Scott Westerfeld has an interesting post trying to identify the various types of time-travel elasticity in science fiction media and literature, notions of one absolute vs. multiple timelines, and whether or not you can effect change in your own timeline.
In contrast to Ray Bradbury's "butterfly effect," I believe it was Isaac Asimov, who in The End of Eternity, submitted the “wave” theory of elastic time, proposing that the effects of any change would be most noticable immediately after the point of interference/insertion, but would gradually diminish in intensity as you moved past the event. So, killing Hitler would radically alter the 20th century, marginally alter the 21st or 22nd century, and might leave the 23rd century or beyond virtually untouched and have no effect on the 30th century at all. Of course, the largest alterations would carry further forwards, while smaller ones would fade out more rapidly.
Oddly, this reminds me of a recent article I read on the resurgence of the “Great Man” theory of history. The idea that, at any given time, there are about 12 people who are creating the world had falled out of academic favor for some decades, replaced with the notion that economic, social, political trends were shaping events more than individuals, who were simply stepping in to fill roles dictated for them by larger forces. I.e., if you did assassinate Hitler, someone else would have stepped into the power vacuum in Germany and mobilized tensions there to similar effect. However, ironically, George W. has renewed interest in the “Great Man” theory. While the artile wasn’t suggesting W was in any way “great,” it pointed out that in almost-single handedly forcing a war that a) wasn’t necessary and b) wasn’t popular with congress, the people, or the world at large, he has demonstrated how much (catastrophic) effect one individual really can have on the course of history.
The other thing this discussion brings to mind is the way that science filters through into pop culture and effects our fictions even at the most visible layer. The original Star Trek very much adhered to the notion of “one timeline”, which, when broken, was always repaired - the break and it’s correction (as Spock points out in “City on the Edge of Forever”) always part of the design. This holds sway through the TNG episode, “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” in which Guinan senses the wrongness of a universe in with the Federation and Klingon Empire are at war, and impresses Picard on the necessity of repairing the damage. (Picard raises the question, “How do we know this timeline isn’t any more right than any other?” but Guinan steamrollers him into accepting her position.)
But this notion of a single timeline begins to break down with the latter episode “Parallels,” which sees Worf permeating through a variety of alternative timelines until everything culminates in a clusterfuck of thousands of Enterprises from a myriad different universes.
By Deep Space Nine, the notion of one time-line has radically broken down, as withness an episode whose title escapes me, in which Chief O’Brien is constantly teleporting back and forth to a future in which the station is destroyed. Despite the fact that each trip exposes him to radiation poisoning, he makes one final attempt to avert the encroaching disaster, meets himself of just minutes later on, dies, and sends his minutes-into-the-future self back in his stead. Upon his return, he wonders if he really has the right to call Kieko his wife, given that “her” O’Brien died in a timeline that was then prevented from occurring, and is reassured by his best friend that he’s still the Chief, even if his memories are out of whack by a few minutes. Since “most of him” is the same, that’s good enough for government work, what?
Finally, when we get to Voyager’s first few seasons (where my knowledge of Trek ends, as my viewing of Trek did too), time has become elastic, fractal, alterable, permeable, and generally good for twisting into any shape the writers need. The two-part episode “Future’s End” sees multiple versions of characters encountered with no attempt to match cause to effect. Here, a crash-landing in the past has resulted in a boom in 1990s computer technology (seemingly the boom we ourselves experienced - thus the alteration IS the correct time, was always meant to occur, etc..), but the 29th Century timecop that is sent to prevent it is re-encountered twice, once as a sane individual aware of and contributing to the outcome of the episode’s action, and once as a homeless man wandering deranged from the initial crash. Both versions co-exist in the same (final) timeline, and alterations and corrections made in the episode do not erase or negate the mad homeless version’s existence. I quite watching soon afterwards, but kept enough tabs on the show to know that they continued to play with multiple versions of their characters, and multiple co-existing and interacting timelines.
Finally, while I haven’t quite put my finger on it yet, I do think that the move from an absolute time to fluid/fractal timelines somehow coincides with blurring questions of individuality and identity unconsciously co-opted from the general zeitgeist. It used to give me fits when Jeri Taylor would tell me “absolutely the holographic doctor is a person” and Brannon Braga would turn around and tell me “absolutely he is not.” They didn’t know themselves, but unconsciously, a lot of that series was about ascribing “personhood” to inanimate, but sentient-seeming, objects, as witness the sympathy everyone gives the doctor when his holographic family breaks down, despite the fact that a simply tripping of a reset switch would have them all up and running again. This inability to distinguish between a long-running program who had achieved self awareness over time and the game-pieces conjured into existence on the holodeck typified the entire series, which, to me, was perfectly appropriate for - and indicative of - an age where a woman driver ran over a biker because her tamaguchi needed immediate food. As tragic as that was, one day I'm sure our robot masters will cite it as a watershed in human/machine empathy.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Friday, September 02, 2005
It Still Moves! - Science Fiction in the Age of UnReason
Gardner Dozois is interviewed by John C. Snider of SciFiDimensions talking about his recent Pyr anthology, Galileo's Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition. Both the book itself, and Dozois in this interview, have some very important things to say about the current anti-science environment prevalent in America today:
"...the United States is busily turning itself into a Third World nation, and at the worst possible time, too, at a time when many other nations are becoming increasingly progressive and scientifically sophisticated. American workers are already at a severe disadvantage in the global marketplace, because they're just not as well-educated, particularly in the sciences, as workers from other countries; see the recent book The World is Flat [by Thomas L. Friedman] for a discussion of this. It certainly isn't going to help that their science education is going to have to be watered-down and distorted even further to make room for stuff like 'Intelligent Design' because of political expediency."
Meanwhile, the Guardian ran a very cogent article by Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne arguing that allowing "Intelligent Design" into the classroom may have seriously detrimental long term effects. At the risk of sounding like a true believer, I think that science fiction's position as a literature of rationality, skepticism, and an open mind has never been more potentially important than it is today.
"...the United States is busily turning itself into a Third World nation, and at the worst possible time, too, at a time when many other nations are becoming increasingly progressive and scientifically sophisticated. American workers are already at a severe disadvantage in the global marketplace, because they're just not as well-educated, particularly in the sciences, as workers from other countries; see the recent book The World is Flat [by Thomas L. Friedman] for a discussion of this. It certainly isn't going to help that their science education is going to have to be watered-down and distorted even further to make room for stuff like 'Intelligent Design' because of political expediency."
Meanwhile, the Guardian ran a very cogent article by Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne arguing that allowing "Intelligent Design" into the classroom may have seriously detrimental long term effects. At the risk of sounding like a true believer, I think that science fiction's position as a literature of rationality, skepticism, and an open mind has never been more potentially important than it is today.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Batman Begins - Part Two: Dressed to Chill
A recent comment on my earlier post about Batman Begins has me thinking more about the costume itself, and I realized in responding that I've got another post's worth of opinion to share.
Now, I love the film, and this is by no means grousing on what I think is a near-perfect effort, but I am in the camp that wishes they'd had the guts to forgo the body armor introduced in the 1989 Batman film.
The problem I have historically had with the Bat-armor is similar to the one that Sandy Collora (director of the Batman: Dead End short) has - which is that there is no body armor currently available capable of deflecting bullets that still leaves one flexible enough to do karate. Sandy argues that you are faced with a suspension of disbelief either way - either that a man can fight sans armor and survive or that a super-armor has been developed that doesn't exist in the real world. Similarly, I've always felt that Batman relied on fast moves and close combat instead of armor, and, in fact, the Batman Begins filmmakers seem to understand this too, as evidenced when Henri Ducard tells Bruce, "You know how to fight six men. I can teach you how to fight six hundred." Lucius Fox's later statement that the armor can stop anything but a direct shot also suggests they are actually "playing down" the armor of previous films, where their choice to keep Batman to the shadows reflects their understanding of his M.O. (Side note: I do like the heavier cape of some of the Batman films, which suggests that the cape itself may have some defensive qualities. Capes are impractical, yes. But you can't dispense with Batman's, so I'd like to see a martial art worked out specifically with that in mind, incorporating his cape into the combat in a way that made sense - both defensively and offensively.)
My second problem with his use of armor goes back to my analysis of his primary motivation - which you know from my previous post I conceive of as his (selfish) need to prove to himself that death cannot catch him unawares no matter what the situation. The use of armor negates the threat, and therefore, fails to feed the psychological need that compels the character in the first place. Simply put - it's a cheat. Recall again the line from Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns when Batman switches off the (rubber bullet firing) guns of the Batmobile, stepping out to face the Mutant Leader because, "he has exactly the type of body I wish he didn't, and I honestly don't know if I can beat him."
My third objection to the armor is that it is a strong connection to the previous franchise, whereas every other aspect of this film is a relaunch. The armor was the invention of the 1989 Batman (along with the unfortunate misconception that the Joker's mouth is frozen in a grin - a mistake that prevented Nicholson from using the full range of his facial expressions, and one which I hope the filmmakers will forgo for the next film in this new franchise. But I digress...) It was interesting to watch the statements released to the press before Begins was released. The studio was officially calling the film a "prequel," while the filmmakers, possibly cautioned about dismissing the previous franchise too openly, hemmed and hawed about whether it was a prequel or a reboot. However, their inclusion of Joe Chill as the murderer of Thomas and Martha Wayne (as opposed to the Joker) is an obvious indication of their intent to separate from the Burton/Shumacher monstrosities - and their allegiance to the continuity of the comic books - and it's even possible the body armor was a studio-insisted upon aspect of the production they were not allowed to challenge.
However, despite all of the above, I am slowly, grudgingly accepting the necessity of armor in a world where street gangs can have access to military grade weaponry, and if armor we must have, appreciate the attempts in Batman Begins to justify it as cutting-edge prototype technology. Furthermore, while no such armor currently exists, every day our technological world makes it a more credible fiction than it was in 1989. I am also a big fan of the animated spin-off Batman Beyond, so much so that I wouldn't object to that story becoming part of official DC continuity, and since that future Batman relies on a high-tech suit decked out with sensors and weaponry, it necessitates a gradual evolution from the current cloth suit to the future suit. In fact, something of the sort is already happening, as witness the computer-assisted vision and armor plating of Jeff Loeb and Jim Lee's recent two-part graphic novel, Batman: Hush.
One thing I'd really like to see incorporated into the live-action suit is the traditional white eye slits. I was hoping they'd forgo the black eye make up in favor of something like the plastic eye-bubbles used in the recent Daredevil film (the only aspect of Ben Affleck's costume I liked actually). Spiderman showed us that you don't have to have an actor's face visible at all for him to emote or for the audience to connect with him emotionally. And masking the eyes might actually lend Batman a psychological advantage and add to his intimidating visage. (It also makes it less likely that close associates like Rachel Dawes will recognize him.)
As to the cape - absolutely it should detach from the cowl. One of my favorite visuals is still the Denny O'Neil penned, Neal Adams draw desert swordfight between Ras Al Ghul and Batman, where Batman removes his shirt and cape but retains his mask. Also, the cape should fasten in the front, under his neck, not at the shoulders, so that it can hang down straight in front and completely cover him.
As to the yellow oval, revisionist history/fan opinion holds that it was added when Batman began his formal relationship with the police and was meant to reflect the Bat Signal, so its absence is justified here. Personally, I prefer the black and grey outfit to the blue and grey one, though it would be nice to see the actual blue and grey of the comics on the screen one day - just to see it "brought to life" somewhere other than (and hopefully more convincingly than) the old Adam West series.
A word on his height - Batman's height in the comics has long been established as 6'2". Of all the actors to portray him on screen, only two are this height - Adam West and Christian Bale. But Bale's Batman isn't heavily muscled. He's much closer to Bob Kane's original idea of the "acrobat-man" or Neal Adams renderings than he is to Miller's Dark Knight. (His temperament is closer to the O'Neil Batman as well.)
Finally, a few years ago, at the San Diego Comic Con, I met a guy in a Batsuit who I
actually thought look the part. Both the quality of the suit, and the physique of the person inside, simply worked. Standing next to this Batman, it was the first time in my life I actually believed that someone could wear the costume and not look silly. This in broad daylight too. In fact, this guy was actually a little intimidating. And I'm not sure but what I didn't like the mask better than any of the movie versions. The utility belt could use some work, and I'd certainly go for a non-reflective grey for the tights, but otherwise I think this costume is spot on. And his torso should amply demonstrate to Hollywood producers that they can dispense with those sculpted latex muscles once and for all if they have the right actor in the part. Click on the picture for a larger view and see if you don't agree with me.
Now, I love the film, and this is by no means grousing on what I think is a near-perfect effort, but I am in the camp that wishes they'd had the guts to forgo the body armor introduced in the 1989 Batman film.
The problem I have historically had with the Bat-armor is similar to the one that Sandy Collora (director of the Batman: Dead End short) has - which is that there is no body armor currently available capable of deflecting bullets that still leaves one flexible enough to do karate. Sandy argues that you are faced with a suspension of disbelief either way - either that a man can fight sans armor and survive or that a super-armor has been developed that doesn't exist in the real world. Similarly, I've always felt that Batman relied on fast moves and close combat instead of armor, and, in fact, the Batman Begins filmmakers seem to understand this too, as evidenced when Henri Ducard tells Bruce, "You know how to fight six men. I can teach you how to fight six hundred." Lucius Fox's later statement that the armor can stop anything but a direct shot also suggests they are actually "playing down" the armor of previous films, where their choice to keep Batman to the shadows reflects their understanding of his M.O. (Side note: I do like the heavier cape of some of the Batman films, which suggests that the cape itself may have some defensive qualities. Capes are impractical, yes. But you can't dispense with Batman's, so I'd like to see a martial art worked out specifically with that in mind, incorporating his cape into the combat in a way that made sense - both defensively and offensively.)
My second problem with his use of armor goes back to my analysis of his primary motivation - which you know from my previous post I conceive of as his (selfish) need to prove to himself that death cannot catch him unawares no matter what the situation. The use of armor negates the threat, and therefore, fails to feed the psychological need that compels the character in the first place. Simply put - it's a cheat. Recall again the line from Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns when Batman switches off the (rubber bullet firing) guns of the Batmobile, stepping out to face the Mutant Leader because, "he has exactly the type of body I wish he didn't, and I honestly don't know if I can beat him."
My third objection to the armor is that it is a strong connection to the previous franchise, whereas every other aspect of this film is a relaunch. The armor was the invention of the 1989 Batman (along with the unfortunate misconception that the Joker's mouth is frozen in a grin - a mistake that prevented Nicholson from using the full range of his facial expressions, and one which I hope the filmmakers will forgo for the next film in this new franchise. But I digress...) It was interesting to watch the statements released to the press before Begins was released. The studio was officially calling the film a "prequel," while the filmmakers, possibly cautioned about dismissing the previous franchise too openly, hemmed and hawed about whether it was a prequel or a reboot. However, their inclusion of Joe Chill as the murderer of Thomas and Martha Wayne (as opposed to the Joker) is an obvious indication of their intent to separate from the Burton/Shumacher monstrosities - and their allegiance to the continuity of the comic books - and it's even possible the body armor was a studio-insisted upon aspect of the production they were not allowed to challenge.
However, despite all of the above, I am slowly, grudgingly accepting the necessity of armor in a world where street gangs can have access to military grade weaponry, and if armor we must have, appreciate the attempts in Batman Begins to justify it as cutting-edge prototype technology. Furthermore, while no such armor currently exists, every day our technological world makes it a more credible fiction than it was in 1989. I am also a big fan of the animated spin-off Batman Beyond, so much so that I wouldn't object to that story becoming part of official DC continuity, and since that future Batman relies on a high-tech suit decked out with sensors and weaponry, it necessitates a gradual evolution from the current cloth suit to the future suit. In fact, something of the sort is already happening, as witness the computer-assisted vision and armor plating of Jeff Loeb and Jim Lee's recent two-part graphic novel, Batman: Hush.
One thing I'd really like to see incorporated into the live-action suit is the traditional white eye slits. I was hoping they'd forgo the black eye make up in favor of something like the plastic eye-bubbles used in the recent Daredevil film (the only aspect of Ben Affleck's costume I liked actually). Spiderman showed us that you don't have to have an actor's face visible at all for him to emote or for the audience to connect with him emotionally. And masking the eyes might actually lend Batman a psychological advantage and add to his intimidating visage. (It also makes it less likely that close associates like Rachel Dawes will recognize him.)
As to the cape - absolutely it should detach from the cowl. One of my favorite visuals is still the Denny O'Neil penned, Neal Adams draw desert swordfight between Ras Al Ghul and Batman, where Batman removes his shirt and cape but retains his mask. Also, the cape should fasten in the front, under his neck, not at the shoulders, so that it can hang down straight in front and completely cover him.
As to the yellow oval, revisionist history/fan opinion holds that it was added when Batman began his formal relationship with the police and was meant to reflect the Bat Signal, so its absence is justified here. Personally, I prefer the black and grey outfit to the blue and grey one, though it would be nice to see the actual blue and grey of the comics on the screen one day - just to see it "brought to life" somewhere other than (and hopefully more convincingly than) the old Adam West series.
A word on his height - Batman's height in the comics has long been established as 6'2". Of all the actors to portray him on screen, only two are this height - Adam West and Christian Bale. But Bale's Batman isn't heavily muscled. He's much closer to Bob Kane's original idea of the "acrobat-man" or Neal Adams renderings than he is to Miller's Dark Knight. (His temperament is closer to the O'Neil Batman as well.)
Finally, a few years ago, at the San Diego Comic Con, I met a guy in a Batsuit who I
actually thought look the part. Both the quality of the suit, and the physique of the person inside, simply worked. Standing next to this Batman, it was the first time in my life I actually believed that someone could wear the costume and not look silly. This in broad daylight too. In fact, this guy was actually a little intimidating. And I'm not sure but what I didn't like the mask better than any of the movie versions. The utility belt could use some work, and I'd certainly go for a non-reflective grey for the tights, but otherwise I think this costume is spot on. And his torso should amply demonstrate to Hollywood producers that they can dispense with those sculpted latex muscles once and for all if they have the right actor in the part. Click on the picture for a larger view and see if you don't agree with me.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Life After WorldCon
Well, I’m sufficiently over my jet lag (which I’m told by several folks doesn’t exist and is purely psychological) and caught up enough on emails & busy work that I can hammer out a con report. This one was the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention, held at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow, Scotland from August 4th to 8th. This is a rotating convention, held in a different venue each year. Last year was held in Boston, next year will be in Los Angeles, and 2007’s will be held in Yokohama, Japan. Overseas cons usually draw less than the 5,000 to 6,000 attendees of American ones, but I’m told this year’s drew a very respectable 4,100 folks (approximately).
I arrived at 7am Wednesday morning, and forced myself to stay up 38 hours till midnight Glaswegian time so as to be on the right schedule with everybody else, whereupon I slept till 9am and felt reasonably well the rest of the week. But this was as difficult convention to work. Ordinarily, World Cons are held in one central hotel – with maybe two or three ancillary hotels, all conveniently located. I can usually plant myself in “the” bar in the evenings and trust that everyone I need to talk to will amble by at some point. But this convention, the conference center was between a river and a convoluted octopus of highways and on and off ramps, and unless you were smart enough to get into the small adjacent hotel called the Moat House (I wasn’t – it having sold out before I’d even clued in), you were a cab ride away across the octopus in one of some ten or so hotels scattered throughout Glasgow. This meant that we had to cab it to the SECC in the mornings, stay all day, and cab it back in the very late evenings, making this a very hard day. To make matters worse, the Moat House had two bars, fore and aft, functionally impossible to negotiate between without going outside, but the official “party” hotel was the Hilton a good cab ride away, so there were at least three different locations where people gathered in the evenings. This, coupled with the spread out nature of the convention, meant you really had to work to find everyone you needed to see, and, indeed, I never found several folks I was hoping to meet up with. (Additionally, there was nothing else in the way of bars or restaurants in the immediate area, so I saw very little of Glasgow despite three excursions detailed below.)
Despite all this, I did managed to locate our international authors fairly quickly, and must say that the best aspect of the convention for me was spending some real time with Ian McDonald, Keith Brooke, Martin Sketchley, and Joel Shepherd, all of whom I met for the first time. (It was wonderful to see Justina Robson as well, and John Meaney is always a pleasure). The highlight was definitely hanging out with Martin and Joel, neither of whom were anything like I was expecting. (To write such sex and action-packed, turbo-charged adventure stories, Martin Sketchley is extremely quiet, exceedingly polite, and soft-spoken. Think a mild-mannered David Byrne.) We all got on famously and I look forward to a long working relationship with all of them.
Thursday night Chris Roberson’s policy of convention bar etiquette paid off. Chris’ M.O. is to pick one member of the wait staff, treat them well (something sadly not all con attendees do), and appoint them our single waiter for the duration. This time he picked Lauren, only two weeks into the job, and by week’s end she was refusing further tips, giving us all free drinks, and serving us after hours while turning everyone else away. That's Lauren on the left, along with John Picacio, Chris Roberson, and Yours Truly. Well, Thursday night she recommended a restaurant in town, which, although they were booked up, themselves recommended The Ubiquitous Chip down a cobble-stoned alley across the street. We were joined by authors Jay Caselberg and Laura Ann Gilman (former senior editor of Roc turned novelist), as well as my good friend Paul Cornell (excellent British author, also writes for television, including Coronation Street and Doctor Who) and his wife Caroline Symcox. In addition to wonderful conversation, I must say, the Ubiquitous Chip served the only good meal I had all week. I’ve also developed a fondness for “black pudding” – to my wife’s horror when I told her upon my return. (Google it if you don’t know what it is.)
Friday afternoon, Alan Beatts of Borderlands Books (one of the finest genre book
stores in America) hosted a Pyr signing. On hand were John Meaney, Chris Roberson, and Fiona Avery. They are pictured right, along with Alan himself and John Picacio. Alan would like to make the Pyr signing a regular feature of World Con, for which I am very honored. I lived in San Francisco in 2000, and of all the things I miss about that city, attending Alan's readings and events is probably the thing I miss the most.
Friday night was an adventure in itself. I’d been asked by John Parker of MBA literary agents to join him and a group of about twelve people for dinner at a Chinese restaurant called Loon Fung in downtown Glasgow. But the adventure arrived when he phoned to say dinner was being pushed back, and could we meet him at a private party being hosted by PanMacmillan at Borders Books. The party was fun – and everyone was there, but crowded and with bad beer. However, no sooner had we (Martin and I) arrived than Parker disappeared to another party, appointing Justina in charge and asking us to follow shortly. This one was held in a private upstairs room of a bar called TigerTiger. The party was fabulous, but, of course, John Parker was nowhere in sight at TigerTiger, though our game of “chase the white rabbit” continued when he called from the restaurant to summon us on. Loon Fung was unexceptional (hence I’m not bothering to hunt up its url), but was worth it as I got to spend a relaxed hour or so outside the con talking to John Meaney and his wife Yvonne. John is still the nicest person I’ve ever met and one of the top science fiction authors working today in my admittedly-biased opinion.
Saturday morning I was on a well-attended panel entitled “Not the Hugo Panel” about who should win the fiction awards (verses who would). I was quite flattered to be asked, as my fellow panelists including Gordon Van Gelder of the Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy, Charles N. Brown, publisher of Locus, and Ginger Buchanan, executive editor of the Penguin imprints Roc & Ace. The general consensus was that Ian McDonald should win in a just world, and I was pleased to be able to mention our edition of his novel, along with Mike Resnick’s upcoming collection New Dreams for Old (as two of the short stories to be included therein were on the Hugo shortlist for “Best Short Story.”)
Saturday night I attended the best party I’ve ever been to at one of these things, thrown by Harper Collins’ Australian imprint Voyager. Chris Roberson, Allison Baker, John Picacio, Martin Sketchley, and Pyr & Voyager author Joel Shepherd came along. But what made it was the venue, “the Tall Ship at Glasgow Harbour,” a converted sailing vessel build in 1896, later converted to a freighter and given an engine, now a dance hall with kitchen and bar. As we boarded, we were given a pirate kit which contained pirate hats, pirate eye patches, and, for a lucky few, swords and hooks. I didn’t get the latter, but did manage to grab a necklace and some gold dubloons, which sadly were solid plastic and not the chocolate I was hoping for. (That's me with Martin Sketchley and Joel Shepherd on the left.) I was also able to catch up with English novelist Graham Joyce, and meet his wife and adorable children. I was also able to indulge my newfound fondness for black pudding (have you googled it yet?).
Sunday was a panel entitled “Where is the Heart of Genre”, addressing the question of whether short fiction or novel-length fiction drives science fiction today. I was on alongside Analog editor Stanley Schmidt (editor of the oldest running SF magazine), authors Harry Harrison and Ian R. MacLeod, and critic Paul Kincaid. Sadly, my role as moderator kept me fairly subdued, as this was a topic I felt I had quite a bit to say on. The panel went alright, but was in a huge space with a raised stage, and the combination of bright lights and four hours sleep the night before made it not as exciting as it could have been. Later in the Moat House bar, the aforementioned super barmaid Lauren came over, asked me “Can I get you anything?” and when I declined, told another drink-seeking famous author to his face, “You have to go to the bar for service!” Lauren really did make an unexceptional bar exceptional! If her boss is reading this - give her a raise!
Sunday night was, of course, the Hugo awards, made more thrilling this time by my first ever attendance of the before-hand reception and the after-hand “Losers Party”, made possibly by virtue of my being John Picacio’s date. The reception featured some really nice Glaswegian smoked salmon, along with other good finger food, and I was able to catch up with several authors, among them China Miéville, Kelly Link, Christopher Rowe, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Ian McDonald. (Pictured left are Campbell nominee Chris Roberson and Hugo nominee John Picacio.)
The Hugos themselves were quite interesting, the SECC’s Armadillo theatre being the nicest
venue I’ve yet attended the ceremony in. Authors Paul McAuley and Kim Newman were splendid MC’s, preparing an hysterical speech that attributed the awards to French writer Victor Hugo (as opposed to Amazing Stories editor Hugo Gernsback) and projecting an alternate world in which France developed the atomic bomb first due to the influence of its “fiction philosophique,” going on to dominate the world through an army of automatons who will execute any gauche enough to serve red wine with fish.
Of our folks up for awards, only Mike Resnick and Jim Burns won. (John Picacio did take a Chesley award at an earlier ceremony, for a cover he did for a Tachyon Press trade paperback). Mike’s “Travels with my Cats” took Best Short Story (to be collected in New Dreams for Old along with his other nominee, “A Princess of Earth.”) Jim Burns is the artist for John Meaney’s four novels, Paradox, Context, Resolution, and To Hold Infinity. I met him earlier in the convention, along with his agent Alison Eldred, both of whom were very nice, and they both had glowing things to say about Pyr.
But it was at the Losers Party afterwards that things got interesting. You see, Ian McDonald was up for Best Novel. Now, very predictably, that went to Susanna Clarke’s bestseller, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell. The book was Time Magazine’s pick for Best Novel of the Year, as well as the pick from BookSense. It took her ten years to write, weighs in at over 800 pages, and had sold film rights and foreign language rights in 30 countries before it even appeared in the US, so there was no way this 800-pound gorilla wasn’t going to win. (And I am very happy for Susanna that it did - make no mistake.) But up against it and River was China Miéville’s Iron Council (the finest fantasy novel I have ever read), vanguard SF writer Charles Stross’ Iron Sunrise (who also had two nominations in the Best Novella category, one of which won), and bestselling Scottish author Iain Banks, (huge in his home territory). So when I learned that River of Gods came in second behind Jonathan Strange, and trailed by only a few votes, I was blown away. This can only mean good things for Ian in future.
Poor Martin Sketchley, who had managed to sneak onto the private bus after the Hugo Ceremony, couldn’t get in the party. By the time we smuggled him out an invitation (donated by Paul Cornell), he was gone. Chris Roberson did spend the rest of the evening getting folks from the bar outside into the private room, but Martin had called it a night. I did spend a late evening with Liza Trombi of Locus and Jetse de Vries, co-editor of the new Interzone, and this proved to be one of the highlights of the whole con for me.
Monday was the Pyr panel. In attendance were Keith Brooke, Ian McDonald, John Meaney, John Picacio, Justina Robson, Chris Roberson, Joel Shepherd, and Martin Sketchley. They were all crowded onto a stage on one side of the room, with Yours Truly at a podium on the other side, and a big screen between us. The room was packed to capacity with about 60 people. I gave a talk with a PowerPoint presentation, showing our second season titles and artwork from our third season. Then each of the authors said a few words. Then we opened the room for questions. Of all the panels I sat on or attended, this was the most lively, with a lot of enthusiasm, questions, interest, laughter, and even a thunderous ovation for my rapid-fire description of Martin’s The Affinty Trap. Which - with pseudo-spoilers - went something like: “Bruce Willis’ character from the Fifth Element is interrupted in his pre-credit sequence rock-climbing vacation for his Mission Impossi
ble 2 assignment, which is that George Bush slash Barron Harkonnen of Dune wants to send him to kidnap the empathic metaphor from Star Trek: The Next Generation. But along the way, the lead falls under the grip of her pheromones and they have wild Species 2 cocoon sex before absconding to Babylon 5. Then, when George Bush slash Barron Harkonnen kidnaps her back, Willis has to team up with the riffraff outside Judge Dredd’s Megacity for an assault on Bush’s fortress.” All delivered in one run-on sentence burst, thank you. Now breathe.
Afterwards, I talked with Steven H. Segal, publisher of the upcoming Earthling lifestyles and culture magazine, and then pronounced the con well and truly done. As everyone else was too tired to move, Allison Baker (who was horribly sick but adventurous) and I left everyone behind and heading out in a cab in search of a real Irish pub (we found two), and some real Guinness (sadly, it was being served “extra cold” everywhere now, as a ploy to attract stupid young people who won’t drink it properly room-temperature. I learned for the real stuff I must now go to Dublin, but what we found in the pubs was at least better than what the hotel bars served). Along the way, we spotted a real blue Police Box, one of only 12 still in existence, and, of course, the model for Doctor Who’s time traveling TARDIS. Chris, who refused to budge from his Moat House bar seat all day, was well and truly mortified when he learned that he missed it. Sadly, neither of us had our cameras with us so this fan-produced model of the interior shall have to suffice.
And that's all folks. All in all, it was a fantastic convention.
I arrived at 7am Wednesday morning, and forced myself to stay up 38 hours till midnight Glaswegian time so as to be on the right schedule with everybody else, whereupon I slept till 9am and felt reasonably well the rest of the week. But this was as difficult convention to work. Ordinarily, World Cons are held in one central hotel – with maybe two or three ancillary hotels, all conveniently located. I can usually plant myself in “the” bar in the evenings and trust that everyone I need to talk to will amble by at some point. But this convention, the conference center was between a river and a convoluted octopus of highways and on and off ramps, and unless you were smart enough to get into the small adjacent hotel called the Moat House (I wasn’t – it having sold out before I’d even clued in), you were a cab ride away across the octopus in one of some ten or so hotels scattered throughout Glasgow. This meant that we had to cab it to the SECC in the mornings, stay all day, and cab it back in the very late evenings, making this a very hard day. To make matters worse, the Moat House had two bars, fore and aft, functionally impossible to negotiate between without going outside, but the official “party” hotel was the Hilton a good cab ride away, so there were at least three different locations where people gathered in the evenings. This, coupled with the spread out nature of the convention, meant you really had to work to find everyone you needed to see, and, indeed, I never found several folks I was hoping to meet up with. (Additionally, there was nothing else in the way of bars or restaurants in the immediate area, so I saw very little of Glasgow despite three excursions detailed below.)
Despite all this, I did managed to locate our international authors fairly quickly, and must say that the best aspect of the convention for me was spending some real time with Ian McDonald, Keith Brooke, Martin Sketchley, and Joel Shepherd, all of whom I met for the first time. (It was wonderful to see Justina Robson as well, and John Meaney is always a pleasure). The highlight was definitely hanging out with Martin and Joel, neither of whom were anything like I was expecting. (To write such sex and action-packed, turbo-charged adventure stories, Martin Sketchley is extremely quiet, exceedingly polite, and soft-spoken. Think a mild-mannered David Byrne.) We all got on famously and I look forward to a long working relationship with all of them.
Thursday night Chris Roberson’s policy of convention bar etiquette paid off. Chris’ M.O. is to pick one member of the wait staff, treat them well (something sadly not all con attendees do), and appoint them our single waiter for the duration. This time he picked Lauren, only two weeks into the job, and by week’s end she was refusing further tips, giving us all free drinks, and serving us after hours while turning everyone else away. That's Lauren on the left, along with John Picacio, Chris Roberson, and Yours Truly. Well, Thursday night she recommended a restaurant in town, which, although they were booked up, themselves recommended The Ubiquitous Chip down a cobble-stoned alley across the street. We were joined by authors Jay Caselberg and Laura Ann Gilman (former senior editor of Roc turned novelist), as well as my good friend Paul Cornell (excellent British author, also writes for television, including Coronation Street and Doctor Who) and his wife Caroline Symcox. In addition to wonderful conversation, I must say, the Ubiquitous Chip served the only good meal I had all week. I’ve also developed a fondness for “black pudding” – to my wife’s horror when I told her upon my return. (Google it if you don’t know what it is.)Friday afternoon, Alan Beatts of Borderlands Books (one of the finest genre book
stores in America) hosted a Pyr signing. On hand were John Meaney, Chris Roberson, and Fiona Avery. They are pictured right, along with Alan himself and John Picacio. Alan would like to make the Pyr signing a regular feature of World Con, for which I am very honored. I lived in San Francisco in 2000, and of all the things I miss about that city, attending Alan's readings and events is probably the thing I miss the most.Friday night was an adventure in itself. I’d been asked by John Parker of MBA literary agents to join him and a group of about twelve people for dinner at a Chinese restaurant called Loon Fung in downtown Glasgow. But the adventure arrived when he phoned to say dinner was being pushed back, and could we meet him at a private party being hosted by PanMacmillan at Borders Books. The party was fun – and everyone was there, but crowded and with bad beer. However, no sooner had we (Martin and I) arrived than Parker disappeared to another party, appointing Justina in charge and asking us to follow shortly. This one was held in a private upstairs room of a bar called TigerTiger. The party was fabulous, but, of course, John Parker was nowhere in sight at TigerTiger, though our game of “chase the white rabbit” continued when he called from the restaurant to summon us on. Loon Fung was unexceptional (hence I’m not bothering to hunt up its url), but was worth it as I got to spend a relaxed hour or so outside the con talking to John Meaney and his wife Yvonne. John is still the nicest person I’ve ever met and one of the top science fiction authors working today in my admittedly-biased opinion.
Saturday morning I was on a well-attended panel entitled “Not the Hugo Panel” about who should win the fiction awards (verses who would). I was quite flattered to be asked, as my fellow panelists including Gordon Van Gelder of the Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy, Charles N. Brown, publisher of Locus, and Ginger Buchanan, executive editor of the Penguin imprints Roc & Ace. The general consensus was that Ian McDonald should win in a just world, and I was pleased to be able to mention our edition of his novel, along with Mike Resnick’s upcoming collection New Dreams for Old (as two of the short stories to be included therein were on the Hugo shortlist for “Best Short Story.”)
Saturday night I attended the best party I’ve ever been to at one of these things, thrown by Harper Collins’ Australian imprint Voyager. Chris Roberson, Allison Baker, John Picacio, Martin Sketchley, and Pyr & Voyager author Joel Shepherd came along. But what made it was the venue, “the Tall Ship at Glasgow Harbour,” a converted sailing vessel build in 1896, later converted to a freighter and given an engine, now a dance hall with kitchen and bar. As we boarded, we were given a pirate kit which contained pirate hats, pirate eye patches, and, for a lucky few, swords and hooks. I didn’t get the latter, but did manage to grab a necklace and some gold dubloons, which sadly were solid plastic and not the chocolate I was hoping for. (That's me with Martin Sketchley and Joel Shepherd on the left.) I was also able to catch up with English novelist Graham Joyce, and meet his wife and adorable children. I was also able to indulge my newfound fondness for black pudding (have you googled it yet?).Sunday was a panel entitled “Where is the Heart of Genre”, addressing the question of whether short fiction or novel-length fiction drives science fiction today. I was on alongside Analog editor Stanley Schmidt (editor of the oldest running SF magazine), authors Harry Harrison and Ian R. MacLeod, and critic Paul Kincaid. Sadly, my role as moderator kept me fairly subdued, as this was a topic I felt I had quite a bit to say on. The panel went alright, but was in a huge space with a raised stage, and the combination of bright lights and four hours sleep the night before made it not as exciting as it could have been. Later in the Moat House bar, the aforementioned super barmaid Lauren came over, asked me “Can I get you anything?” and when I declined, told another drink-seeking famous author to his face, “You have to go to the bar for service!” Lauren really did make an unexceptional bar exceptional! If her boss is reading this - give her a raise!
Sunday night was, of course, the Hugo awards, made more thrilling this time by my first ever attendance of the before-hand reception and the after-hand “Losers Party”, made possibly by virtue of my being John Picacio’s date. The reception featured some really nice Glaswegian smoked salmon, along with other good finger food, and I was able to catch up with several authors, among them China Miéville, Kelly Link, Christopher Rowe, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Ian McDonald. (Pictured left are Campbell nominee Chris Roberson and Hugo nominee John Picacio.)The Hugos themselves were quite interesting, the SECC’s Armadillo theatre being the nicest
venue I’ve yet attended the ceremony in. Authors Paul McAuley and Kim Newman were splendid MC’s, preparing an hysterical speech that attributed the awards to French writer Victor Hugo (as opposed to Amazing Stories editor Hugo Gernsback) and projecting an alternate world in which France developed the atomic bomb first due to the influence of its “fiction philosophique,” going on to dominate the world through an army of automatons who will execute any gauche enough to serve red wine with fish.
Of our folks up for awards, only Mike Resnick and Jim Burns won. (John Picacio did take a Chesley award at an earlier ceremony, for a cover he did for a Tachyon Press trade paperback). Mike’s “Travels with my Cats” took Best Short Story (to be collected in New Dreams for Old along with his other nominee, “A Princess of Earth.”) Jim Burns is the artist for John Meaney’s four novels, Paradox, Context, Resolution, and To Hold Infinity. I met him earlier in the convention, along with his agent Alison Eldred, both of whom were very nice, and they both had glowing things to say about Pyr.But it was at the Losers Party afterwards that things got interesting. You see, Ian McDonald was up for Best Novel. Now, very predictably, that went to Susanna Clarke’s bestseller, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell. The book was Time Magazine’s pick for Best Novel of the Year, as well as the pick from BookSense. It took her ten years to write, weighs in at over 800 pages, and had sold film rights and foreign language rights in 30 countries before it even appeared in the US, so there was no way this 800-pound gorilla wasn’t going to win. (And I am very happy for Susanna that it did - make no mistake.) But up against it and River was China Miéville’s Iron Council (the finest fantasy novel I have ever read), vanguard SF writer Charles Stross’ Iron Sunrise (who also had two nominations in the Best Novella category, one of which won), and bestselling Scottish author Iain Banks, (huge in his home territory). So when I learned that River of Gods came in second behind Jonathan Strange, and trailed by only a few votes, I was blown away. This can only mean good things for Ian in future.
Poor Martin Sketchley, who had managed to sneak onto the private bus after the Hugo Ceremony, couldn’t get in the party. By the time we smuggled him out an invitation (donated by Paul Cornell), he was gone. Chris Roberson did spend the rest of the evening getting folks from the bar outside into the private room, but Martin had called it a night. I did spend a late evening with Liza Trombi of Locus and Jetse de Vries, co-editor of the new Interzone, and this proved to be one of the highlights of the whole con for me.
Monday was the Pyr panel. In attendance were Keith Brooke, Ian McDonald, John Meaney, John Picacio, Justina Robson, Chris Roberson, Joel Shepherd, and Martin Sketchley. They were all crowded onto a stage on one side of the room, with Yours Truly at a podium on the other side, and a big screen between us. The room was packed to capacity with about 60 people. I gave a talk with a PowerPoint presentation, showing our second season titles and artwork from our third season. Then each of the authors said a few words. Then we opened the room for questions. Of all the panels I sat on or attended, this was the most lively, with a lot of enthusiasm, questions, interest, laughter, and even a thunderous ovation for my rapid-fire description of Martin’s The Affinty Trap. Which - with pseudo-spoilers - went something like: “Bruce Willis’ character from the Fifth Element is interrupted in his pre-credit sequence rock-climbing vacation for his Mission Impossi
ble 2 assignment, which is that George Bush slash Barron Harkonnen of Dune wants to send him to kidnap the empathic metaphor from Star Trek: The Next Generation. But along the way, the lead falls under the grip of her pheromones and they have wild Species 2 cocoon sex before absconding to Babylon 5. Then, when George Bush slash Barron Harkonnen kidnaps her back, Willis has to team up with the riffraff outside Judge Dredd’s Megacity for an assault on Bush’s fortress.” All delivered in one run-on sentence burst, thank you. Now breathe.
Afterwards, I talked with Steven H. Segal, publisher of the upcoming Earthling lifestyles and culture magazine, and then pronounced the con well and truly done. As everyone else was too tired to move, Allison Baker (who was horribly sick but adventurous) and I left everyone behind and heading out in a cab in search of a real Irish pub (we found two), and some real Guinness (sadly, it was being served “extra cold” everywhere now, as a ploy to attract stupid young people who won’t drink it properly room-temperature. I learned for the real stuff I must now go to Dublin, but what we found in the pubs was at least better than what the hotel bars served). Along the way, we spotted a real blue Police Box, one of only 12 still in existence, and, of course, the model for Doctor Who’s time traveling TARDIS. Chris, who refused to budge from his Moat House bar seat all day, was well and truly mortified when he learned that he missed it. Sadly, neither of us had our cameras with us so this fan-produced model of the interior shall have to suffice.And that's all folks. All in all, it was a fantastic convention.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Prepare for the Infoquake
Next summer, we'll be debuting a brand new novelist named David Louis Edelman. David is a web programmer and computer trainer, who has worked with the U.S. Army, the FBI, and the World Bank. His novel, Infoquake, isn't really like anything else I've ever read. First of a trilogy, Infoquake is a novel of science fiction business, set several centuries hence in a very detailed future world, and can only be described as Dune meets the Wall Street Journal. I'm very exciting about the book and really interested to see how it is received. But before the first volume comes out next July, David will be promoting the Jump 225 trilogy on a special website which launched earlier this week. He'll be growing the content throughout the year (and beyond), but you can already get a taste here.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Wiki Willy Wonka
I am immensely flattered. An editor at Wikipedia wrote me last week and asked if he could use the plot summation from my earlier post "Golden Tickets to Hell" Willy Wonka- Tour Guide of the Abyss" in the Wikipedia Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory entry, along with a link & a credit in the "external links" section. I must say that I am amazed at the scope of the blogosphere sometimes.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Split the Difference
God, do I ever have an opinion about this: Chris M. Barkley and Patrick Nielsen Hayden have submitted a proposal to split the Hugo Award category for Best Editor into two categories: Best Book Editor and Best Magazine Editor. The idea being that while the magazine editors dominate the category, the short story is no longer the driving force of the genre, and great book editors such as David G. Hartwell (a finalist sixteen times without a win), Beth Meacham, Jim Minz, Betsy Mitchell, Jo Fletcher et al. deserve recognition they won't get when Asimov's, F&SF, and Analog dominate the category in voters' minds.
Now, while I lament their observation that the short story is no longer the driving force of the genre (and have my own humble plans brewing to address this - more on that later), when it comes to giving more opportunities for the great editors of our field to be recognized, I say "Hell Yes!" It's just an embarrassing shame that we (the community) thought it more important to create two separate Hollywood categories before addressing this.
I'd go one step further and suggest a Best Original Anthology category. It drives me bonkers that the World Fantasy Awards have a Best Anthology category, but the genre that gave us Dangerous Visions, the Orbit series, and The Science Fiction Hall of Fame doesn't recognize the category. That last volume was my introduction to science fiction to begin with!
Anyway, suffice to say I am 100% behind this proposal.
Now, while I lament their observation that the short story is no longer the driving force of the genre (and have my own humble plans brewing to address this - more on that later), when it comes to giving more opportunities for the great editors of our field to be recognized, I say "Hell Yes!" It's just an embarrassing shame that we (the community) thought it more important to create two separate Hollywood categories before addressing this.
I'd go one step further and suggest a Best Original Anthology category. It drives me bonkers that the World Fantasy Awards have a Best Anthology category, but the genre that gave us Dangerous Visions, the Orbit series, and The Science Fiction Hall of Fame doesn't recognize the category. That last volume was my introduction to science fiction to begin with!
Anyway, suffice to say I am 100% behind this proposal.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Friday, July 22, 2005
Life after Comic Con
Last week was the San Diego Comic Con. This is the largest comic book convention on the planet, and has grown over the years to be an all-purpose media expo. I don't have exact figures for this years attendance, but the total numbers including attendees, pros and exhibitors is probably somewhere between 93,000 and 97,000 folks. I've heard rumors that it was 10% larger than last year, so maybe we're closer to 100k to 110k. In addition to all the major players in the comic book industry, the convention regularly attracts Hollywood filmmakers (who debut their upcoming works as well as scout out new projects), video, card & role playing game producers, toy manufacturers & licensees, and a growing number of publishers. This year saw Del Rey, Simon & Schuster, iBooks, Bantam, and Scholastic, among others.
The convention itself was insane. Top Cow had Buffy & Austin Powers' star Seth Green signing his new comic book The Freshman on Friday and Saturday, so I spent two days staring across at him whenever the sea of people let up. For some reason, Showgirl's Elizabeth Berkley was hanging around there on Saturday too. I have a good friend in Los Angeles named Stephenson Crossley (pictured left) who had volunteered to drive down from LA and help out. A few weeks prior to the show, he got a gig working on a film in Baton Rouge, but he wanted to keep his word, so he flew at his own expense, arriving Thursday night at 1am and departing Sunday at 9pm. The poor guy had a red eye back, arrived at 7am, and went to work on his film set at 9am. I am immensely grateful and absolutely could NOT have done it without him. The aisles were constantly thick with people and there was never a moment when someone wasn't asking questions or looking at books.
Highlights of the con for me included evenings spent with artists Stephan Martiniere, Jon Foster, and Dave Seeley (all of whom are contributing covers to Pyr's third season) and Tor art director Irene Gallo, as well as Monkeybrain's Chris Roberson and Allison Baker, and artist John Picacio. I also got to see old friends Mike Colbert, Paul Silver, Eric & Jill Frederickson and Eric & Karen Forsberg, whose daughter, Lola, is pictured here on the right receiving a signed copy of Fiona Avery's novel The Crown Rose.
Finally, I was impressed with how many people from Alabama, both on my flight out and my return flight, were heading to the convention. It really pulls from everywhere and is not just drawing from California. On Sunday, I bumped into Ed Cunningham from my local comic store, Empire Comics. As Stephenson had to leave at 5pm to catch his flight, Ed kindly helped me break down the booth and cart it back to the hotel for shipping. I couldn't have done it without him either.
Oh, and while I mostly resisted the cornucopia of merchandise for sale, the geek in me has come home with 6 diecast metal Corgi Batmobiles. They have a whole line of them, from the 1940s roadster through the classic 60s open top to the weird manga cars of the late 90s and the rocket-like car of the 2000s. Heaven.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Preorder the Future
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I've come home from the San Diego Comic Con to discover that my upcoming anthology, FutureShocks, is now available for preorder from Amazon.com. No cover or book info online as yet (though you can see both here in an earlier post and the cover is pictured again right), but it's good to see this book slowly coming to life.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Numerous and Sundry Articles
Phil Kloer of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently interviewed Yours Truly for an article about the Harry Potter phenomenon called "The Harry Effect". In addition to myself, he talks with B&N's James Killen, graphic novel scribe Stephen Stern, the Book Nook's Steve Cohen, and the Sci Fi Channel's Dave Howe. The article, Kloer admits, is at least partially inspired by my own earlier piece in Publishers Weekly, "A Hobbit Takeover?"
The article was picked up by the Cox News Service and ran in a few other outlets (sometimes truncated, and sometimes with slightly different quotes). Here it is at the Kentucky Lexington Herald-Leader and the Berkshire Eagle as well.
The article was picked up by the Cox News Service and ran in a few other outlets (sometimes truncated, and sometimes with slightly different quotes). Here it is at the Kentucky Lexington Herald-Leader and the Berkshire Eagle as well.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Pyr Booth at the San Diego Comic Con
Everyone attending the San Diego Comic Con next week, feel free to stop by the Pyr booth and say hello. We're number 2046, next to MonkeyBrain Books in 2048. MonkeyBrain's Chris Roberson will be signing copies of Here, There & Everywhere on Saturday at noon (though in truth he will never be far away), and Fiona Avery will be signing copies of The Crown Rose at 3pm on Saturday.
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Essentially Speaking...
So, Tor Books and the SCI FI Channel have just announced their new cross-promotional scheme, Sci Fi Essentials, in which one lucky Tor book a month will receive the channel's seal of approval and be promoted on the website, newsletter, and even on the television channel itself. First out, Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, (which has a gorgeous Dave McKean cover.) I must say, I have a mixed reaction to this move, coupled with no small amount of curiosity.
Obviously, this is their bid to create something like the Oprah Book Club for geeks, and the editorial director in me has to admire their marketing ingenuity. But whereas that world famous committee-of-one selects from the pool of all books - or at least, all books that might appeal to Oprah personally enough to get on her radar - this one is paid advertising by and for only one publisher. Now, as the largest SF&F publisher in the world, that's still a pretty large pool to draw from, and I'm sure the selectees feel damn lucky (Karl Schroeder is next up, followed by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson), so more power to them. But I'm bothered that there's no mention in the press release nor on the site itself that I can find as to what the selection criteria are, nor who is doing the selecting. I think I'd feel better about this if there were a recognized jury of SF peers involved, or even Ellen Datlow over at SciFiction, rather than what I suspect is a purely marketing & publicity-derived listing. I feel it's a shame that the Sci Fi Channel didn't launch something like this independent of Tor and offer their stamp-of-approval in a way that potentially commanded more authority and garnered more respect.
Still, I don't actually feel that the stamp-of-approval from the Sci Fi Channel is going to sway anybody in the core community of science fiction readers. Readers who are paying attention enough to have heard about this, or care, are already well-aware of who Cory Doctorow is and don't need the stamp-of-approval from a channel primarily known as rerunning a lot of really slocky horror movies and some direct-to-video embarrassments to tell them what's what in genre writing. (For my part, if I pick up Someone Comes to Town it will be for the aforementioned gorgeous cover, only now the collector in me will be hoping I can get that dang Sci Fi Channel sticker off without damaging the jacket!)
No, this isn't aimed at us, at least not as the number one target, but is, I believe, aimed primarily at that larger pool of science fiction viewers, they who watch every episode of every Babylon 5 spin off but never buy a book that isn't a Quantum Leap or Buffy tie-in. Now, those of you who have followed my writing here and elsewhere know that I've long been irked by the disparity between literary and cinema SF. And, honestly, if this new marketing scheme results in a few of the SF viewer crowd actually discovering "the real stuff" who wouldn't have done so before, well then, I don't think I'm going to fault it.
Ultimately, I think I feel about this about the same as I do about the somewhat controversial Quill Awards, that joint venture between Publishers Weekly parent-company Reed Business Information and NBC Universal Television Stations. (The controversy here revolves around the potential of Publishers Weekly to reap enormous profit in ad revenue from publishers anxious to impress the voters - select industry professionals who are all PW subscribers.) Still, as an effort to encourage reading and literacy in the mainstream with the creation of an "Oscars for books," I can't really begrudge the Quills success. I'll be watching it closely and hoping-against-hope that NBC doesn't get bored with it and drop it in a year or two.
So, congrats to Cory and more power to the Sci Fi Channel & Tor. I'll be watching this with interest as it develops. Meanwhile, I wish the Sci Fi Channel had the good sense to start filming our own Oscars, the Hugo ceremony. Maybe more Hollywood producers would start picking up their awards if they knew they were going to be on television, and the exposure for all our writers would certainly go a long way in bridging the gap between the literature of science fiction and its too often inferior cinematic counterpart.
Obviously, this is their bid to create something like the Oprah Book Club for geeks, and the editorial director in me has to admire their marketing ingenuity. But whereas that world famous committee-of-one selects from the pool of all books - or at least, all books that might appeal to Oprah personally enough to get on her radar - this one is paid advertising by and for only one publisher. Now, as the largest SF&F publisher in the world, that's still a pretty large pool to draw from, and I'm sure the selectees feel damn lucky (Karl Schroeder is next up, followed by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson), so more power to them. But I'm bothered that there's no mention in the press release nor on the site itself that I can find as to what the selection criteria are, nor who is doing the selecting. I think I'd feel better about this if there were a recognized jury of SF peers involved, or even Ellen Datlow over at SciFiction, rather than what I suspect is a purely marketing & publicity-derived listing. I feel it's a shame that the Sci Fi Channel didn't launch something like this independent of Tor and offer their stamp-of-approval in a way that potentially commanded more authority and garnered more respect.
Still, I don't actually feel that the stamp-of-approval from the Sci Fi Channel is going to sway anybody in the core community of science fiction readers. Readers who are paying attention enough to have heard about this, or care, are already well-aware of who Cory Doctorow is and don't need the stamp-of-approval from a channel primarily known as rerunning a lot of really slocky horror movies and some direct-to-video embarrassments to tell them what's what in genre writing. (For my part, if I pick up Someone Comes to Town it will be for the aforementioned gorgeous cover, only now the collector in me will be hoping I can get that dang Sci Fi Channel sticker off without damaging the jacket!)
No, this isn't aimed at us, at least not as the number one target, but is, I believe, aimed primarily at that larger pool of science fiction viewers, they who watch every episode of every Babylon 5 spin off but never buy a book that isn't a Quantum Leap or Buffy tie-in. Now, those of you who have followed my writing here and elsewhere know that I've long been irked by the disparity between literary and cinema SF. And, honestly, if this new marketing scheme results in a few of the SF viewer crowd actually discovering "the real stuff" who wouldn't have done so before, well then, I don't think I'm going to fault it.
Ultimately, I think I feel about this about the same as I do about the somewhat controversial Quill Awards, that joint venture between Publishers Weekly parent-company Reed Business Information and NBC Universal Television Stations. (The controversy here revolves around the potential of Publishers Weekly to reap enormous profit in ad revenue from publishers anxious to impress the voters - select industry professionals who are all PW subscribers.) Still, as an effort to encourage reading and literacy in the mainstream with the creation of an "Oscars for books," I can't really begrudge the Quills success. I'll be watching it closely and hoping-against-hope that NBC doesn't get bored with it and drop it in a year or two.
So, congrats to Cory and more power to the Sci Fi Channel & Tor. I'll be watching this with interest as it develops. Meanwhile, I wish the Sci Fi Channel had the good sense to start filming our own Oscars, the Hugo ceremony. Maybe more Hollywood producers would start picking up their awards if they knew they were going to be on television, and the exposure for all our writers would certainly go a long way in bridging the gap between the literature of science fiction and its too often inferior cinematic counterpart.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Farewell to Paradox
In the original Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever," when a deranged Dr. McCoy has jumped through a time portal into the past, effecting changes that eradicate the existence of the Enterprise, Spock muses that perhaps time is like a river, with eddies and currents, and that if they likewise jump into the portal, these currents will carry them to McCoy's point of intervention.
Apologies to Harlan and Roddenberry both, but that is some lousy science. Or is it?
Later, when time is altered and then set right, our good Vulcan rationalizes their belief in one true timeline by suggesting that both the alteration and it's correction were predestined.
This was pretty much the Star Trek position for the original series, the original cast films, and into the start of The Next Generation, right up through the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" (and Denise Crosby's only decent performance) . But then something happened. The Graham-Everett-Wheeler many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics finally broke through into the popular consciousness.
Then we got episodes like season seven's "Parallels," in which a quantum fissure in space-time propels Worf through a series of alternate universes. The episode's climax sees a myriad different versions of the Enterprise converging, all from their own realities, all equally "real" to their inhabitants, some radically different from our own. The singular time line is gone.
This plays out even more in Deep Space Nine, especially in the episode "Trials and Tribble-ations," in which we learn that - far from having it's own self-correcting mechanisms as Mr. Spock proposed a century ago - time actually requires Federation protection in the form of the "Department of Temporal Investigations."
By the time of Voyager's two-part episode "Future's End," the notion of one sacrosanct timeline has been shot all to hell, and the writers don't even bother with resolving or explaining the multiple temporal paradoxes they introduce. This will become a staple of Voyager episodes, with multiple stories showing the plurality of existence, and the subsequent loss of individuality that results. Of course, some of this is just lazy writing, but the impact of the Graham-Everett-Wheeler depiction of the multiverse was certainly still reverberating through the science fiction writers' zeitgeist.
And now this....
Physicists Daniel Greenberger of the City University of New York and Karl Svozil of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria claim to have demonstrated that the most basic features of quantum theory may inherently rule out paradox. Essentially, their argument resolves around a quantum object's ability to behave as a wave. Ordinarily, such an object split into component waves and traveling through space-time is most likely to end up in places where its component waves recombine "constructively." But, when the component waves travel into the past they behave surprisingly different, their various components "interfering destructively", canceling each other out and actively preventing anything from happening in contradiction to that which has already taken place. If I'm wrapping my head around this correctly, this means that you can travel into the past, but only that past which results in your future.
It seems that all those heavy-handed, self-correcting mechanisms science fiction writers used to put in their stories showing the universe itself acting to prevent paradox might actually have a basis in reality. And Harlan Ellison's "river of time," far from looking like a hackneyed plot device to get Kirk and Spock where they needed to be, is seeming a bit damn prescient about now.
Fascinating.
Apologies to Harlan and Roddenberry both, but that is some lousy science. Or is it?
Later, when time is altered and then set right, our good Vulcan rationalizes their belief in one true timeline by suggesting that both the alteration and it's correction were predestined.
This was pretty much the Star Trek position for the original series, the original cast films, and into the start of The Next Generation, right up through the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" (and Denise Crosby's only decent performance) . But then something happened. The Graham-Everett-Wheeler many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics finally broke through into the popular consciousness.
Then we got episodes like season seven's "Parallels," in which a quantum fissure in space-time propels Worf through a series of alternate universes. The episode's climax sees a myriad different versions of the Enterprise converging, all from their own realities, all equally "real" to their inhabitants, some radically different from our own. The singular time line is gone.
This plays out even more in Deep Space Nine, especially in the episode "Trials and Tribble-ations," in which we learn that - far from having it's own self-correcting mechanisms as Mr. Spock proposed a century ago - time actually requires Federation protection in the form of the "Department of Temporal Investigations."
By the time of Voyager's two-part episode "Future's End," the notion of one sacrosanct timeline has been shot all to hell, and the writers don't even bother with resolving or explaining the multiple temporal paradoxes they introduce. This will become a staple of Voyager episodes, with multiple stories showing the plurality of existence, and the subsequent loss of individuality that results. Of course, some of this is just lazy writing, but the impact of the Graham-Everett-Wheeler depiction of the multiverse was certainly still reverberating through the science fiction writers' zeitgeist.
And now this....
Physicists Daniel Greenberger of the City University of New York and Karl Svozil of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria claim to have demonstrated that the most basic features of quantum theory may inherently rule out paradox. Essentially, their argument resolves around a quantum object's ability to behave as a wave. Ordinarily, such an object split into component waves and traveling through space-time is most likely to end up in places where its component waves recombine "constructively." But, when the component waves travel into the past they behave surprisingly different, their various components "interfering destructively", canceling each other out and actively preventing anything from happening in contradiction to that which has already taken place. If I'm wrapping my head around this correctly, this means that you can travel into the past, but only that past which results in your future.
Basically, you can't alter the timeline, because the past you travel to is the one in which you don't.
It seems that all those heavy-handed, self-correcting mechanisms science fiction writers used to put in their stories showing the universe itself acting to prevent paradox might actually have a basis in reality. And Harlan Ellison's "river of time," far from looking like a hackneyed plot device to get Kirk and Spock where they needed to be, is seeming a bit damn prescient about now.
Fascinating.
Interaction World Science Fiction Convention Schedule
For those of you planning to attend the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland this coming August, 4-8, 2005, and who feel they would enjoy seeing me run at the mouth about all things SFnal, here is my final panel schedule:
Saturday 12:00 noon, August 6th
Not the Hugo Award Panel
Lou Anders
Charles N. Brown
Ginjer Buchanan
Niall Harrison (M)
Gordon Van Gelder
What should win the Hugo Award in the fiction categories? Panellists discuss what they think should win and what the actual vote might be.
Sunday 11:00am , August 7th
Where is the Heart of the Genre?
Lou Anders (M)
Harry Harrison
Paul Kincaid
Ian R. Macleod
Stanley Schmidt
Is short fiction still the engine that drives sf or is the most exciting writing taking place at novel length?
Monday 1:00pm, August 8th
SECC Loch Suite, Boisdale-1 Room
Pyr Presentation
Lou Anders
Keith Brooke
Ian McDonald
John Meaney
John Picacio
Justina Robson
Chris Roberson
Joel Shepherd
Martin Sketchley
Come learn about Prometheus Books' new imprint, ask questions, meet our authors & artists (or at least those not too hungover from the previous three nights who are still lingering around), and see what's instore for the coming seasons.
Saturday 12:00 noon, August 6th
Not the Hugo Award Panel
Lou Anders
Charles N. Brown
Ginjer Buchanan
Niall Harrison (M)
Gordon Van Gelder
What should win the Hugo Award in the fiction categories? Panellists discuss what they think should win and what the actual vote might be.
Sunday 11:00am , August 7th
Where is the Heart of the Genre?
Lou Anders (M)
Harry Harrison
Paul Kincaid
Ian R. Macleod
Stanley Schmidt
Is short fiction still the engine that drives sf or is the most exciting writing taking place at novel length?
Monday 1:00pm, August 8th
SECC Loch Suite, Boisdale-1 Room
Pyr Presentation
Lou Anders
Keith Brooke
Ian McDonald
John Meaney
John Picacio
Justina Robson
Chris Roberson
Joel Shepherd
Martin Sketchley
Come learn about Prometheus Books' new imprint, ask questions, meet our authors & artists (or at least those not too hungover from the previous three nights who are still lingering around), and see what's instore for the coming seasons.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Batman Begins
When I was a child, for some inexplicable reason I couldn't pick up Batman on television, but my neighbors, Steve & Greg Sparks, just one street over, could. Relations with the Sparks kids were always a bit tricky, as the younger was a bit of a baby at times and the older had a mean streak, but I managed, as often as I could, to trek through the ravine behind our houses and a couple backyards to be in front of their television in the afternoon in time for the adventures of the Caped Crusaders. The uncertainty of this situation meant that my viewing was sporadic, and I saw plenty of Part One's without a Part Two and vice-versa. I faired better with The New Adventures of Batman, the animated series with the voices of Adam West and Burt Ward (and Lou Scheimer as Bat-Mite). I grew up hanging upside down on the swing set in a cape my mother sewed for me, passing the Bat Anti-Shark Spray down to my Robin (a Radar O'Reilly look-alike named Alan Eskew). And when I was the first in line at the World of Wheels, and Adam West called me a fellow crime-fighter, well, I was just too proud for words.
I still remember my first comic. It was a Batman Family, and it contained a story by Denny O'Neil that explained the Batman's abstinence from guns as a phobia resulting from a childhood encounter with the Shadow. (Sidenote: Since the Shadow was only temporarily licensed to DC, the brilliant Batman: the Animated Series replaces Wayne's childhood inspiration with the Grey Ghost, voiced, appropriately enough, by Adam West.) I misplaced the comic book at a young age, and it became my "long lost comic book" until I unearthed another copy at a flea market as a pre-teen.
But even as a small child, I was aware of the evolution of the Batman character. My parents had given me a nice hardcover volume called Batman: From the 30s to the 70s (Crown Publishers, 1971). It reprinted choice selections from the Darknight Detective's career, from his very first appearance (Detective Comics #27, "The Case of Bat-Man & the Chemical Syndicate"), to the first appearances of the Joker and Robin, and continuing through important moments such as Dick Grayson's departure for Hudson University and beyond. Pouring through this volume, my childhood self was exposed to the entire progression of the superhero genre in microcosm. I was able to track as both art and story grew in depth and sophistication, and though I lacked the vocabulary to describe it, I could sense how Bob Kane's genius lay in creating a character who was so visually memorable as to lend himself to a myriad interpretations across decades of writers and artists' work.
Introduced in 1939, the Batman was a noir vigilante, very much in the vein of the Shadow. In fact, he executed criminals without compunction with twin-six guns in a manner that would have made Lamont Cranston proud. But within a year, the Boy Wonder was introduced, WWII was looming large in the American consciousness, and dark-toned stories fell out of favor in lieu of more lighthearted fair. Batman and Robin soon revealed they had a code against killing, the guns were gone (in part to play down the inevitable Shadow comparisons), and their mythos rewritten such that the Batman had never killed. The Joker, first introduced as a somber serial killer who's death-pale visage inspired utter terror, quickly became a cavorting buffoon. In fact, he wasn't even officially crazy. (There was actually a comic whose resolution involved Batman and Robin convincing the Joker that he was going mad.)
Truth be told, through much of the 40s and 50s, Batman's comic book exploits were pretty much inline in tone and temperament with those of his camp 60s television show counterpart. In fact, Batman comic book scribe Bill Finger penned several episodes. To this day, you'll never find a better Penguin than Burgess Meredith or a truer rendition of the Riddler than that offered by Frank Gorshin. (Oddly, the only major Bat-villain to be absent from the television show was Two-Face, perhaps because his scarred countenance was too horrific. However, of all the stories from that era, it's interesting to note that the Two-Face encounters are the least camp, most poignant - drenched as they are in the character's guilt and steadfast refusal to believe in the possibility of redemption. As such, they hold up the best in light of today's more sophisticated readers' standards.
Appropriately, it was as the camp television show was in its final days that a writer named Denny O'Neil (born the same month and year as the Batman himself, May 1939) took over the reigns of the comic book and changed everything. Partnering with the soon-to-be-legendary artist, Neal Adams, who brought a hitherto unseen level of realism to the depiction of superheroes, O'Neil revamped the Batman legend, either reinventing the character or returning it to its 1939 roots, depending on your perspective. Robin (who was previously presumed to be thirteen) was swiftly aged and sent off to college. Gone mostly were the costumed villains, replaced by international terrorists, corrupt politicians, mafia bosses. O'Neil's Batman was a Darknight Detective, akin to Sherlock Holmes, who employed his wits and credible criminology methods in the apprehension of evil doers. Bruce Wayne moved out of Wayne Manor into a penthouse apartment atop the Wayne Foundation in the heart of Gotham, and the Batmobile itself was often depicted as little more than an unmarked dark blue sports car, not dissimilar from a Corvette of the era. Occasionally, it would have the suggestion of the Batman's cowl in the lines of its hood, but gone were the fins, bubble domes, rocket engines, and Bat-insignias of previous models. It was during this period that the Joker was reverted to the murderous maniac of his original appearance. When he was captured, it was not Gotham Penitentiary to which he was returned, but Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane (the name a nod to the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft). The mysterious Ras al Ghul was introduced at this time as well, his daughter & Batman-love interest Talia and his Himalayan headquarters both directly inspired by the James Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. O'Neil's era established the Batman (not Batman, but "the Batman" as he has originally been called) as a serious comic book icon, and remained for many years the quintessential depiction of the character.
But a three-decades long back-story weighs heavy, and in the wake of O'Neil's departure from DC Comics, the costumed villains, one by one, came marching back in. The late 70s and early 80s were a schizophrenic time for the character, with writers and fans maintaining the "seriousness" of Batman while parading out an assortment of costumed crazies, with everything from dueling versions of the Mad Hatter to the Calendar Man making an appearance. Slowly, the legend of the Batman began to ebb, if not back towards camp, towards a muddle from which little work of lasting significance emerged. (An exception to this is a brief but significant run in Detective Comics by Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers, Detective Comics #471-476, August 1977 to March-April 1978, which revived the 1939 villain Professor Hugo Strange and mirrored the Joker's original killing spree from his first appearance.)
Then, in 1986, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns burst on the scene. The tale of an aging Bruce Wayne emerging from retirement for one last showdown against crime and corruption, Miller chose to play up the "dark" in Dark Knight. His Batman was obsessed, seething with a barely contained rage that forced out any chance at companionship or peace and overwhelmed Wayne. To recount The Dark Knight Returns' influence and importance on the entire comics industry would take another essay entirely. The prestige format was created for its release, and it almost single handed launched the "graphic novel" format as well - to say nothing of the emphasis it caused to be placed on adult storytelling, nor the respect for comic books it engendered in the mainstream. But suffice to say that The Dark Knight Returns, along with Miller's later Batman: Year One soon became the definitive rendition of the character, and remain so to this day.
Ironically, it was the initial success of The Dark Knight Returns that prompted Warner Bros. to put forth a darker, "serious" cinematic version of the character - a comedy staring Bill Murray had previously been in development - that resulted in the 1989 Tim Burton film, Batman. Praised at the time for being the most serious depiction the Batman had yet received in film or television, and impressive in its striking visual surrealism, it nonetheless wasn't right in the eyes of many fans, prompting Frank Miller himself to say that there were many versions of the Batman character, and obviously he and Tim Burton were depicting different ones.
Truthfully, there are many different versions of the Batman, and the camp version portrayed by Adam West is no less valid than that of the frustrated Billionaire lashing out through his arsenal of "wonderful toys" as depicted by Michael Keaton. Right is and will always be subjective, and I wouldn't begrudge the six year old that I was, sneaking through the woods to the Sparks' house to watch the Dynamic Duo, one iota of his enjoyment. But we can speak in terms of levels of sophistication of various Batman interpretations, as well as pinpoint key works as having had the most profound and lasting influences on the canon, as determined by readers and writers. To do so means that something resembling a "more correct" version of the Masked Manhunter can emerge as a dialogue within the canon between the most significant and enduring works. To date these include O'Neil and Adams' original run, the aforementioned Englehart & Rogers collaboration, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Year One, Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, the Batman: the Animated Series and related animated movies and spin-offs (Mask of the Phantasm, Batman Beyond, Justice League, etc...), and Jeff Loeb & Tim Sale's The Long Halloween and Dark Victory.
So it was with profound excitement that I learned that Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer took as their inspiration these seminal works, relying heavily on O'Neil's original stories of Ras al Ghul, Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, and Loeb & Sale's The Long Halloween and Dark Victory. Star Christian Bale even kept copies of the latter works on set with him for reference when he needed help maintaining his focus on the character. By crafting what is the most faithful-to-the-comics adaptation of Batman to date on film, Nolan and Goyer have created in Batman Begins what very well may emerge as the new definitive rendition of the Batman, as well as raised the bar for comic book adaptations henceforth. (And here is a good time to give fair "spoiler warning".)
With allowances to the character's variegated history, and apologies to Adam West, a definitive portrayal of the Dark Knight must include:
1. A depiction of the extreme force of will of the character. Michael Keaton's Batman was a frustrated and confused little guy who suited up in stiff armor and used an arsenal of impossible gadgets to vent his frustration, then came home and had trouble sleeping. He was dark alright, but his anger was unfocused, his motivation unclear, his methods unrefined. The Batman of the comics, as he is portrayed today, is a "normal" human being who can enter a room full of super-powered beings and command their attention and send a chill down every spine there - despite having no powers of his own - by his mere presence and force of personality. As Ducard says to Bruce Wayne, "Your training is nothing. The will to act is everything." Neitchzean overtones intentional. This is a man who believes, as he says in The Dark Knight Returns, that "the world only makes sense when you force it to."
2. The Batman has something to prove. Legendary artist Dick Giordano once said of the Batman, "The Batman does what he does for himself, for his needs. That society gains from his actions is incidental, an added value...but not the primary reason for his activities." Young Bruce Wayne was the "prince of Gotham City," a billionaire's son living a life only the top one percent of the world could enjoy. Then, in an instant, his happiness and security was yanked away from him. That realization, the realization of the inevitability of death as the great equalizer, that no matter who you are, you can step outside and be hit by a bus, struck by lightening, choke on an olive pit, be shot by a petty thief, and it can all end - struck the young Wayne at an age way earlier than most of us ever encounter it. (I still remember being 17 and seeing how close I could drive my car to a retaining wall on a curving mountain road. And the exact moment, a year later, when I realized with stunning certainty that I was not immortal.) This knowledge (and fear) of death at such an impressionable age terrified him. Like Captain Ahab, who lost his leg (and more if you read between the lines) to the White Whale, Wayne set out to prove to the universe that death could not catch him unawares again. He chose as his territory Gotham City, and as his target the criminal underworld (as Ahab chose the whale), but his real target (and intended audience) was the cosmos itself. In a Batman story from the early 70s, a trained martial artist studies Batman in combat and then attempts to take him down. Later, looking out the window of Commissioner Gordon's office, Batman muses that somewhere out there, some other punk is readying himself to take his shot. "And that makes you depressed?" Gordon asks. "No," the Batman replies, "I can hardly wait!" In "Ghost of the Killer Skies," (Detective Comics #404, 1970), he even challenges a cornered opponent to a duel in the air in biplanes, a rather pointlessly bit of theatrics when a simple punch would suffice, until we remember his motivation - proving to himself and the universe that no matter what form death takes, it will find him ready. This theme plays out in full in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, in which every possible death is evaluated by the Batman until he settles on one grand enough to lay his spirit to rest - that of beating the Man of Steel, here very deliberately a stand-in for God, in a fist fight. (Note to criminals: If Batman is ever about to beat the tar out of you, challenge him to a game of Yatze. If he's never played before, you've just saved yourself a whoopin'.)
3. A refusal to kill and an aversion to guns in particular. Not to pick on him excessively, but in the second Burton film, Batman Returns, Michael Keaton's Batman sat inside the protection of his armored Batmobile and burned alive an unprotected man with a flame from his rocket engine, after the other ineffectually menaced him by breathing fire in a cheap circus stunt. This dick-wagging scene, which drew a chuckle from the audience I saw it with, not only flew in the face of 70 years of continuity, but was the most cowardly act the Batman has ever been seen to enact on film. By contrast, the Batman of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns shuts off his weaponry and emerges from his Batmobile to take on a younger, stronger, seemingly superior foe bare-handed because, "I honestly don't know if I could beat him." (See point #2 above.) The Batman absolutely cannot kill, even in self defense. In fact, especially not in self defense. Since he is acting out of selfish motivation, as Giordano notes above, and placing himself into situations in which he must prove his superiority over death on a nightly basis, he would be a monster if he condoned killing in self-defense. His entire perception of his own sanity, and his ability to circumnavigate Gotham's laws in favor of a higher, personal justice, rests on this razor thin line. (Note: The one character in the Batman mythos who understands this as well as Batman himself is the Joker, who knowingly pours as much pressure on this line as he can in both The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke.)
4. The understanding that, unlike the vast majority of costumed crime fighters, Batman's secret identity is not the core persona. Bruce Wayne, the millionaire playboy, is the disguise, whereas "the Batman" is his true nature. In Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum, when asked by a henchman if they can unmask the captive Batman to see his true face, the Joker snaps, "That is his true face." In the animated spin-off series Batman Beyond, when criminals use a chip implanted in his skull to try to drive the elder Bruce Wayne insane by making him hear voices in his head, he confesses that he maintained his grip thusly: "The voices kept calling me Bruce. In my mind, that's not the name I call myself." Wayne is a prop, a place for Batman to hide during the day. Unlike other heroes, who fear exposure of their private lives, if Bruce Wayne were ever revealed to be the Batman, Wayne would merely disappear, and six months later another alter-ego would emerge to serve a similar function, but the Batman would continue unaffected. Rachel Dawes had it right when she said the face the criminals see was the real one.
So did they get it right with Batman Begins? In framing their film's theme in terms of fear vs. will, in maintaining Batman's compunction against killing, in recognizing the danger of becoming "lost inside the monster," in the acknowledgement that Batman was the true persona and Wayne the mask, in drawing on the seminal texts from O'Neil's late 60s work to Frank Miller's late 80s revision to the recent additions of Loeb & Sales, and , in stripping the franchise of its overblown sets and surrealistic excesses, and giving us a real Batman in a real city with a real motivation that matched and even in places exceeded the groundwork laid by the best of the comic books, Nolan and Goyer have given us the film that I for one have waited for half my life. Finally, the Batman has been presented on screen in a manner in accord with the best of his comic book representations. Did they get it right? Hell, yes they did! Forget Adam West, forget the Tim Burton films. Batman indeed begins here. Many happy returns!
I still remember my first comic. It was a Batman Family, and it contained a story by Denny O'Neil that explained the Batman's abstinence from guns as a phobia resulting from a childhood encounter with the Shadow. (Sidenote: Since the Shadow was only temporarily licensed to DC, the brilliant Batman: the Animated Series replaces Wayne's childhood inspiration with the Grey Ghost, voiced, appropriately enough, by Adam West.) I misplaced the comic book at a young age, and it became my "long lost comic book" until I unearthed another copy at a flea market as a pre-teen.
But even as a small child, I was aware of the evolution of the Batman character. My parents had given me a nice hardcover volume called Batman: From the 30s to the 70s (Crown Publishers, 1971). It reprinted choice selections from the Darknight Detective's career, from his very first appearance (Detective Comics #27, "The Case of Bat-Man & the Chemical Syndicate"), to the first appearances of the Joker and Robin, and continuing through important moments such as Dick Grayson's departure for Hudson University and beyond. Pouring through this volume, my childhood self was exposed to the entire progression of the superhero genre in microcosm. I was able to track as both art and story grew in depth and sophistication, and though I lacked the vocabulary to describe it, I could sense how Bob Kane's genius lay in creating a character who was so visually memorable as to lend himself to a myriad interpretations across decades of writers and artists' work.
Introduced in 1939, the Batman was a noir vigilante, very much in the vein of the Shadow. In fact, he executed criminals without compunction with twin-six guns in a manner that would have made Lamont Cranston proud. But within a year, the Boy Wonder was introduced, WWII was looming large in the American consciousness, and dark-toned stories fell out of favor in lieu of more lighthearted fair. Batman and Robin soon revealed they had a code against killing, the guns were gone (in part to play down the inevitable Shadow comparisons), and their mythos rewritten such that the Batman had never killed. The Joker, first introduced as a somber serial killer who's death-pale visage inspired utter terror, quickly became a cavorting buffoon. In fact, he wasn't even officially crazy. (There was actually a comic whose resolution involved Batman and Robin convincing the Joker that he was going mad.)
Truth be told, through much of the 40s and 50s, Batman's comic book exploits were pretty much inline in tone and temperament with those of his camp 60s television show counterpart. In fact, Batman comic book scribe Bill Finger penned several episodes. To this day, you'll never find a better Penguin than Burgess Meredith or a truer rendition of the Riddler than that offered by Frank Gorshin. (Oddly, the only major Bat-villain to be absent from the television show was Two-Face, perhaps because his scarred countenance was too horrific. However, of all the stories from that era, it's interesting to note that the Two-Face encounters are the least camp, most poignant - drenched as they are in the character's guilt and steadfast refusal to believe in the possibility of redemption. As such, they hold up the best in light of today's more sophisticated readers' standards.
Appropriately, it was as the camp television show was in its final days that a writer named Denny O'Neil (born the same month and year as the Batman himself, May 1939) took over the reigns of the comic book and changed everything. Partnering with the soon-to-be-legendary artist, Neal Adams, who brought a hitherto unseen level of realism to the depiction of superheroes, O'Neil revamped the Batman legend, either reinventing the character or returning it to its 1939 roots, depending on your perspective. Robin (who was previously presumed to be thirteen) was swiftly aged and sent off to college. Gone mostly were the costumed villains, replaced by international terrorists, corrupt politicians, mafia bosses. O'Neil's Batman was a Darknight Detective, akin to Sherlock Holmes, who employed his wits and credible criminology methods in the apprehension of evil doers. Bruce Wayne moved out of Wayne Manor into a penthouse apartment atop the Wayne Foundation in the heart of Gotham, and the Batmobile itself was often depicted as little more than an unmarked dark blue sports car, not dissimilar from a Corvette of the era. Occasionally, it would have the suggestion of the Batman's cowl in the lines of its hood, but gone were the fins, bubble domes, rocket engines, and Bat-insignias of previous models. It was during this period that the Joker was reverted to the murderous maniac of his original appearance. When he was captured, it was not Gotham Penitentiary to which he was returned, but Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane (the name a nod to the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft). The mysterious Ras al Ghul was introduced at this time as well, his daughter & Batman-love interest Talia and his Himalayan headquarters both directly inspired by the James Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. O'Neil's era established the Batman (not Batman, but "the Batman" as he has originally been called) as a serious comic book icon, and remained for many years the quintessential depiction of the character.
But a three-decades long back-story weighs heavy, and in the wake of O'Neil's departure from DC Comics, the costumed villains, one by one, came marching back in. The late 70s and early 80s were a schizophrenic time for the character, with writers and fans maintaining the "seriousness" of Batman while parading out an assortment of costumed crazies, with everything from dueling versions of the Mad Hatter to the Calendar Man making an appearance. Slowly, the legend of the Batman began to ebb, if not back towards camp, towards a muddle from which little work of lasting significance emerged. (An exception to this is a brief but significant run in Detective Comics by Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers, Detective Comics #471-476, August 1977 to March-April 1978, which revived the 1939 villain Professor Hugo Strange and mirrored the Joker's original killing spree from his first appearance.)
Then, in 1986, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns burst on the scene. The tale of an aging Bruce Wayne emerging from retirement for one last showdown against crime and corruption, Miller chose to play up the "dark" in Dark Knight. His Batman was obsessed, seething with a barely contained rage that forced out any chance at companionship or peace and overwhelmed Wayne. To recount The Dark Knight Returns' influence and importance on the entire comics industry would take another essay entirely. The prestige format was created for its release, and it almost single handed launched the "graphic novel" format as well - to say nothing of the emphasis it caused to be placed on adult storytelling, nor the respect for comic books it engendered in the mainstream. But suffice to say that The Dark Knight Returns, along with Miller's later Batman: Year One soon became the definitive rendition of the character, and remain so to this day.
Ironically, it was the initial success of The Dark Knight Returns that prompted Warner Bros. to put forth a darker, "serious" cinematic version of the character - a comedy staring Bill Murray had previously been in development - that resulted in the 1989 Tim Burton film, Batman. Praised at the time for being the most serious depiction the Batman had yet received in film or television, and impressive in its striking visual surrealism, it nonetheless wasn't right in the eyes of many fans, prompting Frank Miller himself to say that there were many versions of the Batman character, and obviously he and Tim Burton were depicting different ones.
Truthfully, there are many different versions of the Batman, and the camp version portrayed by Adam West is no less valid than that of the frustrated Billionaire lashing out through his arsenal of "wonderful toys" as depicted by Michael Keaton. Right is and will always be subjective, and I wouldn't begrudge the six year old that I was, sneaking through the woods to the Sparks' house to watch the Dynamic Duo, one iota of his enjoyment. But we can speak in terms of levels of sophistication of various Batman interpretations, as well as pinpoint key works as having had the most profound and lasting influences on the canon, as determined by readers and writers. To do so means that something resembling a "more correct" version of the Masked Manhunter can emerge as a dialogue within the canon between the most significant and enduring works. To date these include O'Neil and Adams' original run, the aforementioned Englehart & Rogers collaboration, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Year One, Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, the Batman: the Animated Series and related animated movies and spin-offs (Mask of the Phantasm, Batman Beyond, Justice League, etc...), and Jeff Loeb & Tim Sale's The Long Halloween and Dark Victory.
So it was with profound excitement that I learned that Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer took as their inspiration these seminal works, relying heavily on O'Neil's original stories of Ras al Ghul, Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, and Loeb & Sale's The Long Halloween and Dark Victory. Star Christian Bale even kept copies of the latter works on set with him for reference when he needed help maintaining his focus on the character. By crafting what is the most faithful-to-the-comics adaptation of Batman to date on film, Nolan and Goyer have created in Batman Begins what very well may emerge as the new definitive rendition of the Batman, as well as raised the bar for comic book adaptations henceforth. (And here is a good time to give fair "spoiler warning".)
With allowances to the character's variegated history, and apologies to Adam West, a definitive portrayal of the Dark Knight must include:
1. A depiction of the extreme force of will of the character. Michael Keaton's Batman was a frustrated and confused little guy who suited up in stiff armor and used an arsenal of impossible gadgets to vent his frustration, then came home and had trouble sleeping. He was dark alright, but his anger was unfocused, his motivation unclear, his methods unrefined. The Batman of the comics, as he is portrayed today, is a "normal" human being who can enter a room full of super-powered beings and command their attention and send a chill down every spine there - despite having no powers of his own - by his mere presence and force of personality. As Ducard says to Bruce Wayne, "Your training is nothing. The will to act is everything." Neitchzean overtones intentional. This is a man who believes, as he says in The Dark Knight Returns, that "the world only makes sense when you force it to."
2. The Batman has something to prove. Legendary artist Dick Giordano once said of the Batman, "The Batman does what he does for himself, for his needs. That society gains from his actions is incidental, an added value...but not the primary reason for his activities." Young Bruce Wayne was the "prince of Gotham City," a billionaire's son living a life only the top one percent of the world could enjoy. Then, in an instant, his happiness and security was yanked away from him. That realization, the realization of the inevitability of death as the great equalizer, that no matter who you are, you can step outside and be hit by a bus, struck by lightening, choke on an olive pit, be shot by a petty thief, and it can all end - struck the young Wayne at an age way earlier than most of us ever encounter it. (I still remember being 17 and seeing how close I could drive my car to a retaining wall on a curving mountain road. And the exact moment, a year later, when I realized with stunning certainty that I was not immortal.) This knowledge (and fear) of death at such an impressionable age terrified him. Like Captain Ahab, who lost his leg (and more if you read between the lines) to the White Whale, Wayne set out to prove to the universe that death could not catch him unawares again. He chose as his territory Gotham City, and as his target the criminal underworld (as Ahab chose the whale), but his real target (and intended audience) was the cosmos itself. In a Batman story from the early 70s, a trained martial artist studies Batman in combat and then attempts to take him down. Later, looking out the window of Commissioner Gordon's office, Batman muses that somewhere out there, some other punk is readying himself to take his shot. "And that makes you depressed?" Gordon asks. "No," the Batman replies, "I can hardly wait!" In "Ghost of the Killer Skies," (Detective Comics #404, 1970), he even challenges a cornered opponent to a duel in the air in biplanes, a rather pointlessly bit of theatrics when a simple punch would suffice, until we remember his motivation - proving to himself and the universe that no matter what form death takes, it will find him ready. This theme plays out in full in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, in which every possible death is evaluated by the Batman until he settles on one grand enough to lay his spirit to rest - that of beating the Man of Steel, here very deliberately a stand-in for God, in a fist fight. (Note to criminals: If Batman is ever about to beat the tar out of you, challenge him to a game of Yatze. If he's never played before, you've just saved yourself a whoopin'.)
3. A refusal to kill and an aversion to guns in particular. Not to pick on him excessively, but in the second Burton film, Batman Returns, Michael Keaton's Batman sat inside the protection of his armored Batmobile and burned alive an unprotected man with a flame from his rocket engine, after the other ineffectually menaced him by breathing fire in a cheap circus stunt. This dick-wagging scene, which drew a chuckle from the audience I saw it with, not only flew in the face of 70 years of continuity, but was the most cowardly act the Batman has ever been seen to enact on film. By contrast, the Batman of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns shuts off his weaponry and emerges from his Batmobile to take on a younger, stronger, seemingly superior foe bare-handed because, "I honestly don't know if I could beat him." (See point #2 above.) The Batman absolutely cannot kill, even in self defense. In fact, especially not in self defense. Since he is acting out of selfish motivation, as Giordano notes above, and placing himself into situations in which he must prove his superiority over death on a nightly basis, he would be a monster if he condoned killing in self-defense. His entire perception of his own sanity, and his ability to circumnavigate Gotham's laws in favor of a higher, personal justice, rests on this razor thin line. (Note: The one character in the Batman mythos who understands this as well as Batman himself is the Joker, who knowingly pours as much pressure on this line as he can in both The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke.)
4. The understanding that, unlike the vast majority of costumed crime fighters, Batman's secret identity is not the core persona. Bruce Wayne, the millionaire playboy, is the disguise, whereas "the Batman" is his true nature. In Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum, when asked by a henchman if they can unmask the captive Batman to see his true face, the Joker snaps, "That is his true face." In the animated spin-off series Batman Beyond, when criminals use a chip implanted in his skull to try to drive the elder Bruce Wayne insane by making him hear voices in his head, he confesses that he maintained his grip thusly: "The voices kept calling me Bruce. In my mind, that's not the name I call myself." Wayne is a prop, a place for Batman to hide during the day. Unlike other heroes, who fear exposure of their private lives, if Bruce Wayne were ever revealed to be the Batman, Wayne would merely disappear, and six months later another alter-ego would emerge to serve a similar function, but the Batman would continue unaffected. Rachel Dawes had it right when she said the face the criminals see was the real one.
So did they get it right with Batman Begins? In framing their film's theme in terms of fear vs. will, in maintaining Batman's compunction against killing, in recognizing the danger of becoming "lost inside the monster," in the acknowledgement that Batman was the true persona and Wayne the mask, in drawing on the seminal texts from O'Neil's late 60s work to Frank Miller's late 80s revision to the recent additions of Loeb & Sales, and , in stripping the franchise of its overblown sets and surrealistic excesses, and giving us a real Batman in a real city with a real motivation that matched and even in places exceeded the groundwork laid by the best of the comic books, Nolan and Goyer have given us the film that I for one have waited for half my life. Finally, the Batman has been presented on screen in a manner in accord with the best of his comic book representations. Did they get it right? Hell, yes they did! Forget Adam West, forget the Tim Burton films. Batman indeed begins here. Many happy returns!
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Prometheus & Pyr's BEA Booth
Earlier this month I was in New York city for Book Expo America, the largest publishing convention in the United States. Courtesy of Chris Roberson, who had a very successful signing of his Here, There & Everywhere that weekend, here are some pictures of the Prometheus/Pyr booth:
On the first day, we had some very nice displays of give-aways. The stack of Sean Williams' The Resurrected Man is about three-quarters where it started. Every single book had disappeared by afternoon:
Meanwhile, Fiona Avery's The Crown Rose, which started out stacked as high as my sternum, had dwindled this far in little more than an hour, and was gone well before noon. There were a lot of wonderful comments about the book's cover, which was by the artist Caniglia:
Here, if you look to the left of my head, you can see Pyr's first season:
All in all, a very successful weekend.
On the first day, we had some very nice displays of give-aways. The stack of Sean Williams' The Resurrected Man is about three-quarters where it started. Every single book had disappeared by afternoon:
Meanwhile, Fiona Avery's The Crown Rose, which started out stacked as high as my sternum, had dwindled this far in little more than an hour, and was gone well before noon. There were a lot of wonderful comments about the book's cover, which was by the artist Caniglia:
Here, if you look to the left of my head, you can see Pyr's first season:
All in all, a very successful weekend.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Words of Wisdom from Frederik Pohl
Where the Mundane and the anti-Mundane might meet, in a broadly elegant definition of the genre and its importance:
Does the story tell me something worth knowing, that I had not known before, about the relationship between man and technology? Does it enlighten me on some area of science where I had been in the dark? Does it open a new horizon for my thinking? Does it lead me to think new kinds of thoughts, that I would not otherwise perhaps have thought at all? Does it suggest possibilities about the alternative possible future courses my world can take? Does it illuminate events and trends of today, by showing me where they may lead tomorrow? Does it give me a fresh and objective point of view on my own world and culture, perhaps by letting me see it through the eyes of a different kind of creature entirely, from a planet light-years away? - These qualities are not only among those which make science fiction good, they are what make it unique. Be it never so beautifully written, a story is not a good science fiction story unless it rates high in these aspects. The content of the story is as valid a criterion as the style.
Does the story tell me something worth knowing, that I had not known before, about the relationship between man and technology? Does it enlighten me on some area of science where I had been in the dark? Does it open a new horizon for my thinking? Does it lead me to think new kinds of thoughts, that I would not otherwise perhaps have thought at all? Does it suggest possibilities about the alternative possible future courses my world can take? Does it illuminate events and trends of today, by showing me where they may lead tomorrow? Does it give me a fresh and objective point of view on my own world and culture, perhaps by letting me see it through the eyes of a different kind of creature entirely, from a planet light-years away? - These qualities are not only among those which make science fiction good, they are what make it unique. Be it never so beautifully written, a story is not a good science fiction story unless it rates high in these aspects. The content of the story is as valid a criterion as the style.
Friday, June 10, 2005
FutureShocks
Just got this in today from the publisher, the cover to my next anthology, FutureShocks, due from Roc in January, 06. Another stunning John Picacio illustration:
Contributing to FutureShocks: Kevin J. Anderson * Paul Di Filippo * Alan Dean Foster * Howard V. Hendrix * Alex Irvine * Caitlín R. Kiernan * Louise Marley * Sean McMullen * John Meaney * Paul Melko * Robert A. Metzger * Chris Roberson * Adam Roberts * Mike Resnick & Harry Turtledove * Robert J. Sawyer * Robert Charles Wilson
Contributing to FutureShocks: Kevin J. Anderson * Paul Di Filippo * Alan Dean Foster * Howard V. Hendrix * Alex Irvine * Caitlín R. Kiernan * Louise Marley * Sean McMullen * John Meaney * Paul Melko * Robert A. Metzger * Chris Roberson * Adam Roberts * Mike Resnick & Harry Turtledove * Robert J. Sawyer * Robert Charles Wilson
Monday, June 06, 2005
Interviews with Pyr Authors
Barnes and Nobles' Explorations newsletter Spotlight Feature is an interview with Chris Roberson, in which he talks, among other things, about Here, There & Everywhere, MonkeyBrain Books, and his upcoming novel, Paragaea: A Planetary Romance.
Meanwhile, three interviews have appeared with Charles Coleman Finlay, discussing his new novel, The Prodigal Troll. Finlay is interviewed in Ideomancer, in Tobias S. Buckell's author newsletter, and on Maria Zanini's webpage, On Writers and Writing.
Update: Martin Sketchley, whose novel The Affinity Trap we are publishing in September, just informed me that he's also interviewed on the Alien Online, wherein he talks about his followup novel The Destiny Mask, but also about his N. American Pyr release.
Meanwhile, three interviews have appeared with Charles Coleman Finlay, discussing his new novel, The Prodigal Troll. Finlay is interviewed in Ideomancer, in Tobias S. Buckell's author newsletter, and on Maria Zanini's webpage, On Writers and Writing.
Update: Martin Sketchley, whose novel The Affinity Trap we are publishing in September, just informed me that he's also interviewed on the Alien Online, wherein he talks about his followup novel The Destiny Mask, but also about his N. American Pyr release.
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