There's an old law amongst writers of speculative fiction: the best writing has speculative or fantastic elements which, if removed, would ruin the story. You will frequently see writers say that if a tale is merely set in an SF universe, it is not a good story, because it could be mainstream ("realistic") writing, and is only posing as SF.
While I have great respect for the many people who believe this, I disagree, because such an idea gives in to the concept of the mainstream, contemporary, "realistic" story as the basis of all fiction, and much as I like much mainstream writing, I don't want to give it so much power over the imagination.
Certainly, writers have written stories which are not particularly interesting or compelling, and some of these stories suffer from having the only SF element be the setting (usually, the setting is not well realized or original, merely a few mentions of spaceships and nanotech machines). Stories which don't work should be criticized and analyzed, but they should be looked at on their own, and we must guard against using bad stories to create grand generalizations about how SF should be written. All formulas, no matter how valuable they seem, are pernicious.
Not all stories are about their setting, though SF stories tend to highlight setting more than mainstream stories, because SF stories seek to create an entire, often unfamiliar, world in the reader's mind, while mainstream writers can more or less assume that when they set a story in suburbia, their readers will understand the culture and details of suburban life.
But -- to make a completely uneducated guess -- 85% of mainstream stories have setting descriptions which are necessary and central to the story, either to highlight themes, give information about character, or take advantage of imagery. Think of some great mainstream writers -- any mainstream writer you consider good -- and more often than not you will have a sense of the milieu they wrote about in your favorite works. Favorite writers of mine, from Hawthorne to Faulkner to J.M. Coetzee and Paul Bowles, all have used setting to their advantage. (Other favorites, such as Donald Barthelme and Carole Maso, have often had other concerns, often using the text itself as a landscape.)
The hardliners say that if a story's SF elements could be removed without injury to the story, then it is not an SF story, no matter how brilliantly it is told. What sort of argument is this, though? A brilliant story is a brilliant story.
From Edgar Allen Poe on, critics have maintained that short stories should have no unnecessary elements. What readers perceive as unnecessary differs, but certainly, it seems to me, an author should know why she or he wrote whatever words were written, and should omit any which seem needless.
Novels are a different matter altogether. Many types of novels thrive on not-completely-necessary detail, though often the detail actually is necessary for giving the reader a full experience. While War & Peace is easy enough to abridge, any abridgement is a different work, a different experience, from the whole huge, ragged original.
If a writer wants to set a story in an SF setting, even though the story could be told in a contemporary setting, or even a historical one, what is the problem? Fiction should be trying to illuminate the experience of being human, of living life, of acting and being acted upon. Why do we assume that the contemporary, "realistic" setting is the basic one, the one that any piece of writing should employ unless it has specific reasons for doing otherwise?
Samuel R. Delany once said that the difference between SF and mundane (from "mundus", of the world) writing is that any sentence from mundane writing could fit into an SF story, but the opposite is not true. Both a mundane writer and an SF writer could write, "The streetlights turned on," but only the SF writer could write, "The streetlights turned around and greeted the woman with a smile." (Unless, of course, the mundane writer was chronicling a dream.)
Hence, when a writer sits down to write, why shouldn't he or she be able to choose to begin from the broadest possible imaginative starting gate? The only way to do that is to give up all assumptions about setting, to build the setting from imagination. It might correspond to what is generally agreed is "reality", or it might not. It might need its imaginative setting to justify fantastic or improbable events, or it might not. It might be a great piece of work, or it might not.
The fear of "non-SF in an SF setting" comes from a fear of diluting the genre of SF. But what if we give up on the idea of SF as a genre at all? What if we assume from the moment we begin that all writers are imaginative writers, and that they chose the setting they did because it seemed the one most appropriate for the story, or even for the writer's mood on the day composition began?
I don't think it's necessarily a good thing to get rid of all genre identifiers -- it's nice when you're in an SF mood to be able to go to the bookstore and find some books which will fit your mood -- but I do worry that it can be a limit on our imaginations, and that too much genre identification can cause writers and critics to seize on questionable propositions in order to keep the genre pure. The urge to purify genre is a fascistic urge, and fascism is the death of imagination, the quantification of creativity into an X/Y graph with parameters around which The Writer Should Not Travel.
Let's judge stories by their merits as stories, not by abstract concepts of what a story "should be". There are exceptions to all such strictures, and the exceptions should be embraced. If a story is a good story, if it works for the reader, if it excites the imagination, then it should be celebrated, regardless of genre, regardless of assumptions, regardless of empty critical pronouncements from on high.
SF writers chart the geography of the imagination, and readers and critics should challenge them to keep that geography boundless.
25 August 2003
24 August 2003
Sighted At Other Sites
I've gotten suddenly busy and haven't updated this site nearly as much as I hoped to, and haven't been doing nearly as much reading as I'd hoped to, so I thought I would take a moment to point readers toward interesting other SF-related material currently on the web.
Graham Sleight has started a new weblog, Stet, which is young but already brimming with good thought. I particularly liked his look at the worldview of the Harry Potter books, wondering if that worldview is inherently liberal or conservative or a bit of both.
Richard Calder takes a long look at Swinburn's poems "Faustine" and "Dolores", concluding:
While I'm mentioning the great Nighshade discussions, you can find there two threads about the controversial concept of "The New Weird" -- here and here. For different discussions on the same topic, you can find five threads at Third Alternative Press's discussion board section on M. John Harrison. For a general overview of the whole idea of "The New Weird", see this site.
At Locus, Cynthia Ward has an excellent overview of the brilliant animated films of Hayao Miyazaki.
SciFiction has a new Lucius Shepard story. Shepard is always, always worth reading. I'll probably review the story here once I get a chance. If you like Shepard, don't miss his movie reviews at Electric Story, some of the best writing being done on the web, and some of the best film reviewing being done by anyone anywhere.
Bookslut offers a review of Three Novellas by Thomas Bernhard.
That's it from here. I'll post more soon, with any luck.
Graham Sleight has started a new weblog, Stet, which is young but already brimming with good thought. I particularly liked his look at the worldview of the Harry Potter books, wondering if that worldview is inherently liberal or conservative or a bit of both.
Richard Calder takes a long look at Swinburn's poems "Faustine" and "Dolores", concluding:
Both Faustine and Dolores are, of course, succubi: muses that possess and inflame the author -- or, at any rate, those authors 'marked cross from the womb and perverse' -- muses that bring down the fire and reveal the beauty of Hell ...Tim Pratt offers some off-the-cuff speculations about speculative poetry, and links to a discussion of speculative poetry at the Nightshade Books discussion area which is very much worth your attention.
As such, they are incarnations of my muses, too.
While I'm mentioning the great Nighshade discussions, you can find there two threads about the controversial concept of "The New Weird" -- here and here. For different discussions on the same topic, you can find five threads at Third Alternative Press's discussion board section on M. John Harrison. For a general overview of the whole idea of "The New Weird", see this site.
At Locus, Cynthia Ward has an excellent overview of the brilliant animated films of Hayao Miyazaki.
SciFiction has a new Lucius Shepard story. Shepard is always, always worth reading. I'll probably review the story here once I get a chance. If you like Shepard, don't miss his movie reviews at Electric Story, some of the best writing being done on the web, and some of the best film reviewing being done by anyone anywhere.
Bookslut offers a review of Three Novellas by Thomas Bernhard.
That's it from here. I'll post more soon, with any luck.
20 August 2003
The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod
I discovered Ken MacLeod recently, after reading China Mieville's 50 Fantasy & Science Fiction Works Socialists Should Read. I'm not a socialist, but I like politically-engaged fiction, particularly with a leftist bent, so I was curious to see what he'd come up with. Mieville writes of MacLeod:
It is, in many ways, a remarkable novel, though also a frustrating one. I can't say that I've settled my feelings about it -- I know that the story held me most of the time, the characters were sometimes interesting, the imagined world is vivid and interesting both philosophically and scientifically, and the narrative is well constructed with shifting points of view which come together in the end in a surprising and clever way.
Summarizing the plot in a few sentences is nearly impossible -- the story ranges from the 1970s to the end of time. The protagonist is Jonathan Wilde, who discovers at the beginning of the book that he's been resurrected by revolutionaries on a future planet far from the solar system, a planet called "New Mars" where canals have deliberately been built and the society is structured along anarcho-capitalist lines. Wilde had been friends during the end of the twentieth century with David Reid, who ultimately founded New Mars. (Thanks to nanotechnology and some other advances, human lifespans have become essentially limitless.) Wilde was an anarcho-capitalist, but not as vociferously as Reid, because Wilde is first of all an opportunist (with some similarities to a certain character written by about Henry Fielding in the eponymous novel Jonathan Wild), and so he and Reid came to be on-again/off-again enemies, and now Wilde is considered the only hope for helping people in New Mars escape from Reid's tyrannical grip on genetic materials he brought with him from Earth, and which may allow dead humans to be resurrected.
The story is full of action, and full of political discussion. I love political discussion, and found the earliest chapters about Wilde's life in contemporary Britain to be the most compelling parts of the book. I doubt this is true for most readers. The rest of the book was fascinating, but I wanted to get more of a sense of how everyday life on New Mars worked, because some of the principles which governed life in this world had been argued out in the earlier sections, but it was never clear to me (perhaps I didn't read closely enough) which were really in effect. So much time is spent on moving the action forward that, in the second half of the novel, the details of the world itself grow thinner and less compelling, as if MacLeod had realized his publishers would want him to get as big an audience as possible, so he pumped up the standard thriller elements of the book at the expense of the world building. It may also be that I shouldn't have read this book first, for MacLeod's first novel, The Star Fraction, is a prequel. I'll have to read that next and see if it helps.
Some critics have called MacLeod a stylist, and I would disagree with this. A philosopher, sure. A good writer, definitely. But his prose is standard stuff -- clear, full of momentum, and, ultimately, pedestrian. This does no disservice to the book, though I do wonder what a writer more concerned with language would have been able to do with the material, for the many provocative ideas in the book call out for more provocative handling. Alas, we can't have everything, and if The Stone Canal is not a masterpiece, it is, at least, thought-provoking and worth a quick read.
British Trotskyist (of strongly libertarian bent), all of whose (very good) works examine Left politics without sloganeering.Sounded good to me. When I was next at a bookstore, I found The Stone Canal, where the protagonist, Jonathan Wilde, is described on the back cover as "an anarchist with a nuclear capability who was accused of losing World War III". Sounds good to me, I said to myself, and promptly bought the book.
It is, in many ways, a remarkable novel, though also a frustrating one. I can't say that I've settled my feelings about it -- I know that the story held me most of the time, the characters were sometimes interesting, the imagined world is vivid and interesting both philosophically and scientifically, and the narrative is well constructed with shifting points of view which come together in the end in a surprising and clever way.
Summarizing the plot in a few sentences is nearly impossible -- the story ranges from the 1970s to the end of time. The protagonist is Jonathan Wilde, who discovers at the beginning of the book that he's been resurrected by revolutionaries on a future planet far from the solar system, a planet called "New Mars" where canals have deliberately been built and the society is structured along anarcho-capitalist lines. Wilde had been friends during the end of the twentieth century with David Reid, who ultimately founded New Mars. (Thanks to nanotechnology and some other advances, human lifespans have become essentially limitless.) Wilde was an anarcho-capitalist, but not as vociferously as Reid, because Wilde is first of all an opportunist (with some similarities to a certain character written by about Henry Fielding in the eponymous novel Jonathan Wild), and so he and Reid came to be on-again/off-again enemies, and now Wilde is considered the only hope for helping people in New Mars escape from Reid's tyrannical grip on genetic materials he brought with him from Earth, and which may allow dead humans to be resurrected.
The story is full of action, and full of political discussion. I love political discussion, and found the earliest chapters about Wilde's life in contemporary Britain to be the most compelling parts of the book. I doubt this is true for most readers. The rest of the book was fascinating, but I wanted to get more of a sense of how everyday life on New Mars worked, because some of the principles which governed life in this world had been argued out in the earlier sections, but it was never clear to me (perhaps I didn't read closely enough) which were really in effect. So much time is spent on moving the action forward that, in the second half of the novel, the details of the world itself grow thinner and less compelling, as if MacLeod had realized his publishers would want him to get as big an audience as possible, so he pumped up the standard thriller elements of the book at the expense of the world building. It may also be that I shouldn't have read this book first, for MacLeod's first novel, The Star Fraction, is a prequel. I'll have to read that next and see if it helps.
Some critics have called MacLeod a stylist, and I would disagree with this. A philosopher, sure. A good writer, definitely. But his prose is standard stuff -- clear, full of momentum, and, ultimately, pedestrian. This does no disservice to the book, though I do wonder what a writer more concerned with language would have been able to do with the material, for the many provocative ideas in the book call out for more provocative handling. Alas, we can't have everything, and if The Stone Canal is not a masterpiece, it is, at least, thought-provoking and worth a quick read.
19 August 2003
Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer
Every now and then a writer writes a first novel which feels like a tenth, a novel full of imagination, skilled writing, careful structure, and compelling characters. Jeff VanderMeer's first novel, Veniss Underground is one such book. It is not a perfect novel, it will not appeal to all types of readers, but it is work which must be taken seriously, and labelling its author as "promising" does him an injustice, for he writes with more skill and verve than most people who have published far more books than he.
VanderMeer is not a new author -- he's won the World Fantasy Award and others for his short fiction and poetry, and he's worked as an editor for various publishers and journals for many years. In many ways, I'm grateful he waited so long to write a novel, because the maturity of vision demonstrated by Veniss Underground is a rare thing.
The plot is complicated and fragmentary, and no summary can do the book justice. All a potential reader really needs to know is the story is a sort of science fictional version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, although the similarities are mostly superficial. The story posits a world of genetic manipulation reaching monstrous heights, a world of crime bosses and petty hustlers mingled with struggling artists who are trying to make art from the latest technologies. And, of course, somewhere beyond them all, the very rich, who maintain a certain power over the world. But there's a place where the rich can't reach: the land beneath the streets, levels and levels of underground which grow more Dantesque the deeper they descend.
The story is broken into three sections: the first, told in the first person point of view, is of Nicolas, a failed artist who gets involved in much more than he bargained for when he signed up to work with a shadowy man (creature?) named Quin, known for his genetic manipulations. The second section, somewhat longer, is told in the second person point of view, and "you" are Nicola, Nicolas's sister, who tries to find him after he disappears. The final section, and the longest, told in the third person, is that of Shadrach, a friend of Nicolas's and of Nicola's, a man who emerged from the underground and now descends into it again to try to save the people he cares for.
What makes Veniss Underground compelling is less its plot, or even its characters, than its vivid landscape and lyrical, creative language. VanderMeer loves language, he languishes in it, and yet he doesn't ever let it get beyond him -- there aren't really any Faulknerian moments of stream of consciousness verging on babble or blather, but rather a sensibility toward the crafting of sentences which simultaneously convey information and have an aesthetic appeal. The novel is a quick read, and a compelling one, but it should, perhaps, be read slowly, its gems savored, for devouring it all too quickly will make it seem thinner than it is.
Are there weaknesses? Certainly, but I expect each reader will consider different elements to be faults, because the novel has so much to offer that it is difficult to settle down and simply appreciate it for what it is. For me, the weakest part was the first one, from Nicholas's point of view, because I found the slang he used to be gimmicky. Unlike some authors, VanderMeer has a specific point he's trying to make with the slang, and a specific reason for using it which is tied to the character, but I've never liked any made-up slang, except, perhaps for that of Clockwork Orange because it was so creative and so plentiful that it was woven into the basic fabric of the book. [Update: Jeff VanderMeer just pointed out to me, after reading this, that since Nicholas is a failed slang artist, his slang is therefore intentionally bad. Duly noted.] Later, I felt that Shadrach's journey into the Underground went on a little too long, and the plot seemed to push us forward from one horrorific genetic nightmare to another, as if walking through a museum. Readers who thrive on imagery will probably find this to be a real strength of the book, but by that point in the story I wanted more of other things -- a change of language or style, an change of character, something. I'm not sure about the decision to make each section substantially longer than the previous one, either; I loved the progression of points of view, but wanted more time with both Nicholas and Nicola, and a bit less with Shadrach.
In many ways, these are quibbles, and quite personal ones. I don't imagine many other readers will have loved the same parts of the book as I, nor had reservations about the same parts I did. That, for me, is the wonder of rich literature such as Veniss Underground: it is not perfect, but it is better that it isn't, for perfect isn't nearly messy enough for my tastes. This is a book to read and think about, to argue over and dissect, to read aloud for sheer pleasure and read silently, late at night, to creep yourself out.
Veniss Underground reads to me like a little brother of China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, one of the best and most satisfying SF novels I've ever read. Mieville's book is long and complex where VanderMeer's is short, tough, focused, and VanderMeer has, to my ears, a better sense of language (and less proclivity for pulpy turns of phrase) than Mieville. Both works are brilliant, both are worthy of any reader's attention, both are magisterial exercises of imagination, and both contain a beautiful sense of truth and meaning.
VanderMeer is not a new author -- he's won the World Fantasy Award and others for his short fiction and poetry, and he's worked as an editor for various publishers and journals for many years. In many ways, I'm grateful he waited so long to write a novel, because the maturity of vision demonstrated by Veniss Underground is a rare thing.
The plot is complicated and fragmentary, and no summary can do the book justice. All a potential reader really needs to know is the story is a sort of science fictional version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, although the similarities are mostly superficial. The story posits a world of genetic manipulation reaching monstrous heights, a world of crime bosses and petty hustlers mingled with struggling artists who are trying to make art from the latest technologies. And, of course, somewhere beyond them all, the very rich, who maintain a certain power over the world. But there's a place where the rich can't reach: the land beneath the streets, levels and levels of underground which grow more Dantesque the deeper they descend.
The story is broken into three sections: the first, told in the first person point of view, is of Nicolas, a failed artist who gets involved in much more than he bargained for when he signed up to work with a shadowy man (creature?) named Quin, known for his genetic manipulations. The second section, somewhat longer, is told in the second person point of view, and "you" are Nicola, Nicolas's sister, who tries to find him after he disappears. The final section, and the longest, told in the third person, is that of Shadrach, a friend of Nicolas's and of Nicola's, a man who emerged from the underground and now descends into it again to try to save the people he cares for.
What makes Veniss Underground compelling is less its plot, or even its characters, than its vivid landscape and lyrical, creative language. VanderMeer loves language, he languishes in it, and yet he doesn't ever let it get beyond him -- there aren't really any Faulknerian moments of stream of consciousness verging on babble or blather, but rather a sensibility toward the crafting of sentences which simultaneously convey information and have an aesthetic appeal. The novel is a quick read, and a compelling one, but it should, perhaps, be read slowly, its gems savored, for devouring it all too quickly will make it seem thinner than it is.
Are there weaknesses? Certainly, but I expect each reader will consider different elements to be faults, because the novel has so much to offer that it is difficult to settle down and simply appreciate it for what it is. For me, the weakest part was the first one, from Nicholas's point of view, because I found the slang he used to be gimmicky. Unlike some authors, VanderMeer has a specific point he's trying to make with the slang, and a specific reason for using it which is tied to the character, but I've never liked any made-up slang, except, perhaps for that of Clockwork Orange because it was so creative and so plentiful that it was woven into the basic fabric of the book. [Update: Jeff VanderMeer just pointed out to me, after reading this, that since Nicholas is a failed slang artist, his slang is therefore intentionally bad. Duly noted.] Later, I felt that Shadrach's journey into the Underground went on a little too long, and the plot seemed to push us forward from one horrorific genetic nightmare to another, as if walking through a museum. Readers who thrive on imagery will probably find this to be a real strength of the book, but by that point in the story I wanted more of other things -- a change of language or style, an change of character, something. I'm not sure about the decision to make each section substantially longer than the previous one, either; I loved the progression of points of view, but wanted more time with both Nicholas and Nicola, and a bit less with Shadrach.
In many ways, these are quibbles, and quite personal ones. I don't imagine many other readers will have loved the same parts of the book as I, nor had reservations about the same parts I did. That, for me, is the wonder of rich literature such as Veniss Underground: it is not perfect, but it is better that it isn't, for perfect isn't nearly messy enough for my tastes. This is a book to read and think about, to argue over and dissect, to read aloud for sheer pleasure and read silently, late at night, to creep yourself out.
Veniss Underground reads to me like a little brother of China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, one of the best and most satisfying SF novels I've ever read. Mieville's book is long and complex where VanderMeer's is short, tough, focused, and VanderMeer has, to my ears, a better sense of language (and less proclivity for pulpy turns of phrase) than Mieville. Both works are brilliant, both are worthy of any reader's attention, both are magisterial exercises of imagination, and both contain a beautiful sense of truth and meaning.
Brazil: The Criterion Collection DVD
Brazil is the best SF movie I have ever seen. It is also the movie which comes closest to realizing on film some of the sense and style of Philip K. Dick's novels and stories, even though it's not based on a PKD book, and I have no idea if director Terry Gilliam has read any of PKD's work. (By the way, this insight is not original to me: Gardner Dozois made the point in the "Summation" to one of his early Year's Best SF anthologies.) Gilliam's later film 12 Monkeys is also very PhilDickian, especially with its time travel themes, but though I think 12 Monkeys is a superb work, it's not as mesmerizing for me as Brazil.
The Criterion Collection edition of Brazil is one reason I bought a computer with a DVD player in it (since I don't own a TV). It's a 3-disc set, originally released as a laser disc (remember those?), and it includes all sorts of extra material -- commentaries, production art work, and a couple of documentaries, one of which looks back at what has been "The Battle for Brazil", when the studio releasing the film insisted that Gilliam cut it down to no more than 120 minutes (from 142) and make the film as a whole focus on the love story between two of the main characters. The studio ended up cutting their own version of the film (at about 90 minutes), and that version is also included in the Criterion edition. It makes for fascinating viewing for anyone familiar with the longer version originally released to American theatres, because it demonstrates how some clever (and sometimes clumsy) editing can completely change a film's tone and meaning.
The Criterion edition is also especially pleasing because it includes the longest and most complete version of the film available, with roughly 20 more minutes than was available on the version released on VHS and on the cheaper one-disc DVD. The extra length does not change too much of the meaning, and some viewers may find that it prolongs the experience of the movie too far, but for me it is glorious, because much of what I love about Brazil is revelling in the sumptuous imagination fueling it all.
One of the wonders of Brazil, especially the longest version, is that you can watch it over and over again and still discover new elements within it. I have seen it at least 20 times, and have found myself engaged in the narrative and the surreal world with each viewing, for the detail is remarkable. This is not a movie which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make; the production costs were relatively small, and yet it has far more depth and imagination than any blockbuster.
Unlike some of Gilliam's other films, Brazil doesn't live or die on its visual impact -- its script is as strong as any that has been written. Much of the credit goes to Gilliam's collaborators, the great and clever British playwright Tom Stoppard and actor/writer Charles McKeown, both of whom helped Gilliam give form to his original idea, and both of whom added many of the little touches which ultimately make the film so intriguing.
The wonder of Brazil is that it doesn't interpret itself for the viewer. It is a Chinese box of mysteries, a grand flow of paradoxes, an unsettling mix of humor and horror, as if Franz Kafka found himself on the whirling teacups at Disneyworld with Buster Keaton to one side and George Orwell to the other. Some viewers hate the film because of its ambiguities, but for me this is what makes it a masterpiece: while having a strong narrative structure, it is also open to many interpretations, for it houses many ambiguities and circularities within its careful, and often seemingly logical, framework. How much of the story is only in Sam Lowry's head? When is he conscious, when is he dreaming? What, really, is his fate?
Some viewers find the ending to be depressing and take from it a "message" that life is hopeless and dreaming is futile. I don't see this at all. For all he has gone through, what has propelled Sam through so much is his imagination, and even in the end, it seems to me, he is able to escape from pain and suffering by sending himself to the world of his dreams, making him useless to the malevolent forces which seek to impose more and more torture on him. He wins, in the end, because his enemies give up. But the cost is great.
The Criterion Collection edition of Brazil is one reason I bought a computer with a DVD player in it (since I don't own a TV). It's a 3-disc set, originally released as a laser disc (remember those?), and it includes all sorts of extra material -- commentaries, production art work, and a couple of documentaries, one of which looks back at what has been "The Battle for Brazil", when the studio releasing the film insisted that Gilliam cut it down to no more than 120 minutes (from 142) and make the film as a whole focus on the love story between two of the main characters. The studio ended up cutting their own version of the film (at about 90 minutes), and that version is also included in the Criterion edition. It makes for fascinating viewing for anyone familiar with the longer version originally released to American theatres, because it demonstrates how some clever (and sometimes clumsy) editing can completely change a film's tone and meaning.
The Criterion edition is also especially pleasing because it includes the longest and most complete version of the film available, with roughly 20 more minutes than was available on the version released on VHS and on the cheaper one-disc DVD. The extra length does not change too much of the meaning, and some viewers may find that it prolongs the experience of the movie too far, but for me it is glorious, because much of what I love about Brazil is revelling in the sumptuous imagination fueling it all.
One of the wonders of Brazil, especially the longest version, is that you can watch it over and over again and still discover new elements within it. I have seen it at least 20 times, and have found myself engaged in the narrative and the surreal world with each viewing, for the detail is remarkable. This is not a movie which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make; the production costs were relatively small, and yet it has far more depth and imagination than any blockbuster.
Unlike some of Gilliam's other films, Brazil doesn't live or die on its visual impact -- its script is as strong as any that has been written. Much of the credit goes to Gilliam's collaborators, the great and clever British playwright Tom Stoppard and actor/writer Charles McKeown, both of whom helped Gilliam give form to his original idea, and both of whom added many of the little touches which ultimately make the film so intriguing.
The wonder of Brazil is that it doesn't interpret itself for the viewer. It is a Chinese box of mysteries, a grand flow of paradoxes, an unsettling mix of humor and horror, as if Franz Kafka found himself on the whirling teacups at Disneyworld with Buster Keaton to one side and George Orwell to the other. Some viewers hate the film because of its ambiguities, but for me this is what makes it a masterpiece: while having a strong narrative structure, it is also open to many interpretations, for it houses many ambiguities and circularities within its careful, and often seemingly logical, framework. How much of the story is only in Sam Lowry's head? When is he conscious, when is he dreaming? What, really, is his fate?
Some viewers find the ending to be depressing and take from it a "message" that life is hopeless and dreaming is futile. I don't see this at all. For all he has gone through, what has propelled Sam through so much is his imagination, and even in the end, it seems to me, he is able to escape from pain and suffering by sending himself to the world of his dreams, making him useless to the malevolent forces which seek to impose more and more torture on him. He wins, in the end, because his enemies give up. But the cost is great.
"Presence" by Maureen McHugh
"Presence" is currently up for a Hugo Award, and since I haven't yet read any of the other novelette nominees, I can't say whether it deserves to win or not, but it certainly deserves its nomination.
This is a carefull-crafted, well-modulated story which looks at a possible future near-cure for Alzheimer's Disease. Since my own grandfather had Alzheimer's, I can say with some authority that McHugh's presentation of the disease's effect on its victims, and on their caregivers, is sadly accurate. The prose in the story is clear, though not particularly stylish, and the story mostly avoids the kind of cheap sentimentality that stories about sufferers of diseases can often fall into. The ending is particularly well done, with no simple "cure", no easy solution, no sudden fix -- instead, McHugh offers a mutedly emotional ending, one which mixes hope with sadness and regret, the general pain of being human.
I have some reservations about the story, though not reservations about whether it should have been published or whether it deserves to be nominated for awards. As I said, it is an effective story, in some ways a beautiful story, and one which deserves to be read.
Taking all that into account, though, it seems to me to suffer from the same problems as Alice Elliot Dark's story "In the Gloaming", which John Updike included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. I seem to be the only person in the universe who found "In the Gloaming" a frustrating story, one of those tales which gets labelled "poignant" and "sensitive" and "moving", but which ultimately manipulates the reader by offering no option but to feel for the characters and their plight. I think McHugh's "Presence" is a better story, actually, than Dark's, because there is some distance, and a difficult moral question is posed to the reader (we are left to wonder whether the main character's decision to subject her husband to the Alzheimer's treatment against his will was justifiable). For me, "In the Gloaming" was a sort of "disease-chic" tale, the kind of thing which gets made into softly-lit movies (it has been) that make audiences cry. Again, McHugh doesn't quite sink this low, but she also doesn't rise above some of the facility which disease stories offer to authors.
If we compare "Presence" to a classic by Anton Chekhov, "A Doctor's Visit", we can see some of what might have made McHugh's story into a truly remarkable work: a greater willingness to allow ambiguity in what is said between characters, less of a desire to portray every action with clarity for the reader, and more attention to the physical details of daily life in the world she created. I do think there are moments in the story where she nearly achieves this, and the relationship of the son to the rest of the family is a particularly strong choice which adds depth to the narrative and the characters, but there is not enough connection between the characters and the physical world they inhabit for the reader to be allowed the real resonance which great literature provides. Chekhov's story is half the length of McHugh's, and yet its world is more vivid (and in some ways more alien to us), its characters more fascinating because they are mysterious and hint at complexities beyond the frame of the tale itself.
I suppose it seems a bit silly to criticize a story which I've said is better than one included in a book called "The Best American Short Stories of the Century", but I often find myself wanting to criticize really good stories more than bad ones, because the really good ones come so close to greatness. There are a plethora of bad stories out there, hundreds and hundreds for every one story which is even mediocre, and thousands and thousands for every one story of "Presence"'s quality.
I can't help dreaming, though, can I?
(Note: I read "Presence" in Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection.
This is a carefull-crafted, well-modulated story which looks at a possible future near-cure for Alzheimer's Disease. Since my own grandfather had Alzheimer's, I can say with some authority that McHugh's presentation of the disease's effect on its victims, and on their caregivers, is sadly accurate. The prose in the story is clear, though not particularly stylish, and the story mostly avoids the kind of cheap sentimentality that stories about sufferers of diseases can often fall into. The ending is particularly well done, with no simple "cure", no easy solution, no sudden fix -- instead, McHugh offers a mutedly emotional ending, one which mixes hope with sadness and regret, the general pain of being human.
I have some reservations about the story, though not reservations about whether it should have been published or whether it deserves to be nominated for awards. As I said, it is an effective story, in some ways a beautiful story, and one which deserves to be read.
Taking all that into account, though, it seems to me to suffer from the same problems as Alice Elliot Dark's story "In the Gloaming", which John Updike included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. I seem to be the only person in the universe who found "In the Gloaming" a frustrating story, one of those tales which gets labelled "poignant" and "sensitive" and "moving", but which ultimately manipulates the reader by offering no option but to feel for the characters and their plight. I think McHugh's "Presence" is a better story, actually, than Dark's, because there is some distance, and a difficult moral question is posed to the reader (we are left to wonder whether the main character's decision to subject her husband to the Alzheimer's treatment against his will was justifiable). For me, "In the Gloaming" was a sort of "disease-chic" tale, the kind of thing which gets made into softly-lit movies (it has been) that make audiences cry. Again, McHugh doesn't quite sink this low, but she also doesn't rise above some of the facility which disease stories offer to authors.
If we compare "Presence" to a classic by Anton Chekhov, "A Doctor's Visit", we can see some of what might have made McHugh's story into a truly remarkable work: a greater willingness to allow ambiguity in what is said between characters, less of a desire to portray every action with clarity for the reader, and more attention to the physical details of daily life in the world she created. I do think there are moments in the story where she nearly achieves this, and the relationship of the son to the rest of the family is a particularly strong choice which adds depth to the narrative and the characters, but there is not enough connection between the characters and the physical world they inhabit for the reader to be allowed the real resonance which great literature provides. Chekhov's story is half the length of McHugh's, and yet its world is more vivid (and in some ways more alien to us), its characters more fascinating because they are mysterious and hint at complexities beyond the frame of the tale itself.
I suppose it seems a bit silly to criticize a story which I've said is better than one included in a book called "The Best American Short Stories of the Century", but I often find myself wanting to criticize really good stories more than bad ones, because the really good ones come so close to greatness. There are a plethora of bad stories out there, hundreds and hundreds for every one story which is even mediocre, and thousands and thousands for every one story of "Presence"'s quality.
I can't help dreaming, though, can I?
(Note: I read "Presence" in Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection.
"The Only Known Jump Across Time" by Eugene Mirabelli
This story is from the latest (September 2003) issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and it is a story which every lover of short stories should read.
I don't tend to like "sweet" stories, stories which cleverly put two kind-but-awkward characters together in an inevitable love story, stories which play on the reader's sense of nostalgia for a simpler era, etc. "The Only Known Jump Across Time" does all of this, but it is done with such skill and such control of tone that it achieves the hat trick of putting a bunch of less-than-exciting elements together into a magical, masterful whole.
It is the story of two shy, but kind, people, living in America in the 1920s: a tailor and the daughter of a Harvard horticulturalist who discover a similar desire to travel back in time and say some of the things they meant to say before, do some of the things they regret having not done. The premise becomes clear in the first few pages, and I feared as I read that Mirabelli would give in to the sentimentality which could so easily overpower the story's strengths. Miraculously, he doesn't.
The tailor has read Einstein and knows that the past cannot be changed, but he thinks if he can create some lightning (yes, lightning), he will be able to step at least a few moments into the future. He and Lydia (the other main character) attempt this, and the results, while not entirely surprising, are remarkably beautiful and touching because of their ambiguity: Can a shared experience be truly meaningful, Mirabelli seems to be asking, even if it might not be completely based in reality?
What makes the story work is its structure and tone, a tone which is dry, objective, and almost clinical, much like the best stories of Anton Chekhov. The structure aids the tone: the tale is broken into fourteen sections, and the entire story is just under fourteen pages long. This structure allows Mirabelli to create narrative gaps which the reader must fill in with imagination, and these gaps undermine any possibility of too much sentiment or a slip into purple prose. The narration tells us the facts of the story, it sticks to what happened, and there isn't a lot of interpreting of characters' emotions. Instead, we discover their emotions and thoughts through their actions and dialogue, and the ultimate effect is to create two people we sympathize with, care about, are interested in. The final section of the story is a work of genius, strengthening all that is great about the story by creating a perspective which reaches out beyond the narrative itself, while at the same time upholding the central power of the tale.
This is one of those stories that drives labellers crazy -- is it science fiction? Is it even fantasy? Or is it just a mundane story attempting to be imaginative through the addition of ambiguity?
Folks, it doesn't matter. This is one of the best stories published this year, in or out of the genre confines of speculative fiction. It is written with extraordinary skill, and should serve as a model for what the short story form can accomplish when handled by a master.
I don't tend to like "sweet" stories, stories which cleverly put two kind-but-awkward characters together in an inevitable love story, stories which play on the reader's sense of nostalgia for a simpler era, etc. "The Only Known Jump Across Time" does all of this, but it is done with such skill and such control of tone that it achieves the hat trick of putting a bunch of less-than-exciting elements together into a magical, masterful whole.
It is the story of two shy, but kind, people, living in America in the 1920s: a tailor and the daughter of a Harvard horticulturalist who discover a similar desire to travel back in time and say some of the things they meant to say before, do some of the things they regret having not done. The premise becomes clear in the first few pages, and I feared as I read that Mirabelli would give in to the sentimentality which could so easily overpower the story's strengths. Miraculously, he doesn't.
The tailor has read Einstein and knows that the past cannot be changed, but he thinks if he can create some lightning (yes, lightning), he will be able to step at least a few moments into the future. He and Lydia (the other main character) attempt this, and the results, while not entirely surprising, are remarkably beautiful and touching because of their ambiguity: Can a shared experience be truly meaningful, Mirabelli seems to be asking, even if it might not be completely based in reality?
What makes the story work is its structure and tone, a tone which is dry, objective, and almost clinical, much like the best stories of Anton Chekhov. The structure aids the tone: the tale is broken into fourteen sections, and the entire story is just under fourteen pages long. This structure allows Mirabelli to create narrative gaps which the reader must fill in with imagination, and these gaps undermine any possibility of too much sentiment or a slip into purple prose. The narration tells us the facts of the story, it sticks to what happened, and there isn't a lot of interpreting of characters' emotions. Instead, we discover their emotions and thoughts through their actions and dialogue, and the ultimate effect is to create two people we sympathize with, care about, are interested in. The final section of the story is a work of genius, strengthening all that is great about the story by creating a perspective which reaches out beyond the narrative itself, while at the same time upholding the central power of the tale.
This is one of those stories that drives labellers crazy -- is it science fiction? Is it even fantasy? Or is it just a mundane story attempting to be imaginative through the addition of ambiguity?
Folks, it doesn't matter. This is one of the best stories published this year, in or out of the genre confines of speculative fiction. It is written with extraordinary skill, and should serve as a model for what the short story form can accomplish when handled by a master.
"Mother" by James Patrick Kelly
I've been friends with Jim Kelly for many years, and have even been declared by him his "most deranged fan", since I have a nearly-complete collection of his works, including all of his books and all of his earliest stories (the ones he'd like to forget). To be fair, he has lots of my early work, too, things I wrote when I was in grade school, and which he vows to keep as blackmail material should I ever decide to show anyone his early publications.
"Mother" is the only story I've read so far in what looks to be a particularly strong original anthology, The Silver Gryphon, which commemorates the twenty-fifth publication from Golden Gryphon Press. I have a special love for Golden Gryphon, as they published the first large collection of Jim's stories, Think Like a Dinosaur (now, finally, reprinted as a trade paperback).
The qualities that make Jim Kelly special are his sensitivity and virtuosity. Many writers have one or the other, but few combine depth of humanity with an open willingness to try new forms, new themes, new ideas. The risks are great, particularly for short story writers. If you invest months of work on a story, stretching your own boundaries while maintaining your own integrity as an artist, you aren't likely to see a huge pay-off. There is a devoted group of readers for short fiction, but it's a small group, and within that group, the fraction which appreciates the amount of work that has gone into the story can be tiny. Not every Kelly story works for me -- there are times when I think his humanity and compassion veer into sentimentality, or times when I think his virtuosity makes him cut corners on the humanity -- but when he gets the tricky balance right, the result is as good as anything published under the labels of "science fiction" or "fantasy" at any time.
2003 has been a particularly good year for Kelly, in that he's published two stories which seem to me to be among his best: "Bernardo's House" in the June 2003 Asimov's and "Mother".
"Bernardo's House" is, for me, the stronger story, mostly because it is longer and slower-paced, and so the development of the characters and situation is more affecting. This is not to slight "Mother", however, because here Kelly's particular achievement is to cram an entire world into eight and a half pages, and to create many resonances for the reader. It is the story of a girl named Les who has just come back to Earth after escaping from ostensibly benevolent aliens on the Moon, aliens who, she thinks, intend to destroy humanity by promises of immortality for people who give up the ability to produce children. Les has come to Earth to have as many children as possible, and thus to save the world (she thinks). The social system for people who want to be parents is somewhat different from our own, with a Birth Control center (love that name!) which helps train people on how to take care of babies. Similarly, there are many differences in classes of people on Earth, and in a few careful strokes Kelly evokes a vivid world which is similar to ours, but different enough to be both fascinating and unsettling. The resolution of the story is a particular triumph, leaving the reader to wonder if Les's perceptions are at all accurate, and letting the story grow in the imagination like a small seed growing into an immense, mysterious tree.
"Mother" is the only story I've read so far in what looks to be a particularly strong original anthology, The Silver Gryphon, which commemorates the twenty-fifth publication from Golden Gryphon Press. I have a special love for Golden Gryphon, as they published the first large collection of Jim's stories, Think Like a Dinosaur (now, finally, reprinted as a trade paperback).
The qualities that make Jim Kelly special are his sensitivity and virtuosity. Many writers have one or the other, but few combine depth of humanity with an open willingness to try new forms, new themes, new ideas. The risks are great, particularly for short story writers. If you invest months of work on a story, stretching your own boundaries while maintaining your own integrity as an artist, you aren't likely to see a huge pay-off. There is a devoted group of readers for short fiction, but it's a small group, and within that group, the fraction which appreciates the amount of work that has gone into the story can be tiny. Not every Kelly story works for me -- there are times when I think his humanity and compassion veer into sentimentality, or times when I think his virtuosity makes him cut corners on the humanity -- but when he gets the tricky balance right, the result is as good as anything published under the labels of "science fiction" or "fantasy" at any time.
2003 has been a particularly good year for Kelly, in that he's published two stories which seem to me to be among his best: "Bernardo's House" in the June 2003 Asimov's and "Mother".
"Bernardo's House" is, for me, the stronger story, mostly because it is longer and slower-paced, and so the development of the characters and situation is more affecting. This is not to slight "Mother", however, because here Kelly's particular achievement is to cram an entire world into eight and a half pages, and to create many resonances for the reader. It is the story of a girl named Les who has just come back to Earth after escaping from ostensibly benevolent aliens on the Moon, aliens who, she thinks, intend to destroy humanity by promises of immortality for people who give up the ability to produce children. Les has come to Earth to have as many children as possible, and thus to save the world (she thinks). The social system for people who want to be parents is somewhat different from our own, with a Birth Control center (love that name!) which helps train people on how to take care of babies. Similarly, there are many differences in classes of people on Earth, and in a few careful strokes Kelly evokes a vivid world which is similar to ours, but different enough to be both fascinating and unsettling. The resolution of the story is a particular triumph, leaving the reader to wonder if Les's perceptions are at all accurate, and letting the story grow in the imagination like a small seed growing into an immense, mysterious tree.
What's This Mad Universe?
I've created this weblog to keep track of my reading in and thoughts about the world of speculative fiction.
I'm not a big fan of definitions, and I have little patience for arguments about whether a particular work is "science fiction" rather than "fantasy" rather than "horror" rather than "slipstream". I will, in general, use the term SF here, because it doesn't lump writings and authors into little ghettoes, other than the general ghetto of what has been called "weird fiction" or "fabulist fiction" or, one of my favorites, "philosophical romance". I like the last term because it situates writing within a general literary category and doesn't marginalize it (too much) within the world of "mainstream" fiction (aka "literary fiction" aka "mundane" [as in mundus] fiction). I do think there is a distinction between works where anything and everything could possibly happen, where worlds are built and destroyed and characters may or may not have unusual powers and proclivities, and works which deliberately stick to the laws and customs of the "real world". But SF to me includes not only writings published by genre publishers, but also writers such as Samuel Beckett and Ama Ata Aidoo.
Hence, the works discussed on this site will be eclectic. I will try to record thoughts on whatever I happen to be reading which seems to be SF of some sort to me, and I will offer occasional thoughts and rants about various issues regarding those readings, as well as thoughts on news and miscellaneous items which seem relevant. Who knows what will come of all this?
I'm not a big fan of definitions, and I have little patience for arguments about whether a particular work is "science fiction" rather than "fantasy" rather than "horror" rather than "slipstream". I will, in general, use the term SF here, because it doesn't lump writings and authors into little ghettoes, other than the general ghetto of what has been called "weird fiction" or "fabulist fiction" or, one of my favorites, "philosophical romance". I like the last term because it situates writing within a general literary category and doesn't marginalize it (too much) within the world of "mainstream" fiction (aka "literary fiction" aka "mundane" [as in mundus] fiction). I do think there is a distinction between works where anything and everything could possibly happen, where worlds are built and destroyed and characters may or may not have unusual powers and proclivities, and works which deliberately stick to the laws and customs of the "real world". But SF to me includes not only writings published by genre publishers, but also writers such as Samuel Beckett and Ama Ata Aidoo.
Hence, the works discussed on this site will be eclectic. I will try to record thoughts on whatever I happen to be reading which seems to be SF of some sort to me, and I will offer occasional thoughts and rants about various issues regarding those readings, as well as thoughts on news and miscellaneous items which seem relevant. Who knows what will come of all this?
18 August 2003
Mumpsimus (MUMP-si-mus) n.
1. a traditional custom or notion adhered to although shown to be unreasonable.
2. a person who persists in a mistaken expression or practice.
2. a person who persists in a mistaken expression or practice.
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