The Dummy and Bards and Sages

My short horror story The Dummy is now available in the newest issue of Bards and Sages Quarterly (print/kindle), and my name seems to be on the cover. The story's a compassionate, bright, and hopeful tale, about... Well, no. It's dark and disturbing. But hopefully quite enjoyable nonetheless. To either whet your appetite or put you off forever, here's the first paragraph:

The dummy was a work in progress, a Michael to torment and a Michael to love. It was an impromptu sculpture, a masterpiece of longing made from paint and wood, hand carved jewels for eyes and ivory for nails, and blood from a pin for its heart. Fleya spent thirty-three hours mastering every drift of hair, but the face was an abstraction, a swirl of paint and indentations. The dummy was half dream to look upon, and it was snow-cold to the touch.

Best Releases of 2011

Yesterday, Strange Horizons put up their Year in Review post, with my own paragraph-long thoughts among those offered. Head on over and take a look. Once you're done, though, keep reading, because the discussion's not yet over. See, at the time of writing the Strange Horizons piece, my computer was down and seemingly dead (thankfully, it recovered soon after). As a result, I didn't have access to my list of books read and so, rather unsurprisingly, forgot the dates of a few notable releases, most importantly Daniel Kraus' Rotters, a YA horror novel about grave robbing that one me over in short order due to the fantastic descriptions of that so-sordid crime and the depiction of the novel's main character. And then there are all the series books, few of which I mentioned. Both White Luck Warrior and The Crippled  God were quite good. The latter maybe even excellent, even if it wasn't my personal favorite Malazan volume. Both, though, lost their places on the list because they were too tied up with the preceding (and, in the case of the former, to come) novels for me to really judge them on their own merits. Finally, there's certainly the matter of Historical Lovecraft, the anthology that came out midway through the year bearing my very first published story.

My post with overall best reads for the year will come out next week. 

For those interested, the full list of newly released books I read is as follows:

1. Joe Abercrombie – The Heroes
2. Daniel Abraham – The Dragon's Path
3. R. Scott Bakker – The White Luck Warrior
4. James S. A. Corey – Leviathan Wakes
5. Steven Erikson – The Crippled God
6. Daniel Kraus – Rotters
7. Mark Lawrence – Prince of Thorns
8. George R.R. Martin – A Dance with Dragons
9. Robert McCammon – The Hunter from the Woods
10. Haruki Murakami – 1Q84
11. Adam Nevill – The Ritual
12. K.J. Parker – The Hammer
13. Patrick Rothfuss – The Wise Man's Fear
14. Brandon Sanderson – The Alloy of Law
15. Sam Sykes – Black Halo
16. Catherynne M. Valente – Deathless
17. Historical Lovecraft

Christopher Hitchens - God is Not Great

Let’s get this out of the way right at the beginning: the argument at the center of God is Not Great is not a subtle one or a moderate one, not something with which accords can be reached or with which peace can be made. Hitchens doesn’t set out to fire an opening salvo but to deliver a complete strike and a killing blow. In his own words, his goal is to prove that the usefulness of religion is in the past, and that its foundational books are transparent fables, and that it is a man-made imposition, and that it has been an enemy of science and inquiry, and that it has subsisted largely on lies and fears, and been the accomplice of ignorance and guilt as well as of slavery, genocide, racism, and tyranny. (p. 229)

Unsurprisingly, that grand lack of subtlety where the problems start setting in. Far, far too many of Hitchens’ arguments fall into the same trap. After fiery but rational openings, they leap farther, into wild and unsupportable overstatement, leaving their strengths and weight far behind. The first example of this the reader’s to experience is right on the cover. The volume’s title, God is Not Great, is a suitable one, exemplifying Hitchens’ desire to show the evils perpetuated by the divine. And then, those buying the book in America are treated to its ghastly subtitle: How Religion Poisons Everything, a claim so hyperbolic as to be near parody. (Those in the UK, I should point out, do get the far superior The Case Against God on the front of their book.)

Christopher Hitchens argues through specific tales and events rather than through abstractions. Many of these tales come from his personal experience, many sections and assertions open with In northern Uganda in late 2005, I sat in a center for the rehabilitation of kidnapped and enslaved children… (p. 188) or I once joined these potential adepts and acolytes (p. 195) and the like. Hitchens lived an incredibly worldly life, experiencing far more than most ever could or will. Despite that, these arguments backed by anecdote are all unable to, by themselves, carry the day.

This can be most clearly seen, I think, in the book’s second chapter, Religion Kills. The majority of its page count is devoted to an answer Hitchens gave to Dennis Prager, a religious broadcaster, when asked, if a large group of men approached him at night in a strange city, if he would feel safer were they “just coming from a prayer meeting.” (p. 18) In response, Hitchens discusses experiences that he had in – to stay within the letter ‘B’ (ibid) - Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad and why, in those situations, he felt “immediately threatened” by that “group of men […] coming from a religious observance.” (ibid) Each of those six experiences is interesting, well presented, and thought provoking.

All of that’s enough to justify Hitchens’ flippant answer – “No,” (p. 28) needless to say – to Prager’s question, and, considering the breath of Hitchens’ answer and knowledge and depending on how much the reader finds his or herself swayed by his arguments, might even be enough to somewhat justify his claiming that religion is “an enormous multiplier of tribal suspicion and hatred, with members of each group talking of the other in precisely the tones of the bigot.” But to go from there to the chapter title that Religion Kills is simply silly and would require a broadening of the argument not even attempted in the chapter’s pages. It’s well proven here that religion can kill (or as he puts it at one point, faith and worship can make people behave very badly indeed. (p. 242)), but is there anyone who would even challenge such a truism?

Hitchens’ style of attack is excellent for laying to waste certain aspects of religion, for assailing sects and leaders, for showing the dangers and flaws of faith. But it proves ineffective for taking down the edifice of religion as a whole, and Hitchens even seems aware that it's ill suited to the task and unfair if used for it: I do not say that if I catch a Buddhist priest stealing all the offerings left by the simple folk at his temple, Buddhism is therefore discredited. (p. 185) But he makes that very error time and time again. The chapter There is no “Eastern” Solution, to give but one example, begins with a discrediting of a “celebrated guru” (p. 195) known as Bhagwan. Hitchens’ claim here is that these religions are centered on a distrust of and abandonment of the intellect, and he illustrates the dangers of this by showing how Bhagwan fleeces his followers and abuses them horribly. But this is no more a discrediting of all gurus than the presenting of one guru who does not steal and rape would be a validation of all of them.

This death-by-a-thousand-cuts kind of assault on religion is also one badly damaged by factual errors. When discussing religion’s insanities, Hitchens tells us that Orthodox Jews conduct congress by means of a hole in the sheet. (p. 54) That’s outright false and utterly unsubstantiated, and its presence amidst a list of other, equally appalling acts of the faithful, serves to make the reader question the whole thing. All the rest certainly sounds convincing, but, after all, if I didn’t happen to have Orthodox relatives, would I know the above falsity to be just that? Mind you, I don’t think that Hitchens has penned a volume of lies, not at all. Rather, I think that Hitchens, in his drive to stick every injustice he could find on faith, let a few inane rumors sneak right through  his critical faculties and research skills and land on page fifty-four of an otherwise fine work. Nonetheless, its presence there is a damning one that makes it just that much harder to trust every other line and example in the volume.

But let's zoom out and move away from the particulars for a moment. A problem, maybe even the problem, with this whole How Religion Poisons Everything subtitle and thesis – and a large part of the reason why such an overstated subtitle/thesis is so laughable – is the good that religion rather undeniably does in the world. This is where, in my opinion, Hitchens falls the hardest, looking out from his view of religion and, based on its so-hostile tenants, then trying to claim that just about every good thing religion’s ever done is nothing but the faithful inadvertently acting on essentially secular/humanistic principles. He acknowledges that “charity and relief work” might “appeal to tenderhearted believers,” but claims those things to be wholly consequences of “modernist and the Enlightenment.” (p. 192) But that’s absurd, seeing as charity was a fundamental part of the Christian church all the way back to Roman times.

Things get more egregious still when it comes to the poaching of individual believers and their accomplishments, particularly Martin Luther King, Jr: At no point did Dr. King […] even hint that those who injured and reviled him were to be threatened with any revenge or punishment, in this world or the next, save the consequences of their own brute selfishness and stupidity. All things that I, and I suspect most, would agree with, and perhaps, one might think, a reason for Hitchens to soften and acknowledge that some good can come from men of deep faith. Not at all, as it turns out. Instead, he, from this, concludes that King was, in no real as opposed to nominal sense, then, […] a Christian. (p. 176) It’s of course easy, Mr. Hitchens, to make the case that religion has had no good practitioners when you swoop in and claim that all goodly and godly men were not in fact godly.

So after all that criticism, I suspect my long time readers (if I’ve any left after all this and if I ever had any and if those I hypothetically do have ever thought I was particularly good at all this criticism stuff) are quite convinced I’m about to reach my conclusion, my dismissal of Hitchens’ overwrought, overstated, and too narrowly (and sometimes too unfairly) argued attack on religion. Not at all, as it turns out.

God is Not Great is a luxury car with the misfortune of having a maker convinced that it can fly and who, as a result, enters it into all sorts of competitions designed for helicopters and airplanes. This book is never going to sway a believer, prove the nonexistence of God, prove the malevolence of all believers, or disprove all the good things religion’s ever done. Truth be told, despite its own proclamations and subtitle, it’s not really designed for even attempting such a thing, and its few tries are rather weak, though admittedly quite impassioned. No, the roads this finely made automobile was meant to drive were more earthly ones, focused on the fallacies and flaws and weak humanity inherent in the practice of the religions and their leaders that it discusses.

Maybe the key part of all this is Hitchens’ prose. His might be the most fiery, caustic, dancing, biting and clawing writing that I’ve ever read, remorseless and witty, calculated to sting and cut, and fiercely intelligent. This is the kind of writing that will run roughshod over all boundaries, is near guaranteed (maybe even designed?) to cause offense, and is also prone to overshooting its mark on occasion, but the destructiveness is an integral part of its splendor: We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness. (p. 7) Countless times when reading I found myself laughing out loud, caught somewhere between the venom of the words and the ludicrousness of the actions described.

I’m tempted to go on like that for ages, but I’ll refrain. Similarly, I’ll avoid a recounting of all of Hitchens’ arguments. Such a thing might have proved interesting, but, on the points where we broadly agree, it’s no doubt better to let the author speak for himself than to rewrite his text here. Suffice to say, though, Hitchens on the warpath is a sight well worth seeing, and one that spits out immeasurable fascinating thoughts amidst its bile.

The final thing I want to discuss is Hitchens’ treatment of humanism, his alternative to religion. Taking refuge in the middle of all Hitchens’ anger are moments of joy and awe that are just as much a part of the whole, a reverence and respect for science and the natural world. Though Hitchens doesn’t outline what he thinks is needed in place of religion, he does give hints as to its character – and, of course, he defends it against religion’s counterattacks.

In the chapter An Objection Anticipated: The Last-Ditch “Case” Against Secularism, Hitchens deals with one of the most pervasive arguments I’ve seen against atheism, namely the bringing out of its own tyrants and the discussion of the crimes of “secular and atheist regimes.” (p. 229) Some of the section is given to specific and factual linkings between religion and fascism and its crimes, and it’s quite successful at a fair bit of that, but the more interesting part, for me, was the discussion of totalitarianism in general. Hitchens says that totalitarianism – as exemplified by, say, the reverence towards the communist ruling party – should not be viewed as the opposite of religion but rather as, essentially, another form of it. Towards this end, Hitchens provides a very interesting quotation from George Orwell’s The Prevention of Literature: A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. (p. 232)

It’s a very interesting and well done section, and convincing in its way, but I can’t help but feel that Hitchens is here missing, or at least slightly dodging, the point. When most people say religion, they do not mean simply fundamentalism of any sort, and saying that the proper antithesis of secularists like Hitchens is not religion but all forms of dogmatic belief seems going too far. Hitchens may – and, of course, does – favor and encourage questioning and inquiry rather than dogma, but that doesn’t change the fact that atheists as a group are not defined by this questioning but rather by their lack of belief in god. Throwing all of the uncritical atheists back to the other side and saying they’re not wanted feels too much like (to use an example pertinent to this blog’s general focus) a literature professor pulling out all the good Science Fiction stories, pointing to the (almost by definition rubbish) remainder, and saying that, see, it’s a worthless genre after all.

It’s only in the tail end of the section that Hitchens gets to what is, in my eyes, the real reason that comparisons to Hitler, Stalin, and other monsters are not a real refutation of atheism. Humanism has many crimes for which to apologize, he says. But it can apologize for them, and also correct them, in its own terms and without having to shake or challenge the basis of any unalterable system of belief. (p. 250) It’s true that Stalin and his ilk were atheists, but they are not in any way revered or held up as paragons of unalterable virtue in the way that the biblical prophets by definition are.

When all’s said and done, God is Not Great is a fascinating read that’s sure to provoke a reaction out of you. I think this is a work as dominated  by its flaws as its successes, and it’s not one that I can wholly endorse or agree with. It is, nonetheless, an interesting and impassioned one, put together by an erudite author skilled with a pen. Hitchens is absolutely brilliant with specifics, and it's well worth it for the interested, in my eyes, to read this for those delectable and wrathful examples and expositions, even if some of the overall conclusions may not be nearly as roped in as one would like.

Publication: Twitter Story on Nanoism

I wonder if anyone remembers the Twitter Stories I mentioned a few months back. But even those of you who caught that post, and read the two published pieces (one of which can still be read here), did not hear the whole story. See, there was a third piece. I wrote it at the same time as the others, sent it off, and... waited.

Well, no, that's not quite right. As it was so short, I didn't really include it on my normal story spreadsheet. In fact, I kind of forgot all about it. Which made it all the more surprising when, just a few days ago, I received an email from Nanoism telling me that they'd accepted it and, oh, by the way, were publishing it that day. Not exactly bad news. And, since I'm a firm believer in spreading such good tidings (or something like that), I figured I'd give you a link. If you've any interest, come check out my latest (very, very, very short) story here.

Angel: Season One

At the close of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's third season, Angel, everyone's favorite vampire with a soul, left Sunnydale to start a new life (and, it seems, show) in Los Angeles. After drifting about and punching some vampires in an aimless, albeit satisfying fashion, he's approached by Doyle, who, with a direct line to the "powers that be," ends up being able to point Angel at those most in need of aid. Before long, Cordelia wanders back into the picture, the three of them have christened and set up Angel Investigations (We Help the Helpless), and the show's off and running.

Though both Buffy and Angel take place in the same world, and though there are a fair few overlaps, Angel differentiates itself from Buffy quickly and surely. First off, the tone here is totally different, dark, urban, and adult, rather than the high school (well, now, college) metaphors and snarky humor that make up much of Buffy. There's still humor here, of course – it's a Joss Whedon show, after all – but it's less prevalent. Less standout hilarious lines is, of course, a sad thing, but the show's atmosphere makes up for it.

The biggest difference between the two, though, is the lead character and, tied with that, their reasons for fighting. Now, each does pit an abnormally powerful individual against the forces of darkness and all that, but Buffy does so in a fashion similar to a super hero concept. She's light, they're dark, she kills them. Angel, however, is noir to the bone, and the show loves to play with the clichés of the genre, right down to the broke white knight detective against the world. Central to that is the fact that Angel is not like Buffy, cast as a savior by fate. Rather, he fights because he chooses to, and, though he's multiple opportunities to step away, to join the system and gain its power or even to be happy and free, he refuses to stop.

The greatest moments of heroism and character in the show, though, come from those around Angel. For the season's first half, the stage is often stolen by Glenn Quinn's Doyle, and it's his climax in Hero that is by far the most powerful and most affecting of the show's heroic moments. Coming soon after his departure is Alexis Denisof's Wesley Wyndam-Price. Now, I know I was rather hard on Wesley in my review of Buffy's third season, where he acted as an amusing but redundant stickler for the rules, but things are a whole different ball game here, and his determination, knowledge, vulnerability, and occasional incompetence are all damn effective.

Of course, while the standard noir hero is just one man fighting impossible odds, he is also intrinsically not just any man. The very fact that he alone refuses to go along with the system serves to differentiate him, making him – whether he be Hammett's Continental Op, Chandler's Marlowe, or any other detective you care to name – something fundamentally separate from those he's fighting for. In Angel, though, our private detective is not the same as those around him save for his determination. Angel is a vampire, as much a creature of supernatural strength and unnatural night as those he slays. For the most part, the show manages to either slide by this or, when it does bring it into the spotlight, play it as a wrathful avenger, a monster kills monsters type deal along the lines of, say, Dan Wells' recent I Am Not a Serial Killer.

At times, though, things are handled far less deftly, namely in the episodes She and War Zone. Angel – who, besides being inhuman, is a rich white man who, despite resolutely failing to charge the vast majority of his clients and having no other apparent source of income, lives in spacious quarters and drives a snazzy car – approaches, in one, oppressed women and, in the other, poor black children forced into a gang to survive the vampires attacking them. Each time, those in the group, at first, and rather reasonably, doubt Angel's ability to help them. And, each time, Angel proves that he can help anyone and everyone, regardless of their problem or situation, boiling the prejudices and difficulties against the groups into handily punchable opponents. The episodes aren't awful, but they both feel oversimplified and leave Angel a white knight with armor so bright and pure that it ends up defying belief, ironically making what could have been the show's grittiest episode (War Zone) into one of its most uncomplicated and superheroesque.

Most episodes, though, fair far better, thriving on the show's darker atmosphere and more adult tone. Many, like I Fall to Pieces and I've Got You Under My Skin, are genuinely creepy, even terrifying, to an extent that I can't remember anything on Buffy being. Others, like the Ring, are simpler but no less effective, while some – such as Eternity and the absolutely stunning Somnambulist – create incredible character arcs and portrayals in just forty minutes.

All of that's not even mentioning Five by Five and Sanctuary, the season's two Faith episodes, taking place immediately after Faith flees from Buffy. These two are made entirely of the rare moments when absolutely everything comes together, humor and tension and terror and more, to make something astounding. Faith, by this point, is utterly insane and utterly deadly, and her every moment is fantastic, but it's the conflicting reactions of Angel and Wesley that make the arc. Angel, the do gooder with the past of atrocities, can let no one go, can never acknowledge that there is a point after which redemption is impossible. Wesley, meanwhile, was brought up under the harsh and specific rules of the Watchers Council, and even that's before what Faith does to him in Five by Five.

From those and other episodes, much of Angel's worldview can be seen here. For him, it's never too late to turn around and redeem oneself – but, at the same time, there's no one harder than those who choose not to. Late in the season, in Blind Date, a member of Wolfram and Hart finds himself beset by moral qualms and wonders whether he should step away from the organization. Angel, after listening to him attempt to whitewash his own actions, shows damn little sympathy:

Lindsey: [We were] dirt poor. No shoes, no toilet, six of us kids in one room. And come flu season it was down to four. I was seven when they took the house. They just came right in and took it. And my daddy's being nice, you know? Joking with the bastards while he signs the deed. So yeah, we had a choice. You got stepped on or you got to stepping. And I swore to myself that I was not gonna be the guy standing there with a stupid grin on my face while my life got dribbled out.

Angel, after pretending to fall asleep: I'm sorry, I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're evil? (Blind Date)

The organization that Lindsey works for there, the guys in suits that make up the system that Angel and the down and out must fight, are the season's big bad, or would be if the show ever really got around to the supposed center of its plot. The majority of those fantastic one episode arcs build to nothing and, though the shadowy law firm of Wolfram and Heart recurs in the shadows and in an increasingly adversarial way, we never get a glimpse of who they are or what they're trying to do.  By the season's end, Wolfram and Heart have decided that Angel's their foe because he's interfering with their operations, but it's not possible to get even the faintest idea of just what he's interfering with or just what they'd be doing if he wasn't around.

In addition, as Wolfram and Hart's made up entirely of humans, with a security system that seems primarily made up of hope that they won't be attacked, it's difficult to see why Angel doesn't just burn the place to the ground. He's even shown to  break in with nigh no trouble multiple times, but doesn't bother to destroy his foes, because… huh. Not particularly sure on that one. Besides which, Wolfram and Hart has the same thing. Yeah, they send the occasional super powered hitman after Angel towards the season's close, but why they don't do so with, say, a dozen at once, or why they don't go after those squishy mortals who like to help Angel, is hard to say. Not to mention that their final plan – bringing back a throwaway vampire from Buffy's first season that, yeah, maybe have sired Angel but never did anything interesting or important – is not quite making me quake with terror yet.

But while Wolfram and Hart still need to be explored in far greater depth, the show's got time and seasons yet, and what's here in season one is, for the most part, fantastic. The dark, urban atmosphere that Whedon and co have here birthed is oppressive and gripping, the characters at once flawed and larger than life, the plots at once complex and satisfying. All in all, Angel seems a more than worthy spin off to Buffy.

Standouts: Five by Five, Sanctuary, Somnambulist, Blind Date, Hero

K.J. Parker - The Hammer

You can have justice, or you can keep the peace. Can't have both. (p. 379)

Though I can hardly call myself an expert in Parker's work, I have read The Folding Knife and the Engineer Trilogy, and the similarities between The Hammer and the latter of those two are unmistakable. Some of those are superficial, like how we've here, as we had there, a scene involving the urgent construction of some strange tool to save a man's life. But that pales compared to the rather larger similarity of a world, one filled with conflict but set in its ways, disrupted forever by a single freethinking man that fled the established order, outthought everyone else, started a factory, revolutionized the economy and technology of all those around him, had an ulterior motive, and changed everything.

Now, a similarity that gargantuan's a bit hard to overlook, but alright, fine. It was a great concept the first time, and I trust Parker as an author. Surely, she could make it work again, and surely she wouldn't shoot for the exact same payoff. Well, she didn't. But that's where the book's more serious problem lies. The Engineer Trilogy showed its hero of sorts undertaking a huge task, but that was just the beginning. Momentous as the factory was, it was the path to something much greater. Using a comparatively simple mechanism, the main character shifted the entire world and did something that, though tragic, was unmistakably incredible, grand, and all sorts of words like that. The Hammer, alas, plays out in rather the opposite fashion. Our factory builder, Gignomai met'Oc, does have an ulterior motive, but rather than being earth shaking, that motive's far, far smaller than what he seems poised to do. The novel's earthshaking rhetoric and epic build were all just smoke and mirrors. Amusingly enough, all that large scale stuff does end up happening, after our personal payoff, and it does so off screen and without any real fuss.

It's something like if you went to a great stage magician's show, and she took to the stage with a school bus behind her, and she gave a long speech about how she's going to lift the bus into the air with the power of her mind, then reshape it into a statue, or what have you. Then she takes a spoon out of her pocket, bends that, and wanders off. The spoon bending was all well and good, and might have been quite impressive in other circumstances, but it's rather hard to not feel more than a tad disappointed after all the buildup it got. Then, as you're walking to your car, the magician stops by and, in a section entitled Five Years Later, tells you that she actually did all that was promised, only she did it after the lights were out and everybody'd left. She briefly alludes to how interesting it might've been to see if only she'd let you, though, so there's that.

Why is this such a problem? After all, in her aforementioned stand alone, The Folding Knife, Parker plays out the drama of one man's life on a grand stage. What makes that not work here, though, is that, unlike in The Folding Knife, the characters are not only unsympathetic but also unreletable. Some are cold and distant, others are only presented to us in that way, but we can grow close to none of them. That's not necessarily a problem in an epic, but it certainly is in a personal story about one man's obsessions. Like Vaatzes, Gignomai interacts with people as if they're objects, as if he's a "scientist" and the world's but a culture for him to fool around with and bend to his will, life just an "experiment" for him to manipulate to his satisfaction (p. 217). That could work for a man unfeelingly shaping nations, but when his goal is a familial one, I, at least, felt little more than the vague disappointment that comes when a great power is used for some minor end.

Of course, Gignomai's not the novel's only character. He is, though, the only one with any mystery to him. Through the entire novel, I can only think of one genuinely and emotionally human moment, and it takes place very near the end, though I won't say exactly what it is to avoid spoiling the text for those who've yet to read it. That one moment struck me, added untold depths to the character who expressed it, and made me, for a few brief moments, really feel the human consequences of Gignomai's actions. If the rest of the book had been like that, it would've been heartbreaking and immeasurably more powerful. But the rest of the characters, besides Gignomai and that one other flash, are concepts given flesh and blood, walking playthings for Gignomai to shape as he chooses. Amusingly enough, many of them are even aware of this. The town's shopkeep and mayor even begins to think of himself as a "properly greedy man" (p. 300) before all that long. The explanation for this could, I suppose, be that Parker's only capable of writing obvious characters unless, as she does with Gignomai, she simply hides everything about them, but I don't think that's true. After all, though it focused on much of the same themes as The Hammer, the Engineer Trilogy had several complex and fascinating personalities, and The Folding Knife had its riveting star, Basso. Leaving that out, though, I really can't say why most of the characters here fall so flat.

The distance is reinforced by the prose, though there is still a huge amount of Parker's always stunning irreverence towards traditions, loyalty, and life itself: [He] had no idea how to kill a man with his bare hands. It turned out to be one of those things you can pick up as you go along. (p. 342)

But when you laugh – and laugh, I think, you will – you're not laughing with the characters, even if they made a joke. You're laughing at how much more than them you know, even if it's not much, and at how terrible things are and will grow, and at how deserving they are or are not for the fate that you know that's coming.

Even when Parker relates her character's thoughts directly, the prose is still distant. We come to see these people, and we come to understand them, but we never really come to sympathize with them. Midway through the text, we see that Gignomai looked up so fast he banged the top of his head on a cross-beam. He felt a strong pulse in his scalp, and something wet dribbled down over his forehead. (p. 279) We see the physical and emotional effects of the story in every detail, we know why Gignomai hit his head and what happened afterwards and that blood dribbled down, but we see all this through a lense, and the detail that's never mentioned is whether this hurt, and we're certainly never made to wince alongside him.

This is, I realize, a really negative review. I should, likely, qualify it a bit. I didn't hate The Hammer. I even enjoyed reading just about every minute of it, loved the writing, was intrigued for most of it, and finished it in two days. But the book's ending was more a whimper than a bang, and the fact that, for all its interesting aspects, it was building up to nothing, rather trashed my fond memories of most of the experience. This isn't the kind of book where you cheer for the hero, and, because there's never a tenth of the way credible opponent, it's also not the kind where you wonder for even a moment if that hero's going to win. In the end, the The Hammer's the kind of book that's experienced through a lense or a microscope, with the reader not at all a part of the action and along just to see how things turn out, and, well, they don't really turn out at all, at least not on stage in any of the ways we might've been tempted to see.

George R.R. Martin - Tuf Voyaging

The plague star twinkles but little, shines down upon the land with a clear bright light. This is wrong, I told Janeel once; a plague star ought to be red. It ought to glower, to drape itself with scarlet radiance, to whisper into the night hints of fire and of blood. This clear white purity, what has that to do with plague? That was in the first days, when our charter ship had just set us down to open our proud little trade complex, set us down and then moved on. In that time the plague star was but one of fifty first-magnitude stars in these alien skies, hard even to pick out. In that time we smiled at it, at the superstitions of these primitives, these backward brutes who thought sickness came from the sky. (p. 14-5)

Tuf Voyaging opens with a planet bound glimpse of the orbiting Ark, a ship of the long lost Ecological Engineering Corps that, now abandoned, rains plagues down upon the surface of a ruined world. Our focus soon shifts upwards, as Haviland Tuf, the Tuf of our title, gains control of the ship and its near unlimited power. Though composed of eight distinct short stories, this is a collection with a strong arc, and it's one of power, responsibility, maybe even divinity, and – let's not forget – more inventiveness and wit than your average author can dream of.

The first and longest tale, The Plague Star, brings us to that celestial doom bringer and forces us to cower, antlike, before its mass. Like almost all of the collection's pieces, we are relegated to a somewhat distant view of Tuf, but here we don't see him as a titan come with benevolence or malevolence but rather as a man, a down on his luck trader hired to be the most expendable part of a crew made of near nothing but, hired to take them all to a prize so vast they'd all gain wealth beyond comprehension if they could secure it. Of course, as soon as Tuf's Cornucopia of Excellent Goods at Low Prices ferries their crew of retired soldiers, bodyguards, cybertechs, and career criminals to the colossal Ark, things fall right to hell. The Plague Star shows every character gunning for every other, a free for all filled with violence, cleverness, and trickery amidst the echoing corridors and dormant cloning tanks. Before long, a handy tide of delightful monsters and plagues have joined the fracas. Yeah, it's clear from the get go who's going to be relaxing on the bridge at the end of all the shooting, but that doesn't detract one bit from the mayhem. This's a rather different tale from the collection's others, focused more on action than theme, and it's likely the most fun, even if not the best.

From then on, with Tuf in firm (and sometimes not so firm) possession of the Ark, the collection becomes the story of his change (or, depending on your interpretation, lack thereof). In each of the tales to come, Tuf is presented with a seemingly impossible ecological problem and must find the solution. This is where, in my opinion, some of Martin's most colorful creations can be found. Handed the life-generating powers of the Ark, with the limitations and to some extent necessary realism of long form work removed, Martin lets his imagination fly here, presenting us with a variety stunning sights and ideas. In Guardians, for instance, we see a war between horrors beneath the sea and those in the seedships vast cloning vats: To hunt the drifting fire-balloons [Tuf] brought forth countless fliers: lashtail mantas, bright red razorwings, flocks of scorn, semi-aquatic howlers, and a terrible pale blue thing – half-plant and half-animal – that drifted with the wind and lurked inside clouds like a living, hungry spiderweb. Tuf called it the-weed-that-weeps-and-whispers. (p. 235)

The height of all that, though, is likely A Beast for Norn, which readers of Dreamsongs have experienced in slightly different form (along with, actually, the also just mentioned tale Guardians). A Beast for Norn has Tuf visiting a planet famed for its gladiatorial combat, each of its great houses pitting its monsters against the next. That, of course, is a situation just waiting for a man with a titanic vessel filled with all the great beasts of the ages, and so it proves, Martin somehow managing to balance a stylish and moral tale with exhibiting a menagerie resplendent with potential and sheer fun.

Tuf's genesis, Martin reveals in Dreamsongs, was an attempt to generate a proper series, one centered on a "larger than life" (p. 563, Dreamsongs) character who "the readers would enjoy following story after story." (p. 562, ibid) To say that he succeeded is an understatement of the kind that Tuf himself might find rather excessive. Tuf is a vegetarian and a pacifist, the possessor of untold power and unmatchable physical strength besides, a fussy and fastidious man, as obsessed with formality as he is irreverent towards the customs of others. He's implacable and huge and hairless; his only sentimental attachment is his cats – named Dax, Suspicion, Doubt, Hostility, Ingratidue, and Foolishnes to commemorate the rude treatment he receives at his various ports of call – and he often extols the virtues of the feline to any and all who will listen (or, of course, that must listen). And none of that's yet touching on his fantastically dry wit. At one point, a military officer tells him that his seedship is "impossible," for "the EEC was wiped out a thousand years ago, along with the Federal Empire. None of their seedships remain." Tuf's response, in all its wry glory: "How distressing […] Here I sit in an illusion. No doubt, now that you have told me my ship does not exist, I shall sink right through it and plunge into your atmosphere, where I shall burn up as I fall." (p. 206)

But there's a troubling, thought-provoking, and nigh unforgettable core beneath all the collection's levity.  As things proceed, a truth soon becomes clear. It is not enough, and is not even possible, to simply solve the environmental symptoms of the problems that Tuf encounters. No, he can liberate the men he finds from the consequences of their mistakes, but he knows that, as he departs, they will make those mistakes again. And so Tuf changes again, and he begins to alter the men themselves.

The center of the collection's arc is the trio of tales set on S'uthlam, a world beset by overpopulation and long ago exceeded resources. The first time, Tuf tries to save them with simple technology. But, as he is shown again and again, there is no possible solution that is merely technological. So Tuf, witnessing a universe filled with problems, and aware that he has the ability to solve them, steps in to fix them. It's something he must do, he argues, no matter how much the people of that world wish him not to. Failure to decide, because you lack the right, is itself a decision, (p. 438) he says. Tuf remakes the worlds around him to match his own ideas of progress.

The dilemma of right and intervention is an interesting one, but the true blow from all this comes from the reader's own realization. Each of the collection's tales is an escalation from that preceding it, both in moral complexity and in the scale of Tuf's intervention. And while I'm sure the exact point each reader begins to feel queasy will vary, that moment of revelation will come, and it's that revelation – the realization that the reader has been blithely supporting this remaking, unconsidering and as unable to see beyond Tuf's exterior as the characters – that gives such awful power to Tuf's debatably megalomaniacal declaration to the man named Moses in the second to last story, Mana from Heaven:

"I was born human, and lived as such for long years, Moses. Yet then I found the Ark and I have ceased to be a man. The powers I may wield are vaster than those of many gods that humans have worshipped. There is not a man I meet but I could take his life. There is not a world I pause on that I could not waste utterly, or remake as I choose. I am the Lord God, or as much of one as either of you is likely to encounter.

"It is a great fortune or you that I am kind and benevolent and merciful, and too frequently bored. You are counters to me, nothing more – pieces and players in a game with which I have whiled away a few weeks." (p. 382)

Tuf Voyaging is the story of a man turning into a god, though whether it's a benevolent or malevolent diety he becomes is a question best left to each individual reader. This is not a collection that can be enjoyed in the same way as some of Martin's other work, like his landmark A Song of Ice and Fire. Reading, you don't sympathize with Tuf and, really, there's never any doubt at all about whether he'll succeed. This is, nonetheless, an excellent read well worth the attention of any of Martin's fans or any Science Fiction, a narrative of spectacle and humor with enough depth to comfortably envelop Tuf's vast ship.

[Note: all page numbers from the Meisha Merlin limited hardcover edition]

Robert McCammon - The Wolf's Hour and The Hunter from the Woods

My review of Robert McCammon's two Michael Gallatin novels, The Wolf's Hour and The Hunter from the Woods, is now up at Strange Horizons here.

This Week's Review...

This week's review will be coming on Friday, when Strange Horizons posts my review of Robert McCammon's two Michael Gallatin works, The Wolf's Hour and the Hunter from the Woods.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Four

If you'll allow me to paint with a broad brush, I'd characterize Buffy the Vampire Slayer's evolution something like this: after the interesting but flawed first season, the second was a tightly plotted and gripping endeavor, where a relentless plot, driven by a brilliant villain, was underscored and aided by moments of character revelation. The next and third season, meanwhile, was less plot focused, instead allowing the characters, and their interaction and growth, to shape the story. When the main story gets started it's lackluster, but even that's nothing compared to how it takes nearly half the season to jerk into its sorry excuse for motion. The first nine episodes, and a fair few later ones, are concentrated filler, devoid of real character or plot growth, farce only made somewhat passable by witty dialogue. [A warning: SPOILERS follow.]

Looking back, I think the pattern for season openers is rather clear, now: Buffy is in a bad place psychologically, and, by the episode's end, she's pretty much reverted to normal. This worked brilliantly in Anne, the opener of last season, but is, here, rather less successful. In The Freshman, she needs to adjust to college life and the freedom that it offers after being beaten up by a big, bad, super scary collegiate vampire. Once she decides, eh, it'll still probably die if she stakes it, she's good to go, and we're off. Ish.

Character growth?

One of the biggest, or at least earliest, changes between this and earlier seasons is the setting. Buffy and pals have now graduated high school, and, as the first episode – The Freshman – shows us, they're now off to college. But Buffy never becomes a show about college in the way that it used to be a show about high school. Classes are rarely shown, little of the campus is particularly interacted with, and nigh no attempts are made to really bring the overall place to life. About all this, Spike at one point says: You know how it is with kids. They go off to college, they grow apart. Way of the world. This is, of course, a dark thing that must be fought against and all, but, really, it's quite true. Deprived of the established location and feel of its prior sets – both due to moving on in the world and to them having been blown to hell at the end of Graduation Day – the show feels in some ways without a center, something certainly exacerbated by Xander and Giles, neither of which are attending the school, the latter for obvious reasons. They spend the season trying to prove their continuing relevance and largely failing. Giles drinks, is amusing, and is superfluous; Xander goes from odd job to odd job, hangs out with Anya, and develops no life at all outside of his old friends who have, as he notes, rather left him behind. 

Willow, meanwhile, has by far the most, and maybe even the only wholly, effective long term arc of the season. For the first time since season two, Oz must face the consequences of his lycanthropy, but things, expressed through his growing fascination for both the wild and for fellow werewolf Veruca (Paige Moss)), aren't so easy to solve this time. Without ever breaking his trademark stoicism, Oz realizes he's no longer able to so easily continue being the man he once was with the beast inside him raging, and he departs. Soon after, Amber Benson's Tara comes into the picture, a witch on or beyond Willow's level. More importantly, the chemistry between the two is fantastic. All of which sets up one of the season's most tragic, yet perfectly understandable moments: when Oz returns, later, and finds that, though he's managed to reclaim who he once was, everyone else has moved on.

Profundity?

Most Buffy episodes, and all of the best, straddle the line between humor and drama, making us laugh and also making us care. Most of season four's earlier episodes, on the other hand, fall right off the line and land smack in comedy, earning some fair laughs but possessing nigh no staying power. Beer Bad, in which we learn that alcohol of all varieties turns men in to cavemen, is likely the clearest example of this. It's also not the only one to try the moralizing game, and it's not the only one to fail. Pangs is about the rise of a Native American spirit determined to avenge the wrongs done to his people. The episode focuses on the morality of even opposing such a force. As Willow says: Thanksgiving isn't a-about blending of two cultures. It's about one culture wiping out another! And then they make animated specials about the part where... w-with the maize and th-the big, big belt buckles. They don't show you the next scene, where... where all the bison die, and Squanto takes a musketball in the stomach! (Pangs) All well stated and all, and I'm certainly not going to say the Native Americans deserved smallpox or anything like that, but equating a battle against the spirit with the trail of tears is absolutely idiotic. Want to know the difference? It's rather simple. The Native American in question here is dead. There is no longer a peaceful reconciliation. This is not a question of how to treat a people, but rather of whether it's the duty of all Sunnydale citizens to die at the hands of a corpse for crimes committed by their distant ancestors. Forgive me if I'm not all that conflicted.

As usual, there are some magic-focused episodes, and, as usual, they're amusing as hell and have the aftereffect of making everything a damn sight and a half less believable and consistent for episodes uncountable to come. Something Blue's here the main example of this, though Superstar certainly fits the archetype. Something Blue shows Willow accidentally wreaking havoc with a spell gone wrong. But, while the idea of Buffy and Spike getting married is a damn amusing one, this episode faces the same problem as a lot of the show's more magic focused episodes, namely that it entirely breaks… well, everything. If Willow can cast a spell to make her every whim reality, why've the gang yet to resurrect their foreign allies, slay their enemies, and wished for boatfuls of cash to boot?

The main plot of season four has a ton of potential, at least on paper. It addresses one of the aspects of Buffy I've always found lacking, namely the rest of the world's reaction to the whole vampire thing. Well, here, the government gets in on the game with the Initiative, a force of commandos posing as college students (…because) that capture and experiment on vampires and the night's other assorted beasties. The organization's two aspects are summed up in two characters (each of which ends up passing that torch along, but more on that in a bit). First there's Marc Blucas' Riley Finn, a soldier who exemplifies the dependable soldier archetype, determined to do good and sure he's doing it. Then there's everyone's favorite mad scientist, anything to get the job done figure, here Lindsay Crouse's Maggie Walsh, played cool and disapproving throughout.

Buffy, of course, comes in contact with the Initiative (or, well, she does after spending half a season doing nothing much), and she does so through Riley, who she begins to date, not knowing his penchant for night time camo and morning pushups. The drama here seems obvious… which is part of why it's so disappointing when it doesn't bother to show up. The Initiative's initial reaction to her being a Slayer is essentially "Oh, huh. That's odd," which is shortly followed by Maggie's decision that killing her would clearly be a good idea. So, alright, we skipped a few steps and most of the subtlety, but we're at least heading interesting places, right? Things are no longer as simple as demons bad, people good, and Buffy might have to face the implications of…

Moral complexity?

Oh, wait, never mind. That's not how it happens at all. Actually, Maggie Walsh is quickly bumped off by the fruits of her mad science, George Hertzberg's Adam, who is a Frankenstein/Prometheus character desirous of understanding and transcending the boundaries of mortality. He's not a bad character, even if he is a familiar one, and his detached musings do make a decent combination with his strength, but he's a simple character and turns it all into a simple situation. In the past, Whedon's proven a master of twisting the situation so that he can approach complex themes through simple metaphors, but here, having Adam signify everything that's bad about the Initiative in a nicely killable and demonic form deprives the set up of all its interesting parts. With its dangerous element gone, the Initiative – now sans Riley, who's been forced to question everything he's held dear in the one somewhat effective part of all this – bumbles around, irrelevant except when it wanders into the way of someone more important.

One of the side effects of all this is Spike, who's captured by the Initiative towards the beginning of the season. He escapes, but not before they put a chip in his head, and he finds himself suddenly unable to harm any living thing. The initial scenes of this are hilarious, with Spike attacking Willow, finding himself unable to bite her, and her then consoling him for a moment (You're being too hard on yourself. Why don't we wait a half an hour and try again? (The Initiative)) before bashing him on the head. All the same, it really does seem for much of the season that his character and magnetism might've been broken in the shift to impotence. He spends his time hanging around in Giles' house and then Xander's basement, doing nothing much at all, and the revelation that he can still hurt demons, though it seems placed to allow him to really join the good guys' side, doesn't end up amounting to much. It's only at the end, when Spike joins into an alliance with Adam, that he gets his agency and drive back, and his scenes again feel like they've a purpose. I love Spike, he's my favorite character by far on the show, but I hope that, if he's going to be staying around long term, he's given more to do in future seasons than wander about in Xander's cast off clothing.

In the end, Buffy defeats Adam, the Initiative is disbanded because demons are too dangerous to try and harness (because everyone knows the government usually gives up on incredible power just because it's dangerous), and things're just about restored. The main plot, though not awful once it gets going, is never that great. Like all the way back in season one, it's the side stories and one offs that here hold the power, chief among them Hush. The idea of a television episode, let alone one of such a wit-driven show as Buffy, being silent save for music for most of its length is a rather iffy one, on paper. In practice, though, it's one of the strongest episodes of the entire show. The villains, the calm and sophisticated looking Gentlemen and their horrifically demented helpers, are fantastic, and, here, the inability to scream heightens the terror immeasurably, casting every space, no matter how wide or populated, as the site of a claustrophobic nightmare.

It's not the only excellent episode, though. Where the Wild Things Are also successfully builds tension, atmosphere, and drama, something perhaps aided by how, with Buffy and Riley (ahem) occupied, the show needs to turn to its other elements. For character moments, though, Faith's two episode return is impossible to top. Over its course, as Buffy and Faith find their places quite literally switched, the two are forced to, to some extent, come to terms with the other. It's a concept that could have devolved into melodrama, but the excellent dialogue (humorous and anything but), tension, and Buffy's anger make it anything but. These episodes are fast moving and hard hitting, resplendent with all the energy, terror, and raw pain that made Faith's demise at the end of the prior season so unforgettable.

Season four's not awful, but it's certainly nowhere near the standards set by its predecessors. The main plot is slow to develop and only adequate when it does, and the side stories often fail spectacularly, leaving us with a show that often feels like it's coasting on its past success and only able to reach higher through its (excellent) dialogue. And then come episodes like the ones just described, and suddenly everything's back in place, and the quality level's as high or higher than it's ever been. Here's to hoping Whedon and co can, next time, keep those highs and, just maybe, find a main plot with a touch more spark…

STANDOUTS: Hush, This Year's Girl/Who Are You?, Where the Wild Things Are