Movie Musings: THE DARKEST HOUR

I’ve got to give credit to THE DARKEST HOUR for attempting to do something original with the well-worn alien invasion genre. Setting the action in present day Moscow is an interesting change of pace for the North America-centric settings these kinds of films normally inhabit.

The unseen alien forces also have the veneer of freshness, owing more to ghosts and unseen spooks than the traditional creepy-crawly slime types we normally see in films like this.

Unfortunately the commitment to ‘shaking things up’ is only skin deep. Despite the initial stab at trying something new HOUR follows the familiar group of English-speakers as they band together for your typical heroing and adventuring. The films mimics the traditional plot and genre conventions religiously and never once sets out to put its own stamp on things.  Any Russians who somehow managed to sneak into the movie are reduced to forgettable bit players and redshirts.

HOUR isn’t a bad film, just one the completely fails to take advantage of the few elements that make it a unique.

TV Musings: REVOLUTION

REVOLUTION is a hodge-podge of different cult genre thrown together and stirred up with an industrial blender. Western, kung fu, swashbuckling, science fiction, post-apocalyptic action film – there’s no stone unturned here as the creators attempt to throw out the largest net possible in order to draw in the fans.

You have to tip your hat to veteran director Jon Favereau for taking so many eclectic inspirations and somehow making them all work.

The success of THE HUNGER GAMES is also a huge factor here and it’s no surprise that REVOLUTION’s young female lead, striding so confidently through the wreckage of human civilization, could be confused for a Katniss Everdeen clone, bow and all.

Ultimately, REVOLUTION’s greatest weakness is that its playing around in a genre that rewards boldness and risk taking but doing so with one hand tied behind its back. Post-apocalyptic sci fi is a rich seam with the potential for powerful storytelling and uncompromising characters, but unfortunately REVOLUTION is operating under American broadcast television rules.

That means the lead cast looks extra-ordinarily well fed, sporting gym fresh bodies, stylish militaryesque shabby chic clothing (including belly shirts) and generally seems to be living a good, if somewhat rustic, life.

Additionally, all swearing is PG, all deaths bloodless and the central plot slightly generic.

REVOLUTION is interesting and engaging, without being challenging and thought provoking, a perfect recipe for longevity on the small screen but an utterly lousy one for making  a lasting impact on its audience.

One bright light for the show is that character actor Giancarlo Esposito, AKA Gustavo Fring, continues to elevate the calibre of any scene he happens to be in.

Movie Musings: PROMETHEUS

PROMETHEUS isn’t ALIEN, and despite all the similarities in form and content it’s not really trying all that hard to be ALIEN. BUT it does work at ticking off all the relevant ALIEN boxes

• buggy robot
• strong female lead
• barren landscape
• away mission gone horribly awry
• flamethrowers
• questionable corporate agendas

The movie seems more concerned with reaching a certain ending and less concerned about how it jerks around the characters and the film’s sequence of events in order to get there.

(On a much more nit-picky level there are several straight up grade school logical inconsistences in the movie. When contacting an alien culture for the first time, who cracks open their helmet on a whim just because the air is perceived as being breathable?! The scientific method has failed these future scientists. Failed them hard.)

PROMETHEUS riffs on variations on an already established theme, but really fails to carve out new material to add to the ALIEN mythology. Yes, there's some stuff happening there with the Space Jockeys, and that’s all well and good, (and interesting) but even that's not something I would classify as new.

If anything, the film's reliance on ticking boxes and getting some interesting scare moments muddies the crisp, linear understanding of how the xenomorph world functions.

BUT. DESPITE ALL THAT. I liked it. It was interesting. Enjoyable to watch. And I STILL jumped out of my seat on more than one occasion.

It would have been nice if I didn't feel like there was some idea recycling going on, but you know, it also would have been nice if I found my coffee cup was stuffed with 20 dollar bills this morning. Nice is relative.

As long as I liked the end product, and I did, the rest is just quibbling over the expectations I carted into the theatre with me before the first frame had even rolled.

Book Review: The Stories Of Ibis - Hiroshi Yamamoto

In a world where humans are a minority and androids have created their own civilization, a wandering storyteller meets the beautiful android Ibis. She tells him seven stories of human/android interaction in order to reveal the secret behind humanity's fall. The stories that Ibis speaks of are the "seven novels" about the events surrounding the announcements of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the 20th and 21st centuries. At a glance, these stories do not appear to have any sort of connection, but what is the true meaning behind them? What are Ibis's real intentions?

A while back I read and reviewed Daniel H. Wilson’s ROBOPOCALYPSE. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot in fact. I love the idea of a future earth that includes robots, androids, or simply some form of sentient / self-aware Artificial Intelligence (AI). It makes for compelling storytelling, and usually gives you a reason to root for the humans while still seeing the machines plight as servants of various descriptions.

In THE STORIES OF IBIS, Japanese author Hiroshi Yamamoto has written one of the most stunningly thought-provoking and honest novels in the above genre. Better than that he has written one of the finest novels I think I can recall reading. And what’s the best thing about it? It’s wholly unique. It approaches each story from a slightly different angle, and most certainly from angles you have not thought of. The result is an anthology of seemingly disparate fictional tales about humans interacting with AI, which actually end up related to one another, but not at all in the way you might think. The stories would each be amazing on their own(and I actually believe that five of the seven tales related to our narrator by Ibis were originally printed in other publications), but together they weave an intricate tapestry, and aligned with the last two stories (made specifically for this novel) and the “intermissions” which break up the stories and showcase the two protagonists as the stories are told, the result is nothing short of breathtaking.

I don’t want to dig too deeply into the actual plot of the various stories, but you should be aware that they are all totally relevant, clever, and fast paced. The novel is roughly 400 pages long, but it never feels long since the stories click along at such a streamlined speed. The first few tales are shortish (somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 pages), but as we get deeper in they get longer culminating in the last two tales the penultimate of which was pleasantly longer and deceptively emotional, not to mention profound. This is a book that will keep you sitting and thinking about its ideas, plot progressions and characters long after you close the book. It was so engrossing on that level that I was briefly quite tempted to start at page one again and read it through one more time, for fear I might have missed some moment of revelation or insight.

Both the human narrator (unnamed), and the android Ibis (who tells her stories to our narrator) only have seven “intermissions” (including the opening prologue) with which to endear themselves to the reader and surprisingly enough they quite pull that off. Whether that is because of the stories themselves and each character’s reactions to them, or simply because they were well drawn by Yamamoto in the first place I don’t know. All I know is I cared about both the Narrator and Ibis by the end, and that stands out to me.

I don’t really want to pick favourites, since the book and stories all work best as a unit and when compiled make the ending as poignant as it is because of that fact…but the 6th tale, THE DAY SHION CAME, left me completely astonished, and emotionally drained. It is probably the most affecting story in the book and may very well be one of the best short pieces of sci-fi fiction I’ve ever read. It is both completely “human” and totally “android” in its execution and very nearly reduced me to tears. And all that while being almost deceptively simple.

Here is a book that COULD very well have fallen into the trap of techno-babble or being too obtuse for its own good and it never does. Yamamoto never sacrifices his story in order to be overly clever in what he’s putting across. Whenever things are explained or notions are fielded it is done so in a way that makes it easy to understand. Various terms, plot points, and even characters are approached as “known” initially, but are explained quite soon after being introduced allowing your brain to relax while the work is done for you. Basically I never found myself stumbling blindly along attempting to sort out what was going on.

Yamamoto is another author who has created a fan in me with one book. I would place THE STORIES OF IBIS in my top FIVE (you read that right) science fiction books of all time. That might sound lofty, but I simply can’t tell you enough how this book affected me, my preconceived notions about AI, and mostly about humanity. There are revelations within these pages for the reader that will astound simply by virtue of being honest. How often do we look at ourselves in an honest light? We like to see ourselves a certain way and this book may have actually changed that for me. For that I think I might always be thankful to Yamamoto.

This is definitely one of the very BEST sci-fi novels dealing with earth’s future. It’s certainly the BEST of the humans interacting with AI that I’ve read. The prose (translated from the original Japanese perfectly by Takami Naeda) is fluid and poetic without being too flowery, the pace is fast and clean, and the story is a hauntingly beautiful look at the history of science and the possibilities of the future. Hiroshi Yamamoto would be in good company alongside some of Sci-Fi royalty like Asimov and Clarke, but he would be just as at home next to his contemporaries like Reynolds, Brin or Banks. Funnily enough it was as I was walking out of the bookstore (after a daily perusal) that out of the corner of my eye I saw the spine of this book with its sketch-like design on pure white with bright orange block letters for the title. It stood out to me and so I picked it up an read the back. I bought it mere mintues later. Strange how life does that for you some days.

Book Review: THE POSTMORTAL by Drew Magary

The cure for aging was supposed to bring health and prosperity to the world. After all, think of what you could accomplish if your lifespan was near-infinite.

But it doesn’t quite work out that way. Rather the discovery of the cure marks the beginning of a massive social, economic and political transformation, whose consequences will play out over generations.

John Farrell was one of the first people to take the cure. Farrell manages to use his business connections to get in on the ground floor when the cure was still illegal. But overnight the plans for the rest of his life are thrown into disarray. After all, who in their right mind would want to be a real estate lawyer forever?

Set amidst the massive upheaval in a time where death has become an outdated concept Farrell struggles to give his life meaning and purpose in an increasingly chaotic world.

THE POSTMORTAL by Drew Magary is 384 pages of mind blowing insight into a world that is slowly choking to death on its greatest wish. It’s like a post-apocalyptic future where none of the main characters are aware that Armageddon has actually taken place.

Magary has crafted a measured and considered examination of Earth’s slow, downward spiral towards its inevitable demise. With an infinitely prolonged lifespan the social mores that once kept the social order stable no longer apply. Life, death, family, marriage, core precepts reinforcing our cultural and social identity, are torn down and the interpersonal bonds that reinforce and inform our humanity are irreversibly mutated.

POSTMORTAL is clearly an allegory, dialed up to 11, for the many budding social concerns that grip us today. Magary throws out a hodge-podge of brainy social issues for readers to noodle over, from resource depletion to overpopulation and the reckless implementation of scientific discoveries. Thankfully he manages to do so, in a fairly natural way, without beating the reader over the head with a rubber hose whilst proclaiming “and now we’re going to discuss the threat of planetary disease vectors”. There’s no preachy social commentary being shoved down anyone’s throat, just an interested observer peeking behind the curtain.

I can’t emphasize enough how much I was impressed by Magary’s delivery of these concepts. As the story progresses, what would be shocking and radical to us in 2012 is obviously blasé and every day to Farrell. But rather than hold our hand and lead us from Point A to Point B through humankind’s social and technological development, Magary gives us just enough information to draw our own conclusions. It takes a lot of faith to trust the reader to get there on their own and I imagine that the temptation to spell things out must be a powerful one. But I’m glad Magary resisted temptation as the book feels more natural as a result. (As natural as a post-apocalyptic future where people don’t age can feel of course.)

So many of these big ideas are casually tossed out and left for the reader to mull over. Even after I put the book down at night my brain would constantly be churning and turning, trying to get a handle on what I was processing.

But it’s the book’s smaller, more personal moments that I found truly moving, the baby who’s development is forever frozen, cured of aging by the sick love of an addled mother, the seemingly solid relationship that begins to fray and fall part because the couple can’t bear the thought of staying with each other forever or the last goodbye from a dying sister.

It’s these little details, where the author reveals how much thought he’s put into fleshing out the implications of the ‘cure’, that separates POSTMORTAL from the herd.

POSTMORTAL is written in a diary format, which is a structure that allows for a lot of character introspection but generally not so hot at giving readers a glimpse of the larger narrative. Too often I’ve seen writers twist their story into a pretzel with artificial info dumps in order to explain the narrative developments to the reader. Magary neatly avoids these traps by making the diary more of a blog, incorporating snippets of interviews or a friend’s social media feed, a la Twitter or Tumblr. It’s a clever work around, giving the reader a sense of the larger world without talking down to them in the process.

The ending is POSTMORTAL’s weakest link. The reader is asked to accept the likelihood of a lot of unlikely coincidences in order to help the story move forward. This includes a chance meeting between two characters who haven’t seen each other in over sixty years. It’s a bit of a stretch, but thankfully the powerful emotional resonance that Magary has built up throughout the book helps carry skeptical readers over the implausibility gap. It took me a ridiculously long time to digest the last 20 pages or so because the book’s climax was just that powerful and I kept slowing down and rereading it in order to savour that goodness.

THE POSTMORTAL was a phenomenal read. From page one to when I reluctantly put it aside I was hooked. There’s so much at play here, the stakes are so high and the characters so remarkably crafted that it’s impossible to read this book just once and think you’ve got a handle on it all. Every time you peel a layer of the story back there’s another underneath, waiting to challenge you.

Book Review: ROBOPOCALYPSE by Daniel H. Wilson

In a not so distant future a sentient computer program named Archos has determined that it is time for humanity to step aside as the world’s dominant species. The time of the robot as come.

After slowly infiltrating our technological infrastructure Archos ferments a robotic uprising. The initial success of the robo-revolution leaves humanity scrambling to mount a counter offensive, giving Archos time to create deadly robots whose sole purpose is to kill humankind.

Using giant concentration camps Archos conducts horrific medical experiments on survivors of the revolution in order to better understand how human beings function.

But humanity isn’t down for the count yet. All across the world small pockets of resistance are forming, fighting back against the robots and winning.

Time is running out though. Amidst dwindling resources and in the face of an enemy who feels no remorse and will stop at nothing to wipe them from the face of the earth a small group of soldiers will make a stand against Archos and his minions on the frozen fields of Alaska, with the fate of the entire world resting on the shoulders.

If while reading ROBOPOCALYPSE you muse that it seems particularly suited to a big screen adaptation, that’s probably not a coincidence.

In fact in the author’s acknowledgments at the end of the book he singles out DreamWorks SKG to thank them for their support and enthusiasm.

Putting aside for a moment that it’s awfully strange, for me anyway, to have a major Hollywood film studio interested in your book before it’s even written, ROBO very much reads like the novelization of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Reading ROBOPOCALPYSE so shortly after perusing Robert J. Sawyers own take on artificial intelligence, in his WWW series, was very interesting. You couldn’t have two more completely different takes on AI.

Where Sawyer’s Webmind was a friendly, benevolent being ROBO’s Archos seems bloodthirsty and unforgiving in comparison. It was a little disconcerting to see how quickly Archos moved to condemn and destroy humanity, seemingly have written us off in the span of a couple pages.

In all fairness Sawyer had three books to establish and build on Webmind’s motivations, but the simplistic and underwritten motivations of Archos stand out in stark contrast to Sawyer’s complex and more nuanced approach.

Utilizing the same narrative structure as WORLD WAR Z, ROBOPOCAPLYSE isn’t told so much as it is recapped by a single narrator who transcribes the scenes and adds context to events that let up to the final battle between humankind and robots.

Unlike WWZ, with its sprawling unwieldy narrative, Wilson has chosen to work with a much smaller cast of characters, which gives readers the chance become more invested in their personal story lines.

Unfortunately, by choosing to tell this story as a chronicle of past events ROBO kills the illusion that there are serious stakes at play here as the outcome of the war has already been spelt out in the book’s first pages. Kinda kills the dramatic tension when the narrator gives you an executive summary before the book has a chance to even clear its throat.

The book’s filmic influences also work against it in other ways. Brevity and narrative convenience are recurring problems with this book. Character growth and motivation are often glossed over leaving readers with underwritten characters whose internal workings are often a mystery.

Wilson has sketched out his characters just enough that this oversight sticks out like a sore thumb. I want to know what makes these people tick, where they find the fortitude to keep fighting and how they grow and change over the course of the robot war.

Coincidences also seem to pile up pretty quickly in ROBO. Anytime the human resistance runs into a problem a convenient one of a kind solution will be delivered at exactly the right moment to keep the plot moving forward. These kinds of outs are more acceptable in a movie where directors by necessity have to keep things going. But in a book I expect more from a story than to have the author write in a deus ex machina at will.

Quibbles aside ROBOPOCALYPSE is a fun, entertaining read. And if I’m harsh on its failings that’s only because they stand out against a backdrop of so many other things that are done very well.

The premise is interesting, the story compelling and the execution deft and capable. It’s a good a piece of post-apocalyptic sci-fi as anything I’ve ever read.

And in truth I devoured this book like a starving man at an all you can eat buffet.

Dig in.

(ROBOPOCALYPSE was previously reviewed by Scott here.)

Book Review: DIVING INTO THE WRECK by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Boss loves wreck diving.

Whenever she discovers an abandoned space ship she prefers to explore the wreck herself, before passing it along to the authorities. Sometimes she turns the ships into a tourist spot, sometimes she salvages the wrecks for a little money and sometimes she keeps the wrecks off the books and all to herself. Fascinated in the lost history of these ancient vehicles the emotionally fragile and withdrawn Boss, along with a carefully picked crew, will spend weeks exploring every hull and bulkhead, teasing out the wreck’s hidden story.

One day Boss stumbles across a wreck that has no business being this far out in deep space, an ancient Earth ship known as a Dignity Vessel. These antiquated warships are so old that much of what has been written about them seems to be more myth and legend than actual fact. However, the stories all agree on one thing, Dignity Vessels are incredibly dangerous.

Fascinated by the find Boss puts together a small crew of divers to explore the wreck. Quickly the crew discovers why Dignity Vessels are so treacherous. The ships utilize stealth technology, knowledge so hazardous that its origins have been lost in time. Despite its continued efforts humanity has never been able to replicate stealth tech, though periodically it attempts to rediscover its origins.

Fuelled by a deadly combination of greed and wonderment Boss ignores her own misgivings and continues to explore the wreck. Even the discovery that Squishy, a member of her own crew, was part of a secret government program to resurrect stealth tech isn’t enough to dissuade Boss from satisfying her own curiosity.

But as Boss gets closer to unravelling the mystery behind stealth, tragedy strikes. After the death of two divers Squishy abandons the crew to alert the authorities about the existence of the Dignity Vessel. Forced by the goverment to give up the wreck and consumed by feelings of guilt Boss breaks up the crew.

Abandoned and forgotten, Boss must discover the secret behind stealth technology, even if it means exposing the tragedies of her own past.

DIVING INTO THE WRECK is an excellent book that manages to use sci-fi motifs as the backdrop to a great story without falling prey to the hoary pitfalls of the genre.

Mirroring the solitary and lonely pursuit of wreck diving itself, author Kristine Kathryn Rusch has created a very contained and insular book here as the entirety of the story is relayed through Boss’ internal monologuing,

This means the narration comes across as detached and reserved at times, presumably taking its cue from Boss’ own mental state.

There are some advantages to this approach, it gives the story an unreliable narrator which is a technique, when done well, that I particularly enjoy. All the character and scenery descriptions are filtered through Boss’ own experience and personal history (or her personal baggage, whichever description gives you more mileage) colouring her perceptions of people and events.

While this inward focused storytelling approach might slow down the pace of the narrative just a scooch, it entirely suits the mood and tone of the piece. Although the stakes of the story potentially have interstellar repercussions Rusch is more concerned with fleshing out the personal concerns and internal dilemmas of Boss instead.

WRECK is apparently cobbled together from three of Rusch’s earlier novellas and unfortunately it shows. Despite a clear narrative through line in the novel there are distinct stopping points where it’s clear a particular novella has come to an end. This ‘all stop’ felt a little jarring, more akin to the intermission between acts in a play, than the end of a chapter in an ongoing story. I would have liked to have seen more of an effort gone into blending these separate tales into a single cohesive narrative.

WRECK is a solidly laid out and plotted novel. Rusch has a good ear for dialogue and creates distinct characters without reverting to cliché stereotypes in order to set them apart from each other. She has fashioned a dark and inhospitable universe but somehow manages to inject it with hope and humanity at the same time.

A bit of a dated video, but good nonetheless

This is a video featuring a number of current Gollancz authors discussing various tropes of Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and I find it an interesting watch because I've read and enjoyed books by 90% of them. Anyways, I felt we needed a video today on our inaugural day and it was either this or Neil Gaiman reading "The Day The Saucers Came" at Yale (my fave short fiction by him from Fragile Things).

Anyways enjoy the awesomeness that is Joe Abercrombie, Alastair Reynolds, Richard Morgan sitting at a table together, not to mention the undeniably hot Alex Bell.