Ark Royal

When first contact becomes a shooting match, the divided forces of humanity's many national space navies are hastily united to face the alien aggressor. After the first full-scale engagement turns out a slaughter, Earth's only hope may be a handful of ageing and outdated vessels, led by the Royal Navy's oldest carrier, the Ark Royal.

Ark Royal is the first book in a series by Christopher G Nuttall, of which three are now published. It's a nuts and bolts interstellar war story, with a conveniently predictable means of FTL travel and insanely fast intra-system transit to get around the problem of depicting a defensive fight in space. There are some nice conceits, especially those used to centre the action around the oldest ship in the fleet, and in fact those conceits are the best part of the book.

Unfortunately, the technological conceits (which, by the by, are plain bad physics, so let's just accept that and move on) are surrounded by a story full of stock characters and poorly edited drama. No character transcends his or her TFC summary (he's a stubborn, recovering alcoholic navy captain struggling to retain his command; she's a plucky junior officer caught between duty and loyalty: they fight crime aliens.) The female characters are particularly egregious, consisting primarily of said plucky junior officer, a sexy young pilot, a marginally shrewish wife and a reporter whose sole defining characteristics are blondness, stupidity and an 'inhuman' thinness'.

It is, however, only when it comes to relationships the book really takes a nosedive. The sole sexual relationship of the book is between the CAG (Chief of Air Group, for those not either aux fait with military parlance or just following Battlestar Galactica, as Nuttall would appear to be doing) and a much younger squadron leader (said sexy hotshot pilot). It is not noticeably worse than any one of a hundred other literary sexual relationships, except that every encounter is prefaced or followed by the CAG musing that he shouldn't be cheating on his wife, and anyway the squadron leader is young enough to be his daughter/he is old enough to be her father.

Which brings me to the editing, and the fact that there isn't any. There aren't many spelling errors, but repetition is the book's greatest flaw; occasionally just within sentences, but also both repetition of information several times in a given passage, or repetition of the same phrasing every time a similar situation comes up. The squick-making reuse of 'old enough to be her father... almost' before every poorly-written sex scene* is one example, but also the aliens noses were so bloodied by the end of it it's a wonder they weren't all anaemic, and I think if one more ship had opted to 'rig for silent running' and 'lie doggo', I would have screamed.

The next book in the series will not be making an appearance on my Kindle; not unless I get desperate.

* If I genuinely held poorly written sex against an author, I'd never read anything past the 12-14 age bracket.

God Emperor of Didcot

I've actually not read the others, but cover shots are few
and far between.

For the Empire to thrive, the tea must flow. Tea, lifeblood of the British Space Empire, is almost exclusively grown on the planet Urn in the Didcot system. When an invasion threatens to cut off the tea and rob the troops of their vital moral fibre, the Empire sends in Space Captain Isambard Smith, the best man who happens to be in the area, to sort the problem out.

I read Space Captain Smith s few years back; I recall it being pretty decent, but having got around to the sequel, God Emperor of Didcot, I find myself underwhelmed. It's not that it's terrible, there's just very little to expand on the first book; only the same gumbo of SF references and dick jokes. It also lacks proper satirical bite. SF in which the good guys work for a fascist super-state tend to work by painting the super-state as terrible, and the enemy as worse (c.f. Warhammer 40K or Judge Dredd), but Frost's narrative basically buys into the glory of Empire with very little irony*, leaving the Ghasts and the Edenites almost pointlessly vile.

I wanted to like this too. I like steampunky space opera, at least in theory.

Oh well; onwards and upwards.

* I'm sure there is some element of parody, and it is conceivable that I have just been too tired to get it, but I wasn't feeling it.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

This cover is shamelessly misleading;
the only suitcase in the book is much
larger.

"Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be."

Allan Karlsson is turning one-hundred, a minor cause celebre in the quiet town where he lives in the old people's home. Then Karlsson climbs out of the window, walks slowly to the bus stop, impulsively steals a suitcase and catches a bus for any-old-where. It seems an odd time of life to start adventuring, but as the reader learns in parallel to the centenarian Karlsson's Odyssey, it's hardly the first time that he has traveled.

Jonas Jonasson's debut novel*, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is the story - or perhaps two stories - of one Swede's journeys, first across the world and later across his home country. The modern-day story is a comedy of errors, as Karsson and a growing band of friends find adventure, love, and even God through a series of misunderstandings and in defiance of dogged lawmen and criminals alike.

The story of how Karlsson came to be in the old people's home in the first place is more like a globe-trotting, intellectual Scandinavian Forrest Gump, but with much more vodka and dynamite, as Karlsson rubs shoulders with Franco, Oppenheimer, Truman, Stalin, Mao and Albert Einstein's affably dim half-brother Herbert - among others - accidentally gives the world nuclear weapons, acts as spy and counter-spy, inadvertently burns down a major city and twice blows up his own house. Karlsson's anarchic trail leads across continents in fair weather and foul, with and without proper transportation and official documentation, as if to demonstrate the damage and good that one free spirit can bring about armed only with a keen mind, a moral compass uninformed by the slightest political stirrings, and a lifetime's experience of vodka and dynamite.

The whole thing is recounted with a dry wit and a prescient narrative voice that reminds me a little of Anthony Trollope, although again with much more vodka and dynamite (and elephants). It is defiantly lighthearted in the face of danger and age, and presents the great and the good of the twentieth century as a mixture of good and bad clowns for whom deploying an aging Swedish explosives technician is as good a medium of action as any in response to international communism or the rampant running dogs of capitalism.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is a real feelgood novel, and a wonderful palate cleanser after a few months of post-apocalyptic shenanigans and bloody murder (although not without a certain amount of murder itself).

* For completeness, the translation from Jonas Jonasson's original Swedish was by Rod Bradbury for my Kindle edition.

Super, Hero

What makes a hero into a superhero?

Okay, so there are basically four takes on this, with a fair bit of nuance in between:

1. A superhero has definitively superhuman traits, resulting from mutation, technological intervention, non-human origin or magic. There is a certain amount of debate as to how intrinsic the changes caused by a technological intervention have to be for the character to count as a super hero rather than a regular hero using tech.
2. A superhero is someone who wears a costume to fight evil/crime, usually including - if not exclusively - costumed supervillains.
3. A hero whose heroics are themselves 'super'; larger than life.
4. A comic book character published by DC or Marvel, the co-owners of the trademark 'Super Hero'.

The last is the easiest to deal with, because it's beautifully definite. A Super Hero is whatever DC and Marvel decide it is. Yay!

Logo for the 'super hero' trademark defence legal team.

What about the rest of us? For my money (and this really is just for my money), the thing to do is not to try to establish terms from the ground up, but to look at those who are clearly superheroes and see what they have in common. Perhaps we should start with the big three(s). DC and Marvel each have their heavy hitters, the 'big three' who stand head and shoulders above the rest in terms of image and exposure. Who exactly Marvel's big three are is open to question, however. 

As part of the drive towards inclusion, Thor will be replaced
by a female character, and Iron Man by Usain Bolt.

The canonical big three seem to be the core Avengers: Iron Man, Captain America and Thor (hence the bigness of the news that one of the big three, Thor, will be replaced by a new, female incarnation). On the other hand, fan opinion is that the big three are more accurately the characters with the longest record of exceptional popularity: Hulk, Spider-Man and the soon-to-be late Wolverine, who significantly outsell any of the formal three's solo titles, thanks in large part to highly-successful adaptations. Of course, the MCU has seen a significant resurgence for Iron Man, Cap and Thor in the larger world; after all, Hulk didn't get another solo film and the non-canon Spider-Man and X-Men titles are struggling, but in comic terms, the balance is unchanged.

Hulk, Spider-Man and Wolverine are of course the easier three to categorise, as all three are superheroes by every definition. They each have superhuman traits which have become completely intrinsic to their beings, and fight evil in a larger than life fashion. The one stumbler is Hulk, who doesn't have a uniform, but 2012's The Avengers clearly established that the Hulk form is Bruce Banner's 'suit', and that works for me.

"First to punch the cameraman is in the 'big
three'!"

The other big three are more troublesome. Thor fits pretty much the whole package. Even on Asgard his power is exceptional, and on Earth clearly superhuman. He has an iconic costume and weapon, battles evil (his power is actually dependent on his virtue) and if a character who speaks in quasi-Shakespearean declamations isn't larger-than-life, I don't know who is. Captain America also has few questions; boosted beyond human limits by the supersoldier serum, he dresses in a flag and fights for right.

It's Iron Man who slows things down. His 'powers' are technical brilliance (prodigal and prodigious, but not beyond human levels) and a suit of armour. He has no intrinsic power that goes beyond human ability, although he does have an iconic uniform and battles villains in a super fashion. It could be said, however, that Iron Man is not a superhero.

The DC Big Three: If we go by powers,
that gives us Superman, Wonder
Woman, and Ambush Bug.

And yet, people speak of 'the big three' not because of Marvel, but because of DC, whose big three are pretty much beyond question: Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. They are all costumed, all iconic and larger-than-life, all dedicated to the fight against crime and evil, but the odd man out is Batman. In Batman: the Brave and the Bold, Captain Atom describes Batman as a c-lister, pointing out that he has no powers at all, and yet Captain Atom doesn't come close to making the big three. 

Batman is the poster child for the 'super-normal', the characters whose superpower is that they are ludicrously good at a wide range of perfectly mundane things. Batman is a master martial artist, Olympic-level athlete, scientific and technical genius (even when he has help creating his gadgets, he is usually shown to possess excellent analytical and mechanical chops), and of course, the world's greatest detective. There is no one trait that is beyond human potential (although in practice he is usually shown to possess physical abilities on a par with more overtly powered characters), but the sheer range of his excellence could be characterised as superhuman.

It's depressing how hard it is to get a pic of these three in
which Wonder Woman isn't pushing her chest out.

More to the point, a definition of superhero that doesn't include Batman is almost intrinsically flawed. Batman is a critical part of the DC big three, and of the Justice League, one of the top-flight superhero teams. To say that Batman isn't a superhero borders on the disingenuous. If you ask the man or woman in the street to name five superheroes... well, they'd probably look at you funny, but if they gave you five names then they'd either name the Avengers (and include Iron Man, Black Widow and maybe even Hawkeye), or one of them would be Batman.

What does the man on the street know? Well, with a title like 'super hero', popular perception is important. Batman is a superhero, not because of any intrinsic ability, but simply because that is what the world calls him, and in a fictional character, that's really what counts.

This rules out actual super powers as a defining trait of the superhero, and leaves us with a combination of 2 and 3: A superhero wears a costume and fights evil/crime in a larger than life fashion.

The term I've been using for that fashion, iconic, is not mere happenstance. DC characters in particular are self-consciously iconic, and none more so than the trinity. Batman is vengeance and the night; iconically, he stands for 'justice', and the fact that in his world justice must be served by someone outside of a corrupt authority (see Watchmen for a hell of a lot of commentary on this). Wonder Woman is the Spirit of Truth, standing both for truth and for compassion. Superman is the big, blue boy scout; he stands above all else for an enduring hope in a better world.

He's a man with serious mental health issues who found the
last item of clothing from a doomed planet and gained the
power to teleport and recognise his own fictional nature.

Marvel is a lot less straightforward. To quote Alan Moore: "Stan Lee had this huge break through of two-dimensional characters."

Still and all, you can sum up most Marvel superheroes pretty quickly, and that's important. 

A superhero can be a complicated character, but never complex. Any apparent superhero who takes more than a paragraph to explain in their basic essence is probably a deconstruction.

Pure

Fifteen years ago, the Detonations ended the world as it was. What remains is ruin, and the Dome. Who remains are the wretches, scarred and starved, fused to whatever they were holding or touching when the end came, and the Pure, untouched, improved, watching over the wastes from safety. Pressia is a wretch, her fist wrapped in a doll's head. Partridge is a Pure, genetically modified for speed and strength. Yet they are connected.

Pure is the titular first volume of a trilogy by Julianna Baggott, establishing the world of the wretches and the Pure, who between them occupy the ruins of America; or perhaps I should say Gilead, as the descriptions of the old world and its 'return to civility' under the Red Revolution are not dissimilar to the neo-conservative state of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. The primary distinction is that reproduction in Pure is a right, not a duty, to be stripped from women deemed unfit, who can then safely be altered like the men.

Although in places derivative, the book's setting is interesting, but it falls down a little on its characters, especially in the first half. Pressia in particular is almost exclusively reactive in the first half of the book, making no attempt to control her world that is not in response to direct stimulus. Perhaps this is from a life lived in fear, but Baggott seems determined that we know that Pressia is strong and smart and able from the get-go, and as a result she doesn't really kick in as a character until halfway through the book.

A lot of things don't really kick in until the halfway mark, not least the secondary viewpoint characters El Capitan and Lyda, whose first inclusion is actually quite baffling - rather than mysterious - and remains so until their roles are expanded after a significant span. The latter part of the book does show significant promise, once the story puts its cards on the table. It is still done no favours by publicity comparing it to The Hunger Games, but on its own terms is an interesting piece of dystopian fiction.

Super, Hero: The background

About a month ago a friend, whom I shall refer to as Dragnet, posted on G+ on the subject of what makes a hero into a superhero.

Actually, to get the story in its entirety, Dragnet's post was: "What's the first thing to pop into your head when I say "female super hero"? Be honest! "

Some names were floated and the nature of the female superhero discussed, and then this happened:

The story you are about to hear 14 Aug 2014
High leg leotards and ridiculous proportions. :(

The first superheroes I think of are probably Spider-Girl, Elektra, Black Widow & Mockingbird - though actually I think the only one of those that's actually a super is Spider-Girl. +Only the names - you know Elektra better than me - does she count as one? I'm assuming she doesn't. 

This sparked a new debate, which brought up the following opinions:

Only the names 14 Aug 2014
+The story you are about to hear - I wouldn't call her a "super" hero, no; in the same way as Black Widow or Hawkeye, she's just well trained.

To protect the innocent 14 Aug 2014
+The story you are about to hear <Elektra> can psychically poses people and communicate telepathically. if she doesn't count as super, because they are learnt skills, then neither does Doctor Strange.

Only the names 14 Aug 2014
But [Iron Man's] arc reactor is technology he built - it's not the intervention of some magical, mystical* or alien force.
*or supernatural, mutation-based etc

Gangbusters Presents 14 Aug 2014
+The story you are about to hear So, technological intervention doesn't count, but alien does? How does Superman (a perfectly ordinary Kryptonian) compare then to, say, Rocket Raccoon (altered by alien technology)?
Does the "super" in "superhero" not refer to their heroics? The exaggerated nature of their actions?

This then proceeded to a more general debate on another thread, launched by another friend, whom we shall call Fargo:

"What changes a character from a hero to a superhero?"

Which brought out opinions like these:

The events depicted 14 Aug 2014
Having capabilities that more normal people do not have.
Its why heroes are so much cooler ;)

Only the Names 14 Aug 2014
In my opinion, a "super" hero is one that has been somehow changed from the "normal" to give them extra capabilities. So, being a mutant, being bitten by a radioactive spider, super solider serum, that sort of thing.
...
Dr Strange is probably the weirdest one - I haven't really read him much, so I don't know if he really is just a normal human who has learnt magic (thus hero), or if something gave him that ability, like a pact or something (thus superhero)

Minnesota 1987 14 Aug 2014
Hero: ordinary person doing extraordinary things - fireman, policeman etc.
Superhero: protagonist appearing in the comic genre which is the primary output of Marvel & DC, commonly known as 'superhero comics'. There's no difference in my mind between Superman & Black Widow, as they both are protagonists in the same genre.

Request of the survivors 14 Aug 2014
A definition of "superhero" that excludes Batman, one of the five pillars of the form, must needs be inaccurate. Obviously, there isn't a completely accurate definition, but I think a superhero is an iconic, costumed character who fights evil (usually but not solely crime), usually but not always iconic, costumed crime.
...
it has nothing at all to do with the personal intention of the individual. A cop who goes above and beyond for a moment doesn't become a superhero. A superhero wears a costume or is otherwise visually iconic (like the Hulk, who is obviously recognisable even though he doesn't wear a costume) and usually fights some kind of equally iconic opponent. A superhero also typically possesses some kind of exceptional ability, even if that is explained in mundane terms (like Ted Kord Blue Beetle, who has a bunch of Bond-like gadgets).

Now, clearly a lot of people - not least my main man James 'Gonzo History' Holloway have said a great deal on the subject, but Dragnet did ask me to give my take when I was taking requests for an RPGaDAY topic on a day when I didn't have anything to say about the prompt. I said I'd look at that later, so here I go.

However, having set the scene with other people's thoughts, I'm going to go into this in detail in another post.

A Meme: Ten books that have affected me

A meme, picked up from Sally Brewer: Ten books that have affected me.

1. The Dark is Rising Sequence, by Susan Cooper
   This is one of the absolute best series I have ever read; I adore it, and despite my calling being to watch shitty movies, I have resisted ever seeing the movie of The Dark is Rising, because seriously, fuck that for a lark.
   The Dark is Rising is built around Arthurian mythology and its own cosmology involving the long war between the Light and the Dark. The servants of the Dark are manipulative, using humans to their own ends... and so do the Old Ones, servants of the Light. It was one of the first series I read in which magical power was not an unalloyed boon, and I think that was what I most took away from it. 
2. The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander
   Another series with its roots in Welsh mythology, The Chronicles of Prydain is high fantasy, rather than the modern fantasy of The Dark is Rising, complete with a giant cat and an oracular pig. It was also made into a movie that I haven't seen, but I hear that one isn't all that bad. The stories involved several instances of sacrifice, and I think that's what I took away from it. 
3. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
   One of the big names of fantasy, and one of my early influences. It's basically the ur-text for heroic fantasy, and one of the notable things about The Chronicles of Prydain was that it wasn't a Rings clone. The influence of Rings built up slowly for me, in part as a result of reading around it. Like Prydain, it's very much about the end of an age and the birth of the time of the ordinary human. A lot of these books are pretty melancholy. 
4. The Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
   I don't include The Amber Spyglass here. I liked that one, but the first two were - to my mind - better. Given that Spyglass doesn't follow the pattern set out in the front of either of the earlier novels, I've always figured that Pullman made a lot of changes to the plan while he was writing, and my feeling is that it could have done with a little more polish. Nonetheless, I like Spyglass and I love the first two.
   What I take from these... Okay, mostly it's the panzerbjorn. Who doesn't love a bear in armour. 
5. Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke
   
   A number of these entries are relatively recent books, and most of them have more or less disappointing movie adaptations.
   Inkheart is a story about storytellers who can read characters to life out of books, and some of the less savoury characters who have escaped from the eponymous novel-within-a-novel as a result. It's weirdly meta, and extremely dark, where the film was... a little murky in places. 
6. Mortal Engines, by Philip Pullman
   This is a book that could make a great film, but is more likely to make a terribly disappointing one. It's another dark fantasy, this one couched in a post-apocalyptic tale of a mobile, predatory London. It's the imagery that got me with this one; the vast, hungry cities and the skeletal, tech-undead Stalkers. 
7. The Homeward Bounders, by Diana Wynne Jones
   I was a latecomer to DWJ, having read and not enjoyed one of her novels as a child (I know, right, but no-one is perfect and it was basically a musing on mortality and lost childhood, which didn't much suit me at 10 or whatever I was). Of the first batch that I read, The Homeward Bounders was the one that really caught at my mind. I think that what makes it stand out is the central idea that hope is a trap. So often, hope is held up as the last light in the darkness, but the Bounders are imprisoned by it, caught in a perpetual struggle and unable to escape because they believe that there is a way out. 
8. Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett
   Everyone has their own touchstone in the Pratchett canon, and mine is Wyrd Sisters. I love it; I love the Shakespearean references and the Marx Brothers bits, and the witches and Death at the absolute height of their powers. Love it. 
9. Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
   
   However, this for a long time my absolute favourite work by either Pratchett or Gaiman. I feel that it is the first great work by either of them, because Gaiman moderated Pratchett's early whimsy and Pratchett moderated Gaiman's early pretension, and that as a result they both emerged from the collaboration writing better books going forward. 
10. Whales on Stilts, by M.T. Anderson
    If you don't know why I love this book, I guarantee that you're assuming that the title is symbolic.
    It isn't.