Use the Force

Funny stuff...




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ChemICKal Reactions

Karen L. Newman is a chemist and a poet.  In her poetry, she specializes in the writing of horror poetry.  ChemICKal Reactions brings these two roles together, presenting a whole alphabet of chemistry gone wrong.

The poems are fun to read through.  I found myself smiling at the gruesomeness of some of the possibilities presented, and cringing at others.  To get both reactions within a book that has a fairly narrow range to the premises of each poem is quite a feat.  When I started reading, I first thought, "Isn't this going to get monotonous, dealing with one chemical after another?"  So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book didn't generate that feel at all.  It's a good indicator of the extent of Newman's imagination that she can make the device work over and over in the collection without it getting into something of a rut.  I am impressed.

As a sort of a side note, I read the volume in its Kindle edition.  Sometimes poetry doesn't look very nice on the Kindle, but ChemICKal Reactions is formatted to handle the device pretty well.   It is one of the better jobs I've seen done with poetry books formatted for the device.  I'm pleased to see it, and hope it means good things are coming in poetry for the ebook reader.


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What do you get if you mix a little of On the Road with The Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols?  I think American Gods does a pretty good job of exploring that possibility.

It took me a while to get into the reading of American Gods, but that might have had more to do with me than with Gaiman's writing.  Gaiman always tells a good tale, and he is always funny and entertaining.  American Gods is certainly no exception.

The story is fairly convoluted, and you never seem to be able to be 100% sure that you know quite what's going on.  In that way, the book allows you to sympathize with the protagonist, Shadow, because he's forever being led to places and into situations that he can't be quite sure he gets.  He just does what he has to do anyway, and things sort of fall into place in his mind as he goes along.  That's something of a metaphor for the reading experience with this book.  Do things seem a little confusing?  Well, just keep on reading and it will fall into place.

I really enjoyed Gaiman's telling of travels across the US.  The way the travels were woven into the narrative, and the sense of place was built up, was a fun way to make the story work.

The version of the book that I read is Gaiman's preferred version of the text, as per an author's note at the beginning of the book.  I don't know how it compares to other versions out there, but I think you can see signs in the one I read of a sort of careful — maybe even obsessive — attention to the little things that bring the land and the characters to life.  I don't know if I would've been quite as aware of it without that note at the beginning, but the effect of that careful plotting out of all the little things is a good one.

As with any Gaiman novel, this one is worth getting your hands on.





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Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I went to see Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader when it opened here. It was not bad as a movie, and I guess I liked it better than the others in the series so far. But... I sure didn't like the changes that were made to the original story. The book is so good, and I really hated seeing the departure from that story line.

I can't imagine what they're going to do to The Last Battle.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1)

I finally got to see the first half of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows film, and thought i was pretty good. Not only did it follow the book pretty closely, but it did a great job of adapting the tale to the medium of film. Not all of the movies in the series have been as nicely adapted as this one. But, generally speaking, I thought the later films have been better than the earlier ones.

I'm really looking forward to the last installment of the films. I would've preferred that this one not be split into two sections, but then, it seems the only way to fit everything in. They did a pretty nice job of splitting it up, and if the final piece turns out as good as this one, then I think it will be a big success.


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The Last Hope

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At the Back of the North Wind

I finished reading George MacDonald's classic tale At the Back of the North Wind earlier this week, and reviewed it at the Christian Fiction website.  For those less interested in the Christian perspective in the novel, I thought a note here might be warranted.

George MacDonald is a great story-teller.  He can be really funny, and he draws up a past age through his writing.  In his day, children's literature was really just coming into its own, and MacDonald was a big part of that process.

At the Back of the North Wind is addressed to the child reader, but I think it certainly has a much broader appeal than that.  It is a well-constructed piece, fully of whimsy and imagination.  The places the novel takes us are well put together, with images that draw you in to want to read more.

There are many people who might like to lay claim to the title of father of the modern fantasy genre, but I think it is arguable that MacDonald forms at least a good bit of the root system of that whole branch of literature.  At the Back of the North Wind is one of the classic pieces that establishes him in the genre, written back in the days when no one really thought of such a genre existing at all.  He was admired by many writers who came after him, and his fiction left an indelible mark on this whole field of writing that has grown to be so huge in today's book market.



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Atlantis

I just finished reading Greg Donegan's Atlantis today, something I finished pretty much in two evenings this week.  It is a fast-paced, fun action tale with lots of sci-fi, adventure, and spy novel elements all mixed in.

Browsing through Amazon, I found the book is the first of a series.  The whole Atlantis Collection - Set of 6 titles - Atlantis, Assault on Atlantis, Atlantis Gate, Atlantis Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis Devil's Sea, Battle for Atlantis is available at Amazon. I think reading them all could be pretty fun, and this first one made me at least willing to keep an eye out for the others.

The story moves along quickly, following the unfolding of an intriguing plot in the company of some memorable characters.  If you're looking for  a way to while away a lazy weekend, you could do a lot worse than Atlantis.  I'm not sure about the rest of the series, but I think I'll find out before long.

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How to Train Your Dragon

Over the summer, I picked up a copy of How to Train Your Dragon off of a Bookcrossing shelf in Singapore.  It was a quick, easy, and enjoyable read that I finished in one evening. One of those sorts — fun and relaxing.

My friends who are moving in a few days recently gave me a copy of the DVD of How to Train Your Dragon.  I thought it would be fun to watch, since I enjoyed the book so much.  I was surprised to see how different the movie was from the book, but really had fun with it too.  I am glad my friends gave it to me, as I probably wouldn't have picked it up on my own.  But with the difference between the two stories, it's fun to have experienced both versions.














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The Book of Eli

After we watched Inception together this summer, my oldest nephew recommended that I watch Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli.  Since he mentioned it, I was looking around for it, but having some trouble finding it.  After mentioning that to some friends, they kindly watched out for the DVD until they found it and bought it for me.  It took a while still after that, but tonight I finally got to sit down and watch the show.

My nephew's recommendation was a good one.  I liked the movie, thought the acting was pretty good, and very much enjoyed the premise of the show.  The whole notion of the relationship between language and power has long been one of my main interests.  This movie nicely captures that idea and puts it into a story that makes good sense.  The way that we use words, the power they have over us, and the way we too often try to use them to obtain power over others are matters all nicely explored in the film.

The movie reminds me some of Fahrenheit 451.  Maybe that's partly because it's a book that I recommended to my nephew this summer as well, and so was kind of mindful of the connections we'd shared this summer through the things we watched, read, and talked about.  I love those moments of connection, and especially enjoyed that part of watching The Book of Eli tonight — connecting with my nephew even when we are on opposite sides of the world at the moment.



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Testament of Andros

I am haunted.

I read James Blish's short cycle The Testament of Andros yesterday, and I can think of nothing else.   The way the cycle spirals around and around the three characters, the world's end, the sun.... it seems to be spiraling around and around in my brain in just the same way.

It's been some time since I last read anything by Blish, but as soon as I read this, I downloaded several more stories for my Kindle.  And I am planning on reading more of his longer works when I get back to Singapore, since they are on my shelf there.  I had almost forgotten just how good a writer he is.

If you've not read Testament of Andros, it is well worth picking up. It can be read in a very brief time, but will linger in the mind long after the reading, swirling round and round in an eery sort of way.  Just like the story itself does in the telling.  It makes for a wonderful reading effect, and reading after effect.





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Vampire Haiku

Ryan Mecum's Vampire Haiku (2009) sounds like just the sort of thing I should love, doesn't it? Being a speculative poet myself — one who loves haiku for both reading and writing — and having a... er, special interest in vampires, you'd think the book would be just my thing. And, well, I did enjoy reading it. But I also can't help noting some shortcomings.

Firstly, the work is not really much about haiku. It's more sentences with line breaks based on a 5-7-5 syllable count. Some of the sentences are clever, but very few of them are what I would call haiku. My favorite piece in the book is this one:

I have felt no joy
since the night she murdered me —
nor have I missed it.

That's nice, even poignant, but it isn't really a haiku. The syntax is, well, just a sentence. And there's an absence of seasonal reference. I do think there is one real haiku-like feature that some haiku tend to miss out on, and that is the twist. Unfortunately, though, this collection focuses on the syllable count aspect of haiku, which is probably the least important aspect. Many good haiku don't follow a 5-7-5 syllable count at all, and strict adherence to it often spoils what could be a nice poem otherwise.

That said, I did enjoy the story of Mecum's book. It was a fun read, and I'm glad I picked it up recently and was able to read it.

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The Matrix revisited

My nephew and his best friend are here from the US visiting me right now. Last week we watched the Matrix movies together — the first time my nephew had seen any of them, and the first time his friend had seen the whole series to the end. We had a really great time.


We were inspired to view the films again when we saw Inception the week before. I think we all 3 liked it too, but feel the Matrix is more profound and complex.

Either way, it's been loads of fun watching these movies with the guys, and discussing the ideas raised by them. I'm looking forward to sharing lots more with them in the years to come too.


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Inception

On the day of its release, I got to see Inception with my nephew and his friend who are here visiting me. We all really enjoyed the movie, and had a long discussion afterward about issues the show had raised — the nature of reality, human's ability to perceive, programming, and so forth. It was loads of fun talking to these 17-year-olds about some heavy ideas and seeing the way they think about it.

Fun stuff!

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What do you think?

Using on a recent post here, I pasted the text in at I Write Like, a site that analyzes your writing and tells you which famous author it is most like.  Here's the result....

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

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Fahrenheit 451

I don't know why it took me so long to get around to reading Fahrenheit 451. It's the sort of book I always love, with some favorite themes (an imagined future, censorship, the value of the written word, etc.). But somehow or another, it kept getting pushed further and further down my to-be-read list. Until recently, at least.

I finished the short novel last week and really, really enjoyed it. It is a compelling read, well-written, and very thought-provoking. It is about more than just censorship — it is about thought-control, though with a little more optimistic point of view than, say, 1984.

I put Fahrenheit 451 on my Fill in the Gaps list when I started it last year, and I'm really glad I did. It "forced" me to get around to reading something that is very much a book I wanted to read and intended to read for a long time. I'm glad that I put the list up and have been plugging away at some fun titles so far. Fahrenheit 451 is one of the best I've read from my list yet.

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Can You Imagine?

Can you imagine what the seas must have been like way back when?
And I don't just mean in the days before the whaling industry depleted the seas of some of its giants. I mean in the days when the Leviathan melvillei and the Carcharodon megalodon were swimming about. Can you just imagine the fear that such beasts would have inspired? And that's not even talking about Predator X yet, the most fearsome of them all.

It is hard to guess what such animals would have even looked like —- the sort of thing that seems to fit right into a sci-fi underwater scene. But one way or another, I'm glad to see the newest find named for Melville. That's pretty cool stuff there, seeing your legacy carried on in the name of a creature like one of your own creations. Wow! Congratulations, Herman.


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Classic Upgrade?

Do the old classics really need an upgrade?

Take a look at Android Karenina to see what I'm talking about. By the same publishers who brought us Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Quirk Classics, Android Karenina takes brings cyberpunk to Tolstoy.

But some are bothered by this sort of attempt to "upgrade" the classics. Why would they need the upgrade? And who are we to think we can improve on them anyway?

I take something of a different view of it. I don't know that the idea behind Quirk Classics is to upgrade or improve on the older works. Their stated aim is to create "mash ups" of literary classics crossed with genre fiction. Not because it's better, but because it is different, and it allows us to explore the areas where the literature of today and yesterday might overlap.

Recontextualizing older tales has always been a part of the literary scene. How many of Shakespeare's plays have original story lines, after all? And how "faithful to the original material" were his retellings? We might think that this is something different. Shakespeare, after all, was Shakespeare, so of course he might think he could improve on the older stuff. But that's getting it backwards. He didn't get to do that because he was already the "institution" of Shakespeare, but he became this grand pillar of our literary world because of how amazingly he brought a new view to old works.

That's not to suggest that the Quirk Classics are destined to be in the canon of tomorrow what Hamlet is today. Rather, it's to say that explorations of familiar tales are always OK, and some can even be fairly well-done. And, while these that Quirk Classics have produced are getting a fair bit of attention, they aren't really the first to do such things. Adaptations to comic book, film (even cartoon), TV, and so forth have been going on for a long time. And in more the more "highbrow" world of literature, works like Heiner Müller's Hamletmachine consider the classics in a new light that seems more reflective of our new era.

I haven't read Android Karenina, and I don't know when (or even if) I will. But I can say that the idea behind it doesn't bother me at all. The way I see it, there's always room for another quirky take on an old favorite.





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The Gawgon and the Boy

I recently finished reading Lloyd Alexander's The Gawgon and the Boy, and really enjoyed making my way through the short novel. It is a pleasant, funny read, poking sometimes into serious issues, but mostly just taking the reader along for a heart-warming ride.

The book is not really a fantasy tale, at least... no more so than that which exists in the mind of any pre-teen boy. Which is to say that everything in it is fantastic, but it is completely of this primary world that we live in.

Anyway... the relationship that develops between the Gawgon and The Boy is great. I loved both characters, and loved watching them work on one another. And The Boy's fantasy world was a delight to travel through. It was sort of like Bill & Ted, only younger and even sillier, in many ways. Oh, and with a lot of mythology thrown in with the history — more of a general classics education than a mere history project.

It's a fun book, one that I've loaned to a couple of friends for them to read. I think they'll all enjoy it as much as I did. It seems to me a difficult book not to enjoy.


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The Sword or the Ring?

I just read Michael Moorcock's verdict, in which he states that Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword is a better novel than Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring. I am afraid it is an opinion I can't quite share, though. Granted, Anderson's book is much bloodier and more violent, and it is closer to the myths of the Norsemen, but I don't think that makes it a better work than Tolkien's. For me, the chase scene when the Hobbits try to escape across the river with the Black Riders right on their tail.... that's one of my favorite reading memories for the way it sucked me into the fear and agony of the fleeing band.

I have to admit, though, that I am not the most impartial judge. I read The Fellowship of the Ring when I was young, but only got around to reading The Broken Sword this past week. There's no fair way to compare the reading experience of my younger self with that of my older self. So, I have to try to look at the books as texts, rather than simply evaluating my reading experiences with each story. And that is something that is really hard to do (and which I have not yet had sufficient time to do anyway, considering that I've only recently read The Broken Sword). Because the thing that is so great about both books is the way that they suck you right in and make you feel a part of the secondary worlds they create.



For me, and for now, Tolkien's Ring still wins out over Anderson's Sword. But reading Moorcock's opinion made me wonder what the general thought is — which do you prefer? The sword or the ring?


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