Having previously done the top 1000 "must hear" albums and the top 1000 "must see" films, the Guardian have now produced their list of 1000 novels "everyone must read".
Yes, they couldn't bring themselves to dare to say "best books" in the thing itself, but note that the words are embedded in the URL. Hmm. Meanwhile a capstone article from the series editor protests that they didn't want to produce a "best books" list, merely a list of 1000 really important novels. Hmm. Have a browse round the pages while you're there, by the way, if you have the time - it is worth reading through the full articles.
If you do check out the little write-ups of each book in the articles, you'll notice that an absurdly large and frankly unrealistic proportion of the 1000 novels "everyone must read" is made up of obscure Victorian novels you'll never have heard of. (Well, I say that - the one and only person I know who's even halfway likely to have read some of the really obscure ones is the august Dr Pittard, and I doubt even he'll have read all of them. I'd be interested to know if they really belong on the list, though, Dr P.) The series editor claims in his afterword that they didn't want to put together a populist list of best-sellers (naturally), but neither did they want to produce a list full of wilfully obscure books for the sake of looking highbrow, so they chose a middle path. And yet the list is still stuffed with what I, in my middlebrow ignorance, can only describe as wilfully obscure books. Smells like filler. I would have thought that a valid third way would have been simply to pick 1000 f*cking good novels, but then that's why I'm not an editor, isn't it?
Naturally it's not The Definitive List, nor would they have intended it to be - I would assume its chief purpose is to start a debate, to get the literate masses talking, and it's certainly done that. There are comments a-plenty on the Guardian's website. Personally I'd rather just rant right here. I see problems with the list, and the obvious one to point out first is that it's restricted to novels. No Marlowe or Chaucer, no Shakespeare if that bothers you, although my first thought on the matter was that the SF/fantasy section could have benefited from the inclusion of Edgar Allan Poe and Clark Ashton Smith. But naturally widening the criteria out like that from "best books" to "best authors" would have made compiling the list a lot more complicated and more time-consuming for the editors. Then again, it would have saved them the time of picking specific novels.
The use of genre-like sub-sections poses its own problems. They're a pretty odd selection in themselves - grouping together stories about war and stories about travel? Trying to categorise all the non-genre-specific novels as either "Family and self" or "State of the nation"? Yes, it breaks it all up into small, manageable (and importantly, publishable) sections, but perhaps it might have been fairer to the books simply to class them all as "Fiction". There's also some very odd placing of titles within sub-sections. Some of these are arguable cases where a book could reasonably be put into more than one category, and to space them out a bit more the editors have simply opted for the less obvious choice - Kafka's The Castle could just about be classed as comedy, in an existential kind of way, and of course Nineteen Eighty-Four does really belong in SF, although non-fans might prefer to see it under "State of the nation". But some of them are just plain wrong. Does Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men belong under the heading of "Crime"? By what definition are the purely psychological tales Fight Club and (so The Lovely Jo tells me) Beloved SF or fantasy? As much as I enjoyed The Man Who Was Thursday, I wouldn't stretch to calling that SF either. And pray tell, which of "War and travel" does Black Beauty qualify as?
The editors have also made some odd decisions about allowing authors more than one entry. You might not baulk at finding more than one Joseph Conrad or John Wyndham on the list, although six PG Wodehouses and six Evelyn Waughs under "Comedy" must be stretching it a bit, surely. And six Jane Austens under "Love"? All of them - her entire oeuvre of completed novels? Really? Even the ones even ITV won't touch? It seems more like they just couldn't make up their minds. (Or they somehow, unbelievably, just couldn't find 1000 worthy novels and needed some filler. But then they had all those obscure Victorian novels for that...) Compare and contrast with the way Terry Pratchett's entire Discworld series is listed as one item - I'm sure even people like Jo and myself, untrained as we are in the gentle arts of editing, could pick out two or three stand-out representatives. And isn't it cheating to include the 2000 Molesworth omnibus rather than an individual book or books?
Where the editors have restricted themselves to one representative novel for an author, they've made some odd choices. That's a natural reaction, of course - we're all going to disagree on which novel is an author's best (or most significant, assuming those are two different things). But even so... The one that leaps out at me here is The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks under SF - surely the correct choice is his second novel, The Bridge, because:
a) it's much, much better,
b) if you're looking for his most "significant" work rather than his "best", The Bridge was far more a breakthrough novel than The Wasp Factory, and more to the point
c) it actually has some fantasy content that would justify including it in that sub-section.
Similarly Consider Phlebas to represent his "M" output - I found it a disjointed trudge-fest, and I think even Banks fans who did enjoy it would agree that either The Player of Games or Use of Weapons would be a better choice. There are other examples, and here I'll stick to the SF section because it's familiar territory: Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss (Hothouse? The Helliconia trilogy?), Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds (why not the award-winning stand-alone Chasm City?), Under the Skin by Michel Faber (um, someone else's book. Seriously, what is this turgid thing doing on the list? That space could have been taken up by Bulgakov's The Heart of a Dog, or Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair, or Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilia... Christ, anything). Meanwhile they've stuck Russian fantasist Victor Pelevin under "Comedy", and which novel have they chosen to represent him? The Sacred Book of the Werewolf. Come ooooon! I've only just read that one, and it's poor! Damn poor! For god's sake, why didn't you pick Omon Ra - that's the seminal Pelevin novel!
Finally, I'd also question the inclusion of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The contributor who wrote that one up claimed that it had to be included because it's "so influential", by which she merely means that everybody else keeps talking about it. It did occur to me that this year sees the 60th birthday of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and that consequently MiniLit might have made the words "influential" and "derivative" interchangeable, but ultimately I think it's just one of those things. If you're looking for influential, the ur-fantasy series (The Lord of the Rings, of course) is also on the list, but I'm sure they could have found another one to take this spot. The Lovely Jo suggested George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and so did at least one comment-poster on the Guardian's website, and I'm happy to go with that.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
In the Court of the Cyber-King
Tsk tsk, three months since my last blogging. And now we're in 2009, the year when - if all goes according to plan - we'll be emigrating to New Zealand, which isn't likely to make the blogging any more frequent.
No review of the year this time, since I haven't been keeping track of books, films etc as much as I could have, but there is time to look back at some of the last fortnight's television.
Doctor Who - The Next Doctor
Rising from the depths, thirty stories high, Mechzilla! (Da-dum!) Mechzilla! (Da-dum!) ...and Mechzooooookyyyyy, la la la la la la laaa... Having a giant steam-powered robot stomping all over Victorian London ought to make this the best bit of Christmas TV ever - AND YET.
The story itself was quite solid, and there was relatively little corn, which is a mercy. No sparkly Kylie dust this year. David Morrissey was hardly natural enough to be a convincing Doctor, but he was right for his character, and his story hung together neatly and unfolded well. Dervla Kirwan's character, Miss Hartigan, was a lot more vague - a fun villain, but there wasn't really much sense of where she'd come from, barring a few oblique references to sexual abuse. She seemed to have been born fully formed as a sidekick for the Cybermen. Velile Tschabalala's sidekick character was a bit half-drawn as well - I couldn't remember a thing she'd done in the episode even minutes after watching it. Nothing much to say about David Tennant, who turned in another sound performance.
Nice to see the Cybermen again, but what was the point of the Cybershades? Apparently they're the Cybermats for the new generation, but back in the day there was always a reason for having the Cybermats in a story. The Cybershades seemed to exist only to give the viewers (and the Doctors) something new to goggle at. The novelty wore off pretty quickly. You could say the same about the Cyber-King, of course (what exactly were the Cybermen planning to do with it?), but it had the advantage that it actually looked good. Besides, I always have time to spare for city-stomping giant mecha.
The resolution was where it went a bit wrong. Not the Doctor using the second-hand Dalek McGuffin to zap the Cyber-King back into the void - that was set up and used entirely fairly. But before that... It seems there is but one approved way of dealing with Cybermen in the new series, and that's to give them back their empathy. This worked fine in the Age of Steel two-parter, with a bit of head-clutching and Cyber-jiving, a lovely shot of a Cyberman pawing at his reflection, and only one Cyberman's head gratuitously and hilariously exploding. But as soon as Miss Hartigan got the treatment, she and all her Cyber-minions magically evaporated into coloured puffs of mist. What the Mighty Troughton was that all about? And in any case, hadn't she retained control of her own mind? All the Doctor did was "break the Cyber connection" - in which case, how/why did the Cybermen evaporate? I feel like clutching my head and doing the Cyber-boogie just thinking about it. And then, at last, the corn.
You know, if the Morrissey un-Doctor had, for example, clambered up the Cyber-King's foot and jammed in his un-sonic screwdriver, we could have had both Doctors involved in the plot resolution and a reason for the Cyber-King to trip over that didn't involve the mysterious sublimating properties of guilt. Yes, I've committed the cardinal sin of trying to outwrite the episode as shown. There were ways RTD could have written that ending without recourse to sucking, that's all I'm saying.
A couple of minor questions about the Cybermen, arising from the fact that these were once again the parallel universe Cybus versions. How did they get hold of footage of all the previous Doctors? (Did they perhaps pinch that from the Daleks too?) And regarding the Cyber-King - the Doctor recognises it as a "Dreadnought-class" battleship, but the only spacefaring Cybermen he's seen have been the home-grown versions, so:
How did the Cybus Cybermen get hold of it? Since when, and why, do the Cybermen build their ships in the form of giant Cybermen? Why do they build them out of primitive clockwork? It seemed as though these were fragments of previous drafts bobbing to the surface of the story, overlooked by the editing coastguards.
On the whole, not a bad effort - entertaining and, barring the dodgy ending, pretty robust. Worth a 7-ish, certainly on a par with last year's Christmas special. Rewatchable, but not immediately - I might happily watch a repeat in a year or so. But hopefully I'll be in another country by then.
Yikes, I might not see Matt Smith's Doctor in action for years! Well, that's what second-hand Internet scuttlebutt is for.
Demons
AKA "Lukey the Vampire Slayer", in which an athletic teenager struggling at school is told by a shadowy man called Rupert from the other side of the Atlantic that he's been chosen to defend humanity against an endless parade of demons. Hmm, interesting premise - how on earth did the writing team workshop it?
You've got to let pass the first episode of a new series, of course, but the early signs are mixed. Neither the love interest nor "Mina Harker" are up to the sparky bickering the script requires of them. (I've only just realised that Mina was the chief witch in the Shakespeare episode of Doctor Who - I'll have to try not to hold that against her.) (EDIT: As I've since discovered, oh no she wasn't. Bit of a resemblance, but my memory was at fault. She was, however, the nurse character in Survivors.) Philip Glenister's American accent is already the stuff of legend, to the extent that they could make it the monster in a later episode of the series. Surely we've taken enough revenge for Dick Van Dyke now? Too early to say how the waxed-chested hero will pan out.
Calling the demons "freaks" is a bit insensitive to us freaks, as is the hard line the first episode takes against them, but this is in line with the Buffy model, and we may confidently expect Luke to fall for a sympathetic female demon called Angela before the series is out. The handling of the Dracula references is actually one of the episode's two strong points, even if Luke is apparently descended from the Hugh Jackman superhero version of Van Helsing rather than Bram Stoker's version. The other strong point is Mackenzie Crook's quirky ivory-nosed villain, so it's a shame - and a surprise, given his prominence in the pre-show publicity - that they've already killed him off. Presumably they'll find some way to bring him back for the series finale, if not sooner. Perhaps it'll be like the end of Flash Gordon, with some sinister cackling and a gloved hand picking Crook's nose. Sorry, picking up Crook's nose. Couldn't resist.
Plenty of ominous hints about Daddy Van Helsing's "accident", which are bound to pop up again in later episodes. Of course, we all know where they're going with this - a final episode confrontation with an evil demon version of Daddy VH. They've already broken out the Star Wars quotes, so it's not too much of a leap to expect "I am your father, Luke". Maybe they'll even bypass the Angela storyline and go straight for the family connection.
Next week, Richard Wilson turns up. 5 points if he says "Are you my mummy?", minus 5 for "I don't believe it!"
Also next week, another series of Dancing On Ice! Yikes! The routines get more complicated and more dangerous every year, as evidenced by the injuries sustained - this year there's already been a news item about one contestant splitting open his face in a fall, and the series hasn't even started yet. It's only a matter of time before we arrive at "The Ice-Dancing Man", in which criminals (and an action hero convicted of a crime he didn't commit, etc) have to run a gauntlet of in-house skating assassins to survive and win. I'm thinking Torvill and Dean armed with all the accessories from the inevitable "props" week, with all their edges sharpened. Yes, even the table.
No review of the year this time, since I haven't been keeping track of books, films etc as much as I could have, but there is time to look back at some of the last fortnight's television.
Doctor Who - The Next Doctor
Rising from the depths, thirty stories high, Mechzilla! (Da-dum!) Mechzilla! (Da-dum!) ...and Mechzooooookyyyyy, la la la la la la laaa... Having a giant steam-powered robot stomping all over Victorian London ought to make this the best bit of Christmas TV ever - AND YET.
The story itself was quite solid, and there was relatively little corn, which is a mercy. No sparkly Kylie dust this year. David Morrissey was hardly natural enough to be a convincing Doctor, but he was right for his character, and his story hung together neatly and unfolded well. Dervla Kirwan's character, Miss Hartigan, was a lot more vague - a fun villain, but there wasn't really much sense of where she'd come from, barring a few oblique references to sexual abuse. She seemed to have been born fully formed as a sidekick for the Cybermen. Velile Tschabalala's sidekick character was a bit half-drawn as well - I couldn't remember a thing she'd done in the episode even minutes after watching it. Nothing much to say about David Tennant, who turned in another sound performance.
Nice to see the Cybermen again, but what was the point of the Cybershades? Apparently they're the Cybermats for the new generation, but back in the day there was always a reason for having the Cybermats in a story. The Cybershades seemed to exist only to give the viewers (and the Doctors) something new to goggle at. The novelty wore off pretty quickly. You could say the same about the Cyber-King, of course (what exactly were the Cybermen planning to do with it?), but it had the advantage that it actually looked good. Besides, I always have time to spare for city-stomping giant mecha.
The resolution was where it went a bit wrong. Not the Doctor using the second-hand Dalek McGuffin to zap the Cyber-King back into the void - that was set up and used entirely fairly. But before that... It seems there is but one approved way of dealing with Cybermen in the new series, and that's to give them back their empathy. This worked fine in the Age of Steel two-parter, with a bit of head-clutching and Cyber-jiving, a lovely shot of a Cyberman pawing at his reflection, and only one Cyberman's head gratuitously and hilariously exploding. But as soon as Miss Hartigan got the treatment, she and all her Cyber-minions magically evaporated into coloured puffs of mist. What the Mighty Troughton was that all about? And in any case, hadn't she retained control of her own mind? All the Doctor did was "break the Cyber connection" - in which case, how/why did the Cybermen evaporate? I feel like clutching my head and doing the Cyber-boogie just thinking about it. And then, at last, the corn.
You know, if the Morrissey un-Doctor had, for example, clambered up the Cyber-King's foot and jammed in his un-sonic screwdriver, we could have had both Doctors involved in the plot resolution and a reason for the Cyber-King to trip over that didn't involve the mysterious sublimating properties of guilt. Yes, I've committed the cardinal sin of trying to outwrite the episode as shown. There were ways RTD could have written that ending without recourse to sucking, that's all I'm saying.
A couple of minor questions about the Cybermen, arising from the fact that these were once again the parallel universe Cybus versions. How did they get hold of footage of all the previous Doctors? (Did they perhaps pinch that from the Daleks too?) And regarding the Cyber-King - the Doctor recognises it as a "Dreadnought-class" battleship, but the only spacefaring Cybermen he's seen have been the home-grown versions, so:
On the whole, not a bad effort - entertaining and, barring the dodgy ending, pretty robust. Worth a 7-ish, certainly on a par with last year's Christmas special. Rewatchable, but not immediately - I might happily watch a repeat in a year or so. But hopefully I'll be in another country by then.
Yikes, I might not see Matt Smith's Doctor in action for years! Well, that's what second-hand Internet scuttlebutt is for.
Demons
AKA "Lukey the Vampire Slayer", in which an athletic teenager struggling at school is told by a shadowy man called Rupert from the other side of the Atlantic that he's been chosen to defend humanity against an endless parade of demons. Hmm, interesting premise - how on earth did the writing team workshop it?
You've got to let pass the first episode of a new series, of course, but the early signs are mixed. Neither the love interest nor "Mina Harker" are up to the sparky bickering the script requires of them. (I've only just realised that Mina was the chief witch in the Shakespeare episode of Doctor Who - I'll have to try not to hold that against her.) (EDIT: As I've since discovered, oh no she wasn't. Bit of a resemblance, but my memory was at fault. She was, however, the nurse character in Survivors.) Philip Glenister's American accent is already the stuff of legend, to the extent that they could make it the monster in a later episode of the series. Surely we've taken enough revenge for Dick Van Dyke now? Too early to say how the waxed-chested hero will pan out.
Calling the demons "freaks" is a bit insensitive to us freaks, as is the hard line the first episode takes against them, but this is in line with the Buffy model, and we may confidently expect Luke to fall for a sympathetic female demon called Angela before the series is out. The handling of the Dracula references is actually one of the episode's two strong points, even if Luke is apparently descended from the Hugh Jackman superhero version of Van Helsing rather than Bram Stoker's version. The other strong point is Mackenzie Crook's quirky ivory-nosed villain, so it's a shame - and a surprise, given his prominence in the pre-show publicity - that they've already killed him off. Presumably they'll find some way to bring him back for the series finale, if not sooner. Perhaps it'll be like the end of Flash Gordon, with some sinister cackling and a gloved hand picking Crook's nose. Sorry, picking up Crook's nose. Couldn't resist.
Plenty of ominous hints about Daddy Van Helsing's "accident", which are bound to pop up again in later episodes. Of course, we all know where they're going with this - a final episode confrontation with an evil demon version of Daddy VH. They've already broken out the Star Wars quotes, so it's not too much of a leap to expect "I am your father, Luke". Maybe they'll even bypass the Angela storyline and go straight for the family connection.
Next week, Richard Wilson turns up. 5 points if he says "Are you my mummy?", minus 5 for "I don't believe it!"
Also next week, another series of Dancing On Ice! Yikes! The routines get more complicated and more dangerous every year, as evidenced by the injuries sustained - this year there's already been a news item about one contestant splitting open his face in a fall, and the series hasn't even started yet. It's only a matter of time before we arrive at "The Ice-Dancing Man", in which criminals (and an action hero convicted of a crime he didn't commit, etc) have to run a gauntlet of in-house skating assassins to survive and win. I'm thinking Torvill and Dean armed with all the accessories from the inevitable "props" week, with all their edges sharpened. Yes, even the table.
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