I immediately jumped on Portal once I bought the Orange Box, but it didn't take me long before I started working my way through HalfLife 2. I'm not a big FPS guy - counting HL2, you can still count all FPS action games I've played on the fingers of one hand - but I am a fan of Half Life, and it seemed long overdue to return to the world.
I think I first encountered HalfLife in the summer of 1999, after graduating from high school but before starting at college. I can't remember now exactly what made me pick it up. I've far and away been much more interested in RPG and strategy games than action games, but I think the torrent of praise I was hearing for HL grew too big to ignore. If I remember correctly, it won pretty much every single "Game of the Year" award there was when it came out.
For a while I'd held the iD games of Doom and Quake in contempt as convenient whipping boys. It helps that I'd never played either one... the subject matter made them pretty much off limits to me, but even beyond that, the reputation they've had is amazing graphics with minimal plot and reflex-based gameplay. I prided myself on having more intellectual aspirations in my gaming. In contrast, while HL was still definitely an action game, it had won kudos for its storytelling and puzzle aspects.
So I started playing Half Life. And kept going, and going, and going. I went off to college, put gaming on the back shelf for a while as I got my academic sea legs, then picked it back up again. I started to wonder when it would ever end. Not that I was eager to stop, you understand - I was amazed at the variety of the game, the way that it was constantly unfurling, growing ever bigger and more complex. I just couldn't comprehend all the work that must have gone into making a game that was this enormous.
My roommate picked it up and made it pretty far through the single-player campaign, then got bored and switched to the multiplayer portion. For a while I used my Linux partition to run a deathmatch server called Timmy's House of Sprinkles. It was a simple affair, 8 players maximum, with I think a 10-minute limit on each game, and stayed on my favorite multiplayer map, a warehouse that I liked for its small size and the constant action you got as a result. My roommate later migrated on to Counterstrike, which I never got into, but further amazed me. Valve hadn't just created a killer game: they'd built an amazing platform, and I was stunned that the volunteer-based collaborative model that had produced Linux could also create a successful, commercial-quality game like Counterstrike.
I eventually beat the single player campaign, and was well pleased. I poked around a little with various user-created modules, including a cool three-part horror game called something like "They Live." But when I switched to a LInux-only system, HalfLife was one of the casualties, and it faded away.
I'm frankly stunned that it's ten years later and I'm playing the sequel... it doesn't feel like that much time could possibly have passed. I'm also stunned that the game is five years old and still looks amazing.
The original HL was revolutionary for its time, but I think that the industry has caught up. To some extent, you were being radical if you even included any intimations of story in a FPS game before then, other than "All the bad guys are X, kill them all." HL's story was evocative, which is one of the things I like best about it. There were no videos, no cut scenes, everything happened in real-time in front of your very eyes. And so you wouldn't get the standard gaming exposition, describing what's going on and why. Instead of hearing how dire the situation was, you would see it for yourself: not only the hordes of aliens you must constantly fight off, but distantly glimpsed encounters as scientists are slaughtered, or a panicked call for help coming in over a radio. Occasionally you would encounter a particular researcher or someone who would fill you in on something a little more nuanced - "The survivors are gathering in the Lamda core, you should make your way over there." On the whole, though, HL was a textbook example of showing and not telling.
In some ways, HL2 is a step back from that austerity, though I didn't mind at all. There is far more dialog in the sequel than I remember in the first game, and more differentiated characters. Instead of two models of scientists and one model of security guard, you get really well-modeled and well-crafted characters with their own personalities, ambitions, and behavior. It's still an action-driven game, of course, but this time around you hear more from the people you're working to save.
The gameplay is a huge step up from the original, which was already a lot of fun. FPS games have a reputation for linearly improving weaponry; once you get the BFG, there's no point in using anything smaller. In HL, you had to quickly learn which weapons to use for each situation. The machine gun was best when you had a swarm of soldiers in a large room to clear out quickly; the shotgun was best if you were in tight quarters in one-on-one combat; the sniping crossbow could help if you could spot enemies from far away; grenades were tough to master but could clear a room if you got the timing right; and the crowbar was the ultimate melee weapon if you could move quickly and judge your enemy's reach. Add to this exotic weapons like the "bee gun," which could seek out enemies, and the rocket launcher, your only hope for taking down certain large enemies but something that would destroy you if you got caught in the blast.
HL2 keeps most of these weapons (except the bee gun), and adds its own. The new biological "weapon" is an antlion seed pod, which you can use to summon a swarm of obedient alien ants. However, the hands-down most impressive and most praised weapon is the Gravity Gun. This unique tool shows off Valve's vaunted physics engine, and lets you interact with the world in extremely fun, unpredictable ways.
One thing that is a little odd is the set of enemies. There are plenty of new ones, including the forces of the Combine, the alliance between collaborationist humans and the aliens that police human cities. There's also a return of many old enemies, including our friends the headcrab and ceiling tentacles, and some new aliens, such as a great and creepy "fast zombie" and a poisonous version of the headcrab. But I feel like we've lost some of the large enemies from the first game... I vaguely remember there being some larger aliens later in the first game that seem to be entirely missing here. Almost everyone you fight is roughly your size, although there is one great boss in the form of a giant antlion.
Level design! It's amazing. The city environments are cool and pretty unique for a game... it's a dystopic version of an Eastern European city, which is more varied and interesting than the white antiseptic look we got in HL1 or the standard post-apocalyptic New York-ish environment of most sci-fi games of this sort. Where the game really sold me, though, are the exteriors. In particular, you play extended sequences along a coastline, and the interplay of water, sky, sand, and grass are really quite gorgeous. Some levels are just awe-inspiring. Ravenholm is fantastic, a demented Transylvanian landscape filled with spooky atmosphere, environmental puzzles (and weapons), and a great mixture of free roaming exploration and more standard goal-driven progression. Finally, the Citadel at the end of the game is jaw-dropping, a masterpiece of cool design.
On the whole, I think HL2 is a bit shorter than HL1, but still plenty long enough. I've also played through the Lost Coast, an entertaining tech demo, and have just started on Episode 1. I am a little curious where and how they will make this franchise go, but they have so much going for them that they shouldn't have much trouble.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Bounce Back
Whoa.
"Zeitoun" is a really powerful and moving book. A work of nonfiction from Dave Eggers, it tells the story of one family's experience with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. It manages to be gut-wrenching without feeling manipulative... the story is so compelling that it demands a response, and I'm still trying to sort through just what that response should be.
Like many Americans, I was horrified at the stories and pictures we saw of devastated New Orleans after the hurricane. I shared in the frustration at the seeming incompetence of our government to respond to the disaster. I suspect that I'm also like many other Americans in the way that the incident has been slowly fading for me. I still think it was shameful, of course, but I very rarely think about it any more, and when I do it's from a more detached viewpoint. Which isn't very helpful. As many people rightly pointed out at the time, the biggest legacy of Katrina is not the storm itself, but the way it exposed existing problems in our own society, things that are rarely seen in the media but that profoundly affect the character of our country: the vast divide between rich and poor, the severe social isolation within cities, rampant prejudice, and so on.
Weirdly enough, though, those aren't the areas that Zeitoun mines. The main characters in this book aren't part of the masses crammed into the Superdome that so outraged the world; they are successful middle-class people who have realized the American Dream. I think that this book gives an unflinching and unapologetic view of three sides of America. We see the good: the selflessness, courage, everyday decency of individual citizens that both enrich our daily lives and help see us through scenes of tragedy. We see the individual badness, too: blind prejudice, lack of responsibility, and fearfulness that push people to make bad decisions which cut others down in small or large ways. Finally and most damning, we see first-hand how our institutions work in stressful situations, and the sight isn't pretty. It was stunning and depressing to read about the actions of police, the National Guard, the corrections system, the judicial system, and the political system. The problems here rose far above the level of individual incompetence and revealed that the structural orientation of these bedrock institutions is in dire need of reform.
MINI SPOILERS
The book starts slowly but engagingly, after Hurricane Katrina has been named but several days before it makes landfall. We gradually get to know the Zeitoun family. The father Abdulrahman (usually just "Zeitoun") comes from a large Syrian family, and settled in New Orleans after working in the merchant marines for a decade. He met Kathy, a native of Louisiana who converted to Islam. Together they raise a loving family with one son (from Kathy's previous marriage) and four daughters. They also run a successful painting and contracting business, known throughout New Orleans for their high quality of work and reliability.
The Islam aspect is fascinating, both getting glimpses inside the faith (through the eyes of one born to it and one who came to it), as well as seeing how Muslims felt in the post-2001 crusading years. One of the stories that affected me most was reading about how Kathy came to leave her Christian faith after her pastor publicly humiliated her after she came to him for spiritual help. The side of Islam we see here is the one we keep hearing about on NPR: peaceful, devout, upright, thoughtful. Along with Kathy we see that there are a wide variety of Muslims, just as there are a wide variety of Christians: some are extremely strict in their faith, others are just occasional practicers, some are highly modernized, others remain in the past, and so on. Of course I'm not going to convert or anything, but it was nice to see more of the faith through the eyes of the faithful.
The middle section of the book is extremely hopeful. Kathy and the family leave the city once an evacuation order is issued. Zeitoun remains behind to watch after the dozens of properties that the family owns. He stays awake through two days of storm as the rain pours down, leaks spring in the roof, the wind howls, the water rises, the rain tampers down and then leaves, and the water rises. He breathes a sigh of relief, but we remain tense, knowing that the worst is yet to come. He wakes up to find the water improbably rising once again, and instantly realizes that the levees have been breached and the city is doomed. He doesn't panic or flee, though. He believes that he has remained behind for a reason: that God wants to use him to help the others who are stuck in the city. He uses a small rowboat to paddle around his neighborhood. He rescues some elderly shut-ins who could not or would not flee the city before, he meets up with some other people who stayed behind and are interested in helping others, and feeds neighborhood dogs who were abandoned and trapped in their owners' houses.
This section feels surreal and exciting. The scenes Zeitoun encounters are very different from the images that we have of life after the storm. He realizes this as it happens, too; he and Kathy have cell phones, and through her reports and reports from other Zeitoun family members he receives countless warnings about the chaos in the Superdome and roving gangs of looters. He also receives many rumors that later will prove to be false: mass rapes of children, snipers shooting at rescue workers, and other horror stories. These tales are so far from his experiences in Uptown New Orleans that he can't take them too seriously, and he continues on his mission of exploration and rescue.
Zeitoun only once sees looters, and never has any violent confrontations with anyone who remained behind. No: his horror comes entirely at the hands of his own government. He is attacked and arrested, along with three other helpers, within one of the properties he owns. From here he swiftly falls into a legal black hole that echoes Guantanamo in every way: prisoners, American citizens, are not allowed phone calls, legal representation, medical attention; nobody is told where they are, and Kathy spends more than a week thinking that her husband might be dead. We eventually learn that Zeitoun was arrested because a corrupt cop identified him as someone who had looted a Walgreens, but once he enters the prison system, the military justice system begins treating him as an al Qaeda member.
The book doesn't grandstand much about race, just laying out its stories about what happened, but it's still profoundly depressing. Zeitoun and another Syrian named Nasser are grouped together in prison, eventually sharing a tiny cell built for a single prisoner. Later, they are joined by four African-American prisoners who were also swept up after Katrina. One of them was a volunteer firefighter from Albuquerque; he answered the call to come to New Orleans and help with the rescue effort. He was arrested. Another man worked for a construction company in Houston that was hired by the government to help save some structures in the city. Even though he was wearing his uniform and had ID, the Guard accused him of stealing the tools he was using, and threw him in prison as well. Now, to some extent we might be tempted to excuse these wrongful incarcerations as the result of the chaos of the moment, but is it really a coincidence that these men were black and Arab? If not, what does that say about our society? When we're stressed, will we always assume the worst of people who don't look like us?
Eventually a Christian missionary talks with Zeitoun; Zeitoun convinces him to break the rules and let Kathy know that he is alive. From this time on, things begin to move forward, but Zeitoun is still in a weird, Kafka-esque state. Kathy is told that she should come to his hearing, but will not be told where the hearing is. Bail is set absurdly high with no chance to demonstrate that it is unnecessary. Kathy has survived the stress of the storm, deteriorating relationships with her family, a flight across the country to Arizona, dealing with the possible death of her husband, and restarting her childrens' lives in a new school, but it's her encounter with the justice system that finally breaks her. She suffers a nervous collapse, and to this day she isn't as mentally sharp as she used to be. It's a really heartbreaking thought.
Overall, you're left with mixed feelings at the end of the book. Things are better; Zeitoun wasn't permanently vanished, he didn't die in prison, and he and Kathy have restarted their business and had a son. And yet, in the broader picture, it's hard to believe that much has changed. Since that time the Democrats have taken over Congress and we have a new President, and I don't want to diminish the importance of those events, but Obama won't be the first person on the ground when the next disaster strikes. Our institutions are ultimately made of people; those people, in turn, are shaped by the institutions to which they belong. Fundamental reform and better planning are urgently necessary, and there's little reason to believe that they have learned the right lessons from Katrina.
END SPOILERS
The most powerful aspect of the book may be its narrow focus. When you're confronted with a huge tragedy, your mind kind of reels and shuts down. I can hear that millions of people were displaced, and it sounds awful, but I just have no sense of comprehension about what that means. However, when you hear one person's story, that becomes something that you can wrap your mind around and react to. It becomes a gateway that you can use to begin appreciating the magnitude of the tragedy. It's why Anne Frank's diary is so incredibly powerful: through her personal story, the horror of the Holocaust becomes real. Similarly, Zeitoun helps move past the headlines and show the reality of Katrina. It isn't, and doesn't pretend to be, a complete record of everything that happened during the storm, but it's a full story, a necessary one, a chance to find out what went wrong.
"Zeitoun" is a really powerful and moving book. A work of nonfiction from Dave Eggers, it tells the story of one family's experience with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. It manages to be gut-wrenching without feeling manipulative... the story is so compelling that it demands a response, and I'm still trying to sort through just what that response should be.
Like many Americans, I was horrified at the stories and pictures we saw of devastated New Orleans after the hurricane. I shared in the frustration at the seeming incompetence of our government to respond to the disaster. I suspect that I'm also like many other Americans in the way that the incident has been slowly fading for me. I still think it was shameful, of course, but I very rarely think about it any more, and when I do it's from a more detached viewpoint. Which isn't very helpful. As many people rightly pointed out at the time, the biggest legacy of Katrina is not the storm itself, but the way it exposed existing problems in our own society, things that are rarely seen in the media but that profoundly affect the character of our country: the vast divide between rich and poor, the severe social isolation within cities, rampant prejudice, and so on.
Weirdly enough, though, those aren't the areas that Zeitoun mines. The main characters in this book aren't part of the masses crammed into the Superdome that so outraged the world; they are successful middle-class people who have realized the American Dream. I think that this book gives an unflinching and unapologetic view of three sides of America. We see the good: the selflessness, courage, everyday decency of individual citizens that both enrich our daily lives and help see us through scenes of tragedy. We see the individual badness, too: blind prejudice, lack of responsibility, and fearfulness that push people to make bad decisions which cut others down in small or large ways. Finally and most damning, we see first-hand how our institutions work in stressful situations, and the sight isn't pretty. It was stunning and depressing to read about the actions of police, the National Guard, the corrections system, the judicial system, and the political system. The problems here rose far above the level of individual incompetence and revealed that the structural orientation of these bedrock institutions is in dire need of reform.
MINI SPOILERS
The book starts slowly but engagingly, after Hurricane Katrina has been named but several days before it makes landfall. We gradually get to know the Zeitoun family. The father Abdulrahman (usually just "Zeitoun") comes from a large Syrian family, and settled in New Orleans after working in the merchant marines for a decade. He met Kathy, a native of Louisiana who converted to Islam. Together they raise a loving family with one son (from Kathy's previous marriage) and four daughters. They also run a successful painting and contracting business, known throughout New Orleans for their high quality of work and reliability.
The Islam aspect is fascinating, both getting glimpses inside the faith (through the eyes of one born to it and one who came to it), as well as seeing how Muslims felt in the post-2001 crusading years. One of the stories that affected me most was reading about how Kathy came to leave her Christian faith after her pastor publicly humiliated her after she came to him for spiritual help. The side of Islam we see here is the one we keep hearing about on NPR: peaceful, devout, upright, thoughtful. Along with Kathy we see that there are a wide variety of Muslims, just as there are a wide variety of Christians: some are extremely strict in their faith, others are just occasional practicers, some are highly modernized, others remain in the past, and so on. Of course I'm not going to convert or anything, but it was nice to see more of the faith through the eyes of the faithful.
The middle section of the book is extremely hopeful. Kathy and the family leave the city once an evacuation order is issued. Zeitoun remains behind to watch after the dozens of properties that the family owns. He stays awake through two days of storm as the rain pours down, leaks spring in the roof, the wind howls, the water rises, the rain tampers down and then leaves, and the water rises. He breathes a sigh of relief, but we remain tense, knowing that the worst is yet to come. He wakes up to find the water improbably rising once again, and instantly realizes that the levees have been breached and the city is doomed. He doesn't panic or flee, though. He believes that he has remained behind for a reason: that God wants to use him to help the others who are stuck in the city. He uses a small rowboat to paddle around his neighborhood. He rescues some elderly shut-ins who could not or would not flee the city before, he meets up with some other people who stayed behind and are interested in helping others, and feeds neighborhood dogs who were abandoned and trapped in their owners' houses.
This section feels surreal and exciting. The scenes Zeitoun encounters are very different from the images that we have of life after the storm. He realizes this as it happens, too; he and Kathy have cell phones, and through her reports and reports from other Zeitoun family members he receives countless warnings about the chaos in the Superdome and roving gangs of looters. He also receives many rumors that later will prove to be false: mass rapes of children, snipers shooting at rescue workers, and other horror stories. These tales are so far from his experiences in Uptown New Orleans that he can't take them too seriously, and he continues on his mission of exploration and rescue.
Zeitoun only once sees looters, and never has any violent confrontations with anyone who remained behind. No: his horror comes entirely at the hands of his own government. He is attacked and arrested, along with three other helpers, within one of the properties he owns. From here he swiftly falls into a legal black hole that echoes Guantanamo in every way: prisoners, American citizens, are not allowed phone calls, legal representation, medical attention; nobody is told where they are, and Kathy spends more than a week thinking that her husband might be dead. We eventually learn that Zeitoun was arrested because a corrupt cop identified him as someone who had looted a Walgreens, but once he enters the prison system, the military justice system begins treating him as an al Qaeda member.
The book doesn't grandstand much about race, just laying out its stories about what happened, but it's still profoundly depressing. Zeitoun and another Syrian named Nasser are grouped together in prison, eventually sharing a tiny cell built for a single prisoner. Later, they are joined by four African-American prisoners who were also swept up after Katrina. One of them was a volunteer firefighter from Albuquerque; he answered the call to come to New Orleans and help with the rescue effort. He was arrested. Another man worked for a construction company in Houston that was hired by the government to help save some structures in the city. Even though he was wearing his uniform and had ID, the Guard accused him of stealing the tools he was using, and threw him in prison as well. Now, to some extent we might be tempted to excuse these wrongful incarcerations as the result of the chaos of the moment, but is it really a coincidence that these men were black and Arab? If not, what does that say about our society? When we're stressed, will we always assume the worst of people who don't look like us?
Eventually a Christian missionary talks with Zeitoun; Zeitoun convinces him to break the rules and let Kathy know that he is alive. From this time on, things begin to move forward, but Zeitoun is still in a weird, Kafka-esque state. Kathy is told that she should come to his hearing, but will not be told where the hearing is. Bail is set absurdly high with no chance to demonstrate that it is unnecessary. Kathy has survived the stress of the storm, deteriorating relationships with her family, a flight across the country to Arizona, dealing with the possible death of her husband, and restarting her childrens' lives in a new school, but it's her encounter with the justice system that finally breaks her. She suffers a nervous collapse, and to this day she isn't as mentally sharp as she used to be. It's a really heartbreaking thought.
Overall, you're left with mixed feelings at the end of the book. Things are better; Zeitoun wasn't permanently vanished, he didn't die in prison, and he and Kathy have restarted their business and had a son. And yet, in the broader picture, it's hard to believe that much has changed. Since that time the Democrats have taken over Congress and we have a new President, and I don't want to diminish the importance of those events, but Obama won't be the first person on the ground when the next disaster strikes. Our institutions are ultimately made of people; those people, in turn, are shaped by the institutions to which they belong. Fundamental reform and better planning are urgently necessary, and there's little reason to believe that they have learned the right lessons from Katrina.
END SPOILERS
The most powerful aspect of the book may be its narrow focus. When you're confronted with a huge tragedy, your mind kind of reels and shuts down. I can hear that millions of people were displaced, and it sounds awful, but I just have no sense of comprehension about what that means. However, when you hear one person's story, that becomes something that you can wrap your mind around and react to. It becomes a gateway that you can use to begin appreciating the magnitude of the tragedy. It's why Anne Frank's diary is so incredibly powerful: through her personal story, the horror of the Holocaust becomes real. Similarly, Zeitoun helps move past the headlines and show the reality of Katrina. It isn't, and doesn't pretend to be, a complete record of everything that happened during the storm, but it's a full story, a necessary one, a chance to find out what went wrong.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The Pirates! In an adventure with literature.
Arrrr! Though I missed the Talk-Like-A-Pirate-Day connection by several weeks, this still felt like a great time to finally read a pirate-themed book, after having devoted so much time and space to a book about zombies.
"The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists" is a fun, quirky little book. It's just a bit over 100 pages long, and the pages are very small. As with "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," I think that the title helps the audience self-select. Do you like the idea of reading a book about pirates going on a romp that, somehow, incongruously, includes scientists? If so, you will not be disappointed.
I really, really liked the writing style of this book. It's simple without being dumbed-down... it feels like the author is winking at you throughout the whole book. There are lots of funny bits: none of the pirates can remember each others' names, so every pirate is referenced descriptively, as in "The Pirate Captain," "The pirate with an accordion," The pirate with a red shirt," "The pirate with a hook for a hand," and so on. These are the real characters, too. You get to feel affectionate towards the pirate with a scarf, a loyal and hardworking man who patiently deals with the excesses of the Pirate Captain.
The other notable aspect of the book is its copious use of footnotes. These are great, always accurate and almost completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. They cover things like the atomic weights of various metals with complete soberness.
MINI SPOILERS
It turns out that the pirates are really having an adventure with a scientist, not so much scientists in general. That isn't a bad thing, though: the scientist in question is Darwin. The pirates board his ship as he's returning from Galapagos, and soon we see that the fractured aspect of this story isn't confined to its depiction of life on board pirate vessels. Darwin is on a scientific quest to show that a monkey can behave like a perfect gentleman. He has trained a monkey to wear a gentleman's trousers, dress shirt, top hat, and monocle, and to converse through the use of flash cards. This "man-panzee" will astound English society.
There's a catch, though. The sinister Bishop of Oxford is a major backer of Barnum and Bailey's Circus, who is attempting to corner the market on man/animal hybrids with such exhibits as the Elephant Man. The Bishop has kidnapped Darwin's brother Erasmus, and is holding him in a secret location (later revealed to be Big Ben). The pirates volunteer to help Darwin rescue his brother and foil the Bishop's evil plan. Right after they play at the arcade. And finish a game of miniature golf. And eat some cotton candy. And attend a pirate convention. You get the idea.
END SPOILERS
Great stuff... I get the sneaking suspicion that this book might have been written for children, but anyone who enjoys zany pirate escapades will get a kick out of it. Highly recommended.
"The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists" is a fun, quirky little book. It's just a bit over 100 pages long, and the pages are very small. As with "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," I think that the title helps the audience self-select. Do you like the idea of reading a book about pirates going on a romp that, somehow, incongruously, includes scientists? If so, you will not be disappointed.
I really, really liked the writing style of this book. It's simple without being dumbed-down... it feels like the author is winking at you throughout the whole book. There are lots of funny bits: none of the pirates can remember each others' names, so every pirate is referenced descriptively, as in "The Pirate Captain," "The pirate with an accordion," The pirate with a red shirt," "The pirate with a hook for a hand," and so on. These are the real characters, too. You get to feel affectionate towards the pirate with a scarf, a loyal and hardworking man who patiently deals with the excesses of the Pirate Captain.
The other notable aspect of the book is its copious use of footnotes. These are great, always accurate and almost completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. They cover things like the atomic weights of various metals with complete soberness.
MINI SPOILERS
It turns out that the pirates are really having an adventure with a scientist, not so much scientists in general. That isn't a bad thing, though: the scientist in question is Darwin. The pirates board his ship as he's returning from Galapagos, and soon we see that the fractured aspect of this story isn't confined to its depiction of life on board pirate vessels. Darwin is on a scientific quest to show that a monkey can behave like a perfect gentleman. He has trained a monkey to wear a gentleman's trousers, dress shirt, top hat, and monocle, and to converse through the use of flash cards. This "man-panzee" will astound English society.
There's a catch, though. The sinister Bishop of Oxford is a major backer of Barnum and Bailey's Circus, who is attempting to corner the market on man/animal hybrids with such exhibits as the Elephant Man. The Bishop has kidnapped Darwin's brother Erasmus, and is holding him in a secret location (later revealed to be Big Ben). The pirates volunteer to help Darwin rescue his brother and foil the Bishop's evil plan. Right after they play at the arcade. And finish a game of miniature golf. And eat some cotton candy. And attend a pirate convention. You get the idea.
END SPOILERS
Great stuff... I get the sneaking suspicion that this book might have been written for children, but anyone who enjoys zany pirate escapades will get a kick out of it. Highly recommended.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Hyperspace
I don't read a whole lot of science fiction these days. That wasn't always the case. I used to devour sci-fi. I caught the fantasy bug, and it gradually took over. To be sure, some of my favorite books are science fiction, but they're solidly in the soft sci-fi category... think Kurt Vonnegut, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and so on. Books that focus on human society in the future, not technology and science.
That said, I did greatly enjoy Vernor Vinge, the first hard sci-fi author I'd read in ages. When I was last hitting up Amazon for recommendations, I was a little surprised but curious when it offered up Hyperion. I'd never heard of the book or the author, but the ratings were very favorable, and it seemed like a good change of pace. I stuck it in the queue, checked it out of the library, renewed it three times while reading other stuff, and finally finished it this past week.
It's... good. I say that with a little hesitation because I remember how much trouble I had getting into it. That's part of the reason why I kept putting it off through three renewals while reading more directly rewarding stuff.
It finally got going somewhere between page 100 and page 150, and once I bought into it, I enjoyed it immensely. Hm... to be safe, let's call these
MINI SPOILERS
The best thing about Hyperion is its structure and style. Rather, structures and styles. The book as a whole is kind of a reinterpretation of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." There are seven main characters who are on a pilgrimage together. The pilgrimage is really more of a framing and connecting device, though. The bulk of the text is made up of the individual stories that each character tells. From a plot perspective, each story tells us what the character is doing and how they came to join the pilgrimage. Stylistically, though - ah! Each is told in the first person, occasionally with the help of journals and media recordings, also in the first person. Because the seven characters are VERY different, each tale has a completely unique style of its own. For example, Colonel Kassad is a hardened military man. His story is told matter-of-factly, with short sentences, clear but unimaginative descriptions, and a very focused narrative. Martin Silenus, on the other hand, is an insane poet. His tale is filled with flowery words, TONS of literary and historical allusions, numerous digressions, and highly colorful metaphors. If you just read those two stories independently, you might not realize that they were from the same book, or even from the same author.
First, let's hit the bad. The fact that the stories are so different means that some are going to be better than others. In particular, I hated the first one, the Priest's Tale. It is hands-down the dullest tale of the lot, with much of the text devoted to describing how nothing is happening or how something doesn't make sense. It kind of redeems itself with a great bit of horror at the end, but you need to suffer through a lot of drudgery to get there. I also wasn't too impressed with the last story in the book; as with the priest's tale, the punchline is pretty great, but I found it hard to care about the bulk of the narrative. In contrast, the Colonel's and Brawne's tales were really exciting (I especially enjoyed the noir-ish aspects of Brawne's hard-boiled detective story), the scholar's tale was sweet and touching, and Martin's was just awesome. Not just for the allusions, of course, but the really clever way that they support his story. It was clear that the author knows his stuff.
I'm not sure if this is a complaint with Hyperion or with modern sci-fi in general, but the biggest turn-off for me was the sheer volume of technobabble and invented place-names. Which is weird, since this is the very thing that I praise most other books for: creating a fully-realized universe, making it internally consistent, and then just running with it, throwing the content out to the reader and trusting that they'll be able to catch up with you. For some reason, though, it just really rubbed me the wrong way in this book. This is a shame, because once I got into it, it really is a cool universe.
Like most hard sci-fi and unlike the Hollywood version of it, this book actually takes the theory of general relativity into account and what kind of impact it would have on space travel. The future of Hyperion is one where humanity has left Earth and spread out across much of our spiral arm in the Milky Way. The central planets are known as the Web, and are where commerce and exchange flow freely. Outer planets form the Colonies, and are more hardscrabble places that are still developing. You might be thinking of Firefly and the rise of the Alliance, in which case, good for you! Like Firefly, Hyperion imagines a future where class structures and factions are very much alive, and there is tension (though not war) (usually) between the haves and the have-nots. From a technical standpoint, though, the differentiator between the Web and the Colonies is the presence of a device called a Farcaster. As they (eventually) explain, a Farcaster is essentially a man-made wormhole, which connects the portal with every other Farcaster. Which is cool, but you need to actually be somewhere to build a Farcaster there, and it takes a lot of special machinery and such to create it. So the process of mankind's expansion is as follows: A ship full of people will travel from Planet A to Planet B at a very high speed (but still slower than the speed of light, of course). Because of relativity, the people on the ship may experience (for example) that 4 years have passed during their journey, while from the perspective of Planet A and Planet B, ten years have passed from the time they left until when they arrived. Because of this, there's an entire, rich vocabulary of time used within the book. People talk about "ship years," "standard years," "time debt," and so on. I found the idea of "time debt" to be most fascinating. We encounter it several times within the stories: two people know each other, then one of them travels for a time, and when they next meet, their age difference has increased. It greatly complicates friendships, marriage, and family relations.
So, with that as the background, you can see why farcasters are such a big deal. They allow you to instantly travel anywhere within the Web, without requiring the accumulation of any time debt. But, again, only the relatively wealthy have access to farcaster portals, and before a portal can be built, multiple generations of settlers must spend their lives making the hard journey to another planet, preparing it for human habitation, setting up a society, and building the portal.
OK, one final (minor) annoyance: EVERY TIME that Simmons is giving examples of something - say, artists, or philosophers, or scientists - he will first list a couple from our history, and then list a couple from our future. And always in order. So, for example, he might say "Napoleon, MacArthur, Ebberson, or Xevelax." I'd be happier if he occasionally picked all examples from our own era and occasionally all examples from the future, or if he mixed them up a little. Especially since the characters in general do not seem to have a great grasp at all of history; Martin is very educated but doesn't know who Hitler was, for example." Anyways... more than anything, I guess this bugs me because it's one of the only tics from the author that spans multiple narrators' stories.
END SPOILERS
That's a small complaint, though. On the whole I loved this book. It combines interesting and believable science with some of most clever literary references that I've run across in popular fiction. If you read just one sci-fi Chaucerian romp this year, make it Hyperion!
That said, I did greatly enjoy Vernor Vinge, the first hard sci-fi author I'd read in ages. When I was last hitting up Amazon for recommendations, I was a little surprised but curious when it offered up Hyperion. I'd never heard of the book or the author, but the ratings were very favorable, and it seemed like a good change of pace. I stuck it in the queue, checked it out of the library, renewed it three times while reading other stuff, and finally finished it this past week.
It's... good. I say that with a little hesitation because I remember how much trouble I had getting into it. That's part of the reason why I kept putting it off through three renewals while reading more directly rewarding stuff.
It finally got going somewhere between page 100 and page 150, and once I bought into it, I enjoyed it immensely. Hm... to be safe, let's call these
MINI SPOILERS
The best thing about Hyperion is its structure and style. Rather, structures and styles. The book as a whole is kind of a reinterpretation of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." There are seven main characters who are on a pilgrimage together. The pilgrimage is really more of a framing and connecting device, though. The bulk of the text is made up of the individual stories that each character tells. From a plot perspective, each story tells us what the character is doing and how they came to join the pilgrimage. Stylistically, though - ah! Each is told in the first person, occasionally with the help of journals and media recordings, also in the first person. Because the seven characters are VERY different, each tale has a completely unique style of its own. For example, Colonel Kassad is a hardened military man. His story is told matter-of-factly, with short sentences, clear but unimaginative descriptions, and a very focused narrative. Martin Silenus, on the other hand, is an insane poet. His tale is filled with flowery words, TONS of literary and historical allusions, numerous digressions, and highly colorful metaphors. If you just read those two stories independently, you might not realize that they were from the same book, or even from the same author.
First, let's hit the bad. The fact that the stories are so different means that some are going to be better than others. In particular, I hated the first one, the Priest's Tale. It is hands-down the dullest tale of the lot, with much of the text devoted to describing how nothing is happening or how something doesn't make sense. It kind of redeems itself with a great bit of horror at the end, but you need to suffer through a lot of drudgery to get there. I also wasn't too impressed with the last story in the book; as with the priest's tale, the punchline is pretty great, but I found it hard to care about the bulk of the narrative. In contrast, the Colonel's and Brawne's tales were really exciting (I especially enjoyed the noir-ish aspects of Brawne's hard-boiled detective story), the scholar's tale was sweet and touching, and Martin's was just awesome. Not just for the allusions, of course, but the really clever way that they support his story. It was clear that the author knows his stuff.
I'm not sure if this is a complaint with Hyperion or with modern sci-fi in general, but the biggest turn-off for me was the sheer volume of technobabble and invented place-names. Which is weird, since this is the very thing that I praise most other books for: creating a fully-realized universe, making it internally consistent, and then just running with it, throwing the content out to the reader and trusting that they'll be able to catch up with you. For some reason, though, it just really rubbed me the wrong way in this book. This is a shame, because once I got into it, it really is a cool universe.
Like most hard sci-fi and unlike the Hollywood version of it, this book actually takes the theory of general relativity into account and what kind of impact it would have on space travel. The future of Hyperion is one where humanity has left Earth and spread out across much of our spiral arm in the Milky Way. The central planets are known as the Web, and are where commerce and exchange flow freely. Outer planets form the Colonies, and are more hardscrabble places that are still developing. You might be thinking of Firefly and the rise of the Alliance, in which case, good for you! Like Firefly, Hyperion imagines a future where class structures and factions are very much alive, and there is tension (though not war) (usually) between the haves and the have-nots. From a technical standpoint, though, the differentiator between the Web and the Colonies is the presence of a device called a Farcaster. As they (eventually) explain, a Farcaster is essentially a man-made wormhole, which connects the portal with every other Farcaster. Which is cool, but you need to actually be somewhere to build a Farcaster there, and it takes a lot of special machinery and such to create it. So the process of mankind's expansion is as follows: A ship full of people will travel from Planet A to Planet B at a very high speed (but still slower than the speed of light, of course). Because of relativity, the people on the ship may experience (for example) that 4 years have passed during their journey, while from the perspective of Planet A and Planet B, ten years have passed from the time they left until when they arrived. Because of this, there's an entire, rich vocabulary of time used within the book. People talk about "ship years," "standard years," "time debt," and so on. I found the idea of "time debt" to be most fascinating. We encounter it several times within the stories: two people know each other, then one of them travels for a time, and when they next meet, their age difference has increased. It greatly complicates friendships, marriage, and family relations.
So, with that as the background, you can see why farcasters are such a big deal. They allow you to instantly travel anywhere within the Web, without requiring the accumulation of any time debt. But, again, only the relatively wealthy have access to farcaster portals, and before a portal can be built, multiple generations of settlers must spend their lives making the hard journey to another planet, preparing it for human habitation, setting up a society, and building the portal.
OK, one final (minor) annoyance: EVERY TIME that Simmons is giving examples of something - say, artists, or philosophers, or scientists - he will first list a couple from our history, and then list a couple from our future. And always in order. So, for example, he might say "Napoleon, MacArthur, Ebberson, or Xevelax." I'd be happier if he occasionally picked all examples from our own era and occasionally all examples from the future, or if he mixed them up a little. Especially since the characters in general do not seem to have a great grasp at all of history; Martin is very educated but doesn't know who Hitler was, for example." Anyways... more than anything, I guess this bugs me because it's one of the only tics from the author that spans multiple narrators' stories.
END SPOILERS
That's a small complaint, though. On the whole I loved this book. It combines interesting and believable science with some of most clever literary references that I've run across in popular fiction. If you read just one sci-fi Chaucerian romp this year, make it Hyperion!
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Prose and Parody and Zombies
Haha!
I could probably let that one word serve as my review for "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." That would be cheating, though. Hm... perhaps a better review would be "Bwahahaha!"
First of all, I don't think I'll need to include any spoilers tags at all within this review. That's the beauty of the title: it tells you everything you need to know. I also suspect that everyone who reads this book will enjoy it. If, when you first heard that someone was re-writing "Pride and Prejudice" with scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem, your immediate thought was, "Oooh!" or "Awesome!" you will LOVE this book. If you first thought was "Ew!" or "How dare they!", well, I doubt you'll make it past the first scene where Elizabeth and Jane decapitate a score of the ravenous undead.
What's most impressive, though, is how GOOD it is. I was expecting a farce, or at best a parody, and ended up with something really well-written. And not just because of Jane Austen's original text... even the modified bits are quite well-done.
OK... this is already chaotic, so I think I'll need to bring some structure to this write-up. Let's look at what works dramatically, what works humorously, and what doesn't work. Ready, set, go!
As awful as it may sound when I say it, there are some ways in which PPZ actually works better than PP. For example, certain events in the original book just didn't make a whole lot of sense, like why any woman would WANT to marry Mr. Collins, or what the King's regimental army was doing kicking countryside estates during peacetime. Answers are finally, helpfully supplied. Mr. Collins is the one person dumb enough and self-centered enough to marry a zombie bride without realizing it; and, the regimental army is in the English countryside as a desperate barrier between Satan's damned army and the (largely) helpless citizenry.
The overall arcs of the book are almost entirely unchanged from the original. Darcy and Liz still meet at a ball and form instant opinions of one another; Darcy's opinion of Liz quickly changes, while Liz's attitude towards Darcy takes most of the book to resolve itself. Jane and Mr. Bingley go through their roundabout engagement. Wickham's dalliance and background are largely intact.
The characters' personalities are also largely unchanged. Liz is still feisty, intelligent, spirited, and proud; Darcy still reserved; Bingley and Jane are open and warm; Kitty and Lydia are flighty; Mrs. Bennett is amazingly obtuse and narrow-minded;and so on. I was most pleased to see that Mr. Bennett, who is not only my favorite character from this book but also one of my favorite characters in English literature, kept his indefatigable wryness.
The difference, then, is not so much in their essence as in their actions: in this book, Mr. Bennett had paid to send his five daughters to train in Shaolin, China, where they learned the deadly arts of zombie-slaying. Darcy's aunt is a renowned combatant who is working on a serum that may help reverse the effects of the zombie plague. And so on... to me, it felt less like a re-interpretation than an alternate universe. If you took Jane Austen's characters, and dropped them into a situation where the newly buried dead would leap from their graves and seek succulent brains to feast upon, then you would expect them to react rather like they do here.
I haven't read PP in a decade, so my memory is a little fuzzy. My impression is that PPZ doesn't drop any major plot lines, but does trim some of them. Mary is hardly present at all in PPZ, while I think she had a bit more to do in PP. The book as a whole seems to be about the same length, and you don't feel like anything was unnecessarily dropped - or, weirdly, like most was unnecessarily added. Now, in terms of plot, yeah, it's hugely incongruous to read a scene where young couples are dancing in an elegant ballroom, when suddenly all the windows shatter as scores of zombies are drawn to the mass of warm living flesh, resulting in gory combat where zombies are torn apart and their limbs used to beat back the second wave of invaders. But in terms of STYLE, it actually flows. You get the same period English inflection, the same clever observational style, the same way of drawing attention to details by using purposely understated descriptions. That's the most remarkable achievement of the book, and what elevates it from being just a clever idea to something that actually works as a book on its own terms.
Now, what works comically: first of all, the same thing: transporting the 20th-century popular horror genre of the zombie flick into the Regency period setting and writing style. I'm a big fan of incongruity and non-sequitors, hence my admiration for Monty Python, the Marx Brothers, Robot Chicken, and anyone who doesn't force A to line up with B. This seems to be a primal humor response in many of us: confronted with something that we can't explain, all we can do is get angry, ignore it, or laugh at it. I gleefully follow the last path.
You also get a lot of 20th-century humor transplanted here. It's almost all bathroom humor, but again, given the elegant setting and style - heck, the fact that this really is a comedy of manners - I laugh at things that I otherwise would not. Simple example: Balls. I honestly didn't think of this when I first read the book, but there are a lot of balls in PP. This is a topic of some discussion: Darcy asks Liz if she likes balls, the sisters argue about whether big balls are better, people talk about how much fun balls are, and so on. It's all really arch, and I shouldn't laugh, but I do.
There's also a shocking amount of bodily fluids in this book. A lot of it is bloody gore from the battle scenes, which I did. However, a ton of it is vomit. People vomit all the time, when they're upset, when they see something gross, when they're sick or worries. And that vomit can make other people vomit. I can totally visualize what the book is getting at, and have seen similar things on, say, Family Guy, but on the printed page it's more weird than anything.
I think there's also a lot more infidelity in PPZ than in PP. I'm guessing that this was invented for the book, but it's also possible that there were some subtexts in the original that I didn't pick up on at the time which are gleefully exploited in the rewrite.
OK, finally, what doesn't work. As noted above, some of the toilet humor didn't do much for me. Which is a tough call to make, because I thought other toilet humor was hilarious. Still, in general, when they're punching up PP by adding zombies, the results are generally good; when they're punching up PP by adding lots of vomit and incontinence, not so much.
The other thing is a bit harder to explain. There's a kind of backstory about the girls' training in Shaolin, which is held to be more middle-class than training in Japan, where the TRULY go to learn zombie-slaying skills. The book sets up this conflict between the two, and it's kind of present throughout the story, but at the same time it's a bit unsatisfying. Elizabeth thinks of how she should give herself the Seven Cuts of Shame as taught by Master Liu when she has done some wrong; Darcy's aunt is proud of her ninjas - from Japan, of course - who do her bidding. Now, in theory, bringing ninjas into a zombie book is an amazing stroke. The only thing that could make it cooler, of course, would be if some of the undead turned out to be zombie pirates. But it feels like a good idea wasted in execution. You never get to see the ninjas fight the zombies; they're just spent in this stupid duel between the various Eastern traditions, and don't really go anywhere. On the one hand, I think that we don't want to have TOO many ninja scenes - it would overshadow the rest of the story. On the other hand, though, if you're going to put ninjas in the book, do something really awesome with them!
Ahem. I can't believe that I'm arguing about ninjas and zombies. What a WONDERFUL world we live in, folks! Ahhh...
By now you've probably heard that there's a new book in the pipeline: Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters. It isn't from the same author as PPZ. I hope it's good, but honestly, it would be really, really hard to top this one. Still, I do love the general idea of updating classics with bizarre new elements. Imagine Wuthering Heights where werewolves stalk the moors, howling mournfully in the night, infecting Heathclif so his passion burns brighter than ever and he begins to destroy those he loves. Or how about Ethan Frome, but where Ethan is a mad scientist, who creates automatous golem-like creatures to do his bidding, and eventually builds a rocket sled that allows him and his creations to escape the cruel grasp of his wife, who turns out to be an evil priestess of Cthulhu? I'm telling you, the possibilities are endless!
I could probably let that one word serve as my review for "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." That would be cheating, though. Hm... perhaps a better review would be "Bwahahaha!"
First of all, I don't think I'll need to include any spoilers tags at all within this review. That's the beauty of the title: it tells you everything you need to know. I also suspect that everyone who reads this book will enjoy it. If, when you first heard that someone was re-writing "Pride and Prejudice" with scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem, your immediate thought was, "Oooh!" or "Awesome!" you will LOVE this book. If you first thought was "Ew!" or "How dare they!", well, I doubt you'll make it past the first scene where Elizabeth and Jane decapitate a score of the ravenous undead.
What's most impressive, though, is how GOOD it is. I was expecting a farce, or at best a parody, and ended up with something really well-written. And not just because of Jane Austen's original text... even the modified bits are quite well-done.
OK... this is already chaotic, so I think I'll need to bring some structure to this write-up. Let's look at what works dramatically, what works humorously, and what doesn't work. Ready, set, go!
As awful as it may sound when I say it, there are some ways in which PPZ actually works better than PP. For example, certain events in the original book just didn't make a whole lot of sense, like why any woman would WANT to marry Mr. Collins, or what the King's regimental army was doing kicking countryside estates during peacetime. Answers are finally, helpfully supplied. Mr. Collins is the one person dumb enough and self-centered enough to marry a zombie bride without realizing it; and, the regimental army is in the English countryside as a desperate barrier between Satan's damned army and the (largely) helpless citizenry.
The overall arcs of the book are almost entirely unchanged from the original. Darcy and Liz still meet at a ball and form instant opinions of one another; Darcy's opinion of Liz quickly changes, while Liz's attitude towards Darcy takes most of the book to resolve itself. Jane and Mr. Bingley go through their roundabout engagement. Wickham's dalliance and background are largely intact.
The characters' personalities are also largely unchanged. Liz is still feisty, intelligent, spirited, and proud; Darcy still reserved; Bingley and Jane are open and warm; Kitty and Lydia are flighty; Mrs. Bennett is amazingly obtuse and narrow-minded;and so on. I was most pleased to see that Mr. Bennett, who is not only my favorite character from this book but also one of my favorite characters in English literature, kept his indefatigable wryness.
The difference, then, is not so much in their essence as in their actions: in this book, Mr. Bennett had paid to send his five daughters to train in Shaolin, China, where they learned the deadly arts of zombie-slaying. Darcy's aunt is a renowned combatant who is working on a serum that may help reverse the effects of the zombie plague. And so on... to me, it felt less like a re-interpretation than an alternate universe. If you took Jane Austen's characters, and dropped them into a situation where the newly buried dead would leap from their graves and seek succulent brains to feast upon, then you would expect them to react rather like they do here.
I haven't read PP in a decade, so my memory is a little fuzzy. My impression is that PPZ doesn't drop any major plot lines, but does trim some of them. Mary is hardly present at all in PPZ, while I think she had a bit more to do in PP. The book as a whole seems to be about the same length, and you don't feel like anything was unnecessarily dropped - or, weirdly, like most was unnecessarily added. Now, in terms of plot, yeah, it's hugely incongruous to read a scene where young couples are dancing in an elegant ballroom, when suddenly all the windows shatter as scores of zombies are drawn to the mass of warm living flesh, resulting in gory combat where zombies are torn apart and their limbs used to beat back the second wave of invaders. But in terms of STYLE, it actually flows. You get the same period English inflection, the same clever observational style, the same way of drawing attention to details by using purposely understated descriptions. That's the most remarkable achievement of the book, and what elevates it from being just a clever idea to something that actually works as a book on its own terms.
Now, what works comically: first of all, the same thing: transporting the 20th-century popular horror genre of the zombie flick into the Regency period setting and writing style. I'm a big fan of incongruity and non-sequitors, hence my admiration for Monty Python, the Marx Brothers, Robot Chicken, and anyone who doesn't force A to line up with B. This seems to be a primal humor response in many of us: confronted with something that we can't explain, all we can do is get angry, ignore it, or laugh at it. I gleefully follow the last path.
You also get a lot of 20th-century humor transplanted here. It's almost all bathroom humor, but again, given the elegant setting and style - heck, the fact that this really is a comedy of manners - I laugh at things that I otherwise would not. Simple example: Balls. I honestly didn't think of this when I first read the book, but there are a lot of balls in PP. This is a topic of some discussion: Darcy asks Liz if she likes balls, the sisters argue about whether big balls are better, people talk about how much fun balls are, and so on. It's all really arch, and I shouldn't laugh, but I do.
There's also a shocking amount of bodily fluids in this book. A lot of it is bloody gore from the battle scenes, which I did. However, a ton of it is vomit. People vomit all the time, when they're upset, when they see something gross, when they're sick or worries. And that vomit can make other people vomit. I can totally visualize what the book is getting at, and have seen similar things on, say, Family Guy, but on the printed page it's more weird than anything.
I think there's also a lot more infidelity in PPZ than in PP. I'm guessing that this was invented for the book, but it's also possible that there were some subtexts in the original that I didn't pick up on at the time which are gleefully exploited in the rewrite.
OK, finally, what doesn't work. As noted above, some of the toilet humor didn't do much for me. Which is a tough call to make, because I thought other toilet humor was hilarious. Still, in general, when they're punching up PP by adding zombies, the results are generally good; when they're punching up PP by adding lots of vomit and incontinence, not so much.
The other thing is a bit harder to explain. There's a kind of backstory about the girls' training in Shaolin, which is held to be more middle-class than training in Japan, where the TRULY go to learn zombie-slaying skills. The book sets up this conflict between the two, and it's kind of present throughout the story, but at the same time it's a bit unsatisfying. Elizabeth thinks of how she should give herself the Seven Cuts of Shame as taught by Master Liu when she has done some wrong; Darcy's aunt is proud of her ninjas - from Japan, of course - who do her bidding. Now, in theory, bringing ninjas into a zombie book is an amazing stroke. The only thing that could make it cooler, of course, would be if some of the undead turned out to be zombie pirates. But it feels like a good idea wasted in execution. You never get to see the ninjas fight the zombies; they're just spent in this stupid duel between the various Eastern traditions, and don't really go anywhere. On the one hand, I think that we don't want to have TOO many ninja scenes - it would overshadow the rest of the story. On the other hand, though, if you're going to put ninjas in the book, do something really awesome with them!
Ahem. I can't believe that I'm arguing about ninjas and zombies. What a WONDERFUL world we live in, folks! Ahhh...
By now you've probably heard that there's a new book in the pipeline: Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters. It isn't from the same author as PPZ. I hope it's good, but honestly, it would be really, really hard to top this one. Still, I do love the general idea of updating classics with bizarre new elements. Imagine Wuthering Heights where werewolves stalk the moors, howling mournfully in the night, infecting Heathclif so his passion burns brighter than ever and he begins to destroy those he loves. Or how about Ethan Frome, but where Ethan is a mad scientist, who creates automatous golem-like creatures to do his bidding, and eventually builds a rocket sled that allows him and his creations to escape the cruel grasp of his wife, who turns out to be an evil priestess of Cthulhu? I'm telling you, the possibilities are endless!
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