Category: Speculative Fiction

The abiding attraction of Mr. Darcy and other adventures in reading

My reading week in review: Miéville, Austen, Marcus Samuelsson, Mary Robinette Kowal.

I love how the things we read connect to each other in unexpected ways. But it is not so unexpected that a speculative fiction novel set in the time of Jane Austen would connect with Pride & Prejudice – it is quite deliberate. But it is rather unexpected that – three days after I re-read P&P, Without a Summer would appear on my hold shelf at the library. And since I’d forgotten the premise of the novel approximately 30 seconds after I put it on hold, it was quite surprising to my little brain when I opened it and was reading of proper ladies, gentleman of the peerage, and – oh, yeah – magicians. Good thing I love surprises. I’ve only just started the book (okay, I’m 125 pages in), but so far it’s good. It doesn’t try to be Jane Austen (which irritates me), it just lives in her world (well, her world if it had magic) – and does a good job of it.

Speaking of Pride and Prejudice, I think I figured out why Mr. Darcy has been such an object of female adoration for so long. Long before he was impersonated (quite ably, I might add) by Colin Firth, Matthew MacFadyen* and the like, he was merely words on a page. But such words!

Colin Firth Mr. Darcy Pride & Prejudice
Obligatory photo of Mr. Darcy looking dreamy.

We – or at least *I* – love him because he is articulate. And a critical thinker. And he listens when the woman he loves speaks, and attempts to improve himself when he sees his own faults. And Jane does the same in return. I think this consideration – and certainly the fact that both of them behave so admirably – is highly unusual in any romantic fiction (maybe I’m wrong ). And it’s essential in real life. And it’s DAMNED attractive. Even when he’s angry and humiliated, Darcy writes her a letter that compliments her in many ways and assumes she will give his words a fair hearing, even if she does hate him. At every turn, he treats her as a capable, thinking human being, not an empty-headed ornament. Who doesn’t love that?

I’m not sure where I saw Yes, Chef discussed – Twitter? a Powell’s email? I have no clue – but the story intrigued me. A very young man is adopted out of Ethiopia to Sweden, where he grows up helping his grandmother cook and becomes an award-winning chef in America. I’d never heard of Marcus Samuelsson previous to this (though there are several ways I might have if I paid any attention). His memoir is well-written and a great story of the global village we are living in today – plus lots of travel and food. So if I enjoyed this book knowing nothing about him, I imagine fans of his will be delighted.

 

*I originally typed this as Angus MacFadyen – an even more attractive actor I also adore. They are apparently unrelated except in some crazy place in my head.

Me + World: The Girl with No Shadow by Joanne Harris

I’ve read some really great books lately and have been keeping them mostly to myself.  Today, the selfishness ends!

The Girl with No Shadow by Joanne Harris (whom I’ve slathered much love on here and here) is the next chapter of the story of Vianne and Anouk Rocher from Chocolat (the book, of course, not the film, though the stories are close enough that film-goers would enjoy it, I think).   It is every bit as wonderful as Harris’s best stuff.

It’s five years since we’ve been in Lansquenet and things are very different for Vianne. She’s given birth to a second child (Rosette) and has consented to marry a man she does not love.  She’s hiding from the world instead of trying to bring magic to it. Anouk is entering puberty afraid of herself, the magic inside her and the world around her, and wishes her mother was the woman she used to be.  Enter Zozie.

Zozie is everything Vianne used to be, but without the compassion and kindness. She is cool and interesting and not afraid to attract attention. She sees the potential in Anouk and wants it for her own selfish reasons. But in truth, she’s hiding even more than Vianne is – from herself more than anyone.

Harris’s writing is stellar, as always. The copy I have is the P.S. version, with interviews and background material, and I read every bit so I could live with the book and characters a little longer. I was visiting my sister and her family in the wilds of Northwest Montana and read it by flashlight in my tent, surrounded by the sounds of horses grazing around (and sometimes underneath) my tent late at night. The strange surroundings only added to the feeling that I was really in another world, living with Anouk and the others in Paris.

I’m not sure I can articulate what it is I love about Harris. It’s the same thing I love about a lot of authors, who write a lot of different stuff (Miéville, Chabon, De Lint, Shields, Kingsolver). Her works speaks of truths I knew but hadn’t recognized. Her characters are people I’ve been, or met, or would like to meet. I feel as if I know myself better at the end of the book than I did at the beginning. Her writing has a beauty apart from the meaning of the words. Her work helps me feel more strongly connected to the world.

It’s hard to turn the last page, sometimes, and let that go.

 

My new love: The Kraken by China Mieville

True Story: The first in-depth article I read regarding China Miéville was a NY Times article about The Kraken, his latest novel (2010).  I found this article because (of course) Neil Gaiman linked it in his blog. (Or maybe on twitter, since I can’t seem to find it on the blog.)  It was this article, along w/Neil’s recommendation, that got him on my list of authors to check out. After The Scar, I knew I’d be keeping track of his work. But I just finally read The Kraken, after four other books by Miéville.  And I’d forgotten that the article was about this one until I went looking for a pic for this blog.

Art by Vincent Chong

The Kraken is my favorite so far, though I’ve loved everything I’ve read. Here are today’s reasons why I am in love with China Miéville:

 

 

1) I don’t always understand what the heck he’s talking about.  This is rare, especially in a work of fiction.

2) Even when I don’t understand exactly he’s talking about, I’m not irritated by it. It’s not bad writing, it’s fantastic writing that comes across as reality – we don’t always know what the heck is going on!  I’m right there with the rest of the characters. Most of them manage to muddle through somehow, like we all do.

3) He loves to play with words. He makes up words for concepts that don’t currently exist (in mainstream culture, at least) and plays with the language while labeling them.

4) He’s not ashamed of his geek flag, and slips his pop culture references in with originality and tons of humor.

5) I’ve yet to guess more than 50% of any story (of his) that I’ve read (4 novels & one short story collection), and never been disappointed. Many of his plot twist are not just surprising, but truly mind-blowing. As in: I have to put the book down and marvel at the new place he’s taken me in my brain. He doesn’t take things to the next level – he skips 100 steps and lands somewhere much more shocking, and rearranges everything you just read into something new and even more impressive. All without breaking the tension.

Go. Read.

 

Binjas – FTW!

I’m sure I’ve mentioned China Miéville before – here, in fact – a new speculative fiction love for me. Since picking up The Scar, I’ve read Perdido Street Station, Looking for Jake (short stories) and now Un Lun Dun. And The Kraken is sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to finish Middlemarch.

Un Lun Dun (UnLondon) is an ‘other-London’ in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland,  Neverwhere (and various other stories, none of which I can recall right now) where there’s a whole other city/place below/between/just-out-of-reach of the real city, where freaks or aliens or whatever live, and everything is just a bit different than the city most people live in.

Miéville grabs with glee this license to mess with the world.  He is a meticulous world-builder, and never misses an opportunity to add a bit of crazy fun to every situation the intrepid heroes are faced with. He gives us things like upside down cars that are used as boats (which are called ‘car’ but with the word upside-down on the page, it sounds something like ‘rack,’ but the best way to pronounce is ‘turn your head upside-down, then say car’), trash is alive (and can be pets), librarians are explorers, houses are made from defunct technology, and giraffes are the scariest animals.  And – my personal favorite – the binjas.  Seriously. Trash cans (bins in the UK) which are actually ninjas. They keep their weapons inside their cans and have the perfect camouflage. Binjas. Freaking. Awesome. The illustrations are also done by Miéville, quite the talented guy.

Miéville wrote this book aimed at a YA audience, so – at least in the beginning – it doesn’t have much depth. But stick with it, it will be worth your while. There’s  a video interview (which you can see here, sexy & smart – woohoo) where he talks about the book -why and how and stuff.  This book interrogates the quest model so common in sci-fi books (whether for kids or adults) and pokes some fun at it as well. The best thing about this book? It’s fun.  He’s clearly having a blast writing it, and it is fun to read it.

If you love sci-fi/fantasy books, and you’re looking for a light read that isn’t boring and lame – or you’re looking for a way to ease into the dark craziness of Miéville – read this next.

The Matrix vs. Lost – how not to end a story well

It’s not news that I am a huge sci-fi-fantasy-comic-book-alternate-universe story freak. I was watching The Matrix (for possibly the 30th time) the other day when I had a narrative epiphany. Or maybe an epiphany about narratives. Speculative fiction video narratives, to be exact.

Stories have to end sooner or later, in some kind of satisfactory manner – or else the things that excited it us (What do the machines want? Are those people dead? What is the Matrix? What is the Island?) will just start piling up and pissing us off.  So. How do you end it? How do you tell interesting stories – in worlds that must be explained – without either burying the viewers with WAY too much technical information, or else short-changing them?

Different story tellers make different choices. Those who are truly successful balance the world building, character exposition and plot perfectly – so we get most of our questions answered, and give a shit about the characters they happened to. I believe this is more difficult in a story in which one must convince the viewer that the world itself exists, in addition to believable characters and a plot that is both interesting and surprising (but not too).

The Matrix Trilogy vs. Lost

Both were very successful out of the gate. Both were very ambitious. Both asked all kinds of interesting questions and answered a few of them in the beginning. Both had a huge following.

And both of them had a huge portion of their followers HATE the way they ended.

In the Matrix story (I’m sticking to just the three films, here. I know there’s a lot more info in Animatrix and the games and whatnot, but the major thread is contained in the films), the writers/directors chose to explain everything they could: the Oracle, the Core, the Architect, Zion, the machines… on and on and on. An entire cosmology and ideology and history and everything. They knew this world inside and out and they shared it with us. And a lot of people (not me) thought it was boring and lame and too complicated. Like you had to take notes just to understand what was going on. And the characters are not terribly complicated. Good guys and girls, bad guys and girls. Boy loves girl, gets girl. Sketched in histories, lots of emotion but not too much depth.  In the choice between plot and character, the Wachowski  Brothers chose plot. It works well in the first flick, and by the third flick it’s clear that plot is what must sustain us.  For many, it was not enough. Or maybe too much – plot, that is, and not enough character. Time restrictions play a factor here – how long can the film be? (IMHO, their worst mistake – horrible recast of the Oracle. I know the original actress died, but they did a crappy job of choosing her replacement. Ack!)

In Lost, the TV series, Abrams and Lindelhof et.al., chose character over plot. We get histories, alternate futures, heavy interactions and lots of ambiguity. Sawyer: good guy or bad guy? Kate: bad girl or good girl? Who are the Others? And the other Others? They built a compelling but barely explicated cosmology that sacrificed detail for emotional impact. And some people HATED it. How did the smoke monster work, exactly? Were they dead the whole time? Why wasn’t Mr. Eko in the church at the end? For those who cared more about character, the ending was great (at that point, all I cared about was Sawyer and Juliet being reunited). I don’t need to know why pulling that strange stone plug out of a pool underground made the smoke monster mortal. It did, that’s what mattered. For those who wanted to KNOW, they had more questions at the end than ever.

So:
End of Matrix – finally! Who cares if it was the machines or the Architect or whatever. The humans lived. Good. Moving on.

End of Lost – What?! So were they dead? Were they dreaming? So was the island real? Did they die in the first plane crash? What about the smoke monster? Have you ever hated anyone as much as Benjamin Linus?

If you don’t get the balance just right, you will leave half your fan base angry and unsatisfied.

Many successful science fiction movies are set in the future – far enough away that you should expect for things not to make sense to your poor, feeble 21-century brain. With something like the Matrix, you have to explain why the world looks like ours but isn’t, and how it’s going to end, but it’s already ended 5 times before, but this time it’s different. Lost had six years and two timelines of strange happenings, and chooses not to give many details on most of them. But we know A LOT about Jack, and Kate, and Sawyer and Hurley and Mr. Eko and Sayid and Juliet and Ben and Locke and everyone else.

Comic books (and regular book series as well) have the luxury of drawing out the universe, painting it and describing it and making it real and believable and understandable, for years and years and pages and pages, without the obligation to tie all the loose ends or finish every sub plot at the end of each book/year/story arc/what-have-you.  It can create a place, pose 10 questions, answer 3 of them, and then continue on, asking more questions and answering a few here and there.  This freedom from deadline (at least in theory) is part of the reason it is hard to quit reading them.  One story may end, but the universe is still there, having other stories being told all over it.

Okay, so I don’t know exactly what it all means. But it seemed interesting. To me, at least. I wouldn’t presume to speak for all of you.

Bonus epiphany: theme of both Lost & Matrix = Love conquers all. Okay, so it’s a common theme. So what? It just occurred to me, so that makes it a super-amazing realization. And probably the reason I liked both of them. Well, that and cute boys.