Christopher East

I’ve been feeling a little “two-note” in my fiction reading lately: spies and the near future, spies and the near future. I guess I’ve got that on the brain lately, what can I say? To shake things up a little, I picked up Alan DeNiro’s Total Oblivion, More or Less (2009), and I found it an enjoyable read and a nice change of pace. (And is that a wicked awesome title, or what?)

Macy Palmer is your typical sixteen-year-old girl, growing up in your typical midwestern city, experiencing your typical inexplicable invasion of ancient warriors into the contemporary world. That’s right, the Scythians have invaded Minnesota, civilization is breaking down, reality is all wobbly, and the Palmer family — Macy, father Carson, mother Grace, sister Sophia, and brother Ciaran — are displaced and desperate. A letter from Carson’s academic colleague in St. Louis provides a hint of promise, and together they set off from St. Paul down the Mississippi as passengers on the Prairie Chicken, refugees in their own country looking to forge a new life. Wasp-borne plagues, ancient warring factions, weird new drugs, and a bizarrely warped midwestern landscape challenge the family at every turn, and when they arrive at their destination, things only get more complicated. What’s a disfunctional family to do?

This one started a bit slowly for me, but picked up nicely as it went along. I always find the technique of not using quotation marks for dialogue, which DeNiro deploys here, a bit distancing, and initially it had that effect. But after a few chapters I was onboard with it, and I think it contributes nicely to the surreal tone. The book has a dark, dry sense of humor and uniquely weird sensibility, creatively conflating fantasy, history, and reality in entertaining and frequently surprising ways. I didn’t find the plot particularly compelling – the first half of the book, in particular, seemed a bit weak in that area. But ultimately I decided it wasn’t really supposed to be a “plotty” book; the genre concepts and approach are on the experimental side, so I had more fun approaching it with short fiction reading protocols, searching for literalized metaphors (hmm, does indentured servitude in “Nueva Roma” equate to working in a cubical farm in the modern west?) or simply enjoying the quirky humor and darkly weird fictional landscape. And anyway, the story takes more complicated turns in the second half, which I found considerably more engaging. This one wasn’t quite was I expecting, which is exactly what I was looking for; I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Women finally get a transcendance-through-sport film in the Rocky vein with Whip It (2009), an often funny if largely predictable comedy with a curious look and feel.  Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) is a meek, wannabe alternative chick living a repressed small-town life in rural Texas under the conservative bootheel of pageant-loving stage mother Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden) and conflict-averse football fan dad Earl (Daniel Stern).  A stray encounter during an Austin shopping trip puts a roller derby tryout on Bliss’ radar, and on a whim, Bliss sneaks off to give it a shot.  Turns out she’s got a knack for the whole roller derby thing, and soon the waitress-and-loving-daughter by day is moonlighting as star jammer “Babe Ruthless” by night for the league’s worst team, the Hurl Scouts.  She makes friends, finds love, and comes into conflict with her elders, as all the while the Hurl Scouts climb out of the basement and challenge for the roller derby title.

Let’s face it, we’ve all seen this film before…it’s The Bad News Bears and The Mighty Ducks and so on and so forth.  But for a change it puts women at center stage, and Whip It has a talented and funny cast that includes Drew Barrymore (who also directed the film), Alia Shawkat, and Kristen Wiig.  I did spend most of the film trying to figure out what the hell era it was supposed to be set in…the film’s visual sense is such that you can’t figure out whether it’s 1970, 2009, or somewhere — anywhere — in between.  Is this some sort of comment about the story’s timelessness…or maybe about Texas?  It’s a distracting issue to say the least.  Anyway, there’s little surprise here and I certainly wouldn’t send you way out of your way to see it, but it’s a well made and mostly enjoyable coming-of-age story with funny moments and good performances, particularly from Page (who is always worth watching) and Harden.

With the majority of the films on the list focusing on the Cold War and World War II, it’s good to see some contemporary spy movies make the cut too, and Traitor (2008) is a worthy selection.   It’s the story of Samir Horn (Don Cheadle), a Muslim of joint Sudanese-American descent, who becomes the subject in an international FBI investigation.  A former U.S. soldier with demolitions training, Horn is arrested during a raid in Yemen while selling bomb detonators to terrorists.  The FBI man leading the op, Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce), tries to recruit Horn’s help gathering intelligence, but Horn refuses and finds himself imprisoned, where he first impresses, then befriends another terrorist, Omar (Saïd Taghmaoui).  A precisely clocked prison break orchestrated by Omar’s terrorist allies sets Horn loose as well, and he soon becomes a trusted and useful member of Omar’s cell, which is planning a major terrorist attack in the U.S. heartland.  Or so it all appears, anyway…

Fans of excellent contemporary spy shows like MI-5 or Sleeper Cell (the latter is in fact a closer parallel) will find a lot to like in Traitor, which is similar in tone and subject matter, a spy thriller for the terrorism and fear tactics of the post-9/11 era.  The plot is well structured, if not entirely surprising, with most of the requisite elements — rival agencies getting their signals crossed, spies in the front line with mixed feelings about their work, friendships between enemies and animosity among allies, messages about sacrifice and betrayal.  That may be the film’s one flaw, in fact; it delivers everything you want from a spy film, perhaps to a fault.  For me, this is hardly a problem, of course — or perhaps is merely a problem of having watched so many spy films!  Cheadle carries the story well as the conflicted protagonist, and Pearce is also convincing as the FBI agent on his tail.  And the film benefits greatly from its broad canvas, as Horn’s suspenseful adventure carries him all across the Middle East, Europe, and North America.  Beautiful scenery, engaging performances, a tense, complicated story — for the seasoned spy buff, what’s not to like?

David Marusek’s short fiction has had a huge influence on me, and also on the vision for the fiction section of Futurismic, so it was with great pleasure – and a renewed sense of admiration – that I recently re-experienced the stories of his first collection, Getting to Know You (2007).  Don’t get me wrong, I love his novels too – both Counting Heads and Mind Over Ship are very much worth reading.  But some of Marusek’s short work is mind-blowingly good, powerful and innovative stuff that even ten or fifteen years after its publication still feels new and vibrant and important.

The collection leads off with Marusek’s most famous piece, “The Wedding Album,” a touching and highly creative novella told from the point of view of two recorded holosims, taken to commemorate a young couple’s wedding.  Their semi-sentience serves as the window through which the reader views the evolution of artificial intelligence rights over decades of a deeply imagined future.  It’s a sprawling, inventive opening to the collection with more ideas in it than many SF novels, and it’s very highly regarded.  And it’s not even my favorite story in the book.

Not all of the stories on display here hit my sweet spot.  I found “The Earth is On the Mend,” the author’s  first sale, to be a not particularly memorable post-Apocalypse jape, and wasn’t hugely impressed with the grim lifeship tale “Listen to Me” either.  Also “A Boy in Cathyland,” an out-take from “The Wedding Album,” was almost a bit too dense for me, and didn’t quite stand alone — although it possesses some striking imagery and hard-hitting moments.  On the other hand “Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz,” an amusing story that gleefully commits the sins of a) being an epistolary and b) featuring the author as a chracter, worked for me in spite of my predispositions with sheer cleverness.  And “My Morning Glory” is a brilliant little nod-and-a-wink short-short in which a man’s personalized apartment helps him negotiate life, dealing with the oncoming future one moment at a time.

The collection really comes alive for me in its middle stages, though, with a series of hefty stories that are perhaps the ones that cemented Marusek’s reputation.  The astonishingly innovative “We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy” sets the stage for his Counting Heads universe (it serves as the opening of that book), and although it came out in 1995, it still feels brand-spanking new to me, the kind of work that today’s new authors still strive to emulate.  Even better, I think, are its prequels.  “Cabbages and Kale, or: How We Downsized North America” goes back in time to examine the origins of this universe, in a story focusing on the vice president of the United States of North America, who finds himself in a unique position to change the future during a historic Senate vote.  The ramifications of that event are examined somewhat in “Getting to Know You,” in which Marusek entertainingly details the birth of the personal valet (an A.I. assistant specifically tailored to the individual user), while also unravelling a compelling mystery as a former police officer visits her sister in a midwestern arcology.  This story is both engagingly plotted and exciting as science fiction, further developing the author’s famous future history of power-mad, immortal elites, servile clones, and the endless bounty of nanotech.

Special mention must be made, however, for the shocking and brutal “VTV,” which the author’s note laments was received with “stone-cold silence,” but I think may be the author’s most impressive effort. In “VTV,” the callous machine of big media descends upon a woman suspected of being an assassination target and gleefully awaits the big event.  The nightmare near-future depicted in “VTV” is so intense it’s almost gonzo, and yet this story really gets at hard truths in a disquietingly profound way.  It’s a real kick in the teeth, a scathing indictment of exploitative media sensationalism, LCD voyeurism, and the fleeting, care-free attention span of the American public.  I still think it’s a stunning, uncompromising work and an unjustly overlooked gem.  If the past six years of Futurismic slushpile-reading is any indication, it may be the single most influential story in the book.

Getting to Know You contains a wealth of fiercely intelligent, dark, cynical, funny, and edgy SF, and may be a bit much for the feint of heart to take all at once.  But to me it’s an absolutely essential SF collection.

At the beginning of February I renewed my resolve to complete my near-future spy novel Subnetworks.  My goal was to write five days a week, and produce at least 500 words per session.

The bad news is I didn’t really do very well on those goals.  I usually write on my lunch breaks at work, but for most of February I was too wiped out to pull that off.  And our weekends were busy, which limited me to only one Lulu’s excursion.  (I’d been hoping to go once a week again, as a show of commitment.  D’oh!)

The good news is the project is at least moving forward, and I doubt I will need to produce 500 words a day to accomplish my goal of finishing the book this year.  I escaped from the chapter that had stalled me, wrote two more, and I’m coming up on the midpoint of the book.  Writing two chapters a month will bring me to the end of my outline before the end of the year, with time to spare.  So completing this thing — a draft, anyway — is totally feasible!

So, total word count for February:  4,700.  A bit weak, but it’s a start!

I have to admit I resisted seeing Avatar (2009) for a long time.  I have a general aversion to mega-blockbusters, which so often put spectacle ahead of story, and I’m pretty sure I was also just being too cool for school; with so many people adoring the film, I was sure I would hate it.  Don’t drink the blue Kool-Aid!

Yesterday I finally saw it, though, and while I certainly found it impressive, I also feel a little bit vindicated in my resistance.  It’s the story of a disabled Marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who journeys to the distant world of Pandora, a dangerous, unspoiled planet rich in an incredibly valuable element called “unobtainium.”  (Groan…)   Consequently various human forces have set up shop on Pandora, represented by the not insignificantly named Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), a callous corporate type with his eye on the bottom line; destructive mercenary Colonel Miles Quatrich (Stephen Lang), who leads the military contigent in charge of facilitating the operation; and the cantankerous Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), who heads the scientific group.  The chief problem for the humans is the indigenous population, a humanoid species called the Na’vi.  In an attempt to broker peace, the scientific contingent has begun an avatar program — creating half-human, half-Na’vi bodies that the scientists remotely inhabit in order to interact with the locals, learn their ways, and hopefully negotiate a peaceful solution to hostilities.  Sully, whose brother’s death led to his recruitment for the project (their identical genetic makeup enables Sully to link with his brother’s avatar), finds himself assigned to the science team.  Of course, Quatrich seizes on Sully’s military sense of duty to recruit him for an intelligence assignment — gather the information that will enable the military group to forcibly remove the Na’vi from their home, the Tree of Souls, which is centered over the planet’s richest deposit of unobtainium.  By the time Sully has been accepted into the Na’vi tribe, fallen in love with the beautiful Na’vi who welcomed him (Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana), and discovered a deep appreciation for the aliens’ ways, it’s too late to prevent the war he’s helped foment.  Can Sully redeem himself and save the Na’vi?

Avatar is a striking visual achievement, there’s no arguing that.  Pandora is a breathtakingly realized setting, the CGI blends seamlessly with the live action, and there are skiffy eyeball kicks galore.  (We saw the 3D version, and the film lends itself well to that medium, although I doubt the 2D version suffers in comparison.)  The action sequences are gripping and well rendered.  And the movie is generally well acted across the board, with Weaver standing out as the steely scientist.  In addition, its strong environmental theme and anti-war messages, while a bit heavy-handed, are confidently realized.

So, it’s definitely got a lot going for it, and I can see why it’s a crowd-pleaser…but I wasn’t entirely won over.  I think my initial concern, that the story would suffer for the sheer visual feast of it all, was somewhat justified.  The plot is totally pro forma, with all the requisite acts, turns and complications, and for all the graphical surprises, there isn’t a real story surprise to be had.  In order to hit all its marks, from time to time the script kind of shoehornes in illogical character decisions to advance things in the needed directions.  Why does Sully agree to help the military, and then act surprised when they use his information?  What makes him so special that the Na’vi accept him over anybody else?  The film tries to justify these turns, but mainly the answer is usually:  because the plot needs this to happen.

I also found the film frustrating as a work of science fiction.  It works very hard to be believable SF in some ways (convincing tech, legitimate scientific concepts, even the detail of having the planet’s atmosphere be unbreathable by humans) but then undercuts that credibility with implausibilities (floating mountains, largely unconvincing physics, transmission-blocking energies that somehow don’t impact remote avatar control, etc.).  The film falls in love a bit much with what it can accomplish technically, at the expense of plausibility.  Had it been a straight-up science fantasy, I wouldn’t have been bothered, but it feels so much like hard SF at times that the more fantastical elements — and some of the spiritualism and “chosen one” plot mechanics, for that matter — all seem jarring.

There is something to be said, of course, for a film that gives you this much food for thought, and Avatar doesn’t want for important ideas and messages, and generally does an effective job of conveying them in a highly entertaining manner.  I certainly didn’t hate the film, and as a groundbreaking technical achievement, it may be unsurpassed.  But in the end, to me its a very good but imperfect film that deftly camouflages its flaws with movie-magic razzle-dazzle.

I’m pleased and proud to announce that Futurismic’s new short story for March has posted:  “Tupac Shakur and the End of the World” by Sandra McDonald.  Post-Apocalypse fiction is a very tough sell for me, but this one jumped up, stood out, and forced me to like it — I hope you do too!

When we brought Oslo* the new kitten home, he kind of stole the limelight from Cairo, our original awesome cat.  I thought it was time to give Cairo some blog-love.

Cairo is kind of a ‘fraidy-cat.  He tends to go into hiding when people come over.  The first time I flew out here to see Jenn he hid under the bed for a couple of days.  But eventually we cornered him in the back bathroom with a toy and spent some time convincing him to play with me.  Cairo seemed to warm up to me after that, and we’ve been friends ever since.

Cairo is still very much Jenn’s cat, while Oslo* the new guy has kind of latched on to me.  But Cairo and I have a very comfortable, relaxed friendship.  Here’s one of my favorite pics of us hanging out together:

* Name removed to prevent influencing the tag cloud.

Although not readily evident on my site — my current WordPress theme doesn’t display them — I add tags to all of my posts.  I just noticed the tags section on my site management page creates a tag cloud, and it makes for an interesting visual.

Based on my tag cloud, I have learned (if I didn’t know already):

• I seem to write about Castle more than I watch it.
• Amazingly I am now a bigger fan of the Los Angeles Kings than I am of the Buffalo Sabres.   There was a time when I never thought this would be possible.  (But the Sabres are still in my heart…)
• My favorite TV show is still Mission: Impossible, even after all these years.
• Oslo is getting more blog-attention than Cairo.  (Need to do something about that…)
• I’ve posted more about England than about the United States.  But I guess I’ve never taken a trip to the United States, so that makes sense.
• Dollhouse made me think, even when I didn’t like it.
• I love GarageBand!
• Looks like I’ve got a thing for Amy Acker…
• Looks like I’ve got a thing for…Fran Kranz?
• Most-mentioned authors:  Alan Furst, Nancy Kress, John LeCarre’, Maureen F. McHugh.
• What is this Futurismic thing?
• I am very interested in World War II history.
• You may never have heard of The Sandbaggers, but evidently that show is important to me.
• The largest tag by far:  Subnetworks.  It looks like I really do want to finish writing this novel.

And now, to tag this post, thereby reinforcing my tendencies…

I rented The Good German (2006) a couple years ago and it didn’t make a great impression on me at the time, so it was with some trepidation that I rewatched it for this project.  I liked it much better this time around, but I can also see why it didn’t entirely win me over at first.

It’s Berlin, in 1945, and the victorious Allied powers are gathering for the Potsdam Conference to determine Germany’s fate in the wake of World War II.  Military reporter Jake Geisman (George Clooney), on hand to cover the conference, finds himself “coincidentally” assigned a seedy motor pool aide named Tully (a distractingly miscast Tobey Maguire).  Tully just happens to have a German girlfriend named Lena (Cate Blanchett), a figure from Geisman’s past.  Within a few hours of arriving, Geisman’s wallet is stolen, and before he knows it he finds himself embroiled in a murder, a manhunt, and the complexities of post-war power politics.  Everyone seems to be searching for a man named Emil Brandt — American intelligence agents, the Russian military, the U.S. war crimes commission.  Geisman, motivated by his love for Lena and a desire for justice, allows himself to get caught up in the search, but who is Brandt, and why is everybody after him?

The Good German does a lot of things you want a good spy film to do, and the mystery here — while requiring some early patience — is quite compelling, in a conflict that comes down to a battle between those who want to see justice done, and those willing to compromise ethics in the name of political and military expediency.  The bomb-ravaged Berlin setting is beautifully and convincingly realized.  Clooney is in fine form, and Blanchett pulls off a convincingly exotic Marlene Dietrich-like leading lady.

But the film is hampered, I think, by its chief claim to fame; in order to recapture the feel of the old spy-noir films of yesteryear, director Steven Soderbergh (who is always interesting) limited himself to using the film-making technology of the 1940s era he was trying to recapture.  While this makes for an intriguing experiment, it’s also a bit distracting; the film is a little too self-conscious about its technique.  In a few places, Soderbergh forces visual comparisons to the films I suspect he’s paying homage to — chiefly The Third Man and Casablanca, classics that are awfully difficult to compete against.  The concept might have worked, but the film doesn’t entirely commit to its mission. Blanchett and Clooney do well recapturing the acting styles of the era, but other members of the cast don’t…and while the music is effectively retro, the language and violence feel too contemporary.  In the end, I suspect I would have enjoyed it more had it been entirely modern or entirely classic — as is, it’s got a foot in both camps, and the film-making seams are showing a bit much.  I suspect this is the main reason I didn’t care for the film the first time I saw it.

Putting that criticism aside, though, there’s a good, involving espionage yarn on display in The Good German, and if you can get past the distraction of the visual look, it’s definitely attractively shot and distinctive.  With reservations, perhaps, but recommended.