A foolish consistency.

 

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Karli and I are away for the weekend in picturesque Victoria, where we're staying in an AirBnB micro-loft that can't be much more than 250 square feet - now I know what life would be like in the space-challenged megacities of some Malthusian version of the future (although the ceilings will probably be lower).*

We've visited Victoria a couple of times now, and we've started to develop a list of things to do and places to visit, which, in my case, obviously includes Munro's, Victoria's excellent indie bookstore.

I have yet to visit Munro's without finding something that a) I didn't expect to find; and b) wanted to buy. This visit was no exception - there in the science fiction and fantasy section was the full four book set of Chris Wooding's Tales of the Ketty Jay, an entertaining steampunk fantasy series that I'd previously read and enjoyed in digital format.

Unlike most steampunk, the Ketty Jay series takes place in its own reality, rather than an alternate history version of our own world. As such, Wooding is free to populate his tale with airships, pirates, golems, zombies, daemonists, and whatever else catches his fancy. The result is a fun light reading experience, full of adventure, drama, conflict, romance and dry humour.

Finding the entire Ketty Jay series is a bit of a happy coincidence in terms of timing – my friend Chris has been going through a bit of a steampunk phase in his reading, and I’d recommended the series to him. However, since I only have it as e-books and he doesn’t use any sort of e-reader, I was unable to lend it to him.

The only problem was that the four books at Munro's - all British imports - didn't match.  Parts one, two and four of the series were Gollancz Fantasy editions, and part three, The Iron Jackal, was from Indigo, with a completely different design sensibility. (And a note on the copyright page that it had originally been published by Gollancz.)

It actually hurt me a little bit to buy this mismatched quartet of novels, although I can't quite bring myself to blame Munro's buyer for the situation. At least they had the full set, and if this is the price that they had to pay to make that happen, then so be it. It does make me a little curious, though. These aren't just different editions, they're different publishing houses. How does this happen? Did Wooding have contractual issues between the second and third books?

A little research reveals that the matching Gollancz edition of The Iron Jackal is available on Amazon.ca, so apparently he didn't have to switch publishers, but it's ridiculously expensive, clocking in at close to $60 for a new copy. Interesting - is there some reason that the third book in that production run is in short supply?

(Damn it...I also see that there's an omnibus edition of all four books for $30....no, wait, that's for Kindle, so I haven't made a huge mistake in buying them separately.)

I realize full well that it’s irrelevant that one of the copies came from a different publisher: the content will be the same**, it’s just a bit of foolish consistency to want the cover designs to match. Regardless, if I see the opportunity to purchase a (reasonably priced) replacement copy of the Gollancz edition of The Iron Jackal, rest assured that my little mind will jump, JUMP at the chance - hobgoblin or not.

  - Sid

* Actually, it's quite comfortable for a weekend away, as well as being affordable and perfectly located.  But small.

** Probably. After all, I have a Science Fiction Book of the Month Club omnibus edition of Michael Moorcock Elric novels which disappointingly omits a line from my much-read Lancer edition of Stormbringer, the final novel in the series. So you never know.

"You really have no idea what it was. "

The movie adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's 2014 novel Annihilation represents a very specific area of science fiction storytelling:  the alien enigma.  Very few of those stories end with a resolution to the central mystery, and Annihilation is not an exception to the rule.

It's been described as a combination of Contact, Arrival and The Fountain, but none of those references really touch the core of the movie.  For a better cinematic starting point in the challenges of comprehending the unknown, I'd suggest 2001, the 2010 guerilla film Monsters*, or either of the movie adaptations of Solaris, Stanislau Lem's classic SF novel.

As in those films, the unknown in Annihilation remains just that: unknown.  The mystery is never solved or understood, and we are left to judge it only by its ambiguous effects on those who have attempted to explore it.

At the core of Annihilation is the Shimmer, a zone of anomalous effects that surrounds the impact point of a meteorite at a lighthouse on the Florida coastline.  The slowly expanding Shimmer has defied analysis, and no one has returned from any of the attempts to explore it.

This changes at the start of the film with the unexpected reappearance of one of the mission members: Sergeant Kane, the husband of cellular biologist Lena, played by Natalie Portman.  Kane, who has been missing for a year, is disoriented and suffering from some kind of physical trauma when he returns to their home.

Taken into custody by the government on their way to the hospital, Kane and Lena are transferred to Area X, the research base for examining the phenomenon, where Lena decides to join the next group of explorers to enter the Shimmer as Kane slowly deteriorates in quarantine.

Annihilation's disjointed, staccato pacing only emphasizes the strangeness of the environment that the five-woman team of scientists ventures into.  This small group of interlopers offers a full spectrum of responses to the strangeness of the Shimmer and its disconcerting effects on their minds and bodies: confrontation, defiance, curiousity, acceptance, and fear, as demonstrated through strong performances by the excellent ensemble cast of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Portman, Tuva Novotny, Tessa Thompson, and Gina Rodriguez.

My main criticism of the film is that it doesn't go far enough in its evocation of the alien - I expected it to be far more extreme in its depiction of the oddities created by the Shimmer.  Only during the final scenes at the impact point of the meteorite does the movie attempt to fully reach into the bizarre possibilities of alien existence.

 

It's hard to say whether Annihilation succeeds or not - that would depend entirely on what you think it's trying to do.  It's deliberately non-linear, ambiguous and open ended, and as such it falls well outside of the standard approach to storytelling.  It may be that its success lies in exactly that, its lack of answers to the questions it raises.

- Sid

* In which the Mexican/US border is defended by a massive wall, in case you were wondering where Donald Trump gets his ideas.

One single tribe.

"What happens now determines what happens to the rest of the world."

T'Challa, Black Panther

Black Panther, the 18th film set in the Marvel Comics Universe, has proven to be an incredible success.  The movie is full of powerful dramatic performances by a superb cast of actors, and its record-breaking box office performance clearly demonstrates that the story of T'challa, king of Wakanda, resonates with audiences on an international level.

That being said, I have to confess that there were some parts of Black Panther that disappointed me.  It may be caused by sheer familiarity with the various obligatory tropes and themes, but there weren't very many places where the movie surprised me - let's be honest, T'challa's journey from victory to defeat to victory is very much what you would expect it to be.

In fact, his opponent's journey is a more interesting one in some ways, to the point where Erik Killmonger comes very close to being the hero of the movie.  It would only take a very slight change in the plot for the film to become the tale of a lost son of Wakanda who returns from exile after the cowardly murder of his father, and then fights the son of the killer for the throne of the country, after which he will have the opportunity to use his new position to change the outside world.

Ultimately, the thing that does set Black Panther apart from the standard superhero movie formula is the cultural and moral background to the story, as symbolized by the country of Wakanda.

 

An impressive creation that draws upon a myriad of cultural influences to create an idealized African city-state with one foot in the past, and one in the future, Wakanda combines tradition and innovation:  its skyscrapers feature elements from thatched huts, its scientists wear clothing patterned after classic African tribal costumes, and it relies upon both technology and ritual observances.

Wakanda is also a thought experiment, the idealized dream of African country that has been free from the consequences of exploitation, colonization, and war.  However, the dream is a tainted one: the Wakandans are very aware of their privileged status compared to the countries that surround them, and justifiably fearful that to extend a helping hand would be to share the issues that plague their neighbours.  As W'Kabi, leader of the Border Tribe, says to T'Challa, "You let the refugees in, you let in all their problems."  As such, they are only willing to provide minimal aid to other countries through undercover operatives.

The dream is also something of a sad one when it is compared to real world. Wakanda is a what-if Africa, one which stands in stark contrast to the problems that have plagued the real African subcontinent for generations, problems caused by both long-standing tribal conflicts and the unwanted interventions of European interlopers.

It is the problems of Africa and of the underprivileged around the planet that provide the real story for this movie.  The underlying theme of Black Panther deals specifically with the fundamental question of intervention versus inaction, of community and unity, of whether or not power should be used to help the weak, even if it means the end of one's own comfortable security and the possibility of mutual failure.

 

In the final analysis, the hero decides to do exactly what heroes are supposed to do:  save the world.  Except in this case, he decides that the world should be saved for everyone, by a little bit, every single day.  It's a shame that there aren't more heroes like that in the real world.

- Sid