Monthly Archives: December 2008

From all of me to all of you

Some Disney character that's only popular in Scandinavia

I like to give books as presents, to the frustration of everyone I know. Who has time to read?! I would also like to give some books to you, the readers, but I don’t know who you are. So I’ve adressed these gifts more generally, and then you can pick whichever tag fits. You must buy (or steal) the book yourself.

To a political pundit: Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein

To a mumorpeger-playing alpha geek: Halting State, by Charles Stross

To someone who needs to quit whining: The Discourses of Epictetus

To someone who has lost faith in fantasy novels: The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

To myself at 10: The Adventures of Endill Swift, by Stuart McDonald

To myself at 16: Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, by Spider Robinson

To someone who takes things too lightly: Shikasta, by Doris Lessing

To someone who takes things too seriously: Tales of the Dying Earth, by Jack Vance

To someone interested in early 20th century Europe: The Pyat Quartet, by Michael Moorcock

To someone rather clever: Slaughtermatic, by Steve Aylett

To a teenage rebel (or someone you want to make into one): Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow

To the discerning short story reader: The Golden Apples of the Sun, by Ray Bradbury

Happy annual celebration of the Jesus child deity!

Here he lyes in the certainty of the moft glorious refurrection

In Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, a toddler, escaped from an assassin sent to murder his family, finds safety in a graveyard. He grows up among the dead and the undead, with ghosts as parents, a vampire guardian, and a witch as friend. Beneath the graveyard lie older evils, and in the outside world the assassin is still searching.

It’s a children’s book, and, like all good children’s books, it works even better as an adult’s book.

Some people believe you should protect kids from the morbid, because it will scar their fragile minds. These people have clearly forgotten what it was like. Morbid books take kids seriously, they don’t lie.

Gaiman’s novels sometimes feel too neatly plotted. Events fit precisely together, like the output of a plot machine. Anansi Boys had that problem. The Graveyard Book has some of it, especially when the main plot is wrapped up. What works best here is the mood and the theme: The graveyard and the boy.

The movie version of Coraline, Gaiman’s previous children’s book, is due out in February. If it does well, The Graveyard Book is visual and short enough to make a natural followup. (But please leave American Gods alone.)

Each man worships himself

Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself, book one of The First Law, is a fine yarn. It’s not stupid, and it doesn’t make me cringe. That’s good.

Fantasy attracts many bad authors, and undiscerning readers who help those authors stay in business. With this debut novel, Abercrombie isn’t yet one of the good authors, but he’s headed in the right direction.

The anti-hero of The Blade Itself is Logen, a Northern Barbarian. There’s also a Southern Barbarian, a wizard (complete w/harassed apprentice), a torturer, and a conceited fencer from a Decadent Civilization. The usual. But it’s not stupid. Sword & sorcery is like westerns: A familiar scenery you can write good or bad characters into. These are good characters.

The mood is irreverent and brutal. There are worrying hints of an Epic storyline in the following two books, but I think Abercrombie will manage. The First Law is not going to be great, but I’ll settle for smart and enjoyable.

An idea about the internet

The internet is to the city as the city is to the small town, and the small town to the countryside.

In functionality: It’s larger, faster, more anonymous, more specialized, more complex. Some new things become possible, some old things difficult.

In scariness: Isolation, predators, freaks, Angry Internet People. Uncaring and lawless. Too large, too fast.

In attitude: A mixture of arrogance and nostalgia towards the simpler life. In response, resentment and envy. “How quaint and charming!” vs “Who do they think they are?”

A city person goes out in the country to relax, and dream of leaving it all behind for a more authentic and natural life. An internet person finds the same quiet in the city when their gadgets are turned off. They dream of leaving them off forever, to live the authentic urban life.

Attempts to live these dreams will probably lead to boredom, possibly to happiness.

30′s movies marathon – part 6

I’m no Angel (1933, USA) – Flimsy shreds of plot wrapped around a luscious body of nudge-nudge one-liners. Watched it all. But why does Mae West remind me of Bugs Bunny? This needs further investigation!

Picture Snatcher
(1933, USA) – Donald Duck employment story with James Cagney as the rogue who becomes the star photographer of a disreputable newspaper, beating his arrogant competitors to the scoop by being willing to go further than anyone else. Not good, but it’s hard to hate Cagney (or Donald). Watched: 40 minutes.

Zéro de Counduite (1933, France) – Boarding school dramedy. Am I watching these wrong? Maybe it’s a cultural barrier. The movie doesn’t seem bad, I just don’t care. Watched: 15 minutes.

Sagebrush Trail
(1933, USA) – There was a time in Hollywood when even the worst westerns were fairly good. 1933 wasn’t it. Still new to acting, John Wayne stares and smiles like some tourist who’s been let in on the set. Watched: 13 minutes.

The Invisible Man (1933, USA) – A visually challenged scientist is driven to madness and terrorism by the prying eyes of peculiar British villagers. They won’t even let him lock his own room! It’s no wonder he gets angry (and drives trains off the tracks etc.) Watched it all.

Ladies They Talk About (1933, USA) – Swaggering bank robber Barbara Stanwyck manipulates a naive preacher. Watched it all. IMDB reviewers say the plot is stupid, but apart from the lenient prison conditions it’s actually smart and well written.

The cryptic suits that mark Northampton’s deck: Flames, Churches, Heads, and Dogs

Alan Moore has also written a novel. It wasn’t enough for him to be the world’s greatest comic book writer? He must put authors to shame as well?

Yes. Yes, he must.

The stories in Voice of the Fire span 6000 years, but only a small geographical area. It’s sort of a mystical history of Northampton, told by odd and abnormal people: a retarded boy, a sociopath, a decapitated head, a witch, two madmen. The stories are unconnected, except through common themes such as cripples, detached heads, people burned alive, and the magic attached to the place itself. The events of one story become the legends of the next, echoing through dreams and visions. And the final narrator is Alan Moore himself, another odd and abnormal Northampton resident.

Moore doesn’t make it easy for us. The first story is written in a strange, but consistent, grammar, so that every sentence is a riddle. As in, 50 pages of “Fire’s black bout of he’s eyes. Fire’s blood on of he’s horns.” First-time readers of Alan Moore will give up, and should first get to know him through his comics. (No, the movie versions don’t count.) Fans will know that it’s worth it, because Alan Moore is a genius.

But with RyanAir instead of longboats

This is a stupid green hatI went to Dublin this weekend to expand my social network at Google’s European headquarters. This is to prepare for the day when they turn Evil. With one friend (so far) on the inside, I, for one, will now welcome our new Google overlords.

The Irish, I learned, have two written languages, which are English and Gaelic. They have one spoken language, but I’m not sure what it is. This is the first of many stupid jokes in this post. Here’s another:

The Irish drive on the wrong side of the road, and it might KILL YOU. Okay, that wasn’t so funny.

When you visit a friend in Ireland, they will force you to drink Guinness. Even if you don’t like Guinness. They will then take you to visit the Guiness museum, where there’s a floor for each of the six reasons why Guinness is THE MOST AWESOME BEER IN THE WORLD. One of the reasons is their founder, Arthur Guinness. The founder of Guinness is THE MOST AWESOME FOUNDER IN THE WORLD.

While you’re there, you can laugh at all the tourists, who paid 15 euro for what’s essentially an hour long infomercial. Stupid tourists!

You’ll also be taken to the Temple Bar area, which has the most authentic fake Irish pubs in the world. They play Irish folk music. Who plays Irish folk music?!

My tip: Visit the Kilmainhaim Gaol. It’s history the way we all love it, cruel and unfair.

To celebrate the sun’s gallant efforts to survive

Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels are set in the last years of the Sun’s life, when technology has given way to (or become) magic.

The series begins on a dark romantic note with The Dying Earth (1950). Earth’s remaining people live a capricious fairy tale existence, subject to wizards, monsters, and random cruelty. One moment you’re happily torturing some unlucky traveller. The next you’ve had your eyes gouged out for use in an art project.

With The Eyes of the Overworld (1966) and Cugel’s Saga (1983), Vance turns the end into light farce, which suits it better. The protagonist is Cugel the Clever, a trickster who travels the world in search of revenge. The joke is on everyone, both Cugel and the people he cheats, robs, or accidentally causes the brutal death of. Everyone is a fool or a crook, and deserve whatever they get. At least Cugel thinks so.

The satire in Rhialto the Marvellous (1984) is more subtle, and less funny. At one point, thousands of youths are preserved in capsules, to awaken in an expected Golden Age a hundred centuries later. As the time of awakening approaches they’re discovered by cannibals, who treat them as a convenient source of freshly preserved meat. Yum!

Vance’s characters find little to admire in the end-times. Nations, fads and True Religions (And We Mean It This Time) have come and gone for aeons, but people remain the same. What then is there left to believe in? Vance’s attitude is that when everything is past, everything is farce.

30′s movies marathon – part 5

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933, USA) – Song, dance, witticisms and a flimsy plot about show business. Hey, this formula might have future! (Multiple female leads who talk about other things than men: Not so much of a future.) Watched it all.

Shanghai Express (1932, USA) – Marlene Dietrich is all decadent on the Beijing-Shanghai train, which carries its all-white passengers through some tedious little civil war or whatever. Ah, the golden age of cinema. Watched: 19 minutes.

Freaks (1932, USA) – Good idea: Cast a movie with misshapen humans, pretend you’re doing it to educate the world about their plight. Bad idea: Make it really really boring. (This has been another Good idea / Bad idea). Watched: 14 minutes.

Der Sieg des Glaubens (1933, Germany) – Leni Riefenstahl’s clumsy precursor to Triumf des Willes. Makes marching in a Nazi rally look not at all fun. Watched: 30 minutes. IMDB reviewers say you shouldn’t downrate a film just because it’s Evil.

Bureau of Missing Persons (1933, USA) – Violent cop learns manners from the kind, public spirited folks at the Bureau of Missing Persons. Could be the pilot of a modern family-friendly cop show. Watched: 19 minutes.

20 000 Years in Sing Sing (1933, USA) – Prototype of the uplifting prison drama. With Spencer Tracy as the tough guy who isn’t so bad after all. All he needs is a bit of Loving Discipline from the wise and fatherly prison warden. Written by the warden of Sing Sing. Watched it all.