SF and the deeper layers

I've been thinking about Science Fiction.  As you do.  Specifically about just what tremendous fun "Guardians of the Galaxy" was.  I've found myself, since then, trying to figure out why it worked so well, given that a lot of the ingredients had the potential to be solid cheese (ugh, bad metaphor there, sorry!). 

It's partly the fact that I confess I went along with not-very-high expectations.  I don't normally read comic books, and haven't done since I was about ten.  So I had no idea who Star Lord, Gamora et al are, and no investment whatsoever in what happened to them.  I'd seen one trailer that made the whole thing look like standard loud, entertaining, switch-off-your-brain twaddle in the vein of "Transformers" or "Godzilla".  It sounded good fun, though, and I love my SF, so I was happy to go when the DipGeek suggested it.

And of course it's got a good deal more going for it than any "Tranformers" movie ever made.

Should I say "spoiler alert!" at this point, I wonder?  Surely anyone who reads this blog knows I love my SF; surely if you do too, you will have gone to see this cracking film by now.  But if you haven't yet, be aware that this is not a spoiler-free zone.

GotG does have some weaknesses; notably, the two female characters are distinctly short-changed in terms of character development.  I spent quite a while waiting for the moment we'd discover Gamora was double-crossing everyone; only to find she wasn't.  She really had decided to turn spontaneously into a goodie after around five minutes' screen time.  There wasn't really much nuance, much less background story, to her decision that working for a would-be genocidal murderer wasn't to her liking or her conscience.  I mean, it's an understandable decision; but one still likes to have the backstory even so.  She came off better than her adopted sister Nebula, though, who literally has nothing to do but pout and growl, before going headlong into her one spectacular fight scene. 

As a woman, of course, I know I ought to be too-much enraged by this to accord the film's good points my attention.  But said good points were legion; and although it was done a little hastily, Gamora was given a chance to be more than a high-kickin' cliche Strong Woman, too.  She had self-confidence and a sense of humour, moments of anger and confusion, and a generosity to the other characters that was shown to spring from comradeship rather than romantic interest in anyone.  This is all progress.  Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is equal representation.

Speaking of progress, I loved the way Peter Quill was treated as easily as much eye-candy for the audience as Gamora was.  Yea!  It turns out Chris Pratt strips rather well.  You'll find no objections here to a little gender equality in the objectification stakes.

But more importantly than all this trivia, I've been wondering about why it is that the Marvel films get it right, when so much good-fun SF doesn't.  Good-fun SF is good fun - and I like my good fun; but sometimes it's a genre that can go so much deeper than fun.

I think part of it is the fact they take themselves seriously, but in a very specific way.  There's no pretence that the themes are serious; we aren't meant to be getting seriously worked up about the possibility of an invasion of Dark Elves or Chitauri.  It's just an action plot.  There's no assumption that the characters need to be serious and po-faced about things, either, indeed far from it.  There are plenty of jokes, and the characters are treated lightly.  They're allowed to have a sense of humour and to laugh at one another and themselves.  But the humour isn't shoe-horned in; it derives from who these people are and how they relate to one another and to their world.  In other words, it's like a lot of the humour in my life and yours, which makes it real and grounding, instead of an irritating phony fiction trope - "Oh, in this kind of story the characters always make one-liners, so ours must too".  Things are witty and sparklingly light, but not camped up, and the humour is not played as the scriptwriters tongue-in-cheek laughing at the audience and at themselves for pandering to them, but as a recognisable part of the behaviour of real people.

There are plenty too of what I understand are known as Easter Eggs - which, bear in mind, would be called "prefigurings" and "motifs" if we were in the land of Literary Fiction (& that leads me to another thing I get exercised over, namely the cultural snobbery of dismissing certain genres, like SF, as being inherently of lesser worth than certain other genres like LitFic, when they are nothing of the bloody kind, even while holding to a doctrine of cultural relativism and "no such thing as high and low art"; but I'll leave that for now, since I'm trying not to ramble here).  Existing fans will pick up on these prefigurings and inside-jokes straight-away, and will know all their subtle possibilities, but newbies like me can still get plenty from them too, because they're always introduced with a certain care.

I think that care is part of the secret.  Marvel take care.  They appear genuinely to love their material.  They choose their scriptwriters and directors with care, they obviously put an enormous amount of spadework into getting perfect casting, and they take care of their stories.  They seem to want to please both the new fans and the long-standing ones, and to be prepared to put in some effort to try and achieve this.

And on the seriousness front, they're prepared to take the risk of going beyond the thinness of a quick-and-easy comic-book characterisation, and drawing on something rather deeper.  Look at the Marvel heroes who've popped up so far in the MCU; there's a strange resonance to their activities and emotions.  They're like Wagner's characters or those of Tolkein; they are like fairy-tale characters and biblical characters and the characters we meet in our night-time dreams.  They're archtypes, or blends of them.

We've got the True Hero, the Reluctant Hero, the Wounded Hero, the Seeker Hero and so on.  We've got the Right-Hand-Man, we've got the Outsider.  We have Brothers Who Are Eternal Enemies, who are also the Trickster and the Honest Man.  We have the Warrior Woman and the Wise Woman and the Fallen Woman Redeeming Herself (one could easily see Natasha Romanoff as a Brunnhilde/Kundry fusion, for example).  We've got some Fallen Heroes, trying to redeem themselves, too.  We even have Sleeping Beauty, for goodness sakes', in fact we've got a couple of them - and Sleeping Beauty No 1 is also the Wounded Hero, and Sleeping Beauty No 2 is both the Wounded Hero and the Fallen Hero. 

And then this morning I open facebook and find that DipGeek has sent me a link to a fascinating article pointing out another interesting resonance to the films of the MCU, and especially GotG.  You can find said article here; it's well worth a read, and I agree with the author (and not just on the fact that "Firefly" is some of the best SF ever).

The other main thing that has been going on here this morning was rain, and plenty of it.  That's now eased off, and been replaced by wind, and plenty of that.  So I'm just going to get myself a cup of tea and a bite of lunch, and then I shall spend the rest of this afternoon writing.  I have, as usual, a string of half-finished projects.  I want to make some headway, and I've picked one to try and finish, so I'm going to work on the western.

Enjoy the rest of Sunday, wherever you are!

The road you didn't take...

Do you ever wonder if there are alternative universes?  That wonderful staple of so much science fiction (albeit generally at the cheesy twaddle end of the spectrum), the alternative world where your life could have been different, where the entire history of humankind could have been different, where evolution itself could have been different...   Perhaps this is simply further evidence of my being a bit of a saddo, but I do wonder about it.  What if there really were numberless, infinite, endlessly variable alternative worlds?

I don’t wonder much about the perfect life I’m not leading (& that is probably pretty revealing, come to think of it!).  But I do wonder about all the universes in which I didn’t exist, or didn’t exist past the age of four, or fourteen, or twenty-two, or twenty-nine...  I could have been drowned, the first time I saw the sea (I threw myself into it headlong in my excitement, and was pulled out literally by my hair).  I had a mysterious fever when I was fourteen; it went away after a few days, but there could be universes where it didn’t...   It feels as though I am bending my brain and squashing it through a slot in a thick steel wall, when I try to imagine how I can imagine a world in which I am not there to imagine it.

I have jay-walked across so many busy roads in my life.  Every time I have ever taken a risk – whether jay-walking or something more serious - it could have worked out differently; and from each of those branching points, how many alternatives could have come? 

There are positive possibilities, as well as all this “I might not exist” stuff.  Things I look back on as horrible low points in my life could have been far worse, with the smallest twist of fate or shift of decision.  Several relationships that didn’t work out could instead have worked for longer, and then have failed far more dramatically and messily, than they did in this life.   We were pretty poor when I was a child, but we could have been far worse off.  My parents fought; but they could have fought far worse.  I hated school, but I could have had far more reason to do so.

If there are other universes, I’ll never know, anyway.  The song says “The roads you didn’t take run through rotten ground – don’t they?”  But I’ll never know.  My road has had its bumps, but by and large has run through good ground – or at least, through an interesting terrain.

There might be a universe somewhere in which I have always enjoyed perfect health and perfect self-confidence, a universe in which I got a great degree, made a wonderful marriage, had four lovely children, owned a beautiful home, was successful in every career choice and every pastime, and never had to lose anyone I loved.  Would that blessed lotus-eater me have been bored rigid, though? -  maybe even have been dissatisfied with her lot?  She might not have been aware that it was perfect, after all. 

And would she have wondered about alternative universes, in which she and her perfect happy life had never existed at all?

Another week gone and by gum! -

By gum, the Olympics are upon us at last.  After all the years of planning and money worries and bad press (and the odd touch of chaos and old night), we're there.  The Opening Ceremony is tonight; and I don't care what anyone says, I am looking forward to it.

On Tuesday the Olympic Torch came through Kew Gardens; a very jolly occasion, festal and crazy, with boiling sun beating down on everyone.  This morning it came by again, but in conditions that could not have been a greater contrast; classic English summer rain, misty skies and startled cormorants on the Thames.  The royal barge Gloriana slipped by, oars swinging, white-and-gold banners flying, with the flame burning in a sort of giant teakettle in the bows; accompanied by assorted rowing club teams, a lot of police divers in rubber dinghies, the Port of London pilot boat and the RNLI.  They glided past me on the river bank and on towards Kew Bridge, sirens echoing, to vanish under the central arch in the quiet drizzle.

What more?  I managed to write the love scene I had been brooding about, and am pleased to report that it came off fairly well, so far as I can tell at the moment, anyway.   I also watched another of my sale dvds; "Inception".  I do love a good bit of Science Fiction, and this is more than good, it's corking.  I won't try to describe it though, as on top of having a good cast and some stonking special effects, it also has a plot that is deliciously complex and requires a proper degree of mental engagement.  Go on, treat yourself, engage with this one; it's worth it.  So far the three films I bought for a total of £12 a couple of weeks ago have been one rollicking good fun (MI4) and one terrific (Inception); let's hope "The Town" scores as high (no prizes for guessing one of the reasons why I bought that - but I had been on the lookout for it turning up in a sale anyway, as I do love a good policier, and this one got really excellent reviews.  If as I suspect the Man of the Moment turns in the sort of bottled-up raging intensity he seems to specialise in, playing a murderous nut-job,  I'll probably end up trying to hide behind the bed).

The bad news is, tonight I have a stomach ache, and am promised to help TCI with more decorating this weekend; I'm hoping the stomach ache goes away, so that I will be useful to her rather than gripey and ill, and consequently slow with a paintbrush.  But for now I am thinking, hmm, a plain supper, watch the Olympics opening, write a bit, and bed at a civilised hour. 

A year ago today...

A year ago today, at about this time, I had just got home from the A&E department with a broken wrist. I had been x-rayed, examined, and strapped up in a Fortuna splint, and I had an appointment at the Fracture Clinic for the next morning. I trailed in, somehow got out of my coat, and then struggled round the kitchen, making myself a cup of tea and some toast, I rang my boss, then my mother, and then I sat down and felt sorry for myself.

It’s amazing, looking back on the last twelve months, to think I have accomplished anything at all this year. There were times when I felt I would never get through the near-eight weeks I was in plaster. Then there were times, after the plaster came off, when I feared I’d never get the use of my hand back. There were times when I felt I’d never again have a scrap of spare energy. Any kind of shock or anything remotely out of the ordinary could reduce me to tears. I slept badly for months and toiled through life bribing myself onward with meals out, trips to the ballet, chocolate and alcohol.

I am very, very grateful that that time is over. I am very grateful to the NHS for all the treatment and support, and to everyone who bore with me while I was so slow, so clumsy and so tired all the time. I’m very grateful too for having had the grit to stick at my exercises. I didn’t feel very gritty, but something reminded me, each time I wanted to fold up and cry, that there really was no other option. I’m grateful to the still small voice within, that shouted at me and kept me going.

And, above all, I am very grateful that nothing worse has happened to me. When I think of some of the horrors that people bear, the illnesses and accidents, the devastating effects of natural disasters and wars... my blood runs cold at the thought. A simple broken wrist gave me such a bitter endurance test, even here in a wealthy, civilised country like this. My prayers and thoughts go to everyone who is struggling with circumstances far worse than mine were; may their gods be with them, may their life not fail them.

I’d had all sorts of plans for what I meant to do in 2010; and despite the first six months of the year having been almost entirely focussed on getting back the use of my right hand and arm, I have still made some progress on them. Given the circumstances, this pleases me inordinately.

In particular, I’ve finally started on trying to get an agent for my writing. Agent No 1 turned “GY” down; the first three chapters are now with Agent No 2. If she also says no too, then I move on to Agent No 3, and so on down the list. It may take some time to get anywhere - I may never get anywhere at all - but I have overcome that huge, smothering fear about showing my work, and that means a good deal to me.

I’ve also begun on my “Working through the back burner items” project, and it’s proving really worthwhile. I’m trying to draft a synopsis and make a few notes about where an idea came from and what I see as the theme of a story, and the results are fascinating. Doing this really clarifies how ready (or not) a story is. It brings all the glitches and weaknesses to the fore, but it also fires up my creativity, thinking of the things I want to do.

Another odd discovery I’m making as a result of this exercise is the quantity of common threads between the stories. Some of these were expected – for example, I am a whole-hearted romantic, and I love Science Fiction and the fantastic, and it shows. But so far, if I had to pick an overarching theme of the stories I want to tell, it would have to be “redemption”, and I would not have anticipated that.

The “back burner” project also gives me something relatively simple to do of an evening, if I’m tired and feeling uncreative. Each synopsis is done-with in a few pages at most; I don’t need to follow through with the details, just explain the basics. It doesn’t stretch me, but at the end of each one I do I still feel I’ve achieved something.

Constructive stuff...

Yesterday evening I:

Sewed patches on three pairs of trousers

Did a lightening extra edit on GY after re-reading part of it and seeing a new shade of purple where I'd not spotted it before

Made and ate a nice stir-fry with smoked tofu and greens

Watched the film of "Let the Right One in" - beautifully made and acted, not particularly scary, very, very sad. One of the best films-of-the-book I've come across. Could the fact that John Ajvide Lindquist wrote the screenplay based on his own novel have anything to do with it?

And - had a very good dream. One of my favourite sorts of dream, the kind that gives one the germ of a story. GY started with a dream, and eventually led me to over 100,000 words. No idea if this dream is cooking like that, but it was still a good dream. A Sci-Fi dream (oh, yes, I'm low, I am).

Ballet, History, and Science Fiction.

I’ve had a great weekend… Ballet, Sci-Fi, pizza, sunshine and a stately home.

What did I say a week or so ago about Science Fiction being a great genre when well-handled? I watched two movies this weekend, both of which, in very different ways, were worth watching. One was fun, with beautiful period costumes and lovely settings in the Czech Republic, but it had plot holes you could ride a bicycle through and a casual amorality that left an aftertaste. The other was terrific; thought-provoking, intelligent, scary and moving, and full of really big ray guns. More of this anon - you can have fun guessing what the two films were, while I talk about ballet for a bit.

On Friday evening I was at a Masterclass at the Linbury Studio, watching two young ballerinas being coached as the fairies of the seasons in Ashton’s “Cinderella”, followed by two Ugly Sisters going through some of their comedy scenes. I started off drawing the dancers, and as before I got a couple of good sketches and a lot of zen spaghetti. I couldn’t draw the fellas (the Ugly Sisters are danced by men, as classic Pantomime Dames) as I was laughing too much.

Masterclasses are fascinating. They give one a chance to see just a scrap of the hard work that underlies those polished performances one sees in the main theatre. To watch a lass being taken through a series of fiendish variations, over and over, till she is dripping with perspiration and puffing for breath, yet all the time continuing to move with grace and precision, is astonishing and a bit alarming, and fills one with respect for the dedication needed to attain that skill – and that level of fitness.

And to watch Philip Mosley’s snub-nosed hobbit of a shorter Ugly Sister and Gary Avis’s rubber-faced (but still very cute) taller Ugly Sister ramping up their comedy till your sides are aching is awe-inspiring in a different way, too. I do like Gary Avis, and it is nice to see him get to do some comedy, after all those villainous gaolers and vicious Tybalts, and noble French Princes who never get the girl, and doomed Hilarions.

Yesterday I had a day out, with no grocery shopping or cleaning; instead I went into Richmond, mooched in the shops, had lunch at Pizza Express and then walked along the Thames towpath to the beautiful National Trust property of Ham House. The sun was out and along the river bank groups of people were strolling, walking dogs, birdwatching, going fishing... Buds were breaking and the willows were just starting to turn green, and there were clumps of daffodils in the water meadows. I watched the rowers and the ducks and made friends with a lot of dogs, and came down to Ham feeling full of good will to all men.

I last visited Ham House on a school trip when I was about fourteen; my O’level History course included a module on “The Social History of the English Country House”, which at least got us some good field trips. But I haven’t been back since. Walking around yesterday, what struck me was how much my dim memories of Ham had informed the fictional house of Falmory in “Gabriel Yeats”. I have spent a lot of time “in” Falmory in recent years, so much so that at times it felt like a homecoming.

The smells of dust and furniture polish, the tapestries and shining furniture and checkerboard marble floors, the paintings looking down with their distant smiles, and the magnificent carved staircase, it was all so right, somehow, so purely and truly the imagined Falmory itself; it moved me strangely, to find myself there, “- and know the place for the first time.”

As the NT were having a free entry weekend, I spent money in the shop that I would otherwise have spent on my entrance fee, and then treated myself to the luxury of a full Cream Tea (with proper Cornish clotted cream), sitting in the sun in the formal kitchen garden behind the House, where the first hyacinths were blooming in the shelter of old brick walls, and buds were opening on the espaliered peaches. Then I went back across the water meadows to the bus stop at the bottom of Richmond Hill, and home again with a heart full of sunshine and history.

My Saturday night movie was “The Illusionist”; Edward Norton being handsome and enigmatic as stage magician Eisenheim, in a mystery set in an alternative 1900 Vienna (the give-away is that there’s a Crown Prince who never existed). It’s good fun; not a film to take too seriously, but classy entertainment. The protagonists are credible, as are the villain and the compromised Chief of Police, and it looks fabulous (and Edward Norton is startlingly sexy in a gangly, repressed-intensity kind of way).

As regards Eisenheim’s illusions, the film makers want to have their cake and eat it; to say “yes, of course it is all just stage magic, all illusionism” while not actually showing how most of it is done, so that it still looks beyond belief. I felt that was a bit of a fudge, to be frank.

There are two other big problems. One is that the main big plot development is so full of holes that it doesn’t do too well to think about it afterwards. Of course, being me I did think about it, and so found myself also reflecting on our hero’s rather dodgy moral choices. We are asked to accept and approve the fact that he sets an innocent man up as a murderer. A very unpleasant man, it’s true, a licentious and violent man and one who is plotting treason; but a man who would be entirely innocent of the particular crime for which he is framed. With hindsight it sapped some of my sympathy for Eisenheim, and it also seemed out of character in Chief Inpector Uhl to be so cheerful when he discovers the truth, given that he also discovers he has been duped into contributing to the accused man’s downfall.

My Sunday night movie, on the other hand, was a winner; “District 9”. If you haven’t seen this (and always provided you are an SF-lover) see it asap. It's marvellous.

Sometimes, when something is much-praised, when one finally gets to experience it it is a wash-out in comparison to the hype. “Tectonic Plates” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral” both fell into this category for me (and that may well be the first time they’ve ever been lumped together!). But equally, sometimes things live up to their preview hype. And just occasionally they exceed it. “District 9” exceeds it.

It’s one of the best science fiction films I’ve seen in years; intelligent and nuanced, quite terrifyingly scary at one point, and full of subtle historical references, not only to the obvious issues of South African history (the whole thing is set in Johannesburg, mostly in a nightmarish slum township) but also to the Palestinian intifada, Europe under the Nazis, the Cherokee Trail of Tears... It’s intensely moral, but also scrupulously honest about moral decisions and personal valour - the hero is pretty deeply unheroic until he realises it’s all up for him and the only worthwhile thing he can do is save someone else. It’s horribly violent, but the violence is to a purpose, and one which would not be properly served if the violence were not shown (and a lot of the time the violence is also off-screen, illustrated by reactions and by a sudden splattering of gore, or seen in long-shot, rather than graphically foregrounded).

The leading man revels in the name of Sharlto Copley (Sharlto; is that one of those odd Afrikaaner names, like Charlize and Tarryn? I suppose it must be) and is astonishingly good. The aliens look real, and are refreshingly uncliché-d. There’s no attempt to make the ending conventionally happy. The filming style, slewing between mock-documentary and normal narrative action, ought to be an instant fail but instead works marvellously. It is, quite simply, brilliant.

What was I saying about Science Fiction being a great genre when well-handled? Well, there you are; a perfect case in point. Brilliant.

Random scatterings...

There was another bit of blue sky this morning, but it went away again.

The red and yellow apple was rather cotton-woolly when I ate it. It's okay, though, because The Rox only got it from a basket of free apples left in the staff kitchen, so someone else is responsible for buying mushy apples, not Her Roxiness.

I simply have to pass this on as despite the strong language it is so funny and so true, even for those who are not professional/succesful/published writers. Once it is known that you write, people say "Will you read my writing and tell me what you think of it? I really, really want an honest critique" - and then they hit the roof, or cry themselves to a saturated solution, when you do give them an honest critique. So you try giving a dishonest, fuzzy one (and know you have cheated, on many levels, just to avoid hassle) or you start saying "I never read other tyro writers' stuff" and sounding horrendously smug instead. Thanks to Hellie in Cape Town for putting me on to that link.

Thomson Holidays are still prejudiced against solo travellers. Their website now announces there are no seats left on the plane if you try to book as a single; then if you try to book for two people, suddenly the plane has plenty of room. They are stupid for turning away custom. And I am equally stupid for hoping they'll change their ways.

Watched half of "Contact" last night; saving the rest for Friday as I'm out tonight. What an interesting film; it explores the tension between scientific detachment and spirituality with sympathy for both sides. It's intelligent and exciting in equal measure, has lovely special effects (and shots of the real - and spectacular - Very Large Array in New Mexico), lovely Jodie Foster, lovely William Fichtner (sadly only in a small part) and Matthew McConaughey proving he can underact if he wants to... Science Fiction is a great genre when it is this well used.

I can now lift a small tray with two coffee cups on it - cups actually containing coffee, that is. I have been given a piece of pink Squeezy Therapeutic Exercise Sponge by the physiotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital. By the middle of the month I may graduate onto Squeezy Therapeutic Putty - or even Squeezy Balls... I soldier on with the two-minute-stretching exercises and the labourious lifting of half-kilo weights. I often ache by evening, but I won't give in.

There is a gorgeous white dog with a black patch on one side of his head, running about on Kew Green in the misty grey light.

Someone I was at grammar school with has written to me out of the blue. Hello, Carol!

Life is weird. Wouldn't change it for anything else, though. And even with this dull sky and chilly wind, and all the seagulls inland (scattering before the excited arrival of that eager little dog), it is still, slowly, edging towards spring.