It Doesn't Have To Be Right…

… it just has to sound plausible

Author Archives: iansales


by Leave a comment

Readings and watchings 10

It’s been a month since the last one, so here goes:

Books
Interstellar Empire, John Brunner (1976), is a fix-up of three novellas from 1953, 1958 and 1965. They’re juvenilia and it shows. For a start, it’s “enslaved”, not “slavered”. Gah. And despite being set in a post-collapse galactic empire, everyone talks like comedy barbarians. Brunner admits in an included essay that the novellas were partly inspired by a desire to invent a workable swords & spaceships universe – ie, interstellar travel but each world possessing no more than Dark Ages tech (although a helicopter does make an appearance). The mention of mutants and telepathic powers, however, in no way explains the magic powers which feature in one of the novellas. Aldiss did it much better in Starswarm and Galaxies Like Grains of Sand.

Ascendancies, DG Compton (1980), I wrote about here.

Planet of the Apes, Pierre Boulle (1963), was terrible. The film is a great deal better. Although originally published in France in 1963, this book reads like it was written forty years earlier. And, annoyingly, the author (or perhaps the translator of the Penguin edition I read) refers to chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans throughout as “monkeys”. That’s in spite the book’s title. Gah. The story opens with a couple in a spaceship finding a message in a bottle floating in space – which is too dumb a concept to be taken seriously, as paper simply wouldn’t survive in space. The message is the story of Ulysse Mérou, who lands on an inhabitable planet in the Betelgeuse system and is captured by intelligent apes. He’s an unpleasant narrator, the swapping of humans for apes and vice versa is painfully obvious a conceit, and the details of the apes’ world don’t really add up. Avoid.

Alanya to Alanya (2005), Renegade (2006) and Tsunami (2007), L Timmel Duchamp, are the first three books of the Marq’ssan Cycle. I’m currently reading the fourth book, and I plan to write about all five once I’m done. Just like I planned to write about the five books of Gwyneth Jones’s Bold as Love Cycle – the piece on those is almost done, and should be going up here soon-ish. So far, however, the Marq’ssan Cycle is proving an excellent thought-provoking read, and I’d certainly recommend it.

The Collector, John Fowles (1963). Perhaps when reading an author’s oeuvre, you should start with their debut novel. I didn’t. The first novel I read by Fowles was A Maggot, and I thought it was excellent. When I later read The French Lieutenant’s Woman, I was even more impressed. The Collector can’t match either of those. Fowles’ maintenance of his two characters’ voices is good throughout The Collector, and the novel is cleverly-structured. But it all seems a bit, well, tame. The eponymous entomologist kidnaps Miranda, locks her in his cellar, and then treats her like an imprisoned princess. When you compare that to similar situations from television shows such as CSI, or even from the real world, it all seems a bit too comfortable and home counties. Disappointing.

The Girl At The Lion d’Or, Sebastian Faulks (1989), is Faulks’ second novel. The eponymous character is a young woman of mysterious background who takes a waitress job at the titular hotel in France during the early 1930s. She immediately falls in love with wealthy lawyer Charles Hartmann. The two have an affair, and she tells him her secret. This changes his view of her, and so he breaks off the relationship… The Girl At The Lion d’Or has a good sense of time and place – and the heroine’s secret is very much a product of the time – but the writing is a little too flowery in places. But then it is only Faulks’ second novel…

The Secret History Omnibus Volume 1, Jean-Pierre Pécau (2010), is a graphic novel. Back in the Stone Age, four youths were each gifted with a powerful magic rune – the shield, sword, chalice and lance. These four Archons were immortal, and have battled throughout human history for supremacy. When one’s plan backfired during the early years of the Holy Roman Empire, it created William of Lecce, an evil immortal, who has subsequently been responsible for all the wars and tribulations since. There’s a good idea at the heart of this graphic novel, and the historical periods are handled well. But a lot seems unexplained, and it’s easy to get confused. This first volume covers from the Stone Age to the First World War, with episodes set in Ancient Egypt, the reign of Frederick I, the Great Fire of London, and Napoleonic France. I’ll be picking up Volume 2 when that becomes available.

The Flying Saucer, Bernard Newman (1950), I read to review for Interzone.

Films
Déjà Vu, dir. Tony Scott (2006), is one of those high-concept thrillers Hollywood likes to rip bleeding from the oeuvre of Philip K Dick. Except this one isn’t based on anything by PKD. A bomb explodes on a ferry in New Orleans, killing everyone aboard. Denzel Washington investigates, and is seconded to a super-secret taskforce which has access to… a time portal. They can see back in time, to the very moment of the explosion. There’s some guff about wormholes and Einstein-Rosen Bridges, but this is Hollywood so it’s not very plausible. It all ends up with Washington getting sent back in time to rescue a woman who might hold a clue to the bomber’s identity. Entertaining, but it’s best not to think about it too hard.

The Men Who Stare At Goats, dir. Grant Heslov (2009), surprised me. I was expecting some stupid gung-ho thriller related to the title, but it turned out to be a funny and slightly offbeat comedy. The book on which it was based is actually non-fiction. Yes, the US military really did train soldiers in telepathy and telekinesis. Not to mention lots of other weird hippy-type crap. Not that they were successful. At least, not in the real world. In this movie, it’s left open. George Clooney is good, Spacey plays a nasty piece of work convincingly, but Ewan McGregor seems a bit out of place. A fun film.

Lured, dir. Douglas Sirk (1947), is an early thriller by the master of melodrama. It’s set in London, but made in the US with a US cast. Which makes for an odd viewing experience as the accents are variable. Lucille Ball plays an American, however. She gets embroiled in the hunt for a serial killer when Scotland Yard ask her to act as bait. There are several Sirk touches in the film, but it’s not a patch on his later stuff. It’s too light-hearted to really pass as noir, and a bit too bizarre in places as well; and some of the faux Hitchcockian staging sits at odds with the more conventionally-filmed interior scenes. One for fans.

Fanboys, dir. Kyle Newman (2008), I reviewed for VideoVista here.

The Time Traveler’s Wife, dir. Robert Schwentke (2009), I watched because I’ll probably never get around to reading the book. And, to be honest, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Man stalks woman through time, right from when she was really young. It struck me as a bit unhealthy. Meh.

Black Lightning, dir. Dimitriy Kiselev & Aleksandr Voytinskiy (2009), I reviewed for VideoVista here.

Sherlock Holmes, dir. Guy Ritchie (2009), entertained me more than I expected. I don’t have much time for Ritchie’s films, but a few people had told me Sherlock Holmes was actually quite good. And so it proved. Nothing to do with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, though. Well, it was about a detective and his sidekick; and they happened to be named Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. But that’s about as far as it went. Entertaining, if supremely silly. It’s been a couple of weeks since I watched the film, and I find I can’t remember any of the plot. Which pretty much sums it up.

The Woman In Question, dir. Anthony Asquith (1950), I reviewed for VideoVista here.

La Reine Margot, dir. Patrice Chéreau (1994). They were a nasty lot those French royals in the 16th century. We might piss and moan about our current government dumping on the population from a great height, but at least they haven’t manufactured a massacre just to keep themselves in power. That’s what the mother of King Charles IX did in France in 1572. Since he was Catholic, and she didn’t want the Protestants to gain the throne, she had a bunch of them killed, which in turn sparked off a wave of mob violence. As many as 30,000 might have died (estimates vary). The title character is the sister of King Charles IX, who is married off to Henri, King of Navarre (a separate kingdom in the Pyrenees), who is Protestant. This is allegedly to placate the French Protestants, but it doesn’t go very well. Henri is imprisoned, and forced to convert to Catholicism. He eventually escapes, with the help of his wife. But not before King Charles IX’s mother tries to poison him, but inadvertently poisons her son, the king. When he dies, his brother takes the throne. But then he dies too, and Henri ends up as King of France. So he got the last laugh, after all. You couldn’t make this sort of stuff up. If you put it in a fantasy novel, readers would say it was too implausible. This film adaptation is noted for its excellence, and it’s easy to see why. Although sixteenth century France seems a bit minimalist and flat, and there are lots of meaningful glances between members of the cast. And it’s a long film. But it’s definitely worth seeing.

Edge of Darkness (1985), is the original BBC television series, not the inferior Hollywood remake. I thought I’d seen this before, perhaps when it was originally broadcast. But apparently not. Bob Peck plays a Yorkshire policeman, whose activist daughter is shot by an assassin on his doorstep. It turns out it’s all to do with Northmoor, a nearby nuclear waste facility based in an old mine. Peck’s character was a bit odd, even kissing one suspect in order to get him to confess, and later trying a similar trick on the assassin. Also bonkers was Joe Don Baker’s CIA agent, who helps Peck to crack the case because it’s in the interest of the US to blow the lid on the secret British plutonium project and the sale of Northmoor to a US billionaire. I can see why the series has become a cult favourite – it’s not the straightforward thriller a summary of its plot might suggest. It’s a little odd, but compelling viewing nonetheless. And the ending is completely mad.

The Last Mimzy, dir. Robert Shaye (2007), is a genre film which seems to have slipped beneath a lot of people’s radars. It’s based on a short story by Lewis Padgett (AKA husband and wife Henry Kuttner and CL Moore). Basically, the future is in trouble, so they send kids’ toys back into the distant past in the hope of educating a child to send them what they need. A brother and sister, aged six and twelve, who live in Seattle in the present day find the toys. And they make the kids smarter. And also provide some good sfx. While this is a family film, I think it’s concept is a little too high for its target audience. It’s done well, but it tries too hard to get its central conceit across and comes close to losing its viewers in parts. Entertaining, but, well, perhaps the filmmakers shouldn’t have thought about it too hard.

Death Watch, dir. Bertrand Tavernier (1980), I wrote about here.


by 7 Comments

Watch Death Watch

So I managed to get hold of a copy of Bertrand Tavernier’s adaptation – La mort en direct, or Death in Full View, or Death Watch – of DG Compton’s The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe. And I watched it last night.

The book was published in 1974 (I wrote about it here). The film was released six years later in 1980. It was directed by Bertrand Tavernier, and starred Romy Schneider, Harvey Keitel, Harry Dean Stanton, Max von Sydow, and Thérèse Liotard (and a young Robbie Coltrane). Although the movie’s director is French, and the cast is international, it was filmed in Glasgow in English.

I think Death Watch is the first film by Tavernier I’ve seen. I was, of course, more interested in how it was adapted from the novel than in it as a film per se, but even so some parts seemed curiously inept. The editing is especially noticeable, featuring abrupt cuts which badly impact the flow of scenes. The cast also appear to be improvising… but after a night on the town and so suffering from bad hangovers. Some of the dialogue is not so much banal as downright phatic. In one scene, television producer Vincent (Harry Dean Stanton) picks up Roddy (Harvey Keitel) in his limousine. After settling into the car, Roddy asks with a smirk, “Did your handkerchief die?” Vincent gives an embarrassed laugh, and fiddles with the handkerchief poking from the breast-pocket of his jacket. Dialogue in books, plays and films rarely approaches realism because so much real-life dialogue is wasted breath.

The film also shifts the story from the title character, Katherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schenider), onto Roddy, the man who has had his eyes replaced by television cameras. The novel presents Roddy’s narrative in first-person, and Katherine’s in third-person, but Katherine is very much the subject of the story. She has to be for the ending to work. Focusing the film on Roddy makes it unbalanced. It is through Roddy’s eyes that we explore Katherine’s character, which means we should be looking out through them (as we do in the book). We should not see Harvey Keitel’s gurning mug plastered across the screen… Not that I’ve ever understood how Keitel manages to appear in so many well-respected films. He can’t act.

The film follows the plot of the book reasonably closely, although several scenes have been left out. Katherine is told of her fatal illness by a doctor – her reaction to this, and her husband’s response, are both treated quickly. Which makes her decision to run away, and so avoid appearing as contracted on the eponymous television programme, seem somewhat abrupt. She visits the Depot, a street market, and buys a disguise. She escapes her minder from the television studio (Robbie Coltrane), and spends the night in a church dormitory. This is where Roddy befriends her, and perhaps is one of the few scenes in the film in which Keitel does a good job. Together they go on the run, eventually making their way to Katherine’s ex-husband Gerald (Max von Sydow).

Few films are better than their source texts. Death Watch is not one of them. It is only when von Sydow appears on screen that the film feels as serious as its subject matter demands. Nor has Katherine’s character been built up enough to fully explain the choice she makes which ends the film.

Having said that, Glasgow makes suitably grim backdrop – although I felt the book deserved to be set in a town filled with Brutalist architecture. Its world felt grey and slab-faced, which Glasgow certainly isn’t. A couple of scenes were staged cheaply, and it shows in the sparseness of the set-dressing and extras. The acting is mostly good, but von Sydow is, as usual, excellent, and Keitel is, as usual, terrible. I’m glad I watched the film, but it’s not a patch on the book.


by 2 Comments

Mentioned in despatches

It must be some sort of milestone in a writer’s career when something of theirs is reviewed in the national press for the first time. Today is that day for me. In the Guardian Reviews section, Eric Brown has reviewed the Catastrophia anthology edited by Allen Ashley, and in which I have a story. Eric mentions four stories from the anthology, one of which is mine, and writes: “…the more sober, literary examination of the breakdown of society when humanity suffers apperceptive prosopagnosia – face-blindness – in Ian Sales’s affecting ‘In the Face of Disaster'”. You can see the full review here.


by 4 Comments

Looking backward from the Year 3000

I sometimes wonder if in the future they’ll look back at the 20th century as something of an aberration. During the 20th century, efforts were made, precipitated by two huge wars, to create just and fair societies for all – some using methods and ideologies more extreme than others. But the Soviet Experiment went down the pan, and most developed nations seem to be sliding down the slippery slope after it. We’re slowly returning to a world in which the privileged few callously exploit the masses in order to further enrich themselves and extend their power. In the old days, it was the royalty and nobility; now it’s the plutocrats and power-mongers.

Once they could use religion to control the great unwashed – and it still works in some places – but for many it no longer has the power in their lives it once possessed. So now they use the law. They’re putting in place legislation which undoes all those steps forward made in the past hundred years. And with the sort of bare-faced cheek only available to those for whom irony is an alien concept, they insist they’re doing it for our own good.

Which is not to say we’re not complicit. Popular culture celebrates the immoral profligacy of the rich, and heaps scorn on the poor. We admire the greed of the wealthy, when we should be angry at their squandering of resources, or their plundering of that which should belong to all of us. It’s all very well dreaming that any one of us could join their hallowed ranks – if, as they claim, we “work” hard enough – but we’re much more likely to find ourselves at the opposite end of the scale.

Science fiction and fantasy are as guilty as any other mode of entertainment. If sf can be characterised as ordinary people doing extraordinary things in extraordinary worlds, then we too often fail at the “ordinary people” part. No one is Paul Atreides; no one can be Paul Atreides. We can only escape our humdrum lives by being what we are not: empowered. And in sf and fantasy, those powers are extraordinary. They might be technological in origin, they might be magical. But it’s not a utopia unless we have them.

You could argue that there’s no drama in ordinary lives; or that the drama simply isn’t big enough or, well, dramatic enough. No one wants to read about serfs when they can read about princes, no one wants to read about a cook’s mate 3rd class when they can read about the admiral of the space fleet. But this is patently bollocks. True enough, a serf can’t change the world – not unless they’re suddenly handed magical powers – but there’s certainly room for adventure. But then fantasy is not about changing the world, it’s about maintaining the powers of the few. There’s nothing consolatory in being a serf, and nothing admirable in perpetuating their condition. But as long as they have it good in the royal castle, that’s all right then.

So, where are the fantasy genre’s Robespierres and Marats? Why must every peasant-hero be privileged at the start of the story? It’s not even as if they “work” hard for it. It’s a gift, it’s like winning the lottery. And all they do with their new-found power is… keep the privileged few in power. Among which they now number.

Sf may have a slightly better record, but there are far too many tropes in the genre’s lexicon which fail to address societies’ imbalances. Sf should not be justifying prejudices. Celebrating individualism just means you think you’re better than everyone else. And you’re not; no one is. So why are there no stories in which the Great Social Experiment of the 20th century took root? Why must we all imagine that in the future corporations will be more rapacious than they are now? Where are the stories in which there’s no need for one group of people to slaughter millions of others simply to impose their will, or co-opt their resources? Where are the stories in which corporations are carefully regulated so that they can’t “accidentally” bring the Earth, or the Galaxy, to the brink of disaster? The stories in which sacrifice is a personal choice, not an imposed one?

Yes, many authors have tried. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, for example. Iain Banks and his Culture, perhaps… Except the Culture is a post-scarcity society, and has not so much redressed any inequalities as rendered them moot. Which is not the same thing at all. There are other examples. But they’re still a minority.

It’s bad enough the history of the real world is a catalogue of actions by the privileged few extending and/or abusing their privileges. I seen no reason why we should perpetuate this in genre fiction.


by Leave a comment

Another book haul post

I’ve been very good recently – not only have I not added greatly to the To Be Read pile, but I have also pruned my collection of a few hundred paperbacks. Well, they were just sitting there, taking up shelf-space. I was never going to read them again; and some of them are readily available in charity shops and the like, so should I want to reread them I can easily pick up copies. So now I have a bit more room on the book-shelves. Which, of course, shall soon fill up. But only with deserving books…

Anyway, since the last one of these posts I have bought only the following books:

The new Banks, Surface Detail, which I plan to read soon-ish; the latest in Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series, Field Grey; and an omnibus edition of The Secret History Volume 1 by Jean-Pierre Pécau, Igor Kordey and Leo Pilipovic, a graphic novel detailing the exploits through human history of four immortals each gifted with a powerful magic rune.

Two non-fiction books: the title of the first pretty much describes its contents: Convair Advanced Designs. It’s about planes. The second, MoonFire, is a re-issue of Norman Mailer’s 1971 book about the Moon landings, Of A Fire on the Moon, but as a coffee-table tome by Taschen, with many, many excellent photographs. There’s a signed limited edition which costs around £600, and a “Lunar Rock Edition” priced from 60,000 to 480,000 Euros (because each of the 12 copies includes a piece of Moon rock). Mine is the bog-standard £27.99 edition. If you buy only one coffee-table book about Apollo, this looks to be the one you should get.

Here’s a pair of 1960s novels by a pair of forgotten British science fiction writers: Implosion by DF Jones, and 98.4 by Christopher Hodder-Williams. Look at the awful cover art. They don’t do cover-art like that anymore. I’ll be posting reviews of them here, just as I did for No Man Friday (here) and A Man of Double Deed (here).

Finally, a trio of first editions: The Insider by Christopher Evans; Johnnie Sahib, Paul Scott’s debut novel; and Twice Ten Thousand Miles by Frances Lynch. Yes, that last one is a romance historical novel, and the reason I purchased it is because Frances Lynch is a pseudonym of DG Compton. I’m quite looking forward to finding out how the perennially pessimistic and sardonic Compton handles romance historical fiction.


by 28 Comments

20 British sf films

I had this really good idea for a post, a sort of companion piece to my British sf Masterworks. Films… Science fiction films… British science fiction films. How about a list of the best twenty-five sf films from the UK? Everyone likes lists.

Except… I couldn’t find twenty-five good British sf films – either that I’d seen or that I’d would be willing to hold up as good cinema. So I picked twenty. And, to be honest, there are a few on the list that stretch the definition of “good” somewhat. There are also a few that do the same with “British”… Kubrick was American, as are Gilliam and Hyams; and Truffaut is French. And some of the films were made with US money, requiring US actors in the starring roles – but they were British productions, so they count for this list.

No doubt I’ve forgotten lots of really good sf films from the UK, so feel free to leave a comment and suggest some. But here is my list, in order of year of release:

1 – Things To Come, dir. William Cameron Menzies (1936) – there’s not much you can say about this. It’s an astonishing piece of cinema, especially given when it was made.
2 – The Quatermass Xperiment, dir. Val Guest (1955) – Quatermass had a powerful impact on British sf, so one of the three films featuring him deserves to make this list.
3 – The Day The Earth Caught Fire, dir. Val Guest (1961) – not only a disaster film, caused by testing nuclear weapons, but also a post-apocalypse film. The shots of empty cities remain creepy even today.
4 – First Men In The Moon, dir. Nathan H Juran (1964) – the recent Gatiss adaptation on BBC4 was entertaining, but there’s a bonkers charm to Lionel Jeffries’ portrayal of Professor Cavor.
5 – Daleks Invasion Earth 2150AD, dir. Gordon Flemyng (1966) – back when Daleks were cool, they drilled a hole to the centre of the Earth so they could replace it with an engine and turn the whole planet into a spaceship. And they did it in Britain. Until Bernard Cribbins stopped them. With a bit of help from Dr Who.
6 – Fahrenheit 451, dir. François Truffaut (1966). The book is rubbish, but the film is excellent. Casting Julie Christie in two roles was inspired. And the monorail is really cool too.
7 – Frozen Alive, dir. Bernard Knowles (1966) – an Anglo-German production, set in Germany, in which a scientist, well, he freezes himself. But his wife is murdered while he is frozen, and he’s the chief suspect. It sounds daft, but it works.
8 – They Came From Beyond Space, dir. Freddie Francis (1967) – and the plot of this one seems even dafter: meteorites land throughout the UK and take over people, who subsequently build an armed camp in southern England. This is so they can send rockets to the Moon, launched from underneath a lake, to help repair the alien spaceship marooned there.
9 – A Clockwork Orange, dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968) – Kubrick may have been an American but this film was as British as you can get – from Anthony Burgess’s source novel through to the cast and crew.
10 – Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun, dir. Robert Parrish (1969) – Gerry Anderson’s only live-action feature film, although some of the cast were as wooden as his puppets. The central conceit – a copy of the Earth on the other side of the Sun, where everything is reversed – is complete nonsense, but all those Meddings model shots make up for it.
11 – 2001: A Space Odyssey, dir. Stanley Kubrick (1971) – Kubrick gets two films on this list because A Clockwork Orange is too British to leave off, and 2001: A Space Odyssey is too damn good to ignore.
12 – The Man Who Fell To Earth, dir. Nicolas Roeg (1976) – Bowie was perfectly cast. Any film that can say that deserves to be on this list.
13 – Flash Gordon, dir. Mike Hodges (1980) – it’s like a panto. In space. With Brian Blessed. Three reasons why it belongs on this list.
14 – Outland, dir. Peter Hyams (1981) – there’s not much that’s British about High Noon set on a moon of Jupiter (although without Grace Kelly). This was actually a British production, however.
15 – 1984, dir. Michael Radford (1984) – qualifies in the same way A Clockwork Orange does. It’s also an excellent adaptation of Orwell’s novel.
16 – Brazil, dir. Terry Gilliam (1985) – could be 1984 from an alternate Britain. It’s as British as Orwell’s novel, but… funny. Absurd, in fact. Which is the only other sane response to Nineteen Eighty-four.
17 – Sliding Doors, dir. Peter Hewitt (1997) – it’s about the Many Worlds Hypothesis… Well, sort of. It’s a romance, a fluffy version of Kieslowski’s Blind Chance, in which catching a train or not causes the story to split into two separate narratives.
18 – 28 Days Later, dir. Danny Boyle (2002) – zombies that can run. Enough said.
19 – Code 46, dir. Michael Winterbottom (2003) – is one of those films which seems to inhabit a near-future which already exists. It also asks some difficult questions about biotechnology.
20 – Moon, dir. Duncan Jones (2009) – I wrote about this here.

So, what films have I missed off?