Battlestar Galactica

The best of cinematic Science Fiction, whether on the big screen or television, has always wrapped itself around a center of the cold isolation of the cosmos--either discovered or created.

Star Trek minimized the cold, but it was there in the silent visual of the Enterprise surrounded by stars, a threatening unknown quickly banished by the words "Captain's log, Stardate..." The Empire Strikes Back majored in it: Luke isolated and captured in the cold caves of Hoth; Han and Leia in a cave that is disturbingly not what they thought; the grimy and utterly unexpected Dagobah; the final isolation of the incomplete team against a distant galactic backdrop. Alien and Blade Runner went further yet, enclosing the viewer within the vast nothingness of space or shoving the reader into the inhumanities of the scientific mass-production of humanity itself. And, for a season and a movie, Joss Whedon created an incredible resonance with a show centered around a makeshift crew of friends creating a fragile pocket of life in the gray heavens between atomizing regulation and inhuman savagery. And yet the abyss itself, whether seen through the lens of Hollywood cinematography or ancient constellation-making, remains a site of beauty and (potentially) transcendent, inhuman adventure. "The heavens declare the glory of the Lord," and if we see our isolation and loss we are still reminded of the glory.

The best of literary Science Fiction, however, has tended in a slightly different direction. Paperback books, in general, are utilitarian rather than beautiful objects. Few purely verbal descriptions of the cosmos, however well-written, can quite create the stark beauty of light and music found in the opening credits to a mediocre television series. And so SF literature during the "golden age" became a literature of ideas: Laws and Robotics (Asimov), Martian philosophies (Heinlein), the cold comforts of humanity in a purely scientific future (Clark.) The best of the ideas went beyond mere games, however clever--they asked readers what it means to be human, and often as not elicited uncomfortable or uncertain responses. SF became a mirror to show humanity, not all at once, but in a multiplicity of fragments both hopeful and damning.

Both, of course, often (but not always) centered around adventurous plots in which the protagonists have to act to survive. But that, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, is what keeps an audience moving through a story. It is rarely if ever what draws in--or keeps--fans of Science Fiction.

Battlestar Galactica, properly speaking, doesn't bring much new to the table. The visuals carry the level of precision and innovation that viewers have come to expect from an A-grade Science Fiction production. The protagonists are sharply and iconicly heroic, as befits adventurer-explorers of space, but at the same time exceptionally realized and deeply flawed. And the screenwriters never fail to come up with new troubles for these heroes to find themselves in--and this time (unlike, say, Star Trek) they seem to be actually collaborating with their Science Adviser rather than just assigning him the task of creating realistic technobabble to support their plot.

But what makes it special is the appropriation of old stuff from the literary side of SF. Human annihilating robotic races are nothing new, nor are robots that look and feel so human as to blur the line between the human and the inhuman. Nor are leaders denied the comfort of easy solutions, political dangers interwoven with fights for survival, or any other parts of the apparatus used to blend Galactaca's adventure stories with deep and challenging ethical questions. Indeed, Adama's show-defining speech at the beginning of the miniseries only echoes the concerns of science fiction since the pulp days: "when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question "Why?" Why are we as a people worth saving?"

The ambiguous ways of asking, answering, and leaving unanswered the central question which fill the show are nothing new--at least to those who read SF. But its combination with excellent adventure, fully-realized characters, and the full weight of innovative Space Opera cinematography and FX may very well be original. In any case, it makes for an immensely absorbing (if noticeably hybrid) television series.

I'm only in season 2, but I think I'm already sold on watching the full, four-season journey.

Ever wonder what The Little Mermaid would be like if she were a pirate-vampire?

Wonder no more. Apparently someone figured it out, and wrote an awards-nominated short story about the subject.

Ironic Quote of the Year

"Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere."

-George W. Bush

Reading from Christmas Break

It's been a long time since I blogged. I'm back, for at least the moment.

Children of Men is one of my favorite movies. It is SF at its best: an open-eyed meditation on the future and its horrors; a portrait of diverse, lovable characters acting at cross-purposes; an affirmation of life in the midst of our worst fears of horror and death. It is the type of poetry we need, I think, to make sense of our world and allow us to inhabit it as humans. It also involves the most brilliant use of a camera that I have ever seen.

When people ask me why I love it so much, I generally talk about The Shot. The first one. If you've seen the movie, you'll remember--it takes place in the car, they run into an ambush, and everything--character psychologies, the sense of what sort of world this is, the sense of what sort of adventure story we're going to watch--is shattered at least twice in a single, unblinking shot of the camera. As a piece of storytelling, it is utterly cinematic--all the words that are spoken or shouted are merely there as backdrop; we react to the events, expressions, sights and sounds of the very visual actions unfolding on a screen. And viciously, almost immaculately effective. As a technical exercise it is an unimaginable tour de force--one wonders how it is possible for that many actors, vehicles and special effects to be organized into place and captured so perfectly by the ever-moving camera. The Shot, I would propose, is a textbook in itself of what it means to "effectively use the medium of film."

But The Shot isn't the part that I remember most vividly. What I remember is the following conversation:

"I was carrying a baby up the stairs. I started crying. I forgot what they look like they're so beautiful. They're so tiny."
A bullet impacts above the man's head. With a look of hate he fires back at his assailants.
"I knew you was wrong! You thought I could be peaceful. But how can you be peaceful, when they try and take away your dignity?"
He points the gun at Theo.
"We need that child! We need the baby we need him!"
"It's a girl, Luke."
"Yeah, well I had a sister."

The scene is nowhere near as innovative as The Shot. Here the visuals (however perfectly designed) are background--all we need to know is that Luke is desperate and being fired upon. Out of context, the line "How can you be peaceful when they try and take away your dignity?" evokes the worst of Hollywood trailer tell-don't-show. But in context it is heartbreaking--an anatomy of the human spirit struggling for compassion and, in the end, failing to cling to anything other than group identity and violence. It's a scene that tells the truth of cruelty present throughout the world. More importantly, it rings true.

*****

I suppose the last two books I've read, Persepolis and The Name of the Wind, tend towards those two polarities--one a work of personal courage and pain, the other a work of immaculate craftsmanship.

The Name of the Wind is, simply put, the perfect fantasy novel. It taps into the same sense of myth and wonder that only Tolkien and LeGuin have managed to evoke. And even though it follows one of my least favorite patterns--the progression of a brilliant and unbelievably talented boy into the brilliant and unbelievably talented Hero of the Age--I was never anything but entranced. The hero Kvothe (K as in Q, V as in U) is outrageously brilliant, but his failtures are as immense as his successes. He nearly reaches Harry Potter levels of dumbness when it comes to girls, and yet his caution and aprehension may actually be quiet wisdom. And we see enough of his uncertainty, humility and compassion to make him fully human--even as events unfold to turn him into the public legend, mythologized in his time.

But what makes the novel perfect is its craftsmanship and storytelling. The novel begins with a dedication:

To my mother, who taught me to love books.
Who opened the door to Narnia, Pern and Middle-Earth.

To my father, who taught me that if I was going to do something, I should take my time and do it right the first time.

What is impressive is that he does. Everything one could want in a fantasy novel is here--epic tragedy, schoolboy friendship, hillarious humor, romance, desperate fights, an intricate magic system, and a story that never lags. Yet everything is set into an incredible order. In 722 pages of writing, it seems almost as if not a single word, phrase, scene, event, or character is flat. That sort of the impression is the result of but one thing--work. Years of hard labor, cutting out words until only the story remains.

I've only read it once, and it's only the first of a three-volume work, so I can't yet evaluate it accurately. It has the potential to be the best fantasy since The Lord of the Rings. And whether or not it lives up to that potential, anyone who reads for pleasure and isn't alergic to fantasy really ought to read this book.

*****

Persepolis is a work of a different order. Marjane Strapi will not, I think, ever be hailed as one of the great masters of the comic book medium. She did, however, find a corner of it that works perfectly for her story.

Persepolis is the story of her childhood in Iran, drawn in a simple but evocative style remniscent of Peanuts. It's the story of political betrayl, failed promise, war, the loss of faith in Marxism and Islam, friends and family dead and tortured, and stubborn refusals to bow before the ideologies of a nation. As such, it could've been Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: self-indulgent, "literary," self-consciously elite and fiercely challenging. But instead, it reads much more like....Peanuts. We see amusing people, hillarious classroom hijinks, and a multifaceted, good hearted, and deceptively straightforward account of life, family, and friendships.

Portrait of the Iraqui Dissident as a Young Woman would've been far easier to write. Strapi's ability to maintain the funny, warm-hearted pleasantry of her style even as the backdrop gets more and more horrific is an act of pure moral courage. This is the type of story that needs to be told; one that engages with the reader as a human, avoiding the temptation to shout or denounce in favor of a winning understated simplicity.

I don't know that I'll ever read another of Strapi's stories--I'm not sure that she could ever equal herself. But if Faulkner is right in claiming that every author has only one story to tell, she has done a remarkable job of finding it rather quickly. Persepolis may be more of a readers' book than a writers', but it is nearly perfect at being itself. And therefore well worth reading.