Yesterday, I created a Facebook Event for my Daily Telegraph short story, and, bless him, my Agent Simon made great efforts and, overnight, to my surprise, added a contest! So, if you’re a Facebook member, you can win a special big prize… though at this point I don’t know what that is. Go have a look at:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=15395870726
And I do apologise about what you have to do to enter. I’d have gone for ‘Simon is great’.
That petition I mentioned in the First Blog of Christmas, calling for Character Options to make an action figure of Harry Sullivan and the Giant Clam: 137 of you have signed it now. You do know that if it happens, we’re all now morally obliged to buy one?
Today, I’d like to mention a few media items that I thought were the best of their kind this year. Now, these aren’t all of my favourite things. My automatic first pick in a new pile of comics, for example, would be a Bendis Avengers, a Brubaker Captain America or Fables. But those titles are all vastly supported, and all my praise would be praise that has been uttered before. So there’s an element with the following of promoting things that perhaps need a bit of promotion. Or that I just foolishly believe I have new things to say about…
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. This show, (writer) Aaron Sorkin’s follow up to The West Wing, has been my absolute pleasure this year. It’s The West Wing about writers. It specifically concerns the cast and crew of a fictional late night variety show on American TV. It came to Britain having already been cancelled, despite huge initial ratings. In the first few episodes, that unfortunately feels slightly justified, as the show struggles to find a tone. But around week four, it decides who the central characters are and what’s fun, gets on a roll, and doesn’t let up. What I love about Sorkin’s writing is that watching one of his shows is like reading the new book by a favourite novelist. It’s immersive. It’s not an easy ride, and it’s not mitigated by the smoothing out process of tone meetings and what the market will bear. You know it’s going to hurt. (Indeed, I’ll sometimes actually hesitate before playing a new episode, when I’d like something more comforting: this is something I’ll return to in my blog about drama and audiences later this Christmas.) You’re in his head. He doesn’t plan ahead, he writes each show as a reaction to the last. It’s like watching someone expertly dancing on a highwire. When he’s casting around for what to do next, even when he’s having an off day, he’s at his most exciting, because things get a bit woozy and punch drunk and dreamy, and he’ll have a character just do something extreme, and see where that gets him. It means that these aren’t ‘characters’ in the sense of formed individuals, the quirks of which we can sympathise with and anticipate. These are written people, capable of the sudden chaotic surprises which contribute to character in the real world. Lest I make it sound like outsider art, the urbanity of his knowledge and his absolute commitment to sweetening the pot with at least one cracking high quality line of wit every thirty seconds make this a very satisfying ride too. Sorkin loves competence, and despises fools. All his best characters are people who know what they’re doing, and he can convince you he knows the details of that, from the very young doctor who we’re gradually shown has no people skills but is a great medic, to all the sides and strategies and complexes of great writers. The three-part episode ‘K&R’, which uses flashbacks to examine the differences between America now and in the immediate wake of 9/11, has claim to being one of Sorkin’s many masterpieces. In Sarah Paulson’s Harriet Hayes, not just a Christian, but an evangelical who leans to the right, Sorkin convinces us (as he didn’t quite do in The West Wing) with his ability to right empathetically for those opposite to himself, and presents someone who (apart from the evangelical and right wing bit) goes through situations and confrontations I recognise from my own life, and have never seen portrayed elsewhere. Her relationship-long row with Matthew Perry’s atheistic Matt Albie, pictured in a series of jump cuts of them having the row everywhere, from in bed to walking past Buckingham Palace, a theological debate which was also entirely about them and formed the centre of their compromised and difficult lives, was like watching the truth portrayed as a firework display. I know people who jumped this ship when Bradley Whitford’s character Danny Tripp went overboard in his declaration of love for Amanda Peet’s Jordan McDeere, and sounded and acted obsessive. Yes, he was scary for a moment there. He took a while to win us back. Because he wasn’t a character for a moment there. He was real. I’m sad it’s gone. I want to see Timothy Busfield and Allison Janney have yet another go at continuing their onscreen chemistry from The West Wing through this to something else. (And what other show would guest star her so they could do that?) I’m glad that Jennifer Aniston and Jasper Carrott (through his daughter Lucy Davis on this show) are now down to two degrees of separation. And I’m very glad Studio 60 existed.
The Atom. Gail Simone is one of my favourite comics writers, and this is my favourite, and somewhat neglected, book of hers, co-created with Grant Morrison. It’s the story of Ryan Choi, a professor at Ivy Town University, whose hero was fellow academic, and superhero, Ray Palmer. He finds himself taking on Palmer’s titular alter ego, and with it the equipment that allows him to shrink. But that’s not the point of the title. It most resembles a high end American television comedy drama, and, from issue one, is beautifully easy for newcomers to the DC universe, or even comics in general. Ivy Town is strange. There’s an alien civilization living on the fur of Ryan’s dog, one of whom (a floating disembodied head with an urgent turn of phrase) becomes Ryan’s flatmate. There’s a supervillain, Giganta, on the university staff. She fancies our hero, and, despite her having once, erm, swallowed him, he reciprocates as far as going out to dinner with her, which is unfortunately interrupted by his date having to battle Wonder Woman. The supporting cast of eccentric academics is as interesting as the superheroics, Ryan is an engaging hero who approaches his surreal adventures with a boggled scientific glee. And while this is the comic that most often makes me laugh out loud, it also had room for a moving story where Ryan goes home to Hong Kong to find that his childhood bullies are as terrible as he remembers them… and now also undead. The comic plays with the medium, having not only a narration by Choi, but apposite, or sometimes mocking, quotes placed as footnotes. The closest precedent I can think of is the work of Steve Gerber, and that’s the highest possible praise.
Overpowered by Roisin Murphy. The former singer with Moloko, post the break up of that band, initially dabbled in experimental electronica, before obviously thinking sod that for a game of soldiers, and deciding to have some huge pop hits again. This album should have given her some, and perhaps still will, because it’s the most approachable first listen I’ve heard in ages, playing like a greatest hits. This is dance pop of the highest order, soulful and atmospheric, with loads of romantic disco, Goldfrapp, Chic, Tom Tom Club and Prince thrown into the mix. You’ll hear noises on here that you only realise you’ve missed for a couple of decades now they’re back. The groove is the most important thing throughout, but Murphy has a fine turn of phrase, and an eye for atmospheric detail. ‘Scarlet Ribbons’ for example is a heartfelt declaration of a child’s love for her father. The next time James Bond walks into a club, Murphy ought to be onstage. Or better yet, give her the next theme. Lush.
I’ve read a lot of quality non-fiction this year, including Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos, which is what I’d sought for a long time, the book to read to know about the current state of knowledge concerning the universe. Now when there’s a New Scientist story about Planck Lengths (my new favourite thing, that physics doesn’t apply below certain sizes of space and time) or the holographic universe, or the staggering odds against the cosmos being suitable for life, I can follow. It turns out the moon is still there when we’re not looking at it. Probably. You know when you’re down the pub and someone starts talking about cosmology, and suddenly everyone’s meaningfully asserting bollocks for two hours? It’s probably more fun if everyone went off and read this instead. I’m also raced through Robert Harvey’s The War of Wars, a fantastic overview of the Napoleonic wars, from the causes of the French Revolution onwards. It’s widescreen, doesn’t have an axe to grind, and shows us Napoleon in his grandeur and shabbiness and once. Nelson, on the other hand, bar a few human flaws, makes a bloke get a little tearful with every single thing glorious thing he does.
In terms of fiction, it’s hard to know where to start. People like Chris Roberson, Stephen Baxter, Susannah Clarke, Ian McDonald and Simon Spurrier have entertained me vastly this year. (No David Louis Edelman until next year.) I’m looking forward to getting into Scott Lynch’s Lies of Locke Lamora and Iain Banks’ Matter.
My magazine choices have been fixed pretty solidly at SFX, Wired, Fortean Times (which is rallying a bit now, having become a touch less ideological, though bagging it with The Week this month was a bit rubbish), Wired, New Scientist and The Word.
In anime, I’m just discovering the mindboggling New Romantic Heavy Metal lesbian swordfighting wonder that is Revolutionary Girl Utena. But that deserves a blog of its own. And it’s always good to use the word ‘lesbian’ in a blog over Christmas, because it boosts my hit rate enormously. Especially last year, when I mentioned Rude Lesbian Nurses. Oops, I did it again. I’ve already spoken of the delights of Samurai Champloo, and I thoroughly enjoyed the cutting edge SF of Paprika and Solid State Society, the former a somewhat more humane take on the cyberpunk thing that felt to me more authentically Japanese in its emotional outreach.
Today’s link comes courtesy of Cubicle 7, the chaps who are doing the new Doctor Who roleplaying game. Here’s their site, and a forum where they talk over some of the things they’re planning to do:
http://www.cubicle-7.com/
I’m sure I’ve missed something. I’m sure I’ve missed something important. But I’m equally sure you’ll tell me. Until tomorrow, Cheerio!
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