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Preparing for the Film Release

BlindessJosé Saragamo’s Blindness was the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. As the inhabitants of an unnamed city go blind one by one, the very fabric of society begins to decay until it is transformed into an animalistic morass of survival. That is the premise of Saramago’s intensely powerful and challenging novel. The core of the story revolves around seven people, among the first to go blind, along with a doctor’s wife who for some reason never loses her sight, but keeps this fact hidden from all save her husband.

Saramago explores how the removal of sight causes the destruction of the social structure. Even before the entire community goes blind, the government, fearing (rightly) an epidemic, quarantine all the blind under inhumane conditions. Yet as the worst of human society emerges, so too does compassion and cooperation, as we follow the seven main characters and watch as they form their own family to insure their survival.

Blindness is not a beach-reading novel that you can flip through in a day. It require concentration and reflection. Saramago pulls the reader into some pretty horrific situations as some of the downtrodden take advantage of others. With the character of the doctor’s wife, the sole sighted person in a city filled with the blind, Saramago creates a character both helpless and with great responsibility to those around her. It’s an insightful allegory to our world today.

I decided to read Blindness after finding out that it has been adapted for the screen by writer/director/actor extraordinnaire, and my pal, Don McKellar. It’s sure to be a harrowing experience.

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Engrossing Fantasy of the Highest Caliber

Shriek: an afterwordWhenever I am going to meet an author I try to read some of their work beforehand. At ALA this year I attended a dinner with Jeff VanderMeer, and on the plane to DC I started reading his latest fantasy novel Shriek: An Afterword. I only made it through the first 100 pages of so before meeting him, but I could tell there was quite a bit of talent in the man.

Shriek: An Afterword is of that fantasy genre that I don’t often read: alternative histories that may or may not be earth. It is also a biography of sorts of the Shriek siblings, Duncan written by his older sisterS Janice. Likewise it is a “biography” of their strange city, Ambergris. In Shriek, Janice is looking back on her life and writing an afterword for one of her historian/writer brother’s books. The Shriek’s lives were marked by the sudden death of their father after receiving the announcement that he had won a prestigious literary award, when they were children. Is this event the one that started Duncan down the path of an obsessive historian with radical theories perhaps too outlandish for others to fathom? And is this why Janice longs for recognition even while self-destructively indulging in every pleasure imaginable? The Shrieks eventually become fixtures in Ambergris’ culture, both reaching populist heights and tragic lows.

The river-city of Ambergris itself is perhaps the most potent character in the novel. Think of a grand, decaying New Orleans, complete with an underground city of quasi mushroom dwellers known as Gray Caps and you might get a sense of what Ambergris holds. Duncan’s obsession focuses on the Gray Caps and his first work, Cinsorium: Dispelling the Myths of the Gray Caps becomes a best-seller. During his research, Duncan uncovered hints of dark secrets connecting the Gray Caps to an horrific event that nearly destroyed the city years back. He also picked up a bizarre fungal condition that remained with him for the rest of his life. Janice unspools the pair’s story with tantalizing hints of their fate, augmented by notes from her brother, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes contradicting what she writes. It is a fascinating and compelling addition to the city’s lore.

VanderMeer has created a masterfully detailed, complex, fantastical novel, so utterly and darkly creative. The voices of Janice and Duncan are unique and true, revealing their all-too human flaws even while endearing them to the reader. Shriek: an afterword calls to mind Mary Gentle’s glorious White Crow novels, Rats & Gargoyles and Architecture of Desire in its gloriously giddy sense of the historical and the fantastic. This was one absorbing and entertaining read.

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Gaiman… a Greek God?

Neil GaimanYeah, he’s a NYT best-selling author, and he’s the rock-star of comic book writers, but what does having a piece in Time magazine mean in the zeitgeist of popular culture? Neil Gaiman’s got his first Hollywood film adaptation of his writing, the fantasy novel Stardust. Time discusses the potential for Neil’s level of fame to be on the verge of exploding… moving from that level of cult appeal to a more mass appeal. It’s so strange, because on some levels, Neil’s popularity seems enormous already, yet in a way, by its very nature (and despite a few best-selling novels) stemming from comics and living in the fantasy genre, some might label it cult appeal. Well, I’ve been a fan of Gaiman’s since his “Black Orchid” miniseries for DC, and predictably, I’ve had a bit of a crush on him as well. In addition to his talent, he’s awfully cute. But whether you’ve read his work or not, if you’re a blog reader and you haven’t checked out his journal, you probably should. It’s one of the better ones. I wonder how he does it?

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Ambitious New Novel by Sheri S. Tepper

The MargaretsSherri Tepper is a prolific writer of both science fiction and fantasy. Her latest novel is an ambitious work the is for-the-most-part a success. The Margarets takes place far in the future. Margaret is a twelve-year old girl living on Mars’ moon Phobos with her parents. Terrans have for the most part destroyed the Earth through overpopulation and much of the population has abandoned the planet for colonies on other worlds. However interstellar races who advanced earlier than Earthians have been keeping an eye on them. There is some indecision as to whether or not the human race should be allowed to continue to exist.

Some of the races who sit in judgment of humanity are benevolent, while others are vile, living only for torture, pain and cruelty. The former have set in motion a plan to prove that Earthians are worthy, and in the process, give them a gift to help them mature as a race. Central to this plan in young Margaret. As a child, Margaret invented six different aspects of herself, imaginary playmates, to keep loneliness at bay as the only child on the colony. There was Wilvia, the Queen; Naumi, the warrior; a spy, a healer and more. When Margaret and her parents are sent back to earth, and then several years later, when Margaret is forced to leave the planet forever, her other selves are lost to her. Yet in reality, and unveknownst to Margaret, each of her six other selves follow a different path and flourish on different colonies, some finding great hardship and pain, while others have families and find love.

In the end, Margaret must bring all her selves together to help save the human race, with the help of some pretty remarkable beings created out of Tepper’s incredibly fertile imagination. The dozens of races and beings Tepper creates in The Margarets is impressive, and there is very little that seems tired or familiar. My main complaint comes with such a large cast and massive landscape that some areas seem glossed over or too quickly resolved. Already clocking in at just over 500 pages, The Margarets could have used a couple hundred more to truly explore Tepper’s ideas.