it's hard to be a saint in the city
Monday, 5 May 2008 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtIt's a trick! a plot! she cries... I'm Neddy Seagoon! Or, more accurately, when not channelling Goon Show, I'm the victim of a cunning ploy by my Cherished Institution, namely to slow down internet traffic to the point where my usual web browsing is nigh impossible, and I actually have to - gasp! - do some work instead. Cruel and unusual, it is. Also, taking bets as to whether hitting "Post" is productive of anything other than a pretence of cogitation followed by data loss in the coils of slow.
In the specific case, the snail-like connectivity has not only demanded ten minutes and two tries before it will consent to load this post screen, it's also completely refused to allow me to log onto Flickr, which means I can't post the next in my ongoing series of Unreasonably Beautiful Dawns, this one in the Wildly Post-apocalyptic category. Kindly pause briefly to imagine its portentous effulgence here. Thank you.
Instead, I shall amuse the massed hordes by an account of my cultural consumption over the four-day long weekend, during which I Did Not Post owing to an ongoing battle with Sid the Sinus Headache and a concomitant tendency to lie around on sofas all weekend feeling feek and weeble, and occasionally dragging myself to the computer in order to play some desultory Heroes of Might and Magic.
On the book front: The Lies of Locke Lamora and its sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies, the first two in the so-called Gentleman Bastards sequence by one Scott Lynch. Locke Lamora was a 2007 World Fantasy Award nominee: it's (a) a classic thieves/underworld/politics/con artist extended caper narrative, with unlikely amounts of grittiness, and (b) one of the most complex and beguiling exercises in world-building that I've read in years. The feel is more or less Renaissance, more accurately Italian Renaissance and warring city states, with a lot of emphasis on city politics; magic is possible, but is minimalised and rationalised in interesting and thoughtful ways that have a lot to do with the control of power. I also love what he does with religion - understated, underlying, intrinsic. The world-building bit that particularly fascinates me is the location of the Renaissancy civilisation on top of the ruins of a previous, or possibly alien, civilisation who do amazing and unreplicable things with glass. It's never explained, at least not in the two books I've read. It's just there, with absolute conviction. It works.
The problem with thieves and con artists, and with the lively pace and frequent sly humour that this version in particular is able to generate, is that the whole thing can become desperately flip. Fantasy thieves are all too often presented as amoral, thieving with a fine, careless rapture which frees them from any realistic sense of consequence. Bits of the Gentlemen Bastards cityscapes remind me of Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar, which is a slightly inevitable comparison to this sort of thing, but far fewer bucklers are actually swashed, and if they are you can bet something's going to bite back sooner or later. The sting bits of the narrative are giddily enjoyable, but the consequences are often surprisingly dark, violent and psychologically real, and the heroes are never so smart-arse that they can't be taken by surprise.
I should add, for the record, that the second book features kick-butt female pirates and pleasing sailor superstitions about cats. I shall very definitely be seeking out the next in the series.
On the film front: Sunshine, a copy of which I bought second hand lo these many moons ago, and only got around to watching this weekend. Gawsh. Leaving aside the complete asinine stupidity of the basic premise (sun goes out, Our Heroes must drop Huge Enormous Nuclear Bomb into it to restart it), this actually functioned more or less as science fiction, rather than the pale, twee, fluffy imitation Hollywood usually dishes up. It's tightly focused, claustrophobic and tense, and very much about character and atmosphere rather than Shiny Thing Go Bang. (I suppose when your main NPC is the sun up close, both Shiny Thing and Go Bang are so wholly and catastrophically eclipsed that you may as well not bother). The spaceship interiors feel clunky and realistic, but mostly I liked the way this was filmed - inevitable but rather well-done plays with light and shadow, over-exposure versus the darkness of space. Also, Cillian Murphy is just cool.
Last Night I Dreamed: lordy. Um, trying to break into a cinema by swimming under the walls (caught, alas). Subsequently having to swim really fast through an underground column complex to escape the attack of an enormous female shark. Frantically climbing stairs to escape said shark, and realising halfway up that I couldn't move fast enough and would have to jettison my entire book collection by the side of the road. Fortunately my companion-in-escaping had a foolproof system for stamping said books with a cryptic code which would cause anyone picking up the book to send it to me once they'd finished reading it. Arriving at my new flat (at the top of a small complex, a sort of half-renovated attic thing with lots of space but no actual doors) to discover that this had worked, and great piles of books were already waiting for me.
In the specific case, the snail-like connectivity has not only demanded ten minutes and two tries before it will consent to load this post screen, it's also completely refused to allow me to log onto Flickr, which means I can't post the next in my ongoing series of Unreasonably Beautiful Dawns, this one in the Wildly Post-apocalyptic category. Kindly pause briefly to imagine its portentous effulgence here. Thank you.
Instead, I shall amuse the massed hordes by an account of my cultural consumption over the four-day long weekend, during which I Did Not Post owing to an ongoing battle with Sid the Sinus Headache and a concomitant tendency to lie around on sofas all weekend feeling feek and weeble, and occasionally dragging myself to the computer in order to play some desultory Heroes of Might and Magic.
On the book front: The Lies of Locke Lamora and its sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies, the first two in the so-called Gentleman Bastards sequence by one Scott Lynch. Locke Lamora was a 2007 World Fantasy Award nominee: it's (a) a classic thieves/underworld/politics/con artist extended caper narrative, with unlikely amounts of grittiness, and (b) one of the most complex and beguiling exercises in world-building that I've read in years. The feel is more or less Renaissance, more accurately Italian Renaissance and warring city states, with a lot of emphasis on city politics; magic is possible, but is minimalised and rationalised in interesting and thoughtful ways that have a lot to do with the control of power. I also love what he does with religion - understated, underlying, intrinsic. The world-building bit that particularly fascinates me is the location of the Renaissancy civilisation on top of the ruins of a previous, or possibly alien, civilisation who do amazing and unreplicable things with glass. It's never explained, at least not in the two books I've read. It's just there, with absolute conviction. It works.
The problem with thieves and con artists, and with the lively pace and frequent sly humour that this version in particular is able to generate, is that the whole thing can become desperately flip. Fantasy thieves are all too often presented as amoral, thieving with a fine, careless rapture which frees them from any realistic sense of consequence. Bits of the Gentlemen Bastards cityscapes remind me of Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar, which is a slightly inevitable comparison to this sort of thing, but far fewer bucklers are actually swashed, and if they are you can bet something's going to bite back sooner or later. The sting bits of the narrative are giddily enjoyable, but the consequences are often surprisingly dark, violent and psychologically real, and the heroes are never so smart-arse that they can't be taken by surprise.
I should add, for the record, that the second book features kick-butt female pirates and pleasing sailor superstitions about cats. I shall very definitely be seeking out the next in the series.
On the film front: Sunshine, a copy of which I bought second hand lo these many moons ago, and only got around to watching this weekend. Gawsh. Leaving aside the complete asinine stupidity of the basic premise (sun goes out, Our Heroes must drop Huge Enormous Nuclear Bomb into it to restart it), this actually functioned more or less as science fiction, rather than the pale, twee, fluffy imitation Hollywood usually dishes up. It's tightly focused, claustrophobic and tense, and very much about character and atmosphere rather than Shiny Thing Go Bang. (I suppose when your main NPC is the sun up close, both Shiny Thing and Go Bang are so wholly and catastrophically eclipsed that you may as well not bother). The spaceship interiors feel clunky and realistic, but mostly I liked the way this was filmed - inevitable but rather well-done plays with light and shadow, over-exposure versus the darkness of space. Also, Cillian Murphy is just cool.
Last Night I Dreamed: lordy. Um, trying to break into a cinema by swimming under the walls (caught, alas). Subsequently having to swim really fast through an underground column complex to escape the attack of an enormous female shark. Frantically climbing stairs to escape said shark, and realising halfway up that I couldn't move fast enough and would have to jettison my entire book collection by the side of the road. Fortunately my companion-in-escaping had a foolproof system for stamping said books with a cryptic code which would cause anyone picking up the book to send it to me once they'd finished reading it. Arriving at my new flat (at the top of a small complex, a sort of half-renovated attic thing with lots of space but no actual doors) to discover that this had worked, and great piles of books were already waiting for me.
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no subject
Date: Monday, 5 May 2008 11:16 am (UTC)Sunshine Leaving aside the complete asinine stupidity of the basic premise, I rather wondered why they bothered to make it. It was a movie of parts, and every part seems to have been done before somewhere. Event Horizon, Alien, Dark Star, etc.
no subject
Date: Monday, 5 May 2008 12:58 pm (UTC)I'm sure I'll enjoy your photos, but it'll have to be from home this evening. This slow internet thing is apparently a giant malware attack that's turned about 500 campus computers into zombie spambots which are merrily spewing DOS attacks. We get internet in fits and surges, in one of which I'm currently madly commenting.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 7 May 2008 07:19 pm (UTC)Just wanted to say that Goon Show references are the way to my heart. Plus I also have dreamed of having to swim through long tunnels and things, although never having to jettison books - thank god!
And I want to read this Scott Lynch person, the books sound vg indeed.
no subject
Date: Thursday, 8 May 2008 05:27 am (UTC)You will, incidentally, share the Arthur Ransome love with both me and
no subject
Date: Thursday, 8 May 2008 06:04 am (UTC)Goon quotes are equally difficult to pull off because so few people recognise them. None of your Little Britains or Catherine Tates; when I quote the Goons I just sound like an idiot.
no subject
Date: Thursday, 8 May 2008 06:34 am (UTC)I notice that we also share academia and a Dorothy Sayers tendency... what are you studying at Cambridge?
no subject
Date: Thursday, 8 May 2008 09:16 pm (UTC)Hmm... such plots, I fear, abound. The exec in charge of my client co. has half-jokingly announced that the shortage of desk space (ah, the hotdesking culture) isn't actually a scheme to get people to arrive at work earlier.
no subject
Date: Friday, 9 May 2008 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Friday, 9 May 2008 11:24 am (UTC)Everyone has their own laptop, which in theory supports the whole hotdesking thing.