strange and random happenstance

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
Published by: Orbit
Publication Date: August 30th, 2016
Format: Paperback, 592 Pages
Rating: ★★★
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Little does Julie Mao realize that when The Scopuli was taken it would sent in motion a chain of events that will forever change the solar system. Jim Holden and his crew make their living as ice miners. Their ship, The Canterbury, receives a distress call from The Scopuli and they go to investigate it. Holden, Naomi, Amos, Alex, and Shed board The Knight to go get a closer look. The Scopuli is derelict. No signs of any life. No signs of Julie. But Holden knows something is wrong, so they head back to The Knight and that's when The Canterbury is blown out of the sky. The Canterbury, the rest of their crew, gone in an instant, by what Holden assumes is a stealth ship belonging to Mars. In his rage at such senseless waste Holden broadcasts the destruction of The Canterbury to the whole solar system, not caring if this triggers a war between Earth and Mars. Not caring about any ramifications, just hoping for justice for the friends he lost. But Holden hasn't quite connected the dots. The five of them should have died on The Canterbury because whatever they found on The Scopuli is worth killing for. He's determined to find out exactly what it all means, damn the consequences.

Detective Miller has been taken off his usual beat on Ceres. His higher ups have given him the case of a missing girl to be investigated as a favor to her wealthy Lunar family. The girl is Julie Mao. She was a decorated pinnace pilot who gave it all up. She became active in politics and moved to Ceres and joined the OPA. The Outer Planets Alliance is a thorn in the side of Detective Miller, but a thorn he can deal with. He understands their desire to not be controlled by Earth. People on Earth can't comprehend what it's like out in the belt so why should they be allowed any say? Of course they're also the ones who call the OPA terrorists. But none of that matters to Miller, he is consumed with the disappearance of Julie. He might not be the best at his job, and he might drink a little too much, but he's also like a dog with a bone, he will figure out what happened to Julie, even after his boss demands he drop the case. But it's too late for Holden, he's a man possessed by Julie. He must find Julie even at the cost of his sanity. It's not long before he learns about The Scopuli and realizes that Holden might be the only one who can answer his questions. But when they finally meet at Eros Station things are much more complicated than either of them imagined and everything is about to change.

It's rare that I pick up a straight up science fiction book. Usually there's some kind of aspect that draws me to the book, a favorite author like Douglas Adams wrote it or it's Star Wars. So out and out science fiction usually gets pushed aside for books with more paranormal elements, thus pushing them into the fantasy end of the spectrum. Leviathan Wakes was actually a book that was thrown in the hat for book club and I can honestly say that when it arrived from Amazon it's heft made me a little hesitant to dive in. Yet I was quickly sucked in, even preaching to other members of my book club that it was a surprisingly fast read that overcomes it's flaws. Because Leviathan Wakes does suffer from a typical science fiction problem, it wants to be the pinnacle of science fiction and to that extent it incorporates so much of everything that has come before it's hard to really laud it on it's own merits. Yes, it stands on it's own, but so much is borrowed or re-interpreted that it's sometimes hard to let it stand alone. You can't help thinking what else it reminds you of. Here's a little Firefly, here's a little Battlestar Galactica, here's a little Doctor Who, here's a little Red Dwarf, here's a little Bladerunner. Each and every one of these instances pulls you out of the book. I can almost forgive Fred Johnson being Yaphet Kotto from Alien, but when Kaylee literally walks onto Holden's ship, well, that's a step too far.

Yet of ALL the references crammed in the most obvious is Bladerunner. Because Detective Miller is just Rick Deckard under another name and without the whole is he, isn't he a replicant controversy. Now, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just saying it's a thing. It's actually the Noir aspect of this book that is a little divisive, not the Bladerunner homage. And it's not among readers but among the story itself. It's hard to get a Noir story right. You have to have just the right amount of hard drinking, bitterness, and delusions, which Miller does have. But the problem is balancing Miller's plot with Holden's plot. While they do eventually connect and Holden's plot has a mystery at it's center, it is in no way Noir. And when the two storylines merge, the Noir aspect is sacrificed to the bigger storyline. So then why do it at all in the first place if you're going to eventually ditch it? I just feel that this dichotomy between the two narrators should have been thought out more in advance. Yes, it's good to have two very distinct narrators, but they shouldn't feel like they inhabit two different genres. A book needs to be some sort of cohesive whole to work and the styles of these two characters seem to be constantly fighting. In fact I wonder if perhaps this book was written more like the letter game, seeing as James S.A. Corey is actually two people. That might account for the two narrative styles being at such odds. They really needed an editor to fix this.

But then Leviathan Wakes needed an editor in general. There are long sections of the book that could have been excised and the story would have still have been successfully conveyed. This book clocks in at almost six hundred pages and probably two hundred pages could have been omitted. Two hundred pages of battles in spaceship corridors and hiding in spaceship corridors and just hanging in spaceship corridors. And the Amos/Alex thing should have been fixed, because their names are too similar. Oh, and internal monologues! Yes, I know Noir needs these, but as I've already said, the Noir was sacrificed so why not sacrifice a few of these monologues? Oh, and don't think the irony is lost on me that half of James S.A. Corey, the Ty Franck half, is the assistant to George R. R. Martin, an author known for mighty tomes that could use a little tightening up. The extra irony is that he claims he doesn't want to write like his boss... um, ok, so you've totally failed there. But where the editing could have really been used is in the space politics. Yes, I get that with the conflict between Mars and Earth politics have to be included, to an extent, but please, as I've said time and time again, don't bog down your book with politics I don't care about. Contain what needs to be contained and omit the rest. I get too much of regular politics, I don't need to add space politics to this as well. In fact this was a flaw that always grated on me with Battlestar Galactica, too much politics! There's only so much I can take and only so much needed. So bring on the editor!

Though the faults of the book don't take away from the fact that in the end it was still enjoyable and I look forward to reading Caliban's War. The reason for this is that James S.A. Corey has created a believable future. Sometimes when writers imagine the future and how our future will look like in outer space it's just ludicrously wrong. They think too big, too broad, too many aliens. Instead mankind has had about two hundred years in outer space and human genetics, language, and politics are shifting, but not radically, instead at a normal pace that we can see as possible. Outer planets resent the control exerted by Earth, we still can't go beyond our own galaxy to the far reaches of the universe. Mining the other planets for ice to have enough water is big business. These little things like survival and control are big concerns. As for humans themselves, it's interesting to read about what would hypothetically happen to people born outside the confines of gravity, known here as Belters. How it would effect not just their genetic makeup but how their bones would be effected. They are taller and thinner because of this lack of gravity. Reproduction is more difficult. They've developed sign language from the necessity of spacesuits, and therefore their own linguistic mutations with the Belter patois. They are also viewed as different and therefore racial tensions erupt. But this is all believable. This could happen. This might happen. This makes me really need to start the next book.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alien, Backlog Bonanza, Belters, Bladerunner, BSG, Caliban's War, Deckard, Doctor Who, Firefly, GRRM, Holden, James S.A. Corey, Julie Mao, Kaylee, Leviathan Wakes, Miller, Noir, Outer Space, Red Dwarf, Science Fiction

Rising Sun
Based on the book by Michael Crichton
Starring: Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes, Harvey Keitel, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Kevin Anderson, Mako, Ray Wise, Stan Egi, Stan Shaw, Tia Carrere, Steve Buscemi, Tatjana Patitz, and Michele Ruiz
Release Date: July 30th, 1993
Rating: ★★★★
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Lieutenant Web Smith is home with his daughter and mother when he gets a call to come to the Nakamoto Corporate Headquarters in downtown Los Angeles because there is a need for a liaison. Web receives a second call on his way to the crime scene to bring along the retired Captain John Connor who is an expert Japanese liaison. Connor explains to Web that they aren't so much going to a crime scene as the scene of a negotiation. Everything Web knows about police procedure will be thrown out the window while dealing with the Japanese. The Japanese want the case resolved swiftly and they see to it that the conclusion they want reached is easily found. A little too easily. Despite the case being swiftly closed Smith and Connor keep digging, thinking that perhaps the truth of the death of Cheryl Lynn Austin is more important then a quickly solved case. The Japanese do not see their continued investigation as beneficial to their interests and will do anything to stop it, even smear Smith and Connor's names in order to silence them. But with more deaths, threats, and the Yakuza, the cops are quickly learning the hard way that business is war.

Rising Sun is easily one of the better Crichton adaptations out there, and this isn't surprising because Crichton was more actively involved, being one of the co-writers of the script. In fact I would say that the only adaptations of his books worth a damn are the ones he sought to have some control on. Unlike other authors, because of his experience in film, Crichton understands the need to make a good movie instead of slavishly sticking to the book and in the process maintains the spirit of the book as well as creates an enjoyable movie. Having not watched Rising Sun in years I spent a good twenty minutes just in awe of the sheer 90s ness of it all until I became fully sucked into the story. I was also a little shocked that my parents let me watch it when it came out on VHS. Despite having lived through the 90s there's a time capsule quality that this movie represents for me. Those shoulder pads in men's suits! Oh, and those overly pleated pants! Seriously, Sean Connery's pants are flowing in the breeze on that golf course! Is Cheryl Lynn wearing a jumpsuit? Yes she is. But the key sign you're watching an early 90s movie? As my brother says, no movie of this era would be complete without a chase scene through a construction site!

While the film does maintain a fair bit of the hardboiled feel of the book, by not being a period piece it loses the timeless vibe of the source material and decides instead to go for something more bankable, aka, a buddy cop movie. You might not realize at first that you are watching a buddy cop movie, but pay close attention to the dialogue and you can be in no doubt, "sempai, apple pie!" They have taken Lieutenant Smith, who in the book is a questioning but indulgent narrator there to learn from Connor's knowledge and turned him into "Web" Smith, the smart-mouthed sidekick to Sean Connery. While this might seem like a ploy to turn the movie into the next Beverly Hills Cop or Lethal Weapon, instead it is just taking the antagonism that is racing through Smith's inner monologue and putting it on the screen in a format movie audiences would recognize versus falling into the trope of using a narrator and then making it cheesier then the theatrical release of Bladerunner. But there is no doubt in this duo that despite the buddy cop trope of the newbie getting the girl that it's really Sean Connery who will have his bed being warmed at the end of the film.

But the change of Smith isn't just about creating a buddy cop dynamic, there's a subtly and cunning in this change. When the book was released the major sticking point for readers was the overtly racist tone of the book. Rising Sun read as an anti-Japanese tract disguised as a thriller. Thankfully it's obvious in this day and age that this would be unacceptable to movie-going audiences. So how do you take source material that is racist and maintain some aspect of this without alienating your audience? You deflect and transform it. Sad as it is to say, but for us Americans we are more familiar with racism when it falls along a strict black and white line. While this is not acceptable, it is more relatable; especially within the buddy cop genre where the dynamic is often to have this pairing of black and white. The black character is more outspoken and not willing to put up with this shit and occasionally uses "massa" ironically or angrily. By having Snipes say such "empowering" things as "No, you get the senator's car! Wrong guy, wrong fucking century!" the movie is putting the "accepted" racism on view for all while casually deflecting the anti-Japanese sentiment of the book.

The biggest example though of making sure this movie wasn't anti-Japanese, besides the fact that they wisely cast Japanese actors, is in the end when the killer is revealed. It comes as no surprise when reading the book that the killer is the representative for the Nakamoto Corporation whom Connor and Smith dealt with the most. But despite keeping this character complicit in the crimes, despite a totally unwarranted name change for the film, he isn't the killer. Instead the killer is a privileged white yuppie. Bob Richmond is the perfect villain. He has aligned himself against his own country and is disgustingly obsequious and rich. Everyone watching the movie can be pleased that this entitled jackass gets what he deserves all while not unnecessarily persecuting the Japanese in a hateful rant like the book. Of course the murderer's actual guilt might be more ambiguous then in the book, but we are still given an ending that won't ruffle any feathers and gives us a satisfying sense of closure.

Though there was one aspect of the book that was lost in translation. While the movie toned down the anti-Japanese sentiment it virtually eliminated the corruption of political officials. In the book Senator Morton is a Kennedy-esque playboy caught up in the murder. He sleeps around, he drinks too much, his vices bring him down. Here though they justify his affair with Cheryl Lynn because he has an invalid wife, and as for the drinking? It's gone. To me the elimination of governmental corruption wasn't done to streamline the movie or to keep our focus. It felt too much like a purposeful omission and it got me to thinking, while it's not wise to harbor anti-Japanese sentiments, it's the politicians that are the true untouchables. Think about it? Right now even the most corrupt of politicians are being considered as viable candidates for the Presidential election next year! While we can "learn" to become accustomed to certain types of racism that they are allowed into our films as the lesser of two evils, say something against a politician and that's the end of you. The double standards of life are here on full display, and once again, if we look for it, we realize that which isn't shown might be the most important.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 90s, Beverly Hills Cop, Bladerunner, Crichton Celebration, Japanese, Lethal Weapon, Michael Crichton, Politicians, Racism, Ray Wise, Rising Sun, Sean Connery, Steve Buscemi, VHS, Wesley Snipes

Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles Book 1) by Marissa Meyer
Published by: Feiwel and Friends
Publication Date: January 3rd, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
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Cinder is the only source of income for her family. Her adoptive father died and she is left with a step-mother who hates her and two step-sisters. Worst of all is that being a cyborg, she is not just a second class citizen in her home, but is viewed as a second class citizen by all the residents of New Beijing. Yet she is lucky in that her deformities are easy to conceal with clothes and her job of a mechanic means that she can wear gloves to hide her hands, the most obvious sign of what she is. Yet one day everything changes. Prince Kai comes to her stall in the market to ask her to repair his robot. All the world is in love with Kai, yet Cinder feels an instant connection. She can't wait to go home and tell her sister Peony and her best friend Iko, who is a robot. That night though, Peony contracts the plague. The scourge of the world that could wipe out humanity. Cinder's step-mother blames Cinder and volunteers her for medical research. Not to save Peony, but to destroy Cinder.

Yet Cinder is surprisingly resilient to the plague. She might be a hope for a cure. Also, there's the added benefit that she must be constantly at the palace for the research, and if she gets to see more of Kai, that is all right by her. Yet the political machinery she is being drawn into is dangerous. The Lunars, people from the moon whom the earth greatly distrusts, want to form a marriage alliance with Kai. In return the Lunars will give the world a cure for the plague. It is what the world needs more than anything, an end to the suffering. But can two people falling in love put aside their dreams and do what must be done for the world?

I am a sucker for retellings of fairy tales. After all, fairy tales are the building blocks of what stories are. The adversity, the handsome prince, the happily ever after... though sometimes not in the darkest of tales. Cinderella was never one of my favorites. My mother would probably site the fact that when the mice appeared the first time I saw the movie I started crying uncontrollably and had to be removed from the theatre. In all fairness, I don't remember this and remember more the Jungle Book tantrum of my brother that made me never know the ending for over ten years. That all said, there are really two kinds of retellings, those that just flesh out the story more but keep it similar in feel to the original, or those who throw everything out the window and go for something fresh and new. Cinder threw everything out the window. We have strange beings from the moon, we have cyborgs, we have a post apocalyptic world that has the feeling of Bladerunner and Firefly. We have a princess that is very un-princess like. We have the start of a series that looks very promising and then pissed me off greatly by ending on a cliffhanger. The fact that it pissed me off shows that I was invested enough in the characters that I didn't want to book to end.

The world building is fabulous. There's political intrigue, new space age mechanics, new terminology, yet never are you overwhelmed by this. Everything flows naturally from the strong and vibrant characters of Kai and Cinder. You feel their pain and joy. The fact that I almost lost it and started crying when something happened to Iko, who is a robot mind you, that just goes to show that every character, human and otherwise is suffused with this wonderful life. Never once was I pulled out of the world that was made and now I wait, rather petulantly, for the next installment. The ball that is the end of Cinderella really is a launching platform for the rest of the epic story to come for Cinder. Sometimes when the fairy tale says "happily ever after" it is really just the beginning.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bladerunner, Cinder, Cinderella, Cyborg, Fairy Tales, Firefly, Marissa Meyer, Summer Series, The Lunar Chronicles

Only Human by Gareth Roberts
Published by: BBC Books
Publication Date: 2005
Format: Paperback, 240 Pages
Rating: ★★★
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The Doctor was planning on taking Rose and Jack to Kegron Pluva to see the maddest ecosystem out there when the TARDIS gets an alert that someone is using some very dangerous time travel technology outside of London of all places. Pleasure diverted by an investigation isn't anything new, and who knows, this could be more fun! A Neanderthal, Das, has shown up in modern day Bromley. When the three of them finally come in contact with him, he has quite a story to tell about a weird tree and then ending up in a nightclub, like you do. They decide to take him back to his own time but find out that the dangerous technology that has brought him forward far into the future has made it impossible for him to ever go back. Das would literally be destroyed. He is stuck forever in Bromley in the 21st century.

Leaving Jack behind to help their new charge adjust, Rose and The Doctor travel back to Das's time to see what exactly happened and to make sure it doesn't happen again. What they find is beyond weird. Aside from just the prehistoric world with Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, there is a secret underground base of people from the far future, way beyond when Rose comes from. Led by Chantal, these subservient people believe they are there to record and observe, or at least make Chantal happy by doing this. Their number one goal is to make Chantal happy. But Chantal has ulterior motives. Behind a big grey door there is a secret she is keeping, the real reason she wanted to go back in time.

Ok, so, I think I can admit to you all that I think I'm starting to burn out a bit with this whole Doctor Who way of life I'm currently living. Right now I'm watching all the first episodes and last episodes of all The Doctors leading up to the fiftieth anniversary, currently on "The War Games" with Patrick Troughton, as well as reading the books in my spare time. I've reached a stage of numbness that unless it's really good or really bad I just go, "meh, that was fine, next." So, while I did enjoy Only Human, it neither offended me nor was a brilliant piece of work, so, I liked it, but still blame it for getting the song "Only Human" stuck in my head, which seriously is a bit of a break from "What does the Fox Say," so I guess, go "Only Human?" Also, I do really like Gareth Roberts, some of his episodes of the new series are the best out there because he actually understands how to write for the product line and for the show. He knows how to properly do an homage and how to properly write for the characters as well as create auxilery characters we actually like and care about. So if I wasn't so jaded at this point, maybe I'd be really cheering this book on, but at least I can see that it's likable.

What really stuck with me was the Douglas Adams factor. Previously, in the Fourth Doctor's book, the author clearly didn't get the homage/rip off delineation. Roberts nails it right on. In the second Hitchhiker's book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the indigenous hominids are destroyed by, basically, inept hairdressers from the future, and humans descend from them. With The Doctor and Rose exploring this prehistoric era, Roberts keeps subtly nudging you with this idea that these idiots from the future could in fact destroy not only the Neanderthals, which humans did anyway without any help from the future, but perhaps also our original ancestors, Homo sapiens. Yet he takes this kernel of an idea and expands it, he makes it not only the idea that holds the whole book together, but it also is able to bring up the destructive nature of humans and the sad fact of extinction. Message and moral through an entertaining medium, plus Rose Tyler doing nails for prehistoric Homo sapiens. Though I did find The Doctor at times a little too down on humans, Roberts was able to show many sides of an argument in an entertaining manner and I think Adams would have approved.

Then there's an aspect of science fiction that I love that Only Human employs. The future that is old yet new. Like watching an old film and seeing how they pictured what the future would be like, there's a fascination, a nostalgia that captures you. The idea of this whole society hidden underground, having arrived from the far future, knowing the complete map of the human brain, but being unable to have any kind of technology that wasn't analogue, fantastic! I loved this little wooden shanty town with it's pneumatic tubes and typewriters. This world reminded me of Brazil, in my mind one of the best science fiction dystopian movies ever created, I'm talking about the director's cut here. I even picture the people as kind of stylized that way, with the 40s clothes, like Bladerunner. In fact, annoying lady who wrote the Eighth Doctor's book, this is how you get a Bladerunner feel without being a plagiarist. It captured this amazing vibe, I felt like I was in this anachronistic world, part Brazil part Deadwood part Nextian, and just loving it, though I wouldn't love being a minion of Chantal's!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bladerunner, Brazil, Captain Jack, Doctor Who, Douglas Adams, Gareth Roberts, Jasper Fforde, Neanderthal, Nextian, Only Human, Rose, TARDIS, The 10th Doctor, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Thursday Next

Players by Terrance Dicks
Published by: BBC Books
Publication Date: April 26th, 1999
Format: Paperback, 306 Pages
Rating: ★★
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While trying to show Peri a glamorous time after a particularly sewer based adventure, the TARDIS gets the right when not the right where and they end up smack in the middle of the Boer War. Not only in the middle of the strife in South Africa, but in the middle of an assassination attempt against a young Winston Churchill. Winston pooh-poohs the idea that the assassin was after him, but the Doctor knows how integral Churchill is to the coming century so he can't discount this theory. By eliminating Churchill the entire course of future history will be changed. What's more disconcerting is that this has happened before, in The Doctor's second incarnation, almost twenty years in Churchill's future, there was an odd assassination attempt during WWI that The Doctor thwarted. Could there be someone, or a group of someones, so invested in the death of Churchill that they would be willing to wait decades till the perfect opportunity to strike presented itself again?

The Doctor is disturbed by these events and decides to set himself and Peri up in London society in the 1930s. They're bound to run into Churchill, Peri will get her luxury and glamour, and The Doctor will get his answers. Not long after they arrive there is an attempt on their lives quickly followed by one on Churchill. The Doctor doesn't take any risks and hires some Pinkerton agents to see to their safety. But whomever their opponents and would-be killers are, determined and ruthless is how they operate. In the midst of the abdication crisis, could these mysterious assassins be playing some sort of game with The Doctor as their pawn and Churchill's death as a significant move?

One of the fun aspects of Doctor Who is that because he can go anywhen, well, we have the chance to run into some rather august personages, even previous versions of himself. So far in this series of books he hasn't run into anyone of note, but then again, he hasn't really been hanging around earth that much...  in the television series he has met everyone from Dickens to Da Vinci, here we have someone who has even shown up on the show, Winston Churchill. I like that this gives a little bit of context and background to The Doctor's relationship with Churchill, because when the 11th Doctor gets that phone call at the end of "The Beast Below" there is obviously a prior and congenial relationship between the two. I like to think that this book is where it all started.

Yet at the same time I couldn't help be reminded of the first Thursday Next novel by Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair. While I know that this book came out after Players, the fact remains that it is more well known, and I can't help but keep thinking about Thursday's father showing up again and again and asking if she knew who Churchill was. Because, quite literally, if there's one person who was a force for good in the last century, it was Churchill.

And because we are dealing with Churchill, well, we are dealing with some of my favorite time periods. Africa, England, pulling together for the empire in times of crisis... ah, this book had me hooked from page one... but then it lost me. I wanted to love it, it was a fast read in a time period I love, but it just flat lined. The problem I had was with the anachronisms. In any historical fiction, and in particular in a story dealing with time travel and the ability to accidentally change the past, butterfly wings and all that, there are acceptable anachronisms and unacceptable anachronisms. There can be things played for laughs, like in Blackadder: Back and Forth when Edmund messes up the time lines and Shakespeare ends up being known as the inventor of the ballpoint pen. And there can be serious changes, like here if Winston Churchill were eliminated before England's hour of need.

But then there are things that just get under my skin and piss me off, aka, the unacceptable anachronisms. In this book there where two that just drove me crazy. One was the fact that while playing out the abdication crisis with Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII that Wallis was going to be there for his abdication broadcast. Now the clever and acceptable anachronisms is what was going to happen because of the Players... what annoyed me was Wallis's presence. She had fled the country at this point! You can mess with history, you just can't mess with it this much. It's keeping the details intact that make a story like this work. As for the Pinkerton Dekker, who is a little too much Harrison Ford in Bladerunner, well, he was too much of an earlier era. His tommy gun wielding prohi just felt so out of place, it's like Terrance Dicks was taking Boardwalk Empire and trying to force it to breed with the new Upstairs, Downstairs. It was so wrong, not all period dramas mesh, and it didn't surprise me in the least when I learned that Dekker was in a previous Terrance Dicks novel... sometimes you just need to let your characters go. And don't get me started with the Rebbecca joke or the fact Dicks then pulled a Dashiell Hammett and decided to bring in the Continental Op... sigh, sometimes less is more and it's best to separate styles.

As for our big bad? I really loved the Players and their nebulous unexplained nature. In the previous book with the 5th Doctor, Fear of the Dark, I felt that one of the failings was taking a mysterious entity and making it have too too solid flesh. By instead having this race of immortals from who knows where or when and them just playing a game with our history just for fun... well, I like it. I also like that they will obviously return. But what I loved is that at the end they let The Doctor live, not because he wasn't a threat to them, but because they saw his potential as either a player or a very powerful pawn.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Blackadder, Bladerunner, Boardwalk Empire, Boer War, Doctor Who, Jasper Fforde, Peri, Players, Terrance Dicks, The 6th Doctor, The Eyre Affair, Upstairs Downstairs, Wallis and Edward, Winston Churchill, WWI, WWII

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
Published by: Harper
Publication Date: June 19th, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Everything changed on "Step Day." One day there was one Earth. Overcrowded and dying slowly. Then innumerable Earths opened up just a step away. Pure, untouched, Earth as it once was or could have been, yet completely uninhabited, save for animals and insects. Each Earth different and another step away. All because of a simple device whose instructions where placed online. A machine powered by a potato, that could lead you to these infinite worlds, only one after the other in sequence though. Yet there was Joshua. Joshua didn't need a stepper. He was a natural. Unbeknownst to him, so was his mother. At the time of his birth, Joshua's mother accidentally stepped and Joshua was born and left for a moment on an Earth all his own. That was when he first became aware of the silence.

On Step Day Joshua inadvertently became a hero because due to his natural stepping ability, he was able to go from one Earth to the next without having the debilitating nausea that most people experienced. That night he rescued countless children from Earth 1 and brought them back to Datum Earth, or so they would come to be known as. Joshua became something of a folk hero then, because he was more comfortable out exploring the Long Earth as it came to be called, than back in the Home on Allied Drive.

Yet in a world that was changing so fast, taxes and policing having new definitions, with people abandoning their lives, with precious metals becoming worthless, with iron becoming precious because of it's inability to be taken on a step, one corporation stands tall. The Black Corporation. They summon Joshua to their headquarters for a special mission. Lobsang is a reincarnated Tibetan motorcycle repairman who now resides as an AI in a computer. Yet he is definitely human, in that he proved it in a court of law. Lobsang wants Joshua to take him to the end of the Long Earth. They will journey to worlds end in a flying dirigible.

Lobsang has theories about what he will find and Joshua is his fail safe. Joshua can bring him back if anything where to go wrong. Also, Joshua won't get sick on the journey. The two of them set forth, jumping from world to world in the blink of an eye. The way they travel, watching movies at night and eating fine cuisine, makes Joshua a little jaded, and even wish for the way he used to travel. Yet, in all his travels he has never seen the mysterious creatures that are known as Trolls and Elves till now. Soon he realizes that there is more to the Long Earth than anyone could have ever imagined. And that's what scares people the most back on Datum Earth.

This book had two very good reasons for going straight to the top of my "to be read" pile, well, actually three, in that I've been waiting for it to come out for a year... The first reason is my undying love of Terry Pratchett. He is just the most amazing writer out there able to combine hard truths with laugh out loud humor. The second reason is that a fair amount of this book takes place in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin! Ok, so, it's not really a weird coincidence that it takes place in Madison, seeing as Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter used last years North American Discworld Convention that was here in Madison as a research trip and therefore thought setting a good chunk of the book in Madison was handy. At the convention they had a panel where the two of them discussed basically the structure of how the "Long Earth" works, so I had some foreknowledge as to how stepping worked. The idea fascinated me. It's not really an original hypothesis, versions of this theory have existed, even in Philip Pullman's Dark Materials books, we have worlds upon worlds stacked on top of each other only a slim knife's cut away. But here the lack of humanity is intriguing. Also the idea that all the Earths are what could have been possible had something happened differently is fascinating.

At times though, the book does get bogged down in the science of the hows, whys and wherefores. As the authors said, this first book in the series, is more just an introduction to the concept of the Long Earth. A travelogue wherein we familiarize ourselves with how things work. This of course brought to mind the writing style of Douglas Adams, with his Hitchhiker's Trilogy. If you think about those books, nothing much happens, yet you are travelling with these people through space. I think this book owes a lot to Adams, Doctor Who, and Mark Twain. The airship after all is named the Mark Twain, and it very much reminded me of a movie I watched once which I believe was a dramatization of Tom Sawyer Abroad,  a novel by Mark Twain featuring Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in a parody of a Jules Verne-esque adventure story. I distinctly remember the hot air balloon knocking the nose off of the sphinx. So, I can see the validity of people who claimed that this book was thin on plot. Though everything else made up for that loose, and, really, it's the first book, we have to see where it's going.

What really intrigued me though was all the things that would fall under the category of "that's so Pratchett." How the "other" creatures they encounter would account for an actual basis in mythology of Trolls and Elves. The "iron" that the fae feared being the only metal unable to step. His love of the word susurrus. His humor, dear lord, his dead on humor. It was subtler than in some of his other books, but still, to have the AI Lobsang, who I kept picturing as Jude Law from AI, constantly being unclear in his loyalties yet encouraging movie night wherein they would watch 2001. Or where he would say how he had originally created his appearance and demeanor based on the replicants from Bladerunner. To have Lobsang not just have these overtones, but then have Lobsang himself with a nudge and a wink then reference them himself was priceless. I particularly liked when he started to take on his "British Butler" persona, seeing as if there is a true flaw in the book, it's that the authors being British using turns of phrase that Americans would never use, so therefore the Butler kind of made up the language gap. I really think that David from Prometheus has a thing or three to learn from Lobsang.

In the end, I will say that this is yet another series of Terry Pratchett's that I will eagerly await the next book. Even if my heart will forever remain in Discworld, I was happy to say that I really enjoyed this book, far far more than his other stand alone, Nation, but that is another story all together, not just the "book" by my dislike of that book... he should have so stopped before the afterword... ok, I said I wasn't going to get into it, so I won't. Pratchett is wonderful, Baxter worked well with him, but again, like Gaiman and Good Omens, I think it's Pratchett's voice that comes out the clearest.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bladerunner, Datum Earth, Doctor Who, Douglas Adams, Elves, Joshua, Madison, Mark Twain, Philip Pullman, Prometheus, Step Day, Stephen Baxter, Terry Pratchett, The Long Earth, Tom Sawyer Abroad, Trolls

Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles Book 1) by Marissa Meyer
Published by: Feiwel and Friends
Publication Date: January 3rd, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Cinder is the only source of income for her family. Her adoptive father died and she is left with a step-mother who hates her and two step-sisters. Worst of all is that being a cyborg, she is not just a second class citizen in her home, but is viewed as a second class citizen by all the residents of New Beijing. Yet she is lucky in that her deformities are easy to conceal with clothes and her job of a mechanic means that she can wear gloves to hide her hands, the most obvious sign of what she is. Yet one day everything changes. Prince Kai comes to her stall in the market to ask her to repair his robot. All the world is in love with Kai, yet Cinder feels an instant connection. She can't wait to go home and tell her sister Peony and her best friend Iko, who is a robot. That night though, Peony contracts the plague. The scourge of the world that could wipe out humanity. Cinder's step-mother blames Cinder and volunteers her for medical research. Not to save Peony, but to destroy Cinder.

Yet Cinder is surprisingly resilient to the plague. She might be a hope for a cure. Also, there's the added benefit that she must be constantly at the palace for the research, and if she gets to see more of Kai, that is all right by her. Yet the political machinery she is being drawn into is dangerous. The Lunars, people from the moon whom the earth greatly distrusts, want to form a marriage alliance with Kai. In return the Lunars will give the world a cure for the plague. It is what the world needs more than anything, an end to the suffering. But can two people falling in love put aside their dreams and do what must be done for the world?

I am a sucker for retellings of fairy tales. After all, fairy tales are the building blocks of what stories are. The adversity, the handsome prince, the happily ever after... though sometimes not in the darkest of tales. Cinderella was never one of my favorites. My mother would probably site the fact that when the mice appeared the first time I saw the movie I started crying uncontrollably and had to be removed from the theatre. In all fairness, I don't remember this and remember more the Jungle Book tantrum of my brother that made me never know the ending for over ten years. That all said, there are really two kinds of retellings, those that just flesh out the story more but keep it similar in feel to the original, or those who throw everything out the window and go for something fresh and new. Cinder threw everything out the window. We have strange beings from the moon, we have cyborgs, we have a post apocalyptic world that has the feeling of Bladerunner and Firefly. We have a princess that is very un-princess like. We have the start of a series that looks very promising and then pissed me off greatly by ending on a cliffhanger. The fact that it pissed me off shows that I was invested enough in the characters that I didn't want to book to end.

The world building is fabulous. There's political intrigue, new space age mechanics, new terminology, yet never are you overwhelmed by this. Everything flows naturally from the strong and vibrant characters of Kai and Cinder. You feel their pain and joy. The fact that I almost lost it and started crying when something happened to Iko, who is a robot mind you, that just goes to show that every character, human and otherwise is suffused with this wonderful life. Never once was I pulled out of the world that was made and now I wait, rather petulantly, for the next installment. The ball that is the end of Cinderella really is a launching platform for the rest of the epic story to come for Cinder. Sometimes when the fairy tale says "happily ever after" it is really just the beginning.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Bladerunner, Cinder, Cinderella, Cyborg, Fairy Tales, Firefly, Marissa Meyer, The Lunar Chronicles

So, for this Sunday's installment of questions, we go more cultish... meaning, it's time to discuss one of the many awesome things Paul does, which is Doctor Who!
  
Question: From being your friend on facebook I have noticed your decided lean to campy television and B-movies, aside from the obvious references in Helles Belles, how has this worked its way into your writing? 

Answer: I’ve always loved to mix high and low cultural points and I dread the kind of snobbery that separates these things out. I hope what I’m doing through my novels is constructing a kind of secret narrative history of recent centuries, told through various forms of cultural flotsam and jetsam. Soap operas; the Brontes; Shakespeare and the Fantastic Four, Dracula and H.R Pufnstuf – I like to mix it all into a reeking broth.

Question: Expanding on the previous question, your tastes seem such an obvious fit for Doctor Who, how did that writing job come about and do you ever dream of going beyond the books and audios and doing an episode of the show?

Answer: As a kid I wrote Doctor Who stories all the time. The first 30-page story I ever wrote long hand and then drafted and typed up was when I was twelve, and it was a Fourth Doctor story about giant bats in the Lake District. I always, always wanted to write a Doctor Who book. First of all I published some other novels – set in my own universe! – and then, when I had a bit of a publishing record – I approached BBC Books, who were then publishing original Eighth Doctor novels. After that came several others, and then several Big Finish audio scripts for the 5th, 6th and 8th Doctors, and then my adventures with Audiogo, Doctor 4 and Mrs Wibbsey. It’s been an amazing process. Of course I’d love to write for the TV show! But the people that do have big TV CV’s – which I don’t.

Question: Current favorite Doctor, given that this preference could change over time?


Answer: Tom Baker is always my favourite. To me, everyone else is an actor playing Doctor Who. Tom simply is Doctor Who.

Question: Sick Building was rumored to have had the working title of The Wicked Bungalow but was changed prior to release by Russell T Davies. Aside from the fact The Wicked Bungalow is a better title, how much creative interference do you encounter?

Answer: There are always compromises! On every single project that you do. There has to be. Everything is a collaboration – even a single-authored novel. You have to listen to your editor and agent and everyone else involved. They know about getting your stuff out to the audience and can help tailor what it is you’re doing. (I still don’t fully understand the Wicked Bungalow thing, though. I think it was thought to be too ironic-sounding. But that title wasn’t trying to be ironic – it really was a book about a bungalow that was quite, quite wicked.)

Question: You're in a completely hypothetical desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling towards you. You reach down and flip the tortoise over on its back, Leon. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. I mean you're not helping! Why is that, Leon?

Answer: I still don’t get this? Is it from Blade Runner…..?*

*I'll leave this up to my friend Aaron to explain, because he really wanted this question asked... if I remember right the reasoning is because all writers who have written in the sci fi genre should know Blade Runner, which this quote is indeed from. Hey, I took the effort to find a poster with Leon in it, so that's my standing. Also, I just realized Blade Runner is two words, how did I never notice that before? I even read the book... though in fairness, Blade Runner isn't it's title.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 1 comments  

Labels: Bladerunner, Doctor Who, Paul Magrs, Sick Building, The 10th Doctor, The 4th Doctor, The 8th Doctor, Tom Baker

Never judge a new doctor by his first episode, always judge them by their second. The first is all kind of new and maybe a little weird, the second is when they come into their own. I gotta say, I'm loving Matt Smith. Not my lustful worshipping of David Tennant, but in a quieter, he's goofy and works as a sort of Tom Baker Doctor kind of way. The second episode of a new companion always has to be a huge moment, the moment not when they meet the Doctor and deal with him on their turf, but the moment when he takes them out into his turf. His turf happens to be the British Isle floating in outer space. There are weird menacing mechanical carny booths, think Zoltar, in the 30s, but with a real hidden wicked streak and total control over the ships populous called Smilers. Theirs a complete distillation of all things British into one wickedly fun market, like Bladrunner with bunting. There does seem to be more of a children slant, could it be that they're actually going to not traumatize children forever? No, this episode would so have traumatized me. I already have an unnatural fear of elevators, if one of those Smilers went all evil and dropped me into the bowels of a ship for not doing my homework, I'm sorry, I would have totally lost it. It's that underlying menace of what the Smilers do and that no one stands up to them or even tries to change it that makes the Doctors arrival so important.

So we have an oppressed British people hurtling through space and a Queen, cause there always has to be a Queen, searching for a truth that she is not meant to find and when she does, it's a doozy. But it's the Queen that makes this episode the best. Sophie Okonedo as Liz 10 was a combination of Lara Croft and V. Flowing cap, guns at the ready, and lots of goblets of water laying about as if she were in the movie Signs. The eventual saving of the day happens, of course not from the Doctor but from Amy, who was very Arthur Dent and saved the world in her pajamas. But the Doctor being wrong, and not just slightly wrong, but majorly wrong, was interesting. This Doctor is willing to make harder decisions... he's willing to let there be a looser, versus all winners come hell or high water. But Amy tempers him. Too bad next week we have the stupid overused Daleks, because I like where Steven Moffat is taking us, new villains not the same old same old... well at least that's what I thought till I saw those freakin' Daleks!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 3 comments  

Labels: Amy Pond, Bladerunner, Daleks, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Lara Croft, Liz 10, Matt Smith, Signs, Smilers, Sophie Olonedo, Steven Moffat, The 11th Doctor, Tom Baker, V, Zoltar

I promised swans and libraries today… and yes, I do deliver, but with an added bonus of Monopoly! Perhaps a tad more random then the color centric part yesterday, I hope it will be equally entertaining… enough of me, you want more of Jasper, and that’s what this post is all about.

Elizabeth: Do you view the lack of a stocked library[1] the most nightmarish aspect of East Carmine, where all they have is the vague memories of what was once there?

Jasper: It’s pretty chilling really, it’s more because they’re worn out than someone’s… oh hang on, they removed them, yes someone’s removing them, haven’t they. Yeah it is a bit chilling and a bit worrying. But I kind of like the idea. Because in my previous books, in the Thursday Next Series, I have a library that contains every single book there is and here I’ve got a library that contains just empty shelves. I was kind of doing a sort of complete turn around there. But I do like the idea of a library, not only without books, but the people still in it. I think this is very telling, for the kind of way in which this society is really breaking down, that they remember the function of the library and that’s what they’re celebrating. Where everything used to be, and what the titles are, but not the form. So they’re not saying, well the books used to say this, they’re saying, the books used to be here. And I think that was maybe a very subtle way in which the society is kind of rotting, and that maybe 200 years ago they used to discuss the books and now they just discuss where they used to be. It’s just another way of adding to the kind of slightly, sort of insidious, kind of nasty, this society is going in a very very bad direction and no one in particular seems to realize.

Elizabeth: Would the librarians kind of being non-functionary, but still having their job, reflect almost what’s happening today with reference librarians being phased out with the internet?

Jasper: Yes, they do seem to be. The whole library issue is a very interesting point and certainly it will be interesting to see where the internet goes as regards reference libraries. But I think the traditional library with librarians and things, that does seem to be slowing down, and I think it does seem to be on the way out. The internet is such easy access to more and more people, the libraries do seem to have perhaps a bit of trouble competing. Unfortunately that adds to the difficulties where people who don’t have internet access and will actually make the whole unonline, the unconnected underclass, even worse, which is a worry, I must say. But the way I look at the internet is one huge library, and I can just log in wherever I want.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I mean, you can even log into remote libraries themselves and see what books they have and everything.

Jasper: Yeah, it’s terrific, libraries are great too, that’s the thing. I love my local library and the librarians and everything. But one does see that it looks like days could be numbered. Who knows how the future is going to turn out?

Elizabeth: Yeah, my mom’s a librarian and they’re trying to decide whether they are even going to upgrade their school, do they want to try to outmode themselves faster?

Jasper: Yeah, I know it’s a hard one. And budgets are tight and libraries have been giving over more and more space to computer terminals for the last ten, fifteen years, and will probably continue to do so. But, I mean, how they evolve, and stay necessary and useful within the next twenty or thirty years is vital. But I think, certainly, that they will have to change in some form if they are to survive.

Elizabeth: Did you conceive of leapbacks[2] as a way to not only keep the people in line but also to make it so your book is not outdated by true future technology? As you said with Bladerunner it depicts the future so well but didn't prefigure cell phones.

Jasper: Yeah, it was. I’m very much of the opinion that the way we run our lives at the moment is based on sort of habit. And really the way that we think, and the way we discuss things, and the way that we look forward to things is very much a sort of fashion, the clothes we wear. And I thought, the way of thinking about things could change dramatically as well in 700 years, and these days we are always looking forward to new technology, you know, we have an expectation of new technology. In Eddie’s world they have an expectation of loosing technology. And how they deal with this is by trying to loophole a way of keeping the technology or taking the technology so you can use it within the parameters of the leapback compliance certificate. So in many ways, the way that they react to technology, is as innovative as the way that we do, and it was just really taking this idea of this endless increase in technology that we have and saying, ok, let’s turn it on it’s head and have a decrease in technology and actually see how people deal with that instead. And it was just a little sort of little fun thing, but again, also, I think, it’s to keep people in check and to keep everyone very localized and not moving around and really trying to keep a lid on society and make it sustain.

Elizabeth: Did you ever have a bad experience with swans?

Jasper: Swans? No, but it’s very funny though because there is always this thing with mothers, I don’t know what it’s like in the states, but here, it’s always “don’t go near a swan, it will break your arm” and I’ve never, ever, heard of anyone having a swan that broke my arm or anyone else’s. I was even on a tour in America, and during the tour I used to say, “Oh, can I just ask a question here, is there anyone here who has either been attacked by a swan or knows anyone who was attacked by a swan?” And of course no one, absolutely not at all. But it is one of those childhood fears that you have, and I thought I’ll use this because we have, in my book, basically four fears which are being stoked up to keep everyone in check. Swans, you know, big danger, and then there’s the night, which is also very frightening if you’re a child, there’s lightning[3], you know, which can come and get you, and that’s very dangerous too, and then there’s the Mildew[4] of course, always hanging around, disease, ready to get you, and the Riffraff, the unknown, sort of lower classes, who clearly don’t know how to brush their hair properly. So, it’s all this sort of manufactured ill, manufactured fears, in which everyone can sort of talk about and say, “oh yes, it’s terrible” without actually really coming into contact with them or understanding exactly what it is. And it’s just a form of social control I think.

Elizabeth: I was actually once attacked by a goose.

Jasper: Oh really! Well, geese, yeah, yeah, I think I’ve been attacked by a goose, yeah.

Elizabeth: Yeah, my friends don’t let me live it down, I was feeding it and it got violent[5]

Jasper: Yeah, they do that, they’ve got a bad temper geese.

Elizabeth: With reference to Monopoly, with Laden Parke Laine[6], and the only map left in existence after the "Something That Happened" being a RISK game board, how have board games, in particular Parker Brothers, influenced you?

Jasper: Well, Monoploy influenced me quite a lot when I was younger, cause we used to play a lot. I had two older brothers, and they used to play Monopoly, and I used to come along to make up the numbers and to have someone for them to beat. So I remember beating my brother at Monopoly once, and of course it was one of those wonderful moments in one’s childhood, where suddenly everything’s right with the world and it was wonderful[7]. Course he was a very bad looser, so he took it very very badly and I was starting to win very slowly at first, but then I got, more and more and more and more, until there was this point when he realized that he would never be able to claw back the money I’d earned off of him. And in the end, he just sort of threw the board in the air and scattered all the pieces everywhere and stormed out of the room. But it was a very good moment for me I must say, and it was the same with RISK actually. Beating him at RISK was quite good as well. But, yeah, board games, great fun, cause they’re very family orientated you see, and we used to not watch too much tv and play board games and play cards and stuff. I have great fondness for board games. Scrabble, we play a huge amount of Scrabble in my family. So, you know, we like it.

Elizabeth: Yeah, Scrabble was never a favorite, I’m not very good at spelling[8].

Jasper: Yeah no? Oh, ok.

Elizabeth: Thursday Next is very obviously a kind of parallel world to ours, but is Shades of Grey maybe a possible future?

Jasper:Yes, I think that was very much the case, I was really trying to get away from the Thursday world as much as possible so I didn’t want it to be a parallel world. I thought, let’s actually create one that was maybe seven or eight hundred years in the future, or a possible a future. So yes, I was really trying to distance myself from Thursday and everything.

Elizabeth: When writing Eddie, did you try to visualize the world as he'd see it with only shades of red?

Jasper: Yeah, there’s a sequence where he’s looking out of the window and he’s looking at the red flowers cause he’s bored of staring at the grey, cause it just becomes a grey mass as it moves past, and he’s looking for these little tiny little flecks of red, and then I think I describe how he moves through the summer on a sort of seasonal bloom and you take the early bloomers in the beginning of the season, and you’d watch them, and then slowly you’d go through the poppies and the sorrels and the pink campions, until season end, when you didn’t really get much at all. So every now and again I’d think how does Eddie see this, but it’s a hard one to visualize I have to say. But it’s much easier when you get a photograph and then actually desaturate all the colors apart from red and then you get a very clear idea. It also makes you realize that grass is actually yellow, which I never realized until I started mucking around with it. Grass is not really green at all, it’s mostly yellow.

Elizabeth: At least the yellows[9] will be happy then.

Jasper: Yeah, absolutely. They will, they certainly will.

Elizabeth: While several of the more menacing inhabitants are more conventional, with, evil plants, killer swans, and the lightning, I think the most sinister thing is Perpetulite Roads[10]. What made you decide to take something so mundane and make it so menacing?

Jasper: Well, I think that’s the fun of drama, and that’s always the chance of good drama, when you take something very very mundane, and then you make that frightening, or you make it a point of reference. And I just like Perpetulite, I think it’s brilliant. And I was sort of sitting down about six months before the book was finished and I was trying to think up future technologies, and that’s a hard one, cause you really have to think of things which are really not thought about at all, and your self cleaning windows, you know, that’s fine, someone could figure that out, I’m sure they have already, but I thought a building material that was made of a sort of organic plastoid, that actually just sucked all the nutrients out of the surrounding soil that it needs to maintain itself. And I thought this would be a fantastic building material. And really it would start as like a little brickette, wouldn’t it, and you’d just sort of add some water to it and it would start to grow. But the notion that roads are still dangerous, even when there’s no cars or people, I think also has a little sort of satirical edge to it, that you can be killed on the road by the road itself. Not just by a car or driving too fast or a drunken driver or anything else, the road itself will actually kill you. But it’s just a nice, sort of, slightly horrible notion, being eaten alive by something that really has no personality at all, it just wants to be a road.

Elizabeth: Plus, it would just be so useful, even if it was dangerous. I mean, cause we had 18” of snow here last week.

Jasper: Yeah, there you are, you should have some Perpetulite! Cause, you see, Perpetulaite actually generates heat. You can set how warm you want it and there’s never any ice on the road. When people still lived in Eddie’s world and had cars[11], or what might have passed for a car, Perpetulite would have been fantastically useful, never an icy road, the white lines would have illuminated themselves, and it would also have transmitted the power to your car. So it would have been fantastic and perfectly smooth, perfectly flat, no road works, nothing, it would have been great.

Elizabeth: Probably cut down on deer running across your path too, cause it would just eat them.

Jasper: Perpetulite, in it’s proper state would actually sense a deer or something that was actually on the road and then it would put white warning signs up ahead to drivers. Or it could even slow your car down ahead of time. Perpetulite would be the most brilliant of road surfaces ever. There would be hardly any accidents at all. But I love the sort of unintended consequences of wonderful technology and the fact that it’s still there and you can’t get ride of it and it’s seven hundred years later and now it’s starting to eat the inhabitants cause it’s getting hungry. I think it’s wonderful how humans leave their technology around and it starts doing nasty things in a hundred years time, like all those nuclear reactors which have been dumped in the Baring Sea and all that sort of stuff. It’s wonderful technology, but, years from now it’s just going to cause trouble. So I think it’s a bit of that.

Elizabeth: Is this going to be a set trilogy? Or are you thinking of going beyond the three books?

Jasper: Um, I don’t know. I mean it will be interesting to see how we go with number two. I mean, certainly there’s a good number two in it, whether I can stretch that to three or four our more, I’m not sure. The world is still quite large and unexplored, we’ve only really seen two inhabited villages[12] and two uninhabited villages[13], and we haven’t really seen what happened at High Saffron, and we know there’s a huge library[14] at High Saffron, which will have, one presumes, a lot of answers. So there’s an awful lot to be explored and there’s an awful lot of unexplained stuff and a lot for Eddie and Jane to do, even if they can do it in their own lifetime. So yes, but it really depends on how it’s received, and how number two looks and what else I’m writing at the time.

Elizabeth: Well, I hope its received well cause I really enjoyed it a lot.

Jasper: Oh, good.

Elizabeth: Have you actually started working on the next one or…

Jasper: No, I’m working on Thursday Next six[15] at the moment.

Jasper: Well a year’s time.

Elizabeth: Well thank you so much for this interview, I don’t want to take any more of your time.

Jasper: Oh, no, that’s quite alright.

Elizabeth: I’m actually going to be coming to your Skokie event[16].

Jasper:Oh good.

Elizabeth: And have you ever been to the Midwest in winter?

Jasper: Midwest in winter? No, I don’t… think I, hang on, Midwest in winter, well, no, what do you call the Midwest? Minneapolis isn’t the Midwest is it?

Elizabeth: Technically it is I think.

Jasper: Oh, ok, then I have. With, all your like heaps of snow and stuff. I think the first three books I did I was on a winter tour.

Elizabeth: Yeah, we get lots of snow. We’re getting more than what was expected[17].

Jasper: Yeah, I know, I love it. And it’s wonderful, cause we don’t have snow in the UK like that.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it was quite shocking to have last week where all of a sudden we had, you know, two feet of snow and no power.

Jasper: Oh, well ok, no, that snow’s not so much fun.

Elizabeth: Thank you so much and I’ll see you in January.

Jasper: Ok, brilliant.

Elizabeth:Thanks.

Jasper: Right, thanks, bye.

Well, there you have it! I'm obviously indebted to Jasper for doing the interview, but also thanks go out to Sonya Cheuse at Viking for sending me the book and offering me the chance of an interview. Really big thanks go out to Meredith Burks who set up the interview and was there to answer any questions I had in advance. And a final shout out to whichwaydidshego, a Fforde friend, who had the wonderful idea of footnotes, to aid the reader and also to add that little bit of Nextian logic to the interview. I hope you all enjoyed it and I hope to see some of you in Skokie in a week!

[1] In Eddie’s world books are no longer around, hence the lure of High Saffron, because of the rumors of a grand library, despite the whole, no one’s ever come back...

[2] Leapbacks are edicts from the Colortocracy where every year there is a list of technologies that are removed. Books, trains, phones, televisions, etc, have all been banned. The only way to keep technology is to find a loophole. For example, they outlawed trains, not a train. So, since the singular is different from the plural, Chromotacia has A Train.
[3] Ball lightning that seems to have uncanny homing abilities.
[4] The only real health risk in Eddie’s world, once you get it you’re a goner, only hours left culminating in a violent death.
[5] This happened over 13 years ago and still they can’t let it go!
[6] Park Lane being Boardwalk to us Americans, so it’s to “Land On Boardwalk.”
[7] I could tell in his voice what a happy memory defeating his brother was. Sibling rivalry, never out of fashion or out of mind!
[8] You have spell-check to thank for the legibility of this blog! Ironically I can easily see spelling errors…
[9] The more pugnacious of the colors, the yellows are authoritarian asses, especially in East Carmine.
[10] An Organoplastoid self-maintaining building compound, used mostly for roads before the “Something that Happened”, and now, although barely used, is still there. Intelligent and with a powerful memory, Perpetulite draws organic nutrients from the air and soil to maintain its rigid agenda, even if that nutrient source happens to be you.
[11] Cars were eliminated in previous leapback years, so most towns have one or two cars for emergencies.
[12] Vermillion, home of the last rabbit, and East Carmine, home of the Chair census.
[13] Rusty Hill, where everyone died of the Mildew, and High Saffron, where no one has ever returned from.
[14] See 1.
[15] One of Our Thursday’s is Missing, "...Continuing the story from where "First Among Sequels" left off, Jurisfiction has serious problems: With a Serial Killer on the loose, Speedy Muffler declaring all-out Genre war and aggressive book-pulpers threatening to turn entire libraries into MDF self-assembly furniture, only ace book-jumper Thursday Next can save the day. But where is she? Last seen investigating the theoretical Dark Reading Matter, the place - where it is conjectured - erased and forgotten books end up, Thursday is nowhere to be found. With time running out, Jurisfiction decides that you need a Thursday to find a Thursday, so they persuade Thursday5, comfortably getting to grips with the hastily rewritten TN series, to look for the real Thursday in the one region she fears more than anything else - A place of chaos, unpredictability and unresolved plot lines: The Real World...."
[16] I know I’m the real reason you’d be going to the event right? No… ok… but email me if you are thinking of going because I’d love to see you there!
[17] And note, this was BEFORE the really bad blizzard of last week!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 4 comments  

Labels: Bladerunner, East Carmine, Geese, Internet, Jasper Fforde, Laden Parke Laine, Leapbacks, Librarians, Library, Lightning, Mildew, Monopoly, Perpetulite, RISK, Scrabble, Shades of Grey, Swans