Arts & Letters

Recent Television on DVD/BD

3 Comments / Arts & Letters, Movies / /

I don’t watch a lot of live television, but thanks to the magic of DVD/BD/Netflix Instant, I can catch up on a series pretty quickly if I want to. The biggest issue with this approach happens when the series isn’t done yet, and you have to then either slow down and wait between episodes (and deal with things like commercials!) or wait a year or more for the next set of DVDs to come out. That being said, watching a TV series like this can get really addictive, really fast. Here’s a few things I’ve been watching lately:

  • Sherlock – Without a doubt the best Sherlock Holmes series, I’ve probably ever seen. This includes movies, like Guy Richie’s recent Sherlock Holmes and the 1985 Spielberg-produced Young Sherlock Holmes (which I have a soft spot for, despite the fact that no one ever knows what I’m talking about when I reference that movie). Heck, it’s even better than the Sherlock-inspired House, which was probably the best modernized update of the Sherlock Holmes ideal… until now. I’ve only seen the first two episodes, but they’re long episodes (90 minutes each), and there have only been three episodes created so far (with another three scheduled to air later this year). But this is high quality stuff. It’s got a contemporary setting (unlike the usual Victorian setting) and excellent writing, casting, and acting. The visual style of the show even shows more flare than your typical British production. Holmes has his usual quirks, though he is altogether more likeable here than Greg House or Robert Downey Jr.’s version of Holmes. Watson is fun, though I don’t think he’s really been given enough time to really shine just yet. And of course, the mysteries are intriguing (indeed, I rather enjoy this more than what limited stories I’ve actually read). Highly recommended. Thanks to Otakun for his recommendation a while back, as I surely wouldn’t have put this in my Netflix queue without that recommendation. He’s also got some extra info on the series and some interesting links to online tie-in sites (like Watson’s blog, etc…)
  • Fringe – I was in the mood for an X-Files style show, and so I popped this series into my Netflix queue and what I found was something that started off in a similar vein, but which pretty quickly managed to establish its own identity. The show revolves around a series of strange science-gone-wrong accidents that seem to be occurring (ominously referred to as, The Pattern), the idea being that there are these mad-scientists out there experimenting with chemical and biological weapons out in public. It’s creepy stuff, actually. Of course there’s the FBI’s Fringe division, lead by Agent Olivia Dunham and her sidekicks: Walter and Peter Bishop. Walter is a fun character, eccentric and brilliant. You get the impression that he’s done a lot of bad things in the past, but he’s clearly a different person now. And so on. It takes its time, but it eventually establishes a main, overarching conflict which seems pretty compelling. Some of the execution is a bit silly or uninspired (tons of cliches), but it’s a generally entertaining series. What passes for “science” in the show is a bit fluffy, but coming from the guys who dreamed up “red matter” in the Star Trek reboot, that’s par for the course. In that respect, it reminds me a bit of Lost. Again, generally entertaining, but not something I’m convinced will pay off that well. Still, I’d like to watch more of it (alas, we’re well into season 3 now, so I have no idea when I’ll be able to catch up).
  • Breaking Bad – Based mostly on the enthusiastic recommendations of the /Filmcast, I checked out the short first season of this series about a high school chemistry teacher who learns he’s going to die, and to pay for the cancer treatments, he teams up with a former student to cook meth. It’s a lot better than I’m making it sound, and very well acted, but on the other hand, there’s something a little off about the show that I can’t quite place. It was an interesting first season, but I can’t say as though I’m all that excited to revisit these characters. I suppose that I can see why the series has inspired so much love, but it just isn’t clicking with me. I may give it another chance at some point, but probably not anytime soon.

There are a bunch of other series I have in the queue, including Veronica Mars, Deadwood, and a few others (including some Anime). And, of course, the next season of Sherlock.

Update: Damn you, cliffhanger! (Just finished the last episode of Sherlock.)

SF Book Review, Part 6

Arts & Letters, Science Fiction / /

It’s been a while since I followed up on my book queues (and some of the books on here weren’t even on the queue, they just jumped to the top of the queue – which is probably why the queue is so long).

  • Doomsday Book by Connie Willis – This is one of a notable few SF novels to have won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel (technically this book tied with another Kaedrin favorite, Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, for the Hugo). Indeed, Willis has apparently written a few other novels in the same universe, and they seem to have racked up the awards as well. This particular installment is about time-traveling historians. Young Kivrin is travelling back to the 14th century to observe daily life. Her mentor and father-figure, Dunworthy, is against the trip from the start, as it’s a dangerous era and the further back in time you travel, the less precise the technology becomes. The novel proceeds on two main timelines – One at a futuristic Oxford University, the other at a small 14th century town. This is clearly not a predictive novel – the future Oxford is quite absurd at times (in particular, the lack of communication infrastructure is ridiculous – they don’t even have much in the way of telephones, let alone cell phones or the internets). I don’t know enough about history to say whether or not the 14th century bits are more realistic, but they seem more appropriate. Of course, it doesn’t really matter. The story is effective on its own merits, and it operates according to its own internal logic, which is quite sound. One thing I found refreshing for a time-travel story is that there is no real consideration or recursive examination of paradoxes and the like. There are some off-hand references to the fact that the time travel mechanism won’t let you change the past, but there isn’t much in the way of circular causality events or anything resembling that sort of time-travel pyrotechnics that you see so frequently. Indeed, Kivrin might as well have been traveling to a dangerous alien planet. That being said, the historical section plays out in an interesting fashion. I won’t get into too much detail here, but I will say that diseases are involved (in both timelines) and that Willis is brutally unforgiving. Her style is prosaic, more like classical hard SF, which kinda gave me a false sense of security. But Willis managed to pull the rug out from underneath me – several times. It might not seem like it at the beginning of the novel, but this isn’t a book for the faint of heart. That being said, there is a hint of redemption and hope at the very end of the novel. I enjoyed this and may someday get around to the others in the series, but I’m not exactly in a hurry to do so.
  • The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth – Widely considered to be the best SF novel produced by the Futurians – a group of SF fans who eventually turned into editors and authors themselves, often focusing less on hard science and more on sociology and politics. This book is basically a satirical look at advertising and consumerism, and as such, it’s actually still pretty relevant today (even if the specifics of technology are a bit odd at this point). The story follows an advertising copywriter, Mitch Courtenay, who gets ahold of a big new account (Venus!), and all the inter-office intrigue that he has to deal with. It goes some cliched places, but this book probably helped shape some cliches in itself. Stylistically, there’s nothing special going on here, though the pages seem to turn themselves pretty quickly. It’s a short book and a very easy, fun read.
  • Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold – Bujold is one of the authors that seemed to pick up the pieces after the whole Cyberpunk thing happened, returning SF to its Cambellian origins. This is a pretty straightforward space opera, though a very well executed one that I probably enjoyed more than any of the other books in this post. The story concerns a Betan scientist named Cordelia and her encounter with Lord Vorkosigan, of the Barrayarans. At first, they are enemies, but they quickly develop into more. And of course, they are surrounded by war and conflict between their two peoples, and during the course of the story, we’re treated to all sorts of deceptions and treachery. This probably makes it sound trashy, and maybe it is, but it’s still great fun. This book is apparently part of a large, wide-ranging series of books. Opinions differ as to which way to read them – in order of publication, or in order of internal chronology. Either way, Shards of Honor is the start of the series (i.e. it’s the first published and the first in the chronology). I’ve already purchased the next two internal chronology books though, and am greatly looking forward to reading them.
  • Time’s Eye – A Christmas gift from my brother, and apparently also the first in a series of novels, this particular book starts out with a premise similar to Clarke’s 2001. One day, a bunch of Spherical objects (i.e. objects similar in concept to the Monolith) appear on the planet, and suddenly, the planet is a jumble of times. It seems that each region of the planet (the size of the regions appear to be small, though no definites are given) has been replaced with an earlier version of itself, sometimes stretching back millions of years. As such, most of the planet is now devoid of humanity. This story concerns itself with 5 main groups of people. Two are modern (a 3-person UN Peacekeeping team and a 3-person crew of Astronauts who were orbiting the planet at the time of the event), one relatively contemporary contingent (a British regiment, circa late 19th century, stationed in India), and two ancient powers (Alexander the Great’s Macedonian army, and Ghengis Khan’s Mongolian hoards). If you like the concept of modern folks mixing with historical folks (i.e. what would happen if modern astronauts met up with some Mongolians? And so on…), this would be a lot of fun, and I managed to have a pretty good time with it. Ultimately, there isn’t much in the way of answers here, and I’ve read enough Arthur C. Clarke series to know that it probably won’t be completely satisfying by the end of the series, but it was an enjoyable enough read, and there is an internal struggle between the Macedonians and the Mongols that is pretty compelling. It just doesn’t seem that interested in resolving the various mysteries it set up. Perhaps the future books will delve into that a bit, but I have to admit that I’m unlikely to pursue this any further.
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray – I’ve always known that Oscar Wilde was famous for his wit, but I do believe this is the first thing of his that I’ve read (I suppose he’s more notable as a playwright, and you can see that sort of talent in this novel), and I was surprised at the density of witty remarks within the book. It seems like you can’t go a page without getting some wondrous monologue, usually spoken by Lord Henry (a quasi-villain? The book certainly doesn’t have a traditional conflict). You also get a long series of fantastic one-liners, such as “Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” and “Dorian is far to wise not to do foolish things now and then,” and “There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.” and “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.” Much of this is oxymoronic or nonsensical in nature, but oddly compelling nonetheless. The story is a bit on the thin side, and is really just an excuse for Wilde to run, well, wild, with his witty imagination. I suppose you could say that this isn’t science fiction – it’s pretty firmly in the realm of fantasy – but I’ll make an exception here. It’s not a particularly heartwarming tale, but there’s a lot of thematic depth and as I’ve already mentioned, lots of witty repartee that keeps the pages turning. I wouldn’t call it a favorite, but I’m really glad I read it.

And there you have it! Coming up in the queue are some more Bujold novels, perhaps some Timothy Zahn, and even though it’s probably not SF, some Thomas Pynchon for good measure. I may also need to do a Non-Fiction book review soon, as I’ve been reading a lot of that lately too…

Link Dump

2 Comments / Link Dump, Neal Stephenson / /

You know the drill:

  • Given our current technology and with the proper training, would it be possible for someone to become Batman?: Wow. This is pretty well thought out:

    The genius of Batman is that it pretends to be realistic, it lets us convince ourselves that with enough money and training, we could become Batman, too. But it’s still fantasy, it’s just a fantasy that is more compelling and convincing and thus more fun.

    Because I have an unhealthy obsession with Neal Stephenson novels, the above quote made me think of this passage from Snow Crash:

    Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

    So apparently, the “genius of Batman” only really applies to men under 25. Or something. Hey, speaking of realism and fantasy:

  • Science Fiction vs. Science Fantasy: Us cool science fiction nerds like to occasionally take a dump all over fantasy. We’ll even use the term fantasy as an insult sometimes. But who are we kidding? John Scalzi actually makes a good point:

    …everything you can possibly label as “science fiction” is in fact just a subset of a larger genre, which is correctly called “fantasy.” This is because science fiction — along with supernatural horror, alternate history, superhero lit, and the elves-and-orcs swashbuckling typically labeled “fantasy” — is fundamentally fantastic. Which is to say, it involves imaginative conceptualizing, does not restrain itself according what is currently known, and speculates about the nature of worlds and conditions that do not exist in reality. It may gall science-fiction fans to think of their genre as a subset of fantasy, but it is, so calling a film “science fantasy” is in most ways redundant.

    Of course, by that definition, every fictional story ever written could potentially be considered fantasy, but still, it’s an interesting point. However, I think part of the reason science fiction nerds are so protective of their subgenre is that they generally appreciate things like plausibility, scientific rigor, and internal consistency. In my experience (which, I’ll grant, isn’t exhaustive), Fantasy doesn’t really do any of those things. “Magic” doesn’t work for me unless there are serious limitations.

  • A Superman Post: Since I’m totally geeking out on superheroes, fantasy, and SF, I might as well keep it going with as good an explanation of the appeal of Superman as any:

    Superman isn’t Superman because of some tragedy which informed his growth. Pa Kent does not die because of a failure on Clark’s part – indeed in most versions of the story, Pa dies when Clark is already Superman. Clark’s knowledge of Krypton doesn’t make him a superhero either; again, this is something he finds out later, too late to traumatize him. Clark is Superman because he decides to be Superman without being prompted. That’s more complex and nuanced a story than “somebody did something to me.” Superman’s story, which informs his entire character, is one of someone who chooses to be good of his own free will and agency, with no influence other than moral upbringing. That’s both more compelling than the “somebody did something to me” origin most superheroes have and more difficult to work with.

    Lots of great stuff in that post. It’s a shame that the movies almost never really capture this.

  • Ken Jennings on Reddit: Read the comments. Jennings is way funnier than you’d expect. Aside from the fact that his username is WatsonsBitch, a good sample is this response:

    yamminonem: Will you be the leader of the Resistance against Watson once he starts to control Skynet? Please, and thank you.

    WatsonsBitch: Once we are all working in the slave-pits together, I will try to put in a good word for you all. I will be like the old Barnard Hughes character in Tron, who remembers the Master Control Program when it was just accounting software.

    Heh.

  • Predator: The Musical: There’s a whole series of these, but I think this might be the most brilliant of all.

That’s all for now…

Readme

4 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

Not long after the release of Anathem, it was announced that Neal Stephenson’s next novel was due in 2011 and would be titled “Reamde”. The computer geeks among Stephenson’s fans (which is to say, most of Stephenson’s fans) were quick to wonder if the title was really supposed to be “Readme”, a common name for help or pre-installation files on computers, but everyone insisted that it “wasn’t a typo”. Well, a couple of days ago, I see on Tombstone that HarperCollins has now listed the book on their site… as Readme. So was it a typo all along, or are the new listings (also on booksellers like Amazon) the actual typo?

There isn’t much information about the book available just yet. Just that it’s coming in at a svelte 960 pages (about par for Stephenson’s recent work) and that it will be released on September 13 (which happens to be my birthday). The original io9 article also noticed that it was classified as “thriller” rather than SF. They wonder if that means he’s abandoning the genre (as if the 2700 page historical epic featuring no science fiction that he wrote a few years ago didn’t happen), but they may have a point about the novel perhaps resembling the pair of pseudonymous techno-thrillers that Stephenson wrote in the early/mid-1990s with his uncle – The Cobweb and Interface. I actually really enjoy those novels for what they are, so I wouldn’t have any problem with the new book being like that. Given the aforementioned significance of the term “Readme” and how it relates to computers, I think that most SF fans would probably be fine with it too.

Unless the book actually is titled “Reamde”. Then we’re totally fucked.

Link Dump & Notes

Administration, Link Dump, Neal Stephenson / /

Just some interesting links and some notes about upcoming posts and whatnot:

  • First, an announcement! The Oscars are this Sunday, and in accordance with tradition, I will be liveblogging the event, as I have for the past 7 years (!) Feel free to stop by and leave some comments! Previous installments here: [2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004]
  • An update on Game Dev Story! I’ve finally figured out how to hire a “Hardware Engineer” and thus was able to create my own console. Well, I found this DIY Gamer page, which explains it:

    Perhaps the biggest secret in Game Dev Story, bagging a hardware engineer is simple – if expensive – stuff. The idea is to level up one of your staff to the max in every type of role. This can be done with a combination of development points and Career Change Manuals (from the salesman). Level your chosen character up to level 5 in whatever role they’re in, then use the Career Change Manual to swap their job to something they aren’t already level 5 in.

    Level them up to level 5 in this role, then repeat until they are level 5 in every available role. Now use the Career Change Manual on them once more, and the Hardware Engineer role will now be available for selection. Choose this, and you’ll then be able to develop your own console.

    Sweet. Of course, I’m now paying this person almost $2 million a year in salary, but hey, I got to create a console. And according to my records, my company has over $1 billion in reserve, so I should be all right (this is what happens when you sell 30-40 million units of each game). I still think there’s a lot of room in this concept for a deeper dive into some of these details (for instance, shouldn’t I get licensing fees from other developers who want to release games on my console? How about competition with other consoles? And so on…) but for a game that cost $0.99, I’ve had a blast.

  • The Boy Who Stole Half-Life 2 – I never heard of this until now, but it’s an interesting story of some kid who stole the source code to Half-Life 2 before it was released. Very interesting stuff.
  • Black Widow Gone Wild – Heh.
  • Here Be Dragons: Governing a Technologically Uncertain Future 10 – An interview with Neal Stephenson on an earlier panel he participated in and the article he wrote (that I posted) a while back on the history of rocket technology. Some interesting stuff here, but it really just makes me want to read his new book (still no word on when that will be coming out, short of “2011” which is, uh, now).

That’s all for now. Look for my Oscar picks early on Sunday. Updates after that will most likely begin when the show does (I really hate the damn red carpet crap, but sometimes I’m on a bit early anyway).

Link Dump

1 Comment / Link Dump, Neal Stephenson / /

Time is short, so just a few things I’ve found interesting lately:

  • Star Wars Fan Documentaries: I realize that the phrase “fan documentary” probably made you throw up a little in your mouth, but these amazingly comprehensive movies are actually quite well done. They’re built on top of the base of the Star Wars movies themselves, but they feature all sorts of production notes, commentary from cast/crew, and are even sometimes re-cut with alternate takes, deleted scenes, concept art, and original audio. Creator Jambe Davdar must have spent years pouring through Star Wars minutiae to put this together. I haven’t watched all of the videos (there’s a lot of them), but so far, it’s great stuff.
  • The Most Ridiculous Thing that writer/artist Dan McDaid has ever drawn. It’s also pretty awesome.
  • Game Dev Story – An iPhone video game about… well, making video games. A meta video game, if you will. I don’t play a lot of iPhone games, but I heard the guys talking about it on Rebel FM a few weeks ago and it was only $0.99 so I figured I’d give it a try. It’s kinda addictive, despite the fact that the critics never rate my games well.
  • Space Stasis – I haven’t read this yet, but it’s an article by Neal Stephenson, so I’m looking forward to it (apparently a new novel is coming this year as well, though the news has been suspiciously quiet about that so far).
  • MST3k says: Packers win the Super Bowl! – They somehow knew!

That’s all for now!

Anecdotal

Arts & Letters, Culture / /

I’m currently reading Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, by Clay Shirky. There seems to be a pattern emerging from certain pop-science books I’ve been reading in the past few years. Namely, a heavy reliance on fascinating anecdotes, counter-intuitive psychology experiments, and maybe a little behavioral economics thrown in for good measure. Cognitive Surplus most certainly fits the mold. Another book I’ve read recently, How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, also fits. Most of Malcolm Gladwell’s work does too (indeed, he’s a master of the anecdote).

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with this format. In fact, it can be quite entertaining and sometimes even informative. But sometimes I feel a bit uncomfortable with the conclusions that are drawn from all of this. Anecdotes, even well documented anecdotes, can make for great reading, but that doesn’t necessarily make them broadly applicable. Generalizing or extrapolating from anecdotes can lead to some problematic conclusions. This is a difficult subject to tackle though, because humans seem to be hard wired to do exactly that. The human brain is basically a giant heuristic machine.

This is not a bad thing. Heuristics are an important part of human life because we usually don’t always have all the information needed to use a more reliable, logical process. We all extrapolate from our own experiences; that is to say, we rely on anecdotal evidence in our daily lives all the time. It allows us to operate in situations which we do not understand.

Unfortunately, it’s also subjective and not entirely reliable. The major issue is that it’s rather easy to convince yourself that you have properly understand the problem, when in fact, you don’t. In other words, our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence. As a result, we see things like Cargo Cults. Security beliefs and superstitions are also heuristics, albeit generally false ones. But they arise because producing such explanations are a necessary part of our life. We cannot explain everything we see, and since we often need to act on what we see, we must rely on less than perfect heuristics and processes.

So in a book like Cognitive Surplus, there’s this instinctual impulse to agree with conclusions extrapolated from anecdotes, which is probably the source of my discomfort. It’s not that I doubt the factual content of the anecdotes, it’s that I’m not always sure how to connect the anecdote with the conclusion. In many cases, it seems like an intuitive leap, but as previously noted, this is a subjective process.

Of course, Shirky does not rely solely on anecdotal evidence in his book (nor do the other authors mentioned above). There are the aforementioned psychology experiments and behavioral economics studies that rely on the scientific notions of strictly controlled conditions and independent reproduction. The assumption is that conclusions extrapolated from this more scientific data are more reliable. But is it possible that they could suffer from the same problems as anecdotes?

Maybe. The data is almost always presented in an informal, summarized format (very similar, in fact, to the way anecdotes are formed), which can leave a lot of wiggle room. For instance, strictly controlled conditions necessary to run an experiment can yield qualifying factors that will make the results less broadly applicable than we may desire. I find this less troubling in cases where I’m already familiar with a study, such as the Ultimatum Game. It also helps that such a study has been independently reproduced countless times since it first appeared, and that many subsequent tests have refined various conditions and variables to see how the results would come out (and they all point in the expected direction).

Later in the book, Shirky references an economic study performed on 10 day-care centers in Haifa, Israel. I will not get into the details of the study (this post is not a review of Shirky’s book, after all), except to say that it was a single study, performed in a narrow location, with a relatively small data set. I don’t doubt the objective results, but unlike the Ultimatum Game, this study does not seem to have a long history of reproduction, nor did the researchers conduct obvious follow-up experiments (perhaps there are additional studies, but they are not referenced by Shirky). The results seem to violate certain economic assumptions we’re all familiar with, but they are also somewhat intuitive when you realize why the results came out the way they did. On the other hand, how do we know why they came out that way? I’m virtually certain that if you vary one particular variable of the experiment, you’ll receive the expected result. Then what?

I don’t mean to imply that these books are worthless or that they don’t contain valuable insights. I generally find them entertaining, helpful and informative, sometimes even persuasive. I like reading them. However, reading a book like this is not a passive activity. It’s a dialogue. In other words, I don’t think that Cognitive Surplus is the last word on the subjects that Shirky is writing about, despite a certain triumphal tone in his writing. It’s important to recognize that there is probably more to this book than what is on the page. That’s why there’s a lengthly Notes section with references to numerous papers and studies for further reading and clarification. Cognitive Surplus raises some interesting questions and it proposes some interesting answers, but it’s not the end of the conversation.

Update: I thought of a few books that I think are better about this sort of thing, and there’s a commonality that’s somewhat instructive. One example is The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, by Barry Schwartz. Another is Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The interesting thing about both of these books is that they are written by researchers who have conducted a lot of the research themselves. Both of them are very careful in the way they phrase their conclusions, making sure to point out qualifying factors, etc… Shirky, Gladwell, etc… seem to be summarizing the work of others. This is also valuable, in its own way, but perhaps less conclusive? (Then again, correlation does not necessarily mean causation. This update basically amounts to heuristic, and one based on the relatively small sample of pop-science books I’ve read, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Again Update: I wrote this post before finishing Cognitive Surplus. I’m now finished, and in the last chapter, Shirky notes (pages 191-192):

The opportunity we collectively share, though, is much larger than even a book’s worth of examples can express, because those examples, and especially the ones that involve significant cultural disruption, could turn out to be special cases. As with previous revolutions driven by technology – whether it is the rise of literate and scientific culture with the spread of the printing press or the economic and social globalization that followed the invention of the telegraph – what matters now is not the new capabilities that we have, but how we turn those capabilities, both technical and social, into opportunities.

In short, I think Shirky is acknowledging what was making me uncomfortable throughout the book: anecdotes and examples can’t paint the whole picture. Shirky’s book is not internet triumphalism, but a call to action. I suppose you could argue that even the assertion that these opportunities exist at all is a form of triumphalism, but I don’t think so.

Lost

Arts & Letters, Movies / /

Over the past year or so, I’ve been making my way through seasons 2-6 of Lost. I watched the first season on DVD shortly after it came out, and after following along with the broadcast for a couple weeks of season 2, I resolved to stop watching until I had some indication that the show would actually end (i.e. I was worried the writers would continually make stuff up and withhold any answers indefinitely). I dutifully avoided most contact with the series until early last year. By that time, the writers had declared a definite ending point and from observations of friends’ responses to new episodes, I gathered that the show was picking up steam, rather than bogging down.

As you might imagine, given the fact that I pretty much ignored the series for a few years there, I’m not a huge fan of the series. I didn’t actively dislike it either, I was just never hooked or convinced that it was going anywhere interesting. But then there were some things I was able to glean about what was happening and then Netflix made all of the seasons available on their Watch Instantly service, at which point, I had no real excuse to keep avoiding it. I burned through season 2 pretty quickly, though again, I was pretty unimpressed. Season 3 was even more of a slog, though I had been warned that this was the case. Apparently during the course of Season 3, the writers/producers agreed on an ending (or at least, how many more seasons/episodes remained). There was an almost immediate improvement in the quality of the episodes, but again, I was not terribly impressed.

Don’t get me wrong, I was enjoying myself. I had no issues burning through a bunch of episodes all at once, and having the entire series at my fingertips made that prospect all too easy. Nevertheless, I never really had a problem taking a break either. Last year, I gave up Television for Lent. Despite just having started season 3, I had no problem staying away for 40 days. Later in the year, when I had finished season 5, but season 6 wasn’t available on DVD/Netflix yet, I wasn’t all that broken up about it. If this was a show that I loved, such delays would have been quite frustrating. As it was, I’m lucky I even remembered to check for season 6.

Ultimately, I’m glad that I did. I still have a lot of issues with the series as a whole, and even the last season itself, but in the end, I found it to be a worthwhile venture. I’ve tried to avoid Spoilers for most of this post, but there are some things you may not want to know and there are definitely spoilers towards the end of the post. To summarize my thoughts, I found the ending of the series to be emotionally satisfying, but not intellectually satisfying.

This is actually an interesting reaction for me, because I usually respond in the opposite way. For example, a few years ago, I saw the movie Capote and thought it was fantastic. The writing, the acting, the direction, cinematography, just about everything about the film was extremely well done. On an intellectual level, I found it amazing. On an emotional level, I didn’t connect with it nearly as well. I have no idea why. There were a couple of scenes towards the end of the film where I kept thinking to myself This is devastating! and yet, I never actually felt devastated myself. I only really recognized the devastation on an intellectual level. There are lots of other movies I feel similarly about, and it’s a real shame, because that feeling (or lack of feeling, as it were) leaves those films feeling a bit hollow in my mind.

Lost (at least, the final season) ended up being the opposite, especially when it came to the “Flash-Sideways” sequences. Nothing seemed to make much sense intellectually, but it was emotionally satisfying nonetheless. I’m sure there are tons of people who hate those sequences. They’re full of sticky-sweet sentimentality and schmaltz. I’m a guy who doesn’t mind a happy ending, but lots of people seem to hate them. You often see these people excoriating Hollywood cinema for this sort of thing, and to be honest, they’re not entirely wrong. But sometimes they are, and for me, Lost worked. At least, in that specific respect, it worked.

I think my problems with the series have primarily to do with a few early choices that the writers seemed to get away from in later seasons. First, the series initially seemed like a science fiction story. It is not. It is a fantasy. But the writers attempted to use tropes from SF to spice up their story (in particular, the Dharma Initiative and time travel subplots), and that does represent a bit of a problem because the explanation for a lot of the mysterious happenings on the island basically amount to something like “A wizard did it!” or “It was magic!” Even when it comes to the time travel stuff, there isn’t really any science in that fiction – it’s all fantasy. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that sort of thing, but leveraging SF tropes implies a certain plausibility that Lost could never really deliver. Once I realized this, I became a little more accepting of some of the more ridiculous aspects of the series, most of which can be summed up as: The island is a weird place and Jacob has weird powers. However, I think there were a number of times when the series established some convention or set of rules, then went ahead and broke them for no other reason than that it would, like, totally make for a sweet cliffhanger. I think this is, in large part, why the series is not intellectually satisfying for me.

This sort of inconsistency was especially frustrating from a characterization standpoint. Jack and Kate love each other, but then Kate loves Sawyer, but Sawyer’s evil, no wait he’s just a con-man with a heart of gold, but then he does something evil again, but he’s really a good guy, but no, he’s only out for himself, but then he gets married and settles down and now he wants to kill Jack, but Jack loves Juliet, but Juliet is married to Sawyer even though she really loves Jack, but they’re divorced and did I mention that Sawyer is selfish and only looking out for himself but that he’s in love with Kate, no, wait, I meant Juliet and then Ben loves Juliet but she doesn’t really care, but Jack and Juliet are divorced and Kate and Jack are together but then they’re separated and Jack wants to leave the island, but only until he wants to return to the island because it’s his destiny, but no, really it’s Hugo’s destiny, but Jack still has some sort of destiny on the island and isn’t meth awesome!?

Now, here’s the thing: most of that is actually fine. I don’t have a problem with a character who changes their mind or goes through something traumatic and is changed in the process. The issue is that many of these changes happen only because the plot requires them to, not because of a natural outgrowth or reaction of the character. Even worse, the plot often doesn’t require such twists – they’re only included to make for a snappy cut to commercial or cliffhanger ending. So you get these weird character reversals where Kate wants to leave the island, but she doesn’t want to leave, but she does, but she doesn’t. All within the course of, like, 15 minutes. I don’t know, maybe I’m exaggerating. I didn’t make a note every time I thought to myself: Wait, what? Why would this character do that? Oh dammit, end of episode, fuck! But I know I had such thoughts often. (If I ever rewatch the series, I will try to document these occurrences).

Perhaps towards the end of the fifth season and leading into the sixth, this issues seemed to straighten out a bit. I didn’t have nearly as many problems during the sixth season. Maybe that’s because my brain was so addled by the previous seasons that I knew what to expect, but still, things seemed more consistent. Of course, this only leads to my next question, which is: What the hell were the first 5 seasons for again?

I mean, there’s a very basic conflict at the heart of the Lost universe. Jacob vs. Smoke Monster. Protect the magic golden light. That’s really it. The rest of the series is basically just some messed up people trying to work through some personal issues. Some of them think the island can help, most don’t, but in the end, the island brought them together and ultimately brought out the best in them (well, in a bunch of them). That’s all background though, and the aforementioned central conflict? It isn’t even revealed in the series until, like, late in the fifth season. We don’t even hear Jacob’s name until the third season, and even when we think we’ve seen him, we haven’t.

I can accept the fact that it takes a good amount of time to establish characters and their backgrounds and the series is fantastically complex when it comes to that web of character interactions, on and off the island, in the future and in the past. But did we really need 4-5 seasons of that before we got on with the actual story?

Well, this post is turning into a bit of rant about the things I didn’t like about the series, and that’s not what I initially set out to do. None of the above is to say that the series isn’t worthwhile. Indeed, much of it could be construed as nitpicks. I don’t think it’s possible to have a show air for 6 seasons and not have such nitpicks. Shit happens. A cast member want to quit, so you need to write a quick exit (bye bye, Mr Eko!). Other cast members demand way too much money and a couple others get a DUI so they all need to be written off. These things happen.

And even then, the writers managed to build a story with, like, a hundred main characters. That sounds like hyperbole, and I suppose it is, but it’s not that far off. What’s more, most of those characters are interacting, before, during, and after their stay on the island. The non-linear exploration of such connections is actually pretty impressive in its own way. If you’re a science fiction type, you certainly won’t be impressed because there’s no real explanation beyond “Magic” or “Destiny” or “Fate” or something, but there is something admirable about the number of characters and the extent to which their stories were woven together. The “Flashback” conceit was something I was quite dubious about at the beginning of the series, but the writers managed at least one shocking twist in that respect. The “Flash-forward” was a brilliant idea, and it was quite well executed. The “Flash-sideways” of the last season was a little baffling, but quite resonant from an emotional perspective.

So we come back to my basic feeling about the series: satisfying on an emotional level, but not on an intellectual level. I have my issues with the series, but it’s still a well produced, well written series that can get addictive at times (of course, I was able to stop when i wanted as well, but there were a lot of Dammit! Ok, one more episode! moments as the writers laid one of their cliffhangers on me – even some of the lame ones that break character are still compelling in some way).

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

Arts & Letters, Movies / /

One of the themes of 2010 cinema has been a question of reality. Is what we’re watching real? Or is it a fabrication? Or perhaps some twisted combination of the two? Interestingly, this theme can be found in the outright fictional (films like Inception certainly induce questions of reality), the ostensibly true story that is notably and obviously fictionalized (a la The Social Network), and most interestingly of all, the documentary. Films like Catfish and Exit Through the Gift Shop are certainly presented as fact, though many questions have arisen about their verisimilitude. Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck collaborated on I’m Still Here, a supposed documentary about Phoenix’s strange transition from a well known actor to a crazy aspiring rapper that Phoenix and Affleck have since admitted was something of a hoax (I have not seen the film, but from what I can see, many of the events certainly did happen, even if they were manufactured). In most cases, audiences don’t seem to mind the blurring of reality with fiction (this includes myself), so long as that blurring is made clear (that may sound paradoxical, but it is perhaps better understood as the main component of the Reflexive Documentary: movies that acknowledge the biases of the filmmakers and the subjectivity of the material at hand are more trustworthy than movies that claim objectivity). Indeed, one could probably make a case for the presence of fiction in most non-fiction stories. Bias, subjectivity, and context can yield dramatically different results depending on how they’re portrayed.

It is in this frame of mind that I picked up The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale. It was immediately obvious that I was in for something that blurred the lines between fact and fiction. As Summerscale herself acknowledges in the introduction (page XIII):

This book is modelled on the country-house murder mystery, the form that the Road Hill case inspired, and uses some of the devices of detective fiction. The content, though, aims to be factual. The main sources are the government and police files on the murder, which are held in the National Archives at Kew, south-west London, and the books, pamphlets, essays and newspaper pieces published about the case in the 1860s, which can be found in the British Library. Other sources include maps, railway timetables, medical textbooks, social histories and police memoirs. Some descriptions of buildings and landscapes are from personal observation. Accounts of the weather conditions are from press reports, and the dialogue is from testimony given in court.

Even with the acknowledgement, the book is an odd amalgam of embellished factual accounts of a horrific murder, straightforward biographical information of the titular Johnathan Whicher and the family Kent, and a survey of mid-nineteenth century detective fiction. There are times when Summerscale follows one of these three tangential threads too far, but for the most part, she manages to weave them together in a deft and engaging fashion.

The mystery at the center of the book concerns a gruesome murder of three-year-old Saville Kent in 1860. Local police bumbled through the investigation, eventually leading the government to dispatch Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Jack Whicher to the small town to investigate. Whicher sized up the situation and quickly came to the shocking conclusion that the murderer must have been a member of the Kent household. Everyone from Saville’s father to his nursemaids came under suspicion, though Whicher favored Saville’s half-sister, Constance Kent. However, Whicher had been brought into the case nearly a week after the murder. The evidence was mostly circumstantial and most leads had gone cold before he even started the case.

And it was a very odd case. It’s easy to see why fiction authors appropriated so much from the story in later novels. Every clue, every piece of new information, every close examination of the evidence at hand seemed to make the case less clear. Summerscale writes (page 75):

The family story that Whicher pieced together at Road Hill House suggested that Saville’s death was part of a mesh of deception and concealment. The detective stories that the case engendered, beginning with The Moonstone in 1868, took this lesson. All the suspects in a classic murder mystery have secrets, and to keep them they lie, dissemble, evade the interrogations of the investigator. Everyone seems guilty because everyone has something to hide. For most of them, though, the secret is not murder. This is the trick on which detective fiction turns.

Summerscale delves into the tricks of Whicher’s trade from time to time, and it does make for fascinating reading. I love to read about the devils in the details on which something like this murder mystery hinges. For instance, one of the mini-mysteries the case presents us with is a missing nightdress. This sounds like a minor detail, but Whicher immediately seizes upon the missing clothing as a precious clue. Summerscale takes the opportunity to describe the origins of the word “clue” and why Whicher was so keen on solving the mini-mystery of the missing nightdress (from page 68):

The word ‘clue’ derives from ‘clew,’ meaning a ball of thread or yarn. It had come to mean ‘that which points the way’ because of the Greek myth in which Theseus uses a ball of yarn, given to him by Ariadne, to find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. The wirters of the mid-nineteenth century still had this image in mind when they used the word… a plot was a knot, and a story ended in a ‘denouement’, an unknotting.

Then, as now, many clues were literally made of cloth – Criminals could be identified by pieces of fabric.

Summerscale then proceeds to detail several cases where Whicher himself managed to solve a crime due to the fortuitous discovery of unique or identifiable clothing, eventually concluding (from page 70):

The thread that led Theseus out of the maze was true to another principle of Whicher’s investigation: the progress of a detective was backwards. To find his way out of danger and confusion, Theseus had to retrace his steps, return to the origin. The solution to a crime was the beginning as well as the end of a story.

I have a fascination with such details, so of course I wouldn’t have minded if Summerscale indulged in more of such analysis, but it’s clear that she was trying to walk a tight line. I would be easy to stray too far from her focus on the mystery and the man sent to investigate, and she manages to walk that line well enough.

Whicher is an interesting man in himself. Most of what we know about him is in his police reports and correspondence. I would have loved to read more about the man, but from what I can tell, Summerscale has unearthed every conceivable piece of knowledge about the man, and still came up a bit short. As a plain-clothes detective, he obviously avoided attention as much as possible, which probably explains some of the missing information – for instance, there doesn’t appear to be any pictures or paintings of the main available. That being said, he’s certainly a worthy subject for study. He seems to possess keen observational skills as well as a knack for finding holes in a story and clues. He appears quite confident in his perceptions, though as the subhead of the book notes, he is somewhat shaken by the mystery at Road Hill House. His initial investigation yielded no convictions and he returned to London a different man, though I think calling this his “Undoing” is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. Indeed, after Summerscale establishes the central mystery, I feared that the subhead implied that no solution would really be found.

Fortunately, there is a closure of sorts, though I will not spoil the book by delving too deeply into that here. Suffice to say that by the end of the book, we are a bit closer to what actually happened, though the inherent difficulty of rebuilding a picture of the past is one of the themes of the book. In today’s day and age, with TV shows like CSI showing what you can do with forensics in explicit detail, it’s easy to forget how difficult it would be to figure out what happened in the past (and to be honest, even given the advanced forensic technology available, shows like CSI still gloss over the difficulties of a murder investigation). Mr. Whicher had no such forensic luxuries in his day and had to rely on his cunning and intuition, perhaps moreso than would be comfortable with modern populations. Indeed, one of the undercurrents of the book is how England was reacting to the notion of a “detective” – a concept that was somewhat new to the world. Many felt that detectives were too intrusive and seedy, in it only for the money or glory. Whicher does not seem like that type though. He’s reserved and curious, confident in his prowess, but honorable in his manner.

Of course, I’m basing my opinion of the man on what could be argued is a partially-fictional representation of the man and his actions. This question of what is real and what is fiction is something that kept coming to mind while reading this book. Part of that might be the year in film, as previously mentioned, but I think other readers would find such questions arising when reading the book as well. Of the three main components of the story I mentioned earlier (murder mystery, biography, and survey of detective fiction), it is the latter that calls reality into question the most. There seems to be a general idea that quoting fiction in a formal argument is bad form, and as such I can see some people being taken aback by Summerscale’s book. While impeccably researched and sourced, she does give the book a flare you don’t normally see in non-fiction. As she mentions in her introduction, she uses many devices of detective fiction in her writing. She directly references detective fiction of the day, as well as authors like Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, and Wilkie Collins (Arthur Conan Doyle is not really referenced until later in the book, as Doyle did not start writing his Sherlock Holmes books until well after Whicher’s heyday). Some of these references are to non-fiction – Dickens interviewed Whicher, for instance, and Summerscale includes many of Dickens’ insights into Whicher and the case at Road Hill House – but some references are directly from detective fiction. Again, some might find that inappropriate, but I’m sympathetic to such techniques, and I think Summerscale does an exceptional job mixing fact and fiction, to the point where I don’t think the book would be as informative or interesting if it didn’t mix those seemingly incompatible components. Ultimately, I think this combination yields some insights that a traditional scholarly effort might have missed, and I quite enjoyed the book for the way it treated both real and fictional detectives (page 304):

Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional – to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. ‘The detective story,” observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, ‘is a tragedy with a happy ending.’ A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presence of death.

It was a good read, and I would recommend it to any one interested in mysteries or the era. Special thanks to longtime Kaedrin reader and friend, Spencer, for giving me this book.

The Book Queue (Updated)

Arts & Letters, Lists / /

According to my records, I read 21 books last year. This is not a large number by any means, but it was an improvement over recent years. Earlier in the year, I posted my book queue, featuring 10 books that I had sitting on my shelves (an unprecedented number of unread books for me, as I usually don’t work that far ahead of myself) and of course, I’ve only read 7 of those. So three of the below are repeats, and in looking at some other previous lists, there’s a couple other repeat books as well. Then there are several new additions, meaning that somehow that unprecedented list of 10 unread books has actually grown despite my reading 21 books last year. Score. Anyway, for the record, these are the books:

  • The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: This one is next up in the queue. Not sure why I got this one in the first place, nor why it’s taken me so long to pick it up, but there you have it. It seems relatively short, so hopefully I’ll knock this one off quickly.
  • Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville: I’ve some mixed feelings about Miéville, but the fact that his work is described as “weird fiction” in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft and M. R. James has always interested me and since he’s one of the more prolific and popular genre authors these days, I figured I should give him a shot. But then, while my friend Sovawanea enjoyed the book, she also mentioned that it was a bit of a slog at the beginning, and looking at the 600+ page book with small type, well, I don’t want to get bogged down to start the year, so it probably will be a while before I pick this up. That being said, I do want to get through it, if only because it’s been on my shelf for 2 years!
  • Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter: I think I’ve read the first chapter of this book about 3 times. And I really like it! But this is another of those do I really have time to read a dense, 900+ page book with tiny type books. That being said, it’s a classic geek text, and something I really do want to finish off this year (assuming I can get through some other stuff first).
  • Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram: Another one that’s been sitting on my shelf for years. Boyd is apparently quite influential in military circles and his theories are apparently quite important in current conflicts around the world (in particular, he’s frequently referenced by John Robb in Brave New War, a book I read from the last book queue post). I’m not usually a big biography fan, but it’s something I should try out.
  • The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale: A gift from longtime Kaedrin friend and reader Spencer, I will most definitely be reading this early in the year (probably before most of the above). I don’t know that much about it, but then, the subtitle pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond: Another gift from Spencer, and another one that I’ll most likely be tackling early in the year.
  • Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky: I picked this up on a whim whilst at the bookstore a few months ago. Shirky is always entertaining and fun to read, though sometimes I feel like his ideas are too high level. He’s a good writer, but perhaps too clever for his own good. Or maybe not – I guess we’ll find out.
  • Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon: I get the impression that Pynchon is slumming it in a genre story (hard boiled detective fiction) with this book, so I’m actually quite looking forward to this, as Pynchon is a brilliant prose stylist and yet this novel seems more accessible than his other, more literary works. Also, I want to read this before Paul Thomas Anderson finishes his movie adaptation (which I will also look forward to!)
  • The Cobra Trilogy by Timothy Zahn: And of course I return to one of my favorite trashy science fiction workhorses. This is apparently one of his older books, but I’m still looking forward to it. Of course, this is also an omnibus collection of three books, so it’s a monster (around 950 pages).
  • Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold: The first in an apparently longstanding science fiction series, including several Hugo Award winners. I’m looking forward to this, but I can easily see myself getting sucked into the series (and thus delaying some of the other books in this list).
  • The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist by Fred Brooks: I’m a big fan of Brooks’s The Mythical Man Month, and this book about design from a computer science perspective should be interesting.
  • Time’s Eye (A Time Odyssey) by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter: A Christmas gift from my brother and yet another first book in a series (!), I will try getting to this, but I have a feeling that it will be pushed back by some of the above…

A lot of these books are longer than the ones I read last year. In my zeal to cut down the book queue, I seem to have gravitated towards shorter books, leaving only longer (and in a lot of cases, denser) books. As such, I think I’ll be lucky to hit 20 books again this year… but that shouldn’t really matter.