mercredi 18 février 2004

In 'Permanence', Karl sounds the interstellar 'all change' For a book called 'Permanence' (paperback, April 2003), it's all change in Karl Schroeder's first venture into space opera, crammed with very bright ideas, races against time and another go at one of science fiction's big questions: if we're not alone, how come space isn't teeming with civilisations? Most of them got wiped out. Scientist Laurent Herat has spent much of his life studying the ruins of alien cultures, with his assistant Michael Besquith, who also happens to be an undercover Neo-Shinto monk. Humanity has populated vast tracts of what's out there, but the only surviving alien species encountered are totally uninterested in contact, let alone cooperation. Rue Cassels, daring her valiant getaway from an abusive brother and an appalling aunt on a backward mining station, strikes lucky with a major discovery on her way to the nearest planet around the dwarf star that is all she has known for a sun. She stakes a salvage claim to an abandoned, silent "cycler", one of the vast and slow vessels that link the "halo" worlds. Schroeder's threads begin to draw together, the military is swiftly involved, and Rue and an unexpected benefactor in her family circle are caught in a battle to gain and keep control of her starship and a struggle between the Cycler Compact and the Rights Economy of the "lit" worlds, who have faster-than-light travel. The Rights Economy has driven religion underground, including the non-theistic kind, and masters nanotechnology, one of the key ideas in Schroeder's equally rich and dense debut novel, 'Ventus' (reviewed last June). In 'Permanence', however, nano is largely about labelling, price, payment and enforcement. The Cycler Compact, by contrast, relies on trade in goods, ideas and information. At the cost of a more Manichean development of his characters -- pretty clear-cut heros and villains -- than in the first book, Karl develops a deft political subtext as fitting for our own times as it is for his far future. Mostly he keeps it under the surface. A different kind of writing needs deciphering on Jentry's Envy, the name Rue takes from her brother for the ship that could propel her into the elite ranks of the Cycler Captains. The scientists come into their own with this challenge, not just the experts in xenobiology and linguistics, but a bunch of brains, set to be roped, sometimes kicking and rebelling, into Schroeder's imaginative variations on the tug of war between fascinating theory and fearsome technological application. Jentry's Envy is alien. It will take Rue's quick wits and tough guts, Herat's experience and Mike's grasp of alien psychology -- which has plunged him deep into a kind of "dark night of the soul" as a result of his efforts to capture the "kami" (or recorded essences) of otherness -- to unravel the cycler's secrets. It could also take something even harder to obtain: alien help. In a vast void of indifference. For all that's spelled out in too much black and white, Schroeder's characters are mostly convincing and real people, including the kind of resourceful, clever, sometimes funny and brave people you'd like to be able to count on as friends in times of crisis. Herat's a great one for explaining things; perhaps there's an excess of explanation and exploration of the wildest ideas to please readers who don't like the arias overly digressive in their space operas. Some of the ensemble "set pieces" are fantastic writing: a celebratory party in a monastery which turns into a high-stakes power game, the final and furious showdown... The many changes of scenery are generally smooth and sometimes surprising, the big cast includes murderers, rebels, adventurers, the monastic community that upholds the Cycler Compact's concepts of "permanence", marines and even not-so-little green men. There are hidden treasures, high tech and underhand behaviour, cunning twists on some more recent astronomical discoveries -- including brown dwarfs -- and a new look at the old idea of doomsday weaponry. Oh, and there's a love story. 'Permanence' is a very different novel from 'Ventus', and that, for all its minor flaws, is one of its strongest merits. Not one to let go of good ideas, the Canadian writer also likes to develop them at his own place, as shown in his pursuit of "inscape" (Works of Karl Schroeder). With luck, he'll find time for a new novel. 11:41:52 PM  link   your views? [] 'Blueberry': a Western on acid with spirit As Westerns go, apart from two or three classics which are "ancient" already, I enjoy what's offbeat, original and shot with a really attentive eye to the wild, so 'Blueberry' was just my kind of film. Where the "cinéma fantastique" goes, Jan Kounen's movie went a long way, far more interesting than many, but sometimes much too dependent on the special effects to get near the heart of shamanism and journeys of initiation. The big French film to start the year brings a generally excellent international cast to a tale borrowed from a comic strip hero, with Vincent Kassel in his strongest starring role to date as the small town marshal from Louisiana who has to confront a savage killer at the same time as his own past, his fears and a mind scar left by the violent death of a prostitute. The sense of new frontiers on the edge of what passes for "civilisation", both physical and spiritual, pervades the whole film, which has a good number of strong scenes in town (Palamito, with entertaining nods in the direction of Western clichés, the tense saloon, a noisy defenestration, booze and shootouts), and among the Indians and in the desert and the sacred mountains where the climax of Blueberry's journeys takes place. Before making 'Blueberry', which strays a long way from the character created by Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Kounen spent months with the Tarahumara people in Mexico and pursued his interest in shamanism into the Amazonian forest. The movie was shot in Spain, Mexico and France: the 'Blueberry' site (Fr. and Eng.) tells something of the locations, while nature itself plays an important role in the story. Somebody who saw 'Blueberry' a few days ago told me it had "a touch of intelligent spaghetti Western meets Lara Croft" and I kind of see what she meant, though it mines a much deeper vein than both. Kounen's 'Dobermann' (1997; IMDb) was a violent like-it-or-loathe-it first venture beyond stylish shorts and videoclips. I didn't enjoy it myself, but saw signs of a talent with the potential of a Luc Besson or a Matthieu Kossevitz. Here, the director asks a great more of his cast and it pays off. Kassel, thin-faced, tired and clever, is perfect for the title part and carries much of the film on his back, along with New Zealand-born Temuera Morrison as his Indian friend Rumi, who becomes a shaman. In secondary roles, I enjoyed Michael Madsen as the brutal Wallace Blount -- who doesn't kill, as he puts it, Indians and other "animals" -- and Eddie Izzard as the Prussian geologist and adventurer Prosit. As the girl, Juliette Lewis gives more than I've seen before. After coming out of it this afternoon, I read a good interview in 'L'Ecran Fantastique' (construction site for now; Fr.) where Kassel explained how deeply he got into the role and the difficulties of some of the location shooting. And it shows. For me, the climax of the film, much written about and illustrated in the French cinema magazines, was a relatively successful failure, diverting to watch but as incapable as any other attempt I've seen of bringing inner voyage or acid trip to the screen. Minor "confession": in younger days, I experimented, as people then called it, with LSD, magic mushrooms and the like, but have read far too much of the hard psychology and neurobiology of all that since to be contented with anybody's attempts to convey hallucinogenic experience on celluloid. You might enjoy the way Kounen tries it if you're into South American Indian art and snakes ... or you might yawn through it. It's hard to imagine how 'Blueberry', released in France on February 11, will go down in the United States. It deserves to do well, but it's not very much like anything else I've seen to date. 7/10 in my book. 8:56:07 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.