By Michaele Jordan: Friends, I’m not unaware that some of you don’t share my enthusiasm for anime. So I try – really, I do! – not to burble on at you about any cute show that I happen to stumble upon. Even though there are so many cute shows out there! But now I’ve found something genuinely special. And I think that you – my fellow fans, you seekers of something beyond the ordinary and prosaic – need to know that this is out there.
It’s called Inu-Oh. Here are the obligatory credits:
Director: Masaaki Yuasa Producer: Eunyoung Choi, Fumie Takeuchi Writers: Masaaki Yuasa, Yutaka Matsushige, Mirai Moriyama, Yoshihide Otomo, Akiko Nogi, Tasuku Emoto Cast:Inu-Oh voiced by Avu-chan Tomona voiced by Mirai Moriyama Inu-Oh’s Father voiced by Kenjiro Tsuda Tomona’s Father voiced by Yutaka Matsushige Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu voiced by Tasuku Emoto
The short form: it’s an animated musical about a crazed rock band led by a magical monster and a blind priest. They take 14th century Japan by storm with tales of a long-dead drowned child-emperor and his army. Naturally, they get in trouble with the government.
So, does it sound weird enough for you yet? Because there’s more. Beware spoilers.
This film is a story of transformation. Even the story itself transforms as it progresses. It’s an animated film adaptation of a novel entitled The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-Oh Chapters, which is a (loose) adaptation of an historical classic, The Tale of the Heike. Officially it retells the transformation of an ancient form of theater, Sarugaku (monkey music), into the classical Noh theatre which is still practiced today. An abiding legend claims this change was launched by a court performer named Inu-Oh, or King of Dogs. (A stage name, I’m guessing, if he really existed at all.)
We start with traffic on a rainy night, obviously modern day. Except the first character we see is a musician in traditional dress playing a biwa – that’s an ancient stringed instrument – telling the audience that this all happened long ago. Long, long ago. Long, long, long ago.
So then it starts. Late 14th century. The Emperor of the Northern Court (never mind how he came to be Emperor of just the Northern Court. The government has become divided. Think Avignon Papacy, and keep moving) is involved in negotiations to reunite the separate courts. He is bewailing his misfortune, in that he does not have the Sacred Regalia which symbolized the ancient emperors. If only he had those, he’d obviously be the true (and only) emperor. Were they really lost forever at the battle of Dan-no-ura? Couldn’t somebody go find them for him?
Oops! No! So maybe it started before that. Late 12th century. We see a broad river, which narrows to flow around a curve. Approaching the curve from one side is a fleet of ships with red sails – quite tiny ships, since the viewpoint has had to draw back some distance to show them all. They are such pretty little things, like graceful water birds. This does not look like war, for all that we see a similar fleet of ships coming toward them. (Not quite as pretty. Their sails are white – in Japan, the color of death.)
The viewpoint closes in to show a woman on the deck of a ship with red sails, holding a child, and telling him they are going to visit the palace of the Dragon King. Grasping a small trunk, she leaps over the side. We watch her, and the child, and the trunk sink down, down, down. This is an image that has been burned into the heart of every Japanese school child. They may not pay much attention in history class, but they know the battle of Dan-no-ura. That little boy was the last of the Heiki emperors, and the woman was his grandmother. And this dramatic death was the most important turning point in Japanese history. We, too, will see this image more than once.
So let’s go back to when we thought it started before. Late fourteenth century. Or at least we think that’s when this scene is. We see a box with writing on it, tied with a single string. Given the context, we think it may be the box that went down with the little emperor. Or maybe not. The box is opened to reveal a glowing purple mask and a man puts it on. It is not one of the Sacred Regalia.
Here we go again. So it starts. Definitely late fourteenth century. We meet a different little boy, also deep underwater. But Tomona is a few years older than the late prince, and in no danger of drowning. He runs home, and finds his father accepting a contract to search the underwater ruins for the Sacred Regalia. They don’t really expect to find anything. The waters have been searched many times. But they do! They find a case, and extract a sword. Tomona’s father draws the sword from its sheath (maybe to see if it’s the sword they’re looking for?) No matter the reason, drawing that sword is a hideous mistake. It’s too sacred to be handled by just anybody. A gigantic blade of light sweeps across the scene. Tomona is instantly blinded, and while he is still groping around, asking his father what has happened, we see that the magical blade has sliced Tomona’s father in two.
One last time: and so it starts (And this time I mean it. I won’t make you start over again, no matter what happens.) Still late fourteenth century. We see a dreadful creature. It has two feet, but no legs. It has a left hand which – like the feet—seems to be attached directly to the vaguely spherical lump of its body. But the right hand has an arm. And, oh, what an arm! It’s over six feet long. We don’t see a face, but there is a hairy lump emerging from what is probably the chest. There’s a very large gourd hanging over the front of the lump. Assuming that it is a mask, then the two holes punched into the gourd are not where you would expect eyeholes to be.
This unhappy creature crawls around aimlessly, ducking pedestrians, who are always abusive, until it comes to a building where a dance troupe is practicing. The troupe’s leader is extremely dissatisfied with the performance he is supervising, ordering the dancers to do their steps over and over again. But the creature is enchanted, and hops around, trying to dance along with them. Indeed, he gets so excited, he grows legs. He still receives a lot of abuse from strangers, but at least now he can away at high speed.
So that’s your first two transformations. A happy boy is transformed into a blind orphan, and a crawling blob is transformed into a tall, dancing monster. In this place and time, the blind do not have a lot of options. But many of them end up learning to play the biwa, and joining a monastic guild, which offers a way of earning a living and gaining a family of sorts. However, the guild requires him to take a guild name, Tomoichi. This alienates him from his father’s ghost, but Tomoichi (né Tomona) sees it as a reasonable price to pay for a place to sleep nights .
The creature has fallen into the habit of lifting his mask when harassed, and watching all his abusers run away screaming. But surprise! When he tries this trick on Tomoichi, it doesn’t work! Plus this boy who doesn’t scream, even asks politely what his name is (although he doesn’t have one yet) plays wonderful music! The two form an eternal bond on the spot, and are launched together into their next transformation: Rock stars!
There are other transformations in store!
I will tell you no more. Some may accuse me of having committed spoilers already. And yet I have only told you the beginning. Or rather, the beginnings, of which, as you have already seen, there are many. The story is complex, with deep historical roots – which is why I have told you so many beginnings. The average Japanese would have no trouble with these roots, any more than you would have trouble with the historical roots of a Robin Hood movie (which are also convoluted, if you care to study up.).
You don’t need the details, just a rough familiarity with the basic background. Relieved of confusion about why a magic sword would kill anybody that draws it, or why there are two emperors or who or what the Shogun was (the national warlord, who had a lot more power than either emperor, currently Ashikaga) or why do they keep calling that half naked singer a priest? Tomoichi (or Tomari, as he becomes) sure doesn’t look like a priest! (Oh, and don’t let the name changes throw you. Japanese history is full of people changing their names. It’s a thing with them. So just roll with it)
Just delight in the amazing imagery. There’s lots of magic – which is entirely outdone by the clever low-tech substitutions for the modern high-tech glitz required in rock band visuals. There’s beautiful scenery, evocative portraits of poverty, and amazing transformations. I had to watch this movie twice just to keep up with the animation.
And there’s music: classical biwa and raucous rock (also played on a biwa.) There’s dancing. Even aside from Inu-Oh’s wild cavortings, there is the slow, delicate stepping of kimono clad court dancers. So you can see for yourself what Inu-Oh and Tomari are rebelling against. And since it is a rebellion, whether or not the protagonists are self-aware enough to know it, there are plots and cops, and the hard, imperial hand. The emperor may not be the equal of the shogun, but he’s got enough clout to get what he wants.
I absolutely loved this movie. I hope you will, too. It’s available on Hulu, both dubbed and subtitled.
Michaele Jordan is still watching Korean TV. Here’s a show she thinks you should try.
Are you missing MISSING?
Review by Michaele Jordan: It would be easy to do. Just now, when I went on-line to collect production credits which are included in any responsible review, I hit a wall of Missing entries, which all proved to be about the new movie, starring Nia Long and Storm Reid.
Extracting myself from the morass, I corrected my search to “Missing tv show”. I still got a lot of answers. There’s a Canadian series from 2003, a British crime drama series from 2006, an American thriller series form 2012, and another British series (this one an anthology) from 2014. And that’s just the shows that remain popular enough to be on the top of the hit list. I scrolled through several pages, and thought I’d found it when I reached: WATCH THE MISSING: NETFLIX. Nope. (I’m beginning to wonder how I ever found this show in the first place.)
The full title (often not included anywhere in the copy) is: Missing: The Other Side. It’s from Studio Dragon, Written by Ban Gi-ri and Jeong So-young, and directed by Min Yeon-hong. Yes, it is on Netflix, even if it was not the subject of the above-mentioned ad. (I should know by now, the Korean stuff is not generally at the top of anyone’s list but mine.) And it is a superb K-drama. As has become popular in Korea, Missing is what we in fandom would call cross-genre, a mix of mystery, drama, police procedural and fantasy.
Strangely, it does not include romance, as the beautiful girl Choi Yeo-na (played by Seo Eun-soo) is murdered early in the first episode. This does not mean that the part is a walk-on. Just the opposite. We see as much – if not more – of her than we do of her grieving fiancé, the handsome detective Shin Joon-ho (played by Ha Jun).
Her abduction, if not the actual murder, is witnessed by our primary protagonist, Kim Wook (played by Go Soo). There’s no denying he’s a scam artist – he had a troubled childhood – but he’s not a bad guy. Certainly not bad enough to ignore thugs carrying off a screaming, struggling girl, and shoving her into a car. He’s quick witted enough to rip out his phone and capture the event, including both faces and the license number. But the bad guys spot him. There’s a fight, and a long chase into the middle of nowhere, which culminates in his tumbling off a cliff and being left for dead. Pretty action-packed for a first episode.
He’s the protagonist, so he’s not dead, of course – or is he? He is found, rescued, and nursed back to health by the residents of a nearby village. It’s a tiny, primitive place. There’s no TV, and nobody has a cell phone. Nobody but Thomas, the innkeeper, (played by Song Geon-hee), seems to have a job, although they all help out around the town. There are no families; they all just wandered in and never left.
They can’t leave, they explain. Because they are dead. He is dead, too, they assure him. The proof is that he can see them, and the living can’t see the dead. (Spoiler alert: before episode two, we discover that’s not quite true. Most living can’t see the dead. But Wook can.)
But these people are not just any dead. They are dead whose bodies were never located. They never received funeral rites. Their families never found closure. They are forever missing. Every now and then, either by random chance or after years of a survivor’s desperate searching, a resident’s remains are recovered. And that resident stops suddenly, looks up and smiles, and dissolves into a shimmer of colored light. Most of them want this. Just because they are dead doesn’t stop them from worrying about everyone and everything they left behind.
A friend of mine rolled his eyes when I told him about the separate pre-afterlife village for the unburied. “Oh, please,” he groaned. “Dead is dead. Whatever does or doesn’t happen to you next, you’re past caring what happened to your body.” Here in the west, a lot of people would agree with that. But not everybody.
Back in the Middle Ages people believed that the last rites were essential to the well-being of the soul, cleansing it of its mortal contaminations. They even thought the unburied would rise up and turn into monsters. Not just vampires. They had a wide selection of nasty undead, all of whom arose from the failure to lay the living properly to rest. These days we are less rigid about the need for any specific ritual but many still feel a strong need for the dead to be remembered, acknowledged. There is a very special, piercing kind of pain that comes from not knowing what happened to a vanished loved one.
This is the central theme of the show: the sadness of the missing. We see it from every angle, parents still searching year after year for children so long gone that, if they live, they must surely be grown, and children waiting and waiting for parents that never return. Detective Shin Joon-ho grows frenzied in his search for Choi Yeo-na. He’d quarreled with her, and is desperate to find her in time to set that right before their wedding. And she flatly refuses to believe that she can’t get back to him, devising strategy after strategy to communicate.
I say that’s the theme, but please don’t worry that the theme is substituted for a story. What would be the point of having a detective in the cast, if there were no mystery? In fact, there are two main mysteries, and several sub plots. The village gatekeeper, Jang Pan-seok (played by Huh Joon-ho) is another living that can see the dead, and he’s made it his life’s work to find the residents’ missing remains so that they and their families can find rest. What motivates him to take on such an impossible quest? Most of the residents don’t even know who killed them. Well, that’s another mystery.
People writing about the issues they care about is what keeps this community going. It’s a gift and privilege for me to be continually allowed to publish so many entertaining posts rich in creativity, humor, and shared adventures. Thanks to all of you who contributed to File 770 in 2022!
Stormm continued her humorous series about the misdirected emails she gets from Writer X throughout 2022, braiding together comedy, horror, and the pitfalls of being a writer.
…Thinking about Jules Verne, with the new TV version of Around the World in Eighty Days about to start, I just bought the Wesleyan edition of Five Weeks in a Balloon, translated by Frederick Paul Walter – after researching what the good modern translations of Verne are. Verne has been abysmally translated into English over the years, but there’s been a push to correct that….
… It was on FaceBook where I first saw friends’ posting about Opening Ceremonies. According to what was posted, some of the musical selections performed by students from the Duke Ellington School spotlighted the religious aspects of the Christmas holiday.
My immediate reaction was that this was not an appropriate part of Opening Ceremonies, especially since, as far as I know, the religious aspect of the performance was not contained in the descriptions in any convention publication. The online description of Opening Ceremonies says, in its entirety: “Welcome to the convention. We will present the First Fandom and Big Heart awards, as well as remarks from the Chair.” The December 9, 2021, news release about the choir’s participation did not mention that there would be a religious component to the performance….
Whew! We made it. We made it to Issue 100 of the Grantville Gazette. This is an incredible feat by a large group of stakeholders. Thank you, everyone.
I don’t think Eric Flint had any idea what he’d created when he sent Jim Baen the manuscript for 1632. In the intervening two-plus decades, the book he intended to be a one-shot novel has grown like the marshmallow man in Ghostbusters to encompass books from two publishing houses, a magazine (this one, that you are holding in your metaphorical hands) and allowed over 165 new authors to see their first published story in print. The Ring of Fire Universe, or the 1632 Universe, has more than twelve million words published….
This message was written by a fan in Moscow 48 hours ago. It is unsigned but was relayed by a trustworthy source who confirms the writer is happy for it to be published by File 770. It’s a fan’s perspective, a voice we may not hear much….
Right now, when I’m sitting at my desktop and writing this text, a cannonade nearby doesn’t stop. The previous night was scary in Kyiv. Evidently, Russians are going to start demolishing Ukrainian capital like they are doing with Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Mariupol.
The Ukrainian SFF Community joined the efforts to isolate Russia, the nazi-country of the 21st century, to force them to stop the war. The boycott by American authors we asked for is also doing the job. Many leading writers and artists of the great United States already joined the campaign.
We appealed to SFWA to also join the campaign, and here is what they replied…
Fortunately, comic-carrying newspapers are, of course, all (also or only) online these days, but even then, some require subscriptions (fair enough), and to get all the ones you want. For example, online, the Washington Post, has about 90, while the Boston Globe is just shy of a paltry one-score-and-ten. And (at least in Firefox), they don’t seem to be visible in all-on-one-page mode, much less customize-a-page-of.
So, for several years now, I’ve been going to the source — two “syndicates” that sell/redistribute many popular strips to newspapers….
There’s been a lot of excitement about Squid Game. Everybody’s talking about how clever, original, and utterly skiffy it is. I watched it, too, eagerly and faithfully. But I wasn’t as surprised by it as some. I expected it to be good. I’ve been watching Korean video for ten years, and have only grown more addicted every year. And yet I just can’t convince many people to watch it with me….
Let me tell you about my favorite building in Washington, D.C. It’s the staid old Arts and Industries Building, the second-oldest of all the Smithsonian Institution buildings, which dates back to the very early 1880s and owes its existence to the Smithsonian’s then urgent need for a place where parts of its collection could go on public display….
When we last left the Heinleins (“What the Heinleins Told the 1940 Census”), a woman answering the door at 8777 Lookout Mountain – Leslyn Heinlein, presumably — had just finished telling the 1940 census taker a breathtaking raft of misinformation. Including that her name was Sigred, her husband’s was Richard, that the couple had been born in Germany, and they had a young son named Rolf.
Ten years have passed since then, and the archives of the 1950 U.S. Census were opened to the public on April 1. There’s a new Mrs. Heinlein – Virginia. The 8777 Lookout Mountain house in L.A. has been sold. They’re living in Colorado Springs. What did the Heinleins tell the census taker this time?…
“In the future, there was a nuclear war. And because of all the radiation, cats developed the ability to shoot lasers out of their mouths.”
On this dubious premise, Laser Cats was founded. By its seventh and final episode, the great action stars and directors of the day had contributed their considerable talents to this highly entertaining, yet frankly ridiculous enterprise. From James Cameron to Lindsey Lohan, Josh Brolin to Steve Martin, Laser Cats attracted the best in the business.
Being part of Saturday Night Live undoubtedly helped….
The Emeka Walter Dinjos Memorial Award For Disability In Speculative Fiction aims to award disability in speculative fiction in two ways. One, by awarding a writer of speculative fiction for their representation or portrayal of disability in a world of speculative fiction, whatever their health status; and two, by awarding a disabled writer for a work of speculative fiction in general, whatever the focus of the work may be….
Robert Osband, Florida fan, really loves space. All his life he has been learning about spaceflight. And reading stories about spaceflight, in science fiction.
So after NASA’s Apollo program was over, the company that made Apollo space suits held a garage sale, and Ozzie showed up. He bought a “training liner” from ILC Dover, a coverall-like portion of a pressure suit, with rings at the wrists and neck to attach gloves and helmet.
And another time, in 1976, when one of his favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, was going to be Guest of Honor at a World Science Fiction Convention, Mr. Osband journeyed to Kansas City.
In his suitcase was his copy of Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel—a novel about a teenager who wins a secondhand space suit in a contest—and his ILC Dover suit.
Because if you wanted to get your copy of Have Space Suit, Will Travel autographed, and you happened to own a secondhand space suit, it would be a shame NOT to wear it, right?…
… I’m sure that our first face-to-face meeting was in 1979, when my job in industry took me from Chattanooga all the way out to Los Angeles for some much-needed training in electrochemistry. I didn’t really know anybody in L.A. fandom back then but I did know the address of the LASFS clubhouse, so on my next-to-last evening in town I dropped in on a meeting. And it was there that I found Bruce mostly surrounded by other fans while they all expounded on fandom as it existed back then and what it might be like a few years down the road. It was like a jazz jam session, but all words and no music. I settled back into the periphery, enjoying all the back-and-forth, and when there eventually came a lull in the conversations I took the opportunity to introduce myself. And then Bruce said something to me that I found very surprising: “Dick Lynch! I’ve heard of you!”…
It was back in 2014 that a student filmmaker at Stephen F. Austin State University, Ricky Kennedy, created an extraordinary short movie titled The History of Time Travel. Exploration of “what ifs” is central to good storytelling in the science fiction genre and this little production is one of the better examples of how to do it the right way.
For a long time, I’ve felt the Short Form Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation was not properly organized to give an award to the best “Television” SF of the previous year….
Lavie Tidhar’s Neom is a stunning return to his world of Central Station, twinning the fates of humans and robots alike at a futuristic city on the edge of the Red Sea….
… It is through Joy and Cassimer’s eyes we experience S.A. Tholin’s Iron Truth, a finalist of the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition. If there was ever a case of the cream rising to the top this book is one….
… A couple of odd things, though. He had $300 on him, that wasn’t stolen, and an unusual rosary, with what seems to be the wrong number of beads. It’s a puzzle….
In T. A. Bruno’s In the Orbit of Sirens, a Self-Published Science Fiction Competition finalist, the remnants of the human race have fled the solar system ahead of an alien culture that is assimilating everyone in reach. Loaded aboard a vast colony ship they’re headed for a distant refuge, prepared to pioneer a new world, but unprepared to meet new threats there to human survival that are as great as the ones they left behind.
On the morning of Carmen Grey’s sixth birthday an armed team arrives to take her from her parents and remove her to the underground facility where Clairvoyants — like her — are held captive and trained for years to access their abilities. So begins Monster of the Dark by K. T. Belt, a finalist in the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition….
G.M. Nair begins Duckett and Dyer: Dicks for Hire by making a surprising choice. His introductory scene explicitly reveals to readers the true nature of the mysterious events that the protagonists themselves uncover only very slowly throughout the first half of the book. The introduction might even be the penultimate scene in the book — which would make sense in a story that is partly about time travel loops. Good idea or bad idea?…
… What sounds like Firefly also describes the SPSFC finalist novel Captain Wu: Starship Nameless #1, a space opera by authors Patrice Fitzgerald and Jack Lyster. I love Firefly so it wasn’t a big leap to climb aboard this vessel….
…. It would be exceptionally embarrassing for a Worldcon to have to explain why a finalist would have won the Hugo except for — oops! — this bit of outdated fine print. The best course of action is to eliminate that fine print before such a circumstance arises….
The social media of the 30th century doesn’t seem so different: teenagers anonymously perform acts of civil disobedience and vandalism to score points and raise their ranking in an internet app. That’s where Aster Vale leads a secret life as the Wildflower, a street artist and tagger, in A Star Named Vega by Benjamin J. Roberts, a Self-Published Science Fiction competition finalist…..
R F Kuang’s Babel is an audacious and unrelenting look at colonialism, seen through the lens of an alternate 19th century Britain where translation is the key to magic. Kuang’s novel is as sharp and perceptive as it is well written, deep, and bears reflection upon, after reading, for today’s world….
Paul Weimer went to donate some books at Don Blyly’s new location for Uncle Hugo’s and Uncle Edgar’s bookstores. While he was inside Paul shot these photographs of the bookshelves being stocked and other work in progress.
… Another contributor to the Afrofuturist tradition is Nicole Mitchell, a noted avant-jazz composer and flutist. She chose to take on Octavia Butler’s most challenging works, the Xenogenesis Trilogy, and create the Xenogenesis Suite, a collection of dark and disturbing compositions that reflect the trilogy’s turbulent and complicated spirit….
Anna carefully arranged the necessary objects around her desktop computer into a pentagon: sharpened pencils, a legal pad, a half-empty coffee cup, and a copy of Science Without Sorcery, with the chair at the fifth point. This done, she intoned the spell that would open the channel to her muse for long enough to write the final pages of her work-in-progress. Then she could get ready for the convention….
… In the last five years, the [Hugo Awards Study Committee] [HASC] has changed precisely two words of the Constitution. (Since you asked: adding the words “or Comic” to the title of the “Best Graphic Story” category.) The HASC’s defenders will complain that we had two years of pandemic, and that the committee switched to Discord rather than email only this year, and that there are lots of proposals this year. But the fact remains that so far the practical impact has been slower than I imagined when I first proposed the Committee…..
In Michaele Jordan’s overview, she comments on the novellas by Aliette de Bodard, Becky Chambers, Alix E. Harrow, Seanan McGuire, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Catherynne M. Valente that are up for the 2022 Hugo.
… Once we had a lot of science fiction, little fantasy; lately we’ve had a lot of fantasy; so Powers’ writing fantasy does not seem particularly defiant.
His fantasy has generally been — to use a word which may provoke defiance — rigorous. Supernatural phenomena occur, may be predicted, aroused, avoided, as meticulously — a word whose root means fear — as we in our world start an automobile engine or put up an umbrella. Some say this has made his writing distinctive….
The day of reckoning is here for E Pluribus Hugo. The change in the way Hugo Awards nominations are counted was passed in 2015 and ratified in 2016 to counter how Sad and Rabid Puppies’ slates dictated most of finalists on the Hugo ballots in those years. It came with a 2022 sunset clause attached, and E Pluribus Hugo must be re-ratified this year in order to remain part of the WSFS Constitution….
… His name is Joel Nydahl, and back about the time of that Chicon he was a 14-year-old neofan who lived with his parents on a farm near Marquette, Michigan. He was an avid science fiction reader and at some point in 1952 decided to publish a fanzine. It was a good one….
… Abigail Kamara, younger cousin of police constable and apprentice wizard Peter Grant, has been left largely unsupervised while he’s off in the sticks on a case. This leaves Abigail making her own decisions when she notices that kids roughly her age are disappearing–but not staying missing long enough for the police to care….
Friends, let me tell you about one of my favorite TV shows. But I must admit to you up front that it’s not SF/F. Extraordinary Attorney Woo is, as I assume you’ve deduced from the title, a lawyer show. But it’s a KOREAN lawyer show, which should indicate that is NOT run of the mill….
Joseph Campbell was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College, and wrote extensively about comparative mythology. His “hero’s journey” theory has been extremely influential….
… The Phantom Empire, a twelve-chapter Mascot serial, was originally released in February, 1935. A strange concoction for a serial, it is at once science fiction film, a Western, and strangely enough, a musical. It was the first real science fiction sound serial and its popularity soon inspired other serials about fantastic worlds….
… I find myself explaining the changes to membership in the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) and the conditions for attending the World Science Fiction Convention that were ratified this year in Chicago (and thus are now in effect, because this was the second vote on the changes)…
Chicon 8’s Chicago Worldcon Community Fund (CWCF) program offered both memberships and financial stipends. It was established with the goal of helping defray the expenses of attending Chicon 8 for the following groups of people:
Non-white fans or program participants • LGBTQIA+ fans or program participants • Local Chicago area fans of limited means…
The London Underground has ghosts. Well, the London Underground always has ghosts, but usually they’re gentle, sad creatures. Lately there’s been an outbreak of more aggressive ghosts….
As environmental problems caused by industrialisation and post-industrialisation continue to increase, the public is looking for ecological solutions. As pandemics, economic crises, and wars plague our society in different ways, thoughts turn to the good old times. But were they really all that good? People are escaping increasingly into fantastical stories in order to find a quantum of solace. But at what point was there a utopia in our society. If so, at what or whose cost did it exist? Whether or not we ever experience living in a utopia, the idea of finally finding one drives us to continue seeking ideal living conditions….
… Capclave appeared to be equally star-crossed in its next iteration. It was held over the weekend of October 18-20, 2002, and once again the attendees were brought closer together by an event taking place in the outside world. The word had spread quickly through all the Saturday night room parties: “There’s been another shooting.” Another victim of the D.C. Sniper….
… In Fairy Tale, his newest novel, Stephen King delivers a, cough, grimm contemporary story, explicitly incorporating horror in the, cough, spirit of Lovecraft (King also explicitly namedrops, in the text, August Derleth, and Henry Kuttner), in which high-schooler Charlie Reade becomes involved in things — and challenges — that, as the book and plot progress, stray beyond the mundane….
The idea of an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories about the Beatles seems like a natural. I’ve been told the two editors, each unbeknownst to the other, both presented the idea to the publisher around the same time…
The Science Museum (that’s the world famous one in Kensington, London) has just launched a new exhibit on what Carl Sagan once mused (though not mentioned in the exhibit itself) science fiction and science’s ‘dance’. SF2 Concatenation reprographic supremo Tony Bailey and I were invited by the Museum to have a look on the exhibition’s first day. (The exhibition runs to Star Wars day 2023, May the Fourth.) Having braved Dalek extermination at the Museum’s entrance, we made our way to the exhibition’s foyer – decorated with adverts to travel to Gallifrey – to board our shuttle….
I was at the 2022 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival in Rockville, MD today. If you’re wondering why the festival is there, that’s where Fitzgerald and his wife are buried. Now, I’d never read any of Fitzgerald`s writing, so I spent the evening before reading the first three chapters of The Great Gatsby (copyright having expired last year, it’s online). So far, I’ve yet to find anyone in it that I want to spend any time with, including the narrator.
However, the reason I attended was to see Kim Stanley Robinson, who was the special guest at the Festival. The end of the morning’s big event was a conversation between Stan and Richard Powers. Then there was lunch, and a keynote speaker, then Stan introducing Powers to receive an award from the society that throws the annual Festival….
A recent possible record could be the SF2 Concatenation’s website 2012 Eurocon Award voted on by those at the European SF Society’s convention which, that year, was held in Croatia….
Snuff is our narrator, here, and he’s a smart, interesting, likable dog. He’s the friend and partner of a man called Jack, and they are preparing for a major event….
…As a child, I kept a notebook filled with my favorite quotes. (How did I not know I was going to be an author?) The first quote? “Not all who wander are lost.” There was everything from 90s rom com lines to Wordsworth poems in that notebook, but Tolkien filled the most pages….
Louis Wu is 200 years old, and he’s bored. It’s his 200th birthday, and he’s using transfer booths to extend the celebration of it for a full twenty-four hours, and he’s really bored….
How can Halloween be over already? We barely had time to watch thirty horror movies –and those mostly classics, which are less than half our (horror) collection!
There is a fundamental implausibility to easy manned interstellar (or even interplanetary) space travel that nonetheless remains a seductive idea even in our wiser and more cynical and weary 21st century. …
Alif is a young man, a “gray hat” hacker, selling his skills to provide cybersecurity to anyone who needs that protection from the government. He lives in an unnamed city-state in the Middle East, referred to throughout simply as the City. He’s nonideological; he’ll sell his services to Islamists, communists, anyone….
Journalist, author, genre historian (and fan, certainly, from the 1940s and on!) Bertil Falk is acclaimed for performing the “impossible” task of translating Finnegans Wake to Swedish, the modernist classic by James Joyce, under the title Finnegans likvaka….
The protagonist of the first short novel in this omnibus — which is in fact Eye of Cat — is William Blackhorse Singer, a Navajo born in the 20th century, and still alive, and fit and healthy, almost two centuries later….
One fine Monday morning, Peter Grant is summoned to Baker Street Station on the London Underground, to assess whether there was anything “odd,” i.e., involving magic, about the death of a young man on the tracks….
…If you’re not a fan, then there’s a real chance you have no idea how much range animé encompasses. And I’m not even talking about the entire range of kid shows, sit-coms and drama. (I’m aware there may be limits to your tolerance. I’m talking about the range within SF/F. Let’s consider just three examples….
While I subscribe to the practice that, as a rule, reviews and review-like write-ups, if not intended as a piece of critical/criticism, should stick to books the reviewer feels are worth the readers reading, sometimes (I) want to, like Jerry Pournelle’s “We makes these mistakes and do this stuff so you dont have to” techno-wrangling Chaos Manor columns, give a maybe-not-your-cup-of-paint-remover head’s-up. This is one of those….
It’s been 30 years since the passing of my friend Roger Weddall. I doubt very many of you reading this had ever met him and I wouldn’t be surprised, actually, if most of you haven’t even heard of him. Thirty years is a long time and the demographics of fandom has changed a lot. So let me tell you a little bit about him….
I expect a lot of File 770’s readers watched, as we did, as the Orion capsule returned to Terra. I’m older than some of you, and it’s been decades since I watched a capsule re-entry and landing in the ocean. What had me in tears is that finally, after fifty years, we’re planning to go back… and stay….
Poul Anderson began writing his own “future history” in the 1950s, with its starting point being that there would be a limited nuclear war at some point in the 1950s. From that point would develop a secret effort to build a new social structure that could permanently prevent war….
…As with Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water is a visual feast. Unlike the first film, there aren’t long sweeping pans lingering over beautiful, otherworldly vistas. The “beautiful” and the “otherworldly” are still there, but we’re seeing them incorporated into the action and storytelling….
Today we celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of Harry Warner, Jr., who was perhaps the best-known stay-at-home science fiction fan of all time….
…But having learned that she can see and talk to ghosts, and that they all have unresolved problems they want to solve, she can’t always say no when they ask her for help….
…Xich Si is a tech scavenger, living in Triệu Hoà Port, and scavenging tech to sell and support herself and her daughter, when she’s captured by pirates. ….
… When I was growing up, children like myself were taught, no, more like indoctrinated, to think the United States was the BEST place to grow up, that our country was ALWAYS in the right and that our institutions were, for the most part, unassailable and impervious to criticism from anyone, especially foreigners.
I grew up in Ohio in the 1960’s and despite what I was being taught in a parochial Catholic grade school (at great expense, I might add, by my hard-working parents), certain things I was experiencing did not add up. News of the violence and casualties during the Vietnam War was inescapable. I remember watching the evening network news broadcasts and being horrified by the number of people (on all sides of the conflict) being wounded or killed on a daily basis.
As the years went on, it became harder to reconcile all of the violence, terrorism, public assassinations and the racism I was experiencing with the education I was receiving. The Pentagon Papers and the Watergate break-ins coincided with my high school years and the beginnings of my political awakening.
When I look back on those formative days of my life, I see myself as a small child, set out upon a sea of prejudice and whiteness, in a boat of hetero-normaltity, destination unknown….
… After I introduced myself to Mr. Weir and Mr. Bell, I said, “You and I have something in common.”
“Oh really? What’s that?”
“You and I are the only 2022 Hugo Award nominees within a hundred-mile radius of this bookstore.” (I stated that because I know that our fellow nominee, Jason Sanford, lives in Columbus, Ohio, hence the reference to the mileage.)…
Despite some very harsh comments from Dmitry Rogozin, the director general of Roscosmos, threatening that “If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or Europe?” spacefarers seem to have a different perspective and understanding of the importance of international cooperation, respect and solidarity. This appears to have been demonstrated today when three cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station….
Forty-five years ago or thereabouts, on February 26, 1977, the first ‘prog’ of 2000AD was released by IPC magazines. The second issue dated March 5 a week later saw the debut of Judge Dredd. Since then, Rogue Trooper, Nemesis the Warlock, Halo Jones, Sláine, Judge Anderson, Strontium Dog, Roxy and Skizz, The ABC Warriors, Bad Company and Proteus Vex are just some of the characters and stories that have emanated from the comic that was started by Pat Mills and John Wagner. Some have gone on to be in computer games, especially as the comic was purchased by Rebellion developments in 2000, and Judge Dredd has been brought to the silver screen twice.
Addictive and enjoyable stories of the fantastic, written and drawn by some of the greatest comic creators of the latter part of the 20th century, they often related to the current, utilizing Science Fiction to obscure issues about violence or subversiveness, but reflecting metaphorically about the now of the time….
“Fight With Art” is an exhibition of Ukrainian Contemporary Art created under exceptional circumstances taking place now in Kraków at the Manggha Museum until April 30.
We reached out to curator Artur Wabik to learn more of this topical exhibition…
Steve Vertlieb, William Shatner, and Erwin Vertlieb.
Traditionally, the start of a new year is a time when film critics begin assembling their lists of the best films, actors, writers, composers, and directors of the past year. What follows, then, while honoring that long-held tradition, is a comprehensive compilation and deeply personal look at the finest film scores of the past nearly one hundred years….
The frenzy of joyous controversy swirling over director Adam McKay’s new film Don’t Look Up has stirred a healthy, if frenetic debate over the meaning and symbology of this bonkers dramedy. On its surface a cautionary satire about the impending destruction of the planet, Don’t Look Up is a deceptively simplistic tale of moronic leadership refusing to accept a grim, unpleasant reality smacking it in its face.
What follows is truly one of the most personally heartfelt, poignant, and heartbreaking remembrances that I’ve ever felt compelled to write.
Veronica Carlson was a dear, close, cherished friend for over thirty years. I learned just now that this dear sweet soul passed away today. I am shocked and saddened beyond words. May God rest her beautiful soul.
After interviewing William Shatner for the British magazine L’Incroyable Cinema during the torrid Summer of 1969 at “The Playhouse In The Park,” just outside of Philadelphia, while Star Trek was still in the final days of its original network run on NBC, my old friend Allan Asherman, who joined my brother Erwin and I for this once-in-a-lifetime meeting with Captain James Tiberius Kirk, astutely commented that I had now met and befriended all three of our legendary boyhood “Captains,” which included Jim Kirk (William Shatner), Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers (Larry “Buster” Crabbe), and Buzz Corry (Edward Kemmer), Commander of the Space Patrol….
… The first of the most important music modernists, however, in the post war era and “Silver Age” of film composers was Elmer Bernstein who would, had he lived, be turning one hundred years old on April 4th, 2022. Although he would subsequently prove himself as able as classic “Golden Age” composers of writing traditional big screen symphonic scores, with his gloriously triumphant music for Cecil B De Mille’s 1956 extravaganza, The Ten Commandments….
… She was just four days into her maiden voyage from Southhampton to New York City when this “Unsinkable” vessel met disaster and finality, sailing into history, unspeakable tragedy, and maritime immortality. May God Rest Her Eternal Soul … the souls of the men, women, and children who sailed and perished during those nightmarish hours, and to all those who go courageously “Down to The Sea in Ships.” This horrifying remembrance remains among the most profoundly significant of my own seventy-six years….
… It is true that Seth MacFarlane, the veteran satirist who both created and stars in the science fiction series, originally envisioned [The Orville] as a semi-comedic tribute to Gene Roddenberry’s venerable Star Trek. However, the show grew more dramatic in its second season on Fox, while it became obvious that MacFarlane wished to grow outside the satirical box and expand his dimensional horizons and ambitions….
… I was born in the closing weeks of 1945, and grasped at my tentative surroundings with uncertain hands. It wasn’t until 1950 when I was four years old that my father purchased a strange magical box that would transform and define my life. The box sat in our living room and waited to come alive. Three letters seemed to identify its persona and bring definition to its existence. Its name appeared to be RCA, and its identity was known as television….
He was a kindly, gentle soul who lived among us for a seeming eternity. But even eternity is finite. He was justifiably numbered among the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Among the limitless vistas of science fiction and fantasy he was, perhaps, second only in literary significance to H.G. Wells who briefly shared the last century with him. Ray Bradbury was, above all else, the poet laureate of speculative fiction….
On June 11, 1982, America and the world received the joyous gift of one of the screen’s most beloved fantasy film classics and, during that memorable Summer, a young aspiring television film critic reviewed a new film from director Steven Spielberg called E.T….
…Before I realized it, tables and chairs were being moved and I felt the hands of paramedics lifting me to the floor of the restaurant. Les was attempting to perform CPR on me, and I was drifting off into unconciousness. I awoke to find myself in an ambulance with assorted paramedics pounding my chest, while attempting to verbally communicate with me. I was aware of their presence, but found myself unable to speak….
After nearly dying a little more than a decade ago during and just after major open heart surgery, I fulfilled one of the major dreams of my life…meeting the man who would become my last living life long hero. I’d adored him as far back as 1959 when first hearing the dramatic strains of the theme from Checkmate on CBS Television. That feeling solidified a year later in 1960 with the rich, sweet strains of ABC Television’s Alcoa Premiere, hosted by Fred Astaire, followed by Wide Country on NBC….
…When Jack Warner was casting the film version of the smash hit, he considered performers such as Cary Grant, James Cagney, or Frank Sinatra for the lead. Meredith Willson, the show’s composer, however, demanded that Robert Preston star in the movie version of his play, or he’d withdraw the contracts and licensing. The film version of The Music Man, produced for Warner Brothers, and starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones, opened to rave reviews on movie screens across the country in 1962. Robert Preston, like Rex Harrison in Lerner and Lowe’s My Fair Lady, had proven that older, seasoned film stars could propel both Broadway and big screen musicals to enormous artistic success….
On the evening of May 14, 1998, following the airing over NBC Television of the series finale of Seinfeld, the world and I received the terrible news of the passing of the most beloved entertainer of the twentieth century. It has been twenty-four years since he left this mortal realm, but the joy, the music, and the memories are as fresh and as vital today as when they were born….
I had the honor and distinct pleasure of both knowing and sharing correspondence with British actor Peter Cushing for several years during the late Sixties and early Seventies….
Very exciting news. The long awaited CD soundtrack release of 12 O’Clock High is now available for purchase through La-La Land Records and is a major restoration of precious original tracks from Quinn Martin’s beloved television series….
That terrible day in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 remains one of the most significantly traumatic days of my life. I was just seventeen years old. I was nearing the end of my high school classes at Northeast High School in Philadelphia when word started spreading through the hallways and corridors that JFK had been shot. I listened in disbelief, praying that it wasn’t true … but it was….
I recently watched a somber new three part documentary by film maker Ken Burns that is among the most sobering, heartbreaking, and horrifying indictments of humanity that I have ever encountered. It was extremely difficult to watch but, as an American Jew, I remain struck by the similarities between the rise in Fascism in the early nineteen thirties, leading to the beginnings of Nazism in Germany, and the attempted decimation of the Jewish people in Europe and throughout the world, with the repellant echoes of both racial and religious intolerance, and the mounting hatred and suspicion of the Jewish communities and population residing presently in my own country of birth, these United States….
I’ve read with interest some of the recent discussions concerning the measure of Hugo Friedhofer’s importance as a composer, and it set my memory sailing back to another time in a musical galaxy long ago and far away. I have always considered Maestro Friedhofer among the most important, if underrated, composers of Hollywood’s golden era….
…Steven Spielberg’s reverent semi-autobiographical story of youthful dreams and aspirations is, for me, the finest, most emotionally enriching film of the year, filled with photographic memories, and indelible recollections shared both by myself and by the film maker….
These photographs are of an annual Christmas tradition at American Heritage Federal Credit Union located at Red Lion and Jamison Roads in Northeast Philadelphia….
…This was the man who brought such incalculable joy and hope to so many millions of filmgoers with his quintessential Christmas classic, It’s A Wonderful Life. …
My friend Adam Spector tells me that when Ernest Lehman was asked to write the script for North by Northwest, he tried to turn out the most “Hotchcocky” script he could, with all of Hitchcock’s obsessions in one great motion picture.
Moonfall is the most “Emmerichian” film Roland Emmerich is made. Like his earlier films, it has flatulent melodrama interlaced with completely daft science. But everything here is much more intense than his earlier work. But the only sense of wonder you’ll get from this film is wondering why the script got greenlit….
… Having a long career in Hollywood is a lot harder than in other forms of publishing; you’ve got to have the relentless drive to pursue your vision and keep making sales. To an outsider, what is astonishing about J. Michael Straczynski’s career is that it has had a third act and may well be in the middle of a fourth. His career could have faded after Babylon 5. The roars that greeted him at the 1996 Los Angeles Worldcon (where, it seemed, every conversation had to include the words, “Where’s JMS?”) would have faded and he could have scratched out a living signing autographs at media conventions….
When I read in the Financial Times about how Britain’s National Theatre was adapting Sir Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage, the first volume of his Book of Dust trilogy, I told myself, “That’s a play for me! I’ll just fly over to London and see it! OGH is made of money, and he’ll happily pay my expenses!”
Fortunately, I didn’t have to go to London, because the theatre came to me, with a screening of the National Theatre Live production playing at the American Film Institute. So, I spent a pleasant Saturday afternoon seeing it….
… Stories matter more in the theatre than in film because far more of a play is in our imagination than in a film. Stripped of CGI and rewrites by multiple people, what plays offer at their best is one person’s offering us something where, if it works, we tell ourselves, “Yes, that was a good evening in the theatre,” and if it doesn’t, we gnash our teeth and feel miserable until we get home…
As Anton Ego told us in Ratatouille, the goal of a critic today is to be the first person to offer praise to a rising artist. It’s not the tenth novel that deserves our attention but the first or second. In the theatre, the people who need the most attention are the ones who are being established, not the ones that build on earlier successes.
So I’m happy to report that Matthew Aldwin McGee, author, star, and chief puppeteer of Under the Sea with Dredgie McGee is a talented guy who has a great deal of potential. You should be watching him….
I once read an article about a guy who was determined to live life in 1912. He lived in a shack in the woods, bought a lot of old clothes, a Victrola, and a slew of old books and magazines. I don’t remember how he made a living, but the article made clear that he was happy….
By Michaele Jordan: Yes, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving, thank you. I hope you did, too.
But – I blush to admit – I spent a great deal of it in a happy huddle with cousins significantly less than half my age. Like pretty much everybody else, we were talking about our favorite TV shows (having done little but watch TV during the pandemic). And my fellow adults just don’t seem to appreciate my beloved animé. So, if you’ll permit me, I’d like to preach a little, please.
If you’re not a fan, then there’s a real chance you have no idea how much range animé encompasses. And I’m not even talking about the entire range of kid shows, sit-coms and drama. (I’m aware there may be limits to your tolerance. I’m talking about the range within SF/F. Let’s consider just three examples.
We’ll start with The Dragon Prince, created by Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond, and animated by Bardel Entertainment. It’s very accessible and reasonably well known.
The Dragon Prince (or after the 4th season launched, renamed as The Mystery of Aaravos) is classic high fantasy. There are elves and (of course) dragons. There are kings and mages, good guys and bad guys, and numerous forms of magic. It’s clean, and simple enough to share with the kids – if they’re old enough to watch sequels to Lord of the Rings, then they’ll be fine with Dragon Prince. There’s even a kid major character, and a fair amount of humor.
But I promise it’s not so childish that it will bore the grown-ups. It’s an excellent show. Rather than spending millions on special effects, they’ve invested in quality animation – every frame is eye-catching. And it’s well written – the story does not break down under careful examination. And it’s right there on Netflix. Please give it a try.
Next we have Exception, (or e∞ception, as it says in the titles). It’s based on an original story by Hirotaka Adachi with character designs by Yoshitaka Amano, and directed by Yūzō Satō. It is pure SF, and pretty hard SF, at that. It’s also dark. Very dark.
The story revolves around a pre-colonization team sent to prepare a planet for terra-forming. There are only five of them, but their ship is enormous. You almost wonder how they find their way around, because they haven’t been living on it very long.
The ship made most of its very long journey on automatic. Only when it neared their destination did it print (yes, I said print!) bodies for the crew and implant their memories and personalities, which were recorded back on earth.
And that’s where the trouble starts. For reasons unknown, one of the bodies misprints. The resulting person is so malformed it does not look human. But it is alive. It almost immediately shows signs of mental derangement. The rest of the crew has no idea how to handle the situation. Should they just kill the monster and reprint their friend? But once it has recovered from its disorientation, it becomes evident that it is intelligent, if not entirely rational. So wouldn’t killing it be murder? A moot question. They can’t catch it. So they go ahead and reprint their friend, who emerges normal.
That’s just the beginning. This is an edge-of-your seat story, highlighted with creepy, angular imagery. Check it out – it’s on Netflix
So, having taken you all the way from high-hearted fantasy to SF horror, what can I possibly offer that is not simply somewhere between them? Easy! I’ll transform that line into a triangle with a tale of gleeful nonsense: The Tatami Time Machine Blues. It’s based on a novel by Tomihiko Morimi. Sources inform me that it is a sequel (of sorts) to The Tatami Galaxy, a show I’ve never heard of, from twelve years ago. (I’m looking for it. Haven’t found it yet.)
The story is ridiculously simple but endlessly convoluted. In a small, crowded apartment during a brutally hot summer, a gang of students loses the remote to the air conditioner! Then they find a time machine, and decide to go back in time to find it. Except won’t that change the past? And wouldn’t that destroy the future! Trust me, friends, this show is hilarious. It’s on Hulu.
By Michaele Jordan: How can Halloween be over already? We barely had time to watch thirty horror movies –and those mostly classics, which are less than half our (horror) collection!
And yet, there we were on October 31, sitting on the sofa with a huge bowl of candy by the door, watching Bride of Frankenstein. (Bride of Frankenstein is very much a favorite of ours, with its adorable little homunculi, and the tragic ending. Even as a seven-year-old, I was heartbroken that the poor lady Frankenstein only got to live a few minutes before she was squished!) We’d also chosen Bride of Frankenstein because we knew it well enough that it could withstand frequent interruptions.
But it was raining, and hardly any children came to our door. We watched our movie, and even reran a few favorite scenes, only to find that it was a little too late to start another movie, but nowhere near late enough to stop our Halloween viewing. Surely there was something spooky in the way of a TV series available.
And there was. We turned to The Guest, (directed by Kim Hong-seon and starring Kim Dong-wook, Jung Eun-chae and Kim Jae-wook). It won’t sound like much, if you read the blurb. It fact, it sounds like a joke. A priest, a detective and a taxi driver walk into a bar… But don’t be fooled. This is one of the coolest, scariest shows I’ve ever seen! Smart enough to keep you guessing until the end – creepy enough to keep you up half the night afterwards. A perfect binge watch for Halloween.
In Korea, or at least in the sea-side village where the story opens, the term ‘guest’ is used to refer to a possessing spirit, a ‘visitor’ in the victim’s brain and body. (You know. Keeping it polite, like when we call the Fae, ‘the Good Folk’.) Guests are not good folk. We see a local man, Park Il-Do, leave his home and walk out into the sea. He stays out there far too long for us to hope he’s holding his breath. And when he comes back, everyone knows it’s not the same man. He wreaks havoc on his town, killing his family, for starters, and moving on from there.
We soon see that this spirit can move from host to host, whenever he feels his current body is threatened, or just inadequate to his needs. For instance, when he first walks out of the sea, he jumps into the body of the first person he sees, Yoon Hwa-pyung. Hwa-pyung is just a little boy, but at least he’s still alive, which is an improvement over recently drowned.
When a local priest tries to exorcise the child, the guest (who will continue to be called Park Il-Do for the rest of the series, rather than forcing the audience to keep the changing names straight) abandons the boy and jumps into the priest. The exit does not kill the child, (although, as you can imagine, it leaves him scarred for life) and little Hwa-pyung runs down to the highway, and hails a passing car, begging for assistance.
This was a mistake. The driver is concerned and, leaving her own child in the car, goes to Hwa-pyung’s aid. And dies.
You may be wondering if I am planning to tell you the entire story, taking pains to include a spoiler in every paragraph. Not so! All of the above is just the prelude. Episode two takes place twenty years later, with Hwa-pyung a troubled drifter, given to psychic visions, and still looking for Father Choi, the priest whom Park Il-Do jumped into back at the beginning. Since Hwa-pyung is the taxi-driver, I’ll leave it to you to discover the priest and the detective for yourselves.
I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again: they’re making some first-class television in South Korea. Along with The Guest, you might also try Signal (directed by Kim Won-seok and starring Lee Je-hoon, Kim Hye-soo and Cho Jin-woong). I’m am not as deeply into Signal as I am into The Guest, but I’ve seen enough to alert you that it is a police procedural which focuses on a haunted walkie-talkie. Surely that intrigues you? Both these shows are available on Netflix.
By Michaele Jordan: A friend of mine –who has much more elevated tastes than I do – recently twitted me about She-Hulk, Attorney at Law, which she assumed I was watching. But the funny thing was, I wasn’t. I had been vacillating about whether or not to watch it, since I’d first heard of it.
Why such mixed feelings? On the one hand, I am a huge admirer of Tatiana Maslany. On the other hand, I truly loathe The Hulk.
I’ve never read a Hulk comic. I’ve seen a few covers. I would pass by them in the racks at the drug store, while searching for “Mark Merlin’s House of Mystery”. Inevitably I would pause, transfixed by the image, then shudder and turn away. Why in the world would I want to read about someone/thing so ugly and stupid?
I did give the TV show a try, because I liked Bill Bixby. (I was a big fan of My Favorite Martian – having fallen in love with Ray Walston in Damn Yankees.) But I couldn’t stick with it. I was still completely put off by ugly and stupid.
But apparently I was the only one. The Incredible Hulk lasted five years, from 1977 to 1982, and was followed a few years later by three television movies (still starring Bill Bixby): The Incredible Hulk Returns, 1988; The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, 1989; and The Death of the Incredible Hulk, 1990.
After that, I had thirteen years of peace, in which hideous brutes were bad guys (unless an important moral point was being made), and the heroes (usually) knew which side they were fighting for. And then the real movies began.
In these, The Hulk was even bigger and uglier. First, in 2003, we got Hulk, directed by Ang Lee. (Oh, what a come down from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon!) The movie starred Eric Bana. (Bill Bixby had died in 1993.)
When Planet Hulk appeared in 2006, I tried to tell myself that at least it was only animé. (I’m wincing to hear myself say such a thing. But this was a couple of years before I discovered animé.) It didn’t represent the same market as live action. I didn’t have to take it seriously.
I can almost see you rolling your eyes, muttering, “What has she got against The Hulk? Yeah, he’s ugly and stupid, but so what? That’s what makes it fun!” Some of you may even quip, “What? Does she close her eyes every time he comes on in an Avengers movie?” (Where he is played by Mark Ruffalo.) Well, yes. That’s exactly what I do. And for that very reason, I am not a huge fan of the Avengers. I just hate The Hulk. I can’t offer any apologies or explanations. It’s visceral. Even his name is annoying. (He got it from a comic book character named The Heap who was a large green swamp monster.)
Obviously, I was kidding myself. The Incredible Hulk, now starring Edward Norton, hit the screens in 2008. This movie features some incredible transition sequences. At least, so I hear. I haven’t seen it, but I understand that as much money, time and production skill goes into Bruce Banner’s transformation as into the actual presentation of The Hulk, himself.
I’ve gone on at such length, railing against the Hulk, that you must be wondering if I’m EVER going to get to She-Hulk, Attorney at Law. Thanks for your patience. We’ll get to that now. I just wanted you to understand my qualms. Was turning something I hated into a woman really going to make me feel better about it?
As those of you who are already watching could have told me, I shouldn’t have worried. The show does appear to be based on a comic book. (Wha!?! I didn’t even know there was a She-Hulk comic! – which probably tells you how long it’s been since I followed comics.)
In fact there have been several, starting with The Savage She-Hulk, who – as artist Mike Vosberg remarked – “was never overly attractive” and who ran from 1980 until 1982. (My husband insisted that I needed to clarify this. That done, I’d like to skip past the reboots and variations, please.)
She-Hulk #1 (the current incarnation) came out last January, which suggests to me that they already knew the show was coming, and that the comic and the show will, therefore, stay in synch in terms of tone and general content, if not story line. Or maybe not. The panel I saw in an on-line review seemed to be leading in a different direction. And no, I’m not going to go find out. The review wasn’t hugely positive, and I’ve been out of comics for a long time.
But the show is a delight. It is NOT a superhero action show. It’s a comedy, and it’s a lawyer show, albeit one set in the Marvel universe. And, while She-Hulk is big and green (6 foot 7, not counting the stiletto heels) she is NOT ugly and stupid. She’s beautiful, and buff – but not bulgy – and very smart.
Jennifer spends most of the first episode arguing with her cousin Bruce. She is more than a little displeased to find he has infected her with hulkism. She does not want to be a hulk. She doesn’t know how she’s going to fit this into her career or her life, and she flatly refuses to become a superhero. Indeed, most of those action shots you’ve seen on-line are taken from scenes in which she is merely enjoying a workout or sparring with cousin Bruce.
Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) she gains a fair amount of control over when she transforms, and does not shed her brains when she does so. Therefore, when her boss wants her to come to work as She-Hulk, she does so, while remaining fully competent to argue a case.
She really does try to duck public attention, but – of course – soon finds that the world is much more interested in She-Hulk than in Jennifer. However hard she tries to focus on a normal life, she finds herself caught up in the image. She lands a prestigious new job, only to be informed she will be in charge of the super-hero litigation department. Autograph hounds pursue her, wannabe’s are constantly trying to copy her, and media vultures try to shove themselves in front of her. There is nothing so ordinary that it is not contaminated. Where can she even find business suits in her size? And like any attractive person/celebrity (whatever their gender) she has a lot of trouble extracting a decent date from the crowd of creeps and losers trying to attach themselves romantically.
In short, She-Hulk, Attorney at Law really is a comedy/lawyer show. And the bottom line in any comedy show is the writing. Is it funny? Yes, it is. There are multiple writers in multiple functions, but I think the credit for the dialogue can go Dana Schwartz, overseen by creator Jessica Gao. Kudos. This really is a hilarious show. I’m now an addict.
Review by Michaele Jordan: Friends, let me tell you about one of my favorite TV shows. But I must admit to you up front that it’s not SF/F. Extraordinary Attorney Woo is, as I assume you’ve deduced from the title, a lawyer show. But it’s a KOREAN lawyer show, which should indicate that is NOT run of the mill. You’ve probably heard me mention before that I love Korean TV. Especially when kitsune are involved. There are no kitsune in Extraordinary Attorney Woo, but there are whales which is almost as good.
Remember Boston Legal from 2004? It wasn’t SF/F, but most of us watched it, if only for William Shatner and Rene Auberjonois. (Personally, I’d have watched paint dry, if it starred Rene Auberjonois. I miss him so.) You may recall that it also featured Christian Clemenson, as an autistic lawyer. (He also co-starred in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., but that’s another post.) More than one episode focused on the unjust stigma he faced, when his work and integrity were ignored and he was judged solely on a few mannerisms.
I mention all this because Extraordinary Attorney Woo is also about an autistic lawyer. One thing needs to be very plain: there is no known demonstrable link between autism and intellectual disability. (In fact there’s no verified cause for autism at all, although research has categorically disproved some ugly myths – including that nonsense about vaccines.) And yet the two conditions do sometimes overlap. Attorney Woo is NOT intellectually disabled—just the opposite. She’s brilliant. But some people assume she is.
Unlike Boston Legal, Extraordinary Attorney Woo confronts this element of the issue directly, by having Attorney Woo called into a case in which the accused is both autistic and intellectually disabled. All the other characters have assumed that she will have some common feeling with this troubled client, but Attorney Woo doesn’t generally deal in feeling, common or otherwise. Instead – knowing her client’s weaknesses, and tendencies – she manages to communicate with him, something which apparently no one else has actually accomplished.
Park Eun-bin stars as Woo Young-woo (The name is the same back to front as front to back, she earnestly informs everyone she meets.) Ms. Park may be one of the best actresses I’ve EVER seen – if this were an American show, she’d be a shoo-in for an Emmy. She’s on a par with Tatiana Maslany, whose performance(s) in Orphan Black thrilled us all. (Let us hope that She-Hulk will prove worthy of her!)
Ms. Park telegraphs Young-woo’s autism with broad physical moves, whether she’s bopping down the street with her headphones on, or taking an extra moment to prepare herself before going through doorways. Her performance reminds us that Young-woo dances to a different rhythm, constantly twisting her fingers, walking with clunky, hesitant caution through unfamiliar places, steadfastly dodging handshakes and eye contact.
She does not show emotion – rather she declines to respond to emotion, conveying in the process a strong internal response to emotional situations. Her face goes still, and her eyes look inward, trying to calculate the parameters and meaning of an occurrence. And yet she is charming. (Spoiler alert: You will fall in love with her.) The actress presents her with a guileless lack of pretension which I, for one, find riveting.
The stories are simple, involving clients with limited recourse to or understanding of the law, oftentimes finding themselves at odds with large and seemingly inhuman corporate legal teams. Or at least that’s how the series starts. My spies assure me that, as the show builds, its story lines grow more complex and sophisticated. I can hardly wait!I prefer an “ordinary people” approach to story-telling—grandiose stereotypes tend to shatter my suspension of disbelief. If you prefer more realistic characters, too, then I invite you to give this show a try. It’s on Netflix.
*** Addendum
I wrote the above paragraphs ten days ago, thinking I should wait until after Chicon 8 to post them, rather than intruding on the upcoming Hugo Awards. But then, I saw an article about Extraordinary Attorney Woo on the front page of the New York Times! Granted, it was the Sunday edition; granted also, it was just a quick squib at the bottom of the page, directing the reader onward; but still – the front page of the New York Times!?! Furthermore, the squib did not just direct me to a review on the entertainment page. It sent me to a featured article in the International News section.
It seems that Extraordinary Attorney Woo has created quite a stir in South Korea. It’s very popular, but some consider it controversial. Both the government and the media in South Korea are currently trying to promote good mental health and provide assistance to those who need it, especially since the tragic suicide of musical star Jonghyun. But apparently some feel that the issues surrounding mental health are still being swept under the rug, and that the neurodivergent are still kept invisible.
With that in mind, some autistics and their advocates (I’m not saying how many – the numbers are still in dispute) were disturbed that such a feel-good program (and there’s no denying, Extraordinary Attorney Woo is a very feel-good program) presented a dishonestly rosy picture, and might encourage viewers to withhold much needed support and assistance.
And on the third hand, some say the New York Times is just indulging in clickbait, and that the Korean fan media reflects none of the above. I don’t pretend to know – I’m just gossiping.
Whatever the underlying politics, I can state as fact: Extraordinary Attorney Woo is a truly excellent show and you would be denying yourself a great pleasure if you didn’t give it a try! And maybe grab a plate of gimbap to snack on while you’re watching.
By Michaele Jordan: Who’s back?” you ask. Spear and Fang, of course! But perhaps you have not heard of Genddy Tartakovsky’s Primal? (Apparently, Mr. Tartakovsky has become such a big name since making the first three Hotel Transylvania films that his name must now be included in new titles.) I never saw the Hotel Transylvania films, but I thought Symbionic Titans was fabulous, and I loved Samurai Jack so much that I bought the disks instead of just recording them from the TV – which may not sound like much to you, but it’s a big deal to me. I’m a serious cheapskate. He’s won a lot of awards. (None of them Hugos.)
Which brings us back to Primal (Cartoon Network/Adult Swim). Season One first aired (or rather started to air) on October 8, 2019, with five episodes dropping in a clump. They did not appear online. They ran for four days, and vanished. The last episode shown ended unhappily, but Primal was a dark show. A tragic ending was plausible. So, when no further episodes materialized, I thought it was over. A mini-series.
Then, a year later, five more episodes dropped. They were not widely advertised (maybe not at all.) The show ran for a month, and stopped again. I tell you this because I looked it up on Wikipedia. I knew nothing of it at the time.
Season Two did not appear until July, 2022, this time preceded by multiple commercials. I eagerly set my DVDR, only to be utterly bewildered when I watched the first episode. The two protagonists spent the entire episode searching for a third character of whom I’d never heard. It turned out that the third character had been introduced in the season finale (episode ten) of Season One. That’s how I found out that there had been five episodes aired in 2020.
It took a bit of searching, but I did eventually manage to dig them out of On Demand. (Mind you, I’m glad On Demand exists, but it’s not always user friendly.)
By now, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim seems to have learned their lesson. (Or maybe some rich producer gave them enough money to upgrade.) Primal is now available on HBO Max, with each episode dropping the day after it premieres on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim. And HBO Max – bless their little digital hearts – is also carrying Season One, in its entirety.
Now that I have rolled my eyes at how easy you have it these days, and regaled you with the difficulties I had to undergo (Hey, I’m old. That’s what old people do.) let me assure you that watching Primal is worth your while.
You should be aware that it is nothing like what you normally expect of anime. There are no perky school-girls or gung-ho boy pilots in Primal. And there is absolutely nothing sweet about it –except that it is so beautifully drawn that it’s hypnotic. There are monsters, but they are not from outer space or another dimension, they are from the late Mesozoic. You should think carefully about whether the kids should be allowed to watch it. Not because of the sexual content – there is none – but because of the graphic violence, and the bleak, grim vision of life. Like Hobbes said, “Ugly, brutish, and short is the life of man.”
This is an alternate history story, in which humans evolved in time to cohabit the earth with dinosaurs. So there’s no clever dialogue. The Neanderthal protagonist, Spear, does not talk. He grunts. He has formed an unlikely friendship (there’s a back story for that) with Fang, whom the animators label as a Tyrannosaur (although she looks more like an Albertosaurus, Daspletosaurus or Gorgosaurus).
The setting is not just an unspoiled earth, but an earth still young and raw, and only barely inhabited. Most of the flora and fauna look authentic (or at least like the pictures in the earth science textbooks). And Mr. Tartakovsy is a master of landscaping animation, as he plainly demonstrated in Samurai Jack. The imagery is intense and compelling
The stories are simple. There are so many dangers in in this gargantuan wilderness you don’t need to make much up. But, just in case, Mr. Tartakovsy throws in magic, too. Again, it’s not much like what you expect to see in anime. It’s dark and primitive – not so much evil as pre-good-and-evil.
As I’m sure you’ve already deduced, I love this show. I want to see it on next year’s Hugo list. But I have to admit, it’s very dark – maybe too much so for some. But, hey! We are fans! The brave and bold! Give it a try!
By Michaele Jordan: You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, I posted (or rather I started to post) my personal take on the Hugo nominees for Best Novel, but I only got through the first three. So here I am, back with the remaining three candidates.
The next book in the line-up was She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan (Tor / Mantle). I loved it. Just loved it. This book is glorious. Ms. Parker-Chan says that, having despaired of finding a decent translation of the Chinese historical sagas that she loved, she decided to write her own. And that is what this is.
The story is sprawling and complex, driven by characters who are all simply trying to get what they want. Sometimes what they want may seem unreasonable to us, but to them, that’s not a meaningful objection. They don’t have to justify what they want, they just want it. If they can, they will even fling armies around and slaughter thousands to get it.
Although the bulk of the characters are either women or damaged men, it is well over a hundred pages before anyone happens to notice that the inferior status and cruel treatment of women (and others) is perhaps unfair. The insight is shrugged off. In the medieval Chinese world, justice is not a meaningful concept. It’s simply non-existent. Parents are not just. Kings are not just. Life is not just. Even heaven is not just. Most women are far too busy trying to survive to concern themselves with the fairness, or lack thereof, of their situation. It is what it is.
For example (and this is not a spoiler, it’s chapter one) the protagonist, a little girl, is practically the only girl-child in her village. The land has been trapped in drought and famine for her entire life. Food is always short. When a family doesn’t have enough food for all the children, it is not shared. It is given to the son. The daughter just doesn’t get any. So she starves.
It is a testament to her family’s prosperity that they still have a surviving daughter. She helps the little boys dig up crickets to supplement the family diet. (She’s actually much better at it than her brother.) When she gets home, her parents take the crickets away and give them to her brother. This was horrible, of course. But it was horribly truthful. Justice is not an essential, or even a commonplace. It’s a luxury, and a very rare one, at that.
I also loved the magic. It is nothing like the magic you see in any western novel, where magic is simply a non-material technology. This Chinese magic is strange, subtle and otherworldly. Nobody blasts power around. (Thank you, Ms. Parker-Chan!) Frequently, it’s not even useful. At most, some people see ghosts, but the ghosts don’t seem to see them. (That’s a good thing.) Neither the reader, nor, I suspect, the characters, really knew how it is wielded or what the effects of it would turn out to be. This is what I’ve always known in my heart magic is like. Inscrutable and more dangerous than practical.
The only fault I found in this book is that the ending is bit abrupt and not entirely satisfactory. I got the feeling she just cut it off at the closest thing she could find to a stopping place, because she had to wrap it up. So I looked it up, and it is, indeed, Volume One of a duology. I do not doubt that she needs another 500 pages to finish it properly. I eagerly await Volume Two.
The fifth Hugo candidate was Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir (Ballantine / Del Rey). If you read Mr. Weir’s The Martian, (or even just saw the movie) then you already have a pretty good idea of his approach to story-telling. Romance is not a story. (Actually, I agree with him on that.) Pompous speeches are not a story. Fight-scenes are not a story—not unless their outcome significantly changes what comes next. (Think about it. Barring that half-hour all-or-nothing battle at the end of the movie, where the entire cast has to band together to stop one world-destroying bad guy, how often does a fight scene really change the story line? And does that last battle really have to go on for so long? Yes, the specials are impressive, but there are fans in the audience who have to go to the bathroom.)
Mr. Weir knows what he wants in a story. He wants to see one really smart scientist come up against a serious problem, and solve it like a detective, by thinking his way out. (I’ll bet he’s very fond of mysteries.) So that’s what he writes. Writing the book you want to read is what writers do.
In The Martian the problem the scientist had to solve was simple and basic. He needed to figure out how to stay alive in utterly hostile territory. His team had inadvertently left him behind when they evacuated, leaving him alone on a planet only barely habitable, with insufficient supplies of the basic necessities of life. It would be four years before rescue arrived.
So he ‘works the problem,’ as he expresses it. He faces each life-threatening issue as it arises. He declines to panic, and thinks each one through carefully. Some of his attempted solutions don’t work as hoped. Again, he declines to panic, and rethinks them even more carefully.
This low-key, thoughtful problem-solving caught the public eye partly because it was so hugely original. When was the last time you saw a film – with no fight scenes! – in which the hero solves the problem by being smart? The acclaim was well deserved, but it presented Mr. Weir with his own next problem: how to top it.
He remained true to himself. He wrote The Martian because that was the kind of book he wanted to read. Project Hail Mary is also the kind of book he likes to read, a book where one really smart scientist comes up against a serious problem, and solves it like a detective, by thinking his way out. But this time, he made the problem much bigger than personal survival – the extinction of the human race.
Because the problem was so much bigger, his smart protagonist needed international support to build the necessary space ship. (I found the story got a little weak here. Surely international support and cooperation for the draconian means by which Project Hail Mary was assembled is unlikely. Yes, the end of the world was at stake. But it’s at stake, right here and now with climate change, and that hasn’t persuaded the world to unite under one banner.)
But that isn’t really very important. The answer to the problem is at Tau Ceti, thirteen light years away, so the brilliant scientist has to go there, all alone. (He was supposed to have companions, but they came to a sad end.) And when he gets there he finds a friend. Not a human friend, of course, but an alien whose people are suffering a similar problem to the one facing earth. Our hero is delighted. First contact! Alien life! He does not say anything about, ‘oh thank goodness (he’s a teacher, his language is squeaky clean) I’m not alone anymore!’ He doesn’t seem to suffer from loneliness, despite the loss of his travelling companions.
There’s somewhat more action in this book than there was in The Martian, because there are so many terrible accidents possible in outer space, but the book remains primarily about the problem-solving. The explanation for the peril facing Earth, is detailed and carefully thought out. The data he acquires at Tau Ceti is also detailed and carefully thought out. The solution he works toward is painstakingly reasoned. I will tell you nothing about these things, as that would be serious spoilage. They are what Mr. Weir wrote this book to say. The science geeks among us – and we have many – will be in seventh heaven. I am pleased to report that the ending (or perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as the coda) was simultaneously unexpected yet inevitable.
As for me, I guess I’m a little too susceptible to stories with action and emotion. I liked this book – really, I did! – but there were times when reading it was like being locked in a closet with Mr. Wizard.
This year’s final offering is A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine (Tor). It took me longer to get through this than I originally expected. The truth is (and I blush to confess it) I had not realized it was a sequel, let alone the sequel to a previous Hugo winner. (How did I miss that? What was I doing in 2020 that I didn’t read the Hugo nominees like I [almost] always do?) But settling down in my comfy chair, with my cup of tea and a fat new book, I was shocked to see: eagerly awaited to sequel to hugo winner a memory called empire emblazoned across the cover.
I just don’t read sequels out of order. I can’t make myself do it. (Borderline autism, perhaps?) I set the book down, jumped up and rushed over to the computer to order A Memory Called Empire from the library. When I got back, I picked up Project Hail Mary, instead, although I had previously intended to let my husband read it first.
Perhaps I should have broken my rule, just this once. Because – and I need to get this down up front, before misunderstandings arise – I thought A Desolation Called Peace was an excellent book. That said, I have to admit I didn’t think it was as good as A Memory Called Empire, which was just too good to top. There’s a reason it took the Hugo in 2020.
For starters, naturally everything in A Memory Called Empire was new. While we’ve all seen interstellar empires before, the whole complicated Teixcalaanli society, with its overwhelming conviction of its own rightness, contrasted with frequent hints of decadence, was fabulous.
The elegance of the poetry contests and the gilded architecture, the repeated floral imagery always used to represent empire, the constant literary and historical references that every citizen seemed to know, even the golden police: all invoked the insidious beauty of empires in our own past. I frequently caught myself reflecting on the oh-so-sophisticated charms and conceits of 18th century France. We humans know all too well how beautiful empire can look, even though we also know how badly it generally ends.
Of course, all of this is still there in A Desolation Called Peace, but by then we’re into the endgame. The emphasis is more on Stationer society, and too many reminders of the beauties of Teixcalaan would just have made the poverty and cramped quarters of Lsel look worse – and it already looked bad enough, what with its processed food and its corrupt politicians.
Much the same is true of the imago, the central concept of the first book. Here, Ms. Martine set out and explored a genuinely new, original and exciting SF concept, and we shared her fascination. I was particularly struck by her portrayal of how difficult it was for the imperial society to grasp the concept, while it was second nature to the Stationer society, forcing the reader to pick it up from the cross clues. The technique worked beautifully. But in the second book, we already knew about the imagoes, and their main story function was to put the protagonist in danger.
The story line of A Desolation Called Peace revolves around the appearance of an alien species of monsters. Ms. Martine does a superb job with the monsters – they are creepy, gooey, scary (very, very scary) and utterly mysterious. It really does take an entire book to resolve what they are, how they function, and how to communicate with them. That done, I admit, I found the ending a little pat. “And a little child shall lead them.” But I’m guessing that others will find it wonderfully touching.
Also – there’s always an also, isn’t there? – I was troubled by the fact that the ending did not include the resolution of the protagonist’s two very pressing personal problems. (But there was time for adolescent romantic gushing?) So, I’m guessing that there will be a third book. The empire may have to collapse completely in that one.
[Introduction: In Part 1 of her overview, Michaele Jordan reviews half of the Best Novel Hugo finalists: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers, Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki, and A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark.]
By Michaele Jordan: Like many of you, I’ve been immersed in my Hugo reading. (I don’t always manage to get to Worldcon – I am hugely excited about being able to vote!) Last week I was discussing my readings with a friend and they suggested I share my views here. They said, “You’ve been thinking so hard about the books you read. You really should write it all down, and post it!” And they’re right – do think hard about what I read. Why else would I read it?
You may be wondering why I am working so hard to justify writing a post about the Hugo nominees. Truth to tell, I’m a little afraid of how you’ll all take it.
When I was a kid, everybody in my family was an addicted reader. And since we all lived together, we couldn’t afford to get angry whenever we didn’t agree on a book, i.e., all the time. Instead we debated – explaining our views, dissecting the points of opposition, and searching for common ground got to be more entertaining than TV (except on Twilight Zone or Star Trek nights).
But fandom isn’t like that. It shocked me to my soul the first time I said at a con that I didn’t care for a book and a supposedly fellow fan snarled, “Well, that’s just stupid,” and stalked off. Sometimes flame wars even erupt just because two fans disagree, not on a book, but on their favorite character in the book.
So I hereby state, firmly and unequivocally, that I know I am just one fan, that I have no authority to tell others what to read or think, and that I am merely expressing my personal opinions. I bear no ill will to, and pass no judgement on, those who disagree with me.
That said, I’ll start with The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager / Hodder & Stoughton) because that’s the first one I read.
I found this to be a high-end mid-grade novel. I admit I tend to expect award nominees to be better than mid-grade, even high-end mid-grade. But I am not saying that this was a bad book, just more formulaic than I care for.
We’ve all seen the formula many times. A group of travelers collects at some common point – a bus stop, a hotel lobby or a police station, – where for some reason they are temporarily detained. Each detainee has their own story, which includes a personal issue in need of a resolution. In the privacy of their mutual anonymity, they reveal their secrets and face—or conclusively decline to face – their demons, and they make decisions. Then they are released to go their separate ways, with most of them changed, for better or for worse.
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within does not deviate from this outline by a hair. Three space travelling aliens are gathered at stopover facility between wormholes, which is owned and operated by a fourth alien. They become temporarily trapped by a technical difficulty in the transport system. They are all in a hurry (except the host, who has a terminally cute youngling) with plans that cannot withstand extended delay, not to mention uncomfortable political divisions.
One alien has a frail companion waiting for them on their ship, another is racing to a forbidden lover, and a third is in hiding from dangerous enemies. The host frets that they cannot make everybody happy, and the youngling is terribly injured in a foolish mishap resulting from misguided curiosity. But not to worry – it all comes right in the end.
The book’s greatest strength is its detailed visual depiction of its aliens, who may have perfectly comprehensible human-like emotions but are extremely peculiar to look at. The description of the youngling lumbering across a room with a tray is laugh-out-loud funny, and the giant caterpillar was so convincing it set off my insect phobia. The complete absence of humans (barring one off-stage) was a nice touch.
From there, I moved on to read Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki (Tor / St Martin’s Press). This book was more intriguing. Things happened that I had not seen coming. (Some people always want to know what’s going to happen next, may even want it so much that they’ll skip ahead and read the last chapter first. I’m not one of them.)
For starters, Light From Uncommon Stars offers an interesting blend of science fiction and fantasy. (The only time I have ever seen these two so inextricably intertwined was in Charley Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky.)There are aliens from another galaxy, and there are demons negotiating for human souls. And it all circulates around a Southern California donut shop with a giant donut mounted on the roof.
On the one hand, we have Shuzuki Satomi, a brilliant and beautiful violinist who has not performed in many years. Instead she teaches. Her last six students have gone on to the highest pinnacles of international acclaim. And unhappy ends. Very unhappy ends. Hellish, in fact. Now she is searching for a seventh student. But she is hard to please, and has turned down numerous ambitious and gifted young musicians. Instead she inexplicably takes in Katrina, a troubled transgender teen with no formal training, on the run from an abusive father.
On the other hand, we have Lan Tran and her family of refugees, who run the above-mentioned donut shop. It used to be very popular, but since Lan Tran acquired it, its customers are drifting away. It’s not that the donuts aren’t good. Just the opposite, they are just as good as they used to be. Just exactly as good. Down to the last molecule. Because she copies it, molecule by molecule in her replicator. So it lacks that tiny sparkle of home-made originality.
The hand shake between these two scenes occurs by accident. Lan Tran’s family is secretly building a space portal inside the giant donut – but not so they can return home. Just the opposite. It’s so they can persuade the forces of the empire to stay away. And when the engines are being tested, they make beautiful music, which Shuzuki happens to overhear. Beautiful music is the only thing that really matters to Shuzuki. It is her only refuge from the demon she made a deal with, and from the memories of the six students she fed to that demon to keep it away.
Katrina does not need galactic empires or hungry demons to require a refuge from pain. Her ordinary human life has given her all the punishment this world has to offer. She pours her misery into her clunky old pawn-shop violin, playing tunes from video games, and finds more strength than she ever dreamed of possessing.
Light From Uncommon Stars is not a flawless book. There are a few little problems: Katrina’s gender issues are so overwhelming they tend to belittle the pain of a drunken, abusive father; her ability to master Bartok without any classical training, or even familiarity, whatsoever, is a bit too much of a stretch. But those are nits. It is a fine book. It shows us that, superhero fiction to the contrary, the victory of the human spirit is neither easy nor cheap, and certainly not inevitable. But it is possible. The weight of the world is overwhelming, but it can be endured – and that, in itself – is a great victory.
And then I turned to A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom / Orbit UK). Heavy sigh. This is the book that made me worry if I dared be honest with you. For me it was a DNF. I tried. Really, I did. After all, it was a Hugo nominee. Maybe I didn’t have to love it, but I certainly had to give it serious consideration. I don’t usually give a book more than thirty pages to capture my interest. I may even toss it down the basement steps after ten pages if the opening is stupid enough. But for the sake of my responsibility to the Hugos, I gave A Master of Djinn a hundred pages, before I gave up.
I can almost hear you protesting, “But it won the Nebula.” I know. It won the Nebula. And while I am trying desperately to remember that everybody is entitled to their opinion, I still can’t help but feel that’s a gross miscarriage of justice.
So what was so wrong with it? I promise to keep this civil. To give P. Djèlí Clark full credit where it’s due, the setting – modern Cairo in an alternate history world – is excellent. His choice of the turning point in the alternate history, and its consequences were intriguing. He describes a colorful combination of historic streets and architecture (which, I presume, is reasonably accurate since he went to so much trouble with it), and a modern (sometimes bizarrely so) infra-structure.
I am also confident that his presentation of the hierarchy of magical beings and the Egyptian pantheon is accurate; certainly he knows more of them than I, after only a little dabbling, do. I understand he has written a number of short stories set in this world, and he knows it well.
The story is a magical mystery which, I regret to say, I found pedestrian. In the opening scene, the original murder was impressive and mysterious, but he revealed the magical methodology – by far the most interesting element of the crime – very early on, leaving the reader to slog through all the usual whodunit clues. But this, in and of itself, would not have caused me to give up on the book. After all, there might be a last-minute clever twist.
An author friend of mine once told me, “If you just give one character a limp, another character an accent, and make the third use a lot of big words, everybody will say you’re a genius at characterization.” That appears to be Mr. Clark’s approach. Characters are portrayed primarily by the outfits they wear. One woman is strident and mannishly but stylishly dressed. Another is very feminine, and gushes and blushes. I cared nothing for either of them. But this did not cause me to give up either. Perhaps they would develop later.
In the end, it was Mr. Clark’s inadequate English skills that did me in. There were awkward phrasings on every page. Actual grammatical errors were almost as frequent. He mixed up ‘who’ and ‘which’. Occasionally his syntax and vocabulary were so tortured that I simply could not figure out what he meant. His attempt to describe a hexagon, without calling it a hexagon, was mind boggling. (At least I think he meant a hexagon.)
But in the end, that didn’t matter. Reading is (or should be) a pleasure, a matter of surrendering to the rhythm of the words. But if you have to stop every couple of paragraphs to reconstruct incomprehensible phraseology, reading becomes a chore, even a burden. So I gave up. My apologies if you loved it.
This post has gone on longer than I expected, so I’ll draw to a close. I’ll be back soon, if you’ll have me, with my thoughts on the rest of the nominees for Best Novel. So please keep an eye out for Part 2!
