Weekly Watches & Reads – UK History Edition

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In May, my wife and I took a much delayed (thanks COVID!) vacation to the United Kingdom, hitting London, the Scottish Highlands and Isle of Skye, and Edinburgh over the course of a couple of weeks.

As is my wont, the trip inspired me to come home and read/listen/watch various things about that part of the world. Here are some quick thoughts.

Wellington Memorial, London
White Tower, Tower of London
Dunvegan Castle, Isle of Skye
Walter Scott Memorial, Edinburgh

The whole of the UK is steeped in history and it occurred while I was there that I knew precious little of it, particularly when it came to Scotland. I remedied that by digesting the entirety of Scotland: A History from Earliest Times, by Alistair Moffat.

Never was a book so aptly named, given that it spends a good hunk of its epic runtime (23+ hours in audiobook format) covering the geological history of Scotland before human beings even enter into it. Honestly, I wish the book would have condensed that considerably, since Moffat then covers basically all of Scottish human history (my other criticism is that he goes too close to current, lapsing from history to journalism in the end). As a result, it has a kind of bird’s eye view of things, without a whole lot of detail, but for someone like me who didn’t have a great idea of Scottish history, it was just about perfect. Particularly interesting to me was how Sir Walter Scott (who has a huge memorial in Edinburgh, pictured above) essentially created the modern conception of being “Scottish,” drawing on Highland things that had mostly been suppressed previously.

One of this historical things about which I knew nothing at all before we hit Scotland were the Jacobite Risings that happened there in the 17th & 18th Centuries. The last, started in 1745, was particularly prominent, in spite of the fact that it ended in bloody defeat for the rebels at the Battle of Culloden. We visited the battlefield and I wanted to get a better sense of the battle, so I read/listened to a book with the title Culloden, by Trevor Royle, which you’d think would do the trick.

Except that the full title is Culloden: Scotland’s Last Battle and the Forging of the British Empire. The Culloden part is, maybe, one third of the book, although perhaps it doesn’t need much more than that (it took place on wide open terrain and was over in about an hour – Gettysburg it was not). The rest is about how many of the officers and men at Culloden went on to fight Britain’s imperial wars around the world, with a decent focus on North America. It was interesting, in its own way, but not quite what I was looking for.

My thought was Culloden would be a good subject for a movie, so I was surprised that there weren’t many out there dealing with it directly (as opposed to using it as some kind of background). I finally found one called Chasing the Deer that I was able to watch on YouTube.

I was drawn to this partly because one of the actors is Fish, original lead singer of Marillion and successful solo artist in his own right. I knew he’d done a little bit of acting (this was his only feature film) so that made certain I had to check it out. It was well done in terms of tone and accuracy, but the small budget came through and the script wasn’t great (neither, sad to say, was Fish, although he was about par for the course with the rest of the cast). It did give you some idea of what the actual battle was like, however, so that counts for something.

My final bit of reading when I got home was Devil-Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688, by Clare Jackson.

We were in Westminster Abbey and I saw Oliver Cromwell’s tomb (well, slab of tile under which he’s buried) and realized I’d never really dug into Cromwell or the English Civil Wars. This book looked like just the thing to fill that gap. It’s just as long as Scotland, but only focused on about 100 years, after all. Still, I was disappointed that this was also pretty high-level history, without a lot of detail about life on the ground. In addition, the Civil Wars didn’t get any singular treatment and were just events along the way that happened to involve the royals that were really the focus of the book. There was no discussion of any political philosophy underlying the Republicans or Royalists. What is clear to me, however, is that this period was hugely influential on the American Founding Fathers, as you can pick precise parts of the Constitution that seem designed to prevent atrocities and injustices that happened during this era.

Speaking of Westminster Abbey, part of what we took in there were the tombs of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. Somewhere along the way I found out there was a fairly recent movie about the pair, cleverly titled Mary Queen of Scots, with Saoirse Ronan in the title role and Margot Robbie as Elizabeth.

As the title suggests this is a Mary-forward portrayal of events and does give you a sense of the era (the claims of historical inaccuracy, based on my reading, are mostly down to interpretation rather than outright incorrectness). That said, it’s fairly dull for the most part, skipping large periods of time in order to cover all of Mary’s time in Scotland, but precious little of her time as a prisoner in England. And as much as I love David Tennant, one of John Knox’s rants on how wicked women are was enough. Nice bit of synergy, though – I started Devil-Land just after we saw this and it starts with the execution of Mary, so it was a nice transition.

Much less period, and not at all historical, but definitely getting points for Highland isolation is Calibre, from 2018.

Calibre is the story of two buddies, one of whom is getting ready to become a father, who jaunt into the Scottish wilderness for a hunting trip. They wind up in a very small town filled with very creepy people who are full of unheeded warnings. A tragic accident happens and the guys get stuck in town without an easy way out. The movies deals in tropes, to be sure (the “small town creepy hick” cliche transcends oceans), but the atmosphere is really well maintained and the acting is quite good. Like I said, nothing historical, but does give you a sense of what it’s like in the middle of nowhere Scotland (see also “Loch Henry,” one of the episodes of the new season of Black Mirror).

Spending a few days in a foreign land is hardly enough time to get a sense of the place. What it can do, at least for me, is spark a deeper interest in the area’s history and culture, such that it will always be something that captures my interest. I figure British history is a rabbit hole I’m going to plumet down into for a good long while to come.

What Comes Next?

/ JD Byrne / 1 Comment

Well, it’s been about a month since Heroes of the Empire dropped, so I figured it was time to get back at it. Here’s what’s coming up in my world to look forward to (or run away from!).

My first novel, Moore Hollow, was always intended to be a one-and-done affair.

However, I’ve had several readers ask about sequels, so I kept an open mind about returning to Ben Potter and his life if the opportunity presented itself. The opportunity came when I was revisiting an old National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project about a West Virginia lawyer who got wrapped up in a case that touched on UFOs and shadowy Government conspiracies. I didn’t much care for how that story ended up, but I liked the character and thought it was good backstory.

I decided to take Ben and permanently relocate him to West Virginia. There he’ll dig into various paranormal events, some of which brush up against the legal system. When that happens, he and my old lawyer character will team up (or will they?). I think it’s got a lot of potential for some fun, independent stories that I can return to now and then.

The first of those is the so-far-cleverly-titled Untitled Moor Hollow Sequel. In spite of the useless title the book itself is pretty far along. I just completed a third draft and handed it to my lead beta reader. If all goes according to plan, I hope the book (complete with a title!) will come out early in 2024.

After that I’m going to focus on pulling together a new collection of short stories based on what I’ve written since The Last Ereph and Other Stories came out.

I’ve got a decent number of them, some very short, some already shared here, or published in anthologies here and there. It will include stories set both in the world of The Water Road and Moore Hollow (indeed, the sequel story to the untitled sequel is already written!). There may even be another story or two to round things out. Looking for a 2025 release date for that one.

But what of really new stuff? To be honest, I am chomping at the bit to dive into a new world with a bunch of new characters. The Unari Empire books have been my focus for several years so it’s time to turn my attention to one of those slight “ideas” that I’ve got laying around here and there. Plan is to have a new book ready to start writing for NaNoWriMo this year. What will it be about? Right now I have no fucking clue and that’s exhilarating.

Onward!

Heroes of the Empire – The World of Oiwa

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I don’t put maps in my books for a couple of reasons. One is purely practical – they’re expensive if they’re any good. The other is kind of philosophical – I think that if the book is well written and compelling that readers won’t get hung up on details of geography. I hope I’ve managed to do that in these books (and others). Geography is fun, but it’s not the story.

That said, I do tend to make maps for myself to use as a reference while I write. Here’s what’s been stuck to the metal part of my writing desk for the past six years, a map of the planet Oiwa:

The bag at the bottom is the collection of role playing dice I used to create the map. I rolled them out and traced around them to create continents and islands, then filled in the terrain. Some of it matched the story idea I was developing, but a lot of it didn’t and impacted things as they moved along.

Essentially, Oiwa boils down into three sectors, two in the north and one in the south. The one on the right is the Unari Empire, which is where most of the action of these books take place. Cye is just off the east coast of that north/south inlet at the bottom. For Widows of the Empire I wrote some about the areas called the Unaru (the very southern part, south of that big mountain range) and the Knuria (most of what’s north of those mountains). The top left contains the nations of the Western Alliance, which have mostly featured as an off-screen force in the books (from the “sometimes you build stuff for your world you can’t use” file). Aton actually goes there in a job that takes place off screen between the first two books.

To the south are the correctly, if unspectacularly named, Southern Islands, which covers everything on the bottom half of the map. They played a larger part in Widows of the Empire and do again in Heroes. As with the Western Alliance I’ve got a whole lot of lore in my head for how the various parts of the Southern Islands fit together politically and culturally, but there was never a good place for it all to go in these books. Aton spends time there in Widows and there’s action there in Heroes, too, but it’s mostly on ships and so we only get a glimpse of some of the Islander culture.

One of the cool things about writing stories that take place in other worlds is the freedom to create whatever kind of world that you want. With that comes a responsibility to bring readers into it in such a way that it feels real and understandable. Building Oiwa, including its history, has been a blast. I hope it was worth coming along for the ride.

Heroes of the Empire – Out June 7. Preorders available here for Kindle and here for other ebook formats.

Heroes of the Empire – A Second Excerpt

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As promised, here’ the second of two excerpts I’ll be sharing from Heroes of the Empire this month (for a third, exclusive one, join my mailing list!). In this one, Rossum witnesses how far the Emperor will go to hold on to power.

Rossum kept his eyes on the soldiers behind the barricade, the ones who now had their rifles in their hands. Some clutched at them so tightly, their knuckles were turning white. Rossum knew that look, that pose. They were frightened, getting into something they weren’t ready for.

The soldier on the barricade yelled something again, but even with the bullhorn it was drowned out by the crowd. He flung the bullhorn to the ground and went to his belt, reaching for his pistol.

Before he could unholster the gun, a bottle flew out of the crowd. It smashed against the barricade just at the soldier’s feet, shattering into pieces. The soldier threw up his hands to cover his face, lost his balance, and fell backward off the barricade. The crowd roared a cheer of approval that gave way to laughter.

Rossum didn’t think it was funny. These outnumbered, nervous soldiers had seen one of their leaders humiliated and possibly hurt. There needed to be de-escalation of the situation, not the pouring of more coals on the fire. He started to look for the best way out of here, off the stoop and down the street to safety.

The soldiers behind the barricade were looking for guidance. Their eyes flitted from each other to the lieutenant, who had yet to say or do anything. After a long moment, he drew a sword and climbed over the barricade. About half the troops did the same.

“Go home!” the lieutenant yelled, waving his sword. “This needs to stop!”

“We are home!” someone yelled from the front of the crowd. It moved back a few steps as the soldiers advanced, but resumed the chanting. “Our street! Our homes!”

Rossum knew the lieutenant had made a mistake. Even with bayonets, the troops were hopelessly outnumbered by the crowd. It was only the threat of gunfire, with the soldiers safe behind the barricade, that was keeping things somewhat calm.

The soldiers and the crowd had now realized the situation. After retreating a few steps, the chanting crowd started to inch forward again, back toward the barricade. The soldiers stood their ground for a moment before they started shuffling backward toward the barricade. Members of the crowd had started to pick up rocks, bottles, or any other items they could lay their hands on.

The strange, slow dance continued until what Rossum had thought inevitable happened.

One of the soldiers, sliding back on his feet, backed up until he ran into the barricade. He lost his balance and, without thought, pulled his trigger. Thanks to his falling backward, the shot fired harmlessly over the crowd’s head, but it didn’t matter.

Rocks, bottles, and other projectiles flew out of the crowd toward the soldiers. None found any particular target, but it prompted the lieutenant to start barking orders. In rapid fashion the soldiers still behind the barricade raised their rifles and fired into the air.

The ragged report of gunfire caused the crowd to stop, but only briefly. Another salvo of rocks emerged and the mass of humanity surged forward, sending the front rank of soldiers finally scrambling back over the barricades.

Rossum surveyed the block again. If he could get into the crowd and make it through to the other side, he could slip down an alley. He didn’t know where it went, but it would provide better cover if the troops started shooting. He could feel in his gut that they were going to.

He stepped off the stoop, down the street, and plunged into the crowd. He began to pick his way across, fighting the flow of the human stream like a salmon heading home to spawn. He brushed past two people, touching them, but neither seemed to notice. They were too busy chanting and pushing toward the barricade. Then he ran straight into someone without looking, knocking the other person down.

Rossum stopped and extended a hand to help the young man back up. His eyes went wide when he saw the man’s face. “Moth?”

“Rossum?” Moth said, grinning as he got back to his feet. “You’re one of us? I knew it!”

“Look, you need to get out of here,” Rossum said.

“No way,” Moth said, shaking his head. “We need to stand up to these animals. We have to show them that we won’t be frightened.” Moth’s voice started to waver just a bit, like he was trying to convince himself.

“You should be frightened,” Rossum said, nerves on edge as he listened for the next volley. “They’re going to start killing people.”

Heroes of the Empire – Out June 7. Preorders available here for Kindle and here for other ebook formats.

Heroes of the Empire – Vigram Rossum

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One of the cool things about writing books – a series of books, especially – is that you have characters who grow into the story in ways you never imagined when they first showed up. For the record, I’m not one of those authors who anthropomorphize my characters – I made them, I’ll do with them what I damned well please – but that doesn’t mean small characters who weren’t intended for big things can’t surprise you.

I had that happen in The Water Road books. Part of The Endless Hills, the second book, dealt with the aftermath of the sack of a city called Innisport. When I had the main character tour the devastated city I wanted a local to call her out about what her troops had done there. That character was called Mida and all I intended for her to be in one a single scene in that book. Turns out in the final book, The Bay of Sins, Mida not only came back but had a significant storyline of her own, which I used to explore how the people of that city were trying to process what had happened there. Vigram Rossum turned out to be a similar character for me in the Unari Empire trilogy.

I created him originally to be a foil for Aton Askins, the main character who spends most of the story finding ancient artifacts for a mysterious employer. Rossum was the head of security for the person from whom Aton, um, “liberated” his first artifact. Beyond Rossum trying to track Aton down to get it back, I wasn’t sure he’d play much of a role.

Turns out, I liked the idea of Aton having a foil. Not someone who was working against him, at least directly, but who was sort of in the same line of work. The fraternity of those tracking down ancient artifacts of the gods for wealthy patrons isn’t that large, after all. More than that, I liked the idea of having Aton’s foil know precisely what he was doing. Aton has always kind of worked in a state of what we lawyers call willful ignorance – he’s willing to do the job and make the money and not think too hard about where it all comes from. Rossum knows and he thinks Aton needs to know, too. In other words, I liked the idea of Rossum almost becoming a form of Aton’s conscience, getting under his skin and making him reconsider how he’s making a living.

Rossum wound up hanging around, to the point where he’s one of the many point-of-view characters in Heroes. Not only do we get his view of the events in Cye as the story barrels to a close, we learn some more about how he wound up working for his employer in the first place. Rossum was once an Imperial Marine who got caught up in a bad situation and made it worse by doing the right thing. His future employer plucked him from the brig and gave him a second chance, but now Rossum is having second thoughts. Will his current actions echo his past?

Heroes of the Empire – Out June 7. Preorders available here for Kindle and here for other ebook formats.

Heroes of the Empire – An Excerpt

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Here’s the first of two excerpts I’ll be sharing from Heroes of the Empire over this month (for a third, exclusive one, join my mailing list!). In this one, Belwyn shrugs off an old nemesis and is introduced to a new ally.

As Neven approached, Belwyn asked, “Is there a problem?”

“Only that you haven’t signed on yet,” Neven said. She was more pleasant than Belwyn remembered her ever being in Annanais. She was enjoying this. “I realize that’s not likely.”

“The gods returning to Oiwa is more likely.”

Unfazed, Neven said, “I wanted to thank you, before we’re done.”

“Thank me?” Belwyn chuckled. “For what?”

“You did the right thing, much as it surprised me. Not when you ran away from us and not when you put this rabble together, but at least when you realized where all this might be heading, you finally did the right thing.”

“And where is this heading?” Belwyn was generally curious what Neven might know, or just suspect, since she was apparently still in Chakat’s good graces.

“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “These loyalty oaths are not coming as quickly as was hoped. The emperor himself is going to relocate to the Imperial offices in Jerrod Square to take them personally. He thought it was going to bring the Empire together, but there is so much unrest out there.”

“That’s because the Empire is pulling apart,” Belwyn said. She was already an outlaw, what additional risk was there in telling Neven what she really thought? “It’s largely Chakat’s fault, of course. If he’d listen to the peoples’ complaints . . .”

Neven put up a hand. “I’m not here to talk politics, Lady. All I’m saying is that the women who stay behind, including yourself of course, will continue to be outlaws. If the emperor feels the need to deal with you more forcefully, he won’t hesitate.”

“That’s the risk we’re willing to take to get the answers we want, the change we need.” Belwyn did her best not to show that she was getting sick to her stomach. Visions of soldiers with more loyalty to Chakat gunning down ranks of marching, chanting women filled her head.

One of Neven’s underlings got her attention, and, without saying any more, she returned to her post.

Belwyn walked back into the woods, telling Valpari to come find her if anything else happened. She went to her tent, where Coleman, Granger, and a few others she didn’t recognize had congregated.

“How goes collaboration with the enemy?” Granger asked with a sarcastic smile.

“I’m giving the women who want to leave the chance to do so without risk,” Belwyn shot back. “I genuinely care for their safety.”

Before Granger could say anything else, Coleman jumped in. “How many are leaving?”

“Some,” Belwyn said, being deliberately vague. “When all is said and done, we’ll still have a sizeable host. And we’ll know that everyone left is completely committed.” She decided to shift the focus of the discussion. “Neven told me that Chakat is going to start taking these oaths in person?”

One of the young men Belwyn didn’t recognize nodded. “He’s moving to Jerrod Square in the next few days.”

“Then it really isn’t going as well as Chakat thought,” Belwyn said. “At least that’s something.”

“It’s promising,” Coleman said, “but it’s leading the vigilance gangs to step up their patrols, recruit new members. Now they can demand papers, require people to show their loyalty cards, and hand out beatings to those who don’t have one.”

“Good gods,” Belwyn said, leaning against the end of the table. “Don’t people have more time to sign them?”

“Of course,” Granger said, “but Chakat isn’t getting the obeisance he wanted, and the vigilance gangs are an extension of his dissatisfaction. He wants more oaths, given more quickly. How better to assure that than to throw in the threat of a random beating?”

Belwyn shook her head. Things were getting worse. “We can’t keep waiting for some perfect situation to move. Are your people ready?”

“Almost,” Coleman said. “Another few days.”

“I’m not sure we have it,” Belwyn said as Brixton ran up, out of breath. “What is it?”

“Someone to see you, says he has an offer,” he said. “He managed to get here from Cye without being seen and avoided the queue out by Neven’s table, all her men.”

Belwyn stood up, scowling. “Another offer? About what, this time?”

Brixton shrugged. “Hagan’s waiting with him near the edge of the camp.”

Belwyn was bone weary from the day. She didn’t want to deal with another distraction, but what choice did she have? “No more than a few days, Coleman. We can’t let things get away from us.” She left without giving him a chance to object.

Brixton led her through the camp, to the opposite edge from the location where Neven’s sign-ups were underway, where the valley met the high hills that helped define the outskirts of the city.

When they arrived, Hagan was standing with a thin man about her age, with prominent ears. No hat.

“Lady Belwyn,” he said, extended a hand. “Or is it just Belwyn these days?”

“Just Belwyn. And you are?”

“Aton Askins,” he said, shaking her hand. “I think we might be able to help each other.”

Heroes of the Empire – Out June 7. Preorders available here for Kindle and here for other ebook formats.

Coming June 7 – Heroes of the Empire

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I’m very happy to announce that Heroes of the Empire, the final installment of the Unari Empire trilogy will release on June 7 on Kindle and other eBook formats and then in paperback shortly thereafter.

The world is falling apart around Aton Askins. His childhood friend is rotting in a cell for a crime she didn’t commit. There are soldiers in the streets of Cye and an army of angry widows waiting outside the city. His mystery employer might be using him to gather artifacts of the ancient gods to build some kind of weapon. Now he’s been given one last job, one last artifact to find, supposedly on a mythical floating island halfway around the world. He needs to stay in Cye to help his friend, but he needs to finish his work so he has the money to take his family away from the city. Most of all, he needs to keep those he loves safe from what’s coming.

The Widows Army is restless and may be slipping away from Belwyn of Annanais. Stuck outside of Cye, unsure of what to do next, she needs to do something, anything, to make sure the promise she made to these women to find answers about their loved ones doesn’t go unmet. When an unlikely ally presents himself, she uses the opportunity to enter the city and finally find the evidence she needs to show the world the truth of the Port Ambs bombing. All the while, the currents of protestors and revolutionaries are threatening to overtake her.

Lives collide and the fate of an empire hangs in the balance in this thrilling conclusion to the Unari Empire Trilogy.

Revisiting the Need to Change the World

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A few years ago, off the back of reading N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became, I wrote about whether stories that involve magic that are set in the “real world” need to have a meaningful impact on that world.

I had started thinking about that issue thanks to an observation by a legal blogger (of all people!) about Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, in which he concluded that:

it therefore strains credulity to believe that powerful sorcerers have been around for centuries, yet have never revealed themselves to normal humans, seized political power, or had any impact on history.

As I said in my post, I’ve wrestled with this in developing (or not) some of my own ideas. If the story is set in our world, but with magic, shouldn’t magic change things?

I was set to thinking about this again after reading R.F. Kuang’s Babel, which is up for a Hugo.

Babel is set in an alternate history version of England (for the most part) of the early Victorian era, just on the verge of the First Opium War in China. The main characters are training as “translators” at Oxford who practice a form of magic whereby they engrave pairs of words on silver bars that are then used to do particular things. Some of them are completely magical – there’s one that explodes someone’s heart, for example, and another that can heal the sick. Most of them, however, merely make things that already work do so more smoothly and efficiently – carriages travel more smoothly, gardens are more pleasurable, factories require fewer employees, etc.

For our purposes, what all this means is that the British Empire is precisely the same thing that it was in our real history – a globe-spanning colossus that exploited its colonial territories and other weaker, developing nations for fun and profit. There’s nothing about the world of Babel, in broad strokes, that is different from our world. Does that matter? Is it a flaw in Kuang’s world building?

At one time I would have said it was, or at least leaned that way, and you can certainly find reviewers on Goodreads who find that to be a major flaw. But I think what Kuang has done is use the fantasy element to crystalize the themes she wanted to talk about that are very real in our world and our history, namely colonialism and its legacy. In Babel the raw silver needed to fuel the magic works almost like spice does in Dune, a purely extractive industry conducted in a faraway place for the benefit of entrenched, moneyed interests back home. Sure, the actual silver trade did that, too, but the magical gloss heightens the inequity of it.

Could Babel have told the same story without the magic? A few specifics would have to change, but in general, sure it could have. It’s a book about a character who at first thinks he’s been plucked from a dead-end life to live a life of learning and privilege who slowly learns what that privilege is based upon and rebels against it. Magic isn’t required for that, but it doesn’t hurt, either. There’s also the possibility, of course, that what Kuang is saying is that whatever resource we’re talking about, including magic, was going to fall into the service of the most wealthy and powerful anyway, which is not wrong.

In my conclusion back in 2020 I suggested that writers are leaving some interesting ideas on the table by not playing out the impacts of their world’s fantastical things on the world as we know it. I still think that’s true, largely, but I’ve come to accept a caveat – that, sometimes, what you’re after isn’t a big world building “what if?” exercise and trying to do so would just take away from the story you’re trying to tell. As usual, the focus should be on what best serves the character and the story, not anybody else’s idea of how world building should be done.

Weekly Watch: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

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Sometimes the ideas the animate a movie are better than the movie itself.

As with many films of the 1930s-1960s I’ve seen recently, I stumbled into The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance on Turner Classic Movies.

Not only that, it was part of a slate of movies programmed by Steven Spielberg, so there was a little intro discussion between he and Ben Mankiewicz about the film. It was the last of the great westerns directed by John Ford (a huge influence on Spielberg, among others) and they talked about how it confronted issues about the transition of the West as a conflict between an older regime built on violence and self-sufficiency to a new order based on the rule of law. As a lawyer, and someone with a degree in history, that sounded like something I should just eat up. Damned if the actual movie didn’t get in the way of that.

The “old” West is represented by none other than John Wayne, whose performance here spawned a million impressions punctuated by the word “pilgrim.” He plays a rancher, Tom Doniphon, who has made a hardscrabble living out of the land and thinks everyone needs to be capable of using a gun to protect themselves (he is, naturally, a crack shot). The “new” West is represented by Jimmy Stewart as Ransom Stoddard, a lawyer from the east who believes in bringing civilization to the West. They go back and forth about the best way to handle the titular Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), a local brigand who furthers the interests of big cattle ranchers who don’t want the unnamed territory to become a state.

That setup is fine so far as it goes, but Ford doesn’t really do a lot with it in the end. Stoddard’s stagecoach is robbed on its way into town by Valance. When Stoddard complains to the town marshal about it he dodges responsibility by pointing out that it occurred outside of town and therefore outside of his jurisdiction. But we later see Valance do all sorts of criminal things right in the middle of town and not only does the marshal do nothing, Stoddard never demands that he do so. Stoddard never tries to take the job and be the law. Hell, we never actually see him practicing any kind of law in the movie (he does some school teaching, though). No, what does Stoddard do? He pretty quickly gets himself a gun and starts practicing how to shoot.

It’s no great spoiler that Valance winds up on the wrong end of a gun (it’s right there in the title, people), although it’s a little unclear precisely who “the man who shot Liberty Valance” is, in the end. Both Doniphon (from the shadows, we later learn) and Stoddard shot AT him, but it’s unclear who hits him and which shot is the fatal one. Regardless, what is beyond clear is that Stoddard fully joins in the game of dealing with Valance through violence, leaving any real pretense of the law behind. And it’s Stoddard who gets the honor of being that man, even if he doesn’t really want it (which is a really interesting conflict that could have been explored more deeply).

So the movie kind of fizzles in its portray of the “old” versus “new” West, but how is it otherwise? Well, it’s a tale of two movies.

The first, which focuses on the leads – Wayne, Stewart, Marvin, and Vera Miles as the love interest – is pretty good. All those performances are good and the have good scenes together. Marvin, in particular, is really menacing as Valance (and has a young Lee Van Cleef as a sidekick). The love triangle between Stoddard, Doniphon, and Miles’ character is underbaked (Doniphon is building an addition onto his house for her, but she doesn’t have any apparent desire to move in), but, hey.

The other movie is the weirdest feast of overacting I’ve ever seen. There are multiple characters – the Cowardly-Lion-esque town marshal, the drunk town doctor, the (also drunk) newspaper publisher – who perform so broadly that had they wandered off this set onto the one for Blazing Saddles Mel Brooks would have told them to tone it down. If you’ve seen the episode of Futurama where Zoidberg’s uncle directs a “serious” movie but demands that the background actors run around throwing pies at each other, you’ve got the picture. Big ideas can be great drivers of a story, and fiction can be a fantastic way to explore how people grapple with those big ideas. But the idea is not the story. The story is the characters in it, what they do, and why they do it. The biggest and most important idea can be felled by a poorly executed story. That’s what’s the most frightening for us creative types – the big ideas are the easy part, but there’s so much left to do once you’ve hit on one.