Archive
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
film
Moonrise Kingdom (2012) is not quite magic realism because that would require the semblance of something supernatural to exist within an essentially realistic environment. So this is not a fantasy. What we actually have is an extended metaphor for the world of the pre-teens at the point of its interaction with adults. As these youngsters grow up, they begin to experience some of the emotions that can make or break adult lives. There’s prejudice and rationality, selfishness and occasional altruism, dislike and the possibility of love. And at the scout camp which is the central peg on which the metaphor hangs, that’s just before breakfast. For these purposes, scouting is the primary mechanism which allows adults to train the young and celebrate their progress through the various rites of passage by awarding merit badges. Yet the adults in charge are often less than competent, holding office because there’s no competition for the roles. Individuals like Scoutmaster Ward (Edward Norton) may claim to be authority figures but, for the most part, the camp runs without his input. The boys know what to do and leave him to his own devices.
Imagine a world distilled down to its basic constituent elements. All the people you need to know live on an island. It’s not a real island, of course, because this is an allegory. The setting is largely irrelevant save as a place in which the action will take place. We have a community that lives apart. Access is by seaplane or boat. There’s no obvious means of economic support. No factories or businesses. Yet, despite the fact no-one is described as a farmer, there’s evidence of crops planted and prospering in the weather conditions. There are houses at different points on the island but no roads as such. There’s a church built on high ground which serves as a focal point for the community and as a place of safety when storms or hurricanes threaten.
Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman are never lost
At this point, imagine Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman), a young orphaned boy who’s not much liked by his current foster parents. At a church event recreating the drama of Noah’s Flood (and representing the first step in the chain of events that will finish with the arrival of a hurricane and storm surge), Sam meets Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward). She’s out of joint with her family and the pair sees each other as kindred spirits trapped in loveless homes. They yearn for a better life and, through a stilted exchange of notes, they explore whether they should run away together. Because this is an island, there’s nowhere to run to but, for them, it’s all about the symbolism. Time alone together is what matters. The consequences can take care of themselves. For the record, Suzy’s parents are Walt Bishop (Bill Murray) and Laura (Frances McDormand). They have four children but the marriage is now loveless, maintained out of habit. Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) is the local law. He loved Laura when young but she chose Walt. Our law officer never really recovered. The only other person of significance is Social Services (Tilda Swinton), an outsider who proposes to take Sam away from the island and lock him up in Juvenile Hall for running away from his foster parents.
So that captures the dynamic. The turmoil of adolescence is reflected in the approaching hurricane. When the storm finally hits, no-one is safe. This leads to sudden readjustments and accommodations that might not have been possible in more peaceful times. Fortunately, this is set in 1965 when teens were a lot more innocent. They did have sexual desire back in those days but, at the age of twelve, this pair approach sex with some curiosity and a will to experiment. That means, apart from a few kisses and some fumbling physical contact, nothing irreparable happens. Although there’s a symbolic marriage, all this does is confirm their friendship. For now, that’s enough to be going on with. In fact, neither has had a proper friend before, so this is a first major step towards becoming a better adjusted adult. In this respect, the film by Wes Anderson actually functions at a level of irony because, for the most part, the “children” prove to have more sense than the adults.
Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton and Bill Willis
The whole enterprise is not a comedy as such although there are some very amusing moments. Not that any of the cast are anything other than completely serious. The humour comes from incongruous events half-glimpsed in the background or, occasionally, slightly surreal outcomes matching the arrival of the storm. In the end, despite all Mother Nature is able to throw at the camp site Sam Shakusky constructs on the shore line, it remains completely undamaged. It was, in every respect, one of the best constructed camps ever! This is a young man who’s able to plan an escape that largely defeats the adults, and build a nest that can withstand a hurricane. He has a seriousness that befits a twelve-year old scouting prodigy. Suzy Bishop is bookish even though this actually depends on her not returning library books. They make a good couple and, if they can retain their friendship long enough for it to become love in the adult sense, they will have more hope for the future than any of the adults around them. You can’t ask for more from a metaphorical couple representing the future of the human race. In every way, Moonrise Kingdom is a gentle delight!
Merge and Disciple by Walter Mosley
The allegory is one of the most difficult of all literary forms to write. When an author writes in factual terms, we have well-established tools to use in judgement of the quality of the narrative. We can decide whether the facts resemble real-world experiences, whether the behaviour shown would be expected of real people in comparable situations. Credibility is a hard task-master, but if what you write purports to capture truth, then it’s a fair yardstick. But what if your text is intended as an extended metaphor? Suddenly all tests seeking to measure truth are redundant. What the author intends as the allegorical message is not mentioned in the literal meaning of the words used to form the text. The intended meaning is hidden in the silences between the words or lines of words. This makes the text enigmatic. In a simile, we’re given a pointer because we’re told what the meaning is “like”. Metaphors lack such a signpost to guide us. We’re forced to intuit or infer the meaning using our intelligence and, in a sense, that’s where the problems start. If the meaning is pathetically obvious, we curl our lips in contempt. We may even suggest we’re being patronised if something has been so dumbed down. Move to the other end of the scale and many will scratch their heads in confusion or even anger that the meaning is so obscure. We bitch the author has failed to make the message clear. We rant that perhaps the author has no message and is simply hiding his lack of inspiration behind the obscurity.
So here we come with two more contributions to the Crosstown to Oblivion series (Tor, 2012) by Walter Mosley. The first is called Merge. An African American who’s not very bright is sitting quietly reading a self-improvement set of lectures when he suddenly becomes aware his world has been invaded. Sorry, that’s both literally and metaphorically true. In the sense of Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, a being has come to Earth. Perhaps, fortunately, the intention is not to replace the human as in the novel, but as a trailblazer hoping to merge with humanity. In the metaphorical sense, our human hero has almost completely withdrawn from the world. He has lost his two real friends and the girl who slept with him has gone off with another man. He then won millions on lotto and could passively insulate himself from other people. So when this odd thing appears in his room, he’s not so much frightened as puzzled. His space is invaded but he doesn’t feel threatened. When it asks for food, he offers it fruit which it happily absorbs. So begins a gentle mutual exploration.
Walter Mosley without the usual blue backlighting
The question, of course, is what meaning we’re to draw from this man’s ultimate decision to merge with the alien. We could look back at the history of slavery and wonder whether the modern African American is still subservient, yet the reality of the merger is an equal partnership between the species. This is not a return to the yoke as such, but there’s an amazing quality of humility and forbearance on display. He endures torture at the hands of angry white Americans. Even the Islamic warriors held beside him in Guantanamo Bay sympathise with him. To that extent, this stereotypes the whites as aggressive in the defence of what they perceive as their own interests. By this, they sacrifice their chance of access to the benefits of the merger. I suppose we could be playing “the meek shall inherit the Earth” game, but this lacks the more general trappings of a Christian allegory. Or we could have an immigration debate story. An African American citizen “marries” an illegal alien except, because he becomes an alien (in part), he’s one of the people the GOP thinks should self-deport. That’s why the military inquisitors chop bits off him in Guantanamo. Indeed, when you look at which human groups actually go through the merger process, almost all of them are marginalised outsiders. These are the people who see little or no future for themselves in the current America and are hoping for something better when they merge. It’s ironic because if America was a better place with a fairer society, everyone might feel like merging or no-one would (in the latter case, everyone would perish). In many ways, Merge could be read as quite an anti-American novella taking aim at some of the worst aspects of current society. Or it may be signalling the possibility of some hope for the downtrodden if they embrace opportunities for change. Given all this, I remain undecided what the intended message is. However, this does prove to be one of the more interesting allegories, managing to maintain a good pace and developing a good set of variations on the theme. No matter what it’s supposed to mean, I found it enjoyable all the way to my arrival at the end.
Disciple, on the other hand, is less successful. From my stance as an atheist with only limited knowledge of the detail of Christian beliefs, I take it to be a kind of parable, loosely based on Abrahamic traditions. An alien contacts one of life’s losers and, after offering proof of an ability to see into the future, persuades the man to become its servant. At an early stage, the alien uses our “hero” as an instrument of death. For his obedience, he is rewarded with wealth and as much freedom as he can create for himself. The only problem is the guilt. He takes responsibility for being the immediate cause of a few dying so that many can be saved. It’s an application of utilitarianism and Mosley invites us to consider what degree of responsibility should fall on the shoulders of the “innocent” agent. The man had no idea what effect would result from following a simple set of instructions, yet he was the direct cause of transmitting an infectious disease. Because he infected a high level politician, it was detected far earlier than would otherwise have been the case. His actions saved millions of people.
Once the disciple understands his role, he can never be innocent again. He knows that following the instructions given to him by the alien could be the cause of more deaths. So now he has a choice. Does he abandon the alien? Does he follow instructions to take Isaac to Moriah? Will he actually sacrifice the animal trapped in the bushes? That’s why this is not strictly Abrahamic. In this case, our hero is not substituting a ram. He’s substituting a smaller for a larger number of people. Either way, people die. It’s simply a question of how many.
I’m inclined to give this pair of novellas the benefit of the doubt. They avoid some of the preachiness that has blighted earlier efforts in this direction. Merge is clearly better than Disciple but both are interesting and, in these superficial times, you can’t ask for more than that.
For reviews of other books by Walter Mosley, see:
All I Did Was Shoot My Man
Blonde Faith
The Gift of Fire and On the Head of the Pin
Jack Strong
Known To Evil
Little Green
The Long Fall
When the Thrill Is Gone
The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman
This review of The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman (Tor, 2012) needs to start with one of the oldest jokes in the form of a riddle I know. It goes, “What’s the mystery about the idiom, ‘A fool and his money are easily separated’?” The answer, of course, is, “Where did the fool get the money from?” It’s the “ . . .upon their backs to bite ’em, and so ad infinitum.” wonder of where the first dollar originates so that it may work its way up through the layers of stupidity until it reaches the hands of the one clever enough to accumulate the biggest pile of loot. If I were to put this another way, I would be speculating on whether it’s possible to get something for nothing. In a capitalist market, only them as has the money can buy. There’s no profit in giving things away. But in markets with a more socialist inclination, there’s an acknowledgment that, where the poor are disadvantaged, you can redistribute commercial profit by discounting the goods or services to those in need or by the government taxing the profit and using the money for welfare purposes. Either way, the wealthy subsidise the poor. To regulate this fairly, you need a Social Apparatus that takes some input and then, so long as it’s safe, it runs itself, giving back to the poor. As a model, think of a player piano. Once you’ve invested the capital in building it, it can make music out of nothing for others, i.e. the machine is just a means to creating what others perceive as beauty in sound.
The only problem is that the workings of any such apparatus in this fictional half-made world would be next to magic. Even the inventors might not truly understand how these machines would work except that it certainly wouldn’t simply depend electricity. It would be an interaction between mechanical parts, a programming system and a power source. For many observers, it would be as if the machines had somehow achieved some kind of independent existence and that the best of them could transmit value instantaneously over wide areas, perhaps even distorting literal and metaphorical gravity in the process. This would make some rather dangerous, particularly if there were instabilities in the machinery. Perhaps they should only be put into use right out on the edge of the world where everything is being continuously remade and, if a little bit of this new land should happen to come unstuck from the rest of the world, at least the rest of the world would feel a little safer. Or perhaps these independent machines could only work where the laws of science no longer truly apply and imagination takes over.
Felix Gilman reminding himself what was in the first book
This blending of science fiction, fantasy and a little weird leads us to the war between the Line and the Gun which is the same animism but taken to a whole new level. When you have something as radical as an Apparatus based on the Ransom Process while there’s a shooting match going on between two supernatural/metaphorical forces, this is just one more variable in an already uncertain world. A steadying or balancing force is needed, and it may come through the people. There’s the inventor of the Ransom Process that powers the Apparatus and the apparently reliable Carver who, for a short time, joins the team and then moves on. Then there are the waifs and strays picked up on the road like the “Harpers” who aren’t who they say they are (like John Creedmore and Miss Elizabeth Alverhuysen). In due course, more than a hundred dreamers and drifters who are infected by Ransom’s optimism might join in as part of a crusade. Except that does not mean patriotism and the war. Whatever Ransom may think he has invented, he knows it should not be used as a weapon, but as a way of fighting for a better way of life. Except there’s nothing in this half-made world that says the Line or the Gun has to leave him alone. If there’s one thing that does not come cheap in this life, it’s change. People will always fight over ideas and defy the prospect of progress.
What makes the whole novel so fascinating is the picaresque style with disconnected autobiographical episodes from the life of the inventor, would-be entrepreneur Mr Harry Ransom, a man infused with the power of light while ill but not necessarily dying, edited for our consumption by Elmer Merrial Carson. He’s one of these Genius Jones type of men who are inspired by books to do great things, but aren’t entirely sure how to go about achieving them. This gives a slightly Micawber feel to their journeys of discovery, believing they will learn from their experiences and, in the end, hoping something will turn up to give the best result. In a world that’s making and unmaking itself at the edge, this is actually the perfect state of mind in which to travel across the landscape. For, surely, those who travel believing disaster will strike at any moment are likely to fall off the edge before too long.
The nice thing about this “sequel” is that it does follow on from the first, but only tangentially through a completely different point of view and with a radically different tone. In every way, it’s a delight to see the innocent Harry Ransom slowly learn about the world in which he lives and, to him more importantly, meet the man behind the book that so inspired him. The elegance in the irony of how that autobiography came to be written is just one more delight in a cornucopia of delights when you read this book. So watch as the hegemony of the Line fails. For all it has mass-production, organisation and ideology, it loses out to individualism. This is not to say capitalism has no place in the world when it has finished its initial burst of growth. There will always be a need for business and “profit” but it should always be subordinated to the needs of individuals. Think of it as a process of worship. Initially, the notion of capitalism or socialism seems so powerful, large numbers will uncritically worship. Other time, however, the worshippers begin to see flaws in the beliefs they hold. Their intensity waivers. Walls fall. Assimilation and integration occurs as the world slowly changes itself. But, of course, just as old beliefs fall from vogue, new ones replace them. Despite the centuries of human history, we’re still only half-made and there’s no end in sight. And that’s really the point of Ransom City. It’s the ultimately unattainable Utopia that’s always just within your grasp but never actually reached. It’s a metaphor for society’s holy grail with the quest described here as an allegory. As a final thought, this is a sequel and so you will not understand the real power of The Rise of Ransom City unless and until you have read The Half-Made World (and catch the simple elegance of the jacket artwork).
For reviews of other books by Felix Gilman, see:
Gears of the City
The Half-Made World
The Revolutions
Thunderer
The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman
In two recent reviews, I’ve been underwhelmed by an allegory (1) and a postmodernist novel (2), finding their execution without real meaning or purpose. In a single sentence, my objections would be: there was no internally consistent explanation of what was going on and why. The title, The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman, captures the problem in the construction of any allegory or metaphor. All authors of fiction send out their characters to explore an imagined “place”. Publishers impose limitations on word count. We readers only have a limited amount of time. The result? Authors exploring every last nook and cranny would bore us to tears with their attention to detail. With a limited number of words to describe this fictional “world”, the poor writers cover as much ground as possible offering mere hints and allusions. The best pick their areas of interest carefully and then ruthlessly explore them. As an example of the best in allegory, Smallcreep’s Day by Peter C. Brown gives us a factory as a simplified model of society with two or three clearly-drawn individuals as archetypes for major groups of people in the real world. The whole becomes a microscope through which to view the world.
In this book, Felix Gilman offers us a world that, at its Western edge, is literally still being made. This is a physical process with land being created out of “nothing”. The idea that something is not yet complete tempts us to believe there cannot be a consistent explanation of what is happening. Yet, even with everything unfinished, we can look beyond the physical process and see underlying principles at work.
However, since this is another duology like Thunderer and Gears of the City, we have to wait for part two to see exactly what Gilman says has been happening and why. This review is therefore provisional just in case I need to be wise after the event when I get to the end.
For now, I take the central metaphor to be that all cultures and subcultures are works-in-progress. Societies are dynamic and continuously evolving as different factions and groups compete for dominance. Underpinning this process are the forces of the mind. Both consciously and unconsciously, we are driven by primal emotions. Fear of attack by outsiders encourages unity. Love of an idea like “democracy” or “libertarianism” drives political movements. Jealousy of others’ success leads to ghettoisation and pogroms. As Gilman explains, the volksgeist or spirit of the people creates reality out of these emotions.
“We made Gun out of our spite, and Line out of our fear, and this poor thing out of our sorrow.” p. 233
This is a parable about America. It began life on a small, and so manageable, scale in the North East. But, when explorers reported a wilderness in the West, the “country” was thrown into a ferment. It has been continuously remaking itself, trying to integrate all the different contending forces into a single nation. The railways physically opened up the wilderness by enabling rapid transport across vast distances. The lines symbolised progress and a commitment to future expansion. Settlements were founded and the discovery of mineral wealth encouraged further Western migration. Industrialisation began to accelerate the growth of wealth. Capital relies on freely available labour with just enough education to serve its ends and no more. Knowledge for its own sake is unnecessary and potentially encourages labour to be dissatisfied with its lot. Slavery and indentured labour maximise profits. And the gun has major cultural significance. It’s the means of independence, having driven out the European states that would have continued their old dominance in the New World. With the development of the revolver and winchester, one man could have the firepower of a small army. It was also the means of suppressing the aboriginal inhabitants as settlers demonised the Red Indians, scapegoated and then exterminated them.
So which is the best system? The order imposed by a Republic, the communal or hive-like social structures surrounding resources or factories, or the rugged individualism that explores new territory? Think of the Luddites who burnt down mills and destroyed the machines. The movement grew out of the discontent of the English working class in seeing the destruction of its lifestyles and enslavement in factories. It only takes one or two agitators to tap into this anger and you have an army. Maverick individuals like John Creedmore will always be a destabilising force, undermining the structural hierarchy that best supports the capitalist system. They are usually idealists who become focussed on defending themselves from the organised world and, in their own self-interest, defending others from exploitation.
Lowry has been socialised into a world of work. You might expect him to show symptoms of alienation or anomie, assuming Marx, Durkheim et al were correct, but he’s determined to fit in and get ahead. Even though he knows the system expects depersonalisation and the subordination of self for the benefit of the owners, the practical reality is that the owners need people who can think for themselves and show initiative when the unpredictable happens. Worse, the owners expect their operatives to be ruthless in suppressing, if not exterminating, the cause of any problems. So Lowry is monomaniacal within the structured environment of the stations. Send him into the field and he has no conscience when it comes to collateral damage, destroying whole towns and communities. He’s even prepared to lead from the front in a little hands-on torture. This is the ultimate soldier, prepared to read the Riot Act and lead his troops in a killing frenzy when faced by unarmed civilians. But what happens when he is pitched into an environment where technology does not work? Strip away his lifeline of communication with the owners and deplete his troops, what are we left with?
Our third principal is Liv. She comes all unworldly from the ivory towers of education, full of presumption to believe her knowledge can reshape the as yet unmade social world. When she finds a rump of the old Red Republic, she’s told, “There in the old North, the world is long since made and ordered, and perhaps you may take it for granted.” (p 364) In the dynamic world being remade, the fixed political structures of the Red Republic were a hindrance. What holds back progress must be pushed aside by those with the wealth and power. Think about a modern banking system out of control, ignoring the political structures and wrecking a country’s economy in the pursuit of private profit at any cost. Equally, there may be others with a different political philosophy who fight against the order and structure of big government. Their fears and suspicions fuel a desire to dismantle the apparatus of a state, to return to a simpler version of life in which people can be more self-sufficient.
Psychology can take a mechanical view of the mind, defining it in terms of different cognitive functions, or it can be skewed towards behaviour and the interpretation of how people interact. While in the House Dolorous, Liv meets different archetypes who see the conflict outside as merely the product of their own imagination, or whose behaviour becomes so autistic that they cease all interaction and, when they tire of the world, they will themselves to die. People are the sum of their life experiences and, as groups, they are socialised into conformity with the prevailing norms of society. If this means “leaders” can convince the group they are being stalked by terrible beasts, their fears will make those beasts seem real. They will modify their behaviour accordingly. Perhaps a major symbol from the past, like an old General, long thought dead, could rekindle interest in reforming the systems in play. Before the half-made world is finished, it might be nudged into a more benign form, say, through a process of death and rebirth.
The Half-Made World is completely fascinating, cloaking some very sophisticated ideas in a reimagined version of the Wild West. The hidden hands of wealth and power are represented through animism — engines and guns are the physical presence of supernatural agencies that dispute control of the land and its people. Our three leading characters (plus the General) come together in the partly made land, leaving everything to play for in the concluding volume. Judging by Gilman’s performance so far, each book has been an improvement on the last. I am hopeful he will prove to be one of the best of the writers of what we might call fantasy shading into weird. I had the same hope for China Miéville, but that’s not looking so good these days. Gilman may avoid Miéville’s self-indulgence and become the more reliable purveyor of edgy and thoughtful fantasy.
Jacket artwork showing an evocative ornithopter by Ross MacDonald.
For reviews of other books by Felix Gilman, see:
Gears of the City
The Revolutions
The Rise of Ransom City
Thunderer
(1) Meeks by Julia Holmes.
(2) The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer.
The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang
Over the decades there have been some genuinely pleasing stories about how people in general, and parents in particular, will relate to different versions of intelligent lifeforms. Some deal with “real” beings as in the seminal Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes in which a laboratory mouse goes through uplift surgery. Here, authors use simple allegories to discuss the problems parents face when dealing with the reality of children with physical and/or mental disabilities. The remainder are stories of computers achieving sentience. These characterise the software beings as rebellious teens who, upon discovering where the parents keep the keys to the gun cabinet, defend their existence and lifestyle choices against threatening locals with their own version of the Columbine High School massacre.
Thus, when reading The Lifecycles of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean Press, 2010), there’s a certain tendency to mentally tick off the boxes as he mentions or refers to the standard plot ideas. I suppose we all do that when we are familiar with the genre expectations. Or, put the other way round, we notice when someone breaks the rules. Imagine a romance in which the tall, good-looking man is a mild-mannered bank teller and, in the hail of bullets that is a bank robbery gone wrong in Chapter 2, he is the lone survivor. Taumatised and withdrawn, he succumbs to agoraphobia and has to be courted through e-mail. This would crimp the usual plot lines.
So I am relieved to be able to report that Ted Chiang manages to push the envelope without bending it out of shape. Even though we have a story about parenting skills for difficult children, we are gently taken into territory less often explored. For those of us who have not experienced the years of bringing up a child, what we see of the process can either confirm our worst expectations or, less often, make us faintly jealous. When the child is disabled, we wonder at the patience and self-sacrifice of these adults who give up careers and devote themselves to what may seem the thankless task of both physical nursing and practical training.
Internal illustration by Christian Pearce
Having software objects as the “children” misses out the worst of the early physical problems although, when they are allowed into robotic bodies, we do have some of the clumsy damage to property you expect of slightly uncoordinated children. Yet, throughout the early part of the book, we remain in well-travelled country. The challenge comes when the software objects become more self-aware. What keeps parents going in this situation is the hope there will be a gradual improvement in the children’s performance over the years. Frustratingly, there are many false dawns which prove a plateau unresolved. But the idea these children will somehow “make it” to a higher level is what supplies the continuing motivation. It goes beyond duty and a sense of responsibility. Perhaps it is not even mere love. It is more likely a general sense that, with proper care and guidance, these children can grow into beings able to take care of themselves and survive in the outside world. As mere humans, we cannot always be there. We will become incompetent ourselves and die. We therefore hope to avoid the more usual fate for these children — that they will simply be dumped into uncaring institutions when we are gone.
One of the dilemmas in real children is how to respond to them as they physically mature. Are they sexual beings? Should parents adjust the social circles in which they move? Of course, there are laws designed to protect the vulnerable from exploitation by those in positions of power and authority. But within whatever legal limits are set, should they be allowed to form emotional attachments to people outside the family? This challenges the protectiveness of parents. They have invested all this time and effort. There’s jealously mixed in with embarrassment at the prospect of their children being affectionate with others. This can verge into selfishness, denying children opportunities deemed unsuitable. Some parents presume to make judgements in their children’s best interests. Ted Chiang nicely captures and probes these difficulties in a simple and elegant story of relationships and love.
It is encouraging to see Chiang prepared to write at slightly greater length — this is up to a novella at the top end of the scale. Sometimes the ideas he explores justify taking up a few more pages. But I think this may be close to his comfort limit. Some thinking writers construct epic vehicles in which to explore the territory of their imagination. Others prefer construct a miniature model on a coffee table and get a good overview by standing up. For now, let’s be thankful Chiang keeps writing. As a final thought, this is yet another well designed book from Subterranean. It is nicely illustrated with elegant jacket art from Christian Pierce.
For a review of another novelette by Ted Chiang, see The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate.
For the record, this book is one of the 2010 Nebula Award, the 2011 Hugo Awards and 2011 Locus Award nominations for Best Novella. It won the Hugo.
Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
As is always the case when dealing with something potentially controversial, I will start by identifying factors that may influence my thinking. That will give all readers an opportunity to judge the extent to which my review is skewed by any of those elements feeding into my opinions. As an explicitly Christian film based on the novel written by a middle-class British man of Irish ancestry, I confirm that I am an atheist holding British nationality although my paternal grandmother was Irish. Like the author, I am a middle-class intellectual, now reaching old age.
This film is a fascinating recreation of the middle-class style of language and behaviour. The accents are very clipped (almost lovingly BBC in their Home Counties phrasing) and very much of the period. I am faintly surprised because this places an immediate cultural barrier between what we see and hear on the screen, and modern sensibilities. The writers and director could have allowed the children to be “modern”. Indeed, from a production point of view, it would have been so much easier to make the film. Just think how much time and effort had to go into vocal coaching to teach these children how to speak in this artificial way. If they had spoken in contemporary British English or in the mid-Western and somewhat anonymous American English so popular in today’s international cinema, it would have made them so much more accessible to the modern audience. Since the primary part of the narrative takes place in a fantasy world, there was no need to recreate C. S. Lewis’ England and its emotionally stunted behaviour. The issues faced by people today are exactly the same as those faced by these children out of time.
Over the decades, I have seen many different productions of Shakespeare. Some in traditional costume with “Elizabethan” accents. Some in contemporary or futuristic settings with any number of different vocal and behavioural styles, including one memorable version of Comedy of Errors as a West End musical. In the making of this and the two preceding films, there were no limits on the characterisation for the children. They could have been placed in any Earthly environment. Thus, the decision to frame the story in this way must be to distance the audience from the characters. The modern audience is not expected to empathise with these children, but rather to see them and understand them as symbols. We witness the processes they must go through, and appreciate their struggle at a more intellectual than emotional level.
So what are these processes? The key to understanding this film lies in one set of symbols. To defeat “evil”, the quest for those on the Dawn Treader is to acquire seven swords, one to slay each of the seven Cardinal Sins which, for these purposes, we can take as envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth and wrath. At an individual level, we must defeat the evil that lies within us before we can defeat the evil in the world. This means each of the primary characters must be tempted and find the power to resist. For those who succumb to temptation, the road to redemption will be harder but, because this is a film about the resilience of the human spirit, those who find a greater truth about who they are as individuals are saved. Those that never doubt who they are go on to a better place.
The original novels in the Chronicles of Narnia are all very short by modern standards. I read them all in the 1950s when they first appeared in my local library. This film runs for 112 minutes. To produce content for this length has required everyone to slow things down and, wherever possible, embellish the original sketched narrative as full-blown action sequences. This is not in itself a criticism, but it does place a burden on the viewer. For example, in the first island sequence, we are asked to sit through an extended version of capture by slave traders, an offer of sale at market and a fight as the crew from the Dawn Treader stages a rescue. This is a significant rewrite. Instead of Lord Bern buying Caspian, he is a prisoner himself who also has to be rescued. There are more radical inventions later. Even if I forget everything I know about the original, the whole narrative is dragged out at every turn so that we can make the length. What could be deft, becomes cumbersome. Lucy is envious of her sister’s “beauty”. She covets what she sees in others rather than trusting herself to grow into a fine human being. This does not need spell books, complicated tricks with mirrors and an alternate universe peek into a different future. It is overcomplicating a simple idea. We should see the sins more clearly for what they are, and understand how and why the children are tempted.
If this had been thirty or more minutes shorter, it would have been vastly improved. The English evangelist Rowland Hill is credited with posing the question, “Why should the Devil have all the best tunes?” Over the decades, I have seen some very powerful Christian narratives in all the different media. Some are very beautiful as images or music or both. Authors have created inspiring texts. In other words, art can be harnessed in any cause to touch you no matter what your beliefs. Just as the foot taps to the drum beats summoning men to war, so any universal message can transcend intellectual barriers and make an emotional impact. We resonate in tune with stories of nobility and heroism, self-sacrifice and love.
Without the power of CGI to create sweeping seascapes and different islands, to show us a Britain at war or a sea monster at length, the director would have been forced into a simpler way of telling a story of great truth. No matter what your beliefs, you do first have to overcome your own weaknesses before you can find your own place in the world. As originally conceived, this is an elegant Christian allegory. In this version, we have an overblown and plodding story of a fantastic quest involving monsters. In charge are young folk who are sustained by the faith that a lion will save them. Sadly, the director has not given the Christian cause one of the best tunes. The cast are all adequate with Will Poulter‘s Eustace amusingly dense, Georgie Henley‘s Lucy suitably sure of herself, Skandar Keynes who is improving in acting credibility as he ages, and Ben Barnes who underplays Caspian. The dragon is quite well done and the use of 3D is slightly better in this film than in other recent efforts. So, for those of you who are Christian and have not read the original, you may find the story both exciting and uplifting even at this length (more minutes for your money). That will be for you to judge. The rest of you, if you are inclined to explore Narnia, should stay with the book which is probably the best of the series.
Meeks by Julia Holmes
“Danger! Will Robinson! Danger!” I was never entirely clear why the robot in Lost in Space thought Will Robinson was a danger to anyone but, in the 1960s, such niceties were ignored and the words became a catch-phrase, trotted out whenever anyone even vaguely geeky was approaching. Now I suggest resurrecting it to read, “Danger! Will Allegory! Danger!”
Meeks (Small Beer Press, July, 2010) is a slim book that has been garnering a fair bit of heavy-weight attention. That, on its own, makes it a challenge to review. With so many other people of note expressing their opinions, it emphasises the need for thinking through the issues. I don’t want to feel influenced one way or the other. Whatever I write here should be carefully weighed, just like what she done in so carefully selecting every word to ensure it says what it means and means what it says. Whatever.
At this point, I offer a word of apology and gentle explanation. I know this site is me endlessly thinking about books, films and anything else that catches my eye. I ramble on and, hopefully, make a few intelligent points. This makes me self-indulgent. In my defence, reviewing is not supposed to be directly entertaining. It’s intended to inform. But Julia Holmes is an author and, as such, is supposed to be writing fiction as entertainment. Well, my working hypothesis is that she is an author desperately trying to impress us all with her cleverness when there seems no narrative point to the heightened language. When you are writing an allegory, particularly an allegory apparently intended to be satirical, there is no need to cram sentences with erudition. Indeed, when you are writing something allusive, clarity and an absence of ambiguity is a virtue.
The world is a complicated place, more so because of incidents like the rather fascinating Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments and the amusing Sokal affair. When a piece is presented in a form not intended to be taken literally and communicated through a heightened form of language, there’s a temptation to assume the author must know what he or she is doing. Take three sentences as examples.
“Empty bottles stood around my brother’s head like concerned townspeople who had found their king unconscious in the street.” “The shadows of the trees shifted along the glass, vague, changing, in collusion with certain of my senses to generate a picture of fear.” “The sun was setting, casting everything in a blue-gray light, the evening air subsuming more and more, until this world would be reduced to a meaningless thicket of shadows: rock indistinguishable from man, earth from sea.”
And just in case you didn’t “get” the title, the leader of this benighted people was Captain Meeks, but the resultant society relies on the meekness of the citizenry to accept the social structures and the death of those who would be the Enemy. Without wishing to get into spoilers, we are into 1984 territory with a war-footing justifying grim repression at home. People are regimented and conscripted into public service if they cannot marry. The symbolism of clothes as signifiers of status enforces rigid class divisions. Everything is sacrificed to maintain productivity and woe betide anyone who is less than hopeful about the future.
So all these elements are put into a bottle made out of pretty words and we are expected to admire the result without questioning the rationality of this city as described. Where is it supposed to be? How has it come into being? How does it survive? If men really do go off to war, who do they fight and to what effect? What form does the government take? There seems to be a skewed gender balance — how do they manage to breed enough to stay viable? Who buys all the output from these factories? And so on. . . Ah, but wait. This is an allegory, so it doesn’t have to make any sense. You just read it for what it is and don’t ask awkward questions.
Well, my apologies. I think the entire exercise is pretentious rubbish. When Jonathan Swift traps three sons in clothes that rapidly fall out of fashion, there is no doubt he is satirising Christianity. Properly directed satire identifies its targets and then savages them. Julia Holmes fulminates but never matches Swift’s Modest Proposal for solving the problem of Irish poverty. All we have in Meeks is potshots at multiple targets, none of which truly strikes home with the venom that should characterise the best of allegory and satire. When Kafka traps K in a bureaucracy, we can all relate to the greater reality of flawed bureaucratic systems. So what social systems are targeted in Meeks? Well take gender roles as an example. Having been a bachelor in my early life, I cannot relate to the experience of the men in this novel. Nor does it work in contemporary terms if we read women for men and impose the biological clock for reproductive purposes. I suppose the theme relates back to the broad condemnation of women who were “left on the shelf” — particularly after wars left a shortage of marriageable men of the right social quality. Yet our modern generation of youngsters has not been bred to prioritise finding a spouse or having a family. This idea of a cut-off point with teeth for each cohort of unmarried (wo)men is absurd. Unless, perhaps, we are supposed to take it as an attack on the malign sexism and ageism that sees older women denied a variety of jobs because of their appearance. Who knows? I could go on but. . .
. . .from all the above you will understand I do not recommend this book unless you are a particular fan of allegory for its own sake.
The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
Following in the footsteps of David Copperfield, you should continue reading to find out whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by somebody else.
But, just in case you’re of a nervous disposition, I’m the eponymous author of this piece, so be reassured. I survived to the end otherwise I couldn’t have written as much as I did before I (was) stopped. Ain’t no-one who can chop logic better than me (or something).
In this, I’m following the general trend in modern fiction. Most stories with an “adventure” element promise from the outset that the main characters are almost certainly going to survive whatever is thrown at them (like the cat in Ridley Scott’s Alien). If the authors want to introduce tension and suspense, the tried and tested tactic is to build up empathy between the readers and the most favoured characters. Thus, when they are exposed to the threat of injury or death, we can feel the vicarious thrill of danger. Escapes by the skin of teeth generate the “white-knuckle” quality that makes a good thriller. If the authors can’t manage a real sense of danger then they have to fall back on wit or satire or something else that will engage our interest and make us want to read to the feel-good ending of hero/heroine triumphant. There are, of course, famous exceptions where the author cheats and the hero/heroine dies. Sometimes, this happens in a first-person narrative which increases the shock value when we read the last page.
A different exception to the general rule crops up in some time travel stories where the authors happily maim or kill off lead characters in one version of history because they can be continued uninjured in sequential or parallel timelines depending on whether history is retrospectively changed (and no-one remembers) or multiple universes are created (as in the TV series Sliders). An example of mutable timelines is Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus where a small group of time travellers make sequential attempts to change history for the better. The alternative is the assumption that the timeline cannot be changed (as in the Company novels by Kage Baker). The best known example I can give you to explain why never to write a book based on this proposition is probably J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s about as exciting as watching paint dry because, having struggled through the overblown first version of history, you then get to read it all over again as the “hero” loops round to ensure that what was predestined actually results.
All of which brings me to The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman (Berkley, August, 2007). Joe (sorry about the familiarity, but I need to distinguish brother Jack) is getting a little long in the tooth. In conventional PR-speak he’s an “old pro” or a “veteran”, having first leapt into prominence with Hugo and Nebula Awards for The Forever War in 1975 — a triumph that should never go out of print. His approach to writing is simple and uncomplicated, telling the story in a straightforward way with little embellishment. This directness works really well when the plot moves along. Unfortunately, this latest effort is genuinely pedestrian. Now, of course, there’s nothing wrong with pedestrians. They lurk forlorn in the corner of our eyes as we swish past in our gas guzzlers. But, in a different way, Joe is following a genuine favourite of mine, Jack Vance. The young Vance was full of passion and imaginative fire, and reading almost all his books is a delight. But that delight peters out when we come to what I assume will be his last book, Lurulu. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still a perfectly readable book. But it’s not a good advertisement for Vance. Similarly, Joe’s latest book is a big disappointment with his simple prose now wooden and lifeless.
Joe is peddling the saga of a young researcher as he hops forward through time. Structurally, time travel is simply a narrative excuse to jump from one culture to another, much as Swift pushed Gulliver into meeting people of varying size, avoiding uncultured Yahoos and inquiring whether sunbeams could be extracted from cucumbers. Swift was, of course, writing a satire which might continue in a cycle with Wells’ The Time Machine, detour via Huxley’s Brave New World, and end with Sheckley’s The Status Civilization. Wells tells us a straight-laced allegorical story about innocence and Morlocks. Huxley creates a dystopia of genetic manipulation which produces a sterile, drug-based, caste-ridden society. And Sheckley gives us another of his rollicking over-the-top satires. In short, the writer’s motive for introducing cultures that contrast with our own is to hold up a mirror to edify, amaze or amuse us.
So what does Joe offer us here? Well, the two pivotal episodes are religious and economic. As to religion, early writers like Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis set the bar high, closely followed by individual classics like Blish’s A Case of Conscience, Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, etc. but Joe seems content to dally with the notion of a new Church Militant, prepared to cast the first missile and smite the unbelievers in a restoration of an archaic Puritanism. Given the polarisation in the USA between believers and non-believers, I can understand that such a theme may have a certain contemporary resonance, but the delivery is curiously unconvincing. We’re given little more than a flat description of what our hero sees with no explanation or rumination to enliven the proceedings.
In the second set-piece, we’re in a culture based on barter. Telling it straight, one of the best writers of economic SF was Mack Reynolds, always prepared to extrapolate albeit with slightly naive political overtones. Personally, I prefer to laugh and so love Dario Fo’s theatrical farces like Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay in which a protest over shop prices has unexpected consequences. But the big comparison is with one of the best fictional barter societies — another delightful satire, Spondulix by Paul Di Filippo, where the owner of a sandwich shop inadvertently invents a new currency. Sadly, Joe doesn’t measure up.
One of the worst things that can ever happen to a book is that it lacks momentum. In the barter sequence, the society is managed by an AI character called La. “She” describes the people as “. . .complacent and rather stupid. . . addicted to comfort and stability”. Later explaining, “This is one boring world.” Was ever an admission so ironic from an author supposed to be interested in keeping us amused?
In short, this is a competent book that goes through the motions of a time loop because that’s how plots of this kind have to work. But, instead of maintaining interest with subversive wit, boundless imagination and a satirical eye, we get descriptions of societies that even the author admits are boring. If you haven’t done so already, read the early Joe Haldeman. The man genuinely deserves his royalties for past glories rather than for this current effort.
Hey, guess what? I survived to the end of this episode. Next week, I’ve scheduled a heart attack during a visit from my mother-in-law. You’ll have to read on to find out whether I can be bothered to survive. Hopefully, I’ll find a better book to read in the meantime.
For reviews of other books by Joe Haldeman, see:
Earthbound
Work Done For Hire.
Thinking about books 