Science Fiction & Fantasy

V for Vendetta (2006) is set in a future dystopian England in which security fears have led to the imposition of a police state, with tight controls on public behaviour and suppression of dissent. A girl (Natalie Portman) becomes caught up in the plans of a vengeful and resourceful man, known only as “V”, who is planning the violent overthrow of the government. He always wears a mask and costume to represent Guy Fawkes, and it is suggested that he was badly disfigured by an official experiment which went wrong.

I’m not a fan of comics, and when I sat down to watch the film I didn’t realise that it was based on a graphic novel. The comic-strip elements are clear enough: not only the man in a mask, but his improbable resources and apparently superhuman abilities with knives. What is slightly confusing is that the rest of the film appears to be a lot more serious in intent, using well-known actors and sending clear messages about the authoritarian direction in which the UK seems to be gradually but inexorably heading, and the dangers which lie down that path. I’m not sure that the serious and comic-strip elements work all that well together, but it was an interesting attempt and worth watching.

The theme of ‘V for Vendetta’ reminded me of the recent BBC TV series The Last Enemy (shown in five episodes, totalling 330 minutes, in February and March). This was much more realistic, concerning a near-future British government plan to introduce a national “total surveillance” system, linking CCTVs, ID cards and other databases so that anyone can be immediately located and tracked, and comprehensive information about them obtained. A famous but unworldly mathematician is roped in to help sell the idea to the public, and also becomes involved in a parallel plot line concerning a mysterious and lethal ailment apparently caused by secret genetic experiments. Together with a few resourceful friends he tries to expose what is going on but, unlike ‘V’, the story does not have a happy ending.

The plot of The Last Enemy is really getting close to the truth now, because our government does indeed want to introduce a comprehensive system linking everything about everyone that is recorded on official electronic databases, and providing access to such data via the planned ID cards. There’s a lot of debate about the introduction of the ID cards (which is going to be voluntary for most people: at least, at first…). In my view, too much of the discussion misses the point. I see no harm in ID cards. I carry one now – a driving licence with my name and address, date of birth and photo on it – and occasionally find it useful in confirming my identity. The main issue is the vast database which the government wants to put behind it, way beyond anything attempted anywhere else, and that’s a problem for various reasons. The loss of privacy, the certainty of error in inputting the data, and the horrifying prospect of a really comprehensive identity theft if it’s ever hacked (or a civil servant with input access is bribed or coerced). The catastrophic record of government failures in introducing computer-based systems far less sophisticated and complex than this is another reason to regard this idea as misconceived. As is the fact that the excuse for introducing the system is international terrorism, but all such recent attacks in the UK have been by British citizens in good standing who would have been perfectly entitled to be issued ID cards, so where’s the benefit there? Oh well, rant over – for now.

A two-component four-hour drama demonstrated on Uk ITV in early May possibly, ‘Flood’ explored what may well take place if a enormous storm surge funnelled down the North Sea and arrived at the Thames estuary at the same time as the best tide of the year. This was, of training course, far more or a lot less what transpired in 1953, triggering wide-spread flooding and hundreds of fatalities in England, and 1000′s in the Netherlands. I even have a vague childhood memory of that, as at the time my household had been living in an East Coast town which endured considerable hurt from the storm.

The plot of ‘Flood’ assumes that the resultant surge from storm and tide mixed would be large enough to overwhelm the Thames Barrier and inundate a lot of central London, with major casualties. There was a cast of stock characters: the hapless Meterological Business office man who received the forecast incorrect, delaying evacuation ideas the professor who had always argued that the Barrier was in the wrong location leaving London vulnerable to just such a threat the divorced couple forced to operate jointly simply because of their expert expertise of the Barrier the Metropolitan Police Commissioner hoping to co-ordinate the reaction to the threat and subsequent catastrophe while worrying about her own daughters trapped in central London the Deputy Prime Minister saddled with the accountability of making extremely hard selections in the absence overseas of the Prime Minister and for contrast, the two workmen on the Underground program who identified on their own trapped in the tunnels.

There was some exciting substance in this. The CGI of the fantastic wave travelling up the Thames and flooding 1 famous landmark right after another was gripping. The operations of the federal government COBRA Committee, the challenging concerns they grappled with, and the response to the catastrophe were all fairly convincingly, if fairly patchily, portrayed (though I cannot comment on their authenticity). Nonetheless, for my taste the programme was more than-dramatised and over-long: also considerably hysterical screaming and panicking, also a lot time invested on the different “human curiosity” sub-plots.

A pity truly, due to the fact this is a genuine menace which wants to be taken care of critically. When initial developed 25 many years back the Thames Barrier, which rises up to block the Thames when sea drinking water levels threaten to flood London, was employed only as soon as or 2 times a yr. As SE England continues to sink by a number of mm a calendar year (isostatic recovery from the final Ice Age nevertheless likely on) and sea levels steadily rise, so the menace is rising and the Barrier is deployed a lot more frequently – 14 moments in 2003. In addition, we seem to be on the obtaining conclude of much more frequent violent storms. The plot of the drama arrived too close to reality for convenience on 9 November 2007, when the Barrier was lifted twice because of to a storm surge and substantial tide combination, but fortunately they failed to fairly coincide.

I would have welcomed a shorter, calmer and far more practical drama-documentary. In simple fact this issue has very ample drama on its very own, so I’d be pleased with just a “what-if?” documentary, examining the developing probability of the danger, the probably effects if it took place, how the authorities would respond, and what we need to be doing to minimise this danger, considering that the Barrier will sooner or later turn into insufficient. They could retain that CGI of the floods, though – undoubtedly well worth seeing!
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Something of a disappointment on the reading through front this week. I had go through lots of high praise for Geoff Ryman’s ‘Air’, about the impact on a little and remote Asian village of a examination to beam the net correct into people’s heads. So I acquired a copy and got stuck in. However, I stopped reading through after 4 chapters. Nothing incorrect with the author’s creating fashion or ability, it was just that the tale was not to my flavor. And I have so several guides lined up waiting to be go through that I never persevere for extended with a single which I am not savoring.
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A curious trend in the sales of my alternate World War two novel, ‘The Foresight War’. Up to the stop of previous 12 months, following a few decades of revenue, more than twice as many copies had been ordered from the Uk printers as from the US ones (it is Print On Need, so copies are only printed as they are bought). This did not shock me, as the principal character is British and the plot is quite significantly focused on Britain and Germany. Considering that January, however, income in the United kingdom have declined whilst individuals in the USA have improved, to the extent that in this calendar year so far US sales are two.five occasions greater than United kingdom ones. Probably I have just run out of Brits interested in alternate WW2 stories!

I’m slowly catching up with recent SFF films, and saw a couple of them last week. One is The Day After Tomorrow, about the sudden onset of a new ice age. An average-quality disaster movie requiring a high-than-average suspension of disbelief. This is due to the plot making no sense climatologically, especially because of the improbability (to put it mildly) of the suddenness and severity of the cooling effect (ambient temperature falling to minus 150 degrees in a few seconds?). Climate change is obviously a difficult subject for Hollywood. Unlike major earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, which are catastrophic short-term events, climate change takes – at least – years, and usually decades, to produce dramatic results. Rather too long a timeframe for an exciting film, so they decided to exaggerate everything by a few orders of magnitude. And, as is commonplace with Hollywood products, there is a strong focus on the family in the centre of the storm (although not to the same ridiculous extent as the remake of The War of the Worlds which I’ve written about previously). As is usual with modern disaster movies, the real star of the show is the CGI of the disaster itself, with a massive storm surge crashing into New York.

The other film I’ve seen is King Kong – the recent version. A good film, with well-played characters and a most impressive, and expressive, Kong. This one is about relationships too, but then it’s meant to be. Naomi Watts provides a credibly appealing focus for the beast’s affections, and their story is handled well. The only complaint I have is that the film is too long, partly because the director seems to have overindulged himself in playing for ages with an array of CGI monsters on Kong’s island chasing and devouring sundry members of the cast. I kept wanting to cut these peripheral scenes short as I watched them.
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Also time to catch up with some of the material from the British Fantasy Society
which has been disgorged by my letterbox over the past few months – they are an industrious lot! Regular offerings include Prism, which is mostly reviews with a few comment columns. As usual, the coverage is wide, including fantasy, horror, science fiction and graphical fiction (or comics, as I used to call them in my youth). I read (as well as write) a lot more reviews than novels these days, as I find this a useful way of discovering new authors to try.

Then there is Dark Horizons, a mix of short stories, poetry, interviews, news and chat, sprinkled with illustrations. The current issue (#53) offers a remarkably varied selection of tales, including dark fantasy, horror and comedy. My pick of the bunch is Paul Campbell’s Timeless, about a middle-aged woman who is given the opportunity to review one of the key turning points of her life; a relationship which failed to work. This might sound unpromising but it is an original tale, beautifully told.

I’m still working through a couple of BFS booklets. One is A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults, a very strange and intriguing collection of stories all written on the theme (and mostly in the style) of the children’s series but with an adult – and sometimes nightmarish – perspective. The other is Fantasy & SF: the Roots of Genre, which consists of extracts from two books of criticism: Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn and What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid, with an introduction by Niall Harrison [edit to add: ooops, this last one is from the British Science Fiction Association - with apologies to them!].

Finally, a book arrived in the mail the other day, Houses on the Borderland, a substantial 300-pager with six novellas; “unsettling tales of the macabre”, according to the blurb. I was a bit puzzled because I hadn’t ordered it, until it dawned on me that it was another publication of the BFS that was included in my subscription. As I said, they really are busy people. All I can add is “keep up the good work!”