The Elfs Control Hollywood

Skip the film, play the game.

The title to this post hit me like a brick while reading John C. Wright's The Swan Knight's Son. Given that elfs serve as the primary antagonists in a world where they represent the primary threat to Christendom, it's a throwaway line meant to serve as red meat for the faithful.  Yet it serves as a throwaway line that gives the reader pause...it's just plausible enough to make you wonder how fictional the book really is.

Case in point, the recent Hollywood version of Ben Hur.  There are all kinds of problems with this film.  The secular problems are easy:

• They paid for Morgan Freeman to be in it, so of course they have to get their money's worth by having him narrate the opening scene.  It may be the most superfluous narration I've ever seen.  Freeman literally tells us what we are watching, right now.
• The characters are unlikable. The mother is so obnoxious, I enjoyed seeing her arrested by the Romans and didn't care about her fate. The protagonist dooms his family for the sake of a stranger who never receives his comeuppance for all the trouble he causes.
• The sister and love interest are pretty much indistinguishable. That makes for some really confusing make-out sessions.
• The Roman empire is painted as a wonderfully diverse realm where everyone lives and works and trades together in peace and harmony.  Every single crowd scene was carefully crafted to show people of all races and colors and creeds and dress.  Okay, fine, but you're doing this to me right after telling me the Roman Empire was totes xenophobics, guys, 'cause the only reason Rome invaded her neighbors was because they were different.  Does. Not. Compute.

The religious problems were infinitely worse.

• One of the two main leads responds to Hippy Jesus' call for love with the words, "How progressive of you."  Nice and subtle, Hollywood.
• The jerk that caused Ben Hur's downfall and all the pain and suffering in Act One by failing to assassinate Pontius Pilate re-appears in Act Three. Instead of his just desserts, he is revealed to be the crucified thief Jesus promises will sit at his side in Heaven.  You can't paint a character that unsympathetically and then reward him at the end without some serious character growth or character beats.
• The most unforgiveable deviation from scripture occurs when Pontius Pilate identifies Jesus as the real threat to Roman control over Israel. Apparently the writers aren't familiar with Pilate trying on multiple occasions to avoid crucifying Jesus.  Apparently, the writers are familiar with the fact that Christianity worked to preserve the Roman Empire (and the subsequent Eastern Empire in particular) for centuries.

The whole thing, top to bottom, was just dreadful.  You can give them some credit for a great galley-slave battle scene and a great chariot race scene, but without the emotional investment in the characters those are hollow stage-pieces.  Compare the weight of any arena scene in Gladiator.  The fact that Maximus is so much more heroic, wise, and likeable imbues those scenes with a deeper impact than the herky-jerky visuals could ever achieve on their own.

In short, Ben Hur, wins my award for 'worst movie I saw in 2016', right at the final turn.  Congratulations on butchering film-making and the story of Christ both, Hollywood.  You've made the elfs proud once more.

The Invisible City, By Brian K. Lowe

This is my kind of throwback. 

Brian K. Lowe is one of those authors that Cirsova introduced to me.  His story, Hoskin's War, in the second issue featured a grossly under-utilized setting for fantasy - the American frontier in the days of the American War of Independence.  It took a nudge and a Christmas sale, but I've finally confirmed that Brian's long form work is as good as his short form work.

The story kicks off with that wonderful trope of a WWI soldier stumbling into a far flung world so very much unlike his own.  Through grit, wariness, cleverness, and a bit of luck, he survives his first few days in this alien place and goes on to fight for love, honor, and freedom.

Brian's writing style is great.  This book is told in the first person, and he never forgets to describe the advanced tech thrown at the hero in a way that a 1920's young officer would.  Clee, the hero, references Wells and Verne, indicating some familiarity with science-fiction that give him a leg up when it comes to dealing with the fantastic.  The prose is solid.  It has an brutal musicality to it that just works.  Check it:

How ironic, then, that such was my own goal, to track Farren down wherever he might run and wrest from him that which I  desired with my heart, and which he desired with only the basest animal emotions: Hana Wen. Whence he would fly, I knew not, but the answer would likely be found in the midst of his fellows. With that end in mind, I marched boldly into the aliens' headquarters, planning to elicit advice from the Library. Hardly had I stopped before the elevator than two Nuum pulled up even with me, seized me by the arms, and whisked me away.

That's some great stuff, right there.  Feels almost Zelznian, you dig?  It's plain spoken, yet it also has a rolling rhythm to it you don't often find these days. Here's another way you can tell that this guy writes with a #PulpRevolution aesthetic - he isn't afraid to stick Christian words into the mouth of a character born and raised in an early-twentieth century Christendom:

Someday, when the final horn sounds and the multitudes of Mankind gather around the Lord's throne for judgment, He will rise up to His full magnificent height, and He will point His majestic finger, and He will say: "Behold the irony of Man, that I should grant him reason, and he should squander it." And He will be pointing at me.

Used to be passages like this were hen's teeth.  They used to be refreshing to read, but I've been reading a lot of Wright these days, so that sort of reference is no longer just a nice change of pace.  Over the course of 2016, this sort of thing has become damn near a requirement for me.

The one downside is that the middle act seems to meander a bit. It doesn't really.  It turns out the meandering about is important for the resolution of the book, but until you see how it pays off, it does seem like something of a wandering travelogue of the new world the hero finds himself in.  Stick with it, it's worth it.

When people talk about #RegressHarder, this is exactly what they are talking about.  Everything from the basic plot, to the inclusion of an honest to gosh hero, a bit of genuine romance handled with a deft touch, and even the narrator's voice, it all harkens back to earlier days of science-fiction.  And yet, Brian K. Lowe doesn't just write a 1950's work of fiction, he writes a modern day story using all the best bits of the 1950s style.  The voice, the romance, the heroism, and the unbridled sense of optimism all make reading The Invisible City a joy.

The Yanthus Prime Job

It looks like this blog may just be turning into a book review blog.  Things are pretty crazy right now what with the audio book recording, trying to finish "Five Dragons" before the end of the year - a long shot, to be honest - cranking away on a couple of sooper seekrit projects that will be revealed in the new year or forever hidden...oh, and family and overtime in the salt mines. 

Those are all excuses.  To be honest, in the last few months I've just been thrilled to discover great writer after great writer.  Reading Cirsova, and finding a couple of great social nodes on Twitter, have introduced me to a number of great writers.  It's an embarrassment of riches.  Combine that with technology that allows me to sneak in a chapter or two at lunch or in quiet moments at work, and it's almost embarrassing how much reading I've been able to accomplish over the last few month.

Eventually things change, as they are wont to do, and you may find things in these spaces other than reviews.  You know, things like politics, film, writing, wargaming...I do miss wargaming...and philosophy.  But for now, it's books, Books, BOOKS!
 

 Why, lookee here!  It's another book.  Not just another book, but another @RobKroese book.  Remember when I said, "[Starship Grifter is] just not my cuppa joe."?

Yeah...about that.

The Yanthus Prime Job is a novella for a dollar.  It's short.  It's fun.  It's protagonist has the standard, "one last job" motivation, but we all know that for characters like this, there's always another job waiting just around the corner.  A writer's gotta eat, after all.

This title is set in the same universe as Starship Grifters, and it features the same sorts of characters - grifters, conmen, and thieves.  The protagonist of this work is a bartender trying to go straight after a career working for the Ursa Minor Mafia*.  Deep in debt, she hatches a plot to steal a valuable thing and use the proceeds to buy her way out of debt to the mafia and escape Yanthus Prime for parts unknown. 

The story is half standard heist, half science-fiction.  The heist is easily recognizable from movies ranging from the 1940s to today - break into a secure museum and steal a valuable macGuffin - but includes several clever science-fiction nods.  Her (sort of?) low tech solution to defeat the standard high-tech security measures is the sort of plan that could only work in science-fiction or fantasy.  Otherwise, most of her gear (grapple guns, chameleon suits, and plasma glass cutters, for example) is the standard thief kit.  Aside from the key plot-point used to defeat the security cameras, the break-in and escape could be plunked into any setting.  That's actually a compliment.  Rather than succumb to the temptation to make everything whiz-bang gee-whillickers new SF you've never seen before, Kroese wisely stops while the stopping is good.  The hook is all you need.

If you've watched a lot of heist movies, you'll see a few of the double and triple crosses coming a mile away, but there are enough surprises left in Kroese's pockets to make it worth reading through to the end.


  *  Get it?  Ursa Minor Mafia?  Ursa means "bear".  It's the Russians.  Kroese has a gift for nomenclature that is downright Futuramaian.  I mean, the man has a book out called Shrodingers Gat, for crying out loud.  How can you not love that?