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Why We Keep Weaving These Webs

Why We Keep Weaving These Webs

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uncle hugosMy buddy Gabe and I, when we first met almost two decades ago, we knew — man, we knew our stuff was better (or was going to be better) than just about anything out there. It was the haughty arrogance of youth and ego, plus the fact that we just hadn’t read nearly as much of what was out there as we have now.

Consider, too, the impressions we’d formed in our teen years of what was most prevalent in the various popular-media streams: the (much smaller) fantasy book aisle was dominated by Terry Brooks and many lesser Tolkien imitators churning out derivative high-fantasy formula. Comics were still stuck in stunted-development adolescence, just on the cusp of the revolution when writers like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman would kick that medium in its juvenile ass. Films were mostly sci-fi knockoffs of Star Wars or B-grade fantasy with special-effects budgets so meager they wouldn’t fund a single episode of a typical SyFy TV show. And television animated fantasy didn’t aspire much beyond Hanna-Barbera cartoons and He-Man.

In short, based on that narrow and selective assessment, any cocksure young tale-weaver could survey that crop and think, “I can do better than that.” But we weren’t the only Gen Xers who nursed such thoughts. Many others could also do better, and they have.

With our generation, speculative fiction has entered into what seems a golden age, borne out in all those mediums — books, comics, film, television (and add another medium that was just emerging from its nascent stages when we entered the fray: video games). Individuals with tastes and perceptions kindred to our own are drawing on the best of the past like never before, fusing with modern sensibilities what they mine from those rich veins to create some of the finest work the genre has ever seen.

And they’ve infiltrated all levels of the creative business. When I watch old He-Man and She-Ra reruns with my kids, I get the impression that those writers were just lazily phoning it in for a paycheck and couldn’t give a damn about the words they were putting to paper or the stories they were slapping together. Contrast that with the short-lived He-Man relaunch (2002-2004). It wasn’t a stand-out show by any means, but it was heads above virtually anything that cynically aired in the early ‘80s to sell us toys from Mattel and Kenner and Hasbro. Yeah, that particular corner of the market still exists to sell toys — to our kids and grandkids now — but the people who are creating the product were kids like Gabe and me, who thought, “Man, if I could have a job writing that show, I would make it so cool.” And they do have those jobs, and they are.

So where does that leave us, web-weavers in a surfeit of webs?

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The Gargoyles of St. Wulfram’s

The Gargoyles of St. Wulfram’s

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DSC00165_2Of all the freakish critters in the original hardback Monster Manual, the one that always made the most intuitive sense to me was the gargoyle. Having seen perhaps more than my share of gargoyles by the time I entered the role-playing realms, I already knew them to be fierce, frightening, toothy, amply clawed, and sometimes winged. It stood to reason that they’d be crafty, pernicious opponents.

What made no sense was why the D&D variety weren’t made of stone, as nearly all true (read: real) gargoyles surely are. To this day, I still have no explanation for that decision on the part of the Monster Manual’s creators, Mssrs. Gygax, et al. They certainly had no intrinsic objection to stone beasties: consider the stone golem or that durable tri-form oddity, the xorn.

In order to better address this incongruity, I have abandoned my regular offices deep in Black Gate’s vast Indiana Compound and taken up residence at Harlaxton Manor, an out-of-the-way 1830s edifice set in the rolling hills of England’s Lincolnshire. Is it haunted? Probably. Not only did one of its previous owners conduct regular séances in the cozier of the two libraries, but the manor has been used in several eccentric movies, including The Ruling Class (1972) and the truly execrable remake of The Haunting (1999).

Are there gargoyles? Yes. But only two.

Luckily, just down the road, in the struggling industrial town of Grantham, an astonishment of gargoyles awaits on the walls of St. Wulfram’s, a mid-sized Anglican church that dates back to the 1200s at least.

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Adventure On the Page: Genre Fiction vs. Joyce Carol Oates

Adventure On the Page: Genre Fiction vs. Joyce Carol Oates

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36314The more I write, the more opprobrium I feel for categorical definitions of fiction, notably “genre fiction” and “literary fiction.” I like to think I practice both, and that most readers read both. Crazier still –– lunacy, truly –– I suffer the apparent delusion that often the two categories cannot be separated, except by book vendors aiming to simplify or streamline the shopping experience.

Not long ago, I delved back into Joyce Carol Oates’s introduction to a delicious anthology, Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, and I came across this passage:

However plot-ridden, fantastical or absurd, populated by whatever pseudo-characters, genre fiction is always resolved, while literary fiction makes no such promises; there is no contract between reader and writer for, in theory at least, each work of literary fiction is original, and, in essence, “about” its own language; anything can happen, or, upon occasion, nothing.

Now –– and I say this as a long-time and self-avowed fan of your work, Ms. Oates –– them’s fightin’ words.

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A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 4: The Heisei Era (1984–1996)

A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 4: The Heisei Era (1984–1996)

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Godzilla 89Other Installments

Part 1: Origins (1954–1962)
Part 2: The Golden Age (1963–1968)
Part 3: Down and Out in Osaka (1969–1983)
Part 5: The Travesty and the Millennium Era (1996–2004)
Addendum: The 2014 Godzilla

The Underwhelming Comeback: The Return of Godzilla (1984) and Godzilla 1985

After an absence of nine years, Godzilla smashed back onto screens in 1984 in a film simply titled Godzilla (Gojira) in Japan, but marketed as The Return of Godzilla to English-speaking markets. In modern movie lingo, The Return of Godzilla is a reboot. It wipes from continuity all the previous G-films except Godzilla ’54 and fashions a new continuity: The Heisei Series.

The new movies developed a recognizable style, but The Return of Godzilla looks different from the installments that followed. Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka aimed to capture the somber tone of the 1954 original and transplant the Godzilla nuclear metaphor into the 1980s Cold War. The monster, having somehow survived Dr. Yamane’s Oxygen Destroyer thirty years past, heads back toward Japan, squeezing the island country between the nuclear superpowers of the U.S. and Soviet Union. Scientists and the Japanese Self-Defense Force race to find a way to stop Godzilla before a greater nuclear confrontation arises.

It’s an ambitious, admirable premise. The actual movie fails to live up to it, either as a serious tale or as a monster show. While the Cold War background is intriguing, the human action is bland and no character stands out. The exception is the Japanese Prime Minister, whose scenes dealing with the U.S. and Soviet envoys evoke a true sense of Japan’s awareness of it legacy in the atomic age. Otherwise, the time spent away from Godzilla is a stodgy bore of people sitting around talking about all the things they aren’t doing, handled with workman-like direction from series newcomer Koji Hashimoto.

The effects scenes are hit-or-miss. The Return of Godzilla was Toho’s most expensive SF film at the time, and it gave VFX supervisor Teruyoshi Nakano his only hefty budget for a kaiju movie. This translated into a few spectacular sequences, such as Godzilla’s first engagement with the JSDF in Tokyo Bay, and the monster’s showdown with the movie’s special-tech weapon, the flying tank Super-X. Godzilla concludes the fight by toppling an entire skyscraper onto the Super-X. Now that’s how you do it!

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The Adventure Continues: the Return of Renner and Quist

The Adventure Continues: the Return of Renner and Quist

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Sleeping Bear coverWhen I first dreamed up my odd-couple pair of Renner & Quist, one of the many goals I had in mind was to write their stories specifically and consciously as adventures. This was not perhaps the most sensible decision, given a literary market polarized between nominally realistic “grown-up” fare and the highly fantastical tomes aimed at teens. (I shall not deign to even mention Romance; call me biased, go ahead. I can take it.) Nor did my conception of Renner & Quist allow for them to don armor, wield swords, or inhabit some far-flung or alternate world. No, these two, Reverend Renner being a Unitarian Universalist minister and Dale Quist a former P.I. and ex-linebacker, required a contemporary setting; to emplace them elsewhere would be to guarantee that any stories woven around them would be untruthful.

This is not to say that I’m against high fantasy; quite the opposite. I’m here, aren’t I? For further proof, take a gander at my Black Gate trilogy concerning Gemen the Antiques Dealer.

But not all ideas trend that direction and with Renner & Quist, I knew I had nearer waters to chart. Now that their second novella, Sleeping Bear, is out in the world, and with their first proper novel, Check-Out Time, very much in the production pipeline, it seems high time to explore what remains, in the 21st century, of that cracking good term, “adventure.”

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Adventure On Film: Paperhouse

Adventure On Film: Paperhouse

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By and large, if I had to drop one decade from the annals of cinema, it would be the eighties,SK-Paperhouse-1-334x500 but that period did come up with its share of winners.

One of the eighties’ forgotten gems is the fantasy-horror hybrid, Paperhouse (1988), a British release that did its best to compete with flicks like Heathers for Cineplex space, and failed. U.S. gross, according to the internet movie database, was just over $241 thousand. Sad. Paperhouse deserved better, much better.

Spoiler-free, the plot follows Brit tween Anna, curious about lipstick but not yet ready for boys, as she succumbs to a severe case of glandular fever.  The disease leaves her prone to vivid dreams, all of which stem from Anna’s crayon drawing of a bleak, lonely house. Whatever Anna adds to the house manifests itself in her dreams, and what starts out as a bit of a lark (think Harold and the Purple Crayon) quickly turns sour. Hardly twenty minutes in and it becomes clear that Anna may well have planted (or drawn) the seeds of her own destruction.

Having just read Violette Malan’s piece on John Gardner (On Moral Fiction) right here at Black Gate not a week before sitting down to re-watch Paperhouse, I couldn’t help but be struck by the film’s parallels to Gardner’s own arguments in favor of “moral” art and criticism. But what Gardner posits in his book he pursues by Socratic argument, in essay form; Paperhouse cleverly crafts those same questions into a cohesive dramatic whole.

Yes, the movie can be enjoyed on a purely surface level, without ever ceding the floor to philosophy, but make no mistake, this little chiller has a great deal more on its mind than things that go bump in the night, which is why it holds up so well, twenty-five years on.

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A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 3: Down and Out in Osaka (1969–1983)

A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 3: Down and Out in Osaka (1969–1983)

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Godzilla01Other Installments

Part 1: Origins (1954–1962)
Part 2: The Golden Age (1963–1968)
Part 4: The Heisei Era (1984–1997)
Part 5: The Travesty and the Millennium Era (1996–2004)
Addendum: The 2014 Godzilla

Sayanora, Tsubaraya — and Sayanora, Golden Age of Japanese Cinema

The end of the Golden Age of Japanese Giant Monster movies coincided with the end of the most productive era for the Japanese film industry. Starting in the early 1950s, the country’s film industry experienced a meteoric rise. The major studios released a combined average of 450 movies to theaters each year. But the growth of television in the 1960s started to erode film attendance. In the late-‘60s, audience levels dropped precipitously, numerous theaters closed, and the studios faced cutbacks. Contract directors and stars were released, departments were scaled down or eliminated, and the studio responsible for the “Gamera” and “Daimajin” films, Daiei, was forced out of business entirely.

Science-fiction and monster movies had it particularly rough because of the growth of television. Popular superhero TV shows offered a cheaper alternative for young audiences to get their giant monster fix. The children who increasingly made up the viewership for Godzilla movies could now see kaiju action daily from their living rooms.

Ironically, the person most responsible for the growth of SF television was Eiji Tsubaraya, Toho Studio’s master of visual effects and one of the four “Godzilla Fathers.” Tsubaraya formed his own independent company, Tsubaraya Productions, in 1963 to create special-effects television programs. The 1966 hit show Ultra Q led to the monumental success of Ultraman the next year. Each week, Ultraman pitted its giant-sized title hero against a new monster. Clone shows sprouted everywhere, and the monsters of cinema screens started to bring in less money.

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A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 2: The Golden Age (1963–1968)

A History of Godzilla on Film, Part 2: The Golden Age (1963–1968)

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MosuGojiWelcome back… the double holiday interruption delayed this march across (and on top of) the Tokyo skyline. But now the Big-G is back and about to enter the Golden Age of Japanese Fantasy Cinema and the peak of kaiju movie greatness.

Other Installments

Part 1: Origins (1954–1962)
Part 3: Down and Out in Osaka (1969–1983)
Part 4: The Heisei Era (1984–1997)
Part 5: The Travesty and the Millennium Era (1996–2004)
Addendum: The 2014 Godzilla

The Godzilla Masterpiece: Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)

The astronomical success of King Kong vs. Godzilla made Toho Studios commit to yearly Godzilla movies for the rest of the decade, as well as increasing their giant monster output in general. The studio shifted away from broader science-fiction epics like The Mysterians: the same year that King Kong vs. Godzilla ignited the box-office, Toho’s more ambitious and expensive science-fiction movie from the team of director Ishiro Honda and special effects creator Eiji Tsubaraya, Gorath, made a poorer showing. From now on, Toho would push that they had monsters and were ready to hurl them against each other for audience’s viewing pleasure.

After briefly considering a King Kong re-match, G-series producer Tomoyuki Tanaka turned to a hometown hero: Mothra, the monster-goddess from the popular 1961 Ishiro Honda film of the same name. Mothra was the point where the Japanese kaiju film came into its own as a specific cultural style different from the US model that first inspired it. The lovely yet powerful Mothra was a perfect foe to put in the opposite corner from Godzilla — at least in terms of box-office appeal. From a story and special-effects perspective, it was a trickier idea: Godzilla fighting a giant mystical moth?

But the creative team came through in an astonishing way: Mothra vs. Godzilla is the height of the Godzilla series and one of the finest monster epics ever put on film. This is the movie to show people at the start of a Godzilla odyssey, since it captures so well the Japanese interpretation of the giant monster genre, has Godzilla at his most charismatic yet menacing, and is more fun than most amusement parks.  Eiji Tsubaraya was at his zenith with visual effects; after some wonky optical work in King Kong vs. Godzilla, the effects here are seamless, especially the scenes featuring the miniature Twin Fairies (the shobijin, played by pop singing duo The Peanuts). The two monster battles, with Godzilla against the adult Mothra and then against two larval Mothras, are thrillingly staged and scored.

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Fantasy Out Loud IV

Fantasy Out Loud IV

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ReluctantBack in 2011, I penned the first in this occasional series with an attempt at rating and relating the fantasy titles I’ve read aloud to my boys, then aged seven and eleven. They’re now two years older and two years larger, if not wiser (though they are sometimes that as well).

Sadly, older child Corey no longer cottons to a bedtime story.

Evan, however, is not only game, he’s adamant that he receive his daily dose of out-loud fiction. The question as always is what to read? What’s appropriate? And what does “appropriate” even mean?

Right now, Evan’s big wish is to see Catching Fire in the theaters. He was too young for The Hunger Games, but he’s now read all the books (on his own, like most of his fourth grade classmates), and seems quite keen to revel in the filmic gore of Panem bloodletting. We’ll see.

While that debate simmers, the fare of late has included L. Frank Baum’s The Magic Of Oz, Colin Meloy’s Wildwood, Mollie Hunter’s The Walking Stones, and Avi’s Crispin: The Cross Of Lead. Plus a short, Kenneth Grahame’s “The Reluctant Dragon.” Evan chose the Oz title, and I chose the other four.

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Lay Down Your Weary Year

Lay Down Your Weary Year

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time-enough-at-last-350x263“It… is… later… than… you… think.” — Arch Oboler, Lights Out radio program

10…

There’s that classic Twilight Zone episode about the bookwormish little gentleman who has a list long as his arm of books he’s always wanted to read, but who is constantly thwarted by the day-to-day demands of society and pressures of life. He happens to be down in the basement library stacks when a nuclear war breaks out. He emerges to find every other human being gone. After this revelation sinks in, he heads back to the library. Cut to hours or days later: he has amassed piles of books in the order he plans to — finally — read them all.

And then…the unexpected happens. The ol’ TZ twist. In this case, his glasses fall off, and he accidentally steps on them. In the closing shot, he stands there, blind as a bat without his reading glasses, with a look of utter despair on his face that dwarfs any emotions he may have felt on realizing that the rest of his fellow creatures were gone. With the books, even authors long dead were still with him. Now even they have been wrested away, leaving him truly alone.

Rod Serling provides his usual wry commentary in the coda of the closing narration, but everyone who’s seen that episode (“Time Enough at Last”, 1959, starring Burgess Meredith) remembers that final scene — within the context of the story’s simple little narrative, that pair of broken glasses is somehow, improbably, more devastating than the destruction of the human race.

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