Top 20 Geek Novels Poll

In case you didn't see it on Slashdot, let me draw your attention to a list The Guardian has published of "the best geek novels written in English since 1932," based on an informal poll. It isn't all science fiction and fantasy, either (even if you count Cryptonomicon as science fiction).

That Thing about Strange & Norrell

If you were turned off of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by the initial hype (see the New York Times Magazine article) and subsequent lukewarm reviews (see Janet Maslin's review for the Times), take advantage of the new paperback edition to rectify that mistake. Contrary to Maslin's condescending assessment, I would assert that this fantastic history of the rediscovery of magic in early 19th century Britain is a rich and carefully constructed book, not in spite of its own profusion but because of it.

With passing reference to "Aficionados of such tales" and "those who find enchantment in books about magicians" Maslin carefully marks the distinction between herself and "those who find enchantment" (fantasy readers, presumably). With her reference to "footnotes -- endless footnotes" she marks herself as too hurried to absorb the dark hints and embedded tales in this overgrown garden of marginalia. No doubt it's hard to appreciate generous footnotes in a 782 page novel when you're writing a review under deadline, but, for whatever reason, she missed a key subtext of the story. Within the novel, the tendency to tell wandering and irrelevant fairy tales is a symptom of enchantment by a fairy lord -- a curse that prevents the thrall from telling anyone about the true nature of the enchantment. What, then, are we to conclude when the novelist fills her novel with wandering and irrelevant fairy tales?

The Bear

I had this thing about Strange and Norrell all worked up, but then I picked up Rafi Zabor's The Bear Comes Home and reread a few pages. So this week's recommendation is The Bear. I suspect that you don't have to be into jazz to like this novel about a bear who plays saxophone, although I can't verify that from personal experience. In any case, it's about the nature of improvisation and nature as improvisation. It's on my lifetime list, right up there with The Lord of the Rings (not that it's fantasy). Try it.

Tezuka Explores Ethics of Cute Engineering

Imagine that you're reading a comic from the late 40's featuring a boy genius named Doctor Shikishima and a cute talking rabbit who looks Disney's Oswalt. The story promises to be an adventure in the Carl Barks vein, until on p17 the bunny explains, "You see in the Doctor's laboratory he takes the brains of animals and surgically changes them into the brains of humans!" Welcome to The Lost World, an early work by Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy. There's no irony here: the cuteness is always sincere, and unrelenting. But there is self-consciousness. One character remarks to the bunny: "you're like something straight out of a comic book!" The Betty Boop lookalikes made out of seaweed take the notion of engineering cuteness to even stranger places.

With this dark utopian fantasy about the technological realization of fantasy, Tezuka reveals himself as a descendent not only of Disney but also of Wells and Verne, and as a progenitor of cyberpunk anime.

The Lost World is available from Amazon.

Silent Cthulhu Movie

For a movie made by a fan organization (The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society), "The Call of Cthulhu" is amazingly watchable. It may be the most successful distillation of mythos aura into film this side of "Hellboy." The HPLHS pull it off by means of a clever trick: the story is presented as a silent film. This maneuver not only lends an appropriate atmosphere to the movie, but also covers over the amateur acting and cinematography. Only the fight scenes are truly painful. Is cyclopean architecture any less cyclopean if it's made of styrofoam? Perhaps, but creature effects can be even more effective if they're fleeting and old-fashioned. Cthulhu lives. I will say no more.

You can order the DVD through Amazon or directly from HPLHS.

Wachowskis Do Frankenstein Comic

The Wachowski brothers do love their utopias. The world of the Matrix has Zion, complete with Cornell West and raves, while Doc Frankenstein has a fortress in the desert founded by the Frankenstein monster. In the Wachowskis' recent venture into comic writing we discover that the monster from Mary Shelley's novel has survived to the present of Bush's America, where he has established his desert stronghold as a rationalist haven for freaks and free-thinkers. The existential anti-hero of Shelley's novel has become a superhero in the Wachowski book: instead of confronting a silent God in lonely angst, he confronts a Catholic military organization, guns ablazing. As in the Matrix movies, the utopian prospect is ultimately just a dramatic backdrop for the action. Nevertheless, the backdrop makes the action particularly satisfying for the like-minded. Here's an excerpt from issue 2: [Note that the monster has capitulated to common practice and now simply answers to the name of his creator, Frankenstein]:

Soldier of God: Do you have any sins to confess?
Frankenstein's girlfriend: Only that I didn't kick you harder.
Soldier of God: Then may God have mercy on your soul.
Frankenstein's girlfriend: May Frankenstein have mercy on yours.
Frankenstein (crashing through ceiling): Okay, we can do this the easy way, where you drop your guns, or we can do this the hard way, where I rip your arms out of their sockets.
Soldier of God: I don't need a gun, monster.
Frankenstein: That's Doctor Monster to you, God-boy.

Good clean fun.