Tag Archives: sci-fi

’70s-style dystopia: This Perfect Day by Ira Levin

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This Perfect Day is a dystopian sci-fi novel, published in 1970, in the vein of Brave New World and Logan’s Run. People are born into a happy (read: bland) unified society, ruled by UniComp, which is literally a giant computer. Over the generations heterogeneity has been genetically blended out, and every member of ‘The Family’ receives treatments to keep them ‘well’. Of course, there are aberrations. Chip, for example, was born with two different coloured eyes. In his formative years his ‘strange-acting’ grandfather and an artistic friend each have a lasting impact on him. Chip is slowly awakened to a world where one can smoke, learn French, and have orgasms more than once a week!

Aspects have dated, of course, but I never knew what was coming next. The plot is clever and action packed. I don’t know why it isn’t as well known as some of the other dystopias—perhaps because it was never filmed? Some of Ira Levin’s other works have become classic films: The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby.

It’s fun to read a retro futuristic novel and compare its speculations to the present. The aspect of ubiquitous computing—data everywhere—is prescient, but the fact the members have to scan themselves to get in and out of buildings, onto planes etc. wouldn’t work today. Their bracelets would, in a contemporary story, probably be implants, and the scanning would happen automatically (so, much of the plot would fall apart).

I did find the concept of one’s time as controlled and delegated to ‘useful’ pursuits relative to the present. At least, personally, this conversation between Karl and Chip, about Karl’s art, struck me:

‘I’d better get back to the group I’m with’ [Chip] said. ‘Those are top speed. It’s a shame you weren’t classified as an artist.’

Karl looked at him. ‘I wasn’t, though,’ he said, ‘so I only draw on Sundays and holidays and during the free hour. I never let it interfere with my work or whatever else I’m supposed to be doing.’

Anyone else explain their time like that?

One of my supervisors recommended this book to me, because my almost-finished-novel is set in the near future, and there are some similarities. But I think Brave New World may be closer, and I think (hope) there are some completely original aspects about my work (while I do deliberately play on the reader’s intertextual knowledge at some points). The main point is that in my work people do have choices, many choices, but they have been socialised by the media, dominant ideas etc. to watch over themselves. And they choose to, also, due to the anxiety of having so many choices. They need to feel in control. Contradiction is encapsulated by the mantra of ‘balance’. They are not forcefully drugged or anything, but they are socially pressured to ensure their ‘wellbeing’ and ‘functionality’ are intact. My society is not about uniformity, it is about controlled heterogeneity. It is not about efficiency in general—utopianism—but about efficient and controlled market growth. But my work is being written in the era of neo-liberal capitalist consumerism, not during the cold war, like this one…

If you’re a fan of dystopias, particularly kitschy ones (the sexy aspects are awesome) you’ll tear through this. And like any good sci-fi, it will still stir up political questions. Is it better to be happy or free, especially if ‘freedom’ is dirty and dangerous? What if you got to ‘reprogram’ the society so people lived longer and felt more, could you then be content with it? Isn’t it better than the uncivilised chaos that would otherwise descend?

You probably already know the answers, but Ira Levin definitely takes you to some intruiging, challenging places.

Choosing to fly: When We Have Wings by Claire Corbett

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Allen & Unwin, 2011
9781742375564 
(buy Aus paperback, ebook, US/Kindle) 

The main theme, and dilemma, for the two main characters in When We Have Wings is an old one: how do we deal with technological progress, the divides it can create (between classes, between generations), and the power it may provide to a privileged few? More specifically, how does someone raising a child in a rapidly changing environment make decisions about their future?

But the main reasons you should read this novel are:

1. people can fly
2. one of the main characters is a private detective
3. there is a miniature lion

Did I mention that people can fly? Yeah. Wow.

Peri was abandoned as a child and grew up poor in the regions outside the city. When we meet her in the novel, she’s been given her wings, and she works as a nanny to baby Hugo, for a wealthy, influential couple. Her employer, the architect Peter Chesshyre, is the creator of exclusive buildings for fliers, and is a little too in love with his own power. The wings are due to advances in science—genetic engineering—as are much of the spectacular materials for building and fashions. Even pets are hugely altered (if one has the money). It’s natural for people to choose their baby’s eye and hair colour. This is already something that doesn’t seem far away, so When We Have Wings asks: how far would we go?

The other main character—our private dick Zeke Fowler—has to let his ex-wife know whether or not their three-year-old son will go ahead with the treatments to become a flier. Of course, he wants his son to have every opportunity to go forward, and be happy, in the world, but what he’s learning about fliers on his current case isn’t very attractive. His case is to look for Peri, who has taken off with baby Hugo.

The story is addictive: there are adventures (with flying), mysteries, and intense encounters. The book is large and so there’s plenty of time to get to know both Peri and Zeke; their histories, their passions, their weaknesses. Corbett creates a great deal of sympathy for her main characters by giving them both ‘tough-but-caring’ natures. Peri is very protective of Hugo; Zeke is genuinely concerned about Peri. There are also some lovely moments between Zeke and the aforementioned tiny lion.

Corbett has built an imaginative, complex world: a city where permanent residency is like a Wonka golden ticket, plus edge cities, swampy outlands with nasty diseases, and a burgeoning world in the sky. The weather is tropical, the population is multicultural. Technological and genetic advances are for the haves. The have-nots may be left behind, but there are groups working (as there would be) to try to make sure there will be more choice, and clearer ethical guidelines.

Corbett, in creating this world and her characters, has also engaged with theology and mythology, with nature, and with history. When We Have Wings is hence densely layered. It’s smart and political, raising the kind of questions the best science fiction should raise (about ethics, about progress, about how future generations will make meaning), but it’s also just damn entertaining. The characters are well-rounded, the story is genuinely exciting, and best of all, Corbett does not pander to her readers. She does not tie everything into a neat little bow. The future is possibly bleak and strange, it may also be exhilarating. Either way, we will have to deal with many of the same issues we deal with now.

This post will be added to my tally in the Australian Women Writers Reading + Reviewing Challenge.

Short story ‘Ariel’ published in Seizure

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Seizure is a fresh literary journal coming out of Sydney. Each issue imitates the style of a different type of magazine. The first issue looked like a glossy food magazine and all its pieces were linked to the subject. The second issue is ‘Sci-fi’, and it looks like a pulpy science fiction mag. I have a story in the issue, called ‘Ariel’. It’s a pretty traditional narrative about an AI being relied upon to come up with the answer that will save us all. But the story has a bit of a homoerotic twist.

Like a lot of the fiction I have found myself writing in the past couple of years, the story combines a bit of ‘speculation’ with aspects of the everyday. I like to write about desire, sensation and emotions in extreme environments or contexts. In the end, I guess I am asking pretty ancient questions about the effects (and ethics) of ‘progress’. But mainly, I want to write stories that will make you think and feel something.

Other contributors to the Seizure sci-fi issue include PM Newton, Kate Forsyth, Ben Jenkins, Pip Smith and Dinosaur Comics.

I attended the launch of the issue last weekend in Sydney. It was held at the end of the Speculative Fiction Festival at the NSW Writers’ Centre, so there was a good crowd. I enjoyed the festival, hearing writers talk about works in a range of genres that come under the spec fic umbrella (ie. SF, fantasy, supernatural, steampunk, horror). Basically, spec fic covers works that explore ‘what could be’ outside ordinary, rational reality. I’ve always liked fiction that has an element of strangeness, the odd or the slightly off. But I do also like straight realism, too. The great thing about the festival was getting to hear authors who are often sidelined at bigger festivals, or who get stuck at those festivals debating genre vs lit fic (yawn).

Sci-fi rations

But the launch… The Seizure team had bright blue Andorian Ale waiting for us. I mingled and drank under the Jacaranda trees on the gorgeous Writers’ Centre property. Then we received our ‘sci-fi rations’: a protein pill, Soylent Green, Soma-pop and Phlogiston. Yum and fun.

One of the best parts of the day and evening was meeting and catching up with a lot of Sydney peeps and tweeps. You know who you are. Thanks for the great chats.

I hope you will all check out and enjoy Seizure. It’s available in print and as an iPad app. There’s a bit of a sample on the website, too.

20 Classics #8: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

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I’m reading 20 classic, modern-classic or cult books. I aimed to read them all in 2011, but that’s beginning to look unlikely. Read more about this project here.

Why did I want to read it?

I had vague ideas about Gulliver’s Travels. I remembered Ted Danson being tied up by some little people in a film version I saw as a kid. I always loved the Michael Jackson film clip for ‘Leave Me Alone’, which plays on that moment with the Lilliputians. And Tom Cho riffs on that part in the last, eroticised story in his book Look Who’s Morphing. But it was Gideon Haigh’s recommendation of Gulliver’s Travels as a brilliant satire that made me seriously consider reading it.

When was it published?

All the way back in 1726, though it’s more accessible than many books I’ve read from later eras, such as the 19th Century. Oh, those romantics. My copy is from lovely Vintage Classics range (super cheap).

What’s it about?

Gulliver can’t sit still. He finds himself in a series of fantastical lands with strange races (or species). He sometimes gets into a lot of trouble. He makes unforgettable friends. He learns how other societies can be run. When he tries to explain England to his new companions, it often comes across as ludicrous.

Tell us more about the author.

Jonathan Swift was born in 1667 in Dublin, and was educated at Trinity College and Oxford. He worked as secretary to Sir William Temple, in England. In 1694 in Dublin he was ordained as a priest. He spent the rest of his life between England and Ireland. He wrote under another name, and the first of his major satirical works was A Tale of a Tub, published in 1704. Through his writing he became close friends with Alexander Pope. They helped to found a literary group in 1714, called the Martinus Scriblerus. He wrote prose, satirical pamphlets, poetry, essays and sermons in his lifetime. He died in 1745, and his estate was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill, St Patrick’s, which still exists.

So, what did I think? Does it deserve to be a classic?

Undoubtedly. Not only was Gulliver’s Travels a hit in Swift’s lifetime, the book has been continually relevant to Western society. It has apparently never been out of print. It is also genuinely funny. I’ll give you a few examples of its brilliance. When Gulliver is in Lilliput (the land of the tiny people) he observes that there have been six rebellions raised on the breaking of an egg. His present Majesty’s grandfather once cut his finger on the shell when breaking it by the ancient principle, so an edict was published commanding all subjects to break their eggs on the small end. ‘It is computed, that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end’. The ‘Big-Endians’ found sympathy in Blefuscu, the neighboring nation, and so a ‘bloody war hath been carried on between the two empires for six and thirty moons’.

To me, this seems a parody of wars begun (and continued) over differences in religion. England was in the process of crushing the Jacobites, when Swift was writing. Gulliver is eventually suspected of being a ‘Big-Endian’ in his heart and is accused of treason, after putting out a palace fire by pissing on it.

In Brobdingnag the people are giants and the king makes many observations of England. He has been carefully calculating what Gulliver has told him about taxes. Gulliver writes: ‘But, if what I told him were true, he was still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its estate like a private person. He asked me, who were our creditors? and, where we found money to pay them?’ You can see why this book still strikes a chord. The king also wonders what business England has out of its own islands ‘unless upon the score of trade or treaty, or to defend the coasts…’. Swift is mocking England’s excessive conquering and colonising. When Gulliver tries to give the king the secret of gunpowder, he is horrified.

There is humour of a more ‘base’ kind in Gulliver’s Travels too. Satire works best if political and observational humour are mixed with slapstick and the rude (as with contemporary texts, like the Simpsons). In the Brobdingnag section, Gulliver remarks at the hideousness of the skin of the giants when seen up close. He describes a nurse’s ‘monstrous breast’, the nipple ‘was about half the bigness of my head… and the dug so verified with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous’. Later on he is astride the nipple of a maid of honour, ‘a pleasant, frolicksome girl of sixteen’.

On the other fantastical worlds, briefly: Laputa seems a place where logic or reason has gone too far (everything is judged by mathematical and musical terms). And there is a very fun passage in Glubbdubdrib where Gulliver is assisted in bringing back the dead. He learns from dead people of note that ‘the royal throne could not be supported without corruption; because, that positive, confident, restive temper, which virtue infused into man, was a perpetual clog to publick business’. Many of these dead owed their greatness and wealth to perjury, oppression, fraud – Gulliver observes – and worse: sodomy, incest, the prostituting of their wives and daughters, betraying their country, poisoning, and perverting justice.

My favourite land was the final one, of the Houyhnhnms. These horse-folk have no terms for power, government, war, law or punishment. The human-like creatures in their world are base, unintelligent and barbaric, called Yahoos. There is a brilliant passage when Gulliver’s host Houyhnhnm asks him what are the usual causes or motives of war, back in England:

‘Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern: sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinion hath cost many millions of lives: for instance whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh: whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue: whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire: what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or grey; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be things indifferent.’

It goes on, ‘Sometimes one prince quarrelleth with another, for fear the other should quarrel with him’, and so on. It is sad, funny, true. For the first time, staying with the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver really begins to see the ridiculousness of his race of ‘Yahoos’.

One reason this land struck me is because the seductiveness of a simpler, quieter, structured life is so understandable to contemporary readers. I was thinking of the desire for a sea change/tree change that many possess; my own desire (sometimes) to be tucked away in the sparsely populated, naturally beautiful Scottish Highlands. The ‘downfall’ of human nature into greediness and pride that Swift depicts has escalated, in many ways. In other ways, we are so much better off. That doesn’t even really need to be said. His criticisms are still relevant and still amusing. The book still has the ability to make you think about society, politics, war, religion; about human nature, history and the present. Parts of it induce laughter, delight; other parts stir a kind of longing. Well they did for me, at least. I have itchy feet.

One last thing I’ll say is that I felt sorry for Gulliver’s wife, the whole time. He would come back, tell her stories, get her pregnant and then run off again! My annoyance was somewhat appeased, though, by Alexander Pope’s Verses on Gulliver’s Travels included at the back of the book. One poem is called: ‘Mary Gulliver to Capt. Lemuel Gulliver: An Epistle’. In this, Mary Gulliver is reading over his adventures, lamenting them. She has kept herself for him, and is pretty cranky about him getting out his giant ‘appendage’ to put out the palace fire, among other things:

‘How did I tremble, when by thousands bound,
I saw thee stretched on Lilliputian ground;
When scaling armies climbed up every part,
Each step they trod, I felt upon my heart.
But when thy torrent quenched the dreadful blaze,
King, Queen and nation staring with amaze,
Full in my view how all my husband came,
And what extinguished theirs, increased my flame.
Those spectacles, ordained thine eyes to save,
Were once my present; love that armour gave.’

These poems perfectly complement the main narrative. It’s like putting the book down at the end and having a discussion with someone very clever about it, going over all your favourite parts.

What’s next?

I’ve finished Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and I’m reading Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well. Maybe some Chandler or Beckett will follow.

Guest review: Lyndon Riggall on Embassytown by China Miéville

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9780230754317
Pan Macmillan, May 2011
(Aus, UK, US/Kindle)

Reviewed by Lyndon Riggall

I admit defeat. I’ve been trying to present these events with a structure. I simply don’t know how everything happened. Perhaps because I didn’t pay proper attention, perhaps because it wasn’t a narrative, but for whatever reasons, it doesn’t want to be what I want to make it.

China Miéville has widely become regarded as the genre reader’s messiah. His books have consistently thundered the prize scene, and his name has become synonymous with both the Hugo and the Arthur C Clarke awards.

Embassytown represents his first dive into pure science fiction, and as typical for Miéville, he takes to the new ground like he’s been working in it all his life. Without spoiling too many of the surprises, Embassytown follows Avice Benner Cho, a rare human prized with the gift of being able to travel the ‘Immer’. She ends up in Embassytown, a living city, home to creatures known as ‘Hosts’, who speak ‘Language’, a form of discourse so complicated that specially bred ‘Ambassadors’ must be trained as a duo for the purpose of speaking it – it requires multiple words to be spoken simultaneously. The power of the Ambassadors over the Hosts is intoxicating, and when they abuse that power things spiral quickly out of control. Avice has the power to change things, but she does not have Language, and so she does not have a voice.

The world of Embassytown is impressively crafted. Time, for example, is typically measured in hours regardless of length – megahours and kilohours replace days, months and years. Miéville has invented term after term, many borrowed creatively from different cultures of our own world – to the average reader some pages or sections of the book could be nigh on indecipherable. Reading Embassytown is an immensely challenging experience, chapters and events pop in and out of sequence, and the world is meticulously, but by no means accessibly crafted. The book demands dedication before it spills its secrets.

But beautiful secrets they are. Embassytown is about love, war, life, death, truth and lies. It’s about the struggle for freedom, and the gaps forged by power between the elites and the populous. I don’t think personally that it will go down as one of Miéville’s most popular novels – it’s inaccessibility can be tiring for those unfamiliar with the promise of his reputation. For the hardcore fan however, this may be just the ticket, for while it is difficult to tread new ground in SF, the way Miéville walks will certainly set him apart. It’s a weird, hard, frustrating and detailed novel, but while that may put off many, for those avid fans who have read all of China Miéville’s works, I imagine this will be exactly what they’re after.

Lyndon Riggall is an avid sci-fi, fantasy and horror reader, and an aspiring writer. He collects his thoughts on life and books on his blog and on Twitter. It has been 1600 megahours since his last drink.

See also the LiteraryMinded interview with China Miéville from October, 2010: part one and two.

20 classics in 2011 #6: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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I’m reading 20 classic, modern-classic or cult books in 2011. Read more about this project here.

Why did I want to read it?

I love Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and dystopian fiction in general. Plus, the sections of my work-in-progress that people have read have been compared to Brave New World. I thought it was about time I read it (also to make sure I’m not accidentally riffing on it too much).

When was it published?

In 1932. Several years before Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) and in many ways containing more progressive ideas. Huxley wrote to Orwell in 1949, congratulating him on his book, and predicting:

‘Within the next generation I believe that the world’s leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.’ (via)

My edition was published by Longman, and of course there are many editions (see Aus, US, UK).

What’s it about?

Set in London in the year 2540, children are grown, rather than born, and are conditioned via Pavlovian methods and sleep-learning to be citizens of different castes. The idea is that society will be stable, and that people will be happy. They are essentially free to pursue pleasure through multiple sexual partners, soma (a form of medication/recreation) and ‘feelies’, which are movies with added sensation. The Model T Ford and Sigmund Freud are the fathers of this society. Ford is their God.

Bernard is a bit of an outsider both physically and mentally. He thinks his fellow Alphas are ‘morons’, and he fights internally against his own conditioning. He is able to see that happiness is a construct, and is therefore, of course, not happy. He sees the value in delaying gratification, and in being alone (both blasphemous in this society).

Bernard takes a woman he likes, Lenina, to a Savage Reservation, where they meet a woman from their World who had been lost there, and her son, who has learnt English through Shakespeare and who is curious about this place he’s heard so much about. The second half of the novel then deals with ‘the Savage’ and his encounter with civilisation.

Tell us more about the author.

Aldous Huxley was born into an educated family in Surrey, UK in 1894. He was educated at Eton college and was disqualified from service in the WWI due to an illness that left him mostly blind for two to three years. He would struggle with eyesight problems all his life. He studied English literature at Oxford and graduated with first class honours.

Huxley began writing seriously in his 20s. His first published novel was Chrome Yellow in 1921. Brave New World is probably his most famous novel. He moved to Hollywood in 1937 and became interested in Vedanta (and introduced Christopher Isherwood into the circle of Hindu Swami Prabhavananda). He earned a bit of money as a screenwriter, but his synopsis of Alice in Wonderland was rejected by Walt Disney ‘on the grounds that “he could only understand every third word”. (via) Huxley was at the time beginning to experiment with psychedelic drugs as an experiment in the search for enlightenment. I’d like to read that synopsis…

Huxley famously requested and took LSD on his deathbed in 1963. He was 69.

So, what did I think? Does it deserve to be a classic?

‘What fun it would be if one didn’t have to think about happiness!’ – World Controller Mustapha Mond

For a book that was apparently completed in just four months, Brave New World is almost shockingly prescient, dealing with issues of consumption, conformity and complacency. The idea that citizens will be conditioned to be able to fulfil themselves through the means available in order to create stability (as opposed to through threat or punishment) is even more relevant today. Other aspects are dated, of course, such as the psychoanalytic overtones, and the hypnopaedic ways of learning. But then again, some people do still buy into ‘subliminal learning’!

The retro-future aspects are still enjoyable, aesthetically, such as the fact there are lift operators, and helicopters are the advanced mode of transport. It’s like seeing the DOS computer systems in Blade Runner. You can’t read a futuristic novel written in the past and not think about what has and hasn’t come to pass, and what might by the date in which it’s set. There is still an environment in 2540, for example, where as any futuristic novel written today would surely grapple with the issue of climate change.

Bernard is a great character, both inside and outside his society – conditioned by it, like everyone else, but also fighting against it. He has a weak personality, and a large ego, and is easily buoyed by popularity and praise in the rare instances it is bestowed upon him. I think readers of the novel over time would have related to his character, particularly in the earlier chapters, when everyone else is loosening up and having a good time and he feels something is a little off. He is painfully aware of himself and the way he’s feeling. He is interested in ideas of the benefits of feeling pain and of delaying gratification – ideas I’m fascinated by in this era of rampant consumerism. Natural human desires have always been ever-renewing, but what happens to us when they can be fulfilled easier and easier? Huxley deals with the way dissatisfaction or boredom might set in with soma, where citizens can take a little drug-holiday. Soma reminds me of both valium and ecstasy. It calms, and it also creates heightened sensation. Bernard is too aware of its effects (but he still uses it). The Savage refuses to use it.

I enjoyed the ideas, too, about the way we are constructed through language – about how powerful language is. In the brave new world, all ‘old’ texts have disappeared, because they are unnecessary and will interfere with the conditioned ideas. A language of worship to a commercial god has replaced them. But the Savage, too, is constructed by words. His ideas about the world come from Shakespeare. He cannot reconcile himself with the (normatised) promiscuity of the world, and repeats phrases like ‘impudent strumpet!’ from Othello. He thinks and speaks in Shakespearian, and so becomes subversive to both his Savage society who do not read in English, and to his mother and civilisation, who are conditioned to think in specific oppositional ways. There is an Oedipal undertone, too, where he tries to kill the man in bed with his mother. His love and disgust for her is then transferred into his love and disgust for Lenina. He does not wish to ‘defile’ her, thought she literally throws herself at him. Conditioned to be sexually open, she doesn’t understand his response at all. The Savage is a tragic character. The greater message, here, I think, is that none of us escape some kind of ‘conditioning’ through language, during our socialisation process.

I was quite disturbed by the Savage’s repulsion of Lenina, though it is justified in the story. I was worried about a parallel message of nostalgia for female chastity and virginity. I suppose Huxley could have wanted to explore these thoughts (as he’s exploring the dangers of excess in general), and that’s also why Linda, the Savage’s mother, is rendered so repulsively (not just to the civilised, but to the reader). Lenina is a character who, if the novel were written now, I believe could have been developed further. Her tiny awakenings were due to the male characters she encountered and her desire for them. She could be more active, now.

I underlined and dog-eared much in Brave New World and I think it’s a novel that will continue to make people think, and definitely to entertain. I forgot to mention that it’s funny – particularly in relation to Bernard. The style is a little all-over-the-place, but it works. It’s a brilliant piece of art.

‘What you need,’ the Savage went on, ‘is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.’

What’s next?

I’m currently reading The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. It’s a big’un so be patient with me.

Have you read Brave New World? What are your thoughts? I have to say that the mood of Nineteen Eighty-Four is quite different. I remember it well: a certain weightiness. Is there a dystopian vision you prefer?

The moody city: Meg Mundell on Black Glass

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Black Glass
Meg Mundell
Scribe, March 2011
9781921640933 (Aus)

In Meg Mundell’s dark and stylish debut, two sisters and a cast of characters from different tiers of society fight for survival, recognition and connection in near-future Melbourne. The novel is in some ways about maintaining some kind of hope or dreams in a fractured, controlling cityscape – whether those dreams are getting home, finding the person you’ve lost, or ‘making it’ with dignity in media or entertainment. Like all good spec-fic, the novel subtly comments on and exaggerates issues and potential issues of our time; and like all good fiction it also has strong characters, is expressed imaginatively, and elements of the world it paints – casinos and carnivals, backstreets, department stores, a run-down pension, a rooftop, the CBD – are vivid and memorable.

Meg has previously been published in The Age, The Monthly, Meanjin and more. Meg is also a PhD candidate at the University of Western Sydney, in the Writing and Society Research Group – we began at the same time and met on the bus out to Bankstown. I got in touch with Meg to ask some questions about Black Glass…

A: There’s a huge range of vivid settings in the novel, and the way city space is governed is one of the book’s themes. You start out in ‘the Regions’ and on the open road, and then the reader enters the city at the same time the characters do. Can you tell us about building this near-future Melbourne? And those smaller spaces within it: a casino, a rooftop, an abandoned glass factory, and so on?

M: I’ve always been fascinated by places, how we imagine and respond to them – and vice versa, how they affect us. Black Glass could be set in any near-future city, but I chose Melbourne as a way to anchor it in a specific setting. I kind of overlaid my own mental map of Melbourne onto the story, inventing and distorting things as I went. I drew this quite detailed map, too, with all the key locations on it.

Another thing is that I love exploring, finding hidden or strange sites, places with an interesting atmosphere. You might climb fences and sneak into industrial zones, or hang around in the casino, or it might just be a glimpse out the train window. Some of those places stick in your mind, get mixed up with ideas and images – about gambling, flight, broken mirrors, or whatever – and turn up as settings in the book.

A: Tied in with these settings, you raise interesting ideas about space, particularly with the character Milk and his profession as a ‘moodie’. I really enjoyed the sections where he is ‘tuning’ an environment. Can you tell us about him and why these ideas are essential to the novel?

M: With the tuning I wanted look at how space is controlled and manipulated on a subliminal level, and how this might play out, or go wrong. As a moodie, Milk gets paid to tinker with the atmosphere of spaces, to covertly influence people’s behaviour. We’re already seeing this in real life, with marketers using certain aromas and audio to influence our spending decisions, plus the rise of surveillance and its growing ties with commerce. So I wanted to magnify that and see where it could lead.

Milk is a bit of an enigma. He sees himself as an artist, but like most of us, he’s also vulnerable to flattery and coercion and the lure of money. So his role is quite conflicted, and things don’t always work out the way he plans. I suspect this moodie idea came partly from working as a DJ, which I used to do. You’ve got the room under control, everyone’s dancing, then suddenly you pick the wrong record, the mood slips and you struggle to fix it. Yikes! Only in Milk’s case, the stakes are much higher.

A: The main characters are the sisters Grace and Tally. Their quests thread through the narrative, though many other events and characters also propel it forward. Through them you’re partly giving a face to a kind of growing marginalisation that is occurring in the world of the novel – by showing the kinds of things they have to do to stay fed and alive. Were Grace and Tally there from the beginning of the novel? How did their story form?

M: The sisters were there from the start. They always came through very strongly for me, especially Tally. As a sister myself I value that bond – nobody better mess with my sis! – and that’s what drives Tally. Daily survival becomes their first priority, but that bond, and whatever might threaten it, is what really pushes the story along.

Having a homeless main character wasn’t a conscious decision, but was probably influenced by the years I spent at The Big Issue [as deputy editor and staff writer]. The editorial team shared a building with the magazine’s vendors and we got to know a lot of them. Their resilience and humour, the tough things they’d been through and how they’d survived, made a big impression on me. The line between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is a very thin one.

A: The novel is written in a fragmentary style – notebook pieces, bits of narrative from different points of view, conversations. How did you make it effective? Was there more that you wrote and abandoned? How did you choose which fragments and points of view were essential?

M: That fragmented approach fitted nicely with the idea of surveillance, one of the book’s main themes. So you get snatches and glimpses, like you’re an eyewitness, but certain information’s missing, stuff happens out of frame. Sometimes you’re spying on the characters, but that voyeurism doesn’t automatically reveal the full story. The reader has to fill in the blanks and piece things together themselves.

While writing I didn’t throw much out, it was more a case of revising repeatedly, and filling in gaps, until the puzzle pieces came together. To balance out the different voices and narrative modes I imagined a piece of music, where you have various instruments or melodies playing, and you bring them in and out to form a pattern that is hopefully harmonious and compelling. The more important voices, like Tally’s, have solo parts. The minor ones are just samples, overheard snippets.

A: I think many people have an idea of spec fic or sci-fi these days, forgetting that so many classic ‘literary’ writers wrote speculative stories, from Nabokov, to Janet Frame, to Kafka and of course Orwell and Huxley. When writing, did you think of the novel as fitting into a specific genre? Are you a reader of speculative fiction? Or did the genre simply fit the themes?

M: The genre fit the themes this time, I think. With Black Glass I didn’t deliberately set out to write ‘speculative fiction’, it just happened that way. But I do like the possibilities it offers a writer – you can put your characters in extreme situations, really explore that ‘what-if’ element. Although even ‘realist’ fiction is not truly ‘realistic’, it just works very hard to conceal its artifice. In a way I guess all fiction is speculative. It’s all made up!

I don’t have a favourite genre. I’ve done historical short fiction, journalism, memoir, the odd poem. Early on, like most kids, I didn’t think about genres, I just loved reading. Certain ‘literary’ works: To Kill a Mockingbird, Crime and Punishment, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies. Some sci-fi and fantasy too – Orwell, Huxley, Wyndham, Wells, Tolkien, CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll – and some classic popular or genre stuff: Anne of Green Gables, Nancy Drew mysteries, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen King. My tastes are more ‘literary’ now, but that early mix made me a pretty open-minded reader. And I still read trashy magazines!

A: I just re-read your piece ‘Tumbleweed’ in Harvest: Issue One. I always liked it. It’s from a book you’re writing on trucking culture, right? Can you tell us about it?

M: Sure, the trucking book is called Braking Distance. It’s non-fiction – partly memoir, partly a collection of ‘road stories’ about trucking life. To research it I spent three months travelling outback Australia with long-haul truck-drivers. It was amazing, despite a couple of dicey moments. Right now I’m doing a PhD on sense of place in literature, but I’m about to take time off to finish the trucking book.

A: This is your first novel and in it, characters struggle to hold onto their hopes and dreams in a difficult world. What are some of your hopes and dreams, as a person and as a writer?

M: Umm… personally I hope things go well for my loved ones, that’s important. And I want all that deceptively simple stuff, like feeling happy and fulfilled and useful. Writing-wise I want to publish more books and stories, keep learning, and maybe do a screenplay one day – I love films. As for dreams… I have lots of flying dreams, but you have to be practical. So I’d also like a hot air balloon, please.

Thanks so much Meg.

Guest review: Chris Flynn on Justin Cronin’s The Passage

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The Passage
Justin Cronin (Aus, US)
Orion
9780752897851

Reviewed by Chris Flynn

It’s funny how movies influence books so much these days. The fact that The Passage was optioned by Sir Ridley Scott for $1.75 million within a week of Cronin settling on a $3.75 million publishing deal for his vampire apocalypse trilogy is unsurprising given large sections of this first volume read like a movie script. Quite how the Robin Hood director will handle turning this 768-page monster into a 2-hour feature film is a mystery only a knight of the realm can solve. Given his recent form, there will be some sort of grey/blue washed-out filter over everything, Liam Neeson will have a supporting role and there will be at least one scene featuring an arrow-filled sky. The good news for Sir Scott is that there are arrows and blades a-plenty in Cronin’s behemoth. Also Humvees. And characters making physically impossible dramatic leaps through the air whilst firing their weapons, narrowly avoiding the Moors/French/Bad Vampires.

Cronin’s pedigree as a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and winner of the Pen/Faulkner award lends this daft sounding Mad Max cum 28 Days Later mashup a certain credence but don’t be fooled into thinking this is highbrow literature taking on popular tropes. Cronin, whilst eminently more of a wordsmith than Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer, is still no Raymond Carver. He’s more of an undisciplined Steven King. There’s something odd about the structure and tone of The Passage, which is in itself split into three sections. The first is really tight and suspenseful, as Cronin introduces us to the world of 2018 and the discovery of a virus that the military wants to use to create super soldiers. As everyone knows, this never turns out well and the bat-like blood-sucking ‘virals’ escape from the complex. Before you can say, ‘Oh Edward, you’re just so sparkly,’ the world has been flushed down the toilet, civilisation as we know it has been destroyed and there are 42 million of these virtually indestructible bad-tempered creatures hanging under bridges waiting to tear you from arsehole to elbow.

So far so I Am Legend. Just when you’re starting to actually like some of the characters, Cronin propels the narrative forward 92 years to focus on a rag-tag bunch of survivors living inside a floodlit complex in California. This is the slowest section of the book, and it’s a bit of a trial having to start caring for a whole new cadre of characters, most of whom are not very likeable. This is where the crossbows come in and probably where Ridley Scott sat up in his seat and rubbed his palms together in anticipation. Cronin goes to great lengths explaining how difficult it is to kill the virals, with only one sweet spot on the breastbone able to be penetrated by an arrow, bullet or knife. Conveniently all the survivors are really, really good shots. The romp picks up again when the central character of Amy, a girl who we are told will live a thousand years, turns up to drag a group of survivors off on a quest, of sorts. Despite being the key to everything, Amy’s character is strangely underdeveloped. Cronin makes us privy to the inner thoughts of everyone except her, though perhaps this will be amended in the next two episodes of the trilogy.

I’m making this sound like a load of old bollocks, but it’s good fun for the most part. The writing gets lazier and more clichéd as the book progresses, it sags badly in the middle and sections honestly do read like a cheesy action movie script but it’s a much better effort at ‘blockbuster literature’ than we’re used to, so I won’t complain too much. If nothing else it restores vampires to their rightful status as terrifying creatures of the night that you definitely do not want to be staring moodily across a meadow at. The main point of contention I have with The Passage is not the book itself, but the marketing. I read that bookstores are being told not to place this alongside Twilight or Vampire Academy as it is definitely not for sensitive teens. This is utter nonsense – a gross underestimation of the reading capabilities of young people and typical of the saccharine coating and condescension teenagers have to put up with. Yes it’s a scary book and people swear sometimes but duh. Cronin and his 9 year-old daughter came up with the idea when he was out running. She rode her bike alongside and told him his books were boring. When he asked her what sort of book he should write, she naturally said it should be about a girl who saves the world. Oh, and don’t forget the vampires. Every good book needs those, right? 42 million of them in here, though sorely lacking in werewolves. What was this guy Cronin thinking? Russell Crowe would have been perfect.

Chris Flynn writes for The Book Show on ABC Radio National, The Big Issue & Australian Book Review. In 2010 his work appears in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings & Harvest. He runs Dog’s Tales, a weekly storytelling night in St Kilda.

Guest review: Rhys Tate on Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing…

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andanotherthingcover420And Another Thing…
Eoin Colfer
Penguin
9780718155148 (Aus, US)
Reviewed by Rhys Tate

I’ll admit when I heard that Eoin Colfer was ghostwriting a sixth Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy volume, nine years after the death of original visionary Douglas Adams, I fired up the torches and pitchforks and got me a good old fashioned village mob together. It’s more than the fact that handing the reins over on signature projects is, in general, a horrible idea; it’s that Hitchhiker’s was a brilliant trilogy* that spawned very good radio and television serials, and eventually a middling big budget movie. The Law of Diminishing Returns did not offer a kind projection on Colfer’s chances.

And Another Thing… starts much as Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy did, with situational heroes Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect et al. in imminent danger from aliens contracted to destroy the Earth because it’s ‘in the way’. But where Adams populated this scenario with fresh characters and immediately riffed off the ensuing chaos, Colfer is obliged to prove to the fans his familiarity with the inhabitants of the Galaxyand ability to handle same. Cue forty pages of bickering and Adamsesque observations which fail to mask that the story isn’t actually going anywhere quickly.

Things pick up, though, as things usually do. There are some inspired sequences featuring Gods struggling through job interviews, and mobs of personal trainers who have run off from their resorts and turned feral in the bush. Colfer stays faithful to Adams’ style without being toofaithful (a critical distinction), and his dry, self-deprecating humour is well judged, much of the time. He admits to crippling doubt as he was writing the novel, to the point that he began to steer clear of the fan backlash brewing online. This, however, did not save him from the ravages of Facebook, which one day merrily suggested that he join the ‘The Stop Eoin Colfer Writing Hitchhiker’s Society’. Not only did he join, but began to post messages along the lines of, ‘Yes, Eoin Colfer is an arsehole. I’ve known him for many years and I don’t like him’ – messages that eventually won him letters of support from the very people who hoped to stop him.

It’s impossible to think of the Hitchhiker’s series without comparing it to its fantasy equivalent, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. But where Pratchett wrote stand-alone books featuring very different sets of characters that could be largely picked up in any order, And Another Thing…cannot be recommended to the casual reader. It’s a novel for fans familiar with the backstory who long to visit Adams’ mindspace again, and on this note, it delivers. However, I can’t help wondering what Colfer might have achieved if he was allowed to leave Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and Trillian on the shelf and write a Hitchhiker’s Guide sequel that was truly his own.

* In five parts! Aren’t the English absurd?

Rhys Tate has never been into space, not even in a story, and thus feels entirely unqualified to review science fiction.

Melbourne Writers Festival 2009 diary part three: future cities, beautiful rhythms and a literal ending

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‘I just blogged’ I said to my friends when I ran into them, flustered, between sessions. Chris Flynn looked at me and said ‘that sounds dirty’, like ‘I just did a blog’, ‘I just dropped one’ and other variations. And now, the word blog is RUINED for me.

But I was enlightened by two things: Chris and Eirian’s song ‘Old People’ (there certainly were a lot of them around – and good on them, for looking at books and seeing authors and stuff), and Josephine’s present for me from Berlin – a gorgeous vintage scarf.

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196-cover-col-150pxSo, I went to Visions of the City to stare at China Mieville’s guns again, and of course to hear his thoughts. And this time, he had me at ‘hyperreal’. I’m liking him more and more. He and Jack Dann, Margo Lanagan, and chair Rjurik Davidson fielded questions (which must get a wee bit tired for genre authors) on the genre/lit divide etc. The concern is not really a division, but the shape of that division (as Mieville put it ‘horizontal’ categorisation is fine but not ‘vertical’). Overland 196 was being launched during the session also, as Lanagan and Dann have pieces in it’s ‘Melbourne Futures’ supplement. The lovely Susan from City of Melbourne officially launched the issue, but spawned giggles with her references to George Odwell and Aldous Hudley.

Mieville had me going with the way he was interested not just in the setting of the city, but on ‘literary refractions’ of cities – ‘hyperrealised’ cities. Fantastic fiction can do visions of the city better than realist fiction, he said, thus even non-genre writers are writing visions of the city (and we have seen these future cities in popular cinema of late, also).

Lanagan suggested that some people distinctly narrow the categories they read just because there is too much to read these days! An interesting idea. But I like to read a bit of everything (then again, I am perpetually overwhelmed).

The prominence of dystopian over utopian fictions was looked at. Dann said negativity gives the writer the ability to question ‘what’s going on’. Lanagan said utopias are a ‘simple’ construct – ‘the idea of endless progress that we had has come to bite us on the bum’. Also, she said writers are depressives (jokingly?), and well, it’s speculated that ‘depressives see the world more clearly’. I think there’s some truth in that, as a depressive does not apply a gloss or sheen to reality. But Mieville took it further, intellect that he is, and said writers of dystopian fiction are also self conscious of the aesthetic potential of the dystopic world.

The question of process posed by the audience in this one was fascinating – after hearing Anne Michaels and Kate Grenville talk about questions and trust and following intuitive paths, Mieville said he is a ‘meticulous’ planner! He begins with the setting, creates exhaustive outlines of plot and character, before beginning. Lanagan was the opposite, starting with charcater, having a bare ‘scaffolding’, but following different paths.

I’d like to talk about audience for this session – definitely a younger crowd than other sessions. What is it about youth and genre fiction? What is it about older generations shying away from it? Has it got something to do with the ‘general commodification of despair’ in society in more recent years, and a reading audience that have been engaged with this? Is there a pessimism in youth, or a willingness to imagine alternative futures? Just throwing these out there…

Best session quote: ‘The millennium was a bit of a damp squib’ – China Mieville.

Side note: Did you know Jack Dann wrote a book called The Rebel: An Imagined Life of James Dean? I read it a few years ago and never realised, when I heard more about Dann lately, that it was the same writer. I remember really enjoying that book. Must seek it out again sometime.

*

ego_and_soul_lrI went to Our Restless Life to see John Carroll, as I’ve read a fair few of his articles. Brigid Delaney was the other panellist, and it was chaired by Kalinda Ashton. Delaney really spoke after my own heart about restlessness and not wanting to ‘miss out’ on things. She spoke about the ‘illusion that there’s so much choice out there’ . Why is it an illusion? Because we are only on this earth for a small amount of time and can’t physically ‘choose’ everything. The central question of her book is ‘is it better to live broader or deeper, and can you do both?’

John Carroll, in his velvety suit complete with professor-patches, started with a caution – ‘things usually change much less than you think’. Who we are hasn’t essentially changed, he believes, due to modern technology and consumerism etc. He believes the big shift came with the death of religion and community as we shifted ‘to a world where individuals have to make their own meaning’. At the end of the day, our own conscience is our judge. We seek a ‘beautiful rhythm’ in life (an Ancient Greek concept) – moments of transcendence and brilliance, something above and beyond the ordinary. When we fail, we become prone to restlessness – and the world caters for this restless lifestyle. After an audience question, Carroll came to the conclusion that the popularity of the show Masterchef was a perfect example of this seeking of ‘beautiful rhythms’ – something so ordinary as cooking, elevated to an art form, one that some can become the ‘master’ of, and then teach their ‘wisdom’ to others.

I was glad I went to this session because it challenged my thoughts on consumerist society (and I bought Carroll’s book after). I asked Carroll whether he thought the satisfaction of these transcendent moments was more fleeting in a consumerist society – what I was trying to ask was whether consumerist society capitalised on the search and then created a general anxiety for more transcendent moments. Carroll thought the ‘fleetingness’ of these moments was not something new (true that), and he even proposed that we are lucky because (without religious doctrine etc.) we are free to acknowledge the fleetingness… He also said that this Greek concept, the ‘beautiful rhythms’ was rooted in balance. If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know that balance is a capital I issue for me.

So, to balance out this serious blog post (after all, it is Sunday), here is a ‘literal video version’ of Billy Idol’s ‘White Wedding’. Hilarity+