Tickling Wolves - Some Thoughts Inspired by Fritz Leiber

I just finished reading a story about an invention called the Tickler. It starts out as a joke about a mechanical reminder so you wouldn't need a secretary (it was written in the early '60s) and ends up being a telepathic hive minded robot that controls the thoughts of the entire population.

Once I finished it, I opened up my laptop and this thing flashed at me at the bottom of the screen - "I'm Cortana. I can help you. Ask me anything." There's that circle next to it, white and ominous like some unblinking eye. It was eerie.

It's like the time I'd recently finished reading Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 where the main character's wife detaches herself from reality within a TV show that has become her family. The screens are three walls of the living room, she really wants the fourth wall put in, closing the reality, putting her on the stage with the actors and letting her exit the real world. Then I turned on the TV and saw an ad for Big Brother. That was eerie too.

I won't tell you how I reacted when I read about the original Big Brother. Let's just say I nodded a lot as I did.

It all sounds conspiratorial. Too far-fetched. We'd never let those terrible things happen, would we? Authors write what they know. We may stretch and play with ideas, but the ideas come from somewhere. Our world is changing, faster every day, it's difficult to keep up, sometimes we don't want to know everything that's going on, we find ways to tune out. We plug in to switch off - it's a strange dichotomy.

I'm not saying we're living in a dystopia. I'm not saying we're not either. It's hard to know. Are we heading for one? If so, how do we stop it? If we go one way can we be sure that isn't the way to dystopia? In the end what is dystopia? The underlying factor, in the stories of ticklers, book-burning firemen, omnipresent big brothers and others, is thinking. The masses, usually everyone, stops thinking. They may know a lot, they may be very switched on with the news, but they don't think. Nor do they dream. So let's never forget how to think - rationally - and to dream - irrationally and with abandon.

For the record, the story was the first of four in Fritz Leiber's The Night of the Wolf, a sort of anthology/paste-up novel. In the book it's called 'The Lone Wolf' but it was originally published as 'The Creature from Cleveland Depths' in Galaxy 1962.

Keep dreaming!

Happy Birthday Mr Verne

It's Jules Verne's birthday so I thought I'd reminisce a little about my experiences with the works of this wonderful creative spirit.

I can't remember a time when his name didn't mean something to me, that's probably a slight exaggeration but not much. Hearing about travelling with Captain Nemo in the bookshop at the beginning of The Never-ending Story became synonymous to me with adventure and the excitement you could have reading. I heard there was the man who went around the world in 80 days, and another who went to the centre of the Earth. These were thrilling concepts to my young imagination.

At some point I must have seen some of the 1950s film of Journey to the Centre of the Earth and the dinosaurs and volcanic eruption stayed embedded in my imagination. (So it was very exciting when I found it on DVD in a garage sale).

Despite these early impressions and the resulting desire I had to read his books, I was in my late teens before I read one. Even then it was his lesser known and quite short Master of the World. It's a sequel, to wrap up how bad a choice it was for a place to start, but in some ways it possibly was actually better than diving straight into the sea for an epic voyage. It was short and had plenty of action right from the start. It also had fantastic inventions and a mad genius hellbent on world domination. Thrilling stuff.

Since then I've read a handful more of Verne's novels, most notably 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in 80 Days. The former is a worthy classic, it has scenes of suspense and drama, the action of fighting off cephalopods is breath-taking and Nemo is a brooding antihero ahead of his time. On the downside, Verne does go into some very nitty-gritty details about the technical aspects and the longitude and latitude etc. It is at times stifling and could interrupt the pleasure of some readers.

Around the World in 80 Days has fewer passages which really slow the action and romance. It's an action novel right through, but with a lovely whimsy to it, making it very accessible.

So with all that, what is the legacy of Verne for me? I think it's the sheer creative energy he had. He poured himself into writing his books, he gladly and openly tried to forge a new genre and was quite put out when HG Wells started getting credit for it too. His stories are fantastic yet nailed down with his reasoning, he could bring exciting adventure with serious drama, or send us on a whimsical romp. What he didn't seem to do was small. His stories are so vivid and full of adventure that even their echoes in our culture stirs the imagination. So happy birthday Jules Verne and thank you for the spark of dreams.

Keep dreaming!

The Serendipity of Jupiter Ascending

I watched Jupiter Ascending with my wife last night. When it was finished she asked me if I enjoyed it, I said I did and asked her opinion, she thought it was terrible and had ended up watching it for how bad it was. Now, we don't agree on everything and this is hardly the first movie I enjoyed that she didn't, but I realised I enjoyed it because it was in the tradition of the old pulp novels of the first half of last century, which I love. But being a fan of such pulp fiction does require you to forgive certain things other people may not.

Jupiter Ascending is a Planetary Romance slipped it into an action film. Consequently, the characters don't get much depth and are rather two-dimensional, and some of the villains (Titus in particular) seem somewhat ludicrous. But the whole notion of planets being farmed by galactic mega-corporations is fun pulp SF and the plot is ripe for a serialisation in old-school Amazing or Astounding. And from that point of view it's a good movie. From today's standards my wife is right and it's a shocker.

I think my tip-off to its pulp nature was when it was ending and I started thinking of the series of sequels that could follow as Jupiter's secret ownership of Earth and connections to the larger universe complicate her otherwise normal family life. What were her other properties? Would the surviving villains try new ways to take her inheritance? It's stuff Edgar Rice Burroughs and his ilk would dream about. And I was dreaming about it too.

Which is serendipitous as I come into the year I start my Masters. It confirms my ideas of researching within the founding years of modern Speculative Fiction and the ongoing wonders such traditions started. It's where my geek-dom lies after all.

For the record, I think Jupiter Ascending could have been helped by cutting the sister and just having the two brothers, allowing for more character development. Although, where exactly you'd go with the characters is beyond me, so it's probably best as it was. Ideas, stunning visuals and fun action, with a nice romance - pulp SF at its best.

Keep dreaming!

The Silkie by A.E Van Vogt

Years ago there was a shop called Lazy Daze in Penrith. It sold second-hand CDs and books and I loved it. The owner had a terrible head for business though, whenever I bought things he'd do a rough adding up then round it down, sometimes quite a lot. I guess he hated giving change. And the stock was under-priced to start with. But he had some good stock, I got a lot of stuff from Lazy Daze.

One such find was The Silkie, one of A.E Van Vogt's short novels, it cost me $2. At the time I'd buy pretty much any Van Vogt novel Lazy Daze had. I read most of them years ago, The Weapon Makers, The Moon Beast, The Voyage of the Space Beagle ... but when I tried The Silkie, for some reason I just didn't get into it. I stopped reading it not long after the prologue I think. So, I finally got around to reading the whole thing (all 156 pages).

I'm not surprised the prologue put me off, for one thing there doesn't seem much point to it. We have this character who has a quest, it seems like that quest is about to start when she meets a new character. End the prologue, flash forward a couple of centuries ... never go back besides some historical references the actual main character makes. I suspect it shows a change in idea or something like that as this reads like one of Van Vogt's stitch-ups. He was very good at taking a number of short works on a theme or centred on a character and putting them into novel form. And The Silkie reads like three short stories put together, so I presume it really is.

In this case the stories follow the life of Nat-Cemp, a Silkie, which is a species which can shapeshift to human-like being, underwater breather or the space dwelling Silkie shape which can live in the vacuum of space and has hugely advanced mental powers and perceptions. The three episodes set Cemp up against three beings of even higher abilities, thus escalating the risks but also the ideas Van Vogt is throwing around.

In that respect it reminded me of The Voyage of the Space Beagle, which is a series of encounters made by the scientific exploratory ship whereby the hero can demonstrate the wonders of his super-science which bridges every field of science into one. That may not sound terribly exciting the way I've put it but it actually is an enjoyable read with some intriguing situations thrown up. The Silkie however didn't, in my estimation, come close to succeeding on the same level.

While the episodes see some escalation they still seem somewhat same-same, although the history of the silkie species makes for a diversion in one of them. Moreover, the ideas being explored are very hard to connect with. It's all a question of higher perceptions beyond the human and the mental 'weapon' of 'logic of levels', where a mentally planted suggestion causes the body to follow through the logical succession of events to that suggestion/perception. It's airy-fairy and treated in a somewhat rambling way. And Cemp is so unemotional himself it's impossible to really care about him - which is the main issue with Space Beagle, but here it's worse.

Not A.E Van Vogt's best by a long shot.

Keep dreaming!

After a Long Hiatus ...

It's been far, far too long since I wrote here and I've read a lot in that time and written a fair bit too. I'll try to do some catch-up entries about some of the things I read, particularly Algernon Blackwood's short stories and a couple of trilogies I got through.

The last book I finished was Across the Wall, which is a short story anthology by Garth Nix, an Australian fantasy author. I hadn't read any of his work before but I heard him in a seminar at Supanova one year and bought this volume afterward and got it signed, of course. I'm happy to say it the whole collection was delightful. The stories were a good mix but he has a distinctive style which I enjoy. They tend to action with a dark side with flashes of humour. It's also very readable and entertaining so I'll look into the Abhorsen cycle when I get a chance.

Keeping on a signed at Supanova theme, I also read Kate Forsyth's Bitter Greens. This was a combination fantasy and historical fiction, and was simply sumptuous. Reading a story about an author hearing a story she will write down and make famous is a bit meta-fiction but the way Kate Forsyth wrote it isn't very meta, for which I'm glad (not that there's anything wrong with meta-fiction per se). The court of Louis IV comes to life through a side character who's probably more interesting than Louis ever was himself, and we hear a retelling of Rapunzel in the bargain. Kate's writing is rich without being overladen, and really brings the scenes to vivid life. And, for the record, whoever wrote the review quoted on the front cover about the high number of sex scenes in the book was overstating things. Yes, there are a few sex scenes and a lot of 'adult themes' but not as many as the quote suggests.

That's your lot for now. I'll do my best to keep posting more often. In the meantime,

Keep dreaming!

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) but you can procrastinate there - a lot

I was just sitting here playing a game on Facebook in a time I'd specifically arranged to do some writing, and while the guilt gnawed me further into inaction so I continued to play and feel more guilty, so worse, so less likely to do something constructive I remembered one of the things I wanted to write about. That is Felicia Day's book You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost).

Felicia Day is an actress known for her roles in Buffy, Supernatural and others. I saw her in Buffy, but it was when I was belatedly introduced to Doctor Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog that I first really noticed her and learnt her name. Not long after that I was, also belatedly, introduced to The Guild, which is a web series (made before such things were things) that Felicia wrote and starred in. It's hilarious and well worth watching if you haven't.

From there I naturally discovered Felicia's online media company Geek and Sundry - this time just as it was launching, huzzah I was sort of current - and became a complete Felicia fan. Given I have spent several hours of my life watching her and her brother play retro video games I think that's fair to say - but it's very entertaining dammit! Don't knock it till you've watched at least one episode of Co-Optitude.

So, when she started promoting her book I was intrigued and pre-ordered it. Even so, it was likely to have sat on my to-read shelf for a long time since that's what I do, but for having just read Amanda Palmer's book and for a nudge from my wife, who'd also nudged me to read Amanda's book. Hmm, my wife has red hair, Amanda has red hair and Felicia has red hair and they have all recently (and ongoingly) inspired me. I'm noticing a trend.

Moving on. To be honest, initially I was slightly underwhelmed with the book. I was enjoying it, Felicia has a fun writing style with wit and a devilish self-deprecation I can truly relate to. But it wasn't until partway into it that I started to sense this was another important book for me to read at the moment.

It was the story of how she got The Guild from the worm of an idea in her head to an internet phenomenon that really inspired me. Mostly because it was a story of someone with a lot of doubt and confusion and similar mental habits/issues that I have. No mistake, we're very different with totally different backgrounds, but anxiety and depression are constants and the way Felicia describes her dealings with them rings very close to home for me.

And, just as I was a short while ago, Felicia played a lot of games - more than me, but at least not Facebook games, see I procrastinate around playing a decent game to procrastinate, it's another circle of not doing. She tells of how she kept putting off writing The Guild, and just generally not doing it for months and months. Then, with some encouragement and a large portion of guilt/why the hell am I doing not doing this-ness, she put a ridiculous constraint on how long she had to achieve her goal and she worked her butt off to achieve it. And so, The Guild was born.

Then no-one would produce it. So she did it herself, with friends of course not discounting them. But, the point is, she worked hard and she kept going and going until her dreams came to fruition and her story was told. She did what she loved because she got in there and did it.

She also learnt valuable lessons about not working too hard or being too much of a perfectionist, and I'll keep those in mind. For now, it's a matter of getting down and doing the things I love. This blog is a step in the right direction. Finishing some more of my writing goals will be more. I just have to keep working.

And of course - Keep dreaming too.

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham

As Amanda's book led me to think of giant squids as a sort of personal emblem, it made sense that the next book I read be John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes. Of course, at the time I thought there was an actual kraken in the story, there isn't.

This was my third Wyndham novel. The first was, unsurprisingly, The Day of the Triffids, which I read for English in Year 9. I loved it and I'd say it was an important novel in shaping my fictional tastes. Years later I read The Midwich Cuckoos, which I enjoyed but is a much slower story that relies heavily on a sense of wrongness and foreboding.

The Kraken Wakes falls somewhere between the two. It follows a couple and their adventures in a bizarre and world-changing alien invasion. This is probably the only alien invasion story I've read where no-one on Earth knows it's been invaded till over halfway through the book. The narration is made by the husband and starts with an introduction that establishes that the invasion is over but not all is right.

From there he goes back to what he believes is the beginning, a mysterious series of meteorites, then progresses through a number of other mysterious phenomena that baffle experts and the media - of which the narrator and his wife are a part. The state of the shipping market is discussed several times and the resultant increase in air transport around the world is also detailed. The pace picks up when the aliens make their first appearance.

It's an interesting take on the invasion theme, and uses the idea that because the aliens - who live in the deepest parts of our oceans - live in very different ways to us we weren't aware of them straightaway and couldn't understand their motives or actions. Nor, presumably, could they understand human reactions to them. The one thing that was clear was the Earth wasn't big enough for the two of us.

There's some debate in the Goodreads reviews about Brian Aldiss's description of Wyndham's novels as 'comfortable disasters'. As I read this one I definitely understood the term. There's undeniably a disaster unfolding, on a global scale, and there are scenes of very uncomfortable action and emotion. Huge numbers of people are killed. However, it unfolds gently, from the perspective of a remarkably cool-headed and rational Englishman and his wife (whom I'm glad to report more than holds her own, it's a real partnership). There are discussions on markets and how events affect such things.

So, while it is a disaster novel worthy of the name and equal to any more dramatically presented member of the genre, there is a certain calmness to the whole proceedings. Then there's the framing device of knowing the disaster is over and that the narrator is presenting his version of events for future generations to consider. We know who wins.

All in all, it's an enjoyable read with some interesting SF ideas and some classic Wyndham action scenes amidst his more thoughtful scientific mystery business. It probably has less appeal than Triffids, it's certainly not its equal in terms of writing or story, but worth a look for fans of the genre.

Keep dreaming!