I am reading Octavia Butler’s last book, Fledgling, which I have explained to others as the under-age vampire sex novel. The protagonist of the novel is ten and she is, of course, the vampire having sex.

It is not Butler’s best book. The vampire sex thing is somewhat ridiculous, and the ease in which she meets men and women and seduces them lacks, even for a vampire novel, is rather unbelievable. Still, I thought, as I read the book, there’s something brave in the concept of the book by Butler–you have to expect that she would have realised that she would have met with some kind of resistance for putting such a controversial topic into the novel. Paedophilia is the new witch hunt topic: registered sex offenders acts, teachers who are continually in the news, Michael Jackson, and so on and so forth. We’re a society no longer under threat from the Commies, but from sex. Gotta watch that sex. But when the book came out, I didn’t really hear much about that angle. I remember a few reviews which said it wasn’t really her best book, and certainly disappointing given her previous book before that was Parable of the Talents. I also seem to remember short interviews with Butler, who had died just before the book’s release, saying that she wrote it in response to the writer’s block she was having with a third parable book.

But still, where was this controversy?

Last night, about two hundred pages into the book, I flipped to the dust jacket and glanced at it:

“Shori is an apparently young amnesiac girl whose alarming needs and abilities lead her to a startling discovery: she is in fact a 53 year old vampire, genetically modified to walk in the light of the day.”

How interesting, given that this is the reveal that takes place in the middle of the book, and successful destroys the uncomfortable, strange sexuality that sits in the first half.

How interesting indeed.

It appears that Heath Ledger has won an Oscar for being dead.

I don’t know, but maybe I’m the only one around who didn’t think much of the Dark Knight, and certainly I didn’t think much of Ledger’s performance. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad, but as performances go, it was a little like inviting the uncle over for a birthday party and having him pretend to be a cartoon villain. Funny, but not anything close to being real. If he was actually doing a full performance from the Dark Knight, I would also have said that he kept it going on for much too long, ultimately over staying his welcome. It’s been a little tragic watching Ledger win the awards he has for playing the Joker, in fact, and at times it makes me think that it is representative of what’s wrong with Western films at the moment: shallow, without edge or bite, a pleasant distraction from anything real, and where alright has become the bar that we aspire too.

Still, what do I know? It certainly isn’t anything to do with popularity and awards. After all, I saw Slumdog Millionaire, and while I liked that too, I didn’t think it was worth an award of any kind. It was just alright, a good flick, but not one without its problems.

As I write this, I was asked why I felt the need to comment on this, because I don’t actually value awards of any kind. They are, after all, the opinions of people, and if you don’t know the people involved, there’s no real way to gauge if they were actually qualified to make a value judgement. Yet, still, I’m drawn to the results of awards, possibly because of the status that is awarded to them in our society. It’s interesting to see who the winners of various things are, if for no other reason that to trace to the slow disintegration of artistic merit within our society.

A small webzine has been created to raise funds for people in the Victorian fires by Grant Watson. I donated a story to it, which will appear later, but the first issue is up now:

Hope #1

Hope is a new multi-part fanzine raising money for bushfire relief in the Australian state of Victoria. It is edited by me, Grant Watson, with contributions donated by writers, artists and fans in Australia and from overseas. It is supported by the Western Australian Science Fiction Foundation (WASFF), and has received assistance from the Film & Television Institute of WA, Supanova and Big Finish Productions.

Issue #1 is now available in a PDF edition in return for donations. How much you donate is up to you - I personally think a minimum of AUS$5.00 is reasonable.

If you wish to subscribe to the entire series (I suspect at this stage it’s five issues long, not four as I’d previously told some people), then I’d recommend a donation of at least AUS$20.00.

Hope #1 contains contributions from Mo Ali, Sophie Ambrose, R.J. Astruc, Lyn Battersby, K.K. Bishop, Matthew Chrulew, Stephen Dedman, Mark S. Deniz, d.n.l, Paul Haines, Simon Haynes, Kathleen Jennings, Ju Landeesse, Damian Magee, David A. McIntee, Simon Petrie, Andrew Phillips, Gillian Polack, Robert Shearman and Daniel Smith. The cover is by Rebecca Handcock.

Hope #1 contains 46 pages of fiction, non-fiction, artwork, and even a comic book script excerpt!

You can make a donation to the project via Paypal by clicking here:

Once you’ve made a donation, please confirm it by e-mailing me at fanboy@gmail.com, and letting me know whether you were after just the one issue or the whole series as it’s released.

If you’re leery of donating directly to me, to subsequently donate a huge bunch at once, then please e-mail me some kind of receipt or screen capture of your donation to the Australian Red Cross and I’ll trust you and send out the PDF.

Limited print copies are available, if dead trees are your thing. If it’s a print copy you’re after, let me know in your e-mail along with your address. I’ll handle the postage. (Obviously I’d prefer you went for the PDF, but the option is there.)

The other day I found out that the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies novel was real. I’d seen the cover a while back, of course, but I just thought it was a mock up, so I laughed and didn’t think much about it. Fortunately, Lucius Shepard was there to tell me otherwise, and to also add that it was “essentially a rewrite, combining 85% if the original text with new zombie material penned by Grahame-Smith.”

We joked around in the comments after that, making jokes on what kind of Austen like flick or movie you could have. I thought the Austin mix of Predator or Aliens would be good–I mean, who couldn’t see it? All them tea settings, the aliens sitting round, being taught manners, and asked who’d they would like to marry?

Well, seems I wasn’t the only one:

Elton John’s Rocket Pictures hopes to make the first Jane Austen adaptation to which men will drag their girlfriends.

Will Clark is set to direct “Pride and Predator,” which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about.

Shooting will begin in London later this year. John exec produces, and his Rocket partners Steve Hamilton Shaw and David Furnish are producing.

Clark, who directed award-winning short “The Amazing Trousers,” wrote the script with Andrew Kemble and John Pape.

“It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect,” Furnish said.

John will supervise the music, as he does in each Rocket-produced film.

The company is in production on the CG-animated “Gnomeo and Juliet” for Miramax/Disney; James McAvoy and Emily Blunt voice the title characters. Rocket is also behind the Sundance series “Spectacle: Elvis Costello With …”

I can only hope that Elton John himself provides a soundtrack, or, at the very least, sings the circle of life song from the Lion King in the credits.

School started up a few weeks back, so I’ve headed back to tutoring, and that, coupled with the writing has lead to pretty much full days. The cash is nice, though.

The one thing I can’t seem to escape is the financial state of the world, at least at the moment. It lurks around the corners of both gigs: parents get laid off, business’ struggle to pick up the money they’re owed, mags go down, editors get fired, and you have in the back of your head a set of plans, or things you’ll do if everything goes south very badly. Right now, I think I’d become an astronaut. You never really hear of them being fired, or people saying, ‘Well, we have too many, and we need to downsize.’ Reportedly there are too many: there are astronauts that train entire life’s to get thrown out of the orbit, only to spend a lifetime waiting. I don’t know if that’s true, but it has a nice tragedy to it.

I’m about to begin reading Octavia Butler’s final novel, Fledgling. In the last month I’ve read and reread her entire body of work for the piece I’m working on, and I’m unsure how it’ll turn out, but it’s feeling good. She did seem to have a quiet fascination with Mars, though.

Haruki Murakami wins Jerusalem Prize

JERUSALEM —

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami won the Jerusalem Prize for his ‘‘artistic achievements and love of people’’ Sunday, becoming the first non-European-language writer to receive the Israeli literary prize.

In his speech at the ceremony, Murakami, 60, stressed that each person must work to stop states and organizations from getting out of control, apparently criticizing Israel’s recent large-scale offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Murakami said he thought that attending the ceremony might give the impression that he supports Israel’s dependence on its overwhelming military but said he eventually decided to ‘‘speak rather than say nothing.’’

During the 15-minute speech in English, he warned that the system, which is supposed to protect people, ‘‘sometimes takes on a life of its own and it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others coldly, efficiently and systematically.’’

In writing novels, he always keeps in mind a high, solid wall, and an egg that breaks against it. ‘‘I will always stand on the side of the egg,’’ he said.

The wall is a metaphor for the system and the egg represents each person’s soul enclosed in a fragile shell, according to Murakami.

‘‘We are all fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called the system….To all appearances, we have no hope…the wall is too high and too strong…If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our utter uniqueness,’’ he said.

‘‘Each of us possesses a tangible living soul. The system has no such thing. We must not allow the system to exploit us,’’ he added.

While he received loud applause from the audience of around 700, a middle-aged man said he was offended due to the speech’s political content. He said it is wrong to criticize Israel when receiving a prize from the nation.

Murakami’s attendance came despite criticism from pro-Palestinian groups, including a Japanese nongovernmental organization, that receiving the award would lead to defending Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians.

The Jerusalem Prize winner is selected by a panel of judges appointed by the Jerusalem mayor and is given to authors whose writings have expressed the idea of individual freedom in society, according to the award presenter.

Noting that Murakami’s books have been translated into 40 different languages and have garnered acclaim the world over, including in Israel, the presenter said the decision to confer the prize to him was ‘‘made out of profound esteem for his artistic achievements and love of people.’’

’’His humanism is clearly reflected in his writings,’’ the presenter said.

Several of Murakami’s works such as ‘‘Norwegian Wood’’ have been translated into Hebrew and he is a widely known novelist in Israel.

Link.

On Saturday, I saw Slumdog Millionaire, a film that’s been earning a lot of attention. Perhaps even deservingly.

If you’re not familiar with the idea, the film takes place over a two day period, where its protagonist, Jamal (Dev Patel), is taken into police custody after appearing on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and working his way to the final question. Beaten within the opening moments of the film, Jamal is accused of cheating, of knowing the answers, and the film, using a technique that does, at times, feel forced, weaves backflashes in between the questions on the show and those put forth by the police, showing how he came to know them. At the same time, it also details his childhood, his relationship with his brother, Salim, and an orphan girl, Latika. It will become clear, throughout the film, that Jamal has gone on the show not to win the money, but rather to gain the attention of the latter, who is living with a crime lord. What exactly he plans to do once he has her attention is a bit unclear and, unfortunately, the details of Latika’s life are also a bit sketchy. You’re never quite sure how she ends up being the trophy wife of the gangster, or just how imprisoned she is there (never mind why she would actually care for a man that she hasn’t seen since she was fourteen or so). You can piece together such things, but the film, to my mind, never gives her any real room to breath.

For the most part, however, the film is actually quite good. The early scenes with Jamal and Salim growing up in the slums are quite evocative, and the kids in the roll quite likeable, to the point, actually, that you could argue that the younger Jamal is somewhat more charismatic that the older ones. But still, from the early scenes in the out-house, to their time with the beggers, and the knowledge that blind singers earn twice as much, the film keeps moving along quite well, and the slight force that comes from linking these parts to the questions asked in the game show didn’t truly bother me. In fact, the truth is, the more I watched the film, the more its faults ceased to bother me. For a while I was worried that I had actually finally broken down, and was willing to accept any piece of trash as it was now, but ultimately I came back to the conclusion that I was simply engaged by the film for its entire length. Even though I kind of doubted the adult relationship, I wanted the two to get together in the end, and I wanted Jamal to get the money, and to show up the show’s smug, and all knowing host, aptly played by Prem Kumar. Yeah, it’s truth that Salim’s characterisation suffers, as does Latika’s, and there’s a big time jump after Jamal is first reunited with the latter, but to be honest, these are nothing new for a film made by Danny Boyle. From Sunshine to 28 Days Later to Trainspotting, ends have never been a strong point for Boyle, and it appears that it is no different when he shares co-directing credits with Loveleen Tandan.

At any rate, if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth the time.

Last weekend, NSW was apparently the hottest place on the planet.

This weekend, apparently, there are warnings of flash floods.

Global warming.

You’re a communist if you believe in it.

The high concept of Y: The Last Man is this: a virus, a plague, a mystical occurrence, something unknown but deadly, has killed all the men on the planet but Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand.

What follows is, I’m afraid to say, a bit of a misfire on the high concept. For sixty issues, the last man, accompanied by his monkey, and the two women who join him–one to protect, one to figure out why he was the last–go on a quest to, uh, track down his girlfriend. She was in Australia at the time of the event–in a bikini, because all visitors to Australia wear bikini tops–and now that the world is in ruins, and women are rebuilding everything that has been destroyed, the most important thing for the reader to experience is Yorick’s sixty issue quest to find his girlfriend, who you’re fairly sure planned to break up with him. As far as marriages of narrative drive and high concept go, this isn’t the best combination, and I was originally wary of it because of this, but the first issue of the series was so strong, and Brian K. Vaughan’s gift for dialogue so sharp, and Pia Guerra’s art so clean, that I was willing to go along, and find where the series ended.

I have, some six or so years later, finished reading the series, with the final volume, Whys and Wherefores.

The mismatch of the quest to find the missing girlfriend and the high concept and its explanation never do gel, I’m afraid. To a degree, Vaughan attempts to side step the latter by saying that no explanation will do, and offering us numerous theories on how it happened, which is actually a fairly effective way of getting around the issue; but what he doesn’t manage to do, while putting his characters through the quest that they’re on, is engage in the intellectual debate about gender that he sets himself up for at the beginning. Yorick’s desire to find his girlfriend is kind of pathetic, and it cause the series to sag, somewhere round the middle, because it’s simply not got enough meat to it. Vaughan and Guerra do a good job of exploring their characters, be it Dr. Mann (a poorly named character, unfortunately), 355, or Yorick, and the attention given to them allows the series to keep moving, even when the ninja and eye patches appear. Actually, the ninja isn’t too bad, though there is one panel when she sneaks into a house in her ninja outfit that caused me to laugh. At any rate, the pair, along with everyone else involved in the comic, do a fine job keeping everything moving, and it never drops beneath being an acceptable read.

But.

But its attention to these characters, to these narratives, to these details that never fully connect with the high concept, that also stop it from rising above the acceptable.

There are a few moments when the comic does attempt to do this. The Israeli commander, Alter, spends the entire series tracking down Yorick, only to try and kill him, or to die by him, because he’s the final man. Her mental instability is shown in previous chapters, but there is an attempt, I think, that the series makes to connect to the power that is given to male figures within the military. The only problem is, however, that Vaughan never truly lays down a proper thematic construction for Alter, and in the end, she becomes the cardboard comic villain, who may indeed decide to wear and cape and tights and tell everyone she wants to destroy the world. When she finally meets Yorick, then, the encounter is one in which I was left unengaged, and uninterested, especially given what had happened previously. Likewise, there are other elements of this thrown in, from Yorick’s sister, Hero, being an Amazon, and Dr Mann’s plan to grow a clone within herself, none of which ever connect with a strong theme (I would argue, in fact, that as the series develops, it becomes less and less about the gender theme suggested by the high concept, and more about an episodic quest).

That said, I don’t want anyone reading this to think that the comic is bad. It’s not. I suspect my disappointment from it comes from what I perceive to be a misstep with the high concept, and the sheer opportunities it offered, none of which are taken. Other readers may react differently. But, the comic itself is well done: Vaughan’s characterisation is strong, his dialogue always engaging, and Guerra’s simple, yet elegant art, serves the series well, and when other artists step in to over, there is always the sense of the series defined look being absent. It’s just really a shame that it wasn’t more of what I would have liked it to be, being more intelligent, more feminist, more pointed, and with a character motivation that I didn’t think so little off.

But that, as they say, is mileage, and it’ll vary.

Alas,
Poor microwave,
you are broke.

I did not think much
of this
until I was shopping
today.

I never realised how
you influenced my purchases;
Oh, I talk not of the frozen
dinners that are in boxes that
appear to be predominately
orange,
no.

No,
I talk of the fact that I could
make a meal that would keep
for a few days;
that could be divided up, frozen
and reused on those nights when
I returned at nine at night from
work.

(Who, I ask you, can be fucked
cooking at nine at night?)

I talk of the way this saved me money
the way this made me eat slightly better
than I deserved
and the way it supported my laziness
in the best possible fashion:
cheaply, healthily, and emotionally.

Well, perhaps not emotionally.
But if I sung a little song about your door
that sprung out,
the noises you made when you were ready
the way you could be ready in minutes or
an hour,
would you be pleased, like an old British poet
claiming the seasons are sexual

And the pump that is frozen
becomes slippery
beneath her hands (or his)

Unless you had that T-shirt,
I suppose.

Look,
I’ll be honest:
I didn’t really know where I was going,
either.