Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe Review

While working and parenting, I’m normally only able to read about 5 pages of a book at the end of the day (just before my head hits the pillow). However I’m currently working my way through a series of dense, symbolic, almost Proustian books that are keeping me awake a little longer. And they’re – mumble it apologetically – science fiction. The series is called ‘The Book of the Long Sun’ by one of my favourite writers Gene Wolfe.

Having just finished two of the four novels in this series, it could be that I'm being premature by offering a review of them. However, I'm so besotted with Wolfe's prose that I really can't wait.

I bought `Litany of the Long Sun' (the collected volume of the first two books ‘Nightside the Long Sun’ and ‘Lake of the Long Sun’) some time ago and initially found the writing too obtuse and dense to progress beyond the first few pages. Initially things happen very slowly, with a very short period of time covered in great detail. I came back to it l

ast month, however, and found that it's one of those books that deserve persistence and, ultimately, offer incredibly rich rewards.

The books are set on the interior of what I guess you'd call a planet-sized tubular colony ship (known as `the whorl'), with the `long sun' acting like a giant solar fluorescent tube up the middle, providing heat and light. The ship has been on its journey for so long that none of the inhabitants remember that their world is artificial. However, this sci-fi setting belies the feverish imagination and literary intelligence that make this book so compelling.

The plot follows the young a priest – or ‘Patera’ – Silk as he attempts to save the Sun Street Manteion, the neighbourhood church he runs. It’s in the poorest area of the city-state of Viron and is bought by a powerful criminal kingpin named Blood.

Silk worships a pantheon of Gods, whose origin can be guessed by the fact that their Olympus is called ‘Mainframe’. However, Silk’s quest to save the Manteion is driven by a divine vision bestowed by ‘the Outsider’, who may be the ‘real’ God as we understand him. Mind you, another less miraculous explanation of Silk’s epiphany is offered towards the end of ‘Lake of the Long Sun’. As you can tell already, nothing is taken as read in a Wolfe novel. Everything is open to interpretation.

Indeed, Wolfe plays games with the reader– dropping in clues can easily be missed in the plot and intertextual references that connect with other Wolfe novels. For instance, the two-headed god named Pas in the Book of the Long Sun is the tyrant Typhon encountered in the Book of the New Sun. Silk is lame like Severian, the protagonist in the aforementioned tetralogy.

The characterisation is just as slippery: Silk is an earnestly just man, who strives to stay within the moral laws of his religion, but he is still capable of justifying compromises or capitulation with the criminal Blood in self-serving ways.

The writing style reminds me of 19th Century symbolist paintings - slippery of meaning, stoked by classical allusions, vivid imagery and mythological coda. Indeed, when I read it, I feel that I'm in the world depicted in the bejewelled fantastic paintings of Gustave Moreau. I find myself dreaming of the golden baroque images that Wolfe conjures up in his writing.

Of course, only being two books in, I have no idea of how Silk's story will progress or how all the symbolic threads that are being laid out will come together and resolve themselves. However, I'm enjoying the journey immensely...

Jupiter and Semele by Gustave Moreau

Not so Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - My Late Review

“You always have a choice.” These wise, nay cosmically profound, words are spoken by the Invisible Girl, Sue Storm, to the Silver Surfer in the Fantastic Four sequel I paid good money to see last night. They are the words that convince him to abandon Galactus, Devourer of Worlds, and save the Earth. It may seem somewhat odd that, after he assisted in the destruction of dozens of other worlds, the surfer would be so easily persuaded by what some may unkindly call a sentimental platitude. It may have helped that Sue looked like his long-lost love from his homeworld. Maybe all the other planets just didn’t have any hot chicks on them?

That little turd-nugget is typical of an entire film heaving at the seams with lazy plotting, simple-minded irritating characterisation and tedium. Even if I try to put aside my comic fanboy objections to the film (Galactus as a CLOUD for fuck’s sake?!!), I can’t find anything good to say about it. Long periods are dominated by clunking interplay between the members of the Fantastic Four. I suppose this is to help us ‘identify with them’, but I was simply bored and ended up feeling intense hatred for Johnny Storm. He’s supposed to be a cheeky, flawed maverick, but I just thought he was a cunt. At one point, he asks of the others “what have you got against capitalism?” Er, where would you like me to start, you shallow shitbag?

I could go on and on, but I’ll just highlight one more thing. Johnny spends a lot of the film pursuing and being rebuffed by a sexy female soldier. A soldier who happily stands guard while the Silver surfer is tortured (in a bunker in Siberia – I didn’t realise the US had a presence there!) In a twee ‘tying up loose ends’ effort, she appears to have got it together with Johnny and attended Reed and Sue’s wedding in the closing scene (I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that the Earth is NOT destroyed by Galactus). This seems to be sending a bizarre moral message to kids – she may have collaborated in torture but, hey, she’s actually a really nice person! Let’s invite her to the wedding!

No wonder the Americans are getting it wrong in Iraq with those kind of moral standards…

Our film is rubbish

Stardust - My Star Pun-Free Film Review

I went to a preview showing of the film Stardust last night (it’s in cinemas from October, apparently). Don't worry - you won't any crap star puns - "it's a star turn" etc etc. I promise.

It’s a fantasy film based on the illustrated fairy tale by comics megastar Neil Gaiman and artist Charles Vess. Designer colleague Rob and I were invited along as we’re working on a project involving the film. Having visited the website, we went to the preview feeling the film would be a bit naff. Luckily, it was a really entertaining, gorgeous-looking movie and less simple-minded than most films aimed at a crossover audience of adults and kids. Admittedly, the hero being named Tristan may have softened up my critical faculties…

The plot involves this Tristan, a humble lad from an English village named Wall. There is indeed a wall near the village (the town founders must have been particularly unimaginative with words); a wall between the human world and the fairy realm. When a star falls beyond the wall, Tristan swears to enter the fairy kingdom to retrieve it for the feckless cow he’s got the hots for. This, needless to say, leads to a quest full of peril and enchantment.

The thing that saves it from being twee is the gallows humour that permeates the script. I also liked the fact that – unusually for a fantasy movie – there was actually a gay character in there. In fact, Robert de Niro’s turn as the gay pirate Captain Shakespeare was, for me, the highlight of the film. Yes! Travis Bickle as a homosexual freebooter! What brilliant casting! His performance shit all over Ricky Gervais's cameo as David Brent in a funny hat.

Anyway, October’s a long way off, but I reckon you should see Stardust when it twinkles into UK cinemas…Shit! Sorry...

"Look, Ricky - don't try and fucking tell me that Extras is as funny as the Office"

Underworld: Evolution Pigshit Debacle

I have low-brow tastes.

I tried to read Proust’s ‘Remembrance of Things Past’, got two chapters into it and ended up devouring a crime novel by Andrew Vachss instead. I buy the occasional classical piece and get bored with it after one listen. I get arthouse DVDs with subtitles and find myself watching ‘Goodfellas’ again. So, in short, I’ve pretended that I’m intellectual in the past, but I just can’t be arsed any more. I’m happy to wallow in the cultural midden.

However, sometimes the pigshit I roll around in is too fetid even for me. A case in point is ‘Underworld: Evolution’, which I purchased as part of one of those ‘5 for £30’ deals. I’ll admit I rather enjoyed the first film. However, the sequel is worse than I could ever imagine. What an unintelligible car-crash of goth art direction, mangled plot, bad acting and pointless ultra-violence. I don’t expect anything better from Kate Beckinsale, but Derek Jacobi should be ashamed of himself for being greedy enough to take the money and run.

On the plus side, at least ‘Underworld: Evolution’ demonstrates that there limits to the rubbish my brain can tolerate. Now, back to that zombie comic I was reading…

OK, I'm in the frockcoat. Now, where's my cheque?