A review of ” The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2″

Just yesterday I reviewed Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so I thought it appropriate to review the other movie I saw last week, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2. Seeing these two very different movies within days of each other was an interesting experience, to say the least.

SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

Unless you’ve been on a long interstellar journey, you have probably heard of The Hunger Games books and the movies based on them, starring Jennifer Lawrence. It is the story of Katniss Everdeen, forced to fight in the gladiatorial Hunger Games in a far-future, post-apocalyptic tyranny that encompasses what is now North America (‘Panem’). In the course of the four movies (based on three books) Katniss inadvertently becomes first a symbol, and then a leader, in a rebellion against the despotic Capitol.

The first movie, The Hunger Games, was excellent; the second movie, Catching Fire, was even better. The third movie, Mockingjay Part One, was good but something of a prologue, with the final payoff coming with Mockingjay Part Two. Essentially the two Mockingjay movies are the story of the rebellion against the Capitol and Katniss’ not-always-happy role in it. The rebels manage to overthrow the Capitol, but at great cost and suffering, and the end of the fighting is realistically ambiguous.

The movie resonated strongly with me, and frankly, I liked it a good deal more than I liked The Force Awakens. Partly this is because Mockingjay 2 seems especially pertinent to the real world we live in today– despite the futuristic setting, there are scenes that could have been pulled from Syria or Iraq or Libya today. Right now millions of people around the world are engaged in actual struggles, either non-violent or armed, against actual tyrannies. And, to be blunt, it resonates even more with what could be our own future in this country, if certain hateful and megalomaniacal individuals and groups gain actual political power. We live in scary times, and a movie that warns us against tyranny is particularly timely.

Another part of why this movie worked for me is Jennifer Lawrence. This young woman is interesting even when she’s in a film that I don’t particular enjoy (e.g. American Hustle), and I don’t think I’ve seen her turn in a bad performance yet. She brings some serious vulnerability and conviction to the role of Katniss, and if the previous three movies had not already welded us to her emotionally, Mockingjay Part Two would do it. Her pain at her losses in the war, including her sister Prim (you saw the spoiler warning, right?) is raw and brings home the cost of war, even war in a good cause. Someone has called Lawrence the next Meryl Streep, and I find it hard to dispute the suggestion.

The core of the movie’s action is Katniss’ attempt, against orders, to penetrate the Capitol in order to assassinate President Snow, the head of the despotism. This is part revenge and part an effort to kill the snake (and end the fighting) by cutting off its head. The fight to break through the traps the tyrant has put in her path is horrible, and the cost is high. Katniss finally tries to infiltrate Snow’s palace even as the Capitol’s resistance begins to crumble, which means that she sees up close the suffering of the Capitol’s residents at the hands of the rebels. It’s a powerful moment, as the Capitol’s children get caught in the cross-fire. Mockingjay Part Two is essentially an anti-war film, and the climactic scene of the fighting drives its point home hard.

The ending is not then presented to us with a neat and tidy bow– instead, the film touches on a question that plagues all revolutions– how do you ensure that you do not merely replace one tyranny with another? Katniss, given the task of executing President Snow, instead assassinates District 13’s President Coin (Julianne Moore), who, as it turns out, committed a gratuitous act of murder in the last battle in the Capitol and in the aftermath is positioning herself as the new Snow. In the book Katniss is put on trial for this– in the movie she is exiled back to the ruined District 12, her home. This is one of only one or two places where the movie left me with questions, but they are pretty minor and don’t affect my appreciation of the movie as a whole.

The very end of the movie, an epilogue years later, is bittersweet, hopeful and powerful. Its power is enhanced by the soundtrack by James Newton Howard, to which I will doubtless be listening for many years to come. It is just about the perfect conclusion to a movie about a struggle for freedom, love, and healing.

Highly recommended.

Books that inspire me– “Citizen of the Galaxy”

Princess of Fire is now available as a Createspace POD paperback. Phase One of my GBtWD (Get Back to Work, Doofus) project is complete. I’ve started on Phase Two, which is creating a synopsis for Princess of Stars. I’ve allocated a month to that phase. Once I have it in hand, I can start drafting Princess of Stars.

Meanwhile, I’ve been doodling and reading and thinking about what I can do to expand my blogging efforts– and it occurred to me that it might be fun to do a series on books that inspire me, similar to my previous blogs on films. Almost at once, a first candidate for review presented itself.

A few weeks ago Chuck Wendig issued a flash fiction challenge, “YOUR VERY OWN SPACE OPERA”. I didn’t follow up on the challenge– 1000 words is not nearly enough for a proper space opera story, in my opinion– but it reminded me of past space operas, my own (unpublished) and others, and I was inspired to revisit a book that, for me, is one of my Ur-works of science fiction, and, specifically, space opera– Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy.

My personal copy of the book is the thirty-seven year-old Ballantine paperback with the Darrell K. Sweet cover, which is now permanently fixed in my mind as the definitive image of Thorby and Baslim the Cripple–

**********Spoilers hereafter, beware**********

Often the books you read in your youth are the ones that make the strongest impression and which stay with you the longest. So it is for me with Citizen of the Galaxy. I read this little novel before I was sixteen, when I was a lonely nerd desperate to find ways of engaging my imagination more powerful than those supplied by my narrow natal culture. I found just such a vehicle in Citizen of the Galaxy.

This is the story of Thorby, a scrawny, young, and scarred (in many ways) slave, who, through a twist of circumstances, comes to be the property of a beggar called Baslim the Cripple. Baslim is more than he appears (as is Thorby) and he adopts Thorby as his foster son. This starts Thorby a path to re-discover his past, and find his place in a complex and dangerous universe.

Heinlein was a master of creating future worlds with a wonderful economy of words. In Citizen of the Galaxy he surpassed himself. In the first few pages he paints a picture of Thorby’s enslavement and sale in Jubbulpore with small verbal brushstrokes–

“Lot ninety-seven,” the auctioneer repeated. “A fine, healthy lad, suitable as page or tireboy. Imagine him, my lords and ladies, in the livery of your house. Look at–” His words were lost in the scream of a ship, dopplering in at the spaceport behind him.

Heinlein did more in that one paragraph than many modern writers can do in pages of scribbling.

More than that, though, Heinlein’s artistry is seen in the large-scale structure of the book, in which he creates, not one or two cultures for Thorby to navigate, but four, plus others, human and non-human, of which we get glimpses. He brings each of them to life with that same economy. Each society is a stage in Thorby’s growth from slave to free person, as he grows more sophisticated and worldly-wise with each– and, ironically, finds that he has to struggle against new forms of slavery even in freedom. His contact with each society is broken in wrenching ways, forcing him to find his way anew. The drawback with this plot structure is that the novel’s short length does not allow for a detailed exploration of each society or Thorby’s adventures in them (more about that below).

Heinlein did not invent space opera. If there is any one person who deserves that accolade, it would be E. E. “Doc” Smith, with his Skylark and Lensman series, although there were plenty of predecessors even to Smith. But Heinlein put his stamp on the sub-genre with Citizen and other books. His writing and his concepts were just that good.

One aspect of the novel I particularly enjoy is the vivid life Heinlein gives to the capital of the Sargonate, Jubbulpore, where the novel begins. Decades before Joss Whedon’s Firefly, Heinlein created a world where high technology lives cheek-and-jowl with extreme poverty, corruption and superstition. It’s also a strong portrait of life in an all-powerful tyranny, where even nominally free people have reason to fear the authorities– but where ordinary people still find ways to resist.

The book is not perfect. It telegraphs one or two pieces of plot that would have been better left as surprises. Personally, I find myself wishing that Heinlein would have spent more time on Thorby’s experiences in each culture, particularly his time in the Hegemonic Guard, which passes without even a major space battle (unless you count flying mashed potatoes). This last complaint is probably the result of the fact that Heinlein’s juveniles were intended to be short and were produced on a time-table, at least one a year for more than a decade. This is one Heinlein novel which you might wish was a little more door-stopperish than average.

Far more critical, however, is the fact that Heinlein does not completely close the circle for Thorby. Thorby finds a place and a purpose in the last society he has to negotiate, as the head of a powerful family corporation– but the lingering question of whether officers of that corporation actually caused the death of his parents and sold him into slavery to cover their own culpability in the interstellar slave-trade is never really resolved. There is no emotional or psychological catharsis or resolution, no vengeance or retribution, not even a perp walk. The climax of the book is a proxy fight for control of the family corporation, which is perhaps logical in terms of corporate culture, but overall is a dramatic let-down– and it’s followed by an unsatisfying and rather awkward concluding chapter in which Thorby– whose full name is Thor Bradley Rudbek– sits around thinking about how Baslim would want him to stay the course in his corporate job, to do what he can to fight slavery from his position of economic power. Not exactly an ending that makes you light up the literary equivalent of a cigarette.

The weakness of the book’s ending is puzzling, and has come in for a lot criticism over time. When you compare it to the perfect resolutions of other Heinlein books, such as Have Space Suit Will Travel or The Door into Summer, it’s doubly-puzzling. Heinlein was perfectly capable of giving a book a dramatically satisfying conclusion, but somehow this one (in my opinion) got away from him.

A review of the book’s history does not shed a great deal of light on this conundrum. Citizen was written from November to December, 1956 (staggeringly fast, even for a short book). It was came out in hardcover in July, 1957. In other words, Heinlein had seven months to reconsider the ending, but there is no evidence he ever did. It appears this is a case of him applying his own Rules of Writing to himself, in particular, Rule Number Three–

1.) You must write.
2.) You must finish what you write.
3.) You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4.) You must put the work on the market.
5.) You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

Rule Number Three has been indicted for causing a great deal of confusion in the minds of novice writers– but it might explain the ending of Citizen. It’s pretty clear that Heinlein finished it, shoved it into the pipeline to Scribner’s, and moved on to other projects, including Have Space Suit Will Travel.

As frustrating as the ending is, however, it doesn’t change the overall power of the book, shaped as it is by Heinlein’s unique imagination, and his ability to depict humanity at its worst and best.

If you want to write science-fiction in general, and space opera in particular, this is a book you have to read.

A Review of the novel “Station Eleven”

I’m not much of a reader of literary fiction, but an NPR review of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel caught my ear some days ago. It sounded intriguing, so I checked it out of the library.

I’ve mentioned before that it is a rare book nowadays that rivets my attention. As a reader I am old and jaded, and when I look at much of what is being published nowadays I have a sense that I have seen it before. Not many books crack my sense of ennui.

Station Eleven managed the feat. Its story kept me going to the very end. It is a pleasant surprise.

*****Spoilers****Spoilers****Spoilers****Spoilers****

The book’s central premise is that, sometime in the near future, humanity is very nearly wiped out by a new, extremely lethal strain of influenza (the “Georgian flu”). In a matter of weeks global civilization collapses, leaving scattered survivors– those lucky enough to dodge being exposed to the flu, and the very, very few who are naturally immune– struggling to survive.

In most hands this sort of premise would have been given an epic treatment, with scientists and politicians and military men figuring prominently in the story, struggling against the disease in widely scattered locations around the world. This is more-or-less the approach of the movie Contagion, a film I personally enjoyed. In general, calling something epic gets my attention.

Station Eleven, in contrast, completely abstains from an epic approach. Instead, Mandel creates an intimate portrait of the end of the world, and she makes it work. The book starts with the death of Arthur Leander, a middle-aged film star who drops dead in the middle of a production of King Lear in Toronto, on the very night the influenza arrives in the city. The story then moves back and forth in time, describing the lives of several characters, before and after the flu, whose stories are intertwined around Leander and which continue to collide even after his death and the end of civilization. One such character is Kirsten, a young woman who was a child actress in the production of Lear in which Leander died. Twenty years in the future she is a member of the Traveling Symphony, a peripatetic band of musicians and actors who travel between the scattered settlements of survivors in what was once the state of Michigan, giving performances. It’s a changed world, but Beethoven and Shakespeare, not surprisingly, remain relevant.

Even with the small scale, and the shifts back and forth in time and from character to character, Mandel creates an utterly believable post-apocalyptic world. There are almost no false notes here, no over-the-top heroics, no blood-drenched battles, no easy answers to the horrors people go through. About the only complaints I have are that one piece of climactic business is resolved by what appears to be a deus ex machina, and there are parts of Arthur Leander’s story I could have done without. Aside from those quibbles, however, the story flows smoothly and leaves the reader with a sense of verisimilitude– this is what the collapse of civilization would look like, from the inside.

Mandel also brings a fresh perspective to post-apocalyptic story-telling, focusing on the importance of art, even after the collapse of society. Aside from the Traveling Symphony itself, copies of a science-fiction graphic novel, Station Eleven, created by Leander’s first wife, serve as a thread that connects many of the characters over time, often in unexpected ways. The comic is so loving described in the story that I find myself wishing I could buy a copy. The ultimate point Mandel is trying to make about art among the ruins is summed up by a quote from Star Trek: Voyager— “Survival is insufficient”– an axiom that contains within itself the seed of rebirth for human society. As a theme it is powerful and resonant.

I recommend Station Eleven highly– and I hope someone is working on a movie. I think it would work on the screen, although it lacks the sort of suspension-of-disbelief-straining action movie-makers, and audiences, seem to demand nowadays.

More about that in a future post. For the time being, go get the book. You won’t regret it.

There will now be a brief hitch in the get-along….

Stop the presses.

Princess of Fire has hit a snag– several, in fact. My fourth read-through has turned out to be a little interesting than I thought it would be. So much so, in fact, that I’ve told my remaining two beta-readers not to bother reading the version I sent them. I’m not quite going back to the drawing-board, but publication has shifted from possibly this week-end to some time later this month.

I am not going to go into more detail than that. When I’ve tried to write about it I have consistently slipped over into some pretty wretched whining. I’ll spare you. Suffice to say that, at this moment if I were to assess myself as a writer, I would say that I am a third-rate word-mangler who occasionally rises to the level of second-rate mediocrity.

But…there is nothing for it. Time to pick myself up, scrape off the mud and resume digging.

And waiting…a brief Princess of Fire update

This is perhaps the very hardest part of editing a book– waiting for the beta-readers to return their feedback. I’ve gotten a response from one reader on Princess of Fire, and I’m waiting for input from two others. Patience is a virtue, or so I am told….

In the interim I’ve gone ahead and started a fourth reading of my own of a new CreateSpace PDF proof I’ve created. This one is mainly to make sure that my pagination, spacing and page breaks are all in the right places. I assume (hope) that my remaining beta readers will not find anything major at this point, and that there are no important changes left to be made. Still, I’m holding off calling the text finalized, just to make sure.

You may notice that I did not say completed— that’s not a word I use a lot about my books. Over time I’ve come to accept the truth of the saying, which I have seen most recently attributed to Harry Crews, that novels are never finished, only abandoned. There comes a point at which you simply need to stop diddling with the damn thing and either publish it or send it to an agent or editor. That moment is fast approaching for Princess of Fire— in itself, a cause for rejoicing, considering that at times I damn near despaired of ever completing this novel.

In the wake of publishing Princess of Fire I will not immediately start in on writing Princess of Stars. At the moment I know how the book begins, and very precisely how it ends (right down to the last line), but the middle is a largely undiscovered country. After the pantsing disaster of Princess of Fire, I intend to take some time and try to get a better feel for the guts of Princess of Stars— if not a full outline, then probably a pretty detailed synopsis. I anticipate this book will be big and cover a lot of ground, so I want to have a firm foundation before I actually start.

In the interim, I will probably be spending some time expanding the partial draft I have for Horse Tamer, which may need a new title. It’s a story close to my heart, but I don’t anticipate completing it any time soon– when I try to think about a possible word count for it, the number “500,000” keeps coming to mind (don’t scream– there are bigger novels out there).

Beyond that, I plan on expanding my blogging efforts, which have been lagging lately. I have more movies to review and more unsubstantiated opinions to bloviate about. Of course, and hardly least, there is still the nagging need for me to secure a day-job, another project that has been in the doldrums lately.

But I am close, so close, to publishing Princess of Fire. The sense of liberation is going to tremendous. You might want to stand back….

Later.

As I sit here, waiting….

…for my beta-readers to digest Princess of Fire (and I stand by with antacid), I’m going forward with further changes that I know need to be done. These are the kind of fiddling corrections I thought the third draft would deal with– the small inconsistencies and errors that creep into any lengthy work of fiction. Want some samples? I thought you’d never ask–

1. Where’s Kathy’s glasses? Believe it or not, whether or not Kathy’s got her glasses on her nose is important (this was particularly true in Princess of Shadows, where they were a major plot element).

2. At the moment I have Kathy telling two different people to do the same thing in three different places in the narrative. If you don’t straighten that sort of thing out, at the very least your protagonist looks, well, challenged.

3. At different locations in the book I call a certain physical space a situation room, an operations room and an operations center. I think Emerson said something negative about consistency, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t what he was thinking of.

4. Throughout the book I have three sets of running numbers that anchor much of the action. I have to do a find on the critical word for each and make sure they increment correctly and come to the right total at the end. Normally, I’m not this anal, but I have a terror of some reader coming back and saying “On page 321 you said fifteen thousand and sixty-three, and on page 425 you said fifteen thousand fifty-three, can’t you count…?” C’mon, authors are only human. No, I mean it, we really are.

So, this is how I’m keeping myself occupied while I sweat out waiting for my beta-readers. This is always a nerve-wracking time for me– my baby is being looked at by strangers for the first time. Well, not actually strangers, but eyes other than mine. It makes my hands shake, especially since I’m not too sure the little tyke is actually that appealing….

Later.

Short fiction– The Last Tree

This is a piece of short fiction was belatedly inspired by a Sunday Photo fiction prompt—

Photo copyright by Al Forbes

This is sooo belated, though (by ten days), that I am not going to add my link to the collection for April 6th– there’s just no point. There’s also the not inconsiderable fact that I completely blew away the 200-word limit. So, instead, I’ll simply acknowledge the inspiration and move on.

Having said that, this doodle is actually part of a concept I have had for a while for a sci-fi story. I think it would work as a novel, but I think it would really rock as a movie. But the story has to come first, and these are the first few hundred words of the concept I’ve actually laid down.

In a far future, humanity shelters from a poisoned Earth in a vast, enclosed habitat. After centuries, things are not going well, and an unlicensed scientist approaches one of the elite– literally, a “high-level”– with his concerns….

Copyright 2014 by Douglas Daniel
****************************************

“They say it’s the last tree on Earth,” Carr said.

Anneke knew that was not so. Far above, in the up-levels, there were many bonsai’d trees, individual specimens in pots. She had seen those all her life. But a full-grown tree—she had had no idea such a thing existed. This had to be the only, the last, of its type.

She looked up. There was the explanation– this patch of open space, nearly dead center under the core Atrium, was one of the few places in Lower London with plenty of light. Far, far above, sunlight shone through distant skylights, but this place was so down-level, at what the ancients had called ‘street-level’, that the natural light seemed filtered; it was bright here only because artificial light leaked into the core Atrium shaft and supplemented the sunlight. Even as she watched, the sunlight dimmed, then brightened again. Doubtless a dust-cloud had howled over the Habitat just then, momentarily occluding the sun.

“Come closer,” Carr said.

Anneke, hesitating, followed him into the open space around the tree. Odd stone slabs stood upright all around the tree, although some leaned considerably out of the vertical, and one or two had fallen. They were worn and gray; as she came closer Anneke saw that all of them had writing carved into them, although in a mode so ancient that she had trouble understanding the words. Some of the stones were so worn that she could not make out the writing at all.

Tombstones. The realization came with a start—it meant she was standing in a graveyard, among, or over, the bones of ancients buried here. And that meant that the dilapidated stone building standing close at hand was a church. The sheer antiquity of what she was seeing caused her to shiver, all the more because the Hampstead Heath support pillar loomed gigantic over the open space, a few hundred meters beyond the church, and the walls of the Atrium rose dizzyingly overhead.

The two of them stopped beneath the tree. The ground was covered with pink-white petals, matching those still on the tree. As Anneke stood there, a petal fell from a stem somewhere overhead and, in falling, brushed her face. She started, but the petal was soft and the impact gentle.

Looking up, she had an impression of a complexity of brown branches, green leaves, and pink blossoms. She had the sudden sense of being in the presence of a mighty, but silent, being. How long had it grown here, forgotten, a lost remnant of a dead world?

But more petals were falling. “Is it dying?” she asked Carr.

He shook his head. He casually laid a hand on the tree’s trunk, as if they were old friends. “No—it’s spring, or it’s supposed to be. I suppose there’s just enough natural light for the tree to follow its normal cycle. It was normal for trees to blossom in the spring, and then shed their flowers as the season passed. If there were other trees to pollinate each other, then they would bear fruit.” He paused, looking up at the tree. “But this tree hasn’t borne anything for centuries.”

Anneke shifted on her feet, uncomfortable. “Why are you showing me this?”

“I wanted to give you a taste,” Carr said, “of what humanity has lost. We’ve been trapped in the Habitat for so long, we’ve forgotten what the Earth was like before the Catastrophe. Imagine trees like this, thousands of them, standing in forests, groups of trees that covered the land and were so vast you could get lost in them, all under an atmosphere you could actually breathe. And that was only one sort of life-form on the Earth in the old days.”

“I know the history of the Catastrophe, and the ancient times,” Anneke said, irritated.

“I know you’ve read the histories,” Carr said. “Reading history can only carry you so far. Come, touch it.”

Anneke realized she was reluctant, and then she was angry with herself. She stepped closer and laid her hand on the tree trunk. The…bark, she supposed, was rough under her fingers, but cool and benign.

“We are meant to live among other life-forms like this,” Carr said. He stood over her, but there was no threat. His expression was solemn. “Humanity can’t continue to be trapped in the Habitat. We are dying, lady, slowly dying, because we have been cut off too long from what is natural. I think you know that.”

“Yes,” Anneke whispered. “But what’s to be done? The Earth is poisoned, and it’s been poisoned for two thousand years.”

“We must find a way,” Carr said, “to purify the world. And I think those who built the Habitat meant for there to be a way to do that. If so, surely the Administrator’s own daughter would be in a position to find out what that was.”

Anneke looked at him, comprehending. “So that is why you contacted me.”

“Yes,” Carr said. “My friends and I are desperate, lady. You may be our last hope. Please.”

Anneke hesitated. What Carr was asking her to do was to go against her father, the bureaucracy, the entire security apparatus of the Habitat, and two thousand years of tradition. But we are dying. There was no escaping that fact.

“I will try,” she said.

****************************************

Since putting Princess of Fire on hiatus, I have doodled away on several other projects, this among them. I may spend a few more weeks off, and then take a whack at PoF version 2.0. It’s not the way I usually handle my drafts, but Fire has already proven to be an unusual project.