Another episode of the science fiction and fantasy podcast I’m doing with a friend is now up! You can episode twelve here. This week we discuss why we think fantasy is so popular today, the newly announced shows coming to SyFy, and something nifty that Google did. Tune in and enjoy!
You might recall that I was in England at the start of July for a conference and some “me” time. Being overly obsessed with the printed medium, I made time to peruse the bookstores while I was in Lincoln. And boy did I find some nice stuff! I have a gift for finding awesome stuff when I go book shopping, apparently (or so I think). Here’s what I found (after the fold, hopefully): And now for the descriptions, from left to right, top to bottom (taken from Amazon): 1. Vermilion Sands by J. G. Ballard A novel set in the fictional landscape of the future, Vermillion Sands. (Note: Yes, that description is dreadfully short. I tried finding a more appropriate description, but none was forthcoming, I’m afraid.) 2. The Crystal World by J. G. Ballard J. G. Ballard’s fourth novel, which established his reputation as a writer of extraordinary talent and imaginative powers, tells the story of a physician specializing in the treatment of leprosy who is invited to a small outpost in the interior of Africa. Finding the roadways blocked, he takes to the river, and embarks on a frightening journey through a strange petrified forest whose area expands daily, affecting not only the physical environment but also its inhabitants. 3. The Unlimited Dream Company by J. G. Ballard From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller ‘Cocaine Nights’ comes an acclaimed backlist title — in which suburban London is transformed into an exotic dreamworld — now reissued in new cover style. When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is strangely transformed. Vultures invade the rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man’s urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations towards an apocalyptic climax. 4. Blue Light by Walter Mosley San Francisco in the 1960s is already crazy enough when mysterious shafts of blue light touch the lives of random strangers. 5. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell From David Mitchell, the Booker Prize nominee, award-winning writer and one of the featured authors in Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists 2003” issue, comes his highly anticipated third novel, a work of mind-bending imagination and scope. A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation — the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us. I’m actually looking forward to reading all of these. Hopefully I’ll have some time over Christmas to do so, because the Ballard and the Mitchell are definitely at the top of my “fun reading” list. What are you looking forward to reading?
YouTube is both the best and worst thing ever invented. There are days when I’m on there and I think to myself, “this is the land of degenerate people with nothing better to do than spout crazy nonsense in grammatically incorrect English and caps.” And then there are days when I see the following video and am reminded that without YouTube, I would never see this. So, thank you YouTube. Once in a while your greatness outweighs your inability to control trolls. Here’s the video (after the fold):
(You can read my review of Inception here and my other analytical post about the issue of emotion in the film here.) (Note: Because this particular post has become far longer than I had originally intended, I’m going to split it into two parts.) The Musicology of Inception: A Simple Score, or Musical Genius? (Part One) Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of Inception that can be easily externalized pre-DVD-release is the musical score composed by Hans Zimmer. Much of the discussion over Zimmer’s score has centered on two positions: an ingrained hatred for Zimmer’s work, often based on legitimate criticisms, and an incredible misunderstanding of Zimmer’s musical style and its importance in the discussion of Inception‘s narrative. Both issues will be addressed in these two posts on musicology. What sets Zimmer apart from many film scorers is not that he is a technically destitute composer, but that his scores seem to rise to the challenge of accentuation despite their technically vacuity, largely because Zimmer, unlike other composers, understands, on some intuitive level, that film scores must necessarily reflect the film and must impose themselves upon the film medium to amplify the effects produced by all the other aspects of film production (acting, directing, cinematography, CG, etc.). Inception‘s score, thus, is perhaps one of Zimmer’s most complicated musical achievements due to the way in which it creates a dialogue with the film; it is also a score that has already begun to rack up a considerable amount of vitriol, general criticism, and so on. Sadly, many critics have missed what makes Zimmer’s score function so well within Inception‘s narrative, which is the subject I’d like to discuss here and in the post that will follow. There are two elements that I would argue are central to understanding the relevance of Zimmer’s score for Inception: audio manipulation and musical layering. Both are also relevant to the discussion of Inception‘s narrative structure, which will become apparent, I hope, as you read each section. The best course of action, I think, is to take these in order of importance, which leaves us with Zimmer’s experimentation with audio as a starting point. I. Manipulation: Dropping the Audio Levels A less than astute reading of music in Inception would bring one to the growing presence of audio manipulation within Zimmer’s various film scores. None is more obvious than that of The Dark Knight, another Christopher Nolan vehicle, in which Zimmer was given free reign to develop a cacophony of sounds taken from a variety of sources in order to create something that could represent the feel of Nolan’s second and most famous comic book adaptation. The resulting score for The Dark Knight is, understandably, forgettable only if one is looking for familiar themes–like you might with a John Williams score–but not if one is looking for the best example of an attempt by a composer to create an exact musical equivalent for what amounts to an intensive character study–specifically, of the Joker. Zimmer, as such, is not afraid of experimentation, nor one who is new to it, something that many film composers could not say with confidence. But Inception is slightly less ambitious than The Dark Knight, though no less important in terms of what Zimmer’s audio manipulations represent. Unlike The Dark Knight, which is based on a multitude of often inharmonious sounds, Inception is primarily focused on a particular musical element: that of the Edith Piaf version of the song “Non, je ne regrette rien.” If you’ve seen the film, then you understand the importance of “No Regrets” (the English title that I’m going to use throughout the essay to save space) for the various mechanisms of the dreamscape. Zimmer and Nolan have both acknowledged that “No Regrets” is the origin of the score, although this is only obvious in the title song, which uses a severely decelerated brass blare that follows the same beat–this beat also regularly reappears at other moments in the film. The manipulation of “No Regrets” by Zimmer, however, extends far beyond multiplications or divisions of tempos, beats, and tones; for each layer of dream, there is a degradation of the classic French tune, which, as you get deeper and deeper, makes one thing quite clear: the title song is the state of limbo. Limbo, if you haven’t seen the film, is the lowest level of the dreamscape that you can enter before death. The best real-world analogy to limbo is a coma, in which one’s conscious self recedes deep into the psyche and is lost–in Inception, we’re told that staying in limbo reduces your brain to mush. Zimmer’s score is absolutely a reflection of this. For each step downward, Zimmer reduces the tempo, dampens the sound, and manipulates the actual audio to merge the spondaic tonal qualities of “No Regrets” with synthesizers and blaring brass instruments. This reduction is demonstrated quite clearly in the film as the sounds reverberate down the levels to each group of characters until they are all aware of the impending “kick” (the act that “wakes you up”). Part of this manipulation is to denote time, since each level of dream is also on a different plane of mental time–i.e. the deeper you go, the greater time dilates. For Zimmer to play with music in this way, it signals a kind of musical composition that is not simply an accent to a visual medium, but as much a part of that medium as every other aspect. Zimmer’s score cannot be externalized entirely from the medium it was written for without removing the actual meaning and importance of the manipulated elements. As such, to criticize Zimmer for his lack of technical grace–such as in this Amazon review–is to make a grand assumption about what constitutes technicality. Zimmer’s score is absolutely composed of simple movements of notes and chords–particularly in the case of the most popular song from the album, “Time”–but that simplicity is so intimately connected to the structure of the film that its
Once again I have things that have arrived in my mailbox that I think you all might be interested in, not simply because some of the items listed below will become part of a giveaway I will be running soon. But you’ll just have to wait to find out about that. Now for the image (after the fold, hopefully): And now for the descriptions, from left to right, top to bottom: 1. Spectra Pulse Magazine, Fall 2008/Winter 2009, Issue No. 2 (2 copies; given to me by one of the makers) The second and last issue of one of the best fan-oriented SF/F literature-based magazines contains an excerpt from Scott Lynch’s The Republic of Thieves, an original piece of short fiction by Kelley Armstrong, and a number of articles on the changing face of fantasy, Arthur C. Clarke, some must-read books, and much more. I loved the first issue, so I have no doubt that I’ll love this one too. 2. Spectra Pulse Magazine, Spring/Summer 2008, Premiere Issue (given to me by one of the makers) The first issue of this magazine contains an exclusive excerpt from George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons and articles on some forgotten science fiction novels, the progression of science fiction, and a lot of other fascinating stuff. As I mentioned above, I’ve already read this issue and it is quite good. 3. The Journal of Popular Culture, June 2010, Vol. 43, No. 3 (subscribed) This issue contains articles on Eminem, fat culture, Hellboy, Right-wing blogging after 9/11, and intertextuality, ambiguity, and fear and loathing in the work of Hunter S. Thompson, among other subjects. I don’t think this issue has as many interesting things for me as the previous issue, but there might still be some good reading here regardless. 4. Interzone Magazine, #229, July-August 2010 (subscribed) The latest issue of Interzone contains fiction by Paul Evanby, Antony Mann, Toby Litt, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, and Richard Wagner, plus book and media reviews. As usual, I suspect that this issue will be quite good. I’ve yet to dislike an issue of Interzone. You should subscribe. Seriously. Do it. 5. The Journal of American Culture, June 2010, Vol. 33:2 (subscribed) This issue contains articles on the Gettysburg ghost tours, the negotiations of love and work in Jayne Ann Krentz’s work, tuberculosis memoirs, Teddy Roosevelt and the golden age of children’s literature, coon songs and the performance of race, and more. There are also some book reviews buried in there somewhere. I don’t think this particular issue has much for me, except perhaps that article on coon songs (I study the “other” in science fiction, so it might provide some background). We’ll see. 6. Science Fiction Studies #111, Vol. 37, Part 2, July 2010 (subscribed) The latest issue of Science Fiction Studies contains articles on defining science fiction, the death ray in history and science fiction, Gibson’s Neuromancer, and the imperial theme in early anglophone science fiction. There are also loads of book reviews and announcements. As usual, the issue looks interesting. And that’s that. Hopefully some of these look interesting to you. If not, then that’s unfortunate. Have you acquired anything of interest lately? Let me know in the comments.
I’ve got an interesting story to tell about the books below. Both were won by me for separate reasons: one for something amusing I did and one for something nice I did for someone else. And perhaps more importantly, both books have received considerable buzz within the fantasy community for, I presume, being quite good. I haven’t read either, so I can only hope that the fans are right. So, without further delay, here are the books (after the fold, hopefully): (Because each book has a story, I’m going to change things up for the description section. I’m also saving the best for last, because it has a fun little story and some free “fiction.”) First up is a signed copy of Naomi Novik’s Tongues of Serpents, the next novel in her Temeraire series. This particular book arrived unannounced in my mailbox. It turns out that a number of months ago I had participated in a promotion by the fine folks at Del Rey, which resulted in the first book in Novik’s series ending up in the hands of my mother, who promptly rebuked me for getting her hooked on the series. As a result, some many months later, the folks at Del Rey saw fit to send a signed copy of her newest book. A very unexpected and wonderful thing indeed. What is the book about? Here’s the synopsis (from Amazon): A dazzling blend of military history, high-flying fantasy, and edge-of-your-seat adventure, Naomi Novik’s Temeraire novels, set in an alternate Napoleonic era in which intelligent dragons have been harnessed as weapons of war, are more than just perennial bestsellers—they are a worldwide phenomenon. Now, in Tongues of Serpents, Naomi Novik is back, along with the dragon Temeraire and his rider and friend, Capt. Will Laurence. Convicted of treason despite their heroic defense against Napoleon’s invasion of England, Temeraire and Laurence—stripped of rank and standing—have been transported to the prison colony at New South Wales in distant Australia, where, it is hoped, they cannot further corrupt the British Aerial Corps with their dangerous notions of liberty for dragons. Temeraire and Laurence carry with them three dragon eggs intended to help establish a covert in the colony and destined to be handed over to such second-rate, undesirable officers as have been willing to accept so remote an assignment—including one former acquaintance, Captain Rankin, whose cruelty once cost a dragon its life. Nor is this the greatest difficulty that confronts the exiled dragon and rider: Instead of leaving behind all the political entanglements and corruptions of the war, Laurence and Temeraire have instead sailed into a hornet’s nest of fresh complications. For the colony at New South Wales has been thrown into turmoil after the overthrow of the military governor, one William Bligh—better known as Captain Bligh, late of HMS Bounty. Bligh wastes no time in attempting to enlist Temeraire and Laurence to restore him to office, while the upstart masters of the colony are equally determined that the new arrivals should not upset a balance of power precariously tipped in their favor. Eager to escape this political quagmire, Laurence and Temeraire take on a mission to find a way through the forbidding Blue Mountains and into the interior of Australia. But when one of the dragon eggs is stolen from Temeraire, the surveying expedition becomes a desperate race to recover it in time—a race that leads to a shocking discovery and a dangerous new obstacle in the global war between Britain and Napoleon. Sounds pretty interesting, no? The second book is Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton. Before getting into the story about how I acquired it, I’m going to give you the synopsis: Following in the footsteps of writers like China Miéville and Richard K. Morgan, Mark Charan Newton balances style and storytelling in this bold and brilliant debut. Nights of the Villjamur marks the beginning of a sweeping new fantasy epic. Beneath a dying red sun sits the proud and ancient city of Villjamur, capital of a mighty empire that now sits powerless against an encroaching ice age. As throngs of refugees gather outside the city gates, a fierce debate rages within the walls about the fate of these desperate souls. Then tragedy strikes—and the Emperor’s elder daughter, Jamur Rika, is summoned to serve as queen. Joined by her younger sister, Jamur Eir, the queen comes to sympathize with the hardships of the common people, thanks in part to her dashing teacher Randur Estevu, a man who is not what he seems. Meanwhile, the grisly murder of a councillor draws the attention of Inspector Rumex Jeryd. Jeryd is a rumel, a species of nonhuman that can live for hundreds of years and shares the city with humans, birdlike garuda, and the eerie banshees whose forlorn cries herald death. Jeryd’s investigation will lead him into a web of corruption—and to an obscene conspiracy that threatens the lives of Rika and Eir, and the future of Villjamur itself. But in the far north, where the drawn-out winter has already begun, an even greater threat appears, against which all the empire’s military and magical power may well prove useless—a threat from another world. Another interesting book, if you ask me. Fantasy seems to be hitting all the right buttons these days, that’s for sure. But how did I acquire this particular book? Well, Mr. Newton hosted a contest on his blog for signed copies of the U.S. edition of Nights of Villjamur; in that contest, he asked folks to write an entertaining, guilt-tripping, or weird explanation for why we deserved or wanted a copy of the book. I wrote the following unusual peace of nonsense, which one might call New Weird if one is so inclined: Dear Mr. Newton, I’m going to be totally honest about my response. I feel you deserve it. I’ve hidden this from the public, but that doesn’t make it any less true. In fact, it’s very true indeed. Ten years ago I was diagnosed with
