Christopher East

The problem with a sequel that aims to give you more of the same is that it might succeed.  That’s my only real issue with Day Watch (2006), the follow-up to Night Watch, a gritty urban fantasy film that surprised me last year with its stunning look, impressively busy, involved world-building, and epic clash of good and evil.

Day Watch continues the saga of the magical Moscow underworld, in which the Light Others (Night Watch) and Dark Others (Day Watch) struggle to maintain a delicate truce that keeps the world in balance.  In this one, the murder of a Dark Other raises tensions between the factions, and the most likely suspect is our hero Anton Gorodestky (Konstantin Khabenskiy) — who can’t confess without revealing his forbidden investigation of an ancient legend about the Chalk of Fate.  The chalk enables the wielder to write his or her own future, and Anton wants to use it to rewrite his relationship with his son, but it soon becomes the focal point of a complicated power struggle that threatens to escalate the secret cold war into a hot one.

I found Day Watch a little bit tougher to get into than Night Watch, probably because it leaps right into its conflict without all the intriguing set-up of the original.  Learning the world is often more fun than merely roaming around in it, so in that sense, Day Watch is a little like reading the second book of a series — an enjoyable return to an inventive universe, but lacking that initial thrill of discovery.  That isn’t to say it isn’t a fun continuation of the story — it’s got the same eye-popping visuals, gritty attitude, and hard-edged soundtrack of the original, and I intend to watch the series through to its conclusion.  But I didn’t find it quite as riveting as the first film.

One of the perils of writing near-future SF is that, by setting your sights so close to the present, you risk trapping your work there.  Bruce Sterling, one of the field’s foremost futurists, has never been afraid to take this risk; in fact, I suspect he embraces it, which is why his science fiction always feels so immediate and relevant.  His stories riff off the real world, something I wish science fiction would do more often.

It comes as no surprise, then, that his collection Globalhead (1992) very much feels like a product of its time — but not at all in a bad way.   Featuring thirteen stories published between 1985 and 1992, the collection features near-future SF, contemporary fantasy, historical fantasy, alternate history, and “non-SF” — stories that feel science fictional without necessarily being science fictional.  Regardless of subgenre, Sterling’s stories here (like his newer work) tend to explore the real world through an SFnal lens.  The world of these stories, though, is colored by its era, so the stories tend to fall under the shadow of the Cold War, the American-Russian geopolitical divide, the tail end of the Reagan regime, and the early, early days of the internet and personal computing explosions.  It’s tempting at times to accuse the work of feeling dated, then, but more often it merely feels ahead of its time; this is the “futurismic fiction” of its day, fearless and forward-thinking, but still in communication with the modern reality from which it was conjured.

I have to admit, I don’t always exactly get Sterling, and the stories here — which are very idea-driven, sometimes at the expense of narrative — occasionally flew right over my head.  I found “The Compassionate, the Digital,” a weird Islamic political screed involving AI, and “The Gulf Wars,” a densely written time-bending fantasy (?) about two Middle Eastern soldiers, to be politically interesting but somewhat impenetrable.  They do represent rare examples of SF of this time period wrestling with Middle Eastern concerns; not particularly satisfying stories, but Sterling was definitely ahead of the curve identifying the next important area of focus for the US in the wake of the USSR’s decline.  A more satisfying read in this arena, and perhaps even more prescient, is “We See Things Differently,” a near-future tale of culture shock as an Arab reporter from a powerful Islamic Caliphate visits Florida to interview a politically active rock star in the wake of the US’s decline as a superpower.

The two collaborations on display in this volume are also products of their era, and consistent with the collection’s global themes.  “Storming the Cosmos” (written with Rudy Rucker) is a chaotic, energetic secret history that mines the lore of the Russian space program and a certain famous Siberian mystery, a breezy, entertaining tale that has the feel of a “hot typewriter” collaboration.  And “The Moral Bullet” (with John Kessel) has a post-apocalyptic feel familiar from the time, detailing a future wherein life extension pharmaceuticals have wreaked worldwide havoc; a standoff develops between responsible European missionaries and a greedy bandit kingdom that’s come into power in the fragmented, anarchic new US.  It’s a bit unsubtle politically, perhaps, but an inventive and nicely realized scenario.  Both collaborations are satisfying reads.

The solo SF feels more unmitigated, though.  Take, for example, “Our Neural Chernobyl,” written in the form of a book review that looks back at the spread of an intelligence-enhancing plague.  It’s the near-future treated as a deeper future’s past, containing more ideas in ten quick pages than some SF novels.  In “The Unthinkable,” US and Russian political counterparts contemplate the changing world landscape — an interesting mix of Cold war politics and surprising genre content.  There’s also “The Shores of Bohemia,” a transformed far future where a weird European enclave of retro-humans resists the world’s inevitable change; the intrigue here is in gradually unlocking the secrets of the world outside its walls.

Three stories fall into what I think of as the “non-SF” category.  “Jim and Irene” could in fact be more traditionally classified for its fantasy elements — but the mindset is so SFnal, I’m tempted to call it “futurismic fantasy.”  Whatever it is, it’s one of my favorite stories in the volume, an engaging and heartfelt road fantasy about an unlikely relationship between an off-the-grid thief and a Russian émigré, which reads now like an early 1990’s period piece, looking at its now through a futuristic filter.  Less satisfying as story, but jam-packed with ideas and humor, are the volume’s two Leggy Starlitz tales, “Hollywood Kremlin” and “Are You For 86?”  Starlitz (also the star of Sterling’s 2000 “non-SF” novel Zeitgeist) is kind of a quirky international scam artist with a skill for evading the authorities and rolling with every weird geopolitical punch.  The more interesting of the two is “Hollywood Kremlin,” where Starlitz debuts as a cog in the black market machine of decaying Russian influence in Azerbaijan, but “Are You For 86?” is good edgy fun too, transplanting Starlitz to the U.S., where he and his bisexual girlfriends run afoul of right-to-lifers as part of an abortion-drug smuggling ring.

I’ve saved my favorites for last.  “The Sword of Damacles” is a wickedly funny deconstruction of a famous Greek myth about the perils of political power, subversive postmodern metafiction that most writers would never have gotten away with.  And “Dori Bangs,” like “Jim and Irene,” is a kind-hearted and kinda beautiful alternate history, mashing together the lives of two somewhat obscure underground pop culture figures in an unconventional and touching love story, ending the collection on a perfect note.

Globalhead is a challenging and at times difficult collection, perhaps more for Sterling enthusiasts than casual SF readers, but I found it an interesting and rewarding read.

I had high hopes that Terry Gilliam’s latest, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), would be a stirring, brilliant return-to-form.  Alas, it is merely a good, fun, crazy romp.  But it also, quite satisfyingly, feels like the purest Gilliam vision in a long time, perhaps going back to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen — so in that sense, anyway, it is a return-to-form of sorts.

The eponymous Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), a despondently immortal storyteller with the power to project people into his wildly imaginative headspace, is traveling England with his old-style stage show.  The modern era hasn’t been kind to his weird, magical business, and the troupe — which also consists of Percy (Vern Troyer), Anton (Andrew Garfield), and the doctor’s daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) — is struggling mightily.  Then one night they rescue Tony (Heath Ledger), whom they find dangling from his neck under a bridge.  Improbably they resurrect him, and Tony is admitted into the group, where he quickly becomes a source of conflict and change.  But to Dr. Parnassus he may be the key to winning a second, ill-considered wager with the Devil (the brilliantly cast Tom Waits).  The persuasive Tony has a way with luring modern citizens into the imaginarium, where — by passing through the mirror on their traveling stage — they envision their wildest dreamscapes.  There, they can choose a path of good or a path of evil.  In order to erase a previous debt with the Devil, Parnassus has gambled that he can win five good souls before the Devil can win five bad ones.  Who will win the bet?

The film has everything one’s come to expect from Terry Gilliam.  There’s the ever-present clash of wills between imagination and grim reality; a scattered, chaotic messiness; an elderly story-teller and a feisty damsel-in-distress; crazy cock-eyed camera angles; hapless heroes and dastardly villains; and sheer, unrestrained visual creativity.  Do all these elements come together structurally?  Not entirely.  Underneath the visual feast of it all is a coherent plot, but Gilliam’s lack of restraint sometimes buries the story in its eyeball kicks.  The film is always interesting to look at, but takes a little work to follow.  Many sequences reminded me of the brilliant Gilliam of old, while others felt like the hollow, effects-driven spectacles of modern cinema.  From time-to-time, the film even conjures memories of his stream-of-conscious Monty Python animations.

One drawback on the story front is the lack of a relatable protagonist.  Ledger is flashy but weirdly unreadable in the crucial role; Dr. Parnassus, well played by Plummer, isn’t a terribly sympathetic fellow; and Vern Troyer, well, isn’t much of an actor.  (Stunt-casting FTL.)  Cole and Garfield are quite good and bring the most heroic presence, but their story feels like a sideshow to the main event.  Ledger’s death during production forced some creative re-envisioning to complete the film, and the clever cameos of Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell (all stepping in for Ledger) add some life to the proceedings.  But it’s difficult, really, to hang your hat on any one person, I think to the story’s detriment.

That said, by and large I enjoyed the film.  Gilliam’s vision can often be perverse and challenging, and some of his recent work hasn’t rewarded the effort, but the auteur’s unbridled filmmaking enthusiasm won me over to this one.

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.

I spent the first day of 2010 nesting on the couch with a sore throat and light fever, and decided that was a great excuse to move my Netflix queue along.  (Feeling better now, though!)

The film in question turned out to be The Great Yokai War (2005), a highly inventive and deeply strange fantasy adventure from Japan about a young boy named Tadashi (Ryûnosuke Kamiki) who, after his parents’ divorce, is forced to live in the country with his mother and senile grandfather.  At a village festival, Tadashi is selected as the community “Kirin Rider,” destined to preserve peace and prosperity for his village.  This leads to a challenging adventure as he’s gradually lured into a fantasy world populated by odd spirit creatures (yokai) both good and evil, and thrust into a position to defend Tokyo from an evil overlord who’s been transforming the yokai into vengeful machine mercenaries, bent on destruction.

I found it in many ways a wonderful film — colorful, creative, constantly surprising, and frequently bizarre.  The story is mostly engaging, it’s never uninteresting, and it has a distinct and highly odd sense of humor.  The special effects — an unusual combination of CGI, puppetry, stop-motion animation, and costumery — provide a constant stream of visual surprises.

On the other hand, the pacing is all over the map, the story is cluttered with weird, random subplots, and the climactic moment is way out of left field (as Jenn put it, a “beans ex machina” — yeah, you heard me, beans).  And its tonal shifts are hard to keep up with, as it morphs from creepy horror to slapstick farce, from high fantasy to dramatic allegory, and more.  So even as I was enjoying the cinematic artistry and utter strangeness of it all, I found myself frequently frustrated, and for all its playfulness throughout, it resolves in a dispiritingly downcast way.

For all my complaints, though, I’ve never seen anything quite like The Great Yokai War, a truly one-of-a-kind kludge of creativity.  On those grounds I think it’s totally worth watching; I found it a rather unique viewing experience.

When I read The Atrocity Archives a few years ago, it instantly became my favorite Charles Stross novel to-date*, an inventive and clever conflation of occult horror and espionage.  So I was looking forward to its sequel, The Jennifer Morgue, which continues the saga of reluctant techie-espiocrat Bob Howard, who this time finds himself dragged into adventurous fieldwork in the Caribbean, where a deranged industrialist is threatening to unleash a powerful, otherworldly weapon from the depths of the ocean.  Can Howard, paired (in the most intrusive way imaginable) with a beautiful, inhuman assassin, thwart the plot?

Alas, I found myself not terribly interested in the answer to that question.  I usually love Stross’ work, but oddly The Jennifer Morgue just didn’t do much for me.  Although, as usual, it possesses Stross’ distinctive voice and impressively casual creativity, for some reason the book missed the mark for me.  The author’s confident rants and diversions felt more distracting than compelling, and I suspect the recursive James Bond story structure rubbed me the wrong way (I’ve never been a big 007 fan).  And it could well be that I’ve read so many spy novels since The Atrocity Archives that my sensibilities in this area have changed, and a concept that originally struck me as a successful fusion of two genres, here just seemed like a novel with a split focus, half-successful with each element.

For all this negativity, I suspect that for most regular Stross readers, The Jennifer Morgue will deliver the desired reading experience.  For whatever reason, though, I found this one curiously unengaging.

* It’s since been supplanted in my memory by the impressive far future SF novel Glasshouse.

I enjoyed a pair of Paul McAuley’s near-futurish thrillers from earlier in the decade, Whole Wide World and White Devils, so I was looking forward to his next, Mind’s Eye (2005) — which ended up never getting a US edition.  I finally tracked down a copy, and found it to be similarly satisfying, although I didn’t outright love it.

Not entirely science fictional, the premise of Mind’s Eye is nonetheless genresque and fantastical.  Unknown to most, there exist in the world ancient glyphs that, when viewed, have potent mind-altering effects on those who see them.  The story focuses on two people in London who take an interest in these glyphs when they begin popping up around the city in the form of anti-war graffiti.  Harriet Crowley is a freelance spook, and the descendant of a secret society dedicated to keeping these dangerous glyphs hidden from the world so that they aren’t misused.  And Alfie Flowers, a more unwitting descendent of this group, is a freelance photographer whose childhood run-in with the glyphs has  rendered him particularly susceptible to their effects. Alfie and his erstwhile friend Toby, a wise-cracking, chain-smoking journalist, attempt to track down the source of the graffiti, in the hopes of curing Alfie of the life-shaping seizures that have plagued him since the childhood incident.  Meanwhile, Harriet works behind the scenes trying to prevent the glyphs from falling into the hands of some decidedly villainous interests.  Their paths intersect when what begins as a search for an artist gradually grows more perilous as the protagonists cross paths with interests attempting to seize the glyphs’ power.

The plotting is quite well done, and McAuley’s prose is clear and engaging throughout, although at times it shifts gears awkwardly.  Particularly in the first book, set in London, the narrative lurches into flashback without warning on occasion, and at times the writing is a bit distancing.  But things speed up nicely later when the adventure takes the book’s heroes to the Middle East, and events ultimately accelerate to an exciting climax.

With its mix of politics, current events, mysterious secret history and gritty action, Mind’s Eye struck me as a very cinematic reading experience, conjuring early John Frankenheimer movies like Seconds and The Manchurian Candidate, which had similarly unsetlling  quasi-SF overtones.  Perhaps it was the politics, though, that kept it off U.S. shelves?  In spite of its fantastical MacGuffin, it definitely riffs off controversial real world situations — in particular the war in Iraq, and American and British involvement there — which might have been a tough sell here in the Bush era.  I mention this as an observation, rather than a criticism; I found the politics integral, and not that intrusive.  That the villains were pursuing American interests didn’t bother me either, as they were fairly cartoonish villains with a tendency to infodump and monologue at times — another issue entirely, and one of the novel’s more noticeable flaws in my opinion.  Ultimately, though, I found Mind’s Eye well worth the read, an intriguing thriller that, in the right hands, would probably make a pretty good movie.

James Morrow’s previous two novels, The Last Witchfinder and The Philosopher’s Apprentice, are both highly intelligent and challenging books, wonderfully detailed and funny, and bursting with the author’s boundless enthusiasm for his material.   In both cases, that material is at the academic and intellectual end of the spectrum — at times, I felt like some of the jokes would have benefited from an advanced degree in history or philosophy — but for me, the unusual territory was a big part of the fun.  Morrow’s work is ever thought-provoking, and I’ll gladly stretch out of my comfort zone to see what he has to say.

Morrow’s latest release — a short novel entitled Shambling Towards Hiroshima (2009) — feels like a relaxing, breezy read by comparison.  The subject matter is no less esoteric, and just as thematically serious, but the milieu is somewhat more welcoming to the casual reader.  It’s the story of Syms K. Thorley, a noted creature-feature actor of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and his participation in a military project to bring an early end to the war against Japan in 1945.  Told in flashback from Thorley’s seedy Baltimore hotel on the night he’s received a lifetime achievement award from a science fiction convention, it tells the tale of his recruitment into a U.S. Navy biological weapons project to…well, to unleash giant lizards against the Japanese mainland, in order to head off a more conventional invasion and its requisite military casualties.  This initiative, a covert rival of the Manhattan Project, quickly turns into a collaboration between the Navy and Hollywood, and makes for a compelling, amusingy absurd, but ultimately powerful tale.

At a brisk 170 pages, Shambling Towards Hiroshima is tightly constructed, and engagingly recaptures the L.A. of the 1940s from the Hollywood Hills to the inland deserts.  Since this is a secret history — not an alternate one — the ending is never really in doubt, of course:  we all know which war-ending military project wins the race.  But Morrow’s witty and enjoyable narrative succeeds despite the inherent spoiler, making the ride enjoyable enough that the somewhat predictable result is not a detriment.  He also absolutely nails the required absurdist tone to make his Godzilla plot work, so that the book is at once a lovingly crafted homage to the low budget sci-fi films of a bygone era, and a serious and elegiac look back at the unfortunate path of actual history.  Morrow masterfully brings all the loopy, comical build-up to a surprisingly sobering and powerful conclusion.

Much as I hate to say it, Terry Gilliam’s body of work has, in my opinion, steadily degraded since his madly inventive film Brazil came out in 1985.  There’s been a lot to like in some of his subsequent films, most notably The Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys, but to me he’s never surpassed the vision of his complex, imaginative masterpiece involving high fantasy, low bureaucracy, and ductwork.  Brazil is my favorite film, like, ever.  On some level, I think everything he’s done since is bound to suffer in comparison, for me at least.

So I went into his curious film Tideland (2005) with some trepidation.  It opens with a weirdly apologetic intro from Gilliam, during which the theme is rather baldly explained, before launching into a movie that is ultimately not very appealing, but is in some ways rather interesting.

The film involves a young girl named Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), who lives in a shockingly inappropriate household under the unfortunate guardianship of her parents, a junkie rock-’n'-roller (Jeff Bridges) and a recovering addict (Jennifer Tilly).  When mom dies, dad convinces the daughter that they’re off on an adventure, but leads them ultimately to a condemned house in the middle of nowhere, where he checks out on heroin.  Left to her own devices, Jeliza-Rose explores her house and the surrounding areas, showing childlike resilience and imagination in the face of bleak, bleak circumstances.

Although there’s a certain intrigue in the opening of the film, I found the pacing sluggish as it moved along, and my mind really started to wander, particularly later in the film when Jeliza-Rose befriends strange neighbors Janet McTeer and Brendan Fletcher.  It’s easy to see, though, why the material appealed to Gilliam, whose work has always betrayed a grim fascination with the seedy underbellies of his fictional worlds, even as the characters who inhabit them strive for wonderful, cheerier flights of fancy.  Here, Jeliza-Rose serves — as the intro uncomfortably notifies us — as the Gilliam-figure, a child-like dreamer maneuvering herself bravely through a world of shit, and trying to make the best of it.  Sounds a little like Gilliam’s film career, and you can see how this is a highly personal film for him, and why he would want to explain it.

Unfortunately, it’s just not that enjoyable a thing to watch.  Despite some characteristic visual flourishes and some moments of sheer, Gilliamesque surprise, Tideland is a plodding film that perhaps belabors its point.  Had I enjoyed the acting of Jodelle Ferland, I could see the film might have worked better, but alas I didn’t, and that may have been the death knell for it, in my book.  (Although, in some respects, her performance is much easier to watch than those of her adult counterparts — Jeff Bridges excluded, of course…that guy can do anything.)  I suspect that, when Gilliam’s storied and inimitable film career is complete, Tideland will be examined with sympathy and interest by future film historians.  But for the casual film-goer, I’m guessing it will mostly disappoint.

Douglas Lain started publishing regularly right around the time I started reviewing for Tangent, and I remember his stories clicking with me right out of the gates.  His first collection, Last Week’s Apocalypse (2006) — is that a great title, or what? — is probably not for everyone’s tastes, but I found it a pretty remarkable book, its stories consistently funny, unsettling, inventive, and full of surprises.  I’m not sure I always got the stories, but it never seemed to matter, and ultimately I wasn’t always convinced they were supposed to be gotten — they evoke and provoke, regardless.  The prose is effortlessly read, often laugh-at-loud funny, with a singularly quirky tone.  Even when the trees obscured the forest, I found myself simply enjoying the trees — its recurring themes and ideas, which include frequent musings on war, drug use, the nature of reality, mental illness, pop culture, marketing, politics, and consumerism, to name a few.

Lain’s most consistent mode straddles the line between a kind of Twilight Zone-ish soft SF and slippery, interstitial contemporary fantasy.  Some standouts for me, in this vein, were “The ‘84 Regress,” in which a present-day couple goes off its meds, only to find that the drugs had been projecting them into the future from a perfectly recaptured 1984; “The Headline Trick,” a highly pessimistic but darkly comic tale of a man who’s developed a mundanely magical way of gaming the system, only to find he may be contributing to its downfall; and “Shopping at the Edge of the World,” about a magical shredder that seems to only work on advertising copy, but turns out to be more powerful than expected.  The latter two in particular are masterfully done literalized metaphor stories, funny and bleak.  Indeed, even the more traditional-looking SF — such as “How to Stop Selling Jesus” (a less-than-devout salesman peddles holographic Jesus aps door-to-door) and “Identity is a Construct” (simulated humans journey to Alpha Centauri on a diplomatic mission) are less interested in their superficial skiffy trappings than in their thoughtful, internal subtexts about identity, belief, parenthood, reality, language, and more.

Even the collection’s less immediately successful outings are worthy and interesting.  The short, sharp “On a Scale of One to Three,” for example, is perhaps too didactic, but no less chilling for it.  The ballsy, metafictional “The Suburbs of the Citadel of Thought” is a somewhat scattered , self-aware story that’s perhaps a bit indulgent, but bravely so, and “I Read the News Today,” which is similarly disjointed, somehow manages to cohere in a dark, disturbingly funny way.

A very thought-provoking collection.  Taken collectively, the stories have a real undercurrent of melancholy and even anger to them, but individually they’re breezy and quirky and amusing.  I kind of like work that pulls me in different directions like that, so Last Week’s Apocalypse really pushed my buttons.

Oh, and by the way:  if this review interests you in Lain’s work at all, I encourage you to click over to his wonderful story “Resurfacing Billy,” which Paul and I had the pleasure of publishing at Futurismic last year.  The poor story went up on election day and was simply buried in political news…an unjust fate for a great story.