Showing posts with label Criticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Criticism. Show all posts

Monday, April 11, 2011

F is for Fantasy

Fantasy is arguably the most ancient genre of storytelling. One can imagine that some ancient storyteller regaled his fellow hut dwellers with a tale of the day's hunt, but one can also imagine that the "one that got away" was unbelievably big and had fantastic powers. Fantasy is as old as civilization and encompasses all forms of imaginative storytelling -- even the plausible/possible. Everything from Tolkien's "Middle Earth" to the New York of ABC's Castle is a fantasy world where a storyteller engages an audience in an attempt to educate and delight them.

Yet for all its ubiquity, Fantasy that typically brings to mind a vary narrow set of tales. These are stories of Feudal societies where valiant knights slay evil demons/trolls/dragons and where the writing is "uninspired," "lacks seriousness," "is for children," or "isn't literature." What is it about fantasy, the progenitor of all fiction, that makes some rebuff it and seek to separate their own favored fiction as somehow superior to "mere fantasy"?

Recently, David Brin of all people, wrote a blog post claiming that Science Fiction differed from Fantasy in that SF stories believed in the "perfectibility of man," while Fantasy seemed steeped in an almost authoritarian desire to ensure that "the social order stays the same." The thrust of his argument, though he might disagree, appears to be that SF is superior to Fantasy because it breaks free from the "reactionary" notion that we are doomed to repeat our past or that human nature is a fixed thing. SF assumes we can learn and overcome the sins of our fathers, and if we don't accomplish this very possible thing then we are tragic figures. For Brin it is the cautionary tale that makes SF superior.

There are too many ways in which Brin's essay fails to make its case for me to itemize here -- to be fair this and it were only blog posts and one could/should spend an entire semester in a lit genre class discussing this very question.

Brin isn't the first, nor even the best at making this argument.

Michael Moorcock's seminal essay on Tolkien's "trilogy," Epic Pooh, cuts right to the core of Brin's argument. In that piece, Moorcock argues:

"The sort of prose most often identified with 'high' fantasy is the prose of the nursery-room. It is a lullaby; it is meant to soothe and console. It is mouth music...It coddles; it makes friends with you; it tells comforting lies..."

"Like Chesterton, and other markedly Christian writers who substituted faith for artistic rigour, he sees the petite bourgeoisie, the honest artisans and peasants, as the bulwark against Chaos. These people are always sentimentalised in such fiction because, traditionally, they are always the last to complain about any deficiencies in the status quo."

"In many ways, The Lord of the Rings is, if not exactly anti-romantic, an anti-romance."

"I find this sort of consolatory Christianity as distasteful as any other fundamentally misathropic doctrine."

"I sometimes think that as Britain declines, dreaming of a sweeter past, entertaining few hopes of a finer future, her middle classes turn increasingly to the fantasy of the rural life and talking animals, the safety of the woods that are the pattern of the paper on the nursery-room wall."

There is so much more that the brief quotes above to Moorcock's essay, which is available in both Monkey Brain Book's Wizardry and Wild Romance and in Savoy Books' invaluable Michael Moorcock: Into the Media Web. Needless to say, Moorcock views a certain vein of fantasy storytelling as misanthropic -- due to its sentiments regarding human nature and the need of a heavenly protector/father to comfort us -- and as inferior to fantasy that is truly romantic and humanistic.

Brin is more reductive in his post, implying that Fantasy is regressive/reactionary while SF is progressive and positive, but his main point is the same. Type of fiction A is superior to type of fiction B because of type of fiction B's superior understanding of humanity. In the case of Moorcock there is an argument for what it means to be human -- and that it means facing terrors -- that is clearly articulated and compelling. In Brin, it seems that there is a kind of equally misanthropic Post-Human/Trans-Human/Singularity argument going on. I find much transhuman, post-singularity, fiction to be as misanthropic as anything Moorcock accuses Tolkien of writing.

To be fair, Brin's own novels aren't misanthropic and feature interesting tales of human struggle. Equally though, there are moments when he demonstrates that mankind can fall back to those feudal tendencies if they aren't continually reminded of the lessons of the past and provided the connections with the past necessary to learn from it. In his novel The Postman human society collapses back to feudal principles, only to be saved by communication and connection to others. That book has a powerful argument, but underlying it is a sort of assumption to the fixed nature of man. The society may improve, but the people don't -- nor do their motives.

In fact, there are whole genres of SF that are obsessed with the lack of perfectibility in man. The cyberpunk genre may have people who are physically improved through technology, but the societies created by these people are mere mercantilist nightmares. Dystopic SF isn't always a "cautionary tale," it is often a lamenting screed of "if only we could, but we can't."

Where I do agree with Brin is that Fantasy "ought" to have stories where the old order can be overcome, where people can learn from the past to make better societies, and humans are completely doomed by human nature to be flawed creatures for eternity.

There are many books and essays about what Fantasy is or isn't, where it fails or doesn't fail, what genre is superior to what other genre, how modern Fantasy is immoral, how old fantasy is reactionary and lame, how SF is fascist...the list is nigh infinite. I highly recommend Moorcock's Epic Pooh, Tolkien's On Fairy Stories,, The Language of the Night by Ursula LeGuin, and HP Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature. Each of these essays approach the topic from a different perspective, but all are worth while -- as is Brin's post for that matter.

I like all the forms of Fantasy. I love the nursery stories of Winnie the Pooh, the tragic tale of Achilles, the tale of the everyman hero Frodo, the tales of the super heroic and noble John Carter, the complex politics of The Culture, the wide eyed optimism of the Golden Age SF, the cynical and depressing pessimism of cyberpunk, the progressive and the reactionary. They all have a place on my bookshelf with none holding a moral high ground over the other. Fantasy and SF each have reactionary and progressive tales.

The fantasies I love the most though, are those created by my twin daughters. In their world, they are Jungle Junction (what my daughters call Ellyvan) and Iron Man battling the Grabbing Goblin and the Mandarin in order to save Uniqua and Captain D'Amedicada.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Sucker Punch: Just What is Going on Here?


Many of the reviews for Sucker Punch have been scathing in their disgust for Zack Snyder's film. High on the list of many of the reviewers complaints is how the film promises to be a violent "sexploitation" film, and fails to deliver. Many of these critics accuse Snyder of presenting the audience with "near-rape fantasies and violent revenge scenarios disguised as a female-empowerment fairy tale wasn’t going to satisfy anyone but himself" or similar accusations. In a way, it is as if these critics' expectations have been "sucker punched" by what they witnessed in the theater. They expected a high concept tale of "kick ass chicks" killing Samurai, steam powered Nazi zombies, Orcs, Robots, and Dragons. They expected Buffy/Nikita/Project A-ko/Blood: The Last Vampire meets Gundam/Castle Falkenstein.

That isn't what they got, and it isn't what you should expect should you choose to go to watch this film. The movie is visually stunning, but it shares more with Scorsese's Shutter Island and del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth than it does with the expectations its advertisements create. It is a film of sorrow, hopelessness, loss, despair and the role that fantasy plays in dealing with these powerful emotions. The movie's tagline is "you will be unprepared" and I have never read a more apropos movie tagline. Most people think a tagline like that hints at a narrative twist in the movie, and there is one, but in this case the tagline is telling the viewer that the film's trailer isn't truly preparing the viewer for the experience.

So...if Sucker Punch isn't a high concept kick ass chick movie, and is instead a film of despair and fantasy, just what is going on here?


Sucker Punch is quite brave. In a world where critics, continually complain that no one is making "original" films. Snyder did exactly that with Sucker Punch. It is wholly his own creation, even with its obvious inspirations.

The film transitions between "dream" sequences and "reality" in a way that is unnerving and odd, but when one sees the end of the film one realizes that one watched something they didn't come in to see. The film has voice over bookends that tell viewers that angels watch over us and can be found even in the most horrific of places, and that these angels don't fight for us rather they inspire us to be able to fight even in hopeless situations. Given that despair can be viewed as the gravest of all sins, it seems justifiable that the role of angels would be to encourage us to fight rather than despair.

Sucker Punch opens with the death of "Baby Doll's" mother, an event that leaves "Baby Doll" and her sister in the care of their sinister step-father. This step-father finds out that his wife has left her not insubstantial wealth to her two daughters. The step-father responds to this news with rage and decides to take control of that wealth by physically, psychologically, and sexually abusing the girls into submission. "Baby Doll" responds by breaking out of her room, finding a gun, and arriving in time to prevent her sister from being abused. She shoots at the step-father...misses...and kills her sister by accident. She is quickly institutionalized in an asylum, where the father bribes an orderly to arrange a lobotomy for the girl. The psychiatrist who runs the asylum doesn't support the use of lobotomies, but in five days someone who does perform them will be at the asylum and the orderly will forge the psychiatrist's signature and arrange for the deal to be done.

Though Snyder spends an entire act developing this backstory, it is possible "Baby Doll" is not the "protagonist" of the film -- if the film's one twist is to be believed. I say "if the one twist is to be believed" because one could argue whether the film's "angels can be anywhere" message is the real message or whether the film is all a fantasy world created after after the lobotomy takes place.

There is something in this film, it is as brave as "Pan's Labyrinth" and shares many of the same themes, but Sucker Punch is not as good as del Toro's masterpiece.

Sucker Punch is a weird piece, and the more I contemplate the film the more I come to think that it is a strongly tragic piece. The more I analyze the structure of the film, and visual clues, the more I believe that any vengeance fantasy aspect of the film is exactly that...fantasy.

It's funny. In Pan's Labyrinth, I chose to accept the fantasy ending at the end as reality. I wanted so badly for the girl to be safe and to have succeeded in her tasks. In Sucker Punch, it doesn't matter whether the fantasy is the reality or mere fantasy, because the girl is "safe" either way.

The message is very much the same as Shutter Island. In Shutter Island a the protagonist has to deal with the twin horrors that his wife murdered his children and that her murdered her for it. He creates a fantasy world to deal with these tragedies. In the end, he despairs choosing to be lobotomized instead of facing cold reality. He asks the question, "would you rather live life a monster, or "die" a hero?" Sucker Punch asks the same question. "Baby Doll" killed her sister while trying to save her. She doesn't want this memory. She would rather be a savior that helps someone else escape a horrible situation. She has five days to do this very task and the film is about that journey...or is it?

It is possible that the film could have better met Snyder's honest intentions if it had been rated R, but I wonder if it would have reached the audience that should be watching this film.

There's something tragically humanist about this film that I think needs discussing. There is something there. I don't know that Snyder quite captured it, but I do know that one could have some genuinely interesting discussions about this picture akin to discussions I have had after Shutter Island.

It's a strange film that needs the idyllic fantasy segments to work, and I don't think the film would be better if the audience where shown Baby Doll's dances -- these dances seem to be the obsession of many critics. This is because the dances are only happening in one of the fantasy layers of the film. We never see the actual dancing because there aren't really any dances to see in the first place.

Snyder has layered his fantasy world in the following way:

Act 1 takes place in the real world and presents the back story that shows viewers why "Baby Doll" has been institutionalized, establishes the hopelessness of the asylum, and introduces the other characters in the film -- the orderly, the doctor, and the fellow inmates. This act ends just as a doctor is about to perform a lobotomy on "Baby Doll."

The baseline "reality" of acts 2 - 4 take place in "The Club," a combination burlesque and brothel run by the orderly, where the girls are all prostitutes and dancers. This is where "Baby Doll" works with the other dancers to create an escape plan, and this is where "Baby Doll" dances

Every time "Baby Doll" dances in acts 2 -4, the viewer is transported into "The Dream within the Dance." This is the world of the visually fantastic sequences we have all seen in the previews. This is also where "Baby Doll" meets Scott Glenn who, in a nod to his role in The Challenge, provides "Baby Doll" with weapons and tells her she needs to fight to survive. Glenn is the first glimpse of a possible angel we receive in the film, and he is introduced in a dream within a dream.

The final act of the film "returns" us to "reality." Return and reality are in quotes because this reality may or may be nothing more than the inner thoughts of a lobotomized mind. What happens in act 5 is entirely dependent on how you choose to read of the film.

I'd like to reiterate that acts 2 - 4 alternate between "The Club" and "The Dream within the Dance" depending on what is happening at that moment. The dances are used to signify when we are transitioning from one fantasy world to the next. All dances happen at the level of "The Club" and at no time does "Baby Doll" dance in the real world. The only reality we can be certain of is that "Baby Doll" is institutionalized, that she sees a possible way to escape, she attends therapy sessions, and then she ends up in a chair about to be lobotomized. What happens after that is up to interpretation.

My interpretation is a tragic one. In my view the final act is entirely fantasy because of the use of the word Paradise and the appearance of Scott Glenn in the act. This interpretation makes the film a tragedy that, far from being exploitative of young women, shows us how the power of the human mind to create fantasy can help us deal with the greatest horrors. The fantasy world is preferable to the real world, it is a better world, it is a world where we can fight for the survival of others and succeed.

Snyder should be admired for his effort and I think this will be a film that will be watched for stylistic and visual skills for years to come. I had fun during parts of Sucker Punch, but other times I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Snyder took me far out of my comfort zone by luring me in with one kind of tale and giving me another. I expected an action fantasy and received Shutter Island. I had expected a "kick ass chick" movie, but instead got a deconstruction of the genre. I found the film to be disturbing and thought provoking, a feeling very similar to how I felt after my first viewing of The Straw Dogs.

Over the course of his career so far, I have found Snyder to be a brave and wonderful film maker. He has made everything from 300 to Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'hoole without the slightest sense of irony.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Generic Movie: Hollywood as of 1980 or as of Its Origins?



Sean Mattie and I have been discussing, via email, the current fiscal/narrative conservatism that Hollywood seems to be exhibiting of late. His argument, and it is a common argument among critics, is that Hollywood is "no longer" in the business of making original productions and now busies themselves with adaptations of other works and long strings of sequels/remakes.

Having read The Day of the Locust (and seen the movie) and The Loved One (and seen that movie too), I am less critical of modern Hollywood than he is. I think that Hollywood has always been in the business of being risk averse and that the question to consider is whether the overall quality of entertainment offered today is less than that of any other given point in history. I am also of the opinion that quality is up compared to most eras of cinema, but that classic movies of the past are...well...Classic.

Speaking of The Day of the Locust, the thing I have always liked most about the Simpsons television show is how Homer Simpson continually visually references his namesake and his "big hands" in the majority of episodes. Every time Homer is choking Bart, you are getting a glimpse of the end of The Day of the Locust.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Remembering Robert E Howard on the 104th Anniversary of His Birth



In October of 2007, I wrote a post discussing the why Conan was still a resonant character for the modern reader. The character live in the psyche of the popular culture consciousness in a way that few other characters do. People who have never read a Sword and Sorcery tale, let alone a Howard tale, can provide some rough description of the character. That description may be reductive, but it will be a good rough sketch.

Since today is Howard's birthday, and because I think the post itself is a strong one that I don't think I can really improve upon, I have decided to reprint the article. I am only leaving out a preamble that discusses the Conan related products that were "recently" added to the marketplace. If you want to see a the prefatory paragraph and a list of the products, please feel free to read the original post as linked above.

I would like to make one brief comment before republishing the article proper.

In the original post, I wrote that both Herodotus and Plutarch wrote of the Cimmerian peoples, and that Howard's description of Conan's people fits nicely with those representations -- thus demonstrating Howard's seriousness in creating the world of Hyboria. The link to the classical history gives a kind of mythic historical weight to Howard's world that some other pre-historical Sword and Sorcery tales lack.

I wrote of the connection before I read Lin Carter's Golden Cities, Far. In the introduction to that book Lin Carter writes of the imaginary kingdoms that have appeared throughout fantastic fiction. Among these imaginary kingdoms, Carter includes the land of the Cimmerians. As Carter puts it:

The land of the Cimmerians was also popular. It was usually up on top of Scythia, or way over beside Hyperborea, or on the shores of the Frozen Sea. The Cimmerians -- who turned up in the 20th century in Robert E. Howard's popular stories of Conan the Barbarian -- were actually made up by old blind Homer. He seems to have invented them by getting the Welsh Cymry tribes confused with an obscure pack of nomads called the Gimri. As the Gimri were supposed to dwell north of the Black Sea, Homer and later writers assigned the imaginary nation of Cimmeria to that general region

Carter cites no authority for Homer's "invention" -- and even assuming that Homer is a single person is now viewed with skepticism -- rather in typical Carterian fashion, he provides opinion as knowledge. It is often entertaining, or sometimes enlightening, opinion, but opinion none the less. Even were it true that Homer created the classical understanding of Cimmeria, and thus provided the background for Plutarch's and Herodotus' later descriptions of the Cimmerians, it is of little consequence to my larger point. The fact that Howard's Cimmerians echo the Cimmerians of Plutarch and Herodotus is what gives them texture and realism, life if you will, that would be lacking without the context. Howard's research and intentionality shine through.

Patrice Louinet provides a nice discussion of the connections between Howard's description of Cimmeria and that of a number of historians/mythologists. In particular Louinet brings up Bullfinch's discussion of the link between Cambria, the Cymri, and the Cimmerians -- and quotes Howard (in a letter to Lovecraft) demonstrating that he willfully selected the semi-Celtic origin rather than a German or other European origin.


Now, on to the piece proper.




What's So Special About Conan?

In today's USA Today, Mike Snider writes about Conan's reemergence as a relevant subject in popular culture (hat tip to SF Signal for the story). There are those of us who comment about poplar culture who think that Conan has never been an irrelevant figure in society. How can a character who codified an entire literary genre become truly irrelevant? Every story about a sword wielding barbarian, no matter how trite or bad, is at some level inspired by Robert E. Howard's creation.

Conan is always lurking in the pop culture subconscious and I think that we do a disservice to Conan fans, both existent and emerging when we use Arnold Schwarzenegger as the archetypal Conan representation, as Snider appears to do in the article. Some like Arnold as archetype, but I find Conan to be one of the most underestimated characters in American literature (with Natty Bumpo being a close second) and the Governator's portrayal -- while fun -- lacks the depth the character actually has as a literary figure.

When it comes to depictions of unreflective low art, one need look no further than the commonly perceived opinions of Robert Howard's Conan stories. If you ask the average man on the street to describe a Conan narrative, you will likely be given a tale of lust and violence. In the tale Conan will rescue some half-naked maiden from some rampaging beast and the story will end with the woman becoming all naked as she swoons at the hero's feet. In fact, a great deal of Conan pastiche has been based on this very simple formula. The largest problem with such a vision is that it is not all that accurate. Are there tales of this sort in the Conan oeuvre? Sure, but there are also tales of visionary wonder.



Like most authors, whether they write literature or Literature, Howard's writings reflect his own thoughts, experiences, and education. The writing reflects the aesthetic tastes of the author, or his/her understanding of a prospective audiences literary tastes. What makes something worth reading again and again is when an author satisfies those with "lower" tastes while providing them with some food for thought. Howard is no exception. In fact, I was surprised while I was rereading the first published Conan story, Howard's The Phoenix on the Sword to find that the author seemed to be hinting at a theory of the value of literature and its role in society.

Howard's Hyborean Age is a mythic world filled with magic and wonder, but it is also a world based on the history of the real world. Howard combined multiple eras of history so that societies whose "real world" existence is separated by centuries could co-exist narratively. Conan's own people, the Cimmerians, are based on a very real historical peoples. Both Herodotus, in his Histories, and Plutarch, in his Lives, mention the Cimmerian peoples (called Cimbri in Plutarch). In The Phoenix on the Sword, Howard appears to expect his audience to have at least a little understanding of the historical Cimmerians in his conversation of the role of literature in civilization. Conan, as protagonist, must hold ideas which the reader sympathizes with for the particular narrative of Phoenix to work.

So what kind of people were the Cimmerians? According to Plutarch they were a people who were pillagers and raiders, but not rulers.

For the Cimmerian attack upon Ionia, which was earlier than Croesus, was not a conquest of the cities, but only an inroad for plundering.
Herodotus, Histories, I, 6


What did they look like? According to Plutarch:

Their great height, their black eyes and their name, Cimbri, which the Germans use for brigands, led us merely to suppose that they were one of those races of Germania who lived on the shores of the Western Ocean. Others say that the huge expanse of Celtica stretches from the outer sea and the western regions to the Palus Maeotis and borders on Asian Scythia; that these two neighbouring nations joined forces and left their land... And although each people had a different name, their army was collectively called Celto-Scythian. According to others, some of the Cimmerians, who were the first-to be known to the ancient Greeks... took flight and were driven from their land by the Scythians. Plutarch, Life of Marius, XI


What was their temperament? According to Homer:

Thus she brought us to the deep-Rowing River of Ocean and the frontiers of the world, where the fog-bound Cimmerians live in the City of Perpetual Mist. When the bright Sun climbs the sky and puts the stars to flight, no ray from him can penetrate to them, nor can he see them as he drops from heaven and sinks once more to the earth. For dreadful night has spread her mantle over the heads of that unhappy folk. Homer, Odyssey, XI, 14


It is Homer's description of the Cimmerians that Howard uses in Phoenix to describe the mood of the people and to separate Conan from his kin. When Conan is asked why the Cimmerians are such a brooding people, Conan responds:

“Perhaps it’s the land they live in,” answered the king. “A gloomier land never was – all of hills, darkly wooded, under skies nearly always gray, with winds moaning drearily down the valleys.” – Phoenix on the Sword

The average Cimmerian is a dour and towering barbarian who destroys civilization then returns to his gloomy homeland only to begin the process again later. Howard's typical Cimmerian is similar to that of the classical scholars, and presents a figure most unlikely to advance the literary arts. But this is where Conan differs from his kin. In The Phoenix on the Sword, Conan is an older man who has conquered on of the greatest nations of the Hyborean Age expressly to free them from tyrannical rule. He conquered to rule, and to liberate an oppressed nation. A far cry from the typical barbarian. By separating Conan from his kin, Howard simultaneously increases the audience's sympathy for the barbarian king while enabling the character to advance a theory of the value of literature.

The Phoenix on the Sword is the tale of a plot to assassinate King Conan, a plot organized my a Machiavellian figure named Ascalante who desires to assume the throne. Ascalante is the product of civilization, but he is the antagonist of the story and so Howard uses his opinions of the Arts as a way to separate him from the audience's sympathy. When he describes a poet who has been brought into his conspiracy he describes the poet in pejorative terms. These terms evolve as the narrative moves from unpublished draft to final published form. Ascalante originally expresses his disdain for Rinaldo (the poet) in a long description:
“Rinaldo – a mad poet full of hare-brained visions and out-worn chivalry. A prime favorite with the people because of his songs which tear out their heart-strings. He is our best bid for popularity.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished First submitted draft)


By the time the story is published the description is changed to the very brief, "“…Rinaldo, the hair-brained minstrel.” [Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword(published)]. In the published form, Howard leaves out the value of Rinaldo's participation in the plot because it is redundant with information presented later in the story. When Ascalante is asked what value Rinaldo has as a conspirator, Ascalante's response is similar in both the published and unpublished text, but his hatred of Rinaldo is made more clear in the draft than in the published text:

“Alone of us all, Rinaldo has no personal ambition. He sees in Conan a red-handed, rough-footed barbarian who came out of the north to plunder a civilized land. He idealizes the king whom Conan killed to get the crown, remembering only that he occasionally patronized the arts, and forgetting the evils of his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they openly sing The Lament for the King in which Rinaldo lauds the sainted villain and denounces Conan as ‘that black-hearted savage from the abyss.’ Conan laughs, but the people snarl.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (published)

“Rinaldo – bah! I despise the man and admire him at the same time. He is your true idealist. Alone of us all he has no personal ambition. He sees in Conan a red-handed, rough-footed barbarian who came out of the north to plunder a peaceful land. He thinks he sees barbarism triumphing over culture. He already idealizes the king Conan killed, forgetting the rogue’s real nature, remembering only that he occasionally patronized the arts, and forgetting the evils under which the land groaned during his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they open sing ‘The Lament for the King’ in which Rinaldo lauds the saintly villain, and denounces Conan as ‘that black-hearted savage from the abyss.’ Conan laughs, but at the same time wonders why the people are turning against him.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished First submitted draft)


In both descriptions the poet is shown to be a blind idealist. Rinaldo, it appears, cannot look beyond the Cimmerian stereotypes as presented by Plutarch and Herodotus. Howard doesn't require the reader to have those preconceptions, but for the reader who has read Herodotus and Plutarch the stereotype becomes even clearer. Also by editing down the prose the author, either willingly or at editorial command, displays an amount of trust that his audience can reach the proper conclusion that barbarism typically destroys the valuable within civilization. What is interesting is that while Rinaldo is a conspirator, the poet is an antagonist, he is not a villain. He is a blind a foolish idealist, not acting in his own self interest. Ascalante even goes on to describe Rinaldo's motivations:

“Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner, or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism, rising, as he thinks, to overthrow a tyrant and liberate the people.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (published)

“Because he is a poet. Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and the future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism and he sees himself as a hero, a stainless knight – which after all he is! – rising to overthrow the tyrant and liberate the people.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished First submitted draft)


Ascalante specifies what kind of idealists poets are. They seek an imagined perfect society, and will always look for it no matter how good the society they are currently in happens to be. But this is Ascalante, the Machiavellian civilized man, and his opinion about what the value of the poet is. For him the poet is an easily manipulable puppet. What about the barbarian turned king, the protagonist, and oft argued proxy for the author? (It should be noted that many argue that Conan often reflects Howard's own views, this is not an original assertion on my part.)

Conan adores the poet, and understands the criticisms. He is aware that the poet's plays are leading many among the people to despise him, but he too is persuaded of the need for justice. When his chief adviser, Prospero, discusses disdain for Rinaldo, Conan comes to the poet's (and poetry in general) defense. The text is near identical in the published and unpublished format.

“Rinaldo is largely responsible,” answered Prospero, drawing up his sword-belt another notch. “He sings songs that make men mad. Hang him in his jester’s garb to the highest tower in the city. Let him make rhymes for the vultures.”
“No, Prospero, he’s beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. His songs are mightier than my scepter, for he has hear ripped the heart from my breast when he chose to sing for me. I will die and be forgotten, but Rinaldo’s songs will live forever.” – Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished first submitted draft)

“Rinaldo is largely responsible,” answered Prospero, drawing up his sword-belt another notch. “He sings songs that make men mad. Hang him in his jester’s garb to the highest tower in the city. Let him make rimes for the vultures.”
“No, Prospero, he’s beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. His songs are mightier than my scepter; for he has near ripped the heart from my breast when he chose to sing for me. I shall die and be forgotten, but Rinaldo’s songs will live for ever.” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)




For Conan, the atypical Cimmerian, poems and the arts have more power than weapons or royal authority. Not only that, but it is right and just that this is the case. Conan, the barbarian, is the defender of the value of literature, while Ascalante, the civilized man, sees literature as only a tool used to manipulate the foolish. Conan would seek to discuss the past and future, the ideal ones, with the poet, while Ascalante would merely use Rinaldo to destroy what he opposes. Conan's conflict between desiring a free press and swift justice, and the eventual melee that will result because of his favoring of the press, are made clear in the poetic prologue to the final chapter of the narrative.


What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs – I was a man before I was a king. – The Road of Kings Phoenix on the Sword (published)




Surprisingly, Conan's love of literature and the arts, and his defense of them, is so deeply rooted that he initially refuses to kill Rinaldo when Rinaldo attacks him. He still believes he can reason with the poet, it is only when he is left no other alternative that he kills the poet (the text is identical in both published and unpublished forms).


“He rushed in, hacking madly, but Conan, recognizing him, shattered his sword with a short terrific chop and with a powerful push of his open hand sent him reeling to the floor.” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

“He straightened to meet the maddened rush of Rinaldo, who charged in wild and wide open, armed only with a dagger. Conan leaped back, lifting his ax.

‘Rinaldo!’ his voice was strident with desperate urgency. ‘Back! I would not slay you ..’

‘Die, tyrant!’ screamed the mad minstrel, hurling himself headlong on the king. Conan delayed the blow he was loth to deliver, until it was too late. Only when he felt the bite of the steel in his unprotected side did he strike, in a frenzy of blind desperation.

Rinaldo dropped with his skull shattered and Conan reeled back against the wall, blood spurting from between the fingers which gripped his wound.” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)


What is interesting in the narrative is that of all the conspirators, there are twenty in all, none are able to injure Conan with the success of the poet. The poet has both damaged Conan's regime and his body and yet Conan was ever reluctant to, though in the end capable of, slay his greatest enemy.

“’See first to the dagger-wound in my side,’ he bade the court physicians. ‘Rinaldo wrote me a deathly song there, and keen was the stylus.’

‘We should have hanged him long ago,’ gibbered Publius. ‘No good can come of poets..’” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)


What does this tell us of Howard's thoughts regarding the arts? We know that Conan loves them, but we also know how they were used to manipulate the populace and how his own love for them almost cost him his life. Is Howard trying to discuss how Plato's critique of the poets is a good one, while at the same time defending the possible nobility of the poet (as Aristotle does in his Rhetoric)? I think these are questions intentionally posed in the narrative (I know...never guess at intentionality), and make it clear why Conan's first story The Phoenix on the Sword was so compelling to readers when they first read it.

It should be noted that the story was originally submitted as a Kull tale, though I have yet to analyze that draft like I have these two subsequent writings. The Kull version was rejected by Weird Tales and the final (rather than the first) Conan version was the first appearance of what has become a culturally iconic figure.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Bad News for American Solomon Kane Fans...


Jim over at Grognardia has a post that highlights a recent French review of the -- as yet unreleased in the United States -- new Solomon Kane movie. The crux of the review is the the film is neither a good adaptation of Robert E Howard's character, nor is it a particularly good film in its own right.

Crap! This bodes ill.

My obsession with things Howardian will require that I watch the film when/if it is finally released in the United States, but I have greater reason to dread the inevitable viewing. In case you are wondering, my obsession is so potent that I have not only seen Conan, Conan: The Destroyer, Red Sonja, and Kull: The Conqueror on repeated occasions, I own them on DVD and watch them from time to time looking microscopically for glimpses of something remotely Howardian.

This is harder to do with some of the films than it is with others. Thankfully, there is always The Whole Wide World -- a delightful biographical Howardian film.

At the end of the post at Grognardia Jim asks, "What is it about Robert E. Howard that makes Hollywood want to tell its own stories with his characters rather presenting the ones he himself wrote? I'm sure there are other authors whose works have repeatedly suffered as much as Howard's have but I'm hard pressed to think of any at the moment."

I think there are a couple of reasons for the lack of presentation of Howard characters as they should be presented -- in their proper Howardian glory.

First, any Conan movie has to fight against decades of Frazetta's visual representations, and their descendants, of the character. Frazetta's art is stunning, but it doesn't very well match the actual descriptions of the character. Other characters present this problem to a lesser degree as they have fewer popularly resonant images to combat. They also have less popular resonance at all, which constitutes its own problem. A problem that typically leads to an, "I need to provide an origin and context" syndrome.

Second, movies are the perfect length to depict novellas. A 30,000 word story fits nicely in a 90 - 140 minute framework. One could make a nice movie out of The Hour of the Dragon, but any adaptation would likely suffer from "I need to provide an origin and context" syndrome. Fans of the Howard fiction know that the first Conan story, The Phoenix on the Sword, takes place late in the Barbarian's life and drops the reader right into an existing milieu. All we get for context is a beautifully written excerpt from The Nemedian Chronicles giving us a sense of place/time. The vast majority of Conan tales, and Solomon Kane tales, are shorter than novella length and leap from one time and place to another. The fireside story feel of this phenomenon is enjoyable for the reader, but doesn't make for a well structured film.

All one has to do is look at the Stone script for Conan: the Barbarian to see what happens when you combine disparate short stories -- themselves clouded through the de Camp lens -- and fuse them together with your own connecting narrative. One gets Conan fighting a Kull villain -- though to be fair the Kull villain is to Kull as Thoth Amon is to Conan.

The translation of a patchwork of short stories into a 90 minute narrative isn't easy, and it comes with its own temptations -- temptations that Hollywood has fallen into far too many times. It would take a talented, and devoted, writer to bring Howard's great Barbarian to the screen. Even then, there would be those who would quibble with the interpretation.

Imagine how many people felt a need to shout, "someone on the internet is wrong" when I wrote that Frazetta's Conan is artistically beautiful but textually inaccurate. I hold strongly to that opinion, but I imagine there are Howardians who would take me to task for such an opinion.

Howard, and Lovecraft, have yet to see an excellent Big Budget adaptation of their properties.

I lament that the upcoming Solomon Kane film will likely be horrible, but I will watch it none the less. It cannot be worse than Kull: The Conqueror.

Who do you think competes with them for the prize of most awfully adapted?

Please Forgive Me for Passing Edgar Allan Poe's Birthday Without a Mention


Yesterday, January 19th, 2010, was 201st anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth. Poe is a figure who looms so large over the genre that I most enjoy, that it is truly impossible to imagine my reading world without his early contributions.

What would Detective and Mystery fiction be without Poe's invention C. Auguste Dupin?

For that matter, what would Weird Fiction be without Dupin and his obsession with "Darkness" and his, and his Bosworth's, obsession with ancient and mysterious tomes?

What would modern Thrillers be without stories like "William Wilson" or "The Black Cat"? Poe's use of unreliable narrator in these tales, as well as in "A Cask of Amontillado," provides a wonderful tool for authors of Thrilling tales -- for authors of any tale.

What would the world of Literature be without The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket? It is possible there would have been no At the Mountains of Madness, Moby Dick, Land that Time Forgot, or "Dust of the Gods."

Poe helped to set the foundation for modern Science Fiction, Weird Fiction, modern Horror, Mystery, Fantastic Fiction...etc. Quite a remarkable achievement for a man who was long overlooked as a creator. Overlooked until those he inspired referenced him so often that his legacy could not be ignored.

To these reviewers Poe would have written (and G.R. Thompson argues that Poe did write in the Library of America edition of Poe's Essays and Reviews) the following:

THE GREAT FAULT of American and British authors is imitation of the peculiarities of though and diction of those who have gone before them. They tread on a beaten track because it is well trodden. They follow as disciples, instead of being teachers. Hence it is that they denounce all novelty as a culpable variation from standard rules, and think all originality to be incomprehensible. To produce something which has not been produced before, in their estimation, is equal to six, at least of the seven deadly sins -- perhaps, the unpardonable sin itself -- and for this crime they think the author should atone here in the purgatory of false criticism, and hereafter by the hell of oblivion. The odor of originality in a new book is a "savor of death unto death" to their productions, unless it can be destroyed. So they cry aloud -- "Strange! incomprehensible! what is it about?" even though its idea may be plainly developed as the sun at noon-day. Especially, we are sorry to say, does this prevail in this country. Hence it is, that we are chained down to a wheel, which ever monotonously revolved round a fixed centre, progressing without progress.


Thankfully, Poe cracked the spokes of the wheel and allowed future generations of writers to feel free to attempt originality and push the boundaries of what constitutes literature. After all, how dull would the world of Literature be if all short stories were -- as Michael Chabon describes much of modern short fiction -- "contempory, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory stor[ies]," devoid of fantastic, horrific, whimsical, or bizarre counterparts? Chabon laments that the "short story" post 1950 has returned to Poe's wheel and cries out for us to forget the critics and look for the new.

It was Poe's lesson first, but it is a lesson that requires constant renewal.

While I got so caught up in RPG/Conan geekiness yesterday that I forgot to honor Poe's birthday, our friends at The Cimmerian were not guilty of the same oversight.

Monday, November 30, 2009

ICv2 Defends Indefensible WFRP 3rd Review

This is a strongly worded post. Before reading it, readers should know that I am a fan of Bill Bodden's work in general and that I do have a great deal of respect for him. I also think that ICv2 is an invaluable resource on the net. These are some of the reasons I was so deeply disappointed and prompted to write this post. I am not an employee of FFG, or any other gaming company.




On November 25th, 2009, the ICv2 website featured a professional review (written by Bill Bodden) of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game 3rd Edition recently released by Fantasy Flight Games. I wrote about the controversy this new game would stir back in August.

The review rated the game 3 out of 5 stars, not an overly harsh rating, but the review itself was so deficient in substantive details that I was tempted to write a post entitled "How not to write a professional game review." Eventually, I decided not to write the post about the post, but the review itself still bothered me -- for reasons I will explain soon enough. I was prepared to leave the review behind me and write it off as one bad review on a site that has continually provided high quality content. Something happened last night to change my opinion.

First, Christian Peterson (CEO of Fantasy Flight Games) wrote ICv2 to complain about Bodden's review.

Second, ICv2 decided to defend the review.

I could understand ICv2 responding to some of the claims made in the Peterson email, but I could not -- and cannot -- understand any rational defense of Bodden's initial 396 word review. It was hack work, phoned in, and failed to serve the purposes that a review on ICv2's site ought to serve.

These are strong words regarding Bodden's work, work unworthy of a game designer I have great respect for in general, and as such require strong supporting evidence, which I hope to provide as this post continues.

Go back and read his initial review, linked above, before reading further here. Done? Good. Now we can begin.

I would like to start by providing what I will call a "Jefferson's Bible" version of Bodden's review. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Thomas Jefferson edited a version of the Bible which contained all of the important moral content, with none (actually only one) of the miracles. The "Jefferson's Bible" version of Bodden's review is as follows.

The roleplaying game industry is in decline. Fantasy Flight Games is trying to bring new people into the hobby with their WFRP3 game. The game has pretty board game like parts and is expensive. Because it is like a board game, existing gamers might not like it. Because it is expensive, new gamers will not buy it.


That's pretty much what Bodden wrote and it doesn't serve either of the purposes that a review on ICv2 ought to serve -- to be fair it partially covers one of the two purposes, but only just.

ICv2 is a news website for game and comic book retailers, and as such reviews from the site ought to fulfill the two following purposes.

First, and foremost, they must give retailers an idea regarding how well a particular game might perform financially. Retailers need all the help they can get in predicting demand, and it is up to retailer magazines like ICv2 to assist retailers with making informed decisions. A review ought to contain information in this regard, and Bodden's does have a little -- but only a little. He mentions that the game has a high entry cost which might affect sales of the item. This is important information, but it is also obvious information. The item has a suggested retail price of $99.95. This is hard to overlook, and the individual retailer has a better grasp of his own customer's willingness to hand over $100 than an industry magazine. The industry magazine needs to provide some information regarding the general demand, higher or lower than a typical game of this price point, the item might have. This would have been a perfect place for Bodden to discuss the controversy stirred by the release of a new edition of the game.

Rather than expressing his own concerns regarding the system, he could have presented a sense of the sentiment of the gaming community at large -- something that requires more than reviewing online sentiment. It requires market research, something the magazine (and not necessarily Mr. Bodden) should be doing. He does not do this. I don't expect Bodden to have detailed sales figures for FFG, who like most game companies grip their sales figures in a death grip which reduces information in the marketplace and undermines a retailer's ability to predict demand, but I do expect ICv2 to do some surveys regarding the general excitement level regarding WFRP3. They could provide this data to Bodden for entry into his review.

The second, and almost equally valuable, role that a review on a site dedicated to retailers must serve is to provide information about how a product works. When a customer approaches your average store owner looking for a product, he or she doesn't merely ask "is this any good?" On the contrary, the typical customer asks, "what is this game like and how does it play?" If a store owner is armed with information about the workings of a product, it saves him or her the time of playing and examining a game and the cost of purchasing a demo/test copy. Neither of these is an insignificant cost. An informed retailer is a trusted retailer, and it is ICv2's and Bodden's job to help create informed retailers so the hobby can grow. It ought to be a part of their mission statement.

Who do you trust when asking about a product? Do you trust the guy who says, "I've heard the game is expensive and plays like a boardgame?" Do you trust the guy who is able to break down game play, talk about the types of gamers who might be interested in the product, and who can compare the price point to similar products? I prefer the second guy, and wanted Bodden to provide the kind of information that can make retailers into those kinds of sales people without them having to spend $50.00 in inventory, and a variable amount of money in hours demo-ing, in order to achieve a level of understanding.



What makes all of this more egregious on the part of both ICv2 and Bodden, is that Bodden could have written a better review than he did with only information available on the FFG website. Their website provided the following advance stories detailing components, game play, and containing some actual text from the game itself. Some of these resources are listed below.



I know that this critique of a review may sound like I am attacking the reviewer, rather than the review, but there is so little actual content to the review that one must attack the review for that lack of content. Mr. Bodden received a review copy of the game, a copy he received far too close to the release date to get a good "advance review" and this is a big failure on FFGs part, but his review demonstrates no special knowledge that could not have been garnered from the FFG website or from a press release regarding the game.

Here is a list of the questions Bodden fails to answer:

How does the game play?
Is it like Heroquest, Runebound, Warhammer Quest, WFRP2?
How well written is the product?
Are the rules clear?
Can a new player understand how to play?
Are the components made of cheap materials?
Will they hold up under regular use?
How does the price compare to similar products?
Is there controversy regarding the game?
How can I as a retailer promote this game to expand the hobby?
With a price point of $99.95, the average retailer will be paying approximately $55.00 net, is it worth selling at a $25% discount? (something that would still give me $20 of revenue)


These are all questions that customers might ask a retailer, or that a retailer would want to know.

I should note that ICv2 is right, in one regard, in defending their critic. They are siding with their own staff over an advertiser who wants to control information. It is ICv2's job to ensure that retailers get more than the marketing efforts of companies to base their purchase decisions upon, and protecting reviewers at the possible expense of advertising dollars is a good way to demonstrate a commitment to accuracy. But accuracy isn't the problem with Bodden's review. His review is accurate in all non-normative aspects, what his review lacks is detailed and useful information for the retailer -- or even for the potential consumer.

As a point of comparison, I'd like to offer Aaron Allston's capsule review of ENEMIES for the first edition of the Champions role-playing game. The capsule review is written for consumers, and not retailers, but it is useful to retailers who might have considered carrying the book in 1982. The review is 190 words. (I will remove the review at the request of Mr. Allston, or the current owner of Space Gamer magazine.)

This is one of the first supplementary releases for the superhero RPG Champions. Presented are 36 villains of various experience and intent, each with detailed statistics and illustrations.

I wouldn’t buy this product if it were for an old, established RPG; six dollars for 36 NPCs is a little steep. However, it is worth it to pick up this booklet, simply because it contains so many complete characters. Character generation in Champions is by point-allocation, with some ambiguities in the rules. ENEMIES clears up some of the ambiguities, and corrects some problems that I didn’t know existed. However, editing is sloppy. Several examples of identical disadvantages showed dissimilar point values. This may be because the values of disadvantages vary from campaign to campaign, but this is not explained. There are a number of typos. The first villain in the book, evidently a genius at evasive maneuvering, has cleverly eluded the table of contents. The illustrations are fair to good, but the layout of pages throughout the book is often amateurish and confusing.

Buyers wishing to see interesting and useful applications of Champions character-building would do well to pick this up.


Allston provides specific examples of uses and errors in the book and details responses to concerns some consumers might have. If someone asks why they should spend $6 for 36 NPCs, I have an answer. I also have answers regarding quality of product and overall use within a line of products.

In all humility, I think my prior post on the announcement of the new WFRP game has as much insight as Mr. Bodden's review of a now available game, and that is why Mr. Bodden's review is indefensible. He should have taken the time to write a detailed review, rather than attempt to meet a deadline when the game company gave him the game with too little time to provide an in depth review by Black Friday.

Monday, November 09, 2009

[Blogging Hammer's Slammers] -- "Under the Hammer"



I can remember the first time I saw David Drake's name in print, it was in the Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn collection of stories in the Thieves' World shared universe fiction series. I enjoyed his story, Goddess, but didn't read anything else by Drake for quite some time. In fact, it was about a decade later when I read his foreword -- and story -- in Baen's Cormac Mac Art volume in the excellent Robert E. Howard series they put together in the 1990s. It would be a few more years before I started reading Drake's excellent Lord of the Isles series, a rich fantasy series that wanders away from the typical medieval European mythological base and toward Sumerian myths for inspiration.

I have always found Drake's writing engaging, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that he had been friends with two figures who loom large in Fantasy fiction -- Manly Wade Wellman and Karl Edward Wagner. Even though I was a fan of Drake's Fantasy writing, I hadn't read any of his Science Fiction. Most of Drake's SF falls into a sub-genre that I don't often find myself wandering into, namely Military SF. I have no moral objections to Military SF stories. I have read Dorsai, Forever War, Starship Troopers, and Old Man's War, but I haven't wandered far from those literary entries into the genre.

Based on a conversation I had with a friend last week -- a portion of which was dedicated to the aesthetic failings of the covers decorating the majority of Baen's book line -- combined with my recent foray into the Science Fiction of the 1930s and the October Baen release of The Complete Hammer's Slammers vol. 1, I have decided to begin an exploration of Military SF starting with David Drake's classic "Hammer's Slammers" series of stories.

Like Haldeman's Forever War, Drake's "Hammer's Slammers" series of stories are (at least partially) informed by the author's own military experience. Both Haldeman and Drake spent time in Vietnam. The "Slammers" stories share many qualities with the Military SF that has preceding and succeeded them, but they also have some distinct and unique qualities that set them apart.

Case in point, for this post, is "Under the Hammer." This story was the second "Slammers" story that Drake wrote after returning from Vietnam, and it was the second story rejected by Fredrick Pohl for publication. Pohl did not see a need for a third author writing "essentially the same kind of fiction" he was receiving from Pournelle and Haldeman -- a statement that seems bizarre to this particular modern reader. The story was eventually published in the October 1974 issue of Galaxy under the editorship of Jim Baen. According to Drake, Baen didn't really like the story either, but it was better written grammatically than the majority of Galaxy submissions. Pretty humble beginnings for what has become a major entry in a genre sub-category.

"Under the Hammer," gives us a glimpse into new recruit Rob Jenne's first day on the job with the "Hammer's Slammers" mercenary outfit. The story is a stark presentation of on the job training in the middle of a conflict with guerrilla forces on an agricultural planet, a planet so far from civilization that most "modern" means of transportation and communication are completely lacking. It is an environment where the soldiers of "Hammer's Slammers" far outgun the guerrilla's they are fighting, but still find themselves mired in a struggle where victory is less than guaranteed. It's pretty clear that the setting is Vietnam as SF outer rim world, tunnel rats and all.

The story is quite short, but within its pages Drake manages to do a couple of groundbreaking things within the genre. First, he immediately separates himself from Heinlein and Haldeman by not providing a representation of Basic Training. We are reading the story of a recruit showing up "on world" who is on his way to be trained, any training Jenne receives in the story will be provided only as much as it will help him survive the next 20 or so pages. The next difference between Drake's story and others is the almost complete lack of discussion for the "why" of the conflict on the planet. The readers are placed into the circumstances in media res without much context discussing why the "Slammers" have been hired to fight the guerrillas. There is some brief discussion why the "Slammers" might be hired in general, but few specifics about the current engagement. The stress in the story is on the characters and their immediate circumstances, and not on any global (galaxy-wide?) political/ideological struggles. The men presented are real men, who behave realistically, and who aren't doing anything particularly noble or ignoble.

This last point is made particularly poignantly early in the story. One of the first characters Jenne encounters is a priest of The Way who questions Jenne about his enlistment and how the military life may/may not conflict with a peaceful religion. For a story that on the surface lacks any philosophic commentary, the priest's initial comments and his two layered involvement with the "Slammers" made this story stand out. The priest's two layered involvement with the "Slammers" might seem a little heavy handed on the "melodrama tear-jerk inducement index," but it plays a very necessary role for the proper framing of the story.

This is a tightly written story that's only weakness is the thinness of the sfnal veneer. My hope is that as the stories play out, they will be able to keep the strong writing style while adding more SF elements.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Has Science Fiction Leaving the Ghetto Meant the Beginning of a Post Sci-Fi Age? Stupid Question #3182

I have always been a Sci-Fi fan, a scifi fan, and a skiffy fan. While there is much to admire in the philosophically or politically sophisticated science fiction story, or the well-written literary SF tale, I have always liked literature that knew what its purpose was and fulfilled that purpose. The purpose of a Sci-Fi story is to entertain an audience with visions of the possible, and impossible, in an exciting and enthusiastic manner.

The Sci-Fi story doesn't spend pages upon pages describing sophisticated political systems, though there is nothing wrong in doing so in other sub-genre of Science Fiction. Instead, the Sci-Fi story uses readily recognizable archetypes as shortcuts for the audience to follow. Sci-Fi is Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Luke Skywalker, Northwest Smith, and Vic Corsaire.

One could probably get into long arguments regarding what is or isn't Sci Fi versus what is or isn't SF (literary Science Fiction), and those are fun discussions to have, but that is not the intention of this post today. Today, I am here to once again lament those who insult and deprecate Sci Fi in favor of a literary sub-genre they believe to be a far more noble pursuit. For these individuals, the ideal Science Fiction tale ought to be literary and "important." The SF story should touch on topical issues and present intelligent arguments about these issues. Such works include, but are by no means limited to, works like Asimov's Foundation, the works of H.G. Wells, Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Huxley's Brave New World, and Iain Bank's "Culture" novels. All of which are works to be admired, and are great literature and great Science Fiction, but none of which are the be all and end all of Science Fiction. In fact, many might not stumble into these wonderful stories if they weren't first enticed by the "fluff" contained in "skiffy."

As you can tell, I am an unabashed fan of the "skiffy." My fandom was carved deeper into my soul after I attended a Forrest J. Ackerman panel at the 2005 San Diego Comic Con. There's something about sitting in a room where the audience is fewer than 20 people in the audience of like-minded fans that solidifies one's fandom. It doesn't hurt when one of them is John Landis (sitting right next to you) and he keeps elbowing you just before Forrest Ackerman's punchlines and is mouthing the words to each of Forry's stories. It was obvious that Landis had talked with Forry numerous times and that each time was magical. That kind of excitement is contagious.



All of which brings me to an article by Damien Walter at the Guardian book blog. I first got word of the book blog entry thanks to the excellent folks over at SF Signal, where they asked if the "Sci Fi" label still applied. Their answer is identical to mine, "Yes, the Sci Fi label is still important." But after reading their post, and the piece in the Guardian, I realized that a short rebuttal of Mr. Walter's blog post was insufficient as a response to Mr. Walter's post.

In the Guardian piece, Damien Walter begs the question of whether we as a popular culture are now "post sci-fi." His central thesis seems to be that "with sci-fi filling up every corner of cinema and TV and mainstream literature borrowing its ideas freely" there is no further place for the literary tradition to advance now that it has become a cultural phenomenon. His post is an articulation which might as well be renamed "The End of Sci-Fi and the Last Man."

One of Walter's key arguments is that "the walls of speculative fiction [that dread phrase -- C.L.] as a genre are quickly tumbling down. They are being demolished from within by writers such as China Miéville and Jon Courtney Grimwood, and scaled from the outside by the likes of Michael Chabon and Lev Grossman. And they are being ignored altogether by a growing number of writers with the ambition to create great fiction, and the vision to draw equally on genre and literary tradition to achieve that goal."

This is all well and good. It is even true as far as it goes, but it demonstrates (as Walter does elsewhere in the piece) a complete lack of understanding regarding the literary history of Fantastic Literature and Fantasy. What were the Iliad and the Odyssey, if not works of Fantasy or "Speculative Fiction?" What was A Midsummer-Night's Dream and The Tempest, if not Fantasy? The Faerie Queene? The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? Beowulf? The Oresteia? The Eddas? What is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward if not Science Fiction?

All of the above a great literary works, written to be great fiction, and yet all of them fit neatly within any imagined definition of Fantasy or Fantastic Fiction. True, few of them are Science Fiction qua Science Fiction, but SF is the sub-genre not the genre -- a simple fact that Walter gets horribly wrong in his piece. To quote, "yet the literary tradition that has its roots in HG Wells and Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe and George MacDonald, that grew through the writing of Tolkien, Lieber, Howard, Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov, and branched into the modern genres of fantasy, horror and science fiction, may have reached its fruition."

HG Wells and Jules Verne are the "roots" of the tradition? One might think of them as the branches closest to the trunk of the tree, but the roots? Is Walter serious? All the writers Walter mentioned are influenced by those works of Fantasy that predate them. One might argue that the 20th century was one where the literary world felt compelled to carve unnecessary categories into the literary landscape, categories designed to serve market interests, but one oughtn't think of 19th century writers as the root of a tradition. Don't even get me going on how one would attempt to draw a direct literary line from Wells to Howard.

It is not baffling that Walter piled Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction together, as they are both sub-genres of the Fantastic Tradition. That is true, but so is the work of Michael Chabon. Anyone who thinks Gentlemen of the Road is an attempt to scale the walls of Fantasy genre fiction from the "outside" is woefully mistaken. Gentlemen of the Road is a wonderful story in the direct tradition of Fritz Lieber, with no pretenses to being something else. It should be noted that much of the fiction of Avram Davidson is as worthy of literary consideration as that of Michael Chabon, and was as genre breaking for its day.

Just because Michael Chabon can draw from literary traditions other than the Fantastic Tradition when writing a story isn't a sign that we are in a "post sci-fi" era. It is merely a sign that Fantastic Fiction is ending a period of incestuousness where it fed off of itself for as long as it could. The fact that people are talking about the science fiction, or fantastic, elements of "literary fiction" is a sign that speculative fiction [that dread term again] is overcoming a certain stigma given it by literary critics and by "fans" who deride the fiction within their sub-genre which seeks to appeal to a wider audience.



*3182 is the number of lines in the epic poem Beowulf and his used here because of the muddled way Damien Walter articulates the lineage of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

What's the Difference Between Sword 'n' Sorcery and Planetary Romance

A couple of weeks ago, Cinerati featured a post discussing some of the peaks and valleys in quality that fans of Planetary Romance have suffered through/enjoyed over the past few years. In response to the post, our good friend -- and sinister barrister -- Tulkinghorn asked, "what is the difference between Planetary Romance and Sword and Sorcery fiction?"

He received a brief response in the comments from a non-Cinerati member fan of Planetary Romance named Venusian that summarized the difference as, "there is no magic in planetary romance, and it's usually 'off planet.'" This definition is useful, as far as it goes, but it doesn't go deep enough to truly differentiate the two sub-genre from each other. It's also only half true. Add to this lack of specificity the particular -- and perculiar -- skepticism of a person like Tulkinghorn and it makes for a perfect topic for a longer post.

So...what is the difference between Planetary Romance and Sword and Sorcery fiction?

To begin, we must start by acknowledging that both of these sub-genre of fiction lie within the scope of Heroic Fantasy -- and sometimes Heroic Science Fiction -- which is itself a sub-genre of Fantasy literature.

[One could use this as an opportunity to advance the argument that in "speculative fiction" it is Fantasy that is the primary genre and all other classifications are sub-genre of Fantasy, but that is a discussion for another post. Let it merely be stated that I dislike the term "speculative fiction" as it seems to a) have an anti-fantasy bias, b) exhibit "embarrassment" with association with Fantasy, c)has a pro-Science Fiction bias (SF is the abbreviation for both), and is guilty of a litany of other sins including the theft of candy apples from small children at county fairs.]

Heroic Fantasy can be simply defined for the purposes of this discussion, it deserves a thorough examination itself, as narratives in which a heroic figure struggles against antagonists within an imagined setting which contains "impossible" or "improbable" elements. These elements can be magic, monsters, imagined science, or gobbledygook. Most of the fiction in modern Fantasy, epic or otherwise, is some form of Heroic Fantasy though some stories contain "mundane" protagonists or "anti-heroes." To be truly Heroic Fantasy, the protagonist must be larger than life; and this is even more true in the sub-genres of Planetary Romance and Sword and Sorcery.

To really discuss the differences between Planetary Romance and Sword and Sorcery, it is helpful to see how prior science fiction critics have defined the subject.

According to David Pringle (in John Clute and John Grant's Encyclopedia of Fantasy) Planetary Romance stories,

are stories of adventure set almost entirely on the surface of some alien world, with an emphasis on swordplay (or similar), monsters, telepathy or other under-explained "magic," and near-human alien civilizations which often resemble those of Earth's pre-technological past...The hero is usually from Earth, but the means of his or her "translation" to the far planet is often supernatural rather than technological, involving flying carpets, astral projection, angel-power and kindred devices. Spaceships are sometimes mentioned, but the complete lack of interest shown in the mechanics of space travel is one of the principal features distinguishing PR from space opera...; super-scientific spacecraft and other mighty machines are central to space opera, but rarely feature in planetary romance.


The same volume includes a definition of Sword and Sorcery written by John Clute, David Langford, and Roz Kaveney which claims,
In 1961 Michael Moorcock requested a term to describe the fantasy subgenre featuring muscular Heroes in violent conflict with a variety of Villains, chiefly Wizards, Witches, evil Spirits, and other creatures whose powers are -- unlike the hero's -- supernatural in origin. Fritz Leiber suggested "Sword and Sorcery", and this term stuck.


I think these two definitions are extremely useful and one might argue that the Pringle and Clute definitions provide us with sufficient data to provide us with a clear understanding of these two genre, but I am not quite satisfied with Clute's definition of Sword and Sorcery. Certainly, the Pringle definition of Planetary Romance gives us a strong sense of the kind of story one might expect if one were to call it Planetary Romance. It also provides ammunition against Venusian's claim that Planetary Romance doesn't feature magic. This is important because one of the things that makes Planetary Romance so special is that way that it walks the tightrope between Fantasy and Science Fiction. It is a wonderful crossover genre.

Some brief examples of the "magic" featured in tales of Planetary Romance include the telepathic language of the Martians of Barsoom, the psychic hounds of Leigh Brackett's Skaith novels, and the "Force" in the Star Wars films. The Star Wars films being a wonderful filmic example of Planetary Romance. Planetary Romance tales feature magic, but it is not a necessary condition for the tale and is often merely a means to an ends. What is fairly universal is the inclusion of fallen empires, dying worlds, and the ruins of once great civilizations.

The obsession with fallen empires, dying worlds, and ruins of once great civilizations is one shared with the Sword and Sorcery genre. The dying planet of Barsoom shares a great deal with Robert E. Howard's presentation of Hyperborea. Though one should note that the empires of Sword and Sorcery are dead empires for the reader, they are usually living (though dying) empires for the characters within the tale. In Planetary Romance, the fallen civilizations are often artifacts from a "more noble" time. In Sword and Sorcery, civilization itself must fall as it corrupts the natural man with its decadence. This is one distinction between the genre, the 19th century moral clarity of Planetary Romance is often in direct opposition to the 20th century pessimism (almost nihilism) of Sword and Sorcery fiction.

But it is more than a pessimistic world view that separates the two genres. Sword and Sorcery tales contain within them elements of the Weird Horror tale. When Michael Moorcock, a master of Sword and Sorcery whose Elric character perfectly embodies the Sword and Sorcery obsessions with cultural decadence and Weird Supernatural Horror, describes Conan's relation to his world (and to prior Heroic Fantasy characters) he writes, "If the form of Howard's stories was borrowed at third and fourth hand from Scott and Fenimore Cooper, the supernatural element from Poe and others, the barbarian hero of the Conan stories owed a great deal to Tarzan and other Burroughs primatives. Given to impulsive violent action, sudden rough affection and bouts of melancholy...Conan mistrusted civilization. He was forever at odds both with the respectable world and the occult world; forever detecting plots to seduce him." [emphasis mine]

In Heroic Fantasy magic can be a tool that is neutral in its use. The "Force" has both a light side and a dark side, the telepathy of Martians isn't in itself corrupting. In Sword and Sorcery tales magic is by its nature a corrupting force. Conan fears and opposes magic, even the anti-Conan Elric eschews its use whenever possible and the use of magic rituals often comes with a great cost.

Notice the use of the word "fear" when describing Conan's reaction to magic and the supernatural. Howard's invincible barbarian is sometimes as deathly afraid as the most frail Lovecraftian protagonist when it comes to things that lurk in the spaces between. Though the supernatural beast, "neither a hound nor a baboon," that attacks him in The Phoenix and the Sword "rouse[s] in the Cimmerian a frenzied fury akin to madness," a creature similar to Tsathaggua leaves him "frozen with nauseated horror." What is this creature that so frightens Conan, the man beyond fear? It is an "amorphous bulk...Its unstable outlines somewhat suggested an octopus, but its malformed tentacles were too short for its size, and its substance was a quaking, jelly-like stuff which made him physically sick to look at... among this loathsome gelid mass reared up a frog-like head." The creature is either Shoggoth or Tsathaggua (the fact that the creature's summoner is named Tsotha hints at the second), but it is certainly beyond the abilities of our champion to defeat this "blasphemy agains the eternal laws of nature." This is the kind of creature one would not expect to find in the Planetary Romance fiction of Brackett or Burroughs, but that is perfectly at home in the "dreams" of Lovecraftian horror. Horrific creatures abound in the Conan fiction, and in Sword and Sorcery generally. Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories have the "Gods of Lankhmar," Michael Moorcock's Elric tales feature all kinds of Weird Horror from the gods of chaos to much smaller beings.

Planetary Romance is a hopeful fantasy where heroes strive valiantly and where the hero chooses good over evil -- even at personal expense. Sword and Sorcery is a dark and nihilistic genre with a dark view of human nature where the hero often chooses self-interest over the Good. It is his firm command of this single feature distinguishing Sword and Sorcery from other Heroic Fantasy (that of the incorporation of the Weird Horror tale into Heroic Fantasy) that makes Michael Moorcock's anti-Conan stories about the tragic albino Elric so ingenious. Moorcock simultaneously deconstructs the character of Conan while writing a story that embodies the conventions -- even while it expands them -- of the Sword and Sorcery tale.

The first words readers of Howard's Conan read as a description of the archetypal character are, "Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."

The first words readers read as a description of Michael Moorcock's Elric are, "His name was Elric of Melnibone king of ruins, lord of a scattered race that had once ruled the ancient world. Elric, sorcerer and swordsman, slayer of kin, despoiler of his homeland, white-faced albino, last of his line."

Both quotes are from the first published stories of the respective character, and both stories take place toward the end of the character's life. It is exquisite the way that Moorcock inverts almost every aspect of the Conan character in the creation of his anti-hero. He inverts every aspect save one, both men are prone to gigantic melancholies. One might think due to the fact that Moorcock's Elric tales are a deconstruction of the Conan character, or possibly an adult version of an adolescent character, that Moorcock would use the deconstruction as an opportunity to attack the genre itself. Moorcock doesn't. He uses it as an opportunity to refine the genre and expand it. By removing the aspects of the genre that are adolescent wish fulfillment and focusing on the central concepts of Sword and Sorcery, Moorcock allows us to see the literary merit of the conventions of the genre free from the constraints of whimsy. The young reader, seeing the power of Conan, might miss the criticisms of society and the dark presentation of human nature. The reader of Elric's stories cannot avoid them for their terror and their beauty. In writing fiction that is a negative image of the original, possibly to criticize the original, Moorcock created a lens that allows readers to more greatly appreciate what Robert E. Howard has done with his Conan tales -- something that the Lin Carter and L Sprague deCamp pastiches missed -- the demonstration of how fiery human nature reacts when faced with supernatural horror. Conan often fights against the darkness, but he often flees as well.

John Carter would never flee from the giant white ape of Barsoom. He might feel some twinge of fear before he grapples with the beast and defeats it. When translucent skinned invaders from Jupiter attack, horrifying visage and all, it is John Carter who flies of to their home world to defeat them -- fearless in the face of the unnatural or the evil. Luke, when captured by Vader in Return of the Jedi, doesn't succumb to despair. Instead he sees "the good" in his father and fights to redeem a lost father. In Planetary Romance Evil can be defeated. In Sword and Sorcery some Evil is best left in the pit where you found it.