Dystopia Archive

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Book Review: First Impressions of Brave New Worlds

By
Adam Shaftoe
– March 8, 2013Posted in: Lit Reviews, Reviews

Brave New Worlds, an anthology of dystopian short fiction edited by John Joseph Adams, came my way via Netgalley. I knew I wanted to review this collection when I saw the likes of Ursula K. Le Guin, Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow, and Kim Stanley Robinson, just to name a few, in the book’s table of contents. When the review copy landed in my inbox, it proved to be something unexpected. Rather than a complete anthology, Netgalley sent me the additions included in the book’s second edition: three new short stories and a few essays.

Ah well, better than nothing.

Even on their own, these three stories work quite well as explorations of dystopian themes. As ambassadors for the larger anthology, the works of Robert Reed, Jennifer Pelland, and Ken Liu demonstrate a sound understanding of what the sub-genre owes to past writers while simultaneously examining the innocuous but potentially dystopian elements of our own contemporary world.

For want of a full anthology to review, I thought it would be fun to drill down on the stories at my disposal.

The Cull by Robert Reed

Reed approaches the dystopia through the lens of a small colony of humans who have survived the collapse of civilization. While there is still some life left on the Earth, it endures in a handful of self-contained enclaves. Thought control and social engineering contribute to most of the story’s dystopian themes. The central conflict itself speaks to the more specific issue of managing exceptional people in a controlled environment.

Orlando, one of the story’s two central characters, is equal parts bully and genius. He believes himself to be special while living within a community which necessitates an enforced egalitarianism as a means of survival. As readers we’re left to wonder if genius is capable of elevating a small community, or if such natural talent is inherently destructive for its tendency to raise the individual above society?

Personal Jesus by Jennifer Pelland

Personal Jesus is an exposition on American theocracy. Set in the near-future, the story reads as an informational brochure for new arrivals into the Ecumenical States of America. Within this devoutly protestant nation, citizens are expected to wear a “personal Jesus,” which monitors their actions for any indications of sin. The device and the state it represents are couched within the language of loving correction, but ultimately they create a national panopticon, complete with all the Orwellian trappings of anonymous informers, thought control, and forfeiture of self to a greater power.

The story evokes memories of Robert Heinlein’s If This Goes On, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and even some elements of Frank Miller’s “Martha Washington” series of graphic novels. Fascinating as the story is from a thematic point of view, Personal Jesus leaves any immediate plot or conflict as a purely sub-textual element. I would be quite surprised to find out this piece isn’t a Rosetta Stone to a larger work.

The Perfect Match by Ken Liu

Liu plays the allegory very close to the surface in his tale of technological ubiquity. In fact, I was quite leery of this story when protagonist Sai talks to an AI named “Tilly”, who acts as a combination of personal assistant and life coach, and subsequently chides his neighbour for the technophobia she directs against search engine turned tech giant Centillion. Yet the narrative, through a few twists and turns, proves wholly satisfying. Equally interesting is the The Perfect Match’s discussion on the digital age turning humans into Cyborgs, after the fashion of Donna Haraway.

The most compelling question is found when Centillion’s CEO asks Sai what he expects to find in an off-the-grid world where privacy is “protected.” Amid real world discussions on Facebook and Google mining personal information, it seems apropos for Liu to examine the endgame from both perspectives. How do we reconcile a desire, perhaps even a need, to be connected with privacy as an abstract concept? The Perfect Match does not attempt to answer these questions outright. Instead it positions itself as a think piece, challenging readers to consider technological integration, and its market impact, as an imperfect solution for an imperfect species. Is a Google crafted infosphere not a better thing than some Hobbesian state of nature? Is the self-same data aggregator a gilded cage, or a study in practical post-industrial efficiency?

Verdict

With only these stories as a sample of the entire anthology, I’m quite confident Brave New Worlds would appeal to readers with even a passing interest in exploring dystopian themes.

Brave New Words

Edited by: John Joseph Adams

Published by: Night Shade Books


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A Week With Daily Science Fiction

By
Adam Shaftoe
– February 22, 2013Posted in: Lit Reviews

I’ve been an on-again off-again reader of Daily Science Fiction for the last year or so. While I have always appreciated their offerings, I only recently signed up for their story-a-day subscription service. After enjoying two weeks worth of stories mixed in with my morning coffee, I’m left wondering why I waited so long to subscribe. Even when a DSF story fails to resonate with me as a reader, the critic in me finds it impossible to dismiss the quality of the prose, not to mention the editorial variety that founders/publishers/editors Michelle-Lee Barasso and Jonathan Laden offer on a day-to-day basis.

In that light, I thought I would hide from my ever growing TBR pile and review a week’s worth of DSF short stories.

Image via: jflaxman on DeviantArt

For the People by Ronald D. Ferguson

For the People is a near-future politically themed dystopia, likely representing the worst nightmares of American Tea Partiers and their ilk. The story struck me as a combination of something drawn from Heinlein’s Revolt in 2100 cycle paired with a splash of Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid “Patriot” mythos.

It’s particularly interesting to see how this story explores the line between domestic terrorists and freedom fighters. While hardly a new discussion, Ferguson’s story is quite striking in its attempt to portray the terrorist as a powerless pawn in a larger game. Moreover, elements of horror manage to add an unexpected level of humanity to the main character. Though I anticipated the ending, I don’t think the author is making any serious attempt to dissemble on his denouement. The delivery is strong, the prose is evocative, and the underlying subtext on the dysfunctional elements of American government is not lost on this reader.

The Needs of Hollow Men by K.A. Rundell

Among the five stories within this particular week of DSF content, The Needs of Hollow Men is my choice for first among equals. From the title I had a horrible vision of a story about invisible people. Instead, the text presents itself as a grimy story of individual agency subjected to the good of a city-state amid a period of social decay.

Perhaps the strongest element of this story is its treatment of the psychic trope. Therein an empathic detective takes emotional suppressants as a means of amplifying the residual psychic footprints left on objects and people. The greatest crime the noir narration expounds upon, however, is not rape or murder, but two empathic individuals sharing an emotionally charged memory. It is certainly common enough to see science fiction mobilizing gifted individuals as resources, but the balance between pathos and logos is rarely so evenly struck as it is within this story. Pair this structural strength with the image of the broken down cop who has seen too much and it amounts to a truly compelling narrative.

My kudos to K.A. Rundell.

A Hairy Predicament by Melissa Mead

One of the benefits to a review project such as this is its ability to force me out of my critical comfort zone. Thus A Hairy Predicament is not something I would have read on my own. Yet it is impossible to ignore the inherent cleverness contained within this piece of writing.

The story combines the Brothers Grimm tales of Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk, examining the logical aftermath of both stories. In doing so, Mead is able to turn these tired staples of storytelling into something new. With relatively few words she adds a significant amount of depth to what would otherwise be cookie cutter character archetypes. Nobody quite lives happily ever after in this piece, but the application of modern social responsibility to classic, and often grotesque, stories meant to scare children works quite nicely.

Maps by Beth Cato

There’s a definite “real” world setting to the history of a woman who, through some supernatural power, keeps drawing maps indicating the significant life events of loved ones. Yet the story is set within a world where social workers and professional magi exist hand-in-hand. As a result, framing this story became something of a puzzle; is it new age mysticism or outright urban magic? Mayhap I should just call it slipstream and move on.

Since the protagonist, Christina, is something of a self-aware Cassandra, the narrative focuses on her self-imposed isolation from society at large. Naturally it’s hard not to feel some level of sympathy for the character. I initially read Christina’s self-mutilation as an attempt to mobilize body horror for shock value. Upon further thought, I think there’s some merit in seeing her self-harm as an allusion, if not an outright commentary, on society’s perceptions of those struggling with mental health issues.

My only point of contention with this story rests in its ending. The end is both sudden and jarring, leaving me unsure what to take from it. The story flows through Christina’s life, steadily building toward an act which will free her from foreknowledge. Once that act happens, her existence is left somewhat overly ambiguous. Can she actually live without the lifelong companionship of her maps? Or is one act of freedom going to lead to the ultimate act of freedom?

Five Minutes by Conor Powers-Smith

After reading this story I immediately thought, “This is what that Next movie should have been like.” The film, which drew a loose inspiration from PKD’s The Golden Boy, dealt with a con man who could see two minutes into the future. Five minutes’ protagonist more than doubles the abilities of Dick’s character.

Though five minutes of foresight is by no means a marginal thing, the story itself is a study into mediocrity. The protagonist doesn’t even rate a name; he is simply referred to as “the man” throughout the story, and he’s a Mets fan to top it all off (at least he’s not a Cubs fan). His heroism is a variation of the limited sort demonstrated in Greek myth when Jason carries Hera across a river. But where Jason went on to form the Hellenic Justice League, the man only catalyzes events within an appropriately small scope. We could then best view Five Minutes as a working man’s super hero story. There’s none of the perpetual handwringing of Spider-Man, but it also eschews the fetishes and god complexes of Watchmen. The man, like any normal, non-prescient person, seeks to find a purpose for himself, independent of his particular powers. In that, he is an endearing character in a story which presents a positive outlook for humanity.

Wrap-up

Two dystopias, two stories of ESP, and one twisted fairy tale amounts to a good week of reading. I look forward to seeing what Daily Science Fiction offers up in the future. Also, at the time of this post, all of these stories are available to read, for free, on the DSF website.


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Podcast Episode 22: Chatting With the Job Hunters

By
Adam Shaftoe
– July 27, 2012Posted in: Podcasts

Featuring the voices of Adam Shaftoe, Forest Gibson, Kristina Horner, and Tara Theoharis.

Topics under discussion include:

-   A primer on Job Hunters.

-   Dystopian, roommate, comedy…How? Why?

-   Working in web media.

-   Unicorns.

-   Expert techniques in starship command and Chatroulette

My thanks again to Forest, Kristina, and Tara for taking the time to come and talk to me.

Make sure to check out the first episode Job Hunters below.

Head over to http://www.watchjobhunters.com/ for news and updates about the series.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

 

Cold Intro Music: The Lady of Vastness by Dan-O at DanoSongs.com

Theme music: Bionic Commando stage 4 (Dale vs Wray mix) (NecroPolo) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0


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Web Series Review: Job Hunters

By
Adam Shaftoe
– June 18, 2012Posted in: TV Reviews, Web Series Reviews

I was immediately sceptical when I first read the press release for Job Hunters. How often does a person see the words “dystopian roommate comedy” within the same sentence? By its very nature, the dystopia is not something that lends itself to comedy. Nonetheless, I watched the first episode on the day the series premiered on youtube. After eight minutes and forty-five seconds, Job Hunters had demonstrated two things: a brilliant taste for black humour and bang for the buck production values that put traditional television to shame.

For the record, I gave Job Hunters another four episodes before putting pen to paper on this review.

The premise of the series capitalizes on popular culture’s current fixation on young adult death matches while keeping a healthy distance from other established properties. The setup is straight forward: as a means of population control and social engineering, college graduates report for mandatory arena combat. Within the arena, the grads spend the work day battling each other to the death as a means of showing off their talent to potential recruiters. Their off hours are spent in a safe house where the majority of the series finds its focus. Therein newcomers Devon (Forest Gibson), Avery (Kristina Horner), and Paige (Meagan Naser) form a co-existence pact with arena veterans Max (Joe Homes) and Tiffany (Tara Theoharis). But with an 80% mortality rate, the arena is a dangerous place to make friends.

First question: if this is what happens to college grads, what’s life like for the people who don’t get into a university? Do high school drop outs become Soylent Green?

Initially, I thought that the series might be trying too hard to be all things to all people. Upon further consideration, I’m content to chalk this feeling up to a side effect of pairing something as mainstream as comedy with a sub-genre as specific as near-future dystopia. What emerges, despite the “roommate comedy” branding is a comedic sensibility that is often very dry and very black. Think along the lines of Episodes with a dash of Community’s paint ball oeuvre thrown into the mix. The comedy can often be subtle, but so are the dystopian elements.

There’s also a soft spoken, but decidedly intense, dedication to professionalism within the production of Job Hunters. The post production effects are subtle but add a Mass Effect inspired aesthetic to the gadgets of this near future. The interior of the safe house, as well as the location shots for the arena, are stunning. In addition to the primary cast, there is a venerable army of extras adding to the “this isn’t your average web series” vibe that permeates the production. The music which accompanies key scenes could be mistaken for the work of Bear McCreary or Clint Mansell. And did I mention that each episode is nearly ten minutes long? With the first season funded entirely via kickstarter, and probably no shortage of sweat equity, I can only imagine what wonders the producers would be capable of with a grander budget.

Granted, there is the odd bit of acting ends up chewing the scenery rather than conveying an expected emotion. The character of Doctor Monroe stands out in my mind on that point; the actor in question could have made an at-his-prime Paul Darrow blush. Yet these minor imperfections never amount to much. Instead, the story has kept my focus on the complicated relationship between a group of characters who, in all but one case, refuse to acknowledge that they are going to likely end up killing each other…for a job offer.

And that sense of polite yet high stakes competition speaks to where I think is Job Hunters is going to find its core audience. Consider the series as a metaphor for anybody who graduated university within the last ten years only to find the job market saying “Nah, we’re going to go with somebody older/more experienced/better connected.” Friends quickly turn into rivals when competing for work in a shifting economy. Cognitive dissonance is often the only thing that keeps those relationships from devolving into outright hostility. If I set aside everything else that makes this web series work, the fact that it is using humour rather than a soap box to channel a generation’s anxiety about finding meaningful employment is enough make me sign up for the rest of the season and any others that follow.

Bravo to the entire Job Hunters team. I know I’ll be contributing to the kickstarter for season 2 when it comes around.

You can watch the first episode of the series below and head over to http://watchjobhunters.com/ for updates on the show and behind the scenes video.


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The Daily Shaft: Karl Schroeder and Non-Violent Resistance in The Hunger Games

By
Adam Shaftoe
– April 19, 2012Posted in: Books, Criticism, The Daily Shaft

Weeks ago I was wasting time on twitter when Canada’s own Karl Schroeder began a series of tweets about non-violent resistance and Suzanne Collins’ YA novel The Hunger Games. I’ve reproduced his ideas below so that we can all get on the same page.

“Hunger Games: good movie, but suffers the same flaw as the book: it does not present nonviolent resistance as a valid moral option”

“No character chooses to deliberately demonstrate a willingness to be killed rather than kill–not even Peeta”

“This removes an entire moral stance from the table, making The Hunger Games’s conversation about moral choices incomplete”

“Note especially that the value of nonviolent resistance cannot be judged by its immediate effectiveness, i.e. as a means of ‘winning’”

“Imagine Hunger Games with a tribute character who yells “I will not play your game” and then jumps off a cliff. That’s what’s missing”

“The reason it’s missing is that such an act would undermine every other moral choice in the story–actually raise uncomfortable questions”

Though I’ve yet to see The Hunger Games screen adaptation, I was captivated by Schroeder’s ideas. At no point during my own critical interaction with the text did I ever stop to think about non-violent resistance on the part of the tributes or the people of Panem’s districts. For the sake of this post, I thought I would work through the first question that I came up with upon thinking about Mr. Schroeder’s words.

What would happen if a tribute said no?

Let us assume that our would-be tribute has found the remains of some pre-cataclysm library, and is therefore intellectually and spiritually prepared to reject any role in the institution of the Hunger Games. When Reaping day comes, their name gets called. Yet our tribute is nowhere to be found. As a show of protest they decide to sleep through Reaping day.

I imagine the state’s response would be two-fold. First the Peacekeepers would track down the offending tribute. Then I expect the Capitol’s representative would begin a systematic shaming against the family of our tribute; after all it is an honour to be selected for the Games. Assuming the limited free-market economy that exists within district twelve, as seen in the novel, is endemic of all of Panem, exclusion from society could be a powerful weapon of social control. However, shame is a tricky thing. It assumes that the people instigating the shame can appeal to shared values with those evoking the shame.

Despite the fact that some critics like to draw comparisons between Collins and Orwell, Panem is not Oceania. It’s not even Rome. The people who live in the districts are not subject to systematic thought control/modification. The Capitol primarily holds its power through the apathy of the districts and its military might. In fact, if we trust Rue’s description of district eleven and Katniss’ vision of district twelve as accurate, then the vast majority of the people who live in Panem’s districts actively dislike the Capitol and President Snow, including the Peacekeepers who deal in Katniss’ black market goods. Ergo, attempts at state sanctioned shaming might have the opposite effect whereby they generate a sense of community within a district.

Things get less optimistic once the tribute is relocated to the Capitol. At that point non-violent resistance must take one of two forms, suicide or willing slaughter in the arena. An interesting question then emerges: is it still an act of non-violent resistance if a tribute steals a knife from the dining room of their quarters and cuts open their wrists in the bathroom? If death is inevitable, how much value do we put on the agency of that death? Is a conscious decision to self-terminate equal to allowing oneself to be killed?

If the Medium is the Message, make sure to control the Medium.

Remember that those in power within the Capitol are experts at manipulating the media. The message of non-violent resistance, the essential refusal to be a party to blood sports and its associated social structures, would never make it out into the districts. Be it a bedroom suicide or a tribute stepping into the active mines surrounding their entry point into the arena, the facts would get edited, spun, and managed into oblivion. This begs the question, if there’s no audience for non-violent resistance, does it still have a purpose?

From a critical and moral point of view, I can completely see what Schroeder means about not letting the discussion happen within the book. Yet questions of non-violent resistance within the world of The Hunger Games would likely turn into a discussion that rationalizes suicide. Personally, I think that would be interesting. But I wonder how many publishers would want to add that particular layer to a book that already pushes boundaries of acceptable taste in framing state sanctioned teenage death matches within the lens of faux-Orwellian dystopia.

To put it another way: how would the public respond to a young adult novel that legitimized suicide as a form of political dissidence? If you thought the Harry Potter controversies were bad, imagine Collins’ novel being framed within the context of self-immolating Buddhist monks.


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Book Review: The Hunger Games

By
Adam Shaftoe
– February 10, 2012Posted in: Lit Reviews

Summary Judgement: If you can get past the first act and ignore the maudlin ending, The Hunger Games is a decent read.

Novel by: Suzanne Collins

Spoilers Ahead.

When The Hunger Games hit the market in 2008, I was teaching English and Math at a private high school/enrichment center (very Portal-esque). No less than a dozen of my students told me that I had to read The Hunger Games. Of course, some of these students told me that I needed to keep up with a certain Armenian family whose name shall not sully my website. Needless to say, I was sceptical.

Still, I listened attentively to each review. At the end, I always asked the same question: Does Katniss Everdeen, the novel’s protagonist, beat the powers that control Panem? They all said yes. I would then roll my eyes and assign Nineteen Eighty-Four as mandatory reading. Only when the trailer for The Hunger Games’ upcoming cinematic adaptation held my attention did I think that I might have misjudged the novel. And while the book isn’t without some flaws, it turns out to be a reasonably interesting story.

Without a doubt the weakest part of the book is the beginning. It’s bloated with infodumps that could easily have been culled down to size and strategically inserted elsewhere. The essential details are as follows. In the near future North America folds in on itself due to environmental and political collapse. In its wake emerged the nation of Panem. Panem is a feudal nation comprised of a technologically advanced city-state called “The Capitol” at the core and twelve outlying districts. Each of the districts provides a certain type of good or service to the people of the Capitol, often at the expense the districts themselves. Katniss and Peeta, the two central characters of the story, live district twelve – an unremarkable place that specializes in coal mining.

The Capitol maintains its power through surveillance, military dominance, and psychological warfare in the form of the annual Hunger Games. Said games evolved in the aftermath of the districts’ failed rebellion against the Capitol. Every year each district must send one teenage male and female to compete in a no holds barred televised death match. It takes the novel fifty pages or so to cover all of this. Then, in what must be the world’s longest pre-game show, there’s eighty pages of Katniss and Peeta’s training/press junket in the Capitol. Nearly one third of the book is done before the eponymous Hunger Games actually start.

The very fact that Katniss would volunteer for a death match to protect her sister, the female initially drawn to represent district twelve in the Games, tells me and any teenage version of myself that might be reading this book in an alternate universe all we need to know about the quality of her character. Page upon page of exposition expounding Katniss’ virtue very quickly moves from useful to extraneous to abject naval gazing. In short, start the damn fight, I paid, quite literally, for blood.

Once Katniss and Peeta enter the arena, I couldn’t put the book down. Katniss survives the majority of the Games by her wits and years of experience hunting and foraging. In fact, it’s more than half way through the book before Katniss makes her first kill. All the while the narrative carefully crafts the Games as the epoch in Orwellian surveillance and Roman decadence. When TV ratings drop, the “Game Makers” firebomb the arena to herd the tributes together. Though Collins seems to go out of her way to avoid any direct reference to the tributes as gladiators, the comparison is palpable. Winning the Games is not about being the best fighter; it’s about winning a crowd who can sponsor tributes with gifts of food, medicine, and equipment. Though completely absent from the actual narrative while in the arena, the role of the crowd, their lust for violence, is at the core of every action that Katniss takes. This becomes all the more interesting when midway through the Games the rules change to allow two tributes from the same district to claim joint victory. Peeta’s previous declarations of unrequited love for Katniss during the press junket motivate her to find and protect him, knowing that as a couple, even a fake one, the crowd will be that much more inclined to help them survive.

Despite the Game Makers revoking the joint victory rule when Peeta and Katniss are the last tributes left standing, the duo end up leaving the arena in triumph. I was apt to call shenanigans on this move, but it came with a very interesting twist. Katniss and Peeta’s attempt to subvert the spirit of the Games through mutual suicide challenges the authority of the Capitol. When they return to the Capitol their coach warns them their only hope of coming out of the post-game press circuit alive is playing up the unrequited love angle. For those brief pages The Hunger Games is a brilliant tableau of blood sport psychology. No dictator/oligarchy/ape overlord who uses death matches as a social control can ever rise above the will of the mob. Katniss and Peeta used said will in the finest fashion of Maximus Decimus Meridius. But instead of building that crescendo and leaving the fate of the champions in doubt for the second book, The Hunger Games seems content to resolve the issue as a matter of fact. Katniss and Peeta acted out of love for each other, the crowd ate it up, and the Game Makers managed to save face despite being subverted by a pair of teens from the boonies. Such a waste.

What’s left at the end of the book is a broken hearted Peeta finding out that Katniss’ affections for him were part of the show…or were they? Granted alternate universe teenage Adam probably ate up a will they/won’t they cliff-hanger as a motivation to read the next book, the black lifeclock in my palm says that I have better things to do than indulge in any such schmaltz.

Still, it’s not a bad book. Had I a time machine I would certainly use it to tell a 2005ish version of Suzanne Collins that the most boring parts of a sporting event are the pre and post game shows; that’s why everybody tailgates before a football match. If the romantic side plot were more a subtext and the majority of the book focused on the events of the teenage death match, The Hunger Games would rate for me as an outstanding novel. That said, I still think I’ll be going to see the movie, if only to see how the two compare.


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The Daily Shaft – Thoughts on Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “We”

By
Adam Shaftoe
– December 12, 2011Posted in: Books, The Daily Shaft

Until a few weeks ago, I thought I had a pretty good knowledge of the seminal works of early 20th century dystopian science fiction.  In my mind the only novels that really mattered within the sub-genre were Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Then a friend and tossed me his copy of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Nothing important,” he answered.  “It’s only the book that inspired Orwell to write Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

I’m sure some people find it disquieting to learn that they have a giant hole in their reading list, but I rather enjoy the discovery.  It takes me back to the knowledge rush of my undergraduate days.  In fact, I think it’s more exciting now since I can re-evaluate a much broader base of fiction under a new lens.  That said, I’m sure I’ve invited enough hubris here to have somebody else point out another essential work of the early 20th century.

Zamyatin wrote We in 1921.  The Soviet government refused to publish the novel.  It’s first print was in English in 1924.  It wouldn’t be until 1988 that the novel was finally printed in Russia.  Tempting as it would be to review this novel, I know there’s no way I could do it justice with less than a couple thousand words at my disposal.  Instead, I’ll take a moment to talk about a couple of the themes that stood out as most relevant to this modern reader.

Efficiency is at the crux of OneState, the fictional world in which We is set.  Within this walled city state people wear identical clothing, males and females all have their heads shaven, and life is governed by clocks, tables, and efficient bureaucracy.  All buildings are transparent so that the Bureau of Guardians might better police the citizens of OneState.  F.W. Taylor’s theories on industrial efficiency are revered as scripture within this society.  Everything is ordered right down to the number of chews a person must take per bite.

Consider then the story’s protagonist D-503.  D-503 is a mathematician and the chief engineer of OneState’s INTEGRAL: A rocket capable of bringing the reason and logic of OneState to the solar system.  D-503 is happy.  He begins the book happy and he ends the book happy.  Unlike Winston Smith and Bernard Marx, misanthropes and outsiders from word one, D-503 has the contentment of his entire life uprooted and then re-rooted within the text of the novel.  Why is D-503 happy?  Because his life is efficient.  At the core of that efficiency is his removal from a state of freedom.  OneState provides its citizens with food, sex, education, shelter and purpose; the state then organizes all of those necessities into a convenient table of hours.  What else is necessary to make a person happy when they have all these things, asks D-503?  Isn’t that all we want in this world, as well?

Brilliant as Orwell may have been, his world has not, and likely will not, come to pass.  I’ve always thought our future is much more tied in with the vision of Mr. Huxley; of course that opinion was formed during the economic boom of the late 90s and early 2000s.  In this time of economic uncertainly the promise of OneState becomes that much more relevant.  The growth of the service sector, weakness in manufacturing, and countless other factors have turned government into an ideal employer.  In North America and Western Europe, government, albeit indirectly, provides a significant percentage of the population with food, sex, education, shelter and purpose.  What would become of us if that indirect control became universal at the cost of being direct and invasive?  What would a lost generation trade for purpose?  Where is the line drawn between efficiency and austerity?

Ninety years later, We invites these and many other questions.  It’s a novel that examines the relationship between the system and the individual.  But where a contemporary work such as The Matrix does so from the perspective of the dissident, We looks from the inside out and in doing so gives a voice to the parts of us that want the system, fear freedom, and would surrendered to a benefactor if he promised us a happy life.

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Movie Review: Cargo

By
Adam Shaftoe
– November 18, 2011Posted in: Movie Reviews

Summary Judgement: The movie has a great concept for about fifteen minutes, then the story nose dives into monotony, cliché, and thoughtlessness.

Starring: Anna-Katharina Schwabroh, Martin Rapold

Directed by: Ivan Engler and Ralph Etter

Written by: Arnold Bucher, Ivan Engler, Patrik Steinmann, Thilo Roscheisen, and Johnny Hartman

Cargo has all the elements of a great piece of science fiction: a rust bucket deep range cargo ship, an Earth rendered uninhabitable by pollution, large corporations masquerading as government, space terrorists, and a Human Diaspora to cramped space stations which serve as holding pens for the huddled masses, likely in perpetuity, while a privileged few live on the paradise world of Rhea.

European, dystopian, space based science fiction, that’s a no brainer of awesome, right?  Well that’s what I thought when the movie started.

An absolutely stunning opening scene sees the camera panning around, across and through a massive rotating space station that seems to borrow the best parts of Babylon 5 and Blade Runner. Minutes into the movie and the world already feels lived in to the point of total breakdown.  The inside of the space station is dark and dank as water drips from overhead pipes.  Think about the lower decks of Alien’s Nostromo and you have a good approximation of the better parts of Cargo’s space station. Aside from the fact that the protagonist, Dr. Laura Portman (Anna-Katharina Schwabroh) introduces the backstory and plot through a bit of twenty-third century blogging, Cargo had me hooked.

The aforementioned blogging offers the following information.  Laura’s sister Arianne is living on Rhea.  The good doctor longs to join her sister in paradise as she has had enough of the disease and epidemics that accompany life on the space stations.  To raise the funds that she needs to relocate to Rhea, Laura braves the dangers of space terrorism and long term isolation as a medic aboard the interstellar cargo ship Kassandra.

Unfortunately, the name’s the thing in Cargo. On some level, I’d like to think that naming the starship Kassandra was a happy coincidence; if the evil corporation that runs the world of Cargo is going to make Rhea look like the Elysian Fields in its commercials, why not name a ship after the second daughter of King Priam of Troy as a way of maintaining the mythological motif?  It’s a tragically ironic choice as the movie descends from an opening sequence that comes close to making the act of watching a movie a tactile experience, to a contrivance of clichés that is so predictable that I too felt cursed with Kassandra’s gift of prophecy and foresight.  Viewers beware that so long as you possess half a brain and haven’t been living on a space station these last ten years you too will feel like the Oracle at Delphi when you guess the movie’s ending before its first hour is complete.

I’d expound further on the predictable nature of the movie were it not for the fact that the most natural comparison therein would constitute a giant spoiler.  Instead, I’ll simply say that when the revelation comes, it comes with all the gusto and originality of a post-Sixth Sense M. Night Shyamalan movie.  At least he had the decency of putting the “what a twist” moment at the end of the movie.  Cargo will make you sit through a pointless extra hour of story while the characters struggle catch up with the audience.

Part of the problem with Cargo is that it feels like a movie that was written by committee.  This should come as no surprise considering that five people share writing credits. Bucher and Engler have a joint “story by” credit while Steinmann, Roscheisen, and Hartman share the “screenplay by” credit.  Movie making might be a collaborative project, but it’s obvious in this story where one person’s influence begins and another person’s ends.

At some points, the movie feels like a cheeky send-up of our world.  The Kassandra is under the auspices of the Transitional Space Authority, or TSA.  Due to recent terrorist activities the TSA is installing Sky Marshalls aboard all cargo ships.  What’s that you say? Your allegory sense is tingling?  Too bad that after the Kassandra’s Sky Marshall, Lt. Decker (Martin Rapold), shows a short film on the dangers of space terrorism – hmm no foreshadowing there – he becomes little more than an overly enigmatic vehicle for forwarding an unnecessary romantic subplot.  Said subplot is set against the Kassandra’s crew getting killed off in a fashion befitting a tiresome 80s slasher flick.  After an hour and forty-five minutes of this and maudlin romance/angst/blogging, Laura Portman is forever blogging, any good will that the movie might have earned in its opening movement is shot to Hades. (Look at me I can also bat about Greek mythology in an attempt to be clever.)

In the end, Cargo fails one very important litmus test for me, the CPR test.  If in a fictional work a doctor performs CPR on a person who has no pulse, rather than getting a defibrillator, then pulls the “He’s dead, Jim” shtick, the movie fails the CPR test.  Anybody who’s ever taken a first aid course knows that CPR doesn’t start hearts, unless you are on Baywatch.  Once a movie fails this test, I start noticing all the other small flaws.  Why is a starship burning its main engines when cruising through the void?  Why aren’t people aspirating cryo goo while wearing those not very airtight looking face masks.  Why does the space station rotate to make gravity but the spaceship doesn’t? How in god’s name did that person randomly fire space suit thrusters and still manage to hit the tiny airlock on a moving starship without so much as a slide ruler to help with the math?  Are we using night vision in this scene because we are too cheap to properly light a very dark set?  Those flaws very quickly add up to a place where I’m doing my best impression of a cranky old man longing for the good ol’ days of space movies.

Twas a good effort, Cargo. In another world, a world where you were written by one person and the mood was consistant from start to finish, I might have liked you.  You could have been the sci-fi import that I bragged about to all my friends.  Instead, you’re at best on par with a SyFy original feature.

Hits:

+1 for a decent dystopia

+3 for an amazing opening sequence that gave me hope for a great story

Misses:

-0.5 for being cheap and using night vision instead of proper lighting.  (Protip: you should never copy a cinematography trick that appeared in the Freddie Prinz Jr. version of Rollerball)

-1.5 for failing the CPR test

-2 for too many plot directions

-2 for being pointlessly predictable

Overall Score: -2


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Short Story Review: Air, Water, and Road

By
Adam Shaftoe
– August 19, 2011Posted in: Lit Reviews

Summary Judgement:  A subtle and challenging story that weaves together chthonic mythology, dystopian city spaces, and piracy.

Story by: Aynjel Kaye

Originally Published in: Strange Horizons Magazine, February 24, 2003

Air, Water, and Road was not what I was expecting.  Hell it wasn’t even what I wanted to review this week.  In celebration of the Space Pirates and Zombies launch, I wanted to dedicate this week’s Fiction Friday to a space pirate story.  After hours of googling I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t anime fan fiction (so much Captain Harlock fan-fiction) or pure unadulterated crap.  When I came across Air, Water, and Road and saw “They’re bus pirates. You don’t mess with bus pirates” in the caption, I knew I had found a winner.

Although the plot is straight forward, the way in which it unfolds and the mythology that it builds is nuanced and layered.  Air, Wind, and Road tells the story of a young woman named Asia.  One day Asia and her friend Jaz are walking to their mutual friend Dave’s house, when a pirate bus – that is to say an open air bus made to look like a sail boat – passes them on the street.  Jaz wants to get away from the bus.  A primal and inexplicable attraction draws Asia toward the vehicle.  When the bus stops in front of her, Asia allows herself to be brought on board.  Despite a living figurehead bound to the front of the bus like the stuff of a fetishist’s wet dream and the unsavoury state of the crew, Asia refuses to leave.  Therein, the bus’ captain begins grooming Asia for a command of her own.

To the author’s credit, Air, Water, and Road makes fantastic use of the first person-present tense narrative.  In fact, the agency conveyed through that style of writing nicely juxtaposes the themes of submission and dominance that run rampant through the story.  The rigging on the sail of the pirate bus is described as being dipped in latex.  People within the pirate’s home port are clad in “…in silks and leather, latex and lace, feathers and fur…” And did I mention the bound and gagged living pirate bus figureheads?  I did?  Ah, well then.  The message, I think, is pretty clear; piracy within this story isn’t just sexy, it’s about control.  The nature of that control, however, is a bit more nebulous.

In its strictest sense, piracy is about taking wealth while rejecting the laws of civilized nations.  Though subtle, the piracy within this story has more of a Mad Max feeling; the roaming gangs of bus pirates read like a response to urban/national decay rather than a desire to make a fortune off the backs of honest mercantilism.  Yet the piracy itself is nothing so simple as controlling through bullying.  Connected to the chthonic mythos that is woven into the story is a distinct tone of submission.  When Asia takes up the mantle of piracy she is submitting herself to something greater, a history that goes beyond the limited borders of her world.  It’s nothing short of fantastic to see a paradigm shift within the piracy narrative accompanying the creation of a mythology.

Though the story is thought provoking, it is a potentially challenging piece to read.  There is a subtle quality about the writing that took full advantage of this reader’s preconceptions.  Where I expected metaphors, the story was being literal and that caused me to miss the crux of Asia’s voyage until it was hanging plain in my face.  It’s quite the clever trick, actually.  However, it is one that led me to read the story again to be sure I had a handle on things. Smart readers will heed the bus captain’s advice and, “…just let her talk to you.”

At first, I was inclined to think of this story as a coming of age piece.  When the main character is drawn into a world that bombards her with dangerous and risqué sexuality, it seemed a logical connection to make. But upon further consideration I think that is an oversimplification of something that is much more complex.  The story provides enough hints to make a clear case for Asia as a fairly self-realized person before she gets on to the bus.  While the experience on the bus is transformative, I don’t think it necessarily “grows her up”.  Again, the theme that permeates this story is one of control.  At the end of the story, Asia is in control of a pirate bus but is also enthralled to something greater.  Who is dominant between Asia and that force is certainly grounds for debate.

I only took issue with one thing in this story.  Within its first few paragraphs the prose feels jarring.  I’m certain the choice of words and lack of indefinite articles is done intentionally so that the text, in its structure, reflects the nature of the pirate bus.  In fairness, I doubt this nod to stylistic writing will scare anybody off, but it did stand out in both of my readings.

Through it seems that Aynjel Kaye has dropped off the writing scene, Air, Water, and Road remains an excellent piece of story telling.

Overall Score: +3.5

You can read Air, Water, and Road at Strange Horizons Magazine.


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Movie Review: Eden Log

By
Adam Shaftoe
– July 16, 2011Posted in: Movie Reviews

Summary Judgement: Buried amid its disjointed plot and bad dubbing there is something endearing to this sci-fi/horror mishmash.

Directed by: Franck Vestiel

Starring: Clovis Cornillac, Vimala Pons, Zohar Wexler

During a conversation with a friend who teaches film studies I described Eden Log as a movie that makes absolutely no sense but it looks amazing for its effort.  His response to my observation was a rather direct, “Ah, so it’s pretty much like every French genre movie.”  I can’t quite decide if I should be afraid or encouraged by his generalization.  Either way, I’m of two minds when it comes to Eden Log.  On the one hand it is highly symbolic and genuinely original.  The downside is that I’d need a forensics team to go over the original French language version of the film before I’d be content to say I understand the story.

My first thought was that Eden Log was some sort of post-apocalyptic narrative; it turns out that I was totally wrong, but more on that later.  The story begins with a man, covered in mud, clawing his way out of the dark.  Drawn toward a flashing beacon, the unnamed protagonist enters a ruined facility that is populated with cobwebs and plants that look to have overgrown most of the machinery.  The man’s intrusion into the facility triggers a projection system wherein images of women speaking various languages offer a few precious bits of exposition.  Words like “citizenship, sacrifice, and paradise” stand out from the convoluted diatribe.  The plot begins in earnest when our amnesiac protagonist stumbles upon a man grafted into a plant.  This poor chap suggests that suicide is the only escape from a fate worse than death.

Even in these opening movements Eden Log is nothing short of gorgeous.  Its images are harsh yet seductive.  The inescapable grotesquery of seeing a man grafted into a plant offers a powerful promise of narrative depth.  What sort of civilization creates biogenetic technology that lets a person merge with a plant?  And while I was drawn to the story in the same way that the protagonist is drawn to anything that might offer some clue as to who he is and why he is in the Eden Log facility, problems with the movie are evident very early on.

Language is really at the crux of Eden Log’s troubles.  More specifically, the version I watched, the official North American release, has English dubbed in over the native French.  This frustrates me to no end.  Beyond the fact that dubbing opens the door to dubious translations for the sake of convenient lip synching, dubbing always strips away the tonal quality of the acting and replaces it with somebody else’s impression of the actor in question.  When the man grafted into the plant flies into a fit of histrionics his face shows a world-weary torment while his voice comes off as merely angry.  It’s a distraction that comes at the cost of nuances in the acting and stands as evidence that the fine details of the film may be getting lost in translation.

The only thing that saves Eden Log from being a total train wreck is the strength of its visual quality.  Indeed, I think it is fair to say that the movie is at its best when the actors aren’t speaking.  The filming style itself seems to be an extended metaphor that follows the protagonist as he works his way toward the surface of the Eden Log facility.  When the protagonist is covered in mud the camera work is rough and jarring, mirroring the character’s state of mind and movements.  Sets are similarly constricting and claustrophobic as he tries to reconcile his amnesia.  His ascent through the facility sees wider camera angles, bigger sets and a gradual shedding of the initial mud as he learns more about the corpses, mindless brutes and lone botanist that populate the subterranean world.  Upon his return to the surface our protagonist rediscovers his name and finds himself dressed in a sharp military uniform.  Only then, when he is at his most civil outward appearance, do we come to understand why he is more hideous there then when he was covered in mud a la Swamp Thing.   Where the dialogue fails to deliver, the essential themes of the movie are evident through director Franck Vestiel’s cinematic style.

It is only in Eden Log’s penultimate scene that things get particularly messy on all fronts.  The scene, which is mostly exposition and proves that the movie is not a post-apocalyptic tale, shifts gears into the realm of corporate dystopia.  The relationship between Eden Log’s technology and the plants that seem to have overrun everything in the facility is explained but not in any way that should suggest clarity or closure – see previous paragraph on linguistic barriers.  In the end, we are left with a story seems to be about immigration, exploitation of labour and distrust of authority – how very French.  It’s not bad, per se, but it’s about as intuitive as single variable calculus.

Should you watch Eden Log? Maybe.  The concept is unique enough, so far as contemporary movies go, that it merits some attention.  If you secure a subtitled French language version of Eden Log then you might stand a chance of actually understanding all of the story.  While tracing the trajectory of the plot requires a compass and sextant, the visuals convey enough of the movie’s essence as to make the overall experience a positive one.  Although Eden Log comes nowhere close to offering universal appeal, fans of genre media might find this an interesting diversion from summer blockbusters.

Overall Score: +1.5


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