Beating Verne

I just finished Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, and am currently reading the sequel, Round the Moon. It only took me a week or so to read the first one, which sort of surprised me. I've been in a Victorian phase for a while here, having read Kipling's Kim (which was much better and completely different from what I expected) and H.G. Wells's First Men in the Moon (which I had read in high school and therefore missed much of the nuance of).

Verne's book itself is hailed as one of the first, if not the first, true science fiction novels. That is to say, instead of inventing some magical pseudo-scientific device to enable the characters to explore space, like Cavorite or warp drive, Verne attempts to explain the practical problems and their (possible) practical solutions. He therefore predicted with amazing prescience the launch of the first moon mission from Florida, as well as discussed in some detail the astronomical movements that would have to be calculated and the velocities it would be necessary to achieve and stuff like that there.

Of course, he also has the characters planning to establish an outpost on the moon, intending to stay in the deep valleys where the breathable air and the water are, so it's not as if the science is really all that hard.

If this does not sound like the stuff of thrilling drama, you are so right. The plot, in brief: The members of the Gun Club of Baltimore, a collection of artillery enthusiasts and inventors, find themselves with nothing to do because, the War Between the States being over, there is no more use for artillery at the moment. So the Club's president, Impey Barbicane, announces a new challenge: to prove the superiority of American artillery, they will build a huge cannon and shoot the moon.

Such an audacious proposal captures the imagination of the nation and much of the world, so donations come pouring in. After consulting with Cambridge Observatory, Barbicane decides to build the cannon in Florida and construction commences. As preparations continue, however, a telegram arrives from a Frenchman named Michel Ardan, telling them to redesign the projectile, because Ardan plans to ride inside it to the moon.

Ardan convinces Barbicane and Barbicane's arch-rival, Captain Nicholl, to ride along with him (which they do without any hint of hesitation or trepidation at the idea that, having once left the earth, they can never come back), and once construction is complete, the three men get inside the projectile and the cannon is fired. The fate of the three men is unknown.

There's very little in the way of dramatic tension or character conflict in the book. For the first half, Barbicane acts sort of as the book's Doc Savage, which is to say he's better at everything than everybody else. For instance, at a meeting in which they are to discuss and decide how to make the cannon, the other members make their suggestions, then Barbicane says, "Actually, I was thinking this," and his idea is better, so everyone agrees with him. They encounter no opposition or difficulties at any stage of the plan, with the exception of Captain Nicholl, who is literally the only man in the world who opposes the moon shot, and then only because he's jealous. And Nicholl ends up joining the expedition.

Verne tries to make up for the lack of conflict or tension or plot by writing in a sort of wry, humorous style which takes gentle jabs at stereotypes of all nations. It's not exactly a good book, but it's mostly inoffensive, though animal activists might take exception to the scene where they test-fire a cat and a squirrel from a smaller mortar to see how they survive the acceleration.

The reason I say I was surprised to finish the book so quickly is that my only previous experience with Verne was attempting to read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (twice) and being beaten by it (also twice) by the same incredibly boring passage. In the book, the narrator goes to sea on an American warship in search of a sea monster which has been sinking American ships. The monster appears from under the water and rams the ship, sinking it. The narrator then finds himself being rescued by the monster, which turns out to be a submarine captained by Nemo. The narrator and Nemo become friends of a sort, having many conversations (translated in the book as having much "intercourse," unfortunately), and then Nemo allows the narrator to look out the window as he turns on the lights.

At which point the book stops dead and turns into a catalog of all the kinds of fish the narrator sees. As a child, it was this section which stopped me from finishing the book (and perhaps established my youthful habit of not finishing books I had started). When I was an adult, having read through all the begats in Genesis and Matthew and Luke, having read The Lord of the Rings at least three times, having read The Iliad and The Mists of Avalon and Interview With the Vampire and The Stand three times (which is not especially boring, but really fucking long), and having even gotten all the way through the incredibly boring The Witching Hour, I figured there was no way Verne could beat me a second time.

But the fish catalog beat me again.

So I figured that was it for me and Verne. And if it weren't for the fact that I'm still toying with a custom prop idea I hinted at last year, I wouldn't have attempted From the Earth to the Moon. But now that I've gotten through it rather easily, I'm actually starting to think about trying to best Nemo again. I mean, lots of other people have managed to read this book. There's no reason I can't succeed someday.

Is there?

The Left Hand of Death

So about a year ago, while discussing Worldcon, I mentioned picking up a book on the recommendation of the extremely cute Erin Evans. The book I picked up was titled The Left Hand of Death by Parker DeWolf; the cover notes that it is Book 1 of The Lanternlight Files. It was described by Ms. Evans (IIRC) as a fantasy noir, sort of Raymond Chandler meets Dungeons and Dragons.

Well, if you remember August and September of last year, I was reading through the Worldcon stack at a pretty good clip and posting my impressions here. Then I got to the DeWolf book, and bogged down halfway through. I set it down and didn't pick it up again for almost a year.

So what was wrong? Well, part of it was surely just that I'd read too many books in too short a time and was ready for something different. But another, bigger part is that the book just didn't succeed as advertised.

I mean, sure, it has the requisite Chandleresque stock characters and plot coupons. Ulther Whitsun, the main character, is a fixer, the closest thing the D&D world has to a private eye, apparently. People hire him to solve problems, especially problems that take place in the grimy underworld. Oh yes, Whitsun is a hard-boiled bad-ass, all right.

And yes, there's a MacGuffin, and a shady dame who hires him to find it and almost leads him to ruin, and there's a fat man who's also searching for it, and a hit man, and a gunsel (or D&D equivalent) who's got eyes for the dame and is jealous of Ulther. Ulther's search takes him from the chambers of the rich and powerful to the lowliest den of thieves and runs him afoul of crooks and cops alike.

It's got the elements, all right. But the tone, the atmosphere, are still Dungeons and Dragons, and for me, Dungeons and Dragons is pretty watered down and juvenile as fantasy goes. I mean, if you want me to take your story seriously, you've got to do better than halfling thieves. Halfling thieves? I mean, seriously, come on.

So anyway, I finished it, so it didn't beat me. But I won't be searching for the further adventures.

Black God's Kiss

I finally got around to finishing another book from the WorldCon stack. It was slow going, this one.

Black God's Kiss collects the Jirel of Joiry short stories written by C.L. Moore for Weird Tales in the 30's. Jirel was the first sword-and-sorcery heroine, so her stories have a special place in the hearts of fans of the genre.

That said, I had a hard time getting through the book. It isn't badly written, at least not according to the standards of the pulps Moore was writing for. The style is a little overblown at times, but there is a lot of imagination at work here, with moments that come alive quite vividly. And Jirel is an interesting character, as interesting as a character can be in stories that very deliberately avoid character exploration.

No, the thing that held me back was that Jirel is a swordswoman who rarely uses her sword, a fighter who rarely fights. Not that she's some Zen master just wishing for a little peace and quiet or anything. No, she's fiercely eager to run through whomever she can.

The problem is that every story pits her against magical powers she can't fight with a sword, in an alien landscape she can barely comprehend (and often can't even see-she wanders through darkness a lot of the time). The stories read more like Lovecraft's Dream tales than Howard's Conan stories. Jirel wanders through places she doesn't know with properties she doesn't understand and encounters creatures she's never seen before. It gets kind of tiring after a couple hundred pages. I picked up the book expecting action and never really got it.

That being said, I like the look of Paizo Publishing's Planet Stories line, and the concept of republishing stories from the heyday of the pulps. I'll probably end up picking some of their other titles.

Random Observation

Book five of the Worldcon stack is Black God's Kiss by C.L. Moore, and while I'm not ready to write the full review yet, I do have one strange observation.

Almost all the characters have names starting with G or J, at least so far. First of all, it's weird to have so few characters in a book--I'm almost a hundred pages in and there have only been five male and three female characters named--but to then have almost all those characters have names starting with the same letters is just bizarre.

Not only that, but all the G characters are men, and all the J's are women. Maybe the distribution will approach greater normality the farther I get (after all, the last man introduced was the first non-G name, so maybe she realized what she was doing). But it's just weird.

Victory of Eagles

Book four of seven from Worldcon (listed in the order I read them) was Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik. If you're not familiar with the series, let me just say, "Napoleonic War with dragons."

I'm not sure how much to write about this one. It's book five in a series I love, but like all extended series entries, it's kind of a closed loop. Fans of the series already know what's what and have probably already read it. People who haven't read the series aren't likely to read this one first, and a lot of people have told me they don't like to start reading long series in the middle, not knowing how long it will go on or whether it will stay good. They would rather wait for the series to wrap up and read the entire thing.

But I don't want to say nothing, so first, a random observation: this is the first book of the ones I brought back that was not in first-person (the others aren't, either, but it's odd that I would read all three first-person books back-to-back).

As far as the book itself, it was both great and disappointing. Great in the sense that it deepens the characters and the story and is wholly absorbing. I flew through this book and didn't want to put it down. I was a bit disappointed with the climax, though. Not so much with the outcome, but the way in which it unfolded felt a bit rushed to me. I can understand Novik not wanting to end on a cliffhanger--she did it with the previous book, and may not have wanted to do the same twice in a row--but it seemed like everything wrapped up a little too neatly.

Two things that strike me about the series:

Number one, it reminds me a lot of the Harry Potter books in that both concern an outsider brought into an insular society who, over the course of several books, learns of fundamental racial injustice within the society and works subtly to correct it. And both have main characters who are believably flawed, yet are basically good-hearted. They win our sympathy early and hold onto it through many trials.

Number two, the books have the feel of something written in the 19th century, which lends greatly to the flavor of this 18th century story. The characters' dialogue and subtle nuances of spelling and grammar ride a delicate balance between the old-fashioned turns of phrase which lend atmosphere and modern readability. Novik and her editor have done a great job with this. And the plotting groans with outrageous potboiler twists which fit perfectly with the tradition in which she's writing.

Soon I Will Be Invincible

I had planned to scan something funny I brought back from Worldcon, but I haven't got my scanner set up yet, so I guess I'll do a book review first. Soon I Will Be Invincible came out in hardback last year, the debut novel from Austin Grossman. As you may tell from the title, it's a light-hearted look at superheroes, a mainstream novel that looks at some of the basic cliches of the genre and turns them on their heads, makes them fun again.

I was worried that this would turn out to be yet another parody by a writer who looks down on the genre, like Asimov's anti-Batman Batman story "Northwestward" in the anthology "Further Adventures of the Batman," or like Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude. As the authors take apart the silliest tropes of the genre, you get the sense that they're talking down to you: "You're stupid for liking this stuff, but I'll take your money anyway."

Grossman doesn't do that. He's smart enough to see how silly the genre can be, but he loves it anyway, and he lets that love shine through throughout the book. The book is written in first person, from the alternating viewpoints of two main characters, the megalovillain Doctor Impossible and the cyborg superhero Fatale. Evil genius Doctor Impossible escapes from prison and immediately launches into a new plot to take over the world; with his greatest nemesis, the superhero Corefire, missing, he actually has a shot at it this time. Meanwhile, Fatale is invited to join a superteam called the New Champions (their mission: to find Corefire and stop the doctor's villainous plot), which allows her to see the unglamorous details of the heroes' behind the scenes lives.

In some ways, it's what I wanted Hero Go Home to be, except that Hero Go Home will be explicitly series fiction, while Invincible is a literary one-off. Parts of it feel a little well-worn, but parts of it are brilliant. Grossman introduces the conceit early on that being an evil genius is actually a mental disorder, Malign Hypercognition Syndrome. So that whenever he does the obviously self-defeating things that villains do (parodied well but somewhat tediously in the Evil Overlords list), he's not being stupid or a victim of bad writing; he's merely exhibiting the symptoms of his disease, and often enough, he realizes it, which makes him even more human and sympathetic.

I wasn't as thrilled with the Fatale sections of the book. They're more drab, more downbeat, and occasionally drop into pure infodump. And though Grossman does a lot of things well in this book, sometimes the action scenes overwhelm him. A big scene in the middle where Doctor Impossible fights the New Champions single-handed suffers from some curious gaps and continuity errors; other scenes which could have been set-pieces are avoided completely and we see only their aftermath.

Overall, though, it's a funny and fast read. I recommend it for superhero fans.

The Huge Hunter

Just finished reading a short novel from the 19th Century: The Huge Hunter, or The Steam Man of the Prairies, by Edward S. Ellis. I first heard of the book from Jess Nevins at a convention panel a couple of years ago. Nevins is the author of te Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, an exhaustively researched book full of fascinating stuff. According to Wikipedia, The Huge Hunter was the first U.S. science-fiction dime novel, and the first known example of an Edisonade, a story based around a brilliant young inventor and his inventions. The illustration at right is from another Edisonade, a Frank Reade Jr. adventure featuring an electric man, inspired by The Huge Hunter.

In The Huge Hunter, the genius inventor is Johnny Brainerd, a hunchbacked dwarf who builds a steam-powered walking robot that he drives like a train. He hooks up with some prospectors in the American West, and they use the steam man to pull a wagon and scare off Indians while they try to get rich from a lucky gold strike. The writing is stiff, and the plotting is less-than-ideal. For instance, at one point, a man appears who is the nemesis of one of the prospectors. He shows up for about two pages, and then he's gone, never to be heard from again, which is too bad, because his presence could have brought some real dramatic tension to the book. As it is, there's no real drama in the entire story.

Which is not to say it's plodding or boring. It's fast-paced, and there is a lot of action. But as far as action that requires commitment and sacrifice and involves true jeopardy and moral choices, there's none of that. The boy builds a machine, the prospectors fight through a series of adventures, and they live happily ever after. A fun, fast read, but not an absorbing one, or one could say, a dime novel, not a real one. But I'd like to read more like it.

In fact, this book directly inspired the Frank Reade series, in which Reade first builds his own steam man, and later builds an electric man.

If you're interested in more information, start here and here. You might also be interested in reading about the real-life inspiration for the steam man, here.

New Book Buys

So I've got a reasonably long list of books that I want to buy and read someday. Some books, like The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, have been on the list for a year or more. But did I buy that, or The Confusion, or The Prestige, or Ghost Band by my friend John Wooley?

Nope, I ended up getting two books about dragons. Throne of Jade, second in the Temeraire series, and Bitterwood by James Maxey. I've never met James, but he's a member of my on-line writing group and beat me out in a short story competition earlier this year. I'm looking forward to reading his novel. I also plan to hunt down an earlier book of his, titled Nobody Gets the Girl, a superhero novel recommended by my friend M.T. Reiten.

I don't think it has dragons in it.

So I'm currently reading a history of Britain (just hit the Magna Carta), and I'm following it up with two dragon novels. Is there a fantasy novel in my future?

One never knows.