Recent Posts | Page 39

Odaiba Cannonades

Mike Grist August 5, 2013Haikyo, Military Installations, Tokyo-to

160 years ago, Japan and America looked at each other down the barrels of cannon. Japan was in isolation, and America (the whole world, really), wanted in. Five island forts stuffed with cannon (‘daiba’) were built across Tokyo Bay to repel foreign invasion.

They were never used. The foreign invasion came, and Japan opened its doors to the world. Now three of those islands are gone, incorporated into recent land developments. Two remain, one preserved, the other conserved as a habitat for birds.

But why were they built at all? Why was Japan so afraid of letting foreigners in to trade?

Cannon Island #3, accessible by the route at right.

Across the mouth of Tokyo Bay runs Rainbow Bridge, an 800m long suspension bridge connecting Shinagawa with the man-made island of Odaiba.

?The bridge is accessible to pedestrians by this big tower, near Tamachi.

Why did the Japanese fear foreign influence?

“The Bear and the Honeycomb” is a theory in English Teaching that describes Japan’s attitude to the outside world. Japan is the bear, and it wants the honey, which is all the goodies to be had from the outside world- technology, culture, trade goods. But along with the honey come the bees; the power of foreign influence. You can’t get the honey without getting stung by the bees.

As far back as 1600, they had heard of the rampancy of European nations going around colonizing everywhere they could (‘stinging’). So they were wary, understandably so, especially for a nation that had held its cards so close to its chest for so long. Comparisons to England as an ‘island nation’ are irrelevant really- since the amount of island-ness each country had was vastly different. England never had an option of total isolation, since France at its closest point was only 30km away. For Japan, the tip of South Korea is 200km distant from the tip of Kyushu. That allowed a lot of breathing room.

?Island #6 is now a bird preserve, and landing is forbidden. It would be cool to explore, but probably very difficult to achieve. The Bay is very busy, and someone would surely notice an illegal landing.

Close-up of the bird-preserve mouth. You can see that the walls continue inwards in a corridor- probably much the same as the open corridor on island #3.

Back of the bird island #6.

Island #3 and a view up the landing corridor. This would be a helluva place to get delivery services to! Perhaps a jetboat up the Bay could reach there in record time.

???

History lesson on the Rainbow Bridge.

That’s Fuji Terebi building on the right.

So the Japanese protected themselves as best they could. They isolated foreign contact to a single island, Dejima, off Nagasaki. They sent scholars out to learn English, but were careful that they did not become literate, so they couldn’t spread any communication widely. They were that concerned about bees.

By 1853, the world had had enough. After Dutch entreaties to open failed, America sent an isolation-busting fleet of 4 steam warships- henceforth called ‘black ships’ for the black steam they belched into the sky- to Tokyo to force the country open.

Old Edo prepared by building cannonades on islands peppered across the bay. There were 11 such islands planned, but only five were completed; each like a mini-fort, built up with walls and towers, stocked with cannon and shot.

They were never used. The black ships came and went, Japan opened itself up, and the cannon islands sank into dis-use.

History lesson at entrance to island #3.

View across island #3.

Map of #3.

One of the features on island #3.

I’m not sure what it is. Any ideas? A communal toilet? Water trough?

Memorial to something?

Another feature, this runway thing. Doesn’t seem like cannon would be here, as it’s in the middle depression of the island. Perhaps it’s the foundation for a building.

Same, towards Odaiba.

Within the tree cover are a few items of interest. This one must be for drinking water. It might even be modern era, as part of the park’s early preservation efforts?

This path too.

This hole may be old though. An oven?

Down island #3’s jetty corridor, to Rainbow Bridge.

Cannon mounts!!

Only two remain on the island. I wonder if these are even originals, or mock-ups for the preservation?

Cannon and the bridge.

And a nice shot of Fuji Terebi to finish.

That’s it for the odaiba cannons. It’s a neat little bit of Tokyo history that you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t walk across Rainbow Bridge sometime. It’s a fun mini city-hike I can recommend, and you end up in odaiba, where there’s lots of fun stuff to do too.

You can see more military type ruins here.

And more general ruins in the haikyo gallery here.

Mizune Freighter Tracks

Mike Grist June 17, 2013Bridges / Roads, Haikyo, Tokyo-to

60 years ago the Mizune freighter line built one of the biggest dams in Japan. The line was specially constructed in the 1940s, with some 20 tunnels and bridges snaking through the west Tokyo mountains, to ferry supplies from the sleepy hiker’s village of Okutama to the construction site for the Ogochi dam on Okutama lake.

It must have cost millions to blast those tunnels and build all those bridges. Still, the line was abandoned after completion, and now remains high above the still-operational road to the dam, like a hidden super-highway for local fauna.

A concrete bridge along the Mizune freight line.

Ogochi dam was a Tokyo dream since the 1920s, though it wasn’t completed until 1957, due to the difficulty of relocating 6,000 Ogochi valley-inhabitants, the advent of World War 2, and sabotage by Communist party protesters. At 149 meters (489 feet) in height it stands only 37 meters (121 feet) lower than Japan’s tallest dam. It serves primarily as a drought-prevention reservoir, but also has two hydro-electric turbines which produce (a fairly measly) 19,000 kW. At the time of it’s construction, it held back the largest man-made reservoir in the world, at 189 million square meters of water.

Last weekend I went with SY to find and hike the Mizune line from Okutama through to Ogochi dam. It’s the kind of haikyo I love, because it’s big. The vision of blasting and bridging a path through the mountains to a dam site was a pure act of imagination and will, massive in scale and ambition. The longest tunnel, which we walked through in the dark, is 440 meters long (over a quarter mile), and must have cost at least a million dollars in itself. And now it’s completely abandoned.

We started early, leaving Tokyo around 8am, since the train ride to Okutama takes a little over 2 hours. We got in amongst a small throng of other hikers, had an early lunch of kaiseki ryori (fancy Japanese lunchbox with many little ‘tastes’ of different foods, such as tempura, grilled fish, pickles, etc) in a cute little restaurant, then headed out. We didn’t see any other hikers again for about two hours.

Finding the Mizune tracks was easy, though I hadn’t been able to find any evidence of their existence via Google maps, which I’ll normally use to confirm a location. I couldn’t figure that out, since I knew the line had numerous bridges, and figured these at least must be visible from the air. But once we got on the trail, and the bridges, the reason became clear- the line does not bridge any river or road. Rather it wiggles its way around the mountainsides, sometimes boring through, only using bridges to leap gaps between mountains.

This made it invisible to the air, since all the mountains, gaps, and bridges themselves were all forested, and in unexpected places, so perfectly camouflaged.

Still, I knew the tracks criss-crossed with the ‘old’ hiking trail, so just started out along it, and after a few mistakes climbing the switch-backed paths up to private residences, we found the track, and its first tunnel.

First, and most unremarkable, tunnel.

Looking out of tunnels is always more impressive than looking in.

We cheered. We ventured in and out to just get a feel for tunnel life. We read the warning sign on the ground, telling us the usual ‘Forbidden’, as well as another more creative attempt to deter trespassers- ‘There are serious mosquitoes ahead’, or something to that effect. We were on the tracks, and ready to roll.

The usual ‘Do not enter’ signs.

Soon we hit the first bridge, a kind of metal trestle thing running along a steep part of the mountain-side. Now, in this case walking the bridge may not have been necessary. There was the hiking trail alongside, but we couldn’t know when the two would hook up again. And the bridge looked very mangy. 60 years old and heavily overgrown and rotted, with a substantial drop underneath, we had to man up and just do it. The wooden parts looked very crumbly, so instead we stuck to tip-toeing along the rails. I took video of me walking, which you can see at the bottom of the post.

We could have walked on the wood, but didn’t trust it.

The view off the side.

It was nerve-wracking, but we did it. The bridge did not collapse. And on we went. Soon was another bridge, but this one was much easier- a wide concrete affair with lots of grass and no holes that we could slip through. Standing in the middle of it looking to either side, out on a beautiful mountain view which we had all to ourselves, was stunning. I love rural haikyo for this reason.

Side view of the first concrete bridge.

Walking along the first concrete bridge.

The view off into the distance.

Down one side.

Atop the next tunnel mouth, a fire hyrdant.

Side view looking back.

Heading on.

After that, it became a simple procession of bridges and tunnels. Concrete bridges were great, totally stable, wide and easy to walk. Trestle bridges were always a challenge though, and in one case we had to demur and side-track down to the mild ravine and back up the other slope. In that case the trestle had only very large blocks, with very large gaps between them. We’d have to stride across each gap, with no leeway either side. The chance of falling bodily through a gap, or simply straight off the side, just seemed too daunting.

I’m glad in this case we could take the low-road.

Trestle bridge with wide gaps. The video gives some idea of the strides required to cross.

View from up the culvert where we crossed. It was higher than it looks here.

Troll’s view from below.

Looking back.

Looking forwards, to another tunnel.

Backwards.

Forwards.

In later cases, in particular one very long trestle that leaped a large mountain culvert, there was no way to go down. However with that there were no large gaps, the track was rotted but wide, and we could walk on the rails directly. I wish I’d stopped in the middle of that one for a photo, but was honestly just too worried about my own balance, and about delaying SY behind me, that I just pushed through and completed it. It was a long stretch, took maybe 5 heart-pounding minutes to cross, and the most exposed we ever were.

It’s hard to get across how long this bridge was.

Looking back, too steep to climb up really. We had to cross.

This photo, from here, gives some idea of how high and exposed this particular trestle was.

After that came the longest tunnel. It had the biggest effort made to block it off, though of course some prior hikers had cut a way through. Standing in front of it you could feel the steady flow of the mountain’s cold breath, exhaling. We switched on our flashlight and headed in.

Quite well defended.

It was long, and dark. There is not a great deal more to say than that. 400meters is a long way in the pitch black, but in this tunnel there were no bats, no dripping water, nothing. It was a good solid, if chilly, tunnel.

Dramatic tunnel exit.

This tunnel’s end was stuffed up with crinkly old leaves- strange to see since it was summer already. Probably they took shelter in the tunnel mouth and just didn’t rot.

Beyond that, we found a dam, complete with it’s own mini-concretized water-slide. Almost all the rivers and streams in Japan have been concretized, I’m not really sure why. This one was no exception. Standing upon the flow-zone though, looking up at the dam, was a strange sensation, maybe similar to what the orc-hordes felt when they assaulted Minas Tirith. Just, what are we gonna do about that? How can we fight that? If the water had come out in a torrent, we would’ve been washed away…

Mini-dam en route.

Concretized water-slide.

There was some workman-type stuff lying around, clearly a project in progress, so we hurried on.

Next up, we saw some other hikers. At first we were nervous- this seemed a really remote place to bump into other people. They could easily shove us off the rail to our death, and who would know? However it turned out to be a couple on a date, with the girl in a skirt and pumps. No way had they cone the way we had, so I figured we must be near the dam, and they’d come the other way. I said hello cheerily, which I find helpful in such situations, and asked if we were near.

Maybe the boy was nervous too, because he mumbled a hurried “Not far.”

So we did our last two tunnels. In the final tunnel, their were bobbing flashlights coming towards us, as water spilled down through a crack in the pitch black above.

“Hello,” I called, and they replied. On we went.

One of the last bridges.

One of the last grand views.

At last, we emerged to behold the majesty of Oguchi dam. Though I suppose it was kind of a side-view, and not particularly impressive (you can see it in the video). We walked a final bridge, and emerged into an empty car park. Anti-climactic. Still, the dam awaited, and we only had to climb some stairs nearby to get to it.

SY walks on the final bridge.

You are more likely to see this bridge from this angle, as it’s over the road back to Okutama.

Then there was the dam. It was big and grey, because it was a big and grey day. SY promptly took a nap, while I went off for ice cream, the fitting reward to hike-yoists who’d toiled for nearly 3 hours through darkness, underbrush, and across yawning chasms. I wanted strawberry-vanilla flavor but they were out, so had to settle for grape and vanilla. Still, yum.

Large and in-charge.

Stretching back up the valley a long way.

And that was that. We rode back on the bus, getting home some time around 8pm. A full day, and the reason why we don’t often venture out of Tokyo- it just takes so long. But its absolutely worth it when we do.

Watch the video here:

You can see more bridge/road type haikyo here.

And for general haikyo in Japan, go here.

The ancient glare of Angkor Thom

Mike Grist June 10, 2013Haikyo, World Ruins

Angkor Thom is a behemothic ruin, 9 square kilometers of temples, lakes, terraces, and dusty faded glory all bound in by a ten-foot wall. Much of it now is paved with roads built by the South Koreans, the Chinese, the Indians. Our guide happily explained the times and dates each country came along and chipped in their bit to keep this grand testament to ancient Khmer wealth in a visitable condition.

And visitable it most certainly is, from the hydra-headed temple of Bayon to the seemingly endless codices of ‘forgotten temples’ across from the palace’s elephant terrace.

The heads of Jayavarman VII, who built a temple with some 88 copies of his on head, looking in all directions with ‘peace and serenity for all’. Nuts.

There are four main gates to Angkor Thom, at each of the cardinal compass points- and at ech point you’re met with another smiling god-king’s head.

Big Brother sees all.

Hears all.

Feels all.

Knows all.

Our guide took us to all the highlights, and through the hot day we raced around them. Once we bumped into a gang of boys, maybe 8 years old, who were climbing willowy trees to get at the berries at the top. I climbed trees when I was a kid too, but never with the monkey-like ease these boys did. Walk up the side, out along sway-thin branches, pluck berries and drop them in a plastic bottle, then on to the next.

They were cheerful, chatted with our guide, who in turn translated that they lived over 5km away, had walked here, and were picking berries to sell at the road side.

This is Bayon from the outside. you can’t see the heads from so far away, but every crenellation above was stocked with plenty of them.

Rising towers of heads.

A smile meant to bring peace and serenity to all that slaves that built it.

And of course there were lots of other temples that we popped in and out of, the names of which I’ve forgotten. Here are a few highlights.

Valley in the ruins.

Another vision of heaven.

A tumbledown red temple.

With odd bits of conservation going on.

And missing heads.

A real jungle temple, properly un-conserved, largely as it was, and gloriously empty and climbable.

Up, up, up, the ziggurat lickety split.

A final section, in the dying moments of our last day in Angkor Thom, while our guide was really hoping we’d be too knackered to see any more, we pressed for one last round of a final few temples. And what we got was well worth it, this row of stunning watch-tower type stations arrayed in front of the elephant terrace. The terrace itself is unremarkable, a stone wall beyond which the palace would have stood, all in wood. Of course the wooden palace is gone, and only the terrace remains, and the temples and watch-towers before it.

What were these towers for?

Our guide wasn’t sure what the towers were for, but perhaps they were like an early telegraph signal, passing a sign from one end to the other very quickly. Though it’s hard to see the point of that, since the distance they cover is not really more than a loud shout.

Another notion was that there was a rope strung between them, and clows would walk along it for the King’s entertainment.

Maybe our guide was just making stuff up, at that point? Nice idea though…

And behind the watch-towers, a bunch of ‘forgotten temples’. I’m sure these temples have names, but our guide just called them ‘forgotten’.

We climbed and romped.

And romped and climbed.

While these guys were as serious as ever.

And then that was that.

We packed up and rolled out of Cambodia the next day, on a spine-rumbling back-seat of a little van all the way to Bangkok. What a trip!

If you’d like to see photos from Ankgor Wat, you can go here.

For more photos of world ruins, go here. For Japanese ruins, go here.

Why Iron Man 3 had a soft-boiled spine – movie review

Mike Grist May 31, 2013and how to fix it, Book / Movie Reviews

I enjoyed Iron Man 3. Probably you did too. It broke all kinds of records, already made over $1 billion worldwide, and is currently sitting at number 5 in the top 5 highest grossing movies ever (behind Avatar, Titanic, Avengers, and Deathly Hallows). Not bad.

But is it any good? Clearly it is. But come on, is it really any good? Is it solid? Does it twirl where it should twirl, stomp where it should stomp, and hard-boil eggs to a perfect yolky solidity?

Uh, no. It does not. Here’s why.

You shouldn’t have taken the last Reece’s piece!

*** FULL SPOILERS ***

It’s the Mandarin. Or in China, as they call him to avoid offending Chinese, Man Daren. The Mandarin switcheroo is a lopsided goat. It cracks open the movie at the midpoint and lets all the vital fluid, threat, and investment just ooze and goo out, like a poorly shelled egg. It’s a switchback we’re supposed to enjoy, be amazed by, and hang out around to find the real wizard behind the Oz.

How post-9/11, we’re supposed to say. How far we’ve come. The terrorist threat is really all a sham, a high-production value stunt run for the purposes of….

Uh, for the purpose of…

And that is where it falls down. Because the terrifying terrorist the Mandarin was believable. Though we’ve seen a dozen such evil terrorists (though granted, none quite like Sir Ben modelling the white-man’s Bin-Laden beard) in movies, and been inundated with them through shows like 24 and Homeland, there is still something inherently terrifying, disturbing, mystifying, about a powerful figure who just wants to f%*k you up for no clear reason.

It is powerful. It is the thing that drew us into the trailer.

“What drew you into the trailer?”

“Hellfire missiles blowing up Tony Stark’s pimpin’ pad!”

Yes! This exactly is what gave the movie an engine. From the moment Mandarin sent THREE Blackhawks to blow the chrome off Iron Man’s buff job, I was triple-hooked (admittedly I was hooked once for the tech, twice for Downey Jr.). It throws up a plethora of burning questions:

Why would anyone hate Stark enough to do that? (Well, we know it’s because Stark called him out as a wuss publicly, but still, why go SO far?).

How in hell could anyone in the modern era not only get hold of three military grade helicopters, plus missiles plus pilots, along with all the attendant launch/fuelling/maintenance infrastructure they need, but also bring them to the US coastline without any navy radar alarms going off, nor any Stark alarms going off?

How?

That’s what I wanted to know. It’s the reason I’ve always loved 24 season 2’s ending, where the sister-terrorist white girl is in jail, facing a life-stretch as the enemy of all her world holds dear, and she’s staring in Jack Bauer’s eyes and says something to the effect of-

“We are everywhere, but you can’t see us. You can’t understand us, you can’t stop us, and we will tear your civilization down piece by piece.”

I’ll take my eggs over-easy.

Oooh, chills just thinking about it. Perhaps it’s a feeling we like, because it makes us think hard about how we’re complacent, where we’re weak, what we’ve overlooked. But of course it’s also downright creepy. Like there are ghosts out there, invisible, unknowable, and they want our spinal fluid for their smoothies.

So that was the engine. In the midst of all that, and as reaction to that, all manner of cool stuff happens-

– Pepper Potts steps to the Iron Man plate and does some rescuing.

– Tony flees, pretends to be dead, holes up with some lonely kid and starts banging out tech.

– Tony starts having hilarious panic attacks.

– Tony is on the back foot, with nothing in the snow and cold but a glowy heart lamp, while the Mandarin has everything.

And then…

They throw all that away. Every bit of it. Because the Mandarin is a FAKE. He is an actor. As for the bad-ass helicopters, well, they weren’t fake, but they served a purpose not quite what we thought, partly in service of an age-old grudge (who cares?), and partly to keep the FAKERY alive.

And then, uh, what? Some stuff happened? There was an ending?

Yeah, that’s it. Guy Pierce was a spotty loser dork with a bone-on for Stark’s brain and cashola, got jealous, and as part of his ‘dominate the universe’ plan decided to take Tony out. What what, holla!!

Bad. It is a complete sidestep, into sludge. Not only is it a sidestep, but it’s the silliest one the writers of these franchises have taken yet. Certainly of the Iron Man franchise. In Iron Mans 1 and 2, Stark was fighting regular people in fighting suits of one kind or another. If we accept the premise of one Iron Man suit (Tony’s) it is an easy step to accept these others.

But Guy Pierce’s step was a whole different thing. We were getting into Hulk territory, or Spiderman, or Johnny Flame ‘FLAME ON’ territory, with DNA rewriting itself hot. It’s a grasp at straws. It’s a leap at a whole ‘nother comic book premise. I don’t like it.

And then Pepper Potts had it, but got cured, and then Tony Stark cured his heart ailment that was so bad he could barely survive it in the last movie. He just cured it. 😉

Weak.

This meant instead of spending time delving into the Mandarin, and how he did the impossible feats with helicopters and such- which is what I wanted to know- we instead spent that time delving into guy Pierce, and getting to know why he did what he did.

But who cares about that? It was a bait and switch. Evil, mysterious, genius terrorist or faintly mad, slightly miffed, kind of jealous scientist? I’ll take evil mysterious genius terrorist any day.

Knew I shouldn’t have trusted Richard Branson.

So they should have…

– They should have never bothered with Guy Pierce. Instead it should have been Mandarin all the way. If we need a twist, then let it be his motive, why is he doing these terrorist acts? Clearly he’s got a beef with someone. Most likely it will be Tony. Either that, something logical, or he’s just as much a nutballs as the Joker in The Dark Knight. That is terrifying. Probably he’s trying to teach people a lesson.

– And how did he get those black hawks? How did he spy up to Stark’s ego-dome and take out its money-pole? Well, he did it just the same way Bin-Laden did it, piggy-backing on our own infrastructure, riding the gaps in our civilization’s massive command. Probably he is ex-everything, military, CIA, all that, and now he wants his own back. That is scary, because how he can we defend against ourselves?

– That I can roll with. His attacks lead to massive government over-reaction, similar to after 9/11 but bigger, with witch-hunts taking out those not patriotic enough, confining them to camps, crushing civil liberties beneath the boot-heel of security, etc.., a whole other threat in itself.

– And how can Tony fight that? Well, with a team, and an army of suits. But making them robo-AI controlled old suits was a let-down. Rather, let them be people he trusts. Let trust win out, where the Mandarin is trying to sow discord and loss of faith.

That would have been pretty amazing, no?

1 to beam up.

But let me be clear-

Iron Man 3 is far from a failure. There is very much to like in it, as you’ll doubtless already know:

– Pepper Potts steps up.

– Tony freaks out, techs out, builds very funny, dysfunctional relationship with odd kid

– Tony and Don Cheadle bitch each other

– Big teddy bear with boobs

– ‘Come hither’ advances in the Iron Man tech

– Pepper Potts’ belly

But essentially, Robert Downey Junior made this movie. He made it work in spite of a silly plot, with a mid-point twist that took all the bullets out of the gun. After that point, we weren’t watching it for any sense of threat, but rather just to enjoy some more twitchy one-liners and casual dismissive arrogance. We love that, don’t we?

Am I right?

The sun-bleached ruin of Angkor Wat

Mike Grist May 9, 2013Cambodia, Haikyo, World Ruins

Angkor Wat is the last, greatest remnant of the ancient Khmer empire, a sprawling citadel and temple complex built nearly 1000 years ago, now resplendent in ruins. Doubtless you’ve heard of it. It’s the biggest tourist attraction in Cambodia, with thousands of visitors parading through its grand porticoes every day, clad in day-glo Crocs and local-bought elephant-pattern pants, mooning over this relic of the Khmer’s grand vision.

A few weeks back my wife SY and I went to moon right alongside them.

Angkor Wat beyond the boundary moat.

We went to Angkor Wat as part of a whirlwind 9-day tour of Bangkok and Cambodia. We spent about half that time in transit- 2 days for flights there and back, plus 2 days spent crossing the Thai-Cambodia land border via buses, minivans, and tuk tuks. Three of the remaining days we spent on an exhilarating tour schedule at Angkor Wat, waking up at 5am to see sunrises, coming back with sunset heat-exhausted (April is high summer in both countries, up to 40 degrees C / 100F), seeing everything that we could.

It was fantastic. For three days we rambled amongst the rubbled and overgrown temples of the Khmer empire, getting lost in myth and trying to break clear of the tourist throngs whenever we could. It wasn’t easy to get away from the masses though, not really accomplishable to the level I have in the past (where minor Japanese ruins likely go unvisited by anyone for months, if not years). Still, we hit a few spots off the beaten path (with dirt road access), walked a few routes not strictly laid-out for tourists to follow, and sated some primeval urge to do something a little adventuresome.

And of course we took photos along the way.

This is an HDR composite image, with the tourists fogged to ghosts. I quite like how they appear transient, while the Wat holds firm.

Angkor Wat means ‘city of temples’, and is frequently used to refer to all the temples in the vicinity of Siem Reap (the nearest town, whose name itself means-‘the flat defeat of Siem’, and ‘Siem’ means Thailand). However ‘Angkor Wat’ refers more precisely to one temple in particular, featuring a quincunx of towers like peaks in an ascending mountain range. It’s the largest temple of them all, with the biggest tourist draw, so it was tricky to get photos without people in.

All around Angkor Wat are lots of other temples. Nearby stands the huge Angkor Thom, enclosed by a massive wall, which is actually not a temple but a town. Inside it were lots of smaller temples, plus all kinds of other buildings, including the emperor’s palace. Nothing remains of the palace though, since the Khmer built it with wood, reserving stone for the homes of their gods.

This image from Tourism Cambodia gives you some idea of the two Angkor’s relative scale.

Angkor Wat is 500 acres in size.

Once we got buried in touring, going from vast construction to vast construction, the sheer wealth, scale, and pride of the Khmer empire came home to us repeatedly. This was a seriously rich empire, that left an indelible mark on the land. I read Angkor Wat itself was made of 5-10 million ‘bricks’, each weighing up to 3,300 pounds. Crazy. All of that had to be quarried, ferried down numerous canals dug for the purpose from a nearby mountain, dressed, then raised into place.

And that was just Angkor Wat.

It’s a stunning amount of stone. Like with most fallen civilizations, and Shelley’s immortal poem Ozymandius, it begs the question- How did they fall, if they were once so great? What happened?

I’m sure there are plenty of answers out there, probably a combination of over-population leading to over-use of water, desertification, with roaming barbarians to put the cherry on top (and cut the heads of all the statues). If you want to get into all that, I recommend Jared Diamonds book Collapse. But for me, the actual reason is less interesting now than the overwhelming feeling of loss/nostalgia/mystery/faded glory being there engendered.

It’s the same feeling I had in Pompeii, that I’ve written about before (here), and the same feeling I was chasing through numerous ruins all around Japan. The feeling that there are ghosts out there, with stories, who were powerful and mighty but who came up against some unseen force they could not defeat. So all their hubris turned to dust, and again we come back to Ozymandius’ ‘two trunkless legs of stone.’

OK enough of that for now. Some photos.

In the middle gatehouse, looking in.

You lay incense at this god’s feet.

We hired a guide for three days, Mr. Borey, who drove us around and suggested things to look at. He told us some of the history of the place too, which was fascinating. My favorite story was ‘The churning of the Sea of Milk.’ Do you know it?

It’s a Hindu origin myth. Set side-by-side with the origin in the bible’s Genesis, it really kicks a lot of ass. Of course it’s not a competition, but still. It’s actually a very important story to old Angkor, and was exemplified in stone just about everywhere you look. We’ll see the key creature from the story multiple times in these photos. But first, the carving-

Actually I think is the wrong carving, this being one of what heaven and hell looked like to the Khmers. Essentially quite a lot like a Christian version, with lots of torture in hell, and lots of slaves (except for the slaves) pampering you in heaven.

The carvings were huge, at least 60 meters long along the sides of various temples, maybe three meters tall. Here’s some art from the web-

Gods on the left, demons at right, Shiva turtle underneath and Shive man chilling on top, with fire-breathing Naga as rope.

Image from harekrsna.com

So what’s going on there?

The story is about the gods and the demons trying to get hold of the elixir of youth, so they can be all-powerful and live forever. It’s a special liquid found only at the deepest points of the sea of milk. Nobody can dive down to get it, it’s just too deep. So, like the mouse that churned the milk to butter to escape from the milk pail, they decided to churn it out.

The trouble was that the sea was big, and there was no whisk big enough. so they broke off a mountain and put it in the sea. Then they needed a rope to wrap around the mountain so they could spin it (like a spinning top), but there was no rope big enough. So they grabbed the world snake, Naga, and wrapped her around it. Then all the gods lined up on one side, the demons on the other, and so began the grandest bout of tug-of-war ever.

They churned the sea to bits. All the life in the sea got chopped up and spat out, including fish, whales, and people. At the center was Shiva, boss god, doing a dance. Finally they got the elixir, the gods drank it, happily ever after.

The key thing is the tug of war, and Naga. Rope-pullers and Naga are everywhere, lining roads, serving as balustrades, carved into walls. It’s an iconic image that repeats endlessly, everywhere (even in the Thai airport in Bangkok), the same way Christians have crosses with Jesus on.

This is the entrance to Angkor Thom (more on it in another post). At left and right are long lines of Naga-pullers.

Naga’s broken head with Naga-pullers hoisting.

At Angkor Wat Naga was used as the promenade balustrade- and actually there signs warning people not to sit on Naga, because that would be disrespectful. We even got in trouble once, because we sat on a bit of stone we didn’t realize was another part of Naga, and a site warden came over and yelled at our tour guide. It’s not ‘Khmer’ to sit on Naga.

Soon we were inside.

This is inside the central five stacks. Probably these big squares would have been full of water.

The cloisters in HDR. Lots of monks were strolling around in orange robes.

Next was an ascent, up towards the central tower. The stairs were very steep, and led to the central biggest tower, itself surrounded by four more courtyards.

Pretty huge. This is actually a stitched image of two photos, because it was too big for my camera to see all of it.

Walking around Angkor Wat made me think about what has always fascinated me about ruins, and which ruins (haikyo) have been my favourites in Japan. Largely, I like the old ones, and the big ones. If they were associated with events in history in some way, all the better- like the military bases, the kaiten factories, the multi-million dollar theme parks. Anything writ on a large scale.

Of course I went to the minor haikyo as well- the hotels, strip clubs, homes, spas, and enjoyed them too. Sometimes I took photos of minutiae inside drawers, standing on shelves, etc.. But mostly I was out for the grand sweeps, the huge architecture. I loved Matsuo ghost town, lost in the fog, and the great blue slides of Sports World, overgrown in green. Huge old factories, grand old parks, places that dared to dream.

Angkor Wat is obviously cut from that same cloth, but to the nth degree. It also however damns me to a limited number of such ruins. There are only so many grand ruins, even modern ruins, available. If I had the money, I could travel all round the world and take in all kinds of relics from World War 2, the cold war, economies in collapse. That would be pretty great. Maybe I’ll do that…

Angkor Wat from behind.

And in a few hours, we were done. It was hot, dusty, and we were tired of kids trying to sell us the same set of postcards for one dollar. It was nothing like a ‘haikyo’ explore, more like a very impressive museum, but that’s what we expected. Still, in some of the temples that followed I felt a bit of the old explorer’s buzz. There are so many temples, and many of them have not been museum-ified yet, and have their blocks half-tumbled where time dropped them, with trees still growing up through them and barely any tourists.

In? those few I could wander freely, over and under walls, climbing through windows, venturing into darkened ancient halls, cutting trails that, while hardly unique, were at least not the prescribed routes. And that was great. See those photos in the post about Angkor Thom. For now, we have to come back to Angkor Wat, and we have to come for the sunrise.

The purple skies held their breath, bated, waiting as the sun crept up towards us, and the gods and the demons took their positions at the great cosmic tug of war.

We went before dawn, the air still cool, and camped out at the reflecting pool and on the main walkway. Even then there were hundreds of other people around us with the same idea. But they were hushed, bound in by the early hour, the darkness, the mutual sense of anticipation as the sky turned purple, then pink, and the darkness began to lift.

And the skies grew lighter, as the gods and the demons twisted the world snake Naga, and churned the sea of milk, and raised the elixir of life like the sun into the sky.

Devatas clustered to listen, and to watch, and those that were favored were lit by the light of the gods, and those who fell behind grew dark in the shadow of demons.

And thus came the sun, rising over us all, and bringing life to the barren places, and glory, and…

And Hallelujah, praise Shiva, the world is renewed!!

With Naga to watch over all.

You can see more from Angkor Wat in the second half of this series, on Angkor Thom here (coming soon).

You can see modern ruins (haikyo) from Japan in the galleries here.

And world ruins in the galleries here.

Why ‘Cloud Atlas’ is no ‘Magnolia’

Mike Grist December 29, 2012and how to fix it, Book / Movie Reviews

Cloud Atlas is not a normal movie. It’s epic, glorious, ambitious, complex, etc, but as you’ll have surely heard from other reviews, it’s not a normal movie at all. Rather, it’s a kind of sprawling poem, in film, that ruminates on weighty issues like the ‘natural order’ behind slavery, and the revolutionary forces that rise up against it.

Over nearly 3 hours, it tries to blur 6 stories together, cross-cut over time and space, from 1849 on a South Pacific island to Neo Seoul in 2321, aiming for a climactic coda similar to Magnolia’s crowning ‘rain of frogs’. But in the end it disappoints, because in combo these stories fail to deliver any larger karmic punch, and never unite for one climactic action.

Why did it fail? And how did Magnolia succeed?

*** SPOILERS ***

I believe the lack of a rising climax is the major failure point of Cloud Atlas. This problem is very visible in the movie, but was quite likely baked in from the start, with the David Mitchell novel showing the same lack of substantial connections between the 6 narratives, connections required to reach Magnolia’s climactic heights. Resultingly, to get around that lack in both the book and the movie, numerous tricks are played to make it seem as though Cloud Atlas is actually a unified story, when it barely is. These tricks are largely cosmetic, surface level effects used to fake a greater coherence. The most obvious of them is the experimental narrative structure.

Experimental narrative

In Mitchell’s book, the six stories are told in a matroska-doll style, with each story nested inside the previous story. This means there are six beginnings; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, for something like 30 pages each, followed by 6 endings; 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The stories are organized by time, so we start in the past, zoom to a mid-point in the future, then zoom back to the past again.

This structure forces us to abandon each story halfway through, and spend the rest of the coming stories wondering how it will tie in, so when we do find links, however tenuous, it feels mildly satisfying, even if in terms of plot there is never any confluence at all.

In the movie the matroska style is abandoned, perhaps to the story’s detriment, replaced with a blend of all 6 stories happening ‘at the same time’, and cutting between them. The directors Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer made the point that what works in a book won’t work in a movie, and delaying the start of the 6th story, introducing all new characters, until the 90 minute mark of the movie would be disastrous.

Who knows though? I think it may have been better, more honest, more natural than the insane amount of cross-cutting they ended up with. Because Cloud Atlas cross-cuts wildly. Obviously there can be no rhyme or reason to these cuts, except at opportune, perhaps similarly themed moments. At one point Sonmi 451 (the fabricant clone/slave in future Neo Seoul, 2144, story 5) is asked what the afterlife might be like, and she says she imagines “heaven is a door opening”. We cross-cut to a gate opening in the middle of Timothy Cavendish’s (a chap locked up in an old people’s home in 2012, story 4) escape attempt. Is there any connections between these two? None, except the notion of a gate, perhaps as a symbol of freedom.

Bridging Symbols

And so Cloud Atlas is seasoned liberally with symbols. There is the comet birth-mark shared by 6 of the characters across the 6 stories, in each case possessed by the character who fights back against slavery. There is the ‘Cloud Atlas Sextet’, a piece of music composed in story 2 (Robert Frobisher, who fights against a kind of enslavement from his composer boss in the 1930s) being repeated in every successive story; in a record shop for Luisa Rey (a journalist seeking the truth behind a coming nuclear accident, story 3), in the background of Cavendish’ story 4, as the song the fabricants sign as they ascend to exultation in story 5, and probably somewhere in story 6 too.

There are also the tricks of actor and location. One of Cloud Atlas’ best known tricks is having the same actors play different characters in each story, often slathering them with disguising makeup (which changes Halle Berry from black to white, Doona Bae from Asian to white and Mexican, Hugo Weaving from male to female, and so on). They also re-used stage-sets repeatedly, simply redressing the same spaces with some of the same items of furniture for different scenes across different times. There are also repeated props, like the button of Will Ewing’s shirt (Ewing is a lawyer fighting the slave trade in blacks in 1849, story 1) recurring as a jewel in another story.

Halle Berry and Tom Hanks in their various roles.

Huge Weaving as various bad guys (and one girl).

These symbols offer a bridge of connectivity, but one that is wholly cosmetic. There is still some satisfaction to spot them, in being first to shout out “hey that’s Hugh Grant!” but none that make up important moving parts, except for the very weak sense that each story ‘inspired’ the next.

Sonmi 451 (story 5) watches a clip of a movie based on Timothy Cavendish’ escape (story 4) and is inspired to start a revolution. Luis Rey (story 3) reads Rufus Sixsmith’s letters (story 2, Robert Frobisher’s lover) which makes her wonder “why we keep making the same mistakes”. Zachry (a valleysman after the ‘fall’, story 6 in 2321) has a vision-dream and receives a prophecy, both of which feature snippets of the 5 other stories, as well as generally revering Sonmi 451 as a goddess figure. Yet none of these connections are that important. Sonmi 451 finds much better inspiration for her revolution. Luisa Rey’s letters don’t affect her choices materially.

These are all tacked on. Like the swapping actors, they are fun to spot, but don’t add to any sense of rising action or important connection.

More experimental narrative

However I didn’t finish describing the narrative. The following tricks seem unnecessary, and are probably a large part of the reason Cloud Atlas confused many people. It’s hard enough that there are 6 stories told across time and place, but the directors further confuse matters by not starting each respective story at the beginning. Rather many start with flash-forwards, to a point of high drama, before cutting back to their actual beginning.

The movie starts with old Tom Hanks (Zachry in story 6) telling the story of his life in retrospect. We then see snippets of Luisa Rey’s midpoint (story 3) with her car being driven off a bridge, Frobisher’s ending suicide (story 2), Sonmi 451’s near end inquisition (story 5), and perhaps others too. I didn’t mind this too much, but I do feel it’s a little lazy. The writer/directors clearly scoured their material for the best stuff to ‘engage’ the audience, found none of it at the start, so simply chopped a bunch of stuff from later on and moved it to the beginning.

It’s too much, really. It felt a little desperate to me.

Magnolia

So how did Magnolia deal with all this? That was a complex, ambitious narrative, principally thematically based around the various forms of child abuse, and their impacts on both victims and perpatrators. There’s Tom Cruise who hates his absent bastard of a father, and becomes a very negatively presented pick-up artist motivational speaker. There’s the girl who was abused by her father, and only now coming to terms with it, and the father’s view as well. There’s the smart kid forced to do quiz shows by his domineering dad until he wets his pants. There’s the lonely cop and loser burglar, who may or may not have parental issues, but perhaps expand the theme to include lonely people as well.

One thing Magnolia benefits from that Cloud Atlas can’t is that all these stories are happening at the same time, on the same days, in the same city. This allows paths to cross over several times. The abusive father is also the host of the quiz show the kid is on. The lonely cop dates the abused girl, and also meets the lonely burglar. Etc… Each of these connections, when they come, is very satisfying. It makes it feel like there is some reason we are watching these particular characters, at this particular time. It strengthens the bond we feel for them, and makes us care more.

And in Magnolia, there is rising action, with a global act-of-god event that connects all the stories together. It is perhaps ridiculous, but it is also amazing, and ties every story up at its peak beautifully, allowing each cross-cut to just amp up the climaxes, one on top of another.

Of course, it rains frogs. At the same moment, Tom Cruise is giving his career best performance, ranting at his dying absent-father in a hospital bed, the abused girl gets sympathy and understanding from a mother figure at the same time, the lonely cop and burglar talk to each other, perhaps save each other to some extent. Everybody gets a climax, all at the same time, and when that is over, the movie is over. Boom.

There is nothing like that in Cloud Atlas. Across time and space, how could there be? Instead we get a series of rolling climaxes, as in each story the comet-birthmark character steps up to the plate and strikes a blow against the ‘natural order of things’. Will Ewing (story 1) quits the slave trade, confronting his father-in-law who is a slave maven. Frobisher (story 2) actually wimps out, with suicide, so a fail there (though he argues suicide requires the greater courage). Luisa Rey (story 3) rather sort of survives, gets lucky, but with no satisfying denouement (she never faces evil Hugh Grant down). Cavendish (story 4) escapes the old people’s home with a bit of cunning, then bashes Nurse Noakes’ (Hugo Weaving) head in with a bit of help. Sonmi 451 lays the seed of a revolution (story 5) then dies like Christ. Zachry (story 6) mans up, ignores the satanic Old Georgie, and kills the cannibal Hugh Grant.

Good. Nice. But there is no tie-in. I wish there could be some sense that these were not just independent short stories of bravery, and in fact they really were caused by a ripple effect through history, as the trailer promised. But really they are not. They are individual stories with only cosmetic connections, so as one reaches dramatic height, there is not a lot of carry-over from one to the next. In addition, several of them have dramatic heights that are anti-climactic, or too comedic. Cavendish’ story is comedic, and while comedy certainly has a place in a movie like this, I would argue it doesn’t come in climax. Frobisher and Luisa Rey both whimper out. Story 6 has a climax, as Zachry gets to put aside his cowardice in the same place that his cowardice lost him his brother and niece in the beginning, but it’s not on the same order as story 1 and story 5.

Stories 1 and 5 are direct blows to the slave trade, and the most thematically connected. 1 is a slave-trader giving up his business, and 5 is a slave rising up. They are the strongest climaxes, and the most relevant. Sadly they don’t get the maximum play they would need, to approach rising action near the levels of Magnolia.

And how to fix it

So how can we fix this sprawling mass of narrative? Does it even need fixing?

First off, I’ll argue no. As a tone poem, a meditation on a theme from different perspectives, it does not need changing. It is beautiful, exciting, and there are climaxes to every individual arc.

Secondly I’ll argue yes. Alongside a movie like Magnolia, which used its stories to bring us to a fever pitch climax by the end, each building on the others, Cloud Atlas performs poorly. It does not rise, it does not link, and everything that happens in the middle stories feels largely irrelevant to what happens at the end. It’s just a bunch of bits, told in funky out of sequence ways so as to make the most of dramatic spikes.

So how to fix that? Here are a few ways.

1- I would refocus the stories around the most important, most dramatic event- Sonmi 451’s rebellion. I would use her as the frame story, perhaps even keeping it as her inquisition at the start. Then I would have every previous story come as an ingredient to Sonmi’s decision to rebel. They go this way a little bit already, with her watching Cavendish’s talking “I will not be subjugated.” It should be taken further, with his lines being the last lines she says before she dies, as they are clearly the most powerful thing influencing her on her martyrdom.

Then we enter Cavendish’ story, and somewhere at his moment of truth, he will think back to what inspired him, in his case- Luisa Rey. Then we see Luisa Rey’s story, and she’s inspired by Frobisher’s music to be strong, who in turn was inspired by Will Ewing.

In fact I think I may have just inverted the matroska structure here. Ewing is now the heart of the movie, which actualy makes more sense, since he is the earliest in time, and everything from him is a ripple. Then Sonmi is the frame, which makes most sense since we want to finish with the thing that came last.

I suppose if we’re going in this direction, we can add Zachry back in. But then his finale needs to carry more weight. His faith in Sonmi needs to give him strength to do something for himself, rather than simply be rescued, as he is now. I’d like Halle Berry’s tech up on Mauna Kea also tell him that the raiders were coming, via radar or what not, in time for him to get down from the mountain and fight. Or perhaps they have already been enslaved? Then we have a brilliant moment as he faces the giant Sonmi statue, and considers his choices. Then he’ll race down the mountain, and fight. Perhaps it doesn’t even matter if he wins or not. what matters is that he fight. End.

The current Zachry ending is weak. Great climaxes come when both good and bad guy are at their most powerful moment. Zachry however finds Hugh Grant asleep. Easy. Then he wins not by being resourceful or badass, but because Halle Berry has an awesome gun. Nice, but not satisfying as a conclusion to the story of finding the strength to rise up against unbeatable odds.

So we need that to be the throughling- finding the strength to rise up against unbeatable odds. And it is because of the hero’s actions in the previous story, that the next hero finds the strength to rise up and fight back.

That’s in Cloud Atlas now, but so lost and diluted, more footnotes than prime motivators (for example, Luisa Rey is far more inspired by her father than by Frobisher’s music- for the narrative to hold, it must be the music that inspires her, likewise for Frosbisher, he enjoys Ewing’s story, but we can’t say it’s his main reason to fight his boss, chiefly he fights cos he wants to be famous, and also he fights by accident). We need those 6 decision moments to be inspired each by the last, for the movie to have that rising sense that something massive, a great ripple through time, has been affected.

I’d also like to know that Sonmi’s revolution somehow either caused the ‘fall’, or helped avert it from being even worse. I want it to have meant something more than the utter failure of humanity. Perhaps it could be more explicit that it was her influence that seeded the space colonies.

I’d like to see this version. Of course it will never be made, but existing footage could probably be cut to straighten things out a bit more, and make for a much more powerful climax.

Cullsman #9 @ Andromeda Spaceways

Mike Grist December 15, 2012Books, Writing

The Cull needs you.

My story Cullsman #9 is now available to buy in Andromeda Spaceways semi-pro zine, in edition 55, here.

I first wrote Cullsman some 5 years ago, inspired by an idea I had 10 years ago, of a galactic hunter-gatherer ‘snail’ civilization that trawls across the universe dragging its own Dyson sphere with it, stopping to harvest planets along the way. Awesome? I always thought so, but I couldn’t make the story kick the way I really wanted to- it was all idea and no forward momentum. Then a year ago I dusted it off, completely rewrote it, and am now totally proud of the result. It even features King Trunk, a slight ad-lib on our family pet here in Tokyo, King Frog. Watch out for his appearance.

So what is Cullsman #9? It’s a story about the lengths we’ll all go to to protect our own, about genocide, love, loss, and leadership in the face of stone-cold terrorism. There’s some humor, devastation, and gentle echoes of Asimov’s Foundation.

You can find it on the Andromeda Spaceways products page- that’s here– edition 55. Not 56, which is above, but 55, which came out after 56 for some reason. Of course there are lots of other stories in it too, which I’m certain are great- though I haven’t had a chance to read them yet.

You can get print or ebook formats. If you do get it, I’d love to hear what you think below :).

Again, find Cullsman #9 at Andromeda Spaceways edition 55 here.

Why Neal Stephenson’s ‘Snow Crash’ needs rebooting

Mike Grist December 12, 2012and how to fix it, Book / Movie Reviews

Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is a blistering assault of techno-punk babble, metaphoric memetic conspiracy theory, and hubristically confident authorial voice, half-baked into a bun so undercooked it’ll likely stodge up your wind-pipe and throttle you.

But also- brilliantly ambitious, stunningly complex, exciting, hilarious, and (still) so razor-cool you’re likely to embolize your brain on its bleeding edge.

Let’s try to square that circle.

Snow Crash was Stephenson’s 1992 breakout sf debut, which catapulted him straight to stratospheric comparisons with William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, such was its hip density. To its supporters, it predicted a virtual internet (Second Life, AKA the Metaverse), surfed meme theory as that wave became a viral tsunami, forecast the corporatization of the USA, and presaged a boom in Japanophilic manga consumption.

To its detractors its a stonking great turd of bosh cribbed from history books, conspiracy theory nutcases, weapons fetishists, and a neo-liberal’s bizarre imagination. And of course it’s both at once.

Probably it is an appalling oversight in my self-education as a writer of fantasy and sf that I haven’t read Snow Crash until now. I did read Stephenson’s later epic Cryptonomicon, and while it wowed me, it also kind of switched me off. Perhaps something about detached characters, disconnected stories, and just wondering why I was supposed to care about lines of sight in a Phillipines data haven. Huh? I even had a crack at Quicksilver, first book in the encyclopaedically unedited Baroque Cycle, but surrendered 100 pages in, much as I might after 1 page of Finnegan’s Wake.

Then I read Anathem, which left me again awed, put off, and more than a little annoyed, not quite knowing why. I vowed not to read REAMDE, his latest. But Snow Crash, well, why not get in on the ground floor?

Now I see the problem. It’s the baking time.

Stephenson is undoubtedly a very smart, informed, creative wordsmith, but I don’t think he’s ever finished a book the way most writers finish a book. Most writers, and most published books, are a fine mix of their several content matters, smoothied in the blender until the constituent parts have all their identifying edges atomized and made part of the story’s DNA. The book is then of a piece, consistent, and develops at a uniform pace throughout.

Stephenson does not do that. It is incredibly plain what the constituent parts of his story are, because they stick out like bloody stumps, barely cauterized at the edges where they’ve been soldered together. The result is a shambling Frankenstein, all bits and bobs with a loosely interwoven circulatory system barely keeping the cardiogram beeping.

These are the bits of Snow Crash:

– Pizza delivery roadster in ultra-tech delivery-mobile

– Second Life predicting ‘Metaverse’ to goggle into (also predicting X-box Kinect for sword-fighting)

– Deep Sumerian linguistic code theory, pitched as an ancient mind-control virus, with conflux to Babel as religious inoculation

– Cross-pollination of that same virus in a hyper-wired future

– Future tech in numerous guises, including ‘loogie’ immobilizing guns, ‘rat thing’ AI security cyborgs with the pack-minds of dogs, smart spoke-wheels, glass knives, dentata, and nuclear gat guns

– Half Japanese black hacker supreme with major sword skills and a tangled history, called Hiro Protagonist

– Badass Aleut giant with glass knives, a personal nuclear weapon, and a major beef with the USA

– Compartmentalized and corporatized future USA, where corporate DNA is spread through ‘three-ring binders’ in franchise chains

And they are amazing bits. Really, there’s not a bit that’s not interesting, unlike later works which had some large dull stretches. Snow Crash is either high octane pulse-jumping or mind-twisting conspiracy theory, and I stuck with it all the way. But it also seemed half-done. The various sections, all those various ingredients I listed above, function pretty much discretely. They do not merge or blend, except to be overlaid.

Is this even criticism?

How is this a criticism if I say I enjoyed the book?

It felt like reading a mixture of a rabidly metaphorring Angels and Demons-era Dan Brown, intercut with large chunks of the oddest tech and conspiracy sections of Wikipedia, with bits of Digital Fortress-era Dan Brown, sliced with some valley girls meh blog, partially blended, half-baked.

We start with pizza delivery, but don’t go back to it. We do a bunch of other stuff while Stephenson warms up his engines, I barely remember. We read an endless bureaucratic memo about toilet paper allotments in the CIA. The plot about the conspiracy theory kicks in, and for maybe 40 interspersed pages is straight up explained to us by the Librarian. Other items listed above happen, in sequence, rather disconnected.

And our hero, called Hiro, experiences zero change, except to perhaps fully realize what a bad-ass he was all along. Well, OK, thrillers don’t necessarily need that. But thrillers aren’t usually this long either, are they? And Snow Crash is long for a thriller, at 180,000 words. That length with no change can get very samey.

I suppose I’m just a little teed off that Stephenson didn’t do a bit more chewing for me, a bit more baking, really completed the work, instead of just serving me a hodge-podge of soldered-together chips and coleslaw. Couldn’t he have made the whole thing a bit more cohesive? Couldn’t he have cut YT altogether?

Now I realize I haven’t even mentioned YT yet, which tells you he probably could have cut her. She’s some hip skater girl, whose story was recently mirrored in the bike messenger movie ‘Premium Rush’, and she kind of tags alongside Hiro for a bit, but not in any important way- more as just another viewpoint character. We don’t need her in any sense beyond broadly exploring the world, at all. Just like we don’t need her mom, or half the stuff in this book. At the very core there is a plot, and it is fascinating, but it’s all in lumps and bumps, with chunks of whatever other stuff took Stephenson’s fancy that day.

So is that bad? Well, I feel slightly annoyed about it. I’m sure the book could be better, and that’s what’s annoying. Could I have done it better myself, no, but probably Stephenson could. So I feel like I’m not getting his best effort, and that’s vexing. I felt it with Cryptonomicon and Anathem too, that I was being fed something that wasn’t really ready, hadn’t risen, hadn’t been blended smooth.

But then, would those stories still be Stephenson if we blended them all the way? Would they actually be better? Perhaps not, perhaps the way they are now, all tangles and string-tie bindings, is part of what has made him famous. In which case, all this is academic. Snow Crash is undoubtedly half-baked, but perhaps this is the only way it could be what it is, perhaps half-bakedness is in its DNA, written in its three ring binder, and Babel-forbid I don’t wanna try and untangle that.

The Tonsor’s Son @ Podcastle

Mike Grist October 12, 2012Books

I knew from the moment I saw him that his beard was full of evil.

My story The Tonsor’s Son is now up on the PodCastle website- an awesome semi-pro zine that makes audio recordings of short stories. The rendering they’ve given to my story- which begins as above, about beards full of evil, is fantastic. When I wrote that the bad guy had a voice like curds comfortably stuck deep in his throat, I never really imagined what it would sound like. Well, reader Steve Anderson obviously has, and the result is pretty amazing.

But what is The Tonsor’s Son? It’s a story about evil, shaving, and the search for the seventh blade, rated R for violence and gore, with a little humor to leaven the dough.

You can listen to the whole thing for free on the PodCastle site here, where you can also subscribe to their podcast, which of course I recommend- as it features some great stories from brilliant authors, folks like Peter S. Beagle and Elizabeth Bear, whose company I am very glad to join.

Again, listen to it here.

Why the ‘Hunger Games’ was too calorie-lite

Mike Grist August 14, 2012and how to fix it

I found the Hunger Games movie to be kind of disappointing. While I was watching it my mind wandered. I wondered how much time was left, and when we would get to the good stuff, only to realize the ‘good stuff’ had already happened.

So why was this? Why did the movie fail to really engage me, while the book had me gripped? I think it’s largely down to two reason.

** SPOILERS **

Both halves of the movie are off, in different ways. In the first half we see Katniss’ world of District 12, which should set the life or death stakes of the brutal world of Panem. People are supposed to be dying of starvation on the streets there every day, with no-one to help them. But that’s not in the movie. Everyone looks well fed, indulges in charity, can afford to pass up food opportunities.

In the book, we really feel the Hunger. In flashbacks, Katniss, Prim and their mother nearly die of starvation. Nothing comes for free, there is no charity but the government’s own brand of charity, which involves putting your name in the Reaping hat more and more times.

In the second half of the movie we enter the Games, where the problem is one of focus. In the book we are with Katniss through every moment, never exiting her claustrophobic viewpoint for a second. Everything comes to us filtered through her, whereas in the film, we exit constantly to check up on other plot threads, which seriously dents the story’s power to grip us and make us share Katniss’ sense of building threat.

Both these flaws lessen the stakes and the power of the story. The world of District 12 comes to us partially Disney-fied, the world of the Games is presented more as a reality TV game than live-or-die battle. The movie has filed off the book’s edges sharp edges, a kind of Hunger Games-lite, and in so doing has robbed the story of some of its ravenous bite.

Let’s look at those problems in more detail.

1- not enough hunger

Instead of hunger, what we get is:

– A vision of Katniss’ District 12 that summons up a pastoral, pre-industrial woodland America, not a dystopic slum barely surviving off government hand-outs. No-one is dirty, no-one is skeletally thin, no-one is begging on the street or dying in the gutters. All of these happen in the first few pages of the book, but are wholly absent from the movie. There is some talk of ‘don’t let them starve’ when Katniss says bye to Gale after the Reaping, but we’ve seen no evidence of it all- cue:

– When Katniss is about to kill a deer in the opening minutes, Gale scares it off, claiming she’ll never be able to sell it because the Reaping’s in town. Wtf? They’ve got the balls to cross the fence, but not to kill a deer and stow it somewhere for one day? Put it in the cold-cellar and sell it tomorrow! This may seem a small thing, but it sets the image of Gale and Katniss as people who can afford to pass up game. It makes them look like sport-hunters, when in reality they’re supposed to be desperate, constantly on the edge of starvation. I have no doubt desperate people would kill the deer and store it.

– In the Hob, some kindly/worried old lady gives Katniss the mockingjay pin, for no reason at all. This is totally wrong. Greasy Sae in the book was often generous with Katniss, but never for free. To give something for nothing is totally antithetical to the mood of District 12. This woman cannot afford to give anything for free, because she too is about to starve, like everyone else. So giving gifts just doesn’t make sense. Blah blah, it shows human spirit, etc, but at this point she doesn’t even know Katniss is in Games, so no reason to treat her specially. If this old woman showed this kind of generous human spirit every day, giving stuff for free- she should be dead! Terrible business sense.

– Even in the Peeta/bread flashback scenes, we don’t get a good idea of how close to death Katniss is. She looks a bit winded only, like she had a brisk jog in the rain. She should be emaciated, at least on her knees, looking startlingly close to death. That is how starving people look. Chubby-cheeked girls though who are a bit tired and feeling peckish- well, that’s hard to empathize with.

For me, this is a serious failing of the movie. Setting up District 12’s harsh reality at the start is essential, because it informs everything that comes later and sets all the stakes. Without this harsh beginning, you simply have a less well-executed, less slower, less well-shot version of Battle Royale, where the heroine spends most of the movie hiding, getting freebies from her sponsors, and getting rescued by other people (Peeta, Rue, the dude from district 11).

Prescription-

Just make it more brutal. Show people are dying on the streets. Moments of fun with Gale are stolen moments, crushed to diamonds under the weight of their responsibility. Make District 12 a truly horrible place to live, where charity is inconceivable. Make it as harsh as the book.

Nice leathers- should be a bit more tatty, more obviously home-made. Didn’t buy it at Walmart.

2- not enough focus

In the book during the arena, we never leave Katniss’ head. We never get a moment’s respite, we are with her from beginning to end. This incredibly tight focus is incredibly effective at putting us in Katniss’ shoes, forcing us to viscerally go through all the things she goes through. Being a book, this can be done with lots of stream of consciousness, thought-flashbacks and what-not. It is a unique strength of the written story.

The movie loses it. This is perhaps unavoidable, because to only be in Katniss’ viewpoint perhaps guided by voice-over, would probably be weird. But there are endless leapfrogs out of Katniss’ situation, which serve to constantly break the tension. We never feel the visceral threat she is under (except perhaps the moments around when the tube takes her up to the arena), because escape is so easy for us. We bounce in and out, while Katniss hunkers down in her cave. We go to:

District 11, giving their fingers-up thing for Rue
Snow and Seneca talking shop
the Games control room
Gale feeling haunted and alone on a beautiful panorama
District 11 starting a rebellion
Snow wandering in his garden

And so on. This constant back and forth endlessly breaks the tension. I know it’s hard to do otherwise in a movie, where they have to show something interesting all the tie, but I wish they’d cut away less. Why not spend more time focusing on the rudiments of Katniss’ early survival, like an episode of Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls.

I want to see her every action, because at every step her life hangs in the balance. Give us more on Rue, and less on the Game makers. What is gained by seeing them? Nothing, and the sense of fear is lost. In the book’s arena, the Gamemakers are faceless, all-powerful gods. In the movie, they look more like NASA controllers playing a video game. Something is definitely lost, and nothing gained but a few Minority Report-esque tech scenes.

Prescription-

Narrow the focus considerably. If they must bounce around, bounce around inside the arena. Show us what the other tributes are doing. This is the time for flashbacks too. Make Katniss a bit more proactive- because it’s very apparent in the movie that she really doesn’t do much, except sit around in trees and wait. Cut all sign of the Gamemakers, the reality TV coverage, Snow, all of it. Let Katniss and Rue talk about what the Gamemakers are doing instead, what Snow’s plans are, what it’s like in District 11. That’s better. Let every moment be suffused with tension, that Kato might be creeping up on them in the dark.

Too much switching between characters.

3- assorted

There were several other disappointing points in? the movie.

– The fire outfits sucked. I can’t claim to know how this might have been done better, but after imagining whole-body aflame suits, where they looked more like the Human Torch, what we got was pretty feeble: a bit of fake-fire hanging off their shoulders. Not good, and not worthy of the acclaim they get. I don’t want to see the black suit they’re wearing at all. Just fire, is what makes it sexy. Redo.

– Everything came too easy. This is similar to point 1, but more about what comes later. Also its a direct transliteration from the book- so perhaps that’s a problem with the original. Essentially- Katniss has to do very little to get a whole lot:

She gets Peeta for free, a totally selfless dog-boy who’ll do anything to keep her alive, just because she’s pretty.
She gets Cinna for free, without whom she’d have had nothing to say on the reality TV show, and would’ve been unremarkable during the entrance. It doesn’t make much sense, since you’d expect the Career tributes to get the best designers.
She gets Rue and trackerjacks, placed with a huge amount of coincidence both within reach, despite the arena being so massive.
She gets medicine immediately for a minor burn to her leg. It just didn’t look serious enough for her to need medicine even.
She gets saved by Rue’s fellow district 11er.

I know all of this is in the book, but since we’re in her head, constantly feeling how hard it is for her, we forgive these freebies. In the movie, with all the jumping around, it seemed like she was just getting an endless stream of freebies. She didn’t have to suffer/subsist at all. They ought to have either given her less, or made us feel her suffering more. Also make her more proactive. Why not let her see the trackerjackers herself, and then rescue Rue independently of that moment?

– The Peeta stuff. In the book, because we’re in her head, there’s the great tension of half-falling for Peeta, and half playing to the cameras. In the movie, a lot of that was lost, and it looked almost like she’d actually fallen for him. They had to show somehow, that it wasn’t really real, and both she and Peeta knew it, and were still playing their game.

Conclusion

I really thought I was going to love the Hunger Games. The trailer looked so good. But in the end it just got too diluted with non-suffering and cuts away from Katniss, breaking the stakes and the mood for me, making the whole thing feel like a bunch of kids play-acting out the book for their parents in their living room. It didn’t feel cinematic, it didn’t get its hands dirty in the blood and muck and murder and starvation, and resultingly it lost a lot in the book-movie transfer.

Well, they wanted a kid-friendly rating. Too bad, cos while the book is kid friendly, its also a whole lot darker, bleaker, and exciting than the movie.

Page 39 of 90
←
1
...
38
39
40
...
90
→