Post Apocalyptic Archive

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Movie Review: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

By
Adam Shaftoe
– March 13, 2013Posted in: Movie Reviews

On its surface, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World appears as a comical, if late to the table, reaction to the big budget apocalypse movies of the 1990s. This particular story opens with call backs to Deep Impact and Armageddon as a mission to divert an asteroid on course for Earth amounts to a spectacular failure. Humanity is thus left with three weeks before an extinction level event. The audience then witnesses Dodge Petersen’s (Steve Carell) wife abandoning him in the face of disaster. What follows is Steve Carell at his sad clown finest. Rome burns around Dodge, yet he continues to go about his life as best he can without ever really picking up a golden fiddle. This tone of stoic existentialism is likely why the movie didn’t sit well with a lot of people, as evidenced by its 55% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Seeking a Friend, for all its foibles, is probably closer to the truth of the apocalypse than most people would want to admit.

The movie suggests some people, for want of a sense of normality in their lives, will keep going to work when presented with calamity. Others will lock-on to the film’s Carpe Diem motif, auctioning off their virginity, or hiring assassins to kill them rather than looking death in the eye as it falls out of space. William Petersen of CSI acclaim voices one of the movie’s central ideas when he says, “A person should not know when their time is up. That sort of knowledge changes a person.” Nowhere do we see his notion better reflected than in the film’s first act when Steve Carell’s suburban friends turn a dinner party into a heroin fueled orgy, complete with Rob Corddry encouraging his children to power back martinis and “drink through the burn.”

The entirety of the first act is thus a necessary comic catharsis which not only leads into a buddy comedy/road trip story, but also makes the audience poke death in the eye. Well, either that or it alienates the audience entirely with its underage drinking and moral relativism in the face of impending doom. It could really go either way depending on the psychological baggage a viewer brings to the table.

Steve Carell and Keira Knightly make for an unusually effective pairing. In the past we have seen Steve Carell put into uncomfortable romantic situations with younger actresses, Anne Hathaway in Get Smart comes to mind. But the odd couple chemistry between Carell and Knightly works quite well. The relationship is combination of gradual friendship mixed with ‘devil may care’ recklessness. But because the genesis of their relationship is an act of genuine kindness on Carell’s part, the romantic attraction doesn’t seem quite so forced as it has in other Carell catastrophes.

As the movie enters its third act the laughter is all but gone. The comedy of the first act, which told viewers “Hey it’s okay to laugh about the end of the world” gives way to an equally poignant tragic sensibility. Carell has a reconciliation of sorts with his estranged father, aptly played by Martin Sheen, and resolves himself to facing the end of the world with only the company of a dog. The movie could have ended there and been wholly satisfying. While the actual resolution is somewhat predictable given the script’s tendency to remind us that Knightly’s character is an optimist, it doesn’t commit the cardinal sin of a last second apocalypse aversion, thus cheapening the entire experience for the sake of pandering to an audience’s desire for a happy ending. The world ends, we all die, and life ultimately proves meaningless. Still, Knightly and Carell face their end with eyes open and more courage than I could muster in such a situation.

Perhaps that’s one more reason why this movie put off its audience. Were a giant asteroid about to slaughter us, I don’t think I would be the guy who made peace with his life and quietly died in bed. I, and I suspect many others, would take a page from Rob Corddry’s book and lapse into hedonistic denial. Many more would call upon the movie’s “Hire an Assassin” option, which is just a less icky way of saying “commiting suicide.” In a situation where humanity would be at its worst, Carell and Knightly are at their best, and damn if we don’t resent and admire them for it.

While some of the film’s transitions may seem a bit jarring, the movie’s flow from black comedy to life affirming tragedy – just in time for all life on Earth to be wiped out forever – works quite well. The characters’ enduring charm owes much to directing that puts as much emphasis on the pauses between conversations and words left unsaid as it does the dialogue itself. It should also go without saying that the movie requires a certain nihilistic acceptance of life’s inevitable end. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is best approached as a contemporary tragicomedy; it will make you laugh, but that laughter only makes the poignancy of the tragedy hurt that much more later on.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Written and Directed by: Lorene Scafaria

Starring: Steve Carell and Keira Knightly


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Movie Review: Stake Land

By
Adam Shaftoe
– January 21, 2013Posted in: Movie Reviews

Stake Land first appeared on my cultural radar in the most inauspicious of ways. I saw banner ads promoting the movie floating about the Battlestar Galactica Online home page for about three days. When the ads disappeared, I forgot about the movie. Recently, it made an equally stealthy appearance on Netflix, so I thought why not check it out. Its description, however, invited some trepidation on my part.

“This genre-bending thriller combines vampires, religious fanatics and post-apocalyptic horrors with a coming-of-age tale that finds drifter Mister training young Martin to survive the nightmare that has become America as they journey to New Eden.”

Say the words “Vampire Apocalypse” out loud and tell me you don’t wince at the sound of your own voice. You should. And if you don’t, I don’t know if we can still be friends.

Make no mistake, I appreciate a good annihilation fantasy as much as the next person. Yet a shuffling of the monsters within the cinematic trope has to be sign that this particular genre niche is running on vapours. Despite this, and some incidental similarities in nomenclature and format to 2009’s Zombieland, Stake Land manages to turn out a reasonably unique take on the post-apocalyptic monster story.

Stake Land’s best selling feature is its realization that post-apocalyptic movies are the figurative bull in a china shop. The narrative must be violent and convulsive but not so much so that it shatters the audience’s tentative acquiesce to the end of the world; I’m looking at you, Rolland Emmerich.

We want the bull to break things so long as it doesn’t bring the roof down on our heads. Stake Land executes a few gambits to achieve this task. Even though Mister (Nick Damici) exudes a gruff and cold exterior, his dialogue and actions steer clear of the grumpy hero clichés. His protégée Martin (Connor Paolo), whose name I actually forgot because Mister only ever addresses him as “boy”, is not the dough-eyed neophyte whose misadventures drive the plot. The two are survivors, each dependent upon the other for purpose and protection. Beyond that, Damici and Paolo’s well placed scenes of “Stake Jitsu” training manage to evoke a Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-san style of relationship. Routine as the relationship between the two characters may be, it is all but forged in silence, allowing the audience to shade the protagonists as they will.

When Martin and Mister come across additional survivors, the writing is smart enough to avoid any of the big apocalypse clichés: we can’t trust strangers; we can’t take them with us; somebody in the group is infected; and Sexe Diem, which is (fake) Latin for, “It’s the end of the world; we might die tomorrow, so let’s bang.” Though Mister’s reputation as a hunter lands him no shortage of action when the two call upon various free city states, the sex is always off camera. More importantly, there’s no clumsy romantic sub-plot for Martin.

Oh and it should go without saying that there’s no sex with vampires, no sparkling vampires, and no misunderstood vampires who want to atone for past deeds. The blood suckers range from semi-sentient to outright feral and their sole motivation is to feed on warm bodies.

How odd that annotating all the things the movie doesn’t do almost encapsulates a review in and of itself.

In terms of story, Stake Land is at its best when examining humanity as its own worst enemy. Yeah, I know, Battlestar Galactica and The Road pretty much wrote the book on that particular post-apocalypse motif. Still, Stake Land’s use of religion to explore this theme is rightly satisfying.

Amid the ruin of America a religious sect called “The Brotherhood” controls much of the hinterlands between pockets of civilization. The Brotherhood believes the vampires to be god’s means of cleansing the Earth of the impure and unworthy. Though firmly Christian in origin, they are not beyond loading a truck with vampires and ramming it into the gates of a city state, thus unleashing some divine vengeance.

Yet the religious themes do more than vilify the story’s human antagonists. One of the first survivors Mister and Martin come across is a nun known only as Sister (Kelly McGillis). It would be all too easy to turn Sister into a “god has a plan” sort of bible thumper. Instead, she symbolically carries, and perhaps compartmentalizes, her faith in her pocket in the form of a figurine of the Virgin Mary; however Sister also picks up a gun to defend their group. She, like Mister and Martin, embody compassion within a broken world.

This is where Stake Land really delivers as a post-apocalyptic movie. Compassion is regularly the first victim of this genre. What better way for a director to show the end of the world than to end any sense of obligation from one person to another. Keeping a sense of loosely chivalrous heroism, violent and visceral as it may be, about the POV character and his mentor defies the audience’s expectations about this type of story. Martin and Mister become easily identifiable to the audience without sacrificing any of the plot’s high stakes.

On a technical level, Stake Land makes excellent use of its modest budget. External shots in heavily wooded rural areas effectively build a ruined world for free. The camera work is steady enough to convey a grand sense of location and isolation, but never dwells on the setting as a means of filling time. Fight sequences between the hunters and vampires are fast and brutal, as befitting an actual fight. The make-up and gore on the vampires is as good anything one would expect from a big budget production. My only real complaint is that the director’s effort to show Mister and Martin’s professional detachment left the final vampire battle sequence rather understated. In fact, Martin’s “graduation” to full hunter is a blink and miss it moment. A few extra seconds of camera work here and there would have contributed so much more emotion to these important scenes.

Strong as Stake Land may be, it wasn’t the movie to redefine the sub-genre in 2010 nor shall it do so today. What it does prove is a high level of technical and storytelling proficiency from director and co-writer Jim Mickle. While not quite as cerebral as something like The Road, Stake Land proves that there is room to improve the formula within the supernatural post-apocalyptic genre.

Stake Land

Director: Jim Mickle

Writers: Nick Damici, Jim Mickle

Stars: Connor Paolo, Nick Damici and Kelly McGillis


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Who is Captain Power, and Why Does He Deserve a Reboot?

By
Adam Shaftoe
– October 22, 2012Posted in: Television, The Daily Shaft

The year was 1987. Transformers was all the rage, and Hasbro was filling dump trucks with money having successfully paired a line of toys with a fantastically addictive children’s cartoon. Enter Gary Goddard and Tony Christopher. They had an idea for a post-apocalyptic science fiction series that would pit man against sentient robots without any of the space Mormon BS of Battlestar Galactica. Enter Mattel. Mattel’s executives were frothing at the mouth with envy over Hasbro’s Transformers revenue. So they came up with a plan to insinuate light gun based interactivity into Goddard and Christopher’s series. Thus was born, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future: a series meant to cater to the whole family, but in doing so appealed to nobody…well nobody except me and a few other loyal resistors. Seriously, I took a beat down for bringing my XT-7 Powerjet toy to school for show and tell.

So what went wrong? Captain Power’s story was dark. I mean Ron Moore Battlestar dark. Set in the 22nd century, it saw a scientist named Lyman Taggart (David Hemblen) take control of the world’s robot armies by linking his mind to that of a sentient computer. The scientist came away from the encounter seeing “machine life” as the next phase in human evolution. Therein he began a pogrom against humanity, digitizing humans into computer code so they might be reconstituted into machine bodies at a later date. Taggart’s machines nearly wiped the planet clean of life save for small bands of refugees, scavengers, and resistors. Just picture all the worst parts of the future as depicted in Terminator and Terminator 2 and you’ll be in the right ball park.

Enter “Captain” Jonathan Power (Tim Dunigan) and his father Dr. Stuart Power (Bruce Grey). Stuart was working on a secret weapons project within a hidden base in the Rocky Mountains. “Project Phoenix” would have turned the tides in the “Metal Wars” in that it transformed a single human soldier into a mobile weapons platform capable of resisting digitization.

Sadly Pap Power died before the “Power Suits” could go into mass production. Vowing revenge for his father, Jonathan and a band of four other resistors took up a campaign of asynchronous warfare to bring down Lord Dredd and his machine Reich.

In concept, it’s fantastic. Dread was the embodiment of every nasty bit of 20th century nationalism, only in a cyborg body and commanding legions of machine soldiers. The language of hegemony, empire, and resistance permeated each episode. Characters had back stories which gradually unfolded throughout the season allowing for some great narrative depth. In particular, the youngest member of the team Jennifer “Pilot” Chase was a former “Dread Youth” stooge, liberated by the Captain. The series was even a little avant-garde in its treatment of genetically engineered soldiers, biological weapons, WMDs, and the Internet. Of course with Joe Straczynksi, who would later go on to write and show run Babylon 5, posting writing credits for half the episodes such quality long-arc story telling is hardly unexpected.

Ultimately, the show’s biggest strength proved to be its undoing. Children, except bookish power nerds like me, were not apt to catch-on to the subtleties of the story. Meanwhile parents, including my own, had a problem with plopping their kids down in front of a show where the bad guy espoused his plans for a new order. Say nothing for the dubious image of certain human antagonists walking about in regalia reminiscent of a certain German political association. Also, the toy’s “shoot at the bad guys on TV” selling  point barely worked.

After one season the series was canned and Landmark Entertainment, Captain Power’s production company, began a slow fade into the ether. Until recently, this was the end of the story for Captain Power. Now it seems the Captain may be on the brink of a renaissance.

Via Topless Robot and Ain’t it Cool News we’ve learned that Gary Goddard’s new production company has entered negotiations with former Paramount executive Jeffrey Hayes to resurrect Captain Power as Phoenix Rising, a one-hour weekly drama. Noted Star Trek writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens have signed on as both developers and writers for the new series.

With the promise of details to come, it’s hard not to speculate based on a single press release and a lone promotional video. Which network/cable channel will have the stones to pick this up? When the original series cost $1,000,000 per episode in 1987 money, can the new show look good on a manageable budget? What does Joe Straczynksi think about this, and is he going to get involved with the project?

Here’s what we know.

Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens have said that their intent is to begin again the story of Captain Power, NOT to “fix Captain Power.” The new series will explore how the world of the Machine Age came into being, while delving into the rich history of the characters. Though the actors will likely be different, fixtures such as Jonathan Power, Pilot, Scout, Tank, and Lyman Taggart/Dread will all be in play. Former series star Tim Dunigan has also said that he is involved with the process “on some level.”

It may be early days on Phoenix Rising, and maybe I’m channeling a bit too much of the energy that I had as a sixteen year old writing a spec script for season 2 of Captain Power, even though I knew it was a fruitless exercise, but for fans of the series this is some pretty interesting news.

Here’s the promo video for Phoenix Rising.

Now to find a way to get Gary Goddard, Tim Dunigan, and/or Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens on the podcast.


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Book Review: Blood and Water

By
Adam Shaftoe
– August 24, 2012Posted in: Lit Reviews

I’ll borrow a favoured term from Margaret Atwood when I say that Blood & Water, edited by Hayden Trenholm and published by Bundoran Press, is a tremendously compelling collection of speculative fiction. The anthology’s theme is one of near future conflicts emerging out of resource scarcity and climate change, all from a Canadian perspective. In the initial call for submissions Mr. Trenholm placed no limits on genre, indeed stating in the book’s introduction that he was open to “cross-genre and even urban fantasy”. By and large, the stories included in the final cut are science fiction of the first order, what some might call “hard” SF, but what I’d rather recognize as the sort of work where the authors very clearly did their homework. While one or two stories do borrow too heavily on the clichés of “Can Lit” the greater focus remains on the fantastic challenges and the no less awe inspiring opportunities that Canada, as well as the rest of the world, will face in the century to come.

Although the quality of the writing, even in the stories I didn’t care for, is second to none, this is not an anthology to be read in a single sitting. The visions of the future offered in Blood & Water are, in all likelihood, more in tune to the reality of our world than most people would care to admit. The potential hard truths deserve a moment or two for reflection and exploration after the fact. Where a good friend once told me people read to escape, I would argue there is little sanctuary to be found within Blood & Water. Yet the best stories within this book do not present tales of privation with an accusatory finger pointed squarely at the reader and their carbon footprint. They offer solutions to problems and in doing so they posit on the price that we must pay for sustainability and survival.

Honours Candidates

Phoebastria by Jennifer Rahn

Considering the background of the authors within this anthology, it should come as no surprise to see the academy as a central setting in a number of stories. Jennifer Rahn’s Phoebastria is memorable in that it takes the concept of the ivory tower, and drops it into a version of Edmonton that is not quite post-apocalyptic but certainly on course therein. The theme of resource conflicts are taken quite literally within this story as a graduate student is exiled from the university into a largely lawless and waterless wilderness. There is some obvious criticism of officious bureaucracy as seen in contrasting graduate student competition with gang loyalties. However, I think the truly interesting message emerges as a discussion on the “knowledge economy” where people cease to be valued as individuals and are instead reduced to their varying skill sets.

Bad Blood by Agnes Cadieux

Bad Blood is unique within the anthology as something that subverts the generally established approach to resource scarcity. Herein the resource is not oil, electricity, or water, but human antibodies. Racism, racial intolerance, and individual rights are juxtaposed against the practical application of a Rousseauian greater good during a viral outbreak. Tales like this also shine a light on the unique hubris encompassing discussions of manmade climate change. As we discuss carbon emissions it is easy to overlook nature as a complex beast capable of striking down humanity at the cellular level. Bad Blood is a viscera filled reminder of this truth, a horrifying voice quietly whispering in the back of our minds that no matter how careful we are, with ourselves, with the planet, we are not safe. More than any other within the collection, this story chilled me to the bone.

We Take Care of Our Own by Kate Heartfield

While others may have used the word “foodlegger” in the past, We Take Care of Our Own was my first exposure to this particular neologism. Heartfield’s story offers a non-cataclysmic breakdown of modern macro agriculture and the subsequent economic protectionism which rises in its wake…and cheese smuggling into New York. Yet this story is more than a parallel of Canada’s dubious past in alcohol smuggling. It frames critical thinking, a politically astute populace, and youthful outrage as scare resources in the face of growing apathy within Canada’s population (Montreal notwithstanding of course). Furthermore, there seems to be a suggestion on the part of the author that a critical mass of people living their lives in a “plugged-in” condition is contributing to a lethargic hive mind like mentality. Pairing this serious dialogue with something as deceptively whimsical as an illicit grilled cheese sandwich allows for fantastic exploration without becoming abrasive or preachy.

The Parable of the Clown by Derek Künsken

At first, I did not know what to make of this story. Who would when the first sentence discusses the serious problem of clown farts? Yes, I said clown farts; it’s a significant issue in forestry and bio-fuels. In an anthology heavily invested in exploring problems of a planetary magnitude, Künsken’s story is a necessary oasis of comedy. This does not imply The Parable should be taken any less seriously than the rest of the stories in this book. Comedy by its very nature demands more of its audience than tragedy. The selling point in this case is the author’s deft ability to balance the inherently didactic nature of a parable with poignant absurdity on par with the likes of Terry Gilliam. So what is there to laugh about in sustainable resource development? Quite a lot when we stop to look at short sightedness in the face of long term problems.

Watching Over the Human Garden by Jean-Louis Trudel

Many years ago a high school teacher of mine suggested the planet was not over populated, simply unbalanced in its distribution of resources. This was back when Earth’s population was a shade below six billion. Trudel’s contribution to Blood & Water is the perfect response to any such notion, and is ideally placed as the final tale within this book. Though its exploration of shifting population patterns due to climate change is not unique within the anthology, it is the only narrative  that looks at alternative fuels, nuclear fusion, and conservation as a stall in the face of the planet’s real problem: humans need to consume things. Layered within its art on art discussion, is a cruel but arguably necessary recognition that humanity may be an overgrown garden in need of pruning. Moreover, Human Garden takes aim at the culture of cognitive dissonance fueling our collective inability to manage climate change. “…people rapidly get used to transformations of their own environment. Much too rapidly, in fact.” Consider well the author’s words as we reflect on this summer’s record breaking heat and water starved crops.

The Bottom Line

There’s little doubt in my mind that Hayden Trenholm has assembled a fantastic collection of highly relevant, but equally accessible stories. Where I’m normally content to recommend an anthology if at least half the content within rates as “decent”, I would call no less than eleven of Blood & Water’s stories outstanding. Of the remaining nine, only four failed to find any real traction with this critic. For those particularly concerned with cost/value equations, I would point out that five of the stories in this anthology are reprints. Yet they are, save for one, very fine contributions which are quite in line with the theme of this collection.

For readers with the fortitude to gaze into a future without the comforts of cornucopia technology, a place where perpetual crop shortages and radical climate change are less than a lifetime away, then Blood & Water is a must have.

Blood & Water is edited by Hayden Trenholm and published by Bundoran Press.


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Gears of War: Judgement – A Missed Opportunity?

By
Adam Shaftoe
– July 18, 2012Posted in: The Daily Shaft, Video Games

Gears of War Judgement promises more of the same, now with 50% more snark and 60% more of the only black guy in the game.

For a moment, let us ignore the likely future where everybody who owns an XBox 360 is going buy the fourth installment in the Gears of War franchise. And while we’re employing our cognitive dissonance, we might as well disregard the obvious fact that a fourth Gears game, from a narrative point of view, is nothing but naval gazing. I could also point out that prequels are generally an indication of creative bankruptcy within a property, but that might belabour a point that better people than me have made a long time ago.

Make no mistake, I do not begrudge Epic a chance to make more money with an established brand. And mark my words; Epic is going to make money with Gears 4, if only out of consumer loyalty. Yet as a fan of the series, and somebody who even read a Gears of War novel, this new game seems like a missed chance to shift the focus of Gears while maintaining its spirit.

In the scant calms between bouts of gunfire, the Gears of War trilogy offers a compelling story of redemption and loss. Marcus Fenix’s introduction is that of an ex-convict who had been left to rot in a military prison for putting loyalty to family above loyalty to the state. Dominic Santiago, Marcus’ best friend, begins as a man on a quest to discover the fate of a wife lost to the vicissitudes of war. By the end of the second Gears of War game, these quests are resolved. Therein the story of the third Gears game is that of a search for purpose.

*Spoiler ahead for Gears of War 3*

Arguably neither of the two main characters are able to find a purpose in life. Despite winning the day, Marcus ends Gears 3 as an accomplice to the Locust genocide. As he strips off his armour, Marcus admits to fellow Gear Anya Stroud that he doesn’t know what to do without the fighting. Dom’s fate is found somewhere between heroic sacrifice and suicide, probably closer to the latter. In finding his wife’s mind and body shattered by Locust torture in Gears 2, Dom effectively loses the one thing that kept him fighting.

Yes, there is senseless gunplay in the Gears franchise. And yes, there is a lot of blue collar dialogue from Delta Squad. However, beneath its base trappings, Gears of War is one of digital media’s foremost war stories. Rather than undermining the narrative authenticity of these two characters, a smart decision, Epic is shifting the focus of Gears of War: Judgement to Delta Squad’s two other members: Damon Baird and Augustus Cole. The potential problem is that Baird and the Cole-Train don’t quite fit the established character model.

The most obvious incongruity with Gears: Judgement is Delta’s favourite misanthrope being billed as Lieutenant Damon Baird. Gears of War has always been a war story told from the “working man’s” point of view. Lieutenant Kim, Delta Squad’s commanding officer in Gears 1, dies at the end of the first act. From then on out, Marcus, a mere Sergeant in the Coalition of Ordered Governments’ Army (COG for short), acts as Delta’s leader. The narrative pay off in such a decision is that the player is always as much in the dark, with respect to the larger scope of the war, as the game’s central characters. Hearing the taciturn Colonel Hoffman tell Marcus that something is “need to know” becomes a shared experience between gamer and character. Maintaining that shared experience with Lt. Baird may prove a difficult proposition as officers by their very nature know more about strategic matters than the men under their command. Not to mention this casting might seem a retread of established motifs given that Gears: Judgement will tell the story of Baird and Cole’s fall from the COG’s grace. We’ve already explored redemption as a conceit with Marcus, is it going to work a second time with Baird? Are players going to empathize with Cole, a millionaire sports star turned fighting man due an “alien” invasion? I hate to say it, but I’m not convinced that Cole has the chops to be anything other than comic relief.

Redemption also misses an opportunity to tell a story set before Emergence Day. Prior to the Locust’s attack, Sera was a planet divided between two supra-national entities, the Coalition of Ordered Governments and the Union of Independent Republics. We know from game lore that these two entities fought a series of conflicts known as the Pendulum Wars. The details of those conflicts are scant save for references to resource scarcity and control of the super fuel known as Immulsion. In fact, other than the Gears of War novels, the canonicity of which are up for debate, what little gamers know of Sera’s back story is gleamed through in-game ephemera. Propaganda posters nailed to crumbling walls, overheard conversations, and throwaway references hint at the world that existed before the Locust’s emergence. Nothing would say, “the same but different” like bringing the oft hinted at pre-Locust world of Gears of War to life. Then again, maybe only political science geeks and history nerds would want to know about the Cold War conflicts that happened before the underground monster apocalypse.

In the end, Gears may always be a man versus monster experience; if only because chainsaw bayonets are a monstrous weapon when used on a human. It’s easy to feel mighty chopping up an over sized Locust drone. Gears draws quite heavily on the classic “alien other will unite mankind” theme as seen in novels like Starship Troopers. But are the dogmatic and geopolitical differences between the COG and UIR sufficient to merit battlefield butchery? Probably not. If that’s the case, it’s probably a better business investment to keep treading the same ground for a profit, then risking jeers for neutering the combat experience just to push the franchise’s fictional frontiers.


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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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Short Story Review: Alien Apocalypse – The Storm

By
Adam Shaftoe
– November 12, 2011Posted in: Lit Reviews

Summary Judgement:  It’s incredibly difficult to pull off an innovative alien invasion story.  Alien Apocalypse manages that task in just under ten thousand words.

Written by: Dean Giles

Alien invasion stories are an interesting sub-genre of science fiction.  They compare quite nicely to high fantasy in that the seminal entries were written about a century ago, and in that time we haven’t really come up with any interesting ways to divert from the formula.  Consider that Independence Day is for all intents and purposes War of the Worlds only bigger and bloated with American jingoism.  Despite the ninety-eight years that separate the two stories, the ending is still the same:  all the armies of man couldn’t defeat the invaders were it not for a humble virus; a computer virus with respect to the latter but the conceit remains a constant.  Therefore in evaluating an alien invasion story only one all-important question comes to my mind: Does it do something new?  Alien Apocalypse: The Storm, most certainly does.

The story, though a discrete unit on its own, represents a first episode in a much larger narrative.  Yet it would be mistake to assume that this is a blasé introduction.  There’s no filler or extraneous back story as the plot shifts between the story’s two principle characters. Elliot Weber is an eleven-year-old living with his grandparents in the English countryside.  Leon Weber, Elliot’s father, is serving out the last few months of a four year prison sentence.  For reasons that are both deceptive and poignant, Elliot has not seen his father since Leon’s incarceration.  In spite of the physical isolation, the two maintain a relationship through phone calls, email and letters.  At the beginning of the story, their most recent correspondence involves a comet that passes very near to the Earth.

My first thought when I read about the comet: “Great.  Here come the tripods, heat rays, and black gas.”

I’m convinced that Mr. Giles took this approach just so he could have a laugh at the expense of readers like myself who jumped to a false conclusion.

Either by accident or design, the close pass of the comet deposits a form of semi-sentient plant life on the Earth. Excreting acid and multiplying at exponential rates, the moss eats everything that it comes into contact with.  Earth and all its life upon it have no natural defence against the invading life form.  In that sense these “aliens” are more akin to the virus from The Andromeda Strain than any sort of grey alien.  Of course, the green moss assimilates biological life with such terrifying efficiency as to make Andromeda look like a bad case of the sniffles.  At this point, I could draw a line between the red weeds that H.G. Welles’ Martians used to terraform the Earth.  However those plants were nowhere near as pernicious as the green moss and only took root, pardon the pun, as a consequence of tripods and war machines.

After only a few days of exposure to our planet’s biosphere, the green moss has brought civilization, or at least England, to an absolute ruin.  Leon wakes up in his solitary confinement cell thinking that the prisoners are rioting only to find that society has collapsed in around him.  From there, the plot is rather straight forward; Elliot must survive the encroaching moss long enough for his father to rescue him.

I will admit that at first I found both of the characters to be a little archetypal.  Granted invoking familiar archetypes is necessary in a story that very quickly moves from everyday life to a post-apocalyptic environment.  While Elliot remains little more than a goal for his father throughout the story, Leon’s personality develops quite nicely beyond the cliché of an ex-military ex-con with a heart of gold.  In fact, by the time the story was done I felt genuinely connected to Leon as a character.

There are also hints of environmental and colonizing force motifs at play within the story.  It begins with Leon’s attempts to maintain his sense of self within the brutal environment of Her Majesty’s Prison Wormwood Scrubs.  The metaphor continues with the nature of the green moss as a literal colonizing force upon the Earth.  In both instances an environmental force is acting upon a pre-existing system to forcibly convert it into something made in the former’s own image.  Since the grand narrative is still very much in its nascent phase, the over arcing ideas remain somewhat undeveloped.  However, the seeds have clearly been planted for some interesting extended metaphors in subsequent editions of the series.

Overall, Alien Apocalypse deals with what I call the “Welles Paradox” (Where the capacity for narrative depth within an alien invasion story is proportional to the efficiency of the invasion) by destroying the world and then turning his characters loose within it.  This setting results in an immediate empathy with the story’s adult protagonist as he embarks on a routine but wholly accessible quest.  The nature of the story is focused enough to keep a reader interested while maintaining a natural potential for serialization without feeling pulpy.  I for one can’t wait to see what Mr. Giles come up with next.

Overall score: +3

You can buy yourself a copy of Alien Apocalypse: The Storm as well as reading its free prequel story at TWB Press.


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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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Book Review: Nexus: Ascension

By
Adam Shaftoe
– March 29, 2011Posted in: Lit Reviews

Summary Judgement:  Nexus: Ascension deftly weaves post-apocalyptic storytelling with space opera to produce a unique novel that explores the depths of tragedy and the limits of hope.

Written by: Robert Boyczuk

Published by: Chizine Publications

Robert Boyczuk offers a supremely intriguing story in Nexus: Ascension. Set in a far-flung corner of the galaxy where human life exists on multiple planets, the novel charts the fate of the starship Ea. The Ea’s crew, upon returning to their home planet of Bh’Haret from a thirty-year trade mission, emerge from stasis to find a strange network of satellites orbiting their world.  Blocking all transmission in and about Bh’Haret, the satellites scream two words, over and over, into the void “plague hazard”.  Low on food and fuel, the Ea’s crew land on Bh’Haret only to find cities pockmarked with radioactive craters and human life seemingly extinguished.  And did I mention that all this happens within the first thirty pages?  To say that Nexus: Ascension has a convincing hook is to understate the robust narrative that Boyczuk generates with his words.

Nexus: Ascension is no simple story of survival.  Indeed, that is one of the strengths inherent to Boyczuk’s style.  He constantly plays with preconceptions that readers might be bringing to the table.  Each time the plot approaches a cliché of the post-apocalyptic genre it changes pace just enough to keep a reader on their toes.  While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the book plays in plot twists, it is keenly aware of the need to be unexpected when treading down the familiar literary path of planetary catastrophe.  Allow me to illustrate the point: Nexus: Ascension isn’t content to merely have its characters lament the loss of their world while they get on with the business of survival.  Rather, the book unrepentantly explores loss as a psychosis so strong that its characters are constantly courting insanity.  On its own, that idea might not seem overtly avant-garde.   Yet, maintaining a believable malleability in the characters’ sanity without reducing them to blithering idiots, cannibals or other tropes of madness is quite a feat.  Arguably, the novel’s tableau of coping skills, which quite naturally put me in a place to ask what I would do in a similar situation, is one of its most accessible qualities.

Much to my surprise, the novel’s tendency to explore the mental state of its characters in no way slows the pace of the book.  One of the ways Boyczuk ensures the tempo of his novel is in resisting the tendency to provide detailed exposition.  Equal measures of sharp dialogue and rich environments drive the plot rather than merely elaborating on it.  Indeed, as the story transitions from survival narrative to space opera, I appreciated that the writer focused on the events at hand rather than the pointless details of fusion engines, laser pistols and other such sundry sci-fi gizmos.  This shouldn’t suggest that the book deserves being labelled as soft sci-fi.  All events within the book unfold according to the rules of physics as we currently understand them.  Thus, avoiding excessive details therein assumes a level of sophistication from the audience in addition to grounding the text in the human condition.

Despite the aforementioned strengths, the character development within the book isn’t quite perfect.  There are a couple of religious kooks within the book that serve no real purpose, not withstanding their occasional prognostications of doom.  Additionally, there are times when it seems that some of the main characters, in particular Ea’s captain, Sav, are a little shallow.  However, the more I read into the book, the more I came to recognize that this shallowness was not a failure on the author’s part.  Rather, these occasional moments of character hollowness were a reflection on the fact that the book’s characters find themselves constantly reinventing who they are to suit the moment in which they live.  In retrospect, this is an interesting way of exploring self-identity when everything that defines a person and their place within a society has been destroyed.  While a very bold gambit for subtextual exploration, it is one I fear that some readers may misinterpret.

Further criticisms of Nexus: Ascension are few and far between.  As the story develops, the focus splits from one inclusive plot line to two separate threads.  The segment wherein my favourite character dwells ended a bit more abruptly than I would have liked.  Of course, a complaint such as that speaks more to Boyczuk’s ability to draw me into the story than it does any fault in the writing.  Also, the characters’ relationship toward cybernetics is as thought provoking as it is frustrating.  While it all makes sense within the context of the story, I felt a desire for a greater understanding of the relationship between the cybernetic “facilitators” and their role within Bh’Haret’s nation states.  Again, it’s another criticism that speaks more to how the book tapped into my fascination with post-humanism than any failing in the narrative.

As a study in human emotion and a first rate space opera, Robert Boyczuk’s Nexus: Ascension is so unique that it defies easy comparison.  It is also a bold story in that it dares to have individual characters honestly grapple with the end of their world.  Short of the sheer physical exhaustion that comes with reading late into the night, it was almost impossible to find a reason to put this book down.

Overall Score: +3.0


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Fiction Friday Short Story Review: Orange

By
Adam Shaftoe
– January 28, 2011Posted in: Lit Reviews, Reviews

Summary Judgement:  Orange is a wonderful read that blurs the demarcation between short story and flash fiction.

Written by: Susan Forest

Photo by: Spencer Jones-Getty – originally found on the Guardian Blogs.

Style defines Susan Forest’s Orange almost as much as its content.  Rather than follow a single protagonist through the end of the world, the story is a fusion of a half-dozen pieces of flash fiction.  These smaller narrative units are connected together through the exposition of a photographer who produces time lapsed images of an orange impaled upon a spike.  Trust me, it’s not as complicated as it sounds.  Although the format is unusual, it offers a uniquely cohesive story in relatively few words.

As I already mentioned, Orange is a story about the end of the world.  Although the details of this particular apocalypse are limited, the relationship between The Earth and “The Orange” offers ample back story.  Within the text, Orange presents snapshots (my words are chosen specifically to fit in with the motif ) of would-be survivors who have taken temporary refuge in the offices of a fictional multinational called SpaceCorp.  I’ll let your imagination take it from there as further details would spoil the story.

Despite the brevity of these snapshots, Orange is remarkably nuanced.  To call Ms. Forest’s writing rich and evocative is to commit a crime of understatement.  However, it’s not just the details that make this story work; the very structure of the text is essential to overall experience.  Short narrative chunks add a consistent sense of urgency to the story, even when characters find a reprieve from the anarchy of armageddon.  In keeping dialogue terse and descriptions to a pithy minimum, the tempo of the story is similarly accelerated.  Such natural pacing happens without the use of extreme violence, immediate doom or other such tropes in the arsenal of plot hastening.  Rarely do I find a story offering so much depth for so little investment.  Of course, that usually means the story’s imagery is going to live in my head for a while.  In this instance, I’ll roll out the red carpet.

I find myself wanting to return to the relationship between The Earth, “The Orange” and the photographer.  There’s a certain perfection in having decaying fruit as an analogue to the Earth; the symmetry says so much without having to say anything at all.  However, the photographer, the voice that connects the narrative bits together, oozes subtext.  It’s taking every ounce of my writer’s discipline to avoid turning this review into an exercise in literary deconstruction and analysis.  Come on, you know you want to hear me wax poetic about textual nuances, right?  Wait, where are you going?  Don’t leave.  I’m just kidding, I promise, I’ll behave.

With an abundance of books and movies jumping on the apocalypse bandwagon, it is wonderful to see a story that taps into popular culture without depending on popular tropes to tell a story.  Although Orange’s format is a little more challenging than some other pieces of short fiction, it is absolutely rewarding for those who give it a few minutes worth of thought.  The full text of Susan Forest’s Orange can be found on AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review.  Here’s the link.

Overall Score: +4


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