Weekly Everything: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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Last week marked the anniversary – the 37th, to be exact – of the debut of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in the form of a BBC Radio play.  In the decades since it’s conquered just about every form of media – books, TV, film, video games, the Internet.  It’s been one of my favorite things in the world since my brother introduced me to it lo those many years ago.

But I do have a bit of a confession.  As a writer, my favorite version of Hitchhiker‘s should be the books, right?  Not only do they cover a lot more ground than the other versions, they’re books!  Alas, ’tis not the case, for my favorite version, the one I return to again and again is the TV version.  Yes, the cheap and exceptionally dated BBC production is what I think of when I think Hitchhikers.*

Part of that is almost certainly because that’s the version I experienced first.  I think (it’s been a while, after all).  But I also think that the TV show comes the closest to getting it “right,” if there can be a “right” for Hitchhikers, given that Douglas Adams was involved in all the various permutations.  I think that comes down to two things.

First, the TV show does the best job of integrating the Guide itself into proceedings in a way that really works.  The animation, combined with the voice of Peter Jones, allowed the Guide to really exist apart from the main story.  Here’s one of my favorite examples:

Wouldn’t life be better if Wikipedia worked that way?

The other thing that I think works in the TV show’s favor is, perhaps counter intuitively, it’s tiny budget.  I’m not talking cheap – to paraphrase Frank Zappa, cheap has nothing to do with budget, although it helps – but it’s clear there were certain limitations that the BBC crew were working under when producing the series.  It looks low budget because it was, but it’s not cheap.

But the low-buck approach yields an interesting benefit in that it comes across almost more like a theater production, where the audience has to buy into a willing suspension of disbelief to enjoy things.  Yes, we know Zaphod’s second head and third arm are clearly fake props, but so what?  It might even work better that way.

Science fiction is at its best when, in spite of its setting or embrace of gee-whiz tech, it’s holding up a mirror to humanity as we know it now.  It’s true for comedic work like Hitchhiker‘s as well as more serious stuff.  That’s sometimes harder to do in the modern CGI world.  Take, as one example, the Vogons, Adams’s ultimate bureaucratic nightmares and purveyors of bad poetry.

Here’s the Vogons of the TV show:

VogonTV

Here’s the Vogons of the 2005 movie:

VogonMovie

The movie version looks “better” in just about every conceivable way, including the fact that they are terribly alien.  But does that serve the story more effectively?  The TV Vogons look like people in rubber suits and, as such, are still somewhat recognizable as people.  Which is appropriate, since the Vogons aren’t really something that sprang fully formed from Adams’s brain from nothing.  They’re formed from our own real world experience – they are the ultimate cold blooded government functionaries.  They may be an exaggerated form of one of humanity’s worst traits, but they’re nonetheless rooted in humanity.

The movie Vogons, but contrast, are really alien.  They’re different enough that the connection to our own world is lost.  It doesn’t make the story worse, but the jokes don’t land quite as hard when they aren’t as grounded in reality.

None of this is to say that anyone else is wrong for having another version of Hitchhiker‘s as their favorite.  That’s one of the coolest things about it – it’s reached out so many ways that it doesn’t matter if you’re a reader, a watcher, or a listener.  Regardless, you’ve got a great place to jump in.

Just remember – bring a towel.

* Actually, that’s not completely true.  The first thing that usually pops into my head is the line about how Vogon ships hang silently in the air in “the way that bricks don’t.”  Utter brilliance.

In Defense of “The Cold Equations”

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My first exposure to “The Cold Equations,” a short story by Tom Godwin first published in Astounding magazine in 1954, was in a college sci-fi and fantasy class.  I didn’t take the class – my roommate did.  But he shared the story with me and we talked about it quite a bit.

The story, very briefly, is this: a pilot is guiding a small spacecraft to a distant colony carrying medicine to help stop a fatal disease outbreak.  The ship is lean and purposeful, with just enough fuel to do the job with the expected payload.  Problem is, there’s a stowaway – a teenage girl who wants to see her brother, one of the colonists.  After some agonizing, the pilot does what the rules – and the laws of physics, the nominal cold equations – require him to do: push her out an airlock.  For, you see, with the extra weight of the stowaway there isn’t sufficient fuel for a safe landing.  Save the girl, the ship crashes, and all the colonists die.

The ending of the story has caused arguments since it was first published, I imagine.  My roommate and I had a good one, with me taking the side of, “this is stupid, there should have been something done to prevent this from happening.”  It was one of those things that college arguments are built on.

This time last year Boing Boing maven and sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow wrote a piece for Locus Online essentially taking the same position I did all those years ago.  Doctorow is entirely correct, as I was years ago, that things could have been set up differently to allow for a happier ending – one where the stowaway survives and the colonists don’t die of a nasty disease.  But I disagree with him when he concludes that the absence of those things makes the story a failure. Two of his arguments don’t quite sit right with me.

First, after setting forth all the ways that the story sets up the pilot’s dilemma, he writes:

It is, then, a contrivance. A circumstance engineered for a justifiable murder. An elaborate shell game that makes the poor pilot – and the company he serves – into victims every bit as much as the dead girl is a victim, forced by circumstance and girlish naïveté to stain their souls with murder.

* * *

‘The Cold Equations’ is moral hazard in action. It is a story designed to excuse the ship’s operators – from the executives to ground control to the pilot – for standardizing on a spaceship with no margin of safety. A spaceship with no autopilot, no fuel reserves, and no contingency margin in its fuel calculations.

That’s an odd accusation for a fiction writer to make.  Fiction is the ultimate contrivance.  Writers move pieces around and put them together in particular ways to tell particular stories.  That’s why in a legal drama the hero isn’t just defending an innocent man charged with murder, but his brother, or why the cute girl the guy hooked up with the night before isn’t just in the same line of work, she’s the main rival for the new account.  It can be a cheap way of ramping up the conflict, but it’s hardly unheard of.

Obviously one can critique a story for being overly contrived and unrealistic, but we are talking about a short (10,000 words, about) tale set on a spaceship.  There’s not a whole lot of room to explore the facets of this universe that don’t focus on the central conflict.  It’s a story about the rather obvious, yet compelling, theme that space is a dangerous place and it doesn’t care about the humans caught up in it.

The second argument is more implicit than explicit, but it comes up when Doctorow cites the litany of means the story could have used to avoid the tragic ending, from better engineered spaceships to better medical care at the distant colony in the first place.  All of these are true, of course – something could have been done.  But that misses a key point – is it unreasonable to think that in the universe of “The Cold Equations” such things might not happen?

Assuming the story is set in a future period of our own history it certainly isn’t.  History is riddled with tragedies that occur when some entity cuts corners on safety.  I don’t even have to look beyond West Virginia to find plenty of examples – mine explosions, the Buffalo Creek flood, the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster.  All caused because safety was sacrificed for something else, either profit or political expediency.  Or just plain dumb assery.  Is there any reason to think the powers that be in the universe of “The Cold Equations” are better human beings than we are now?

After all, there was a sign warning unauthorized personnel not to enter the ship.  Is it too harsh to say anybody who ignored that sign got what she deserved?  Yeah, but that wouldn’t stop people from saying so.  Scour any Internet comment section in the wake of some tragic accident and there are plenty of people willing to blame the injured for their predicament.  Again, there’s no reason to think citizens in the universe of “The Cold Equations” would look at the incident any differently.

In the end, Doctorow’s main criticism of “The Cold Equations” seems to be that it’s not set in the best of all possible worlds, one where everything possible to prevent such a tragic event from taking place would be done.  But that world is a fantasy, one harder to believe in that most of what’s on sale in the bookstore.  Perhaps one of the reasons it’s endured all these years is that as readers we know it’s all too plausible.

99-Cent Weekend!

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In continuing honor of World Book Day (that was yesterday), the Kindle version of The Last Ereph and Other Stories will be on sale all weekend at Amazon!  Get yours here while supplies last!*

* OK, so, technically supplies are unlimited – it’s an eBook, after all – but that sounds so much more urgent, doesn’t it?

Weekly Read: Trigger Warning: Short Fictions & Disturbances

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Neil Gaiman’s newest book, Trigger Warning, is a collection of short fiction (and a few poems) that, as with most such things (although not this one!), is made up mostly of works that have appeared elsewhere.  Moreover, many of these stories were prepared for certain people under certain circumstances and, therefore, might not be the most representative of Gaiman’s original work.  Nonetheless, it’s a pretty good collection, rising and falling (as it must) on the strength of each selection.

The works tied to others include stories from the worlds of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who, and Gene Wolfe in addition to stories springing from a photo essay about David Bowie and Gaiman’s wife’s work as a human statue.  It’s fun to see Gaiman work within these various confines, such as “A Calendar of Tales,” a series of 12 short short stories (one for each month) based on prompts drawn from readers.

Of those stories the one that stood out most to me was “Nothing O’clock,” the Dr. Who story (set during the Matt Smith/Karen Gillan era).  It’s got a hint of “Get ’em Out By Friday” in the setup (aliens buying up real estate) and is genuinely creepy.  Gaiman makes good use of the fact that it’s a written story rather than a TV show, a well, with some imagery (and doppelgangers of prominent British folks) that you just couldn’t pull off on screen.

The Holmes story, “The Case of Death and Honey,” doesn’t fare as well.  Full confession – I’m not a Sherlock Holmes fan, so I’m not in the target audience.  Nonetheless, the minute details of beekeeping that the story used got in the way of the larger story.  I know from reading his blog that Gaiman has recently taken up beekeeping, so I can understand the desire to share a new passion, but it just didn’t work.

Of the completely original works, several stand out.  “The Thing About Cassandra” also starts out a bit like a Genesis tune (“Me and Sarah Jane” this time) with a guy being stalked by his imaginary girlfriend, but it takes a wicked twist in the end.  “Orange” is a great story – of a girl who achieves a kind of malevolent ascendance – told in a really neat way – it’s entirely made up of answers to questions posed to a witness to the events.  Meanwhile “My Last Landlady” involves a guy who – well, let’s just say his need for a landlady doesn’t go away because he buys a nice house in the country.

But two originals are the best reason to get this collection.  The first, “The Truth Is a Cave In the Black Mountains . . .,” began life as a mixed media thing, with Gaiman reading the story on stage, complete with background illustrations and music from a string quartet.  In spite of that, the story – an atmospheric tale of revenge and, well, truth – works really well just on the printed page (or, on the Audible version, with Gaiman narrating).  It’s one of those classic Gaiman stories that sounds like it should take place in the real world but thankfully doesn’t.

The second is “Black Dog,” which is not based on the Led Zeppelin tune but rather is a further entry in Gaiman’s own American Gods cannon.  Shadow is still wandering, this time finding his way to a pub in the English countryside that, at one point, had a mummified cat built into the walls.  He falls in with a couple that has some secrets (naturally) which requires Shadow to get in touch with one of his deific pals.  It’s a cracking read, full of weird and chilling little details.

Weekly Read: The Illustrated Man

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I think my first exposure to Ray Bradbury (on the page, at least) was Fahrenheit 451, which was a mistake.  Not because that book isn’t a classic – it is – but because novels really weren’t Bradbury’s thing.  He was a short story writer and he cranked them out at a furious clip.  Although I knew that, the only collection of his stories I’d ever sat down and read was The Martian Chronicles, in which the material is related enough that it’s sometimes considered a novel.

The Illustrated Man has no such pretensions.  Sure, there’s a frame story (about a man whose tattoos come to life and predict the future), but it has nothing to do with the stories themselves, each of which rises and falls on its own.  Most of them, naturally, not only rise but soar.  Highlights are too numerous to list completely, but include “The Veldt,” which must have been one of the first stories to deal with virtual reality, massive TV screens, and artificial intelligence.  There’s “The Man,” which takes the concept of being in constant pursuit of perfection to a different level.  “The Rocket” uses a nice bit of sleight of hand to tell a story about a father who’d do anything for his children.  The version I have even includes one of my favorite of the Martian stories, “Usher II,” in which a eccentric brings to life many of the horrors of Poe and visits them on those who would censor such things.

My two favorites in this collection surprised me.

The first was “The Long Rain,” which is essentially a survival story, which is generally not my kind of thing.  But the description (of a Venus that probably doesn’t resemble the real one) is so rich and the layer of madness on top so palpable that it really works.  How nobody has made this into a move yet is beyond me (it was one of a few stories adapted for a 1969 film called The Illustrated Man, but it wasn’t received well).  I’m thinking Alien meets Aguirre, The Wrath of God – somebody get Herzog on the phone!

The other, “The Fox and the Forest,” falls into one of my least favorite of sci-fi categories – time travel stories.  Such stories generally lead to me tearing my hair out.  I can’t really say why – maybe it’s because such stories normally deal with the byzantine rules of time travel itself and tend to disappear up their own backside.  But this story, perhaps because it’s a short story and doesn’t have time for such things, sidesteps that, as it deals with a couple who flee into the past to escape a dystopian future.

To be fair, one of the other time travel stories I really like is Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder,” so maybe he was just on to something when it came to time travel.

My wife isn’t a fan of short stories.  She prefers novels because she likes the longer work that allows her to get deeply involved with it.  I see her point, but short stories – good ones – dip you into another world so efficiently and effectively that they seem longer than they really are.  Certainly when you’re in the hands of a master that’s true.  Bradbury doesn’t disappoint.

“The Last Ereph” – Excerpt

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Another little taste, this time from the title story of the new collection, “The Last Ereph.”

It’s not about a dragon. Obviously.

The cobblestones that paved these byzantine back alleys were not as clean as they appeared. Kol discovered this when his left foot, rather than pivoting him crisply to the right towards the open alleyway, instead slid out from under him. He did not fall. He managed to catch himself with his right hand. It stung, but was not broken.

More pressing, the slip caused him to lose momentum and provided the chance for one of his pursuers to loose an arrow towards him. It missed, but not by much, flying close enough that Kol could hear it zip past his left ear. Too close.

Kol took just enough time to glance over his shoulder and count–only two of them now. Still enough to catch him. Still enough to kill him. He regained his footing and sprinted down the alley.

Why did he always let people talk him into these things? On the surface they were wrong, but his friends always managed to convince him. “It’s for the best,” they said. “It must be done,” they said. “It is the right thing to do,” they said. If that is all true, then why did the duty to act always fall on him? Why would none of his friends ever risk their own skin? No one could ever explain that, on the few occasions Kol was bold enough to ask.

And this time, doing the “right thing” had the Corps of Constables chasing him like hounds after a hare. Whoever this gem belonged to, they were close enough to the His Eminence to have all his power deployed to retrieve it.

He could not outrun them. Kol knew, as a petty thief, that most of his marks, if they pursued him all, had no stomach for a prolonged chase. They would give up in five minutes at the most. It had already been fifteen minutes since Kol snatched the gem and the hue and cry went up. Two of his immediate pursuers had fallen away, but others would no doubt appear from who knows where.

What he needed was to disappear into one of the locked doors of the shops that lined the alley. All were closed and empty, thanks to the feast day. And Kol had never been a lock picker, only a thief. Picking locks seemed so much worse to him than merely taking something that was already available. He would be angry if someone picked the lock of his small room by the wharf. If someone took something because he left the window open, however, he could hardly blame them.

He kept running. The alley jogged left then right, so Kol followed, deftly clipping the apexes of the corners. The next turn lay about two hundred feet in front of him, a sharp right around which the alley disappeared from sight.

Directly in front of him, sunken into the wall at the end of the alley, was a door. This would be Kol’s best chance. If it did not work, at least the attempt should not slow him down too much. The jog, about 150 feet behind him now, should provide him some cover if the door did give way. If it did work, he would disappear as if into thin air, for all his pursuers knew.

Kol took a deep breath as he reached the end of the alley and flung himself into the door. As if by a miracle, it gave way. The surprise of success caused Kol to fall face first onto the dark, cool, stone floor inside. He had just enough time to recognize his good fortune before leaping towards the door, back first, to slam it shut.

He sunk to the ground, back against the closed door and the street outside. He held his breath, even though his heart was pounding, listening. There were footsteps. They did not stop. Instead, Kol heard them come and go, taking the turn and continuing down the alley. He was safe.

Kol exhaled and closed his eyes. Only for a moment, he told himself. Just to catch his breath.

The Last Ereph and Other Stories – available March 2, 2015.

Final Cover Idea (KDP)

Preorder now!

Weekly Watch: Enemies of the People

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My wife and I recently returned from our belated honeymoon in Cambodia. It’s a fascinating place, filled with beautiful landscapes and wonderful people, but it’s still laboring to escape one of the greatest calamities of the 20th Century.

In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge – a radical faction of a one pan-SE Asian communist movement – stormed into Phnom Pehn. Over the next three-plus years (until the Vietnamese rolled in), the Khmer Rouge regime embarked on a brutal plan of forced ruralization to complete their revolution. Anyone seen as a dissident or potential traitor was killed. Starvation swept the countryside. Millions died, although the exact number will never be known.

Enemies of the People is a film by Thet Sambath, whose mother, father, and brother were all killed by the Khmer Rouge. Earlier this century he spent years gaining the trust of a small group of Khmer Rouge functionaries and getting them to talk about what they had done. A few were the lowest level foot soldiers, the ones who did the actual killing. But the big target was Nuon Chea, also known as Brother Number Two, the Khmer Rouge’s second in command. After years of rapport building talks, he finally confesses to ordering the killing (along with Pol Pot, aka Brother Number One).

The film is thus both about how a victim of the Khmer Rouge has come to terms with this history, but also how the killers themselves have done so. Unlike the subjects in the similar film from last year, The Art of Killing, the responsible parties here all express regret for what they did. Perhaps understandably, the ones who did the actual work – which they relate in horrifying detail – are the most contrite. Nuon Chea himself is sympathetic (particularly after Sambath reveals his family’s history), but still clings to some ideology that suggests it was something he had to do for the sake of the nation.

A formal apparatus for dealing with the Khmer Rouge’s crimes didn’t arrive until the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia were formed in 1997 (the post-Khmer Rouge unrest in the country didn’t end until 1998). Progress at the court has been slow and both of our guides questioned whether it would ultimately bring any kind of justice to Cambodia. Nuon Chea, at least, has had his day in court – he was convicted of crimes against humanity in 2014 and sentenced to life in prison. It’s clear that the country as a whole is still struggling with this bloody legacy.

Enemies of the People is a small film. Sambath begins by wanting to answer the question of why the killings happened, but he never really gets there. The best he can do is get answers from the men with (literally) blood on their hands (they would have been killed had they not followed orders) and the higher up who equivocates enough that you can see the monster behind his eyes. That it doesn’t find the answer to the big question doesn’t make it any less powerful.

“The Dragon of the Bailey” – Excerpt

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Here’s a taste of “The Dragon of the Bailey,” one of ten tales from The Last Ereph and Other Stories.

This one is about a dragon. Obviously.

Lhai sniffed the water in his trough. Was the poison in there? He couldn’t tell. He cursed, not for the first time, that the Maker had given dragons such a poor sense of smell. What if he just didn’t drink it? How could they make him? He was as large as any of the guards. Bigger, if one counted his tail. His rough grey hide would be difficult for spears or swords to pierce. What could they do if he would not drink? But how could he refuse when he was so very thirsty?

He extended his wings, stretching nearly six feet from end to end. The cobalt blue feathers had come in fuller and thicker this time. It had been easy for him to swoop up to the perch yesterday afternoon, probably too easy. If he had resisted the urge to be away from these humans for a while, to sit above them and keep watch on their activities, maybe his keeper would have forgotten about the clipping. Another few days and perhaps he could have flown over the wall and away from this bailey. But his regular water and food disappeared a few days ago and the keeper would not let Lhai out of his sight. The clipping was near. His keeper was not so forgetful.

But now it was too late, and he was so very thirsty. He drove his head into the trough and gulped furiously, knowing that a deep sleep would soon overtake him.

~~~~~

When he woke up, Lhai could feel the cold iron and leather muzzle that had been wrapped around his face for the ceremony. It took a few moments before he realized where he was and for the throbbing pain in his wings to come to the fore. He gritted his teeth and tried to stand, but was stopped by a sharp yank on the chain that lashed him to the stone pedestal.

To one side, keeping a safe distance, was a priest. He held a large, worn, brown book in his hands and smiled nervously at Lhai when their eyes met.

To the other side, at the same distance but looking much more certain of himself, sat the one they called Lord Kala. He looked bored by the state of affairs, as if he had something better to do. Lhai hoped his unconsciousness had delayed the proceedings, just to be difficult.

Out in front of him, Lhai could see the crowd that had gathered in the courtyard below, huddled together against the chill of the damp morning mist that was so prevalent in these parts. There were a few dozen people, ringed by another dozen guards in polished armor, creating a makeshift fence out of tall, golden spears. What the Maker had taken from the nose, She had given to the ear, but the crowd murmured to itself, making it difficult for Lhai to hear the contents of any one conversation.

The crowd hushed when the priest raised the book high over his head and began to intone the prayer. Lhai had heard it six times before, every year on the anniversary of his capture, a day that also happened to be Kala’s birthday. For Kala, the coincidence made Lhai’s captivity all the more auspicious.

“And so the Maker, who is just and gracious,” the priest said, slowly and deliberately, “did promise that should any dragon come to your castle, then should you know peace and happiness.”

“Get on with it,” Kala said, slumped in his chair.

The priest picked up the pace, as ordered. “And so long as the dragon remains in your castle, the lord of that castle shall rule, with justice and mercy to his people.” The lines were well worn and got little reaction from the scrum.

As the priest continued, Lhai’s eyes caught some movement near the back of the crowd. He focused on a young boy, no more than nine years old, tugging urgently on the arm of the old man who stood beside him.

“Grandfather,” the boy said, in a loud whisper that was drowned out by the priest’s speech for everyone save Lhai. The old man tried to shush him, but the boy kept on. “Why does it wear a muzzle? Why is it chained down? If it wants to stay, why does it . . .,” the boy asked, before the old man put an end to it with a swift smack up the side of his head.

Lhai grinned, as best he could.

The Last Ereph and Other Stories – featuring “The Dragon of the Bailey” – available March 2, 2015.

Final Cover Idea (KDP)

Preorder now at Amazon.

Weekly Read: The Leftovers

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I came to The Leftovers via the HBO series that launched last year.  It took a lot of shit – most, I think, because it involves a central mystery that none of the characters are trying to solve – but I really liked it.  It was dark, kind of funny in a creepy way, and seemed like a more interesting take on the “Left Behind” phenomenon.  I decided the book would be a good way to pass the time on my recent long journey to Cambodia.  Naturally, the book is not the TV show and vice versa, but it’s interesting to contrast the two.

The most glaring difference is that the main character, Kevin Garvey, is the mayor of the small town in the book, whereas he’s been made the police chief in the TV show.  While that does let him be a bit more proactive with the town’s simmering conflicts, it robs the show of a character who is really doing his best to move the town past the trauma of the departure (a prime example of what a military history prof once referred to as the “Chamber of Commerce mentality).

Which is important, because it allows the Guilty Remnant cult to make a whole lot more sense.  On the show they’re always talking about not forgetting, but it doesn’t look like anybody is.  The book has a little more forward momentum, which makes the GR’s focus more logical.  They manage to come off as less aggravating but more purely evil on the page, however.

Another idea that gets much more developed is the charismatic Holy Wayne, including his rise and fall.  To be honest, that whole part of the TV show never really jelled, but it makes much more sense here.  Wayne comes off less as a truly supernatural healer and more of a New Agey con man who leaves a trail of hurt in his wake.

But overall, what struck me about the book is that it’s funnier than the show.  Not in a knee slapping “this is really hilarious!” kind of way, but just in the tone Tom Perrotta uses.  It comes off more as wry observation, as opposed to dark foreboding.  It’s enjoyable, which isn’t something I’d say about the show, no matter how much I like it.

The real question is where does the show go next?  The first season basically tracks the book, so the show runners are on their own as they go into the future.  Maybe with a little more freedom to explore their own creation they’ll find some of the lighter tone from the book.