frequently occurs.
My final gripe is a lack of consistency in the characteristics of the two proxies, especially Donner. In their final battle he engages in fisticuffs with Li Chen, which seems absurd in the context of their respective abilities.
The author's writing shows some promise, but he would benefit from a much stricter editor.
Saturday, 3 July 2010
The Dragon Masters by Jack Vance
Jack Vance was one of the giants of my early SFF reading and is still around today. His last novel (to date) was published in 2004, some 54 years after the first. In between came some forty SFF novels, plus novellas and some mystery stories. He won several major awards, one of them - the Hugo in 1963 - for The Dragon Masters. This was one of my recommendations for the Classic Science Fiction discussion group, as I felt that such an influential author needed an airing and I was looking forward to re-reading his work after a long absence.
The most obvious feature of the book is its length: at just over 120 pages it is barely a novella in modern terms. Even by the standards of the 1960s this is a bit short (something nearer 200 pages being more typical then) , but that doesn't mean it is lacking in ideas. In fact, novels from this period tended to be all about ideas, with characterisation and detailed world-building receiving sketchy treatment. That doesn't make them worse than modern doorstops, just different, with the added benefit that they can be polished off in a session or two so even if they're not much good, you haven't wasted a lot of time on them. In contrast, I need to wind myself up to grappling with a huge modern tome, and have to feel mentally fit and fresh before I start. Also, I frequently don't finish them; if they're going to monopolise so much of my time, they'd better be good. I wrote about book length in more detail in this web article.
No problems of this sort with The Dragon Masters. The reader is plunged straight into the action, in the form of a strange intruder breaking in to the private apartment of Joaz Banbeck, hereditary leader of the small community of Banbeck Vale on the sparsely populated planet of Aerlith. The intruder is a sacerdote, one of a secretive group of contemplative humans who live a separate existence in deep caverns in the mountains which border the Vale. Joaz investigates the sacerdotes to find out what is going on, and learns that they have developed a mysterious but powerful weapon. He is interested in this because not only is he facing a challenge from his territorially expansive neighbours in Happy Valley, he is worried that the gradual brightening of star Coralyne may indicate the possible return of the grephs (the "dragons" of the title); a lizard-like race with technology - including spaceships - far more advanced than the humans, and whose previous destructive visits have been to capture humans for slaves and breeding stock.
Vance then jumps back to the past with a chapter set in the time of the last greph attack. The grephs subjected their human stock to selective breeding, producing a variety of specialised types differing considerably in size and characteristics (much as we do with dogs). The humans of Aerlith were able to capture some of the grephs and over the intervening years also bred them - for internecine warfare, producing breeds with names such as Termagants, Fiends, Murderers, Juggers and Blue Horrors.
The plot follows the fortunes of Joaz as he juggles the problems of invasion from his neighbour, greph attack, and the enigmatic sacerdotes.
How does this award-winner stand up today? Not too well in terms of literary quality, but the fresh and imaginative plot, the selective breeding of humans and dragons, and the strange culture which results on Aerlith, all have their appeal. Definitely worth the couple of hours needed to read.
The most obvious feature of the book is its length: at just over 120 pages it is barely a novella in modern terms. Even by the standards of the 1960s this is a bit short (something nearer 200 pages being more typical then) , but that doesn't mean it is lacking in ideas. In fact, novels from this period tended to be all about ideas, with characterisation and detailed world-building receiving sketchy treatment. That doesn't make them worse than modern doorstops, just different, with the added benefit that they can be polished off in a session or two so even if they're not much good, you haven't wasted a lot of time on them. In contrast, I need to wind myself up to grappling with a huge modern tome, and have to feel mentally fit and fresh before I start. Also, I frequently don't finish them; if they're going to monopolise so much of my time, they'd better be good. I wrote about book length in more detail in this web article.
No problems of this sort with The Dragon Masters. The reader is plunged straight into the action, in the form of a strange intruder breaking in to the private apartment of Joaz Banbeck, hereditary leader of the small community of Banbeck Vale on the sparsely populated planet of Aerlith. The intruder is a sacerdote, one of a secretive group of contemplative humans who live a separate existence in deep caverns in the mountains which border the Vale. Joaz investigates the sacerdotes to find out what is going on, and learns that they have developed a mysterious but powerful weapon. He is interested in this because not only is he facing a challenge from his territorially expansive neighbours in Happy Valley, he is worried that the gradual brightening of star Coralyne may indicate the possible return of the grephs (the "dragons" of the title); a lizard-like race with technology - including spaceships - far more advanced than the humans, and whose previous destructive visits have been to capture humans for slaves and breeding stock.
Vance then jumps back to the past with a chapter set in the time of the last greph attack. The grephs subjected their human stock to selective breeding, producing a variety of specialised types differing considerably in size and characteristics (much as we do with dogs). The humans of Aerlith were able to capture some of the grephs and over the intervening years also bred them - for internecine warfare, producing breeds with names such as Termagants, Fiends, Murderers, Juggers and Blue Horrors.
The plot follows the fortunes of Joaz as he juggles the problems of invasion from his neighbour, greph attack, and the enigmatic sacerdotes.
How does this award-winner stand up today? Not too well in terms of literary quality, but the fresh and imaginative plot, the selective breeding of humans and dragons, and the strange culture which results on Aerlith, all have their appeal. Definitely worth the couple of hours needed to read.
Friday, 25 June 2010
A Rebel in Time by Harry Harrison
In the late 1960s when, as a somewhat lazy student, I read more fiction (nearly all SF) than ever before or since, Harry Harrison was one of my favourite authors. He wrote short, fast-paced and often hilarious page-turners, and I still have a few of his classic novels on my shelf: Bill the Galactic Hero (a spoof of Heinlein's Starship Troopers) and the Deathworld trilogy. Probably his best-known comic character was Slippery Jim DiGriz of The Stainless Steel Rat series, but he also wrote more serious fiction, most famously Make Room! Make Room! about overpopulation. Although he was still publishing novels in the 1990s (and has a new Stainless Steel Rat one due out this year) I last read his work in the early 1970s, with A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! (also published as A Tunnel Through the Deeps), a very tongue-in-cheek take on an alternative Victorian world which would nowadays automatically be classified as "steampunk". I'm not quite sure why I bought A Rebel in Time (published 1983) but it's been sitting on my shelf for a while and I felt like some light reading (Iain M. Banks tends to do that to me) so I picked it up. It was not quite what I expected.
A Rebel in Time deals with two familiar SF themes; time travel and alternate histories. A present-day soldier, Troy Harmon, is recruited into an obscure government organisation whose job is to "watch the watchers"; to keep an eye on people with high security clearance. He starts to look into the puzzle of Colonel McCulloch, head of security at a top-secret research establishment, who has been behaving strangely - in particular, he's been converting most of his assets into gold. Almost half of the novel is concerned with Harmon's investigation, always one step behind McCulloch, while he tries to understand what's happening - until McCulloch suddenly disappears, leaving a trail of crimes behind him. Harmon gradually pieces together what has happened, and realises that McCulloch has used the time-travel experiments of the research establishment to send himself into the past, just before the American Civil War, together with a fortune in gold and with plans for making the very simple Sten sub-machine gun. Harmon realises that McCulloch, a pathological racist, is going to try to help the Confederacy win the war. He decides that he must follow him on a one-way trip into the past to try to prevent this from happening, since he has a powerful motive: Harmon is black.
This is a serious novel a lot longer and more deliberately-paced than his typical 1960s work (although at just over 300 pages, still not long by current standards), but the Harrison story-telling skills are as strong as ever and it is a gripping page-turner. Harmon's experiences in the slave culture of the southern USA in the late 1850s ring true, and the ending, while certainly not of the "happily ever after, all tied up" type is exactly right.
I did have one technical issue over the Sten gun. I have no doubt that the gun itself - possibly the simplest and crudest 20th century firearm to have seen general service - could have been manufactured in the 1850s, but I have serious doubts about the ammunition. Possibly the drawn brass cases might have been, although I'm not sure (coiled brass sheets were used when cartridges were first developed) but the propellant is another matter. The Sten's 9x19 Parabellum ammunition was designed for smokeless powder, much cleaner burning and more efficient (requiring less volume) than the gunpowder in use in the 1850s; the advances in chemistry which made this possible didn't happen until the 1880s. Loaded with gunpowder, the ammunition would have been much less powerful, and even if it could be made to work it is likely that the gun would have become quickly fouled by gunpowder residues, causing it to jam.
Despite this nerdish niggle A Rebel in Time is a very impressive and enjoyable story.
If this plot sounds vaguely familiar you might be thinking of Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South, which also features people from the present day taking modern automatic guns back to the American Civil War to help the Confederacy win. This was published nine years after A Rebel in Time and has also been sitting unread on my shelf for a very long time, so I'll tackle that soon to compare and contrast.
A Rebel in Time deals with two familiar SF themes; time travel and alternate histories. A present-day soldier, Troy Harmon, is recruited into an obscure government organisation whose job is to "watch the watchers"; to keep an eye on people with high security clearance. He starts to look into the puzzle of Colonel McCulloch, head of security at a top-secret research establishment, who has been behaving strangely - in particular, he's been converting most of his assets into gold. Almost half of the novel is concerned with Harmon's investigation, always one step behind McCulloch, while he tries to understand what's happening - until McCulloch suddenly disappears, leaving a trail of crimes behind him. Harmon gradually pieces together what has happened, and realises that McCulloch has used the time-travel experiments of the research establishment to send himself into the past, just before the American Civil War, together with a fortune in gold and with plans for making the very simple Sten sub-machine gun. Harmon realises that McCulloch, a pathological racist, is going to try to help the Confederacy win the war. He decides that he must follow him on a one-way trip into the past to try to prevent this from happening, since he has a powerful motive: Harmon is black.
This is a serious novel a lot longer and more deliberately-paced than his typical 1960s work (although at just over 300 pages, still not long by current standards), but the Harrison story-telling skills are as strong as ever and it is a gripping page-turner. Harmon's experiences in the slave culture of the southern USA in the late 1850s ring true, and the ending, while certainly not of the "happily ever after, all tied up" type is exactly right.
I did have one technical issue over the Sten gun. I have no doubt that the gun itself - possibly the simplest and crudest 20th century firearm to have seen general service - could have been manufactured in the 1850s, but I have serious doubts about the ammunition. Possibly the drawn brass cases might have been, although I'm not sure (coiled brass sheets were used when cartridges were first developed) but the propellant is another matter. The Sten's 9x19 Parabellum ammunition was designed for smokeless powder, much cleaner burning and more efficient (requiring less volume) than the gunpowder in use in the 1850s; the advances in chemistry which made this possible didn't happen until the 1880s. Loaded with gunpowder, the ammunition would have been much less powerful, and even if it could be made to work it is likely that the gun would have become quickly fouled by gunpowder residues, causing it to jam.
Despite this nerdish niggle A Rebel in Time is a very impressive and enjoyable story.
If this plot sounds vaguely familiar you might be thinking of Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South, which also features people from the present day taking modern automatic guns back to the American Civil War to help the Confederacy win. This was published nine years after A Rebel in Time and has also been sitting unread on my shelf for a very long time, so I'll tackle that soon to compare and contrast.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Film: 2012
I suppose it had to happen. There's been a huge amount of nonsense posted on the internet, by those whose grasp of reality is somewhat tenuous, concerning the claim that the Mayans predicted the end of the world on 21 December 2012. As it happens the Mayans did no such thing, although the degree of nonsense involved would be no less if they had; I discussed this on this blog on 6 March 2009. Anyway, someone in Hollywood got to hear of this and spotted a money-making opportunity, so we now have a dramatic film about it. Naturally, I just had to watch it…
I'll pass quickly over the the gibberish which the film-makers used to provide a pseudo-scientific explanation for the mechanism which would bring about global disaster. I'll give them one credit for the fact that the Mayan believer in the film was portrayed as a raving nutcase, but since it all came to pass as the Mayans "predicted" that isn't worth much.
Let's move on to the film - how did it work as a drama? The start was not at all promising, with the same tired old Hollywood cliches trotted out; the hero coping with a broken marriage, his wife's new partner, and sharing custody of their young kids (who are frequently in danger, of course, but survive, of course). This reminded me of the recent War of the Worlds film which focused on such family relationship issues to such an extent that I gave up watching out of sheer boredom. 2012 isn't quite that bad, so I stuck with it and we soon get into the strength (actually, the only point) of the film, which is the CGI vision of the end of the world. And I have to admit it's pretty dramatic, with huge earthquakes and tsunamis, canyons suddenly opening up and cities disappearing into them, followed by floods across the world.
The problem is that the film-makers seemed to be so bewitched by all this that they didn't bother overmuch with a plot, providing instead one relentless chase scene as the hero and his family struggle to get to China where several arks (vast armoured ships, each housing tens of thousands) designed to ride out the disaster are waiting (they get there, of course). The last part of the film is an anti-climax, with the hero struggling to solve a technical problem with their ark (work which he delays, despite its urgency, in order to have a passionate heart-to-heart with his ex), which seems very minor-league stuff after the colossal disasters we've witnessed.
It doesn't help that the hero (played by John Cusack) and his family are not particularly engaging or likeable. There's a much more interesting and appealing combination of Chiwetel Ejiofor as a scientific adviser and Thandie Newton as the US President's daughter, but they have only secondary roles. Ejiofor gets to make the big moral speech about how they should open up their ark to let in thousands of people left stranded, an action which very nearly results in the destruction of the ark. All very noble, but no-one mentions the surely important issue of how much food they have on board to last whatever time it will take before the land stabilises again and they can start growing crops; did they all have to go on a starvation diet to cope with the extra numbers?
As an aside, this moral dilemma reminded me of one of those table-top disaster management exercises which took place in the UK some years ago. The scenario was that an outbreak of a highly infections and highly lethal disease had occurred in a hospital, and the task was to decide what to do to stop it spreading. The winners (in terms of minimising casualties) were the team who opted for stationing snipers all round the building and shooting dead anyone who tried to leave. This was regarded as abhorrent by the more moralistic participants, but their "humane" approaches resulted in predicted death-tolls in the tens of thousands. Me, I'm with the snipers…
A couple of unnecessary details jarred with me. One was a news flash that the 2012 London Olympics had had to be abandoned because of the rapid onset of world-wide geological disaster. Anyone with the vaguest interest would know that they are to take place in the summer, not December. The other was the sight of an elderly lady with some corgis entering one of the arks - obviously intended to suggest the Queen. This is the duty-driven daughter of the King who, in the darkest days of World War 2 when London was being bombed daily and a German invasion believed to be imminent, refused to leave Buckingham Palace and was observed in the grounds practising with his revolver, preparing to make a last stand against the invaders. I can imagine the Queen ordering Prince William to flee the country and take refuge in order to continue the line, but herself? Never.
So is 2012 worth watching? If you like disaster movies with spectacular CGI, then yes it is. But you'd better set aside whatever critical faculties you possess if you hope to enjoy it as a drama: I suspect that the internal application of a moderate quantity of alcohol might help!
I'll pass quickly over the the gibberish which the film-makers used to provide a pseudo-scientific explanation for the mechanism which would bring about global disaster. I'll give them one credit for the fact that the Mayan believer in the film was portrayed as a raving nutcase, but since it all came to pass as the Mayans "predicted" that isn't worth much.
Let's move on to the film - how did it work as a drama? The start was not at all promising, with the same tired old Hollywood cliches trotted out; the hero coping with a broken marriage, his wife's new partner, and sharing custody of their young kids (who are frequently in danger, of course, but survive, of course). This reminded me of the recent War of the Worlds film which focused on such family relationship issues to such an extent that I gave up watching out of sheer boredom. 2012 isn't quite that bad, so I stuck with it and we soon get into the strength (actually, the only point) of the film, which is the CGI vision of the end of the world. And I have to admit it's pretty dramatic, with huge earthquakes and tsunamis, canyons suddenly opening up and cities disappearing into them, followed by floods across the world.
The problem is that the film-makers seemed to be so bewitched by all this that they didn't bother overmuch with a plot, providing instead one relentless chase scene as the hero and his family struggle to get to China where several arks (vast armoured ships, each housing tens of thousands) designed to ride out the disaster are waiting (they get there, of course). The last part of the film is an anti-climax, with the hero struggling to solve a technical problem with their ark (work which he delays, despite its urgency, in order to have a passionate heart-to-heart with his ex), which seems very minor-league stuff after the colossal disasters we've witnessed.
It doesn't help that the hero (played by John Cusack) and his family are not particularly engaging or likeable. There's a much more interesting and appealing combination of Chiwetel Ejiofor as a scientific adviser and Thandie Newton as the US President's daughter, but they have only secondary roles. Ejiofor gets to make the big moral speech about how they should open up their ark to let in thousands of people left stranded, an action which very nearly results in the destruction of the ark. All very noble, but no-one mentions the surely important issue of how much food they have on board to last whatever time it will take before the land stabilises again and they can start growing crops; did they all have to go on a starvation diet to cope with the extra numbers?
As an aside, this moral dilemma reminded me of one of those table-top disaster management exercises which took place in the UK some years ago. The scenario was that an outbreak of a highly infections and highly lethal disease had occurred in a hospital, and the task was to decide what to do to stop it spreading. The winners (in terms of minimising casualties) were the team who opted for stationing snipers all round the building and shooting dead anyone who tried to leave. This was regarded as abhorrent by the more moralistic participants, but their "humane" approaches resulted in predicted death-tolls in the tens of thousands. Me, I'm with the snipers…
A couple of unnecessary details jarred with me. One was a news flash that the 2012 London Olympics had had to be abandoned because of the rapid onset of world-wide geological disaster. Anyone with the vaguest interest would know that they are to take place in the summer, not December. The other was the sight of an elderly lady with some corgis entering one of the arks - obviously intended to suggest the Queen. This is the duty-driven daughter of the King who, in the darkest days of World War 2 when London was being bombed daily and a German invasion believed to be imminent, refused to leave Buckingham Palace and was observed in the grounds practising with his revolver, preparing to make a last stand against the invaders. I can imagine the Queen ordering Prince William to flee the country and take refuge in order to continue the line, but herself? Never.
So is 2012 worth watching? If you like disaster movies with spectacular CGI, then yes it is. But you'd better set aside whatever critical faculties you possess if you hope to enjoy it as a drama: I suspect that the internal application of a moderate quantity of alcohol might help!
Friday, 11 June 2010
Interzone 228
There's an interview with Gene Wolfe along with a review of The Sorcerer's House among other books, plus the usual round-up of films, DVDs and TV programmes - or to be precise, a TV programme, the focus being on the remake of The Prisoner. I'm still not sure what to make of it myself, but it was an interesting experience. I'm inclined to sympathise with the reviewer, who found it a bit of a mess, but it was an intriguing mess so I'd probably watch a second series.
Just five stories this time:
Untied States of America by Mario Milosevic, illustrated by David Senecal. The United States have become physically separated from each other and now drift individually around the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, occasionally spotting each other in passing. A watcher on the coast of Washington keeps a daily look-out, and is surprised to see a small boat approaching the shore, rowed by a man escaping from another state.
Iron Monk by Melissa Yuan-Innes, illustrated by Jim Burns. The near future: an assorted group of strangers is despatched on a mission to meet aliens who have arrived in the outer Solar System. Damage to their ship's radiation shield threatens their survival.
A Passion for Art by David D. Levine, illustrated by Mark Pexton. Artworks in a museum are being damaged, with figures in them disappearing. A security consultant sets out to trap the vandal, but finds a lot more than he bargained for.
Plague Birds by Jason Sandford, illustrated by Darren Winter. A remote-future population is scattered thinly over a rural landscape, living in self-contained villages. Their main threat is the arrival of a Plague Bird; a woman with strange and lethal powers to punish any wrong-doers who have not been properly dealt with by their communities.
Over Water by John Ingold, illustrated by Richard Wagner. The inhabitants of an island in a scattered archipelago are pestered by occasional raids from their savage neighbours, until they decide to resist.
An interesting and varied batch of stories with some original ideas. Two of them (Plague Birds and Over Water) have deceptive fantasy elements but turn out to be more like science fiction. Plague Birds is perhaps the story with the most potential for development, and indeed the author plans more tales about the principal character. However, my prize for the most bizarre and memorable concept goes to Untied States of America.
********************************
To return to the subject of TV programmes, I was a bit disappointed that there was no coverage of the final series of Ashes to Ashes, which ended a few weeks ago. It turned out that everyone was dead, and had been existing in a kind of waiting area while their characters developed sufficiently to pass on to the afterlife, joyously represented by a really good, convivial pub (well, can you think of anything better?). I found the final episode rather touching, even elegaic, and it (more or less) wrapped up the disparate threads more effectively than anything else I could imagine.
Just five stories this time:
Untied States of America by Mario Milosevic, illustrated by David Senecal. The United States have become physically separated from each other and now drift individually around the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, occasionally spotting each other in passing. A watcher on the coast of Washington keeps a daily look-out, and is surprised to see a small boat approaching the shore, rowed by a man escaping from another state.
Iron Monk by Melissa Yuan-Innes, illustrated by Jim Burns. The near future: an assorted group of strangers is despatched on a mission to meet aliens who have arrived in the outer Solar System. Damage to their ship's radiation shield threatens their survival.
A Passion for Art by David D. Levine, illustrated by Mark Pexton. Artworks in a museum are being damaged, with figures in them disappearing. A security consultant sets out to trap the vandal, but finds a lot more than he bargained for.
Plague Birds by Jason Sandford, illustrated by Darren Winter. A remote-future population is scattered thinly over a rural landscape, living in self-contained villages. Their main threat is the arrival of a Plague Bird; a woman with strange and lethal powers to punish any wrong-doers who have not been properly dealt with by their communities.
Over Water by John Ingold, illustrated by Richard Wagner. The inhabitants of an island in a scattered archipelago are pestered by occasional raids from their savage neighbours, until they decide to resist.
An interesting and varied batch of stories with some original ideas. Two of them (Plague Birds and Over Water) have deceptive fantasy elements but turn out to be more like science fiction. Plague Birds is perhaps the story with the most potential for development, and indeed the author plans more tales about the principal character. However, my prize for the most bizarre and memorable concept goes to Untied States of America.
********************************
To return to the subject of TV programmes, I was a bit disappointed that there was no coverage of the final series of Ashes to Ashes, which ended a few weeks ago. It turned out that everyone was dead, and had been existing in a kind of waiting area while their characters developed sufficiently to pass on to the afterlife, joyously represented by a really good, convivial pub (well, can you think of anything better?). I found the final episode rather touching, even elegaic, and it (more or less) wrapped up the disparate threads more effectively than anything else I could imagine.
Saturday, 5 June 2010
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
Iain M. Banks has established himself as one of the most highly regarded SF authors of the current generation. Unusually, he switches between genre and mainstream fiction (the latter under the name Iain Banks - without the M) and is equally successful at both. His SF books focus on a far distant future when mankind has spread across the galaxy. Most of them are set in the "Culture", a time of enormous wealth for all, managed by immensely powerful artificial intelligences.
The Algebraist is not a part of the Culture series, but it is still set in a galaxy-spanning future. Humanity and various alien races co-exist, using huge artificial wormholes to connect star systems. There has been a long history of inter-human conflict in which AIs have been banned. The action is set in one distant system which has been cut off from the rest of civilisation by the destruction of its wormhole in such a conflict, and can only be reconnected after a sub-light-speed fleet has spent centuries travelling from the nearest high-technology system. To add to their problems, the system is vulnerable to attack by dissident human cultures who are planning an invasion. A Jovian-type gas giant within the system is a home to the Dwellers, a galaxy-wide race which have been around for some ten billion years and who can individually live for up to two billion. They have no great interest in other races but permit occasional visits by human scholars.
One of these scholars is Fassin Taak, the hero of the novel. He is summarily recruited into the military/religious order which rules the system and sent to the gas giant to investigate an ancient rumour that the Dwellers know of other wormholes which could end their isolation. The action focuses mainly on Taak's adventures among the Dwellers, switching occasionally to other characters in the system, in the rescue fleet and in a dissident invasion fleet which are both racing towards the system.
Like all of Banks' books, The Algebraist is not really a page-turner. The pace is slow and deliberate and at over 500 pages of a rather small font, the book requires some dedication to read. I must confess that it took me quite a while to get into, but I stuck with it and eventually became so engrossed that I read the last third in one sitting.
The main point of interest in the story is the Dweller race, which lives in the atmosphere of gas giants. They are famously disorganised, appear to have no government, and normally use a relatively low level of technology. Banks makes them intriguing but perhaps too human-like in their attitudes and conversation; despite their vast age, strange habitat and decidedly non-human physical form I didn't find them as alien as I would have expected.
I found this book to be well worth reading, but while I admire Banks' works (with the exception of Feersum Endjinn, which I abandoned in irritation at the extensive use of an invented dialect) they never quite hit the bullseye with me. I'll still keep reading them, though.
The Algebraist is not a part of the Culture series, but it is still set in a galaxy-spanning future. Humanity and various alien races co-exist, using huge artificial wormholes to connect star systems. There has been a long history of inter-human conflict in which AIs have been banned. The action is set in one distant system which has been cut off from the rest of civilisation by the destruction of its wormhole in such a conflict, and can only be reconnected after a sub-light-speed fleet has spent centuries travelling from the nearest high-technology system. To add to their problems, the system is vulnerable to attack by dissident human cultures who are planning an invasion. A Jovian-type gas giant within the system is a home to the Dwellers, a galaxy-wide race which have been around for some ten billion years and who can individually live for up to two billion. They have no great interest in other races but permit occasional visits by human scholars.
One of these scholars is Fassin Taak, the hero of the novel. He is summarily recruited into the military/religious order which rules the system and sent to the gas giant to investigate an ancient rumour that the Dwellers know of other wormholes which could end their isolation. The action focuses mainly on Taak's adventures among the Dwellers, switching occasionally to other characters in the system, in the rescue fleet and in a dissident invasion fleet which are both racing towards the system.
Like all of Banks' books, The Algebraist is not really a page-turner. The pace is slow and deliberate and at over 500 pages of a rather small font, the book requires some dedication to read. I must confess that it took me quite a while to get into, but I stuck with it and eventually became so engrossed that I read the last third in one sitting.
The main point of interest in the story is the Dweller race, which lives in the atmosphere of gas giants. They are famously disorganised, appear to have no government, and normally use a relatively low level of technology. Banks makes them intriguing but perhaps too human-like in their attitudes and conversation; despite their vast age, strange habitat and decidedly non-human physical form I didn't find them as alien as I would have expected.
I found this book to be well worth reading, but while I admire Banks' works (with the exception of Feersum Endjinn, which I abandoned in irritation at the extensive use of an invented dialect) they never quite hit the bullseye with me. I'll still keep reading them, though.
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Film: Superman Returns
Superman Returns was one of my Christmas collection of recorded movies. It was, I suppose, a competent enough production but it left me pondering the whole question of realism and credibility in such present-day fantasies.
With any fantasy, the reader has to be capable of suspending disbelief in order to enjoy the story since at least one key aspect of it (e.g. a superhuman ability) is usually scientifically impossible. However, for it to be acceptable (to me, at any rate) it is important that the plot woven around this aspect should be internally consistent and reasonably logical.
To give some examples from my recent reviews: Batman Begins, while highly improbable, is not actually impossible. There are no magical powers, just a well-trained man using moderately advanced technology. With such limitations, tackling crime in his home city seems a reasonable target. There is a different approach in Gould's Jumper (the book not the film) in that the hero's ability to teleport is indeed impossible (as least as far as present-day science can conceive) but apart from that, what happens as a result is intensely realistic and credible. The X-Men films push the boundaries a bit further, since there are various different super abilities distributed among the characters. However, the plots built on this make acceptable sense.
So where does Superman fit into this? Not just one super ability, but a whole batch of them in one man; in fact, there's not a lot he can't do. He is so all-powerful that he would achieve an easy victory every time, so the debilitating effect of Kryptonite had to be added to provide any trace of dramatic tension. However, if you are able to take a really big swallow and suspend your disbelief about this, you then get to what Superman does with these abilities. Think about it for a moment; what would you do?
Well, recent earthquakes provide some obvious opportunities; rescuing people trapped in fallen buildings, rushing them to hospital, carrying in vast quantities of supplies and other necessities. Part of the world suffering a drought? Dump an iceberg into the nearest lake-bed. Famine in a war zone? Get the food through regardless of attempts to stop this. Worried about nuclear war or terrorism? Scrap North Korea's nuclear facility and haul Osama bin Laden out of whatever hole he's in. Then you come to the fun bits: want to encourage space exploration? Lots could be done; for example: deposit research satellites around the Solar System; launch probes at extremely high velocities towards all the most likely nearby stars; lift complete, self-contained, permanent habitats onto the Moon and Mars (although I'd insist that humanity develops and maintains the ability to transfer people and supplies between planets, otherwise they'd just rely on me and the whole endeavour would collapse when I wasn't there any more).
These kinds of plot elements could provide some interesting material. For instance, Superman was supposed to have been sent to Earth to benefit mankind, not just the USA, which (incredible as it may seem in the comic-strip world) may not always be in the right. If you're removing nuclear weapons, where do you stop, and why? Who would be in charge of your Mars (or wherever) base? How could you get the nations to work together? Lots of moral and political issues to tackle here.
So what does Superman do: any of this? Err no, actually, he just fights a criminal nutcase while rescuing people from small-scale disasters and dealing with routine crime. In other words, the film is entirely unbelievable in all respects from start to finish. This is fantasy for kiddies who, one would hope, would grow out of stuff like this before they're ten. It makes Batman Begins and the X-Men films look like epics of Shakespearean quality and grandeur. The film-makers try to distract attention from this by focusing on the romantic relationship between Superman and his former girlfriend, but to try to make a decent film about Superman is, to borrow a memorable phrase, like putting lipstick on a pig; it simply isn't worth the bother.
With any fantasy, the reader has to be capable of suspending disbelief in order to enjoy the story since at least one key aspect of it (e.g. a superhuman ability) is usually scientifically impossible. However, for it to be acceptable (to me, at any rate) it is important that the plot woven around this aspect should be internally consistent and reasonably logical.
To give some examples from my recent reviews: Batman Begins, while highly improbable, is not actually impossible. There are no magical powers, just a well-trained man using moderately advanced technology. With such limitations, tackling crime in his home city seems a reasonable target. There is a different approach in Gould's Jumper (the book not the film) in that the hero's ability to teleport is indeed impossible (as least as far as present-day science can conceive) but apart from that, what happens as a result is intensely realistic and credible. The X-Men films push the boundaries a bit further, since there are various different super abilities distributed among the characters. However, the plots built on this make acceptable sense.
So where does Superman fit into this? Not just one super ability, but a whole batch of them in one man; in fact, there's not a lot he can't do. He is so all-powerful that he would achieve an easy victory every time, so the debilitating effect of Kryptonite had to be added to provide any trace of dramatic tension. However, if you are able to take a really big swallow and suspend your disbelief about this, you then get to what Superman does with these abilities. Think about it for a moment; what would you do?
Well, recent earthquakes provide some obvious opportunities; rescuing people trapped in fallen buildings, rushing them to hospital, carrying in vast quantities of supplies and other necessities. Part of the world suffering a drought? Dump an iceberg into the nearest lake-bed. Famine in a war zone? Get the food through regardless of attempts to stop this. Worried about nuclear war or terrorism? Scrap North Korea's nuclear facility and haul Osama bin Laden out of whatever hole he's in. Then you come to the fun bits: want to encourage space exploration? Lots could be done; for example: deposit research satellites around the Solar System; launch probes at extremely high velocities towards all the most likely nearby stars; lift complete, self-contained, permanent habitats onto the Moon and Mars (although I'd insist that humanity develops and maintains the ability to transfer people and supplies between planets, otherwise they'd just rely on me and the whole endeavour would collapse when I wasn't there any more).
These kinds of plot elements could provide some interesting material. For instance, Superman was supposed to have been sent to Earth to benefit mankind, not just the USA, which (incredible as it may seem in the comic-strip world) may not always be in the right. If you're removing nuclear weapons, where do you stop, and why? Who would be in charge of your Mars (or wherever) base? How could you get the nations to work together? Lots of moral and political issues to tackle here.
So what does Superman do: any of this? Err no, actually, he just fights a criminal nutcase while rescuing people from small-scale disasters and dealing with routine crime. In other words, the film is entirely unbelievable in all respects from start to finish. This is fantasy for kiddies who, one would hope, would grow out of stuff like this before they're ten. It makes Batman Begins and the X-Men films look like epics of Shakespearean quality and grandeur. The film-makers try to distract attention from this by focusing on the romantic relationship between Superman and his former girlfriend, but to try to make a decent film about Superman is, to borrow a memorable phrase, like putting lipstick on a pig; it simply isn't worth the bother.
Saturday, 22 May 2010
The Ruby Dice, by Catherine Asaro
I previously reviewed Catherine Asaro's Skolian Empire space-opera series in July 2007 (see the review list in the panel on the left) so I won't repeat the background to the stories here. Suffice to say that The Ruby Dice is the twelfth novel in the series, with a thirteenth (Diamond Star) already published and due out in paperback shortly.
The Ruby Dice focuses on two individuals: Kelric, the Rhon psion Skolian Imperator, and Jaibriol III, the Eubian Emperor. As leaders of the two great and fundamentally opposed interstellar empires, they personify the constant struggle between the slave-owning Eubians and the Skolians. All is not as it seems, however; unknown to the Eubians, Jaibriol is the son not just of the previous Emperor but also of the former Skolian Imperator, and he is a powerful psion - a fact which would lead to his instant deposition and death or slavery if it became known. Kelric also has a major secret; that in a previous period of his life (recounted in The Last Hawk, the seventh book of the series) he had been held as a prisoner on the restricted planet Coba, where he had not only learned to play the culture-dominating dice game of Quis to its highest level, he had also fathered two children.
The plot of The Ruby Dice starts a decade after both Kelric and Jaibriol had inherited their respective titles. Both men are separately determined to try to agree a peace treaty despite powerful internal opposition, and the viewpoint alternates between them as they scheme and take major risks to achieve this. The story makes a rather slow start, as it contains numerous infodumps to apprise new or forgetful readers of the background to the series and the events so far. Personally, I would much rather have this contained within a prologue which could be skipped if not needed, allowing the story to plunge straight into the plot. As it happens there is a prologue, but this has a different function, recounting some events a year before the plot starts. Once underway, however, Asaro's story-telling skills drew me in as usual.
For me, the scenes set in the Eubian court are far more fascinating than the Skolian episodes. Jaibriol is under intense pressure, not just from the normal deadly intrigues but also in trying to maintain the mental defences which prevent the Eubians from realising that he is one of the despised Rhon psions. A marvellous major character is his wife Tarquine, vastly older than himself and a ruthless and brilliant manipulator of the court on his behalf. The author has a lot of fun with the oblique and coded use of court language, direct speech being considered acceptable only among lovers - or to slaves. For instance, the comment "Paris is a decadent city, I have no desire to tour France again" actually means "the incomplete Treaty of Paris with the Skolians was a bad idea and not worth pursuing". Similarly, "Corbal values the dawn. He would never let its radiance dim" means "Corbal will stand by his slave mistress (named Sunrise) and would never abandon her".
I mentioned in my previous review that the later novels were beginning to show signs of the fatigue which almost always afflicts such a long series of novels set in the same universe. Certainly the pace has slowed somewhat as the author selects different facets of her creation to examine in more detail. However, the variety which her approach permits is ably used to maintain interest and prevent the setting becoming stale. The Skolian Empire series is a major achievement, and each new book remains on my "must buy" list.
The Ruby Dice focuses on two individuals: Kelric, the Rhon psion Skolian Imperator, and Jaibriol III, the Eubian Emperor. As leaders of the two great and fundamentally opposed interstellar empires, they personify the constant struggle between the slave-owning Eubians and the Skolians. All is not as it seems, however; unknown to the Eubians, Jaibriol is the son not just of the previous Emperor but also of the former Skolian Imperator, and he is a powerful psion - a fact which would lead to his instant deposition and death or slavery if it became known. Kelric also has a major secret; that in a previous period of his life (recounted in The Last Hawk, the seventh book of the series) he had been held as a prisoner on the restricted planet Coba, where he had not only learned to play the culture-dominating dice game of Quis to its highest level, he had also fathered two children.
The plot of The Ruby Dice starts a decade after both Kelric and Jaibriol had inherited their respective titles. Both men are separately determined to try to agree a peace treaty despite powerful internal opposition, and the viewpoint alternates between them as they scheme and take major risks to achieve this. The story makes a rather slow start, as it contains numerous infodumps to apprise new or forgetful readers of the background to the series and the events so far. Personally, I would much rather have this contained within a prologue which could be skipped if not needed, allowing the story to plunge straight into the plot. As it happens there is a prologue, but this has a different function, recounting some events a year before the plot starts. Once underway, however, Asaro's story-telling skills drew me in as usual.
For me, the scenes set in the Eubian court are far more fascinating than the Skolian episodes. Jaibriol is under intense pressure, not just from the normal deadly intrigues but also in trying to maintain the mental defences which prevent the Eubians from realising that he is one of the despised Rhon psions. A marvellous major character is his wife Tarquine, vastly older than himself and a ruthless and brilliant manipulator of the court on his behalf. The author has a lot of fun with the oblique and coded use of court language, direct speech being considered acceptable only among lovers - or to slaves. For instance, the comment "Paris is a decadent city, I have no desire to tour France again" actually means "the incomplete Treaty of Paris with the Skolians was a bad idea and not worth pursuing". Similarly, "Corbal values the dawn. He would never let its radiance dim" means "Corbal will stand by his slave mistress (named Sunrise) and would never abandon her".
I mentioned in my previous review that the later novels were beginning to show signs of the fatigue which almost always afflicts such a long series of novels set in the same universe. Certainly the pace has slowed somewhat as the author selects different facets of her creation to examine in more detail. However, the variety which her approach permits is ably used to maintain interest and prevent the setting becoming stale. The Skolian Empire series is a major achievement, and each new book remains on my "must buy" list.
Friday, 14 May 2010
TV series: FlashForward, Ashes to Ashes, and The Prisoner
Three series currently showing on UK TV have varied SFF elements, and make for some interesting contrasts.
FlashForward is a US series, based on a 1999 novel of the same name by Canadian author Robert J Sawyer. It is set on a present-day Earth in which (almost) everyone blacked out for two minutes and seventeen seconds, during which they appeared to see visions of what would happen to them six months into the future. I haven't read the book and was unable to watch the first series (the channel it was shown on not then being available in my area) but came in on the two-part "special" and the start of series two. Sadly I didn't get much further since, although I was aware of the basic premise, the second series is packed so full of references to events and people in the first series that I found watching it an exercise in frustration. I gather from other commentators, however, that the series suffers from being far too drawn out (with 22 hour-long episodes in the first series alone) which means that the concept becomes seriously diluted.
This raises an interesting question concerning the optimum length of such series and whether or not it is important to try to keep the pacing and structure of the novel. Generally speaking, feature films don't have enough time to do justice to most novels, since they try to pack a story which typically takes over five hours to read (assuming 350+ pages) into a couple of hours. Long series like FlashForward go to the opposite extreme, stretching the plot to several times its original length. One consequence is that the focus may shift from the science-fictional premise to the activities and interrelationships of the characters. This might be acceptable if the characters are strong and their relationships develop in an interesting way, but that doesn't seem to be the case with FlashForward, judging both by my own brief exposure to it and the comments of others.
Ashes to Ashes is now in its third and last series. I reviewed the first two on this blog on 25 June 2009, so I won't go into the background again. This time the mood is darker, with the threatening figure of Jim Keats, a police officer tasked with reviewing Gene Hunt's (Philip Glenister) department, on a mission to discredit Hunt. Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), thrown back from the present to 1983, becomes obsessed with the death of Sam Tyler, the former throwback in Life on Mars, and discovers evidence that Hunt was involved. However, the focus for much of the series has been on 1983 policing, with little evidence of the desperation to return to her young daughter Drake showed in the first two series; the only mysterious element being her repeated visions of a wounded policeman. Flashes of brilliant comedy are still there, however, one being the incorporation of a real-life incident, the vandalism of the garden developed for the children's TV show Blue Peter. This is "revealed" as being the consequence of a messy arrest by Gene Hunt and his team, who afterwards are shown glumly watching the actual 1983 TV programme which described the vandalism by persons unknown! Viewers are promised that the series will end by explaining what has been happening and wrapping up all the loose ends. It will be fascinating to see how they do this, but also a sad day - however, all good things must come to an end.
The Prisoner was a late-1960s British TV series concerning a former secret agent (played by Patrick McGoohan, who also devised the story and wrote several episodes) who wakes up in a mysterious village (the actual picture-postcard folly village of Portmerion in North Wales) from which he is prevented from leaving while those in charge try to find out why he resigned. The residents all have numbers rather than names and live a surreal existence which, along with the bizarre attempts to break the hero's resistance, provide a substantial fantasy element to what is ostensibly a spy thriller. (In this respect it is not dissimilar to another famous but lighter and more comedic series from the same period, The Avengers, in its definitive third series starring Diana Rigg). I saw the The Prisoner when it first appeared and saw it all again when it was broadcast a few years ago; it deservedly has cult status now.
A new version of The Prisoner is now showing. This is a joint US/UK production featuring an American hero (played by John Caviezel) and is set in a model village among the deserts of southern Africa. So far it looks promising, with a similar basic premise but enough differences to make it interesting, and lots of confusing blurring between the hero's past and present lives. One to keep watching, for now at least.
FlashForward is a US series, based on a 1999 novel of the same name by Canadian author Robert J Sawyer. It is set on a present-day Earth in which (almost) everyone blacked out for two minutes and seventeen seconds, during which they appeared to see visions of what would happen to them six months into the future. I haven't read the book and was unable to watch the first series (the channel it was shown on not then being available in my area) but came in on the two-part "special" and the start of series two. Sadly I didn't get much further since, although I was aware of the basic premise, the second series is packed so full of references to events and people in the first series that I found watching it an exercise in frustration. I gather from other commentators, however, that the series suffers from being far too drawn out (with 22 hour-long episodes in the first series alone) which means that the concept becomes seriously diluted.
This raises an interesting question concerning the optimum length of such series and whether or not it is important to try to keep the pacing and structure of the novel. Generally speaking, feature films don't have enough time to do justice to most novels, since they try to pack a story which typically takes over five hours to read (assuming 350+ pages) into a couple of hours. Long series like FlashForward go to the opposite extreme, stretching the plot to several times its original length. One consequence is that the focus may shift from the science-fictional premise to the activities and interrelationships of the characters. This might be acceptable if the characters are strong and their relationships develop in an interesting way, but that doesn't seem to be the case with FlashForward, judging both by my own brief exposure to it and the comments of others.
Ashes to Ashes is now in its third and last series. I reviewed the first two on this blog on 25 June 2009, so I won't go into the background again. This time the mood is darker, with the threatening figure of Jim Keats, a police officer tasked with reviewing Gene Hunt's (Philip Glenister) department, on a mission to discredit Hunt. Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), thrown back from the present to 1983, becomes obsessed with the death of Sam Tyler, the former throwback in Life on Mars, and discovers evidence that Hunt was involved. However, the focus for much of the series has been on 1983 policing, with little evidence of the desperation to return to her young daughter Drake showed in the first two series; the only mysterious element being her repeated visions of a wounded policeman. Flashes of brilliant comedy are still there, however, one being the incorporation of a real-life incident, the vandalism of the garden developed for the children's TV show Blue Peter. This is "revealed" as being the consequence of a messy arrest by Gene Hunt and his team, who afterwards are shown glumly watching the actual 1983 TV programme which described the vandalism by persons unknown! Viewers are promised that the series will end by explaining what has been happening and wrapping up all the loose ends. It will be fascinating to see how they do this, but also a sad day - however, all good things must come to an end.
The Prisoner was a late-1960s British TV series concerning a former secret agent (played by Patrick McGoohan, who also devised the story and wrote several episodes) who wakes up in a mysterious village (the actual picture-postcard folly village of Portmerion in North Wales) from which he is prevented from leaving while those in charge try to find out why he resigned. The residents all have numbers rather than names and live a surreal existence which, along with the bizarre attempts to break the hero's resistance, provide a substantial fantasy element to what is ostensibly a spy thriller. (In this respect it is not dissimilar to another famous but lighter and more comedic series from the same period, The Avengers, in its definitive third series starring Diana Rigg). I saw the The Prisoner when it first appeared and saw it all again when it was broadcast a few years ago; it deservedly has cult status now.
A new version of The Prisoner is now showing. This is a joint US/UK production featuring an American hero (played by John Caviezel) and is set in a model village among the deserts of southern Africa. So far it looks promising, with a similar basic premise but enough differences to make it interesting, and lots of confusing blurring between the hero's past and present lives. One to keep watching, for now at least.
Friday, 7 May 2010
2009 BSFA Short Fiction award
The British Science Fiction Association presents annual awards to the best in four categories (Novel, Short Fiction, Artwork and Non-Fiction) as determined by the votes of the members. The six stories in the Short Fiction category were included in a booklet sent out to members. By the time I worked my way to it through my ever-growing pile of reading material I was (as usual) too late to vote, but this is my take on them anyway. Two of them had previously been published in Interzone magazine so have already been mentioned in this blog, but I'll paste my comments in here to save you searching for them:
Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast by Eugie Foster (first published in Interzone 220): a fantasy in which everyone wears a mask in public – a mask which determines their personalities and the events they are involved in. It is illegal to be seen in public without one, so every morning people have to choose which identity to adopt from their varied collections of masks. But there are some who reject the idea and try to develop their own independent personalities.
Johnny and Emmy-Lou Get Married by Kim Lakin-Smith (first published in Interzone 222): 1950s-style romance across the boundaries of futuristic US gangs, the Rocketeers and the Flies.
The Push by Dave Hutchinson (first published in The Push, Newcon Press): a long short story about planetary colonisation. One of the original founders of a colony on a distant planet returns several centuries later (although only a few years for him as the result of the temporal effects of the FTL space travel technology) to discover that a previously non-sentient native race had suddenly acquired intelligence - and that meant trouble.
Vishnu at the Cat Circus (extract) by Ian McDonald (first published in Cyberabad Days, Gollancz): set in a future fragmented India, the ancient genetically-enhanced owner of a circus of performing cats tells the story of his early life.
The Beloved Time of their Lives by Ian Watson & Roberto Quaglia (first published in The Beloved Of My Beloved, Newcon Press): Two lovers keep meeting, the man growing steadily older as he works his way back though time to keep meeting his ever-younger lover.
The Assistant by Ian Whates (first published in The Solaris Book of Science Fiction, Volume 3): the cleaning squad enters the office building for their night job, but it involves a lot more than just physical cleaning; there are cyber attacks and infiltration by mini robots to deal with too.
I couldn't really evaluate Ian MacDonald's extract as it is abruptly cut short before it gets anywhere, and makes no sense by itself with a complete disconnect between the protagonist's early and late lives. For inventive and original fantasy I would choose Eugie Foster's story, but being a sucker for traditional SF my personal favourite was Dave Hutchinson's tale; it could have been written at any time in the past few decades but is none the worse for that.
PS Having written the above, I checked the BSFA site and found that the Watson/Quaglia story had won the award. I found that one a bit irritating because of the way in which the meetings were curtailed because the couple kept making the same mistake.
Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast by Eugie Foster (first published in Interzone 220): a fantasy in which everyone wears a mask in public – a mask which determines their personalities and the events they are involved in. It is illegal to be seen in public without one, so every morning people have to choose which identity to adopt from their varied collections of masks. But there are some who reject the idea and try to develop their own independent personalities.
Johnny and Emmy-Lou Get Married by Kim Lakin-Smith (first published in Interzone 222): 1950s-style romance across the boundaries of futuristic US gangs, the Rocketeers and the Flies.
The Push by Dave Hutchinson (first published in The Push, Newcon Press): a long short story about planetary colonisation. One of the original founders of a colony on a distant planet returns several centuries later (although only a few years for him as the result of the temporal effects of the FTL space travel technology) to discover that a previously non-sentient native race had suddenly acquired intelligence - and that meant trouble.
Vishnu at the Cat Circus (extract) by Ian McDonald (first published in Cyberabad Days, Gollancz): set in a future fragmented India, the ancient genetically-enhanced owner of a circus of performing cats tells the story of his early life.
The Beloved Time of their Lives by Ian Watson & Roberto Quaglia (first published in The Beloved Of My Beloved, Newcon Press): Two lovers keep meeting, the man growing steadily older as he works his way back though time to keep meeting his ever-younger lover.
The Assistant by Ian Whates (first published in The Solaris Book of Science Fiction, Volume 3): the cleaning squad enters the office building for their night job, but it involves a lot more than just physical cleaning; there are cyber attacks and infiltration by mini robots to deal with too.
I couldn't really evaluate Ian MacDonald's extract as it is abruptly cut short before it gets anywhere, and makes no sense by itself with a complete disconnect between the protagonist's early and late lives. For inventive and original fantasy I would choose Eugie Foster's story, but being a sucker for traditional SF my personal favourite was Dave Hutchinson's tale; it could have been written at any time in the past few decades but is none the worse for that.
PS Having written the above, I checked the BSFA site and found that the Watson/Quaglia story had won the award. I found that one a bit irritating because of the way in which the meetings were curtailed because the couple kept making the same mistake.
Friday, 30 April 2010
Films: The Time Machine, and Timeline
Two films with a central theme in common - time travel.
I re-read H G Wells' novel The Time Machine only last year (see review list on the left) and vaguely recall watching the 1960 film version, so when the 2002 film appeared on TV I naturally had to watch it. My first reaction was one of puzzlement; not only was the setting changed from London to New York (par for the course for Hollywood, which seems to find it hard to imagine that anything of interest could ever happen outside the USA) but the first quarter of an hour or so is entirely new, concerning a doomed love affair. It transpires that this is what drives the central character (a physics professor) to develop a time machine, and after some more diversions the story duly arrives 800,000 years in the future, into the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks. Sadly, the devolution of humanity is glossed over, the Eloi shown as normally intelligent rather than stupid, with the cause of humanity's lost civilisation being put down to a man-made physical disaster (the break-up of the Moon) rather than natural evolutionary forces. Also the evocative final section of the book, in which the time traveller visits a dying Earth from which humanity has disappeared, is omitted, to be replaced by a tacked-on and totally nonsensical destroy-the-bad-guys-and-live-happily-ever-after ending. A dumbed-down sketch of a classic novel; Hollywood doing its worst.
I had never heard of Michael Crichton's 1999 novel Timeline and didn't realise that the 2003 film I had just watched was based on this until the credits rolled. So I can't comment on how faithful (or otherwise) the film was to the book. This is probably just as well, otherwise I might have found far more fault with it. As it was, I enjoyed the tale of the team of modern archaeologists using a time-travel machine to visit medieval France at a crucial point in history, in order to rescue one of their colleagues. Much scheming and fighting result as the archaeologists desperately try to return to the present day. Far from serious, but enjoyably entertaining.
If there's one lesson to learn from these two films, it's this: if at all possible, try to see the film before you read the book. You are then more likely to enjoy the film.
I re-read H G Wells' novel The Time Machine only last year (see review list on the left) and vaguely recall watching the 1960 film version, so when the 2002 film appeared on TV I naturally had to watch it. My first reaction was one of puzzlement; not only was the setting changed from London to New York (par for the course for Hollywood, which seems to find it hard to imagine that anything of interest could ever happen outside the USA) but the first quarter of an hour or so is entirely new, concerning a doomed love affair. It transpires that this is what drives the central character (a physics professor) to develop a time machine, and after some more diversions the story duly arrives 800,000 years in the future, into the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks. Sadly, the devolution of humanity is glossed over, the Eloi shown as normally intelligent rather than stupid, with the cause of humanity's lost civilisation being put down to a man-made physical disaster (the break-up of the Moon) rather than natural evolutionary forces. Also the evocative final section of the book, in which the time traveller visits a dying Earth from which humanity has disappeared, is omitted, to be replaced by a tacked-on and totally nonsensical destroy-the-bad-guys-and-live-happily-ever-after ending. A dumbed-down sketch of a classic novel; Hollywood doing its worst.
I had never heard of Michael Crichton's 1999 novel Timeline and didn't realise that the 2003 film I had just watched was based on this until the credits rolled. So I can't comment on how faithful (or otherwise) the film was to the book. This is probably just as well, otherwise I might have found far more fault with it. As it was, I enjoyed the tale of the team of modern archaeologists using a time-travel machine to visit medieval France at a crucial point in history, in order to rescue one of their colleagues. Much scheming and fighting result as the archaeologists desperately try to return to the present day. Far from serious, but enjoyably entertaining.
If there's one lesson to learn from these two films, it's this: if at all possible, try to see the film before you read the book. You are then more likely to enjoy the film.
Friday, 23 April 2010
Slan, and Slan Hunter, by A.E. van Vogt & Kevin J Anderson
It is a very long time since I read Slan, one of the classic novels of the "golden age" of the 1940s which had a huge impact at the time, so when I learned that a sequel had been written I decided to read both.
Slan is a far-future story set on Earth (with scenes on Mars towards the end) in which enhanced humans called slans, featuring extended lifespans, inhuman strength, speed and intelligence, plus the ability to read minds with the aid of fine "tendrils" in their hair, are being persecuted close to extinction by the rest of humanity. The hero of the story is Jommy Cross, a young slan whose mother is killed in the first scene of the tale. Captured by an old woman who uses him as a thief, he grows up and discovers the secrets of advanced science left to him by his father, which enable him to construct formidable technological devices. He also discovers that there is a secret race of tendrilless slans who cannot read minds but whose abilities have allowed them to monopolise air travel - and to clandestinely develop space travel as well. His long search to discover other true slans and to understand why humans and the tendrilless slans hate them so much fills the rest of the novel.
The story is very much of its time and is dated in style as well as scientific understanding - Mars is portrayed as having a breathable atmosphere, for example. The ending is also rather rushed, consisting of a long infodump in which Jommy is told the answers to many of the questions which have troubled him. Despite these flaws the relentless pace and unrestrained imagination drag the reader along, as usual with a van Vogt tale.
In the 1980s the author began to write a sequel, but only got as far as the story outline and a hundred or so pages before he stopped. Kevin J Anderson was eventually given the job of completing the tale and the result, Slan Hunter, was published in 2007. This picks up when Slan left off, concluding the tale of Jommy's search to discover the truth about the slans of both varieties, with all loose ends neatly tied up. I was amused to notice a couple of retrospective explanations for peculiarities in the original. Mars has a breathable atmosphere, we are told, because a thousand years earlier humanity had bombarded the planet with ice comets, algae and bacteria in a massive terraforming exercise, resulting in the return of surface water, a thick atmosphere and warmer temperatures. Also, the remarkable similarity of human culture and technology to 1940s USA is explained by the devastating effect of the slan wars, so that "even now our society has returned only to the equivalent of the United States of America back in the 1940s…some of the cultural similarities to that period are quite striking." Indeed they are!
The new book remains very faithful in style to the original. This also applies to the ending, including as it does some sudden and unexpected revelations. I have to say that this is not necessarily a good thing, unless you think that van Vogt's style can't be improved on. I found that I am much more inclined to be tolerant of technical and stylistic shortcomings in a 1940s book than I am in a 21st century one. This is very unfair of me since Anderson evidently worked hard to match the original, but from my perspective he can't really win: his deliberate pastiche of 1940s style doesn't particularly appeal to me, but a more modern approach would probably have infuriated van Vogt's more devoted fans. So it goes…
Slan is a far-future story set on Earth (with scenes on Mars towards the end) in which enhanced humans called slans, featuring extended lifespans, inhuman strength, speed and intelligence, plus the ability to read minds with the aid of fine "tendrils" in their hair, are being persecuted close to extinction by the rest of humanity. The hero of the story is Jommy Cross, a young slan whose mother is killed in the first scene of the tale. Captured by an old woman who uses him as a thief, he grows up and discovers the secrets of advanced science left to him by his father, which enable him to construct formidable technological devices. He also discovers that there is a secret race of tendrilless slans who cannot read minds but whose abilities have allowed them to monopolise air travel - and to clandestinely develop space travel as well. His long search to discover other true slans and to understand why humans and the tendrilless slans hate them so much fills the rest of the novel.
The story is very much of its time and is dated in style as well as scientific understanding - Mars is portrayed as having a breathable atmosphere, for example. The ending is also rather rushed, consisting of a long infodump in which Jommy is told the answers to many of the questions which have troubled him. Despite these flaws the relentless pace and unrestrained imagination drag the reader along, as usual with a van Vogt tale.
In the 1980s the author began to write a sequel, but only got as far as the story outline and a hundred or so pages before he stopped. Kevin J Anderson was eventually given the job of completing the tale and the result, Slan Hunter, was published in 2007. This picks up when Slan left off, concluding the tale of Jommy's search to discover the truth about the slans of both varieties, with all loose ends neatly tied up. I was amused to notice a couple of retrospective explanations for peculiarities in the original. Mars has a breathable atmosphere, we are told, because a thousand years earlier humanity had bombarded the planet with ice comets, algae and bacteria in a massive terraforming exercise, resulting in the return of surface water, a thick atmosphere and warmer temperatures. Also, the remarkable similarity of human culture and technology to 1940s USA is explained by the devastating effect of the slan wars, so that "even now our society has returned only to the equivalent of the United States of America back in the 1940s…some of the cultural similarities to that period are quite striking." Indeed they are!
The new book remains very faithful in style to the original. This also applies to the ending, including as it does some sudden and unexpected revelations. I have to say that this is not necessarily a good thing, unless you think that van Vogt's style can't be improved on. I found that I am much more inclined to be tolerant of technical and stylistic shortcomings in a 1940s book than I am in a 21st century one. This is very unfair of me since Anderson evidently worked hard to match the original, but from my perspective he can't really win: his deliberate pastiche of 1940s style doesn't particularly appeal to me, but a more modern approach would probably have infuriated van Vogt's more devoted fans. So it goes…
Friday, 16 April 2010
Politics, climate change and fiction
It's been a bad year for politicians, climate change and my novel-writing efforts (yes, there is an admittedly rather tenuous link between all of these).
Here in the Land of Uk, our politicians have been neatly hoist with their own petard in that the Freedom of Information (FoI) act which they passed a few years ago has been used to expose all kinds of shenanigans with their expenses. A few of the more extreme cases are now subject to criminal proceedings, but the lesser offenders fell foul of a kind of cultural groupthink; they fell in with a prevailing official culture which allowed all kinds of secret abuses of the system on the grounds that their basic pay was being artificially restricted for political reasons. When the news broke, howls of rage and derision were heard throughout the land. The fall-out is due to land soon with the forthcoming General Election which will see the biggest clear-out of politicians since 1945 - plus a popular wish for a "none of the above!" option to be provided on the voting form.
Politicians also failed to shine in a different way at the Copenhagen conference on climate change. Here they could really have done with some groupthink to get their act together and come up with some constructive results, but they failed. Part of the problem is that most politicians are more concerned with being re-elected than anything else, which makes them very sensitive to public opinion, which means they are strongly inclined to follow public opinion rather than lead it - even when that opinion is badly informed. The inevitable conclusion is that democracy, for all of its other merits, is a very poor system for persuading people that they really do need to face up to something which they would really rather not - especially if the problem is very complex and isn't due to hit home for decades (i.e. many elections away). Ironically one country which is unconcerned about elections - China - had its own reasons for not wanting to know about any potential restrictions on economic growth.
Most of the reason for the Copenhagen failure was probably the feeling that recovering from the economic recession took priority, but it wasn't helped by the publicity about the now notorious emails within the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. These revealed another kind of groupthink among the researchers, who felt themselves beleaguered by the constant attempts to discredit their work, including the bombardment of demands for information under that same FoI act which did for the MPs. They seem to have adopted a bunker mentality, trying to block and frustrate the activities of their critics. As is now obvious, this was a very bad idea. So was the inclusion by the IPCC of an unsupported remark concerning the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers in what was supposed to be a peer-reviewed and thoroughly checked report.
All of this has no doubt contributed to the sharp increase in the number of those in the UK who do not believe that climate change is a problem, although I suspect that a much bigger reason was the severe winter we've just endured. I had to laugh at the cartoon which showed a traffic jam of cars partly buried in snow with, coming from all of them, a version of that well-known question-and-response chant familiar from demonstrations and protest marches:
"What do we want?"
"Global warming!"
"When do we want it?"
"NOW!!!"
The fact that the Meteorological Office had predicted a milder than usual winter, coupled with their springtime prediction of a "barbeque summer" which turned out to be thoroughly wet and cold, only added to the public feeling that the so-called experts had no idea what they were talking about.
The problem basically comes back to the fact that climate change is a complex subject with long-term consequences. Unfortunately, amendments to our behaviour to deal with this are also long-term in their effect, and therefore need to be put in place well in advance. In order to try to wake the public up to the potential severity of the situation, there is no doubt that many people involved with climate change research have been guilty of over-simplifying and over-dramatising the issues. Sadly they have thereby supplied free ammunition to those who do not want to believe that there is a problem, or if there is one that it is anything to do with human activities, or that if it is to do with human activities, that there is anything that we can realistically do about it.
As an interested bystander , I offer my own small contribution to correcting these perception problems by going back to basics. The first essential is to clarify the distinctions between global warming, climate change and weather; something which a lot of people are evidently still confused about.
Global warming describes the gradual increase in average planetary temperatures over the past century or so. It's important to stress the "average" bit: on a year-by-year temperature graph, the line zig-zags up and down, making it difficult to see what is happening. So statisticians calculate a rolling average over several years; this smooths out the annual variations and shows the underlying trend. And what this trend shows is that the planet is indubitably warming up: see THIS. Various explanations have been put forward for this and (as is usually the case) the truth is likely to be a complex blend of interacting reasons: but the informed opinion of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists is that the substantial increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from human industrial activities (which is also well evidenced) bears a very large share of the blame.
Climate change affects us much more directly than global warming: it concerns what happens to regional temperature, wind and rainfall patterns as a result of the overall warming trend. This has been the subject of many of the more alarming predictions about the consequences for humanity. However, it is a very complex and difficult area to predict, so any statements about the consequences need to be expressed as probabilities rather than certainties - and even the probabilities need to be regarded with caution as they will certainly change as we learn more over time. Having said that, there are already considerable differences from one part of the world to another. For instance, the Arctic is warming up faster than anywhere else, probably because the much reduced summer ice cover is allowing the ocean to absorb more of the suns rays and thereby warm up, instead of the rays being reflected back to space by the ice cover. At the other extreme, the Antarctic is hardly warming at all. Perhaps even more significant than temperature changes are the consequences for wind and ocean current patterns and how they will affect rainfall. All we can say at the moment is that there will be a wide range of climate changes in different parts of the world, and that while some may be beneficial to specific areas, the overall consequences are likely to be negative. Why is this? Simply because our current patterns of population distribution and agriculture are based on and adapted to the existing regional climates, so if these change for the worse (e.g. less rainfall in an agricultural area) the effects are likely to be serious. These comments only apply to moderate levels of climate change. If the global average temperature increases by several degrees, then the resulting climate changes are likely to be catastrophic almost everywhere.
Finally, Weather. This of course describes the temperatures, winds and rainfalls which we experience hour by hour, day by day, month by month. The graphs for these zig-zag around wildly, giving us considerable short-term variations (hence the wet summer and cold winter). These can be very inconvenient but are not of any long-term significance. It is only if the weather changes consistently and over a long period of time that this becomes important - and then it becomes climate change.
From my perspective, the whole question of climate change is one of risk assessment: how likely is it to happen, and if it does happen, how bad might the consequences be? Finally, what would be the costs of taking remedial action? As you will have gathered, there are no certainties in any of this, nor are any simple answers possible. However, the best judgment which I can make from studying the published evidence and the professional opinions of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists is that global warming is very likely to continue unless we take some strenous actions to prevent it; that this will drive ever-increasing climate change; and that the long-term consequences for our civilisation are likely to be serious.
So what should or could we be doing about all of this? I have gone into this in some detail HERE. The main point is that adapting our activities to reduce global warming as far as possible is not all bad news, because it brings opportunities as well as costs: as old industries wind down, new ones will spring up. This is already happening in many areas of life (to give a simple example: as production of low-efficiency light bulbs declines, that of high-efficiency ones accelerates), and these changes will continue anyway.
So what on earth has all this to do with my novel-writing problems? Well, a year or two ago I had an idea for a new novel. I was intrigued by the kind of existence people would have living in arcologies - basically huge buildings containing homes, shops, workplaces, leisure facilities, even food-producing areas - but considered that these are only likely to become economically worthwhile if temperatures fall considerably while energy costs rise, because of the huge energy savings they would permit. At that time there was considerable concern that the melting Arctic ice might stop the flow of the warm current from the Caribbean which keeps NW Europe much warmer than it otherwise would be, so this region could experience a fairly short-term but severe cooling effect, until global warming gradually restored the situation. Great! I had the background I needed and could get on with devising a suitably science-fictional murder-mystery set in my arcology. I had it all planned out - right down to the dramatic final twist - and was happily ploughing through it when disaster struck. I discovered that the original concerns had been caused by oceanic measurements which indicated that the current had already slowed by 30% over a few decades; but more recent research had showed that this was merely a short-term variation, and that particular threat was no longer regarded as very likely. Collapse of one SF author, torpedoed below the water line. Oh well, I suppose that novel was just an early casualty of climate change!
Here in the Land of Uk, our politicians have been neatly hoist with their own petard in that the Freedom of Information (FoI) act which they passed a few years ago has been used to expose all kinds of shenanigans with their expenses. A few of the more extreme cases are now subject to criminal proceedings, but the lesser offenders fell foul of a kind of cultural groupthink; they fell in with a prevailing official culture which allowed all kinds of secret abuses of the system on the grounds that their basic pay was being artificially restricted for political reasons. When the news broke, howls of rage and derision were heard throughout the land. The fall-out is due to land soon with the forthcoming General Election which will see the biggest clear-out of politicians since 1945 - plus a popular wish for a "none of the above!" option to be provided on the voting form.
Politicians also failed to shine in a different way at the Copenhagen conference on climate change. Here they could really have done with some groupthink to get their act together and come up with some constructive results, but they failed. Part of the problem is that most politicians are more concerned with being re-elected than anything else, which makes them very sensitive to public opinion, which means they are strongly inclined to follow public opinion rather than lead it - even when that opinion is badly informed. The inevitable conclusion is that democracy, for all of its other merits, is a very poor system for persuading people that they really do need to face up to something which they would really rather not - especially if the problem is very complex and isn't due to hit home for decades (i.e. many elections away). Ironically one country which is unconcerned about elections - China - had its own reasons for not wanting to know about any potential restrictions on economic growth.
Most of the reason for the Copenhagen failure was probably the feeling that recovering from the economic recession took priority, but it wasn't helped by the publicity about the now notorious emails within the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. These revealed another kind of groupthink among the researchers, who felt themselves beleaguered by the constant attempts to discredit their work, including the bombardment of demands for information under that same FoI act which did for the MPs. They seem to have adopted a bunker mentality, trying to block and frustrate the activities of their critics. As is now obvious, this was a very bad idea. So was the inclusion by the IPCC of an unsupported remark concerning the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers in what was supposed to be a peer-reviewed and thoroughly checked report.
All of this has no doubt contributed to the sharp increase in the number of those in the UK who do not believe that climate change is a problem, although I suspect that a much bigger reason was the severe winter we've just endured. I had to laugh at the cartoon which showed a traffic jam of cars partly buried in snow with, coming from all of them, a version of that well-known question-and-response chant familiar from demonstrations and protest marches:
"What do we want?"
"Global warming!"
"When do we want it?"
"NOW!!!"
The fact that the Meteorological Office had predicted a milder than usual winter, coupled with their springtime prediction of a "barbeque summer" which turned out to be thoroughly wet and cold, only added to the public feeling that the so-called experts had no idea what they were talking about.
The problem basically comes back to the fact that climate change is a complex subject with long-term consequences. Unfortunately, amendments to our behaviour to deal with this are also long-term in their effect, and therefore need to be put in place well in advance. In order to try to wake the public up to the potential severity of the situation, there is no doubt that many people involved with climate change research have been guilty of over-simplifying and over-dramatising the issues. Sadly they have thereby supplied free ammunition to those who do not want to believe that there is a problem, or if there is one that it is anything to do with human activities, or that if it is to do with human activities, that there is anything that we can realistically do about it.
As an interested bystander , I offer my own small contribution to correcting these perception problems by going back to basics. The first essential is to clarify the distinctions between global warming, climate change and weather; something which a lot of people are evidently still confused about.
Global warming describes the gradual increase in average planetary temperatures over the past century or so. It's important to stress the "average" bit: on a year-by-year temperature graph, the line zig-zags up and down, making it difficult to see what is happening. So statisticians calculate a rolling average over several years; this smooths out the annual variations and shows the underlying trend. And what this trend shows is that the planet is indubitably warming up: see THIS. Various explanations have been put forward for this and (as is usually the case) the truth is likely to be a complex blend of interacting reasons: but the informed opinion of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists is that the substantial increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from human industrial activities (which is also well evidenced) bears a very large share of the blame.
Climate change affects us much more directly than global warming: it concerns what happens to regional temperature, wind and rainfall patterns as a result of the overall warming trend. This has been the subject of many of the more alarming predictions about the consequences for humanity. However, it is a very complex and difficult area to predict, so any statements about the consequences need to be expressed as probabilities rather than certainties - and even the probabilities need to be regarded with caution as they will certainly change as we learn more over time. Having said that, there are already considerable differences from one part of the world to another. For instance, the Arctic is warming up faster than anywhere else, probably because the much reduced summer ice cover is allowing the ocean to absorb more of the suns rays and thereby warm up, instead of the rays being reflected back to space by the ice cover. At the other extreme, the Antarctic is hardly warming at all. Perhaps even more significant than temperature changes are the consequences for wind and ocean current patterns and how they will affect rainfall. All we can say at the moment is that there will be a wide range of climate changes in different parts of the world, and that while some may be beneficial to specific areas, the overall consequences are likely to be negative. Why is this? Simply because our current patterns of population distribution and agriculture are based on and adapted to the existing regional climates, so if these change for the worse (e.g. less rainfall in an agricultural area) the effects are likely to be serious. These comments only apply to moderate levels of climate change. If the global average temperature increases by several degrees, then the resulting climate changes are likely to be catastrophic almost everywhere.
Finally, Weather. This of course describes the temperatures, winds and rainfalls which we experience hour by hour, day by day, month by month. The graphs for these zig-zag around wildly, giving us considerable short-term variations (hence the wet summer and cold winter). These can be very inconvenient but are not of any long-term significance. It is only if the weather changes consistently and over a long period of time that this becomes important - and then it becomes climate change.
From my perspective, the whole question of climate change is one of risk assessment: how likely is it to happen, and if it does happen, how bad might the consequences be? Finally, what would be the costs of taking remedial action? As you will have gathered, there are no certainties in any of this, nor are any simple answers possible. However, the best judgment which I can make from studying the published evidence and the professional opinions of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists is that global warming is very likely to continue unless we take some strenous actions to prevent it; that this will drive ever-increasing climate change; and that the long-term consequences for our civilisation are likely to be serious.
So what should or could we be doing about all of this? I have gone into this in some detail HERE. The main point is that adapting our activities to reduce global warming as far as possible is not all bad news, because it brings opportunities as well as costs: as old industries wind down, new ones will spring up. This is already happening in many areas of life (to give a simple example: as production of low-efficiency light bulbs declines, that of high-efficiency ones accelerates), and these changes will continue anyway.
So what on earth has all this to do with my novel-writing problems? Well, a year or two ago I had an idea for a new novel. I was intrigued by the kind of existence people would have living in arcologies - basically huge buildings containing homes, shops, workplaces, leisure facilities, even food-producing areas - but considered that these are only likely to become economically worthwhile if temperatures fall considerably while energy costs rise, because of the huge energy savings they would permit. At that time there was considerable concern that the melting Arctic ice might stop the flow of the warm current from the Caribbean which keeps NW Europe much warmer than it otherwise would be, so this region could experience a fairly short-term but severe cooling effect, until global warming gradually restored the situation. Great! I had the background I needed and could get on with devising a suitably science-fictional murder-mystery set in my arcology. I had it all planned out - right down to the dramatic final twist - and was happily ploughing through it when disaster struck. I discovered that the original concerns had been caused by oceanic measurements which indicated that the current had already slowed by 30% over a few decades; but more recent research had showed that this was merely a short-term variation, and that particular threat was no longer regarded as very likely. Collapse of one SF author, torpedoed below the water line. Oh well, I suppose that novel was just an early casualty of climate change!
Saturday, 10 April 2010
Films - Eagle Eye, and District 13: Ultimatum
Two very different near-future thrillers with SF elements.
Eagle Eye is a 2008 mystery thriller set in the USA. It concerns a young man and a young mother who are coerced into assisting a mysterious and apparently all-powerful organisation which is able to monitor them by tapping into nearby CCTV, communicate with them by ringing any phone in their vicinity plus altering electronic message boards and video displays they pass, and can also assist their progress (or threaten them) by switching traffic lights and taking over remote-controlled machinery.
The pair are soon on the run from the authorities while desperately following a string of instructions with no obvious purpose, until the threads gradually come together to reveal a deadly threat to the US government. It is the nature of this threat which puts the film into the SF bracket (although it may also be described as a "techno-thriller"). Lightweight entertainment, but not bad.
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I enjoyed the original District 13 - a 2004 French film set in Paris. The social problems caused by an undesirable banlieue, or district, had been "solved" by walling it off, creating a lawless environment within it. An action-man supercop joined forces with an athletic resident to resolve the threat of a nuclear bomb being exploded in the District. Much entertaining action followed, focusing on the parkour (free-running) exploits of the heroes racing around the rooftops.
The sequel, District 13: Ultimatum, features the same pair of heroes trying to stop a dastardly plan to demolish much of the District so that a major construction company can make a vast fortune redeveloping it for the middle classes. We first see the supercop passing as a (female) prostitute in order to infiltrate a drug-dealing nightclub. At the same time, a secret arm of the government security forces is setting up an incident designed to provoke riots within the District, giving its corrupt leaders, bribed by the construction company, the excuse to clear the area ready for demolition. Only the heroes can stop this from happening, but one of them is soon in prison and the other is on the run.
The action is just as entertaining as before, the combat scenes just as improbable. The violence is tongue-in-cheek; there is hardly any visible blood and very few deaths despite the constant mayhem. What lifts this above the usual is its mischievous sense of humour, providing lots of laugh-out-loud moments. I particularly enjoyed the attempt to escape from a building by car, which resulted in it being driven up into, around and down out of, the first floor (don't ask) before being driven off. And the name of the corrupt construction company? Harriburton!
Apart from the humour there is a very French sense of nonchalant style about these films. Very much not Hollywood, and very enjoyable in a light-hearted way. The film is subtitled which may put off some viewers, but I found that once the action got underway I barely noticed.
Eagle Eye is a 2008 mystery thriller set in the USA. It concerns a young man and a young mother who are coerced into assisting a mysterious and apparently all-powerful organisation which is able to monitor them by tapping into nearby CCTV, communicate with them by ringing any phone in their vicinity plus altering electronic message boards and video displays they pass, and can also assist their progress (or threaten them) by switching traffic lights and taking over remote-controlled machinery.
The pair are soon on the run from the authorities while desperately following a string of instructions with no obvious purpose, until the threads gradually come together to reveal a deadly threat to the US government. It is the nature of this threat which puts the film into the SF bracket (although it may also be described as a "techno-thriller"). Lightweight entertainment, but not bad.
-------------------------------------------------
I enjoyed the original District 13 - a 2004 French film set in Paris. The social problems caused by an undesirable banlieue, or district, had been "solved" by walling it off, creating a lawless environment within it. An action-man supercop joined forces with an athletic resident to resolve the threat of a nuclear bomb being exploded in the District. Much entertaining action followed, focusing on the parkour (free-running) exploits of the heroes racing around the rooftops.
The sequel, District 13: Ultimatum, features the same pair of heroes trying to stop a dastardly plan to demolish much of the District so that a major construction company can make a vast fortune redeveloping it for the middle classes. We first see the supercop passing as a (female) prostitute in order to infiltrate a drug-dealing nightclub. At the same time, a secret arm of the government security forces is setting up an incident designed to provoke riots within the District, giving its corrupt leaders, bribed by the construction company, the excuse to clear the area ready for demolition. Only the heroes can stop this from happening, but one of them is soon in prison and the other is on the run.
The action is just as entertaining as before, the combat scenes just as improbable. The violence is tongue-in-cheek; there is hardly any visible blood and very few deaths despite the constant mayhem. What lifts this above the usual is its mischievous sense of humour, providing lots of laugh-out-loud moments. I particularly enjoyed the attempt to escape from a building by car, which resulted in it being driven up into, around and down out of, the first floor (don't ask) before being driven off. And the name of the corrupt construction company? Harriburton!
Apart from the humour there is a very French sense of nonchalant style about these films. Very much not Hollywood, and very enjoyable in a light-hearted way. The film is subtitled which may put off some viewers, but I found that once the action got underway I barely noticed.
Friday, 2 April 2010
Interzone 227
The featured author in the March/April issue of Interzone is Connie Willis. There's an interview with Paul F. Cockburn in which she talks about her work in general and her latest duology set in the London Blitz, Blackout and All Clear (really one novel split into two volumes). There's also a review of Blackout. The author is best known for short stories, although I can't recall having read any by her (my short-story reading being largely confined to Interzone and British Fantasy Society publications). I have read a couple of her novels, however; To Say Nothing of the Dog and Passage, both of which I reviewed on this blog (see review list on the left). Two things struck me about her novel writing: it is very good, but it goes on at inordinate length. As the reviewer of the 500-page Blackout puts it, she has a "relaxed pacing". Still, I expect I might well tackle these two sometime, despite the vast allocation of time I'd need to set aside for them.
The rest of the review section is notable for discussing the film Avatar at some length, providing a lot of background information concerning the making of the film.
Finally, the usual half-dozen short stories:
The History of Poly-V by Jon Ingold, illustrated by Robert Dunn.
A small team of research scientists discovers a drug which enables memories to be retrieved precisely and in great detail, as if they were being experienced afresh. It's a great commercial success, but further development work begins to reveal that memories are not what they used to be.
Dance of the Kawkawroons by Mercurio D. Rivera, illustrated by Jim Burns.
A couple of fortune hunters manage to bypass the quarantine patrols around a planet populated by some exotic intelligent flying creatures living among the ruins of an ancient alien civilisation. They steal some eggs which have characteristics which are incredibly valuable to humanity; but who is exploiting whom?
Chimbwi by Jim Hawkins, illustrated by Ben Baldwin.
Western civilisation is collapsing into chaos, but in Africa scientific breakthroughs have provided limitless free power. A British physicist makes the hazardous journey to start a new life there, and discovers that to be accepted he needs to demonstrate a lot more than just scientific knowledge.
Flying in the Face of God by Nina Allan, illustrated by Robert Dunn.
An astronaut makes her goodbyes as she is irrevocably changed by a treatment to make long space journeys possible.
Johnny's New Job by Chris Beckett.
The ultimate expression of the blame culture visitied upon social workers who make the wrong judgments.
The Glare and the Glow by Steve Rasnic Tem, illustrated by Dave Senecal.
Strange new light bulbs reveal far more than is comfortable.
I was particularly impressed by the first three stories which, while very different in style and content, are good enough to be published anywhere.
The rest of the review section is notable for discussing the film Avatar at some length, providing a lot of background information concerning the making of the film.
Finally, the usual half-dozen short stories:
The History of Poly-V by Jon Ingold, illustrated by Robert Dunn.
A small team of research scientists discovers a drug which enables memories to be retrieved precisely and in great detail, as if they were being experienced afresh. It's a great commercial success, but further development work begins to reveal that memories are not what they used to be.
Dance of the Kawkawroons by Mercurio D. Rivera, illustrated by Jim Burns.
A couple of fortune hunters manage to bypass the quarantine patrols around a planet populated by some exotic intelligent flying creatures living among the ruins of an ancient alien civilisation. They steal some eggs which have characteristics which are incredibly valuable to humanity; but who is exploiting whom?
Chimbwi by Jim Hawkins, illustrated by Ben Baldwin.
Western civilisation is collapsing into chaos, but in Africa scientific breakthroughs have provided limitless free power. A British physicist makes the hazardous journey to start a new life there, and discovers that to be accepted he needs to demonstrate a lot more than just scientific knowledge.
Flying in the Face of God by Nina Allan, illustrated by Robert Dunn.
An astronaut makes her goodbyes as she is irrevocably changed by a treatment to make long space journeys possible.
Johnny's New Job by Chris Beckett.
The ultimate expression of the blame culture visitied upon social workers who make the wrong judgments.
The Glare and the Glow by Steve Rasnic Tem, illustrated by Dave Senecal.
Strange new light bulbs reveal far more than is comfortable.
I was particularly impressed by the first three stories which, while very different in style and content, are good enough to be published anywhere.
Friday, 26 March 2010
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Now a quarter of a century old, Neuromancer is widely regarded as a classic of modern SF (if that isn't a tautology). It won just about every award going for its portrayal of a future in which skilled people could be "jacked in" to the information technology network, able to experience it as a virtual landscape and navigate around its programmes and data storage nodes, evading defensive systems and stealing data. Old hat now, but not at the time.
I read it when it first came out, and frankly had forgotten everything about it - even reading it again rang no bells at all. I find these inconsistencies from time to time; sometimes I can clearly remember stories even if they're not much good, at other times even a good tale slips through the gaps in my memory.
Anyway, what did I think of it this time? I was deeply impressed; I found it much better than I had expected. This is not mainly due to the virtual world concepts but simply because the tale of Case, a former cyberspace expert recruited to a dangerous mission, is a rattling good thriller, told with a blend of pace and style which would be equally successful in other genres. The language is often terrific:
"Gravity came down on him like a great soft hand with bones of ancient stone."
And:
"Case's consciousness divided like beads of mercury, arcing above an endless beach the color of the dark silver clouds. His vision was spherical, as if a single retina lined the inner surface of a globe that contained all things…"
If I have any criticism it is that the plot is so densely packed, the writing so laconic, that you really have to stay on your mental toes to keep up with everything that's going on. This is not a book to fill an idle moment, you need to settle down and concentrate. In fact, I was tempted to read it again immediately, in order to savour it in a more leisurely fashion and pick up on the nuances that I suspect slipped by me the first time. Why it made so little impression on me on first reading I don't know; but this one is now added to my pantheon of the SF greats. If you've never read it, treat yourself.
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Joy of joys, the third (and sadly final) series of Ashes to Ashes commences on UK TV next week. For those unfamiliar with this, check out my blog post of 25 June last year where I write about this series and its predecessor, Life on Mars. I'm looking forward to a lot more of those bizarre one-liners from Gene Hunt, like "…as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot".
I read it when it first came out, and frankly had forgotten everything about it - even reading it again rang no bells at all. I find these inconsistencies from time to time; sometimes I can clearly remember stories even if they're not much good, at other times even a good tale slips through the gaps in my memory.
Anyway, what did I think of it this time? I was deeply impressed; I found it much better than I had expected. This is not mainly due to the virtual world concepts but simply because the tale of Case, a former cyberspace expert recruited to a dangerous mission, is a rattling good thriller, told with a blend of pace and style which would be equally successful in other genres. The language is often terrific:
"Gravity came down on him like a great soft hand with bones of ancient stone."
And:
"Case's consciousness divided like beads of mercury, arcing above an endless beach the color of the dark silver clouds. His vision was spherical, as if a single retina lined the inner surface of a globe that contained all things…"
If I have any criticism it is that the plot is so densely packed, the writing so laconic, that you really have to stay on your mental toes to keep up with everything that's going on. This is not a book to fill an idle moment, you need to settle down and concentrate. In fact, I was tempted to read it again immediately, in order to savour it in a more leisurely fashion and pick up on the nuances that I suspect slipped by me the first time. Why it made so little impression on me on first reading I don't know; but this one is now added to my pantheon of the SF greats. If you've never read it, treat yourself.
-------------------------
Joy of joys, the third (and sadly final) series of Ashes to Ashes commences on UK TV next week. For those unfamiliar with this, check out my blog post of 25 June last year where I write about this series and its predecessor, Life on Mars. I'm looking forward to a lot more of those bizarre one-liners from Gene Hunt, like "…as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot".
Friday, 19 March 2010
The Matrix films revisited
I seem to be watching more films than reading books lately, probably because I recorded a lot of the Christmas TV schedules so I've been playing catch-up ever since.
As a result, I saw the Matrix trilogy again recently, for the first time since they were newly released (was The Matrix really over ten years ago?). I was impressed with the first of the series when I saw it originally and it has worn well, rich in SF ideas and with a complexity which makes the story in the visually wonderful Avatar seem as simple as a child's cartoon strip. I think that The Matrix is not far behind Blade Runner in the elite group of the best SF films ever made, and it's a lot more inventive.
Sadly the two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, released four years later following the huge success of the original, were a major disappointment. The impression I get is that the Wachowski brothers poured all of their ideas into The Matrix and were stumped for what to do next. Reloaded has just one really good, original SF scene (and the only one which significantly carries the plot forward); the climactic meeting between Neo and the Architect of the Matrix, the inventor of the virtual existence in which most of humanity is unwittingly trapped. Neo learns that he is the sixth version of himself to face the Architect and that his repeated appearance was due to an inherent flaw in the programming. All the time this meeting is taking place, the wall of TV screens is showing the varied reactions of his predecessors at their meetings with the Architect. As for the rest of the film, the brothers evidently decided to please the teenagers and fill it with combat and car chase scenes. While technically good, these go on and on interminably, well past the point of tedium, until you are praying for the bad guys to kill off the good guys just to put an end to it all. The only relief from this comes from the occasional pretentious speech, which is scarcely an improvement. Amazingly, Reloaded was more successful at the box office than The Matrix. There's no accounting for taste…
Revolutions is better, largely because the plot actually progresses to a conclusion rather than just marking time. Events begin to make some sort of sense - I particularly liked the notion that the evil Mr Smith programme was the inevitable balancing force to Neo's existence - and the ending was satisfactory. The various fight sequences were still tediously long, though, and Trinity's death scene was ludicrously unrealistic and protracted.
The decision to split the sequel to The Matrix into two separate films was presumably motivated purely by money (hey, we've got all this footage, instead of doing a decent editing job let's use all of it and make the fans pay twice over!). This is emphasised by the fact that there is no proper separation between the two; Reloaded ends in the middle of events and Revolutions picks up immediately without any kind of lead-in or introduction, so they need to be seen in quick succession or the viewer will lose track of what's going on. The problem is that there is barely enough worthwhile material to make one decent film out of the pair of them. So come on, brothers, now you've made your pile let's have a proper "directors' cut" which will do exactly that, combining the best one-third of Reloaded and two-thirds of Revolutions to make the single film which always should have been released. Call it The Matrix Revisited if you like! This could make a worthy sequel to The Matrix - even if it still wouldn't be as good.
One point of detail caught my attention in the first film, concerning the traitor who was tired of the grim reality of life and wanted to be returned to the Matrix, provided that he was assigned a wealthy and famous identity. What intrigued me is that he wanted the memories of his nine years of life outside the Matrix removed so that he would have no idea that his virtual life wasn't real. The thought crossed my mind that if that happened, he wouldn't be the same person; it would be as if he had been killed and a stranger had taken over. So how would he - the essential "he" - have benefited from that?
This reminded me of a similar issue I have mentioned before concerning Star Trek's transporter system, in which individuals are scanned and their complete data transmitted elsewhere to be instantly recreated. In this process, their existing bodies are destroyed. No-one would be able to tell the difference between the original and the copy as they are identical in every detail, but in one important respect they are not the same: the original is killed and a copy is made. The copy has all the memories of the original, and believes he is the original, but he isn't. This problem is more clearly laid out in The Prestige by Christopher Priest (I haven't read it yet, but I have seen the highly rated film). In this case a copy is made by the Tesla machine but the original remains in existence. So, the key question is this: if you entered the Tesla machine and a copy of you appeared in front of you, would you be happy to be killed, knowing that your exact copy would survive? Personally, I wouldn't - which means that I would never want to use a Star Trek type of transporter, because that is in effect what happens.
The same issue of identity is involved in the idea of uploading your mind to a computer so that you can live a virtual and theoretically immortal existence. But it wouldn't really be you living the virtual life, but a copy of yourself - as would be obvious if your corporeal mind remained in existence. Oh well, we won't have any practical cause to worry about such issues for a long time to come…
As a result, I saw the Matrix trilogy again recently, for the first time since they were newly released (was The Matrix really over ten years ago?). I was impressed with the first of the series when I saw it originally and it has worn well, rich in SF ideas and with a complexity which makes the story in the visually wonderful Avatar seem as simple as a child's cartoon strip. I think that The Matrix is not far behind Blade Runner in the elite group of the best SF films ever made, and it's a lot more inventive.
Sadly the two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, released four years later following the huge success of the original, were a major disappointment. The impression I get is that the Wachowski brothers poured all of their ideas into The Matrix and were stumped for what to do next. Reloaded has just one really good, original SF scene (and the only one which significantly carries the plot forward); the climactic meeting between Neo and the Architect of the Matrix, the inventor of the virtual existence in which most of humanity is unwittingly trapped. Neo learns that he is the sixth version of himself to face the Architect and that his repeated appearance was due to an inherent flaw in the programming. All the time this meeting is taking place, the wall of TV screens is showing the varied reactions of his predecessors at their meetings with the Architect. As for the rest of the film, the brothers evidently decided to please the teenagers and fill it with combat and car chase scenes. While technically good, these go on and on interminably, well past the point of tedium, until you are praying for the bad guys to kill off the good guys just to put an end to it all. The only relief from this comes from the occasional pretentious speech, which is scarcely an improvement. Amazingly, Reloaded was more successful at the box office than The Matrix. There's no accounting for taste…
Revolutions is better, largely because the plot actually progresses to a conclusion rather than just marking time. Events begin to make some sort of sense - I particularly liked the notion that the evil Mr Smith programme was the inevitable balancing force to Neo's existence - and the ending was satisfactory. The various fight sequences were still tediously long, though, and Trinity's death scene was ludicrously unrealistic and protracted.
The decision to split the sequel to The Matrix into two separate films was presumably motivated purely by money (hey, we've got all this footage, instead of doing a decent editing job let's use all of it and make the fans pay twice over!). This is emphasised by the fact that there is no proper separation between the two; Reloaded ends in the middle of events and Revolutions picks up immediately without any kind of lead-in or introduction, so they need to be seen in quick succession or the viewer will lose track of what's going on. The problem is that there is barely enough worthwhile material to make one decent film out of the pair of them. So come on, brothers, now you've made your pile let's have a proper "directors' cut" which will do exactly that, combining the best one-third of Reloaded and two-thirds of Revolutions to make the single film which always should have been released. Call it The Matrix Revisited if you like! This could make a worthy sequel to The Matrix - even if it still wouldn't be as good.
One point of detail caught my attention in the first film, concerning the traitor who was tired of the grim reality of life and wanted to be returned to the Matrix, provided that he was assigned a wealthy and famous identity. What intrigued me is that he wanted the memories of his nine years of life outside the Matrix removed so that he would have no idea that his virtual life wasn't real. The thought crossed my mind that if that happened, he wouldn't be the same person; it would be as if he had been killed and a stranger had taken over. So how would he - the essential "he" - have benefited from that?
This reminded me of a similar issue I have mentioned before concerning Star Trek's transporter system, in which individuals are scanned and their complete data transmitted elsewhere to be instantly recreated. In this process, their existing bodies are destroyed. No-one would be able to tell the difference between the original and the copy as they are identical in every detail, but in one important respect they are not the same: the original is killed and a copy is made. The copy has all the memories of the original, and believes he is the original, but he isn't. This problem is more clearly laid out in The Prestige by Christopher Priest (I haven't read it yet, but I have seen the highly rated film). In this case a copy is made by the Tesla machine but the original remains in existence. So, the key question is this: if you entered the Tesla machine and a copy of you appeared in front of you, would you be happy to be killed, knowing that your exact copy would survive? Personally, I wouldn't - which means that I would never want to use a Star Trek type of transporter, because that is in effect what happens.
The same issue of identity is involved in the idea of uploading your mind to a computer so that you can live a virtual and theoretically immortal existence. But it wouldn't really be you living the virtual life, but a copy of yourself - as would be obvious if your corporeal mind remained in existence. Oh well, we won't have any practical cause to worry about such issues for a long time to come…
Friday, 12 March 2010
The Asteroid Menace
The subject of the threat to our civilisation from asteroid impact is an old one in SF, having inspired various novels (of which Arthur Clarke's The Hammer of God, reviewed here 12 Sep 2008, is probably the most informative, albeit now a bit old) and a couple of modern Hollywood films (Deep Impact and Armageddon, both released in 1998). Only the other week, a careful analysis of all of the data relating to the great dinosaur die-off 65 million years ago confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that the major blow was struck by the asteroid, ten kilometres in diameter, which created the 180 kilometre wide, 900 metre deep, Chicxulub crater in Central America, with catastrophic consequences for the planetary environment.
Such a huge impact happens about once every 100 million years on average, and at present there is nothing that humanity could do to prevent it from happening again - or even to deal with a much smaller incoming asteroid which could still cause a major regional disaster. A collision with a 200 metre wide body takes place about once every 10,000 years. Several asteroids have been identified which will pass close enough to the Earth to create a small risk of collision, the most worrying being Apophis, with is 270 metres wide and has a one in 45,000 chance of hitting us in 2036. So it's worth devoting some thought to how we might protect ourselves in the future.
Current thinking on these issues was discussed in a couple of New Scientist articles by David Shiga last year: How to save the world from an asteroid impact (28/3/09) and No need to worry about asteroid tsunami disaster (18/4/09).
The author summarises three possible means of preventing or reducing the scale of the destruction: blasting it apart with nuclear weapons (which may mean that many smaller chunks hit the Earth with lesser but still serious consequences); forcing it off course by hitting it with another heavy object travelling at speed (technically difficult and risky); or nudging it more gently out of the way without breaking it apart, by detonating a nuclear device at a distance or pushing it with high-powered lasers.
Work has taken place at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to evaluate the possibility of pushing an asteroid aside with a nuclear blast. This is complicated by the fact that most small asteroids are believed to be loose agglomerations of material rather than solid objects. They were able to demonstrate that it would be possible to change the velocity of a one kilometre wide asteroid sufficiently to miss the Earth by detonating a 100 kt bomb some 250 metres behind it - provided that this was done thirty years before the impact. An alternative being considered is to detonate a much smaller (less than 1 kilotonne) weapon just below the surface. These seem to be the best techniques available to us for the time being, provided that we have enough notice: the shorter the warning time, the more difficult it becomes.
If we have only a short warning time we would need to revert to Plan A and attempt to fragment the asteroid with a massive nuclear device detonated under the surface. If done three years before impact, only a very small fraction of the resulting debris cloud would hit the Earth - but this may not work if the asteroid is one solid chunk of rock.
A more technically difficult but potentially less risky proposal is to use lasers. These would be mounted in spacecraft, several of which would be sent out to rendezvous with the asteroid. They would focus their beams on one point on the surface, creating a plume of vapourised rock which over a period of months or years would act as a side-thruster, nudging the asteroid onto a safer course.
But suppose all these attempt fail, what happens if a large asteroid strikes? Given that the Earth's surface is 70% water, there's a good chance that it would land in the sea and cause a massive tsunami, but there is some dispute as to exactly how big this might be. If a 200 metre wide body struck the deep ocean it would displace billions of tons of water, creating waves hundreds of metres high. However, unlike the earthquake-induced tsunamis with which we have become familiar, these huge, steep waves are likely to collapse and rapidly reduce in height with distance, declining to perhaps 10 metres at a distance of 1,000 km. Given the way in which oceanic waves pile up and increase in height as they approach the land that still sounds very serious, but the shorter wavelength of impact waves (less than two minutes rather than eight minutes for a typical tsunami) means that they would be unlikely to penetrate so far inland. Such an impact, while still devastating to land areas nearby, may therefore have a more limited effect than earlier studies suggested.
This may be slightly reassuring, but having seen the consequences of much smaller waves from the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004, it's still worth putting significant scientific effort and funding into methods to avert such a disaster.
Such a huge impact happens about once every 100 million years on average, and at present there is nothing that humanity could do to prevent it from happening again - or even to deal with a much smaller incoming asteroid which could still cause a major regional disaster. A collision with a 200 metre wide body takes place about once every 10,000 years. Several asteroids have been identified which will pass close enough to the Earth to create a small risk of collision, the most worrying being Apophis, with is 270 metres wide and has a one in 45,000 chance of hitting us in 2036. So it's worth devoting some thought to how we might protect ourselves in the future.
Current thinking on these issues was discussed in a couple of New Scientist articles by David Shiga last year: How to save the world from an asteroid impact (28/3/09) and No need to worry about asteroid tsunami disaster (18/4/09).
The author summarises three possible means of preventing or reducing the scale of the destruction: blasting it apart with nuclear weapons (which may mean that many smaller chunks hit the Earth with lesser but still serious consequences); forcing it off course by hitting it with another heavy object travelling at speed (technically difficult and risky); or nudging it more gently out of the way without breaking it apart, by detonating a nuclear device at a distance or pushing it with high-powered lasers.
Work has taken place at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to evaluate the possibility of pushing an asteroid aside with a nuclear blast. This is complicated by the fact that most small asteroids are believed to be loose agglomerations of material rather than solid objects. They were able to demonstrate that it would be possible to change the velocity of a one kilometre wide asteroid sufficiently to miss the Earth by detonating a 100 kt bomb some 250 metres behind it - provided that this was done thirty years before the impact. An alternative being considered is to detonate a much smaller (less than 1 kilotonne) weapon just below the surface. These seem to be the best techniques available to us for the time being, provided that we have enough notice: the shorter the warning time, the more difficult it becomes.
If we have only a short warning time we would need to revert to Plan A and attempt to fragment the asteroid with a massive nuclear device detonated under the surface. If done three years before impact, only a very small fraction of the resulting debris cloud would hit the Earth - but this may not work if the asteroid is one solid chunk of rock.
A more technically difficult but potentially less risky proposal is to use lasers. These would be mounted in spacecraft, several of which would be sent out to rendezvous with the asteroid. They would focus their beams on one point on the surface, creating a plume of vapourised rock which over a period of months or years would act as a side-thruster, nudging the asteroid onto a safer course.
But suppose all these attempt fail, what happens if a large asteroid strikes? Given that the Earth's surface is 70% water, there's a good chance that it would land in the sea and cause a massive tsunami, but there is some dispute as to exactly how big this might be. If a 200 metre wide body struck the deep ocean it would displace billions of tons of water, creating waves hundreds of metres high. However, unlike the earthquake-induced tsunamis with which we have become familiar, these huge, steep waves are likely to collapse and rapidly reduce in height with distance, declining to perhaps 10 metres at a distance of 1,000 km. Given the way in which oceanic waves pile up and increase in height as they approach the land that still sounds very serious, but the shorter wavelength of impact waves (less than two minutes rather than eight minutes for a typical tsunami) means that they would be unlikely to penetrate so far inland. Such an impact, while still devastating to land areas nearby, may therefore have a more limited effect than earlier studies suggested.
This may be slightly reassuring, but having seen the consequences of much smaller waves from the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004, it's still worth putting significant scientific effort and funding into methods to avert such a disaster.
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