Eruditorum Press

Doxing gods

All The Mirrors of the World

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Having carefully built the storytelling machine that is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell over three episodes, Harness and Haynes here start to explore some of the less obvious things that it can do. The result is yet another step up for the series. 
Two sequences strike me as particularly highlighting this sense of a show that is reveling in the basic fact of its own flexibility. The first are the sequences involving Lady Pole under the care of John Secundus and Mr. Honeyfoot, which juxtapose the acutely brutal portrayal of Lady Pole’s suffering with the awkward comedy of Secundus and Honeyfoot. A highlight is the scene where Secundus awkwardly escorts Stephen out of Lady Pole’s room and closes the door, leaning against it with a pained and awkward expression on his face. It’s set up and played as a gag – part and parcel of Secundus’s general cheery ineptitude. Edward Hogg gives a beleaguered sigh of “well that’s over with” as he leans against the door. It’s funny. As is the awkward question about how much experience they actually have in running an asylum. And then, from behind the door, comes Lady Pole’s anguished scream, completely and utterly unfunny.
It’s an impressive juxtaposition, paid off well when Secundus and Honeyfoot prove themselves to be genuinely invested in helping Lady Pole by fending off Childermass. But the reason it works is that both Lady Pole and the Secundus/Honeyfoot double act have been well established by the series. (Indeed, the entire sequence in “The Education of a Magician” in which Childermass randomly shows up to forbid the two from opening a school of magic is basically the setup for a gag in which the punchline is “so instead they run an asylum.”) And because they’ve been kept relatively separate, they’ve been allowed to develop their own narrative gravity, which is then spectacularly maintained as they cross paths. 
In many ways even more jaw-dropping is the sequence of scenes when Jonathan Strange finally goes through the mirror out onto the King’s Roads. First of all, these are just a lovely bit of visual weirdness, and the image of Jonathan Strange, dressed the perfect Romantic, striding up the stone staircase, strewn with moss and withered vines, up to the impossible vista is simply a perfect image that captures everything that the show promises. (Also lovely, the small callback to Strange and Norrell’s first meeting as Norrell looks briefly into the mirror early on, the document Strange sent through it still hanging suspended within.)
But equally great is the way in which the show transitions in and out of this. The cut into it, from Strange confronting his supposed student during the billiards game, is obvious enough, and what the King’s Road intro needed. The transition into Faerie has to be jarring. That’s the point. What didn’t have to happen, and what is thus brilliant for happening, is the transition out of Faerie into the confrontation with Drawlight, including the wonderfully ridiculous list of vendettas handed to Strange.
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Shabgraff in Wonderland (Shabcast 7)

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“[T]he speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life.”

– Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Today is the 150th anniversary of the origins of Alice in Wonderland.  A century-and-a-half ago today, Lewis Carroll took a boat trip with the Liddell family, and told the children a story.  Alice Liddell asked him to write it down.  He started the next day.

To celebrate, follow me down the rabbit hole and listen to Shabcast 7 – here.

A special one, this.  I’m once again joined by Josh Marsfelder (of Vaka Rangi) and for the first time by the wonderful Jane of many fames.  We watch (and chat about) the neglected 1966 Jonathan Miller TV version of Alice in Wonderland.  A forgotten masterpiece.  Well, maybe not forgotten… but not exactly remembered either.

This podcast had various titles before I settled on my final choice: ‘Alice Narrates Herself’.  It was going to be called ‘Cobwebs on the Tea Urn’, then ‘Mock Turtles all the Way Down’, then ‘Pig Latin’…  I even toyed with a facile but amusing ‘Shabcast Madness Returns’.  I eventually settled on a title which reflected something myself and my guests all seemed to notice and cherish: the fact that this production gives control of the narrative to Alice herself, and lets her tell the story.  One of the many things which makes this production unique.

I’m very proud of this episode, not just because I was lucky enough to get Jane to guest with myself and Josh, but also because the dynamic of the discussion is lovely.  The three of us attend a tea party, detached from time (it’s the evening for them, the middle of the night for me) and talk at cross purposes for ages… though, of course, unlike the Hatter and his friends, we’re hopefully not talking nonsense.  I love the way our distinct perspectives each hook into something different about the story we’re watching, and the way we overlap and converge.  We don’t always end up in exactly the same territory… but we get to read and enjoy each other’s maps.

What could be more apt?

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UPDATE (Same day):

I somehow forgot to link to Josh’s pieces about Alice.  Here they are:
http://forest-of-illusions.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/pet-hobby-of-mine-has-always-been.html
http://vakarangi.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/and-when-i-grow-up-ill-write-one-once_26.html
http://forest-of-illusions.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-second-song-of-queen-aliissa.html 

And here’s Jane’s essay about LOST, mentioned in the Shabcast:
http://www.philipsandifer.com/2013/11/pop-between-realities-home-in-time-for_27.html

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EDIT (Also same day):

In the original version of this post I mistakenly claimed that today was the 150th anniversary of the publication of the book.  I have corrected this howler. …

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All Known and Unknown Things (The Last War in Albion Part 103: The Not-End of Halo Jones)

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This is the fourth of five parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Eleven, focusing on Alan Moore’s The Ballad of Halo Jones. An omnibus of all five parts is available on Smashwords. If you are a Kickstarter backer or a Patreon backer at $2 or higher per week, instructions on how to get your complimentary copy have been sent to you.

The Ballad of Halo Jones is available in a collected edition that can be purchased in the US or in the UK.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: The third book of The Ballad of Halo Jones offered a portrayal of futuristic war grounded in the psychological horrors war inflicts on its combatants. 

“First, there is Brahma, the self-aware immensity, from whose thought-substance are created all known and unknown things.” –Grant Morrison, 18 Days

It’s a shocking portrayal of post-traumatic stress, grounded in the same brutal social realism that saw Mills depicting Charley Bourne on the dole in 1933, and, for that matter, in a Britain where Thatcher’s had only recently gone to war with Argentina for some obscure islands as crushing unemployment sparked riots at home.
Figure 815: Halo Jones slowly drinks herself to death. (Written by Alan
Moore, art by Ian Gibson, from The Ballad of Halo Jones Book Three
in 2000 AD #451, 1986)
This parallel is, of course, in no way incidental. The Ballad of Halo Jones was, from the beginning, rooted in social commentary on Thatcher’s Britain. This was in many ways the point, the satirical tradition of 2000 AD being one of the things that endeared it to Moore in spite of the numerous frustrations. The Hoop was just another variation on the terraces of Moore’s childhood: a place built for poor people to die in with as little fuss as possible for the rest of the world. The callous disregard for the safety or well-being of its residents and the cruel farce that there might be any jobs for them anyway was, as with the best strips in 2000 AD, and indeed the best science fiction, nothing more or less than Moore looking outside his own window and describing what he saw from an oblique angle, an approach perfectly suited to Gibson’s brilliantly grotesque blend of realism and cartooning. And the focus on the economic realities continues to be at the heart of the strip in Book Three, which uses its prologue chapter to depict Halo’s decade-long downward spiral after leaving the Clara Pandy as a vicious cycle of unemployment and claustrophobia slowly leads her to a life of petty crime and alcoholism. It’s in this context that Halo’s enlistment in the military is shown, making it clear that this is an act of desperation – the only way out of the galaxy that Halo can find. In this regard, notably, Moore surpasses his model Charley’s War, which never really looked at the economic conditions that make the military an attractive career option, least of all tied that into its overall portrait of the horrors, both material and psychological, of war, and it is hardly surprising he considers Book Three the high point of The Ballad of Halo Jones.
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“Whatever their hopes and longings”: Unification I

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It’s almost facile, trivial, in fact, to read “Unification”. The fandom narrative is both obvious and trite: The unification of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, or to be more precise, their fans. Collectively the first and second parts of a three-part 25th Anniversary gala celebration that will heal once and for all the acrimonious rift in Star Trek fandom that has existed since 1986, or so the story goes. In truth, this is all merely comforting platitudes designed to hide a reality deeply uncomfortable to Trekkers; that there is no such thing as a Star Trek fan. There are only fans of specific incarnations and philosophies of the meta-work, something that the looming premier of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is only going to highlight all the more starkly.

Those classical Star Trek fans, who knew everything about everything and everybody, are now so small a minority as to be statistically irrelevant. Perhaps things are beginning to swing back to the other pole these days in the age of Netflix and binge watching, but this was most certainly the state of affairs in 1991. I know this as well as I can know anything because I was there. I was fully present and entirely swept up in the Star Trek 25th Anniversary fervor. A deeply strange celebration for me personally, I should add, as I knew next to nothing about the thing that was actually turning 25, and, to be honest, I didn’t much care to learn. All I knew was that the show I sat in front of the TV set transfixed by late at night was now suddenly everywhere and everyone I knew was talking about it.

We’ve of course established that Star Trek: The Next Generation was never a cult show, but even by its admittedly lofty standards things had definitely been kicked into high gear. Some of this is on me, as I never really talked about this sort of thing with other people (for the simple fact that I had nobody else to talk about it with: I don’t mean the show was unpopular, I mean I had no neighbours and my only friends were the people I was related to). But even so, I do seem to recall that this was the first time I started to become aware of Star Trek: The Next Generation existing as kind of large-scale media phenomenon-As if from nothing, there were suddenly Star Trek: The Next Generation toys showing up on the shelves of the local five-and-dime, which filled me with equal parts delight and astonishment. This was also around the time I started to get entertainment industry magazines like Starlog, and Star Trek: The Next Generation was the only thing on anybody’s mind. It felt exciting and affirmational to be a part of something that so many people clearly had so much affection for.…

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Comics Reviews (July 1st, 2015)

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Part One: Comics

From worst to best of what I voluntarily paid money for.

Secret Wars #4

It’s not even that it’s a bad comic. It’s just that, well, at this point it’s become impossible to read this comic as a separate phenomenon from the overall realignment of Marvel comics (see part two of this post). Here we have what is in effect a brutal rejection of an entire line of thought in Marvel comics that has been going for several years – the Cyclops-as-Revolutionary angle. The comic is explicitly configured to allow Cyclops’s vision of fiery rebirth a moment in the sunlight and then to cut it down. Specifically in favor of a Reed vs Doom story. Although with the knowledge that both X-Men and Fantastic Four are being consciously downplayed within Marvel right now for broader corporate reasons, it’s tough to see that as a promising dualism either.

The real problem, though, is that I’ve always wanted to root for the Cyclops-as-Revolutionary angle. I’ve always thought that challenge to what superhero narratives are was worth exploring seriously and allowing the possibility of moral validity. Hickman turns away from it very, very hard here. I reject that, aesthetically. It’s not even that I think Cyclops is morally right. I think that’s a functionally meaningless question within the melodramatic metaphysics of a superhero universe. It’s that I think Cyclops is a vehicle for giving voice to perspectives superhero narratives don’t usually get to explore, and that Hickman gave him depressingly short shrift here.

Yes, there’s more issues and this may turn around. But this is a review of this specific issue. And given Secret Wars demands to be read as a meta-commentary on the state of Marvel Comics, I think what it’s saying this month is rank fucking bullshit.

Grant Morrison’s 18 Days #1

Honestly, I just think it’s unfair to ask the world to offer any sort of critical judgment of this, and I’m half-inclined to say that I’m going to buy it and not review it. It’s clearly not a major Grant Morrison project. And look, I don’t begrudge him taking the money and running, which he’s clearly done with this. But this book is a Kirby pastiche reworking of the Mahabharata with an artist who is not Jack Kirby. And a writer who is not Jack Kirby. It’s pretty. It’s competent. But what on Earth is one supposed to say of it? Morrison is in the backmatter comparing himself favorably to Lord of the Rings and Shakespeare. This issue doesn’t stand up to either. But equally, it seems vital to note that the problem is not what the book is – a western comic based on Hindi mythology. The problem is that this is just a Kirby pastiche of novel subject matter.

Ultimate End #3

There’s a shell game here, obviously. This book inherits its premise from other bits of Secret Wars. Not all of those bits are out yet. So the precise nature of Manhattan and of this mash-up of the 616 and Ultimate Universes is not yet revealed.…

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Spare Parts, A Love Story (more podcasting)

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Yet more audio news, listeners. 

This time I’m a guest on the lovely, cuddly, clued-up Oi! Spaceman podcast, hosted by married couple Daniel Harper and Shana Wolstein. 

Here‘s my episode.

We discuss the Big Finish cyber-masterpiece ‘Spare Parts’ by Marc Platt, and loads of other stuff including Cybermen in general, emotion in drama, capitalism, communism and fascism…

I know, it sounds a bit dry, but we also do loads of nerdy chatting about Doctor Who, and there’s plenty of mucking about and giggling.  Also, I receive my first ever aural blowjob. 

Shana and Daniel have a great podcast going (I’ve been enjoying their back catalogue and its been a blast) and I was honoured to be asked on.  I had a great time, and I think you will too if you lend us your ears.  Your spare ones will do.…

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Ship’s Log, Supplemental: Gene Roddenberry

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On October 24, 1991 Gene Roddenberry passed away.

It may seem strange to grant him an entire chapter in this book. Roddenberry has, after all been an undeniable presence since the very beginning of Star Trek, and no small amount of digital ink has been spilled on my part, or on the part of others, trying to piece together precisely who he was and what his contributions to Star Trek really were. I’m not going to do this every time a major creative figure exits our story permanently, but given the stature Roddenberry had, and to some extent still has, and the synchronicity of his death happening almost exactly parallel with Star Trek’s 25th Anniversary, there’s no way this was going to be seen as anything other than a massive event even among a 24-month year marked by massive events. There’s only one other primary creative figure in all Star Trek who casts a remotely comparable shadow over the series’ heart and soul to the one Gene Roddenberry does: He’ll get his due when his own time comes (in fact he’s in many ways *more* deserving of tribute than Roddenberry, a true unsung hero), but right now this is something that needs to be properly addressed for good.

From the beginning of Vaka Rangi, I have been exceedingly and harshly critical of Gene Roddenberry. I did not, I want to make eminently clear, start this project with a chip on my shoulder and an ax to grind. This was supposed to be a voyage of peace and understanding. And I went out of my way to be as even-handed about him as I possibly could in my inaugural essay on “The Cage”: That episode is, without question, Star Trek as Gene Roddenberry saw it. It’s the purest, most distilled version of his original vision for what the series should be, and even though he had a ton of help cleaning it up and making it presentable from Bob Justman and Herb Solow, that remains plainly on display in the finished product. But the other thing about “The Cage” is that, unfortunately, it is fucking terrible. So that’s also where things start to go wrong for both Gene Roddenberry and Vaka Rangi.

The period of the original Star Trek Gene Roddenberry was the showrunner for, from “The Corbomite Maneuver” through “Dagger of the Mind”, does not inspire confidence (with the extremely notable exception of “Balance of Terror”). Nor does the fact Roddenberry thought, for whatever reason, that “Mudd’s Women” and “The Omega Glory” would have been suitable pilots for Star Trek. Once I started to actually dig into the behind-the-scenes history of Star Trek and actually cast a critical lens upon it, I discovered two things. One, I wish I had never thought to do that because the whole thing is way over my head and way too dangerous for me to me to even conceive of messing around with.…

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A Short Guide to Janelle Monáe and the Metropolis Saga

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The June bonus post, as voted upon by my generous Patrons. 

A large amount of the critical discourse surrounding Janelle Monáe has focused on the question of why she hasn’t been more successful. I mean, sure, she’s got a major label record deal, is one of only a handful of black women to run her own record label, is one of the most critically acclaimed artists working, and is making a good living while making art according to her own vision and nobody else’s, but her best-performing album only hit #5 in the charts, so obviously she’s doing something wrong. And looking at her work and her career, I think I know what her problem is: she’s never had a white male science fiction fan whose only credentials for writing about music are having co-authored a book about They Might Be Giants write a detailed guide to her work.

An appalling oversight, to be sure, but one I’m only too happy to help correct.
The bulk of Monáe’s work consists of the five (and counting) part Metropolis Saga, released over two albums and an EP, and currently projected to run for seven parts, although it was previously slated as four parts. The suite focuses on the stories of Monáe’s alter-ego Cindi Mayweather, a time-traveling android.
Suite 0: The Audition
Monáe’s 2003 self-released album The Audition is not actually a part of the Metropolis Saga, but contains two songs that introduce the themes and concepts she would later explore in the Metropolis Saga: “Metropolis” and “Cindi.”
The first of these is interesting in that it serves as a concise and bespoke sketch of the Metropolis setting, describing a run down and oppressive city (“Population ten zillion and six”) from the perspective of a “cyber girl” living “on the wired side of town.” Most of the song is a liltingly wistful number about the unnamed narrator’s dreams of freedom, with a spoken word bridge about the prejudices faced by “wired folk” on the grounds that “we have no feelings no memories or minds.” Several major concepts that will be expanded on in the Metropolis Saga proper are introduced here, most notably the repressive Droid Control and the character of Anthony Greendown. 
The second is a two minute ballad that has no overt sci-fi trappings, instead being about the gulf between one’s dreams and one’s ordinary self, singing about “that girl in the mirror / with hair like a rock star / she wants to dance but she has cold feet/ her confidence is low / so much talent but who’ll know / when she’s afraid to follow her dreams.” But the lyrics make reference to trying “to be Cindi, in hopes that they’d notice,” a title drop that alludes to the robotic alter-ego she would eventually flesh out in detail. Crucial – indeed, as will eventually become clear, the entire point of the exercise – is the aspirational quality, one that’s implicit in the demo album’s title, The Audition. This is, in many ways, the eternal plot of the Metropolis Saga: Janelle Monáe’s continuing attempt to become Cindi Mayweather, a process that is indistinguishable from her continuing attempt to define what that means. 
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Theses on Hannibal

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Series 3 of Hannibal is, of course, largely about people who have been horribly wounded.  Cut to pieces.  Shattered.  Reassembled.  Stitched back together in new shapes.  They’ve spent months ‘recovering’, only to discover that the process has fundamentally changed them.  They cannot ‘recover’ their old selves. 

The show itself is taking episodes to ‘recover’ from the trauma of the end of Series 2.  That episode horribly wounded the show itself.  Cut it to pieces.  Shattered it.  Dismembered it.  We are now watching a show, a formula, a set-up, in fragments.  Roughly stitched back together but unable to return to its former shape. 

If Series 1 was a police procedural slowly going mad because of its own affinities, and Series 2 was a police procedural actually being slowly and gradually usurped and warped by those ascendant affinities, Series 3 is a police procedural shattered into fragments and glued back together by a triage doctor in an afterlife casualty ward. 

Because Series 3 shouldn’t exist.  It shouldn’t be on the air.  It is the ghost of a television programme.  It is the reanimated zombie corpse of a television programme.  Series 3 is what television programmes look like after they’ve ended, after they’ve been cancelled and are no longer being made and only exist in the television afterlife.

Which is bitterly ironic, if you think about it.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.06: The Old Gods and the New

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State of Play
The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister
The Direwolf, Catelynn Stark
Dragons of Qarth: Daenerys Targaryen
Mockingbirds of Harrenhal: Petyr Baelish
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Lions of Harrenhal: Tywin Lannister
Direwolves of Winterfell: Brandon Stark
The Direwolf, Robb Stark
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark, Joffrey Baratheon [sic]
Direwolves of Harrenhal: Arya Stark
Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy
Flowers of King’s Landing: Shae
Dogs of King’s Landing: Sandor Clegane
Pyke is abandoned.
The episode is in fourteen parts. The first is eight minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The first image is of Maester Luwin running into his chamber. It features the death of Roderick Cassell, beheaded poorly by Theon Greyjoy.
The second is three minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Bran and Rickon Stark to Jon Snow. 
The third is four minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Arya Stark. 
The fourth is six minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Arya to Jon Snow. It features the death of several unnamed wildlings.
The fifth is six minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Sansa Stark. It features the death of Jocrassa Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day-Slitheen, torn apart by an angry mob.
The sixth is four minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by theme, with both scenes featuring monarchs who cannot control things.
The seventh is four minutes long and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by dialogue, from Daenerys discussing conquest of the Iron Throne to Tywin’s battle maps. 
The eighth is tjree minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Arya to Robb. 
The ninth is three minutes long and is set north of the Wall. The transition is by family, from Robb Stark to Jon Snow, and by the theme of inadvisable sex.
The tenth is two minutes long and is set in the Stark camp in the Riverlands. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Robb Stark.
The eleventh is two minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by dialogue, from talking about Theon to Theon.
The twelfth is one minute long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by theme, from Osha’s use of sex to Shae.
The thirteenth is one minute long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by dialogue, from Shae telling Sansa to trust nobody to Osha demonstrating the point to Theon.
The fourteenth is two minutes long and is set in Qarth. The transition is by dialogue, with Daenerys talking about whoring herself for a boat after Bran and Rickon’s escape. It features a significant depletion in the number of Dothraki in the series. The final image is of a man carrying Daenerys’s dragons towards a tower, his identity a riddle whose answer is chess. 
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