Monday, 28 April 2008

Ownership and Back Pain

I did an interview recently with Marcus Lanyon, a London-based artist and occasional reader of edgy yet humorous fantasy, for a piece about ownership in The Royal College of Art Magazine, mostly focusing on working with the staples, cliches, tropes etc, of an established form, and how one goes about trying to twist them, turn them, make them one's own.

Now I know that the vast majority of the readers of this blog probably already receive the Royal College of Art Magazine, but in the unlikely event that some few of you are not that high-brow, and have accidently stumbled wide-eyed into the fountain of culture that is my work, Marcus has kindly given permission for me to reprint the interview here. Enjoy, or possibly don't. It is in your hands...


Poking Frodo In The Eye

Joe Abercrombie's novels have been variously described as "deliciously twisted and evil" and as "a seminal work of modern fantasy". Picking up the well-entrenched genre of fantasy by the ears and re-positioning its bloodied nose as something worth engaging with once again, Marcus Lanyon spoke with him about regaining ownership of this spiky-helmeted genre in a fresh, innovative way, process and putting your back out...

1. The fantasy genre is full of staples, tropes and well-entrenched stereotypes - you could say it is owned in particular by Tolkien and the standards he laid down in his work. How do you place your work in relation to this? How have you re-claimed it and made it your own?

I'd like to think of what I'm doing as standing in relation to Lord of the Rings (and the classic epic fantasy that's been strongly influenced by Tolkien) in the same way as - if I can use a cumbersome extended metaphor - Unforgiven stands in relation to High Noon. A slantwise look at the cliches of the form from a more modern, cynical, realistic perspective, perhaps even a bit of a satirical riff on the form at times, but first and foremost a strong example of the form. I hope that I've got something to say about the ways that good and evil, power and violence are traditionally represented in fantasy, but at the same time I hope that above all what I've written is a cracking fantasy tale, and can be enjoyed purely on that level.

I think humour is a key area as well. For all of Tolkien's great strengths, I don't think most people would make much of a case for him as a humorist, and the genre has tended to take itself rather seriously ever since, or, perhaps in reaction to that, to take the mick out of itself with full-on comedy. I wanted to sit somewhere between the two - incorporate the humour of everyday life, maybe. The odd chink of light only makes the darkness harsher by comparison, to my mind.

2. When absorbing influences, inevitably the creative process is part of one long evolution of the ideas that went before. You took a very particular genre, one that is filled with orcs, elves and magic, and somehow very successfully merged it with contemporary 'punch' - honest human flaws, everything a shade of grey and peppered with sex, violence and loss. Did the two ever come into conflict?


As you say, there's nothing new under the sun, and every artist or author tries to incorporate into their work all the different things they've read, seen, viewed, and liked or been affected by (sometimes without even realising it, I'm sure). Don't get me wrong, I've got a lot of admiration for Tolkien and a lot of love for epic fantasy as a genre, but at the same time I've read a lot of more general fiction and non-fiction, been very influenced by film, and more recently the movement in TV towards much more realistic, difficult, morally complex material (with shows like the Wire, Deadwood, the Shield and so on that certainly have, as you say, contemporary punch). So I've done my best to combine the things that I enjoy in fantasy - the adventure, the epic scale, a little bit of mystery and magic - with some more modern-feeling, stripped down prose and dialogue, and some more morally complicated, shocking, unexpected plotlines.

I've tried as hard as I can, in fact, to bring the classic and contemporary elements into conflict wherever possible. As you say, there are certain expectations on the part of the reader when they read a book like this, and you can use those to surprise them. For me, that's what makes writing in a genre with a lot of well-established cliches so interesting. I should point out as well that there are a lot of other authors who have been doing interesting, difficult, and surprising things in fantasy ever since Tolkien and, indeed, before. But, especially with the success of the Lord of the Rings films, orcs, elves, magic, and climactic struggles of good against evil still do seem to define fantasy in the public consciousness.

3. Your characters inhabit the book through the third person limited perspective, a method that really sucks the reader into the action, up-close and intensely. Would you say this gives you a greater range of options with illustrating them throughout the books? Or do you enjoy the control it gives you over focusing the reader's eye on certain details?

The big advantage of this approach for me is the feeling of closeness it gives the reader to the characters, and the feeling of involvement it can give with the action. Epic fantasy tends to be about huge events, about tiny characters within a vast landscape, and I wanted very much to focus on the people, and on their individual experiences of the events. I'm not so interested in the troop movements in a battle, for example, (though those have to make sense) as I am in what it feels like to be there.

4. Further to 'focusing', you are also a professional film editor. Has this affected your development as a writer - certainly the action scenes have a very cinematic flow to them?

My background is mostly in documentary and live music rather than drama, but definitely my experience as an editor has had an effect on the way I write, certainly it's been invaluable experience as far as pacing is concerned. It may sound strange from someone who writes pretty chunky books, but I try to make every scene as lean and effective as possible, and cut out everything unnecessary.

5. The character of Inquisitor Glokta - a tortured war hero turned torturer himself - is a repulsive yet strangely attractive character who consistently finds himself wrestling with control and ownership of decisions that have wide-reaching impact. Could you tell us a little more about him?

Inquisitor Glokta was born out of the experience of injuring my back, which I did pretty frequently over a period of about five years. It gives you a strange, savage and twisted outlook on the world when every movement is painful. I suspect many of those who've been unfortunate enough to suffer from back trouble will instantly know what I'm talking about. Things you take utterly for granted, things you normally do without thinking about them - getting out of a chair, using the toilet, climbing a flight of stairs, coughing even - become exhausting, terrifying ordeals. You see the remote just out of reach. Oh god, oh god, oh god. How much will this hurt? Your world contracts to the limits of your own pain. You come to hate everyone and everything. Lying there one day, staring at the ceiling, I can remember thinking: What if this was your life, and it was never going to get better? How bitter, how cynical, how venomously ruthless would you become? How utterly indifferent to the pain of others. A man who felt like this all the time would be a woeful, a disgusting, a pitiable thing. But with nothing more to lose, nothing more to fear, he would also be a terrifying one...

6. The process of writing fiction is arguably one of self-absorbed control; a true puppet master. This is then passed on through editors and such - what is your relationship with this process? Do you rely on the input of trusted others or do you fight for how you want it to turn out?

Perhaps I've just been very lucky with my editor, but I think there's a common misconception that book editing is often a battle between the creatively-minded author and the commercially-minded editor, and that publication inevitably involves some compromise between the two. My experience is that my editor and me want exactly the same thing - to make the book as good as possible (and, secondarily but hopefully following on from that, to shift as many units as possible).

The editing process is a key opportunity to look at certain parts of your story through new eyes, make improvements and solve problems you perhaps haven't seen because you're just too close. You might not always agree with the change an editor suggests, but it usually has a way of focusing your attention on a problem and making you come up with an improvement of your own.

7. Your debut, The Blade Itself, is now published in eight countries, in seven languages, with seven different titles. How do you feel about the inevitable changes that this incurs - the 'lost in translation'?

In terms of the content it's hard to say, since I don't speak any languages other than English at a high enough level to have much of a notion whether the translations are good or not. But clearly in terms of titling and covers there are some pretty significant changes that I can comprehend. When you first see a very different treatment of the book it can be pretty surprising, but different markets have different tastes, and you have to trust the publishers in those markets to know their business and present the books in a way that's going to sell. Being completely honest, there's not much other choice anyway.

8. When you end a character's life, a creation you have perhaps incubated for years, does this element of ownership affect you at all? Do you feel a duty of care - a twinge of loss, even - or is your relationship with them purely technical?

If you do decide to kill someone off, for a reader that might seem a single moment, but as a writer it's a decision you came to probably months before when you were first planning the book, thought about at length, developed, tried to write in the most effective way, then revised frequently over the course of months of editing. So I don't feel there's necessarily that emotional element involved. Nothing you could call a twinge, anyway. For me the duty of care is more towards the reader - to give them the most effective, intense, surprising experience possible. If you can help produce that strong response by killing off a character, then that character will have been very well used. Nothing to be sad about, from my point of view. Having said that, I do think that in general there are more interesting things you can do with a character than kill them off...

9. In terms of ownership, how would you react to a cinematic treatment of the trilogy (also something you have experience of) - as obviously the transference of novel to film incurs a change to the whole piece - would you be happy to let your baby go or would you retain some authority over its development?

When you sell film rights to your book, I think you do just that. It's sold, and you have to step back, and accept that there are all kinds of tough decisions inherent in turning one thing into another that you, as the original creator, might find impossible to deal with. I think films, or any other piece of art, tend to be most effective when they're largely the result of one person's vision, and a film should belong to its director. I doubt it would be possible to retain any authority, but even if it was, I'm not sure it would be desirable.

10. Last Argument of Kings was recently published, wrapping up the trilogy. Is there a sense of satisfaction or a sense of what next?

The odd thing about writing is that publishing schedules can be pretty lengthy - anything from 6 to 18 months between finishing a book and seeing it on the shelves. You feel a great satisfaction when you finish the first draft, and again when you've completed the first edit and tightened and improved it. But the process of refinement is ongoing for quite a while, so there isn't really that sense of putting it down, done, that a reader might have. By the time you've completed more editing, copy editing, and a proof read, you're probably more than happy to wave goodbye to it. So though the third book has only just been published, strangely enough it feels like something I finished quite a while ago. Something slightly separated from me in a weird sort of way, since I'm already more than half way through the next book - a standalone this time, though set in the same world - and wrestling to make that work. So I'm very happy with the trilogy, very satisfied with how it turned out and, on the whole, the response from readers. But at the same time, yes, the question of "what next" is one that I don't think a writer can ever escape from...

Labels: interviews

Thursday, 24 April 2008

Ye Olde Middle Booke Syndrome

Too long has it been, good friends, since I girded my loins (whatever that means), unsheathed my mighty blade, bestrid my charger, and rode forth from my shining citadel to do righteous battle against the forces of evil. Well, not evil in the strictest sense, perhaps, but people who criticise me, anyway, which is the closest thing to pure evil abroad in the world today, in my book. What's that you say? Yours too? Ah, you stand among the righteous! Let me now, then, strike a blow for noble souls everywhere by letting fall like the hammer of God my well-deserved wrath upon those who had anything but the most sycophantic praise for my middle book, Before They are Hanged.

There are, of course, many sensible, intelligent, cultured, and attractive people out there who love The Blade Itself and its sequel unreservedly as though 'twere their own flesh. There are, believe it or not, a couple of neanderthal losers who hated the first book and hence got no further, but, really, who cares what they think?

But there are also some enigmas. Some human riddles. Folks who evidently missed the point the first time round, but got it the next time. Still more bizarre, plenty who loved the first book but were less impressed with the second. I know what you're thinking, but it's not enough to simply scream, "insanity!" and call for the brain doctors, for I'm reasonably sure that at least some of these people function in real life almost as normal individuals. We need to find out what's going on here, for it may be possible that some among them can be saved.

An accusation often used in these somewhat disappointed-sounding reviews is that of "middle book syndrome". What is this syndrome, and wherefore comes it? Does it turn your brain spongey, like Creutzveldt-Jakob Syndrome? Is it something terrible but that can be survived with the proper treatment, like Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome? Might it even burn a hole straight through the earth, like The China Syndrome?

My dictionary which I use to look up words that I don't know what I may seem right cleverer than others defines a syndrome as: "any combination of signs and symptoms that are indicative of a disease or disorder." What, then, are the observed symptoms of Middle Book Syndrome? In particular, from my point of view, what symptoms of malaise does Before They are Hanged exhibit?

I must admit I've always been surprised by the diagnosis, because I felt myself that Before They are Hanged was a big improvement pretty much across the board (not that the first book isn't fantastic, of course, if you haven't bought it you really should, it'll change your life etc.) I feel on re-reading that I'm happier with the prose in the second book, in general, though a couple of scenes I'd tinker with now. The pace seems much faster, much more directed, I like the way the different plots inter-relate, peak at different moments or at the same time. It all feels much more fluid to me than the first book, where I was still working out a lot about the characters, the story, and just how to do it. That and simply, with a lot of the setup of characters and settings done, I felt free to get into the story more thoroughly, explore some of the relationships between the characters, broaden the scale to some bigger events, some bigger set-piece battles and adventures and so on. My Mum agrees, incidentally, and she's always right.

I mean to say, was I not crowned most improved writer of 2007 by Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, with a soaring increase in my scores from a miserable 7.5/10 for The Blade Itself to a resplendent 7.5/10 for Before They are Hanged? Did Publisher's Weekly not consider my first book "a muddled sword and sorcery ... marred by repetitive writing and an excess of torture and pain" but my second a "grim and vivid sequel that transcends its middle volume status ... suffused with a rich understanding of human darkness and light"?

Well is it better or isn't it? Can I not get just one straight answer? Let us see...

Robert, of Fantasy Book Critic, though undoubtedly liking the series, definitely detected a whiff of the dreaded syndrome about Before They are Hanged. He still loves the characters, but he thought the plot had somewhat run out of steam:

"Unfortunately, Before They Are Hanged did not impress me as much and largely that's a result of being a middle volume. In other words, not much happens ... Thankfully the characterization was even stronger than it was last time, so even though the story was disappointing, I still had a blast ... [the characters] are unquestionably the strength of the novel - and the trilogy as a whole so far - but the lackluster plot kept me from enjoying the sequel as much as I did The Blade Itself."

So it was a lack of action, or perhaps of resolution, that was the problem? The middle book of a trilogy contains neither the excitement of new beginnings, or the satisfaction of closure, it's ... the other bit. But in this era of 7, 10, 12 volume mega-sequences, does that mean we are doomed to 5, 8, 10 sub-par linking tomes? Perhaps, perhaps it does, alac the heavy day. But what's this? Larry of Wotmania fame, had the opposite reaction. He thought the plotting in Hanged was much improved but had problems with the characterisation:

"The choppiness of the first book has been smoothed out and the action develops nicely. There are scenes full of great dramatic tension, but ultimately the uneven characterization and the over-reliance upon cynical takes on stock characters makes for a story whose promise remains somewhat unfulfilled."

The characters, are the problem, then? Familiarity breeds contempt, and so forth. They've got worse, or at least, not better, and therefore stale? John Enzinas, at SFSite, certainly detected such a 'going off':

"The world history is fascinating and the descriptions of both the settings and the fights are wonderful. The characters, however, are limp and listless, like vegetables left too long in the fridge. They've lost the crispness and freshness they had when we first saw them ... It's clearly a bridging book, meant to get the characters in position for the final act, and this it does admirably. I just wish that the author had taken a little bit more time with it and maintained the level of craft that he managed with his first book."

Curse my lack of craft! My characters too long in the salad drawer, damn them! But then Monsters and Critics , unmoved by the first book, appear to say the exact opposite, focusing their pleasurable surprise on my wonderfully improved characterisation:

"Where many of the characters in the first book seemed stiff and contrived, here they become dynamic, well-developed personalities struggling to survive the trials of the day ... If Abercrombie continues this pattern of improvement, he will undoubtedly become a major voice in the fantasy genre."

So it's a problem with characters, or plotting, or possibly a bit of both, or the pace is too fast, or too slow, or maybe there is no problem and I'm way better than I used to be, cos the first book was rubbish. Hmmm. Certainly the specific symptoms of the syndrome are difficult to get a handle on. I'm being unfair, of course, because who said critics have to agree with each other? But from my point of view some consensus would be interesting, perhaps even educational, and hey, it's a blog, who said I have to be fair? Let us delve further, then. Siobhan Carroll at Strange Horizons very much liked the first book, but had a different take on mild disappointment with the second:

"Before They Are Hanged lacks the polish of Abercrombie's previous novel, The Blade Itself. That book mixed the pared-down prose of hard-boiled detective fiction with the epic scope of a George R. R. Martin fantasy in a plot that steered refreshingly clear of most of the usual fantasy conventions. Now that Abercrombie is further into his trilogy, however, the familiar beats of an epic fantasy series are beginning to emerge."

This I can kind of understand. I think a lot of readers prefer the second book because the plot in the first is, you know, kind of vague and uncertain (I'd say mysterious), and in the second becomes a bit more clear, easier to follow. Perhaps they're worried initially that the lack of a clear plot might mean, you know, that there's no plot at all. Perhaps at the same time this focusing, and the surface (alright, more than surface) simliarities to classic tales of epic fantasy in the second book are the very things that distance other kinds of reader, the ones that precisely liked that unfamiliar, amorphous quality in the first. Is it all a question of taste, then, like every bloody other thing in reading/writing? Or is there more to this middle book syndrome? I think Ken at Neth Space might have come closest to the heart of the problem:

"Abercrombie plays with common fantasy tropes (all-knowing wizard, barbarian from the north, stuck-up nobleman, etc.) - he uses many of them, yet does so with a biting, satirical edge and seems to revel in taking the story in unexpected directions. Before They Are Hanged does all this (and more), but since this is the second book of the trilogy, the novelty of the approach has worn off. With the novelty gone, things almost become tiresome in places ... my impression at the moment is that Before They Are Hanged suffers a bit from the middle book syndrome."

That thing that every author has, no matter how derivative their work, that individuality of style, of approach, of concerns or ideas, the thing that makes them new and interesting (hopefully), that novelty, well, that, alas, will almost always wear off to a degree. We might still love it, but it will never hit us quite the same as it did the first time. I guess that's the reason why I still love Game of Thrones more than the rest of Martin's series, despite admitting there's bigger, better, bolder stuff in the later books. When he does the things he's so good at doing, I'm never going to be as shocked, as moved, as impressed as I was the first time.

Perhaps that's the difficulty at the heart of middle book syndrome. An author's books may get better, but they may well not get better enough...?

Labels: opinion, reviews

Sunday, 20 April 2008

TV Heaven - The Wire

Finally, I complete my epic trilogy. Of short pieces of TV commentary. And how should one close but with - to my mind - the best thing on TV, The Wire. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that HBO have changed the face of TV drama since the turn of the millenia. Let me count the ways. The Sopranos. Six Feet Under. Band of Brothers. Deadwood. Rome. Many more. But I don't think they've done anything more consistent, more daring, more compelling and thought-provoking, than The Wire.

In theory it's a show about policemen trying to catch drug-dealers on the mean streets of Baltimore. But it's about an awful, awful lot more than that. Story arcs generally last at least a series, often much longer. Catch one episode, then another a few weeks later? Forget it. You've got to sit down and work through a series at a time. After four or five episodes you'll probably feel confused, mildly repelled, vaguely intrigued, but slightly wondering what all the fuss is about. After ten episodes you'll be utterly gripped. After a whole series you'll sit amazed at how the whole thing comes together, and it will stick with you long after the end. For me, at least, the more you watch, the better it gets. And better, and better.

Each series tends to be a single, extended, fiendishly complex case, which gets at least partly wrapped up after 13 episodes, but they take the show in different directions each time. The first series sets the scene, and follows the effort of the police to take down the city's biggest gang. The second shifts attention to Baltimore's once-proud docks, finds time to investigate urban decay and the collapse of the American working class. The third examines the prison system, and the rehabilitation of criminals, at the same time broadens the scope into the upper echelons of Baltimore's administration. The fourth changes up again and focuses on four young kids and their chances, looks at education, and through a race for the Mayor's office the chances and disappointments of power. It's a fiendishly complex show with a giant cast. I tend to watch each series on DVD as it comes out, usually within about four days, and I think that adds considerably to the experience. I don't know if you'd be able to follow it so well spread out over 13 weeks. Certainly it would be pretty damn frustrating...

The police force are endemically lazy, almost uniformally incompetent, occasionally outright corrupt. The few good officers are always swimming against the current, usually getting ostracised to some bullshit duty as a result of being too effective and making trouble for everyone. The senior officers are obsessed with statistics and self-aggrandisement rather than meaningful results. The whole city operates on a system of favouritism and back-room dealing, where promotion is nothing to do with ability, and all about who's "got suction", meaning the right friends. For Chief of Homicide Rawls (one of my own favourite characters from a galaxy of brilliant ones), a big win isn't solving a case, but managing to palm it off on another department.

Obviously, I'm neither a police nor a gangster, but there's a feel of authenticity about near every element of this show. Real police work is shown to be more mindless drudgery than kicking down doors. Sitting for hours listening to wire-taps, following paper trails, squeezing informants, lying on roofs in the freezing cold taking photos. McNulty, probably the most central cop (though it's always an ensemble piece), has drawn his gun once in four series, and even on that occasion never fired it, just ran around ineffectually in the dark looking scared. His partner then shot a bystander. It's all about the confusion, the pointless complexity, the randomness, the waste and corruption. When criminals are caught it's more often because of small accidents, treachery, or their own failings than some stroke of crime-fighting genius on the part of the police.

It's a grim vision. Really, really grim. I very much doubt it's done any favours to Baltimore's tourism industry - the place looks like an endless, lawless slum of boarded-up houses, rusted playgrounds and collapsing tower blocks. The gangsters, who are followed just as closely and are just as sharply drawn as the police, usually end up dead or in jail for a very long time. The police usually end up busted, sacked, divorced, and/or constantly drunk. Those looking for happy endings or neat resolutions best run in the other direction. Unflinchingly harsh, determinedly unglamourous in its treatment of cops, criminals, drugs, violence, politics, urban decay and everything else. But at the same time it's not unremittingly black by any means. There's occasional nobility, honour, charity, often from the least expected quarters. Some folks try to do the right thing, in spite of the odds, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Things very rarely turn out exactly how you expect they will. Usually they turn out very badly.

Above all, though, the characters feel like real people to a degree that I don't think I've ever felt with any other film or tv show I've seen. And the sweep of different types of people it encompasses is immense. From the young kids trying to find their way on the streets of Baltimore, to the gangsters who work the corners, to the police and their bosses, to the community leaders, to the politicos at the Mayor's Office, it's almost impossible to imagine that these people are actors. I can scarcely think of one weak link in the whole thing. You don't think to yourself - great performance by Dominic West. You think to yourself - oh, there's McNulty, I love that guy. It goes beyond great scripting and acting to a whole other plane. Much though I love, say, The Shield, it's full of disposable, interchangable latino gangsters. In The Wire, despite there being probably hundreds of different runners, dealers, soldiers, gangsters, bosses across the four series, they all seem like real individuals, even ones who appear for moments.

In many ways, The Wire strikes me as the exact opposite of CSI Miami. Utterly real, convincing, courageous, subtle, with important points to make. It is the anti-CSI Miami. I quite like CSI, but I don't much care for CSI Miami. I've never much cared for David Caruso, and I REALLY don't care for him in that. He's like a caricature, of a bad joke, of an idiot's idea of what a really, really terrible over-actor is like. CSI Miami is supposedly the most successful TV Show in the world. The Wire most definitely isn't. Now there's a crime that needs investigating.

I could go on and on, but no-one's paying me to, so I think I'd better close out and do some actual work. That or play Civilisation all day. You may have gathered that I think The Wire is rather good. That if you haven't seen it, you should see the whole thing now.

NOW.

Labels: film and tv

Tuesday, 15 April 2008

TV Heaven - The Civil War

No, I refer not to some comic book plotline, or indeed to anything genre, but to Ken Burns' 11 hour masterpiece of documentary film making, The Civil War. (Or The American Civil War, if you happen to be British). I'll admit I'm not exactly capturing the Zeitgeist with this one - this series is nothing new. First shown back in 1990, I'd seen it all at least twice before, and just now rewatched it on DVD. But it's just as good after three viewings and nearly twenty years as it was the first time round.

The American Civil War was in many ways the first truly modern war - vast numbers of men were conscripted and there were vast casualties (more Americans died in it than in all other American wars combined, if you can believe that). It was the first war in which civilians were targeted on a broad scale. It saw the first use of iron-clad warships, trench warfare that anticipated the First World War, vast prison camps and burned-out cityscapes that anticipated the Second. It was also the first war which was widely photographed, which is what makes this series possible at all. But at the same time the way in which the combatants thought, spoke and behaved seems a world away from us. It's this collision between the old and the new that makes it such a fascinating subject, for me.

Now, I've worked as an editor on quite a lot of documentaries, so I appreciate just what a masterfully understated, unpretentious piece of work these films are. Visuals are almost exclusively photographs from the time, with some maps to illustrate the troop movements, some archive of veterans, and the odd bit of modern footage of the battlefields and locations. There's no lame-ass stuff of civil war recreationists given a naff painterly effect to supposedly excite the jaded viewer. No attempt to jazz it up whatsoever. Why would you need to, when the photographs and the stories themselves are flipping amazing?

There's an awful lot of ground to cover - political, social, industrial. The details of the warfare and of the key battles, the experience of soldiers and non-combatatants. A TV series, even one as long and thorough as this, can only ever be an introduction to such a vast subject. But this is a great, broad introduction, and the thing it achieves so brilliantly - which is so rare in films made from archive, especially stills - is a real sense of the personalities of some of the key players, and of the feel of the era, the importance of the events.

Sound-wise, it's largely composed of writings from the time, voiced by quality actors (Morgan Freeman, Jason Robards, Jeremy Irons and Derek Jacobi among them). I don't know if it's something about the manner of expression of the era, or the events themselves that produced the drama, but the words are simply amazing. There's the fabulous oratory of Lincoln, of abolitionists like Frederick Douglas, of poets like Walt Whitman. There's the earthier wisdom of Generals like Grant, Sherman, Lee, Jackson. The magnificent pomposity of George McClellan. The reminiscences of diarists from privates on both sides to ladies of high society. Some moving, some terrifying, some simple. Stuff like:

"May 31st, 1864, Cold Harbour, Virginia. I was killed."

It's all held together by a superb voice-over, which manages to feel completely of a part with the rest. It's also very uncluttered. Anyone who's worked on voice-over driven documentaries will know that there's always a push towards over-explaining, over-talking, filling every available second between interviews with blather. It's actually the hardest thing to leave silent spaces, to let it breathe. It's the pacing of these films that I particularly admire, because I realise the huge amount of work that's required to reduce the words down to the most essential, poetic few. The huge amount of work needed to make it seem as if it was no work at all, in other words. The voice is never rushed, never confusing, the language simple and straightforward. There are long pauses with just music (of the time, of course) and subtle sound effects, we're allowed to linger on the photographs of the people, to see their faces, to take it all in.

So powerful is the evocation of the period, in fact, that when the somewhat dated-looking sit-down interviews occasionally appear you're kind of shocked to find the whole thing wasn't filmed either in 1866 or yesterday. Chief among these interviews is the late, magnificent Shelby Foote, a man whose knowledge of the events is so thorough that he speaks with the emotion of an eye-witness, whose Narrative History of the Civil War is some of the most involving non-fiction I've ever read. Now, for reasons that I cannot begin to fathom, out of print. Bloody publishers.

Anyway, it may be somewhat off the beaten track for readers of edgy yet humorous fantasy fiction, but it's a must see for anyone interested in the period, in war, life in general, or for my money, the art of documentary making. Inspirational stuff.

Labels: film and tv

Wednesday, 9 April 2008

TV Heaven - Battlestar Galactica

What with the tornado of excitement created by my own releases, reviews, signings, and convention attendances in March, and the tidal wave of resulting reviews, I realise I've utterly neglected my important duties as far as slagging off other people's hard work goes. Time to put that right...

I haven't spoken much about TV before, except perhaps indirectly, but apart from working in the business for some 10 years (though mostly in the areas of live music and documentary rather than drama), I've also been a keen watcher of the stuff most of my life (like most of us, I'm sure), and have observed some interesting and exciting shifts in the way it's been approached over the last decade, especially US drama. I've watched with ever increasing delight the realism, depth, unpredictability, and outright darkness of shows like Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, 24 (before it became utterly ludicrous), The Shield, Nip/Tuck, Deadwood and so on, and I think a lot of this stuff has been an undoubted influence on the way I write, and the kind of stories I want to tell.

All in all, it may seem odd to say, but I take in a great deal more fiction via TV these days than I do via books, as most of my (lamentably limited) reading is non-fiction. TV seems to have gone from the medium of light, schmaltzy, disposable, poorly-made entertainment, with film as the cultured, clever cousin, to the medium in which all the clever stuff gets done first while film (at least the commercial end of it) is looking ever more cheesy and repetitive. The long format of TV series seems to allow the development of deep approaches and long arcs that you just can't manage at the cinema, while the relatively lesser outlay seems to allow for a greater level of adventurousness. Massive generalisation, of course, and there's still plenty of rubbish on the telly box (though don't you dare tell me So You Think You Can Dance isn't brilliant), but for the discerning watcher there's more quality product out there these days than you can shake a fistful of confusing remote controls at.

The advent of DVD, and in particular for me Amazon's system whereby they send you stuff through the post from a list, you send it back when you're done and they send you more, has only made things better. Now you can get hold of a series and burn through the bastard in the comfort of your own living room in a few days, three or four episodes at a time. No more waiting for next week's installment. Truly we live in a privileged age. Lately I've watched three different series, all excellent in their own way, my opinions on which I thought I'd share with the world. Or at least the people who read this blog...

First onto the chopping block, Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica (new version, obviously). I totally missed BSG when it first came out, so I'll probably say a load of stuff that you've all been saying for months, if not years. Still, doing something everyone's already done and calling it original is what I do for a living, so here goes ... Haven't seen Razor yet, by the way, so don't spoil me in the comments.

The first two series, and parts of the second especially, are frakking brilliant. Shades of grey? Oh yes. Deep and interesting characters? Most definitely (self-destructive frak-up Starbuck and mean-ass one-eyed drunk Tigh are my personal favourites, though there's much great acting going on all round). Technical quality? Oh yes again - very interestingly edited, in fact (editors never get the respect they deserve), and featuring some of the best space combat scenes I've seen in anything. Best of all, though, is the way that at its best BSG uses sci-fi to investigate some highly relevant questions about the real world that contemporary drama would probably balk at. How far should we compromise liberty in the pursuit of security? Does democracy work against extremism? Are terrorism or torture ever justified?

Season 3 hasn't been quite as good as the other two, but better than I was expecting from what I'd been told. A few bad calls seem to have been made, though a lot of them I think are the result of the writers' willingness to change things up radically and shift the focus, the courage of which I greatly respect and applaud. It's what you have to do if you aren't going to become a bad parody of yourself. Still, some characters don't really work. Apollo in particular seems always to be led around by the vagaries of the plot rather than by any personality of his own, as a result of which he doesn't really seem to have a consistent personality at all (Though I will admit that fat Apollo was a stroke of genius). Baltar seems to have gone from a fascinatingly conflicted and ambiguous character to a whinging ass. The Apollo/Starbuck forbidden love plot is weak as well, and constantly repeated to very little effect of any kind. Their eyes meet across a crowded room. They both look lean and tortured while hugging someone else. He even more chiselled than in previous series, she more tanned, having evidently spent some time on a sunbed (careful, that shit gives you cancer).

There seems to have been a general loss of focus and attention to detail round the middle of this series, which is exemplified for me (yes, yes, I am a borderline obsessive/compulsive) by the way in which the rank insignia on the various characters' uniforms are constantly swizzling round and pointing off sideways so they don't match any more. That happens literally in every other close-up. The hard won feeling of reality that the show was so good at generating previously is nearly frittered away by some poorly plotted episodes and a bit too much reliance on pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo. The show is best when it engages with the real, and the prophecy stuff seems like movement in the opposite direction. One episode in particular involving some sort of radiation cloud just made no sense at all. They had to fly through it, but I'm sure in a wide shot later you could see it in the distance and there was no apparent reason why they couldn't have just gone round the bastard.

Way the biggest mistake for me though, which started back in the second series, was the "deeper investigation" of the Cylons, which on New Caprica appeared to be lots of identical pretty people in coffee bars, and now in space seems to consist of Baltar in a bed with Lucy Lawless and a shed load of dissolves. Note to the gallery. Loads of dissolves don't make an otherwise tedious and nonsensical sequence seem mysterious and alluring. In the first season the glimpses of Cylon environments seemed truly alien and strange - otherworldly mixtures of flesh and machine. Now the inside of a base-star is revealed to look something like a cross between a successful New York lawyer's practice and a seventies disco. Folks in suits wander round the same stretches of bland corridor looking smug, and occasionally having unconvincing, bitchy conversations. The odd slime bath does not a tantalising alien civilisation make. Though you do gotta love Dean Stockwell.

The problem is that the show was much at its best when the Cylons were simply the unknown, implacable threat, the enemy within, a device for putting pressure on human civilisation and investigating the human reaction. Looking at them in detail makes the whole thing a) less frightening, b) less relevant to reality, and c) occasionally quite silly.

Anyway, despite a disappointing middle the season starts and ends as well as ever, and one can't deny that sci-fi tv seems a way tougher, darker, edgier and consequently more interesting place as a result of this show. It's often said that there's nothing more dated than past visions of the future. I look back happily on Star Trek the Next Generation, though I was well aware even at the time that many of its episodes were poo (anything involving Lwxana Troi springs to mind). I still think fondly of Picard, Data, prune juice and Cardassians. But it's amazing how trite and disposable it all seems in the light of this dangerous new breed.

Gone are the glossy, sanitised environments of the Enterprise, in comes beaten-up, falling apart, low tech junk. Gone are the clean and shiny people too. The characters in BSG are tormented, damaged, generally drunk and strung out on drugs, often hate each other, often have sex with each other, sometimes hate and have sex with each other, and almost always have bad hair. Gone, most of all, is the noble mission to the stars. These are not people seeking out new life or new civilisations. These are people running for their lives, with hell at their backs and in their pasts, doing absolutely whatever is necessary to keep themselves alive. It's a dystopian starship with a dystopian crew, making the best (and sometimes the worst) of a shitty, unfair universe. I particularly like the fact that they stand always ready to resort to nuclear weapons because, I mean, you would, wouldn't you?

The future of futuristic telly has never looked so grim. And that makes me very frakking glad.

Labels: film and tv

Thursday, 3 April 2008

Ending Like an Avalanche

SPOILERS * SPOILERS * SPOILERS

If you ain't read my books, best read no more of this, for it may spoil the (wonderful/shocking/deeply moving) experience somewhat. Certainly don't read the comments section of this or the previous post, which are sure to BURN YOUR EYES LIKE THE BREATH OF THE BALROG OF MORIA.

What's that you say? You've read all my books so far, and I'm talking mostly about the third one, Last Argument of Kings? Then we may continue...

I'm not that hot on foreign languages if I'm honest, and my Danish? (Finnish? Swedish? Norwegian?) is slightly rusty, but I'm interpreting the headline of this review as:

"Abercrombie's Last Argument of Kings is Tolkein with a Magnum 44"

That's all I need to understand. Although I also see, in the way you sometimes do in the midst of a paragraph of incomprehensible foreign words, some English springing out lower down. The words "Hollywood-Ending." I'll take a wild guess, and assume he's pointing out that there isn't one.

Peadar O' Guilin (aplogies for the lack of appropriate accents on those Irish letters), author of The Inferior, has been musing on the subject of the great importance of endings over on his blog. The man makes some good points about how it's very hard, once you've finished a book, for one's opinion not to be entirely coloured by the ending.

I think this is particularly true of epic fantasy, in which series often start with great promise, but seem to lose focus, bloat out in the middle, and often end with a bit of a disorganised and predictable whimper (apologies, of course, to the many important exceptions). I was very keen when writing the First Law that it should a) stick to three books of roughly the same size, b) build steadily so that scale and pace mounted with each part, and c) have a satisfying end that had some twists, was unusual within the genre, and (hopefully) said something about real life too. Now I hope people won't think I'm just tooting my horn if I say that I'm very happy with the way it turned out. But everyone has different tastes. Some in the english-speaking world found the ending just a bit too dark, even if they liked the book. Ben from the Deckled Edge:

"When I read other reviews saying Abercrombie took the fantasy tropes and completely tore them up in Last Argument of Kings, I wasn't sure exactly what they meant. I have to admit I was shocked at how events turned out. The battles were amazing, the character machinations and revelations even more so. What really surprised me was how the reader's preconceptions of the characters and the world were totally turned on its head. Thus, The only complaint I have of Last Argument of Kings is that the world-view is too cynical for my tastes, but I think that's Abercrombie's point."

'Tis indeed the point, my man. I like my tea dark and strong, and my endings the same way. If you're comfortable with it all, then it ain't really worked. But for some, and I suspect there'll be more of these as time goes on, the end was ... just too much. John Enzinas over at SFSite was pretty keen on the first two books. He seemed almost ... wounded by the third, though:

"Like the avalanche, it is powerful, mesmerizing and unstoppable. However, also like an avalanche, the only way things can end is in a crush at the base of the mountain with luck being more likely than skills or bravery to save you ... No matter how brilliant the dialogue, how engaging and sympathetic the characters, how fascinating the mythology, or how clever the writing, a story needs to provide an ending that leaves room for hope and change, if not in the lives of the characters, then at least in the world itself. A world without hope is one I can leave behind and not look back."

I actually think that's a great review, and, oddly enough, would make me want to read the book more than any other I've read. I actually don't think it's as utterly devoid of hope as the man felt, but, yeah, you got me, it's pretty harsh. The thing is, I love a happy ending, when it's appropriate, but there's an awful, awful lot of 'em out there. Even stuff that comes over all cynical-as-you-like to begin with often ends up drowning in a saccharine bog of sentimentality (or overblown tragedy, which in its way rings just as hollow). That's why I love and admire The Wire so much (more on that later). Real darkness is pretty rare in any genre, but particularly in epic fantasy, I reckon.

So I'll settle for an ending like an avalanche. A few readers are sure to clamber out cold and unhappy, teeth chattering, saying they're never going to ski again. Some may even feel crushed. But I reckon most will enjoy the ride, and, even if they don't, the experience might just give them something to think about...

Labels: opinion, reviews