What Spare Time?

Fearless

2006-10-15T08:52:00.000-05:00

Fearless is a pretty good movie that has unfulfilled ambitions of greatness. The movie is based on the real life figure of Huo Yuanjia, a martial artist in China who founded a prestigious and international martial arts academy and captured the public imagination as an advocate for restoring national strength against Western and Japanese interests in the early 20th century. The movie incorporates elements of martial arts movies, biopics, sports films, and historical romances. These disparate styles wouldn't work together except for the unmistakable star power of Jet Li as Huo – easily his most appealing and intimate performance since 1994's Fist of Legend.

The story is broken down into three, clearly-identifiable acts in the traditional bildungsroman structure. In act one, Huo is the son of a martial arts instructor who spreads the reputation of his school through public matches in the town square. When Huo's father loses, Huo makes a personal commitment to become the champion fighter of the province. He fights fiercely, with reckless abandon and easily becomes famous throughout the land. A feud with a rival school escalates into tragedy, though, and the conflict ends with the rival master and Huo's family dead. In act two, Huo flees to the countryside and live in self-exile with a rice-farming peasant community for several years. His return to a simple and traditional lifestyle enlightens Huo about the need to restore pride in Chinese identity and to foster brotherhood rather than rivalry. Act three brings Huo back to the big cities of China where he becomes an outspoken figure in national pride. The markets are full of foreign investors who compare China's weak national markets to a physical infirmity. Huo fights foreign challengers in the boxing ring to demonstrate the strength of the Chinese. The movie's climactic finale takes place at a rigged tournament where Huo succeeds in establishing national pride in Chinese identity, but loses his life through treachery.

Although Huo is a historical figure, he has the reputation of a legend, and stories of his life are hazy and contradictory. The parts of Huo's life shown in Fearless are obviously ahistorical (for example, Huo is presented as childless after act one, but the real man was survived by several children) and gives the movie a feeling of being a tall tale. This impression is only further served by the physics-defying fights, choreographed by the great Yuen Woping. The dizzying wire-work creates unbelievable stunts that undermine the historical significance of the story.

While the second act is the beautiful soul of the film, it is also dishonest in its presentation of the rural utopian village. The peasants are always healthy and clean, the crops never fail, there is always enough food, and the beautiful and kind blind girl who loves Huo always has an apropos proverb to demonstrate their simple, traditional Chinese wisdom. The nationalism is so strong that there isn't a single white character in the whole of the movie who isn't portrayed as a grunting, dishonorable brute. A Japanese judo master is the lone foreigner presented with any sympathy.

In its rush to become a historical epic, the film also loses track of its most important relationship, that of Huo and his childhood friend Nong Jinsun. Huo's jock attitude and Nong's bookish responsibility develop into an unlikely friendship. By the end of the brisk and moving first act their friendship is rendered almost certainly irreparable by Huo's selfish actions. In the third act, however, poor Nong is relegated to sidekick status. Huo has achieved enlightenment on his own and only needs Nong's finances as startup funds for his academy.

As a martial arts film, it delivers the goods, perhaps to excess. But as a historical epic, it's unwillingness to play fair with facts and all-too willingness to uncritically celebrate Chinese values and demonize foreigners limits its importance. I was struck with a great sadness throughout the whole movie at how Jet Li, so charismatic in Fearless, has been misused as a dramatic actor in the past decade. The film's problems aside, it is truly a joy to watch one of the world's great international film stars at the top of his game.

Worlds of the Imperium - Keith Laumer

2006-09-16T08:34:00.000-05:00

I received a recommendation for Keith Laumer's Imperium novels, and so I decided to follow up on it. There's a new omnibus edition collecting all three Imperium novels, but it's currently only available in hardcover. Since this is my first encounter with Laumer's writing, I opted for the cheap way and bought a slightly beat-up used copy of the first book in the series for about two bucks and gave it a try.

Laumer's hero, Brion Bayard, is an American diplomat from our world who is kidnapped and dragged into a parallel dimension by the Imperium. The basic idea is that there are many parallel universes that all differ from their neighbors by some tiny amounts. The Imperium is made up of many of these parallel Earths who are so close in continuity that traveling between them is easy and government and commerce flourish. Separated by an expansive barrens (parallel universes that failed in an evolutionary sense) is our universe, and one other. This other, "evil" universe is like ours, except the cold war escalated and modern civilization collapsed. Brion's counterpart in this universe is the supreme dictator of Earth, so the Imperium, fearing invasion by this "evil" universe, wants Brion to infiltrate the capital, kill his counterpart, and assume control of the government.

It's a pretty clever idea, except Laumer's writing is too sparse. The elaborate concept works solely to get Brion to his adventure on the "evil" Earth. The Imperium itself hardly appears at all in the story. Brion, though he is professionally a diplomat, is more of an action hero and never exhibits any of the tact or strategy one would expect. Laumer also made his most famous hero, Retief, a diplomat, so clearly he likes the idea, but for all purposes, Brion could have been a fireman or an accountant for all it mattered in this story. The depiction of the underground resistance on the "evil" Earth is particularly effective, as well as the intriguing twist Laumer injects into his story when Brion finally meets his counterpart. However, most of the book is written in a hurried style that never lingers too long on any one idea or character. It's not a bad book, just an unsophisticated one.

My copy includes two bonus short stories, unrelated to Imperium. "The War against the Yukks" is dreadful. It's the kind of chauvinistic junk that was common during the male-oriented bad-old-days of science fiction. Two idiots find an archaeological relic which turns out to be a spaceship and travel to a planet with 700 nubile women where they are given the arduous duty repopulating the whole planet. Ugh.

Much better is "Worldmaster" in which the admiral of the U.S.'s space fleet, as controller of the most powerful military force in the solar system, has decided to turn his military power back on the Earth and declare himself supreme dictator. The story's protagonist must take information of the coup to the president who may be able to stop the plot. The story is nothing more than an extended chase scene through a futuristic Washington D.C., but it was tight and quite enjoyable. I mention it because I enjoyed this one quote, which I find as applicable in today's political climate as it was in the 60s when Laumer wrote it. "Theories are beautiful things–simple and precise as cut glass–as long as they're only theories. When you find in your hand the power to make them come true...suddenly, it's not so simple."

Topper - Thorne Smith

2006-09-12T22:40:00.000-05:00

There is a scene in Topper of such beauty that it has stayed with me in the weeks since I finished reading it. Cosmo Topper is an upper-middle class banker with a mundane life of routine. In an attempt to break free from his life of regularity (some might call this a mid-life crisis) he buys a sports car. The car was previously owned by a young couple with a reputation for hard partying and fast living. That lifestyle caught up with them, and they both died after wrecking the car. The car is lovingly restored and Topper begins driving it despite its reputation. The car, of course, is haunted by the ghosts of the young couple, George and Marion Kerby, and after getting over his initial shock at being haunted, Topper strikes up a friendship with the pair. In my favorite scene, Topper and George have found a case of whiskey and gotten good and thoroughly drunk, and Topper has finally started to loosen up.

  "This Scotch is delicious. Do you feel like dancing?"
  Kerby quickly looked up from his drink. Mr. Topper appeared to be perfectly normal. He was sitting solidly on his box and gazing into the fireplace.
  "Do I feel like what?" Kerby demanded.
  "Dancing, George," replied Mr. Topper in a reasonable voice. "Dancing or singing."
  "Certainly not," said Kerby, shortly.
  "That's odd," replied Mr. Topper. "I seem to."
  "Well, don't do it," Kerby commanded. "You'll spoil everything."
...
  "Listen, George," [Topper] asked humbly, "if I just sit quietly here by the fire and feel like dancing it will be all right, won't it?"

I found something beautiful, funny, and sad about a man so meted out, so worn down by his routine, that he had to ask permission to feel like dancing.

Eventually Topper and Marion (who no longer considers herself married to Kerby since death did them part) run off together for an affair which is anything but physical. The book is mostly a sequence of delightfully written set pieces of slapstick humor. Particularly outrageous are the Kerbys haunting Topper's trial for public intoxication and disturbing the peace, as well as a restaurant scene involving a partially materialized ghost dog. (I'll let you figure out which half of the dog was visible.)

Topper was written in the 1920s, and is full of references to prohibition. The Kerby's continual inebriation must have been shocking to contemporary readers, but even to a modern reader they drink to excess. There is something different in the way a modern reader interprets how the Kerbys died while driving under the influence, compared to a contemporary reader, for whom sports cars must have seemed a novelty or impractical luxury. The story also includes a few scenes of ribaldry which are tame by today's standard. Instead of seeming quaint, they lend a kind of timeless charm to the whole affair. The idea of an invisible naked woman sharing a room with a married man is enough to delight without being overly explicit.

There is a movie version of Topper, which is generally inferior to the book. It is perhaps most famous for being one of Cary Grant's early movies, and one of his very few supporting roles. The movie version adapts most of the book's best scenes and captures a lot of the slapstick comedy in the book. Roland Young is magnificent as Topper, but other than his nuanced performance, very little of the movie evokes the rich poignancy that runs throughout the story in Thorne Smith's book. If I just sit here and remember this book and laugh quietly to myself, it will be all right, won't it?

Agent of Chaos - Norman Spinrad

2006-09-10T11:00:00.000-05:00

My copy of Agent of Chaos includes an introductory note by Rex Weiner who praises the book for its revolutionary premise and underground status, and explains that it is a cult favorite among prisoners in the U.S. corrections system. I have a hard time believing that this book – firmly rooted in space opera genre conventions and also a dreadfully dull lecture on political philosophy – would be enjoyed by anyone. The 1960s produced so many good revolutionary novels and works of political ideas. Agent of Chaos is not one of them.

In Agent a central government, the Hegemony of Sol, rules over all human colonies throughout our solar system. The standard of living of the average human in the Hegemony is generally good, sacrificing some individual liberties for stability and harmony. There are two rival organizations: the Democratic League, which seeks to replace the authoritarian Hegemony with a more representative democratic government; and the Brotherhood of Assassins, a shadowy secret group committed to following the teachings in a manuscript describing the role of Chaos in the natural order of the universe. There is a plot about assassinations and interplanetary coups that allows thinly-written characters to engage in pro-forma debates about the benefits of various forms of government. The ratio of lecturing to action in this book is about 10 to 1.

As explicitly stated and restated, these three organizations fall into the three archetypical forms of governance: establishment, loyal opposition, and counter-establishment. The opposition challenges the policies of the establishment government, but supports the general framework of governance. Consider the role of the Democratic Party in the present-day U.S. Republicans control all three branches of government. Democrats form an opposition to the Republican policies, but they are essentially seeking to replace Republicans in positions of power with members of their own party. Politicians of the opposition may use the language of revolution, but they are, in practice, counter-revolutionaries. In the book, the followers of Chaos are not anarchists opposed to any system of governance, but they oppose regularity and predictability. They perform the role of injecting randomness into a system to dislodge it from its evolutionary dead-end. It is ironic that they follow this theory in a disciplined and even religious fashion, but I don’t see evidence that Spinrad intended this irony.

The book is not long, but it continues on long past the point the reader has grasped its facile premise and ceased to care about its cardboard characters and rote plot. Spinrad followed this debut novel with some ground-breaking novels, but none of his later genius is on display here. I was especially reminded of Robert Anton Wilson’s hallucinogenic Illuminatus trilogy, especially in the way the followers of Chaos in Wilson’s series follow a mysterious bible of discord and chaos. Agent lacks any of Illuminatus’s humor, wit, and even the plausibility of that absurd book. Rex Weiner says that this book inspired him to form Pie-Kill Unlimited, that group of jokers who throw meringue pies at powerful people. This book sure could have used some pies.

The Girl in the Glass - Jeffrey Ford

2006-08-18T08:05:00.000-05:00

The Girl in the Glass is a book about conmen, conspiracies, crackpots, and carneys. The story follows three conmen who work on Long Island during the Great Depression putting on fake seances for the rich and powerful. During a botched seance, the leader of the group, a wise and experienced grifter called Schell, sees a vision of the ghost of a young girl in a pane of glass. Schell discovers that the girl is the kidnapped daughter of a millionaire and decides to use his knowledge of human nature and powers of observation to find the girl under the pretense of his psychic powers. Diego, a 17 year old illegal Mexican adopted by Schell and trained to pretend as an Indian swami, narrates the case as his own coming-of-age story. Girl in the Glass is very clever, very funny, and very exciting.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but I kept expecting it to be something it wasn't. I've been a fan of Jeffrey Ford's since his debut novel, The Physionomy, was published. His previous novels are weird fantasies that toy with perception, identity, and the relationship between narrator, story and audience. As a result, each of his novels have a feverish dreamlike quality, none more so than his masterful The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque. In Charbuque, a painter is offered a large sum of money to paint an accurate portrait of a woman he can speak with but never see directly. The novel, set in turn-of-the-20th-century New York, must have whet Ford's appetite for historical fiction and set up the idea for Girl in the Glass. Although Girl includes the weird and fantastic, the perspective is always from backstage where the reader can see the trickery and slight-of-hand exposed. This is Ford's turn into the literary mainstream, and although it is a straightforward mystery novel (if mysteries can ever be considered straightforward), on its own merits it is a very fine book.

The book's narrator, Diego, is Ford's most appealing character from any of his books, and in fact, all of the principal characters here are strong and likeable enough to serve in sequels, should Ford decide to ever revisit the idea of conmen as psychic detectives. There are some profoundly memorable sequences as well, such as the carnival side-show funeral and the first passage into Schell's bugatorium, an indoor garden devoted to raising and breeding butterflies of all types. The butterfly serves as the novel's central metaphor, a transitional creature emerging from the chrysalis. On its own, the symbolism is somewhat facile, but Ford adds his own sense of irony, giving the characters a chance to explain their own interpretations of the meaning of butterflies, but in doing so, Ford rejects each of them in turn for a deeper meaning. The butterfly is a creature that cannot be seen for all that it is at once. It is always only a part of its self, and that is the deeper meaning of the con, visible only in parts.

The Boy Who Couldn't Die - William Sleator

2006-08-15T12:20:00.000-05:00

William Sleator has written some fantastic books over the years. His career is mostly made up of science fiction and fantasy thrillers for a young adult audience, but his books never insult the intelligence of his readers. Sleator's best novels – House of Stairs, The Green Futures of Tycho, and Interstellar Pig – meld mundane experiences with fantastic occurrences, always taking the time to develop the characters and create a pervasive sense of suspense and mood. There are many similarities between Sleator's stories: a teenage protagonist (usually male) falls victim to some interesting challenge caused by a scientific principal or magical phenomenon and must think his way out of the puzzle, usually with the help of an exotic, and highly intelligent, girl, encountering several twists and complications along the way. In fact, that pretty much sums up The Boy Who Couldn't Die, a recent novel which can be read enjoyably in one sitting, but isn't one of Sleator's more memorable works.

Sleator's protagonist, Ken, is grieving for the death of his best friend, who died in a plane crash. Ken learns of a voodoo practice for granting immortality, and decides to visit a spiritualist who can help Ken avoid the fate of his departed friend. The ritual separates Ken from his soul, turning him into an invulnerable astral zombie. What sounds perfectly corny in summary works surprisingly well through Ken's living dead narration. Liberated from fear and risk, Ken also can no longer experience the joy and sweetness of life. Ken becomes a thrill seeker, and travels to the Caribbean to swim with sharks. While there, he learns of the true consequences of his bargain, and decides to regain his soul, whatever the cost.

The book is always interesting, but the roller coaster plot relies far too strongly on coincidence and logical fallacy to maintain a suspension of disbelief. Ken's family is almost limitlessly wealthy, and although a long passage of the book deals with how Ken will finance his quest to find his soul, the outcome is rarely in doubt. Far more interesting are the off-beat Cheri Buttercup, the stretch pant-wearing spiritualist, and Sabine, a poor island girl who joins Ken in his quest. Long passages describing SCUBA diving most likely reflect Sleator's interest in the activity, rather than adding anything meaningful to the plot.

The Boy Who Couldn't Die is fun and short – the one probably a factor in the other – and the subject matter is interesting and interestingly presented. However, the book can't quite compare to some of Sleator's better novels. It is possible that I simply found the magical aspects of the story less plausible than the scientific and science fiction ideas he usually puts in his story. I am looking forward to reading his next book, The Last Universe, which deals with quantum physics.

Polymorph - Scott Westerfeld

2006-08-07T13:41:00.000-05:00

Scott Westerfeld is experiencing something of a career resurrection lately, thanks to his wildly popular young adult novels. His first career, as a writer of character-driven science fiction for grownups is largely forgotten. Before Uglies, Midnighters, Peeps and So Yesterday Westerfeld turned out some very fine novels. The ideas and themes that make his young adult novels so engaging are vividly on display in Polymorph, Westerfeld's debut novel.

Polymorph's protagonist, who sometimes calls herself Lee, is capable of shifting her structure to take on any appearance. Her talent, and her fear of being exposed as a freak, has enabled Lee to live a life of public anonymity, slinking through life on the path of least resistance and leaving the least impression. Her solitary life is disturbed when she meets another polymorph. The two are first lovers, then enemies, as they are unable to reconcile their own ambitions. In their game of cat-and-mouse, Lee struggles not to become the mouse.

The novel works many of the same themes and ideas that Westerfeld explores in his other novel, especially the relationship between appearance and identity that shows up in the Uglies books. Westerfeld creates a parallel examination of this idea through Lee's one friend, Freddie, who has a job working as an online actor, taking on personas to stimulate conversation between a chat service's paying customers. Westerfeld also intelligently examines the need for social belonging and intimacy. Lee takes on many lovers, but her talent allows her to disappear and avoid any emotional connection. The explicitness of her sexual encounters (which will be shocking to readers familiar only with Westerfeld's youth-oriented books) demonstrates the evolution of intimacy, trust, and control in Lee's character through the book.

The action in Polymorph moves along swiftly, as Westerfeld wisely opts to keep the plot fairly simple. Each character and scene in the book is memorable. There are many more issues Westerfeld could have addressed, but the depiction of Lee's journey of self-discovery is economical and effective, and the action is exciting. Westerfeld only makes a misstep in the novel's denouement, where a brief passage suggests that the ending is not quite what it seems. Whether Westerfeld intended to leave the story open for a sequel, or he succumbed to the temptation to put an unnecessary and confounding twist in his narrative, it sours what is otherwise a very entertaining novel.

Shattered Glass

2006-07-30T08:57:00.000-05:00

How entertaining should it be, really? A young writer at a prestigious policy magazine fabricates some articles, gets caught, and creates a crisis for a young managing editor who hasn't yet won the loyalty of his staff. If this weren't the incredibly true story of Stephen Glass – the real-life writer for The New Republic, whose sensational stories established him as one of the hottest young writers in America before his lies were exposed – the movie never would have been made. That the movie Shattered Glass works as a taut thriller and terrifying character drama is a tribute to the fine writing, acting, and directing. While it was on screen, it was thoroughly captivating entertainment, but once the movie was over, it left me with many questions unanswered, and many more unasked.

The movie covers the brief span of time between two critical firings: former New Republic editor, Michael Kelly, and Stephen Glass. Glass is the youngest contributing editor on an unusually young staff. He tells us in the opening that the secret to his career is two-fold: modesty in his professional life and a willingness to see the reader's needs within the story. By the end of the movie, we see how both qualities have ruined him. Glass has a fine art for extrapolating small details into a compelling story, regardless of the veracity of that narrative. The plausibility of his tales, combined with his willingness to please his audience and lack of presumption, mean that his research is rarely questioned. Glass, played subtly by Hayden Christensen, tells everyone exactly what they want to hear, responding timidly, "Are you mad at me?" when anyone comes close to questioning his fictions. The movie portrays Glass not so much as an unethical journalist, than as a pathological liar and crafty self-promoter. When the carefully constructed lies begins to fall apart around him, the collapse of Glass's personality is truly terrifying.

The movie takes on many issues here, and the most compelling of the movie's subplots involves the ascension of new managing editor, Charles Lane, played with the right balance of leadership and vulnerability by Peter Sarsgaard. After former editor Kelly was fired by the publisher for political reasons, Lane finds himself with a staff fiercely loyal to Kelly and on the verge of mutiny. The crisis with the popular Glass strains the office even further. The movie does a great job of showing how difficult it was to prosecute the truth of Glass's reporting while also fulfilling his role as advocate for his writers. The way that Glass systematically exhausts Lane's favor and forces Lane to refuse Glass any further sympathy is heartbreaking.

The movie does leave many questions open, and as a result, this is a movie that I find myself still thinking about days after seeing it. The movie never really addresses the underlying causes of Glass's behavior. It somewhat suggests that Glass broke under the stress of trying to manage a writing career while attending law school, but his fabrications and lies began long before his graduate studies. Was Glass nothing more than a social climber? The movie also suggests so, showing Glass courting successively more prestigious publications, while actively denying his ambitions to his colleagues. And yet, when Glass is exposed as a fraud, he continues to dissemble, destroying his career in the process, rejecting opportunities to repent and rehabilitate his reputation.

The most frightening aspect of the film is its most unsolved: the gap between research and reporting. The movie was released the same year as the Jayson Blair scandal and reports on journalists being paid by the Bush administration to repeat government opinions as news. The Glass scandal nearly sunk The New Republic and permanently damaged its reputation, but the movie never really addresses how these kinds of scandals come to pass. Michael Kelly is practically canonized here, and when the characters realize that most of Glass's falsifications happened under Kelly's editorship, the movie quickly changes the subject, as if afraid of the implications. If the movie has any lingering conclusions to make, it is to shatter trust in those whose words seem so polished and whose ideas seem so sure, and to expose them as flawed human beings in a flawed system.

A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick

2006-07-06T07:50:00.000-05:00

A Scanner Darkly is a shockingly anti-subversive novel from one of the most subversive novelists of the 20th century. It is a most realistic work of a science fiction master. It is Philip Dick's most vulgar, most fatalist, most subtle, most humane, most modern, and arguably his best novel.

The story's central conceit is that drug distributors and dealers have so completely infiltrated law enforcement, undercover narcotics officers must hide their identities even from their own police supervisors. This means that a narc must report on his own dealings as a suspect so as not to identify himself to the other detectives working the case. It is in this situation that Bob Arctor finds himself, playing the double role of up-and-coming dealer as "Arctor" and "Fred", the incognito undercover narc. Arctor's mission is to work his way up the drug distribution ladder and move up through the organization to find out the source of a drug called Substance D, known on the streets as Death.

The novel's critical moment comes when a drug-addled Fred sees Arctor on the scanner for the first time and doesn't recognize himself. The novel begins to subtly veer off into a paranoid delusion as Arctor suspects that someone is trying to kill him while Fred makes it his life's work to bring down Arctor. This would be a fine set-up for a by-the-numbers Philip Dick novel, but Scanner is so much more.

During the 1960s, Dick went through a period of feverish creativity and intense production, often churning out several novels per year. Scanner marks the beginning of a new era of his career in which his novels became more autobiographical and earnest, maintaining the same basic themes, but bearing a maturity and discipline not present in even some of his most famous works. Dick writes in his poignant afterward that this book was inspired by the years he spent sharing his house with itinerant young people who came to his house to do drugs and crash. As a result, Scanner is shockingly authentic in the language of this California drug culture, and endearing in the genius of many of its characters.

Though the book is something of a celebration of the sub-culture of the dopehead, Dick makes it clear, both in his afterward and in the novel's chilling final act, that drugs are a kind of pestilence on our lives and our society. Dick's personal paranoia – of the government, of the police, of power in general – is a misdirection from the true villains of the story. The authorities, often working at odds with themselves, are far less sinister than the disciplined organization that sells the promise of a view into a larger reality, but only shows our own world through a scanner darkly.

Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land - John Crowley

2006-07-04T07:28:00.000-05:00

"Abendland (Evening Land): There is always a West into which the heroes of the older age may go. Just beneath this word, in the small dictionary that I have, is another, Abentreuer, which means generally an Adventure, but is more exactly or loosely a journey West. Where dawn comes, of course, as everywhere. No end to the West till those who journey thence come round again at the last."

So writes Lady Ada Lovelace in a set of annotations to a long lost novel by her estranged father, the poet, Lord Byron. In Crowley's novel, Byron set pen to paper sometime between 1816 and 1822 and wrote The Evening Land, his only work of prose fiction. The manuscript falls into Ada's hands in the twilight of her life and she dutifully edits and annotates the novel for the father she never knew, before destroying the manuscript at the request of her emotionally manipulative and controlling mother. The notes and letters associated with the novel are sealed away for 150 years until they fall into the hands of a modern woman who calls herself Smith, working on a detailed biography of Ada Lovelace for a Women-in-Science website. The notes, along with page after page of numbers, transcribed meticulously by Ada as she was dying of cancer, form a central mystery for Smith and precipitate her reunion with her own estranged father.

The novel is told in three layers: The Evening Land, Byron's lost novel, presented wholly for the reader; Ada's annotations, in which she tries to explain Byron's literary and historical references; and the electronic correspondences between Smith; her father, Lee; and her lover, Thea. The Evening Land occupies the majority of the book and is a sprawling novel about a half-English, half-Albanian boy, Ali, sired by a mad, adventuring English lord, and eventually adopted and transplanted to the British Isle. The tale is wildly inventive, if rambling, as Ali encounters one improbable scenario after another. The novel features drafty Scottish abbeys, dank English prisons, brave heroism on the field of battle, duels, unexpected reunions, midnight liaisons, and even a zombie for good measure.

Crowley is a master stylist, and he is masterful here as he weaves the three threads of his story. I am no Byron expert, but The Evening Land is effective at evoking that period of literary history – between Austen and Dickens – when the novel was novel. The prose is, at first, overly rich with literary flourishes. After only a few pages, though, even a modern reader can sink into the flow of the text to hear the story within. Crowley's modern sections, told through email, are as modern and authentic as The Evening Land is romantic and ornate.

The story outside the story, is largely one of characters who exist outside the narrative. Central to the novel is Byron himself. Left to the context of history, The Evening Land might have been the source of unending speculation and criticism, but here, Ada (our other great unseen character) seems to be looking for some message from her father. Crowley uses Smith and her father both to tell their own story, but also to provide a modern reader (who likely has no particular knowledge of Byron, his life or poetry) a context for understanding the story he is trying to tell. These parts can be largely expository, but they help in understanding the subtle yearning in Ada's notes and in Lee's identification with the novel to understand his relationship with his own daughter.

The outer story also features ancient computers (the so-called Difference Engine), secret ciphers, and mysterious strangers. (Crowley has Byron write himself a cameo into The Evening Land, just as Crowley writes himself into the framing story.) However, this is no Lord Byron Code. This is a story about art and style and characters. The book is largely an effusive love letter to Lord Byron and a celebration of his literary legacy through homage. But most of all, it is a grand Abentreuer, and a splendidly told one at that.

Adult - Tokyo Jihen

2006-07-01T13:37:00.000-05:00

Tokyo Jihen has finally melded into a band in its own right, rather than merely being Shiina Ringo's band. The current Tokyo Jihen lineup is not only the most talented set of musicians Shiina has ever worked with, but based on the studio set presented on Adult, Tokyo Jihen is greater than the sum of its formidable parts.

It is always difficult to tell exactly how popular foreign artists are in their home countries, but all evidence is that Shiina Ringo's popularity at its peak was nothing less than stratospheric. With her distinctive voice, quirky musical sense, and iconic mole, her solo career took her from impressive alt-rocker grrl with a pop sensibility to art-rock diva, even inspiring a character in a popular video game franchise. Her final solo album, Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana was a swirling blend of noise rock, electronica, traditional Japanese folk, and cabaret. After announcing her retirement, she had her signature mole surgically removed and reemerged as the vocalist for Tokyo Jihen. Their debut album, Kyoiku, was a crafty bit of post-punk rock-lite, full of high-tempo, angular songs and garage rock production. The disc had a few strong songs but never elevated beyond feeling like a Shiina Ringo one-off project.

Tokyo Jihen retooled its lineup since the release of Kyoiku and has come back stronger and more confident. The songs are more diverse, covering a range of 20th and 21st century popular musical styles. Shiina Ringo's musical influence is still felt strongly here – in fact Adult evokes the range on Shiina's influences and covers album, Utaite Myouri. The disc has all the polish and up-tempo swagger that Kyoiku lacked. The overall sensation is of a energetic jam session.

Shiina refreshingly reins in her performance to let the magic happening with the band shine. As a result Shiina's voice, usually so effective, sounds somewhat thin compared to her older work. She is weakest here on some of the jazz and swing-influenced numbers where a true chanteuse or a more forceful performance would have been preferable, but might have destroyed the precious balance of ego that catapults this disc to such heights.

The hard-rocking, daring, solo Shiina was brilliant while it lasted, but the musical maturity on display on Adult presents a Tokyo Jihen with a future just as bright.

Xenogenesis Trilogy - Octavia E. Butler

2006-06-28T10:31:00.000-05:00

Octavia Butler passed away earlier this year. I had previously read both Parable novels and Kindred. Those novels carry elements of SF, but are largely works of social literature, rather than genre fiction. After hearing of Butler's untimely death, I decided to try her Xenogenesis trilogy: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago – which are essentially science fiction in ways that many of her other books are not. I found the series to be less of a trilogy, and more of a set of variations on a theme. The first book, Dawn, is the most fully developed novel of the three, and is the only book in the series that is essential genre reading.

The story of Xenogenesis concerns the fate of humanity after a cataclysmic war which has killed most of humanity and rendered the Earth uninhabitable in the long-term. At this point, an alien race, the Oankali, descend to Earth, harvest the surviving humans, and create a research program to study the social and biological makeup of the species. Over the course of the series, the Oankali are revealed to have a biological imperative to accumulate genetic diversity throughout the universe, incorporating the best ideas of any evolutionary path and discarding the flawed or diseased. In this way, the Oankali become a kind of meta-species representing universal life in all its variations.

By destroying themselves, humanity has forfeited its right to independent existence – although that right is portrayed in the series as a mere illusion. The Oankali will breed with the remaining humans and become something new, effectively ending humanity as we know it. The first book, Dawn, focuses on Lilith, a human woman chosen by the Oankali to act as liaison to humanity in the early stages of the alien program and to lead the new human-Oankali hybrids to their new homes on Earth. The later books deal with the experiences of her mixed-species children as they attempt to reconcile their feelings of identity with normal humans and their own mixed-species societies.

Dawn works largely because of the central identity of Lilith, as she shares our emotional base. She makes decisions we may disagree with, but we understand her reasons for them. She initially feels revulsion and anger toward these alien invaders, and as she begins to develop tolerance and a grudging admiration for them, we can experience it as well. The narrators of the later books are too fully un-human to sympathize with (and maybe that's the point,) and their adventures are merely elaborations of Lilith's own from the first book. She plays a minor role in these later books, and the loss of a human character as an emotional anchor constantly threatens to separate the reader from the narrative. Butler might have been better suited telling at least one story from the perspective of a human resister.

The biological and reproductive descriptions in the books are fascinating, but as Butler explores them in the sequels, she creates more questions than she can answer. The Oankali are tri-sexual, with each mating requiring a male, a female, and an ooloi, whose job it is to selectively construct the offspring from the male's and female's genetic contributions. Unfortunately, the Oankali are biochemically monogamous – although that word is not exactly accurate – and all matings are essentially heterosexual. The books never address issues of homosexuality or promiscuity, though her system could allow both and interesting variations. (Perhaps this was an editorial decision to keep the books from being too weird.) Moreover, mixed-species children are more essentially Oankali than human, lacking many characteristics that might have benefited the new species: humor, art, imagination.

Dawn creates a compelling picture of a human future, and while it may be uncomfortable or unpleasant in places, it is a profound and poignant read. The later books are neither as engaging or as informative, but they are readable and have their own small, moments of genius. Instead of Adulthood Rites or Imago, I would recommend other books of humanity's future, such as Arthur C. Clarke's classic, Childhood's End, or Patricia Anthony's Brother Termite. For similar themes about genetic manipulation and human-alien relations, Karen Traviss's Wess'har series is worthwhile, if long-winded. And of course, Butler's Parable novels explore many of the same social themes of human identity, manifest destiny, and religion, and both of them are highly recommended.

Ship Fever - Andrea Barrett

2006-06-26T03:25:00.000-05:00

Ship Fever collects seven short stories and one novella thematically linked by science and the observation of the natural world. Within this context, Barrett explores many secondary themes, involving the relationships between men and women, parents and children (literal and metaphorical), and the living and the dead. Barrett also seems determined to examine her characters lives in retrospective, as the themes of unfulfilled lives or unrealized dreams recurs in most of the stories – as if a whole life could be seen as an extended scientific experiment.

Barrett's style is one of alternating detail and generalization, giving most of the stories a dreamlike or memory-like quality most commonly found in the magical realists. One would expect that stories of science and scientists would be more clinical, and yet Barrett's prose is almost lyrical. Most of the stories here lack a traditional story structure in a narrative sense, but far from meandering, Barrett is tracing the course of her characters' developing sense of self-awareness. It is perhaps ironic, and yet not at all ironic, that many of her scientist characters fail to observe their own lives with the attention they afford the natural world.

Barrett's greatest weakness in this collection is in her depiction of gender relations and the motivations of her male characters. Barrett's female protagonists are well-drawn and sympathetic, but most of her central male characters are disillusioned or disappointed with their careers, feckless in their relationships with their wives or daughters, or simply non-existent for important parts of the narrative.

There is a subtext here about how men judge themselves by their professional advancement and the respect of their peers and women judge themselves by their relationships with their families. Unfortunately, Barrett misses the point that these are different only by degrees, and as more and more opportunities arise for women to advance professionally, many women are choosing to prioritize their careers over families. In one story, Barrett creates a career-minded female scientist, but then softens her by giving her an ineffectual father and showing her communing with the spirit of her deceased mother.

Despite these shortcomings, Barrett's stories are never less than fascinating, especially "Ship Fever", the sprawling novella that makes up most of the book's second half. Set against the backdrop of the typhus epidemic on Grosse Isle, Canada, during the summer of 1847 – which killed over 5,000 Irish emigrants – all of Barrett's considerable talents and forgivable shortcomings are on vivid display. Barrett creates her most sympathetic male character in Lauchlin Grant, a second-rate doctor with an unrequited love for his childhood sweetheart (whose husband is, incidentally, abroad for most of the story, reporting on the potato famine.) Grant decides to work at the Grosse Isle quarantine facility. "Ship Fever" also features the most vivid, muscular prose of the book, as the stink and despair of the sick is practically palpable. Most of the stories in the book tend toward the precious or refined, but "Ship Fever" is exciting and gritty.

It may sound like I found a lot to dislike in this book, but quite to the contrary, I found all of the stories here to be worthwhile, even if flawed in some way. I am reminded of the scene in Contact, when the female astronomer, confronted by the splendor of the universe, laments "They should have sent a poet." Contact's heroine is a more plausible and curious scientist than any of the characters depicted in Ship Fever, but the stories here practically sing and dance and weep about the scientific discovery of the natural world and the inner lives of Mendel, Linnaeus, Darwin, and the countless men and women who followed them.

Cook's Country Magazine

2006-06-20T20:08:00.000-05:00

Even though I have not been cooking as much lately, I still maintain my subscription to Cook's Illustrated, a charming if anachronistic bi-monthly dedicated to bringing gourmet cooking to the everyman's kitchen. All illustrations and photos in that magazine are in black-and-white, but the magazine is completely free of advertisements and has a high standard of quality control with respect to recipe content, instruction, and product evaluation (both food and equipment.)

Cook's Country is a new magazine from the same publisher. Ostensibly the magazine is dedicated to "country-style" cooking, and the trial issue I received certainly bears that out. The July 2006 issue (not the one in the picture) features recipes for burgers, ribs, potato salad, pies, and fried fish, just to name a few. Actually, in terms of content, I found little difference between Cook's Country and it's sister magazine. The basic format is for the test cooks at the magazine to take some recipe, familiar or exotic, and try several approaches to duplicating it. They select their favorite on the basis of the ease of production and quality of the results. Often it's a compromise and they say as much. In addition to the recipe, they provide details about how the recipe can go wrong, why, and how to fix it, making their articles more useful than some of the other cooking magazines you could choose. There are also short product reviews and cooking tips (some from professional chefs and others from readers.)

The first difference you notice about Cook's Country is that, unlike Cook's Illustrated, the whole thing is in color. It's a much glossier publication, but is still ad-free. I had learned not to miss the color in CI, but everything here is so vibrant I just want to rush over and start cooking immediately. The magazine also features a punch out, quick cooking "centerfold" where key recipes are printed on cards that can be stored separately in a recipe file. These recipes are not written with the same level of detail as the feature articles, but they represent simple, fast dishes that should be fairly foolproof. (This fool hasn't tried any of them yet, though.) Also, the magazine seems to rely more on reader input than CI. One very nice feature is a letters column, where readers can write in with descriptions of dishes and ask for recipes.

According to the web, Cook's Country will be getting a companion TV show on PBS, similar to the relationship between Cook's Illustrated and "America's Test Kitchen." I hope that our PBS affiliate will pick it up, because I greatly enjoyed "ATK" for the short time it was carried locally. I like the new magazine, and I think it makes a lot of improvements to the old, traditional format of Cook's Illustrated. However, I haven't decided to subscribe or not. I am worried about overlap between the two titles. If they can maintain good quality control, and keep the two magazines distinct, I would gladly look forward to adding a new quality cooking magazine on the alternating months when I don't have a new Cook's Illustrated to read.

Ultra Blue - Utada Hikaru

2006-06-19T09:14:00.000-05:00

Utada is regressing. Her first album, First Love, was the work of an unnaturally talented ingenue. Her second, Distance, was a rousingly diverse collection of songs that improved on her debut in every way. Deep River was a melancholy masterpiece. Since then it's been rough going. Her American crossover attempt, Exodus, was a disappointment and will probably prevent her from ever catching on in the land of her birth. Ultra Blue is marketed as Utada's triumphant return to the Japanese pop scene, but that market has changed a lot since her last album in 2002, and Ultra Blue is the least ambitious album of Utada's career.

The album consists of songs from Utada's five single releases over the past 4 years, plus a collection of pleasant-sounding, but unmemorable filler tracks. The secondary tracks here are largely mid-tempo synth-pop in the style of Erasure. The arrangements are all synthesized, with a cheap, shimmery sameness. The vocal performances are too controlled and mannered to elevate the forgettable and meandering melodies. "This is Love" opens the album with a little energy, and "WINGS" would have been a beautiful song with a more organic accompaniment. The best of the new tracks is "Eclipse (Interlude)" which is a two-minute instrumental that expanded into full-length form would have been the only danceable track on the album.

As far as the older songs, "Colors" is the oldest and hews closest to the traditional Utada sound perfected on Deep River. "Be My Last" is a lovely ballad which stands out largely for its emotive performance and real instrument accompaniment. The best of the singles, and best track on the album by far, is "Passion", which builds a textured sonic landscape out of ethereal samples, backmasked vocals, and a complex cadence.

If only the whole album had taken some chances instead of playing it safe, we might be watching the maturation of a great artist. As it stands now, Utada's early potential is still largely unrealized and she is being surpassed by the artists she influenced and inspired. It took her five albums to do so, but with Ultra Blue she has finally started her sophomore slump.

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-06-12T08:19:00.000-05:00

While the overall message of An Inconvenient Truth was noteworthy and I would encourage everyone to see it, especially to have a more basic understanding of global warming, the film is not without fault. Al Gore would have done much better if he would have decided what type of film he was actually creating. A memoir? A political film? An environmental awareness film? While all of the information given in the film was important, I'm not sure that it all needed to go together. Does it really matter that his family continued to grow tobacco even after the Surgeon General's report that smoking causes cancer? Do we really care what Al Gore's childhood summer residence was like? Do we need to know how lame Bush really is when it comes to the environment? Well, yes, but is that what the movie was suppose to be about? We know that Bush has totally manipulated science all around, but it's not just about the environment that he's doing it. So I don't think that it was very relevant to bring up the dopehead that Bush put in place at NASA who then went on to work at ExxonMobil. What was important is the fact that our environment is in a dire position. He could have spent a lot more time discussing what causes global warming, what's happening the world over (he did give a good number of examples), and what we can do to stop it and reverse it. He could have introduced us to the different companies around the world that are making policies to help the environment. He could have shown us less of his slide show presentation. I could have seen less about Al Gore traveling and spending time on planes, in cabs, in hotels... Don't just explain the problem and how politicians have ignored scientists (suprise surprise). Tell me the solutions. These barely had any time at all. The public is left to go off and investigate for themselves. The public is lazy.
http://www.read-the-truth.com

Fools Errant - Matthew Hughes

2006-06-10T09:47:00.001-05:00

Fools Errant is Matthew Hughes's first novel, and introduces the Archonate, a loose confederation of human societies on a far-future Earth. The novel is obviously an homage to Jack Vance's Dying Earth series of books in style, milleu, and plot. In fact, several of the vignettes in Fools Errant would fit seamlessly into Vance's novels The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga.

Filidor is the leisurely nephew of the Archon, the ruler of most of the societies of civilized Earth. He is called away from his indulgences by his uncle who sends him on an ill-defined quest with only his (oft-disused) wits and his uncle's dwarfen asssistant. Along the way, Filidor is forced to interact with the diverse peoples and look beyond his provincial, if priveleged, lifestyle. The book is organized episodically with only the thinnest of connecting tissue linking one story to the next. This makes it a nice book to pick up, savor for a while, and put down for later. Unfortunately, the ending comes abruptly, and somewhat unsatisfyingly, as Hughes tries to rush Filidor's maturation and conclude the Archon's quest in one brisk passage.

The similarities to Vance make some of the differences all the more striking. Hughes emulates Vance's baroque prose and dialogue, but does so with a softer touch than Vance used. The result is the sensation of grandor and mystery without the burden of a vocabulary lesson. Hughes's hero is also more appealing. Filidor is not so much a scoundrel as Vance's anti-hero Cugel, but rather a lazy and indulgent sort who needs toughening. We relish the way Cugel always gets his comeuppance, but yet we pull for Filidor to learn and grow. Hughes also uses lower forms of comedy and farce to lighten his story, compared to Vance's dry, cynical sense of irony.

The best addition to Hughes's story is a book within a book called Discourses and Edifications of Liw Osfeo, consisting of a set of parables about a scholar who always succeeds in confounding expectations. Filidor carries the book with him through his travels and frequently reads excerpts from the book, hoping to attain some great wisdom from the stories. These stories are hilarious non-sequitors which serve as both diversion and satire. They remind me greatly of some of Stanislaw Lem's short fictions, especially the stories of The Cyberiad.

Hughes's two novels about Filidor – Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice – are currently out of print, but relatively easy to find used. Hughes has continued writing stories about the Archonate which deal with other characters and can be enjoyed separately.

Le Sac des Filles - Camille

2006-06-09T11:02:00.000-05:00

I heard a sample from French singer Camille's latest album Le Fils and was immediately intrigued. The album is getting enough attention that the CD has been released in the US with comparisons to other avant-pop performers such as Bjork.

I tracked down a copy of her French debut, Le Sac des Filles, through an online reseller, and it's a very satisfying listen. Unlike the experimentalism of her new album, Le Sac des Filles is a walking tour of French pop music that feels both traditional and modern. Lighter and less artificial than any of Pizzicato Five's attempts to recreate this kind of music, Camille's production is clever yet perfectly organic, using traditional instruments and sampling to build the sensation of moving through Paris streets in different seasons and eras. At times the effect is gimicky, such as the artifical grammaphone effect in "Ruby", the relentless wordplay of "Les ex", or the crashing dishes that punctuate the collapse of the title track.

But mostly it is Camille's versatile voice that sells the best tracks here. She is childlike and playful on the opener, "1 2 3", but regoups into full caberet mode on "Paris". "Mon petit vieux" is a pleasant song accompanied only by guitar and piano. "Un homme déserté" sounds like an excerpt from a melancholy romance film. Camille whispers and growls through "Je ne suis pas ta chose", a defiant pop masterpiece.

All the songs on this album have the wonderful characteristic of sounding new and original yet sounding immediately familiar. Whether or not the challenging sonic landcapes of Le Fil catch on in the US, Le Sac de Filles is worth tracking down. It's a rewarding listen and nicely fills the French pop niche your music collection was lacking.

Passion Play - Sean Stewart

2006-06-06T22:07:00.000-05:00

Passion Play dates back to 1992, and is Sean Stewart's first novel. Stewart is perhaps best known for his contemporary fantasies Mockingbird and Galveston. Unlike the dreamlike lucidity of those novels, Stewart's prose here is spare and lean. Perhaps inspired by the rise of the Moral Majority during the elder Bush presidency, this is perhaps the most prescient vision of the extrapolation of the current Bush's administration since 1984.

The main character is Diane Fletcher, an empath who works as a freelance investigator for the police. In the future of Passion Play, the constitutional democracy of the United States is replaced with a fundamentalist Christian regime which treats sins as capital offences and televises executions. Fletcher is brought in to investigate the murder of the most popular actor in the state run entertainment industry, the de facto spokesman for the moral lifestyle of the patriotic citizen. Along the way, she discovers the hypocrisy of the powerful, the harsh faith of the true believer, the burden of the conflicted and compassionate, and the quiet rebellion of the rejected and outcast.

The mystery is a fairly straightforward parlor mystery with a narrow set of suspects, each reflecting an aspect of the dismal society they inhabit. However, it is Fletcher's ruminations on life and faith, enhanced by her empathy, that make the story worth reading as she struggles to find a place in an increasingly intolerant and rigid society. At fewer than 200 pages, there is scarcely a wasted word, and every scene is vivid and memorable, from the crime scene on the first page, to the final haunting execution as justice is finally served.

The book is currently in print from Tesseract Books, and it is about time that someone realized that the book perhaps even more current and essential today than it was when it was first published.